guest editors of eLoPe vol. 20, No. 1:
frančiška LIPovšek and gašper ILC
Journal editors: Smiljana koMar and Mojca kreveL
University of Ljubljana Press
Založba Univerze v Ljubljani
Ljubljana, 2023
vol. 20, No. 1 (2023)
nglish
anguage
verseas
erspectives and
nquiries
NoveL ChaLLeNgeS for DISCoUrSe
aNaLySIS: CroSS-LINgUIStIC
aND CroSS-CULtUraL PerSPeCtIveS
CIP - kataložni zapis o publikaciji
Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana
81'42(082)
NoveL challenges for discourse analysis : cross-linguistic and
cross-cultural perspectives / guest editors frančiška Lipovšek and
gašper Ilc. - Ljubljana : University of Ljubljana Press = Založba
Univerze, 2023. - (eLoPe : english language overseas perspectives
and enquiries, ISSN 1581-8918 ; vol. 20, no. 1)
ISBN 978-961-297-137-3
CoBISS.SI-ID 157092867
3
Contents
Part I: INtroDUCtIoN
Frančiška Lipovšek, Gašper Ilc 9
Novel Challenges for Discourse analysis: Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural
Perspectives
Part II: SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
Mohammed Ademilokun, Rotimi Taiwo 15
Discursive Construction of higher education Institutional academic Identities
in Nigeria
Diskurzivno oblikovanje visokošolskih institucionalnih akademskih identitet v
Nigeriji
Nikola Jokić 41
Is It all greek to you? an analysis of Communication Strategies among
erasmus Students
ali me sploh kaj razumeš? analiza sporazumevalnih strategij med študenti v
okviru programa erasmus
Katarina Petrović 67
Journalistic transcreation of News agency articles from english into Serbian:
Associated Press and Reuters articles in Blic and N1 online Portals
Novinarska transkreacija člankov tiskovnih agencij iz angleščine v srbščino:
članki agencij associated Press in reuters na spletnih portalih Blic in N1
Mariangela Picciuolo 89
an eLf-oriented Corpus-Based analysis into the eMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial
Deixis across two Different teaching Media
korpusna analiza rabe prostorske deikse pri izvedbi predavanj v angleščini kot lingui
franci preko dveh različnih učnih medijev
Festa Shabani 113
Bilingual Phenomena occurring in the Speech of albanian Native Speakers
Dvojezični pojavi v govoru maternih govorcev albanščine
Dragana Vuković Vojnović 133
‘experience Norfolk! experience fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi više od očekivanog’ – a Corpus-
Based Contrastive Study of reader engagement Markers on the Web
“experience Norfolk! experience fun!” vs. “Doživi više od očekivanog” – korpusno
zasnovana kontrastivna analiza označevalcev vključenosti bralca na spletu
Part III: varIa
Lilijana Burcar 153
ongoing objectification, Marginalization and Sexualization of Women in Michael
ondaatje’s The English Patient and Divisadero: old Patterns, New Disguises
Nadaljevanje popredmetovanja, marginalizacije in seksualizacije žensk v romanih
Angleški pacient in Divisadero Michaela ondaatjeja: stari vzorci, nove preobleke
Niloufar Khosravi Balalami 171
representing M(other): a Cixousian reading of Memoirs Written by Jeanette
Winterson and elif Shafak
reprezentacije matere kot/in drugega: cixousijsko branje memoarov Jeanette
Winterson in elif Shafak
5
Gabrijela Petra Nagode, Karmen Pižorn, Žan Korošec 187
The Demographic factors affecting the Writing Skills of Slovenian year 6 efL
Students
Demografski dejavniki, ki vplivajo na pisno zmožnost slovenskih šestošolcev v
angleščini kot tujem jeziku
Sara Nazockdast, Zohreh Ramin 203
Becoming the rhizomatic outsider: a Study of the Narrative Deconstruction of
Being in ali Smith’s The Accidental
Postajati rizomatski autsajder: študija pripovedne dekonstrukcije obstoja v
romanu The Accidental ali Smith
LISt of CoNtrIBUtorS 225
7SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
Part I
Introduction
9
Frančiška Lipovšek,
Gašper Ilc
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Novel Challenges for Discourse Analysis:
Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Perspectives
In the mid-20th century, linguistics saw a great paradigm shift from the formalist and
structuralist frameworks inspired by de Saussure’s seminal work to novel, multi-faceted
and interdisciplinary approaches (aronoff and rees-Miller 2003). If the former primarily
studied linguistic units on the well-known phoneme-to-sentence continuum in isolation – in
other words, the grammar in its narrowest and traditional sense – the latter moved beyond
these per partes investigations and tried to focus not only on the grammar, but also on the
language in use, its functions, the participants involved, and the social context (van Dijk
2008). This meant that the new approaches had to take into consideration the at that time
ground-breaking findings of the new and emerging disciplines in humanities such as, but not
exclusively, psychology, sociology, ethnography, anthropology, and computer sciences.
one of these multi-faceted and interdisciplinary approaches is discourse analysis, which
has since its beginnings become a very versatile and prolific field of linguistic research. as
Schiffrin, tannen, and hamilton (2001, 1) point out, there are many different definitions
of discourse analysis ranging from the more traditionalist anything-above-the-sentence
views to perspectives that pay special attention to language in use and different social
practices. The multi-dimensionality of discourse analysis is perhaps best captured in
fairclough’s (1989, 22ff) view that language should be analyzed as a special form of social
practice, because it is an inalienable part of society, and it is a social process, conditioned by
other (non-linguistic) societal features. In other words, language users never use language
in vacuo but their language production is conditioned by their (current) social position/
situation, by the desired social effect, by social conventions and other discourses. for this
reason, discourse analysts can and should investigate only the naturally produced language
data (i.e., attested data), at the same time rejecting any use of invented data (i.e., non-
attested data) for their research.
to encompass all of these dimensions, fairclough (1989) develops a hierarchically structured
three-level framework of analysis, whose aim is first to focus on the formal properties of the
text1 (i.e., the level of description), second, to investigate the processes of text production and
text interpretation (i.e., the level of interpretation), and, lastly, to explore the social context
(i.e., the level of explanation).
at the stage of description, the analyst explores the formal properties of the text, such as
the selection of various vocabulary items, the use of metaphors, the preference for certain
syntactic patterns, etc. at this stage, the analyst wants to explore why the language user in a
1 The author adopts the hallidayan definition of a text as any meaningful instance of language (halliday and hasan 1976).
INtroDUCtIoN
2023, vol. 20 (1), 9-12(228)
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10 frančiška Lipovšek, gašper Ilc Novel Challenges for Discourse Analysis: Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Perspectives
given social position/context makes certain lexical and syntactic choices. for example, in a
student-teacher situation, the lexico-syntactic selection may be (completely) different than in
a husband-wife situation.
The key elements at the level of interpretation are the discourse participants: the producer
and the recipient of the text. hence, at this level, the text fulfils two functions – it is both the
final product of the process of production (i.e., the producer’s perspective) and the resource
in the process of interpretation (i.e., the recipient’s perspective). The process of interpretation
involves six distinct domains, as set out in fairclough (1989, 140ff): (i) surface of utterance
(knowledge of the language – phonology, grammar, vocabulary), (ii) meaning of utterance
(semantic and pragmatic aspects of the utterance), (iii) local coherence (meaning connections
between connected utterances), (iv) text structure and ‘point’ (text global coherence, social
conventions, different types of discourse), (v) situational context (external cues such as
the physical situation, properties of the participants, etc.), and (vi) intertextual context
(connection to previous discourses).
at the last level, explanation, the analyst endeavours to present discourse as part of a social
process, to determine to what extent the discourse is governed by existing social structures, and
at the same time to what extent discourse shapes/changes the existing structures (fairclough
1989, 163).
fairclough’s (1989) model of reference is very reminiscent of the text linguistics framework
as set out by Beaugrande and Dressler (1981), who established the now well-known and
referred to seven standards of textuality: (i) cohesion, (ii) coherence, (iii) intentionality, (iv)
acceptability, (v) informativity, (vi) situationality, and (vii) intertextuality. In fact, all of these
standards are included in the faircloughian model, either at the stage of description and
interpretation. What makes his model different, however, is the special focus on the role
discourse plays in society, in particular, the use of language to exert (political) power, to
manipulate, and to establish social inequalities (the level of explanation). for this reason,
fairclough’s model is referred to as critical discourse analysis.
If original research in text linguistics and discourse analysis primarily focused on text produced
by native speakers for native speakers, the turn of the 20th century brought a new challenge
for text/discourse analysts: the phenomenon of english as a lingua franca. The designation
english as a lingua franca (eLf) refers to interactions between speakers from diverse linguistic
backgrounds, for none of whom english is the native language. one of its special features is
also that the majority of its speakers have adopted it through learning english as a foreign
language, i.e., via formal instruction rather than personal contact (Mauranen 2006, 126).
It was not until the beginning of the new millennium that eLf received attention as an object
of systematic linguistic studies. The challenge of “accepting a language that is not anybody’s
native tongue as a legitimate object of investigation and descriptive research” (Seidlhofer
2009, 237) was underpinned by the long-standing paradox of having a language with the
largest number of speakers, yet failing to categorize it as a world language. This “conceptual
gap” (Seidlhofer 2001) called for a decisive reconceptualization of the nature and function of
eLf, as well as language varieties and speech communities in general.
Frančiška Lipovšek, Gašper Ilc
Novel Challenges
for Discourse
Analysis: Cross-
Linguistic and
Cross-Cultural
Perspectives
11
over the first quarter of the 21st century, eLf has been promoted as the “chosen foreign language
of communication for groups of speakers having different first language backgrounds” (Pakir
2009, 229), i.e., a legitimate alternative to english as a native language. adopting the new
perspective has gone hand in hand with a major change in orientation in linguistic research.
Several studies have been published on the phonological, pragmatic and lexicogrammatical
aspects of eLf. eLf corpora have been compiled in order to facilitate analyses depending
on large amounts of data (the first version of voICe, the first general corpus of eLf, was
released in 2009). The focus of eLf description has shifted from the linguistic features as
potential means of codification to the functions these indicate in communicative interactions.
Departures from native-speaker norms have become to be interpreted as examples of variance
rather than errors or signs of incompetence, and bilingual elements like code-switching as
means of promoting one’s own cultural identity (cf. Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey 2011; Mckay
2018; Seidlhofer 2009). The recognition of eLf speakers as language users in their own right,
freed from the pressure of the normative tendency of english as a foreign language, has also
had implications for english language teaching and learning. In particular, it has enabled a
redefinition of non-native teachers of english from “perennial, error-prone learners of english
as a native language” to “competent and authoritative users of eLf” (Seidlhofer 2004, 229).
a great deal of discussion has been devoted to distinguishing eLf from english as a foreign
language (efL). Jenkins (2006, 140) summarizes the differences as follows:
i) efL adopts a “deficit” perspective, eLf a “difference” perspective on differences from
native-speaker english: the former sees them as errors, the latter as variants;
ii) the efL perspective explains deviations from native-speaker english in terms of
transfer and metaphor, the eLf perspective in terms of contact and evolution;
iii) the efL perspective has a conformative, monolingual bias, the eLf perspective a
transformative, bilingual bias;
iv) the efL perspective regards code-switching and code-mixing as interference errors,
the eLf perspective as bilingual resources.
The use of eLf has been investigated in a number of discourse communities, in particular
business, tourism, journalism, school settings and higher education. In these domains of
social contact, the spread of eLf has accelerated significantly due to the forces of globalization
and internationalization. Some of these communities are placed in the centre of investigation
in this special issue of eLoPe, which comprises six research papers, all of which focus on
the application of the discourse analysis framework to analyze various texts produced in the
eLf context. In particular, in tourism, which has expanded greatly due to globalization,
the use of language plays a key role in promoting tourist destinations and interacting
with potential customers (see vuković vojnović, this volume). transcreation, a process of
adapting translated content to suit the target audience’s context, culture, and expectations,
is frequently employed in journalism (see Petrović, this volume). The internationalization
of higher education, for example, has transformed language use within academic settings
(see ademilokun and taiwo, this volume). english has emerged as the primary medium
of communication among students, scholars and institutions from different first language
INtroDUCtIoN
12 frančiška Lipovšek, gašper Ilc Novel Challenges for Discourse Analysis: Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Perspectives
backgrounds, whose social interactions foster intercultural understanding and the exchange
of different linguistic practices. In non-anglophone countries, english-medium instruction
programmes have gained popularity, where academic courses are delivered entirely in english.
The adoption of eLf in higher education has significantly changed the dynamics of teaching
and learning, as well as research (see Shabani; Jokić; Picciuolo, this volume). In turn, the
constant shaping of eLf by its speakers opens up new perspectives for discourse studies.
The guest editors would like to express their thanks to the contributors, reviewers, the
organizers of the 9th BICLCe conference and the journal editors.
References
aronoff, Mark, and Janie rees-Miller, eds. 2003. The Handbook of Linguistics. oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
Beaugrande, robert-alain de, and Wolfgang Dressler. 1981. Introduction to Text Linguistics. London:
Longman.
fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. harlow: Longman.
halliday, M. a. k., and ruquaiya hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2006. “Points of view and Blind Spots: eLf and SLa.” International Journal of Applied
Linguistics 16 (2): 137–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2006.00111.x.
Jenkins, Jennifer, alessia Cogo, and Martin Dewey. 2011. “review of Developments in
research into english as a Lingua franca.” Language Teaching 44 (3): 281–315. https://
doi.org/10.1017/S0261444811000115.
Mauranen, anna. 2006. “Signalling and Preventing Misunderstanding in eLf
Communication.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 177: 123–50. https://
doi.org/10.1515/IJSL.2006.008.
Mckay, Sandra Lee. 2018. “english as an International Language: What It Is and What It Means for
Pedagogy.” RELC Journal 49 (1): 9–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688217738817.
Pakir, anne. 2009. “english as a Lingua franca: analyzing research frameworks in International english,
World englishes, and eLf.” World Englishes 28 (2): 224–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-
971X.2009 .01585.x.
Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah tannen, and heidi e. hamilton, eds. 2001. The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis. oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2001. “Closing a Conceptual gap: The Case for a Description of english as a Lingua
franca.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11 (2): 133–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/1473-
4192 .00011.
—. 2004. “research Perspectives on teaching english as a Lingua franca.” Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 24: 209–39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190504000145.
—. 2009. “Common ground and Different realities: World englishes and english as a Lingua franca.”
World Englishes 28 (2): 236–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971X.2009.01592.x.
van Dijk, teun a. 2008. Discourse and Context. A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
13SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
Part II
Special Issue
Articles
15SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
Mohammed Ademilokun,
Rotimi Taiwo
obafemi awolowo University, Nigeria
2023, vol. 20 (1), 15-39(228)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1.15-39
UDC: 316.77:378(669.1)
Discursive Construction of Higher Education
Institutional Academic Identities in Nigeria
aBStraCt
There is an increase in brand marketing on the websites of universities in a bid to present the
kind of identities that will best promote them. This study examines the identities universities
project to market their brands within the context of consumer culture of the contemporary
higher educational setting. Data for the study were obtained from the websites of 24 public
and private universities in Nigeria and were analysed based on fairclough’s (2015) dialectical
relational theory and roper and Parker’s (2006) insights on branding. The findings reveal
seven kinds of identity: professional, national, transnational, humanist, afrocentric, ethnic
and religious. These identities range from the ideal to narrow-interest ones. The study
concludes that identity construction in any university should aim primarily at advancing
knowledge and producing total graduates who would be able to adapt and survive in any part
of the world and contribute meaningfully to societal development.
Keywords: identity, higher education, university, branding, marketization
Diskurzivno oblikovanje visokošolskih institucionalnih
akademskih identitet v Nigeriji
IZvLeČek
Na spletnih straneh univerz se povečuje oglaševanje le-teh kot blagovnih znamk, pri čemer
se poskušajo predstaviti z identitetami, ki jih bodo najbolje promovirale. Predmet raziskave
so identitete, ki jih univerze oblikujejo za potrebe samooglaševanja kot blagovnih znamk
v kontekstu potrošniške kulture sodobnega visokošolskega okolja. raziskava temelji na
podatkih, pridobljenih na spletnih straneh štiriindvajsetih javnih in zasebnih univerz v
Nigeriji in analiziranih na podlagi faircloughove (2015) dialektične relacijske teorije ter
razumevanja marketinga po roperju in Parker (2006). rezultati raziskave kažejo na sedem
vrst identitet: poklicno, nacionalno, transnacionalno, humanistično, afrocentrično, etnično
in versko. končna ugotovitev je, da mora pri oblikovanju identitete vsaka univerza stremeti
predvsem k visokemu nivoju znanja in produkciji odličnih diplomantov, ki se bodo znali
prilagoditi in preživeti v kateremkoli delu sveta ter smiselno prispevati k razvoju družbe.
Ključne besede: identiteta, visoko šolstvo, univerza, blagovna znamka, oglaševanje
16 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
1 Introduction
This study investigates the construction of identities on the websites of universities in Nigeria,
as these universities attempt to market themselves and present their brands to the public.
In the last one and a half decades, the Nigerian government has embarked on policies
and reforms leading to the liberalization of the economy with the goal of moving towards
a market-driven economy. The liberalization policies have also affected higher education,
leading to the massification of universities and other higher institutions in the country in line
with the increase in demand for higher education. The National Minimum Standards and
establishment of Institution acts, which came into being in May, 1999 made the granting of
licenses to private individuals and organizations to establish universities possible. The number
of universities approved by the Nigeria Universities Commission (NUC) had grown to 219
as at the end of 2021, while several others are awaiting approval by the commission (www.
nuc.edu.ng). This comprises 49 federal universities, 59 state-owned ones and 111 private
universities.
Due to the large number of universities in the country there is also a high level of competition,
especially among the privately owned ones. Unlike the public ones, very few Nigerians can
afford to pay the very high fees charged by private universities, therefore limiting their
enrolments. It then becomes imperative for private universities to compete for the limited
number of Nigerians who can afford them. The need to do brand marketing also becomes
very important in order to attract students and other stakeholders. University websites are
thus one of the most visible spaces for branding, presentation of universities’ identities, and
marketization. Public universities are also not left out in the process of marketization and
identity formation, as they are conscious of operating in a very competitive market, where
ranking in terms of performance indicators, such as teaching, research, citations, international
outlook, and graduate employability play major roles in their recognition and patronage
by the public. This study therefore examines how selected Nigerian universities brand
themselves through identity formation on their websites, thereby leading to marketization
of their institutions.
2 Literature Review
The increase in the number of universities in Nigeria has been motivated and necessitated
by the tremendous growth in demand for university education in the country (akpotu and
akpochafu 2009). This increase has naturally brought about strategic marketing efforts by these
institutions through brand marketing (Mogaji, Maringe, and hinson 2020), sloganeering
(ayinuola and francis 2021; farinloye, adeola, and Mogaji 2020), the formulation of clear
vision and mission statements (ashiru and oludare 2015; efe and ozer 2015) and strong
institutional identities (Wayne, farinloye, and Mogaji 2020), such as through “about us” texts
on the related websites (Xiong and Li 2020), in order to compete favourably for patronage
by stakeholders.
In spite of the challenge of affordability and in the face of the stiff competition among private
universities with regard to the existing public universities, both kinds of institutions have
developed strategies for attracting students and staff through brand marketing. While the
Discursive
Construction of
Higher Education
Institutional
Academic ...
17SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
private universities capitalize on the deficiencies of the public ones to market themselves,
emphasizing a stable academic calendar, good learning resources, conducive environment, ease
of gaining admission, running courses that are in high demand, better research opportunities
for faculties, and stronger lecturer-student relationships, among other factors, the public
universities emphasize their experience and strength of faculty, among others.
Studies on the marketing, identity construction and branding of universities have identified
specific contextual spaces for their display, such as the websites and hard copy publications of
such institutions. Marketing elements are typically displayed in logos (ead and Saleh 2021),
vision and mission statements (Banda and Mafofo 2014; ashiru and oludare 2015), mottos
and slogans (Shanaz and Qadir 2020), leaders’ speeches (teo and ren 2019), and information
about the university (about us) (Zhang 2017; Wu and Cheong 2020).
Studies on the marketization of universities include fairclough (1993), hoang and rojas-
Lizana (2015), Xu, Xie, and Lei (2021), and ead and Saleh (2021), among others. for
instance, fairclough (1993) identifies an increasing tendency towards marketization and
commodification of discursive practices in contemporary discourses that concern British
universities, owing to their expectation to raise a proportion of their funding from private
sources. he notes that major issues driving the marketization agenda of such universities
include ranking, staff quality, citations per staff member as well as environment for learning.
hoang and rojas-Lizana (2015, 3) focus on how universities have adopted academic
marketing in their discursive practices by investigating “how two australian universities
represent themselves in response to social changes through the use of language on their
institutional websites”. The authors show that visual elements such as logos, images and
videos play important roles in the representation of the universities.
Xu, Xie, and Lei (2021) also examine the marketization process of top-tier Chinese universities
by scrutinising their self-promotional strategies over the past two decades. Their study focuses
on the attitudinal markers in the “about us” texts of the selected universities with a view
to identifying the major themes in the texts. The study identifies seven major themes that
were positively appraised by the universities at both time points. ead and Saleh (2021) is a
critical discourse analysis of the shapes, images, symbols and colours used in logos of eight
universities in egypt. The authors observe that in marketing the various programmes the
universities offer and project the relevance and images of the institutions. The logos project
the cultural heritage, religious beliefs and past history of civilization.
There are also studies on the branding of universities, including Dogan (n.d.), valitov (2014),
Mampaey and huisman (2016), Bhattacharya and faisal (2020), among others. Dogan
(n.d.) examines the corporate credibility of universities with three distinct naming strategies:
strategies based on the name of a person, city or location and region of location. The study
shows that the name of a famous person is preferred over the city of location, although the
reverse is sometimes true. The study further shows that region of location-based names are
the least preferred type of university name. Mampaey and huisman (2016) examines the
transformation to a more market-oriented steering approach in a european higher education
context. The findings indicate that some similar tendencies are visible, although brand
differentiation could also be identified between highly and lowly reputed institutions.
18 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
Bhattacharya and faisal (2020) examine how the media were used for branding of higher
education during the CovID-19 pandemic. The authors note that the emergence of
CovID-19 altered the previous reliance on newspaper advertisements, radio jingles, career
counselling workshops, education fairs, billboards, and so. however, the authors note that
higher education started using social media in this time to get a competitive advantage.
There have also been a few studies on identity in academic discourse, such as Bucholtz and
hall (2005). The authors study identity and interaction from a socio-cultural linguistic
approach, and assert that identity is a social and cultural phenomenon. In addition, they
also observe that “identities encompass macro-level demographic categories, temporary and
interactionally specific role and local ethnographically emergent cultural positions” (Bucholtz
and hall 2005, 592). Much more important to the current study is the view that identities
may be “linguistically indexed through labels, implicatures, stances, styles and linguistic
structures and system” (Bucholtz and hall 2005, 594). as will soon be seen in the analysis
presented below, institutional identities are often constructed by deploying different linguistic
styles and discursive strategies to highlight prominent aspects of institutional identities.
Looking further into evaluative, affective and epistemic orientations in discourse, some
scholars have studied authorial identities in an academic context, especially, students’ writing
and journal articles (flowerdew and Wang 2015, karoly 2009 and rahimivand and kuhi
2014). flowerdew and Wang (2015) examine identity in academic discourse and stress the
nexus between voice and academic identity. They also assert and demonstrate how identities
are often constructed based on the conventions of specific communities of disciplinary
practices (see also hyland, 2004; 2005).
karoly (2009) investigates the expression of authorial identity in some research articles and
Master’s theses written in english, and underscores the deployment of more author pronouns
by less experienced writers rather than by expert writers. The author concludes that student
writers need more training in english for academic Purpose for them to be conversant with
various aspects of style that take account of the students’ stereotypical cultural, linguistic,
academic and educational backgrounds.
The present study rests on the assertions that identity is critical to any form of writing, that
authorial voice is the way individuals represent or identify themselves in their discourse, and
branding through marketization is essential for identity. In spite of the surfeit of studies on
authorial identities in academic discourse, there is a lack of knowledge on academic identity
construction for the branding of universities on institutional websites in Nigeria.
3 Methodology
Data for the study comprise texts on the profiles of selected universities in Nigeria culled from
the websites of the respective institutions. The data were obtained from four universities,
two public and two private ones, in each of the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria, making a
total of twenty-four data samples. The decision to obtain data from institutions from all the
geopolitical zones was informed by the need to reflect the diversity of Nigeria and universities
in the country, while data from each of the regions was purposively obtained focusing of the
19SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
length of the profiles of the institutions and their richness. The data samples were obtained
over a period of six months (from July to December 2021) after the websites of the institutions
were monitored for changes in their self-descriptions in order to ensure that the data used for
the research represent the current vision statements of the institutions.
Specifically, different texts such as the “about us”, history, and vision and mission statements
of the selected twenty-four universities constituted the data for the study. however, for
data analysis we purposively selected different parts of the various texts from the different
institutions that are relevant for the kind of analysis afforded by the precepts for analysis in
fairclough’s dialectical relational approach and roper and Parker’s theory of branding.
after gathering the data, the researchers closely studied them and marked out the different
identities that are constructed through different linguistic features, particularly lexical
features and the issues raised in the profiles of the selected institutions. Through further
close reading of the data, the researchers marked out various parts of the texts that yield
to roper and Parker’s (2006) ideas on branding and subsumed them under the various
identities already established from the data. We thus show how the expressive resources
for creating the various identities were further used for branding the institutions. In the
presentation of excerpts for data analysis, we purposively selected the marked parts of the
data that specifically projected various identities, while at the same time trying to reflect
the diversity of the institutions whose profiles constitute the corpus for the study. table
1 presents basic information about the institutions whose webpages were analysed for the
purposes of the present study.
table 1. Basic information about the institutions included in the analysis.
SN Name of Institution Brief Information on Institution
South South
1. University of Benin a second-generation federal university in Benin City, the
capital of edo State.
2. rivers State University one of the first set of state-owned universities in Nigeria. It
is located in Port harcourt, the capital of rivers State and
owned by the rivers State government.
3. Benson Idahosa
University
a private university owned by the Church of god Mission
International. It is located in Benin City, edo State.
4 Igbinedion University one of the first set of private universities in Nigeria. It is
located at okada, edo State. It is owned by Chief gabriel
Igbinedion, a business man.
South East
5. University of Nigeria,
Nsukka
one of the first-generation universities in Nigeria owned
by the federal government. It is located in Nsukka enugu
State.
6. Nnamdi azikiwe
University, awka
a federal government-owned university located in awka,
the capital of anambra State.
7. Madonna University a private university in okija, anambra State. It is owned
by the Catholic Church.
20 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
8. renaissance University This is a private university located in enugu, owned by
Chimaroke Nnamani, the former governor of enugu
State.
South West
9. obafemi awolowo
University
a first-generation university, owned by the federal
government and located in Ile-Ife, osun State.
10. University of Lagos a first-generation university owned by the federal
government and located in Lagos, the commercial capital
of Nigeria.
11. Covenant University a private university owned by the Living faith Ministries
and located in ota, ogun State.
12. redeemer’s University a private university owned by the redeemed Christian
Church of Christ and located in ede, osun State.
North Central
13. University of abuja a federal university located in abuja, the capital city of
Nigeria and within the federal Capital territory.
14. University of Ilorin a federal government-owned university located in Ilorin,
kwara State.
15. veritas University a private university owned by the Catholic Church. The
university is located in abuja, the capital of Nigeria.
16. Landmark University,
omuaran
a private university owned by the Living faith Ministries.
The university is located in omu aran in kwara State.
North East
17. Modibbo adama
University of
technology, yola
a federal government-owned university based in yola, the
capital of adamawa State.
18. federal University,
Wukari
a federal government-owned university based in Wukari,
taraba State.
19. american University of
Nigeria, yola
a private university owned by atiku abubakar, former
vice President of Nigeria. It is located in yola, the capital of
adamawa State.
20. kwararafa University,
Wukari
This is a private community-owned university located in
Wukari, taraba State.
North West
21. Uthman Dan fodio
University
a federal government-owned university based in Sokoto,
the headquarters of the Islamic religion in Nigeria.
22. federal University,
Dutsinma
a federal government-owned university located in
Dutsinma, katsina State.
23. Skyline University a private university located in kano, the foremost
commercial city in the north-west of Nigeria.
24. al-Istiqama University a private university located in Sumaila, kano State.
4 Theoretical Framework
The study employs an eclectic theoretical framework for data analysis as it combines
fairclough’s (2015) dialectical relational approach to critical discourse analysis with roper
and Parker’s (2006) idea on branding. fairclough’s dialectical relational approach provides
21SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
for analysis of various discourse levels of analysis such as description, interpretation and
explanation (fairclough 2000). at the level of description, attention is paid to the formal
features of a discourse such as vocabulary (lexis and metaphor), grammar, cohesion and text
structure. for interpretation, attention is paid to how meanings of texts link the texts with
their contexts. finally, at the level of explanation, the analyst focuses on meanings relating
to the broad ideological and topical issues underlying identity construction for universities
in Nigeria. The choice of fairclough’s (2015) dialectical relational approach is based on its
provisions for the explication of issues relating to social change and the analysis of expressive
resources in discourses.
The other component of the theoretical framework, which is roper and Parker’s (2006)
theory of branding, explicates branding as identification, differentiation, and personification,
and the brand as asset. according to roper and Parker (2006, 57), the original purpose of
branding was for identification. Branding in this regard serves the purpose of ensuring that
consumers recognize a product. at this level of analysis of a branded text, the analyst thus
pays attention to the linguistic features that are used to identify the branded item, in the
case of this study, the selected Nigerian universities. The second paradigm for analysis is
the differentiation dynamic of branding. here, according to roper and Parker (2006, 57),
due to the increased competition among companies and service providers, a brand needs to
differentiate itself from other brands. In the context of this study, it will be interesting to
analyse the linguistic features institutions use to create unique identities for themselves in
the face of competition for students, staff and funding by the many universities in Nigeria.
Closely related to branding as differentiation is branding as personification. here attention
is paid to how the physical, aesthetic, rational and emotional elements of a brand are
foregrounded to typify it. So, beyond differentiating themselves from other universities in
Nigeria, this study will examine how the universities typically portray their inherent features
and create identities for themselves. finally, the analyst also examines a brand as an asset by
focusing on the value of such a brand. Under this, it is possible to examine the value placed on
the institutions by themselves regarding their leadership in provision of university education
in Nigeria, internationality, stability, evolution of new trends, and perceived quality, among
other factors.
5 Data Analysis
In the competitive educational context of Nigeria, Nigerian universities have been working
hard to construct distinct identities which then form the basis for marketing themselves
to potential stakeholders – students, parents, companies, funding agencies, etc. In earlier
work, Shamaz and Qadir (2020) report that a corporate identity is the most prominent
identity constructed by Pakistani universities. kenway and Bullen (2001) find that students
are constructed as educational commodities, while ayaawan (2021) reports that educational
institutions are constructed as businesses offering academic services in ghana. rogendorf
(2008) shows that in New Zealand, corporate identity is often constructed, among other
identities. In Nigeria, however, our data show that professional identity, national identity,
transnational identity, ethnic identity, humanist identity, afrocentric identity and religious
22 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
identity typify the marketization of universities. This section presents these kinds of identities
projected in the data and a discussion on how they constitute marketization within the
Nigerian education context.
5.1 Professional Identity
a very significant kind of identity that higher institutions construct in order to brand
themselves is professional identity. for the purpose of this study, professional identity refers to
the identity pertaining to career foci or job prospects which the programmes of the institutions
sampled in this study focus on. This manifests in the attempts by higher institutions to portray
themselves as focusing on certain fields or areas of research. Constructing a professional
identity becomes necessary in a world where professionalism is gaining importance and
students would prefer studying professional courses, which many universities offer. Moreover,
the creation of specialized universities in Nigeria in response to specific national needs has
brought about certain universities focusing on some specific subsectors of the economy, such
as agriculture, technology, education, medicine, and petroleum, because of their importance
for national development. for many of these specialized universities, their names are their
first identities. It is, however, noteworthy that there are some universities in Nigeria that
construct professional identities for themselves without necessarily reflecting such identities
in their names. Let us consider an extract from what Landmark University, omu aran tagged
“our Story”, shown in example (1).
(1)
In example (1) above, Landmark University creates a professional identity for itself by showing that their focus is on
meeting one of the most basic human needs – food. This is graphologically expressed through the foregrounding of the
lexical item “FOOD” in the text which is presented as the ultimate goal of the research focus of the institution. The vision
of the university further constructs this professional identity as an agriculture-focused one. The construction of a
professional identity in the text reflects Fairclough’s dialectical relational approach principle that “[t]exts semiotically
construe identities and simultaneously seek to make these construals persuasive” (Fairclough 2016, 101). A close look at
the example also shows that, through the text, Roper and Parker’s (2006) idea of branding as identification is enacted. This
manifests in the association of the institution with the Living Faith Church Worldwide as its owner, which conforms with
Roper and Parker’s (2006) prescription on branding for the purpose of identification. Similarly, through the same text
there is the enactment of branding as personification. Since de Chernatony and Dall’Olmo Riley (1998, 418) state that
“company, identity system, image, value system, personality, relationship and added value can be combined to form the
personality of a brand”, the presentation of Landmark University as concerned with producing leaders who will ensure the
production of food is an effort in branding the institution for personification. The example below also indexes professional
identity:
(2) To be a leading world class university, by spearheading an agrarian revolution on the African continent through the
exploration of hidden treasures in the mother-earth thereby restoring the dignity of the black race. (Landmark University,
Omu Aran, https://lmu.edu.ng/about-lmu/vision-and-mission)
The agricultural revolution has always been at the centre of most agro-economic policies of the Nigerian government, as
it is a major way of diversifying the crude oil-based economy. Through these narratives, the university not only targets a
set of students interested in agriculture-related courses, but also presents itself as committed to solving one of the problems
in Nigerian society, which is the provision of food, that is metaphorically described as “hidden treasures in the mother-
earth.” Thus, there is the continuation of the streak of branding for personification in the profile of Landmark University
as the university is portrayed as largely interested in the “agrarian revolution” even though there is also the idea of branding
as differentiation implicit in the text as the university is distinguished as one that focuses on agriculture. Another example
elucidating professional identity follows:
(3) Brief History of the University
Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola formally known Federal University of Technology, Yola, Adamawa state
Nigeria was established in 1981 by the Federal Government of Nigeria to provide the much needed technologically skilled
In example (1) above, Landmark University creates a professional identity for itself by
showing that their focus is on meeting one of the most basic human needs – food. This is
graphologically expressed throug t e foregrounding of th lexical item “fo D” in the text
which is presented as the ultimate goal of the research focus of the institution. The vision of
the university further constructs this professional identity as an agriculture-focused one. The
23SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
construction of a professional identity in the text reflects fairclough’s dialectical relational
approach principle that “[t]exts semiotically construe identities and simultaneously seek to
make these construals persuasive” (fairclough 2016, 101). a close look at the example also
shows that, through the text, roper and Parker’s (2006) idea of branding as identification
is enacted. This manifests in the association of the institution with the Living faith Church
Worldwide as its owner, which conforms with roper and Parker’s (2006) prescription on
branding for the purpose of identification. Similarly, through the same text there is the
enactment of branding as personification. Since de Chernatony and Dall’olmo riley (1998,
418) state that “company, identity system, image, value system, personality, relationship
and added value can be combined to form the personality of a brand”, the presentation of
Landmark University as concerned with producing leaders who will ensure the production
of food is an effort in branding the institution for personification. The example below also
indexes professional identity:
(2) To be a leading world class university, by spearheading an agrarian revolution on the
African continent through the exploration of hidden treasures in the mother-earth thereby
restoring the dignity of the black race. (Landmark University, omu aran, https://lmu.
edu.ng/about-lmu/vision-and-mission)
The agricultural revolution has always been at the centre of most agro-economic policies of
the Nigerian government, as it is a major way of diversifying the crude oil-based economy.
Through these narratives, the university not only targets a set of students interested
in agriculture-related courses, but also presents itself as committed to solving one of the
problems in Nigerian society, which is the provision of food, that is metaphorically described
as “hidden treasures in the mother-earth.” Thus, there is the continuation of the streak
of branding for personification in the profile of Landmark University as the university is
portrayed as largely interested in the “agrarian revolution” even though there is also the idea
of branding as differentiation implicit in the text as the university is distinguished as one that
focuses on agriculture. another example elucidating professional identity follows:
(3) Brief History of the University
Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola formally known Federal University
of Technology, Yola, Adamawa state Nigeria was established in 1981 by the Federal
Government of Nigeria to provide the much needed technologically skilled manpower
for the nation. It is one of the Federal Universities recognized by National Universities
Commission (NUC) to offer Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate degrees in different fields
of Science and Technology. (Modibbo adama University of technology, yola, http://
mautech.edu.ng/new/index.php/en/about-us/who-we-are/about-mautech)
Moddibo adama University of technology also creates a professional identity through the
contents of its website. technologically skilled manpower is essentialized in the discourse
as “much needed for the nation” as a way of marketing the institution. Through this, there
is a branding of the institution for personification using roper and Parker’s (2006) ideas as
the institution is portrayed as basically typified by science and technology instruction and
research. Since several other universities offer courses in science and technology, recognition
24 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
in the form of accreditation by relevant bodies (most especially the National Universities
Commission, as is mentioned) plays a major role in shaping opinions of stakeholders. This text
latched on to this widely held understanding to project the legitimacy and reputation of the
university and market its degrees from bachelors to doctorates. however, different strategies
are used in professional identity construction in relation to the accreditation of courses. These
range from being general (different fields of science and technology), as seen in (3), to being
specific, as seen in (4) below. however, in addition to branding by professional identity, there
is also branding as identification. This manifests in the presentation of Modibbo adama
University of technology as owned by the government. Below is another excerpt featuring
professional identity in the discourse:
(4) All our programmes are accredited by the relevant regulatory and professional bodies
such as the National Universities Commission (NUC), Medical and Dental Council
of Nigeria (MDCN), Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN), Medical Laboratory
Science Council of Nigeria (MLSCN), Council of Legal Education (CLE), Nursing and
Midwifery Council of Nigeria (NMCN), Council for the Regulation of Engineering
in Nigeria (COREN), Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN),
Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), etc. (Igbinedion University,
okada, https://iuokada.edu.ng/vice-chancellors-message/)
for Igbinedion University, listing the relevant regulatory bodies and identifying specific
professional bodies would go a long way to providing and promoting the necessary information.
for many professionals, these professional bodies’ recognition confers practical and ethical
standards on their conduct. Providing such specific information is a strong marketing strategy
for the professional subjects identified with those professional bodies (medicine, pharmacy,
medical laboratory science, law, nursing and midwifery, engineering, computer science and
accounting). This evidences roper and Parker’s (2006) concept of branding as an asset, as
the institution is presented as having remarkable values which warrants its recognition by the
numerous professional bodies.
Projecting professional values is an essential means of constructing professional identity. Such
values include ethics, conduct and a professional appearance, including dress, which are an
important part of conduct. for Benson Idahosa University, giving information to the public
on the professional dress code is seen as part of professional identity projection.
(5) We are Nigeria’s first university with a professional dress code for staff and students.
We are Nigeria’s first university to have a work study programme that allows students to
study and put in some hours of their week into working to earn some money. (Benson
Idahosa University, Benin City, https://www.biu.edu.ng/about-biu/why-study-at-
biu/)
The claim of being the first university to have a dress code for staff and students makes
the information significant for professional identity projection and marketization of the
university and its professional courses. This information being placed under “Why Study at
BIU” is specifically drafted for marketing purposes, and is a way of branding the institution
for differentiation. The use of the expression “first”, which fairclough (2015) accounts for
25SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
under the level of description bordering on lexis in data analysis, gives the institution the
image of doing things differently. It also underscores the inculcation of professional ethics
into students from the university and the support for such values among the university
staff. however, the branding of the university in the text goes beyond differentiation as
there is also branding for identification. This manifests in the assertion in the text that the
university belongs to the wider Nigerian society through the expression “We are Nigeria’s
first university…”
5.2 National Identity
National values and priorities may be important enough to constitute an identity for some
universities, and the texts on the websites of Nigerian universities effectively project these in
line with fairclough’s (2015) claim on the centrality of identity construction to texts. Names
are bearers of identities, therefore a university, such as the University of Nigeria, already
projects the national identity through its very name. however, national identity has also been
constructed in other texts about a university, as can be seen in one of the mandates of rivers
State University of Science and technology (rSUSt), Port harcourt in example (6).
(6) RSUST was established to: […] relate its activities to the social, cultural and economic
needs of the people of Nigeria. (rivers State University of Science and technology, Port
harcourt, https://www.rsu.edu.ng/index.php/about/who-we-are/about-rsust)
The text above shows the deployment of branding as an asset for the construction of academic
identity for rSUSt. In the text, there is the essentializing of the goal of the institution by
projecting it as one which aims at enhancing the social, cultural and economic conditions
of Nigerians through its activities. This aligns with roper and Parker’s (2006) claim that
branding as an asset involves indicating the value of a brand. The implication of the projection
of the value of rSUSt is that the nation is the primary beneficiary of the products of the
research of the university. In whatever form they come, the research activities would positively
impact the social, cultural and economic life of the people of Nigeria. The strategic placement
of this information under the heading “who we are”, which is a statement of identity itself, is
significant for identity projection on the university’s website.
another projection of national identity is seen in the welcome message of the vice Chancellor
to the University of abuja, which is the first major narrative on the university’s website. The
University of abuja is located in the federal capital territory and also named after it. abuja is
obviously quite symbolic in Nigeria, being the capital. at the level of description in fairclough
(2000, 2015), one can see that in using lexis, the text producers give the university two appellations
in the narrative: “the model university in Nigeria” and “a pride of Nigerians and humanity
in the provision of higher education”. going further in the linguistic analysis as described by
fairclough (2015) under description, one can see the centrality of two nominal lexical features
“model” and “pride” used in the similar syntactic structure of MhQ-type nominal groups.
These two appellations at the levels of interpretation and explanation as espoused by fairclough
(2015) are projections of how the university wants to be seen in relation to other universities,
the nation, humanity and the provision of higher education in general.
26 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
(7) The University of Abuja is the model University in Nigeria, and has developed robust
developmental strategies to meet and sustain that status and remain a pride of Nigerians
and humanity in the provision of higher education. It is dedicated to quality teaching,
learning, and research. It offers both staff and students a serene and conducive environment
for living, working, teaching, learning, and research. (University of abuja, abuja,
https://www.uniabuja.edu.ng)
In the text above, in addition to the national identity that is constructed, the text producer
also brands the University of abuja using branding as differentiation, as it portrays the
university as different through the lexical item “model”, which also ascribes a status which
confers on it the “standard” which others have to follow. however, it is noteworthy that
even though branding as differentiation is primary to the academic identity constructed
in the text, there is also a subtle deployment of branding as asset, with the university
being portrayed as giving the nation the value of being a source of pride to her, Nigerians
and humanity in general. The ultimate goal of teaching, research and service is to address
social problems. The beneficiaries of these activities are not usually clearly spelt out for
most universities, since they are meant to assert universal values. Therefore, a deliberate
essentialization of a nation and its citizens as the prime beneficiaries of any university’s
products in its mission statement is a strong way of constructing national identity and
branding the institution as an asset to the people of the nation. This can be seen in the
vision statement of Nnamdi azikiwe University in example (8).
(8) The mission of the University is to use teaching, research, and public service to solve social
problems. In the process of learning, students would be oriented to use their education
in solving practical problems confronting them in the Nigerian society and beyond.
(Nnamdi azikiwe University, awka, https://unizik.edu.ng/about/vision-and-
mission/)
While it is more common to see universities building capacities through the advancement
of national values on their campuses or affiliates abroad, the strategy of projecting national
values is not a very common one on the websites of Nigerian universities. This is a way of
branding such institutions as assets for the circulation of national values in conformity with
roper and Parker’s (2006) idea on branding as asset. It must be pointed out that national
identity projection abroad is more common at the lower levels of education – primary and
secondary. In Nigeria there are some primary and secondary schools established by other
nations, which project strong identities of these nations through their curricula, such as the
Lebanese Community School, american International School, British International Schools,
Netherlands International Schools, Italian International School, enrico Mattei, and so forth.
It is more common, especially for private universities to compete on projecting an identity
that transcends their immediate locality or nation for marketing purposes rather than national
identities. In the next section, this will be fully discussed.
5.3 transnational Identity
By transnational identity, we mean an identity created to show that an entity or person
is characterized by features that transcend national boundaries. for the universities, this
27SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
entails presenting themselves as not being localized, but having international appeal. In
example (9) there is a text evidencing transnational identity in the profile of the american
University of Nigeria.
(9)
compete on projecting an identity that transcends their immediate locality or nation for marketing purposes rather than
national identities. In the next section, this will be fully discussed.
5.3 Transnational Identity
By transnational identity, we mean an identity created to show that an entity or person is characterized by features that
transcend national boundaries. For the universities, this entails presenting themselves as not being localized, but having
international appeal. In example (9) there is a text evidencing transnational identity in the profile of the American
University of Nigeria.
(9)
(American University of Nigeria (AUN), Yola, https://www.aun.edu.ng/index.php/about/overview/history)
The projection of the identity of the founder, Atiku Abubakar in the text above is an instance of branding as identification.
The strategy reveals a number of facts about him – his being the former Vice President of the country, the location of the
university being the capital of his home state, and his vision of establishing an American-style university in Nigeria.
Moreover, the text producers create a transnational identity for the American University of Nigeria. In the first instance,
the name of the institution is indicative of the transnational identity constructed. In the name there is reference to both
America and Nigeria, because while the university is presented as American in nature and style, it is portrayed as something
which belongs to Nigeria. This portrayal of the university as transnational is meant to show that it is a melting pot of
Nigerian and American cultures, and a way of showing that students who are privileged to attend the institution will not
only know about their society but also American culture and way of life. The American identity of the text further manifests
in the expression “establishing an American style university”, showing that the university is patterned after the American
University in Washington DC. The transnational identity constructed for the institution, using the branding theory of
Roper and Parker (2006), is a way of branding the institution through differentiation it from other institutions in Nigeria.
To further this differentiation, the university’s president has this as part of her message:
(10) AUN is unlike any other university in this part of the world: we provide a university education based on the US model –
just as if you were to go to university in the US. (American University of Nigeria, Yola,
https://www.aun.edu.ng/index.php/about/leadership/president)
(american University of Nigeria (aUN), yola, https://www.aun.edu.ng/index.php/
about/overview/history)
The projection of the identity of the founder, atiku abubakar in the text ab ve is an insta ce
of branding as identification. The strategy reveals a number of facts about him – his being the
former vice President of the country, the location of the university being the capital of his
home state, and his vision of establishing an am rican-style u iversity in Nigeria. More v r,
the text producers create a transnational identity for the american University of Nigeria.
In the first instance, the name of the institution is indicative of the transnational identity
constructed. In the name, there is reference to both america and Nigeria, because w ile the
university is presented as american in nature and style, it is portrayed as belonging to Nigeria.
This portrayal of the university as transnatio al is meant to show that it is a melting pot of
Nigerian and am rican cultures, and a way of showing that students wh are privil ged to
attend the institution will not only know about their society but also american culture and
way of life. The american identity of the text further manifests in the expression “establishing
an american style university”, showing that the university is patterned after the american
University in Washington DC. The transnational identity constructed for the institution,
using the branding theory of roper and Parker (2006), is a way of branding the institution
through differentiation it from other institutions in Nigeria. to further this differentiation,
the university’s president has this as part of her message:
(10) AUN is unlike any other university in this part of the world: we provide a university
education based on the US model – just as if you were to go to university in the US.
(american University of Nigeria, yola, https://www.aun.edu.ng/index.php/about/
leadership/president)
28 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
The differentiation claim that the university is “unlike any other in this part of the world”
is based on the idea of bringing the american experience to Nigeria’s educational setting
prompted by the idea of delocalization, and thus establishment of overseas campuses or
affiliates to further internationalize the university.
It also brands itself as american through the transnational identity of the institution, given
the fact that the american element in the naming and curriculum will arouse curiosity.
Beyond this, it is a marketization strategy in the sense that there are many who would derive
satisfaction from having a sense of attending a university that has some connection with
america. Through the transnational identity of the institution, the university also prides
itself as one that is internationalized, thus further marketing itself favourably to the public,
internationalization being seen as one of the qualities of great higher institutions of learning.
In an advertisement for admission on the university’s website, there is a slogan “school at
home, study abroad”, which further strengthens the transnational identity. This slogan co-
constructs the experiences of schooling and studying within the discourse of the transnational
experience, thus bringing the american Dream (the dream of many young Nigerians) into
the Nigerian national experience.
It is important to state that there is an emphasis on foreignness or americanness in the
construction of transnational identity in the profile of the american University of Nigeria.
Drawing insights from fairclough (2016, 101), this emphasis shows the peculiarity of the
conception of the idea of internationalization by the university as opposed to what obtains
elsewhere, especially in the Western world. The belief underlying such a perception is that
internationalization refers to having foreign links or contacts, especially connections with
one of the most powerful nations in the world, america, even though internationalization
elsewhere would mean having an international outlook, especially regarding the composition
of students and lecturers.
Similar to the aUN’s identity construction is that of the Skyline University of Nigeria, where
a transnational identity is also expressed in the university profile:
(11)
The differentiation claim that the university is “unlike any other in this part of the world” is based on the idea of bringing
the American experience to Nigeria’ educational setti g prompted by the idea of d localizati n, and thus establishment
of overseas campuses or affiliates to further internationalize the university.
It also brands itself as American through the transnational identity of the institution, given the fact that the American
element in the naming and curriculum will arouse curiosity. Beyond this, it is a marketization strategy in the sense that
there are many who would derive satisfaction from having a sense of attending a university that has some connection with
America. Through the transnational identity of the institution, the university also prides itself as one that is
internationalized, thus further marketing itself favourably to the public, internationalization being seen as one of the
qualities of great higher institutions of learning. In an advertisement for admission on the university’s website, there is a
slogan “school at home, study abroa ”, which further strengthens the transnational identity. This slogan co-constructs the
experiences of schooling and studying within the discourse of the transnational experience, thus bringing the American
Dream (the dream of many young Nigerians) into the Nigerian national experience.
It is important to state that there is an emphasis on foreignness or Americanness in the construction of transnational
identity in the profile of the American University of Nigeria. Drawing insights from Fairclough (2016, 101), this emphasis
shows the peculiarity of the conception of the idea of internationalization by the university as opposed to hat obtains
elsewhere, especially in the Western world. T e belief underlying such a perception is that internationalization refers to
having foreign links or contacts, especially connections with one of the most powerful nations in the world, America, even
though internationalization elsewhere would mean having an international outlook, especially regarding the composition
of students and lecturers.
Similar to the AUN’s identity construction is that of the Skyline University of Nigeria, where a transnational identity is
also expressed in the university profile:
(11)
(Skyline University Nigeria, Kano, https://oas.sun.edu.ng/Apply/About)
The transnational identity is expressed in the delocalization and internationalization of the university through the transfer
of the United Arab Emirates’ experience into Nigeria. The success of Skyline University College in the United Arab
Emirates is being replicated in Nigeria with the establishment and transfer of the idea of the s me university onto Nigerian
soil and for Nigerian students, and the name is also intended to reflect this identity. The transnational identity of the
institution also manifests its depiction as “the first international university… .” It is interesting that, as stated earlier, the
deployment of “first” for the branding of Skyline University is characteristic of Fairclough’s analytical level of textual
description where the adjectival lexical item goes to convey meanings border on differentiation in line with Roper and
Parker’s (2006) postulation at the levels of interpretation and explanation. The international appeal generated through the
transnational identity of the institution is no doubt a marketization strategy as it has the propensity to attract many
Nigerian students to have access to “the Dubai experience” or have the opportunity to further their education at the school
(Skyline University Nigeria, kano, https://oas.sun.edu.ng/apply/about)
29SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
The transnational identity is expressed in the delocalization and internationalization of the
university through the transfer of the United arab emirates’ experience into Nigeria. The
success of Skyline University College in the United arab emirates is being replicated in
Nigeria with the establishment and transfer of the idea of the same university onto Nigerian
soil and for Nigerian students, and the name is also intended to reflect this identity. The
transnational identity of the institution also manifests its depiction as “the first international
university… .” It is interesting that, as stated earlier, the deployment of “first” for the branding
of Skyline University is characteristic of fairclough’s analytical level of textual description
where the adjectival lexical item goes to convey meanings bordering on differentiation in line
with roper and Parker’s (2006) postulation at the levels of interpretation and explanation.
The international appeal generated through the transnational identity of the institution is
no doubt a marketization strategy as it has the propensity to attract many Nigerian students
to have access to “the Dubai experience” or have the opportunity to further their education
at the school in the United arab emirates. This international appeal and connection, which
highlight the transnational identity of the institution, are similarly used to brand it as an
asset in the sense that Nigerian students will benefit from the knowledge of the arab world
and culture which they will get acquainted with through their lecturers or books on the arab
world and culture. to further this transnational identity, another extract from the section
“Why Skyline University, Nigeria” describes the university this way
(12) Primarily, the goal of the university is to be recognized both locally and internationally
as the citadel of academic excellence. The university boasts of quality staff and faculty
members drawn from different parts of the world. (Skyline University, kano, https://
www.sun.edu.ng/sun-at-the-glance)
Universities face the potentially conflicting task of responding to both local and global
demands, and are expected to balance these dual engagements, and this is what Skyline
University has responded to in example (12). a transnational identity is built into the
university’s goal, and one of the practical ways of demonstrating this identity is the attraction
of faculty members from different countries, while remaining socially responsible and relevant
within the Nigerian local context. The internationality of the faculty of the university is an
index of its transnational identity and further serves the purpose of branding the institution
as an asset that offers the best exposure to such an identity to its students.
5.4 humanist Identity
The humanistic approach to education is one of the most advanced in contemporary
education, because the whole concept of education is about human development through
knowledge transfer and societal development. The focus in the projection of humanist identity
is the enhancement of self-worth, self-image and self-actualization. Covenant University has
developed a system that projects this kind of identity through its curriculum.
(13) The Total Man Concept (TMC) is Covenant University’s custom-built programme
that constitutes the core concept of her academic programmes. This concept centres on
‘developing the man that will develop his world’. The TMC Programme focuses on the
three components of the human personality: the spirit, the mind and the body. (Covenant
University, ota, https://covenantuniversity.edu.ng/about-us/overview/about)
30 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
total human development is a concept that is central to the concern of the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) for which the organization has developed the human
Development Index (hDI) to measure each of the following three dimensions – a long and
healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living. The human-centred
focus of the Covenant University was developed to carve a niche for the institution and
project its identity as humanistic. This aligns with roper and Parker’s (2006) idea of branding
as personification as the total man concept is presented as the core of the academic operation
of Covenant University. This is an uncommon marketization strategy, which is put forward in
the general context of the promotion of the intellectualism and aesthetics, with little reference
to the development of the total human personality.
This kind of identity is also projected by redeemers University, ede in its vision strategy. It
emphasizes that the “total person” goes beyond intellectual success to latent aspects of the
human individual, which will together with other, well-emphasized aspects produce the total
person.
(14) RUN is not only about academics. The serene atmosphere offers a conducive environment
for your spiritual and secular development, making you a total person. (redeemers
University, ede, https://run.edu.ng/vision-mission-strategy/)
In addition to using the curriculum for achieving total human development, as done by
Covenant University, redeemer’s University stresses the importance of the environment in
one’s total development. here, neither universities misses out on the spiritual component of
the human personality, being Christian mission institutions.
The University of Nigeria also projects the humanistic identity in its motto, which is: “to
restore the dignity of man”. Through the expression/motto used to construct the humanistic
identity at the textual level, as given by fairclough (2015), there is the employment of
branding as personification, and the restoration of the dignity of human beings is presented
as an attribute of social and symbolic meaning to redeeemer’s University. education here is
thus conceptualized as a tool for the restoration of human dignity, and making people realize
their self-worth is an integral part of the humanistic-centred education. There is also the
use of synonyms in the excerpt as the lexical items “serene” and “conducive” are both used
to describe the environment at rUN for the purpose of marketizing it to the public. In the
process of educating people, their minds are developed, as also expressed in the mission of
the University of Benin:
(15) To develop the human mind to be creative, innovative, competent in areas of specialization,
knowledgeable in entrepreneurship and Dedicated Service. (University of Benin, Benin
City, https://uniben.edu.ng/about/)
vital to human development is the development of the mind, which includes the cognitive
skills and general intelligence necessary for adaptation and survival. These are spelled out
in the mission of the university to create the awareness of those needs and the readiness
to address them as part of its humanistic drive. Through the humanist identity created in
the text, the producers also deploy branding as personification and branding as asset, based
31SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
on roper and Parker’s (2006) ideas. They promote the university as essentialized by the
humanist orientation and list the values that can be obtain from the institution as innovation,
professional competence, high entrepreneurial capacity and the ability to deliver exceptional
service. generally, the humanist identities created by these universities serve as a boost to
promoting them as unique in their approaches to educational services.
5.5 afrocentric Identity
another form of identity seen in the branding of Nigerian universities is afrocentrism, which
is used to champion the african cause, values and identity. This resonates with an important
idea in critical discourse analysis, which is resistance to foreign supremacist thinking and local
inferiority/inequality to the foreign, which fairclough (2016, 88) notes. What it means to be
an african from an african perspective may be quite different from how the phenomenon
is seen by others. With africa’s rich moral heritage of dignity, discipline, diligence, faith,
honesty and integrity being eroded, these common ideals need re-emphasis in the context of
the unmitigated acceptance of alien, Western doctrines. Some universities intentionally craft
their profiles in such a way that they celebrate and project such africanism and afrocentric
ideas in order to market their brand. The afrocentric identity is foregrounded in the mission
of Covenant University, thereby projecting the view of the restoration of human dignity, but
focusing on the black race.
(16) To create knowledge and restore the dignity of the black race via Human Development
and Total Man Concept-driven curricula (Covenant University, ota, https://
covenantuniversity.edu.ng/about-us/overview/about/)
Landmark University, an institution with the same owner as Covenant University, has a similar
narration on the restoration of the dignity of the black race through the agrarian revolution,
as noted in example in (2). It has always been said that the different forms of oppression the
black race has gone through over the centuries, such as slavery and colonialism, have made
it lose its dignity and real identity. But education can be deployed to restore this lost dignity.
In the pursuit of this goal, Covenant University is one of the universities determined to bring
africa into the limelight through its human development programme, as expressed in the
following example (17).
(17) We run with a compelling vision of raising a new generation of leaders African continent.
