US-China Foreign Language Volume 12, Number 3, March 2014 (Serial Number 126)

US-China

Foreign Language

Volume 12, Number 3, March 2014 (Serial Number 126)

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US-China Foreign Language

Volume 12, Number 3, March 2014 (Serial Number 126)

Contents Linguistic Research

A Contrastive Analysis of the Verb Phrase in English and Ɛŋgwo: Some Pedagogical Implications 177

Paul Mbufong, Fontem A. Neba, Abianji Emmanuel

Interpreting Semitic Protolanguage as a Conlag or Constructed Language I 183 Edouard G. Belaga

Teaching Theory & Practice

Teaching Effect of Contrasting Intonation Systems 193 Hanako Hosaka

On the Development of Novice English Teachers’ Practical Knowledge—A Case Study of Two Novices in Nanchong No. 1 Middle School in China 204

DENG Xiaofang, FENG Dan, YING Bin, CHEN Qian

Speed Reading: Theory, Practice, and Research 216 Binnan Gao

Translation Research

The Emotive Component in English-Russian Translation of Specialized Texts 226 Natalia Sigareva

Cultural Differences and C-E Advertising Translation 232 HU Chun-xiao

Literary Criticism & Appreciation

The Cutting Edge Between Nationalistic Commitment (Iltizām) and Literary Compulsion (Ilzām) in Palestinian “War” Literature 239

Dima M. T. Tahboub

US-China Foreign Language, ISSN 1539-8080 March 2014, Vol. 12, No. 3, 177-182

A Contrastive Analysis of the Verb Phrase in English and Ɛŋgwo:

Some Pedagogical Implications

Paul Mbufong University of Douala,

Douala, Cameroon

Fontem A. Neba University of Buea,

Buea, Cameroon

Abianji Emmanuel Government High School Ekona,

Ekona, Cameroon

This study sets out to perform a contrastive analysis of the verb phrase in English and Ɛŋgwo. This is because it is

suspected that the differences between the components of the verb phrase in both languages may account for some

of the errors that native speakers of Ɛŋgwo learning English as a second language commit. Special attention was to

verb phrase components and their placement in verb phrase structure. Sample verb phrases were collected from

recorded speeches, interviews, observations, and the researchers’ knowledge of both languages. The data were then

analyzed. The results of the research suggest that the components of the verb phrase in both languages pose few

problems but their placement in verb phrase structure and the modifications they undergo account for many of the

numerous errors that native speakers of Ɛŋgwo make when learning English as a second language.

Keywords: contrastive analysis, verb phrase, pedagogy

Introduction

The desire to learn English either as a second or foreign language is increasing in Cameroon. Cameroon is a country where English is learned as a second language by English speaking Cameroonians (Anglophones) and as a foreign language by French speaking Cameroonians (Francophones). The language is given a high coefficient in class and certificate examinations. It is also given a high premium in professional examinations.

There is an increasing effort made by learners to avoid errors in the target language. Despite these efforts, their utterances in the target language are not error free. The errors are numerous and varied. A study of these errors reveals that many of them result from the negative transfer of features from the learner’s mother tongue to the target language while others result from the learner’s attempt to reproduce the rules of the target language he or she has formulated or memorized.

Contrastive analysis, a term coined by Lado (1957), seeks to establish the similarities and differences between languages with the assumption that the areas of similarities will be easier to study in a target language while differences will pose learning difficulties (Bouton, 1970; Gradman, 1971; James, 1976, 1980).

This research seeks to perform a contrastive analysis of the verb phrase in English and Ɛŋgwo. It intends to

Paul Mbufong, lecturer, Department of English and Foreign Languages, University of Douala. Fontem A. Neba, lecturer, Department of English, University of Buea. Abianji Emmanuel, lecturer, Department of English, Government High School Ekona.

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compare and contrast verb phrases in both languages, and to attempt to establish the areas which might pose problems to learners of English as a second language with Ɛŋgwo as a first language.

Ɛŋgwo is the native language spoken by the Ngwo people found in Njikwa Sub-Division in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. It is one of the 279 native languages spoken in Cameroon (Tanda, 2006).

Ɛŋgwo has co-existed with English for a long time. Ɛŋgwo also makes use of English words that have been borrowed and adjusted phonologically (see Example (1)).

Example (1) Pen εpεn Ball bɔrɔ Towel tawεt

The relationship between both languages can be felt even in the educational milieu. Ngwo students who are in the same school, at the same level of education and who are taught in school using English

often revise or discuss their school subjects among themselves in Ɛŋgwo though they will have to write the subjects in English.

It is for this reason that the present research seeks to find out if the similarities and differences between the verb phrase components in both languages can account for the numerous errors involving the verb phrase that

native Ɛŋgwo speakers make in learning English as a second language. The study is very necessary when one looks at the fact that very little has been written about Ɛŋgwo (Ntembe,

1987; Abianji, 1999).

Materials and Method

The main method of data collection is a form similar in nature to the Grammar Translation Method that was propounded by Johann Seidenstucker, Karl Plotz, H. S. Ollendorf, and John Meidinger in that “it approaches the language first through detailed analysis of its grammar rules followed by application of this knowledge to the task of translating sentences and texts into and out of the target language” (as cited in Richards & Rodgers, 1995).

This research is therefore based on a series of verb phrases that have been given in Ɛŋgwo, and then, translated into English and vice versa.

Because no previous attempt has been made to classify the components of the verb phrase in Ɛŋgwo, the components have thus been classified following the English classification. The components in Ɛŋgwo are therefore based on the English components to see how they can be realized in Ɛŋgwo. The other components in Ɛŋgwo that do not exist in English have also been considered. Data were then collected in both languages, placed side by side and contrasted.

Contrastive Analysis and Discussion of Results

This involves comparing and contrasting verb phrases in English and Ɛŋgwo and predicting the errors that are likely to occur.

Verb Phrases Containing Modal Verbs This involves verb phrases that make use of English modals such as may, might, can, could, will, would,

shall, etc. (see Example (2)).


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Example (2a) He may eat He might eat εŋgo wunε ndε He can eat He would eat

Example (2b) They may eat They might eat aŋgo bənε ndε They can eat They would eat

Example (2c) I will sing a song εmε waŋgo kwon εtsa They will sing a song aŋgo baŋgo kwon εtsa

Example (2d) She could dance εŋgo anεnε bin They could dance aŋgo anεnε bin

Of the auxiliaries in English, may, might, would, will, and shall express the possibility of the action of the verb taking place now or in the future. Could is used to show the possibility of the action of the verb in the past. As can be seen from the data above, Ɛŋgwo has only two forms which can be used for may, might, can, and would which are wunε (see Example (2a)) if the subject is singular and bənε (see Example (2b)) if the subject is plural. Equally, will vary depending on whether the subject with which it is used is singular or plural. If the subject is singular, waŋgo (see Example (2c)) is used, and if the subject is plural, baŋgo (see Example (2c)) is used. Unlike the other auxiliaries that vary when used with singular or plural subjects, could remains the same anεnε (see Example (2d)) whether it is used in the singular or in the plural.

From the above data, one can predict that there may be semantic errors resulting from the misuse of modals since there are more modals in English than in Ɛŋgwo. The native Ɛŋgwo speakers may not be able to know the difference between the following sentences since they mean the same thing in Ɛŋgwo (see Example (3)).

Example (3) They look at me They may look at me aŋgo bənε kεdε aŋgu They might look at me They would look at me

Verb Phrases Containing Finite Verbs/Tenses The finite form of a verb is used to show agreement with the subject and to show agreement with the subject

and to indicate tense. It is the most widely used form of the verb. Example (4) English Ɛŋgwo

Write ŋwεʔrε I am writing English εmε wa ŋwεʔrε εkara (*1I am write English) We are writing English mbiə ba ŋwεʔrε εkara (*we are write English) She writes English εŋgo wa ŋwεʔrε εkara (*she is write English) They write English aŋgo ba ŋwεʔrε εkara (*they are write English) I ate rice εmε aa ndε aliʃi (*I [past tense marker] eat rice)

1 The star indicates that the structure is ungrammatical in standard English.


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We ate rice mbiə aa ndε aliʃi (*we [past tense marker] eat rice) We will speak to him mbiə ba gama bo aŋgo (we will speak [pl] to him) I will speak to him εmε wa ga bo ŋgo (I will speak [sg] to him)

The sentences in Example (4) involve verb phrases that contain finite verbs/tenses in English and Ɛŋgwo. They have been carefully selected to show the various aspects of the verb phrase in both languages. When a verb is used in the infinitive in English, there is no problem to realize it in Ɛŋgwo. Problems arise when the verb is conjugated. This is because tenses are realized in Ɛŋgwo through the use of auxiliary verbs which most often vary depending on whether the subjects with which they are used are singular or plural. In the present continuous tense, we see that “is” in Ɛŋgwo is realized as “wa” and “are” is realized as “ba” and the verb that comes after any of them is not conjugated as seen in the cases of “wa ŋwεʔrε—is writing” and “ba ŋwεʔrε—are writing”.

With regards to the simple present tense in English, the verb is inflected for tense by the addition of an “s” to the verb if the subject is singular except when “I” is used as the subject. No “s” is added if the subject is singular. In Ɛŋgwo, this tense is realized in the same way like the present continuous tense as seen in Example (5).

Example (5) English Ɛŋgwo She writes εŋo wa ŋwεʔrε They write aŋgo ba ŋwεʔrε

Some verbs are inflected in Ɛŋgwo but this is for plurality as seen in the examples involving speak (see Example (6)).

Example (6) We will speak mbiə ba gama (gama = speak [plural]) I will speak εmε wa ga (ga = speak [singular])

We see here that if the subject is singular “I”, “ga = speak” which is not inflected for plurality is used. If the subject is plural “we”, “gama = speak” which is inflected for plurality id used. In the case of “ate” where the verb is conjugated in the past tense, the tense is realized through the position of “aa” (a tense marker) in front of the verb, and then, a verb in the infinitive.

From the data, it can be predicted that native Ɛŋgwo speakers may tend to use an auxiliary followed by a verb in the infinitive, since it is a structure common in their language, there by producing asyntactic English sentences as shown in Example (7):

Example (7) They have eat aŋgo ʃi ndε (ʃi ndε = have eat) She has go εŋgo ʃi ŋgo (ʃi ŋgo = has go)

They may tend to add the tense marker “s” or “es” to a verb thinking they are inflecting the verb for plurality since some verbs are inflected in Ɛŋgwo for plurality as in Example (8):

Example (8) They have gone aŋgo ʃi ŋgoro (ʃi ŋgoro = have goes) *They goes She has gone εŋgo ʃi ŋgo (ʃi ŋgo = has go) *She has go

Reduplication of Verbs Verbs in Ɛŋgwo are most often reduplicated. Almost all verbs in Ɛŋgwo can be reduplicated. The effect of

reduplication will depend on the intension of the speaker and what the hearer makes of the situation. This process is done for different reasons. It can be for encouragement, or to minimize the stress involved in the execution of the action of the verb. It can be for emphasis or to communicate the effect of the English “just”. Reduplication is


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at times used to show the type of terrain one is moving on. Verbs may be reduplicated more than twice but this is most often to show that the action of the verb took place over a long period of time.

Example (9) dɔrɔ dɔrɔ ŋgo *run run go kwɔrɔ kwɔrɔ atsa fiε *sing sing two songs (just sing two songs) ga ga εna *speak speak to me (just speak to me) dara dara ŋgo (to walk on level land) kwaʔ kwaʔ zε *climb climb come (climb and come) εmε a ga ga ga *I spoke spoke spoke

The sentences in Example (9) have been used to show the reduplication of verbs. The verbs “dara dara” and “kwaʔ kwaʔ” are used to show the type of terrain on which one is moving but “dara dara” has not got an English equivalent as “walk” cannot sufficiently describe it. Together with the other verbs they are reduplicated to achieve any of the other reasons already stated.

Borrowed Auxiliaries Auxiliary verbs have been borrowed from English to Ɛŋgwo to be used in expressions needing auxiliaries

that Ɛŋgwo has no auxiliaries for. The main auxiliary that has been borrowed from English is must which is pronounced in Ɛŋgwo [mʌʃi]. “Get” is a verb that has been borrowed from English but is used as an auxiliary verb in Ɛŋgwo to stand for either “has to” or “have to” as seen in Example (10):

Example (10) You must eat ngwo wa mʌʃi ndε (*You have to must eat) Joe has to go dzo wu gεrε ŋgo (*Joe is get to go) They have to come aŋgo bu gεrε zεʔ (*They have get to come)

From the above data, it can be predicted that “must” will pose no problem to the learners since it is borrowed with its meaning in English, but “get” will pose a problem as the learners may tend to use it as an auxiliary, thereby producing asyntactic sentences as shown in Example (11):

Example (11) Ɛŋgwo equivalent Correct English form *You get to do the work ŋgwo wu gεrε fwεʔ a fwεʔ jεə You have to do the work *You get to do the assignment ŋgwo wu gεrε lε gʌment wεə You have to do the assignment

Conclusions: Pedagogical Implications

The above study focused on the differences that exist between the components of the verb phrase in English and Ɛŋgwo to predict the errors that are likely to be committed by a native Ɛŋgwo speaker learning English as a second language. Using sample verb phrases containing modal auxiliaries, finite verbs, and borrowed auxiliaries from English to Ɛŋgwo and reduplication of verbs in Ɛŋgwo, the study was able to relate the verb phrases to the likely errors that a native Ɛŋgwo speaker will commit when learning English as a second language. It is worth noting here that these are only predictions that are likely to occur. Some or all may occur with different learners. None of the errors may even be found with some of the learners since language study differs from learner to learner.

A teacher of English to these Ɛŋgwo native speakers should be expected to meet some of these errors and so should be better prepared to overcome them. Contrastive analysis can be used to predict the hierarchy of difficulty in learning English as a second language to a native Ɛŋgwo speaker. This will go a long way to help structure the English language lesson, beginning with the areas of similarities to the areas of differences. Even the


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difficult areas can be structured from the less difficult to the most difficult to facilitate learning by the learners. These and other suggestions could help to reduce the learners’ difficulties.

References Abianji, E. (1999). The noun phrase: A contrastive study between Ngwo and English (Unpublished dissertation for D.I.P.E.S. II.

University of Yaounde 1, E.N.S. Yaounde). Bouton, L. F. (1970). The problem of equivalence in contrastive analysis. IRAL, 14(2), 143-163. Gradman, H. (1971). The limitations of CA predictions (PCCLLU papers, University of Hawaï). James, C. (1976). The exculpation of contrastive linguistics. In G. Nicke (Ed.), Papers in contrastive linguistics (pp. 53-68).

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. James, C. (1980). Contrastive analysis. London: Longman. Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics across cultures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ntembe, P. (1987). Borrowing into the Ngwo language (Unpublished dissertation for the undergraduate diploma, University of

Yaounde 1, E.N.S. Annex Bambili). Richards, C., & Rodgers, S. (1995). Approaches and methods in language teaching: A descriptive analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. Tanda, V. (2006). Sociolinguistic aspects of language loss: A case study of the language situation of Cameroon. In E. N. Chia, K. I.

Tala, & V. A. Tanda (Eds.), Perspectives on language study and literature in Cameroon. Limbe: ANUCAM.


Interpreting Semitic Protolanguage as a

Conlag or Constructed Language I

Edouard G. Belaga Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

One of the most natural approaches to the problem of origins of natural languages is the study of hidden intelligent

“communications” emanating from their historical forms. Semitic languages history is especially meaningful in this

sense. One discovers, in particular, that BH (Biblical Hebrew), the best preserved fossil of the Semitic

protolanguage, is primarily a verbal language, with an average verse of the Hebrew Bible containing no less than

three verbs and with the biggest part of its vocabulary representing morphological derivations from verbal roots,

almost entirely triliteral—the feature BH shares with all Semitic and a few other Afro-Asiatic languages. For

classical linguists, more than hundred years ago, it was surprising to discover that verbal system of BH is, as we say

today, optimal from the Information Theory’s point of view and that its formal topological morphology is

semantically meaningful. These and other basic features of BH reflect, in our opinion, the original design of the

Semitic protolanguage and suggest the indispensability of IIH—Inspirational Intelligence Hypothesis, our main

topic—for the understanding of origins of natural languages. Our project is of vertical nature with respect to the

time, in difference with the vastly dominating today horizontal linguistic approaches.

Keywords: Semitic languages, protolanguage, verbal system, origins of natural languages, artificial intelligence,

conlagor constructed language, VBBH (Verbal Body of Biblical Hebrew), IIH (Inspirational Intelligence

Hypothesis)

Language is one of the hallmarks of the human species—an important part of what makes us human. Yet, despite a staggering growth in our scientific knowledge about the origin of life, the universe and (almost) everything else that we have seen fit to ponder, we know comparatively little about how our unique ability for language originated and evolved into the complex linguistic systems we use today. Why might this be?

Morten H. Christiansen & Simon Kirby, 2003, p. 300

Introduction: BH (Biblical Hebrew) Perceived by Classical Linguists

Triconsonantal Morphological Pervasiveness of BH BH, the best preserved fossil of the Semitic protolanguage (Huehnergard, 2011), could be seen as

primarily a verbal language (Bergen, 1994), with an average verse of the Hebrew Bible containing no less than three verbs and with the biggest part of its vocabulary representing morphological derivations from verbal roots (Joosten, 2012), almost entirely triliteral, or triconsonantal (Gesenius, 1813, 1952)—the feature BH shares with all Semitic and a few other Afro-Asiatic languages (Ehret, 1995).

The unique peculiarity of this triconsonantal morphological pervasiveness did not completely escape the

Edouard G. Belaga, doctor, Institut de Recherche Mathématique Avancée, Université de Strasbourg.

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attention of previous generations of Western linguists, as shows the following “methodological” warning opening a popular Hebrew grammar edited more than a century ago:

Hebrew, of course, has difficulties of its own, which must be frankly faced. … [In particular,] the roots are almost entirely triliteral, with the result that, at first, the verbs at any rate all look painfully alike—e.g., malak, zakar, lamad, harag, etc.—thus imposing upon the memory a seemingly intolerable strain. Compound verbs are impossible: there is nothing in Hebrew to correspond to the great and agreeable variety presented by Latin, Greek, or German in such verbs as exire, inire, abire, redire, … ausgehen, eingehen, aufgehen, untergehen, etc. Every verb has to be learned separately; the verbs to go out, to go up, to go down are all dissyllables of the type illustrated above, having nothing in common with one another and being quite unrelated to the verb to go. (Davidson, 1916, pp. 1-2)

Three Extraordinary Fundamental Linguistic Phenomena This amusing résumé has the merit to recognize, even if under the guise of an earnestly banal pedagogical

clueing in, three extraordinary fundamental linguistic phenomena common to all Semitic languages: First, the extreme parsimoniousness, one could say optimality, from the point of view of Information

Theory, of the triconsonantal representation of verbs: With more than one and less than 2,000 known BH verbs, two consonants would be not enough and four would be too much: The BH dictionary has about 1,700 verbs among about 8,000 words.

Second, the meaningful morphological topology of the body of BH verbs, a fundamental feature of the BH architecture. Two triconsonantal verbs are morphologically or, equivalently, topologically neighboring if they differ in just one consonant, with many pairs of topological neighbors having close, or similar, or related semantical values (Clark, 1999).

Third, even more surprising and subtle: This feature of BH of mixed morphologic-semantic nature manifests not only the pervasiveness of the phenomenon of topologically neighboring verbs having semantically meaningful correlations—such correlations are often relating to the type of the particular letters involved (Clark, 1999).

Thus, the verb to go, “he-lamed-kaph”, meaning to progress step by step toward a goal, is both semantically and morphologically neighboring the verb “he-lamed-qoph”, meaning divide and portion, and not the verbs to go out, to go up, and to go down, which are neighboring the verbs to extend, to master, and to scrape or scratch, respectively.

The Ancient Hebrew Vocabulary Must Have Been Markedly Larger These exquisite—combinatorial, topological, and communicative—precision, efficiency, and

evocativeness are the real source of the so much deplored above difficulty of mechanical memorization of BH verbs, the difficulty which, according to (Ullendorff, 1971), would be considerably aggravated if the quoted manual should be written somewhen in between the third and second millennium BC: “It has, of course, long been recognized that the ancient Hebrew vocabulary must have been markedly larger than that preserved in the OT [Old Testament, alias Hebrew Bible]” (Ullendorff, 1971, p. 242).

Communicative Awareness and Inspirational Intelligence Inspirational Intelligence Hypothesis

Summarizing the above observations, we arrive at the following central problem of our project: Main problem. What is the meaning and what are the origins of these unique and fundamental attributes

of BH, primarily verbal language, with most of words of its dictionary derived from verbal roots? We speak


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here of the highly innate, morphologically most parsimonious, semantically efficiently involved formal structure of its verbal system, displaying also a unique language-alphabet relationship, closely resembling in particular, and yet vastly superior in its expressive power to humanly designed assembler languages.

Our conclusion, stipulated and developed below, cannot be formulated otherwise than: IIH (Inspirational Intelligence Hypothesis). The assumption that the hypothetical protolanguage

preceding BH and other known Semitic languages, and called here Semitic protolanguage, has appeared or emerged, spontaneously and during a relatively short period of time, in and from a single person or a single family. In other words, its emergence is of inspirational nature, sort of a very personal “poem”, reflecting the innermost vital, moral, spiritual, and intellectual “architecture” and aspirations of certain human beings.

The real presence of inspirational creativity—related to physics or biological, linguistic, cultural, and social contexts—is somehow eluding today the scientific curiosity. To confirm the reality and the validity of our intuition in the linguistic and cultural context, it will suffice to mention the example of the Russian poetic genius Alexander Puchkin (1799-1837) who almost singlehandedly initiated the modern culture of Russian language and literature, better—the Russian modern culture tout court (Bethea & Dolinin, 2005) (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. The Hebrew alphabet.

Communicative Awareness The computational modeling is today the most powerful technical universe for playing in, around, and out

different scenarios of emergence and evolution of natural languages (Jurafsky & Martin, 2000). Pre-adaptation for emergence, biological and cultural apparatuses for evolution and natural selection, genetic and archaeological evidence, etc. (Pinker & Bloom, 1990): Those are global scientific concepts and ideological schemes dominating our linguistic field—unfortunately without much success (Christiansen & Kirby, 2003).

Our approach will be different. To simplify, if not caricature the matter, one can compare it to methods of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) (Swift, 1993), without attributing to this modern field the importance its protagonists aspire.

More precisely, we will restrict our attention to hidden intelligent “communications” emanating from evolving historical forms of Semitic protolanguage, as those forms are reflected in the structure of its best preserved fossil, BH. Then we will try to understand the meaning of these communications and its implications for the problem of emergence of our Semitic protolanguage.

Historical Role of the Semitic Protolanguage For those of our readers who might be doubting the value of constructing a research project on emergence

of natural languages around such a “rare poisson” as BH, let us remark that we are sharing the assumption,


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many times and in many ways demonstrated linguisticly, that its Semitic protolanguage was the principal source for all modern European and many Asia-African languages (Huehnergard, 2011).

Verbal Structure of BH and of Its Protolanguage Verbal Triliterality

The Hebrew verb is known for its remarkable linguistic “enigmas” (McFall, 1982). Ours start with a trivial observation that, with the exception of several dozen double two-letter cases, all Hebrew verbs are triliteral, or triconsonantal—three-letter combinations over the Hebrew alphabet of 22 letters (see Figure 1). In other words, about 1,700 of these verbs can be presented by points of the discrete cube BH Verbs, BHV = 22 x 22 x 22 = 10,648.

There is no doubt that, taking by itself, its notoriety notwithstanding, this unique linguistic phenomenon should arise today one’s scientific curiosity—be it just because of the striking similitude of the abstract perfection and parsimoniousness of such an alphabetical coding of verbs to the way machine codes (low level, or assembly programming languages) (Pratt & Zelkowitz, 2001) are traditionally represented—by mostly three Latin letters combinations (abbreviations), with a very few codes having two- and four-, or more-letter names.

Add to this surprising formal similarity, first, the well-known but still lacking any evolutionary explanation fact that “Hebrew grammar is essentially schematic and, starting from simple primary rules, it is possible to work out, almost mathematically, the main groups of word-building” (Lambek & Yanofsky, 2006; Weingreen, 1959); and the second, even more surprising, subtle, of a mixed morphologic-semantic nature feature of BH—the pervasiveness of the phenomenon of topologically neighboring (for example, differing in only one letter position) verbs having semantically meaningful correlations, often related to the type of the particular letters involved (Clark, 1999).

The very existence of such a semantically meaningful relationship represents a novel, and for that matter, giant conceptual leap from the pure phonetical role an alphabet—interpreted by modern evolutionary theories as a phonetically oriented dead end of a gradual random simplification of the hieroglyphical systems (Healey, 1990)—supposed to play, and the change of the linguistic perspective at least as radical as the passage from a hieroglyphical coding of words-notions to their phonetically meaningful alphabetic protocols.

Organismic Linguistics Let us think now back to the mentioned above classical appreciation of the difficulties of BH: “[Its]

roots are almost entirely triliteral, with the result that, at first, the verbs at any rate all look painfully alike—e.g., malak, zakar, lamad, harag, etc.—thus imposing upon the memory a seemingly intolerable strain” (Davidson, 1916, p. vi).

Thus, because “language is one of the hallmarks of the human species—an important part of what makes us human” (Christiansen & Kirby, 2003) (our epigraph), one can conclude that profound intimate linguistic preferences of English speaking people yesterday and today are different from those of people who spoke the other day BH and, before, its protolanguage.

In other words, to this second category of women and men, the BH verbs were not at all looking alike! In particular, we observe that some points of the “verbal body” of BH were connected between them by

the sensitive passages—change of only one consonant—to their neighbors: Thesis: Organismic BH Linguistics. The compact trilateral “verbal body” of BH is an extremely

sensitive organismic fundament of human proto-Semitic linguistic ability.


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Triliterality as an Essential Feature of Semitic Protolanguage Were these properties specifically BH or were they “projected” on BH from more ancient proto-Semitic

languages? The modern redaction of the cited above classical BH grammar (Davidson, 1916) creates an impression

that this verbal BH compactness was acquired later: “The roots, whatever may have been their original form, are in the Old Testament almost entirely triliteral” (Mauchline, 1978, p. 6).

However, all studies of Semitic languages, living and dead, demonstrate convincingly that verbal triliterality was an essential feature of Semitic protolanguage. And this feature does not imply either particular difficulty—compared to modern English—to learn and to use this protolanguage, or poverty of its expressive power.

Quite to the contrary—whereas in the above English example (see “Triconsonantal Morphological Pervasiveness of Biblical Hebrew” of section “Introduction: BH (Biblical Hebrew) Perceived by Classical Linguists”) the verbs to go, to go out, to go up, to go down achieve semantical variations by outward combinatorial means applied to the unanalyzable basic word go, BH verbs are referring by their triliteral structure—which is related by vicinages to similar verbs and which implies the immanence of an alphabet—to some innermost realities of the human being:

Thesis: Verbal Body of Semitic Protolanguage. (1) Verbal body of Semitic protolanguage was an organismic (Goldstein, 1939/1995) linguistic system with explicit and deep links to biological, psychological, intellectual, spiritual, and social aspects of human life; (2) Morphologically, this verbal body was absolutely dominant, implying an extremely dynamic appeal to women and men exercising this protolanguage; (3) We cannot characterize in the same way the verbal body of modern Hebrew, even if its creators were very sensible to the ancient origins of that language; (4) As to the verbal systems of modern natural languages, they should be characterized as verbal collections, without any substantial universal and unifying links between verbs; (5) Verbal body similar to that of BH cannot be expected to appear in a process of acquiring accidental improvements. Its existence is the result of a linguistic construction—Semitic protolanguage was a constructed language—Conlag (Okrent, 2009); and (6) One can expect to partially reconstruct this system by understanding the semantical meaning and the alphabetic references of verbal neighborhoods in the BH verbal body.

Getting out of the Natural Selection Stampede to Clean up Our Epistemic Act Charles Darwin vs. Johannes Kepler

The challenge of our BH problem has been from the very beginning complicated by a universal, unspoken, and yet not less bounding methodological assumption that any evolutionary solution should be consistent with, if not inspired by, the natural selection paradigm (Gould, 2002).

More generally, Charles Darwin fundamental idea—before and independently of his elaborated doctrine—that the biological reality is permanently in a natural movement, in a flow of renewal, accompanied by accidental mutations, with some of them leading to radical improvement of species—this popularity has finally eliminated from the scientific horizons all “theological” interest à la Johannes Kepler (Wolfenstein, 2003) in Why?, Thanks to what?, For what purpose?, and Who? (Kepler, 1619). Thus, for example, the only ambition of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2002/2004) was, and remains, to introduce and to investigate some natural constrains on the linguistic flow of languages—the flow supposed to bring our languages from speechless vocality or manual nothing to their modern splendor.


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We believe that the truth, at least in our case, turned out to be different, and the vision elaborated in this study has been won out by the author—looking since about 20 years for a meaningful interpretation of the mysterious linguistic phenomena outlined above—over the considerable psychological pressure, and at the prize of a painstaking sorting out the enormous body of relevant emergence-and-evolution-by-natural-selection publications, with their characteristic authoritative—because emanating from this theory of everything (Laughlin & Pines, 2000)—and yet, to our great disappointment, absolutely unconvincing, even if often computer-oriented and -supported, claimed Gray and Atkinson (2003).

Does Design Come After Evolution? A typical sample—a veritable statement of metaphysical faith, publicly and solemnly delivered by Robert

Dawkins (2005) and having the merit to be short, clear, and uncompromising—could help an outsider to have a taste of, without acquiring it for, the prevailing atmosphere:

I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all “design” anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection. It follows that design comes late in the universe, after a period of Darwinian evolution. Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe. (p. 5)

And many, many, too many have tried to be faithful to this condemnation of the design creativity to work out accidentally as it were: (1) biology (Dawkins, 1986), cosmology (Smolin, 2004), behavioral psychology (Crawford & Krebs, 1998), and lingustics (Pinker & Bloom, 1990); (2) all progress of sciences at large (Weinberg, 2001) and even more radically; (3) all intellectual endeavors and failures (Dennett, 2006) of humanity, if not; and (4) the very existence in, and ultimately, of the Universe (Dawkins, 2005).

The Prototype of Laplacian Mechanics To begin with, let us remind the reader that, historically, there is nothing new or extraordinary when a

venerable (in our case, spelled out by a 19th century economist (Malthus, 1803)) scientific concept outlives its epistemological usefulness and becomes an epistemological burden for science. Two following well-known precedents should illustrate the point:

Laplacian Mechanics created more than two hundred years ago and universally admired ever since—that is, until the advent of Maxwell’s, Poincaré’s, and Einstein’s theories—has ultimately lost its epistemological value for physics, to acquire instead an enormous ideological prestige as an authentic and unsurpassed in its perfection instance of reductionist philosophy which, in particular, underlay the corresponding dogmatic distortions of otherwise valuable scientific discoveries of, say, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud.

This is how Einstein (1998) has summarized the post-Laplacian epistemological crisis in physics:

We must not be surprised, therefore, that, so to speak, all physicists of the last [19-th] century saw in classical mechanics a firm and final foundation for all physics, yes, indeed, for all natural science, and that they never grew tired in their attempts to base Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, which, in the meantime, was slowly beginning to win out, upon mechanics as well. (p. 73)

Little has Einstein known, delivering this post-mortem of a formerly omniscient theory, that he himself has fallen under the spell of the commonly accepted—at least, since Isaak Newton—Classical Causality Doctrine of Space and Time, the very conceptual ground on which Pierre-Simon Laplace has proudly erected his miniature mechanical universe.


189

To his credit, Einstein was able to spell out himself his difficulty to understand some quantum micro-phenomena incompatible with the classical causality doctrine, by inventing his now famous Gedanken experiment exhibiting, as he called it, a “spooky action on a distance”.

We speak here about the well-known, systematically exploited, and yet as poorly understood today as in Einstein’s times phenomenon of quantum entanglement that, after being discovered according to the very scenario advanced by Einstein and his colleagues as improbable (Einstein, Podolsky, & Rosen, 1935), dominates the modern research in Quantum Information Processing (Nielsen & Chuang, 2000).

Computer Metaphor as the First, Best Hope of Materialism The subtlety of this pure physical phenomenon, of its philosophical and theoretical repercussions and

accommodations, and of related theoretical experimental discoveries which might one day lead to the creation of presently still even theoretically unconceivable Quantum Computer, most strikingly contrasts with the 19th century scientism still limiting and burdening the imagination of many cognitive scientists—as illustrated by the following recent credo (Hobbs, 2007), found in the mentioned above and otherwise very instructive compendium (Arbib, 2007) on the mirror system hypothesis on the linkage of action and language:

[T]he central metaphor of cognitive science, “The brain is a computer”, gives us hope. Prior to the computer metaphor, we had no idea of what could possibly be the bridge between beliefs and ion transport. Now we have an idea. In the long history of inquiry into the nature of mind, the computer metaphor gives us, for the first time, the promise of linking the entities and processes of intentional psychology to the underlying biological processes of neurones, and hence to physical processes. We could say that the computer metaphor is the first, best hope of materialism. (Hobbs, 2007, p. 50)

What physical processes have had the author in mind formulating this statement of scientific belief: only classical, or quantum, the “spooky” ones including, or some other, now either on the stage of preliminary studies, or as yet not discovered, eventually even more paradoxical ones? What sort of Materialism informs his scientific vision—Laplacian, or Einsteinian, or more modern, said Zeilingerian (Zeilinger, 2005) (which would not be recognized as “Materialism” neither by Laplace nor by Marx, and probably not even by Dennett), or its futurist version, not yet invented? And on what idea of Computer relies his metaphor—the abacus, Charles Babbage’s programmable mechanical computer, the modern transistor-based, integrated circuit computer, the futurist quantum computer project, or a future computing device based on new revolutionary philosophical, physical, chemical, or other scientific principles, today not even dreamt about?

Natural Languages Without Natural Selection

In fact, transposed to such fields as the studies of the emergence and evolution of natural languages, of science (Belaga, 2008), etc., from the strictly biological scene—with its immense variety of species, genera, etc., with its times of engagement ranging from at most hundred years of life expectancy for an individual organism to at least millions and even billions of years for evolutionary processes to bring this or that organism to existence, and with the fundamental scarcity of the material traces (fossils) of both biological organisms and their evolutionary changes—natural selection conjecture becomes for the first time verifiable and, if it should be eventually the case, falsifiable (Popper, 1963).

This eventuality, neither deals there with, nor bears directly on our proceedings or conclusions, has everything to do with the three following well-known linguistic (and more general, cognitive) (Belaga, 2008) facts of fundamental epistemological importance—with particular instances of the second and the third ones


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providing us, as it was already mentioned above (see “Three Extraordinary Fundamental Linguistic Phenomena” of section “Introduction: BH (Biblical Hebrew) Perceived by Classical Linguists”), with both the object and instruments of our enquiry:

First, the number of natural languages, living or dead, does not exceed several hundreds, with the life span of a typical natural language, our linguistic “organism”, varying from several hundred to several thousand years, compared to at most several million years of modern languages existence; respectively, the number of principal natural languages families (the linguistic genera) does not exceed several dozens.

Second, the linguistic “fossils” are relatively numerous, very well preserved, and mostly very good documented and studied—to faithfully testify both to the state of particular languages at particular historical junctures and to their evolutionary changes.

Third and last, but not least, linguistics is the theory of language used in materially preserved exchanges, sometimes very intelligent and detailed, between individuals and personal announcements, sometimes very deep and substantial. These exchanges and announcements bear in many cases some important information about the emergence of the language:

Thesis: Higher Memory Level of Linguistic Fossils. Alongside the traditionally studied first, or low, or material memory level of linguistic fossils extracted from preserved (and mostly archeologically retrieved) inscriptions and texts—the level corresponding to the one and only one known in the case of biological fossils—fossilized languages often possess a higher memory level: the stories told by preserved texts about the (history of the) very language in which they were written.

As in the case of the first level memory possessing by preserved inscriptions and texts, but on a different methodological basis, the stories which preserved the higher memory level need a careful and critical examination before being admitted as trusted testimonies to the history of the language in question. But if ultimately admitted, the extracted information, otherwise unavailable, might be of an extraordinary importance: Just imagine that, alongside our studies of fossils of an extinct dinosaur, we could also hear from him his generation’s story!

Conclusions Our approach reverses the only direction of research known today toward the origins and structural

meaning of natural languages. We believe that, similar to physical phenomena, we should learn a lot from their original and fully independent of simplistic evolutionary paradigms structures.

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Teaching Effect of Contrasting Intonation Systems*

Hanako Hosaka Tokai University, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

Not many language learners have been taught the sound system systematically. Intonation is no exception. This

paper aims to show the effectiveness of contrasting TL (target language) and L1 (first language) intonation

systems for the learners to become aware of the TL intonation system as something new and different from what

they are familiar with. The Japanese-speaking subjects showed a better understanding of the English intonation

system after the instruction on the functions of the five-tone choices in English speech. While they were “aware”

of “intonation” as a phenomenon, they did not know “how intonation works”, nor were very aware of any

differences between TL intonation and the intonation they are familiar with, such as L1 and mother tongues.

Therefore, it is better not only to teach the technical rules in intonation, but also to develop the ability to use

intonation in TL appropriately in context. Teaching TL intonation system by contrasting with L1 can help the

learners to systematically learn how intonation works in TL.

Keywords: contrast, teaching effect, intonation system, English, Japanese

Introduction

It is not always easy for language learners to get the idea of the intonation system in other languages, and it is rarely the case that language learners have been taught the sound system systematically. For example, most of the English major students enrolled in the author’s “Introductory Phonetics Course” say that they had never learned the English sound system before the enrolment, and that they wished they had learned it earlier. Likewise, Nakagawa (1996, pp. 106, 115) pointed out that not many learners of Japanese have learned the Japanese sound system including accent and intonation, and she hoped for developing systematic teaching materials for the Japanese sound system. This paper shows that contrasting two intonation systems between TL (target language) and L1 (first language) is effective for the learners to become aware of the “new” intonation system they are acquiring.

The author applies the Discourse Intonation Model (Brazil, 1985, 1994; hereafter DI Model) to both English and Japanese to make a fair contrast. The DI Model is originally designed to capture the “communicative value” of intonation in English discourse contexts. It can be considered as a way of investigating intonation in the discourse analysis framework, looking at “the meaning of intonation” (Brazil, 1997, p. ix) functionally in a stream of natural speech. As shown in Hosaka (2004b, p. 207), the DI Model (originally proposed for English) is

* Acknowledgements: The author would like to acknowledge Prof. Yoshihiro Nishimitsu for his various kinds of contributions in the linguistics fields. His flexible approach and the idea of contrast in language have influenced the author in pursuing sound studies and applied linguistics.

Hanako Hosaka, associate professor, Department of English, School of Letters, Tokai University.

DAVID PUBLISHING

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TEACHING EFFECT OF CONTRASTING INTONATION SYSTEMS 194

suitable in describing oral data in Japanese, as well as variations in L1/L2 (second language) English. Also Yamato (2000) evaluated the DI model as “the most appropriate system to utilise for intonation teaching”, because it “focuses on communication and discourse, as well as holding the balance in terms of simplicity of notation system”, whereas other existing intonation theories “focus on linguistic descriptions” (pp. 98-99). Hence, the author considers that it is possible to teach the basic patterns of discourse intonation in English to Japanese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners with the DI model.

In this study, the author gave a lesson focusing on the usage of Brazil’s five different tone choices in English to Japanese EFL learners at the undergraduate level, and introduced them to the differences of the tones and their meanings while letting them imagine their use of intonation in Japanese. For the purpose of teaching the basic intonation patterns, the author focused on the use of TUs (tone units) with one lexical item (e.g., “yes” and “well”) in context, and then let the students use the five tones in a little longer TUs. This method is motivated on the three points (Hosaka, 2004a, p. 13): (1) The pronunciation of lexical items needs to be dealt with in the stream of speech as well as in citation forms (as shown in dictionaries with International Phonetic Alphabets); (2) It is helpful to be aware of the L1 tendencies in discourse intonation at the lexical level (in comparison to TL tendencies); and (3) Non-native speakers can become aware of the communicative usage of TL intonation through appropriate instructions.

The author compared the students’ tone transcriptions before and after the lesson, and analyzed the effect of the lesson. This paper discusses the following points: (1) comparison between English and Japanese intonation systems; (2) teaching of basic English intonation to Japanese EFL learners by comparing the five different tone choices; and (3) the effect of teaching the English intonation system in contrast with the Japanese system.

This paper aims to show the effectiveness of the contrastive approach between TL and L1 in L2 acquisition and foreign language teaching.

Comparison Between English and Japanese Intonation

Characteristics of English and Japanese Intonation in Contrast In both English and Japanese, the intonation system helps to add an “extra” meaning to the original

dictionary meaning. We acquire it very early in the L1 acquisition process. According to Ogura (2005, pp. 32-35), from around five months before birth, fetuses can recognize patterns in intonation and stress from the mothers’ speech through the amniotic fluid; and infants’ babbling starts sounding with intonation after 0;10. According to Cruttenden (1979, as cited in Suganuma, 1993, pp. 5, 19), a child starts to discriminate and produce differences in pitches, loudness, length of sound, and voice qualities from neonates, and “during the one-word stage or early in the two-word stage he may begin to use the difference between a falling and a rising pitch pattern systematically” (p. 19). According to Guernsey’s (1928) research on 200 infants from 0;2 to 1;9 (as cited in Murata, 1968, p. 23), the influence of L1 discourse appears in infants’ intonation long before their speech starts sounding like L1. Since then they usually use it unconsciously in their L1 speech.

This means that L1 intonation would easily stay as part of the core of the “new” language system. Intonation is more likely to cause language transfer from L1 to TL (= L2) (Hosaka, 1996a, 1996b).

Because of this aspect, the author considers it is effective to make a clear contrast between TL and L1 in teaching TL, so that the learners can utilize the awareness of the TL-L1 contrast in using TL.


As for five-tone choices in the DI Model, while the majority of English tone use is p, r+, r, and o tones, that of Japanese tone use is p, r+, and o tones. Table 1 shows an example of tone choices in English and Japanese: Both languages have similar systems, with different frequencies in tones.

Table 1 Example of Tone Choices in English and Japanese (Percentages of Each Tone Choice Frequency)1 English // it is RAINing // (%)

Brazil’s five-tone choices Japanese // Ame desu ka // (%)

It is raining! (surprise, unexpected) 0.3 p+ rise-fall /\ 0.1 It is raining! (surprise, unexpected) It is raining. (statement) 47.8 p fall \ 74.5 It is raining. (statement) It is true it is raining. (expected and not interested)

11.3 o level _ 16.0 It is raining… (expected and not interested)

Is it raining? 30.5 r+ rise / 6.2 Is it raining? Is it really raining? 6.4 r fall-rise \/ 2.1 Is it raining? (more involved) Cf. // aME desu ka //

(= candy)2 Note. Adapted from Hosaka, 2004b, p. 206.

Table 2 is the summary of the characteristics of English and Japanese intonation (Hosaka, 2004b, p. 203).

Table 2 Intonational Comparison Between English and Japanese English Japanese Indo-European Group Non-Indo-European SVO (Subject+Verb+Object) Word order SOV (Subject+Object+Verb) Intonation language (determined by discourse structure) intonation + rhythm intonation > accent

Typology

Word-pitch language (determined by word accent structure) accent + pause accent > intonation

Prosodic & discoursal unit At least 1 primary accent (optionally with pause and/or lengthening)

TU Prosodic & pausing unit Boundary low tone + pause (often with pragmatic particles)

Discoursally various

Intonation patterns Fall = certainty Rise = uncertainty Level = continuation

Fairly fixed

Primarily for intonation purposes Pitch Mainly for accentual purposes “stress accent” movable depending on intonation and rhythm

Accent “pitch accent” immovable, predictable

Note. Adapted from Hosaka, 2004b: based on Hosaka, 1996a, 1996b, cf. Cruttenden, 1986; Kubozono, 1995; Beckman & Pierrehumbert, 1986.

As in Tables 1-2, it is possible to contrast the intonation systems of the two languages in the same DI Model. In addition, using the same model, it becomes easier to show the similarities and differences in the intonation system in different languages: in this case, teaching English to Japanese EFL learners.

1 The frequencies of each tone choice were analyzed in Hosaka (in progress) in the context of reading aloud. The total of the five tones in Table 1 does not make 100%, because 3.7% in the English data and 1.1% in the Japanese data did not have clear tones to be uniquely identified as one of them. 2 In Japanese, it is possible to distinguish meanings solely by the use of prominence in speech, as in // Ame // (rain) and // aME // (candy). This is similar to the distinction of // CONduct // (noun form) and // conDUCT // (verb form) in English.


The author considers the systematic teaching of intonation would help the L2 learners become more aware of the “new” intonation system in TL.

Research Questions In the author’s other ongoing research in teaching listening in English to Japanese EFL learners, she found

as follows: (1) Japanese EFL learners tend to be aware of their difficulty in “listening”; and (2) Nearly half of them can be successfully improved their listening skill in English by instruction in how to listen.

The research questions in this paper are: Could the same logic apply to teaching intonation? If we give the students instruction on English intonation systematically, would it improve their listening skill?