(Covenant University, ota, https://covenantuniversity.edung)
In this narrative on the activities of Covenant University, the ultimate goal of the human
development programme is to “raise a new generation of leaders” specifically for africa, the
continent of the “black race”. This is no doubt an instance of branding by personification
as raising a new generation of leaders is presented as the major attribute of the institution,
and is indeed a vital way of promoting the afrocentric value. This value directly impacts
on leadership, which is considered as a major challenge for many african countries. It is
believed that with the kind of education that addresses leadership concerns, the dignity of
the black race will be restored. The whole idea is articulated as a vision which is described as a
“compelling” one. to further drive this leadership vision, Covenant University established the
32 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
african Leadership Development Centre (aLDC) to run innovative leadership trainings on
leadership competencies. In the words of Dr David oyedepo, the founder of the university:
(18) The greatest challenge of Africa in the 21st century is leadership. Therefore, the
African Leadership Development Centre (ALDC) is poised to address issues of
Leadership Development across diverse contexts. (Covenant University, ota, https://
covenantuniversity.edu.ng/about-us/operations/african-leadership-development-
centre-aldc)
This narrative further underscores the leadership challenge of africa and the need to address
it through an afrocentric vision.
apart from dignity and leadership, another concern projected in the afrocentric identity is
the african cultural values, which appear to be eroding with the popularization of Western
values through colonialism. obafemi awolowo University (oaU) emphasizes this aspect
of the afrocentric identity with the resolve to add value to african culture, apparently by
projecting it at every opportunity that arises.
(19) To nurture a teaching and learning community; advance frontiers of knowledge; engender
a sense of selfless public service; and add value to African culture. (obafemi awolowo
University (oaU), Ile-Ife, https://oauife.edu.ng/about-oau/vission-mission)
Like many Nigerian universities, oaU has an institute that promotes african cultural values
in order to drive its afrocentric identity, and the african value of selflessness is enunciated
in the profile of oaU excerpted above. all this has been presented in the profile for the
purpose of branding oaU. In a similar manner as Covenant and Landmark Universities,
in its “about us” text, aUN also addresses the issue of leadership, which is considered a very
crucial challenge to the facilitation of the socio-economic development of africa states
(20) The goal of AUN is to train the future leaders of Africa and to serve as both a stimulus
and agent of economic development throughout the region [...] AUN is committed to
providing the skills and the leadership essential to advancing the continent’s pressing social
and economic challenges. (american University, yola, https://www.aun.edu.ng/index.
php/about)
The reference to africa in all the extracts is captured through the use of the lexical items
“africa”, “region”, “continent” and “black.” It is however interesting that the foregrounding
of africa in all these narratives is positive, making the essence of the university the training
of bright minds for the continent. It is generally believed that leadership is the bane of
development in many african nations, and a close look at the excerpt shows that roper and
Parker’s (2006) branding as personification and branding as asset are evident in the text. This
is because the text shows what typifies the university and at the same time what it has to offer.
as can be seen in the text, to show their passion for african development, these universities
present themselves as committed to training future leaders for the related countries.
although afrocentrism may focus on a number of values beyond what has been addressed,
such as its being a historical/political movement, three key issues have been identified as the
33SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
basis for driving the afrocentric identity projections on the websites investigated – the dignity
of the back race, leadership and African cultural values. These issues are considered strong
enough for emphasis in the higher educational approach to advancing the afrocentric values
and promoting the african identity. It should also be noted that through the afrocentric
posturing of the institutions, they also brand themselves as different, peculiar and unique and
at the same time personalize themselves.
5.6 ethnic Identity
The university is a universal concept of a citadel for promoting the knowledge industry
through the dispassionate pursuance of scholarship in diverse disciplines. Such an idea is
therefore not expected to promote ethnic concerns, given the assumption of the composition
of a university in terms of people from diverse backgrounds. Universities are expected to be
global in outlook and orientation, and thus free from ethnic biases, but this is not always
case in practice. ethnic identity refers to certain features that associate a particular person or
entity with members of an ethnic group in contrast to members of other ethnic groups. from
our findings, we discovered that certain universities present strong identification with their
host communities in order to foster harmonious relationships and probably to advance the
town-gown relationship with the local communities. This can be seen in the “Community
relations” section of the federal University Dutsin Ma’s website.
(21) Dutsin-ma people and its leaders, particularly the district head of Dutsin-ma, have
been very hospitable and supportive to University since its establishment. The pioneer
and subsequent leaderships of the University have done an excellent work of establishing
and sustaining a mutually beneficial relation with our host community. Therefore, we
made sure we build upon that through the recruitment of more junior staff and security
personnel on casual basis from Dutsin-ma and neighbouring towns, sharing our water
source with our immediate neighbours and repairs of water and electricity equipment,
donation of computers, classroom furniture etc to public and community schools, making
our facilities available like venues for events, sport fields and vehicles. (federal University,
Dutsin-Ma, http://www.fudutsinma.edu.ng)
In spite of the status of a public federal university, the narrative above shows the university’s
strong identification with the host community, and to sustain this it is reflected in the
institutions recruitment policy and some social programmes targeted at the community.
This captures roper and Parker’s (2006) idea on branding as identification. even though the
university is not presented as being owned by the community, it is presented as inseparable
from it. The ethnic identity manifests through references to leadership and the people, giving
the impression of the university enjoying goodwill and a harmonious relationship with the
community.
The role ethnicity plays in shaping university identities in Nigeria is becoming more
prominent. This, of course, cannot be divorced from the conceptions of “community” and
“ethnicity” in Nigeria and perhaps africa in general. The notion of community in Nigeria
and africa is rooted in the communal essence of the people, and abakare and okeke (2018,
67–68) state that “it is a system of social relations in which the claims of the individual is
34 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
generally put second, next to the claim of the community”. Closely tied to the idea of the
community is the conceptualization of ethnicity in Nigeria, which defines many if not most
Nigerians. This of course cannot be separated from the reality that most Nigerians define
themselves in terms of their ethnicity first before perceiving themselves as Nigerians, since the
nation is made up of many diverse and distinct ethnic groups.
ethnic affiliations play prominent roles in the appointments of key officers in public
institutions, and ordinarily this should be seen as antithetical to the spirit of intellectualism, in
which competence is rated above any other considerations. But the reality in the contemporary
Nigerian educational system is that the universities are gradually being “ethnicized”, and
this process is being legitimized. Quite significant is the motivation to stress ethnic issues
on the university’s website to make the wider world understand the university’s concerns
for its host community in order to complement the usual research and teaching duties.
This kind of information may also become relevant in the light of unhealthy relationships
that sometimes develop between institutions and their host communities in contemporary
Nigeria, sometimes leading to attacks and even killings.
a few communities are strong, cohesive, determined and financially strong enough to
establish their own universities. Such universities are few, but for them the construction of an
ethnic identity would not be out of place. Such is the case of kwararafa University in Wukari,
North eastern, Nigeria.
(22) Kwararafa University Wukari was licensed as Wukari jubilee by the National Universities
Commission in 2005. It took off in March, 2006 with 61 students as the first community
promoted University in Nigeria, the first university in Taraba State and the second
private university in the North East geopolitical zone of Nigeria. Located at Wukari an
ancient city that was for a while the headquarters of the historically famous Kwararafa
Confederacy, the university changed its name from Wukari Jubilee to Kwararafa in
February 2012 to reflect the historical roots of the confederacy which at the zenith of
its powers extended to modern Niger, Plateau, Kogi, Nasarawa and Benue States…In
the logo, the spear head “Atoshi” is the traditional weapon of the Jukun people (host
community of the University). (kwararafa University, Wukari, https://www.kuw.edu.
ng/history.php)
The text above manifests the deployment of branding as differentiation for the purpose of
creating a remarkable academic identity for the university. The statement “the first community
promoted university in Nigeria” bears this differentiation in the text.
Just as it was indicated earlier that even the names of the institutions are used to construct
professional identities, for specialized institutions (see above) in particular there is also the
construction of ethnic identity through the name of the university “kwararafa University.”
“kwararafa” is identified with a multi-ethnic confederacy around the river Benue valley of
Central Nigeria. Wukari, which later became the rallying point for the Jukun people, who are a
very strong part of the confederacy. Therefore, through the name, the university identifies itself
with the Jukun, Wukari and the historical and defunct kwararafa confederacy. The practice of
deploying historical names for constructing ethnic identities for institutions is not peculiar to
35SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
this university, as there is also a university in Southwestern Nigeria named oduduwa University
in order to construct the yoruba ethnic identity. oduduwa is seen in yoruba history as the
first yoruba person to have ever lived. Therefore, it can be said that apart from promoting
harmonious existence with the people of the immediate locality, reference to historical values
by institutions may have been the goal of promoting ethnicism by some universities.
It should also be noted that in order to foster ethnic identities, many public universities are
named after persons considered to be prominent in the history of the ethnic groups that
are based where such universities are sited after their deaths. While such persons are mostly
politicians, the goal is primarily to promote an ethnic identity. Some examples include:
obafemi awolowo University (named after the former Premier of the Western region),
ahmadu Bello University (named after the former Premier of the Northern region), Nnamdi
azikiwe University (named after the former President of Nigeria), abubakar tafawa Balewa
University (named after the first Prime Minister of the country in the 1st republic), and
ambrose ali University (named after the former governor of the then Bendel State), among
many others. ethnic identity was the motivation for the (re)naming of these institutions and
this resonates well with the different ethnic groups, since they legitimize the action.
5.7 religious Identity
Since the liberalization of higher education and the granting of licenses to religious bodies to
establish universities, many religious organizations have established universities in the country
and the projection of religious identities is quite visible on the websites of these universities.
In spite of the pressure on religious institutions to secularize, religious identity is becoming
a prominent feature in the profiles of such institutions in Nigeria. By religious identity, we
mean the use of language and visual element to show affiliations with certain religions or
promote them. It may not be particularly surprising that religious identity keeps manifesting
in the profiles of the higher institutions, given the fact that in the Nigerian nation, there is
generally a wide reference to religion. Below are some examples that illustrate the promotion
of religious identity in the narratives on the websites of some universities in Nigeria.
(23) The mission of Veritas University is to provide its students with an integral and holistic
formation that combines academic and professional training with physical, moral,
spiritual, social and cultural formation together formation of Christian religious principles
and the social teachings of the Catholic Church… Based on Christian inspiration and
Christ’s sacrificial witness, the University shall promote authentic human and cultural
development modeled on the person of Christ. (veritas University abuja, https://www.
veritas.edu.ng/about/mission.php)
In example (23), which is extracted from the self-description of veritas University, one can see
the explicit construction of a Christian identity for the university by the text producers. This
construction of Christian identity by the university resonates with roper and Parker’s (2006)
principle of identification in their branding theory – the university wishes to be recognized
as a Christian institution. Looking at the data through the prism of fairclough’s (2015)
analytical layer of textual description, one realizes that the strategic lexical items used in the
text for the creation of Christian identity for the higher institution are “spiritual”, “Christian
36 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
religious principles”, “Christian”, “Catholic”, “church” and “Christ”. once one sees the
above-mentioned lexical items in the self-portrait of the institution, one immediately discerns
that it is a Christian school and indeed an institution established by a specific Christian
denomination: the Catholic Church.
It is interesting to note that through the religious identity constructed in the text, the university
intentionally tries to appeal to a certain segment of Nigerians, Christians, in order to market
their institution. furthermore, while a broad Christian identity is constructed in the text, it
is also discernible that the religious identity is further deepened by identifying the institution
as a Catholic one through reference to Catholicism as a subset of the Christian religious
identity. apart from the explicit mention of the Catholic Church in the text, other parts
of the profile foreground Catholicism through reference to “the Second vatican Council”
and other expressions such as “Catholic identity of the University”, “Catholic principles and
attitudes” and “Catholic universities”. This particular Catholic identity constructed for the
university above its Christian identity indexes roper and Parker’s idea of differentiation in
their branding theory, which borders on how a brand differentiates itself from other brands.
a similar religious identity construction is found on the webpage of Madonna University,
another university owned by the Catholic Church.
(24) Being the first private/Catholic university in Nigeria and a member of the International
Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU), we pride ourselves to be upholders of the great
Catholic education tradition that birthed modern civilization. (Madonna University,
okija, https://www.madonnauniversity.edu.ng/page/24/)
The strong Catholic identity constructed in the narrative is seen in the expression “upholders
of the great Catholic education tradition”. The Catholic Church has been involved in
education in Nigeria since the pre-colonial days, and over the years they have been known
for their educational tradition, which cuts across schools at all levels – primary and secondary
and now university. There is the deployment of branding as differentiation for the purpose
of creating an academic identity for the institution. Differentiation here is not limited to
denominationalism, but is also reflected in the prominence of terms such as the exclusive
claim of “firstness”, which boosts and markets the brand. Differentiation in religious identity
is also seen in the following extract from Covenant University’s “about us” text.
(25) Covenant University is a private Pentecostal Christian University, which has been
operating with official status since 2002 in Ota, Nigeria. Covenant University is one of
the leading universities in Africa founded on Christian Mission Ethos. It has the vision
to raise a new generation of leaders and reinstate the black race’s dignity. The University
is committed to remaining at the cutting-edge of learning based on enlightening the
Total Man. (Covenant University, ota, https://covenantuniversity.edu.ng/about-us/
overview/about)
Pentecostalism is projected as opposed to other forms of Christian religious practices, and
the university is described as being founded on “Christian Mission ethos”. This means the
university has a distinguishing character, moral nature and guiding beliefs which differentiate
it from others of similar Christian background. Beyond the projection of a Pentecostal
37SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
identity, this differentiation is also seen in the expression of the university’s mission focus.
religious identity as a branding technique also manifests in (26), which is part of the profile
of Usmanu Danfodiyo University.
(26) The University statute established the Centre for Islamic Studies in 1982. Its aim, among
others, is to promote the study of and research in Islam, its instructions and related
disciplines and its culture with special reference to the northern states of Nigeria. The
Centre runs a Diploma programme in Islamic Studies, which started in 1983, to assist
in the manpower development of the locality and the country at large. The Centre also
runs certificate courses in Arabic and Islamic Studies. (Usmanu Danfodiyo University,
Sokoto, http://www.udusok.edu.ng)
It is interesting that in this particular construction of religious identity, the university
intentionally foregrounded on its website a centre of Islamic studies in cognizance of the
popularity of the Islamic religion in Sokoto, where it is located. Using roper and Parker’s
(2006) idea on branding, the presentation of the Centre for Islamic Studies as a very
important feature of the university can be considered as asset branding. The centre is an
immediately recognizable phenomenon that embodies and promotes Islam. Therefore,
Usmanu Danfodiyo University brands itself as a university in the heart of Sokoto, the seat of
the leadership of Islam in Nigeria. This promotion of Islamic religious identity is particularly
significant because the institution is a public university owned by the federal government of
Nigeria. The university authorities however deem it proper to project the popular religious
faith in its locale and promote a religious identity on the related website. The religious identity
further shows that even public universities can be sensitive to the religious peculiarities of
their locations.
6 Conclusion
This study has examined the discursive construction of identity on Nigerian university
websites and discussed how these constructions further project marketization of their
brands to stakeholders. Sourcing data from selected public and private university websites in
different parts of Nigeria, the study critically engaged the websites’ narratives and identified
the major identity types that are constructed, which are: professional, national, transnational,
humanist, afrocentric, ethnic and religious identities. The study argues that while many
Nigerian universities project professional, national and transnational/international values,
which could be very positive, some others promote humanist and afrocentric identities in
order to underscore pragmatic social values. Moreover, others project issues of narrow interest,
which may not necessarily impact scholarship and intellectualism, such as religion and
ethnicity. for such institutions, religion and ethnicity are essentialized to drive the sentiments
of their organizations and locales. The significance of this study lies in its understanding
of the discursive strategies that underly the projection of identities in Nigerian universities’
websites. It also offers these perspectives in order to close the apparent gaps in global studies
on marketization discourses, especially in the area of identity construction.
38 Mohammed ademilokun, rotimi taiwo Discursive Construction of Higher Education Institutional Academic ...
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41SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
2023, vol. 20 (1), 41-66(228)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1.41-66
UDC: 811.111:378.014.24
Nikola Jokić
University of graz, austria
Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of
Communication Strategies among Erasmus
Students
aBStraCt
The goal of this paper is to investigate english as a lingua franca (eLf), a phenomenon
that has attracted much attention in the last twenty years. Specifically, it aims to analyse the
communicative strategies non-native speakers of english employ with a view to securing
understanding. to achieve this, informal eLf conversations among erasmus students at
the University of graz are investigated. This study deploys qualitative methods, i.e., semi-
structured interviews with erasmus students were tape-recorded and transcribed. Therefore,
communication strategies that contribute to mutual understanding are presented along with
examples and their frequency of usage in the data. furthermore, the numerous functions of
communication strategies are mentioned along with possible explanations of their use. The
findings show that erasmus students employ various strategies with the aim of achieving
mutual understanding and preventing possible communication problems.
Keywords: english as a lingua franca, erasmus students, self-initiated communicative
strategies, other-initiated communicative strategies
Ali me sploh kaj razumeš? Analiza sporazumevalnih strategij
med študenti v okviru programa Erasmus
IZvLeČek
Predmet raziskave je angleščina kot lingua franca (aLf) – pojav, ki je v zadnjih dvajsetih letih
pritegnil pozornost jezikoslovcev. Cilj raziskave je analiza sporazumevalnih strategij, ki jih za
potrebe razumevanja uporabljajo nematerni govorci angleščine. v ta namen smo analizirali
neformalne pogovore v aLf med študenti v okviru programa erasmus na Univerzi v gradcu.
Uporabili smo kvalitativne metode: polstrukturirane intervjuje s študenti smo posneli in
transkribirali. v članku so na podlagi analize predstavljene sporazumevalne strategije, ki
prispevajo k vzajemnemu razumevanju, skupaj z zgledi in pogostostjo rabe. omenjene so
številne funkcije komunikacijskih strategij z možnimi razlagami njihove uporabe. rezultati
raziskave kažejo, da študenti v okviru programa erasmus uporabljajo različne strategije z
namenom doseganja vzajemnega razumevanja in preprečevanja morebitnih težav pri
sporazumevanju.
Ključne besede: angleščina kot lingua franca, študenti v okviru programa erasmus,
samoiniciativne sporazumevalne strategije, sporazumevalne strategije na pobudo drugih
42 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
1 Introduction
The fact that english has been used internationally as a lingua franca for centuries does not
represent an astonishing discovery. however, its unique position today means that english is
now being used globally to an extent far surpassing its earlier reach. Moreover, the situation
becomes increasingly complicated as the number of speakers of english continues to rise
exponentially. as a result, the last two decades have led to a rapid expansion in the field of
linguistics exploring this particular state of affairs. a considerable body of research has been
published on english as a lingua franca (eLf) (e.g., Jenkins 2000; Mauranen and ranta
2009; Seidlhofer 2011). What could be inferred from these studies is that misunderstandings
represent a rare occurrence due to the “effort eLf users put in so as to prevent such problems”
and their collaboration (Jokić 2017, 16). This stands in contrast with the popular belief that
the different levels of proficiency and wide range of accents could cause a breakdown in
communication among international users of english.
While previous eLf research concentrated more on identifying phonological or
morphosyntactic features, more recent literature has emerged dealing with pragmatic
strategies and their functions (e.g., Björkman 2014). It should be noted that the reason for
this could be because pragmatic features have long been thought of as somewhat challenging
to pinpoint compared to phonological or lexico-grammatical features.
The concept of a communication strategy (CS) was formulated in Selinker’s (1972) seminal
article on interlanguage as one of the five fundamental processes used in L2 communication.
In 1977, tarone published a paper in which she provided a taxonomy that is still regarded as
one of the most authoritative in CS research. however, it was váradi (1980) who carried out
the first CS analysis, which focused on message adjustment.
In the 1980 and 1990s, several studies were conducted with the aim of determining and
categorizing CSs (Bialystok 1990; Cook 1993; Poulisse 1987). a selection of the most
influential papers, edited by faerch and kasper (1983), had the same goal. Similarly, a group
of scholars at Nijmegen University undertook a study that proposed a new set of strategies
(kellerman et al. 1990). Lastly, another project that brought together the most important
papers at the time was kasper and kellerman (1997). This collection was significant because
it widened the scope of CSs research by including papers that perceived L2 acquisition not
only as a cognitive but also as a social phenomenon.
as far as the definition of CSs is concerned, a literature review reveals that most call attention
to “problematicity” or “problem-orientedness” (Dörnyei and Scott 1997, 182). eLf scholars
have suggested that the issue of “problematicity” needs to be tackled in the eLf field as well.
In eLf conversations, there is a wide range of different accents and proficiency levels, such
that the participants often seem to use “pro-active” strategies in order to avoid potential
misunderstandings. The characteristic of being prepared for a potential misunderstanding
and knowing how to handle it represents the quality of eLf conversations and is a recurrent
theme in eLf research (Björkman 2014, 124).
furthermore, Björkman (2014, 125) mentions that the only reference to the communicative
strategies’ framework related to eLf settings is kirkpatrick’s study (2007). however, she
43SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
criticizes the way CSs have been classified. kirkpatrick divided all strategies into speaker and
listener, which, according to Björkman, might be complicated when it comes to assigning the
roles in a conversation since the moment a listener replies to a speaker, they become a speaker
as well. Therefore, she proposes another categorization that is already known from Ca: “self-
initiated” and “other-initiated” strategies (Björkman 2014, 127).
to the best of our knowledge, Björkman (2014) is the only researcher that has provided a
communicative strategies framework within an eLf perspective. She produced a taxonomy
of strategies that occurred in eLf interactions in a higher education setting. The present
study follows Björkman’s thought process and uses her framework as a starting point,
adapting it to different settings, i.e., investigating whether these strategies are to be found
in informal conversations between erasmus students at the karl-franzens University of
graz, austria.
apart from kalocsai (2014), who analysed the practices of erasmus exchange students, there
is a general lack of research in communicative strategies in the erasmus community. Most
of the research on communicative strategies pertains to particular strategies analysing them
in greater detail (Cogo 2009; firth 1996; kaur 2011; kirkpatrick 2007; Lichtkoppler 2007;
Mauranen 2006). In contrast, this paper will review the most frequently recurring strategies
in an attempt to build a communicative strategies framework. at this point, it is crucial to
emphasize that it is beyond the scope of this study to analyse all communicative strategies
mentioned and described in the existing body of literature. What follows is thus a brief
explanation of perceived communicative strategies.
as noted by Norrick (1987, 245), “[e]veryday face-to-face conversation thrives, in particular,
on repetition”. however, despite its ubiquity, far too little attention has been paid to repetition
and its functions in conversations, and only a few scholars have tried to bridge this knowledge
gap by portraying its various forms and functions (Bazzanella 1996, 2011; Johnstone 1994;
Norrick 1987; tannen, 1987; 2007).
Paraphrase can be defined as “providing the same content by modifying the previous utterance
or ongoing utterance” (Björkman 2014, 131). It is considered by some linguists (tannen
1987) as an extended repetition. When speaking about paraphrase, we should highlight
that its use to pre-empt problems of understanding in eLf conversations has been already
documented (kaur 2009). What kaur (2009) emphasizes is that a speaker often chooses to
employ paraphrase when the problem is in understanding rather than hearing, which she
connects to the use of repetition.
Self-repair is described as a strategy that is used “when the speaker corrects the pronunciation,
the word selection, or the grammar of what they have just said” (Deterding 2013, 131). The
frequency of this in conversation is reported to be high, since speakers deal with any obstacles
that occur in the interaction as they go along (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks 1977). as regards
their function, self-repairs have often been portrayed in the literature as proactive (Mauranen
2006), thus contributing to mutual understanding. In her study, Björkman (2014) included
the type of repair referred to as “word replacement” and analysed their instances. In the
same vein, kaur (2011) identified self-repairs on four different levels, namely phonological,
morphological, lexical and syntactical.
44 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
Comprehension checks have been described in the literature as those strategies that speakers
use – and are therefore self-initiated – in order to verify whether the listener understood the
previously mentioned utterances (Björkman 2014). It is symptomatic that they often occur
in the form of a question or a stressed word. as far as the functions of comprehension checks
are concerned, they are of great importance as they allow the speaker to determine the level of
understanding in communication and spot any possible misunderstandings.
as regards confirmation checks, this strategy is used when the content of the previous
utterance is not precise enough. Speakers usually ask questions (e.g., Do you mean?), or
they use question repeats (i.e., repeating a word/utterance with a rising intonation) with
the purpose of continuing the flow of conversation. research into confirmation checks in
eLf contexts has revealed that they tend to be used proactively in conversations to prevent
misunderstandings (Mauranen 2006; Björkman 2014).
Clarification requests are similar to confirmation checks, in that they are also used when
inquiring about a previously uttered segment of a conversation. Correspondingly, they are
often formed as questions. however, when using clarification requests participants “ask for
explanations or more information on something they have not fully understood” (Björkman
2014, 133).
The final strategy, called by Björkman (2014) “co-creating the message/anticipation”, and
by kirkpatrick (2007) “lexical anticipation”, implies that participants finish each other’s
utterances, but only in those situations where they cannot deliver their message. Through
identifying any potential trouble and enhancing the utterance with the missing elements,
co-creation is established. as a result, an utterance is produced that strengthens mutual
understanding. In the next section, I will introduce my study and take a closer look at its
objectives, research questions, methodology and data.
2 Data and Methodology
The primary aim of this study is to investigate how international students talk to each other
and overcome linguistic and cultural obstacles in eLf contexts. In analysing their speech,
this study sets out to report on communicative strategies that international students – and
specifically erasmus students at the karl-franzens University of graz – employ in order to
prevent and overcome misunderstandings in conversation. to that end, a small-range corpus
which consists of only non-native speakers of english was built with a view to offering new
insights into the communicative effectiveness of eLf use. as has been discussed in major
publications on eLf (e.g., Seidlhofer 2011), native speakers are not excluded from eLf,
and nor are they from the community of erasmus/international students. however, this
study included only non-native speakers of english since it wanted to report on the use
of communicative strategies among speakers whose L1 is not english. Therefore, the focal
point of this study rests on erasmus students’ communication and the suitability of an eLf
framework as the best analytical approach from which insights could be gained.
45SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
This study is led by one principal research question:
rQ1: What are the strategies erasmus students use in order to prevent and overcome
possible misunderstanding?
a further underlying research question in this study is:
rQ2: to what extent do erasmus students use communicative strategies?
This research understands the erasmus community as a “community of practice” (kalocsai
2014) since it comprises a large pool of international students who experience similar
processes, some of these being the adaptation to a new environment, experiencing cultural
shock or using english as the primary language of communication, i.e., a lingua franca. as
a method of inquiry, group interviews were chosen to gain insights into the communicative
strategies employed by eLf speakers due to its advantage of obtaining a comparatively large
amount of qualitative data. During the interviews, which were semi-structured, with all the
questions set in advance, the participants were asked how they felt in the new surroundings
and what things they liked or did not like about graz. The semi-structured approach is
adopted as a balance between structured and unstructured interviews. While on the one
hand structured interviews “follow a pre-prepared, elaborate interview schedule” and often
lead to the lack of spontaneity, unstructured interviews represent the total opposite, allowing
“maximum flexibility to follow the interviewee in unpredictable directions” (Dörnyei 2007,
135). Using the semi-structured type of interview enables not only the possibility to pose
open-ended questions, but also offers the advantage of encouraging participants to explicate
whatever seems relevant to them.
as far as my role of the interviewer is concerned, not only was I able to be an observer, but
also a participant, which helped immensely in reaching valuable conclusions. engaging in
interviews also enabled me to ask about and share the participants’ experiences, albeit to a
limited extent. Moreover, while the interviews were held I took brief notes, which I thought
could be of importance in the data analysis.
The data reported in this study include seventeen group interviews ranging approximately
from 40 to 65 minutes and resulting in 15 hours and 35 minutes of conversational data.
of the 39 participants, 14 were male and 25 female. The group sizes ranged from two to
three speakers, except in one case where there were five speakers. all of the participants
were aged between 20 and 28. as regards the linguacultural context, it includes 18 different
backgrounds: most of the participants spoke romance languages as their L1s (Portuguese,
Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, french, Italian), followed by Slavic (Croatian, Slovenian,
Serbian, Bosnian, Czech, Ukrainian), germanic (Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish), hellenic
(greek) and finno-Ugric languages (finnish, hungarian).
The conversations were transcribed by using the voiceScribe editor and adapted voICe
mark-up and spelling transcription conventions (http://www.univie.ac.at/voice/documents/
voICe_mark-up_conventions_v2-1.pdf). In this study, transcribing interviews itself
represents part of the qualitative data analysis alongside identifying and categorizing
46 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
communicative strategies, which is strengthened by quantification, namely finding out about
their frequencies. furthermore, it is worth mentioning that this study adopts a Conversation
analysis (Ca) framework in its broadest sense to map the usage of interactional strategies
(firth 1996). The discourse was studied by taking into account the turn-taking system so that
the classification of communicative strategies would be easier. given that the participants had
as a goal to reach mutual understanding, the Ca approach was used to identify instances of
misunderstanding and the way the interviewees dealt with it. Moreover, apart from the turn-
taking system, this study includes details on overlaps and pauses when they are of importance.
3 Results
The following is a systematic account of communication strategies that the erasmus
students in this study used in their interactions. overall, this study reveals that the bulk of
communicative strategies belong to the self-initiated category with 562 instances (90%),
whereas other-initiated communicative strategies were found in 65 instances and account for
10% of the total number of instances. What follows is a visual overview of my taxonomy in
figure 1 and a detailed theoretical outline of these strategies illustrated with examples from
the corpus.
taxonom
y in Figure 1 and a detailed theoretical outline of these strategies illustrated w
ith exam
ples from
the
corpus.
F
IG
U
R
E 1. T
axonom
y of com
m
unicative strategies observed in the study.
3.1 Self-Initiated C
om
m
unicative Strategies
According to a definition proposed Björkm
an (2014, 129), self-initiated com
m
unicative strategies “are those
w
here the speaker him
self/herself initiates the use of a C
S for a variety of com
m
unicative purposes.” She
proceeds to say that the reason for doing this could be explained by the speakers’ decision to “enhance the
explicitness of a statem
ent they feel m
ay be potentially risky, to check the com
prehension of an utterance, or to
figure 1. taxonomy of communicative strategies observed in the study.
3.1 Self-Initiated Communicative Strategies
according to a definition proposed Björkman (2014, 129), self-initiated communicative
strategies “are those where the speaker himself/herself initiates the use of a CS for a variety
of communicative purposes.” She proceeds to say that the reason for doing this could be
explained by the speakers’ decision to “enhance the explicitness of a statement they feel may
be potentially risky, to check the comprehension of an utterance, or to replace a word that
may not be transparent to the other speakers” (Björkman 2014, 129). The current study
revealed that four different self-initiated communicative strategies were used among the
erasmus students under investigation. These were repetition, paraphrase, self-repair and
comprehension checks. The frequency of these strategies is illustrated below (figure 2).
This study found 562 tokens of self-initiated communicative strategies in the corpus. from
the data in figure 2, it is apparent that self-initiated repetition is by far the most frequent
self-initiated communicative strategy employed among the erasmus students. Thereafter,
the instances of self-initiated word replacement and self-initiated paraphrase are found to
47SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
be comparatively similar to each other in terms of their occurrence. Moreover, the results
obtained demonstrate that comprehension checks constitute the minority and are the least
frequent self-initiated communicative strategy.
3.1.1 Self-Initiated repetition
Self-initiated repetition entails a speaker reiterating their words. In order to accurately identify
repetition in eLf talk, certain criteria had to be applied in the analysis of the data. firstly,
the original linguistic unit of the repetition needed to be identified in the transcribed text.
Secondly, a methodological decision was made prior to the analysis that neither repetition due
to disfluencies (e.g., I like…I like…I like) nor repetition used for backchannelling purposes
(e.g., yeah yeah) were to be of considerable significance for this study. Thirdly, it is essential to
acknowledge that even though repetitions can be found on several levels, this study has as its
focus only those that occur on a lexical or syntactic level since further elaboration would go
beyond the scope this paper.
as regards the time of occurrence, repetition can be classified into immediate and delayed.
Bearing in mind how previous researchers (Lichtkoppler 2007; tannen 2007) dealt with this
issue, it was decided that immediate self-initiated repetition should be defined as one that
appears immediately after the original utterance or in the same turn (extract 1). on the other
hand, delayed self-initiated repetition was considered as such when there was at least one turn
between the original and repeated element (extract 2). Throughout the paper, the relevant
parts in the extracts are given in bold.
extract 1
1 S3: no i have seen i have seen
2 S1: you have okay (.) what do you think about that
3 S3: it’s it’s strange yeah it’s strange but i like it because i like dogs @@
replace a word that may not be transparent to the other speakers” (Björkman 2014, 129). The current study
revealed that four different self-initiated communicative strategies were used among the Erasmus students under
investigation. These were repetition, paraphrase, self-repair and comprehension checks. The frequency of these
strategies is illustrated below (Figure 2).
FIGURE 2. Number of self-initiated communicative strategies (562/627 instances).
This study found 562 tokens of self-initiated communicative strategies in the corpus. From the data in Figure
2, it is apparent that self-initiated repetition is by far the most frequent self-initiated communicative strategy
employed among the Erasmus students. Thereafter, the instances of self-initiated word replacement and self-
initiated paraphrase are found to be comparatively similar to each other in terms of their occurrence. Moreover,
the results obtained demonstrate that comprehension checks constitute the minority and are the least frequent
self-initiated communicative strategy.
3.1.1 Self-Initiated Repetition
elf-initiated repetition entails a speaker reiterating their words. In order t accurately i entify repetition in
ELF talk, certain criteria had to be applied in the analysis of the data. Firstly, the original linguistic unit of the
repetition needed to be identified in the transcribed text. Secondly, a methodological decision was made prior
to the analysis that neither repetition due to disfluencies (e.g., I like…I like…I like) nor repetition used for
backchannelling purposes (e.g., yeah yeah) were to be of considerable significance for this study. Thirdly, it is
essential to acknowledge that even though repetitions can be found on several levels, this study has as its focus
only those that occur on a lexical or syntactic level since further elaboration would go beyond the scope this
paper.
As regards the time of occurrence, repetition can be classified into immediate and delayed. Bearing in mind
how previous researchers (Lichtkoppler 2007; Tannen 2007) dealt with this issue, it was decided that
immediate self-initiated repetition should be defined as one that appears immediately after the original
utterance or in the same turn (Extract 1). On the other hand, delayed self-initiated repetition was considered as
such when there was at least one turn between the original and repeated element (Extract 2). Throughout the
paper, the relevant parts in the extracts are given in bold.
Extract 1
S3: no i have seen i have seen 1
S1: you have okay (.) what do you think about that 2
S3: it’s it’s strange yeah it’s strange but i like it because i like dogs @@ 3
Extract 2
figure 2. Number of self-initiated ommunicative strategies (562/627 instances).
48 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
extract 2
1 S3: today the woman was very rude at the shop
2 S2: they they (1)
3 S3: she was like a:h
4 S1: that is an interesting thing to talk about
5 S3: she was really rude at the shop
It is apparent from figure 3 below that the majority of self-initiated repetition instances
appeared immediately after the original or in the same turn. In contrast, slightly more than a
quarter of all self-initiated repetitions were classified as delayed. a comparison of the results
indicates the participants’ preference to repeat themselves in the same turn, thus offering an
explanation that they wished to enhance their peers’ understanding.
S3: today the woman was very rude at the shop 1
S2: they they (1) 2
S3: she was like a:h 3
S1: that is an interesting thing to talk about 4
S3: she was really rude at the shop 5
It is apparent from Figure 3 below that the majority of self-initiated repetition instances appeared immediately
after the original or in the same turn. In c ntrast, slightly more than a quarter of all self-initiated repetitions
were classified as delayed. A comparison of the results indicates the participants’ preference to repeat themselves
in the same turn, thus offering an explanation that they wished to enhance their peers’ understanding.
FIGURE 3. Self-initiated repetitions according to time of occurrence.
As far as the scale of fixity is concerned, a few of preconditions needed to be set out so that the obtained results
were reliable. First, exact repetition implied precise wording, whereas repetition with variation included minor
or major changes at the lexico-grammar level. The case when all the elements were changed without altering the
idea constituted a paraphrase which is viewed as a distinct strategy in this study. Furthermore, an important
factor in deciding between exact repetition and repetition with variation was a pause. If participants took a
pause after the repetition of an original phrase or utterance, this would be classified as an exact repetition and
the following elements would not constitute any variation (Extract 3). On the other hand, if the pause was
taken immediately after the original phrase or utterance and the repetition ensued, then that would represent
the example of repetition with variation (Extract 4).
Extract 3
S2: the only the only (.) part where when things are international are these students parties or students 1
happenings or whatever… 2
Extract 4
S2: they all seem yeah i mean but but one was from serbia @@@ i did not know that so yeah but so she was 1
very (.) she was very relaxed and yeah my mentor here is also very friendly 2
It should also be borne in mind that there is a significant difference between exact repetitions and repetitions of
disfluencies. As se n in Extract 3, the speaker does not repeat the seg ents just because he/she is not able to
produce an utterance, but rather for the purposes of emphasis and considerable relevance for the rest of the
conversation.
73%
27%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Immediate self-initated repetition (N=253)
Delayed self-initiated repetition (N=93)
TIME
Percentage of tokens
figure 3. Self-in t ated r titions according to time of o currence.
as far as the scale of fixity is concerned, a few of preconditions needed to be set out so that
the obtained results wer rel able. first, exact epetition im l ed precise w rding, whereas
repetition with variation included minor or major changes at the lexico-grammar level. The
case when all the elem nts were changed without altering the idea con tituted a paraphrase
which is viewed as a distinct strategy in this study. furthermore, an important factor in
deciding between exact r petition and repetition wit variati n was a pause. If participa ts
took a pause after the repetition of an original phrase or utterance, this would be classified as
an exact repetition and the following elements would not constitute any variation (extract 3).
on the other hand, if the pause was taken immediately after the original phrase or utterance
and the repetition ensued, then that would represent the example of repetition with variation
(extract 4).
49SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
extract 3
1 S2: the only the only (.) part where when things are international are these students
2 parties or students happenings or whatever…
extract 4
1 S2: they all seem yeah i mean but but one was from serbia @@@ i did not know that so yeah
2 but so she was very (.) she was very relaxed and yeah my mentor here is also very friendly
It should also be borne in mind that there is a significant difference between exact repetitions
and repetitions of disfluencies. as seen in extract 3, the speaker does not repeat the segments
just because he/she is not able to produce an utterance, but rather for the purposes of emphasis
and considerable relevance for the rest of the conversation.
With respect to the question of the usage of self-initiated repetitions in terms of form, this
study finds that slightly more than half of all the instances are repetitions with variation
(figure 4). taken together, these results provide valuable insights into the use of self-initiated
repetition, therefore suggesting that the participants employ it so as to ensure understanding.
With respect to the question of the usage of self-initiated repetitions in terms of form, this study finds that
slightly more than half of all the instances are repetitions with variation (Figure 4). Taken together, these results
provide valuable insights into the use of self-initiated repetition, therefore suggesting that the participants
employ it so as to ensure understanding.
FIGURE 4. Self-initiated repetition according to form.
3.1.2 Self-Initiated Paraphrase
Self-initiated paraphrase is defined as a strategy employed when a speaker wants to rephrase a previous utterance
without changing the content or idea. The results of this study show that self-initiated paraphrase is found in
100 instances in the corpus. With regard to the time of occurrence, self-initiated paraphrase can be classified
into immediate and delayed. As with repetition, an immediate self-initiated paraphrase was defined as one that
appears immediately after the original utterance or in the same turn (Extract 5). Conversely, delayed self-
initiated paraphrase was considered as when there was at least one turn between the original segment and
paraphrase (Extract 6).
Extract 5
S2: @@@ i spend on food really really and also on travels because i think that’s worthy i i don’t want to care 1
about money right now because i wanna live the erasmus ss experience so i’m going on trips and i’m buying 2
the food that i like 3
Extract 6
S3: probably because I I don’t know why but in the next town they speak different than I do (.) you can 1
basically say by the way a person speaks where they where the person is from 2
S2: mhm 3
S3: just by listening to a person 4
Figure 5 provides a summary of self-initiated paraphrase in the data as far as time of occurrence is concerned.
46%
54%
42% 44% 46% 48% 50% 52% 54% 56%
Exact self-initiated repetition (N=159)
Self-initiated repetition with variation (N=187)
FORM
Percentage of tokens
figure 4. Self-initiated repetition according to form.
3.1.2 Self-Initiated Paraphrase
Self-initiated para ase is defined as a strateg employed when a speaker wants to rephrase
a previous utterance without changing the content or idea. The results of this study show
that self-initiated paraphrase is found in 100 instances in the corpus. With regard to the
time of occurr nc , self-initiated paraphrase can be classified into immediat and d layed.
as with repetition, an immediate self-initiated paraphrase was defined as one that appears
immediately after the original utterance or in the same turn (extract 5). Conversely, delayed
self-initiated paraphrase was considered as when there was at least one turn between the
original segment and paraphrase (extract 6).
50 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
extract 5
1 S2: @@@ i spend on food really really and also on travels because i think that’s worthy i i
2 don’t want to care about money right now because i wanna live the erasmus ss experience so
3 i’m going on trips and i’m buying the food that i like
extract 6
1 S3: probably because I I don’t know why but in the next town they speak different than I do (.)
you can basically say by the way a person speaks where they where the person is from
2 S2: mhm
3 S3: just by listening to a person
figure 5 provides a summary of self-initiated paraphrase in the data as far as time of occurrence
is concerned.
FIGURE 5. Self-initiated paraphrase according to time of occurrence.
As can be seen in Figure 5, the majority of instances of self-initiated paraphrase tend to appear within the same
turn, whereas slightly more than one third are found later in the conversation. Overall, these results show that
self-initiated paraphrase is, in this study, utilized in informal interactions among the Erasmus students as the
second most frequent communicative strategy.
3.1.3 Self-Initiated Word Replacement
Self-initiated word replacement represents a type of self-repair that occurs at the lexical level. The current study
finds that there are 91 instances of self-initiated word replacement in the corpus. As Figure 6 shows, the word
choice category seems to be the most frequent, constituting half of all instances of self-initiated word
replacement. The insertion of a lexical item takes the second place with slightly more than a third of all
instances, whereas pronoun replacement represents the least frequent category of word replacement. Even
though pronoun replacement might be incorporated in the word choice category, this study distinguishes it as a
separate category due to its specific use.
66%
34%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Immediate self-initiated paraphrase (N=66)
Delayed self-initiated paraphrase (N=34)
TIME
Percentage of tokens
figure 5. Self-initiated paraphrase according to time of occurrence.
as can be seen in figure 5, the majority of instances of self-initiated paraphrase tend to
appear within the same turn, whereas slightly more than one third are found later in the
conversation. overall, these results show that self-initiated paraphrase is, in this study,
utilized in informal interactions among the erasmus students as the second most frequent
communicative strategy.
3.1.3 Self-Initiated Word replac ment
Self-initiated word replacement represents a type f self-repair that occurs at the lexical
level. The current tudy finds that there ar 91 inst nces of self-initiated wo d replacement
in the corpus. as figure 6 shows, the word choice category seems to be the most frequent,
constituting half of all instances of self-initiated word replacement. The insertion of a lexical
item takes the second place with slightly more than a third of all instances, whereas pronoun
replacement represents the least frequent category of word replacement. even though pronoun
replacement might be incorporated in the word choice category, this study distinguishes it as
a separate category due to its specific use.
51SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
FIGURE 6. Categories and frequency of self-initiated word replacement.
Word choice represents a category of word replacement where a speaker self-corrects themselves and chooses
another word that best describes the current situation. There are 47 such occurrences in the corpus. What the
examples in this category have in common is the fact that the speakers decided to perform a word replacement
in search of a better word to describe the concept in question. For example, in Extract 7, S2 describes the first
impressions of living in another country and in the second line they replace the word nature with parks, which
shows the intention of this speaker to enhance clarity and avoid any vagueness. Furthermore, this successful
attempt at minimizing ambiguity reveals one more characteristic, namely the speaker’s practice to replace a
general term with a more specific one.
Extract 7
S2: I was actually maybe a little bit depressed at beginning because I thought that that they have no nature (.) 1
no parks cause I am really I am really used to going to the woods every day…2
In addition, the research findings reveal that the insertion of lexical items is found in thirty-four examples in
the corpus. In Extract 8, when referring to bars and cafes, S2 realises that mentioning that it is a thing would
probably not be precise enough for the participants in the conversation, which prompts this speaker to insert
Austrian in order to pre-empt any communication problems.
Extract 8
S2: mhm so maybe bars or cafes is a thing is an austrian thing but not nightlife1
The third category of self-initiated word replacement is pronoun replacement, found in ten instances in the
corpus. What these instances have in common is that speakers could be aware of the fact that the use of
pronouns may lead to ambiguity. Therefore, they opt to pre-empt it by replacing them with their referents. In
Extract 9, S3 immediately realises that the pronoun us may be too ambiguous, which is why it is followed by a
prepositional phrase that makes it more specific what this speaker had in mind.
Extract 9
S3: yes yes for us (.) for students it is not good but if you work here it’s amazing1
In view of what has been discussed with respect to self-initiated word replacement above, it can be summarized
that this strategy aims to minimize and pre-empt any ambiguity in understanding that might occur by either
replacing words or inserting lexical items.
3.1.4 Comprehension Checks
52%
37%
11%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Word choice (N=47)
Insertion of a lexical item (N=34)
Pronoun replacement (N=10)
Self-initiated word replacement
Percentage of tokens
figure 6. Categories and frequency of self-initiated word replacement.
Word choice represents a category of word replacement where a speaker self-corrects
themselves and chooses another word that best describes the current situation. There are
47 such occurrences in the corpus. What the ex mples in this category have in commo
is the fact that the speakers decided to perform a word replacement in search of a better
word to describe the concept in question. for example, in extract 7, S2 describes the first
impressions of living in another country and in the second line they re lace the word
nature with parks, which shows the intention of this speaker to enhance clarity and avoid
any vagueness. furthermore, this successful attempt at minimizing ambiguity reveals one
more characteristic, namely the speaker’s practice to replace a general term with a more
specific one.
extract 7
1 S2: I was actually maybe a little bit depressed at beginning because I thought that that they have
2 no nature (.) no parks cause I am really I am really used to going to the woods every day…
In addition, the research findings reveal that the insertion of lexical items is found in thirty-
four examples in the corpus. In extract 8, when referring to bars and cafes, S2 realises that
mentioning that it is a hing would probably not be precise en gh for the participants in
the conversation, which prompts this speaker to insert austrian in order to pre-empt any
communication problems.
extract 8
1 S2: mhm so maybe bars or cafes is a thing is an austrian thing but not nightlife
The third category of self-initiated word replacement is pronoun replacement, found in ten
instances in the corpus. What these instances have in common is that speakers could be aware
of the fact that the use of pronouns may lead to ambiguity. Therefore, they opt to pre-empt it
by replacing them with their referents. In extract 9, S3 immediately realises that the pronoun
52 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
us may be too ambiguous, which is why it is followed by a prepositional phrase that makes it
more specific what this speaker had in mind.
extract 9
1 S3: yes yes for us (.) for students it is not good but if you work here it’s amazing
In view of what has been discussed with respect to self-initiated word replacement above,
it can be summarized that this strategy aims to minimize and pre-empt any ambiguity in
understanding that might occur by either replacing words or inserting lexical items.
3.1.4 Comprehension Checks
Comprehension checks are a type of self-initiated communicative strategy that serves
the function of checking the listener’s understanding. overall, twenty-five instances of
comprehension checks were observed in the informal erasmus students’ interactions examined
here. as figure 7 shows, the majority of comprehension checks employed were in the form
of a stressed word with rising intonation. The second most frequent kind of comprehension
check is the minimal check with a rising intonation okay, which accounted for 20% of these.
only a fifth of the total number of instances goes to short questions such as you know?, do you
know?, you know what I mean? and another minimal check which is yeah. for the purposes of
this article, only the first two, i.e., the most frequent comprehension checks, will be analysed.
Comprehension checks are a type of self-initiated communicative strategy that serves the function of checking
the listener’s understanding. Overall, twenty-five instances of comprehension checks were observed in the
informal Erasmus students’ interactions examined here. As Figure 7 shows, the majority of comprehension
checks employed were in the form of a stressed word with rising intonation. The second m st frequent kind of
comprehension check is the minimal check with a rising intonation okay, which accounted for 20% of these.
Only a fifth of the total number of instances goes to short questions such as you know?, do you know?, you know
what I mean? and another minimal check which is yeah. For the purposes of this article, only the first two, i.e.,
the most frequent comprehension checks, will be analysed.
FIGURE 7. Forms and frequency of comprehension checks.
Regarding the use of okay, it occurs five times in the corpus in the function of a comprehension check, namely
in a rising intonation pattern. In Extract 10, S3 offers their opinion on the power distance in the relationship
between professors and students at their home university and the University of Graz. The statement about
professors who are seen as gods, seemingly the main message, is further elaborated in line four. Here, it is
emphasized that it is not only the professors themselves who play a crucial role in the outcome of this
relationship but that it also depends on the courses. In order to verify whether participants understood the
intent fully, this speaker utilizes a minimal check at the end of their utterance. It is of significance here that the
speaker waits for confirmation so that they may continue with the original topic.
Extract 10
S3: I like the relationship between the professor (1) and us so er I came from a big university and professors are 1
(2) gods @@@ and (1) you feel alone and very far from professors 2
S1: mhm 3
S3: so I think it’s (.) yeah maybe (4) it depends from the professors but from the course okay? (.) 4
S1: mhm 5
S3: but here we have (.) so I speak I speak for me for mathematician we have erm poqi 6
weniger okay so we have the possibility to speak with professor and ermmm 7
By far the most frequent form of a comprehension check is the use of a stressed word. In a total of fifteen
instances, it occurs with rising intonation with the aim of further checking understanding. The most striking
observation to emerge from these examples is that they tend to occur at the end of an utterance. In Extract 11,
60%
20%
8%
4%
4%
4%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Stressed word (N=15)
Okay (N=5)
Do you know (N=2)
You know (N=1)
You know what I mean (N=1)
Yeah (N=1)
Comprehension checks
Percentage of tokens
figure 7. forms and frequency of comprehension checks.
regarding the use of okay, it occurs five times in the corpus in the function of a comprehension
check, namely in a rising intonation pattern. In extract 10, S3 offers their opinion on the
power distance in the relationship between professors and students at their home university
and the University of graz. The statemen about professors w o are seen as gods, seemingly
the main message, is further elaborated in line four. here, it is emphasized that it is not only
the professors themselves who play a crucial role in the outcome of this relationship but that
it also depends on the courses. In order to verify whether participants understood the intent
53SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
fully, this speaker utilizes a minimal check at the end of their utterance. It is of significance
here that the speaker waits for confirmation so that they may continue with the original topic.
extract 10
1 S3: I like the relationship between the professor (1) and us so er I came from a big university
2 and professors are (2) gods @@@ and (1) you feel alone and very far from professors
3 S1: mhm
4 S3: so I think it’s (.) yeah maybe (4) it depends from the professors but from the course okay?
5 (.)
6 S1: mhm
7 S3: but here we have (.) so I speak I speak for me for mathematician we have erm poqi
8 weniger okay so we have the possibility to speak with professor and
9 ermmm
By far the most frequent form of a comprehension check is the use of a stressed word. In a total of
fifteen instances, it occurs with rising intonation with the aim of further checking understanding.
The most striking observation to emerge from these examples is that they tend to occur at the end
of an utterance. In extract 11, the speaker used tonic stress with rising intonation on the word.
This is done with a view to checking whether the participants in the conversation understood the
message (in this case a word) so that the line of conversation can resume.
extract 11
1 S4: and it was like past six pm and everything was closed and I was completely shocked because
2 in Croatia I could buy cigarettes at one am if I wanted to and here nothing worked and then (.)
3 erm I found like those like machines?
4 S2: yeah
5 S3: mhm
In summary, these results show that erasmus students in this study use comprehension checks
in various forms. Whether they are structured as long or short questions, minimal checks or
stressed words, comprehension checks are employed in order to increase the efficiency of
understanding.
3.2 other-Initiated Communicative Strategies
other-initiated communicative strategies are those that the speaker uses “after another
speaker expresses a communicative need and marks the discourse for this communicative
need, such as asking about part(s) of the preceding utterance” (Björkman 2014, 132). In this
study, repetition and paraphrase also represent part of the scope of communicative strategies
erasmus students use in order to overcome and prevent misunderstanding, alongside
confirmation checks, clarification requests and co-creating the message. figure 8 provides the
breakdown of other-initiated communicative strategies according to their frequency.
54 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
the speaker used tonic stress with rising intonation on the word. This is done with a view to checking whether
the participants in the conversation understood the message (in this case a word) so that the line of conversation
can resume.
Extract 11
S4: and it was like past six pm and everything was closed and I was completely shocked because in Croatia I 1
could buy cigarettes at one am if I wanted to and here nothing worked and then (.) erm I found like those like 2
machines? 3
S2: yeah 4
S3: mhm 5
In summary, these results show that Erasmus students in this study use comprehension checks in various forms.
Whether they are structured as long or short questions, minimal checks or stressed words, comprehension
checks are employed in order to increase the efficiency of understanding.
3.2 Other-Initiated Communicative Strategies
Other-initiated communicative strategies are those that the speaker uses “after another speaker expresses a
communicative need and marks the discourse for this communicative need, such as asking about part(s) of the
preceding utterance” (Björkman 2014, 132). In this study, repetition and paraphrase also represent part of the
scope of communicative strategies Erasmus students use in order to overcome and prevent misunderstanding,
alongside confirmation checks, clarification requests and co-creating the message. Figure 8 provides the
breakdown of other-initiated communicative strategies according to their frequency.
FIGURE 8. Number of other-initiated communicative strategies.
As shown in Figure 8, the data from this study reveal that co-creating the message is the most frequent other-
initiated communicative strategy employed among the Erasmus students. The instances of confirmation checks,
clarification requests and other-initiated repetition are rather similar in terms of their occurrence. Furthermore,
the results demonstrate that Erasmus students utilized other-initiated paraphrase a few times. In the following
section I will provide a detailed description of other-initiated communicative strategies illustrated with the
examples taken from the corpus.
3.2.1 Other-Initiated Repetition
Other-initiated repetition is defined as a repetition by the same speaker that is prompted by another speaker’s
wish to check on comprehension. As such, it should be distinguished from other-repetition, which implies
figure 8. Number of other-initiated communicative strategies.
as shown in figure 8, the data from this study reveal that co-creating the message is the most
frequent other-initiated communicative st tegy employed among the er smus students.
The instances of confirmation checks, clarification requests and other-initiated repetition
are rather similar in terms of their occurrence. furthermore, the results demonstrate that
rasmus students utilized other-initiated paraphrase a few times. In the following section I
will provide a detailed description of other-initiated communicative strategies illustrated with
the examples taken from the corpus.
3.2.1 other-Initiated repetition
other-initiated repetition is defined as a repetition by the same speaker that is prompted
by another speaker’s wish to check on comprehension. as such, it should be distinguished
from other-repetition, which implies repetition by another speaker. In the results there are 12
instances of other-initiated repetition. In connection with its linguistic form, figure 9 shows
that more than half of other-initiated repetition instances belong to the exact repetition rather
than the repetition with variation category. Both types can be observed in the following
extracts.
extract 12 exemplifies exact repetition as employed by the erasmus students. S4’s clarification
request what prompts the choice of opting for exact repetition. a similar thing occurs in
extract 13, where S2 decides to change a couple of words with a view to securing mutual
understanding when prompted by S3 (hm?). as noted above, if there is at least one part of the
repetition that is changed in comparison to the original utterance, which was classified here
as repetition with variation.
extract 12
1 S4: […] german with long words and it’s very sometimes complicated to have a fluid language
2 S2: yeah
55SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
3 S4: so
4 S2: and did you improve your german
5 S4: what?
6 S2: did you improve your german
7 S4: I think I think yeah but
extract 13
1 S2: few dialects from your region
2 S3: hm?
3 S2: so there are several dialects in your region
4 S3: yeah it basically changes every town
5 S2: okay
another important finding is that other-initiated repetition is employed among the erasmus
students due to hearing problems. extract 14 touches upon the topic of english knowledge
among austrians. In line two, S3 expresses their belief that this is not the case with the older
generations, and they do this by repeating it twice. S1 repeats in the next line what they heard
with rising intonation, which initiates S3 to employ exact repetition. By reiterating their
words, S3 focuses on the achievement of shared understanding in the interest of preventing
any communication issues.
extract 14
1 S1: but do you think that they know english au<1> strains 1>
2 S3: <1> old 1>er people don’t older people don’t
3 S1: all all the people?
repetition by another speaker. In the results there are 12 instances of other-initiated repetition. In connection
with its linguistic form, Figure 9 shows that more than half of other-initiated repetition instances belong to the
exact repetition rather than the repetition with variation category. Both types can be observed in the following
extracts.
FIGURE 9. Other-initiated repetition according to form.
Extract 12 exemplifies exact repetition as employed by the Erasmus students. S4’s clarification request what
prompts the choice of opting for exact repetition. A similar thing occurs in Extract 13, where S2 decides to
change a couple of words with a view to securing mutual understanding when prompted by S3 (hm?). As noted
above, if there is at least one part of the repetition that is changed in comparison to the original utterance,
which was classified here as repetition with variation.
Extract 12
S4: […] german with long words and it’s very sometimes complicated to have a fluid language 1
S2: yeah 2
S4: so 3
S2: and did you i prove your german 4
S4: what? 5
S2: did you improve your german 6
S4: I think I think yeah but 7
Extract 13
S2: few dialects from your region 1
S3: hm? 2
S2: so there are several dialects in your region 3
S3: yeah it basically changes every town 4
S2: okay 5
Another important finding is that other-initiated repetition is employed among the Erasmus students due to
hearing problems. Extract 14 touches upon the topic of English knowledge among Austrians. In line two, S3
expresses their belief that this is not the case with the older generations, and they do this by repeating it twice.
S1 repeats in the next line w at they heard with rising intonation, which initiates S3 to mploy exact repetition.
58%
42%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Exact repetition (N=7)
Repetition with variation (N=5)
FORM
Percentage of tokens
figure 9. other-initiated repetition according to form.
56 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
4 S3: older people don’t
5 S2: yeah they don’t
3.2.2 other-Initiated Paraphrase
even though there were only two instances of other-initiated paraphrase in the corpus, this
study shows that the participants employ it when they want to reformulate their own previous
utterances after a need for modifying has been expressed. In the conversation below (extract
15), the participants were asked whether they liked people in austria. however, S3 expresses
their opinion by stating that they do not believe in stereotypes. When asked to elaborate on
what they meant, S3 chooses to paraphrase the previously uttered part of a sentence. Despite
the fact that there is a general acknowledgement by S2 in line four and S1 in line seven, S3 opts
to employ paraphrase in the next turn one more time, only in this case self-initiated, so as to
secure understanding and emphasize their message. This example indicates that other-initiated
paraphrase is used to enhance clarity and resolve any potential ambiguity that might occur.
extract 15
1 S3: I don’t think it’s possible to say the austrian people are like that or they aren’t
2 S1: what what do you mean
3 S3: you cannot generalise in that way I think
4 S2: <1> yeah that’s it 1>
5 S1: <1> yeah but 1>
6 S3: <1> global 1> isation and and everyone can choose to own lifestyle and
7 S1: that’s true
8 S3: people are individuals not stereotypes
3.2.3 Confirmation Checks
Confirmation checks are employed to confirm the understanding of previously uttered
statements, remarks, comments or opinions. Since these fall into the category of other-
initiated strategies, what is common is that they too need a trigger word or phrase in order
to be utilized. evidence of this will be illustrated by the extracts that follow in this section.
figure 10 below shows the breakdown of some of the most frequent confirmation checks
found used by the erasmus students.
There were 16 instances of confirmation checks in total in the data. It can be seen from the
figure above that slightly less than two-thirds of the total number of instances are question
repeats, i.e., repetitions of a word with question intonation. They are followed by you mean
and do you mean, at 31% and 6% respectively.
regarding you mean, the corpus shows that it is found five times. In extract 16, the speakers
are comparing transport infrastructure in austria with that in their home countries. S3
seems somewhat confused by the use of the phrase make business, which S2 considers very
important, and they demonstrate this by repeating it twice (line seven). Consequently, in line
57SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
nine S3 paraphrases and uses a confirmation check in order to reinforce and contribute to
mutual understanding, which is further enhanced by S2’s confirmation in line ten.
extract 16
1 S3: and trains here are much better than than in the balkans <3> in croatia especially 3>
2 S1: <3> that’s true 3>
3 S3: because the buses and the trains there are (.) slow and also not very modern and not very
4 <4> neat inside 4>
5 S2: <4> yeah but you need 4> you need <5> to think also 5>
6 S3: <5> stuff like that 5>
7 S2: about making business with the train I mean nowadays nowadays to make business between
8 barcelona madrid the two big cities the trains are always full (.) and that is because
9 S3: if you go to work you mean?
10 S2: exactly they go they run every half an hour there is a train to madrid and in two hours and
11 twenty minutes you are from city to city and there are six hundred and fifty km
This research has shown that in their conversations the erasmus students, as far as confirmation
checks are concerned, tend to use question repeats as a way to confirm whether previous parts
have been correctly understood. In extract 17, S5 wants to point out the price of a kebab by
repeating it twice in one turn. When S3 decides to use a confirmation check in the next turn
in order to validate the previously uttered phrase, S5 repeats the number again and confirms
the essential information. What is interesting in this example is that this participant repeats
the information in a rising intonation. What follows in the next turn is the confirmation of
the essential information in the form of repetition.
figure 10. forms and frequency of confirmation checks.
58 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
extract 17
1 S5: like we bought a kebab and it was
2 S2: xxx
3 S5: what was it se seven euros per each seven
4 S3: seven?
5 S5: seven
6 S2: then you did the bad deal come on
overall, the results in this section indicate that the speakers used various forms of confirmation
checks in order to confirm understanding and negotiate meaning.
3.2.4 Clarification requests
another other-initiated communicative strategy noted among the erasmus students is
clarification request. In this study, clarification requests are defined as strategies speakers
utilize in order to request clarifications that may solve a comprehension problem. figure 11
represents the relative frequency of all the forms of clarification requests found in interactions
in the data.
In total, there are 13 instances of clarification requests. as can be seen from figure 11, the
short question what accounts for nearly half of the instances, whereas question repeats make
up only half of that number. More extended questions such as what do you mean, and what
does it mean, comprise less than a fifth of the whole chart, while the least frequent clarification
requests are did you say and yeah at 8% each.
overall, clarification requests directly address potential comprehension problems by
introducing questions. In extract 18, the participants are talking about differences in
educational systems. S2 mentions (line one) that universities in their country make use of
S5: like we bought a kebab and it was 1
S2: xxx 2
S5: what was it se seven euros per each seven 3
S3: seven?4
S5: seven 5
S2: then you did the bad d al come on 6
Overall, the results in this section indicate that the speakers used various forms of confirmation checks in order
to confirm understanding and negotiate meaning.
3.2.4 Clarification requests
Another other-initiated communicative strategy noted among the Erasmus students is clarification request. In
this study, clarification requests are defined as strategies speakers utilize in order to request clarifications that
may solve a comprehension problem. Figure 11 represents the relative frequency of all the forms of clarification
requests found in interactions in the data.
FIGURE 11. Forms and frequency of clarification requests.
In total, there are 13 instances of clarification requests. As can be seen from Figure 11, the short question what
accounts for nearly half of the instances, whereas question repeats make up only half of that number. More
extended questions such as what do you mean, and what does it mean, comprise less than a fifth of the whole
chart, while the least frequent clarification requests are did you say and yeah at 8% each.
Overall, clarification requests directly address potential comprehension problems by introducing questions. In
Extract 18, the participants are talking about differences in educational systems. S2 mentions (line one) that
universities in their country make use of continuous evaluation. However, S3 still finds this puzzling and needs
the meaning of the term “continuous evaluation” to be refined, which is why they ask the question what do you
mean (line nine). What makes this example interesting is that the participant provides a synonym, i.e.,
assessment, alongside their interpretation. This direct clarification request leads to a full explanation of what S2
had in mind. As a result, shared understanding is accomplished, which can be seen by the use of a minimal
response in line fourteen.
Extract 18
S2: it’s a continuous evaluation so basically if you fail you need to restart the course 1
S3: that depends <2> on xxx that’s that’s 2> 2
46%
23%
15%
8%
8%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%
What (N=6)
Question repeat (N=3)
What do(es) you(it) mean (N=2)
Did you say (N=1)
Yeah (N=1)
Clarification requests
Percentage of tokens
figure 11. forms and frequency larification requests.
59SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
continuous evaluation. however, S3 still finds this puzzling and needs the meaning of the
term “continuous evaluation” to be refined, which is why they ask the question what do
you mean (line nine). What makes this example interesting is that the participant provides
a synonym, i.e., assessment, alongside their interpretation. This direct clarification request
leads to a full explanation of what S2 had in mind. as a result, shared understanding is
accomplished, which can be seen by the use of a minimal response in line fourteen.
extract 18
1 S2: it’s a continuous evaluation so basically if you fail you need to restart the course
2 S3: that depends <2> on xxx that’s that’s 2>
3 S1: <2> but how many times can you try 2>
4 S2: four
5 S1: four
6 S3:<3> that’s in 3>
7 S1: <3> oh we can try six times 3>
8 S2: really
9 S3: we can try three times in croatia but what do you mean by continuous assessment like <4>
10 finishing 4>
11 S1: <4> yes 4>
12 S3: a course without a <5> without the final exam 5>
13 S2: <5> it means that the final the final exam 5> it’s only forty percent of the grade
14 S3: yeah <6> it’s the same for us in croatia 6>
a similar use is noticed in extract 19, where erasmus students used what, and a question
repeat in order to clarify and request more information. In this example, the participants
discuss the advantages and disadvantages of larger and smaller cities as far as studying is
concerned. S5 makes inquiries into this, but the very formulation of the question prompts
S3 to use a clarification request (line eight). This example is also interesting because in the
next turn another speaker uses a question repeat in order to request more information. In
line ten, we can see that S5 corrects themselves and provides further clarification through an
exemplification. at this point, it should be mentioned that the reason both S2 and S3 initially
use a clarification request could be due to poor hearing, or S5’s rapid speaking.
extract 19
1 S5: but do you like more the touristic people or international environment of the international
2 students city
3 S3: <1> well 1>
4 S2: <1> what 1> was the first thing
5 S3: yeah
60 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
6 S5: @@@ I don’t know anymore @@@ do you like more like international environment with
7 students or whether touristic environment with
8 S3: what
9 S2: artistic environment
10 S5: touristic like vienna for example
11 S3: aaaaa noo xxx the first one xxx
12 S2: yeah
13 S3: I would not like tourists <2> xxx 2>
14 S2: <2> today there were 2> a lot of tourists only croatians (.) entire schlossberg was full of it
together the results provide insights into the function of clarification requests and suggest
that the erasmus students make use of them to elicit the information necessary for successful
communication.
3.2.5 Co-Creating the Message
Co-creating the message seems to be one of the strategies that the erasmus students tend to use
in their interactions in order to avoid communication problems. The principle of this strategy
is that participants jointly produce an utterance in a communication event. This reveals the
collaborative nature and cooperation through which shared understanding is maintained.
The reason why this strategy is perceived more as a collaboration than interruption is that the
participants are involved in the turn-construction process. They use the information that was
mentioned before and try to guess what the previous speaker meant.
In this study, co-creating the message occurs in 22 instances. It seems that a pattern typically
occurs when a participant pauses at the end of their turn, which seems to have the function
of a request for help. This can be seen in the following example.
extract 20
1 S4: I don’t think so it was properly about habits but I have observed that austrian has a strange
2 reason of life during week they wake up very (.)
3 S2: early yeah
4 S4: early and fi and and open and and close their business very soon in the night <1> for
5 example at when you are 1>
6 S2: <1> yeah the secondary school 1>
7 S4: when it is a six or seven <2> most of the business 2> are closed
8 S3: <2> yeah xxx 2>
In extract 20, the speakers talk about the habits of austrians they have observed. S4 wishes
to draw attention to the fact that austrians get up earlier in the morning than other people.
however, what we can notice is the brief pause (up to a half of a second in line two), after
which S2 provides a lexical suggestion based on the previously mentioned information
61SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
(line three). In the next turn, S4 accepts this suggestion by repeating it and continues the
conversation.
regarding the type of phrase that is employed, there are 14 examples that use a lexical
suggestion in the corpus as opposed to eight instances that use longer phrases. The previously
discussed extract 20 shows how other participants may contribute to the conversation by
providing a word. figure 12 below presents the forms of co-creating the message and their
relative frequency.
S4: I don’t think so it was properly about habits but I have observed that Austrian has a strange reason of life 1
during week they wake up very (.) 2
S2: early yeah 3
S4: early and fi and and open and and close their business very soon in the night <1> for example at when you 4
are 1> 5
S2: <1> yeah the secondary school 1> 6
S4: when it is a six or seven <2> most of the business 2> are closed 7
S3: <2> yeah xxx 2> 8
In Extract 20, the speakers talk about the habits of Austrians they have observed. S4 wishes to draw atte tio to
the fact that Austrians get up earlier in the morning than other people. However, what we can notice is the
brief pause (up to a half of a second in line two), after which S2 provides a lexical suggestion based on the
previously mentioned information (line three). In the next turn, S4 accepts this suggestion by repeating it and
continues the conversation.
Regarding the type of phrase that is employed, there are 14 examples that use a lexical suggestion in the corpus
as opposed to eight instances that use longer phrases. The previously discussed Extract 20 shows how other
participants may contribute to the conversation by providing a word. Figure 12 below presents the forms of co-
creating the message and their relative frequency.
FIGURE 12. Forms and frequency of co-creating the message.
As can be seen in Figure 12, the use of a lexical suggestion makes up approximately two-thirds of the total
number of instances, whereas the remainder goes to longer phrases. The following extract exemplifies longer
phrases.
Extract 21
S2: mmm I cannot say because I mean the problem I see here is that you need sometimes to find out or figure 1
out yourself what’s a what hooo <1> hooo 1> 2
S3: <1> what 1> works better for you 3
S2: what works better for yo for you I mean maybe the uni the interface between international students and the 4
and the (.) university err is not is not that fluent and 5
S3: mhm 6
64%
36%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Lexical suggestions (N=14)
Longer phrases (N=8)
Co-creating the message
Percentage of tokens
figure 12. forms and frequency of co-creating the message.
as can be seen in figure 12, the use of a lexical suggestion makes up approximately two-thirds
of the t tal number of instances, whereas the remainder goes t longer phrases. The following
extract exemplifies longer phrases.
extract 21
1 S2: mmm I cannot say because I mean the problem I see here is that you need sometimes to
2 find out or figur out you self wh t’s a what hooo <1> hooo 1>
3 S3: <1> what 1> works better for you
4 S2: what works better for yo for you I mean maybe the uni the interface between international
5 students and the and the (.) university err is not is not that fluent and
6 S3: mhm
In extract 21, the speakers talk about the differences in their educational systems, particularly
what they think about the practice of their host university in allowing students to choose
classes as opposed to having a fixed curriculum. S2’s argument is that students have to decide
on their own what seems to be best for them. however, S2 appears to struggle to finish
the utterance, which prompts S3 (line three) to provide a suggestion that helps to establish
understanding and carry on the conversation. The proof that the completion is successful is
the repetition by S2 in the next line.
62 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
The results in this section indicate that erasmus students use the strategy of co-creating the
message with the aim of preventing and also alleviating problems in communication. It is
interesting to note that by completing each other’s utterances the interactants enrich the
communication process and contribute to enhancing mutual understanding.
4 Discussion
as regards rQ1, this study has revealed that erasmus students take advantage of communicative
strategies in order to achieve understanding. four self-initiated communicative strategies were
found in informal discourse – self-initiated repetition, paraphrase, word replacement and
comprehension checks. as far as other-initiated communicative strategies are concerned, this
study shows cases of other-initiated repetition, paraphrase, confirmation checks, clarification
requests and co-creating the message.
With respect to the question of frequency, this study found 562 instances (90%) of self-
initiated communicative strategies in the corpus. a possible explanation for the significantly
larger number in comparison to other-initiated communicative strategies may be the speakers’
attempt to be more explicit or pre-empt problems either by repeating, rephrasing, repairing
themselves, or checking comprehension.
as far as self-initiated repetition is concerned, the findings in this study reveal that the erasmus
students prefer to employ it in the same turn (immediate self-initiated repetition) for the
purposes of emphasis and considerable relevance for the rest of the conversation. The results
concerning the form of repetition show that repetition with variation and exact repetition
are similar in terms of frequency. regarding the functions of repetition, the present findings
accord with Björkman’s (2014) account of self-initiated repetition used as an explicitness
strategy to strengthen understanding of a key piece of information.
as regards paraphrase, the current study finds that the participants often employ it, and
preferably in the same turn rather than a few turns after. furthermore, the use of paraphrase
as a means to obtain clarity and prevent communication problems is found at both lexical
and sentence levels, which is in line with research carried out by kaur (2009).
It has been demonstrated that self-initiated word replacement has an important role in
reducing the risk of ambiguity. Three categories spring from the analysis showing how they
contribute to successful communication: word choice, the insertion of a lexical item, and
pronoun replacement.
regarding comprehension checks, it is observed that the erasmus students use them to
confirm understanding. Comprehension checks are performed through the use of long or short
questions (you know what I mean?, do you know?, you know?), minimal checks (okay?, yeah? ) or
stressed words. The literature also enumerates examples with Are you with me?, Do you follow/
understand?, Do you know what I am saying?, and many others (Jamshidnejad 2011; vettorel
2019). however, this study did not find any instances of the abovementioned questions.
In comparison to self-initiated communicative strategies, other-initiated communicative
strategies are not as prominent, appearing in only 65 instances (10%) in informal spoken
interactions among the erasmus students.
63SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
regarding the other-initiated repetition, the participants in this study prefer exact repetition
to repetition with variation, which could be explained by the need to put an emphasis on
the most critical parts of an utterance. Consequently, it is noteworthy that they may use it in
situations where overlapping or hearing problems occur.
In relation to other-initiated paraphrase, it should be mentioned that it is the least frequent
strategy in the corpus. Nevertheless, a few of instances that were observed suggest that the
erasmus students employ it to promote understanding. This strategy has been explored to a
limited extent in the eLf field, with one such effort being made by Björkman (2014), who
illustrates how other-initiated paraphrased segments lead to the promotion of understanding.
In the same vein, Putry, Munir and Purwati (2019) reveal that other-initiated paraphrasing is
not as frequent as other strategies.
Upon examining confirmation checks, this study reveals that they are to be found in various
forms, among which question repeats are the most common. other forms include you mean
and do you mean. Moreover, the data indicate that the speakers make use of confirmation
checks in their interactions so as to mitigate possible vagueness and secure understanding.
as regards clarification requests, what becomes evident from the instances in this study is that
after their use, successful communication tends to be ensured. This inquiry has shown that
they are found in a variety of forms such as the short question what, question repeats, what
do/es you/it mean, did you say and yeah. further research on clarification requests lists other
expressions/phrases such as What do they mean, I didn’t catch that, I’m not with you, Could you
explain (Jamshidnejad 2011; vettorel 2019).
In Björkman’s (2014) study, clarification requests are reported to be the most frequent,
accounting for almost a third of the other-initiated communicative strategies, and this is
in agreement with Putry, Munir and Purwati’s (2019) findings which show that asking for
an explanation is often employed. In terms of frequency, the findings of this study do not
support the previously mentioned research. however, it is important to remember that the
differences in the frequency of communicative strategies that are observed could be attributed
to different settings (academic vs. informal), which might yield different results.
finally, co-creating the message is the most frequent other-initiated strategy found among
the erasmus students in this study, demonstrating that they jointly tried to enhance mutual
understanding. The study reveals that the participants also preferred to provide a lexical
suggestion rather than employ longer phrases. It is difficult to explain this choice, but it
might be related to the fact that the speakers did not want to interrupt the other speaker
with a long stretch of speech. on the subject of co-creating the message, other studies point
out the collaborative nature between participants that leads to sentence completion and
the achievement of a communicative goal (Cogo and Dewey 2012; Deterding 2013; kaur
2011; kirkpatrick 2010). The findings of the current study seem to be consistent with other
research as far as the functions of co-creating the message are concerned. however, in terms
of frequency, a contradictory result can be seen in Björkman’s (2014) study, which reports
only a few instances. The possible interpretation could be that Björkman’s participants were
involved in close-ended tasks requiring a final product, e.g., the solution of a problem or a
report in an academic setting.
64 Nikola Jokić Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students
5 Conclusion
This paper set out to conduct research into the communicative strategies involved in erasmus
students’ spoken and informal interactions. The main goal was to provide a taxonomy of
strategies in an environment where english is used as a lingua franca, such as among erasmus
students. What needs to be pointed out is that the results may not apply to other contexts.
Therefore, when comparing findings, the exact context of this study (the most important one
being the nature of informal and casual conversation) need to be taken into account.
furthermore, this study can be distinguished from others since it shines a light on
conversations among erasmus students, as there is a paucity of research as far as eLf within
this community is concerned. Therefore, it could be said that the findings from this project
contribute to the existing knowledge of spoken eLf interactions. further research might
investigate different communicative settings alongside the usage of other strategies attested
in the literature.
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2023, vol. 20 (1), 67-88(228)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1.67-88
UDC: 81'25:070=111=163.4
Katarina Petrović
University of Novi Sad, Serbia
Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles
from English into Serbian: Associated Press and
Reuters Articles in Blic and N1 Online Portals
aBStraCt
transcreation refers to adapting translated content to suit the target audience’s context,
culture, and expectations. Predominantly researched in marketing, this phenomenon has
recently come under scrutiny as a method of transferring foreign news to local readership.
This paper explores journalistic transcreation in Blic and N1, the two most visited Serbian
online news portals, considered to be on opposing ideological and political spectrums. as
a point of comparison, articles in english are taken from web portals of the two leading
news agencies globally – the Associated Press and Reuters – as their reporting practices are
regarded as more factual and less biased compared to non-agency media. The findings
reveal transcreation’s much greater presence in the Blic portal, as illustrated in two selected
examples, which might stem from the portal’s pro-government reporting and reader base who
predominantly have absolute trust in the government or support it in the hopes of gaining
employment via political affiliation.
Keywords: transcreation, translation, media studies, journalism
Novinarska transkreacija člankov tiskovnih agencij iz angleščine
v srbščino: članki agencij Associated Press in Reuters na spletnih
portalih Blic in N1
IZvLeČek
Izraz transkreacija se nanaša na prilagajanje prevedene vsebine na način, da ustreza kontekstu,
kulturi in pričakovanjem ciljnega občinstva. ta pojav, ki je raziskan predvsem v trženju, je v
zadnjem času pod drobnogledom kot metoda posredovanja tujih novic lokalnemu bralstvu.
Pričujoči prispevek obravnava novinarsko transkreacijo na portalih Blic in N1, dveh najbolj
obiskanih srbskih spletnih novičarskih portalih, ki veljata za nasprotujoča si pola ideološko-
političnega spektra. Za potrebe primerjave so članki v angleščini vzeti s spletnih portalov dveh
vodilnih svetovnih tiskovnih agencij – associated Press in reuters; njune prakse poročanja
namreč veljajo za osredotočene na dejstva in manj pristranske v primerjavi z neagencijskimi
mediji. rezultati kažejo na večjo prisotnost transkreacije na portalu Blic, kar je ponazorjeno
na podlagi dveh izbranih primerov. to bi lahko bil odraz portalovega provladnega poročanja
in njegove baze bralcev, ki povečini absolutno zaupajo vladi ali jo podpirajo v upanju, da jim
bo politična pripadnost pomagala pri zaposlitvi.
Ključne besede: transkreacija, prevajanje, medijske študije, novinarstvo
68 katarina Petrović Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles from English into Serbian ...
1 Introduction1
Journalistic practice as we know it seldom involves writing original news without utilizing an
already written article. The majority of stories are thus based on creating an article through
the aggregation of different pieces of information found in other media. frequently, the
information used comes from international media sources, written in different languages.
as having a journalist who is fluent in other languages is not always possible, and employing
both translators and journalists unprofitable, journalists resort to translating foreign articles
by themselves and re-forming them to create original texts (filmer 2014). This means that
both processes – translation and creation – are in the hands of journalists, which grants them
plenty of possibilities to, intentionally or not, make significant changes to the news. The act
of translation has become invisible in journalism, for both the journalists and readers, and
so implicit that media do not even mark quotes made in other languages as translations,
although they assuredly present them as verbatim.
yet, despite the mass media’s considerable role in mediating between different nations and
cultures, opposing politicians, a country’s leadership, and the general public, until recently
journalistic work was exclusively the focus of Media Studies, when research shed light on the
enormous presence of translation in news practice. What the research into this topic (Bielsa
2007; Caimotto 2014; federici 2011; van Leeuwen 2006) shows is that news reporting
today largely lies in the hands of those who are not fully equipped to deal with the linguistic
and cultural nuances of the community(ies) they write about. In theory, this phenomenon
is not yet conclusively named. adaptation and localization are among the terms frequently
used to denote this process, but both come with limitations, as will be presented in the next
section. various theoreticians (Caimotto 2014; Mukherjee 1997; Pedersen 2014; a.o.) refer
to this phenomenon as transcreation, though with varying definitions.
The paper analyses the presence of journalistic transcreation in selected articles published by
two Serbian online news portals – Blic and N1, as compared with their corresponding pieces
issued by the news agencies Associated Press (henceforth: AP) and Reuters. The paper aims to
assess the presence of transcreation in selected Serbian media portals compared to english-
language articles in global news agencies and provide findings into methods, motivations,
and goals of transcreation in the two Serbian media.
Section 2 provides a review of relevant literature on transcreation, followed by a section on
the methodology used in this work (section 3). The results section discusses two selected
examples of transcreation in Serbian news portals, and compares them to the related news
agencies’ pieces (section 4). Section 6 then summarizes and concludes the paper.
2 Transcreation – Basic Tenets
even though the first news translation bureau was opened in 1832 (valdeón 2010, 156),
a landmark in research on news translation did not happen until the 1980s, when Stetting
1 The paper is based on the author’s master’s thesis “Journalistic transcreation of News agency articles from english
into Serbian: Associated Press and Reuters articles in Blic online Portal”, the faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi
Sad, under the supervision of aleksandar kavgić. for the purposes of the current paper, the original thesis theme has
been expanded to include the N1 news portal. The author’s master’s thesis is available online: http://remaster.ff.uns.ac
.rs/?rad=68a1d2dcebadf594d3cd1f2e52ddc052.
Journalistic
Transcreation
of News Agency
Articles from
English into Serbian
...
69SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
(Stetting 1989, as quoted in valdeón 2014, 52) coined the term transediting, which refers
to the alternations of the source text, with the aim of transforming and better fitting it to
the target culture (valdeón 2014). Stetting (1989) argues that such a practice is present in
various genres, such as religious, historical, and literary texts, and transediting inevitably
found its way into news translation. however, valdeón (2010, 53) believes that “even though
journalists often translate, they reject their role as translators of news originally written in
other languages. […] [they] view this process as part of an editing process, or, to put it
differently, of the adaptation of the source news texts and/or events to the expectations of
the target audience.” filmer (2014) investigated methods of and opinions on news reporting
translation by nine British newspaper correspondents for Italy. his interviews with the
journalists revealed that only one of them had some formal training in Italian, but that all
of them translated texts on their own, resorting to the help of Italian colleagues only when
a word was ambiguous. “translation is implicit, readers know”, concludes one of filmer’s
(2014, 145) interviewees. as news articles are thus rarely regarded as translations – both either
journalists, and readers – valdeón considers transediting to be an unsuitable term, as the
very process of translation includes a certain degree of editing, not taking into account “any
ideological shifts aimed at infusing the target versions with new meaning” (valdeón 2014,
53), nor “the political, economic and social implications” which processes such as adaptation
and appropriation entail (valdeón 2014, 60). Besides adaptation and appropriation, valdeón
proposes framing as the potential terminology describing varied translation processes in news
production, noting that framing involves the “selection and deselection of news events and
reports, as well as linguistic transfer and adaptation of other elements such as headlines and
quotes” (valdeón 2014, 56).
van Leeuwen (2006) investigated the work of 40 translators who also proofread and
sometimes wrote original articles, using a sample of more than 100 translations from The
Vietnam News, a daily newspaper entirely in english. The author (2006, 218) observed three
steps in the process of translation: (i) correcting the translated text in english, (ii) adaptation
to journalistic style, and (iii) adaptation of source text culture and ideology. van Leeuwen
(2006) thus introduced the notion of ‘adaptation’ – though as a tool of globalization, as
the vietnamese newspaper adapts its content to the expectations of its english-speaking
readers. In contrast to ‘globalization’ there is also ‘localization’, a term which van Leeuwen
(2006) asserts to be closely related and in fact nearly synonymous with the term translation.
Localization is also mentioned by Mangiron and o’hagan (Mangiron and o’hagan 2006,
20 as quoted in Pedersen, 2014, 64) and rike (rike 2013, 73, as quoted in Pedersen 2014,
64), the latter describing localization in the field of translation of manuals, instructions, and
software, not granting it a creative aspect. however, both localization and adaptation are in
professional circles understood as the final two processes, following translation, and done by
companies attempting to appeal to a potential market. although similar to the intentions of
news producers, those involved in localization do not re-create, as journalists do, but simply
change or adapt their product to meet customers’ expectations. Therefore, localization and
adaptation are inadequate terminological choices for this paper.
Mukherjee (1997) was one of the first researchers who focused on the term ‘transcreation’,
noting how, although not included before the 5th edition of the Oxford Advanced English
70 katarina Petrović Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles from English into Serbian ...
Dictionary (oeD), it has been well-known to Indian speakers of english ever since the mid-
20th century. The author (1997, 158) quotes the dictionary definition of transcreation as
being “creative translation seen as producing a new version of the original work.” even before
being officially recognized, transcreation had existed in the translations of Purushottam Lal,
frequently referred to as P. Lal, who is responsible for one of the biggest and most important
translation ventures in India, as he translated several centuries’ worth of fiction and poetry
from a variety of Indian languages into english. Mukherjee (1997, 180) points out that
what P. Lal did was not translation per se, as he introduced many changes into the translated
texts, compared to their original versions – “yet enough of the original remained in the new
texts […] to be able to relate it to the old texts.” furthermore, Mukherjee (1997) recounts
that the term translation is nowhere to be found in any of the Indian languages, suggesting
its unfamiliarity to Indians. The author (1997, 180) argues that instead of translating
certain texts, they would use “it as a take-off point and composed a similar text in another
language.” Di giovanni (2008, 34, as quoted in Pedersen 2014, 58) quotes Lal’s definition of
transcreation as a “readable, not strictly faithful translation.”
Notably, in the oeD there is Coleridge’s quote on transcreation, where the term is defined as
a process of “creat[ing] by or in the way of transmission”, which renders clearly both aspects
of transcreation, namely “faithful transmission and creation” (katan 2014, 17).
Caimotto (2014, 161) also identifies transcreation as a process that often occurs in the
translation of poetry, which she sees as a “creative translation […] attempting to retain culture-
bound elements.” She compared the stories of Iginio Ugo tarchetti, the 19th-century Italian
author who introduced gothic tale to Italy using transcreation in his works, and Daniele
Lutazzi, a controversial Italian comedian who in 2010 suffered nationwide condemnation for
allegedly plagiarizing various american stand-up comedians. Lutazzi’s case, argues Caimotto
(2014, 159–60), is a good example of how translation practice is viewed disparately by
laypeople and scholarly professionals. Social media responses to the issue of Lutazzi’s
plagiarism reveal that acts of translation and/or adaptation are not regarded as creative tasks,
and thus for the general public, translation, and copying are identical, concludes Ciamotto
(2014, 168).
Zanotti (2014) studied the dubbing process of english-speaking movies for the Italian
market, focusing on the instances of transcreation. The author (2014, 109) refers to galassi
(galassi 1994, 64, as quoted in Zanotti 2014, 109), who stated that a talented dialogue
adapter is able “to forget how the original line is structured and recreate it in another language
as if it were not a translation, while fully grasping its meaning, the allusions it contains as well
as the intentions that underlie it.” for Zanotti (2014), the creative aspect of transcreation is
of interest, as she quotes o’hagan and Mangiron (o’hagan and Mangiron, 2013, 106, as
quoted in Zanotti 2014, 110) for whom transcreation brings about occasionally unpredictable
translation choices. additionally, she (2014, 100) reflects on transcreation as being a buzzword
of the current translation business, mostly linked to the advertising industry.
for fang and Song (2014, 74), transcreation “fundamentally involves the transfer of meaning
from one language to another”, a process usually carried out in the field of advertising and
marketing. In their study of Chinese translations of labels for australian health products,
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fang and Song (2014, 74) argue that the creation part is introduced only when “a product
[…] is believed unable to strike the chord with the intended audience.” however, as there is
a striking resemblance between the characteristics of free translation and transcreation, they
are both criticized (fang and Song 2014, 74) for scaling down semantic equivalence and
giving precedence to cultural and social needs. although their research revealed significant
changes in the translations, fang and Song (2014) assert that creative translation does not
automatically imply unprofessionalism.
as already mentioned, transcreation is widely used in the field of marketing and advertising,
with the intention of altering a marketing campaign or advertising slogan, making it more
appealing to target consumers without suffering the original message (Pedersen 2014, 58).
Pedersen (2014) focused on definitions and explanations of the process of transcreation as
given by the professionals in the field – transcreation providers. analysing definitions of
different transcreation providers (Branded translations, transPerfect, alpha CrC and
textMinded), Pedersen ( 2014, 59–61) discovered that they use a variety of phrases to
define transcreation, such as: “creative adaptation”, “creative wordplay and techniques such
as assonance and alliteration”, “recreat[ing]” and “transferring the essential message […] as
opposed to a more traditional translation”, respectively. Pedersen (2014, 62) infers that such
companies regard transcreation as a sub-category of localization – as suggested by Mangrion
and o’hagan (2006) – aimed to ensure cultural applicability, and that transcreation not only
has nothing to do with translation but rather is even more than translation itself. The author
(2014, 62) concludes that while “translation is transferring words from one language to
another […] transcreation is transferring brands and messages from one culture to another.”
gambier and Munday (2014) discussed the position of translation and transcreation, both
in relation to each other and in translation Studies. They reflect how such terminological
vastness can destabilize translation Studies, however, the emergence transcreation and similar
terms could actually hold the key to the future of translation. With the exponential growth
of machine translation, where translators’ “already fragile habitus is being encroached on by
machines” (katan 2014, 16), transcreation is an “inherently creative process [...] [which]
a machine cannot touch” (gene Schiver, Ceo of machine-driven gLoBo Language
Solutions, as quoted in katan 2014, 17).
2.1 transcreation in Journalism
“translation is not the job of the journalist”, argues John Lloyd, a long-serving foreign
correspondent to the Financial Times, and co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study
of Journalism (Lloyd, July 15th, 2013, as quoted in filmer 2014, 136). although translation
has been an integral part of journalism ever since, it is only in recent years that its importance
became the focus of scholars (valdeón 2010). filmer (2014, 136) argues that, as the boundary
between journalist and translator us blurry (van Doorslaer 2012, 1050, as quoted in filmer,
2014, 136), and translation in news discourse is rather implicit (van Dijk 2009, 191–205,
as quoted in filmer 2014, 136), both lead to the invisibility of translation in the field of
journalism (Schäffner 2008, 3). Similarly, federici (2011, 1396) agrees that in analysing
journalistic texts it is challenging to “distinguish translators from editors, page editors, and
72 katarina Petrović Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles from English into Serbian ...
every ‘writer’ involved in the delivery of the news.” This is the case because “producing a
single news item often involves the integration of various text sources” (filmer 2014, 138),
i.e., journalists turn to (inter)national coverage of the particular news, including some expert
comments, and/or re-use information from earlier, related articles (van Doorslaer 2012). This
‘cut and paste’ approach, as filmer (2014, 138) calls it, renders the translation process in the
news invisible. valdeón’s (2010, 154) “news aggregator” is a journalist whose job consists
of gathering news from different sources, and consequently producing a new piece in new,
‘original’, form. however, filmer (2014, 154) argues that the term “journalator” is yet not to
become a thing.
In contrast, filmer’s study (2014) of British correspondents to Italy demonstrates how
journalists translate on their own, only rarely relying on their Italian colleagues, even though
they almost exclusively did not go through any formal course in the language, translation,
nor intercultural communication, as Lloyd suggested. “There is no great mystery”, says The
Times correspondent James Bone in an interview conducted for filmer’s study (2014, 146),
proving the assumption journalists do not give much attention to a deeper understanding
of foreign meanings, as “things are what they seem to be” (hannerz 1996, 120, as quoted
in filmer 2014, 146). Bassnett (2006, 5–7) points out the fact that journalists do not have
any formal training, yet regard themselves as “international journalists”, whereas hernández
guerrero (2007, 57, as quoted in valdeón 2010, 156) observes how for journalists translation
is a “marginal and secondary” process, which Paterson sees as “paradoxical when online news
has caused ‘demystification and deprofessionalization’ of journalism.”
to help in revealing and analysing the transcreation practices present in selected Serbian
media, the subsequent section outlines the methodological approach used in the paper.
3 Methodology
for the purposes of the analysis, a corpus of 139 unique news articles in Serbian and english,
amounting to approximately 40,000 words, was collected. The gathered data include 45 news
stories and events, presented in at least two news pieces, by at least two distinct media, and
in two different languages. Data collection took place from the beginning of february 2019
to the end of July 2019.
articles in Serbian add up to 90 articles in total: 45 news articles published by Blic and
45 pieces published by N1. In contrast, the corpus includes 49 news pieces in english: 18
published by AP and 31 by Reuters.
all articles in Serbian, published by Blic and N1, have their english counterpart(s) issued by
either or both Reuters and AP. It is important to note that a number of article sets lack either
aP’s or reuters’ pieces. This is due to several factors, of which the most common are: (i) news/
events were not reported by both agencies; (ii) news/events were discussed within an article
piece that included a broader context, and thus this was not truly equivalent to the Serbian
version; (iii) news/events were reported in a rather short article (two or three sentences long),
rendering the piece ineffective for comparative analysis (predominantly present in AP).
73SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
articles for the corpus were first searched for on the Serbian online portals Blic and N1, upon
which complementary articles in english were looked for on the AP and reuters web portals.
The choice of articles to be included in the corpus was based on selecting news distant enough
from Serbia to ensure that Serbian articles relied on foreign reporting, yet close enough to
Serbia in terms of interest in the topic. as such, the corpus does not include news originating
from Serbia or neighbouring countries whose languages are mutually intelligible (e.g., Bosnia
and herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia); however, it does include a number of stories
regarding russia, the USa, germany, the eU, etc., all of which are the great importance and
interest to Serbian people. to ensure maximum compatibility, pieces in both Serbian and
english had to be published on the same date. after a parallel corpus was fully compiled in
the form of a Microsoft Word document, all Serbian-english pairs of articles were copied into
separate tables, providing a side-by-side layout for comparison.
The analysis of the corpus involved both qualitative and quantitative methods. Since the
corpus data consist of text only, qualitative analysis was preferred as it allowed for describing,
interpreting, and contextualizing examples of transcreation found in articles published by
Blic and N1.
3.1 factors in Media outlets Choice
regarding the selection of the analysed media outlets, the two Serbian news portals were
selected due to their positions on different ends of the ideological and political spectrum
(Đorđević 2020, 456). Blic, the portal owned by a german-Swiss media company, is
one of the most popular and widely read newspapers in Serbia, both in print and digital.
although considered essentially pro-government, with known practices of “expressing its
political affiliation to the government” (Đorđević 2020, 465), Blic is still moderate when
compared to some other Serbian media. It is neither overtly pro-Western, nor pro-russian,
but rather adjusts its views to those of the government. It is also noteworthy that Blic is very
much a tabloid newspaper, with frequent instances of loaded language, clickbait titles, and
celebrity coverage, yet it still has elements of a broadsheet, such as an occasionally formalized
journalistic approach to news coverage with in-depth news stories and analyses. N1, on the
other hand, is Blic’s polar opposite in its reporting of Serbia’s internal affairs, being far more
leftist, pro-Western, and objective in its reporting, and prone to express open criticism of the
ruling party and the government (Đorđević 2020, 456). The news portal, which also has a
cable tv channel, is CNN International’s local broadcast partner and an affiliate, which is
why the ruling party and pro-government media often dub it a “Western satellite” in Serbia.
Besides being the most-read media portals among the Serbian general public, Blic and N1
portals were chosen for this research due to their disparate reader bases (CeSID 2021; IreX
2018). Namely, according to CeSID’s research (2021), N1 consumers tend to hold pro-
Western views, identifying the eU and the US as their preference for life, education, work,
and medical treatment, as well as considering the two as the biggest economies and Serbia’s
allies. In contrast, “Blic readers tended to declare themselves neutral in geopolitical terms”,
and see russia or China as Serbia’s greatest allies (CeSID 2021).
analysing two entirely different media outlets and their potential transcreation practices
is thus envisioned as a way to tap into the reasons for the use and effects of transcreation
74 katarina Petrović Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles from English into Serbian ...
with regard to two disparate groups of Serbian people – those with pro- and anti-regime
sentiments.
The two news agencies, Reuters and AP are selected for their integrity and factual, least-
biased reporting, as well as their global influence and positions as reliable news sources (ad
fontes Media). Choosing these two agencies and their (more) neutral coverage enables easier
identification of transcreation occurrences on the Blic and N1 online portals.
The reason why this paper does not analyse perhaps more suitable counterparts to Reuters and
AP, such as Serbian news agencies tanjug and Beta, or foreign media similar to Blic and N1,
is that the research was aimed at evaluating the transcreation practices in news pieces directly
consumed by end-readers. Blic and N1 represent the choices of the majority of Serbian people
as the favoured media to stay informed, whereas local news agencies are scarcely ever read by
the general public. In addition, the accessibility of a myriad of media outlets via a single click
and general familiarity with the english language have had detrimental effects on the vitality
of local news agencies, as nowadays, journalists from Blic, N1, and all other news portals
across the globe are able to share a news story to their audience directly from foreign media.
finally, the decision to retrieve articles from online portals of the four media lies in the fact
that digital news sources have an advantage over print versions (of Blic at least, as N1, Reuters,
and AP do not have print editions) for being up-to-date and more easily accessible to a wider
readership.
4 The Analysis
transcreation has been identified, at varying degrees, throughout all 45 chosen news pieces
from Blic and 17 articles published by N1. It is important to note that the quantity of
transcreation found in the corpus was not expressed as the number of individual instances of
transcreation in each article pair, as it is challenging to determine what a single transcreation
occurrence is – e.g., is a complete alteration of news title an example of one transcreation
instance, or several of them simultaneously?
In terms of findings, the methods of transcreation identified in articles published by Blic
and N1 include lexical choices (such as occurrences of loaded language), shortening or
lengthening, addition and/or omission of information, grammar alterations (including
instances of focalizing, change in modality, etc.), examples of mistranslations, refocusing
(changing a story’s focus point), reframing (presenting a certain event, person, or idea
differently on the level of the entire article, not only a segment), and so on.
Political news comprised the majority of the articles in the corpus, and this was found in
diverse forms, encompassing everything from international summits and bilateral disputes,
to articles that reported on the interweaving of politics and entertainment. In addition to
politics, stories on religion, social issues, and sports were others that underwent transcreation,
although there were significantly fewer articles concerning these issues.
russia and the US were expected to be the leading countries in stories that had been produced
through the process of transcreation, considering stance Serbia’s in-between these. although
75SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
the results proved the lasting importance of russia and the US for Serbia, it was surprising
that these two countries were matched by an unlikely competitor – france. however, upon
closer observation of the political situation at the time the stories were collected, it became
clear as to why france had such a strong presence in the Serbian media.
This was because of the public backlash in germany against the admission of migrants from
the Middle east and africa, as well as angela Merkel leaving the position of Chancellor,
leading to the declining power of germany in the eU, and europe more generally. france’s
President Macron thus emerged as the new leader of the eU, and taking into consideration
Serbia’s efforts towards becoming an eU member state, the growing interest of the media
in the france was thus not unexpected. So, even though germany remains one of the most
important countries for Serbia, politically as well as in terms of migration, its lessening
influence in europe is definitely reflected in the two Serbian media examined in this study.
The subsequent sections discuss in more detail two examples of transcreation identified in
articles published by Blic and N1 in comparison to their corresponding english versions
issued by AP and Reuters. The first example analyses the set of articles on the suspension of
the Intermediate-range Nuclear forces treaty between russia and the USa (henceforth, the
INf treaty). The second set of news articles discusses one of the weekly rallies that took place
as a part of the yellow vests series of protests in france.
The topic of INf treaty suspension is selected for analysis as the event involves russia and
the USa, both of which Serbia strives to maintain strong political and economic relations
with. as Serbia’s foreign politics is well-known to look both east and West (konitzer 2010;
Lopandić, 2020; rastović, 2018), analysing the portrayal of this event in Blic and N1 for
transcreation practices may provide insights into each media’s (and their target audiences)
sentiments with regard to the two countries.
regarding the topic of yellow vests Protests, the event was chosen due to its equivalence
to the anti-government protests, one of five Million, that took place in Serbia during a
similar period as the rallies in france. as Serbia’s protests were mainly discredited, or entirely
overlooked, by the pro-government media, analysing the portrayal of french protests
promised to offer some compelling findings.
4.1 The Suspension of the INf treaty between the USa and russia
The INf treaty regulating nuclear disarmament between the US and Soviet Union (now
russia), was revoked in february 2019, after being in force for more than 30 years. In late
2018, President trump announced US withdrawal, which officially took effect on february 1,
2019. russia’s response came a day after when its suspension of the treaty was also announced.
The analysed articles were taken from all four analysed media outlets, and published on
february 2, 2019, the day russia made its suspension of the INf treaty official.
to begin with, the article titles in the stories from the agencies and Serbian portals (table 1)
have sharply distinct focuses. While the titles of AP and Reuters focus on russia – perhaps
somewhat expected considering the fact that the articles were published on the day of its
76 katarina Petrović Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles from English into Serbian ...
treaty revocation – and seemingly put the responsibility on russia, Blic and N1, on the other
hand, foreground the US perspective. an identical tone is kept throughout each article.
table 1. Comparison of news titles from Blic, N1, AP, and Reuters regarding the INf treaty.
Media Title Translation
Blic Pompeo: Zvanično nemamo obaveze
prema INf
Pompeo: We officially do not have
any obligations regarding INf
N1 SaD se povlače iz sporazuma o
nuklearnom oružju s rusijom
USa withdraws from the INf treaty
with russia
AP russia to pull plug on nuclear arms
pact after US does same
-
Reuters Putin says russia suspends INf
nuclear deal with U.S.
-
only the articles from AP and Blic can be further analysed, as the piece in Reuters is only a
few sentences long, and the coverage in N1 involves a nearly one-to-one translation from the
AP. an interesting note regarding the article in N1 is that the only difference between the text
from the AP and its translation by N1 is that the latter refocused the title to perhaps highlight
that the USa initiated the INf treaty’s suspension, without providing any indisputable
evidence of a russian breach. The remainder of the similarity between N1 and AP may be
attributed to the similarities in the two media’s audiences and genres, as N1 is generally the
choice of pro-Western Serbian readership (CeSID 2021).
Throughout its article Blic exclusively presents the US view of the matter, through State
Secretary Pompeo’s statements, only mentioning the russian response in the last sentence
of the text. Blic portrays the US decision as legitimate and justified, by omitting some very
important information that provides a bilateral and clearer picture of the issue. for instance,
Blic says the US halted the treaty following a russian breach, as the article puts it (table 2).
however, from the text by AP we learn that the US did not provide any evidence of a russian
breach, a piece of information that is left out in Blic (see appendix). In the following excerpt
from Blic (table 2), State Secretary Pompeo asserts russia’s breach of the treaty.
Pompeo’s accusations of a russian breach were left unanswered by russian officials in Blic,
completely disregarding russia’s viewpoint. In Blic, the russian perspective on the matter
is mentioned only in the last sentence of the article, stating that “after the US decision,
russia announced that it is no longer bound by the INf treaty.”2 to provide a more objective
perspective, it would be necessary that Blic include additional statements by russian officials.
There are other significant pieces of information that are not mentioned in the Serbian
text but have been referenced in AP (see appendix), as shown in table 3 and the following
excerpts from the AP article.
2 Posle odluke SaD, i rusija je saopštila da je ne više ne obavezuje sporazum INf.
77SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
table 3. excerpts from the AP, on the topic of the INf.
AP
Moscow has strongly denied any breaches and accused Washington of making false
accusations to justify its pullout.
[…]
“We will respond quid pro quo,” Putin said. “our american partners have announced
they were suspending their participation in the treaty, and we will do the same. They have
announced they will conduct research and development, and we will act accordingly.”
[…]
trump’s move also reflected his administration’s view that the pact was an obstacle to
efforts needed to counter intermediate-range missiles deployed by China, which isn’t part
of the treaty.
[…]
russia has rejected the U.S. claims of violation, charging that the missile, which is part
of the Iskander-M missile system, has a maximum range of 480 kilometers (298 miles).
russian officials claimed the U.S. assertions about the alleged breach of the pact by
Moscow were intended to shift the blame for the pact’s demise to russia.
[…]
The russian Defense Ministry on Saturday released a satellite image of what it described
as new production facilities at the U.S. missile maker raytheon’s plant in tucson, arizona,
noting that their expansion began in 2017 as the Congress authorized spending for the
development of intermediate-range missiles.
Without these pieces of information, the article in Blic creates a one-side image of the issue,
siding with the US, and confirming its view without any questioning. In contrast, the aP’s
coverage of both the american and russian sides offers a more objective and complete
overview of the events.
table 2. excerpt from Blic, on the topic of INf.
BLIC Translation
Prema njegovim [Pompeo] rečima, s SaD
su uradile sve što su mogle da očuvaju
sporazum, ali da zvanična Moskva i dalje
demantuje da je kršila sporazum svojim
raketnim sistemom.
Postupci rusije, kako kaže američki državni
sekretar, ugrožavaju SaD i ne mogu
dopustiti da budu ograničeni sporazumom
dok ga druga strana otvoreno krši.
according to [Pompeo], the US did
everything to save the treaty, but official
Moscow still denies violating the treaty with
its rocket system. russian actions, as the
US Secretary of State says, jeopardize the
US and they cannot allow being limited
by the treaty while the other side is openly
breaching it.
78 katarina Petrović Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles from English into Serbian ...
other reasons for the US withdrawal – for example, the nuclear advances of China, which
was not a member of the INf treaty – and russia’s denials of a breach, as well as evidence
of US violation of the treaty, are all specified in the AP article. In Blic, however, there is
no mention of any of these issues. The overall tone of the news piece on Blic is that US
assertions are undeniably true, which is further supported by the lack of a russian answer
to the american accusations. This creates an impression that the russians did not defend
themselves – which could be interpreted as a sign they really are at fault.
By focusing the piece only on the US point of view, omitting russia’s responses to US claims,
and using Pompeo’s statement filled with loaded language, Blic creates a significant reframing
of the issue, in which russia is the guilty party, while the US does only what is necessary.
4.2 yellow vests Protests in france
on March 20, 2019, the french government announced its decision to deploy special
military troops to maintain peace during the protest announced for the following weekend –
one of many that took place within the series of weekly yellow vests protests.
Reuters did not report on this particular story, so table 4 only includes article titles from Blic,
N1 and AP. In addition, N1’s article is nearly identical to the one published in AP. Therefore,
the remainder of the analysis will focus on comparing articles from Blic and AP alone.
table 4. Comparison of article titles from the Blic, N1, and AP on the topic of the yellow vests
protests.
Media Title Translation
Blic graĐaNSkI rat U NaJavI
francuska vojska za vikend izlazi na
ulice zbog najavljenog protesta “Žutih
prsluka”
CIvIL War aheaD french army
goes to the streets on the weekend
because of the announced yellow vests
protest
N1 Pojačanje za naredni protest Žutih
prsluka - vojna antiteroristička
jedinica
Back up for the following yellow vests
protest - a military counter-terrorism
unit
AP france to deploy troops to maintain
security during protests
-
Choosing to use the phrase civil war in the title is certainly aiming to sensationalize the
news piece, and attract the readers’ attention. however, taking into consideration the target
audience of Blic, it becomes clearer why the journalists opted for this particular phrase. for
Serbian people, civil war is a phrase that carries a strong connotative meaning, reminding
them of the decade-long conflicts between ex-yugoslav countries, fuelled by genocide, ethnic
cleansing, and fights for independence. The death toll was around 150,000 people, almost
half a million were displaced, and yugoslavia as a whole ceased to exist.
Therefore, claiming that a civil war will break out certainly sparks memories in the general
public in Serbia, whose memory of the horrors of war is deeply instilled. So, using such strong
79SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
examples of loaded language aims at readers’ emotions, particularly those of fear, panic, hate,
pain, loss, powerlessness, and so on. however, the question remains as to why journalists
working for Blic would want to arouse these negative and painful emotions in their readers,
and in relation to the violent conduct of french protesters. The answer lies in the events in
Serbia, and the anti-government protests one of five Million, which were held around the
same time as the yellow vests protests in france. here, in fact, reporting on french protests
in the Serbian media served as a commentary on those at home. The excerpts in table 5 show
how Blic transcreated the article to fit this purpose.3
table 5. Comparison of excerpts from the AP and Blic on the topic of the yellow vests protests.
Media Excerpt Translation
Blic francuski vojnici biće raspoređeni
u subotu, 23. marta tokom protesta
“žutih prsluka” i čuvaće javne objekte
u slučaju da se ponovi nasilje u Parizu
i drugim gradovima, saopštila je danas
francuska vlada.
french troops will be deployed on
Saturday, March 23 during the yellow
vest protest and will guard public sites
in case the violence in Paris and other
cities repeats, the french government
announced today.
AP french president emmanuel Macron
has announced that soldiers will be
deployed across the country to help
maintain security during yellow vest
protests planned this weekend.
-
Blic Prošlog vikenda, više od 5.000
policajaca nije uspelo da zaustavi
stotine nasilnih demonstranata koji
su divljali šanzelizeom, i koji su
opljačkali i zapalili više od 100 firmi.
Nasilje je trajalo više od sedam sati,
navodi afP.
Last weekend, more than 5000 police
officers did not manage to stop
hundreds of violent protesters who
were rampaging along the Champs-
elysees, and robbed and set on fire
more than 1000 firms. The violence
lasted for more than seven hours, afP
reports.
AP The french government announced
on Monday new security measures
and a ban on yellow vest protests
along the Champs-elysees avenue in
Paris and in two other cities following
riots on Saturday that left luxury
stores ransacked and charred from
arson fires.
-
3 Blic referred to afP (agence france-Presse; a french international news agency) as their source, as the
second excerpt states; however, the author was not able to retrieve the afP’s original article at the time
of the corpus collection, nor at a later date from afP’s archives.
80 katarina Petrović Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles from English into Serbian ...
In comparison to the article from the AP, the one in Blic is quite openly against the participants
of the protests, dubbing them violent and their activities a rampage. furthermore, the AP
article clearly states that the protesters set out to attack upscale stores, highlighting the anti-
capitalistic aspect of the protests. Blic, on the other hand, suggests the protesters attacked
any random firm they came across, belittling the protesters’ cause. The entire article is filled
with examples of loaded language, i.e., words and/or phrases which are used to “elicit strong
emotional response from the reader or listener”,4 such as violent and rampage. extensive use of
loaded language in this news piece by Blic presents the french protesters in a very bad light, as
senseless, violent, destructive people, who will wake the spirits of the past and revive confusion,
bloodshed, cruelty, suffering, and death in a “civil war”. Blic’s portrayal of french protesters as
such can be understood as a reference to the Serbian ones, suggesting that both the motives
and consequences of anti-government protests in france and Serbia are not much different.
The time references in the above-shown excerpts of the two articles differ considerably. The
english text concentrates on the future, and the idea of the army preserving peace and order
at the protest. Blic, on the other hand, focuses on past events, promoting the idea of brutality
and chaos related to protests. Thus, the concept of the past is once again woven into the story
of the protests, serving as another echo of the events of the 1990s in yugoslavia.
By condemning the french protests, Blic implicitly suggests to its readers that disapproving of
the government equals brutality and leads to war, and that protesters are there to disturb the
peace, halt progress, and restore enmity. as such the Serbian protests are criticized, although
not even mentioned per se.
5 Conclusion
The analysis of the data presented in this study yields two significant findings: (i) Blic resorts
to employing transcreation methods almost as a regular practice when adapting foreign news
on topics relevant to Serbia; (ii) N1 employs transcreation practices moderately in comparison
to Blic and these are generally focused on alterations of grammatical constructions and article
titles, whereas the remainder of the stories are identical to those published by AP.
The latter finding, regarding N1, may be explained by the fact that N1 is a Western-owned
media, with an audience identified as pro-eU/pro-Western, pro-opposition/anti-government
(rendulić 2023; Cesid 2021), as discussed in section 3. The media’s genre is such that it almost
exclusively deals with formal topics, including politics, business news, social commentary,
culture, sports, health, and so on, without tabloid-like stories and sensationalism. together, all
these factors may significantly influence why the majority of articles in N1 are rather faithful
translations of texts from AP – after all, both N1 and AP state they are focused on providing
factual and unbiased news (Đorđević 2020, 456, ad fontes Media). It is thus expected that
near identical news stories will fit the purposes and expectations of readers of both AP and N1.
The minimal employment of transcreation methods in articles published by N1 might be
argued to be the result of an already present political bias in the news pieces by AP. While AP
4 https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-is-a-loaded-language.htm
81SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
is regarded as one of the least biased media globally (ad fontes Media), it is hardly possible
that any media in the world is completely devoid of (at least partial) inclination toward a
political figure, regime, country, system, etc. It might thus be possible that N1 by and large
copy-pastes the texts from AP because within them the desired sentiments and ideas are
already interwoven, thus diminishing the need for additional interventions by N1 journalists.
Blic, on the other hand, resorts to transcreation frequently, at least when it comes to reporting
on foreign events of importance to Serbia. The findings align with this media outlet’s politics,
which is neither pro-east nor pro-West, but rather pro-regime (Đorđević 2020, 456; vučić et
al. 2022). The articles in Blic and the effects of transcreation employed in them correspond to
Serbia’s in-between political and economic position and aspirations towards both east (russia
and China) and the West (the eU and USa). as with Serbia’s foreign politics, Blic balances
the two in ways to support the regime’s needs and decisions, and it affects the audience’s
opinions and sentiments on certain issues, as the example of the french protests confirms.
The discussion regarding the desired aims behind the use of transcreation in Serbian news
portals, especially Blic, yields somewhat incomplete answers, as it is impossible to know what
the driving force for such alterations was, and primarily, who the decision-maker was in the
creation of the news pieces, be they journalists, editors, editor-in-chief, and so on.
one clear reason for such changes, even without inside knowledge of the article-writing
process, is modifying the way of presenting certain topics, individuals, and countries for
the Serbian audience. all the issues presented are, to a greater or lesser degree, relevant for
Serbia (or, perhaps better to say, its official politics), in terms of existing or planned business
cooperation and economic investments, political relations and aspirations, analogous political
and/or social events. The underlying motive for transcreation in Blic could unequivocally be
to influence the general opinion, beliefs, and attitudes of the Serbian people towards those
matters.
however, as was previously mentioned, all the issues which were found to be transcreated
in Blic are affiliated or have some parallel with events in Serbia. Therefore, transcreation
in Blic was not intended to affect only the Serbian perception of foreign affairs, but the
understanding of and feelings on matters in Serbia as well. In terms of the limitations of this
research and recommendations for future work, it should be pointed out that a wider range
of Serbian media should be analysed in order to yield a more comprehensive overview of the
media scene and its politics in this country. Comparing the potential presence, methods, and
aims of transcreation in a variety of different types of portals in Serbia, such as news agencies,
media entirely discussing politics, unashamed tabloids, and others, will certainly yield more
exhaustive conclusions as to how, to whom, and why the media in Serbia resort to transcreating
their articles. In addition, future research could focus on analysing the transcreation of a
single topic/country/individual across media to perhaps provide a clearer image of differing
sentiments on the issue, or focus on the comparison of identical media genres in both english
and Serbian (e.g., only tabloids or only news agencies). finally, this paper presents the results
of a small scale research, and a larger scale study into transcreation practices in Serbian media
would certainly yield conclusions that would confirm or reject this paper’s results. The media
have been used for decades as a political tool, but the primary role of mass media, which
82 katarina Petrović Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles from English into Serbian ...
was to inform and educate the general public, has been further redefined in recent years.
Understanding the scope of transcreation in journalism is a question that undoubtedly calls
for further research, considering the omnipresence and profound influence the media has in
today’s world.
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AP: Russia to pull plug on nuclear arms pact after US does same
MoSCoW (AP) — following in the footsteps of the U.S., russia will abandon a centerpiece
nuclear arms treaty but will only deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles if Washington
does so, President vladimir Putin said Saturday.
President Donald trump accused Moscow on friday of violating the 1987 Intermediate-
range Nuclear forces treaty with “impunity” by deploying banned missiles. trump said in
a statement that the U.S. will “move forward” with developing its own military response
options to russia’s new land-based cruise missiles that could target Western europe.