Teaching Basic English Intonation to Japanese EFL Learners by Contrasting the Five Different Tones

Subjects The author gave a lesson on the basic English intonation system with focus on the five tones as in Table 1 to

the total of 64 Japanese students in four regular English language classes for undergraduate focused on listening. The subjects were undergraduate Japanese EFL learners at two Japanese universities. Their English levels varied to some extent, mostly in the range of low- to high-intermediate. The author compared their tone choice perception at between pre- and post-instruction.

Teaching the English Tone Choice System In order to teach the tone choices, the author made a set of handouts (based on Utsu & Schaefer, 1989/2001,

pp. 30-36; Brazil, 1994, 1997; Bradford, 1988) as a teaching material. She designed it as one lesson to cover the five-tone differences in context sound-wise and meaning-wise. For data collection in this lesson, the author included a short dialogue in the handouts. Considering the subjects’ English level, the dialogue contains only p (\) and r+ (/) tones in the context, which are common in Japanese intonation as well.

The procedure of the English tone choice lesson goes as follows: (1) introduction of the five-tone choices in English. The author introduced each pitch move pattern and the simplified codes to transcribe it (using arrow signs to mark pitch moves); (2) explanation of the basic contrast between English and Japanese intonation; (3) listening to the model dialogue [ Pre-instruction]. The subjects listen to a short model conversation between a man and his wife, and try to transcribe the tones used in this dialogue3; (4) comparison of a simple dialogue with different tone choices. They are asked to compare a dialogue between A and B, and imagine how A would answer in the given different situations; (5) learning the differences in the use of intonation. Continued from (4), the handout presents the differences in the use of intonation—each tone and its meaning; (6) prosodic introduction to the five different tones in English. The author reads the same lexical item in the five different tones. The subjects focus on the tones and transcribe each tone; (7) guessing their meanings or functions. They are asked to guess the meaning or function of each tone; (8) explanation in context. The handout explains meanings for each tone in the same context; and (9) reviewing the model dialogue [ Post-instruction]. They listen to the same dialogue again, and transcribe the tones4.

3 In Pre-instruction, the author told the subjects, “Listen to the following conversation between a man and his wife. Try to transcribe the tones used in this conversation”. Then in Post-instruction, “Listen to the following conversation between a man and his wife AGAIN. Transcribe the tones used in this conversation”. 4 See the third footnote.


The data in this study are the two attempts in tone transcription of the model dialogue by the subjects in the lesson, i.e., Pre-instruction and Post-instruction ((3) and (9) above).

Results: Transcribing the Five-Tone Choices

Model Dialogue Used in the Data Collection As described earlier, the subjects were asked to try transcribing the tones used in the model dialogue as the

data source material before and after the instruction on the basic English intonation system. The author asked them to write the tones using arrow signs, so they could easily visualize what they heard in the context.

The model dialogue used in the lesson (added the DI transcription on the original dialogue used in Utsu & Schaefer, 1989/2001, p. 31):

[Imagine the context5: The husband came home after work and was starting to unwind. His wife asks him.] Wife: // r+ ANYthing to DRINK // Husband: // p HMM // Wife: // r+ WELL // Husband: // p YES // p WELL // p OK // Wife: // r+ BEER // p or SAke // Husband: / p BEER // Wife: // r+ with poTAto CHIPS // Husband: // p NO // p THANKS // Wife: // r+ here you ARE // Husband: // p THANK you //

The model dialogue has 14 TUs6. It is consisted of only p (fall) and r+ (rise) tones as for the tone choices. Hence, the subjects’ attempts were to tell which tone out of the five choices was used in each TU in the model dialogue as they listened.

Pre-instruction Result Table 3 is the pre-instruction result of the subjects’ attempt of transcribing the tone choice in the model

dialogue. The dark-shaded columns are the correct transcription of the tone used in each TU. The bold numbers are the most preferred tone transcription by the subjects.

The findings from Table 3 are: (1) Nearly half of the subjects successfully transcribed in most of the TUs; (2) When the p tone was used, most of the subjects guessed it was either p+, p, or o; (3) When the r+ tone was used, most of them guessed it was either r or r+; (4) In spite that there was no o tone used in the model dialogue, all of the TUs expect 1 in Table 3 had quite a few subjects guessed as the o tone (e.g., 9, 11, 12 in Table 3); and (5) Although p+ and r rarely occur in English as Table 2 shows, the subjects could not seem to tell them well (e.g., 6 and 8 for p+, 3 and 13 for r in Table 3).

These findings reflect the Japanese tone preference in Table 1 as follow: Tone preference (based on Table 1)

5 The original textbook shows the context in a picture. 6 In Discourse Intonation Model, a “TU”, transcribed between a set of double slashes, is used as the unit in intonation including one tone choice occurred in one of the prominences. Brazil (1997) stated it as “the stretch of language that carries the systemically-opposed features of intonation” (p. 3). This is equivalent to “intonation unit” in other intonation theories.


Japanese: p (3/4) > o (1/6) > r+ (1/15) > r > p+. English: p (1/2) > r+ (1/3) > o (1/10) > r (1/15) > p+. Hence, the default tone choice for Japanese EFL learners would be p or o, while they are supposed to learn

the English way of using each tone.

Table 3 Pre-instruction Attempt of Transcribing the Tone Choices in the Model Dialogue No. TUs Tone used p+ (/\) p (\) o (_) r (\/) r+ (/) 1 // anything to drink? // r+ 18 45 2 // hmm. // p 12 40 8 1 2 3 // well? // r+ 1 1 25 34 4 // yes. // p 7 30 17 1 4 5 // well, // p 10 30 21 1 6 // OK. // p 22 23 13 2 3 7 // beer // r+ 6 8 14 34 8 // or sake? // p 23 19 2 4 13 9 // beer. // p 22 32 8 10 // with potato chips? // r+ 2 15 45 11 // no, // p 4 43 12 12 // thanks. // p 2 32 25 13 // here you are. // r+ 4 7 12 26 12 14 // thank you. // p 13 25 18 5 Note. Only the valid answers are counted in this table.

Pre-instruction vs. Post-instruction Figure 1 is the comparison of the numbers of the subjects according to the numbers of correct answers in the

14 TUs in the model dialogue between Pre- and Post-instruction. The data include all the 64 subjects, including four of those marked as n/a because of no answers written down in either Pre- or Post-instruction. The result is categorized into four score groups according to the numbers of correct answers out of 14 TUs as follow:

Four-score groups: score 0-3, score 4-6, score 7 to 10, score 11 to 14

Figure 1. Pre- vs. Post-instruction result (counted by the number of subjects).


Figure 1 shows the lower-score groups became smaller (from 56% to 42%), and the higher-score groups became larger (from 42% to 53%). This means even one lesson concentrated on intonation was effective.

Teaching Effect Comparison According to the Score in Pre-instruction The author categorized the teaching effect by comparing each subject’s Pre-instruction answer with its

Post-instruction answer per each TU as in Table 4.

Table 4 The Teaching Effect Categories Used in the Analysis Teaching effect Pre-instruction Post-instruction Explanation Positive Incorrect Correct Improved after instruction

Neutral Correct Correct

No change after instruction Incorrect Incorrect

Negative Correct Incorrect Got worse after instruction n/a n/a in either or both of Pre- and Post-instruction INVALID to show the effect

Figure 2 is the teaching effect in total counted by the number of TUs (out of 840 TUs = 14 TUs x 60 valid subjects), using the four categories above. When counted by the numbers of TUs, 22% of the TUs (181 out of 840) showed positive effect. It is notable that 11% showed negative effect, probably because the subjects might have confused until they would fully digest the new knowledge of tone choices.

Figure 2. Teaching effect in total (counted by the number of TUs).

Figure 3 is the teaching effect in total (counted by the number of TUs out of 840 TUs) compared by the score groups as in “Four-score groups: score 0-3, score 4-6, score 7 to 10, score 11 to 14”, using the four categories in Table 4. The top “total” bar is the same as in Figure 2, as reference to each score group.

Figure 3 indicates: (1) All the four-score groups show similar tendencies in teaching effect; (2) The lower-score groups show more of positive teaching effect (24% in 0-3, 26% in 4-6, 18% in 7-10, and 10% in 11-14); and (3) The higher-score groups show less of positive effect, and a little more negative effect instead (7% in 0-3, 12% in 4-6, 13% in 7-10, and 14% in 11-14).


Figure 3. Teaching effect: by the score groups (counted by the number of TUs)

Therefore, from Figures 2-3, even one lesson concentrated on intonation had positive teaching effect in 22% of the TUs in all the valid subjects, and the positive effect was bigger in the lower-score groups. On the other hand, 11% of the TUs showed negative effect, and it was slightly bigger in the higher-score groups. This implies overt intonation instruction may be more effective in lower intermediate level.

Teaching Effect Comparison Between p and r+ Tones In the 14 TUs in the model dialogue (3), there are nine p TUs and five r+ TUs. The author presents Figures

4-5 to compare the teaching effect between p and r+. Figure 4 is the teaching effect compared between p vs. r+ tones counted by the number of TUs. In Figure 4,

the author counted only the correct answers, and the numbers of correct answers increased in both p and r+ tones after instruction (i.e., 8.5% increase (38.1% 46.6%) in p TUs, 11.3% increase (49.0% 60.3%) in r+ TUs).

Figure 4. Teaching effect: p vs. r+ tones (counted by the number of TUs).


Figure 5 is the teaching effect rate compared between p vs. r+ tones counted by the number of subjects. The author uses “positive”, “neutral”, and “negative” labels for the teaching effect rate, as in Table 4.

Figure 5. Teaching effect rate: p vs. r+ tones (counted by the number of subjects).

Figure 5 shows: (1) The teaching effect rate results on p TUs and r+ TUs were almost the same; and (2) In both p TUs and r+ TUs, about half of the subjects showed positive effect (50% in p TUs, 48% in r+ TUs).

Therefore, from Figures 4-5, even one lesson concentrated on intonation had positive teaching effect in both p TUs and r+ TUs in all the valid subjects, and both showed very similar tendencies.

Subjects’ Reactions to the Intonation Lesson

After this lesson on discourse intonation, the author asked the subjects if they were aware of the functions of intonation in English before the instruction. Forty-four of them gave valid answers as in Table 5.

Table 5 The Subjects’ Reactions to the Intonation Lesson Were you aware of the functions of intonation in English? Valid answers: 44 Not aware 0 0% Aware but didn’t know the details 38 86.4% Aware but can’t distinguish the differences 5 13.6% Fully aware 0 0%

Table 5 shows the subjects were “aware” of “intonation” as a phenomenon, but did not know “how intonation works”. Examples (1)-(3) represent the subjects’ comments after the lesson (translated from Japanese).

Example (1) It is difficult to listen to the differences between the tone choices. Example (2) I have realised I have been using the tone choices unconsciously. Example (3) I learned the tone choices make differences in what the speaker means.


Conclusions

The result of this study proves it is effective to teach the intonation system in class. The subjects showed a better understanding of the English intonation system after being instructed how differently the five-tone choices function in English speech context. The effect was equally apparent in both p and r+ tones, and the teaching effect was more obvious in lower-score groups than in higher-score groups. Even though the instruction was only one lesson concentrated on intonation, the result confirms that the author’s suggestions in Hosaka (2000) are valid for more effective intonation teaching. However, there was some negative effect shown in the result, further lessons may reduce it over time.

Learners are aware of “intonation”, but not likely to be aware that the intonation system they are familiar with (e.g., L1 intonation) is different from that in TL. Hence, it is important to focus on what intonation does rather than what it is (Taylor, 1993). The aim for L2 learners is not learning rules how to use intonation, but developing ability to understand and use intonation in TL appropriately. This is because: (1) The exploitation of intonation in TL can be difficult for L2 learners; and (2) Language transfer from L1 can emerge easily in L2.

As the author suggested in Hosaka (1998), the intonation system has not been overtly taught in English language teaching, particularly in Japan; and needs to be taught more “on how intonation works in natural verbal communication at the discourse level in the target language” (pp. 114-115). This can be done by overt instruction to make L2 learners systematically aware of the intonational differences between their L1 and TL, and between their use in L2 and that of native speakers.

References Bradford, B. (1988). Intonation in context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brazil, D. (1994). Pronunciation for advanced learners of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brazil, D. (1997/1985). The communicative value of intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brazil, D., Coulthard, M., & Johns, C. (1980). Discourse intonation and language teaching. London: Longman. Cruttenden, A. (1979). Language in infancy and childhood: A linguistic introduction to language acquisition. Manchester:

Manchester University Press. Cruttenden, A. (1986). Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guernsey, M. (1928). Eine genetische Studie über Nachahmung (A genetic study of imitation). Zeitschrift für Psychologie (Journal

of Psychology), 107, 105-178. Hosaka, H. (1996a). Intonation transfer and foreign accentedness: Comprehensibility in interlanguage (Unpublished M.A.

dissertation, Kobe University, Japan). Hosaka, H. (1996b). Language transfer in English intonation: A cause of foreign accentedness. Kobe Studies in English, 10,

235-266. Hosaka, H. (1998). Discourse intonation in English and Japanese of Japanese EFL speakers: A pilot study. Annual Review of

English Language Education in Japan, 9, 107-117. Hosaka, H. (2000). Prosody of language learners’ speech: In English and Japanese. AILA ’99 Tokyo Proceedings CD-ROM, Tokyo. Hosaka, H. (2004a). L1-L2 intonational contrast at the discourse-lexical level. Dokkyo University Studies in English, 59, 1-15. Hosaka, H. (2004b). Expanded application of Discourse Intonation Model into Japanese: In comparison with English. Dokkyo

University Studies in English, 60, 133-147. Hosaka, H. (in progress). An investigation of L2 speech in English and Japanese (Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Birmingham,

U.K.). Murata, K. (1968). Yooji no Gengo Hattatsu (Language development of infants). Tokyo: Baifu-kan.


Nakagawa, K. (1996). Towards the acquisition of Japanese prosody for English native speakers. Hokkai Gakuen University Studies in Culture, 7, 95-118.

Ogura, T. (2005). On’in no hattatsu (Prosody development). In S. Iwatate, & T. Ogura (Eds.), Yoku Wakaru Gengo Hattatsu (Introduction to language development) (pp. 32-35). Kyoto: Minerva Shoboo.

Suganuma, A. (1993). Gengo Kakutoku Nyuumon (Introduction to language acqusition). Osaka: Osaka Kyooiku Shoboo. Taylor, D. S. (1993). Intonation and accent in English: What teachers need to know. International Review of Applied Linguistics in

Language Teaching, 31(1), 1-21. Utsu, Y., & Schaefer, E. J. (1989/2001). Tune in to spoken English (pp. 30-36). Tokyo: Seibido. Yamato, K. (2000). Validating David Brazil’s theory of Discourse Intonation for intonation teaching. Annual Review of English

Language Education in Japan, 11, 91-100.


On the Development of Novice English Teachers’ Practical

Knowledge—A Case Study of Two Novices in

Nanchong No. 1 Middle School in China*

DENG Xiao-fang Southwest University,

Chongqing, China

FENG Dan Southwest Jiaotong

University Hope College,

Nanchong, China

YING Bin High School Affiliated to

Southwest University,

Chongqing, China

CHEN Qian Chongqing Jianshan Middle

School, Chongqing, China

TPK (Teachers’ practical knowledge), an essential component of teachers’ knowledge and impetus for teachers’

professional development, plays a crucial role in the novice teachers’ dealing with the initial years of “sink or

swim” crisis. This is a case study to explore what components of TPK the novice English teachers lack, and how the

novices develop TPK. Data are collected from questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, and journals. We

find that the novices especially lack three components of TPK, i.e., interpersonal knowledge, situational knowledge,

and critical reflection, and internal factors (beliefs, problem consciousness, and reflection) and external factors

(interaction with colleagues and students, learning in COP (Community of Practice), and school culture) facilitate

the development of novices’ TPK. Teacher learning in COP based on constructivism and reflective teaching have

contributed greatly to the development of novices’ TPK.

Keywords: novice, TPK (teachers’ practical knowledge), COP (Community of Practice), reflective teaching

Introduction

As an essential part of teachers’ knowledge, teachers’ practical knowledge (hereinafter referred to as TPK) is crucial for teachers’ professional development. TPK is the central theme within the field of language teacher education (Borg, 2009). Recent years have witnessed studies of TPK at home and abroad on the definitions, components, features, values, and development of TPK (Elbaz, 1983; Clandinin & Connelly, 1987; Golombek, 1998; CHEN, 2003; SHEN, 2006; ZHANG, 2007, etc.).

However, the previous studies of TPK mainly focus on the experienced teachers and most Chinese scholars approach TPK from the static perspective and empirical studies are scant. The novices’ initial years of teaching

* This paper is one of the research results of the project “Constructing Teacher Research Group for Teacher Learning in Higher Education” sponsored by 2013-2014 Higher Education Scientific Research of Chongqing Higher Education Association (Grant No. CQGJ13B320).

DENG Xiao-fang, associate professor, School of Foreign Languages, Southwest University. FENG Dan, teacher, Foreign Language Department, Southwest Jiaotong University Hope College. YING Bin, teacher, High School Affiliated to Southwest University. CHEN Qian, teacher, Chongqing Jianshan Middle School.

DAVID PUBLISHING

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ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF NOVICE ENGLISH TEACHERS’ PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE

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are a “crisis” or a “sink or swim experience” in which teachers have to create coping strategies to face difficult situations (Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2011). Besides, teachers have to face more challenges with the ongoing reform in basic education of China which brings about The National English Curriculum (2001), the new textbooks, and the conflicts in philosophical assumptions about the nature of the language teaching and learning, teachers’ roles, and students’ learning strategies and qualities valued in teachers and students. All these call for the novice teachers’ development of TPK to adapt to teaching and education reform. Hence, this study aims to explore what components of TPK the novice English teachers lack, and how the novices develop TPK.

Theoretical Framework

TPK Definition. Elbaz (1983) thought TPK encompasses first-hand experience of students’ learning styles,

interests, needs, strengths, and difficulties, and a repertoire of instructional techniques and classroom management skills, as well as the knowledge of the social structure of the school. TPK includes five components: knowledge of self, the milieu of teaching, subject matter, curriculum development, and instruction. Chinese scholar, CHEN (2003) thought that TPK includes six components: teacher’s educational beliefs, self-concept knowledge, interpersonal knowledge, situational knowledge, strategic knowledge, and critical reflection. Educational beliefs involve teacher’s understanding of the goals of education and how a teacher evaluates his job. Self-concept knowledge is teacher’s understanding of his/her own personality, roles, and teaching styles. Interpersonal knowledge is understanding of students’ needs, learning styles, and relationship with the students and colleagues. Situational knowledge is understanding of the classroom setting and making quick judgments and decision according to the milieu of teaching. Strategic knowledge is the design, structuring, and implementation of teaching. Critical reflection is timely reflection on one’s teaching. As we will explore the novice English teachers’ development of TPK in Chinese context, we adopt CHEN’s classification of TPK.

Features of TPK. TPK is action-oriented, person-bound, and context-bound. It allows teachers to achieve the aims they personally value (Johnston, 1992). TPK is implicit or tacit knowledge. Teachers are more in a “doing” environment than a “knowing” environment (Clandinin, 1986; Eraut, 1994). TPK integrates scientific or formal knowledge, everyday knowledge, norms and values, and experiential knowledge (Handal & Lauvas, 1987). Teachers’ beliefs play a crucial role in building practical knowledge. As part of practical knowledge, both beliefs and knowledge are closely interwoven, but the natures of beliefs make them the filter through which new knowledge is interpreted and subsequently, integrated in conceptual frameworks (Pajares, 1992).

Theoretical Basis for Developing TPK Constructivist learning theory. Constructivist learning theory forms the basis of teacher learning. With

the emergence of the socio-cultural perspective on teacher learning and professional development (Borko, 2004; Johnson & Golombek, 2003), teacher learning is understood as socially negotiated and contingent upon knowledge of self, students, subject matter, curricular, and setting (Cobb & Brower, 1999). Constructivist theory suggests that learners construct knowledge rather than have that knowledge transmitted to them by some other sources. Learner constucts meaning based on his/her own experiences, interpret stimuli on the basis of what they already know, and construct understanding that makes sense to them. New learning is


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interpreted in the immediate context of current understanding and social interaction facilitates learning (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).

Based on constructivism, the process of teacher learning is understood as normative and lifelong, emerging out of and through experiences in social contexts (Freeman & Johnson, 1998). Development of TPK is an ever-lasting process of learning through collaboration, interaction with other teachers, students, and the context of situation.

COP (Community of practice). Wenger (1998) defined “COP” as groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. All human learning takes place within communities of practice, either in formal learning structures, including classes and schools, or in informal networks, including families, professional groups, and in social circles. A COP has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest, which distinguishes members from other people. Members of COP value their collective competence and learn from each other. In pursuing interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other by interactions on formal and informal occasions (Wenger, 1998).

Teacher learning in COP represents the basic mode of cooperative and collaborative learning that teachers use in their daily interactions with their environment. Knowledge must be co-constructed if it is to have lasting meaning (Schoonmaker, 2002). Teachers’ knowledge and beliefs are constructed through and by the normative ways of thinking, talking, and acting that have been historically and culturally embedded in the communities of practice in which they participate as both learners and teachers (Johnson, 2009). COP provides teachers with opportunities to participate “in a professional community that discusses new teaching material and strategies and that supports the risk taking and struggle entailed in transforming practice” (Mclaughlin & Talbert, 1993, p. 15). With the guidance of more experienced teachers, COP provides a supportive teaching community for the development of novice English teachers through observational learning, modeling, imitation, reflection, and interactions among themselves or with students.

Reflective teaching. Since the early 1980’s, reflective teaching has been proposed as an effective way for teacher development. Reflective teaching is teacher’s thinking about what happens in classroom and alternative means of achieving goals or aims; and thus provides teachers with an opportunity to consider the teaching event thoughtfully, analytically, and objectively (Cruickshank & Applegate, 1981). Schön (1983a, 1983b, 1987) argued that professionals develop their expert knowledge through two separate, but related processes: reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action. Reflection-on-action, the typical self-evaluative thinking that teachers do after lessons, is a deliberate attempt to understand past events in order to discover how our knowing-in-action may have contributed to an unexpected outcome, and shape future action. Reflection-in action occurs “on the run, teachers simultaneously teach and analyze what they are doing, why they are doing it and how the students are reacting” (Steffy, Wolfe, Pasch, & Enz, 2000, p. 14). To reflect-in-action, a teacher must be able to frame problems almost subconsciously, generate hypotheses, and immediately test them.

Reflective teaching improves teachers’ self-knowledge, reshapes teacher beliefs, and facilitates the development of TPK. A reflective teacher would engage with reflection on his own TPK, examine it reflectively, reconstruct it, attempt to solve the dilemmas of classroom practice with such knowledge, reframe his knowledge base for teaching, and promote professional development. Reflective teachers adopt a critical attitude to


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themselves and accept other teachers’ ideas wholeheartedly. They regularly question their own knowledge, beliefs, and the results of their past teaching experiences with the intention of learning something new. Richards and Nunan (1990) stated that experience coupled with reflection is a much more powerful impetus for professional development. Reflective teaching promotes a professional dialogue and provides a way of situating teachers’ stories of TPK development. It leads the teachers to share their stories with colleagues, the experienced and expert teachers. It creates a context which provides a complete process of reflective planning before class, reflective teaching in class, and reflective evaluation after class during which the TPK is considered before class, applied in class, and evaluated, improved, and restructured after class.

Research Design

Qualitative case study, which allows for thick description of the context and particulars of a phenomenon, is used to “gain an in-depth understanding of the situation and meaning for those involved” (Merriam, 1998).

Pilot Study A pilot study was conducted to examine what components of TPK pre-service English teachers lack. Two

hundred pre-service English teachers in Grade Four of Southwest University did the questionnaire of TPK and 10 of them were randomly selected to be interviewed. The results show that the pre-service English teachers were especially lack of three components of TPK: interpersonal knowledge, situational knowledge, and critical reflection. Just graduating from universities, novice teachers’ TPK is similar to that of pre-service teachers. Thus we form the hypothesis: The novice English teachers are lack of interpersonal knowledge, situational knowledge, and critical thinking.

Research Questions This study aims to address the following questions: (1) What components of TPK are the novices lack of?;

and (2) What facilitates the development of novice teachers’ TPK and to what extent?.

Subjects Ann and Betty (alias for Teacher A and Teacher B), two novice English teachers in Nanchong No. 1 Middle

School in Sichuan province, participated in the study (see Table 1). Graduating from the same university—China West Normal University, both are teaching senior high school students.

Table 1 Background of the Novice Teachers Participant Age Gender Education degree Teaching experiences Students Textbook Ann 23 Female BA 0 Grade 1 New Standard English Betty 24 Female BA 1 year Grade 2 Senior English for China

Both teachers’ students participate in the study and are encouraged to answer the interviewer’s questions freely without their teachers’ presence.

Instruments Semi-structured interviews. The semi-structured interview is used, because they offer both the needed

structure and flexibility for the participants to express their views freely. The open-ended questions allow the author to get the detailed information about the development of the novice English teachers’ TPK (see Appendix).


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Classroom observation. Classroom observation helps the novices understand what goes on in the language classroom and learn from other teachers, and helps the researcher collect data about the novices’ TPK which is embedded in classroom teaching.

Reflective journals. Lampert (1985) characterized teachers’ work in terms of managing dilemmas: in relation to knowledge, students, teacher’s roles, the relations to the local community and the society at large. By writing journals, teachers examine the specific dilemmas, so implicit knowledge was brought to the awareness of the teachers. The novices are requested to write journals based on the following questions designed by Richards and Nunan (1990): (1) Were you able to accomplish your goals?; (2) Was your lesson teacher-dominated or students-dominated?; (3) What was most and least successful?; (4) Did you depart from your lesson plan? If so, why?; (5) Did students contribute actively to the lesson?; and (6) How did you respond to different students’ need?.

Procedure This study takes one year. At the beginning and the end of the study, the two novices are interviewed to

find out what components of TPK they already have and what they still lack. Their reading classes are observed as they integrate the teaching of reading, speaking, listening, grammar and vocabulary, and teachers can give full play to TPK. Journals are written to record the teachers’ personal reflections on the lessons observed, the specific dilemmas, past experiences; and the conversations and reflections in their teaching and research group.

Analyses of the data from the pilot study and the initial interview show that the novice English teachers are lack of interpersonal knowledge, situational knowledge, and critical thinking. Hence, how the novices develop the interpersonal knowledge, situational knowledge, and critical reflection will be the focus in this study.

Data Collection and Analysis We collect and analyze the data from the non-participated classroom observations, teachers’ journals, and

the interviews. The data, 12 interview transcriptions, 10 classroom observations, and 10 journals, are complementary and triangulated.

Results and Discussion

This section presents the detailed development of the novices’ TPK with the focus on interpersonal knowledge, situational knowledge, and critical reflection.

Teachers’ Interpersonal Knowledge Interacting with students and colleagues, learning in the COP and reflection has gradually promoted the two

novices’ growth of interpersonal knowledge. The data of Ann. At the beginning of the study, Ann, who had only two lessons’ teaching experience

during internship in the university, had no idea of interpersonal knowledge and did not know how to interact with her students. She planned her lessons according to the syllabus or reference books but ignored the factor of students. She was more concerned about carrying out the lesson plan than students’ needs. In order to make her class go smoothly, she chose the top students to answer questions and ignored other students. This can be seen from her students’ description:


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Ann is friendly to us but she never requires us a lot. She only asks the good students to answer questions. Sometimes her class is boring. (XIA Xu, personal interview, September 20, 2011)

Ann has a name list with students’ scores of high school entrance examination. She likes to ask the top students to answer questions. What I care about is not the answer but the reason. She didn’t tell us. She didn’t know what we want. (Monitor, personal interview, September 20, 2011)

Interacting with colleagues helps Ann adapt to the teaching situation quickly and the knowledge from experienced teacher helped her grow. Being a newcomer, Ann was not familiar with her colleagues, and she was afraid of talking too much with her colleagues at first. After Ms. CHEN was appointed to be her mentor, Ann had been observing her mentor’s classes and participating in all discussions in her teaching and research group. She said that her mentor’s and peer teachers’ teaching style, ideas, and techniques had a great influence on her professional development especially in educational beliefs, attitude to students, and teaching skills. After one term’s teaching, the relationship between Ann and her students and colleagues became much better. She regularly reflected her teaching, considered students’ needs and interests in her lesson planning, and made her lesson more student-centered and more effective. In the journal, she wrote:

At first, when I reflected my own teaching, I couldn’t find so many problems. Gradually, by listening to my mentor’s suggestions, I came to know more problems and try to find solutions. I took my students’ ability into consideration when designing the tasks. I could see the smile on my students’ face after they finished the tasks. I learned how to involve students and make the lesson interesting by observing my mentor’s classes. I began to make friends with the students and understand what they want. The leader of our group and other peer teachers especially my mentor contributed a lot in my career. (Ann, journal, June 2, 2012)

Learning in COP, as formed by the mentor and peer teachers, interaction with students and colleagues, and reflection contributed a lot in a respectful and constructive way in helping Ann adapt to the real teaching situation quickly, reshape her beliefs, and develop interpersonal knowledge.

The data of Betty. Betty, with open-minded personality and one year experience in work, developed her interpersonal knowledge more quickly and easily.

From the first year on, Betty had been guided by a mentor, Mr. TANG, an experienced English teacher, and the collective lesson planning was used in their grade. Discussions with her mentor and other teachers helped her a lot in dealing with teaching more easily as well as establishing good relationship with her students. Betty admitted that at first, she did not pay attention to her students’ needs until after she became comfortable with her own position as a teacher in the classroom. She used to be more concerned about how she could be accepted by her students and colleagues. Little by little, she found that students should be the center of the whole class, and that one’s class would never succeed if the students’ needs, interest, and personality were neglected. This can be seen in her journal:

I did not know my students at the very beginning. But my mentor told me if I can call out the students’ names, they would pay more attention to my class. So I spent several weeks remembering the students’ names and after class I often chatted with them to know their difficulties better. (Betty, journal, October 15, 2011)

Betty’s personal knowledge grew after one year’s teaching. And she had established good relationship with her students and known her students’ needs well. Students spoke highly of her as follows:

Betty makes her class humorous and interesting by telling jokes, so we like to speak English in and out of class. She


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can easily predict and explain the difficulties clearly. My class makes great progress and is at the top in the final examination. (LI Wen, personal interview, June 18, 2012)

Betty is familiar with all the students and often chats with us after class. (Monitor, personal interview, June 18, 2012)

Interacting with colleagues helps Betty solve her teaching dilemmas. Being active and open-minded, Betty likes discussing teaching dilemma in her office and always finds satisfactory answers. Here is an example of their discussion:

Betty: I’m angry that certain student listened to music in my class. A: It’s common. B: It’s hard to teach senior high school students. C: If you see them listen to music again, let them hand in their Mp3 or cell phone. C: How do you deal with it? Betty: I asked him to stand at the back of the classroom. D: I think it is better to warn him by walking towards him. On one hand, he knows you noticed him. He will give up

listening to the music. On the other hand, if you respect him, he will listen to you carefully… (personal communication, April 8, 2012)

From the data, we can see the novices’ interpersonal knowledge has developed after learning in the COP, interaction with students and reflection on their teaching. The students’ attitudes towards their English teachers have changed. More and more students think their English teachers know them well, and this makes their learning more effective. Ann’s students think she is more competent than before, and Betty’s students think that English classes are much more interesting than before. Betty, with one more year’s teaching experience, can establish a better relationship with the students. It is the typical feature of TPK, i.e., action-oriented.

Teachers’ Situational Knowledge Situational knowledge is gradually accumulated in the milieu of teaching. The two novices made progress in

different perspectives during the one-year study. The data of Ann. At the beginning of teaching, Ann dealt with the incidents in her class by ignoring or

skipping them. In the first class observed, Ann could not control the class appropriately, ignored the students’ noise when other students were answering questions, and read her lesson plan constantly. In another lesson, Ann asked the students to describe their favorite teacher using some of the adjectives (nervous, shy, patient, serious, strict, pretty, handsome, energy, popular, amusing, fun, etc.). She did give students time to think and asked the students: “Who’d like to try?” There was no response of her students. Then, she asked a top student to answer the question.

When reflecting the lesson, she found her problems. “It’s difficult for me to deal with the incidents in the classroom and I don’t know how to react immediately” (personal communication, September 18, 2011). But she did not know how to tackle them with little teaching experience. What she knew came from the teaching methodology book and there was a big gap between theory and practice.

As the study went by, learning from experienced teachers, communicating with her students, and more importantly imitating other teachers’ solutions to similar problems helped Ann improve situational knowledge. She made classroom questioning more effective by following her mentor’s suggestions: (1) Give the students more time to think about the questions; (2) Do more group work rather than individual work; and (3) Pay more attention


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to the students’ response. Ann learnt to handle the critical incidents in classroom by observing her mentor’s and other teachers’ classes whenever possible. Learning from her mentor and peer teachers, interacting with students and reflecting made Ann change her own beliefs and teaching practice. “The students inspired me and I can adjust my lesson planning and made my teaching more effective” (personal communication, May 10, 2012).

Gradually, great changes happen in Ann’s class. Firstly, she improved her classroom management. She paid attention to the whole class, moved more frequently in the classroom, and raised students’ attention with changed intonations when she highlighted the difficult points. Secondly, she listened to the students patiently and gave clear instructions before the students answered questions. Thirdly, she told some jokes to attract students’ attention or relax the tense atmosphere. In the last classroom observation, to the observer’s surprise, Ann gave clear instructions, reacted quickly and appropriately to the students’ questions and the students actively participated in classroom activities.

The data of Betty. Learning from her mentor and other colleagues, Betty had some situational knowledge at the beginning of the study with one year teaching experience. However, there are still some problems in her lessons. In the first observation, Betty asked the students to find the main idea of the text. No students answered her question. After a long while, she wanted to move forward her class by asking a top student to answer her question. And later in her journal she reflected:

I must go on with my class and ingore the students’ needs or I cannot finish the content. However, the students did not cooperate with me. I asked some top students of the reason. They said that this reading material was quite different from the previous ones and it is difficult for them to generalize… (Betty, journal, October 12, 2011)

Betty realized her problems and could analyze them. She had the awareness of problem-solving. Suggestions given by her colleagues after discussing with them helped her change. She also appreciated this learning atmosphere in the teaching and research group. In the next class we observed, she improved her teaching. She introduced the features of the English essays and told the students the first sentence or the last sentence of a passage was the topic sentence. Soon the students found the answers and her class went smoothly.

With the mentor’s guide, Betty successfully prepared and gave an open class of reading (“Saving the earth”, Unit 9). She collected the information from the Internet and discussed it with her mentor. In her journal she presented:

Mr. Tang told me to think more about the students and the incidents in class when I designed the tasks. It really helped me when I had my class. Several situations which I met in class were within my expectation and I could handle them. (Betty, journal, December 12, 2011)

The two novices’ situational knowledge has grown during the study. At the beginning, they focused too much on whether they could finish their teaching in time or rushed their teaching quickly to some degree without giving students enough time to think over or take notes. Most of their responses to the students’ questions or classroom incidents were not effective. Learning in the COP and reflection helped them change. When they joined the discussion in their office, their group leader told them to give each student appropriate feedback. In the last observations, they talked slowly and paid more attention to students’ responses. They gave students more encouragement and positive feedback. They could evaluate the students’ answers appropriately according to different situations. When students’ answers were uncompleted, they gave prompts for students to


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complete the answer. They could balance the time of students talk and teacher talk. More and more interactions between the students and teachers happened in class. Their lessons become more flexible and efficient just as they said: “More importantly, I would adjust my lesson planning according to the process of the class” (personal communication, June 18, 2012).

Teachers’ Critical Reflection Critical reflection helps accelerating teachers’ professional development. The two novices develop critical

reflection by learning from mentor and communicating with colleagues as well as reflective teaching. The data of Ann. At the beginning of the research, as a green hand, Ann was scared to ask colleagues for

help. She could only handle her problems by self-thinking. She followed her lesson planning rigidly and scarcely used the Internet. In the first journal she wrote:

I taught the students the text required, but I really found it hard to reach all the objectives and I did not know how to deal with the incident in class. I feel alone since I did not know whom to ask for help. (Ann, journal, September 15, 2011)

One week later, her mentor was requested to observe and guide her teaching. This enhanced Ann’s enthusiasm. With the mentor’s help, Ann started to change and reflect her teaching regularly. In the journal she reflected: “I took every opportunity to test my courage, enrich my experience and sharpen my teaching skills. Basically, I wasn’t happy with the way my class went today. The activities took up too much time…” (Ann, journal, November 23, 2011). “I reflect each of my class now. Basically, after class, I would ask myself: Was my lesson really students-centered? Which is most or least successful? Did every student participate actively in the lesson and learn anything? Why?” (Ann, journal, June 2, 2012).

Ann’s reflection shows her perspectives on teaching. At the beginning, she tended to evaluate her teaching in terms of herself as a teacher and how successfully she had brought about her intended goals. She described success of teaching in terms of teacher’s behavior, whether she felt more comfortable handling the presentation stage, whether she was more in control and how the lesson could be more structured and predictable. But later, she evaluated her lesson according to how well she adapted the presentation, practice, or production phases to students’ needs. And she came to reflect the lesson more from the perspective of student outcomes.

The data of Betty. Betty owned some knowledge about reflection. Compared with Ann, she paid more attention to the efficiency of her classroom teaching and her students. She developed her critical reflection mainly through learning in the COP.

Betty divided her students into three groups at the beginning of this term to give them different tasks according to the students’ English competence. Later, she found that some of the lower students were not as active as before in class. In order to find a solution to this problem, she first asked Mr. TANG for help. She did not know she had already hurt some of the students. Additionally, she got the feedback from her students, as she wrote in the journal:

I told my mentor that the students did not participate in my class actively like before. Mr. Tang said that I ignored the self-esteem of the students. It made the top students more confident while the low-proficiency students felt they were discriminated and some even gave up English… (Betty, journal, October 15, 2011)

She canceled this grouping and apologized to her students. Her students were happy to hear that. Later on, neither the difficult tasks nor homework was alternative.


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In Betty’s class, she never supplemented too much information beyond the textbook. The most difficult part for her was language points. Every time, she explained the language points and let the students memorize them by telling the exact usage of each phrase. It made her class boring.

After many times of interaction in her research group, Betty believed that a good language teacher creates a good context for practice, with plenty of chances for students joining in. Lessons should be relevant and useful to students with various and interesting activities, and teacher gave a clear and structured presentation. A successful lesson engaged the students and generated useful practice of the language. And good language teaching was dependent upon the design of the lesson, which provided good language learning environment and plenty of time for practice. How well the students learned was much dependent on what a teacher provided for them, and classroom materials played a key role.

During the one-year study, the two novices have developed TPK in the light of reflecting their teaching experience, drawing on their own beliefs and assumptions about themselves, about teachers, about teaching, and about learners. As Colton and Sparks-Langer (1993) observed: In the constructivist view, the learner’s direct actions, reactions, and interactions with objects, people, rules, norm, and ideas result in the personal construction and reconstruction of knowledge and adaptive abilities. By critical reflection, the novices develop their beliefs about teaching and teaching styles based on several information sources: own experiences, their mentors’ practical knowledge, and theory (Black & Halliwell, 2000). By critical reflection, they compare the similarities and differences of the three sources and become aware of differences between the mentors’ explicated practical knowledge and the mentors’ lessons, and thus improve their own practice and develop TPK.

Conclusions

This study finds that the components of TPK which the novice English teachers lack are interpersonal knowledge, situational knowledge, and critical reflection, and the novices develop TPK through interaction, teacher learning in the COP, and reflective teaching. Both internal and external factors contribute to the development of the TPK.

Internal factors, including teacher beliefs, problem consciousness, reflective teaching, and practice have great impact on novice teachers’ development of TPK. The two novices’ changing beliefs assist their development of TPK. Built up through time and practice, their beliefs are derived from and reshaped by different sources, such as experiences as language learners, teaching experience, and reflections on their teaching. TPK guides teachers’ thinking and understanding of their work contexts, which determines their classroom teaching practice. With the mentors’ help, novice teachers make personal interpretations of formal knowledge through their practice in their specific work contexts by reflection. Reflection impels teachers to shape their beliefs. Additionally, collective reflection in group plays a crucial role in the development of TPK especially after the open class. Reflection helps the novices develop problem consciousness and learning in COP promotes their competence to handle the dilemmas. Hence, the novices develop TPK by learning, reflecting, and problem solving.

Additionally, external factors—the school culture, COP (the teaching and research group, the mentor, peer teachers, the students, etc.) play crucial roles in developing the novices’ TPK. Practices and activities of the community influence the novice English teachers’ cognition, because learning is the key of a coherent COP and


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members share things and simultaneously influence each other. When they find problems in teaching, they naturally ask their mentors or colleagues for help or imitate the same solutions which their companions once did with the similar problems. Besides, communicating with their students helps them improve their lesson planning and evaluation and make their teaching more efficient. This study proves that young teachers’ professional development happens in a supportive community of more experienced teachers and positive interactions among themselves or with their students. COP is the driving force for teachers to keep improving themselves in action. COP strongly enhances the generating and enriching of TPK as well as teacher’s professional development (ZHOU, 2007; ZHANG, 2007).

However, the present study has some limitations. The subjects are limited, and the time for conducting the study is short. Further studies on novice English teachers’ development with more subjects over a longer period of time in different contexts need to be done.

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Appendix: Interview Questions

1. What’s your understanding of English teaching and learning? 2. What do you know about yourself as a teacher? Do you understand your teaching styles? The dilemma in your teaching? 3. Do you know your students well such as their need, affect, and difficulty, etc.? 4. Do you often communicate with your colleagues? If yes, what do you usually talk about? 5. Do you reflect before class, in class, and after class? What do you reflect about?


Speed Reading: Theory, Practice, and Research

Binnan Gao Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

This paper reports on training advanced learners of Chinese in five basic reading skills through speed-reading over

one semester by using PowerPoint with the time duration function. Both the pre- and post-training tests and the

students’ questionnaires prove the effectiveness of this training. The questionnaire also reveals important

information regarding students’ perception of the training and related factors, such as their anxiety level and the

influence of unknown words upon their understanding. The scores that students obtained on the tests of the five

skills could give a general picture of the difficulty level for each of the trained reading skills.

Keywords: speed reading, reading skills, Chinese advanced learners, unknown words, difficulty hierarchy, pre- and

post-tests, questionnaires

Introduction Reading skills are not introduced systemically in the syllabus for advanced Chinese L2 (second language)

learners. The assumption seems to be that the learners will understand a passage well enough as long as they know all the characters, words, and grammar in that passage. Although L2 linguistics knowledge, mainly word knowledge, is the single best predictor of reading comprehension, accounting for up to 30% of the variance (Landi, 2010), learners also need other domains of linguistic knowledge, such as textual structure and world knowledge, to comprehend the idea of a passage. In addition, without proper reading skills to skim and scan, reading can be less accurate as well as inefficient. The reason for introducing the speed factor into reading comprehension training is that it can force learners to give up reading word by word and use the proper skills, increasing their accuracy in reading comprehension.

Literature Review The proposals for reading skills and reading components mainly come from two different but connected

perspectives: (1) the instructional and testing perspective; and (2) the research perspective. The early lists of skills proposed by Davis (1968) and Munby (1978) come from the instructional and testing perspective. These lists of skills are concerned with reading as a product; in other words, what understanding is reached by the readers. Their lists are tied into the idea of “levels of understanding”, i.e., literal understanding, the understanding of inferred meaning, and critical examination of a text (Alderson, 2001). For example, Davis (1968) defined eight skills, as follows: (1) recalling word meanings; (2) drawing inferences about the meaning of a word in context; (3) finding answers to questions answered explicitly or in paraphrase; (4) weaving together ideas in the content; (5) drawing inferences from the content; (6) recognizing a writer’s purpose, attitude, tone, and mood; (7) identifying a writer’s technique; and (8) following the structure of a passage.

Binnan Gao, Ph.D., Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

SPEED READING: THEORY, PRACTICE, AND RESEARCH

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Recalling word meanings, finding answers to questions explicitly, weaving together ideas in the content, and following the structure of a passage are all necessary parts of a literal understanding of the text; drawing inferences from the content is understanding between the lines; and recognizing a writer’s purpose, attitude, and mood clearly belongs to a critical examination of the text.

The main criticism of defining reading in such a fashion is that analysis of test performance does not reveal separability of skills (Alderson & Lukmani, 1989; Alderson, 1990a; Alderson, 1990b). However, a skill’s approach remains influential in syllabus and material design, as well as the design of language tests (Alderson, 2001).

In the research literature, there are different ways of decomposing the reading construct. A seminal study done by Bernhardt and Kamil (1995) found that 30% to 38% of the variance can be accounted for by L2 linguistic knowledge and 10% to 16% can be explained by L1 (first language) reading proficiency, with the remaining 50% unexplained. Within L2 linguistic knowledge, word recognition is the most predictable determiner of reading comprehension, explaining 30% to 40% of the variance (Landi, 2010). Studies that tried to prove the existence of variables other than L2 linguistic knowledge and L1 reading proficiency could not explain the variance as much. For example, Leloup (1993) reported an average 1% variance that could be accounted for by background knowledge, with readers’ interest getting an 8% variance. Landi (2010) found that nonverbal IQ (intelligence quotient), representing general cognitive ability, accounted for at most 3% of the variance in comprehension ability.