Moscow has strongly denied any breaches and accused Washington of making false
accusations in order to justify its pullout.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in explaining that Washington on Saturday formally
suspended its treaty obligations, said in a statement that russia’s “continued noncompliance
has jeopardized the United States’ supreme interests.” he said the treaty will terminate in six
months unless Moscow returns to “full and verifiable compliance.”
The collapse of the INf treaty has raised fears of a repeat of a Cold War showdown in the
1980s, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on
the continent. Such weapons were seen as particularly destabilizing as they only take a few
minutes to reach their targets, leaving no time for decision-makers and raising the likelihood
of a global nuclear conflict over a false launch warning.
after the U.S. gave notice of its intention to withdraw, Putin said russia would do the
same. he ordered the development of new land-based intermediate-range weapons, but
emphasized that russia won’t deploy them in the european part of the country or elsewhere
unless the U.S. does so.
“We will respond quid pro quo,” Putin said. “our american partners have announced
they were suspending their participation in the treaty, and we will do the same. They have
announced they will conduct research and development, and we will act accordingly.”
The U.S. has accused russia of developing and deploying a cruise missile that violates
provisions of the pact that ban production, testing and deployment of land-based cruise
and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,410 miles). trump’s
move also reflected his administration’s view that the pact was an obstacle to efforts needed
to counter intermediate-range missiles deployed by China, which isn’t part of the treaty.
Nato allies have strongly backed Washington and urged Moscow to save the treaty by
returning to compliance.
russia has rejected the U.S. claims of violation, charging that the missile, which is part of the
Iskander-M missile system, has a maximum range of 480 kilometers (298 miles). russian
officials claimed the U.S. assertions about the alleged breach of the pact by Moscow were
intended to shift the blame for the pact’s demise to russia.
The russian Defense Ministry on Saturday released a satellite image of what it described
as new production facilities at the U.S. missile maker raytheon’s plant in tucson, arizona,
Appendix
85SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
AP: Russia to pull plug on nuclear arms pact after US does same
MoSCoW (AP) — following in the footsteps of the U.S., russia will abandon a centerpiece
nuclear arms treaty but will only deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles if Washington
does so, President vladimir Putin said Saturday.
President Donald trump accused Moscow on friday of violating the 1987 Intermediate-
range Nuclear forces treaty with “impunity” by deploying banned missiles. trump said in
a statement that the U.S. will “move forward” with developing its own military response
options to russia’s new land-based cruise missiles that could target Western europe.
Moscow has strongly denied any breaches and accused Washington of making false
accusations in order to justify its pullout.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in explaining that Washington on Saturday formally
suspended its treaty obligations, said in a statement that russia’s “continued noncompliance
has jeopardized the United States’ supreme interests.” he said the treaty will terminate in six
months unless Moscow returns to “full and verifiable compliance.”
The collapse of the INf treaty has raised fears of a repeat of a Cold War showdown in the
1980s, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on
the continent. Such weapons were seen as particularly destabilizing as they only take a few
minutes to reach their targets, leaving no time for decision-makers and raising the likelihood
of a global nuclear conflict over a false launch warning.
after the U.S. gave notice of its intention to withdraw, Putin said russia would do the
same. he ordered the development of new land-based intermediate-range weapons, but
emphasized that russia won’t deploy them in the european part of the country or elsewhere
unless the U.S. does so.
“We will respond quid pro quo,” Putin said. “our american partners have announced
they were suspending their participation in the treaty, and we will do the same. They have
announced they will conduct research and development, and we will act accordingly.”
The U.S. has accused russia of developing and deploying a cruise missile that violates
provisions of the pact that ban production, testing and deployment of land-based cruise
and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,410 miles). trump’s
move also reflected his administration’s view that the pact was an obstacle to efforts needed
to counter intermediate-range missiles deployed by China, which isn’t part of the treaty.
Nato allies have strongly backed Washington and urged Moscow to save the treaty by
returning to compliance.
russia has rejected the U.S. claims of violation, charging that the missile, which is part of the
Iskander-M missile system, has a maximum range of 480 kilometers (298 miles). russian
officials claimed the U.S. assertions about the alleged breach of the pact by Moscow were
intended to shift the blame for the pact’s demise to russia.
The russian Defense Ministry on Saturday released a satellite image of what it described
as new production facilities at the U.S. missile maker raytheon’s plant in tucson, arizona,
noting that their expansion began in 2017 as the Congress authorized spending for the
development of intermediate-range missiles.
“The character and the timing of the works provide an irrefutable proof that the U.S.
administration had decided to pull out of the INf treaty years before making unfounded
claims of russian violations,” it said.
Putin has argued it makes no sense for russia to deploy a ground-based cruise missile
violating the treaty because it has such weapons on ships and aircraft, which aren’t banned
by the pact.
Speaking Saturday in a televised meeting with his foreign and defense ministers, Putin
instructed the military to work on developing new land-based weapons that were previously
forbidden by the INf treaty. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin that they
would include a land-based version of the kalibr ship-based cruise missile and a new
hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile.
Putin emphasized that such new weapons won’t be deployed unless the U.S. does so.
“russia will not station intermediate-range weapons in europe or other regions until similar
U.S. weapons appear in those regions,” he said.
The russian leader said Moscow remains open to talks with Washington, but added it would
be up to the U.S. to take the first step.
“Let’s wait until our partners are mature enough to conduct an equal and substantive
dialogue on those issues,” he said.
at the same time, Putin told his ministers that he would like to review the progress on
building other prospective weapons that don’t fall under the INf treaty, including the
intercontinental avangard hypersonic glide vehicle and the Poseidon underwater nuclear-
powered drone.
he noted Shoigu’s report that a key stage in testing of the Poseidon was completed several
days ago. The drone is designed to carry a heavy nuclear weapon that could cause a devastating
tsunami wave.
The russian leader last year unveiled an array of new nuclear weapons, including the
avangard and the Poseidon, saying that they can’t be intercepted. Putin also noted during
Saturday’s meeting that he would like the military to prepare a response to the possible
deployment of weapons in space.
The Pentagon’s new strategy unveiled last month calls for a new array of space-based sensors
and other high-tech systems to more quickly detect and shoot down incoming missiles.
Putin instructed the military to make sure the research and development works on new
weapons don’t swell military spending. he said the military must reconfigure the existing
defense budget to find money for the new weapons.
“We must not and will not be drawn into a costly arms race,” he said.
(https://apnews.com/article/moscow-north-america-donald-trump-ap-top-news-
international-news-15881e8900db4c4eaae3d84bb2500041)
86 katarina Petrović Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles from English into Serbian ...
Reuters: Putin says Russia suspends INF nuclear deal with U.S.
MoSCoW, feb 2 (Reuters) - russian President vladimir Putin told a meeting with foreign
and defence ministers on Saturday that russia has suspended the Cold War-era Intermediate-
range Nuclear forces treaty following a similar decision by the United States, the kremlin
said.
Putin also said that russia will start working on creating new missiles, including supersonic
ones, and told ministers not to initiate disarmament talks with Washington.
(https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-usa-nuclear-idUkL5N1ZX06P)
Blic: Pompeo: Zvanično nemamo obaveze prema INF
američki državni sekretar Majk Pompeo izjavio je večeras da su SaD i zvanično obustavile
izvršavanje svih obaveze prema Sporazumu o likvidaciji raketa srednjeg i kratkog dometa
(INf) koji su 1987. potpisali s tadašnjim Sovjetskim Savezom, a čiji je naslednik rusija.
Pompeo je dodao da su SaD uputile rusiji zvaničnu notu u kojoj najavljuju potpuno
povlačenje u roku od šest meseci, što je u skladu sa sporazumom, navodi AP. Prema njegovim
rečima,s SaD su uradile sve što su mogle da očuvaju sporazum, ali da zvanična Moskva i
dalje demantuje da je kršila sporazum svojim raketnim sistemom. Postupci rusije, kako
kaže američki državni sekretar, ugrožavaju SaD i ne mogu dopustiti da budu ograničeni
sporazumom dok ga druga strana otvoreno krši. Posle odluke SaD, i rusija je saopštila da je
ne više ne obavezuje sporazum INf.
(https://www.blic.rs/vesti/svet/pompeo-zvanicno-nemamo-obaveze-prema-inf/w63cdq6)
N1: SAD se povlače iz sporazuma o nuklearnom oružju s Rusijom
Državni sekretar SaD Majk Pompeo objavio je da se SaD povlače iz Sporazuma o nuklearnim
snagama srednjeg dometa (INf) sa rusijom, kojim se kontroliše nuklearno naoružanje od
vremena hladnog rata.
Sporazum su 1987. potpisali SaD i Sovjetski Savez, a SaD optužuju rusiju za njegovo
kršenje, što rusija negira.
„SaD će sutra suspendovati svoje obaveze u okviru INf sporazuma i pokrenuti proces
povlačenja iz tog sporazuma, koji će biti završen u roku od šest meseci u skladu sa članom
60“, rekao je Pompeo.
on je rekao da će sporazum, ukoliko rusija ne počne da se pridržava, biti ukinut.
to će se desiti ukoliko rusija ne bude počela da poštuje svoje obaveze i uništi sve rakete,
i opremu kojim se ovaj tekst sporazuma krši, napisao je predsednik Donald tramp u
saopštenju.
Pompeo je rekao da su SaD dale rusiji dovoljno vremena da ispravi svoje postupke i da
poštuje svoje obaveze preuzete tim sporazumom, i dodao da to vreme sutra ističe.
„rusija je ugrozila bezbednosne interese SaD i mi više ne možemo biti ograničeni
sporazumom dok ga rusija bestidno krši,“ rekao je Pompeo i dodao da će SaD zvanično
obavestiti rusiju i druge strane u sporazumu da se povlače iz sporazuma SaD.
87SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
Povlačenje SaD iz sporazuma je bilo očekivano mesecima. Usledilo je posle više godina
nerešenog spora oko ruskog poštovanja tog sporazuma i odnosi se na određene ruske krstareće
rakete. Prema sporazumu o nuklearnim snagama srednjeg dometa (INf) iz 1987. godine
između SaD i Sovjetskog Saveza, zabranjena je proizvodnja, testiranje i raspoređivanje
krstarećih i balističkih raketa dometa od 500 do 5.500 kilometara.
Pentagon smatra da novi ruski raketni sistem 9M729 potpada pod taj sporazum, a Moskva
tvrdi da ta raketa ima domet manji od 500 kilometara.
(https://n1info.rs/svet/a456939-sad-se-povlace-iz-sporazuma-o-nuklearnom-oruzju-s-
rusijom/)
AP: France to deploy troops to maintain security during protests
ParIS (AP) — french President emmanuel Macron has announced that soldiers will be
deployed across the country to help maintain security during yellow vest protests planned
this weekend.
Macron said the military will secure government buildings and other sites to allow police
forces to focus on maintaining public order, in comments reported Wednesday by govern-
ment spokesman Benjamin griveaux Wednesday.
about 7,000 soldiers, most armed with automatic weapons, are already deployed across the
country in what the military calls operation Sentinel, which was created to protect sensitive
sites following deadly attacks in 2015.
The french government announced on Monday new security measures and a ban on yellow
vest protests along the Champs-elysees avenue in Paris and in two other cities following
riots on Saturday that left luxury stores ransacked and charred from arson fires.
(https://apnews.com/article/9f79a3d301d64729b9a4be503cc994d1)
Reuters: –
Blic: GRAĐANSKI RAT U NAJAVI Francuska vojska za vikend izlazi na ulice zbog
najavljenog protesta “Žutih prsluka”
francuski vojnici biće raspoređeni u subotu, 23. marta tokom protesta “žutih prsluka” i
čuvaće javne objekte u slučaju da se ponovi nasilje u Parizu i drugim gradovima, saopštila je
danas francuska vlada.
Portparol francuske vlade Benžamin grivo rekao je novinarima da će vojska biti
preraspoređena iz antiterorističke operacije “Sentinel”, u okviru koje vojnici patroliraju uli-
cama i štite aerodrome, železničke stanice, bogomolje i druge lokacije.
on je dodao da će to omogućiti policiji da se koncentriše na kontrolu gomile i održanje
reda i mira.
Prošlog vikenda, više od 5.000 policajaca nije uspelo da zaustavi stotine nasilnih demonstra-
nata koji su divljali šanzelizeom, i koji su opljačkali i zapalili više od 100 firmi. Nasilje je
trajalo više od sedam sati, navodi afP.
88 katarina Petrović Journalistic Transcreation of News Agency Articles from English into Serbian ...
Nakon tih nereda, vlada je otpustila šefa pariske policije Mišela Delpuša.
vladini izvori rekli su da će još neki visoki policijski zvaničnici biti smenjeni.
Neki policijski sindikati upozorili su da održavanje reda i mira na ulicama nije zadatak za
vojnike.
(https://www.blic.rs/vesti/svet/gradjanski-rat-u-najavi-francuska-vojska-za-vikend-izlazi-na-
ulice-zbog-najavljenog/blme2w2)
N1: Pojačanje za naredni protest Žutih prsluka - vojna antiteroristička jedinica
Pripadnici francuske vojne antiterorističke misije “Stražar” (Sentinelle) biće dodatno ra-
sporedjeni u subotu za vreme protesta gradjanskog pokreta “Žuti prsluci” gde će izmedju
ostalog obezbeđivati zgrade zvaničnih institucija, saopštila je francuska vlada.
ta incijativa će omogućiti policiji i drugim pripadnicima snaga bezbednosti da se usredsrede
na kretanje demonstransta, a cilj je održavanje javnog reda i mira, izjavio je portparol vlade
Benžamen grivo, nekoliko dana posle nasilja i nereda koji su izbili u pariskoj aveniji Jelise-
jskih polja za vreme protesta „žutih prsluka“.
vlasti su posle toga zabranile okupljanja na toj čuvenoj aveniji kao i u nekoliko četvrti gra-
dova u francuskoj gde su izbijali neredi.
Premijer eduar filip je najavio da će vlasti odgovoriti na nasilje na protestima gradjan-
skog pokreta koji organizuje demonstracije od 17. novembra zbog nezadovoljstva opštom
državnom politikom.
Neke opozicione stranke su kritikovale danas najavljeno rasporedjivanje vojske.
Desničarska stranka republikanci smatra da vojnici nisu obučeni za obezbedjivanje javnog
reda i mira, već za borbe i da ubijaju u slučaju rata. radikalna levica ocenila je da vojska ne
može da zameni policiju jer to nije njen posao.
vojna antiteroristička misija „Stražar“ angažovana je od terorističkih napada u januaru 2015.
u Parizu. vojnici su rasporedjeni ispred nekih verskih objekata, kao što su sinagoge i džamije.
Nalaze se i na mestima koja mogu da budu mete napada, kao što su turističke lokacije ili
železničke stanice.
(https://n1info.rs/svet/a469767-pojacanje-za-naredni-protest-zutih-prsluka-vojna-antiter-
oristicka-jedinica/)
89SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
2023, vol. 20 (1), 89-112(228)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1.89-112
UDC: [811.111:37.091.3]:81'322
Mariangela Picciuolo
University of Bologna, Italy
An ELF-Oriented Corpus-Based Analysis into the
EMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial Deixis across Two
Different Teaching Media
aBStraCt
In the last two decades, english-Medium Instruction (eMI) has fast increased in non-
anglophone universities, with the result that non-native english speaker (NNeS) lecturers
are increasingly using english as a lingua franca (eLf) to interact with their NNeS students
in the classroom. as such, eMI represents “a prototypical eLf scenario” (Smit 2017, 387).
This paper identifies and describes language variations that occurred in eMI lecturers’ talk in a
comparable corpus of six eMI engineering lectures taught in two different teaching modalities:
in-person and virtual synchronous classrooms. By means of a corpus-based methodology, this
study particularly focuses on lexical spatial deixis as it allows the lecturer to direct students’
attention towards a common referent so as to ensure students’ comprehension and participation
(hyland 2005). The findings indicate that the use of proximal deictics differs according to the
context, with interactional and pedagogical implications beyond eMI.
Keywords: english-medium instruction, english as a lingua franca, teachers, oral speech,
eMI corpus, corpus-based methods, spatial deixis, online teaching
Korpusna analiza rabe prostorske deikse pri izvedbi predavanj v
angleščini kot lingui franci preko dveh različnih učnih medijev
PovZetek
v zadnjih dveh desetletjih se je na neanglofonskih univerzah hitro razširila raba angleščine
kot medija poučevanja (aMP), zaradi česar predavatelji, ki niso materni govorci angleščine,
za interakcijo s študenti, ki prav tako niso materni govorci angleščine, v razredu vse pogosteje
uporabljajo angleščino kot linguo franco (aLf). angleščina kot medij poučevanja tako
predstavlja »prototipični scenarij aLf« (Smit 2017, 387). v članku predstavimo jezikovne
variacije, ki se pojavljajo v govoru predavateljev v primerljivem korpusu šestih predavanj za
inženirje, ki se izvajajo v angleškem jeziku in preko dveh različnih učnih medijev: v klasični
predavalnici in v sinhroni virtualni učilnici. S pomočjo korpusne metodologije se raziskava
osredinja na leksikalno prostorsko deikso, ki predavatelju omogoča, da usmeri pozornost
študentov na isti skupni referent in tako zagotovi njihovo razumevanje in sodelovanje (hyland
2005). rezultati raziskave kažejo, da se raba proksimalnih deiktičnih izrazov razlikuje glede
na kontekst, kar ima interakcijske in pedagoške implikacije izven aMP.
Ključne besede: angleščina kot medij poučevanja, angleščina kot lingua franca, učitelji, ustni
govor, korpus aMP, korpusne metode, prostorska deiksa, spletno poučevanje
90 Mariangela Picciuolo An ELF-Oriented Corpus-Based Analysis into the EMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial Deixis ...
1 Introduction
In the last two decades, english-Medium Instruction (eMI) has fast increased in non-
anglophone – and particularly european – universities, with the result that non-native
english speaker (NNeS) lecturers are increasingly using english as a lingua franca (eLf) to
interact with their NNeS students in the classroom. as such, eMI represents “a prototypical
eLf scenario” (Smit 2017, 387). however, studies into eMI from an eLf perspective are
still quite rare, as evidenced by the fact that much research into eMI lecturers’ talk still takes
english native language as its “lubber line” (Doiz and Lasagabaster 2022).
Parallel to the international rise of eMI is the increasing rate of eMI courses delivered
through online platforms during and after the CovID-19 pandemic. although computer
technology “has become ecological and normalized” (Zhou and Wei 2018, 471) in the
language classroom, the use of newer technology in the eMI classroom is a relatively new
phenomenon with little investigation.
to address this gap, this exploratory study illustrates language variations occurring in
eMI lecturers’ discourse when teaching in different teaching modalities – i.e., face-to-face
(ftf) and online synchronous video lectures (SvL). It adopts corpus-based methods in
combination with qualitative analysis to identify contextual language variations occurring in
the speech of three Italian first-language lecturers teaching in eMI courses at the department
of engineering at an Italian university. Since one of the major changes brought about by
the shift to online teaching is related to the physical setting, this study aimed at examining
variations in lecturers’ use of spatial deictic markers whose meanings rely greatly on the
situational context of utterance. This paper begins with a review of the theoretical background
and previous research relevant to eMI lectures in both classroom-based and online settings.
It provides a foundation for the present study, which adopts a case study framework and
considers the relationship between contextual factors – i.e., the affordances and constraints
of each teaching/learning environment – and lecturers’ discursive practices. Data collection
and methodology are then presented, followed by a summary of findings, which leads to
a discussion highlighting the potential of integrating innovative technology into teaching
methods to improve eMI lecturers’ communicative effectiveness and, possibly, to facilitate
students’ comprehension in the eMI classroom.
2 Background
a well-known definition by Dearden (2015, 4) describes english-Medium Instruction (eMI)
as “[t]he use of the english language to teach academic subjects (other than english itself) in
countries or jurisdictions where the first language (L1) of the majority of the population is not
english.” as such, the eMI classroom falls in the realm of english as a lingua franca (eLf).
however, despite the increasing “importance and amount of english as a lingua franca
(eLf) usage and eMI lectures” (Siegel 2020, 73) in the last two decades, Murata (2018)
underlines the “relatively unknown territory” (Siegel 2020, 1) related to eLf and eMI in
educational contexts. furthermore, Björkman (2018, 227) emphasizes that despite “the
myriad of domains where english has become an important lingua franca, we are far from
An ELF-Oriented
Corpus-Based
Analysis into the
EMI Lecturers’ Use
of Spatial Deixis ...
91SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
having explored academic usage of english as a lingua franca fully. […] especially with respect
to the importance of contextual factors, methodological approaches and data.”
The study described in this paper involves eMI content courses at a university in northern
Italy where such courses have existed for more than 10 years, although they have seen a
recent dramatic increase in numbers. In the academic year 2021/22, 96 international courses
were offered by the University of Bologna (UNIBo) – 56 taught entirely in english, and 23
including at least one english taught study programme – out of a total of 234 degree programs,
resulting in a 50% increase compared to the academic year 2016/17.1 This trend is expected to
be consolidated in the coming years more broadly at the international level, “which makes this
a topic of importance for tertiary education at a global level” (Siegel 2020, 74).
While previous research on eMI has often paid much attention to the proficiency levels of both
eMI lecturers and students, more recent eLf-oriented eMI studies (e.g., Björkman 2010;
Dang 2018, 2020; Deroey and Johnson 2021; Morell 2018; Siegel 2020; trent 2017) have
increasingly emphasized the role contextual factors play in affecting speakers’ communicative
practices. These studies have focused on lexis, metadiscourse markers, classroom interaction,
and pragmatics.
2.1 Lexis
as Jablonkai (2021, 95) points out, “[t]o inform eMI programme developers about the
linguistic difficulties students might face, corpus studies that focused on disciplinary
vocabulary load and lexical complexity are of specific relevance.” In academic lectures,
the presence of unfamiliar words and expressions might be a serious obstacle to students’
comprehension, especially for L2 students. Therefore, previous studies examining academic
discourse from an eLf perspective also focused on lexical features – such as lexical bundles
(Biber 2004; Biber and Barbieri 2007), their cohesive role (Nesi and Basturkmen 2006),
and the frequency of formulaic expressions (Simpson 2004; Simpson-vlach and ellis 2010),
investigating lexical variations of both oral and written academic discourse – as described
in detail by Biber (2006) and Biber et al. (2002). Martinez, adolph, and Carter (2013)
investigated lexical bundles used by lecturers to introduce key terms. They revealed that the
function of defining was often realized through words such as or, essentially or basically which
carry a pragmatic meaning of which L2 students might not be aware, hence potentially
hindering their comprehension. These findings are in line with Mazak and herbas-Donoso’s
(2015) study of translanguaging in a Spanish eMI context, which showed that the professor
mostly translanguaged key terminology as a way to apprentice students into english for
Specific Purposes (eSP). research has also investigated lexical variations across different
disciplines (e.g., Dang 2018, 2020; gardner and Xu 2019; hyland and tse 2007; Mudraya
2006), particularly in terms of frequency, collocation, range, meanings and functions of
lexical patterns. among these latter, Dang (2018, 2020) showed that the discourse of hard
Sciences, both spoken and written, is characterized by a higher lexical coverage than that of
1 UNIBo Quality assurance Committee, 2022 annual report. available at: https://www.unibo.it/
nucleodivalutazione/Documenti/reLaZIoNe%20aNNUaLe%20NDv%202022_con%20allegati.
pdf?Source=/nucleodivalutazione/default.aspx
92 Mariangela Picciuolo An ELF-Oriented Corpus-Based Analysis into the EMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial Deixis ...
the Soft Sciences, recommending that eSP course material should include wordlists based on
a particular subject.
2.2 Metadiscourse Markers
In the last two years, there has been an increasing research interest into the use of metadiscourse
markers in the eMI classroom. Metadiscourse refers to “aspects of a text”, whether spoken or
written, “which explicitly organize a discourse or the writer’s stance towards either its content
or the reader” (hyland 2015, 14). Questions and second-person pronouns (engagement
markers), and conjunctions and adverbial phrases (transition framers) are good examples of
this. as such, “[m]etadiscourse reveals the writer’s awareness of the reader and his or her need
for elaboration, clarification, guidance and interaction” (hyland 2015, 17). Metadiscourse
markers are of paramount importance in lecture comprehension, and this especially applies to
eMI lectures, which are generally monologic and highly informative (Broggini and Murphy
2017; Molino 2018). These studies have shown that, although the lecture genre, cultural issues
and disciplinary culture may play a role in lecturers’ use of interactive metadiscourse when
teaching in eMI, as seen with the use of reminders and frame markers (Doiz and Lasagabaster
2022), certain metadiscursive features are more likely to be related to eMI, especially personal
metatext forms – such as reformulations and metalinguistic comments (Molino 2018), and
self-mentions (Broggini and Murphy 2017) thus revealing that eMI lectures tend to be more
conversational, spontaneous and informal. furthermore, impersonal metadiscourse expressions,
such as connectives, were found to be less frequent in eMI lecturers’ spoken language, and
they also demonstrated a limited variety of connectors (Broggini and Murphy 2017). In this
regard, Mauranen (2012) compared word frequencies in the eLfa and the MICaSe corpora
showing that although NNS lecturers tend to use a smaller range of vocabulary, their more
limited lexical and syntactic repertoire rarely obstruct comprehension. finally, in their corpus-
based contrastive study of lecturers’ use of importance markers, Deroey and Johnson (2021)
found that there is little difference in the way that L1 and eMI lecturers use importance
markers, but some intracorpus differences were identified, meaning that it was the lecturers’
teaching experience and the educational culture, rather than their language proficiency, which
also played a role in lecturers’ use of metadiscursive markers.
2.3 Classroom Interaction
Interactional practices in the eMI classroom have been the focus of increasing research
interest. Studies on this topic have used surveys and interviews to explore lecturers’ and
students’ attitudes and perceptions towards classroom practices involved in eMI (Morell
2007; Picciuolo and Johnson 2020; revell and Wainwright 2009). In the Italian context, for
example, Picciuolo and Johnson (2020) show that both eMI Italian lecturers and domestic
students still have a non-native accent bias, such that they mainly attribute comprehension
problems in the eMI classrooms to accent and pronunciation-related issues, despite the
“interlanguage benefit” (Bent and Bradlow 2003), whereas international students do not
see the lecturers’ accent as an important issue. Similarly, in the lecturers’ view, local students’
low english competence would hinder interaction in their classes, although some lecturers
also indicated their own linguistic insecurity, besides lecture time constraints, as a major issue
93SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
in preventing them from engaging in longer verbal exchanges. In this regard, other corpus-
based investigations in this field have focused on lecturers’ use of personal pronouns as a
means for engaging students with lecture content and enhancing students’ comprehension,
comparing pronoun frequency and function across disciplines (e.g., Johnson and Picciuolo
2022a; yeo and ting 2014). These studies have shown that lecturers tend to favour the use
of the personal pronoun you but with an impersonal and generalized function, i.e., when
it does not refer to the audience. Similarly, a preference for the exclusive-oriented personal
pronoun we also appeared in eMI lecturer discourse, with little variation occurring across
disciplines. once again, these results suggest that eMI lecturers are unwilling to promote
bidirectional verbal exchanges with their students (Johnson and Picciuolo 2020). however,
by triangulating classroom discourse analysis with findings from lecturers’ surveys, previous
studies (e.g., Picciuolo and Johnson 2020) have also emphasized that the disciplinary culture
and lecturers’ personal attitudes and beliefs – which are nonetheless culture-dependent – are
likely to affect eMI lecturers’ interactional practices.
further studies on classroom interactions in eMI settings have adopted a corpus-based
approach to examining how lecturers engage students through questioning. These works
have shown that eMI lecturers mainly use closed and cognitively undemanding questions
(Sánchez-garcía 2018) such as confirmation checks, display or even referential questions,
which are less likely to engender a verbal response from the students. furthermore, although
eMI lecturers’ preference for confirmation checks might also be due to their greater need to
monitor and ensure students’ comprehension when teaching through an L2 (Sánchez-garcía
2018), it was more generally found to be typical of the lecture genre, with little variations
occurring across different L1 and disciplinary contents (Chang 2011; Crawford Camiciottoli
2004, 2008; Dafouz Milne and Sánchez garcía 2013), such that differences in lecturers’
questioning practices seem to be determined to a greater extent by their instructional style
(Morell 2004; Northcott 2001). In this regard, Morell (2018) showed that eMI lecturers,
when specifically trained, make greater use of elicitations, more cognitive demanding
questions, and negotiation strategies than L1 lecturers, but they also show that these
questioning practices emerge when setting up pair/group work activities, thus confirming an
interdependence between contextual factors – e.g., type of learning activity being carried out,
number of students involved – and discursive practices.
2.4 Pragmatics
In this regard, studies have investigated eLf speakers’ use of pragmatic strategies for effective
spoken academic interaction as well as to what extent contextual factors affect eMI lecturers’
discourse (e.g., alsop and Nesi 2013; Bellés-fortuño and fortanet-gómez 2009; Björkman
2010, 2011). alsop and Nesi (2013) investigated cross-cultural and cross-linguistic variations
in engineering lecturers’ use of summary, showing that eMI NNS lecturers used summary
for previewing and reviewing current talk more often than NS lecturers, thus paying more
attention to reinforcing content than NS lecturers.
Moving away from the native/non-native dichotomy, Björkman (2010) examined lecturers’
and students’ use of selected pragmatic strategies in two different eLf speech events (lectures
94 Mariangela Picciuolo An ELF-Oriented Corpus-Based Analysis into the EMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial Deixis ...
and students’ work groups). She found that such strategies are employed more frequently
and with a wider variety by students in group-work sessions than by lecturers in lectures.
however, she also points out that variations in the type and frequency of pragmatic strategies
used “cannot solely be attributed to the speakers” (Björkman 2010, 960), but rather to
certain communicative goals the speakers pursue. In fact, while students might feel a greater
need to get a message across in order to accomplish a shared task in the group-work session,
the lecturers’ “job is primarily to deliver the content” (Björkman 2010, 961, our emphasis).
She then illustrates several strategies and examples of a lecturer’s skilful use of pragmatic
strategies, including “commenting on discourse contents […] labelling the speech act since
the speakers verbalize what it is they do” (Björkman 2010, 956). She calls for shifting eMI
lecturers’ attention from achieving high L2 proficiency levels to developing a set of functional
strategies, which might be viewed as more encouraging by eMI lecturers, as being faster to
learn and more closely related to their academic field. In this regard, Lau, Cousineau, and
Lin’s (2016) study particularly focused on eMI lecturers’ use of pragmatic force modifiers
(e.g., actually, just, kind of) and found that students generally misunderstood the intended
pragmatic-functional meaning of these lexical items. as such, Lau, Cousineau, and Lin
(2016) call for more pragmatic approaches to be taken in providing training to eMI lecturers.
In this regard, other studies have identified further pragmatic strategies eMI lecturers may
use to facilitate students’ comprehension, including:
making the individual lecturer’s style clear to students, making transitional signals clear,
giving students focusing questions at the beginning of a lecture, pausing regularly to
avoid cognitive overload, and allowing for notetaking and collaboration (e.g., flowerdew
and Miller 2000; rodgers and Webb 2016). repetition of key points is an additional
step eMI teachers can take (e.g., flowerdew and Miller 1996). (Siegel 2020, 80)
overall, it is clear from this brief and by no mean exhaustive overview that much eMI research
attention has been paid to lecturers’ discourse, as being the “front-line instructors who are
responsible for the delivery of content subjects” (trent 2017, 220) in the eMI classroom.
furthermore, while the lecturer’s english competence is not the only determining element
affecting students’ comprehension, previous research has long focused on eMI lecturers’
english use as “it remains one of the most tangible [factor] and one that students may identify
most frequently when they elaborate on their ability to understand (or not) eMI lectures”
(Siegel 2020, 88). Nevertheless, in contrast to “a deficit view raising doubts about the capacity
of instructors whose mother tongue is not english to deliver content subjects […] in english
and to adequately support student learning in eMI environments” (trent 2017, 220) eLf
approaches to eMI have looked at eMI lecturers’ classroom discourse assuming a difference
rather than a deficit orientation. These studies have shown to what extent contextual and
situational factors in the eMI classroom contribute to lecturers’ teaching and discursive
practices, emphasizing that (monologic) lecture genre, (directing) instructional style, and
disciplinary culture all affect interactional patterns and classroom discourse more than
lecturers’ and students’ linguistic difficulties. for example, Siegel’s (2020) study shows that
the factors affecting students’ listening comprehension in eMI lectures also include students’
background knowledge of the topic, students’ familiarity with a lecturer’s accent, and effective
visual aids (e.g., PowerPoint slides) used by the lecturer.
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2.5 Digital tools and Language Learning
In this last regard, Siegel (2020) questions the use of technology (e.g., PowerPoint slides and
their availability online) as a way of making lectures less demanding. as he puts it:
visual aids, and software such as PowerPoint in particular, have become ubiquitous
in higher education. Utilizing PowerPoint during lectures is largely viewed as
advantageous for both lecturers and students, as the tool supports the organization
of information, notetaking and holding student attention (e.g., roehling and trent-
Brown 2011). however […] while lecturers have technological tools to help support
student learning in and from lectures, these tools need to be used with care to maximize
their effectiveness. Siegel (2020, 80)
The affordances and constraints of digital resources to language teaching and learning have
been widely discussed within efL contexts. In Zhou and Wei’s (2018) systematic review
of research on technology-enhanced language learning (teLL) they particularly emphasize
the benefits provided by the use of digital resources to teach and learn language learning
strategies, particularly in terms of self-regulation and autonomous learning. The authors also
stress that “[t]he pervasive use of mobile technologies and easy access to online resources
require that digital language learners understand and employ appropriate learning strategies
for learning effectiveness and that their teachers are able and willing to teach these strategies
as needed” (Zhou and Wei 2018, 471).
although these findings have important implications for eMI, studies investigating the use of
educational technology specifically in the eMI classroom are still rare. Cicillini and giacosa
(2020), for example, investigated eMI lecturers’ and students’ perceptions about the shift
to online teaching and learning during the CovID-19 pandemic. Their study revealed that
“issues such as language proficiency and poor interaction” (Cicillini and giacosa 2020, 59)
still seemed to affect eMI in online settings in a very similar way as in eMI ftf classes.
however, they also showed that the majority of both lecturers and students “succeeded in
reaching their goals and improved their skills” (Cicillini and giacosa 2020, 59) and that
online learning was considered by both stakeholders as a potential force to speed up the
internationalization process and make academic instruction more flexible for both local and
international students’ needs. Similarly, hammond and radjai’s (2022) study shows that
Japanese lecturers expressed satisfaction towards the growth of online international programs
for virtual student mobility during the pandemic, as lecturers feel freer “to personally
internationalize their curriculum […] without excessive external interference” (hammond
and radjai 2022, 87). taking a more applied linguistics perspective, gay’s (2022) study
shows the effectiveness of certain digital tools (e.g., websites/apps and Moodle platforms) to
help mixed-ability eMI students learn vocabulary learning strategies (vLSs) so as to increase
the scope of their vocabulary as well as to promote higher levels of self-regulation. Querol-
Julián (2021) identified and described eMI lecturers’ communicative functions when
interacting in a large eMI online lecture from a multimodal perspective. She outlined some
of the major challenges facing eMI lecturers when delivering classes online for large groups,
including a lack of experience in online synchronous teaching, and the separation of teachers
from students, which inevitably affects interaction, as students can “hide behind technology”
96 Mariangela Picciuolo An ELF-Oriented Corpus-Based Analysis into the EMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial Deixis ...
and the lecturer “cannot feel the pulse of the class for understanding” (Querol-Julián 2021,
311). however, she also noticed that in online settings, “teacher discourse functions were
built up by chains of non-linguistic modes that interact with linguistic mode”, and that
“some embodied modes were crucial in the construction of interaction, structuring, focusing
and intensifying discourse, playing interpersonal functions and showing epistemic stance”
(Querol-Julián 2021, 311). Nevertheless, students may find it difficult to understand “the
relationship between verbal and nonverbal cues that combine to co-construct meaning
within a range of academic listening situations (e.g., lectures, webinars and massive online
open courses; Campoy-Cubillo and Querol-Julián 2015)” (Siegel 2020, 70).
More recently, Chien et al. (2022) examined both the verbal and non-verbal teaching materials
eMI lecturers use in online courses. verbal teaching materials include the lecturers’ speech,
textbooks, slides and whiteboard text. Non-verbal teaching materials include images projected
on the screen or drawn on the whiteboard as well as teachers’ body movements, including
the way they interact with the teaching objects (e.g., the whiteboard) in the classroom.
Despite being primarily aimed at presenting a new method to automate the evaluation of
eMI lecturers attending training courses online, the findings from this study also support the
pivotal role played by multimodal competence in achieving “educational effectiveness” (Siegel
2020, 76). furthermore, it also acknowledges that, in the online classroom, the components
which make up lecturers’ multimodal competence include their ability to effectively interact
with computer systems and objects in the physical world. except from these few examples,
however, eMI in online settings is still an “unexplored academic instructional digital genre”
(Querol-Julián, 2021).
to address this gap, this exploratory study aims to identify and describe language variations
occurred in eMI lecturers’ talk as a consequence of the shift to online teaching following the
CovID-19 lockdown. Since one of the major changes brought about by the shift to online
teaching is related to the physical setting, this study aimed at examining variations in the use
of spatial deixis.
2.6 Spatial Deixis
Spatial conceptualization and its realization in language-use has provided a vast field of
research for scholars from different research areas. Starting from the pioneering works by
Bühler (1934) and fillmore (1997 [1971]), spatial deixis (henceforth SD) has come to refer
to a specific set of linguistic items – e.g., speech patterns such as “this one” or “over there”
– which are recruited by the speaker to refer to entities present in the perceptual spatial
surroundings of the participants. as such, spatial deictic markers “function as signposts
within the deictic field” (Stukenbrock 2014, 72), so as “to coordinate the interlocutors’ joint
focus of attention, which is one of the most basic functions of human communication”
(Diessel 2006, 463).
earlier theorizations of SD (Lyons 1977) identified three prototypical features – i.e., the
interactants, a dialogic process, and a shared physical context – which constitute a “coordinate
system of perceptions at whose zero-point lies what is called the origo, i.e., the I-now-here-
centre of the speaker’s subjective orientation” (Stukenbrock 2014, 72, emphasis in original).
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however, more recent studies have criticized the egocentricity of the deictic centre (e.g.,
fricke 2002; hanks 1990; Laczkó 2010), revealing that in dialogic interactions the spatial
origo may also shift from the speaker’s to somebody else’s point of view, thus showing the
participants’ mutual cooperation in the co-construction of meaning. examples of such
instances include when the deictic locative adverb here symbolically refers to either: a) a
geographical place, such as a city or a nation; b) “an imaginary locus” (Bazzanella 2019, 7)
such as the speaker’s body – what Bühler (1934) referred to as deixis am phantasma as in
John broke his leg here, uttered while pointing to her/his own leg – or the speaker’s visual
imagination, as in Levinson’s (2004, 103) example: “Imagine this room were my office. The
book would be right here [pointing to the edge of my desk]”; c) another person’s location,
as happens in reported speech. In all these three cases, the interpretation of the referent
requires that participants share “physical context, appropriate context and common ground”
(Bazzanella 2019, 7) in order to be understood.
2.6.1 SD in remote Interactions
as Bazzanella (2019, 9) points out, in written, partially synchronic interactions such as chat and
text messages “[t]he lack of common physical context […] sometimes makes understanding
a laborious or even unsuccessful process”. for example, “I’m here ‒ uttered on a train while
using a mobile phone ‒ is completely inadequate pragmatically, given that the interlocutor
cannot guess the speaker’s (unshared) position” (Bazzanella 2019, 9‒10). Therefore, such an
utterance requires either the speaker or the interlocutor to use conversational strategies (e.g.,
auto-correction, repair) in order to achieve mutual understanding.
In this last regard, the technological developments of the last two decades have produced
dramatic changes in communication practices. Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC)
environments – e.g., instant messaging and video-conferencing platforms – have facilitated
communication among people across space and time by offering a wide range of visual,
symbolic, spatial, and deictic channels of communication. however, “remote communication
is still limited compared to face-to-face interaction (eisert 2003), in particular concerning
deictic expressions” (Medrano, Pfeiffer, and kray 2020, 1867). Therefore, much research in
human-Computer Interaction (hCI) dealing with deictic communication in distributed
interactions has paid increasing attention to the use of remote pointing gestures as an effective
resource to structure and direct participants’ visual attention (see, e.g., kirk, rodden, and
fraser 2007). however, to the best of our knowledge few studies have analysed participants’
use of spatial deictic expressions in virtual interactions. among the few studies that do exist,
fussell et al. (2004) investigated the effects of remote pointing gestures on language in
collaborative physical tasks showing that the use of pointing gesture tools led to less verbose
referential expressions amongst the instructors, being replaced by higher rates of proximal
deixis use – e.g., this, here – which in turn was correlated with faster task performance.
2.6.2 SD in english
In english, SD is primarily expressed through devices such as demonstrative determiners and
pronouns this/these and that/those and locative adverbs here/there.
98 Mariangela Picciuolo An ELF-Oriented Corpus-Based Analysis into the EMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial Deixis ...
furthermore, english speakers divide space in binary ways, with here, this, and these marking
something proximal (or close) while there, that, and those indicate entities distal (or distant) in
relation to the speaker’s point of reference, whether the referent is physically or psychologically
close or distant (Cairns 1991). In fact, as Cairns (1991) points out, speakers’ use of SD
not only reflects the concrete physical distance from the speaker or addressee, but it also
creates a psychological distance from a proposition in order to express an attitude. In this
regard, of particular interest are examples (1) and (2). In example (1) from friginal et al.
(2017) the teacher points to a typing mistake that a student identified. Notice that when the
teacher points out the mistake, she uses that, but uses this when indicating what is correct.
(1) t: yeah, oh that is wrong, yeah it’s wrong you were right it is wrong. yeah, I have to,
now this is correct actually that’s a good thing you pointed that out Diep now see
Diep, was a, a teacher. (L2CD-t-13) (friginal et al. 2017, 124)
example (2) is an excerpt from our sub-corpus of online synchronous video lectures (SvL)
eMI lectures.
(2) t: one solution which I don’t have time to go to get into now, but I think. It is
worthwhile, you know, looking it because it’s a nice example of adversarial
networks. Is this one. So if you’re curious, look at that. (Lect 2_SvL)
here, the lecturer first uses this when referring to an object (i.e., the image of an adversarial
network) which is obviously closer to the lecturer, since it is visible to him on his screen and
then shared through a video-platform. But in the following utterance he does a straightforward
reformulation and uses that. It might be argued that the demonstrative that is used to refer to
the previous sentence instead, thus working as anaphoric reference or discourse deixis2 rather
than SD. however, the co-occurrence with the verb to look suggests that the demonstrative
that is rather used to point to an object. furthermore, with this reformulation the lecturer
discursively replaces “distance” with “proximity” transferring the object from the speaker’s
position (i.e., his own) to the addressee’s perspective (i.e., his students). This, in turn, seems
to highlight “the common spatial context” of the lecturer and students (Bamford 2004, 135)
as a demonstration of social proximity.
2.6.3 SD in Lecture Discourse
SD is of critical importance in lecture discourse (fillmore 1997; Levinson 1983). example
(3) below shows a lecturer from our SvL sub-corpus showing a picture (figure 1) to his
students.
(3) t: look at the blue line or the black line. these are moving averages of concentration
of isotopes in the atmosphere (Lect 1_SvL)
SD allows the lecturer to anchor students in the physical space of the classroom (friginal
et al. 2017) and “to establish a joint focus of attention on a referent” (Peeters, hagoort,
2 exploring the differences between anaphoric reference and discourse deixis goes beyond the purpose of this study, so
we will henceforth generically refer to anaphora. for further reading on this see, for example, Cornish (2007).
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and Özyürek 2015, 64) so as to ensure students’ comprehension and participation (hyland
2005). however, despite their importance in ftf interactions, few studies have specifically
examined SD in classroom discourse.
Bamford (2004) observed that university lecturers made greater use of gestural here to make
reference to visuals and to highlight “the common spatial context” of the lecturer and students
(Bamford 2004, 135) as a demonstration of social proximity. In addition, she observes that the
use of deixis is one way lecturers tailor their talk to students’ linguistic needs. Biber (2004)
also found that referential bundles (i.e., lexical bundles including SD as in that’s one of the,
and this is a) occur only in classroom teaching as a means to identify an entity. furthermore,
yang (2014) showed that that and this are among the top 20 most frequent words in Chinese
college efL teachers’ discourse as in the MICaSe corpus.
friginal et al. (2017) particularly focused on SD in the english for academic Purposes
(eaP) classroom. They found that teachers shift from proximal to distal SD equally, thus
directing learners’ attention to entities proximally and distally from their own speaker territory,
which is also reflective of higher contextualized and interactive classrooms. They also found
that that occurs more frequently than this, which is typical of casual conversations. finally,
they showed that the frequency of here is higher in eaP classrooms than in university lectures,
which may be attributed to the greater need to physically contextualize lesson content and
activities in eaP classrooms than university lectures.
example (4) from our ftf sub-corpus shows a lecturer alternating between proximal and
distal SD as a kind of negotiation between his students and his own point of reference.
(4) t: but then this counts together with the description that says this is a critical section,
that’s a critical section (Lect 3_ftf)
Since we found no systematic studies in the literature on the use of SD in eMI lecturers’
speech, this exploratory study reports on a corpus-based comparative discourse analysis of
lexical spatial deixis used by eMI lecturers at university in two different teaching modalities,
ftf and SvL. as this study only involved three lecturers, the findings and discussion cannot
be generalized but instead are intended to raise awareness among lecturers and students, as
well as researchers and educational policy makers, of the potential of applying a technology-
enhanced approach to onsite eMI teaching.
3 Methodology
to examine and compare eMI lecturers’ discourse across the two teaching modalities, we
extracted six lectures from the emiBo corpus (Johnson and Picciuolo 2022b) to build up
two comparable sub-corpora of the same lecturers giving their eMI classes in two different
teaching modalities (ftf and SvL). The following sections describe the study setting and the
participants, as well as the data collection tools and methods. finally, it is important to note
that lecturers’ demographic data were collected in 2018 as part of the initial stage of a wider
100 Mariangela Picciuolo An ELF-Oriented Corpus-Based Analysis into the EMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial Deixis ...
project carried out at the targeted university.3 Demographic details were collected by means
of surveys and interviews of eMI lecturers (Picciuolo and Johnson 2020). as such, these data
will henceforth be referred to as secondary data.
3.1 Participants
Three eMI lecturers at a university in northern Italy volunteered to participate in the project.
all three taught in eMI master’s degree courses at the department of engineering. When this
research was carried out, all three lecturers had been teaching in eMI classes for more than five
years. from our secondary data, we observe that all three lecturers are L1 Italian users and speak
english as an L2, with a self-declared english language level of C1 of the Common european
framework of reference (Council of europe 2022). furthermore, two lecturers (Lect 2 and
Lect 3) ranged in age between 41 to 50, while one lecturer (Lect 1) was over the age of 65.
table 1. Lecturers’ demographics.
Lecturers Lect 1 Lect 2 Lect 3
Age > 65 41-50 41-50
L1 Italian Italian Italian
Self-declared English language level C1 C1 C1
EMI teaching experience > 5 years > 5 years > 5 years
EMI classroom attendance rate on
average
<25 75-100 25-100
as shown in greater detail in table 1, attendance at these master’s degree lectures ranged
widely, from fewer than 25 to 100 students, with little difference between the two teaching
modalities. The L2 english proficiency levels of the students who attended the selected lectures
were not measured directly for this study. Nonetheless, according to the enrolment policies
of the university where this study took place, to be eligible for an eMI course, students must
provide proof of english language qualification at a level of B2 of Cefr (2022). Lect 1 and
Lect 3 stated that international students attending their classes accounted for 50-75% of
the total, while in Lect 2’s classes less than 10% of the total were non-domestic students.
finally, secondary survey data collected in 2018 show that the most frequent nationalities of
origin of students attending eMI courses at the selected department were Indian, Norwegian,
azerbaijani, Iranian, german, Syrian, Brazilian, kazakhstan, Portuguese, and Italian.
3.2 Data Collection
The targeted participants’ demographics and average attendance rates at the selected lecturers
were collected through surveys conducted between 2018 and 2020 with both lecturers and
students attending eMI classes at the department of engineering of the university where this
study took place (Picciuolo and Johnson 2020). for the purposes of the same project, lecture
audio-recordings of ftf classes were collected between 2018 and 2019, whereas lecture
3 The “Insegnare in lingua inglese all’UNIBo” project started in 2018 and was assisted by funding from UNIBo
research grant number ID-51465.
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video-recordings of SvL were voluntarily shared by the same targeted lecturers through the
online platform Microsoft Stream between 2020 and 2022. The transcripts of these lecture
recordings are now part of a monitor corpus, the “emiBo Corpus” (Johnson and Picciuolo
2022b). The study presented in this paper reports in particular on six eMI lectures extracted
from the emiBo corpus.
More specifically, this analysis focuses on six eMI engineering lectures delivered by three
Italian lecturers in two different teaching modalities (ftf and SvL) over a time span of
three academic years. Data referring to duration and word counts of each lecture are shown
in greater detail in table 2.
table 2. Duration and word count of each lecture in the two sub-corpora.
Lecturers
(Lect) Year
Duration
(min.)
Total duration/
modality (min.)
Words
Total words/
modality
FTF
1 2018 90
258
11,266
22,4342 2018 66 6,526
3 2019 102 4,642
SVL
1 2020 144
302
17,567
32,5622 2020 111 10,362
3 2020 47 4,633
Total 3* 560 54,996
3.3 Data Collection and analysis Procedures
to examine and compare eMI lecturers’ use of spatial deixis across different teaching modalities,
we first extracted six lectures from the emiBo corpus to build two sub-corpora (ftf and
SvL). We limited our analysis to demonstrative determiners and pronouns (this/these, that/
those), and adverbs of location (here/there). Using the corpus tool Sketchengine (kilgarriff
et al. 2014) we searched electronically for each instance of these deictic markers. Upon
identifying all examples in the two sub-corpora, each potential item was examined manually
in its context in order to determine whether it was functioning as a spatial deictic, or not.
annotation was done manually using the tool SkeMa (which stands for Sketchengine
manual annotation). Therefore, demonstratives and locatives that did not function as spatial
deixis were excluded from the analysis. after identifying those demonstratives and locatives
that only functioned as spatial deictics, the tokens were normalized to occurrences per 1,000
words (ptw). additionally, using the Sketchengine N-grams function, the two sub-corpora
were analysed for the most common recurring two- to five-word lexicogrammatical phrases,
and the concordances were examined to determine whether these clusters were used in a
spatial deictic sense. finally, we looked for lexical collocations of the SD and compare these
across the two teaching modalities.
4 Results
as not all the instances of demonstratives and locatives acted as spatial deixis, manual analysis
was necessary. table 3 shows that out of nearly 3,000 items, only about 600 were found to
function as SD markers.
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table 3. total number of occurrences of demonstratives and locatives identified in the corpus
(raw), and the number of occurrences of these demonstratives and locatives when serving as SD
markers.
WORD frequency FTF SVL TOT.
Raw SD Raw SD Raw SD
that 544 15 784 24 1,328 39
this 260 68 468 197 728 265
there 172 17 250 3 422 20
here 78 65 166 143 244 208
these 58 12 111 29 169 41
those 7 1 11 4 18 5
Total 1,119 178 1,790 400 2,909 578
% of tot. items 20% 22% 20%
The following examples show when the demonstrative this functions as SD (5), and when it
is not SD (6), but rather as anaphoric referent (a).
(5) SD: if you look at the graph which is here hopefully yeah this is a nice graph
and I try to make it, ok this nice graph. I try to make it larger, shows you the
fuel consumption (Lect 1_ftf)
(6) A: how can we estimate these implications? I told you that this is another big
question mark. because actually the effect of global warming on flood frequency on
flood. magnitude on (Lect 1_SvL)
table 4 shows the distribution and normalized frequency of proximal, distal and total SD
used in the 2 sub-corpora.
table 4. Comparison of proximal and distal SD in ftf and SvL.
FTF ptw SVL ptw
Proximal deixis 145 6.46 369 11.33
Distal deixis 33 1.47 31 0.95
Total 178 7.93 400 12.28
as can be seen, in both ftf and SvL the lecturers overwhelmingly preferred proximal to
distal deictics, signalling that they tend to perceive space within the speaker’s territory (i.e.,
their own). This may be partially explained by the fact that the two sub-corpora consist
primarily of whole class talk where the teachers do most of the talking.
however, table 4 also shows that while lecturers in ftf use about eight SD in 1,000 words,
in SvL they use 12 SD in 1,000 words. This may be partially explained by the fact that in
online classrooms all elements – not only maps and graphs, but even words and sentences –
are more visually salient. This is exemplified by the following three instances (examples 7, 8
and 9) all extracted from our online SvL sub-corpus.
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(7) Sorry, there’s a question. *how was Bert trained to be able to do all these tasks?*
ok, so the question. So this is a question here. I will repeat the question *how was
Bert trained to be able to do all these tasks?* (Lect 2_SvL)
(8) the tasks in gLUe are single sentence task, similarity task, paraphrase task, inference
task, and these are some examples of these tasks (Lect 2_SvL)
(9) two things we have to get from this sentence. first we are still in a glaciation. but
within this glaciation there is, I’m selecting an alternating series of […] (Lect 1_SvL)
example (7) shows that in the online classroom even a question from a student gains visual
salience, as it is posted in the chat (indicated in the transcription as being inserted between
asterisks **) and spoken out loud by the lecturer. In example (8), anaphoric references (i.e.,
these tasks) gain visual salience as they referred to learning objects which materialize while
being shown on the screen. finally, sentences (example 9) are written and highlighted by the
lecturers and therefore become visual objects.
This result is in line with fussell et al.’s (2004) study where higher rates of proximal deixis
use were found in computer-supported remote collaborative tasks, which were also correlated
with faster task performance.
In this respect, a recent study by Wu et al. (2021) showed that “visual salience shortened
the reading times of key concept terms” and that, in particular, “visual salience accelerates
the lexical processing of visually salient information and helps readers build faster and more
elaborate connections between visually salient information and associated content” (Wu et
al. 2021, 146).
4.1 Demonstrative SD
as with our findings of overall proximal and distal deixis use, table 5 shows that the lecturers
preferred the proximal SD this, which diverges from previous findings which showed that
university lecturers rather prefer that, thus showing that eMI lecturers tend to position
classroom participants and objects proximally within their own territory.
table 5. Comparison of the frequency of SD demonstratives in ftf and SvL.
FTF ptw SVL ptw
that 15 0.67 24 0.74
this 68 3.03 197 6.05
these 12 0.53 29 0.89
those 1 0.04 4 0.12
Total 96 4.28 254 7.80
furthermore, table 5 also shows that the singular forms of demonstratives are much more
common than the plural forms in both sub-corpora, which supports Biber et al.’s (1999)
analysis of conversations and the of friginal et al. (2017) on eaP lecturers’ talk. however, our
findings contradict Biber et al.’s (1999) with regard to the singular SD demonstrative this,
which was found to be more common in academic writing than conversation, whereas eaP
104 Mariangela Picciuolo An ELF-Oriented Corpus-Based Analysis into the EMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial Deixis ...
lecturers preferred that. In contrast, in our study the lecturers preferred to use the proximal
SD this more in online settings. We discuss the implications of this further in the discussion
section.
4.1.1 Demonstrative SD: N-grams
turning to the most frequent lexical phrases, we only found one two-word cluster that occurred
at a minimum of 0.5 ptw (which is the criterion we established to minimize the impact of
individual speaking styles). This could be because of the small size of our corpus.
table 6. Comparison of the frequency of the n-gram this is in ftf and SvL.
this is tokens ptw
FTF 20 0.89
SVL 38 1.17
Total 68 1.24
as shown in table 6, the proximal SD this is occurs 0.89 ptw in ftf and 1.17 in SvL. This
result ties in with friginal et al.’s (2017) study, where the most frequent lexical phrase in eaP
lecturers’ discourse was found to be this is (2.34 ptw), and this might indicate the lecturers’
attempt to draw students’ attention to their proximal space and that, as Biber (2004) showed,
might also serve as referential bundles used to identify an entity, as in the following examples
(10, 11):
(10) t: so let me see if you. can see. my screen yes so this is what you see. here it’s
our calendar and actually it’s. it doesn’t include the lecture that I. did on March
23rd […] (Lect 1_SvL)
(11) t: you’ll do that think of of a share integer variable that we: can: call: ur:m number
of waiting threads or N urm NW so: nw so: this is the: the number number of
threads (0.2) waiting […] (Lect 2_ftf)
4.2 Locative Deictic adverbs
table 7 below shows that lecturers favour here over there. In ftf, nearly 80% of the adverbs
are here, while in SvL approximately 98% are here. Compared to the findings from Bamford
(2004) and friginal et al. (2017) we note that the frequency of here in eMI lecturers’ talk
online is much closer to that of eaP lectures.
table 7. Comparison of frequency of SD locative adverbs in ftf and SvL.
FTF ptw SVL ptw
there 17 0.52 3 0.09
here 65 2 143 4.39
Total 82 2.52 146 4.48
finally, upon examining potential clusters, no lexical phrases with here were found, and
therefore we do not discuss this any further.
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4.3 Lexical Collocations
We also looked at the collocational behaviour of SD words, i.e., left, right and total collocates
of SD words in our corpus. as the demonstrative this and the locative here are the most
frequent words serving as SD in our small corpus, we only focused on the collocational
behaviour of these two SD words.
The Word Sketch in figure 1 shows that in ftf this often co-occurs with state verbs (be,
become). Conversely, in SvL lectures, although this often co-occurs with the verb to be (which
is consistent with previous findings on lexical clusters – i.e., this is), it is also often accompanied
by the verb to look. This may be explained by the fact that in SvL, lecturers’ discourse focused
on a greater extent on visuals.
Figure 1 Lexical collocations of the SD demonstrative this in FTF and SVL.
Figure 2 Lexical collocations of the SD locative adverb here in FTF and SVL.
figure . Lexi al collocations of the SD demonstrative this in ftf and SvL.
The greater reliance of lecturers’ discourse on visuals in the online classroom is more prominent
when looking at the collocates of here: figure 2 shows that in SvL here often co-occurs with
verbs of seeing (e.g., see, read, show, depict) and verbs related to the digital classroom space
(e.g., to click).
Figure 1 Lexical collocations of the SD demonstrative this in FTF and SVL.
Figure 2 Lexical collocations of the SD locative adverb here in FTF and SVL.figure 2. Lexical collocations of the SD locative adverb here in ftf and SvL.