A common view in the research literature is that reading consists of two components: decoding (words recognition) and comprehension. The latter includes parsing sentences, understanding sentences in discourse, building a discourse structure, and integrating this understanding with what one already knows (Gough, Juel, & Griffith, 1992). DARC (Diagnostic Assessment of Reading Comprehension), developed by Potts and Peterson (1985) and extended by Hannon and Daneman (2001), identified four central comprehension processes: remembering newly read text, making inferences licensed by the text, accessing relevant background knowledge, and making inferences that require integrating background knowledge with the text. Altogether, they could explain 65% of the variance in the participants’ reading comprehension performance (Hannon & Daneman, 2001).

An alternative is Carver’s (1987, 1992) view that reading should be seen as having three components: word recognition skills, reading rate or reading fluency, and problem-solving comprehension. Carver (1987) showed that rate fluency abilities increase with reading development. In another study, Carver (1992) examined L1 English college students and distinguished five different reading modes according to different reading purposes or required tasks: scanning (find target word, 600 wpm), skimming (find transposed words, 450 wpm), rauding (comprehend complete thoughts in sentences, 300 wpm), learning (pass multiple choice test, 200 wpm), and memorizing (recall, 138 wpm). For L1 English-speaking college students, Carver shows that there are optimal reading rates for each of the five reading modes.

The reading components proposed from the research perspective have proved, for the most part, to be independent of each other, with word recognition claimed to be the most important determiner. In addition, the component of comprehension is decomposed in a fashion when reading comprehension is viewed as a process instead of a product. Therefore, reading assessment designed in this way (Potts & Peterson, 1985; Hannon & Daneman, 2001) can help diagnose the particular part readers have difficulty with.


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Rational of the Current Project

Lists of skills from the instructional perspective were chosen in order to train the advanced learners of Chinese, instead of reading components proposed from the research perspective. The reason is that rather than diagnosing which part of the cognitive process gave the students difficulty, the purpose is to train students to master skills to deal with real-life reading tasks, such as locating specific information, generalizing the main idea, and understanding the writer’s tone.

Five skills were selected from the reading skills proposed in the literature (Davis, 1968; Grabe, 1991; Munby, 1978). They are: (1) locating specific information; (2) seeing the connection between sentences; (3) locating and summarizing the main idea; (4) following the structure of the narrative and argumentation; and (5) recognizing the writer’s purpose, attitude, tone, and mood, as shown in Table 1. Table 1 also presents the types of questions that exercise learners’ skills.

As noted in the previous section, these skills are not entirely separable. For example, Skill 2 and Skill 3 both require students to make inferences and summaries. In addition, the types of questions targeting each skill are not exhaustible. For example, to help students build Skill 4, three types of questions were chosen, although there can be more, such as arranging sentences in the correct order.

Table 1 Five Reading Skills Selected for Training Advanced Learners of Chinese

Why speed reading? Is it too much to expect foreign language learners to read both well and fast? As shown in the literature review section, speed is an important indicator of reading proficiency. A proficient reader reads fast not only because he is able to read the words and sentences quickly but also because he is skillful enough to adjust his attention and reading pace according to the purposes of the reading (Alderson, 2001). In other words, he is able to switch to the different reading modes as defined by Carver (1992), according to the different reading tasks. Both the automaticity with the words and his skills allow him to divert more attention to the task, thereby increasing accuracy. Therefore, introducing the speed factor into the reading tasks can not only help L2 learners become conscious of their reading speed; it can also force L2 learners to give up reading word by word and build up their skills to scan and skim, which will ultimately increase their reading accuracy.

Skills Text types Types of questions 1. Locating specific information (scanning)

Menus, signs, ads, directions, timetables Find a specific piece of information.

2. Seeing connections among sentences and sub-ideas

Narratives (stories, jokes), argumentations

Find out what a pronoun refers to. Complete a paragraph containing conjunctions or adverbs, such as buguo (however), gen… xiangfan (opposite to), chufei(unless), etc.

3. Locating main idea and summarizing sub-ideas into main idea (skimming)


Find the main idea in the topic sentence. Summarize sub-ideas into main ideas.

4. Following the structure of a narrative or an argumentation


Find “what happens initially/then/finally”. Find out how many points are made. Insert a sentence in the right place.

5. Recognizing a writer’s purpose, attitude, tone, and mood Narratives, argumentations Identify whether the writer is in support of, opposed to, or

ambivalent about a point.


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Practice

The students, 21 in total, who received the speed reading training were advanced learners of Chinese studying at a prestigious eastern university in the US. They had learned Chinese for two years and a half before the training. Each skill was trained to them in two 10-minute modules in classroom, one at the beginning and one at the end of a two-week period. They were introduced to the skill with the exercises in the first week, and were evaluated on the skill followed by the discussion of the answers in the next week.

Each module contained two phases. The first one was to develop the students’ automaticity with words. After new words were taught to them, both the unknown and unfamiliar words were shown to the students with the animation functions of PowerPoint. Students were required to say the English translations of the words as fast as possible. In the second phase, items were presented to students on PowerPoint, and the time duration function of PowerPoint was used to control the time allowed for completing each item.

The set of exercise items and the set of evaluation items are equivalent in terms of length, difficulty level, and time allowed for completion. In each set, there are four to five prompts with five multiple-choice questions. Each prompt is usually either around 50 to 70 characters long followed by one question ranging from 15 to 50 characters long, as shown by Example (1), or 90 to 110 characters long followed by one or two questions, as shown by Example (2). The time allowed to complete the former is 30 to 40 seconds, while the time allowed to complete the longer one is double that, as shown in Table 2. The time length was decided in reference to the reading speed of the students under training, which was 140 characters per minute as measured by a reading comprehension exercise before training. The reading speed in this training was set at 110 to 220 words per minute, a little faster than the students’ reading speed before the training, so that they had to give up reading word by word and learn how to skim and scan. For example, the item in Example (1) is 88 characters, with only 30 seconds allowed; this means that the students need to read 176 words per minute if every single word is to be read. However, if the students know that to answer the question, they only need to find the key words, such as shouxian (first), lingwai (in addition), and gengzhongyao de shi (more importantly), it can take them less than 30 seconds to complete. Furthermore, lengths of time given to complete questions were varied, with prompt length and difficulty level of the skills taken into consideration. For example, recognizing a writer’s purpose and attitude requires reading the whole prompt and deeper mental work and, therefore, is given longer time than locating information.

Example (1) In characters: 首先，我喜欢有个性的人，所以，你一走上台，就深深地打动了我。另外，你能坚持自

己的选择，而不是迎合评委，非常难得。最重要的是，你今天的表现的确非常出色! 所

以，我支持你。(30s)

评委支持这位舞者的原因有几个？

A. 一 B. 两 C. 三 D. 四

Romanized: Shouxian, wo xihuan you gexing de ren, suoyi, ni yi zoushang tai, jiu shenshendedadong-le wo. Lingwai, ni neng jianchi ziji de xuanze, er bushi yinghe pingwei, feichang nande. Zui zhongyao de shi, ni jintian de biaoxian diquefeichang chuse! Suoyi, wo zhichi ni. Pingwei zhichi zhewei wuzhe de yuanyin you jige?


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A. yi B. liang C. san D. si Translation: First of all, I like people with unique characters, therefore, the moment you got unto the stage, you struck me deeply. In addition, you can stick to your choice, but not cater to the taste of the judging committee. That is very rare. Most importantly, your performance today was indeed outstanding. Therefore, I am in support of you. How many reasons did the judge in the committee have in support of this dancer? A. yi B. liang C. san D. si

Example (2) In characters: 下午三点的时候，他回到了宿舍。他先给自己泡了一杯浓茶，然后坐到书桌前，拿出笔

记本和笔。他正要写作业的时候，发现忘记了作业的内容。于是，他给朋友小李打电话。

打完电话以后，他突然觉得很饿，于是吃了一碗方便面。最后，他又把茶喝光了，觉得

非常满足！(60s)

他回到宿舍做的第一件事是_______？

A. 拿出笔记本和笔 B. 给自己泡了杯茶 C. 给小李打电话 D. 吃了一碗面

他回到宿舍做的最后一件事是_______？

A. 给小李打电话 B. 吃了一碗面 C. 把茶喝光了 D. 写作业

Romanized: Xiawu sandian de shihou, ta huidao-le sushe. Ta xian gei ziji pao-le yibei nongcha, ranhou zuodao shuzhuoqian, nachu bijiben he bi. Ta zhengyao xie zuoye de shihou, faxian wangji-le zuoye de neirong. Yushi, ta gei pengyou Xiaoli da dianhua. Dawan dianhua yihou, ta turan juede hen’e, yushi chi-le yiwan fangbianmian. Zuihou，ta you ba cha heguang-le, juede feichang manzu. Ta huidao sushe zuo de diyi jian shi shi_______？ A. nachu bijiben he bi B. gei ziji pao-le bei cha C. gei xiaoli da dianhua D. chi-le yiwan mian Ta huidao sushe zuo de zuihou yijian shi shi_______？

A. gei xiaoli da dianhua B. chi-le yi wan mian C. ba cha heguang-le D. xie zuoye Translation: Three o’clock in the afternoon, he went back to his dorm. He first made himself a cup of strong tea, and then sitting at the desk, he brought out his notebooks and pens. When he was just about to do his homework, he found that he forgot the content of the homework. Therefore, he called his friend Little Li. After hanging up, he suddenly felt very hungry, and therefore he ate a bowl of instant noodles. Finally, he drank up his cup of tea, and felt very happy and content! The first thing that he did when he got back dorm was _______. A. took out his notebook B. made himself a cup of tea C. called Little Li D. ate a bowl of noodles The last thing that he did when he got back dorm was_______? A. called Little Li B. ate a bowl of noodles C. drank up his cup of tea D. wrote his homework


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Table 2 The Length of Prompt and Its Question and Time Allowed for Items of Five Different Reading Skills

Notes. N: number; Char: character; Sec: second; * indicates that there is one prompt that is twice the length of the prompt indicated in the table. Time allowed for it and its question is twice as much as that allowed for the shorter prompts; ** indicates that there are two prompts that are twice the length of the prompt indicated in the table. Time allowed for it and its question is twice as much as that allowed for the shorter prompts.

Since word knowledge is crucial to reading comprehension for foreign language learners, the words used were strictly controlled. The words used in the items are mostly in the range of the 0 to 3,000 vocabulary frequency list of The Syllabus of the Graded Vocabulary and the Graded Characters for Chinese Proficiency Test, which is less than the vocabulary size of the students under training, who had learned 3,500 words before the training. The new words were taught before the students worked on the items as said before. It should also be mentioned that 50% of the items were written on the basis of the items of the reading sections of Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK) level 4 and 50% were written from scratch.

Research Pre- and post-tests, which included five items that respectively tested the five selected skills, were

developed and administered to the students before and after the training to measure their gains. The two tests were equivalent in terms of length and difficulty levels, and they had the same format as that of the exercises and evaluations used in the training. The students were also given an eight-item questionnaire at the end of the training. In it, they rated on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 being the strongest and 1 the weakest) how much they agreed with statements designed to find out: (1) their gains; (2) the relationship between knowledge of words and their understanding; and (3) other factors of the exercise and evaluation items.

Results of Gains According to Pre- and Post-tests The 21 students who received the speed reading training throughout the semester performed more

accurately on their post-test, as indicated by the accuracy rates. The paired-sample t-test indicates that these students performed statistically significantly better in the post-test than in the pre-test, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3 The Paired-Sample T-test of Accuracy Rates of Pre- and Post-tests

Pre-test (N = 5) Post-test (N = 5) M (%) SD M (%) SD t-test df

70 0.12 80 0.07 -3.08** 20 Notes. ** p < 0.01; M = mean; SD = standard deviation.

Results of the Questionnaire As shown in Table 4, according to the percentage of students who “strongly agreed” with a statement, i.e.,

Skill 1 Locating info

Skill 2 Seeing connections

Skill 3 Summarize main idea

Skill 4 Following structure

Skill 5 Recognizing writer’s purpose, attitudes, and mood

N of prompts 4* 4* 5* 4* 5** N of questions 5 5 5 5 5 Length of prompts (N of char)

50-70 50-70 50-90 50-70 50-70

Length of questions and options (N of char)

15-30 25-40 35-50 30-40 20-30

Time (sec) 35 40 40 30 40


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those who chose 4 or 5 in the scale of 1 to 5, and the average of their ratings, they strongly agreed that this speed reading training helped with their reading comprehension ability and speed. They also became more confident by the end of the training. Seventy-one point four percent of the students “strongly agreed” with the statements, granting these statements the highest level of agreement, and the average of their ratings of these statements range from 7.52 to 7.81 in the scale of 1 to 10, the highest ratings among all statements. For some reason, they did not agree that they utilized these skills in other reading materials as much as they agreed with the other statements about the effectiveness of the training. Both the percentage of the students who “strongly agreed” with the statement and the average of their ratings were the lowest among ratings of all statements regarding the effectiveness of the training.

The questionnaire also shows that the students did not have much difficulty decoding the learned characters and words, since less than half of them strongly agreed with the statement that says the opposite, and the average of their ratings was only slightly above 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. However, compared to the above rating, the students felt stronger about the effect of unknown words on their performance in reading comprehension, since around 60% of the students “strongly agreed” with the statement, and the average of their ratings reached 7.52, the same as the average of their ratings on most of the statements regarding the training’s effectiveness.

As for the other factors, the students felt OK about the speed of the slides, and their anxiety level was not very high. Fewer than half of the students agreed with the statements regarding their anxiety level and the speed of the slides, and the average of their ratings was between 6 and 7, almost the lowest of all ratings on the statements.

Table 4 Students’ Feedback Collected From the Questionnaire After the Training

Notes. * indicates that learners who chose 5 and 4 in the survey; N: number of students.

Other Results Since the time allowed for completing the test items of the five reading skills varied not only according to

the length of the prompt but also according to the conjectured difficulty level, the accuracy rates of the tests of the five skills (as shown in Table 5) cannot accurately reflect the difficulty of these skills. For example, Skill 4 (following structure) was given only 30 seconds per item, while Skill 2, Skill 4, and Skill 5 were all given 40 seconds per item. The accuracy rate of Skill 4 might have increased if the students were allowed more time. On

Number and percentage of learners who strongly agree* (N = 21)

Average (Transformed on a scale of 1 to 10)

Standard deviation

Effectiveness of the training

Help with reading comprehension in general

15 (71.4%) 3.76 (7.52)

0.70

Help with speed in general 15 (71.4%) 3.90 (7.81)

1.00

More confident 15 (71.4%) 3.76 (7.52)

1.00

Utilize the skills in other reading materials

9 (42.9%) 3.33 (6.66)

1.06

Relationship between words and comprehension

Have difficulty figuring out learned words

10 (47.6%) 3.19 (6.38)

1.33

Unknown words effect 13 (61.9%) 3.76 (7.52)

1.14

Other factors Slides went too fast 9 (42.9%) 3.00 (6.00)

1.14

Very anxious 9 (42.9%) 3.33 (6.66)

1.15


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the other hand, although the time allowed for completing the test item for Skill 1 (locating specific information) was given 35 seconds, its accuracy rate was the highest.

Despite all this, Table 5 still gives us a picture, though not accurate, of the difficulty levels of these five selected skills. It seems that Skill 1, which requires the lower-level skills of word recognition and scanning, was the easiest for the students, while Skill 2 (seeing connections among sentences), which requires the deeper mental work, was the most difficult. Skill 3, Skill 4, and Skill 5 were in between. Skill 5 demands deeper mental work as well. While some questions tap Skill 3 and Skill 4 in ways that require abilities similar to those demanded by Skill 1, other questions that address these skills require deeper mental work. For example, for Skill 4, questions like finding what has been done first, second, and last, which are introduced in the passages by the words “first”, “second”, and “last” were easy for the students while inserting a sentence in the proper place in a paragraph can be difficult.

Table 5 The Accuracy Rates of the Tests of Five Selected Skills

Skill 1 Locating info

Skill 2 Seeing connections

Skill 3 Summarizing main idea

Skill 4 Following structure

Skill 5 Recognizing writer’s purpose, attitudes, and mood

Accuracy rate (%) 92 62 88 80 88 Standard deviation 0.06 0.13 0.09 0.08 0.07

Discussion

The statistically significant difference between the students’ pre- and post-test performances proves that at the end of the training, the students improved their speed-reading skills. However, these results might not accurately reflect the extent of the students’ improvement resulting from the training alone, since the students also got other opportunities to exercise their reading skills throughout the semester and might have brought the skills they learned through other activities to this training.

Carver’s theory can help, to some extent, explain why the students did not strongly agree that they utilized the skills in other reading materials. In the course they were taking, they also did an intensive reading of a text in class, with the guidance of teachers, for the purpose of studying the grammar and sentence structures and comprehending the text. Once every other week, they read a 1,000- to 1,500-character story on their own after class. It is possible that since the former requires the studying mode, there is not as much need for the students to speed-read and, therefore, to utilize these learned skills. The number of new words in the latter was not controlled and the students might focus on figuring out the meaning of each sentence, not realizing they were using the skills even if they might. If the students had been given reading materials of different nature and with the number of new words controlled, we would be able to find out whether the reading skills, especially Skill 2, Skill 3, Skill 4, and Skill 5, which the students learned through reading the shorter passages in the training, to longer and more complicated passages and, as a result, be able to comprehend better and faster as we wished. It will take more refined approach in the future to find out whether the reading skills that the student learn through speed-reading can be carried out to other reading materials.

The students reported that they did not have difficulty figuring out the meaning of learned words and that decoding the learned words did not affect their performance. This shows that students at this level have


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developed a certain degree of automaticity with the characters and words, which is the first step toward reading well and fast. They also reported that the words that they did not learn affected their reading comprehension significantly, although the anticipated unknown words were taught to them before they started to do the items. This is consistent with the research findings that say word recognition is a strong predictor of reading comprehension for L2 learners. In other words, L2 learners or even native speakers would not be able to use the skills or to read fast if there are too many words they do not know. For example, SHEN (2005) indicated that for beginning L2 learners, an increase of 1% of unknown words in the reading text could bring about a decrease in the reading comprehension rate from 2% to 4%.

Since the time allowed to complete the items for the five selected reading skills was not the same, the accuracy rates of the five skills could not reflect their difficulty levels. However, we can still see that a skill that requires lower mental ability, such as scanning, is easier for students than those that require higher mental ability, such as making inferences, generalizing main ideas, and understanding the writer’s purpose. Among the skills that require higher mental abilities, it is hard to say which is more difficult, since the difficulty level of each skill also depends on the type of questions used to test it. For example, for Skill 3 (generalizing the main idea) a question like finding out the main idea in the topic sentence requires locating specific information type of skill (Skill 1) and is probably easy for the learners. Questions like those regarding the summary of sub-ideas into a main idea require not only the ability to locate specific information (Skill 1), which in the test was introduced by words like shouxian (first) and di’er (second), but also a kind of inference-making ability, namely seeing connections among sentences throughout the text (Skill 2). Therefore, this type of question can be harder than finding the main idea in the topic sentence. It can be imagined that if the students are required to summarize main ideas of a paragraph with sub-ideas that are not so obvious, the difficulty level will increase. Hence, this project proves one more time that not only are the skills proposed from the instructional perspective inseparable, but also that it is almost impossible to provide a difficulty hierarchy for the skills, given that skill difficulty varies with the mental challenge demanded by the different tasks.

Conclusions

The results of the pre- and post-tests prove the effectiveness of the training. According to the questionnaires collected at the end of the training, the students claimed that the training helped improve their reading speeds and reading comprehension abilities in general. They also become more confident by the end of the training. However, it needs further research to decide whether the skills that the learners have learned through the speed-reading can be employed to longer passages.

According to the questionnaires, the students’ anxiety level and the speed of the slides were both in the OK range, indicating that the speed and difficulty of the items were set right for the advanced learners of Chinese with knowledge of 3,500 characters who read 140 words per minute. The students strongly agreed with the statement that unknown words affected their performance, confirming the results of previous research that vocabulary knowledge is the single best predictor for reading comprehension.

The scores that students obtained on the tests of the five skills reveal that the skill that requires the lower-level mental work, such as locating specific information, is easier for the students than the skills that demand deeper mental work, such as seeing connections among sentences, and generalizing main ideas. Among the latter, following the structure, generalizing main ideas, and seeing the attitude and mood of the author are


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easier than seeing connections among sentences. However, we cannot give a difficulty hierarchy of the reading skills in this study, since the difficulty of most of the skills is also dependent on the questions that tap it.

References Alderson, J. C. (1990a). Testing reading comprehension skills (Part One). Reading in a Foreign Language, 6(2), 425-438. Alderson, J. C. (1990b). Testing reading comprehension skills (Part Two). Reading in a Foreign Language, 7(1), 465-503. Alderson, J. C. (2001). Assessing reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alderson, J. C., & Lukmani, Y. (1989). Cognition and reading: Cognitive levels as embodied in test questions. Reading in a

Foreign Language, 5(2), 253-270. Bernhardt, E., & Kamil, M. L. (1995). Interpreting relationships between L1 and L2 reading: Consolidating the linguistic

threshold and the linguistic interdependence hypotheses. Applied Linguistics, 16(1), 15-34. Carver, R. P. (1987). Technical manual for the rate level test. Kansas City, M.O.: Revrac Publications. Carver, R. P. (1992). Theory, research and implications. Journal of Reading, 36(2), 85-95. Davis, F. B. (1968). Research in comprehension in reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 3, 499-545. Gough, P., Juel, C., & Griffith, P. (1992). Reading, speaking and the orthographic cipher. In P. Gough, L. Ehri, & R. Treiman

(Eds.), Reading acquisition. Hillsdale, N.J.: L Erlbaum. Grabe, W. (1991). Current developments in second language reading research. TESOL Quarterly, 25(3), 375-406. Hannon, B., & Daneman, M. (2001). A new tool for measuring and understanding individual differences in the component

processes of reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(1), 103-128. Landi, N. (2010). An examination of the relationship between reading comprehension, higher-level and lower-level reading

sub-skills in adults. Read and Writing, 23(6), 701-717. Leloup, J. W. (1993). The effect of interest level in selected text topics on second language reading comprehension (Unpublished

doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University, Columbus). Munby, J. (1978). Communicating syllabus design. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Potts, G. R., & Peterson, S. B. (1985). Incorporation versus compartmentalization in memory for discourse. Journal of Memory

and Language, 24, 107-118. SHEN, H. H. (2005). Linguistic complexity and beginning-level L2 Chinese reading. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers

Association, 40, 1-28. The Syllabus of the Graded Vocabulary and the Graded Characters for Chinese Proficiency Test. (2001). Beijing: Economical

Science Publishing House.


The Emotive Component in English-Russian Translation of

Specialized Texts

Natalia Sigareva The Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Saint Petersburg, Russia

In this paper, the author will focus on the emphatic component of specialized texts and discuss some issues of

intercultural communication effectiveness in diverse socio-cultural context. Many emotional theories have already

placed the major emphasis on investigation of cultural dimensions of emotions. It has been stated that emotions are

greatly determined by the systems of cultural values. The way the emotions are displayed (or hidden) in different

languages is crucial for verbalization of different emotional experiences. Thus, the translation techniques employed

to bridge the communication between the selected cultures are of paramount importance in terms of cultural norms

and regulations characteristic of different lingual communities. The author will argue that translation of technical

texts from English into Russian presents a challenge from the point of view of consensual ideology which differs in

respectful cultures in the discussed domain.

Keywords: socio-cultural context, emotive component, translation of specialized texts, translator competence

Introduction

It has been identified on the national level as the Russian economy becomes more closely integrated with the other countries of the world and in particular with the countries of the European Union, the need for trained professionals in translation of technical texts has been repeatedly noted by the relevant services in Russia and international organizations. The research was based on the experience acquired through the project training at Herzen University. The main result was to develop a consistent, coherent, and coordinated methodology of training that would determine the translation market value, providing a solid theoretical foundation to equip the students with conceptual tools, and giving them an ample opportunity to place more importance to the practical side of training. Special stress was laid on the socio-cultural approach of training which means acqusition of tricks from experts and interaction between participants of the group. Interdisciplinary approach was implemented in order to optimize the different types of learning. The learning process has to be active, linked to the situation and imbedded in a social context. University trainers create authentic professional situations involving students into real translation projects, which have the advantage to stimulate the motivation of the students to enlarge their theoretical background. The challenges of translation of scientific texts from English into Russian reveal not only the importance of documentary reseach and

Natalia Sigareva, assistant professor, Department of Translation and Interpreting, The Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia.

DAVID PUBLISHING

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THE EMOTIVE COMPONENT IN ENGLISH-RUSSIAN TRANSLATION 227

creation of terminology equivalence in a certain technical field but the importance of the culture behind the language for accurate translation. The students should be trained to link concepts and languages aiming to relay a message across cultural and linguistic boundaries.

Discussion

When analyzing technical texts, referential function is typically brought into focus. The reason for that is the assumption that in specialist texts, the language is mainly used to identify an object, a process, or a state of the reality. These texts are usually characterized by the frequent use of the passive voice, subject pronoun “it”, abstract nouns, and nominalization. Besides, the personal perception of the topic by the text producer is not vivid. Impersonality is on the surface of objectivity, accentuating the seriousness of the point putting forward the meaning of the message, but not the form. Sending the message, the writer is concerned with the accuracy and obviousness of the described phenomena.

These characteristics seem to be universal. Nevertheless, the conventions of appropriateness in English and Russian do not coincide. The degree to which the use of language focuses on the perception of the producer—an emotive function—is different in this pair. Word play, metaphors, emotional words, and marked syntactical forms are thought to change the register and the level of formality in Russian texts. Classifying it as subjective (i.e., not scientific), Russian conventions restrict the use of emotive language in technical texts, whereas for English writers it is quite natural to use, say, metaphors in scientific discourse.

The tension between source and target texts is usually expressed in terms of equivalence, but when we consider how specialized text shifts between referential and emotive functions, the primary difficulty in translation derives from clashes in perception of the emotive aspect of objectivity.

Challenge posed by different approaches in the representation of the objective reality may involve translator adapting or altering the mode or the register as he/she shifts from English to Russian. The translators need to ensure that the text they produce is appropriate to target readership. The result of misinterpreting the emotive implication in the source text is one problem, another one, less vivid, but more important is the result of giving not accessible tone to the target text. There are many occasions when translators have to translate a relatively emotional pattern in a specialized text and consider the relevance of the emotive component in translation. This is the area where experience of a specialized text translator is vital.

The translator competence resulting in translation competence is achieved by consistent training in classifying texts in terms of similarities and differences and by recognizing these distinctions. The key point in making the target text accessible is that the translator should be able to: (1) compare the differences; (2) find what will make the text incoherent or awkward if cultural values are not being met; (3) reflect the cultural context which is to be processed; and (4) avoid shifting the focus to the form of the message away from meaning itself when preserving the emotive component in restricted domain (Russian technical texts).

Results

The study concludes that the translation process is a multiple-dimensional, purposeful with pragmatic principles and cross-cultural communication to be taken into consideration.


Language is unquestionably rooted in the reality of culture and cannot be explained without reference to the broader contexts of verbal utterance. The translation should be taken not as an equivalence-based language replacement, but as a communication process mediation.

Language is a reflection of the system of cultural values and conventions acceptable, but even the profound knowledge of the two languages cannot guarantee the effective communication between two cultures. There is great demand in profound psychological and emotional involvement. A translator must take into account not only the intellectual, but also the emotional response that the target text may evoke in its reader. The failure to observe the conventions of emotive component usage in the target language may hinder the successful communication. Translators are expected to manipulate the source text in various ways in order to make it compatible with the requirements set by the target reader.

One of the challenges the English-Russian translator faces translating stylistically marked elements in English technical texts is the search for acceptable Russian equivalents that would not only express the same meaning, but also perform the same emotive function in the text, meet the lingua-ethnic competence of the readership, and fit the stylistic norm of the target text. Otherwise, the translators will come out with inappropriate, awkward, and ambiguous translations. The degree to which they can effectively transfer the message is the question of translation competence and the quality of the final product.

The linguistic base for sense in general is just a part of a whole. Readers/addressees apply relevant knowledge to complete it. Communication strategies are closely bound up with cultural beliefs, values, and expectations. Translators create a new balance between explicit and implicit elements. The translator shows an image identical to the one evoked in the original by creation of equivalence being faithful to the writer when building the new universe of knowledge in the target text.

The premise that language is metaphorically biased raises the problem of metaphor awareness approach in technical translation. The weight of metaphor in source and target texts is different, and the translators have to take into consideration the metaphoric perspective. Metaphor should be viewed as both the conceptual and linguistic device to deliver the meaning and the rhetorical move to achieve the effectiveness of communication.

Besides, emotionally colored adjectives widely used in English specialized texts are usually substituted by neutral equivalents in Russian texts. Raising awareness regarding the conventional usage of the target text is the major point in translator training.

Translation presupposes the involvement of emotions and power relations. To make the communication successful means to resort to cognitive and attitudinal resources. The most challenging for inter-delivery and for translation is the science translation of technical texts which shows its specific regulations in terms of the process of translation of cultural component.

Experience has shown that the corresponding and accurate meaning of a technical term or lexical unit used in the source science text can be easily provided by dictionaries but hardly ever used directly without pragma-cultural perspective as the main focus. The latter, finally, as a control variable presupposes the analytic diversity of meanings, involving textual tension and cultural factors that become concrete causations of change and transformation of the content. Genre as a control variable in cross cultural communication affects the translation language and hence the target culture: composition, conventions, and norms.


In the hope of finding out the relevance between the linguistic formalization and explication in translation and bearing in mind the laws of human beings’ cognitive processing, the translators have to serve readability, fidelity, terminology, and syntax as reasons for explication. Target texts dimensions in this respect are termed as acceptability, adequacy, and accuracy.

A translator is supposed to find answers to questions: Why does the writer write this? And: What cultural adaptation strategies are acceptable in this very situation for this particular recipient?

A broader description of the translation competence more emphasizing its communicative aspect involves transfer competence: the awareness of socially and culturally relevant context in processing of different linguistic codes and modalities. The transfer competence means the ability to understand the nuances and the ability to sensitively treat the cultural aspects, with the precision in rendering the message, precision in terminology expression as an absolute necessity.

Thus, to bridge the absence of equivalent typologies across cultures, a translator has to employ translation competence, that is to justify own decisions, exercise correct terminology-completeness of rendition, and clarity of expression; be aware of language change (language competence); develop the ability to identify functions and meaning, implicit content, cultural elements, to reconstruct the gist according to genre conventions (intercultural competence).

The acquisition of the main methodological, occupational, and psycho-physiological competences will enable a translator to map source text relations onto target text relations and exploit a series of standards that a text has to meet to be considered as such and recognized as textual communication.

To translate the emotive component found in English scientific texts into Russian is to encounter challenges to transfer both the proper intention and the meaning which call for full and accurate comprehension and appropriate and correct rendering. One of the most distinct features of Russian technical text is relatively infrequent use of emphatic structures because of this a translator may take this seemingly irrelevant for Russian scientific discourse element as subject to drop it out , sometimes resulting in the loss of meaning. The question “how to convert the prominent emotive elements in English texts into secondary elements in Russian translation in order to highlight the idea and achieve the purpose” is crucial.

Any particular instance of emphasis should be treated as obligatory or optional—two main categories distinguished in the translation model. Variation in the use of translation strategy is addressed in terms of individual, convention, and readership. The theory of risk avoidance by Pym (1992) puts forward the idea of developing translator’s awareness of his/her place in a particular translating environment. It is very important to separate out what is universal from the conventions of translating in particular cultures.

The question of cultural transfer in scientific/technical translation from English into Russian and back necessitates the mechanisms of both conceptual and linguistic adjustment on the part of receiving culture. When we weigh translation decisions over effectiveness being equipped with various tools to overcome specific translation problems, we also have to trust our knowledge of cultural universals, raise comparative cultural and ethnographic awareness, and possess the ability to control the empathy. By comparing the similarities and differences of the two languages, the translator develops the skills that help to achieve the satisfactory result.

The production of an unambiguous translation can be achieved by means of understanding of peculiarities of


discourse types and text genres, their structure, stylistic features, and discourse markers. Translation as rendering of the sentences at discourse level should take into consideration different textual dimensions: content, intention, and cultural variability of the factors influencing the meaning. Translating the culture that gives the meaning is required to effect successful translation.

To sum up, we have to admit that mediation, linguistic, cultural competences as well as the factual and research competences lay the basis for the strategic competence that helps achieve the best possible quality of translation.

The strategic competence reflects the environmental relativism in translation. Ecological principle in translation calls for translation process being as natural as possible, creating the comfortable environment for both cultures where the words and sentences are not disjoined, they create the world harmony of message delivery.

Conclusions

This short investigation has sought to show two basic points. First, not only the connotation of the emotion challenges the translation, but also the emotive function itself. The problem results from marked formality Russian technical texts are characterized by in comparison with the English tradition to resort to the use of emotive function by using different figures of speech. Second, as Russian, restrictions to use emotional language in scientific discourse are pretty rigid, a translator has to identify each type of referential and emotive function treating the text as the single unit and to analyze the impact of any change, negligence, or preservation of the cultural emotive accents.

The competent translator is always capable, on one hand, to put the extent to what the texts can be regarded as equivalent across cultures at stake, and, on the other hand, to raise awareness to what extent the translation decisions reflect the absence of the emotive component in target text.

In examining the intricacies of the translation process, we looked upon it as an act of communication in which the translator is at one and the same time a receiver and a producer of a text. The professional world requires that communication proceed efficiently and expects from a professionally trained translators a combination of effectiveness and efficiency in the form of translator competence which is regarded as textual competence and presents the acquisition of linguistic skills, world knowledge, and experience.

We have considered the competences related to the principles and strategies that have to be applied in order to work through the translation process and to be able to arrive at the appropriate decision. The developed skills should serve the way to grasp principles related to translation practice.

The translation competence should be treated in terms of ecological process, meaning that translation process goes as natural as possible, thus creating the universe of knowledge that presents a harmonious, effectively working system in the respectful cultures.

References Alves, F., & Gonçalves, J. L. (2006). A relevance theory approach to inferential processes in translation. In F. Alves (Ed.),

Triangulating translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bell, R. (1991). Translation and translating: Theory and practice. New York: Longman.


European Committee for Standardisation. (2006). Nederlandse norm NEN-EN 15038 (en): Translation services: Service requirements. Brussels: Nederlands Normalisatie-instituut.

Hatim, M., & Mason, I. (1900). Discourse and the translator. New York: Longman. Lederer, M. (2003). The interpretive model. Manchester: St. Jerom. Nord, C. (2005). Text analysis in translation: Theory, methodology, and didactic application of a model for translation-oriented text

analysis. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi. Pattison, A. (2009). The Herzen “Human Technology” editing project. Modern concepts of university education. St. Petersburg:

Herzen University. Pym, A. (1992). Translation and text transfer: An essay on the principles of intercultural communication. Frankfurt, Main: Peter

Lang.


Cultural Differences and C-E Advertising Translation

HU Chun-xiao Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China

The present paper aims to explore the activity of translating Chinese advertisements into English across cultural

barriers. First, the functional views of Skopostheorie are introduced which can be served as theoretical supports for

advertising translation. An attempt is then made to analyze the cultural errors existed in C-E (Chinese-English)

advertising translation. They are the literal translation of some stereotyped expressions in Chinese advertisements,

the lack of knowledge of the different consumer expectations in two cultures and the neglect of the difference of

committing in Chinese and English advertisements. This paper suggests three methods to solve the problems: (1)

adding explanations to the names of special Chinese products; (2) imitating the household proverbs and poetry in

the West; and (3) making appropriate adaptations of certain cultural elements in the original advertisement. All

methods suggested are proved feasible by a number of examples so as to gain certain enlightenment of dealing with

the cultural aspects of advertising translation.

Keywords: Skopostheorie, advertising translation, cultural differences

Introduction

As an applied language, advertising is developing rapidly. Advertisements have direct effects on people’s daily life in many aspects, and with the social progress and economic development, the effects will become even stronger. Being a tool serving economy, the advertising translation is a very important research problem. Lund (1947) had classified the objectives of advertising into five aspects: attract attention, arouse interest, stimulate desire, create conviction, and get action. Association of National Advertising of America has made a similar definition as ACCA (i.e., awareness, comprehension, conviction, and action), which requires the language used in advertisements must be firstly appellative and persuasive. Therefore, in advertising translation, “faithfulness” is not in the first place as in the literary or scientific translation. In order to achieve the promotional function of an advertisement in a target culture, the translator can make some adaptations on the basis of the information offered by the original text, taking account of the presumed interests, expectations, knowledge, and situational constraints of the target-culture addressees. This paper thus introduces Skopostheorie, a functionalist approach, as a theoretical guidance on advertising translation across cultural barriers.

Skopostheorie

Skopostheorie first proposed by Vermeer (1987), who has played a major role in the development of functionalism, focusing on the function or functions of texts and translations. The word “Skopos” is a technical

HU Chun-xiao, lecturer, Hangzhou College of Commerce, Zhejiang Gongshang University.

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term for the aim or purpose of a translation. Every translation is directed at an intended audience, since to translate means “to produce a text in a target setting for a target purpose and target addressees in target circumstances” (Vermeer, 1987). In Vermeer’s terms, the target text should conform to the standard of “intratextual coherence” (Vermeer, 1987). This means the receiver should be able to understand it; it should make sense in the communicative situation and culture in which it is received. However, since a translation is an offer of information about a preceding offer of information, it is expected to bear some kind of relationship with the corresponding source text. Vermeer (1987) called this relationship “intertextual coherence” or “fidelity”. Fidelity is considered subordinate to intratextual coherence, and both are subordinate to the skopos rule (Nord, 1997, p. 12). In Skopostheorie, the standard for judging the validity of a translation is not the “equivalence” between the translated text and the original one, but the extent to which the prospective functions are achieved in the target situation.

The primary function of an advertisement is to stimulate the receivers’ desire to purchase a particular product. It tries to appeal to their real or imagined needs, describing those qualities of the product that are presumed to have positive values in the receivers’ value system. Similarly, whether the translated text can serve the same promotional function in a target culture as the source advertisement in the original one depends on the extent to which receptors understand and appreciate the translated text. Therefore, the functional views of Skopostheorie can serve as theoretical supports for advertising translation.

Identifying the Existing Problems in C-E (Chinese-English) Advertising Translation

By comparing the Skopos with the source text functions before starting to translate, translators should be able to locate the problems that will arise in the translating process. They should thus be able to devise a holistic strategy for their solution (Nord, 1997). Translation errors can be functionally classified into four categories: pragmatic, cultural, linguistic, and text-specific. This paper mainly concerns cultural translation errors, which are “due to an inadequate decision with regard to reproduction or adaptation of cultural-specific conventions” (Nord, 1997). Cultural translation errors are common problems in a number of translated English advertisements from the Chinese.

Literally Translating the Conventional Chinese Expressions The literal translation of certain Chinese phrases may be unacceptable in English, though they are perfectly

natural and entirely appropriate in Chinese. For example, “老少皆宜” can often been seen in many food

advertisements in our country in order to emphasize the wide range of their prospect consumers. It is a good and sound Chinese expression. However, it would not translate the Chinese phrase into “suitable to the old and young”, which ignores “old” as a euphemism in Western culture. Examples (1)-(4) are given below to show how “老少皆宜” can be rendered into acceptable English

Example (1) Leephick 花旗参茶: “efficacious for grownups and children”. Example (2) 鹰牌花旗参茶: “the most convenient and effective health drink and refreshment for both

sexes of all ages and in all season”. Example (3) 多美滋 (Dumex) 奶粉: “convenient for ensuring healthy nourishment for growing children

and the whole family”.


Example (4) Contadina 食品: “now Contadina offers you pastes & sauces to target every consumer segment”. Similarly, the literal translation of some stereotyped expressions in Chinese advertisements would sound

queer to the native English speakers. Consider Examples (5)-(7): Example (5) 省优部优: awarded the superior quality product by the provincial government and the

Ministry concerned Example (6) 信誉第一，顾客至上: reputation first and consumers the utmost Example (7) 在有关部门的领导下，取得了很大的进步 : It makes great improvement under the

leadership of the sectors concerned. The exact translations of Chinese advertising formula into English may be grammatically correct, but the

manner of expression does not stylistically match original English advertisements. Instead of convincing people, the word for word renderings would confuse foreign readers and even arouse displeasure.

Lacking Understanding of the Different Consumer Expectations As we know, Chinese and Western people have different ways of thinking. Without knowledge of the

different consumer expectations in two cultures, a translator can hardly make his translated text appellative to the target culture receivers. For instance, a Chinese food advertisement usually gives prominence to the scientific process, which can be seen from common statements like “引进国外先进技术”, “高科技技术”, and “用科学方法”, while the Western counterpart highlights the naturalness of food. There is such an advertisement exacted

from a Chinese magazine for a kind of ginseng soft sweets (see Example (8)). Example (8) 经几代技术人员的努力，吸取现代先进工艺之精华，该产品既保持了口味纯正、糖体

晶莹的特点，有增添了芬芳浓郁、咀嚼适口的感觉，令您食而不忘。

The English version right following the Chinese text is a literal translation: “It’s the result of many years of intensive studies done by the technical personnel of our factory and is refined with modern advanced technology. The product has a glistening luster, a thick fragrance as well as a pure and delicious taste. Once you eat this sweet, you’ll never forget it”.

However, how can an advertisement based on the Chinese way of thinking attract foreign readers’ attention? The following translation shows the improvement made by a successive revision, which stresses “naturalness” so as to suit the Western consumer preference: “The natural flavor is improved by years of researched state of the art technology. Our candy reserves in its glistening amber-like jerry the natural fragrance of the virgin forest. It melts on your tongue with a lasting sweetness”.

Overlooking the Different Advertising Commitments The Chinese and English way of committing is also different. Traditional Chinese culture upholds

overwhelming superiority so that gaining a “golden” prize can often be a sound evidence of the good quality of a certain product. Though some English advertisements also have authoritative supports, they seem less convincing to the Western consumers than the results from experiments or marketing surveys (LIAO & JIANG, 2011, p. 381). However, the difference of committing in Chinese and English advertisements has not got enough attention by some translators. Here is a sample (see Example (9)):

Example (9) x x x—the health bodyguard of the people x x x Vital Herb-Belt , a new external-use health car product, is made up of natural herb. Based


on theories of traditional Chinese medicine and referring to the health care therapies of ancient dynasties, it is invented by Mr. x x x, an expert on external treatment of internal diseases. x x x Vital Herb-Belt has been appraised by the most famous traditional Chinese medical experts. It can increase the immunity of human body, delay aging, adjust autonomic nerve function and increase sex function. It also has perfect medical effects on chromic gastritis, diarrhea, constipation, sexual failure. Besides it is effective to diseases of respiratory tract, cardicvessel, nervous system and urinary system. Containing neither hormone nor poison nor side effect, it is a safe, handy and effective health-care produce which can treat diseases and make you stronger if you have no disease. Since it was invented, it has won 65 international and national prizes and enjoyed the confidence of patients. Wish you good health and a long life accompanied by the x x x Vital Herb-Belt.

Obviously, the above commitments do not accord with the Westerners’ way to measure truth, that is, let the facts speak for themselves. How can the herb-belt be reliable without any data from clinical experiments or any appraisal by authorities? The commitments are totally groundless. Professor Les from York University in Canada once analyzed the frequency of 14 categories of information appeared in Chinese magazine advertisements. According to his statistics, information from marketing researches in Chinese magazine advertisements was less than one percent (LI, 2010, p. 76). Therefore, a Chinese translator should be very aware of the Western consumers’ belief that “facts speak louder than words” especially when putting Chinese advertisements into English. Advertising translation problems connected with the promotional function should be solved according to a strategy, which will ideally lead to the translation type acceptable in another culture. The method used in the following translating practice can set a good example (see Example (10)).

Example (10) 华夏始建于1949年5月，至今已有40多年悠久历史，业务关系遍及世界，是一个具有丰富经验，享有良好信誉，以航运为主的综合性运输公司⋯ FARENCOL was founded in May 1945, with a history of over 40 years. It has established business relations all over the world. FARENCOL is a comprehensive transportation business specialized in shipping…

By comparing the two language versions, it can be found that the translator has intentionally neglected the outlined statements in the original Chinese text so as to let the facts themselves convince English readers.

Dealing With the Cultural Aspects in Advertising Translation

Translating the Names of Special Chinese Products The purpose of advertising translation is to promote a certain product to people in another country, thus it is

of crucial importance to transmit the image of the product invariantly to the readers of the translated text. However, it is difficult to put names of some special Chinese products into English due to the different cultural conventions. In order to keep the image of the product invariant, a translator should add explanations or corresponding replacements where necessary. Comparing the following original translated text and the revised version (see Example (11)):

Example (11) 溪口千层饼采用传统工艺，制作精细，质地松脆，清香可口。


The original translation: “Xikou Thousand-sheeted cake is home made, using natural foods and traditional procedures. The cake tastes good, smells good and is crisp”.

The Chinese name of “千层饼” aims to emphasize the sheets of this particular cake are much more than

those of ordinary cakes, not representing the exact number. The literal translation as “Thousand-sheeted cake” is likely to cause misunderstanding in the English readers. Look at the improvement made in the revised version: “Xikou Qianceng Cake, with numerous clear sheets in it, is finely made in a traditional way. It is tasty and crisp”.