5 Discussion
This study compared the speech of three Italian L1 eMI lecturers when teaching at eMI
courses delivered at the UNIBo in different teaching modalities (ftf and SvL). all lecturers
106 Mariangela Picciuolo An ELF-Oriented Corpus-Based Analysis into the EMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial Deixis ...
in our study were experienced lecturers who had taught in eMI courses at the faculty of
engineering for more than 5 years. all of them self-declared a C1 level of english competence
according to the Cefr (2022). furthermore, while Lect 2’ and Lect 3’s age ranged between
41–50 (i.e., “generation X”) Lect 1 was more than 65 (i.e., “Baby Boomer” generation),
which suggests that the lecturers in this study had different attitudes towards the use of
internet and modern digital technologies (Pirhonen et al. 2020).
as this study was intended to provide a first glimpse on the variations occurring in lecturers’
discourse when shifting to the online teaching modality, this analysis focused on their use of
spatial deictic markers whose pragmatic use is heavily dependent upon the physical context
of utterance.
We first selected six lectures from the emiBo corpus (Johnson and Picciuolo 2022b) and then
built two sub-corpora – ftf and SvL – each made up of three lectures delivered by the same
lecturers in the two modalities. We particularly focused on the demonstrative adjectives and
pronouns this/these and that/those and the locative adverbs here/there. We used corpus analysis
tools to electronically search for all the instances in which these items occurred in our corpus.
however, given that the targeted demonstratives and locatives not only function as spatial
deictic markers, but also as anaphoric reference, for example, we manually annotated each
instance in order to assess whether they were functioning as SD or not. We found that in SvL
22% of the total number of demonstratives and locatives function as SD, while in ftf this
figure slightly decreases to 20%. although there is no significant difference between the two
settings, this ratio seems to suggest that in both contexts lecturers tend to refer more often to
something mentioned in the current discourse (e.g., through anaphora) while they tend to
refer less to the physical objects in the spatial context of utterance. as Cornish (2007) points
out, english demonstratives, when functioning as discourse deixis or anaphora – i.e., which
“involve reference via the discourse context upstream” (Cornish 2007, 137) – “operate at the
level of memory organization” (Cornish 2007, 138). as such, a higher reliance on anaphora
and discourse deictic expression in eMI lecturers’ discourse might put a heavier cognitive
demand on the student.
The findings from this study have also shown that in both ftf and SvL the lecturers
overwhelmingly preferred proximal to distal deictics, signalling that they tend to perceive
space within the speaker’s territory (i.e., their own). This “highly egocentric positioning”
(friginal et al. 2017, 121) is also indicative of their monologic and directing instructional
style, which previous research (Broggini and Murphy 2017; Molino 2018) found to be
common in tertiary education.
however, our corpus-based analysis also showed that in SvL lecturers used SD significantly
more frequently than in ftf, and that in the online classroom eMI lecturers also showed a
higher preference for the singular SD demonstrative this, which was found to often occur in
the lexical expression this is used to identify an entity (Biber 2004) in the spatial surroundings.
In our view, this may be partially explained by the fact that in SvL lecturers more often refer
to learning objects which are pointed to on the screen, thus gaining more visual salience. The
greater reliance of lecturers’ discourse on visuals in the online classroom is more prominent
when looking at the collocates of here. In ftf, nearly 80% of the adverbs are here, while in
SvL approximately 98% are here. given that the deictic use of here was found to be typical
107SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
of the discourse surrounding visuals in lectures (Bamford 2004), the higher occurrence of
the locative SD here in SvL would thus confirm our hypothesis. furthermore, by looking
at the collocational behaviour of this and here we found that they often co-occur with verbs
of seeing (e.g., see, read, show, depict) and verbs related to the digital classroom space (e.g., to
click). finally, compared to the findings from Bamford (2004) and friginal et al. (2017) we
note that the frequency of here in eMI lecturers’ talk online is much closer to that of eaP
lectures. This, in turn, would suggest that in the online classroom eMI lectures feel a greater
need to physically contextualize lesson content and activities.
6 Conclusions
Previous eLf-oriented studies investigating eMI lecturers’ discourse both in ftf and online
settings have shown that contextual factors – such as the lecture genre, cultural issues and
disciplinary culture – play a pivotal role in lecturers’ speech production when teaching in
eMI, though too much research attention is still paid to their level of english competence,
taking a deficit (rather than a difference) perspective.
This exploratory study aimed to identify and describe language variations that occurred
in the use of lexical SD in three engineering eMI lecturers’ talk as a consequence of the
shift to online teaching during the CovID-19 pandemic. It is underpinned by an eLf
theoretical orientation as it aimed at identifying linguistic cues that might substantiate the
implementation of strategies to enhance eMI lecturers’ communicative competence as well as
students’ comprehension in the eMI classroom. Building on the strengths of corpus methods,
it also aimed to contribute to the still scarce corpus-based literature on eMI (Jablonkai 2021).
The findings from this study seem to suggest that the shift to online teaching involved a
reconceptualization of space in eMI lecturers’ discourse, which might have some important
pedagogical implications.
Considering that the three lecturers kept the same – monologic – teaching style for online
classes, proximal SD deixis would be most frequent in SvL because lecturers and students
shared the same visual space. to put it simply, as shown by fussell et al. (2004), in remote
computer-mediated collaborative tasks, when the instructor is aware that the participants share
his/her view of the scene, he/she can manipulate the visual field such that he/she “can refer
quickly and efficiently to task objects, tools, and the like by using short-hand expressions and
pronouns” (fussell et al. 2004, 32) such as the SD terms this and here. Therefore, the findings
from this study support the benefits of increasingly integrating digital tools in eMI teaching.
In eLfa (english as an academic Lingua franca) settings – such as the eMI classroom – the
lecture comprehension of L2 students might particularly benefit from more reliance on the
lecturers’ part on visuals, as was found to happen in SvL, because the referent – regardless
of being mispronounced, for example, or weakly stressed by the lecturer, or unknown to the
students – is pointed to verbally by the lecturer, while being displayed visually on the screen.
furthermore, this research also supports including eMI lecturers’ digital competence as part
of that multimodal competence eMI lecturers needs to achieve to improve their “educational
effectiveness” (Siegel 2020, 76).
108 Mariangela Picciuolo An ELF-Oriented Corpus-Based Analysis into the EMI Lecturers’ Use of Spatial Deixis ...
This study could certainly be further improved as far as the measure, scale and scope of the
analysis are concerned. further studies should also compare individual lecturers’ use of SD
in the different teaching modalities, also considering that the way lecturers interact with
technology and, therefore, with visuals, might also differ according to their age, and/or their
acquaintance with new technology. furthermore, future research might also implement
the present study by taking a multimodal discourse analytical perspective and investigating
the way lecturers use both verbal and non-verbal resources with a spatial deictic reference,
also including the way they interact with the learning objects through technology. finally,
students should be involved at a later stage to test these preliminary observations. In this
regard, the potential of technologies such as eye-tracking should be exploited to detect how
students’ visual and cognitive attention changes across different teaching modalities.
Nonetheless, the findings from this study might contribute to increasing eMI lecturers’ as
well as researchers’ awareness of the affordances of digital tools, something that is likely to
improve eMI lecturers’ effectiveness and foster students’ comprehension, even beyond the
eMI classroom.
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113SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
2023, vol. 20 (1), 113-131(228)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1.113-131
UDC: 811.18'373.45:811.111
Festa Shabani
University of Prishtina, kosovo
Bilingual Phenomena Occurring in the Speech
of Albanian Native Speakers
aBStraCt
This study aims to determine whether bilingual phenomena occur in the speech of albanian
bilingual students with high exposure to english, in an attempt to detect the influence of
english on the albanian language. Special attention is paid to bilingual aspects like code-
switching, lexical borrowings, calques, and hybrid compounds. Data have been gathered
through participant systematic observation: albanian bilingual students have been observed
within informal settings of Pristina international schools. Their conversations have been
recorded and transcribed for further analysis. The study shows that code-switching is the
most common linguistic behaviour among the students under investigation. however, in
addition to code-switching, lexical borrowings and calques also play a roughly equivalent role
in their speech. This research provides evidence of bilingual phenomena resulting from direct,
everyday language contact between english and albanian in Pristina international schools,
which aids in understanding the sociolinguistic changes brought about by such contact.
Keywords: language contact, bilingualism, code-switching, lexical borrowing, calques
Dvojezični pojavi v govoru maternih govorcev albanščine
IZvLeČek
Cilj raziskave je ugotoviti, ali govor albanskih dvojezičnih učencev z visoko izpostavljenostjo
angleščini zaznamujejo dvojezični pojavi, s čimer bi opredelili vpliv angleščine na albanski
jezik. Posebna pozornost je namenjena dvojezičnim vidikom, kot so kodno preklapljanje,
leksikalne izposojenke, kalki in hibridne zloženke. Podatki so zbrani na podlagi sistematičnega
opazovanja albanskih dvojezičnih učencev v neformalnem okolju mednarodnih šol v
Prištini, pri čemer so njihovi pogovori posneti in transkribirani za potrebe analize. rezultati
analize pokažejo, da je med preučevanimi učenci najpogostejši dvojezični jezikovni pojav
kodno preklapljanje. vendar imajo v njihovem govoru dokaj enakovredno vlogo leksikalne
izposojenke in kalki. raziskava potrjuje prisotnost dvojezičnih pojavov kot posledice
vsakodnevnega neposrednega jezikovnega stika med angleščino in albanščino v mednarodnih
šolah v Prištini, kar doprinese k razumevanju sociolingvistično pogojenih sprememb, ki so
posledica takšnega stika.
Ključne besede: jezikovni stik, dvojezičnost, kodno preklapljanje, leksikalne izposojenke,
kalki
114 festa Shabani Bilingual Phenomena Occurring in the Speech of Albanian Native Speakers
1 Introduction
Contacts between english and albanian varied across periods. Until lately, there were no
direct contacts between english and albanian. from a diachronic perspective, gërmizaj
(2009) examines the contacts between english and albanian through the analysis of
bilingual english-albanian dictionaries compiled throughout history. The first english-
albanian dictionary was published in 1915. however, it is emphasized that the first contact
between albanian and english dates back even earlier, to the beginning of the 19th century,
documented through a greek-albanian-english dictionary of 2,100 words, and as such is
considered the first albanian-english dictionary (gërmizaj 2009, 19). These dictionaries
were compiled to serve the needs of albanian immigrants living in the english-speaking
parts of the world, and with each new edition they became more sophisticated by providing
more details about words.
The english and albanian language did not have any direct contacts until 1999, when
english became more present through the mechanisms of international organizations that
were deployed or established in the post-war kosovo (Nuhiu 2013; Shabani, Munishi, and
Sadiku 2022). This situation is also related to the current period of globalization, during
which english has become a bridge language and an official language in meetings held in
europe and beyond.
kosovo has two official languages (albanian and Serbian), but it is the sociolinguistic context
which is more diverse (Munishi 2020). In practice, english occupies an important place in
almost every sphere, although it is an unofficial language. It enjoys the status of the second
most learned language in kosovo, as knowledge of english is associated with professional
achievement as well as with higher social status. People are thus motivated to learn english and
have a typically positive attitude toward doing so because they are aware of how important it
is to be able to communicate in this language (gërmizaj 2013, 241). Moreover, the younger
a person is, the more they are likely to learn english along with their native language.
In this newly created reality, albanian parents encourage and support their children to start
learning english at an early age either through attending language courses, or directly by
enrolling them in international schools with english as the language of instruction, within
and outside of the country.
Their exposure to english leads to the manifestation of code-switching1 (henceforth: CS),
borrowing,2 and other contact-induced phenomena as typical features of bilingual speech.
as a result of their frequent use of the two languages, the speech of albanian students can be
linguistically examined to ascertain whether and to what extent the second language affects
their mother tongue.
Specifically, the main aim of this paper is to analyse the speech of albanian bilingual
students that have been highly exposed to english to determine the extent to which bilingual
phenomena occur in their speech. Since the results of the analysis on CS have already been
1 The alternate use of two or more languages among bilingual interlocutors (MacSwan 2014, 1).
2 The phonological and morphological integration of a word from one language into another (MacSwan 2014, 1).
115SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
discussed (Shabani, Munishi, and Sadiku 2022), the present study focuses primarily on lexical
borrowings and calques. More specifically, the degree of their adaptation is examined to
determine whether the expressions from the donor language3 replace the existing expressions
in the receiving language4 (albanian) or whether their use is considered essential due to new
connotations.
among the most frequently occurring phenomena encountered in the speech of albanian
bilingual students in addition to code-switching is the use of established lexical borrowings and
new lexical borrowings, also known as nonce borrowings. Calques or calquing – translations
of borrowings, or semantic transference as defined by Clyne (2003, 90) – constitute another
frequently occurring category, as well as hybrid compounds. In the remainder of the paper,
the analysis and discussion focus on these categories, i.e., established/new lexical borrowings,
calques/calquing and hybrid compounds.
2 Literature Review
The distinction between CS occurring as a single word within a sentence and lexical
borrowing is not generally agreed upon by scholars. There are a number of researchers who
distinguish lexical borrowings from CS in that the former are syntactically, morphologically,
and phonologically adapted to the receiving language, whereas the latter are not (Poplack
1981; Poplack and Sankoff 1988; Poplack, Wheeler, and Westwood 1989; Poplack 2004;
Milroy and Muysken 1995; gumperz 1982, MacSwan 2000, 2005a, 2005b, 2013; MacSwan
and van gelderen 2008). on the other hand, a number of researchers do not find such a
distinction necessary (Myers-Scotton 1993, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2008; Myers-
Scotton and Jake 2001, 2017; Bentahila and Davies 1991; treffers-Daller 1991; Johanson
1999, 2002a, 2002b, among others).
In an attempt to distinguish between CS and lexical borrowing, Poplack (2018) uses the term
nonce borrowing to refer to other single linguistic elements that show either morphological,
syntactic, or phonological similarities with the target language. The opposite is true for
established borrowings, which exhibit total linguistic integration, behave precisely the
same as any other native word, and are included in monolinguals’ repertoire. In a similar
vein, MacSwan (2005a) in his proposed Pf (phonetic form) Disjunction Theorem makes
a distinction between CS and lexical borrowing depending on whether the other language
stem is phonologically integrated with the affix. In the latter case, it is regarded as a novel
borrowing, which is what Poplack (2018) refers to as nonce borrowing.
on the other hand, another group of researchers (cf. Myers-Scotton 1993; also, Bentahila and
Davies 1991; Jake, Myers-Scotton, and gross 2002) challenged Poplack’s (1980) position by
asserting that CS and lexical borrowing are undifferentiated by the bilingual user; therefore,
such a distinction is deemed unnecessary. In this regard, Myers-Scotton (1993) developed
the MLf (Matrix Language frame) model according to which ML (matrix language) is the
3 Donor language – the language which is borrowed from (Campbell 2013).
4 receiving language – the language which borrows (Campbell 2013). There is another term employed such as Host
language which is defined as the most widely used language variety within the region of settlement within the host
country of interest (hirsch and kayam 2021).
116 festa Shabani Bilingual Phenomena Occurring in the Speech of Albanian Native Speakers
dominant language or the language of more morphemes. on the other hand, according to
the author, it is the embedded language eL (embedded language) which follows the rules of
ML (Myers-Scotton 1993, 1996, 2001, 2017). Therefore, both CS and lexical borrowing
indicate the morphosyntax of the matrix language.
according to Myers-Scotton (1993, 243), nonce borrowing is essentially the same as CS,
so there is “no motivation for introducing such a term”. as such, it is suggested that they
should not be seen as two distinct phenomena, but rather as a diachronic continuum: at first
new expressions enter the recipient language as CS and then eventually become integrated
as loanwords (gardner-Chloros, 1995, 2009; haust 1995). In the albanian language,
since letters often correspond to sounds, it is important to consider phonological criteria to
distinguish between lexical borrowings and code-switching.
gumperz (1982, 68) also focuses on the distinction between CS and lexical borrowing by
stating that CS is primarily a matter of conversational interpretation, thus taking into account
pertinent inferential tools that affect contextual and social presuppositions, whereas lexical
borrowing is regarded as a single-word and clause-level phenomenon.
2.1 Lexical Borrowings
There are a number of perspectives on how to distinguish between lexical borrowing and
single-word code switching, so there are no precise distinctions (for discussion, see above).
In this paper, we consider them as two distinct phenomena. The degree of adaptation the
foreign word has undergone in the receiving language determines this difference. This
means that, if a word is adapted according to the morphological, phonological and semantic
level of the receiving language, then that word can be considered a fully assimilated lexical
borrowing, also known as an established borrowing. on the other hand, if the word,
phrase, or sentence is used as in the original language, it is known as CS. however, there
are cases where CS occurring as single words have already taken the inflected forms of
the host language, in those cases the stem of the word has also undergone phonological
modifications; therefore, they are considered as nonce borrowings. They have started the
journey of adaptation in the receiving language, although they may not be present or
widespread in the community. Poplack (2001) asserts that nonce borrowings differ from
established borrowings in that they are not necessarily recurring, nor are they widespread,
or familiar to monolinguals.
to illustrate the difference, some examples that have been categorized as nonce borrowings
are given below, in which mainly nouns taken over from english are inflected for case
by the appropriate albanian suffixes. In the same way, verbs from english seem to have
been adapted and canalized according to the relevant conjugation in albanian. Since the
noun sunset in (1) made its way into albanian through spoken english, one can notice the
influence of the pronounced form of the word. Thus, the phoneme /ʌ/ is replaced with the
closest albanian phoneme /a/. however, it is treated as a nonce borrowing since the accent
has changed position from the first syllable in the original word to the second syllable when
adapted in the albanian language.
117SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
(1) Sa bukur u duke sunset-i![sanˈseti]
‘how beautiful the sunset looked!’
(2) Amelia: Pse bre ‘recess-i [ri’sesi] është shumë pak kohë? Është one hour.
‘Why is recess time in school so short? It’s only one hour.’
(3) … merrne krejt recess-in. [ri’sesin]
‘…you can have the whole recess.’
(4) Where’s miss? [mɪs] Miss-i [‘mi:sɪ] u hi mrena.
‘Miss went inside.’
however, in most of the cases, english nouns used in albanian syntactic structures lack
case marking. Likewise, verbs are neither conjugated according to the morphology of the
albanian language nor do they receive the english ending. Therefore, they are unassimilated
in an albanian sentence, and as such together with many other words are categorized as cases
of code-switching.
(5) A u kry recess? Edhe pak.
‘Is recess over? Not yet.’
(6) E çfarë kompani janë këto që i paguni e nuk iu rimburse kur keni ma së shumti nevojë
për ta?
‘What companies are these you give money to but do not reimburse when you most
need them?’
It is well-known that when languages are in direct contact, they influence each other, and the
most affected linguistic area is the lexicon (Nevalainen 1999; ajeti 2005, 394; Blaku 2010,
213; Curtis 2012). The present synchronic study aims to analyse spoken data extracted
from the everyday conversations of bilingual speakers in informal settings. for this reason,
code-switching is their most prevalent linguistic behaviour. however, it is known that
insertions from the second language, i.e., code-switching eventually leads to borrowings
(gardner-Chloros 2009, 12). oftentimes they are embraced by the receiving language if
they bring new terms and expressions. These new expressions, otherwise known as lexical
borrowings, are finally adapted to the receiving language according to the morphological,
phonological and semantic levels of the receiving language. otherwise, if foreign words are
unassimilated, they are identified as instances of CS. Since this is a diachronic process, only
the surviving and mostly used items remain in the vocabulary of the receiving language,
including their presence in the repertoire of monolinguals (Poplack 2018). With regard
to the distinction between lexical borrowing and how we set the latter apart from CS or
calques, CS is characterized by the speakers’ simultaneous usage of elements from two
different languages (example 8 below). however, when using borrowings, speakers only
employ elements from a single language, meaning that any concept from the second
language has already been fully incorporated into the vocabulary of the first language and
adapted phonologically (see (7)):
(7) Jam shumë selektive [selek’ti:ve] me njerëz.
‘I am a very selective person.’
118 festa Shabani Bilingual Phenomena Occurring in the Speech of Albanian Native Speakers
In contrast to the previous example, example (8) is a clear case of CS because it involves three
people speaking two languages simultaneously. CS takes place between turns, and Jefferson’s
(2004) glossary of transcript symbols was used to transcribe the conversation into written form.
(8)
01 a: Kom shanca ma t’mdhaja m’u bo me të.
‘I have better chances to be with him.’
02 B: Are you complaining about it? Are you complaining?
03 C: Këqyre si s’të do ai, edhe 3.9 milion djem tjerë janë.
‘Look! If he doesn’t love you, there are 3.9 million other guys out there.’
04 a: but they’re not like him=
05 B: =yeah, but they’re better.
06 C: eh moj motra jem, me sa djalin kom fol, këqyre tash
‘oh, my sister, you know how many guys I have talked to and am still talking.’
07 a: mos rrej bre, mos rrej
‘Don’t lie, please, don’t lie.’
08 B: you’re such a love sick!
09 C: I know, she’s such a hopeless one.
10 C: A e din qysh thojshe?
‘you know what you used to say?’
11 a: [I KNOW ↑ but it’s not that …
12 B: she said “I don’t wanna be with him at all”.
Myers-Scotton (2006, 212–15) distinguishes between two semantic types of loanwords:
cultural and core loans. The first type of borrowings is related to concepts that are new to
the receiving language, whereas the second type of borrowings refers to borrowings that have
equivalents in the receiving language but have a new semantic connotation. according to the
distinction made by Weinreich (1953, 56), cultural loans are close to prestige borrowings
while core loans correspond to necessary borrowings. It can be assumed that the first type
of borrowings is used by monolingual speakers due to the need to name new notions, while
the second type may be related to bilingualism and CS, hence used by bilingual speakers
(Matras 2009, 111). according to van Coetsem (1988/2000) (cited in Curtis 2012, 52–53),
depending on the situations of language contact, a distinction is made between borrowing
and imposition. Borrowing refers to the intentional incorporation of a foreign word into
the vocabulary of the native language and implies that the speaker is more proficient and
dominant in his native language. While imposition is about situations when the speakers
are in the process of learning the second language, and as a result of insufficient knowledge
in the second language they incorporate syntactic structures from the first language into the
second target language. The intensity and type of contact between communities, as well as the
dominance and sociocultural pressure of one community on another, are among the variables
that Thomason and kaufman (1988, 72) highlight as being important in determining what
can be borrowed. These variables are taken into account when determining the extent of
119SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
borrowing from one language to another. however, there is a common conclusion based on
research findings (Muyesken 1981; Matras 2009) that content words tend to be borrowed to
a greater extent even in less intense contact situations, while functional words are borrowed
in those cases when contacts are more intense (cited in Curtis 2012, 56). viewed from a
diachronic context, one can understand the pragmatic context by referring to friedman
and Joseph’s (2013) typology according to which loanwords are first presented by speakers
of languages within conversations indicating social context. erIC (essentially rooted in
conversation) loans constitute the loans encountered in direct contact situations such
as Balkan Sprachbund (cited in Curtis 2012, 58). Some examples of such borrowings are
kinship terms, numerals, and words with grammatical value such as adjectives, prepositions,
negation, complementizers, discourse particles, and so on.
The speakers in this study are native speakers of albanian. Nonetheless, they still communicate
with other albanian native teachers in english, and at the same time are surrounded by
other international teachers and students with whom the only language of communication is
english. In contrast to long-term coexistence and widespread daily bilingualism between two
languages, this paper analyses a situation in which there is direct contact in a particular setting.
Therefore, the elements that can be borrowed are content words related to the education of
students, such as lessons, names of courses, and classes, and less can be said about borrowing
grammatical elements.
over time, various authors have discussed how lexical borrowings are changed in the
receiving language, with an early example being haugen (1950, 214), who examined how
the foreign word is morphologically adapted. Borrowings are classified according to the
degree of morphemic substitution. filipović (1960a, 1960b, 1968, 1980, 1981, 2002, 2018)
specifically addressed the adaptation of loanwords in the receiving language when he dealt with
english lexical borrowings in the Croatian language. In addition to the morphological level,
filipović also concentrated on the phonological and semantic levels of foreign word adaption.
Campbell (2013) speaks of loanword adaptation in terms of morphology and phonology.
By referring to a number of languages, he demonstrates how foreign words are remodelled,
accommodated and adapted according to the structure of the borrowing language.
foreign words undergo thus various stages of adaptation in terms of phonology where
substitution, deletion or replacement of particular sounds take place. additionally, loanwords
are also altered to suit the morphological patterns of the borrowing language. for instance,
gender is given to nouns from english that are inserted into albanian because the latter has
grammatical gender.
2.2 Calques or Direct translations from the original Language
The term calque refers to cases where an expression is literally translated from the source
language into the target language while preserving its meaning and structure. Thomason
(2001, 260) defines calques as borrowed elements which do not appear in their integral form
in the receiving language but are replaced by a corresponding term of the latter. haugen
(1950) recognizes them as loanshifts. vinay and Darbelnet (1995, 32) define calques as “a
special type of borrowing when one language borrows an expression from another, but then
120 festa Shabani Bilingual Phenomena Occurring in the Speech of Albanian Native Speakers
literally translates each of its elements.” Calques are essentially morpheme-for-morpheme or
root-for-root translations. In their study vinay and Darbelnet (1995, 32) place particular
emphasis on two categories of calques: lexical and structural. The first category of calques
concerns those that follow the syntactic structure of the receiving language while presenting
a new way of expression, while in the second instance, calques are used to introduce new
structures into the receiving language. There are also other types of calques, such as semantic
calques, phraseological calques, orthographic calques, and so on.
3 Methodology
This study is qualitative in character. Data were collected through fieldwork. Participant
systematic observation was used as a means of gathering as much authentic utterances as
possible to determine whether and to what degree bilingual phenomena are present in the
speech of albanian bilingual students.
3.1 Participants
The investigation was conducted on 30 students aged nine to 18 years old, all of whom have
been studying in english since enrolling in Pristina international schools. The time from
the students’ first enrolment in these institutions to the time of the current research varies
depending on the age group under investigation. The 30 students have been further divided
into three groups. The first group is made up of fifth graders in elementary school, who are
between the ages of nine and 11. The second group is made up of middle-schoolers, who are
between the ages of 12 and 14. The third group is made up of high school students, who are
between the ages of 15 and 18.
even though the subjects are exposed to english on a daily basis for about seven hours,
they live in an albanian-speaking community, use albanian extensively outside the school
environment, and interact with other albanian speakers in an otherwise monolingual
environment where the majority of the population speaks albanian.
table 1. Participant self-reports on language use at home/school.
Domains home School Language Proficiency
Participants albanian english english as a second language
The social environment of these children is homogeneous as they all have a similar biographical
background. So they live in a monolingual society with albanian as the dominant language in
all spheres of life. however, their english language repertoire differs depending on the age of
exposure to english. overall, 21 students enrolled in Pristina international schools after pre-
school or the first grade (from the ages of five to six), while the other nine students joined these
schools later on. another study on the same subjects revealed that age was a significant factor
in language choice. This was demonstrated using the chi-square test to determine the extent to
which extra-linguistic factors influence language choice, with the statistical value for language
choice in the alpha table being less than .05. The earlier the children began learning english,
the more often they utilize it in conversation (cf. Shabani, Munishi, and Sadiku 2022).
121SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
3.2 Data Collection
The corpus used in this study is made up of conversations between albanian bilingual
students that were recorded in Pristina international schools. The corpus, which is comprised
of 16 hours and eight minutes of audiotaped conversations, forms the basis for this research.
additionally, the students’ attitudes and interpretations of language use were obtained
through focus groups and interviews. When observing the students, the fieldworker (the
author of the paper) was a bystander and thus not involved in their conversations when
recording. over time the students saw the fieldworker as one of the teachers supervising
them during recess, despite the fact that at the outset of the research consent was obtained
from the school representatives, parents and the subjects, and her role as an outsider had been
explained to them.
4 Results
The initial focus of the study is to establish how often albanian bilingual students with regular
exposure to english switch back and forth between languages. Nevertheless, during the course
of our research we realized that the use of foreign words of english origin did not only appear
in a form of CS, but some foreign words had already undergone some degree of adaptation in
the target language. examples of these bilingual aspects include lexical borrowings and calques,
and the extent of their use among participants is shown in the chart below.
FIGURE 1: The occurrence of bilingual phenomena identified in the speech of Albanian students
As the chart above shows, CS is more present in the speech of the Albanian students highly exposed to English in
comparison with calques or lexical borrowings. Out of the 1,405 utterances that were transcribed from the speech
of Albanian students, 931 instances (or 53%) were classified as CS, while the remaining 47% were made up of 222
(or 22%) lexical borrowings and 252 (or 25%) calques.
Therefore, through participant systematic observation it was found that Albanian students inserted single words and
phrases from English into Albanian utterances, or even switched between two languages for longer stretches of talk.
On the other hand, the monolingual speech that makes up the remaining 47% of the sample should not be
disregarded because it contains established lexical borrowings from English and calques (structural and lexical) that
are replicated from English.
For the purposes of this paper, lexical borrowings and calques have been further analysed. Examples are provided to
illustrate how they have undergone adaptation into the receiving language. Additionally, they have been analysed
from the perspective of whether they are used to fill lexical gaps or replace the existing Albanian equivalents. This
comparative and contrastive analysis is done by using reference dictionaries: Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
(henceforth: OALD) for English and Dictionary of Contemporary Albanian Language (henceforth: DCAL) for
Albanian.
5. Discussion
5.1 Lexical Borrowings
As the findings indicate, lexical borrowings are less present in the speech of bilinguals compared to CS. This occurs
because the Albanian speakers in our study have chosen to keep the languages apart – they keep a monolingual
mode, i.e., they switch between sentences, or for longer stretches of talk. Specifically, this is true for elementary
school students. They frequently switch between the two languages intersententially (between sentences) rather than
at the level of words or phrases within a single sentence. Below are some examples of lexical borrowings from
English that have made their way into Albanian. They are adapted in terms of morphology, syntax, phonology, and
semantics either fully or partially. High school students, for whom it has been observed that they use their mother
tongue more frequently than the other two observed groups, when conversing informally with one another, also use
lexical borrowings more frequently in comparison to the other groups (i.e., elementary or middle-school students),
and thus these borrowings are encountered in monolingual discourse. Lexical borrowings are especially noticeable in
the focus groups where the conversation was purposely begun in Albanian to encourage the participants to speak
53%
25%
22%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
code-switching calques lexical borrowings
figure 1. The occurrence of bilingual phenomena identified in the speech of albanian students.
as the chart above shows, CS is more present in the speech of the albanian students highly
exposed to english in comparison with calques or lexical borrowings. out of the 1,405
utterances that were transcribed from the speech of albanian students, 931 instances (or
53%) were classified as CS, while the remaining 47% were made up of 222 (or 22%) lexical
borrowings and 252 (or 25%) calques.
Therefore, through participant systematic observation it was found that albanian students
inserted single words and phrases from english into albanian utterances, or even switched
between t o languages f r longer stretch s of talk. on the other hand, the mo olingual
speech that makes up the remaining 47% of the sample should not be disregarded because it
122 festa Shabani Bilingual Phenomena Occurring in the Speech of Albanian Native Speakers
contains established lexical borrowings from english and calques (structural and lexical) that
are replicated from english.
for the purposes of this paper, lexical borrowings and calques have been further analysed.
examples are provided to illustrate how they have undergone adaptation into the receiving
language. additionally, they have been analysed from the perspective of whether they are
used to fill lexical gaps or replace the existing albanian equivalents. This comparative and
contrastive analysis is done by using reference dictionaries: Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary (henceforth: oaLD) for english and Dictionary of Contemporary Albanian
Language (henceforth: DCaL) for albanian.
5 Discussion
5.1 Lexical Borrowings
as the findings indicate, lexical borrowings are less present in the speech of bilinguals
compared to CS. This occurs because the albanian speakers in our study have chosen to keep
the languages apart – they keep a monolingual mode, i.e., they switch between sentences,
or for longer stretches of talk. Specifically, this is true for elementary school students. They
frequently switch between the two languages intersententially (between sentences) rather
than at the level of words or phrases within a single sentence. Below are some examples of
lexical borrowings from english that have made their way into albanian. They are adapted in
terms of morphology, syntax, phonology, and semantics either fully or partially. high school
students, for whom it has been observed that they use their mother tongue more frequently
than the other two observed groups, when conversing informally with one another, also use
lexical borrowings more frequently in comparison to the other groups (i.e., elementary or
middle-school students), and thus these borrowings are encountered in monolingual discourse.
Lexical borrowings are especially noticeable in the focus groups where the conversation was
purposely begun in albanian to encourage the participants to speak the language. however,
there are instances of both CS and fully adapted borrowings when students attempted to
explain how a typical class works or how they spend the break time, for example.
Despite the fact that many of the lexical borrowings identified in this research are frequently
associated with the field of education, they also come from other fields. The forms that have
been translated into albanian are written using albanian orthography, and the original
forms in english are enclosed in brackets. english suffixes are sometimes replaced by the
corresponding albanian ones, as in the cases of (10), (17), and (24), while english words
are sometimes associated with albanian inflection in the cases of (11), (18), (22), (27), (28),
and (29). additionally, there are the derivations given in (16), (17), and (26), where the
english prefix has been transferred into albanian along with the stem, but the suffix is still
in albanian.
(9) Kam provu me e dhanë edhe tek ato bagazhet që i vendosin gjërat fragjile (fragile) por
fatkeqësisht nuk ishte e sigurt.
‘Unfortunately, it was unsafe even though I tried to pack it in the luggage designed
for fragile items.’
123SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
(10) Jena tu prit ma shumë participues (participants) edhe ma ja nisë.
‘We are waiting for more participants to start.’
(11) Edhe një diçka që vlen mu cek, mesa e di për Ballkan, best library, librarinë që kemi pasë
qasje na, ka qenë njona prej librarive (libraries) ma të mira n’Ballkan.
‘one more thing that is worth noting, as far as I know about the Balkans, the best
library, the library we had access to, was one of the best libraries in the Balkans.’
(12) Jam shumë selektive me njerëz.
‘I am a very selective person.’
(13) Qoftë edhe përshembull të internshipeve (internships) ose mundësive tjera akademike që
t’i ka ofru universiteti.
‘for instance, either internships or other academic opportunities provided by the
university.’
(14) Kjo e determinon (determines) punën e tyne.
‘This determines their work.’
(15) Ja, ky vendim është determinant (determinant) për të ardhmen tonë.
‘This decision will determine our future.’
(16) Në mënyrë që ta destigmatizojmë (destigmatize) çështjen e periodave dhe ciklit menstrual
…
‘In order to destigmatize the issue of periods and the menstrual cycle ...’
(17) Një kampanjë që synon destigmatizimin (destigmatization) e çështjeve …
‘a campaign aimed at the destigmatization of issues.’
(18) Hand luggage i ka dimensionet strikte (strict).
‘hand luggage has strict dimensions.’
(19) Mund të aplikohet (applied) për prodhuesit e nje programi televiziv.
‘It can be applied to the producers of a television programme.’
(20) Filloi me u implementu (implement) kur unë jom kon n’vitin e tretë.
‘It started to be implemented when I was in my third year.’
(21) Prit veç ta shoh stokun (stock) a kanë mbet a jo.
‘Wait until I check the stock, to see if there are any left.’
(22) Shikoja asetet (assets) e buta qysh i tregon.
‘Look how she exposes her soft assets.’
(23) Bordi (board) i shkollës është institucion që përfaqëson interesat tona.
‘The school board is an institution that represents our interests.’
124 festa Shabani Bilingual Phenomena Occurring in the Speech of Albanian Native Speakers
(24) Na ju sigurojmë kontinuitetin (continuity) e sukseseve tona.
‘We assure you the continuity of our success.’
(25) Në fakt, në mu drita ka impakt (impact) në mësim.
‘In fact, light has an impact on me when learning.’
(26) Kjo tani përkthehet në atë disbalancin (disbalance) edhe padrejtësinë që iu bohet atyne
nxansave.
‘If interpreted differently, this could mean that such people are victims of unequal
treatment and injustice.’
(27) Përnime është shumë e vlefshme edhe ta jep qat’ sensin (sense) që studenti nuk është aty
dud me u ndal edhe me aprovu çdo sen që ti i thu.
‘as a matter of fact, it is very helpful because it gives you the sense that the student is
not an idiot and does not agree with everything you say to him.’
(28) Meqenëse vet nuk um konvenojke ashtu jo pse i influencojsha (influence) edhe tjerët po
krejt ishin njëzëri që ky sistem nuk është i mirë.
‘The others all agreed that this system is not good as it was not convenient for me and
not because I had any influence over them.’
(29) Me pasë atë suportin (support) e duhur prej prindve …
‘to have the right support from parents.’
(30) Intervistat e fundit që i kish pasë ishin kon qaq banale, qaq me disrespekt (Albanian
spelling) (disrespect) saqë prej mllefit tha ma mirë po shkoj në Gjermani.
‘The last interviews she had were so banal, so disrespectful [...] she said with bitterness,
“I’d better go to germany.”’
example (11) is known as a false cognate in the literature (Lipski 2008), when in fact the
word that replaces library in the albanian language is bibliotekë. on the other hand, librari
(bookshop) is a store where you can buy books and all other relevant school supplies.
5.2 Calques
Based on the relevant literature on the definition of calques, below there are details of the
various different types that have been identified when analysing the language behaviour of
the students in this study. The results show that there is a tendency from the side of the
speakers to transfer the syntactic structure of english to albanian, so we are dealing with
structural or syntactic calques. however, calques that transmit the meaning from the source
language are another aspect of the repertoire of bilinguals. to compare the meanings and
semantic approximations, we used the dictionaries of the two respective languages, namely
the oaLD and DCaL. Some examples follow:
125SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
(32) Brainwash5 – tru shpërlarje
This compound was transferred from english as a structural calque, but as such it
is not yet present in the dictionary of albanian. Its structure indicates that it is of
foreign origin since the phrase shpërlarje e trurit ‘washing of the brain’, albeit still
considered a calque, would be a more appropriate expression in albanian.
(33) Share a room – ndaj një dhomë
In this case we are dealing with a structural calque, a structure transferred from
english. Similar cases are provided in (34–35).
(34) Change my mind – ndërroj mendje
(35) Merit-based – në baza meritore
(36) I made the decisions – i kom bo vendimet instead of I kam marrë vendimet
‘I have taken the decisions.’ given that this form is rare in albanian, it can be
concluded that there it is a direct translation from english. In albanian, a much
more idiomatic expression for english make a decision is take a decision. Therefore, in
albanian the noun decision collocates with the verb take.
(37) Open-minded6 – mendje hapur; also: mendje-hapun
There is a near equivalent in albanian for open-minded: mendjegjerë7 (broad-minded).
The antonym for the words broad-minded and open-minded in the english language
is narrow-minded.8 The latter is similar to its albanian equivalent mendjengushtë9
in meaning. It can be said that mendje hapur is synonymous with the existing word
mendjegjerë, given that both compounds have similar meanings in the original
language as well.
(37) Stereotype10 – stereotip instead of paragjykim11
The english word prejudice12 is more closely related to the albanian paragjykim
than other words with comparable meanings. additionally, the english word bias13
conveys meanings akin to prejudice or stereotype. In the albanian language, there
is just one word that is used to convey this meaning: paragjykim. Therefore, it can
5 oaLD: to force somebody to accept your ideas or beliefs, for example by repeating the same thing many times or by
preventing the person from thinking clearly.
6 oaLD: willing to listen to, think about or accept different ideas.
7 DCaL: who has the capacity to absorb and evaluate things in breadth, who judges things broadly and profoundly,
and who is knowledgeable.
8 oaLD: not willing to listen to new ideas or to the opinions of others.
9 DCaL: who perceives and judges things superficially and narrowly, who is unable to comprehend and evaluate them
in depth; having little understanding, uneducated; opposite: broad-minded.
10 oaLD: a fixed idea or image that many people have of a particular type of person or thing, but which is often not
true in reality.
11 DCaL: unfair impression that you have about someone or something before knowing one fully and that prevents you
from evaluating it objectively.
12 oaLD: an unreasonable dislike of or preference for a person, group, custom, etc., especially when it is based on their
race, religion, sex, etc.
13 oaLD: a strong feeling in favour of or against one group of people, or one side in an argument, often not based on
fair judgement.
126 festa Shabani Bilingual Phenomena Occurring in the Speech of Albanian Native Speakers
be said that we are dealing with new expressions that are being introduced into
the albanian language (such as stereotip) as a result of the albanian students being
highly exposed to english.
(38) I remind myself has been directly translated as Po e rikujtoj veten
however, the expression Po ia rikujtoj vetes is much more common in albanian than
the calque po e rikujtoj veten. In this instance of a structural calque, the speaker uses
the cases incorrectly – the accusative is used instead of the dative.
(39) Library14 – librari15 for bibliotekë16
Due to the fact that the bilingual speakers are confusing the terms, there is a structural
calque in this situation. The word librari has a different meaning in albanian. although
they do not have the same meaning, there is a tendency to use the albanian counterpart
interchangeably because they are similar in structure and orthography.
(40) Education17 – edukim18 instead of arsimim19
The word arsimim seems to be semantically more related to the english word
education. Due to the similarities in the orthography, and under the influence of
english, this example is treated as a calque.
(41) Eventually20 – eventualisht21 for përfundimisht22
although this adverb can be linked to the adjective eventual in this sense in the most
recent version of the albanian dictionary, it was previously used in albanian with
an entirely different meaning, such as ndoshta ‘maybe’ and mund të jetë ‘it could be’.
however, the dictionary already contains the word ‘eventualisht’ in the meaning of
‘përfundimisht’.
(42) General23 – gjeneral24 for i përgjithshëm25 as in S’po besoj që ka terapist të specializum veç
për gjumë, po nji terapist gjeneral mundet me e trajtu këtë problem (a general therapist
would be better able to handle this issue because I don’t think there is a special type
of therapist who only deals with sleep issues).
14 oaLD: a building in which collections of books, newspapers, etc. and sometimes films and recorded music are kept
for people to read, study or borrow.
15 DCaL: the shop where books are sold. Popular bookstore. City bookstores. textbook library.
16 DCaL: a building or hall of an institution, which works with the collection, storage, and processing of books,
magazines, and other publications, making them known to the general public and lending them out to readers
temporarily for use. National Library. Scientific Library.
17 oaLD: a process of teaching, training and learning, especially in schools, colleges or universities, to improve
knowledge and develop skills.
18 DCaL: contribution made via conscious, methodical, ongoing work toward the general and special development of
a person or group of people regarding their way of thinking, their feelings, etc.
19 DCaL: I give him education, equip him with knowledge by sending him to school.
20 oaLD: at the end of a period of time or a series of events.
21 DCaL: finally, eventually.
22 DCaL: finally; forever, once and for all: the problem was eventually resolved; eventually gave up; eventually the decision
was made.
23 oaLD: not limited to a particular subject, use or activity.
24 DCaL: senior officer rank in the armed forces of the land and air forces, which is lower than marshal and includes
several ranks.
25 DCaL: that is common or characteristic of a set of people, things or phenomena, that belongs to all or a large number
of people, things, etc.; opposite: specific; special.
127SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
Depending on the context, this word can have a variety of meanings in english,
including the only existing meaning in albanian. So it seems that this word can
expand its meaning in albanian under the influence of english. however, the
adjectives general and i përgjithshëm are synonyms when compared to one another.
Therefore, its use is deemed unnecessary because it does not fill a lexical gap.
(43) Contributor – kontributor for kontribues
Instead of the word kontribues, contributor is translated into albanian as kontributor.
There are no entries for kontributor or kontribues in the albanian dictionary.
however, their related forms such as kontribuoj, kontribuim, and kontribut, are
already included in the dictionary.
(44) Remain on hold has been translated partially as mbet hold for mbetesh në pritje.
In this case we have a hybrid composition, where words from both languages co-
exist, but again the collocational preference follows the english pattern.
(45) Respective26 ways – mënyrat respektive for mënyrat përkatëse27
Due to the semantic similarity between the english adjective respective and its
albanian counterpart përkatëse we conclude that the transferred and adapted
adjective from english, respective is not necessary.
(46) We have nothing to do today – Na kena asgjë me bo sot for Na s’kena me bë asgje sot.
In albanian, double negation is a common feature of sentences, for example we
don’t have nothing to do for standard english we don’t have anything to do. While the
sentence given here speaks of structural transfer of english found in the repertoire of
a nine-year-old albanian bilingual.
(47) Training is supposed to be28 held online – Trajnimi është i supozuar me u mbajt online
In this case we are dealing with a direct translation of the idiom from english. a
similar case is given in example (48).
(48) You are not supposed to suit the clothes. Clothes are supposed to suit you – Ti nuk
supozohet të përshtatesh me rrobat. Rrobat supozohet të përshtaten me ty.
(49) Class – Klasë as in we start the Art class in February
The word klasë in this context has a distinct meaning in albanian; instead of it, the
expressions orë/mësim/lëndë are used more frequently.
(50) Take finals – I kom marrë finals29
Despite the fact that this composition is hybrid, we deal with a collocation, or a
structural calque from english.
26 oaLD: belonging or relating separately to each of the people or things already mentioned
27 DCaL: that belongs to me or to someone; related to someone or something; that complies with or corresponds to
something
28 oaLD: to be expected or required to do/be something according to a rule, a custom, an arrangement, etc.
29 oaLD: the last exams taken by university students at the end of their final year.
128 festa Shabani Bilingual Phenomena Occurring in the Speech of Albanian Native Speakers
(51) Ma s’pari hina n’klasë, e marrin ‘attendance’, e kqyrmi një ‘video’ ‘first we go to class,
they take attendance, we watch a video /ˈvɪdiəʊ/.’
This is an illustration of yet another collocation with ‘take’, like in the aforementioned
instance.
(52) Gain experience – fitu eksperiencë
In albanian, bëj përvojë ‘make experience’ is more common than fitu eksperiencë
(gain experience). This collocation has an english-language effect.
6 Conclusion
The paper has first addressed the distinction between CS as a single word and lexical
borrowing. We have treated an expression as CS if it is used precisely as it would be in the
original language, i.e., without any modifications. expressions that have undergone any kind
of adaptation, for example phonological or morphological changes, have been categorized as
nonce borrowings. Nonce borrowings are first used by bilinguals and may not be familiar to
the general public. Some of them eventually find their way into the speech of monolinguals
and are used just like any other native word. In this case, they are known as established
borrowings in the literature.
alongside CS which is a frequent linguistic behaviour among the students with high
exposure to english, it can be argued that a significant number of borrowings have been
found in the repertoire of the bilinguals in question. The borrowings identified in the research
mostly belong to the semantic domain of education. They are expressions from the school
which is their immediate environment. however, borrowings from other domains have been
encountered as well. They behave like any other albanian word in terms of structure. These
words have already undergone adaptation at all levels.
Calques, or literal translations from L2 to L1, exhibit a strong english influence on albanian.
albanian students who speak both languages frequently use calques in their speech. In fact,
structural calques, in which the english syntactic order has been directly transferred into
albanian, are evident. however, there are also cases when additional meanings of the words
in english are transferred in the albanian language. The influence of english on albanian is
felt, among other things, in the case of collocations. for example, verbs are directly translated
from english into albanian and still combined with english nouns.
additionally, bilingual speakers use direct translations of english idioms into albanian, which,
for example, would not seem natural to albanian monolingual speakers. Due to the influence
of english, it has been noted that the meaning of existing albanian words has expanded. This
necessitates the addition of new expressions borrowed from english with new meanings in
order to fill lexical gaps. Nevertheless, as a result of english influence, expressions were also
borrowed due to a lack of awareness about the existence of adequate albanian equivalents.
This is a diachronic process where foreign expressions first arrive as CS and later some of
them are adapted and established as lexical borrowings. only the most commonly used words
survive and are distributed among monolingual speakers in the community. In terms of
129SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
character, the study in question is regarded as a synchronic research endeavour. accordingly, it
has also been noted that CS is present and is used most frequently among albanian bilingual
students. But they also use lexical borrowings and calques, which were observed in their
speech and investigated for the purposes of this paper.
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133SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
‘Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi
više od očekivanog’ – A Corpus-Based Contrastive
Study of Reader Engagement Markers on the Web
aBStraCt
The paper investigates how reader engagement markers (hyland 2005; Zou and hyland 2020)
are used in tourism promotion to establish interaction with potential customers on the web.
The markers are extracted using antConc software from two comparable corpora in english
and Serbian compiled from the web texts of regional tourism organizations. Normalized
frequencies per 1,000 words are calculated, followed by a quantitative and qualitative analysis
of the most frequent markers. The results are interpreted in view of the differences and
similarities in the two corpora considering the distribution and communicative functions of
the markers, and the cultural aspects of this kind of interaction with the reader. The findings
shed light on the implied concepts underlying reader-oriented engagement and written
e-communication practices in the context of tourism discourse. The results can be used for
the data-driven teaching of writing and translation studies.
Keywords: comparable corpora, reader engagement markers, promotional tourism discourse,
written e-communication
“Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!” vs. “Doživi više od
očekivanog” – korpusno zasnovana kontrastivna analiza
označevalcev vključenosti bralca na spletu
IZvLeČek
Članek raziskuje, kako se označevalci vključenosti bralca (hyland 2005; Zou in hyland
2020) uporabljajo v turistični promociji za potrebe interakcije s potencialnimi strankami
preko spleta. označevalce smo s pomočjo programske opreme antConc pridobili iz dveh
primerljivih korpusov v angleščini in srbščini, ki sta sestavljena iz spletnih besedil regionalnih
turističnih organizacij. Izračunane so normalizirane frekvence na 1.000, sledi kvantitativna
in kvalitativna analiza najpogostejših označevalcev. rezultate smo interpretirali z vidika
razlik in podobnosti v obeh korpusih ob upoštevanju porazdelitve in sporazumevalnih
funkcij označevalcev ter kulturnih vidikov tovrstne interakcije z bralcem. rezultati raziskave
osvetlijo implicitne koncepte, na katerih so osnovane osredotočenost na bralca in prakse
pisnega e-sporazumevanja v kontekstu turističnega diskurza. rezultati so uporabni tudi pri
podatkovno podprtem poučevanju pisanja in prevajalskih študijih.
Ključne besede: primerljivi korpusi, označevalci vključenosti bralca, promocijski turistični
diskurz, pisno e-sporazumevanje
Dragana Vuković Vojnović
University of Novi Sad, Serbia
2023, vol. 20 (1), 133-150(228)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1.133-150
UDC: 81'322:[339.138:004.738.5]
134 Dragana vuković vojnović ‘Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi više od očekivanog’ ...
1 Introduction
effective communication strategies are crucial for success in tourism business. according
to Bruner (2005), communicative situations in the context of tourism can be divided into
three phases: pre-tour marketing or the imagined journey, followed by the actual trip, and
post-tour narrative as the final phase. Pre-tour marketing is in the focus of attention of the
institutionalized tourism promotion on the web, when a potential tourist explores options for
travelling, usually browsing websites and social networks, consulting blogs and forums, etc.
Such online spaces aim at attracting customers’ attention while they are still undecided about
their travel destination, and try to persuade tourists to choose the travel package on offer.
Thus, both transactional and interactional functions (Brown and yule 1983, 1–3) are present
in this type of communication. on the one hand, promotional texts provide information and
factual details about a destination, but they also establish a specific relationship with their
target readers by using diverse verbal, visual and audial means in order to create an emotional
response of the reader/tourist/customer. frequently, a strong desire to influence the customer
is present (vuković-vojnović and Nićin 2011, 356).
attracting tourists and visitors (i.e., customers) along with presenting a tourist destination
in the best possible way are top priorities of tourism promotion. Based on the definition and
categories of interactional metadiscourse in hyland (2005) and Zou and hyland (2020), further
explained in the chapter on reader engagement, this paper investigates how reader engagement
markers are used in tourism promotion on the web in order to establish interaction with
the reader/customer and persuade them to visit a proposed region. The study uses a corpus-
based approach by analysing two custom-made comparable corpora in english and Serbian
compiled from the web texts of tourism organizations of two regions – Norfolk in great
Britain and vojvodina in Serbia (https://www.visitnorfolk.co.uk/ and https://vojvodina.travel/
respectively). The two regions were chosen due to similar geographical features, in particular
rural areas, fertile flatland, a network of canals and lakes, quaint villages and forested areas,
which all have an impact on the potential tourist activities and attractions that are offered on
the related websites. In addition, the administrative centres of the two regions, the cities of
Norwich and Novi Sad, are culturally connected as twin towns.
In this paper, we first give critical overviews of the theory underlying tourism discourse,
interactional metadiscourse and reader engagement, followed by the empirical part of the
study. The research methodology comprises the extraction of reader engagement markers,
using antConc software (anthony 2017) and normalization of frequencies per 1,000 words
for a more objective quantitative analysis and comparison. furthermore, the most frequent
markers found in the two corpora are analysed qualitatively, considering their distribution
and communicative function. finally, the differences and similarities in the two corpora are
considered along with the cultural aspects of this kind of interaction with the reader. In
conclusion, we show how the findings can shed light on the implied concepts underlying
reader engagement and examine if there are some universal features in the two languages.
There are also implications for the study of the written communication practices in the
context of specialized discourse, gaining a cross-cultural understanding of tourism language
and data-driven teaching of writing in the context of tourism discourse.
‘Experience
Norfolk! Experience
Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi
više od očekivanog’
...
135SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
2 Tourism Discourse
Studying the language of tourism, as the language of one of the most developed and successful
industries in the world, has attracted the attention of numerous linguists, anthropologists,
sociologists and marketing experts in recent decades. In the past 30 years, the interdisciplinary
approach to tourism discourse has uncovered its manifold characteristics which show how the
language of tourism can be used as a powerful communication tool (Urry 1995; Dann 1996;
Jaworski and Pritchard 2005; gotti 2008; Thurlow and Jaworski 2010; Maci 2010; heller,
Jaworski, and Thurlow 2014; Suau Jiménez 2012; 2019).
The language of tourism promotion is closely connected to the language of advertising, whose
main goal is to draw consumers’ attention to a product/service for the purpose of selling
it (Crystal 1987, 390). Crystal (1987, 390–91) explains that the language of advertising
is positive, unreserved, figurative, and underlines the uniqueness of the offer, while it can
sometimes be vague and controversial. today the language of advertising is more common
than ever with the development of social networks and emergence of new professions, such
as bloggers, online copywriters, and even professional influencers, and tourism discourse can
be viewed as part of this.
tourism discourse is a specialized type of general discourse (gotti 2008, 22–24), which very
often represents situations where there is communication between professionals and non-
professionals, i.e., between tourism providers and tourists/customers, realized by means of
power, influence and control (Jaworski and Pritchard 2005, 5). It has a huge impact in our
shaping of the world either through real life experiences or exploring abundant resources
about travel destinations. francesconi (2014, 3) states that “travel and tourism texts have the
ideological potential to influence and orient perception, ideas, values, and actions”.
tourism discourse shapes our vision of reality, creates social identities – juxtaposing self and
the other (Jaworski and Pritchard 2005, 6–7). This specific aspect is of great importance
when analysing writer-reader pronouns in the context of promotional tourism discourse. The
language of tourism promotion also shapes the actual physical environment into the object
of desire by giving it a symbolic value, which is often described as the tourist gaze (Jaworski
and Pritchard 2005; Urry 1995).
today, the sociolinguistic approach to tourism discourse focuses on the ways the language is
used for “identity construction, social boundary marking, and power formation” and “as a
dynamic repository of flexible, mobile resources – codes, genres and styles” (heller, Jaworski,
and Thurlow 2014, 426). It covers topics such as how the interactions between tourists and
hosts are staged, how cultural aspects are presented as tourist products and how linguistic and
semiotic aspects influence the management of space and time (Jaworski and Thurlow 2015).
The language of tourism is often characterized as the language of social control, since it
purposefully creates a certain image and values regarding a destination and lures potential
tourists to become actual customers by creating the sense of otherness, novelty, authenticity,
adventure (Dann 1996). however, it needs to be emphasized that it is crucial to maintain
responsible and ethical communication with the customer (Maci 2010). The contemporary
136 Dragana vuković vojnović ‘Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi više od očekivanog’ ...
approach to tourists has moved away from offering package deals to them. today tourism
professionals try to help tourists make their own decisions by aligning the values presented
on the related websites or social media accounts with those that tourists seek, as well as by
creating a desire to travel as the first step in a potential business deal in the travel industry. In
this way, even though communication in the context of tourism involves both professionals
and non-professionals as participants, the desirable values regarding travel and tourism
destinations are co-created, especially with the increasing influence of e-communication.
3 An Overview of Reader Engagement
reader engagement (hyland 2001, 2002, 2005; Zou and hyland 2020) can be broadly
defined as rhetorical ways of how writers acknowledge the presence of readers and include
them as discourse participants. The study of reader engagement discourse markers falls under
the umbrella of metadiscourse studies that were the first to pinpoint the interactive aspect
of language in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Mauranen 2010, 14). It was observed that
written discourse, apart from its informative and objective element, also contains language
used for establishing writer-reader interaction, which later expanded the view of writing as
highly interactional (Mauranen 2010, 14–15). It was vande kopple (1985, 83) who was
among the first to note that written discourse has a dual function – to inform the reader but
also to help them better understand the text and form their opinion about it.
There are two main approaches to the study of metadiscourse: interactive (interactional/
interpersonal/ textual) model (Markkanen, Steffensen, and Crismore 1993; vande kopple
2002; hyland 2005) and reflexive model (Mauranen 1993, 2010). In their work on written
and spoken metadiscourse, Mauranen (1993, 2010) and Ädel (2006) break out of the more
established view of terminology regarding the study of metadiscourse markers, opting for the
term reflexivity as a way of leading the audience through discourse.
Studies have shown that dialogic form and audience involvement in academic writing are
strongly rooted in the anglo-Saxon writing tradition, whereas other linguistic and cultural
contexts do not use reader-oriented engagement markers so abundantly and the writer’s
voice is subdued with various stance features (Peršurić antonić 2016; Suau Jiménez 2019).
although it has been observed that, for example, the Czech academic tradition has been
impacted by several influences throughout the decades – the german, russian, and more
recently anglo-american tradition of academic writing style (kozubíková šandová 2019,
104) – Czech academic authors are not so direct in communicating their ideas as anglo-
Saxon writers, and they tend to reformulate their ideas, which is different from a more
concise and dialogic style of academic writing in english (kozubíková šandová 2019, 105).
hyland’s interpersonal approach also relies on the understanding that “all language use is
related to specific so cial, cultural and institutional contexts” (hyland 2005, 174). on the
one hand, the writers see themselves as part of a field-specific academic community, so they
evaluate their propositions and the readers within that context, but they also strive to connect
with their readers and associate with their values. as such, hyland (2005) recognizes two
interpersonal dimensions, stance and engagement, as shown in the figure below.
137SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
engagement markers so abundantly and the writer’s voice is subdued with various stance features (Peršurić Antonić
2016; Suau Jiménez 2019). Although it has been observed that, for example, the Czech academic tradition has been
impacted by several influences throughout the decades – the German, Russian, and more recently Anglo-American
tradition of academic writing style (Kozubíková Šandová 2019, 104) – Czech academic authors are not so direct in
communicating their ideas as Anglo-Saxon writers, and they tend to reformulate their ideas, which is different from
a more concise and dialogic style of academic writing in English (Kozubíková Šandová 2019, 105).
Hyland’s interpersonal approach also relies on the understanding that “all language use is related to specific social,
cultural and institutional contexts” (Hyland 2005, 174). On the one hand, the writers see themselves as part of a
field-specific academic community, so they evaluate their propositions and the readers within that context, but they
also strive to connect with their readers and associate with their values. As such, Hyland (2005) recognizes two
interpersonal dimensions, stance and engagement, as shown in the figure below.
FIGURE 1. Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse.
Stance mostly refers to the writer’s own voice and their attempt to position their opinions and attitudes as credible
and supported by arguments, or to express certain reservations without openly exposing themselves to criticism. As
Hyland (2005, 176) puts it, it includes “...the ways that writers intrude to stamp their personal authority onto their
arguments or step back and disguise their involvement.”
On the other hand, the engagement feature more openly establishes the relationship with the reader in the form of a
dialogue to acknowledge the presence of the reader, and, as Hyland (2005) suggests, it establishes an alignment with
them, guiding them through the interpretation of the text. Engagement markers can be grouped into five major
categories with different subgroups (Hyland 2005; Zou and Hyland 2020), which will be explained in more detail
in the following part of this section.
3.1 Reader Mentions
Interactional
Metadiscourse
Stance
writer-oriented;
attitudes;
judgement;
commitment
Engagement
reader-oriented;
alignment;
dialogue;
writer-reader
interaction
figure 1. hyland’s interactional metadiscourse.
Stance mostly refers to the writer’s own voice and their attempt to position their opinions and
attitudes as credible and supported by arguments, or to express certain reservations without
openly exposin thems lves to criticism. as hyland (2005, 176) puts it it includes “...the
ways that writ rs intrude to stamp their personal authority onto their arguments or step back
and disguise their involvement.”
on the other hand, the engagement feature more openly establishes the relationship with
the reader in the form of a dialogue to acknowledge the presence of the reader, and, as
hyland (2005) suggests, it establishes an alignment with them, guiding them through the
interpretation of the text. engagement markers can be grouped into five major categories
with different subgroups (hyland 2005; Zou and hyland 2020), which will be explained in
more detail in the following part of this section.
3.1 reader Mentions
reader mentions (Zou and hyland 2020, 6, 9–11) are usually marked by reader pronouns
(mainly personal pronouns, possessives and reflexives) in the form of the second person to
explicitly bring the reader into the discourse and establish a dialogic form and closeness with
them. however, first person plural forms are also used as an inclusive form to align the writer
and the reader and create a sense of solidarity, as well as to communicate with the readers as
colleagues. In the context of tourism, first person plural forms of pronouns are also used to
establish the difference between the host (i.e., the writer) and the customer (i.e., the reader) in
order to create the sense of otherness as a persuasive strategy that attracts tourists/customers
to experience something different and new. The pronouns and possessives we looked for in
the english corpus in this paper are the following: you, your, yourself, yourselves, we, our, us,
ourselves and their counterparts in Serbian, which are explained further in the discussion of
results section. It has been observed in this study that they are often combined with other
engagement markers, such as directives and modals as we can see in the examples from the
corpus of english tourism texts:
(1) Immerse yourself in 19th century Cromer life in this cosy Victorian fisherman’s cottage.
(2) Be at RSPB Snettisham for daybreak and you’ll see the amazing sight of thousands of
waders taking flight.
138 Dragana vuković vojnović ‘Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi više od očekivanog’ ...
3.2 Directives
Directives are typically represented by imperative forms of verbs that instruct the readers to
act within the text or outside of it, also including obligation modals and predicative adjectives
that express necessity or importance (Zou and hyland 2020, 11). In the academic style of
texts analysed by Zou and hyland (2020), writers try to draw readers’ attention to certain
important elements in their arguments presented in research articles (hyland 2002) or to
get involved in a dialogue with the reader by directly addressing them in scientific blogs
(Zou and hyland 2020). In addition, directives can be subdivided into textual, cognitive
and physical. textual directives ask the reader to act within the text (e.g., see, refer to table),
whereas cognitive directives require the reader to position themselves regarding the presented
arguments or think about them further (e.g., think, consider, note). finally, physical directives
would require the reader to do something outside the text or give some instructions to the
reader (e.g., write, open, mix).
for the purpose of this study, a greater variety of verbs are detected in the corpus when
compared to verbs found in academic style texts (cf. hyland 2001) because of the specific
stylistic and rhetorical features of promotional tourism texts, as will be further explored in the
discussion section of the paper.
3.3 Questions
Zou and hyland (2020, 14) found that questions could be the main strategy to engage readers
in a discussion, but most of them are rhetorical and thus do not require an answer. Such
questions can be content-oriented or reader-oriented, with the latter being more interactive.
The markers in this category could be subdivided into those which check understanding,
expect response or seek agreement on behalf of the reader (Zou and hyland 2020, 14–15).
The markers include full or reduced questions, question tags, as well as rhetorical questions,
which were also found in tourism texts, especially in the english corpus.
3.4 Shared knowledge
In academic writing, authors often want to make sure the readers agree with the expressed
views by trying to persuade them that such views are in accordance with the shared knowledge
that has already been established within a specific discipline (Zou and hyland 2020, 17).
The markers usually comprise adverbs and comments that appeal to logical reasoning (e.g.,
obviously, of course), usual circumstances (e.g., normally, regularly) and usual community
practices and beliefs (e.g., common, traditionally) (Zou and hyland 2020, 17–19).
In tourism discourse, we will see that some of the markers under this category, in particular
the adjectives traditional, typical, and usual, have a somewhat different motivation for their
use due to the communication strategies in tourism discourse. Namely, by using such
adjectives the writers intend to express the specific features of a destination and portray it as
being genuine, which will be more appealing to tourists who are attracted to places that are
“authentic”.
139SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
3.5 Personal asides
Personal asides are short phrases or clauses used to make a comment on what has been said,
usually given in parentheses or separated by commas. although they clearly represent the
voice of the writer (hyland 2001, 561), their main aim is to directly engage with the reader
(hyland 2005; Zou and hyland 2020, 19–20) and offer an “interpretative framework”
(hyland 2001, 561). The examples given by Zou and hyland (2020, 20) include expressions
such as but so far, to my knowledge, in fact, etc.
In this study, markers of personal asides were not expected to be found in abundance because
institutionalized web promotions do not have explicit authors but are written in such a way
that they represent the whole community and not a personal view, as in blogs. however, a few
instances were found in the two corpora.
4 Tourism Promotion and Reader Engagement
Institutionalized tourism promotion on the web usually starts with a website as a way
to establish communication with tourists, consisting of an array of verbal, visual and
audial elements which are persuasive but also need to be truthful. The so-called direct
e-communication is realized by combining different discursive strategies with rhetorical
functions and interpersonal elements (Suau Jiménez 2019, 2). The reader is viewed as the
customer or the consumer, so the main aim is to convince the reader that the presented
offer is attractive, to get the reader involved, with the ultimate goal being the creation of
an economic value (Suau Jiménez 2019, 2). The interaction of the writer and reader in the
promotional tourism texts on the web is highly subjective and guided by the preconceived
values of the reader, i.e., the customer, about the promoted destination or service. In this
way, the very nature of reader engagement in tourism promotion texts will differ from the
academic texts which have been in the focus of interactional discourse studies for decades.
Modern communication with the customers via websites is in a dialogic form, establishing
the bonds with the reader (Suau Jiménez 2019, 6), especially in the anglo-Saxon tradition
of promotional writing. Unlike in research articles, reader engagement in promotional
tourism discourse is more direct, subjective and highly persuasive. furthermore, linguistic
and cultural aspects play a huge role in such communication, so we can expect a variety
of practices across different languages and cultural contexts. for example, the investigation
of stance and engagement in promotional e-tourism genres compiled in the CoMetvaL
corpus (Suau Jiménez 2012 cited in Suau Jiménez 2019, 14–20) showed that reader
engagement was represented to a much higher extent in english than in Spanish. a variety
of reader engagement markers were used, with reader pronouns and directives as the most
dominant ones. Conversely, Spanish texts almost neglected readers as potential co-creators
of the values that were promoted, with reader engagement markers poorly used. Stance as
a way of establishing credibility and the writer’s authority was used much more in Spanish,
often using boosters such as positive adjectives and attitudinals in combination with the self-
mentions (first person pronouns).
another study of the interactional metadiscourse in english travel blogs, which are a genre
somewhat different from the promotional websites, included the investigation of both stance
140 Dragana vuković vojnović ‘Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi više od očekivanog’ ...
and engagement features in the corpus of 16,149 tokens retrieved online (huang, Wang
and tang 2020, 789). engagement was less present than stance in the corpus, with reader
pronouns being the most frequent markers in total, followed by boosters, which corresponds
to the study of Suau Jiménez (2019). Directives were not used so frequently in blogs, which
can be attributed to the very nature of the genre in which the author is trying to give a
personal, subjective account of their travel experience.
Unlike contrastive metadiscourse studies of academic texts (Blagojević 2004, 2007), previous
research on engagement in tourism discourse based on contrastive studies of english and
Slavic languages is not at all common, but it has proven what has been found in other
languages (e.g., Spanish as found by Suau Jiménez 2019). In terms of metadiscourse and more
specifically engagement markers, cultural differences among different language backgrounds
are expected. for example, a previous study shows that Croatian tourist brochures are less
direct than the english ones, and that they do not explicitly address the readers (Peršurić
antonić 2016).
In our study the engagement markers have been classified according to hyland’s categories,
but they have also been considered as open categories (as previously done by fuertes-olivera
et al. 2001, 1296) to include the examples relevant to the language of tourism, which could
differ from the instances found by hyland (2001, 2005), who based his views on investigating
the language of research articles and academia.
5 Research Design and Procedure
In this paper, the main research objectives are the following:
(i) find evidence of reader engagement in the custom-made comparable corpora in
english and Serbian;
(ii) identify the frequency and purpose of the reader engagement markers in each corpus;
(iii) compare and contrast similarities and differences in the two corpora;
(iv) establish potential implications and areas for further study.
a corpus-driven contrastive approach was applied including quantitative and qualitative
analysis of the extracted engagement markers. two comparable corpora were compiled
by selecting promotional tourism texts from two websites, which will be referred to as
english tourism Corpus (etC) and Serbian tourism Corpus (StC). etC comprises texts
written in english as a native language (www.visitnorfolk.co.uk) and StC includes texts
written in Serbian as a native language (https://vojvodina.travel). The texts are unauthored,
i.e., the author is not given and cannot be identified as in blogs, for example. as has
already been mentioned in the introduction, the two regions were chosen because they
share certain geographical similarities that would have an impact on the potential activities,
amenities and attractions promoted to tourists. Both websites deal with so-called inbound
tourism, so the main purpose is to present their own region to potential domestic and
international tourists, which also has implications for the content and discursive features
of the promotional texts.
141SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
for the purpose of the quantitative analysis, the absolute number of occurrences were given
as normalized or actual frequencies per 1,000 words since the two corpora were not the same
in size. as we can see from table 1 below, the total number of words in etC was 32,180 and
for the StC 25,965. Such a procedure provides a more objective comparison of the actual
frequency and distribution of the engagement markers in the corpora.
table 1. The number of word types and word tokens in the two corpora.1
Corpus Types Tokens
english tourism Corpus 5,120 32,180
Serbian tourism Corpus 7,858 25,965
Total 12,978 58,145
The examples were extracted by using antConc software, version 4.0.4, developed by anthony
(2017), then the headword list was explored manually, and the chosen markers were further
checked in context (kWIC – key words in context). The qualitative analysis focused on the
communicative purpose of the extracted engagement markers and corpora comparison.
6 Results and Discussion
6.1 overview of results
as can be observed from table 2 and table 3, the normalized frequencies (nf) per thousand
words (ptw) show that tourism promotional texts in english (etC) use engagement markers
to a much greater extent, with an overall normalized frequency of 25 when compared to the
corpus in Serbian (StC), with overall normalized frequency of 16.52. on the other hand,
the order of subcategories in terms of preference overlaps in the two corpora with reader
pronouns being the most frequent (etC – nf 13.8; StC – nf 7.32) and personal asides being
the least favourable category in both corpora (etC – nf 0.53; StC – nf 0.26). furthermore,
normalized frequencies (table 2 and table 3) show that the actual representation of markers
and their normalized frequencies are much higher in etC in all the categories except for
shared knowledge with nf 4.04 in StC compared to nf 2.8 in etC.
table 2. an overview of the engagement markers in english tourism Corpus (etC).
Category N nf (ptw)
reader mentions 444 13.8
Directives 226 7
Shared knowledge 90 2.8
Questions 27 0.83
Personal asides 17 0.53
Total 804 25
1 In antConc software, word tokens refer to a total number of words in the corpus, and word types refer to a total
number of unique words in the corpus.https://cataloguelegacies.github.io/antconc.github.io/05-wordlists/index.html
142 Dragana vuković vojnović ‘Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi više od očekivanog’ ...
table 3. an overview of the engagement markers in Serbian tourism Corpus (StC).
Category N nf (ptw)
reader mentions 190 7.32
Directives 111 4.27
Shared knowledge 105 4.04
Questions 16 0.62
Personal asides 7 0.26
Total 429 16.52
In the next part, we will present some specifics regarding engagement markers in tourism
discourse and compare the two corpora in more detail based on the findings.
6.2 reader Pronouns
In etC, reader pronouns (N=444) are by far the preferred way of addressing the reader, with
the pronouns you (N=255) and we (N=58) being the most frequent ones. The other forms
included your, yourself, yourselves, us, our, ourselves. The purpose of using first person plural
forms of pronouns in tourism promotional texts is twofold. on the one hand, they can be
inclusive, showing the unity of the writer (or in this corpus the host) and the reader (i.e.,
the tourist) as if they are sharing the same desires and experiencing the place together – if
something is viewed as favourable by the writer, it is assumed that the reader will share the
same preference, as in the following examples from etC:
(3) Seals can hunt at night, [...] That’s when we get to see them!
(4) [...] our location is dropped down from the road, giving us some protection from sea
breezes, giving us privacy and a sense of being far from the hustle and bustle of local life.
(5) Finally on this northern stretch of the coast, we come to Cromer, dramatically poised on
a high bluff.
on the other hand, and to a much greater extent, the first person plural forms of pronouns
underline the difference between the writer and reader creating the dichotomy of self and the
other, which is a popular strategy used in tourism promotion. however, this is done to the
benefit of the readers who are referred to as our guests to be reassured that the writer or the
host will do everything possible to make their stay pleasant and stress-free, so the tourists can
just relax and enjoy their holiday:
(6) We offer a generous buffet-style breakfast for all our guests in our country-style breakfast
room.
(7) Let us help you find accommodation in Norfolk where you can relax and enjoy your stay.
This dichotomy is also used to promote some cultural values of the host, creating the sense of
authenticity or uniqueness that would be appealing to tourists and attract them to the area:
(8) We once had strong trading links with Yorkshire, became American pioneers, sent many to
distant parts of the Empire [...]
143SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
(9) The bricks of the Victorian farmhouse, the boundaries of the fields and the curve of the
River Wensum define what we are all about and what we have to offer.
Second person pronouns are often combined with other markers in a broader context, most
frequently with modals, then directives and questions. They are often used in the context
of describing amenities, services or activities on offer, thus giving the sense of control to the
reader, as if they are the ones who made that choice. here are some examples:
(10) You can get refreshments at the cafe too.
(11) Head eastward and you’ll see Norfolk’s very own Treasure Island… Scolt Head.
(12) Immerse yourself in 19th century Cromer life in this cosy Victorian fisherman’s cottage.
In StC, pronouns take on different morphological forms than their english counterparts due
to a highly inflected nature of the Serbian language – so there are different morphological
forms according to number, case and gender. for example, for the english pronoun we/us
in Serbian there are mi (nominative), nas (genitive, accusative), nama, nam (dative), nama
(instrumental, locative), whereas for the english our, in Serbian there are naš, naša, naše,
našeg, našem, našom, naši, naših, našim, našoj, našu which were all found in the corpus. This
is relevant for the purpose of understanding the obtained results in antConc software, where
these distinctive forms are listed separately but were summed up into the total. That is to say
that the variations of the same pronoun were summed up and were not analysed as separate
pronouns. a similar situation is found in the Serbian counterparts for the english you and
your. additionally, Serbian includes different forms for the second person singular ti/tebe/
tebi/tobom, second person plural forms vi/vas/vama/vam, and the capitalized second person
plural forms Vi/Vas/Vama/Vam which are used for polite address and were the most frequent
pronouns found in StC. In contrast, second person singular forms were not present in the
StC at all, which indicates that the analysed text in Serbian is less direct and more formal.
The Serbian reflexive pronoun se has not been found as pertinent to the reader mentions
subgroup in this corpus, but appeared as the impersonal pronoun se in passive structures (e.g.,
Vinarija se nalazi na salašu [...], “The winery is situated near the farmstead”). furthermore, in
Serbian the writer can address the reader using particular verb endings without using the
pronoun, which would be less formal. Contrary to what might be expected, no instances
were found in this corpus that would be categorized within the reader mentions subgroup, so
they are not included in the analysis. This contributes to the overall nature of the StC which
is more formal and less interactive than the etC. however, there were a few examples under
the personal asides subgroup. furthermore, as seen in examples 13 and 14, it is evident that
the writer strives to maintain respectful and reassuring communication with the reader by
using capitalized pronouns Vi, Vaš, Vam which are morphological plurals but with singular
references used as honorific forms:
(13) [...] smeštaj i ishranu po pristupačnim cenama i upravo onako kako Vi to budete želeli
‘[...] accommodation and food at reasonable prices and just the way you would like’
(14) Po Vašoj želji organizovaćemo Vam posete [...]
‘according to your wishes we will organize you a visit to [...]’
144 Dragana vuković vojnović ‘Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi više od očekivanog’ ...
for a more dialogic mode, reader pronouns are combined with questions and directives, for
the purpose of addressing the reader more directly and making a proposal more tempting:
(15) Lagana vožnja turističkim brodićem po Paliću Vam zvuči primamljivo? Samo uskočite,
zapolovite i uživajte.
‘Leisurely tour boat ride across Palić sounds tempting to you? Just hop in, set sail and
enjoy.’
first person plural pronouns are used in a similar way as in the english corpus, either as
inclusive to emphasize the unity of the writer and reader who are sharing the same experiences
(example 16) or as a way to present the host to the reader as credible and trustworthy (example
17):
(16) [...] – čekaju vas zanimljivi predeli. A mi ćemo u ovoj turi obići i jedno i drugo!
‘[...] – interesting landscapes are waiting for you. and we will see in this tour both!’
(17) Uložite svoje poverenje u nas i dođite gde su vaše potrebe vrednovane.
‘Put your trust in us and come where your needs are valued.’
6.3 Directives
In etC, directives in the imperative form of the verbs are the second most frequent category
with 226 instances and normalized frequency of 7. Contrary to what was expected (cf.
hyland 2001, 553–54), modal verbs were not used to guide the reader or instruct them to
pursue certain actions inside or outside the text, apart from three instances of have to. textual
directives are also rare in etC because further references are always hyperlinked and take
you to a different space on the website or outside the website. The majority of verbs used as
directives in etC call for some physical or mental action outside the text and on behalf of the
tourists (i.e., the readers) through affirmative presentation of the amenities and attractions
that would provide unique experiences for them:
(18) Paddle on the shore and explore the rockpools left behind the tide.
(19) Imagine vast expanses of clear blue sky and sparkling water.
(20) Learn about shopping and trading, take a look at the recreated early 20th century
chemists shop and explore The Undercroft!
Negatives are also used to kindly warn the tourists of some potential danger, to establish
greater interaction with the reader, or to emphasize the attractiveness of the destination:
(21) Don’t forget sun cream and sun hats, too.
(22) ...the castle was actually reconstructed by the Victorians, but sssh, don’t tell anyone!
(23) Don’t miss our Norman cathedral, one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture
in Europe.
It has also been observed that directives are rich in phrasal expressions, namely with the verbs
take and look:
145SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
(24) Take a brisk walk past crisp hedgerow [...]
(25) Take a spin on the Big Wheel on Great Yarmouth’s Golden Mile of seafront [...]
(26) Look out for massive flocks of geese in winter, [...]
Directives are also the second most frequent category in StC, with 111 instances and nf
4.27, but what is significantly different from the etC is the fact that out of the total number
of directives, 47 instances include modal verbs. There are only a few negatives, and some are
combined with modal verbs. In Serbian, imperative forms have second person singular (e.g.,
zamisli – “imagine”), first person plural forms (e.g., zamislimo – “let us imagine”), and second
person plural forms (e.g., zamislite – “imagine”). as is the case with the reader pronouns,
imperative forms are used in the second person plural as a form of polite, more formal and
less direct way of addressing the reader:
(27) Probajte naše salašarske đakonije [...]
‘Taste our farm specialities [...]’
(28) Rezervišite turu odmah!
‘Book the tour now!’
Most of the directives in StC invite the reader to some physical or mental action outside the
text, to take some practical steps in order to secure the best possible holiday. however, there
are several examples of the textual directives, calling for some action within the text on the
website:
(29) više o turama i vodičima duž Dunava u Srbiji, pogledajte na linku ovde.
‘More about the tours and guides along the Danube in Serbia, look up the link
here.’
regarding the modals, they are also given in the second person plural form and show even
more distance and a more polite, less direct way of addressing the reader:
(30) Za ribolovačke dozvole možete se obratiti ...
‘for fishing permits you can ask ...’
(31) Morate probati Mirkovu tortu.
‘you must try Mirko’s cake.’
(32) 10 atrakcija u Bačkoj koje ne smete propustiti ...
‘10 attractions in Bačka which you must not miss ...’
6.4 Shared knowledge
In etC, the category of shared knowledge is less frequent than reader pronouns and
directives, with 90 instances and nf 2.8, and it is highly context-dependent. This category
includes a range of rather heterogenous expressions (for example, of course, yes, considered,
said, traditional, known, etc.) used to confirm common knowledge about some aspect of the
promoted destination or to provoke curiosity by confirming some lesser-known facts:
146 Dragana vuković vojnović ‘Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi više od očekivanog’ ...
(33) [...] with comfy beds for you and your pet and they of course include a fantastic buffet
continental country style breakfast
(34) You can have a traditional English Afternoon Tea there today.
(35) Yes, the pristine façade you see today was created by the Victorians!
(36) [...] Yes, Nosey Parker was a Norfolk guy!
In StC, this is the only category that has a higher normalized frequency than the same
category in etC, with 104 instances and nf 4.04. The examples include adjectives or adverbs
that emphasize some expected or well-known aspects of the promoted destination:
(37) Poznato je da se na ovoj deonici kanala DTD [...]
‘It is well-known that on this section of the DtD canal [...]’
(38) Uloga kuće je da prikaže tradicionalnu arhitekturu ovdašnjih ljudi [...]
‘The role of the house is to represent the traditional architecture of the local people [...]’
(39) ... više liči na šumovito-planinski predeo nego na uobičajenu vojvođansku ravnicu [...]
‘... more resembles a forest-mountain area than the typical vojvodina flatland [...]’
This could be attributed to the fact that the text in StC is more formal in presenting the
destination, so it includes longer descriptive passages which include additional details
including shared knowledge features to ensure a more credible presentation.
6.5 Questions
In etC, questions are not very common with nf 0.83, which is far less than other categories.
They appear mostly in their full form, reduced form or as tags. The full forms are content-
oriented, and they are used as titles to introduce a new section on the website where you can
immediately find the answer in the text that follows it:
(40) What part of Norfolk is best?
reduced forms and tags are reader-oriented and used to establish an informal, intimate
dialogic form with the reader and to provoke a reaction or response, or seek agreement:
(41) a second there you thought Millennium Falcon, didn’t you?
(42) ... like in Norwich, but then every place has got those, right?
(43) On a diet? Don’t worry, there are loads of other fabulous food outlets.
a few completely informal, conversational expressions were also found, such as:
(44) Ipswich Town, it is called the Old Farm Derby. Geddit?
In StC, questions are even less common, there are only 16 instances with nf 0.62. They are
mostly reduced questions and were found in one smaller section of the website that was less
formal:
(45) Hrana ili piće? Ili oba?
‘food or drinks? or both?’
147SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
(46) Kroz istoriju ili kroz kulturu?
‘Through history or through culture?’
Questions in full forms are used as titles:
(47) Šta sve možete u adrenalin parku?
‘What can you do in adrenalin Park?’
6.6 Personal asides
The category of personal asides is not common in the two corpora, which is expected because
the texts are not written as personal accounts and the authors are not given. In etC, there
are only 17 instances that are used as comments to provoke certain reactions in the reader, so
they contribute to the less formal, dialogic form of the english corpus:
(48) Okay, there’s more to it than just the chips (fried in beef fat – not for veggies!)
(49) [...] and much more (death masks of convicted killers anyone?)
In StC, there are only 7 examples, used as comments to the content or what was previously
said:
(50) Mada neki još pamte, da je nekoliko godina pre ovog datuma, ...
‘although some still remember that a few years before this date ...’
(51) Mnoštvo u jednome, kažemo i ne dodajemo ništa.
‘Multiplicity in unity, we say and add nothing.’
7 Conclusion
as was mentioned in the introduction, promotional tourism discourse is based on rhetorical
strategies that aim at persuading potential tourists to travel and engage in tourism activities.
Therefore, it has been expected that the written e-communication of tourism organizations
would be interactional and would engage the reader in a dialogue in terms of aligning the
values presented on the websites with the values of the readers/tourists.
The main objective of this study was to analyse two comparable corpora in english and Serbian
compiled from official websites of two regional tourism organizations from great Britain and
Serbia in terms of the use of reader-oriented engagement markers. Prior to the empirical part,
the theoretical framework was explored in order to establish underlying principles of their use.
after the extraction, engagement markers were grouped into five sub-categories as proposed
by hyland (2005). It was immediately noticed that the actual instances of the markers found
in tourism corpora would differ to some extent to those proposed by hyland (2005) and
Zou and hyland (2020), as their studies were based on the investigation of research articles
and academic blogs, which represent different genres than promotional tourism websites, so
the writer-reader interaction is somewhat different. Quantitative and qualitative comparison
of the two corpora uncovered some similarities and differences. Based on this study, some
features could be considered as universal when it comes to reader engagement since reader
mentions and directives are the most frequent categories both in the analysed corpora and
148 Dragana vuković vojnović ‘Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi više od očekivanog’ ...
in the reviewed literature. furthermore, certain cross-cultural differences were observed in
the analysed corpora regarding the interactivity and formality of written e-communication,
which is also congruent with previous studies (kozubíková šandová 2019; Peršurić antonić
2016; Suau Jiménez 2019).
one of the major differences between the two analysed corpora is that english uses reader
engagement features to a much greater extent (etC N= 804, nf 25 ptw, StC N= 429, nf
16.52 ptw). Communication with the reader in etC follows a dialogic form, and is more
direct and less formal in the attempts to engage the readers and motivate them to choose
their travel destination. one similarity is that the preferred categories in both corpora are
reader pronouns and directives, followed by shared knowledge. however, we observed certain
differences in the type of marker representatives within the categories. firstly, regarding reader
pronouns in the StC, it was found that second person plural forms were used as honorific
forms of addressing a single person in a formal way. StC is not so direct as etC, which is
additionally proven by the greater number of second plural forms of modals in the category
of directives which increases the distance from the reader. on the other hand, etC is more
dynamic, addresses the reader more directly by engaging them in a less formal way through
directives and informal questions and question tags.
The analysis presented here shows that the cultural elements are omnipresent in both corpora
influencing the aspect of reader engagement. When compared to academic corpora, tourism
corpora provide a longer and more diverse list of actual markers within categories, especially
when it comes to directives and reader mentions (cf. hyland and Jiang 2019). The directives
found in academic texts guide the readers through the text or ask for some interpretative
action on behalf of the reader (hyland 2001, 564). Conversely, our findings show that
directives that would require an action within the text are not characteristic of institutional
tourism texts, but they rather refer to the activities to be performed in the actual destination
that is promoted, whereas text references are always hyperlinked. This brings us back to the
insight that interactional metadiscourse, including reader engagement, is highly dependent
on the context in terms of genre, target audience and specialist field of the analysed texts. It
is intricately connected to cultural and linguistic aspects and writing practices within special
professional communities. In addition, in tourism texts, and based on the results of this study,
the difference between self (the writer) and the other (the reader) is emphasized to the benefit
of the reader, with the ultimate goal of immersing the reader in the local culture and shared
experience with the writer.
regarding further analysis of reader engagement in tourism discourse, studies should focus
on aspects regarding reader mentions other than reader pronouns, which were observed in the
corpora (e.g., everyone, all, visitors, guests, adventurers, connoisseurs and so on). a more detailed
study of semantic classes of verbs used as directives could also provide fruitful insights into the
cultural and intercultural aspects of institutionalized tourism discourse on the web.
finally, the findings of the study provide real-life examples of language use in the context of
written e-communication in institutionalized tourism discourse and can be used for the data-
driven teaching of english for tourism and hospitality, and also help Serbian content writers
when preparing the content for the e-promotion of tourist destinations.
149SPeCIaL ISSUe artICLeS
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Part III
Varia
153varIa
2023, vol. 20 (1), 153-169(228)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1.153-169
UDC: 821.111(71).09-31ondaatje M.:141.72
Lilijana Burcar
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Ongoing Objectification, Marginalization and
Sexualization of Women in Michael Ondaatje’s The English
Patient and Divisadero: Old Patterns, New Disguises
aBStraCt
The year 2023 marks Michael ondaatje’s 80th birthday, a landmark in the author’s life and
an occasion for literary critics to look back and revisit what are perhaps some of the more
troubling aspects of his literary production. ondaatje’s poetry and fiction have received little
attention from feminist literary critics, which is due to the author’s conservative take on
the figuration of female characters and representation of women. While some critics have
proposed that The English Patient (1992), and therefore also by extension his novel Divisadero
(2007), might signify a turning point in ondaatje’s otherwise problematic gender politics,
this article demonstrates that earlier patterns of women’s objectification, sexualization and
marginalization found in ondaatje’s poetry and fiction persist in both of these seemingly
more progressive works, albeit in new forms and disguises. This article also introduces a new
concept to the field of (feminist) literary theory, the so-called blazon in prose.
Keywords: Michael ondaatje, feminism, Coming Through Slaughter, The Cinnamon Peeler,
The English Patient, Divisadero
Nadaljevanje popredmetovanja, marginalizacije in seksualizacije
žensk v romanih Angleški pacient in Divisadero Michaela
Ondaatjeja: stari vzorci, nove preobleke
IZvLeČek
Leta 2023 obeležujemo osemdeseto obletnico rojstva kanadskega pisatelja in pesnika Michaela
ondaatjeja, kar je pomemben mejnik v avtorjevem življenju in hkrati priložnost za literarno
kritično srenjo, da ponovno preuči vidike avtorjevega literarnega ustvarjanja, ki ostajajo
problematični. ondaatjejev pesniški in literarni opus je požel zelo malo zanimanja med
feministično literarno kritično srenjo zaradi izrazito konservativne naravnanosti njegovih del
pri upodabljanju ženskih likov in podajanja predstavnosti o ženskah. Medtem ko so nekateri
kritiki roman Angleški pacient (1992), in kasneje v navezavi z njim tudi roman Divisadero
(2007), označili za prebojnega, saj naj bi predstavljal odmik od konservativne spolne politike,
prispevek pokaže, da oblike popredmetovanja, seksualizacije in marginalizacije žensk tudi v
teh dveh domnevno bolj progresivnih delih, ki temeljita na ondaatjejevi tipični konstelaciji
moških in ženskih osrednjih likov, niso odpravljene, pač pa se ohranjajo v posodobljeni,
manj vpadno agresivni preobleki. Prispevek vpelje nov strukturalni koncept v polje literarne
(feministične) teorije, t. i. blason v prozi.
Ključne besede: Michael ondaatje, feminizem, Coming Through Slaughter, The Cinnamon
Peeler, Angleški pacient, Divisadero
154 Lilijana Burcar Ongoing Objectification, Marginalization and Sexualization of Women in Michael Ondaatje’s ...
1 Introduction
The year 2023 marks the 80th birthday of Michael ondaatje, one of Canada’s most prolific
and prominent living writers. Despite his enduring success, ondaatje’s novels and books of
poetry have drawn very little feminist attention. Writing in 1994, Lorraine york brought
up the question of the missing feminist critique or “the-not-yet-written feminist criticism”
of ondaatje’s fiction and poetry (1994, 71). This question was to be raised again almost
thirty years later by literary critics such as robert Lecker, who asked why the representation
of women in ondaatje has “not actually been approached in any depth” (r. Lecker, email
message to author, January 8, 2022). a still valid answer to this overwhelming question was
offered by york herself in what to this day remains one of the rare critical feminist essays
on ondaatje, titled “Whirling Blindfolded in the house of Woman: gender Politics in the
Poetry and fiction of Michael ondaatje”. york hypothesizes that
feminist critics shied away from ondaatje because they assumed there was nothing
to write about, or that, if they did write, they would end up compiling a survey
of ‘images of women’ in ondaatje – in essence, a catalogue of atwoodian victim
positions.” (1994, 71)
In other words, from a feminist perspective, ondaatje’s fiction and poetry are deeply
problematic and in their essence conservative. his fictional and poetic worlds, as argued
by critics, are based upon the re-inscription of the patriarchal symbolic order and the
reproduction of “cultural male bias” (ellis 1996, 24), which in his earlier works preceding
the publication of The English Patient is most clearly reflected in “the romanticization” of
masculine violence along with its sexual codification directed at women (Bök 1992, 109).
In this respect, some critics consider ondaatje’s The English Patient (1992), and by extension
his novel Divisadero (2007), which is also based on a constellation of male and female central
characters, as signifying a turning point in his conservative gender politics.1 These two
1 The intervening novel between these two is Anil’s Ghost, published in 2000. Unlike the rest of ondaatje’s novels
that carry a constellation of male and female central characters, with the latter marginalized and the narrative points
of view tipped in favour of male characters as central observers, Anil’s Ghost is, exceptionally, told from the point
of view of a female focalizer. This has led many mainstream critics to view Anil’s Ghost, including one of our own
reviewers, as automatically emancipatory and unproblematic in terms of gender binaries. When trying to dispute
feminist criticism of ondaatje in particular, mainstream critics and reviewers of scholarly articles alike make a
point of referring to ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost (2000). They claim that the novel represents a major departure
from the author’s conservative gender politics for the simple reason that it “us[es] a woman as the focalizing figure”
(reviewer B, accompanying comments, april 5, 2023). But as is very well known in feminist literary theory, having
a woman character as a central focalizer does not in any way guarantee that such a literary text will be automatically
emancipatory and free of patriarchal paradigm, its hierarchically arranged masculine-feminine binaries and harmful
gender constraints. Thinking in these terms is in fact biologically deterministic and deeply flawed. a closer analytical
look at ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost proves this point.
The main protagonist and central focalizing figure is a Sri Lankan woman, educated in the Uk and working in the
USa as a forensic anthropologist. This, according to ondaatje, is supposedly a male-dominated profession. She is sent
to Sri Lanka during the civil war as an employee of the United Nations’ Centre for human rights in geneva. She not
only excels in her profession but also loves being “one of the boys” (ondaatje 2011, 143), who constitute the crème
de la crème of forensic doctors dispatched to different corners of the world by international human rights agencies.
ondaatje makes his female focalizing figure in Anil’s Ghost truly one of the boys not only in spirit but also in her
name. With her mind set on being a successful woman, she barters away her childhood female name for a male one.
anil, as this woman explains and who mainstream critics ironically take as a rare example of female empowerment in
ondaatje’s fiction, is “her brother’s unused second name” (ondaatje 2011, 63). It is her brother’s masculine name that
Ongoing
Objectification,
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works are believed to usher in a less problematic model of masculinity that departs from
earlier explicit violence directed at women, while also offering an improved representation
of women (Bök 1992; york 1994; ellis 1996). yet a closer comparative look at The English
Patient and Divisadero, as we demonstrate in this article, reveals that the pattern of women’s
objectification, sexualization and marginalization characteristic of ondaatje’s early poetry
and fiction continues to inform these two seemingly progressive novels, albeit in new forms
and disguises. an in-depth analysis of The English Patient and Divisadero reveals a shift from
an earlier explicit pattern of gendering to a more refined, toned-down version. We show that
this seemingly more benign pattern of gendering, which admittedly is no longer based upon
gives her orientation, stability and security, a feeling of belonging and self-worth. her adopted masculine name is a
ticket that in combination with her hard work opens the door to the homosocial world of well-paid male professionals.
ondaatje exceptionally allows a career woman to enter this homosocial circle of high-ranking professionals, providing
she sheds her original feminine name and identity, which works towards the symbolic preservation of masculine
homogeneity. here, instead of building upon the problematization of masculine-centred public and work-related
spaces, ondaatje perpetuates the old, gendered divide and stereotype by having the woman adapt to masculinity as
the modus operandi of professional worlds. to count as equal and to fit in, it is women that must adapt and not vice
versa, for this might spell reaching out and meeting halfway by both parties, thus disturbing the patriarchal paradigm.
Instead, the central position of a woman in this novel, which according to mainstream critics represents a significant
digression from the rest of ondaatje’s novels, in which women feature as peripheral and marginal to men, seems to
derive from symbolically embracing masculinity.
equally problematic is the way in which ondaatje’s central female character secures her masculine name. out of
an array of options, ondaatje opts for the sex trade. This points to the ongoing sexual objectification of women in
ondaatje’s texts, which is never a fate meted out to his male characters:
her name had not always been anil. […] She had tried to buy it from [her brother] when she was twelve years
old, … She gave her brother one hundred saved rupees, a pen set he had been eyeing for some time, a tin of
fifty gold Leaf cigarettes she had found, and a sexual favour he had demanded in the last hours of the impasse.
(ondaatje 2011, 63–64)
The central female protagonist and focalizer of the novel acquires her new masculine name and a more empowering
masculine identity through a trade exchange with her brother, which involves a trade with her own body. This stands
in stark contrast to ondaatje’s male characters, most typically exemplified in The English Patient, for whom change
of identity or loss of national identities derives from their agency and acts of heroism and never depends upon their
reduction to objects of sexual commodification and somebody else’s sexual pleasure. The latter holds true for the
female central focalizer in ondaatje’s only novel that delivers the narrative through the lens of a female character.
her admission to the masculine world and her seeming empowerment leads through the backdoor of making herself
sexually available. This is, as implied rather than problematized in the novel, a price a woman must pay or even
willingly pays to eventually make it in a men’s world.
But once in, women in this supposedly emancipatory fictional world are themselves given to perpetuating harmful
binaries of femininity and masculinity. We learn that this career woman’s success in the forensic labs where she works
itself depends on “mak[ing] it a point to distinguish female and male traits as clearly as possible” (ondaatje 2011,
133, our italics) as though masculinity and femininity were biological givens and not in reality socially assigned
characteristics and roles. according to the central female focalizer, women forensics can supposedly handle cadavers
of all ages better than men because they are “geared to giving birth, protecting children, [and] steering them through
crisis” (ondaatje 2011, 133). It is the assumed universal and natural ability to give birth and to be a mother that
supposedly makes women “better at dealing with calamity in professional work than men” while “men need[] to pause
and dress themselves in coldness in order to deal with a savaged body” (ondaatje 2011, 133). Ironically, the central
character is not a mother. The fact that women have the biological ability to give birth supposedly makes them by
default better equipped for examining decomposing bodies, which is a textbook example of biological essentialism
and biological determinism par excellence. When it comes down to gender politics, ondaatje’s focalizing character
does not voice views that would enable this central female character to break out of the confines of gendered binaries.
her thinking is mired in biological determinism and based on the essentialization of assigned traits of masculinity and
femininity as indisputable biological givens. having a female focalizer is not a game-changing narrative technique in
its own right. What matters is the content. Therefore, such thinking is itself part and parcel of biological determinism,
to which mainstream literary critics not versed in feminist literary theory are more than prone to succumbing.
156 Lilijana Burcar Ongoing Objectification, Marginalization and Sexualization of Women in Michael Ondaatje’s ...
explicit masculine aggression and sexual violence against women, still revolves around the
re-inscription of women’s secondary status as the objectified and marginalized other and as
the commodified sexualized and bodily other, orbiting around a tight-knit male homosocial
centre. to prove this, the contribution sheds light on the premises of the overt patriarchal
paradigm that informs ondaatje’s first novel, Coming Through Slaughter (1976)2, and his
most popular collection of poetry, titled The Cinnamon Peeler (1989), which includes poems
that ondaatje wrote between 1963 and 1990. These two works are pivotal reference points as
they literally frame the first three decades of ondaatje’s writing career. for this reason, they are
brought in and read against The English Patient and Divisadero to show that instead of there
being a remarkable paradigm shift, there is instead still a stunning consistency in women’s
objectification and their ongoing sexual commodification, with homosocial patriarchal
bonding between men and hegemonic masculinity remaining the central axes of these two
seemingly more progressive fictional worlds.
In this way, this article also attempts to redress the gaping hole in the feminist critique of
ondaatje’s fiction and poetry, which peaked in the 1990s but never picked up after that, as
feminist critics, justifiably, turned their attention elsewhere.3 admittedly, this text is in its own
way an exploration of what york has termed women’s “victim positions”, which still remains
an open chapter of feminist critique on ondaatje and which this article attempts to close.
our approach, however, does not function on the level of mere descriptive renditions and
listings of “images of women” at the receiving end of male violence, which was predominantly
the case with feminist close readings of literary texts in the 1980s and the early 1990s.
as york implies in her seminal feminist essay on ondaatje, it was this factor, along with
ondaatje’s conservative gender politics, which presented itself as a deterrent and the reason
that feminist critics in the late 1990s and from that point onwards avoided engaging critically
with ondaatje. They came to fear that a textual approach based on a mere description and
enumeration of women’s positions as victims, which ondaatje’s works seem to invite by
default, would help to reenforce harmful binaries of femininity and masculinity. They feared
it would help to perpetuate an essentialist view of women, whose identity in the patriarchal
symbolic order remains dependent on the assigned status of marginalized and objectified
other and on being a perpetual victim at the receiving end of masculine violence (Brown
1995). our contribution departs from the pattern of mere descriptive textual investigations
2 Coming Through Slaughter was ondaatje’s first novel. Prior to that, in 1967, ondaatje published his first collection of
poems, titled The Dainty Monsters (1967), which was followed in 1970 by The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-
Handed Poems. The latter is not a novel proper but a pastiche of “poems, prose, photographs, interviews, and even comic
books, which combined create a meditation on the nature of heroism and violence” (encyclopaedia Britannica 2023).
3 By the early 1990s, anglo-american feminist literary criticism tended to criticize male-authored patriarchal texts by
merely describing the presence or absence of women and the restricted, traditional roles assigned to them in such works.
at the same time, feminist literary critics had more important and urgent tasks to see to than simply dwelling on
male-authored texts, as these began to increasingly constitute just one segment of the entire literary production and
by extension also of college syllabi for literature courses. feminist scholars and literary critics increasingly turned their
attention to the recuperation of a lost female literary canon and to an ever more expanding field of contemporary
feminist literary production, which required its own critical assessment. This new, blossoming literary field turned out
to be more alluring and engaging, as feminist literary writings aimed to address and problematize patriarchal social
organization and its constraining effects on men and women alike. for this reason, they offered, and still do, alternative
modes of being and acting in the world, far removed from the pattern of women’s passivization, desubjectivization and
commodification found, for example, in the works of then established male authors such as ondaatje.
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and relies on an analytical, deconstructive method. In doing so, it brings together a wide and
complex variety of interdisciplinary insights, produced by feminist scholars over the course of
the last four decades, both into women’s body objectification and commodified sexualization,
and into the processes of women’s objectification and marginalization in general. These
interdisciplinary feminist investigations, which first emerged in the field of cultural and
sociological studies, remain united under one common banner. Their aim is to make the
ongoing processes of women’s othering, body objectification and sexualization “strange”; that
is, no longer tenable and therefore no longer acceptable.
2 Women’s Body Objectification and Marginalization
The Cinnamon Peeler is a collection of poems spanning the period between 1963 to 1990
when ondaatje wrote his first major works The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Coming
Through Slaughter, Running in the Family, and In the Skin of a Lion. The collection establishes
the template for multi-layered forms of homosocial bonding. These include representations
of the poet and his male friends (to whom some of the poems are dedicated) and other
mostly deceased fellow artists, primarily literati and poets (such as Christopher Dewdney,
Wallace Stevens, robert Creeley, Peter handke, henry rousseau, rainer Maria rilke, Pablo
Neruda, Marcel Proust, Miguel de Cervantes, and federico garcia Lorca), scientists (Charles
Darwin), politicians (John f. kennedy), philosophers, and other male figures that command
authority in their respective fields. It is exclusively with them that the poet speaker engages
in a direct communication, referring to them most often as a source of inspiration or even
envious admiration. In this homosocial poetic landscape two female artists are mentioned
in passing (Bessie Smith, emily Dickinson). Meanwhile, men appear as each other’s mental
companions and spiritual mentors, immersed into “thinking chaos” (ondaatje 1992, 39)
and the production of poetic lines as “tracks of thought” (ondaatje 1992, 41). Women, on
the other hand, pop up sporadically as voiceless bodies, mirroring flora and fauna at best
but most often as anonymous sexualized bodies to be laid claim to. In both cases, women
function as “passive objects of the male explosive creativity” (Bök 1992, 116). Women walk
in and out of this collection of poems primarily as “naked” bodies (ondaatje 1992, 84), and
as bodies already shared with other men. a woman’s stomach, for example, is kissed by the
poet speaker to bless those men who kissed this part of the same woman’s body before him,
as in “rock Bottom” (ondaatje 1992, 151). This form of homosocial bonding, which is
cemented through the exchange of women between the poet and his male friends, further
rests on the reduction of women to anonymous bodies also shared between the poet speaker
and his contemporary or long-deceased fellow artists in their own lines of poetry. In this way,
if the poet speaker is at one point “aroused by Wyatt’s talk of women who step / naked into
his bed chamber” (ondaatje 1992, 55), at another point he is also full of admiration for
rousseau and his visage of “a naked lady / who has been animal and tree / her breast a suckled
orange” (ondaatje 1992, 46).
In ondaatje’s homosocial poetic landscape, a woman most often appears as a particular kind
of a “naked body”. This is an assemblage of fragmented and sexualized body parts, held in
the gaze of a single male or in a mirrored gaze of multiple male observers who share in their
spiritual companionship and acts of poetic creativity. The collection features a thinking and
158 Lilijana Burcar Ongoing Objectification, Marginalization and Sexualization of Women in Michael Ondaatje’s ...
creative male subject versus women who feature as a collection of sexualized and fetishized
body parts. While the poet speaker and his male companions appear wholesome, representing
mind and spirit, sporadic women reduced to sexualized body fragments represent the outer
margin of their homosocially reconstructed human centre. Painted in this manner as the
ultimate other and something closer to nature than culture, women are always on the outside.
That is, they are always on the other side of the homosocial world inhabited exclusively by the
poet speaker and his fellow artists. This is best exemplified in “tin roof” as follows:
oh, rilke, I want to sit down calm like you
or pace the castle, avoiding the path of the cook, Carlo,
/…/
I have circled your books for years
/…
I can see you sitting down
the suspicious cook asleep
/… /
Us and the coffee,
all the small charms we invade it with.
as at midnight we remember the colour
of the dogwood flower growing
like a woman’s sex outside the window. (Bök 1992, 122–23)
While men are engrossed in each other’s spiritual worlds and their “weaving [of ] language
into artistic creation” (Miller 2016, 31), women are desubjectivized and marginalized as a
faceless and voiceless collection of eclectic and sexualized body parts, scattered on the outer
rim of men’s homosocial world. Defined and controlled by the masculine gaze of the male
observer and reduced to an assortment of sexualized body parts to be “repeatedly put together
and taken apart” according to the male poets’ whims and erotic desires (Montrose in Miller
2016, 29), women further assume the status of absent presence. They pass from “a potentially
speaking subject to a sexualized physical object” to be eventually claimed and triumphantly
possessed by the poet speaker ((Miller 2016, 32). This is most clearly encapsulated in the title
poem of the collection, “The Cinnamon Peeler”, in which the opening lines read as follows:
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust/on your pillow
your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
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floating over you.
//…//
here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
you will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler’s wife. (ondaatje 1992, 156)
The woman’s identity and subjectivity are non-existent and instead are derivative of that of
the poet speaker. reduced to a truncated and fetishized body, the woman disappears only to
reappear as an assortment of sexualized and commodified body parts, which are mapped and
claimed by the male speaker’s hands. reconfigured as an eclectic collection of body parts, the
woman has no voice, no self, and consequently no power. as an assemblage of fragmented
body parts, she can be unproblematically made to “serve men’s ends” (Jones 2000, 91) or,
more specifically, sexual desires other than her own.
ondaatje’s elision of women as subjects and their remoulding as fragmented and sexualized
bodies is of course not his own invention. It is a faithful reinvocation of the renaissance
genre of blazon, especially its Petrarchan convention, whose problematic patriarchal
principles ondaatje follows to the letter. Blazons are conceits or poems that in their entirety
“dwelt upon and detailed the various parts of a woman’s body” held in the dissecting and
defining masculine gaze of the male poet (Cuddon 1991, 97). as noted by C. John Stout,
in this poetic genre, “the female body is taken apart and fetishized so that the male poet can
demonstrate his verbal prowess, his wit, and his technical expertise. In this process, the man
speaks and the woman is silent” (2003, 54). Just as importantly, in this poetic genre and by
extension in ondaatje’s poetry, “men make possession of the female body, dismembering
it, caressing it with words or insulting it, while [the woman], to whom their poems are
ostensibly dedicated remains absent” (Stout 2003, 57). Worse, with Petrarch the woman
becomes an absent presence and, to rephrase Charles Sorel’s then contemporary critique,
“a beautiful monster” (Mandell 1996, 569). Petrarchan convention, which dominates the
genre of blazon, is based on “the listing of body parts” usually “from the hair down” and
on “the use of hyperbole and simile in describing lips like coral, teeth like pearls [hair like
fine-spun gold, breasts like ivory] and so on” (Baldick 2001, 28). a Petrarchan blazon is
therefore a head-to-toe inventory or a catalogue of women’s body parts which are aligned
with minerals, metals, and other precious, and, most importantly, tradeable objects in nature.
It emphasizes and links the commodified riches that the woman’s body parts are equated with
and subsumed under the worldly possessions the poet speaker as the woman’s lover and owner
of her body finds or symbolically places himself in charge of. With each body part compared
to a treasure in nature or to a valuable object, the woman is again fixed as a possession and
as an interchangeable commodity to be bartered among men in their competitive pursuit
of symbolic wealth. Within the Petrarchan convention of blazon, however, this does not
160 Lilijana Burcar Ongoing Objectification, Marginalization and Sexualization of Women in Michael Ondaatje’s ...
necessarily translate into explicit sexual fetishization of the woman. however, the woman
is again commodified and effaced as a subject, her body parts come to stand for tradeable
commodities in nature manned by those constituting the homosocial centre of humanity.
as a result, she is made to disappear as a human by being realigned with nature rather than
culture once her body parts come to stand for precious objects found in nature or when they
come to stand for its flora and fauna. This is exactly the form of women’s body fragmentation,
othering, and marginalization also at work in ondaatje’s The English Patient and Divisidaro.
Divisadero, first published in 2007, is set both in the United States and france. each of the two
settings, as is typical of ondaatje’s intercontinental novels, features women not as independent
entities, as is the case with the men populating the same literary world, but as an obligatory
part of male-female pairings. The narrative is framed and focalized primarily through the eyes
of central male protagonists. These include Coop, a professional gambler, then the pre–first
World War obscure writer Lucien Segura, and rafael, a post-war child attached to Segura’s
refurbished estate at the end of the twentieth century. even when the two token female
characters, Claire and anna, occasionally take the central podium, their perspective is muted
and abstracted. Their energy is channelled toward maintaining the love for their men or toward
the investigation and advancement of the lives of other men but never women. anna’s career
thus revolves around “exhuming mostly unknown corners of european cultures” with her
“best-known study […] of auguste Maquet, one of alexandre Dumas’ collaborators and plot
researches” and another one being that of “george Wague, the professional mime who gave
Collette lessons in 1906 to prepare her for music-hall melodramas” (ondaatje 2008, 148).
It is also in this capacity that anna, an american researcher now dedicated to the recovery
and canonization of Segura’s forgotten writings, encounters rafael, with whom she almost
immediately enters into a love liaison. and it is this amorous liaison rather than the nature
of her work that defines her role in the novel. here, women appear primarily as erotized
or brutally sexually commodified bodies and as sexual bait, like Bridget. They hover on the
perimeters of the men’s world and are held in the gaze of male focalizers, while men in this
homosocially centred literary world function as independently standing and, most importantly,
fully rounded persons with a clear presence of mind and spirit. The poetic conventions of the
blazon are translated into and made to fit what we might refer to as a blazon in prose. In
the short vignette titled “two Photographs”, Segura the writer and his biographer anna are
typically juxtaposed in this manner, which serves to entrench a classical and hierarchically
arranged gendered binary. The opening lines read as follows:
There are two photographs pinned up the wall of the kitchen in Dému. one is the
picture taken of Lucien Segura in his last phase of his life, sitting on a garden bench
with a dark branch fanning over him. […] what is most informal is the openness of
his face, as if it has just been blessed. his laugh, for instance – there is no attempt to
hide the shaggy randomness, or even the unsightly gap of a missing tooth. This was
a discreet man who used to laugh internally, in a hidden way. (ondaatje 2008, 194)
The vignette offers an image of a man pictured as a persona. It provides an intricate insight
into his own inner psyche and personal characteristics one can read from his face and his
manner of laughing. This is a person the reader can identify with.
161varIa
Not the same goes for anna, the woman in this dyad. It is not only that she pops up as
a woman without a name, but she is also instantly reduced to a body. She is a mere body
silhouette that belongs to a nameless woman, and with which one of course cannot identify
but can only observe and assess through the lenses offered by the narrator:
We are much closer to the subject in this picture.… The woman’s figure is naked
from the waist up, just about to break free of focus. The tanned body wilful, laughing,
because she has woven the roots of two small muddy plants into her blond hair, so it
appears as if mullein and rosemary are growing out the plastered earth on her head.
There’s a wet muck across her smiling mouth, and on her lean shoulders and arms.
It is as if her energy and sensuality have been drawn from the air surrounding her.
(ondaatje 2008, 195)
Unlike the man’s face, which is defined by his laughing and which in turn is a sign of his
lively interior world and exuberant mental presence, the woman, in this gendered binary
typical of ondaatje’s works, is doubly reiterated as a body. first, she is cast as a body figure,
and then as just a body that laughs. There is no psychological profile to this woman who is
only a body without a face, and a specific kind of “beautiful monstrous body” at that. her
body is an evocation of the renaissance blazon, with the roots of muddy plants woven into
her blonde hair instead of precious gold and with earth plastered over her shoulders and arms,
thus forming a new earth-like assemblage of body parts. Instead of radiating with the sun-like
rays, symbolized by gold-spun threads woven into the golden locks of renaissance ladies, her
head is the head of mother earth itself. It sports plants that seem to grow from the crown of
her head, which is itself redefined as the crust of the earth.
The woman, reconstituted as an assemblage of body parts that imitate or melt with the flora
and fertile earth, is realigned with nature and ultimately reconstructed as a sensual rather than
a rational, thinking body. turned into a sensual body, the woman ends up as an eroticized
body closer to nature rather than culture. reconstructed as a body that by default cannot be
rational but only sensual, it inevitably invites its own sexualization under the objectifying
gaze of the narrator and the reader alike. typically for ondaatje, this sensualized or eroticized
body assemblage that is a woman appears ensconced between two men, with whom the
vignette opens and closes. The first one looks at us from the photograph and is the man
of discreet laughter. The other one is anna’s lover turned photographer, who observes and
captures her image through the lenses of a camera, fixing her as a body: “We look at this
picture [of the woman as a body] and imagine also the person with the camera, we can
see the relationship between the unseen photographer and this laughing muddy woman”
(ondaatje 2008, 195). It is this homosocial structuration, with the woman remoulded as
an assemblage of monstrously beautiful and eroticized body parts sandwiched between two
men, two persons, that also underlies the rest of the novel.
Similarly, The English Patient may depart from ondaatje’s earlier pattern of overt and taken-
for-granted masculine violence and systemic sexual abuse targeted at women (ellis 1996, 22),
but it continues to reinscribe and perpetuate the gender binary of transcendent and universal
masculine bodies/subjects on the one hand, and dismembered and commodified, fragmented
and sexualized female bodies on the other. This gendered binarism is the underlying axis of
162 Lilijana Burcar Ongoing Objectification, Marginalization and Sexualization of Women in Michael Ondaatje’s ...
the central narrative, framed by the english patient, or Count almásy, a desert explorer and
map-maker. as a desert map-maker who charts geographical phenomena, he inevitably puts
himself at the service of imperial powers but is himself not to be domesticated and owned
by imperial cartography and its signifying system. he and his fellow map-makers start out
as “german, english, hungarian, african” only to, as almásy emphasizes, become gradually
“nationless” (ondaatje 1993, 138). almásy appears as a transcendent and universal human
body, as a prototypical universal masculine body, operating on par with the sand desert,
which itself cannot be “claimed or owned”, and where nations by default are made sooner
or later “historical with sand across their grasp” (ondaatje 1993, 22, 18). as almásy walks
out of a burning plane in the desert, his charred body comes to signify the dissolution of
national borders and ideological inscriptions. By the time he ends up in a villa in florence
and retells his story on his death bed, with “all identification consumed in a fire” (ondaatje
2008, 48), it is no longer the side he worked for that matters but the bonding with other
males who have directly participated in the war as sappers (kip) or as spies and intelligence
agents (Carravaggio), working for the other side. Their coming together, their bonding and
immersion into each other’s stories, and eventually their mutual appreciation, depends on the
exchange of the ideas and knowledge, on the mutual admiration they come to share for each
other’s craftiness and expertise, out of which hana as their nursing body is excluded.