The revision has not only improved the loose structure of the original translation, but also precisely introduce the special Chinese food to the Western people.

Here is another example (see Example (12)): Example (12) 曹州城内有一隅首，名曰“尤之女”。据传尤之女酿得一手好酒，偶被孔子一饮，赞

曰：“圣贤至美！”故得名“圣酒”。（曹州圣酒）

The original translation: “There is an intersection named ‘Girl Youzhi’ in Caozhou city. The story goes that Girl Youzhi made a good kind of liquor with ‘Confucius’ drank by accident. He praised this liquor to be ‘a delicious one’. So it got its name as Liquor ‘Shengjiu’”.

Putting the improper use of vocabulary aside, we only concern the translation of traditional Chinese terms in the above sample. First, “Confucious” is not well known in Western countries, an additional explanation like “the great Chinese educator” is quite necessary. Second, the praise made by Confucious in a genteel manner involves knowledge on traditional Chinese expressions. In ancient China, liquor of the highest grade was often likened to the sage men. Accordingly, the revision as “excellent” would more in keeping with the original degree of appreciation than the word “delicious”. Finally, the transliteration of “Shengjiu” cannot convey its rich connotations in Chinese, and if changed to “Saint Liquor” it seems much better.

The examples mentioned reflect the cultural diversity that exists. Certain traditional Chinese terms mean little or nothing without some sort of additional explanation. A few, however, do have equivalents in English. A translator is required to apply translating methods in a flexible way.

Using Parody Parody is most effective method that contributes much to the attention value of an advertisement. Through

imitating the household advertisements, proverbs, and poems in the West, one can make his translated texts more impressive and easy to remember. A study of several examples will illustrate this (see Examples (13)-(16))::

Example (13) “黑妹牙膏”，强健牙龈，保护牙齿。

Don’t show me any other. But show me Black Sister. The translation of this advertisement is inspired by the English advertisement of the typewriters with

“Brother” brand of Japan. Their original text is: “Don’t say ‘Give me another’. Say ‘Give me Brother’”. The repeated use of “Show me” has the effect of contrast and stress, indicating that potential consumers just want to buy “Black Sister” . Compared with the original text, the artistic effect of the parody is better than the original one (FANG, 2003, p. 156).

Example (14) 红玫相机新奉献

My love’s like a Red Rose! The translation is a copy of the famous love poem “My Love’s Like a Red, Red Rose” (LI, 2010, p. 88),


which is widely read among Western people. It well expresses a consumer’s fondness for Red Rose Camera, hoping the brand will gain a general appeal as Robert Burns’ poetry.

Example (15) 谁跑到最后，谁笑得最好。(轮胎广告) He laughs best who runs longest．

Example (16) 人到山前必有路，有路必有双星鞋。 Where there is a road, there are Double Star Shoes．

The former is rendered in imitation of the English proverb “He laughs best who laughs last” while the latter imitates a common saying “Where there is a will, there is a way”. The two translated advertisements have not only achieved functional equivalence with the source texts, but also added emotional appeal to the products being promoted.

Making Adaptation As we have seen, the main idea of Skopostheorie could be paraphrased as “the translation purpose justifies

the translation procedures” (Nord, 1997). The advertising translation is not a cultural communication, but a way to promote products to intended audience in another culture. Therefore, adaptations of cultural elements in the original advertisement are needed to ensure everyone in the target situation understands the translated text.

Some words giving good or beautiful impression in Chinese culture may have negative meanings in English culture. Take “Dabao SOD” (大宝SOD蜜) brand for example. People who are familiar with Chinese will associate “SOD蜜” with something sweat and soft. It seems that we can smell the aroma on the users’ body. But if it is sold as “Dabao SOD” in foreign countries, English customers will have an awful feeling after a glimpse at it. “SOD” in English is used as a term of abuse to a man, showing annoyance and sudden anger. Similarly, the cultural associations of certain creatures are also different. For instance, the Mandarin Ducks are the symbol for love between couples in Chinese culture. But to the Western minds, they do not arouse such association (DENG & LIU, 1989). So “鸳鸯牌枕头” is better to be translated as “Lovebirds Pillowcase”. It should also be mentioned that when translating Chinese advertisements into English, care should be taken with Western consumers’ psychology. The reason why “轻身牌减肥片” found no market for a time in America where weight-reducing had always been a fashion was the original translation as “obesity-reducing Tablets” aroused displeasure in Western consumers. Soon after the translation was changed into “slimming pills”, the medicine began to have a good sale.

In short, appropriate readjustment is not only permissible in advertising translation, but a necessity.

Conclusions

The promotional function of the translated text is predominant in advertising translation. Care must be taken with the cultural elements to make the target audience appreciate the translated version and finally ignite their desire for a certain product. To counter the cultural errors existed in C-E advertising translation, three methods are suggested as solutions. Some sort of additional explanation to the literal translation of the traditional Chinese term can ensure to transfer the image of the product adequately; using parody makes the translated advertisement more impressive and smooth; adaptation is especially effective in dealing with cultural barriers. All methods suggested are proved feasible by a number of examples. However, further consultation with professional translators is also necessary.


References DENG, Y. C., & LIU, R. Q. (1989). Language and culture: Comparison of English and Chinese language and culture. Beijing:

Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. FANG, M. Z. (2003). Pragmatic translation studies (p. 156). Qingdao: Dingdao Press. FENG, X. W. (2010). On aesthetic and cultural issues in pragmatic translation-based on translation of brand names and brand

slogans. Shanghai: Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press. LI, K. X. (2010). Advertisement translation: A theoretical and practical approach. Beijing: Beijing University Press. LIAO, G. Q., & JIANG, L. R. (2011). CE translation of practical writing: Theory, strategies and practice (p. 381). Beijing:

National Defence Industry Press. Lund, J. V. (1947). Newspaper advertising. New York: Prentice-Hall. Nord, C. (1997). Translation as a purposeful activity: Functional approaches explained (pp. 30-33). Manchester: St. Jerome

Publishing. QIN, X. B. (2002). Essentials of English stylistics. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Research. Vermeer, H. J. (1987). What does it mean to translate?. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 13(2), 25-33.


The Cutting Edge Between Nationalistic Commitment (Iltizām)

and Literary Compulsion (Ilzām) in Palestinian “War” Literature

Dima M. T. Tahboub Arab Open University, Amman, Jordan

This paper presents war literature as a distinctive genre intertwined with various schools of social thought and

literary criticism including nationalism, social realism, and commitment. It puts forward a definition of war

literature and the history of its emergence. It also attempts to explore some grey areas in war literature, relating to

its artistic and creative modes of writing, its biases and prejudices. It questions the principles of authenticity and

representation in this literary genre, addressing the contestation between reality and fiction, aesthetics and ideology

which dominate the discourse of postcolonial studies. The paper chooses Palestinian literature as a model case

study, discussing the effects of the Satrean school of commitment, Arabized in the concept of Adab al-Iltizām on

the creativity and individuality of writers. It discusses some of the general characteristics and themes of Palestinian

literature, moving from early war literature (1948) to more contemporary works (1990s- ), and manifesting the

strategies through which some writers try to surpass the revisionist trends of post-colonialism.

Keywords: war literature, post-colonialism, commitment

Introduction

Definition and Background of War Literature In modern critical terminology, war literature does not exist as a distinctive genre titled as such; most

critics group it under national, nationalistic, or resistance literature (Harlow, 1987). This classification is not accurate as it fails to account for the neutral and negative overtones voiced in war literature with its three thematic subdivisions: war literature, warring literature, and literature under war and its two attitudinal subgenres: pro- or anti-war literature. National, nationalistic, or resistance literatures are more favorable and positive in tackling their subject matters, including the concept of the nation, the image of the warriors, and the righteousness of the cause. War literature, on the other hand, is categorized as any literary production that, directly or remotely, depicts the context of war. War literature is set apart from other literary categories, as its very presence is governed by a state of war, actual or fictional, temporary or permanent, past or present, primitive or modern, which affects the configuration of the war story and its themes. The canon of war literature records the adapting of the war story to a set of non-literary parameters incorporating views on nationalism, socialism, and commitment, all of which boggled the minds of the writers and affected the pattern and content of their stories, either by adhering to or rejecting them. These parameters transformed war

Dima M. T. Tahboub, assistant professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Arab Open University.

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literature from being the single-handed production and individual vision of an author into a public statement and picture of collective identity at a certain point of time.

War literature branches into three main subcategories. The first is war literature referring to the neutral or biased, impassioned or disheartened, realistic or fictional representation of war. The second category is warring literature, first used in Palestinian literature under the title of resistance or combat literature (Adab al-Muqāwama), an employment of ideology in literature with no hesitancy in encouraging warriors and mobilizing for war. The third type is literature under war, in which the subject of war is viewed as a distortion of the process of literary creativity, forcing rigid reality and commitment on its themes and imagery. War, in this subcategory, is depicted as an intrusion forced upon the writer and the literary work, with the writer trying to free the subject matter from the compulsion and mainstream vision of society.

These three subcategories are further subdivided into two main divisions reflecting the author’s attitude towards the subject matter: pro-war literature and anti-war literature. Being pro-war and supporting ones nation in war was the state of the art until anti-war literature developed into a literary frontier, especially after the eclipse of nationalism in Europe and similarly the nationalist projects in the Arab world, namely, Pan-Arabism or Nasirism, adopting a revisionist antithesis during the war or in post war periods. Anti-war literature judges its counterpart as obsolete in ideas and representation of heroes and heroism. Rutherford in his book The Literature of War (1989) explained the reduction of the basic values that pro-war literature takes to heart as belonging to “the childhood of the individual or the race… Fortitude is out of fashion as a virtue… the portrayal of courage in the face of adversity, suffering or danger is… positively suspect in the eyes of many readers”, writers, and critics “whose unexamined ethical assumptions often predetermine their aesthetic judgments on the literature of war” (p. i); thus accentuating a sense of delusion and ruination of humanity. These two war stances of encouragement and discouragement, of commitment and lack of national commitment created some form of literary hegemony dividing the loyalties of writers across a continuum of being for or against the cause of war.

The concepts of nation, nationalism, and patriotism, although primarily ideological and socio-political, have an impact on writing the war story. In addition to the political dimension of self-determination, nationalism combines “the cultural idea of the nations as one’s primary identity, and a moral idea of justification of action to protect the rights of the nation against the others” (Ignnatieff, 1993, p. 10). War literature conveys a celebratory tone when nationalism is a strong hold, governing how a nation at war or post-war presents itself to a national and foreign readership. War literature involves the celebration of nation, cause and people, gauging public morale and support, attacking social flaws and offering solutions. Wells (1958) believed that this type of literature acts as “the social mediator, … the parade of morals, the exchange of manners and the factory of customs” (p. 154). This is the moderate presentation of war literature; the more radical version suggests that the conditions of theorizing and writing about war and revolution are no different than starting them if on the verge of war, or inflaming them if they are in progression (Kiberd, 1995).

This view of war literature is seen to empower the nation at war with the will to resist and triumph with a clear message of survival and optimism. It can implant “a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those one is prepared to make in the future” (Bhaba, 1990, p. 19). Suleiman (2006), in a book published on literature and nation takes on the argument stressing that war literature should have a target of advancing the cause of nationalism as a frame for collective identification and allegiance:


“Material that fails to do so… must ‘strike a chord’ with those at whom it is directed” (p. 3). The voice of war literature is sometimes that of the collective we, the nation as a whole (Eagleton, 2003). On the stage of war literature, individuals rarely feature as leading individuals. Their existence is in relation to a sublime nation and they feature as spokespersons of its ideology. In this sentimental sense, the nation is not only a group of people, “it is a soul, a spiritual principle… the culmination of a long past of endeavours, sacrifice, and devotion… a heroic past, great men… the common will in the present” (Bhaba, 1990, p. 19).

Nonetheless, the adoption of nationalism in war literature can be judged as a shortcoming, because nation and past glories are seen as a source of “contamination” (Bhaba, 1990, p. 18) to the literary value of texts, a mismatch of aesthetic and ideology, in which the alignment with the concept of nation blinds the writer from depicting inner social mischief and victimization for the sake of the glorious image of the nation. Adopting this nationalistic stance, the value of war literature is minimized into propaganda, which, in critical jargon implies falsification, disillusion, or official views. This is an overstretching of propaganda with its negative connotations that belittles according to Levine in Aesthetics and Ideology (1994) the capacity of war literature to move and engage despite the entanglement between literature and politics. Harlow (1987) is cautious with using the term propaganda and replaces it with a notion of beautification through which the “oppressed are sanctified and every aspect of their actions, their culture, their past, present and future behavior is presented as admirable” (p. 29).

War literature is expected to have an effect on the readership. The Arab critic, Shukrīin his book Adab al-Muqāwama (The Literature of Resistance) (1970) stressed the unique nature of war literature as a pursuit to resist all forms of weakness and fragility that may inflect the human soul in times of decline, when the gruesome reality blinds man’s eyes to all beauty, namely art and literature. A greater task of war literature is assigned by Cooke (1988), and that is to lead people in times of crisis, when writers assume responsibility for the morale of their people by maximizing their potentials and minimizing their shortcomings, by confessing that pain and death are saddening and bitter, but necessary for deliverance.

Worldwide, war literature has witnessed substantial changes in terms of national dedication. After WWI (World War One) and with the advent of pacifism in Europe, writers such as Passos (1932), Remarque (1928), and Woolf (1929) lost all stamina for war and endorsed themes of peace, and antimilitarism in their works. Instead of the recruiting effect war literature had on people, there was an extreme change of attitudes to protest and withdrawal. Writers feared that “the imminence of another war might mean the end of not only history but also any possibility of narrative from any surviving point of view” (Connor, 1996, p. 59). It is at this time in history that war literature developed into two distinct subcategories: pro-war literature and anti-war literature.

Before attempting to scrutinize Palestinian war literature, it is informing to consider the ideology of commitment, from which much of the literary production on war literature stems. It is the understanding of this school of thought in relation to war and the writing of the nation’s image that leads to the appreciation of war literature and responds to accusations against it of being propagandistic and didactic.

War and Commitment: Writers as Warriors and Words as Arms, Creativity Redefined The principle of commitment in arts is an established tradition and school of thought that spread amongst

writers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It appeared in response to the art for art’s sake school and value-free art, which advocated a sense of nihilism in arts and that arts should not yield to any restraints except those of


aesthetics. Founders and followers of the school of commitment believe that words and literature are vehicles of truth and contents of reality. “A word has the power of fire, it penetrates the blockade. It is a war and a substance of warfare” (Darrāj, 2002, p. 55).

Sartre in What Is Literature? (1950), viewed by many critics as the Bible of commitment, preached the inevitability of commitment in arts. He believed that words are actions embodied with power to change reality. A word in Sartre’s (1950) doctrine “is not a gentle breeze, which plays lightly over the surface of things, grazing them without alerting them. It is our shell and our antennae; it protects us against others and informs us about them” (p. 11). He puts forward an extremely fundamental definition of words, which is in perfect harmony with the subject of war literature, referring to them as “loaded pistols”, and to writers as professional snipers who should not shoot to kill but write to change.

A writer not meeting this description fails to meet the requirements of authorship in Sartre’s (1950) school of commitment where “literature throws you” (the writer) “into battle… Once you have begun, you are committed” (p. 47). Sartre wages war against the supporters of pure art, which he condemns as empty art occupied with temporal affairs and meaningless lines and imagery. A literature with a message arising from commitment to a cause is his forcefully suggested answer to the questioning title of the book. Commitment in this view is a balanced composite of ethics and aesthetics, art and ideology. The artist is always entangled with some form of ideology, ranging from the collective and public to personal and private agendas, from being pro-war or anti-war. Some critics declare that disavowing ideology by some artists is as silly as denying biology and insist that “ideology is a social process that works on and through every… subject, that, like any other social process, everyone is ‘in’, whether or not they ‘know’ or understand it” (Lentricchia & Maclaughlin, 1995, pp. 311-312).

Arabic literature cloned Sartre’s engagement or commitment, producing the Arabic equivalent of Adab al-Iltizām. The basic concepts of this school were inherent earlier in Arabic literature as the meaning of Adab (literature) and Adīb (writer, novelist, poet, and man of letters) reflects the connotations of virtue and promotion of goodness and manners. The critic Badawi (1985) claimed that since its adoption by writers and critics in the 1950s, the phenomenon grew “steadily in popularity and was repeated ad nauseam by every upstart critic” (p. 2). He further accounted that commitment in mainstream Arabic literature was a rule rather than an exception. Arab countries were suffering from colonization and critics like Suhail Idrīs (1953), the founder of the Arab magazine al-Ādāb, summarized the role of writers in “mobilizing all their powers to liberate their countries and raise their political, social and intellectual level. Literature should aim to be ‘effective’. It should be in interrelation with society, influencing it and being influenced by it” (p. 1). Writers and literature were considered “effective” based on other than literary characteristics; a writer who upheld this duty was described as patriotic (waṭanī), with unspoken accusations of disloyalty befalling writers who chose to differ and remain autonomous. In fanatic support of commitment, the term “al-Adab al-Ḍāll” (the erring literature) was coined to criticize any literature that did not comply with the teachings of commitment.

However, not all writers succumbed to commitment, some attacked it as being a means of censorship on ideas and imagination, a source of compulsion (ilzām) begetting bound literature, thus initiating another war of ideas on defining the boundaries between commitment (iltizām) and compulsion (ilzām). There also emerged a call for true and authentic art, signaling a return to the roots of Arab thought and history (aṣāla) to resuscitate the Arab present with the glory of the Arab past.


The commitment and aesthetic schools have been in battle to define what they claim is the recipe for good and creative literature. Baydas, an early proponent of social realism in his book Masāri¯ al-Adhhān (The Theatres of Intellect) (1924), set the mission of the novel to glorifying virtues, condemning vices, straightening morals, enlightening minds, and purifying hearts. Passos (1932), a follower of the aesthetic school, understood the novel as:

A commodity that fulfills a certain need; people need to buy daydreams like they need to buy ice-cream or aspirin or gin. They even need to buy a pinch of intellectual catnip now and then to liven up their thoughts… to stimulate their feelings. (p. 1)

This does not imply that the committed war story is uncreative, rigid, and colorless and that the committed writer simply jots down every day accounts of incidents, or parrots the official view of events.

The committed writer comprehends that the reader of war stories seeks literature not journalism. He can always read the newspaper for news but he reads the story for the broader views of the news, an artistic exploration of actual human experience. (Hammūdī, 1986, p. 23)

Palestinian “War” Literature

The Historical and Literary Background of Palestinian Literature The key to opening the world of Palestinian literature is the understanding of the historical and political

background of the Palestinian tragedy starting with the proposed partition of Palestine by the UN in 1947 into two independent states: Israeli and Palestinian. The actual occupation of much of Palestine through the 1948 war was preceded by mass Jewish immigration to Palestine, and settlement on Palestinian lands, facilitated by the Jewish Emigration Agency and the British mandate. The 1948 war was accompanied by a massive exodus of Palestinians forced out of their homes and lands into what became known as the West Bank (of the Jordan River) and the Gaza Strip, or outside Palestine to the neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, or Syria.

Just as Palestinians, as well as Arabs, were starting to recover from the 1948 war, with the rise of Arab aspirations of victory encouraged by the spread of Pan Arabism (Nasirism) led by Egyptian President Jamāl ‘Abd al-Nāṣir, who called for a joint Arab command to defend Palestine, Israel defeated the Arabs for the second time in 1967, confiscating the rest of the Palestinian land, and occupying parts of Egypt, Jordan, and the Golan Heights in Syria. These events left Palestinians and fellow Arabs in a state of shock. The catastrophe of the nakba of the Palestinian people in 1948 took time to sink into the mentality of Palestinians. As ‘Abd al-Qādir (1993) stated:

It was no time to write, keeping alive was the best one could do, but when the traumatic moment passed, the Palestinian who lost his country and security started looking for something to explain the defeat and promise a near victory. (p. 13)

A more mature literary treatment of the subjects of Palestinian literature surfaces in the periods of the two Intifāḍas in 1987, 2000. A reflective mood of criticism, political and social reform dominates the discourse and diction of literary works in these consecutive periods.

The Schemata and General Characteristics of Palestinian Literature Reality and Clear-Cut Commitment Inspiring Fiction

Reality comes as the most substantial element in writing Palestinian literature, most often, at the expense of


fiction. The overlapping between reality and fiction is apparent and justified for “what is the credibility”, asked Arab critic Abū al-Najā (2003), “of a text on resistance which ignores the massacres committed against Palestinians. How could a critic evaluate a Palestinian text without taking notice of real life situations?” (p. 107). Until 1975, only two literary works are based on symbolism in the canon of some two hundred novels and short stories written after two major climactic events, the nakba and the naksa. This absence of symbolism can be seen deliberate and justified, since the Palestinian work of art is audience based. It aspires to reach as many people as possible, the masses in the expression of social literature, to inject some material change on the ground (Shapiro, 1973). People failing to respond to and interact with symbolism results in the incomprehensibility of the message; thus the mission of war literature fails.

Abū Matar in his book al-Riwāya fī al-Adab al-Filastīnī 1950-1975 (1980) stressed that the expression of Palestinian national concerns flooded all means of communication amongst Palestinians and Arabs giving in details the experience of deportation and exile, and preserving the memory and attachment to the lost safe haven. The literary effort concentrated on serving the war effort at that turning point in the history of Palestine and the lives of Palestinians, just as socialist literature was used in the twenties to advance Communism. Palestinian literature worked on “engineering the souls”, to use Stalin’s expression, of its audience to unremittingly serve their cause (Mathewson, 1975).

This ideology of serving the cause through literature shortened, from Ghassān Kanafānī’s (1968) perspective, the period of infancy in Palestinian literature. The ruthless destruction, silencing, and the erasing of Palestinian culture drew Palestinian literature to adopt the school of commitment, transcending the extended argument on the scope of creativity in committed arts. Kanafānī (1968) wrote:

That Palestinian literature should be committed is a sine qua non. There was a pact between writers that aimless experimenting is an extravagance that Palestinian literature as a mirror of Palestine and Palestinian people is not ready to pay for. (p. 33)

The rejection of the notion and practice of experimentation in arts by some writers arises from the sensitivity of the Palestinian artist towards his/her national cause and people. Writers have felt responsible to provide an outlet to their physically and psychologically tormented readers, there was no waiting for Godot, no space for absurdity or obscurity, the message of work had to be clear and promising. This resulted sometimes in imprisoning Palestinian literature in traditional moulds and patterns of artistic expression swinging back and forth across the fine line separating reality and fiction. On the other hand, it could be argued that the literary writing of the Palestinian tragedy has helped the targeted audience, particularly the Palestinians, to accept their suffering, when writers dismantled the rigidity, officialism, and bleakness of the socio-political events into the emotionalism and sentimentality of literature; suffering became honorable sacrifice, death was martyrdom, causalities were heroes, and the return to Palestine was envisioned and possible.

Innovative Rewriting of Sameness Succumbing to realism may be considered as hindering the development of Palestinian literature, yet, it

managed to generate varied styles of writing, moving from narrow nationalism to wide internationalism by embracing or contradicting views on Marxism, feminism, imperialism, etc., and uniting with other revolutions in


Latin America, South Africa, and Algeria, giving way to reading other revolutionary experiences within the Palestinian tragedy. It is Kanafānī who bestowed on the Palestinian tragedy this archetype of universalism and humanity. “In Palestine”, he said:

I see a symbolic human prototype. When I write about a Palestinian family, I write of a human experience which knows no bounds. Any disaster worldwide can find an identical twin in the Palestinian catastrophe. When I present the suffering of the Palestinians, I mean it to be a spokes-person of human suffering. (Kanafānī as cited in ‘Abbās, Al-Nakib, & Kouri, 1974, p. 38)

The points of reference for Palestinian literature are the same, but the treatment of each author is surprisingly different, the message is similar, but the configuration is diverse. Jayyūsī in the “Introduction” to the Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature (1992) attacked what may seem as convictions of monotony and imitativeness on the part of Palestinian literature, stressing that the thematic limitations do not prevent the new views of old news, because there are always two sides of a coin and two versions of a story, the tragic and heroic, which expand the forum of presentation, interpretation, and reinterpretation. The exemplification of this point is evident in the writing and rewriting of the stories of the nakba (the catastrophe of 1948), and the naksa (the setback of 1967) in the 1990s, decades after the occurrence of the actual events. Ya¯yā Yakhluf’s, Bu¯ayra warā’ al-Rī¯ (A Lake Beyond the Wind, 1991) and al-Nahr Yasta¯im fī al-Bu¯ayra (The River Bathing in the Pond, 1997) are two works which reincarnate and resurrect these events, but each with a new presentation taking into account the role of women in the latter and the advent of the peace process.

Palestinian Women in a Masculine Text and Context Palestinian literature can be classified as a bildungsroman (a story of growth and development) in relation to

the portrayal of Palestinian women, as it reflects the major social changes women have undergone, starting from the 1948 catastrophe to the 1967 setback to the life of refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, reaching to the Uprising and the peace process period from 1987 onwards. The change in the societal image and role of women has come gradually. Each victory has left its imprints on women, so has each defeat left its scars, but both have brought emancipation and empowerment. The portrayal of women in early Palestinian literature starts with domestic and homely women moving to the revolutionary comrade in contemporary literature. The bulk of early Palestinian literature focuses on themes of freedom and revolution; characters, whether males or females, are catalysts that help achieve the desired end. The flatness or roundedness of their character is event-based. The feminist-masculine fight for domination does not receive much focus in the early period, enabling Palestinian literature to sail in calm gender seas. Gender issues are mostly presented in a traditional pattern of female followers and male leaders, females weakened by their femininity and males empowered by their masculinity, house women, and battlefield soldiers. The concept of ideal womanhood is determined by male writers, who preceded women in writing the war story, setting national and mythical archetypes of women as emblems of the nation, female Galateas carved and enlivened by the view of male Pygmalions.

The most famous example of the female persona in Palestinian literature is Umm Sa‘d, the protagonist in Kanfānī’s novel holding her name, Umm Sa‘d (The Mother of Sa‘d) (1969). Umm Sa‘d is a novel of character that embodies Kanafānī’s Marxist doctrines on the characteristics of Palestinian women, and his adherence to


social realism which celebrates the working class and glorifies their suffering. Paralleling Maxim Gorki’s The Mother (1906), Kanafānī in straight forward words signals the archetypal nature of Umm Sa‘d in his dedication to her, as the people and school of thought. The novel consists of nine tableaux with interlocking images of Umm Sa‘d, through which Kanafānī paints to perfection the minutest details that lead to the completion of the image of this epic-like heroine. The novel starts with a preface which appears to be a necessary technique at the time to explain to the audience, Arabs and Palestinians, who are usually accustomed to male figures and protagonists, why he chooses Umm Sa‘d as the sole heroine of this work with her outstanding characteristics. Kanafānī chooses the mother figure aware of her effect on bringing up the future generations, being acceptable to both men and women. She is also a member of the poor working class, the vast majority of Palestinian refugees, at whom the Marxist teachings for social reform are directed.

Umm Sa‘d transcends her literary character and claims the role of representing all Palestinian women. This work fits into the canon of Kanafānī’s production, the ideological writer who wrote in various works how Palestinian manhood should or should not be; Umm Sa‘d is his vision of what Palestinian womanhood should become. In dynamic language, Umm Sa‘d is described as the motherland.

She rises from the womb of the earth, as an arrow held by mysterious destiny escalating endlessly… She walks high as a flag carried by unseen hands…She is solid as a rock, patient as a prophet. She has grown ten years older trying to win clean bread for her family” (Kanafānī, 1969, pp. 15-16, 25).

The charisma of Umm Sa‘d lies in her altruism and success in accomplishing her multiple duties. She is an all-in-one figure: a patient wife and a working mother, who puts up with the nastiness of her husband, until she manages to turn his claws to loving hands holding her and their family in passion. In terms of family problems, Kanafānī does not hide his head in the sand for the sake of maintaining a bright picture of Palestinian women and Palestinian family life. He refers to the cruel treatment by Ab- Sa‘d , the husband of Umm Sa‘d, but he blames the prime victimizers, the occupation, the life in the refugee camp, and the lack of employment for the state of Ab- Sa‘d. Capitalizing on her merits, Umm Sa‘d is her own marriage counsellor, puts up with her husband’s low self-esteem, until a positive transformation occurs in his psyche, with Sa‘d joining the resistance.

She also is a Palestinian mother trying to overcome her instinctive nature and fear for her children’s lives for the sake of her identity and cause as a Palestinian. Her husband describes the holiness of her role in begetting children for the sake of Palestine. She has a solid belief in her son’s involvement in the resistance, but occasionally her heart is overtaken by motherly fear and worry. She unconsciously abstains from food until Sa‘d’s arrival from the front, but when she recovers from her fear, she regains her patriotic vigour in full force. These scenes showing the internal conflict Umm Sa‘d feels between her feelings as a mother and her commitment to the cause, for which she sacrifices the most valuable thing she brought to life, her son, are intentional. Through these scenes, Kanafānī creates a dialogue with all Palestinian mothers who may have the same worries, and equips them with the sublime conviction of sacrifice to overcome these fits of emotion the same way Umm Sa‘d does.

In contrast to what critics argue that women’s revolution is always motivated by a male catalyst (‘Āshūr, 1981; Zeidan, 1995), Umm Sa‘d has precedence over all her male acquaintances. She is more hopeful than her educated relative, the narrator, and beholds a vision of victory. She has to put aside her instincts and motherly passion to mould her revolutionary character, while her son, the male warrior has one task to fulfill, fight. It is not


her relation to her son that distinguishes her; she stands with her own leadership qualifications. She assumes the role of a military leader defending the camp with other women.

When female writers took to the stand, characterization of women evolved from an infancy depicting dependency and adherence to social codes to some form of maturity and confrontation. It is fair to claim that Palestinian women writers are more prone to opposition in presenting the war story. This can be diagnosed as emanating from their sense of being the victimized party as a result of the war and the spread of the nationalist ideology, which they believe maintained fixed patriarchal social and gender structures. Although war and nationalism may be said to have accelerated the emancipation of women, bringing female rights and imagery to the fore, some Palestinian female writers argue that war, created and sustained by men, entraps them in mythical, motherly, or maiden roles. In war literature, works by female writers are more critical than their male counterparts, because most women writers have taken to the scene of writing after the emergence of feminism. They maintain their right in having their own views of the events and in criticizing the icons so strongly enshrined in the minds of their nations. They refuse to join in recreating the same female characters, who succumb to the one nation, one story type of writing, making it difficult to investigate a female pattern of writing the war story.

An example of the counter narrative produced by Palestinian female writers is provided by the works of Sa¯ar Khalīfa (1990). In her novels, there is always a focus on the internal battle with men and institutions of patriarchy more than the battle of the Palestinians against the occupation, calling for the freedom of women prior to the freedom of Palestine. In an unpublished M.A. thesis on the novels of Sa¯ar Khalīfa by Shanābla (1993), the researcher asserts, by studying all the literary production of Khalīfa that her novels are only Palestinian in title. She is amazed by her ability to distance herself and produce novels unrelated to the “Palestinian context of heroism, martyrdom, imprisonment… etc” (Shanābla, 1993, p. 46). Khalīfa remains through her novelistic journey a prisoner of her own personal agenda. She herself confesses to that in her autobiography. “I never thought of myself as a part of community, but as an outsider” (Shanābla , 1993, p. 245). She admits that most of her female characters are an extension of herself, her own aspirations, and disappointments.

The intifāḍa, which is depicted by the majority of writers as being a positive and emancipatory transformation to the advantage of the Palestinian people and cause is presented in the negative in Khalīfa’s novel Bāb al-Sā¯a (the name of a location in the old city of Nāblus). This novel has been expected by Cooke (1993) to “provide the transformed context. The conditions would seem to be ideal because the intifāḍa is the most explicitly feminized of all post-modern wars” (p. 195), but Khalīfa has chosen to differ. In a society such as the Palestinian which values ethics, especially in relation to women’s honor and sexual chastity, Khalīfa elects a “prostitute” in Bāb al-Sa¯a to act as the ethical judge of society during the intifāḍa, creating havoc in the moral and social context of her works. The prostitute in the novel, Nazha, is shown as a victim of society, a society which leads her astray into prostitution by killing her mother for her alleged connections with the occupation, and turning her only brother, an intifāḍa activist, against her vowing to kill her at some point.

The only female character worth noting in the novel is Aunt Zakiyya. She qualifies as another Umm Sa‘d, the midwife and nurse who brings Palestinian children to life and treats them when they are in pain. A woman, who although left by her husband with three daughters to raise, does not bow to the storm of hardship. She stands for herself and fellow women. She works, takes care of her daughters and gains the respect of the


community. However, Khalīfa does not lead her through towards character fulfillment, like Kanafānī’s Umm Sa‘d, and she remains in a state of mediocrity, the best amongst her female companions, all suffering from the maltreatment of men and lack of appreciation for their efforts. Her courage gave her the nickname of “Umm al-Shabāb” (the mother of young men). The word “shabāb” in Arabic meaning youth and young age has a generic interpretation including females and males without gender distinction, but Khalīfa chooses to stress the meaning in relation to males to prove her point of sexual bias against females. Most of Khalīfa’s female characters emerge as unfulfilled characters and leave the course of events as psychological wrecks. Thus, the feminism of the authoress is not passed on to her characters.

Whether symbolic or realistic, the reader of Khalīfa’s works has a partial view of Palestinian society depicted as stricken by social ills. It is true that Khalīfa is a pioneer in exposing social mischief, but the problem comes with exaggeration and applying the exception as the rule. Representative war literature is expected to present the two sides of the coin in proportion, to avoid the traps of propaganda or exaggerated criticism. This validates the claim that Palestinian “war” literature, and probably all other genres, are in need of textual rather than sexual dramatization, and that “physical apartheid should at the very least be countered with literary integration” (Cooke, 2001, p. 5) so as not to divert the attention from the main stream of thoughts and characterization. To write with a feminist or masculine voice, to exclusively focus on male or female characters may affect the message and nature of the war story, and may present a partial rather than an overall view of the stake and status of women in war.

War Fraternity and the Humanization of the Freedom Fighter The sociopolitical background of Palestinian literature, affected by the nature of the Palestinian struggle

against an identified Zionist enemy, has rendered a great deal of the literary production in international circles as void of value and no more than propaganda. Early Palestinian literature is more dogmatic and ideological in maintaining a belief in the justice of the Palestinian cause, the right to regain full sovereignty over the land of Palestine, and the impossibility of compromise with the enemy. In this period, Palestinian literature adopted to a form of resistance or warring literature (Adab al-Muqāwama), recruiting its audience to serve the cause of liberating Palestine. Durdunjī, in her novel Ilā al-Liqā’ fīYāfā (Till We Meet Again in Jaffa) (1969), pronounced this uncompromising ideological stance through her Heroine ‘Abla who tells an Israeli judge: “I am a Palestinian, and by definition that means a freedom fighter. When you killed my mother, father, family and countrymen, and kicked us from our homes and country, I swore, honestly, to fight you till death” (p. 10).

Such presentation ushered waves of criticism against Palestinian literature. Said (1980) recorded that Palestinian literature as well as Palestinians:

Are immediately associated with terrorism, as Israel has seen to it that they are. Stripped of its context, an act of Palestinian desperation looks like wanton murder… Because Israel has succeeded in shutting… the world’s eyes to what has been done to the Palestinians… the pro-Palestinian rhetoric is too often constructed as anti-Semitism. (pp. 177-183)

To avoid these traps and non-literary constraints, contemporary Palestinian literature is more conscious in addressing the supra-contextual elements of writing surrounding the presentation and acceptance of the Palestinian war story. It tries to align itself with revolutionary experiences worldwide as an empowerment strategy to gain international acknowledgement, audience and support. To achieve this, it incorporates principles


of the Marxist revolutionary ideology, the Algerian revolution, the Japanese war experience of WWII (World War Two), and the South African struggle pinpointing mutual and shared values and means. Some writers have even addressed the Jewish suffering side by side to the Palestinian suffering as a part of the human suffering which knows no boundaries and has to be elevated wherever it occurs.

In Bāb al-Shams (Gate of the Sun) (1998) presented by its Lebanese writer, Khūri, as the Palestinian odyssey, the writer reconstructs the bits and pieces of the Palestinian nakba and its aftermath. He takes note of the sensitivity of presenting the Palestinian cause with emotionalism or exaggerated sentimentality. In this aspect, Bāb al-Shams, written in the late 1990s, differs from other nakba stories written earlier, as it is one of the very few novels which presents the Palestinian suffering within its wider human context. Through Dr. Khalīl, the narrator of the story, Khūrī calls for a revision of Palestinian war ideology, and probably sends an indirect message to the Israelis to reciprocate, urging them as sufferers to accept and sympathize with the suffering of others, even if it is the suffering of what they see as their enemies. He mentions the events of the Holocaust and the killing of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, which are either denied or justified by Palestinians. He tells Y-nis, the person who spent his life fighting for Palestine that it is time to reconsider what Palestinians held as unquestionable for years and years:

You and I and every human being on the face of the planet should have known and not stood by in silence, should have prevented the beast from destroying its victims in that barbaric, unprecedented manner. Not because the victims were Jews but because their death meant the death of humanity within us. (Khūri, 1998, p. 70)

This scene transcends its literary bounds into presenting a new political ideology, an internal debate permitting other than the voice of the majority on such issues; a majority who may not permit even literary meditation of such rapprochement.

Other literary works try to counter the stereotypical images of warriors and their relation to terrorism and violence, and present them with the righteousness and nobility of the freedom fighter. Modern Palestinians works stress that war is forced on Palestinians who would rather live and prosper. Most Palestinian writers depicting the image of the martyr explain the reasons that force him/her to choose this course of action. In a novel entitled Ra¯īl (2003) (the name of the female protagonist), by the authoress al-Rajabī, the ideology of freedom fighters and resistance is presented as honorable and indispensable in preserving the life of Palestinians. Rajabī’s novel contributes to humanizing the concept of martyrdom and martyrs against stereotypes of demonization, she presents martyrdom (al-shahāda) as a way of gaining glory in this life and the afterlife. One of the fighters says that they aspire to live in peace with their children on their lands, which has been confiscated by the Israelis. Ra¯īl mothers these young men, uncovering by talking to them, the losses each suffered at the hands of the Israeli army. By giving them opportunity to speak and present the motives behind their actions, the authoress wants to prove that martyrs are not suicidal.

They would prefer to live, but given the circumstances fail to see how they can. They do not seek death directly, even if death is an inevitable result of their actions… They make a statement out of their dying, not a weapon. (Eagleton. 2005. p. 10)

This explanation according to Eagleton is what writers adopt to separate saints from suicides, heroes from terrorists.


Conclusions

The understanding of the particularity and distinctive features of war literature is a prerequisite to evaluating its ability to achieve a state of “literariness” in comparison and contrast with other genres and schools of literature. War literature can be seen as the matrix of compromise between the two other opposite subcategories: warring literature and literature under war. A good example of the general features of war literature is Bāb al-Shams (Gate of the Sun) by the Lebanese Khūri, in which the writer presents an epic-like historical story of the nakba and the images of the Palestinian victims, with dramatization of actual events that occurred in 1948 in real life Palestinian villages, and minimal authorial voice or a clear-cut concluding theme. Umm Sa‘d by Kanafānī is a distinctive representative of warring or resistance literature. In Umm Sa‘d, Kanafānī endorses the value of resistance as the unquestioned path to regain the dignity of Palestinians and the freedom of Palestine.

The works of the Palestinian authoress Sa¯ar Khalīfa fit into the third category of literature under war. They picture the human and individual concerns as victimized at the altar of war and nation. In the traditional Odysseus and Penelope sense of heroism, her characters act as anti-heroes and heroines, exhibiting no epic-like heroic features, but people suffering from the perils of living under war. Such works present other schools of social and literary criticism, such as feminism and existentialism as being in opposition to the logic of war, revising and criticizing the ideology from which concepts of superiority, righteousness or uniqueness stem.

Nonetheless, attempting to define the genre does not deny that the nature of war literature is as unstable and oxymoronic as war itself, changing through time in content and characterization, presenting in the words of Harlow (1987): “A serious challenge to the codes and canons of both the theory and the practice of literature and its criticism as these have been developed in the West” (p. xvi). The history of war literature testifies that as war is in progress, war literature assumes a supporting role, aiming to implant a collective sense of nationalism and nationhood, calling on individuals for an engagement in the public, and the delay of private rights. To preserve the national image, Palestinian literature employs selective historical, political, and social discourse to achieve a degree of representability of actual events and images. In this task of image preservation, war literature adopts an eclectic approach to depict a state of uniformity, conformity, and sameness in themes and characters.

In Palestinian war literature, there seems to be an agreement on the definition of nationalism as devotion to cause and people. Writers are expected to maintain a degree of credibility and authenticity regardless of the gender of the writer. Gender differences are expected to act as a source of enrichment to the war story, presenting a variety of literary treatments. In Palestinian war literature, men writing the war story present women in religious, mythical and sacrificial nature, the symbol for which men fight. The female image written by men is that of the saint or the Satan praised endlessly for acting as mothers, wives and war supporters, or condemned limitlessly if they breach the social norms. Historical sources record that Palestinian women’s agency and participation are much greater than fictionalized in war literature (Zurāq, 1948), proving that male writers did not do justice to the imagery of their fellow female comrades. The picture is less detectable in the female story. Some Palestinian female writers do not defend the position of their female ancestors, but turn their back on all the heritage of war history and concentrate on writing the women’s plight as war goes on. Early war literature in Palestine represents the collective entity manipulating the individual suffering, charisma and achievement to speak for the whole nation. Furthermore, some degree of propaganda as beautification of the suffering and concealment of social


problems can be traced in early Palestinian literature. This propaganda lessened as war progressed and writers grew more critical and questioning. Palestinian war literature with its female imagery remains a stage for change with writers divided at its far ends between those adhering to a fixed image of heroism and nationalism and those foiling it. The continuation of the Palestinian war on ground ushered its continuation in literature, giving way in contemporary times for a degree of variance and split opinions, unimagined in early war literature.

In terms of readers’ response, the works of writers like Kanafānī are still appreciated and commended for their non-literary aspects regarding the promotion of a resistance ideology. Contemporary works like Khalīfa’s also receive acclaim by an audience who appreciates her critical style. Taking into consideration these discrepancies, the important thing to underscore is that the war story should neither be propagandistic nor alienated, as in the words of Eagleton (2005): “A nation, like an individual, has to be able to recount a reasonable story of itself, one without despair or presumption” (p. ix).

The obscurity of gender issues is evident in Palestinian literature; issues of equality, sexuality, and social reform receive minor focus. As Tucker (1993) has proposed: “The emphasis on the unity of men and women in the struggle for decolonization postponed the critical questioning of the inequalities of power between men and women in these patriarchal cultures” (p. 43). Nonetheless, stories of women in the intifāḍa attribute agency and initiative to women unlike stories written about women after the 1948 nakba, which picture women as recipients and a back stage chorus assisting male heroes.

Commitment, didacticism, and national discourse infiltrate in various degrees and at different periods of time most literatures, most apparent at times of war, as a part of the evolvement process to maturity and independent unconstrained writing. This package of commitment should not hinder the literary appraisal and appreciation of war literature as a “phasic” literature to be judged in this light. To appreciate the literary value of these texts, covering different political periods of the history of war, readers and critics need to adopt a “read in-read among-read beyond” strategy. This involves analyzing texts in relation to the period they are written in to evaluate how progressive or regressive, emancipating or confining the images and themes are at a specific point of time and in comparison with other national and international works on war. It is difficult to appraise a Palestinian work written in the 1970s expressing extreme nationalism, with the critical mentality of the late 20th century, when people worldwide relapsed back on nationalism considering it a phase of human infancy; therefore, war texts are to be read as both period specific and unconstrained by time in order for the recipient to value their literary edge.

In conclusion, war literature, both pro-war literature and anti-war literature, is a literature in the making, and so are its characters and themes. Adopting social realism, war literature tries to achieve a degree of authenticity and credibility in presenting real life war, and actual human experiences. War literature succeeds in acting as a register; it preserves socially sanctioned images and roles. Nonetheless, pro- and anti-war literature is expected to meet the expectations of the readers to what constitutes a war story at a certain period of time. This reader-writer interaction is what leads the authorial process of writing, and the scholarly process of criticism. Without this reader-writer contract, to borrow from Rousseau’s social contract, genres of literature and schools of criticism would not have had features and frameworks through which the writer can manoeuvre, and by which the critic can judge the value of the literary work. It is true that literature is a creative process, but many feel that creativity should involve some sort of standardization in studying the literary work, placing or dismissing it from the canon of what may be judged as “representative” war literature.


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Appendix: Transliteration Scheme

The system of transliterating Arabic in this paper is as follows: (1) Consonants س ز ر ذ د خ ح ج ث ت ب ء´ b t th j ¯ kh d dh r z s م ل ك ق ف غ ع ظ ط ض ص شsh ṣ ḍ ṭ ẓ ´ gh f q k l m ي و ه نn h w y (2) Long vowels ā آ ū ‘و ī ي ِ(3) Short Vowels u ‘ i a (4) Diphthongs ay ْي َaw َْ و َ

US-China Foreign Language Volume 12, Number 3, March 2014 (Serial Number 126)

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