While the male protagonists in the novel are defined by their expertise and as transcendent
and omnipotent masculine bodies, not weighed down by particulars, the two women, hana
and katharine, are divested of their own agency and body fluidity typical of the men in this
novel. The two women, and consequently the forms of embodiment they are allowed to
enact, are “tied to the institution of femininity” (Burcar 2007, 107). While hana is reduced
to a nursing body appended to the homosocial national centre, katharine, the focal woman
in the story, is reduced to a fragmented sexualized body, whose parts are to be laid claim to
by her lover, a desert explorer and map-maker. ondaatje thus perpetuates the problematic
gender binary of masculinity and femininity and, with the almásy–katharine story occupying
central place, the naturalization of the woman as an assemblage of sexualized body parts
rather than a subject. katharine’s personal name is revealed only when we are already well
into one third of the novel. Before and after she is referred to either as Clifton’s wife or as
almásy’s lover and a nameless female body defined by her nakedness and sexual availability.
as an assemblage of body parts, she is not a woman who can speak or stare back, let alone
explore and map.
This gender paradigm of passive women, who are reduced to objectified and sexualized
naked bodies, and of agential men, who are defined by their profession and expertise, is best
captured in the section describing almásy’s thoughts during one of his expeditions into the
desert. here he thinks of katharine in their love nest, left behind in a room in Cairo: “In the
desert the most loved waters, like a lover’s name, are carried blue in your hands, enter your
throat. one swallows absence. a woman in Cairo curves the white length of her body up
from the bed and leans out of the window into a rainstorm to allow her nakedness to receive
it” (ondaatje 2008, 141). katharine as the central woman of the story enters and exits the
novel as a passive, sexualized naked body to be owned or as an assemblage of fragmented,
eclectic body parts to be laid claim to, but never as a person. as captured and dismembered
163varIa
through the masculine and cartographic gaze of her lover, which is also the reader’s gaze,
she is from the start a mere cluster of “awkward limbs climbing out of a plane” (ondaatje
2008, 144). She is a pointed “elbow” next to a campfire (ondaatje 2008, 107), a “sweating
knee beside the gearbox” inciting almásy, a sensuous mouth drinking “the chlorinated water
[with] some coming down her chin, [and] falling to her stomach” (ondaatje 2008, 149), and
a sweating “shoulder” that almásy makes possession of: “This is my shoulder, he thinks, not
her husband’s. This is my shoulder” (ondaatje 2008, 156).
In this process of body reduction and fragmentation, parts of katharine’s body are claimed
and appropriated on the part of the male observer in a specific way, through the cartographic
masculine gaze. as almásy maps the desert, so he also maps katharine’s body or rather its
parts, referring to them and realigning them with geographical features of a desert landscape.
This is another technique of objectifying a woman as part of nature, that is, as an assemblage
of geographical phenomena through which a male explorer passes or claims on his or others’
behalf. katharine’s body parts come to resemble such geographical phenomena. During a
dance when their affair is already over, almásy deliberately pushes against her so that his
throat lands “at her left shoulder on that naked plateau, above the sequins” (ondaatje 2008,
244, italics added). and, most importantly, he becomes obsessed with mapping and claiming
katharine by giving a name to what he considers the most erotic part of her body, the “hollow
indentation at her neck” (ondaatje 2008, 162, italics added). It is this part of her body,
already described in semi-geographical terms as if one were describing land depressions
on the terrain, that he and the rest of his companion cartographers come to nickname the
Bosphorus: “There was that small indentation at her throat we called the Bosphorus. I would
dive from her shoulder into the Bosphorus!” (ondaatje 2008, 236). Contoured and pinned
down as the Boshporus strait, this part of the woman’s body allows for the imprint, the
agency, and the expansion of the masculine lover, the map-maker. for almásy and the reader
the woman does not exist as a person with her own thoughts and desires but as an assemblage
of erotized body parts that resemble or duplicate geographical phenomena, inscribed and by
analogy claimed by the male explorer.
Under almásy’s cartographic masculine gaze, this assemblage of eroticized body parts that
is katharine is also to be eventually “translated into the text of the desert” (ondaatje 2008,
236), so that both can be finally contained and claimed. When wondering how to describe
katharine to his listeners in the villa in the north of Italy, almásy proposes he can do this
“the way I can arc out in the air the shape of a mesa or rock” (ondaatje 2008, 235). This also
echoes an earlier mention of how desert landscape is inscribed and claimed by other fellow
mappers, captured in the following scene:
Someone seen bathing in a desert caravan, holding up muslin with one arm in front of
her. Some old arab poet’s woman, whose white-dove shoulders made him describe an
oasis with her name … the old scribe turns from her to describe Zerzura. (ondaatje
2008, 140–41)
feminization and erotization of the land, which proceeds on the backs of women’s body
fragmentation and objectification, serves as a double strategy of patriarchal and imperial
containment, with women “serving as mediating and threshold figures by means of which
164 Lilijana Burcar Ongoing Objectification, Marginalization and Sexualization of Women in Michael Ondaatje’s ...
men orient themselves in space, as agents of power and agents of knowledge” (McClintock
1995, 24). Similarly, when almásy writes his book on the Libyan desert in order to record
his discoveries and present the mappings of the terrain not yet charted by Westerners for the
London geographic Society, he is unable “to remove [katharine’s] body from the page” (EP,
235). along with the desert that he charts into existence, he is also preoccupied with katharine’s
“nearby presence … or if truth be known with her possible mouth, the tautness behind her
knee, the white plain of stomach” (ondaatje 2008, 235). What ondaatje perpetuates and
reinforces here is the classical masculine cartographer’s gaze, starting with the feminization
and erotization of the Libyan desert as a whole: “The desert of Libya. a sexual, drawn-out
word, a coaxed well. The b and the y” (ondaatje 2008, 257). as observed by McClintock in
a different context, within the patriarchal gendered paradigm, the claiming and inscribing of
lands, which proceeds by the latter’s feminization and erotization, is pictured and encoded
“as a relation of power between two gendered spaces” (1995, 24). The feminization and
sexualization of the land, which proceeds on par with the sexualization and fragmentation of
women into parts of bodies to be translated and inscribed into landscape, serves as a strategy
of containing the unknown, symbolized by women who are constructed as the marginal
other in homosocial patriarchal world. once feminized and eroticized as the passive and
yielding other like the woman whose body parts it mirrors, the land can be “spatially spread”
and rendered “safe for male exploration” and expropriation (McClintock 1995, 23). at the
same time, women reduced to body parts are contained and circumscribed as manageable,
instrumentalized objects. Symbolically merged with and built into the landscape as its body
parts, they are again “the earth that is to be discovered, entered, named, [given purpose to]
and, above all, owned” (McClintock 1995, 31). katharine also features as a beautiful monster,
an assemblage of body parts, with which almásy inscribes and acts upon the landscape while
he refuses to be inscribed and acted upon himself.
3 Women’s Sexual Objectification and Subordination
In ondaatje’s oeuvre, body objectification and sexualization of women feeds into and is
structurally supportive of women’s sexual subordination. ondaatje’s homosocial, masculine-
centred literary worlds rest upon men’s sexual dominance over women, with women featuring
as sexual instruments to be brutally violated and appropriated or at least placed in the service
of men’s sexual desires and demands. While ondaatje’s The English Patient and Divisadero
may abandon the earlier romanticization of explicit sexual violence against women and their
brutal sexual degradation as a central element of male bonding and hegemonic masculinity,
they still rest on the entrenchment of the phallocentric view of sexuality and the inscription
of women as mere physical objects of men’s sexual gratification. In this sense, violent scenes
of women’s sexual dehumanization that constitute the essence of being a woman in his first
novel Coming Through Slaughter find their almost identical, albeit toned down renditions in
both The English Patient and Divisadero.
Coming Through Slaughter runs amok with sexual violence and is rife with sexual victimization
and humiliation of women who feature as sexual pawns in the hands of men. Mocked,
brutalized, and slashed for real or in the voyeuristic eyes of their male observers, the women
ranging from “mattress whores” (ondaatje 1976, 118) in the streets of New orleans to
165varIa
the protagonist’s different wives feature as sexualized punchbags. They are to be used and
systematically abused in what is defined as the normal sexual pleasure of men. These actions
are consequently not condoned by the narrator nor does the main protagonist sympathize
with the plight of the women. on the contrary, as pointed out by Thomson, “the narration
negates their subjectivity and assigns an absolute knowledge of them as objects” (1993, 37).
Moreover, reduced to sexualized bodies to be violated, the women serve as mute “sites of
coercive compliance” (visano 2002, 57) with their own sexual degradation and brutalization
or they feature as those who desperately want to be sexually violated and degraded, which is
especially the case in ondaatje’s later works. While the latter applies to katharine’s portrayal
in The English Patient, the former applies to Coming Through Slaughter. here, in various
sexually violent and by default phallocentric scenes, women are brutally objectified and
violated by men, a pattern which resurfaces intact in Divisadero, supposedly ondaatje’s most
lyrical novel to date. In Coming Through Slaughter, we read:
I press myself into her belly.… I lift her arms and leave them empty above us and bend
and pull the brown dress up to her stomach and then up into her arms. Step back and
watch her against the corner of my room […]. Cool brown back. till I attack her into
the wall my cock cushioned my hand sat the front of the thigh pulling her at me we
are hardly breathing her crazy flesh twisted into corners” of the room [of the room].
(ondaatje 1976, 61).
This hardly differs from a similar scene of sexual violence in Divisadero, which depends upon
ondaatje’s subscription to the patriarchal codification of the masculine pleasure principle as
animalistically raw and penis-centred. Men feature as sexual agents and possessors and the
women as the passive, inert body to be acted upon, and to be violently possessed and consumed:
What had been innocent – a celebration! – abruptly made him a voyeur. his daughter’s
forearms and open palms were flat against the mildewed wall as Pierre tugged her
white hips and shoulders toward him, his body digging into her again and again, and
again […]. Lucien thought of her small hand brushing away the erasure rubbings
from his pages [when she was a child]. (ondaatje 2008, 239)
here ondaatje unproblematically adopts what in a different context has been recognized
as the patriarchally driven pornographic construct of “consensual rape” (Pease 2019, Smith
1995). Scenes of rape as the ultimate form of sexual violence against women and violation
of their bodily and mental integrity are disguised as objectively neutral, taken-for-granted
scenes of male eroticized pleasure and reinscribed and naturalized as integral to male-female
heterosexual relationships.
In Divisadero, the reader’s encounter with the sexual degradation and brutalization of
women is no longer direct but is made seemingly distant and removed. Sexual violence and
the woman’s objectification are artificially diffused by being transmuted and sublimated
under the voyeuristic gaze of the third party, the father who observers his daughter from
a distance and, with the narrator’s focus being diverted elsewhere, to his daughter as a
little girl, while her adult status as an object of sexual violation and brutalization is thus
not only taken for granted but implicitly endorsed. The English Patient employs a similar
166 Lilijana Burcar Ongoing Objectification, Marginalization and Sexualization of Women in Michael Ondaatje’s ...
decoy tactic of introducing and naturalizing sexual violation of women in the process of
inscribing patriarchal heteronormative and masculine-centred sexual paradigm. here it is
katharine who demands of almásy that she be “ravished” by him, placing herself not only in
the position of a sexual object but one to be brutally acted upon. In her only sexual dream in
the novel she imagines the two of them being “bent over like animals”, with almásy “yoking
her neck back so she has been unable to breathe within his arms” (ondaatje 1993, 236, 149).
ondaatje again subscribes to the patriarchal and phallus-centred pornographic discourse, in
which women are imaginarily depicted “as enjoying how they are being used and violated
by men” (Papadaki 2021, n.p.) and presented as those who “desperately want to be bound,
battered, tortured, humiliated, and killed, or merely taken and used” (Mackinnon 1984,
326). This is a form of displacement whereby women, who are positioned as “sexual objects
available for men’s consumption” (Papadaki 2021, n.p.) supposedly invite and desire their
own sexual subjugation and dehumanization.
While The English Patient and Divisadero may depart from explicit sexual violence,
brutalization, and degradation of women with women no longer uniformly appearing “as
passive victims of male volatility” (Bök 1992, 116), in these two novels female characters
continue to feature as sexual objects who are there to serve the needs of men. Women are
by default treated as silently compliant and readily available physical objects, facilitating the
sexual desire and gratification of men. In line with the patriarchal phallic organization of
sexuality that ondaatje upholds, male sexual desire and eroticism are in turn themselves
narrowly and mechanistically construed with “the penis as the focus and male ejaculation”
as the apex and “the end of the sexual event” for both parties involved (Stick and fetner
2020, 784). In these constellations, where women are reduced to a body or its silent parts
and treated as readily available instruments for the sexual gratification of men, women’s
feelings are not only disregarded but annulled and obliterated. Precisely with the woman
being instrumentalized, her feelings as a human being “need not be taken into account” at all
(Papadaki 2021, n.p.). Women are thus totally desubjectivized and dehumanized.
In this vein, ondaatje’s fiction consistently demonstrates a preoccupation if not obsession with
one particular type of sexual posture already encountered in the bestial sex imagery dreamed by
katherine in The English Patient. In Divisadero, too, there is virtually no other sexual position
but the one where women are compliantly bent over and men do whatever they please. In
Divisidero, whose Bloomsbury edition features a book cover with a woman’s torso but no head,
we read Cooper thinks of Bridget as “his willing and diligent lover” (ondaatje 2008, 124).
When they first make love or, rather, have sex, it is on the hood of a car:
They stopped, left the car open so music filled yards of the desert night, and she bent
over the hood of the Chrysler, the heat from its engine against her t-shirt. he could
hardly grip her because of the sweat on her shoulders. (ondaatje 2008, 122)
The women in Divisadero at this point only start to diligently bend over or are being bent over.
In another scene involving roman and Marie-Neige, who again comes across as a silent and
compliant body there to facilitate her man’s sexual pleasure, the entire affair is described from
a masculine point of view in a totally mechanical manner, as is prototypical of ondaatje’s
style of writing. We read:
167varIa
he touched the soft and small delight of her face, […] she turned and put her arms
out along the thick rim of the barrel where in the water was the moon and the ghost of
her face. roman moved against her, and in the next while, whatever surprise there was,
whatever pain, there was also the frantic moon in front of her shifting and breaking
into pieces in the water. (ondaatje 2008, 221)
In another instance we are privy to exactly the same kind of sexual objectification, with the
woman represented as a silent instrument of man’s sexual gratification:
on his knees, behind her, he pulled her thighs back to him in a slow rocking, as if he
wanted her now to search for him, the heat of her cave onto his coldness, […] and he
moved into her, her softness and the unknown warmth. (ondaatje 2008, 262)
In these representative scenes, with women reduced to objects for man’s gratification,
ondaatje’s men appear as “powerful, active and dominant” and women as silent, submissive
and pliable bodies that “complement men’s sexuality”, supporting and mirroring their
phallocentric subjectivity (Stephen 1994, 225).
only in rare instances, when the focalizer is not the male protagonist and/or the narrator
and the sexual encounter is exceptionally described from the point of view of the woman, is
this sexual position abandoned. But the same does not go for the phallocentric organization
of sexuality and the hierarchical binary of active and agential men versus passive and inert
women who lack sexual autonomy. This paradigm continues to be firmly entrenched. This is
the case with hanna in The English Patient. here we encounter a typical patriarchally defined
female complementary dyad, with one woman, katharine, being sexually commodified and
violated as though this is an extension of her own sexual desire, and the other woman in the
novel, hana, whose sexual desire is positioned as secondary and dependent. It is presented as
being derivative of male masculine pleasure, which in turn takes centre stage:
She holds an Indian goddess in her arms, she holds wheat and ribbons. as he bends
over her it pours. as [kip] moves [inside her], she keeps her eyes open to witness the
gnats of electricity in his hair. (ondaatje 1993, 218)
hana is presented as a passive body whose sexual pleasure remains obscure. In this patriarchal
phallocentric organization of sexuality – within whose framework man’s pleasure is prioritized
but also reductively concentrated on the penis while the clitoris is removed from view, so that
women’s multiple erogenous zones are whittled down to and erroneously equated “only with
the vagina” in order to “comply with the coital imperative” (Plessis 2015, 4) – female pleasure
comes to be “seen as unimportant and/or mysterious” with women turned “into passive
receptacles” (Stephen 1994, 225).
In line with the patriarchal phallocentric organization of sexuality, ondaatje does not
acknowledge multiple erogenous zones of women’s bodies and their own sexual pleasures
and sexual agency. In this way, he shies away from “a wider range of sexually pleasurable
activities [in heterosexual relationships] that are less reflective of a male-centred model of
sexuality” (Plessis 2015, 3). ondaatje’s The English Patient and Divisidaro thus, too, subscribe
168 Lilijana Burcar Ongoing Objectification, Marginalization and Sexualization of Women in Michael Ondaatje’s ...
to phallocentrism, with women serving as mere physical objects of male gratification. By not
acknowledging multiple and reciprocally mutual pleasures, ondaatje inadvertently reinscribes
damaging feminine and masculine roles that in a sense constrain his own male protagonists
too, while also reinscribing masculine (sexual) domination. feminists have long claimed that
“the possibility of an alternative and empowered female [and male] sexuality in heterosexual
relationships requires male sexuality to depart from patriarchal and phallocentric identities”
and that “empowered female sexuality” cannot emerge without the promotion of “alternative
models of male sexuality” (Plessis 2015, 3). ondaatje’s The English Patient and Divisadero,
considered his breakthrough novels in terms of supposedly reformed gender politics, sadly do
not live up to this task, either.
4 Conclusion
representations of women in ondaatje’s supposedly more progressive novels the English
Patient and Divisadero remain locked in a problematic homosocial model of patriarchal male
bonding and modified hegemonic masculinity, which rests on the inscription of women as an
objectified and sexualized body or an assemblage of body parts orbiting on the outer limit of
masculine-centred worlds. token women are allowed in, seemingly on an equal basis, only to
be again perfidiously reinscribed as the objectified and sexualized other (like katharine in The
English Patient and Bridget and Marie-Neige in Divisadero), or simply as the feminine other
conscripted into the service of grooming and catering for the male homosocial centre (anna
in Divisadero and hana in The English Patient). This feminine other that languishes in the
shadow of masculine-bonded groupings of male characters too poses and is again defined as a
sexually inert body to be acted upon. Its erogenous zones and hence its sexual autonomy and
agency need yet to be recovered if not discovered. It is alas no wonder that feminist critics to
this day continue to avert their critical gaze from ondaatje’s oeuvre, seeking their pleasures
in greener pastures.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Slovenian Research Agency [grant number P6-0265].
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2023, vol. 20 (1), 171-185(228)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1.171-185
UDC: 821.0.09-94:929
Niloufar Khosravi Balalami
University of Malaya, Malaysia
Representing M(other): A Cixousian Reading
of Memoirs Written by Jeanette Winterson
and Elif Shafak
aBStraCt
Writing about themselves, women return to their mothers and secure their self-identification
by writing about the newly founded mother-daughter relationship. Nonetheless, depicting
the concept of the mother is remarkably onerous because her image is either idealized by
the patriarchal society or overlooked as a passive character under the masculine power of the
father. Therefore, in order to depict a fair image of the mother, woman writers are compelled
to stand against this overly simplistic depiction to portray her as complex and different. In
doing so, women’s self-writings will successfully remember the mother’s voice and refer to
her unique qualities. In this article, I would argue that elif Shafak’s and Jeanette Winterson’s
memoirs are tightly bonded with the concept of the mother, which is compatible with the
way hélène Cixous defines and writes about not only her mother, but motherhood in general.
Keywords: concept of the mother, woman-mother, self-writing, mother vs. father, mother-
daughter dyad, elif Shafak, Jeanette Winterson, hélène Cixous
Reprezentacije matere kot/in drugega: cixousijsko branje
memoarov Jeanette Winterson in Elif Shafak
IZvLeČek
ko ženske pišejo o sebi, se pogosto vračajo k svojim materam in si samoidentifikacijo
zagotavljajo s pisanjem o novonastalih odnosih med materami in hčerami. kljub temu pa je
tematizacija koncepta matere izjemno težavna, saj je njena podoba v patriarhalnih družbah ali
idealizirana ali pa povsem pasivizirana v odnosu do maskuline moči očeta. Če želijo pisateljice
predstaviti kolikor toliko ustrezno podobo matere, se morajo zoperstaviti temu skrajno
popreproščenemu prikazu. Na ta način žensko avtobiografsko pisanje vzpostavlja materin
glas in poudarja materin edinstven doprinos k oblikovanju posameznic in posameznikov.
v tem članku pokažem, da so spomini elif Shafak in Jeanette Winterson tesno povezani
s konceptom matere, ki je skladen z načinom, na katerega materinstvo opredeljuje hélène
Cixous.
Ključne besede: koncept matere, ženska-mati, avtobiografskost, mati vs. oče, diada mati-
hči, elif Shafak, Jeanette Winterson, hélène Cixous
172 Niloufar khosravi Balalami Representing M(other): A Cixousian Reading of Memoirs Written by Jeanette Winterson ...
1 Introduction
one of the critical notions in women’s self-writings is how they remember their mothers
and represent them in the process of gaining self-knowledge. Interestingly, this process is
different for men since their journey starts with independence from their family, especially
their mothers, while women’s growth happens within the realm of their families. In other
words, they learn the ways of life from their mothers and by the way(s) they identify with
them (ferguson 1983, 229). as a result, women tend to include their mothers in the texts
they write about themselves. however, the mother’s image in a patriarchal society is disturbed
by a one-sided, simplistic depiction as motherhood is traditionally “idealized as a feminine
embodiment of moral purity” (Park 2019, 63), which is liable to omit queer mothers and
even male caregivers. Consequently, traditional motherhood suppresses the voice of a wide
variety of mothers. hence, my argument is that there seems to be an urgent need for an
alternative image of the mother, which I propose Shafak and Winterson have the potential
to delineate in their memoirs, Black Milk and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
hélène Cixous holds the view that mothers are exceptional since they can have a significant
impact on their children: “[W]hat makes the difference, his or her difference, is the mother”
(1998, 45). furthermore, the multitude of studies published in The Journal of the Motherhood
Initiative attest to the importance of the mother, since they show how motherhood is related
to different concepts like sexuality, literature, feminism, and the queer (o’reilly 2019, 19).
for this reason, this quality can conceivably introduce an alternative way of treating ‘the other’
through acceptance, which stems from the unique relationship between mother and her child
as the mother allows ‘the other’ to exist without practicing appropriation (Cixous 1990, 112).
accordingly, remembering and writing about motherhood is a way of displaying loyalty
toward the childbearing aspect of femininity, which is a controversial idea in feminism. This
is because there are numerous preconceptions associated with the role of the mother, and not
all women can or want to be mothers. Notably, writing a ‘mommy memoir’ like Black Milk
by Shafak or a memoir in which mother is remembered, like Winterson’s Why Be Happy?, is
utterly different from the traditions of autobiographical writings. traditional autobiographies
reflect power relations because only “wealthy white men viewed as holding public significance
wrote and published autobiographies, while people disadvantaged by dominant structures of
power generally did not” (hewett 2019, 192). as a result, writing memoirs with mothers as
the main characters obviously ignores the mainstream power relations in the genre.
My main objective in this article is to argue that Why Be Happy? and Black Milk are both
quests for mother/mothering, during which Winterson and Shafak talk about their own
mothers but at the same time make an attempt to picture a new image of the mother as a
concept that influences people’s lives. Winterson views the mother as “our first love affair”.
If we hate her, we are likely to carry the hatred into our other love affairs (Winterson 2011,
311). Likewise, Shafak’s memoir is a text about the process of becoming a mother, along with
the life stories of many literary women, some of whom were mothers while others decided
not to be. one could say that both memoirs ponder the mother-daughter relationship, and
as I shall argue, similar to Cixous’ interpretation of the mother, her image in these memoirs
could be radically different from the one imposed on women by patriarchal society.
Representing
M(other): A
Cixousian Reading
of Memoirs
Written by Jeanette
Winterson ...
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2 M(other) and Positive Receptivity
Writing about mothers and mothering could be regarded as a key concept in women’s self-
writings, since “we think back through our mothers if we are women” (Woolf 1979, 75).
however, it is not easy to write about motherhood because the fertile aspect of womanhood
is used to encourage women to have children and to reduce them to mere baby-making
machines within a society that will despise them for avoiding procreation (Cixous 2008,
7). Moreover, the patriarchal world represents mothers as either absent or overly idealized
(kristeva 2011, 47), and in the common view mothers are always passive, second-rate,
and helpless (Söderbäck 2019, 63). Therefore, it is challenging to represent the mother
because there are not enough representations of her real being in literature. to differentiate
the mother’s real being from its patriarchal image, looking at the differences between the
concepts of ‘mothering’ and ‘motherhood’ is helpful. In order to introduce a new image of the
mother, critics have exchanged the male-defined ‘motherhood’, a patriarchal and controlled
institution, for the word ‘mothering’, which is a more female-defined concept concerning
women’s experiences (o’reilly 2019, 20). Therefore, mothering is no longer linked to biology
and can be done “by anyone who commits themselves to the demands of maternal practice”
(o’reilly 2019, 22). for that reason, we can also have mothers in “single, blended, step,
matrifocal, and same-sex” (o’reilly 2019, 31) families.
another challenge of writing about mothering lies in the assumed love and/or hate relationship
between mothers and daughters with roots in freud’s idea of mother hatred. Working with
his patient Dora, freud concluded that she hated her mother because she was simply after
her father’s love. In contrast, Cixous makes a hero out of Dora, believing that Dora broke the
social structure and language, which basically functioned as the major causes of her mother’s
defeat (goodman 2019, 12). Thus, in Cixous’ interpretation, Dora was actually on her
mother’s side, which means regardless of the state of this relationship, at least some daughters
are one way or another on the side of their mothers.
according to Cixous, the mother’s role is important both symbolically and in real life. The
symbolic impact of the mother belongs to her life-giving nature, while her present reality
stems from the fact that she is constantly engaged in life’s daily routines, turning her into
a sheer “commonplace”. By this means, the Cixousian mother cannot be idealized because
her presence can be felt in every aspect of life compared to the father, who is godlike and
always floats in the imaginary (fisher 2003, 68). furthermore, in attempting to approach a
fair image, the mother is represented on three different levels by Cixous: first in the mother-
daughter dyad, second by looking at the way she changes our lives compared to the role of
the father, and third by talking about the quality of the mother and her universal voice that
can be found in every human.
Looking at Cixous’ representation of the mother in the context of recent studies on mothering,
it seems that her image of the mother is that of an empowered one. on the one hand, Smith
Silva reminds us that Cixous does not overlook the subjective nature of the mother-daughter
relationship (2019, 304). on the other hand, focusing on the mother’s influence on her
daughter’s life instead of the father, Cixous manages to replace the mother-son relationship
with the mother-daughter dyad and disturb the patriarchal attempts to trivialize this (rich
174 Niloufar khosravi Balalami Representing M(other): A Cixousian Reading of Memoirs Written by Jeanette Winterson ...
1976, 226). finally, by introducing the quality of the mother as a characteristic everyone can
achieve, she pays special attention to “othermothers”, whom Smith Silva defines as everyone
who accepts the caretaking responsibility (2019, 298). This fact can be regarded as one of the
essential aspects of recent studies concerning the notion of mothering.
In addition, Cixous defines the symbolic role of the mother by breaking the binary opposition
of man/woman in the family institution that unavoidably priories the father and gives him
more power than the mother. She postulates that the mother is always alive in us and fights
against death, while the father is afraid and fails to do so (1991a, 19–20). In Cixous’ view, the
mother is the life drive, the one who encourages the daughter to pursue freedom (andermatt
Conley 1991, 69), while the father is the actual death drive, always in suspense and absent
(Cixous 1990, 129). It is worth noting that the mother’s relationship with the other is
metaphorically evident since the maternal body keeps ‘the other’ inside. That being said, the
mother does the difficult job of “letting people to be born”, as Derrida puts it, and Cixous
defines it as going beyond the anatomic maternal body since you “let yourself to be taken by
the other” (1991b, 84) by accepting otherness inside you.
furthermore, the importance of the mother comes from her ability to define people
through the mark she leaves on them. The mother is both a metaphor and not a metaphor
simultaneously; those with a mother inside face ‘the other’ with watchfulness; therefore, “the
mother is a quality” (Cixous 1998, 45). This quality first comes from the maternal body and
then is transferred to the child. hence, any living human has a little of their mother inside of
them and can successfully achieve the mother’s quality. Nevertheless, it is important to notice
that Cixous’ close attention to this quality and her constant reference to woman’s ability to
get pregnant is not simply biological. In fact, her major arguments about the feminine body
are thoroughly morphological:
It is not anatomical sex or essence that determines us in anything; it is, on the contrary,
the fable from which we never escape, individual and collective history, the cultural
schema, and the way the individual negotiates with these structures, adapts to them
and reproduces them, or else gets around them, overcomes them, goes beyond them,
gets through them. (Cixous 1991a, 155)
In contrast, freud is an essentialist, believing that everything depends on anatomy:
The excremental is all too intimately and inseparably bound up with the sexual; the
position of the genitals – inter urinas et faeces – remains the decisive and unchangeable
factor. one might say here, varying a well-known saying of the great Napoleon:
‘anatomy is destiny’. (freud 1912)
following these lines, Bray concludes that “the body understood as morphology is not
reducible to either nature or culture but is, rather, the scene of a dynamic writing which
exceeds the limits of either category” (2003, 39). as a result, one may say that Cixous is not
an essentialist as freud is since, in Stigmata, she argues that everyone can reach the mother
inside of them both as a metaphor and a quality (1998, 45).
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here I argue that this unique definition of ‘the quality of the mother’ is evident in the selected
memoirs in terms of how they describe mothers and depict themselves as entities possessing
this quality. The fact that both Shafak and Winterson accept difference takes them to the
state of ‘positive receptivity’ in which a woman keeps ‘the other’ inside. Through this process,
women experience the inside, filled with an ‘other’ that changes them in a non-negative way.
More interestingly, they even take pleasure in having the ‘other’ inside (Cixous 1991a, 155),
which is likely to happen in texts as well. That is, in telling the story of the mother along
with the self, the maternal voice (the symbolic) and her milk (the real) are heard (andermatt
Conley 1991, 56), and in writing, once one starts remembering, the cycle of forgetting would
be broken (Borofka 2010, 10). In other words, Shafak and Winterson successfully create a
textual space in the form of a memoir in which the mother’s presence is remarkably redefined.
The alternative image of the mother depicted in elif Shafak’s and Jeanette Winterson’s
memoirs Black Milk and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Can be proved on
two levels. firstly, on a personal level, when Shafak and Winterson represent a different
relationship with their mothers: they tend to picture the mother as similar to any other
human with a complex web of varied characteristics. Moreover, they move from personal to
the public sphere by representing the Cixousian ‘quality of the mother’ and associating the
acceptance of otherness with the motherly state of being, enabling everybody to act motherly
through positive receptivity. as a result, a sisterhood among women is born and depicted
through some vivid images in the memoirs.
3 The Real Mother
In a curious quest to find the mother, Shafak and Winterson encounter a variety of
contradictions between what they believe and what the patriarchal world wants them to
believe. however, it seems they both end up on good terms with the concept of the mother
despite the differences they discover. This discovery helps both see the real mother as she is
present in her daughter’s everyday life, and that mothering is utterly different from person
to person.
Cixous writes about her mother “without being consumed”; that is, she recreates her
mother and then allows her voice to talk through her (Cixous 2008, 128–29). Through my
interpretation of this concept, this not being consumed could imply that the predefined idea
of the passive and devoted or overly idealized mother does not have a place in Cixous’ text,
as her recreation of the mother is tangible enough due to being commonplace in the life of
her daughter. on the other side, the same tangible yet diverse presence is noticeable in the
way that Shafak and Winterson write about their mothers. In fact, the type of mother they
intend to introduce is neither traditional nor modern, neither moral nor immoral, neither
an angel nor a monster. Instead, the mother in their memoirs resembles everyone else, with
typical human flaws as well as strengths. as I mentioned earlier, motherly feelings generally
vary tentatively person to person. That is precisely why I argue that Shafak’s and Winterson’s
depiction of the mother, fairly similar to that of Cixous, can resist the assumptions forced by
the outside world. In line with the previous points, analysing the memoirs in question can
hopefully demonstrate my point more clearly.
176 Niloufar khosravi Balalami Representing M(other): A Cixousian Reading of Memoirs Written by Jeanette Winterson ...
Black Milk is Shafak’s memoir about pregnancy and mothering. The book starts with a scene
where Shafak is traveling on a boat and sees a mother of two boys who is pregnant again
and starts bragging about how she prefers single life over the life this particular woman is
experiencing. Later on, in an interview with a famous turkish writer, adelet agaoglu, who does
not have children and has dedicated her life to writing, Shafak is asked to choose between having
children or becoming a professional writer. That is when she excuses herself to the bathroom
and introduces her fantastic multiple selves called “finger women”1. Little Miss Practical, Dame
Dervish, Miss highbrowed Cynic, Milady ambitious Chekhovian, Mama rice Pudding, Blue
Belle Bovary, and also a man called Lord Poton (the postpartum Djinn). other than that, to deal
with her serious dilemma about marriage and children, elif starts reading about other famous
literary women’s ideas on the matter. In each part of elif ’s journey, one or two of her finger
women take control of her life and try to push her toward certain choices, but eventually, after
falling in love, getting married, having a child, and dealing with her postpartum depression, elif
decides to embrace all her selves as different parts of her existence.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Is Winterson’s autobiographical book about
finding her biological mother. While writing about the hows and whys of the decision to
start this difficult journey, Winterson recalls her life with her adoptive parents, and mostly her
mother, Mrs. Winterson. The book does not have a chronological timeline, and while Shafak
uses fantasy, Winterson’s time-plays are her way of talking about her mothers and how she
identifies with them. apart from her life story, Winterson also talks about different writers
and poets who played an essential role in the way she gained self-identification. eventually,
Jeanette visits and gets to know her biological mother (ann). Winterson, a British writer
and childless lesbian, dedicated her book to her “three mothers: Constance Winterson, ruth
rendell, ann S”: one is a friend who helped her in this process of becoming (ruth rendell),
another is her adoptive mother who abandoned her at the age of sixteen upon learning of
Jeanette’s homosexuality (Constance Winterson), and the third is her biological mother, who
abandoned her after giving birth because she did not know what else she could do (ann S).
Shafak’s view of motherly feelings could be pursued in her description of her motherly side,
Mama rice Pudding. Unlike the other more Westernized finger women living inside elif,
Mama rice Pudding seems to be her traditional self (Boşoiu 2014, 116), but surprisingly
nothing appears exotic or strange about her. She is instead described as a kind of femininity
everybody can achieve by being simple, caring, and at ease with themselves:
She is wearing an aquamarine dress that reaches her knees, red shoes without heels, a
belt of the same color, beige nylon stockings. her wavy hair is held back in a ponytail
by a modest hair band. The chubbiness of her cheeks is due to her extra pounds, but
she seems to be at peace with her body. (Shafak 2011, 72)
additionally, Shafak confirms that Mama rice Pudding is motherly and loving, and has been
repressed all these years (2011, 73) by elif and her other finger women. however, Mama
1 finger women are fantastic characters Shafak has created to impersonate different aspects of her personality as a
woman. These characters are tiny women who live inside her and control her actions and reactions to the outside
world.
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rice Pudding’s motherly feelings are more prominent when she is the only finger woman
who strives to save Shafak from ignoring her body and femininity (2011, 91). Despite that,
at the beginning of pregnancy, her dark side emerges as she turns into a tyrant and bans
reading books by literary figures who are against pregnancy, and even bans talking to other
finger women (2011, 115), although she does her best to help elif experience a smooth
pregnancy. Mama rice Pudding could thus be viewed as a helpful yet tyrannical mother,
and her real presence is depicted without either victimization or turning her into a heroine.
In other words, Shafak has accepted and portrayed the complexity and plurality within the
mother figure by writing only about her own motherly side, devoid of any generalizations
about mothers.
Similarly, Winterson renders both of her mothers realistically yet really different from each
other because her adoptive mother Mrs. Winterson had a strong presence in Jeanette’s life,
with her strange ways of living, whereas her birth mother was absent for a long while (van der
Wiel 2014, 176). It is important to note that Winterson does not favour one over another as
she avoids introducing one as a better mother and depicts them as neither passive nor simple
angels. She describes her birth mother as straightforward and kind, while Mrs. Winterson is
portrayed as a labyrinth (2011, 412). her birth mother is a woman who likes men and has
been married four times but never depended on them, as she did everything by herself, even
putting up the shelves (2011, 417). on the other hand, Mrs. Winterson is the one in charge
of language (2011, 61): a confident, dramatic reader (2011, 63) who teaches Jeanette how to
read (2011, 60). Mrs. Winterson is thus the mother on the side of the mind, while Jeanette’s
birth mother is on the side of the body. In other words, the author has a little bit of both in
her by writing about sexuality and the ways of the body. as such, we can see that Jeanette’s
mothers are not passive because Winterson has pictured them as decisive and responsible
women with entirely different personalities. Jeanette’s mothers are both good and bad, since
they tried to do what was best for their daughter but eventually abandoned her. Therefore,
unlike the patriarchy’s definition of mothers, Jeanette’s are neither passive nor angels.
Shafak and Winterson thus do not let a rigid image of the mother created by the masculine
world affect their own view regarding who a mother is or what she should be. The mother
in both memoirs is both good and evil, understanding and annoying, a saviour yet someone
who might abandon you. More importantly, not all mothers are the same, just like any
other human being. Notwithstanding the above argument, Shafak and Winterson go beyond
representing a personal idea of mothering by writing about the symbolic mother, as I shall
argue below.
4 The Symbolic Mother
The mother and the qualities associated with her role and presence have a similarly substantial
influence on the symbolic level, since they are essential for self-recognition and therefore play
a critical role in memoir writing. for instance, Shafak and Winterson create an alternative
symbol of the mother, depicting their mother’s strong and active presence. They even manage
to illustrate a mother-daughter dyad that depicts ‘the quality of the mother’ as a feminine
characteristic, rejecting freud’s doctrines in this area.
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The mother’s presence can be studied by looking at the man/woman binary opposition and
defining the mother’s role in the institution of the family compared to that of the father.
Cixous describes the father as an absent mystery compared to the mother’s life drive,
constantly resisting death. The mother’s life force derives from her commonplace existence
in her daughter’s life, her association with the body and giving birth, and also the fact that
she accepts ‘the other’ inside herself both in the english language – m(other) (Bray 2003,
74) – as well as in reality (pregnancy) (Cixous 1991b, 84). on the other hand, the father’s
archetypal association with logic turns him into an unknown mystery, always absent from
his daughter’s life. Shafak’s and Winterson’s portrayal of their mothers and fathers neatly
resembles Cixous’ definition of them and, at the same time, could potentially reverse the
existing binary opposition that has always prioritized the father.
Shafak’s mother takes care of her daughter after getting divorced, and the reader cannot see
a trace of her father in the text: she talks about herself as “the only child of a single mother”,
and even when she stays with her paternal grandmother so that she can spend more time with
her father ends up seeing his mother more than him (Shafak 2011, 16, 134). as a result, her
grandmother has a more substantial presence than her father. Moreover, since her father is
never present, elif decides she does not want to carry his name any longer (2011, 67) and,
instead, defines herself by her father’s absence (Benenhaley 2014, 10). She thus changes her
last name to her mother’s first name, Shafak, which means ‘dawn’ (2011, 71), ‘the emergence
of light’, and a ‘life drive’. Consequently, the father, who is always absent, loses his position,
and her mother’s name replaces him. That is how the mother gives life, even through the
meaning of her name. Interestingly, elif ’s first story was published under the name of elif
Shafak – elif and her mother, as the mother takes a positive place in her daughter’s writing
career.
Moving on from elif ’s father to the father of her child, one could still feel the noticeable
absence of the father. elif is almost always alone after pregnancy and childbirth. for one reason
or another, her husband (the father-to-be) is not there. for instance, during her postpartum
depression, eyup (the father) is doing his military service for six months, although he calls
when he can (Shafak 2011, 129–30). however, even when he is back and is asked to take
care of the baby, while elif writes, he panics and suggests looking for a nanny (2011, 159).
overall, the father is absent in elif ’s and her child’s lives, but the reason for this differs.
Similarly, present mothers and absent fathers are also shown in Winterson’s memoir. her
biological mother breastfed her but did not try to keep her because of poverty (Winterson
2011, 436). elaborating on her mother’s reason for putting her child up for adoption,
Winterson writes, “Better for Janet to have a mother and a father” (2011, 388). ann gives
Jeannette up because she does not want her to grow up without a father. Moreover, she
believes that by letting go of her, Jeanette can have a better life, and thus fights back against
the death of hope for her child. Little did she know that the father in her daughter’s new
family would also be passive and invisible.
Moreover, the portrait of the Winterson family also breaks the binary opposition of active
father and passive mother since Mrs. Winterson liked to wrestle (with problems) while her
husband only liked watching wrestling (Winterson 2011, 15). In addition, he was usually
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either at work in the factory or in the church (2011, 109–10), so he was absent from the
household. Nevertheless, what clearly shows Jeanette’s idea of her father’s passivity (absence)
is when she describes his role in her exorcism and the fact that he did not do anything to help
her (164), although he was against it, and later on he did nothing (2011, 104) to keep her
from leaving home. Winterson thus shows the symbolic absence of the father, stating that he
never tried to save her. on the other hand, despite Jeanette’s problems with Mrs. Winterson,
she writes about the effective presence of her adoptive mother, which might remind one of
the ways Shafak portrays her mother.
The mother-daughter relationship solidified in Black Milk and Why Be Happy? Is mainly
similar to Cixous’ idea rather than that of freud. treating Dora, freud suggested that daughters
hate their mothers, while Cixous had a positive interpretation of Dora’s feelings toward her
mother (goodman 2019, 12), since the mother is the voice that is always alive in a woman’s
writing, and it seems that sentences, expressions, and anecdotes are “her sphere” (Sellers 2006,
117). Besides, the mother is always within the daughter (Cixous 1976, 881), affecting the
formation of her daughter’s identity. In other words, Shafak and Winterson seem to have
written “matrifocal” narratives, which o’reilly and Caporale Bizzini define as “one in which a
mother plays a role of cultural and social significance and in which motherhood is thematically
elaborated, valued, and structurally central to the plot” (o’reilly and Caporale Bizzini 2009,
11). If so, the mother’s strong presence in her daughter’s life can be observed in both memoirs.
although Jeanette criticizes Mrs. Winterson and challenges her by “setting her (Jeanette) story
against hers (Mrs. Winterson)” (Winterson 2011, 20), in the end, she even feels lucky for
having her (2011, 439). In the same manner, similar to Shafak, Winterson carries her mother’s
last name since she always calls her father merely ‘father’ while her mother is always ‘Mrs.
Winterson’, with such a sense of strong presence: “She filled the phone box. She was out of
scale, larger than life. She was like a fairy story where size is approximate and unstable” (2011,
17). Winterson even alludes to Mrs. Winterson’s influence on her career by hinting at her
mother’s, which forced Jeanette to memorize the Bible. Later on, Jeanette was not even allowed
to read and keep her favourite books, and so she had to memorize them (trussler 2013, 27).
all the same, Winterson does not express any hatred toward Mrs. Winterson because she
believes this dark gift has been helpful, as it seems to be all Mrs. Winterson could do for
her (2011, 412). That is how Winterson values the positive presence of her adoptive mother
despite their disagreements. on the other hand, Winterson mentions that she had been
writing stories so that her birth mother could one day find her (2011, 311).She thus appears
to have depicted both her mothers as the people who shaped her existence. In fact, she has
decided to continue living her life by looking back at these two women while simultaneously
stepping forward and going beyond them.
The symbolic, present, and “life-affirming mother” (Bray 2003, 54), who encourages her
daughter to choose freedom and has a give-and-take relationship with writing and language,
can also be seen in both memoirs. Winterson linked the bitter days when she could not talk
(when she lost her language) to when her birth mother abandoned her before she could even
have a language (2011, 316). Therefore, she is concerned about maternal loss (van der Wiel
2014, 4) as well as the loss of language. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, she learned reading
180 Niloufar khosravi Balalami Representing M(other): A Cixousian Reading of Memoirs Written by Jeanette Winterson ...
from Mrs. Winterson, who was in charge of language at home. on the other hand, Shafak’s
mother encourages her to write by giving her a turquoise notebook to use as a journal, but
elif, who is bored with her life, starts writing stories instead of recording her daily life (Shafak
2011, 144). Thus, both memoirs link the mother to words, writing, and reading. In addition,
both writers refer to how their mothers are involved in or impact their writing process or
language. In other words, the mothers give their daughters a language to write with, and
the daughters remember their mothers in the texts they write, so the mother is always
remembered in a give-and-take relationship instead of a love-hate one: I am the mother, and
I give you what you need to write; I am the daughter, and I remember you in my texts. to the
‘matrifocal’ narrative, the role of the mother is as significant as the words and language used.
Moving on from personal memories of their mothers to a more general image of the concept,
to celebrate mothering and different ideas about it, Shafak and Winterson tell stories of
mothers who are not similar to each other, and they even include those women who cannot
be mothers or have decided not to be. Including different kinds of women, a break in the
forgetting cycle is created that reminds us of the variety in the feminine world, that ‘woman’
and, as a result, ‘mother’ is plural. furthermore, insisting on the notion of mother is not to
turn the woman into an ‘other’. Instead, it functions as a tactical move that deconstructs
the phallocentric thought (Bray 2003, 29), considering the mother as the central piece of
the plot. More importantly, this can encourage women to play the role of the mother for
themselves and others (Sellers 1992, 141). The movement from a personal account of the
mother to a more general discussion showing different aspects of her to the world can happen
in the attempt to depict ‘the quality of the mother’.
The mother’s relationship with ‘the other’ can be defined by the Cixousian term of ‘positive
receptivity.’ The m(other) is the only person who allows an ‘other’ to grow in her, and then
she sets that other free (giving birth) without attempting to change it/him/her to herself. The
way the mother accepts an ‘other’ is called ‘positive receptivity’ (Cixous 1991a, 155), and
Cixous calls this ‘the quality of the mother’, It is also worth mentioning that both Shafak and
Winterson write about the existence or absence of this quality in their memoirs. although
Winterson constantly writes about Mrs. Winterson, she seems to be aware of the fact that
her adoptive mother’s flaw is the lack of this motherly quality, since she describes her fixed
routines and ideas to imply that she mother does not accept things that are defined in any
other way than what she regards as typical norms. here I argue that the most eye-catching
moment depicting the lack of Cixousian motherly quality occurs in the scene that features
the title of the memoir. In this particular scene Jeanette wants to leave because she is happily
in love with Janey, while Mrs. Winterson asks, “Why be happy when you can be normal?”
(Winterson 2011, 226). for Mrs. Winterson, normal means living under the authority of the
Bible’s instructions and the evangelical church (patriarchal institutions), according to which
homosexuality is unacceptable and considered a sin. Mrs. Winterson is always concerned
about being normal and bans any ‘otherness’ even in books, since she believes fiction causes
trouble (2011, 81): “The trouble with a book is that you never know what’s in it until it’s too
late” (2011, 73), while Winterson uses books to write about Mrs. Winterson and her unusual
ways of life. Books can thus possess ‘the quality of the mother’ by having the other inside,
accepting the one who is against them.
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however, and as noted earlier, the ‘quality of the mother’ is not a feature exclusively for
mothers, and so the lack of this quality in Mrs. Winterson is not due to the fact that she did
not have a child of her own and has adopted one. even Jeanette, who has never had a child
of her own, possesses this quality in the way she treats her biological mother and adoptive
parents. In Winterson’s memoir, one can notice two different incidents in which Jeanette
takes the role of a caregiver and treats her father like an accepting mother would. In the
first incident, her father decides to get married after Mrs. Winterson’s death but still fears
his dead wife and worries that she will never forgive him. Jeanette then helps and calms
him down by saying that Mrs. Winterson would be happy to see him happy, although
she is sure this is untrue (Winterson 2011, 102). even after her father’s death, there is a
problem with the cheque she had written for the undertakers, so they refuse to bury her
father. Then Winterson introduces herself as the writer of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
an auto-fictional book about her family and her problems with them with regard to her
homosexuality. This book is quite famous in england because the BBC had made a tv
series based on it, and the people who were in charge of the funeral had seen and were
impressed by it, so they agreed to bury her father (2011, 379) since they were sure a famous
writer would eventually pay them. Interestingly, Jeanette’s auto-fictional book about her
life with the Wintersons helps her father’s funeral to run smoothly. on the other hand, as
I mentioned before, her father could have helped her grow up effortlessly, but his absence
and passive nature prevented him from doing so, whereas ‘the quality of the mother’ in
Jeannette urges her to help her father.
In addition to the above, Jeanette also shows her motherly quality in her relationship with
Mrs. Winterson. She disapproves of Mrs. Winterson’s lifestyle, yet she defends her presence
as her mother when she admits, “She was a monster, but she was my monster” (2011, 441).
The same is true about her biological mother, as Jeanette declares, “I certainly don’t blame
her. I think she did the only thing she could do” (2011, 412). overall, even though both
women abandoned her at a certain point in her life, Winterson acts motherly toward them
by trying to understand their reasons and accepting them as they are. eventually, she is happy
with the person she turns out to be (2011, 439) and comes to terms with her own ‘otherness’.
although Jeannette criticizes both of her mothers at some point, her own ‘quality of the
mother’ is reflected by giving them a certain position in her created world and by just calling
them mothers instead of good/bad mothers, as the masculine world tends to. Winterson thus
remembers her mothers and records their lives in her auto-fictional texts.
In contrast, one could discern Shafak’s lack of motherly quality in her attitude toward the
pregnant woman on the boat, but later she learns this quality of accepting ‘the other’ by reading
and narrating life stories and the ideas that various literary women have about having children.
In fact, these ideas were so diverse that Shafak could not find a fixed rule. all the biographies
aside, Shafak practiced and learned about mothering by accepting her independent, modern
mother and her superstitious, conservative maternal grandmother’s different ways of life.
While doing so, she did her best to avoid prioritizing one over another, believing that each
had her advantages and disadvantages (Shafak 2011, 83). That is how she stands against the
patriarchal notion of motherhood, which disregards stay-at-home mothers as being passive
and inexperienced in the ways of the world, although it simultaneously values them. The male
182 Niloufar khosravi Balalami Representing M(other): A Cixousian Reading of Memoirs Written by Jeanette Winterson ...
world applies the same kind of double standards to a modern mother who is applauded for her
independence, but blamed for not spending enough time with her children.
Writing Black Milk, Shafak is looking for “inner democracy” (Shafak 2011, 14), which can be
taken as another term for ‘the quality of the mother’. Shafak explained her inner democracy as
recognizing all her finger women and treating them equally (Shafak 2011, 161), disregarding
their differences, and admitting the fact that she is all of them and needs all of them, too. In
my present argument, this definition is similar to having ‘the quality of the mother’ through
which one accepts others and will not try to change them into a restricted self. Therefore, I
cannot entirely agree with Boşoiu, who believes elif ’s finger women coexist peacefully from
the beginning (2014, 114), because in her attempt to gain inner democracy or ‘the quality
of the mother’, elif went through different stages, named after different political terms, that
rule over spaces outside the text. Initially, she had an inner monarchy in which she did not
give voice to her motherly (Mama rice Pudding) and feminine (Blue Belle Bovary) sides
because she was trying to be cynical and creative. Then, a coup d’état took place led by
Miss ambitious Chekhovian and highbrowed Cynic to keep elif focused on writing, and
after that, there was a strict military regime to stop Shafak from even considering marriage
and pregnancy. Later on, after pregnancy, the monarchy of the queen Mama rice Pudding
resulted in the imprisonment of all finger women by Lord Poton (the postpartum Djinn).
finally, she accepts all the voices inside her and realizes that she “loves them equally without
discrimination” (Boşoiu 2014, 113), which enables her to achieve inner democracy or ‘the
quality of the mother’.
This inner democracy is the first step in creating a sisterhood among women, which Shafak
pictures in at least two different ways in her memoir. firstly, by illustrating a feminine unitary
decision to support pregnant women:
No matter how many times I say “no, thank you,” they insist until I give in. So I walk
around munching on other people’s sandwiches and cakes. It doesn’t matter that I’ve
never met these women or that I’ll never see them again. Where there is pregnancy there
is no formality. Where there is no formality there is no privacy. (Shafak 2011, 124)
even if Shafak presents a negative notion in the last sentence, this unique decision to support
the mother and mothering can still be celebrated.
another scene that perfectly exemplifies the sisterhood I mentioned earlier is the second
time Shafak meets adelet agaoglu. even though agaoglu had decided not to have children
when she was young, she still is the person who tells Shafak that having children was perhaps
a good decision. Describing the situation, Shafak writes, “I gently squeezed her hand, and
offered humbly in return, ‘and I respect your decision not to become a mother so as to
fully dedicate yourself to your writing’” (Shafak 2011, 159). Despite having different life
stories and choosing different lifestyles, they hold each other’s hands and share a moment
of unity. and despite a multitude of existing ideas and mindsets, the fact that they accept
different ways they have chosen to live could be regarded as a sign of positive receptivity. This
plurality of feminine characters has the potential to stand against Clanchy’s idea that Shafak
has overlooked the real barriers a new mother will face in the outside world (2013, par. 9).
183varIa
These barriers include “loss of status, economic inequality, and so on”, but Shafak writes
about the “inner fears” and precarious motherhood created by the same inequalities Clanchy
names in her review. In the end, the democracy Shafak has gained “in herself” by accepting
the inner diversity she has learned from her depression (Shafak 2014) might be said to be the
first stage of defeating the “bigger and more important political problems of motherhood and
selfhood” that Clanchy points towards. one could argue that the politics of Shafak’s memoir
is in the illustration of ‘the quality of the mother’ that can be achieved in different ways, yet
women can still hold hands and form a sisterhood.
By the same token, Winterson’s decision to write about herself as a lesbian with no children,
Mrs. Winterson, a religious woman who has adopted a child instead of having one herself,
and ann, who has been married four times and has several children but gave her first child
up for adoption, shows Winterson’s ability to gather different kinds of women, mothers and
caregivers and create a bond among them.
Therefore, in my interpretation of Cixous’ theory, ‘the quality of the mother’ is not just
for those women who can and want to have children, but it is simply about the concept of
sisterhood among women and the way they break the circle of very rigid definitions in order
to create alternative ways of defining the mother-woman in their stories. The way Winterson
writes about Mrs. Winterson and her biological mother, in line with the way Shafak writes
about her mother, maternal grandmother, the pregnant woman on the boat, and all other
literary women, could be regarded as certain representations of this quality. By writing about
different kinds of caregivers, a recreation of identity has happened through writing about
various feminine selves, which other feminine selves can read. In doing so, one plays the
role of the present mother, not only to herself but to other women. as demonstrated in this
article, the writers not only remember and write about mothers but also act like mothers in
caring for themselves and their created worlds, while protecting language, literature, literary
figures, and their readers.
5 Conclusion
Black Milk is Shafak’s quest to find the personal meaning of womanhood while representing a
plural picture of mothering. In this book, two different views that try to define motherhood
as a dormant state in a woman’s life are criticized: the traditional and sanctified view of
motherhood, which calls it “holy and honorable” (Shafak 2011,115) and the belief that
women should leave all other aspects of their lives to fulfil this sacred duty, and also the
modern view of women’s magazines in which all women are considered “superwomen”, able
to handle a career, children, and husband at the same time (Shafak 2011, 154). Besides,
Shafak shows that as a woman she can change her mind about apparently fundamental
concepts such as marriage and motherhood and, instead, introduces change and alteration in
discussing notions that have always been defined non-flexibly.
Why be Happy When You Can Be Normal? also functions as Winterson’s curious quest to find
her biological mother (ann), since she believes finding her lost mother will most fill in the
empty part of her character as an adopted child. to put it differently, Winterson wants to
make amends with her inner unhappy child. Interestingly, Winterson questions all the fixed
184 Niloufar khosravi Balalami Representing M(other): A Cixousian Reading of Memoirs Written by Jeanette Winterson ...
predefinitions of motherhood by writing about the differences between her adoptive and
biological mothers. even though Jeannette seems to have confused feelings toward these two
women, she also dares to write about their cruelty of abandoning her and their innocence of
not knowing what else to do.
In conclusion, I argue that being the mother’s voice and telling her story could be a way of
resisting the condescending look of patriarchy on mothers. to elaborate more, the concept
of mother and motherly feelings in Black Milk and Why Be Happy? seems to be able to resist
the simplistic notion of the patriarchal society that omits ‘other mothers’ and regards women
with childbearing ability as the only ones who can become caregivers. on top of that, women
suffer from double standards of judgment as mothers depending on the kind of mother they
are. In contrast, the mother can be seen as a quality everyone can achieve and is much needed
in every aspect of everyday life, since it encourages the acceptance of difference and otherness.
and I believe the latter is what Shafak and Winterson have done in their auto-fictional books.
Acknowledgment
I am grateful to Mojca Krevel, who turned this article into a better one through her patience,
suggestions, and corrections.
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2023, vol. 20 (1), 187-201(228)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1.187-201
UDC: 314.114:373.3:[811.111'243:808.1]
Gabrijela Petra Nagode,
Karmen Pižorn,
Žan Korošec
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
The Demographic Factors Affecting the Writing
Skills of Slovenian Year 6 EFL Students
aBStraCt
efL writing is a complex and difficult productive skill for young learners. National assessment
of efL at the end of year 6 in Slovenia shows that additional research into the various variables
affecting efL writing is needed. The aim of this study is to predict the relationship between
gender, place of living, home possessions, years of schooling and parents’ education, and efL
writing performance for year 6 students. a representative sample of 790 pupils completed
a demographic e-questionnaire and two writing e-tasks. according to aNova, statistically
significant factors are home possessions, number of Slovenian and english books, years of
learning english and mother’s education. Statistically insignificant factors are gender, place of
living and father’s education. Demographic factors predict efL writing performance by 9.9%.
Keywords: efL writing, young learners, prediction, demographic factors, quantitative
research
Demografski dejavniki, ki vplivajo na pisno zmožnost slovenskih
šestošolcev v angleščini kot tujem jeziku
IZvLeČek
Pisanje v angleščini kot tujem jeziku je kompleksna in zahtevna produktivna zmožnost za
mlajše učence. analiza več nacionalnih preizkusov znanja iz angleščine ob koncu šestega
razreda kaže, da so potrebne dodatne raziskave vplivnih dejavnikov na pisno zmožnost, tudi
demografskih. Cilj raziskave je napovedati povezanost spola, kraja bivanja, imetja, let učenja
angleščine in izobrazbe staršev na uspešnost pisanja v angleščini. vzorec je reprezentativen in
obsega 790 šestošolcev. Učenci so izpolnili demografski e-vprašalnik in dve pisni e-nalogi.
glede na aNova so statistično pomembni dejavniki imetje, število slovenskih in angleških
knjig doma, leta učenja angleščine in izobrazba mame, statistično nepomembni pa so spol,
kraj bivanja in izobrazba očeta. Skupno demografski dejavniki pojasnijo 9,9 % variance.
Ključne besede: pisna zmožnost v angleščini kot tujem jeziku, mlajši učenci, napoved,
demografski dejavniki, kvantitativna raziskava
188 gabrijela Petra Nagode, karmen Pižorn, Žan korošec The Demographic Factors Affecting the Writing Skills ...
1 Introduction
Writing in a first language has been researched deeply over the last 40 years and presented in
various models as a complex skill (Weigle 2011, 23). Writing in a second language was first
presented in the monitor model (krashen 1982). for young learners, aged five to 12, writing
in a first and additional language is a complex skill regarded as particularly difficult, especially
in contrast with adults, due to their age-related characteristics such as growth, literacy and
vulnerability (Mckay 2011).
early recognition of poor writing skills may be crucial information in predicting students’
future career opportunities (Pretorius and Naudé 2002). The 2018 results of year 6 students
at national assessment show wide variation in Slovenia. as stated in several previous reports,
efL writing should be understood as a process that needs a lot of practice and, accordingly,
should be developed more systematically and earlier, while appropriate feedback should also
be given (rIC 2018, 189). Some students do not even attempt to write or they write in
another language (rIC 2019, 189). In general, efL writing goals stated in the national plan
are not achieved, which was also reported in 2017, with poor results observed in the case of
all three criteria – content, grammar, and vocabulary and spelling (rIC 2022, 6–7).
Demographic factors, among others, are known to influence academic performance (tinto
1975). Some, such as the relationship between age, gender, and academic achievement are
under-researched (Slaughter 2007, 52). Based on these findings, we conducted quantitative
research to find out the relationship between the selected demographic factors such as gender,
socio-economic status, region, years of schooling and parents’ education, and efL writing
performance. The factors are discussed in depth in the next section.
2 Theoretical Background
It is encouraging that scores on the efL national assessment at the end of year 6 and
participation have been rising in recent years in Slovenia (rIC 2021). however, new research
is required to determine why this is so. In contrast, there are still about a half of the students
who do not master efL writing skills, or do so only partially. early detection of poor efL
writing skills may be a crucial warning that points to the students’ future career possibilities.
Therefore, efL writing skill must be developed more effectively, as noted in the 2009 report.
New research could also explain why the ranking of regions has been the same for several
years now.
gender, as one of the key demographic factors, is one of the essential components in evolving the
agency and identity of writers, but remains under-researched in both second language writing
and second language acquisition as a larger field (kubota 2003). Competence development of
efL writing skills from the point of view of gender has been studied, but mostly with students
in upper secondary education (keller et al. 2020). female-male differences with primary
school learners are usually studied from the perspective of CLIL and writing genres (graham
et al. 2021). Steinlen (2018) examined the development of english writing skills of primary
school pupils in years 3 and 4 attending a bilingual german-english school as opposed to
mainstream programmes, and the results also acknowledged the gender dimension.
189varIa
Minimal differences in efL writing proficiency, according to gender, are reported in the
national assessment of efL in Slovenia, which is composed of listening, reading and writing
tests at the end of year 6 (rIC 2019, 177–78; rIC 2021, 185). This finding is seen as
extremely positive and taken as evidence that the topics selected are general enough and
relevant to both male and female students. It is further assumed that neither male nor female
students are discriminated against by efL teachers.
as reading is a skill strongly related to writing (krashen 1993), it is informative for us to
find out the effects of demographic factors such as gender in reading, too. The PISa 2018
results for Slovenia (oeCD data, as reported by šterman Ivančič, štigl and Čuček 2019, 22)
indicate that motivation for reading, as measured by the reading satisfaction index, is below
average compared to other oeCD countries, which is –0.4 for boys and 0.3 for girls, while
in Slovenia it is –0.55 and 0.11, respectively, on a scale ranging from –1 to 1.5. according
to Duarete, raposo and alves (2012), a satisfaction index, often referring to customers and
a specific moment, can traditionally be measured by a combination of statistical procedures
such as regression analysis, descriptive statistics, comparison of means tests, structural equation
modelling, analysis of deviations, performance analysis, correlation statistics, importance
performance, path analysis and factor analysis.
Socio-economic status (SeS) is known to have an effect on students’ academic performance.
In many studies, learners coming from low-SeS households develop academic skills more
slowly as compared to learners coming from high-SeS environments (Morgan et al. 2009).
Serquina and Batang (2018) find that learners coming from families with a low SeS may have
the ability to accomplish a task, but then may get interrupted by some social factors. one
of the conclusions is that focused attention is impossible for learners whose families struggle
financially. Socio-economic and cultural status was also measured in SurveyLang (european
Commission and eSLC 2012), the first broad international study of language competences.
Students in the last year of lower secondary education or the second year of upper secondary
education were invited to participate (european Commission and eSLC 2012, 243). The
study considered students’ home possessions and parents’ educational status. however, in the
study’s final report no specific demographic factors are discussed, as they are seen to be largely
beyond the control of policy makers.
With regard to parents’ education, a large correlation was also found in relation to children’s
academic achievement in Idris, hussain and ahmad (2020). tam (2009) compares the
influence of mothers’ and fathers’ educational level on academic achievement with a
sample of hong kong families children, with boys and girls treated as separate groups,
based on the claim that the issue in question had not yet been studied systematically. The
results show that mothers care about and promote academic achievement more intensively
than fathers, which is said to be in accordance with Chinese culture. Boys benefitted more
from maternal efficacy than girls, but were more hampered with regard to psychological
governance. In contrast, the girls’ academic performance was more enhanced by paternal
academic efficacy than that of the boys.
Parents’ education, as part of SeS, is known to influence the academic achievement and
cognitive development of a child. This is achieved through a series of family environment
190 gabrijela Petra Nagode, karmen Pižorn, Žan korošec The Demographic Factors Affecting the Writing Skills ...
variables such as parents’ educational expectations, parenting ideas and behaviours, and the
parent-child relationship (Bradley and Corwyn 2001; yeung, Linver, and Brooks-gunn 2002).
The importance of maternal education for children’s academic achievements is widely
recognized; however, the multiple potential mechanisms that explain this relationship are
underexplored (harding, Morris and hughes 2015). The same authors explain that theories of
human, cultural and social capital are integrated with two developmental psychology theories
– bioecological theory and developmental niche theory. Magnuson (2007) discusses the role
of maternal education from the point of view of its improvement in relation to young mothers
with a low level of education, and older mothers with a high level of education, in terms
of academic achievement and the quality of their home environments in middle childhood
(age six to 12). Children of young mothers with low education who improve their education
perform better in reading, but less improvement is observed in maths. No impact of education
improvement was found with children of older mothers with previous high education.
In view of region as another demographic factor, statistical analyses derived from the results
of Slovenian national assessment of efL in 2020/21 (rIC 2021, 185–86) indicate that the
ranking of five most successful regions have remained the same for some years, with central
region – containing the capital – being the best. as pointed out several times by the national
assessment committee, a mixed-methods approach is needed to explain what factors lead to
lower versus higher results, and thus what causes differences in the results of efL assessment
in year 6 according to the various regions. The research could also explain the differences in
results according to the students’ place of living.
according to SurveyLang (european Commission and eSLC 2012), school time in relation
to (formal) early language learning was a major issue in the eU in 2012, by which time the
various countries had gradually increased the overall years spent teaching languages, which
was mainly achieved by starting fLL earlier. The topic of early language learning is reviewed
by Nagode and Pižorn (2016) in relation to some widespread myths and misconceptions.
The myth that “earlier means better” seems to be true, but with certain limitations. The
question of the proper age to start learning a foreign/second language is a complex one.
When deciding on the starting age, the final aim of a language programme plays a crucial
role. Learning conditions, e.g., enough exposure to the language, and possibilities for students
to use the language in various contexts, have to be taken into account as well.
eU citizens are strongly encouraged and even expected to learn more than one additional
language, as stated on the official website of the european Union (cited on august 17,
2022) under the theme of the importance of multilingualism. Language competences are
stated to be at the heart of building the european education area. In other words, they are
indispensable for mobility, cooperation and mutual understanding across borders.
3 Method
This is a non-experimental quantitative study. Descriptive and causal-nonexperimental
methods of pedagogic research have been used. The research has been conducted according
to ethical rules.
191varIa
3.1 Participants
Prior to the study, primary school pupils in general had been found to experience considerable
difficulties in efL writing (Jashari and Dagarin 2019). The year 6 students were selected as
the central primary school population and the upper year of the second triad of Slovenian
primary education. We believed that the results of this study could help us better understand
what demographic factors affect students’ outcomes in writing in the year 6 National
assessment of knowledge (Nak) in efL. In addition, the students participating in this
study might have benefited from taking part in it because it would be great practice for
them with regard to actually taking the Nak in efL at the end of year 6, as they were also
asked to complete two standardized writing tasks. In selecting students, no limitations were
applied in terms of gender, ethnicity, special needs or any other background relevant to the
context of efL. We refer to year 6 students as younger learners, with the age cut-off of being
(approximately) 12 (Mckay 2011, 1).
a systematic random sample of 5% was planned from the statistical population of all year
6 primary school pupils taking the regular curriculum in the school year 2017/18 (N =
18.932). In order to select only students with english as their first foreign language, and not
german, we have removed the latter group.
The required 5% corresponded to 22.7 primary schools. We concluded that the research
should be conducted at 24 schools, 12 of them from larger cities, i.e., capitals of regions,
and 12 from smaller towns and villages (abu-Bader 2021). The actual participation was as
follows: 310 students from villages (40.5%), 350 students from smaller cities (45.7%) and
105 students from larger cities (13.7%). from the point of view of statistical regions valid in
the time of the research, we planned an equable, systematic geographical distribution. The
final number of participants amounted to 825 individuals.
3.2 Instruments, Materials and apparatus
The demographic questionnaire is based on a broader contextual questionnaire used before
in SurveyLang (european Commission in eSLC 2012), and the related description of the
results for Slovenia (rutar Leban 2013). The questionnaire is composed of 11 factors: school,
region, student, gender, place of living, home possessions in terms of “what” and “how
many”, number of books in the official language of the country of research, number of books
in english, years of previous learning efL, and parental educational level. Theoretically, the
range of variables could be extended to include, for example, items signifying wealth specific
to the research country. however, this would necessitate additional research to identify these
items and an even longer contextual questionnaire. In SurveyLang (european Commission
and eSLC 2012), parental educational level was measured on an eight-level scale. Several
students found it difficult to answer all the questions. for year 6 students, the existing
questionnaire might already be too long considering their concentration span as well as some
cognitively demanding items, such as parental educational level. Moreover, it is difficult
for schools to allocate (more) time for research. The questionnaire was converted into an
electronic form. Some motivational symbols were added. to achieve a satisfactory level of
anonymization, students had to enter their code first. as for reliability, it is not calculated for
demographic data.
192 gabrijela Petra Nagode, karmen Pižorn, Žan korošec The Demographic Factors Affecting the Writing Skills ...
a pilot study was conducted with 29 year 5 students from two classes at a primary school in
May and June 2017. Students participated anonymously after receiving written permission
from their parents or guardians. In general, students liked the electronic tasks more than
the traditional paper version. Some technical problems were encountered, such as entering
the task more than once. This led to a time-consuming extra effort verifying all entries and
selecting the best version for statistical analysis. additionally, 1ka – the system used to collect
the data – did not save the results if the students interrupted the task. The availability of
the school’s computer science teacher and the efL teacher proved to be most beneficial in
getting the students to complete the task. Content-wise, the students expressed difficulties
in comprehending some questions, and they were offered oral support. Prior to the main
research, technical difficulties were addressed. Some instructions were corrected as well. The
order (sampling) and timing of tasks was pre-determined.
We also used two writing tasks, which had been used before as standardized tasks for the
national assessment of efL at the end of year 6. The paper version was converted into an
e-version. Students typed the text into a special field on the screens as part of the selected 1ka
programme. Both the written instructions and criteria were preserved unaltered. accurate
oral instructions were given. The programme allowed unlimited text length. a child-friendly
visual background for the e-tasks was selected, and all the tasks were peer-reviewed.
During the course of our pilot study the students were asked to complete three writing tasks.
The task My Favourite School Friend was eliminated from the main study as being less suitable
compared to the Monster and Winter tasks. In the task Monster, students were asked to
describe the appearance, place of living and preferred activities of the monster in the picture.
In the task Winter, they had to write to a pen-friend from an african country to explain what
the weather in winter looks like in Slovenia, what you wear when going out and what you
can do. The task Winter is more authentic than Monster, as it is set in a real situation and
environment.
Both tasks are picture-based. however, from the point of view of predicting writing
performance based on task characteristics, it would be more informative if we included two
different tasks, such as a listen-and-write or read-and-write tasks. New tasks could also be
created, but this was not a priority of this research.
3.3 Procedure
Contacts with schools were established by emailing the missive to headteachers. after their
consent, the schools received another email with all the details regarding data collection
as well as all e-tasks. Parents and guardians received a letter with key information about
the research and a written consent form. Participation was announced as anonymous and
voluntary, meaning that students could exit the study at any phase, which is a research ethics
stipulation par excellence.
Students were asked to write as much as they could. If they could not recall an english
expression, they were allowed to use a word in their first language, although this strategy
was employed only exceptionally in order to keep the flow of writing. We emphasized that
students should write in english. During the pilot phase some students wrote in Slovenian.
193varIa
Nevertheless, the pilot-study-instructions did not explicitly state that the text should be
written in english. Students were encouraged to use their imagination in the Monster writing
task. as for grammatical accuracy, if they were unsure and hesitating they were told that it
was better to misspell the word than not to write it at all. Students were told to read the
instructions carefully, to copy the codes accurately, to adhere to the timing and order of tasks
(the a/B system was used and each student received the corresponding a or B paper list
and was asked to tick off the task after finishing it), the way of asking questions, the need/
possibility of writing paper tasks instead of e-tasks, the position of letters q, w, x and y on the
keyboard, and the prohibitions with regard to using dictionaries and talking to schoolmates.
all data were collected in an electronic format. Data collection lasted from the beginning
of february to the end of april 2018. Schools allowed two class periods for this study. ICt
classrooms were used, although of varying quality. Data were collected by the researcher at all
schools with efL and ICt teachers assisting this process.
The researcher used about 10 minutes for an introduction as research procedures are a rather
unusual situation for both students and teachers. an additional lesson, i.e., three instead of
two, would be helpful in this context. Students could ask questions but were asked to do so
at the beginning, if possible. efL teachers handed students’ written consent forms to the
researcher beforehand.
The students were asked if anyone wanted to do the tasks in paper form, providing they
could justify their preference. Some students with various special needs were assisted by their
teachers. all students preferred e-tasks, probably because these minimize the required input
and correspond with greater levels of personal relevance.
3.4 Data analysis
to determine the relationship between demographic factors (each factor taken separately),
frequencies, mode, skewness, kurtosis, minimum and maximum are calculated. to find out
statistical significance, one-way aNova is used. homoscedasticity of residuals is checked
by the Breusch-Pagan test of heteroskedasticity. graphically, the relationship between each
demographic variable and efL writing performance is presented by histograms. one has
been selected to be presented in this paper whereas others are explained in the text. to test the
heteroskedasticity of the number of books in the country’s official language, and the number
of english books together, a two-way aNova is used.
to detect missing data, we could use Analyse > Missing Value Analysis as a standard function in
SPSS. however, as we wanted not only to detect missing data but also eliminate all units with
at least one missing value, we used a filtering procedure NMISS (v0, v93, v3 to W14) < 1.
after filtering, 765 units remain. The final number is still higher than planned. In all further
statistical analyses, only units without missing values are used. These are units with answers
to all demographic questions and both writing tasks.
No attrition occurred, that is, no participant dropped out. There were also no cases of
students’ non-response.
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3.5 variables in the Study
School is a simple nominal independent variable with 21 values, according to 21 participating
schools. region is a simple nominal independent variable with 11 values, according to the
fact that 11 regions participated. Student, as a code, is a simple nominal independent variable
with 765 values, standing for all students whose data were included in the statistical analysis.
gender is a simple nominal independent variable with two values. Place of living is a simple
nominal independent variable with three values, 1 representing village, 2 town and 3 city.
home possessions, in terms of “what”, is a compound independent ordinal variable with
values from 1 to 16. More than one response is possible. each answer is assigned 1 point.
Mean value is calculated. according to SurveyLang (european Commission and eSLC 2012),
the first eight home possession items are equal across countries, whereas those from nine to
16 are country-specific. home possessions in terms of “how many” is a compound ordinal
independent variable with values from 1 to 4. Students had to select one answer for every
home possession from the list. The answers are transformed into points (values) according
to the following key: one point for the answer 0, two for 1, three for 2, and four for 3 or
more. for all items together the mean value is calculated. Number of books in Slovenian,
as well as number of english books, is a simple ordinal independent variable with six values
corresponding 0–10, 11–25, 26–100, 101–200, 201–500, more than 500 books. years of
learning efL is a simple ordinal independent variable with 10 values, 1 standing for zero
years, 1 for two years, 3 for three years and so on, up to 10 for 10 years. Maternal and paternal
education are two simple ordinal independent variables with the same seven values, according
to the given seven levels of education, 0 for no schooling at all and 7 for the highest level of
education. efL writing performance as the dependent variable is a compound with values
from 0 to 10. as for the criteria, content (0–4 points), grammar (0–3) and vocabulary/
spelling (0–3) are taken into account. each criterion is an independent ordinal variable. efL
writing performance is calculated as follows:
((rating 1 of writing task Monster + rating 2 of writing task Monster) / 2 + rating 1 of
writing task Winter) / 2
overall, 2,304 writing tasks were assessed (768 x 3). The number does not take into account
the tasks that we excluded from statistical analysis due to missing data. rating 1 was completed
by the researcher for both writing tasks, Monster and Winter. finding english teachers for
the compulsory rating 2 turned out to be difficult. Seven highly qualified raters – members
of the national efL assessment team – helped with rating 2. The researcher also completed
rating 2 of 118 Monster writing tasks, but only six months after rating 1. In cases of assessment
discrepancy greater than two points, rating 3 was introduced. rating 2 for the writing task
Winter was not carried out. In rating 1 the 2017 Nak scale was applied whereas in rating
2 the 2018 Nak scale was used. a comparison of the scales showed very few discrepancies.
Intra-rater reliability (0.907) was calculated as 0.846 (the researcher as rater 1 vs. other raters).
The logic of the formula leads to the average number of points achieved for both writing tasks.
4 Results and Discussion
The research question in this study was to identify the relationships between gender, place
of living, home possessions in terms of “what” and “how many”, number of books in the
195varIa
official language of the research country, number of books in english, and maternal and
paternal educational level as demographic variables, and efL writing performance with
year 6 students. The statistically significant variables are home possessions, in terms of both,
“what” (the most influential variable) and “how many”, the number of books in the language
of the research country, the number of books in english and maternal educational level.
gender, place of living and paternal educational level are statistically insignificant.
gender is statistically insignificant as a predictor of efL writing performance (p = 0.051).
girls achieved a slightly lower result than 5 points (out of 10) and boys somewhat more than
4.5 points. however, the p value exceeds 0.005 by only 0.1%, so we are adding information
on effect size, which is also frequently given in social science studies.
effect size and consequently the proportion of variance explained in efL writing performance
by gender can be calculated using partial η2 = 0.005. accordingly, gender explains 0.5% of
total variance in efL writing performance. Based on the partial η2 coefficient, the effect size
for gender as a predictor of efL writing performance can be calculated according to Cohen’s
criteria. It equals 0.07 and is regarded as small.
The result is in accordance with our expectations as the two writing tasks are standardized
and, as such, were used for one of the national efL assessments for year 6 students. In the
recent corresponding reports of the national assessment committee on the efL assessment
at the end of year 6, very little difference in efL writing performance according to gender is
mentioned, indicating that the tasks seem to be liked by both girls and boys, and pointing
to non-discriminatory efL teaching in relation to gender. however, this finding has not yet
been supported by research connected to the national efL assessment for year 6 students. We
hypothesize that efL writing performance would be more varied if different types of writing
tasks were used, such as a listening and writing task or reading and writing task, which we
suggest for further research, taking into account also the findings of kormos and Wilby
(2019) on task development. In practice, we would propose all existing ongoing support for
(early) reading in the first language and efL to continue. The transition from efL reading
to efL writing should be explored and, where possible, strengthened at the national level.
Place of living as a predictor of efL writing performance with year 6 students is statistically
insignificant (p = 0.280). Under its influence, the average efL writing performance differs
by approximately half a point (4.6 to 5, out of 10). a slightly positive trend in the direction
village-town-city can be observed.
years of learning english is statistically significant (p = 0.000), as expected. The Breusch-
Pagan test confirms homoscedasticity with p = 0.391. a steadily increasing trend in the
direction village-small town-large town can be observed. The vast majority of year 6 students
(230) have been learning english for three years. The difference in efL writing performance
ranges from about 4 to 7 points, which we estimate as large, as compared to the range of
difference caused by other variables.
home possession (“what”) is a statistically significant variable with p = 0.001, as expected
according to the known importance of socioeconomic status, to which the variable in
196 gabrijela Petra Nagode, karmen Pižorn, Žan korošec The Demographic Factors Affecting the Writing Skills ...
question belongs. The Breusch-Pagan test of heteroskedasticity confirms heteroskedasticity
with p = 0.036 (lower than 0.05). Nevertheless, this is most probably merely a consequence
of the illogical and disproportionately high first (left) bar of the histogram (figure 1),
which is represented by only one student. The other bars show a clear upward trend, and
efL writing performance ranges from 2 to almost 6. frequencies show that most students
fall into the following bars: bar 6 with 25 students, bar 7 with 37 students, bar 8 with 60
students, bar 9 with 67 students, bar 10 with 99 students, 11 with 119 students, 12 with
105 students, 13 with 81 students, 14 with 64 students, 15 with 46 students, and 30 with 16
students. as for the list of 16 wealth indicator items, these should be verified in any further
research endeavour for their country-specific appropriateness. The list is based on SurveyLang
(european Commission and eSLC 2012).
FIGURE 1. The relationship between EFL writing performance and home possessions, in terms of “what”, with
Year 6 students.
Home possession in terms of “how many” turns out to be a statistically significant variable (p = 0.011). The
Breusch-Pagan test confirms homoscedasticity (p = 0.448). The majority of students (553) possess two (same),
90 students claim to possess one item, and 122 claim to have three or more items of the same type. The
difference in EFL writing performance is about one point. It arises mainly among students who generally own
one item of the same type, as opposed to those who possess two, such as two smartphones. There is almost no
difference in EFL writing performance if we compare students with two, and those with three or more items of
the same type, according to the list. We can observe a slightly rising trend, that is, more home possessions
results in higher EFL writing performance.
In SurveyLang, the item “bathrooms”, in terms of how many, suffered from severe misfit in the case of Slovenia
so it was excluded from further statistical analysis (European Commission and ESLC 2012, 245). This raises
the question of whether the selection is appropriate for a specific country, as there might be some (new)
country-specific wealth items. However, the main aim of this research was not to develop a new demographic
questionnaire.
The number of books in the official language of the research country is a statistically significant variable (p =
0.015) in predicting EFL writing performance. The difference between its minimum and maximum value is
about one point. However, the dispersion, i.e., the results of 95% of the sample, is about two points. A rising
trend can be observed, that is, more books in Slovenian leads to higher EFL writing performance. Frequency
statistics show that 92 students opted for answer one (lowest number of books), 183 stated two, 287 pupils
reported three, 110 four, 67 five, and 26 six. The majority of students possess between 26 and 100 books in the
country’s official language, Slovenian.
Number of books in English is a statistically significant predictor of EFL writing performance (p = 0.041). A
slightly rising trend can be observed. More books in English result in higher EFL writing performance. The
dispersion, however, rises intensively, ergo, from about one point to as much as five, as the number of English
books rises. The difference between the minimum and maximum value of EFL writing performance is about
1.5 points, that is from about 4.5 to slightly more than 6. A total of 421 students selected the answer one, 221
selected two, 88 three, 23 four, 9 five, and 3 six (as the largest number of English books). Frequency statistics
show that most students possess 0 to 10 books in English.
figure 1. The relationship between efL writi g perfor ance and home possessions, in
terms of “what”, with year 6 students.
home possession in terms of “how many” turns out to be a statistically significant variable
(p = 0.011). The Breusc -Pagan tes confirms homoscedastici y (p = 0.448). The m jority
of stu e ts (553) possess two (same), 90 students claim to possess one item, and 122 claim
to have three or more items of the same type. The difference in efL writing performance is
about one point. It arises mainly among students who generally own one item of the same
type, as opposed to those who possess two, such as two smartp ones. There is almost no
difference in efL ting performance if we compare students with two, and those with three
or mor items of the s me type, according to the list. We can observe a slig tly rising trend,
that is, more home possessions results in higher efL writing performance.
In SurveyLang, the item “bathrooms”, in terms of how many, suffered from severe misfit in
the case of Slovenia so it was excluded from further statistical analysis (european Commission
and eSLC 2012, 245). This raises the question of whether the selection is appropriate for a
specific country, as there might be some (new) country-specific wealth items. however, the
main aim of this research was not to develop a new demog aphic questionnaire.
197varIa
The number of books in the official language of the research country is a statistically significant
variable (p = 0.015) in predicting efL writing performance. The difference between its
minimum and maximum value is about one point. however, the dispersion, i.e., the results
of 95% of the sample, is about two points. a rising trend can be observed, that is, more books
in Slovenian leads to higher efL writing performance. frequency statistics show that 92
students opted for answer one (lowest number of books), 183 stated two, 287 pupils reported
three, 110 four, 67 five, and 26 six. The majority of students possess between 26 and 100
books in the country’s official language, Slovenian.
Number of books in english is a statistically significant predictor of efL writing performance
(p = 0.041). a slightly rising trend can be observed. More books in english result in higher
efL writing performance. The dispersion, however, rises intensively, ergo, from about one
point to as much as five, as the number of english books rises. The difference between the
minimum and maximum value of efL writing performance is about 1.5 points, that is from
about 4.5 to slightly more than 6. a total of 421 students selected the answer one, 221
selected two, 88 three, 23 four, 9 five, and 3 six (as the largest number of english books).
frequency statistics show that most students possess 0 to 10 books in english.
If we compare the impact of books in Slovenian to the impact of english books, we can see that
the difference in efL writing performance is approximately the same. however, the dispersion
of data differs considerably (much larger in the case of english books). heteroskedasticity is
tested for both variables (by a two-way aNova) and rejected (p = 0.517).
The number of books in the household, as a traditional socioeconomic measure, as well
as the number of children’s books as its extension, may be a robust predictor of academic
achievement. Nevertheless, the statement refers to parents’ questionnaires on the number of
books at home (heppt, olczyk and volodina 2022).
Maternal educational level as a predictor of efL writing performance is statistically significant
(p = 0.001). It causes a difference of approximately 1.5 points in efL writing performance.
a downward trend can be observed, that is, higher maternal education leads to higher efL
writing performance of year 6 students. Most mothers (253) attained higher education
certificates, 165 mothers (upper) middle school, 139 higher vocational, 111 middle or lower
vocational education, 73 students a vocational course or “matura” course, 16 primary school
in terms of year 7 to year 9, and eight have an education of year 1 to year 6. There are no cases
of mothers without any education.
The growing trend of efL writing performance due to maternal education is in accordance with
our expectations, as the importance of maternal education for children’s academic achievements
is widely recognized (harding, Morris and hughes 2015). We surmise that the extent of 1.5
out of 10 points is considerable. In SurveyLang, the relationship of maternal education and efL
writing performance is not discussed, but it could be constructive for comparative analyses.
however, the result of this higher maternal education is not necessarily and straightforwardly a
steady linear rise of the efL writing performance of their children. factors like mother’s age and
previous educational level when starting additional education play an influential role. Paternal
educational level turns out to be statistically insignificant (p = 0.474). It causes a difference in
198 gabrijela Petra Nagode, karmen Pižorn, Žan korošec The Demographic Factors Affecting the Writing Skills ...
efL writing performance of about one point. a fluctuating course can be detected. Most fathers
(253) have the highest education possible, that is, university degree or higher, 169 (upper)
middle school, 253 general middle school including grammar school, 163 higher vocational
education, 133 middle or lower vocational education, 85 a vocational course or a course for
graduation before leaving secondary school, 20 are reported to have year 7 to year 9 of primary
school, three with year 1 to year 6 of primary school, and two with unfinished primary school
or no education. heteroskedasticity was tested for maternal and paternal educational levels
together and rejected (p = 0.231). The results regarding the relationship between paternal
education and efL writing achievement are as anticipated vital for its established charge.
That being said and contrary to the sum of our expectations, paternal education had no
palpable effects. according to tam (2009), the influence of mothers’ and fathers’ educational
level on children’s (boys and girls studied separately) academic achievement should be studied
more systematically.
The question about parents’ education is relatively difficult for children (year 6), as it might be
cognitively too demanding, in other words, too abstract. Moreover, it is difficult to ensure a
high degree of anonymity which would be ethically suitable as the question is highly personal.
These circumstances reveal that our results regarding paternal education may be less reliable.
however, students answered the question on maternal education under the same conditions.
Moreover, the question on parents’ education is only one component variable of SeS.
overall, statistically significant demographic variables explain 9.9% of the whole variation in
efL writing performance (r2 = 0.099).
Data were also collected for school and region, as another two demographic variables, but
not analysed as we are mostly interested in the role of the selected demographic factors as a
whole. for the sake of statistical analysis, the student/code is also considered as a demographic
variable. Student profiles could be identified.
5 Conclusion
Demographic variables have an impact of 9.9% on efL writing performance among the
year 6 students examined in this study. The variables represented in this percentage are home
possessions in terms of “what”, home possessions in terms of “how many”, number of books
in the language of the research country, number of books in english, years of learning english,
and maternal educational level. gender, place of living and paternal educational level were
found to be statistically insignificant.
The research concentrates on the role of demographics as a whole. however, a student profile
by region would most likely at least partially answer the question raised more than once by
the National Committee for efL assessment at the end of year 6 as to why the ranking of
regions has been identical for a number of years. additional research is required in such and
similar cases where insufficient answers prevail. Nonetheless, based on the existing data and
according to the criteria used, five student profiles could be established relating to efL writing
performance, which would be highly informative. Student profiles are researched to solve
practical educational/language problems systematically in, for example, the United States.
199varIa
Considering the study’s limitations, educational attainment could be measured at three
levels exclusively, according to the 2011 International Standard Classification of education,
since the eight-level scale used might be too difficult and abstract for year 6 students. The
variables related to books could feature supplementary questions on children’s books, as has
been found in some other studies. The list of home possessions should be revised, and new
country-specific wealth items could be added, whilst certain others deleted. We interpret the
insignificance of paternal education as idiosyncratic, but in order to resolve this conundrum
an interdisciplinary approach would be needed to transcend the limitations of what we as
linguists can provide.
Concerning pedagogical recommendations, both efL teachers and policymakers should
continue all activities to promote efL reading, commencing with an emphasis on reading in
the first language.
Similarly, the continuity of efL learning in connection with the education system should be
further supported in the hopes of maintaining the positive effect on efL writing achievement.
Proper beliefs must be thus preserved. The transition from efL reading to efL writing should
be explored and, where possible, strengthened at the national level.
amongst other things, writing in a foreign language is indeed a crucial skill enabling students
to have better career opportunities, and thus it is important to observe and explore this at an
early stage. This study fills the void in the research for this issue in Slovenia. Internationally,
there is also less research on efL writing focused on young learners than on adults. We hope
that this study offers an interesting and valuable new insight into the nature and importance
of various demographic variables as efL writing predictors of year 6 students, both in
Slovenia and beyond.
Disclosure Statement and Note of Contributors
This research was funded by the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS), grant research program P6-
0411 Language Resources and Technologies for Slovene.
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203varIa
Sara Nazockdast,
Zohreh Ramin
University of tehran, Iran
2023, vol. 20 (1), 203-221(228)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1.203-221
UDC: 821.111.09-31Smith a.
Becoming the Rhizomatic Outsider: A Study of the
Narrative Deconstruction of Being in Ali Smith’s The
Accidental
aBStraCt
ali Smith’s novels and short stories are violently realistic in terms of depicting the hollow and
disconnected lives of the postmodern individual. however, they also, albeit obliquely, aspire
for hope and change. The loss of a sense of location, direction, and, as a result, a meaningful
presence is interwoven in The Accidental’s persistent concern with time. accordingly, in this
essay, drawing upon Michael kane’s analysis of postmodern time and space, The Accidental
is studied with regard to capitalist time and simulacra, the culture of pastiche and spectacle,
and spatiotemporal fragmentation. Within this backdrop and informed by Derridean
deconstruction complemented with the study’s Deleuzian framework, the novel’s subversive
deconstructions of a metaphysics of being and the substitution of fictional becoming are
explored. It is argued that The Accidental corporealizes supplementarity and employs
rhizomatic disruptions in the lives of the characters and the structure of the narrative to open
up deterritorized spaces for monoritarian authenticity, agency, and creativity.
Keywords: time, postmodernism, deconstruction, différance, supplement, rhizome,
subversion, becoming, Deleuze, ali Smith
Postajati rizomatski autsajder: študija pripovedne dekonstrukcije
obstoja v romanu The Accidental Ali Smith
IZvLeČek
romani in kratke zgodbe ali Smith so brutalno realistične v prikazovanju praznih in
izključenih življenj postmodernih posameznikov in posameznic. kljub temu je v njih moč
zaznati upanje in teženje k spremembam. Izguba občutka za prostor, smer in, posledično,
smiselno prisotnost je v romanu The Accidental vtkana v nenehno obremenjenost s časom. Zato
na podlagi kaneove analize postmodernega časa in prostora v tem članku roman obravnavam
s stališča kapitalističnega časa in simulakrov, kulture pastiša in spektakla ter fragmentacije
prostora in časa. v tem kontekstu s pomočjo derridajevske dekonstrukcije in Deleuzove misli
raziščem subverzivne dekonstrukcije obstoja in zamenjavo fikcijskega postajanja v romanu.
Članek pokaže, da The Accidental utelesi suplementarnost in z rizomatskimi disrupcijami
življenj likov in strukture pripovedi odpira deteritorializirane prostore za monoritarno
avtentičnost, tvornost in ustvarjalnost.
Ključne besede: čas, postmodernost, dekonstrukcija, différance, suplementarnost, rizom,
subverzija, postajanje, Deleuze, ali Smith
204 Sara Nazockdast, Zohreh ramin Becoming the Rhizomatic Outsider: A Study of the Narrative Deconstruction ...
Sara Nazockdast, Zohreh Ramin
Becoming the Rhizomatic
Outsider: A Study of the
Narrative Deconstruction ...
1 Introduction
ali Smith’s novel, The Accidental (2005), is comprised of three chapters: “The Beginning”;
“The Middle”; and “The end”. The ironic juxtaposition of the title of the book and the
chapters, which purport to adhere to conventional narrative spatiotemporal linearity,
foreshadows the complexities that are put forth in Smith’s novel. The first chapter, “The
Beginning”, is not the beginning, and the final chapter, “The end”, does not really end the
story, as the first-person voice tells us “we’re back at the beginning” (2005, 320). In explaining
narrative linearity kermode claims people are born in medias res, but because of their very
human need to belong, they create “fictive concords” with beginnings and ends (2000, 7),
and thus contrive meaningful middles. The postmodern era, however, marks not only the end
of unified narratives of linear progression, but a foundational change in the spatiotemporal
experiences of human beings in a digital world.
kane observes: “Maybe it was einstein, or maybe it was the earth-shattering explosions of the
first World War, but something seems to have happened [to] the sense of time in Western
culture in the early twentieth century” (2020, 70). according to kane, in literature and art of
the early twentieth century clock time seems to function as the controller of an inherent and
potential chaos of the mind (2020, 75).1 The hidden turmoil was the sign of an imminent
collapse; Jean-francois Lyotard calls it the fall of metanarratives – the linear and unified stories
of progression and completion presuming a past assuredly flowing towards a significant future.
In contrast, in the postmodern world the present is “cut…off at both ends” (Bauman 1995,
quoted in kane 2020, 92) leading to the dislocation of the subject: “‘we do not know for
sure’ […] where is ‘forward’ and where ‘backward’ […] the past […] has all but fallen apart”
(Bauman 1995, 95, quoted in kane 2020, 125). This sense of dislocation in the postmodern
era is only intensified by the instantaneity and simultaneity of perception, a “tele-presence” of
everything (virilio 2007, quoted in kane 2020, 119) correlative with an addiction to two-
dimensional pictures, digital cameras, and the virtual spectacles of capitalist time.
The impact of these changes on the postmodern subject has been fundamental. The
omnipresence of two-dimensional appearances has eroded experiential reality. Moreover, the
loss of the sense of spatiotemporal location has led to desolation of a unified self (kane 2020,
5), and, since identity requires persistence through time, personal identity (Punday 2003,
119), making the master theme of postmodernism “fragmentation” and its most prominent
stylistic features pastiche and simulacra.
although from a pessimistic view this is the end for authentic artistic creation, more
optimistic scholars believe we can venture new narrative concords to assign meaningfulness
to our human experiences; after all, “[f ]ragments can be all we have” (Barthelme, quoted in
Punday 2003, 167). Bauman contends: “The work of a postmodern artist is a heroic effort
to give voice to the ineffable, and a tangible shape to the invisible… a standing invitation
1 kane (2020) points out that in kafka’s Metamorphosis we see that when gregor wakes up in the morning he is worried
that the alarm clock on his night table did not ring, which meant he would miss his morning bus, and only later he
realizes he has transformed into a beetle. other examples of the dominance of clock time over mind time in modernist
literature are Mrs. Dalloway, Ulysses, and The Dubliners.
205varIa
to join in the unending process of interpretation which is also the process of meaning-
making” (1995, 105, quoted in kane 2020, 127). Considering the significant role that
narrative plays in giving voice to the postmodern experience, it is important to understand
how it has adapted to the requirements of the time. In Narrative After Deconstruction,
Punday studies the contestations addressed to narrative form by post-structuralism and
deconstruction, most importantly “seamlessness” and “objectivity”, claiming that the task
of postmodern narrative is to find a way of “textual construction after deconstruction”
(2003, 4). The post-deconstruction narrative has to embrace a new form that correlates with
the “arrhythmic temporality” of this new world (Bogue 1990, 408). hence, metanarratives
give way to local narratives that foreground subjectivity, contextuality, and multiplicity. In
Derridean terms, in order to dismiss the Platonic “one”, postmodern narrative has to make
room for différance.
gilles Deleuze is another philosopher who, especially in his fruitful collaborations with felix
guattari, has contributed significantly to delineating ways of outgrowing the exclusions
and hierarchizations of dominant articulations, to the extent that his notion of rhizome
has become one of the key terms of postmodernism. according to Punday, what Derrida’s
différance, Lyotard’s local narratives, and Deleuze and guttari’s rhizomatic have in common
is a concern with “the creation of temporary spaces of conflict and exchange” (2003, 129)
in which the Platonic unified being is deconstructed to make room for the becoming of
the other. accordingly, the subversive postmodern art welcomes difference and sidesteps
predefined controlling interpretations by becoming rhizomatic.
as a significant, postmodern novel, The Accidental has received considerable critical attention
and studied from the perspective of different approaches. tew (2015) and horton (2012), for
instance, have studied the novel as an example of traumatic fiction and against the backdrop of
terrorist attacks of 9/11. from a different perspective, orr (2019) argues that Smith recognizes
the dominance of the culture of spectatorship of her time and encourages active and critical
scrutiny of the detachment and passivity enforced from the outside. Lea (2016) acknowledges
Smith as one of the outstanding British writers of the twenty-first century and believes
in her works she illustrates the hollowness and sense of disconnection of the postmodern
individual in a world of oppressive capitalism in a diverse manner, yet always with a hope of
transformation. In Lea’s words, the works of ali Smith are “balanced between pessimism and
optimism: pessimistic that the price of being in the world will be too high, but optimistic that
the moments of transcendent connection and empathy will compensate for the erosive action
of subjectivity” (2016, 28). tancke (2013) in a very different approach refers to the destructive
and violent consequences of the “virtual intrusions” of the fantastic in the real and describes
The Accidental as a critique of this postmodern condition. o’Donnell (2013), however,
uses kristeva’s notion of “the stranger” to argue that this intrusion is both destructive and
constructive in terms of the identities of the characters. as these studies testify, Smith’s stories
do not merely take a reflexive and hopeless standpoint towards the enforced inauthenticity of
our age, and instead attempt to criticize constructively and aspire for change.
In this study, it is argued that Smith’s The Accidental, as a brilliant example of subversive
postmodern narrative, and in search of new ways of assigning meaning to human experience,
206 Sara Nazockdast, Zohreh ramin Becoming the Rhizomatic Outsider: A Study of the Narrative Deconstruction ...
casts off metanarrative linearity and deconstructs the logocentric assumptions of being in order
to substitute them with subversive rhizomatic becoming. In the course of this article, first,
postmodern narrative and the incorporation of différance is discussed drawing upon related
theoretical scholarship. Then, informed by kane’s comprehensive analysis of postmodern
time and space, the spinal role of spatiotemporal being in The Accidental is studied in relation
to its contemporary context. In applying Deleuze and guattari’s rhizomatic structure to The
Accidental, significant features of Smith’s work are revealed extending from the level of her
story to the overall structure of the narrative. It is concluded that Smith’s novel employs
supplementarity and rhizomatic narrative possibilities in order to find a way out of the
dominant molar lines of capitalism via minoritarian becoming and embodying différance.
2 Postmodern Narrative and Deconstruction of Being
Punday notes that today narrative acts are becoming increasingly important as local narratives
are being used to assign meaning to minor experiences that were formerly rendered silent
(2003, 1). he believes this “narrative turn” is not a turn against Derridean deconstruction
and its denouncement of narrative linearity, but an outcome of deconstruction’s “linguistic
turn” and the emphasis on subjective contextuality (2003, 4). Thus, by welcoming différance,
narrative form is not only able to dismiss two of its foundational suppositions that are renounced
by postmodernism – “the supposition of a pure, undivided origin and the supposition that
the ensuing fall into difference was a process of linear consecution whose events could be
excluded from the origin itself” (Currie 1998, 83) – but also become the perfect medium for
deconstructing the metaphysics of being and incorporating the excluded other.
Central to Derrida’s différance is the deconstruction of the metaphysics of present (time)
correlative with presence (place). In his critique of the Platonic being, Derrida is very much
indebted to husserl’s changing the classic definition of time as a procession of nows to a
vanishing present that is perpetually constituted in being divided between the retentions
(memories) and the protentions (anticipations). Derrida takes a step further and deconstructs
the “metaphysical baggage” (Currie 2007, 95) of phenomenology and displaces it with
Grammatology, declaring “il n’ya pas de hors-text” (Derrida 1974). he adopts husserl’s notion
of the vanishing present, and declares the word present does not refer to but is constituted in
différance. Derrida claims that since the present moment, or “what is”, is constituted by the
absences of the past and the future, “what is not”, the “undivided presence” and its purity are
illusions (Currie 1998, 82), and the present is always “complicated by non-presence” (Lawlor
2022). Consequently, the origin that marks the pure moment of undivided self-presence is
discarded and substituted by the primacy of the supplementary: “a possibility” that “produces
that to which it is said to be added on” (Derrida 1973, 89). at the heart of Derrida’s différance
is an emphasis on the future as the supplement. as Currie explains:
It is possible to view Derrida’s treatment of husserl’s notion of protention, or the
concept of différance as a claim that all language exists in a condition of waiting to find
out if its prophecies are fulfilled or not. (2007, 44).
Therefore, the word present does not refer to a present inner object of consciousness expressed
in the sign, but is constituted in being deferred to a possible future. In other words, the
207varIa
present is produced by the possibility of a future, for the supplement “does not follow the
origin”, but it is the possibility that becomes “the origin of the origin” (Currie 1998, 84).
evinced by Derrida’s increasing interest in the form throughout his career, narrative fiction
plays a very significant role in deconstructing the myth of pure origin and foregrounding
the supplementary (see Punday 2003). In clarification, Derrida refers to the shared
root of the word “fantasy” and “phantasm” – a ghostlike appearance, something that is
neither present nor completely absent (Derrida 1986, quoted in hobson 2009, 140). By
overturning Plato’s condemnation of false appearances, Derrida demonstrates literature is
the manifestation of the logic of supplement: “what we call a likeness, though not really
existing, really does exist” (Plato 24ob, quoted in Derrida 1986, 209–10). In Derrida’s
critique of Platonic mimesis, the dividing line between the ontological real – the origin
– and the “phantasmatic” copy is broken and the superiority of the former questioned.
Miller maintains: “Literature is for Derrida the possibility for any utterance, writing, or
mark to be iterated in innumerable contexts and to function in the absence of identifiable
speaker, context, reference, or hearer” (2001, 59). according to Derrida fiction, with its
detachment from an ontologically present origin, is the demonstration of the illusion of
division between the presence and the representation (see hobson 2009). By foregrounding
the supplement instead of the origin, narrative fiction is able to deconstruct being, and
become the medium “in which a structure of exclusion can be opened up to difference”
(Currie 1998, 84). In other words, in narrative deconstruction of presence the excluded
other can be restored and incorporated.
another important Derridean term associated with narrative fiction’s detachment from
ontological presence is the secret. as Derrida asserts: “The secret is nothing–and this is
the secret that has to be kept well, nothing either present or presentable, but this nothing
must be well kept” (Derrida 1992a, 205). Miller continues: “Literature is the place
specially to look for the secret because it is by convention detached in special ways from its
‘transcendence’ or referential gesture” (2001, 73). Ironically, Miller maintains, the secret
in the spectre of fiction makes it an act of “survival” and “living on” after death (2001,
72). Thus, by embodying the secret, a narrative act becomes a defiance of nothingness,
exclusion, and death.
Consequently, contrary to the assumptions that saw narrative form at odds with postmodern
subversion, by making the absence of self-presence and origin corpuscular in narrative form
and storytelling, narrative deconstruction becomes an act of subversion and survival:
It is that the possibility established in the fictional domain, the possibility of surface
without depth, is a possibility that the other model, of surface as the externality of
depth, cannot get away from ‘the possibility of non-truth in which every possibility of
truth is held or is made’. (Currie 2007, 135; Derrida 1992b, 153).
In Currie’s words: “In order to tell the truth about a lie, one must tell a lie about the truth”
(2007, 63). having discussed the narrative deconstruction of being, its subversive responses
to the postmodern condition and the capitalist time and space will be examined in what
follows.
208 Sara Nazockdast, Zohreh ramin Becoming the Rhizomatic Outsider: A Study of the Narrative Deconstruction ...
3 Postmodern Time, Simulacra of Capitalism, and Subversive
Art
Jameson associates the postmodern period with a “waning” of the sense of time (1993, 72).
kane defines “waning” as an inability “to see and interpret the present (and the future) as
part of a wider historical context” (2020, 69). In contrast to Jameson, virilio believes that the
technological advances of our age in media, communication, and mobility of information
have abolished “the reality of distance” by eroding spatial intervals: “here no longer exists;
everything is now” (2005, 116, quoted in kane 2020, 93). This “now”, however, in its
perpetual presence loses its distinctiveness, “no sense of time passing” (kane 2020, 5). The
postmodern “now”, in other words, is time flattened in a “continuous present” (Bauman
1995, 89, quoted in kane 2020, 92). Both critics, therefore, in their seeming difference are
referring to a fragmentation of spatiotemporal perception in the postmodern world. Jameson
believes that postmodern capitalism “has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of
the human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and
cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world” (quoted in kane 2020, 9). With
the subject not being able to locate herself in a cognitive map of here and now, her presence as
the a priori unified perspectival locus is undermined as well resulting in becoming decentred.
kane refers to the Communist Manifesto’s observation of the consequences of capitalism in the
previous century: “all that is solid melts into air” and asserts “one could perhaps pointedly
rephrase virilio’s line thus: ‘here no longer exists; everything is air!’” (2020, 9). Whereas the
modern metanarratives strived to embody meaningfulness in their promise of the significant
future, the postmodern flattened present attaches itself to a fleeting poster like advertisement
of a future, making time a spatial simulacrum.
The defining feature of a simulacrum is its hollowness and two-dimensionality. Baudrillard
borrowed the term from a story by Borges in which the cartographers create a map that is
so detailed that it covers the real territory. Baudrillard claims in the postmodern world the
two-dimensional picture has substituted the reality, and we are living in a world of “simulacra
and simulations” (1983; quoted in kane 2020, 101). kane adds the modernist master theme
of “alienation” of the individual that implies an inner being thus becomes obsolete in the
capitalist society and is displaced by the theme of “fragmentation” (2020, 71) which is two-
dimensional and superficial.
furthermore, kane, drawing upon Jameson, associates the postmodern world’s simulacra and
flashing advertisements with “an addiction to the photographic image” (2020, 114), or in
Currie’s words, an archive fever (2007, 88). Jameson labels this intensification of immersion
the “society of the spectacle”, in which, quoting from Debord, “the image has become the
final form of commodity reification” (quoted in kane 2020, 114–15)2; in capitalist time,
the present is archived in order to be sold in the future (kane 2020, 89). Detached from the
reality of things, the virtual world of pictorial spectacles with its fast-paced propagation is
the perfect medium for the deceptive theatricality of capitalism and its myopic fixation with
future profit – a system in which nothing has value “in itself” but only in being exchanged.
2 kane believes the pervasiveness of the dominance of photographic representation in television, the internet, and
digital cameras is so deep that instead of being immersed into culture, we are now “gazing at it” (2020, 116).
209varIa
In a brilliant analogy, Bauman assimilates the sense of direction in metanarratives of modernity
to a pilgrimage towards a meaningful purpose and significant destination and the modern
individual to a pilgrim. In the postmodern era, however, and in a world “inhospitable to
pilgrims” (Bauman 1995, 83, quoted in kane 2020, 138) new archetypes emerged. among
these postmodern archetypes, the tourist is the most prominent. The tourist moves around
restlessly according to a pre-planned itinerary with aimless and short-term interests. She buys
and then duplicates experiences and archives them randomly with her camera as a proof of
her presence. for the tourist the present is experienced only in relation to how it would be
presented in pictures and videos in the future. The tourist is constantly persuading herself
that “[i]f this is a ‘selfie’, there must be a ‘self ’ in it” (kane 2020, 144). however, unlike the
smiling tourists featured in pictures and advertisements, the postmodern subject is a tired
tourist depleted by inauthenticity, dislocation, and disconnection.
It is in this crisis that postmodern art goes against the grain (kane 2020, 126), creates a new
sense of authenticity, and finds a way out of the simulacra by exposing the artificiality of its
imposing signifiers. In the same vein and in his counterhegemonic divergences from western
philosophy and culture, Deleuze champions subversive art and declares:
The more our everyday life appears to be standardized, stereotyped and subject to an
accelerated reproduction of objects of consumption, the more art must be injected into
it in order to extract from it that little difference which plays simultaneously between
other levels of repetition, […] in order that Difference may at least be expressed […].
(1994, 293)
for Deleuze this new form of art is rhizomatic.
In their interpretation of kafka and other artists that stand outside the authority of the
alleged state, Deleuze and guattari value the “minor” artists who “deterritorize” themselves
and break away from the forceful interpretations and codifications of the dominant culture.
They believe the artist who is marginalized by the system is able to reinvent herself as the
minoritarian outsider and thus sidestep being subordinated by the molar imperatives of the
state (Deleuze and guattari 1986, 17). May explains: “to become minor is to jostle the reins
of the majority identity in order to investigate new possibilities, new ways of becoming that
are no longer bound to the dominant molar lines and their abstract machines” (2005, 150).
two points should be noted with regard to the minor literature: first, the attempts of the
minor should not be seen as liberative, but “a matter of line of flight, escape…an exit, outlet”
(Deleuze and guattari 1986, 13); the nomadic minor does not aspire for metanarratives of
liberation, but is in a constant unravelling of limits and interpretation. Second, as Deleuze
himself asserts, the active becomings of the rhizome are not to be judged with criteria of
“justness” or “falsity”, nor in terms of “success or failure”, “but simply as an act the outcome
of which is unknown” (Deleuze and guattari 1983, 14). It is the constant rejection of fixity
and counterhegemonic reinvention that maintains the subversiveness of the minoritarian.
In a world where the senses of coherence, connection, and progress towards a meaningful
destination are lost, the rhizome substitutes metaphysical location with nomadic superficial
becoming. Thus, the Derridean différance aligns with Deleuze’s rhizomatic subjectivity
210 Sara Nazockdast, Zohreh ramin Becoming the Rhizomatic Outsider: A Study of the Narrative Deconstruction ...
in postmodern narrative’s dismissal of linearity of being and the corollary metanarrative
seamlessness and unity (Weedon 1987, 105–6). as a rhizome that rejects the arborescent
form (“a system of derivation: first the roots, then the trunk, then the leaves”), the postmodern
artist denounces identity, unity, and essence and reinvents diverse selves in multiple, random,
and parallel offshoots that reject the sequence from the beginning to an end; thus substituting
being with “a local affirmation of becoming” and conjunction (Bogue 1990, 404). In this
manner, the exemplary subversive text of postmodernism is rhizomatic (Leitch et al. 2010,
1448), with the postmodern individual becoming a “site of différance” (Punday 2003, 129)
and “body without organs” (Deleuze and guattari 1987) rather than a logocentric being. as
the world is no longer holding on to the myths of depth, the work of art has to be authentically
two-dimensional. on a par with Derrida’s text, the rhizomatic art in its two-dimensional and
superficial form dismisses the illusion of depth of alleged simulacra and is thus able to unveil
the deceptions and hollowness of signifiers of presence in its no-root structure and break with
the exclusive rules of identity in its diverse emergences.
4 The Hole at the Heart, Deceiving Signifiers and Absent
Signifieds
Smith’s novels and short stories respond to the central issues of our time in both their
structure and thematic concerns. her characters voice their exclusions, disconnection, loss
of centre, and entrapment in a flattened world of flashing signifiers. yet like her characters,
Smith’s works aspire for hope. as Jelínková asserts: “underlying all of her work is a deeply
human ethos, which emerges in her trademark carefully poised endings on a note of tentative
reconciliation and qualified hope for the future” (2019, 9). In line with Punday’s observation
that postmodern narration is an act of “linguistic construction after deconstruction” (2003,
4), in her novels and short stories Smith has a philosophical concern with unveiling the
illusion of false appearances by disturbing the givenness of the familiar and replacing
it with the interruptive unfamiliar. In this way, Smith’s works strive to “deterritorize” the
postmodern individual and find a way out of the capitalist simulacra by forging new forms of
meaningfulness. In some of her works, such as Hotel World (2001), Smith’s illustration of the
oppressions and marginalizations of Western capitalism is more apparent, and in others, such
as The Accidental, it emerges more implicitly in the way they penetrate into the details of the
mundane everyday life of the middle-class families who are unaware that they are surrounded
by surveillance cameras, social and academic values, and rigid “standards”.
Smith wittily chooses her narrative metaphors to expose the artificiality of capitalist signifiers
and their promises of equality and prosperity. It was noted above that Bauman compares
the postmodern subject to a tired tourist wandering around with no authentic sense of
direction, distracted by transient spectacles, and consuming advertised attractions. In Hotel
World, for example, we see that the hotel represents the Western world and how it enforces
the hierarchization and exclusion of those who cannot afford it, and also the schizophrenic
confusion of its wandering inhabitants. The hotel is a simulacrum like the world that
completes its name. however, at the heart of the hotel there is a hole, a lack that haunts the
dazzling spectacle of its colourful surface. Lea maintains:
211varIa
This metaphor of emptiness at the heart of a rigidly determined and policed space
speaks well to Smith’s criticism of the hollowness of capitalism, not just in a moral
sense but as a system for providing order and meaning that encompasses all members
of a society. (2016, 44)
The void at the centre of this grand structure discloses the absence of the base, the inner
essence that was supposed to stabilize and hold the appearance together.
In The Accidental, however, the simulacra of deceiving authorial signifiers of capitalism are
conveyed in the depthless and two-dimensional world of digital cameras, virtual impositions
of the internet and academic clichés that purport “truth”. The Smarts are a twenty-first
century middle-class family, well-educated, and up-to-date not only in terms of the scientific
and technological demands of their time, but also in the elitist tastes of their class. astrid’s
recurring use of the word “substandard” in her evaluations of her surroundings is an example
of the resoluteness of rules of acceptance in a society which assigns validation through
language and hegemony. Despite their intelligence, money, and social status, the Smarts
have lost their sense of connection with others, the external world, and their own authentic
being: “each is solipsistically engaged in pursuing justifications for their own worldviews
and is consequently blind to the desperate need of the others” (Lea 2016, 48). Immersed in
screen-based technology, streaming images, and news, they are not able to feel, sympathize,
and respond. When astrid is thinking about the “tragic news” she is constantly hearing she
ponders:
It is all everywhere all the time, it is serious, animals with ribcages and children in
hospitals on the news with people somewhere or other screaming because of a suicide
bomber or american soldiers who have been shot or something, but it is hard to know
how to make it actually matter inside your head, how to make it any more important
than thinking about the colour green. (2005, 141–42).
Bombarding people with pictures and news, the intensification of mobility has eroded the
“reality” behind experiences and the possibility of emotional response. The same emotional
detachment can be seen in eve, astrid’s mother when, for example, looking at the tragic
photos of death and torture in the newspaper, she realizes
the more she looked at them the less she felt or thought. The more pictures she saw,
the less they meant something that had happened to real people…She didn’t know
what to do about the looking, whether to keep on looking or to stop looking [...] She
was living in a time when historically it was permissible to smile like that above the
face of someone who had died a violent death. (2005, 199)
In recognizing the pervasiveness of pictures, digital technology, and screens, The Accidental is
modelled on ocular narration; characters are constantly “gazing at” the culture (kane 2020,
116, also see Baudelaire 1964), yet, similar to the hotel in Hotel World that is built upon a
void, the objects and people in The Accidental are only fleeting appearances, disconnected and
meaningless.
212 Sara Nazockdast, Zohreh ramin Becoming the Rhizomatic Outsider: A Study of the Narrative Deconstruction ...
5 The Lost Concord, the Smart Family in Search of Sequence
and Direction
as discussed above, one of the main features of postmodern time is its loss of direction and, as
a result, sequence. Immersed in simultaneity and instantaneity, astrid is constantly trying to
locate the beginning by using her digital camera to go back and forth in time. She has taken
multiple shots from the moment of dawn signifying “the beginning” of the day, but is not
able to capture the signified in the outer world. It is as if the signifieds of time are absent; the
correlative beginning and end are missing and without them the middle seems accidental and
meaningless. astrid notices the omnipresence and control of CCtv cameras over the lives of
people when, for example, thinking about the woman working in the shop being recorded
all day she wonders:
when the woman gets home at night and sits at dinner or with a cup of coffee or
whatever, does she realize she is not being recorded anymore? or does she think inside
her head that she still is being recorded, by something that watches everything we do,
because she is so used to it being everywhere else? (2005, 124)
astrid sees the world through the viewer of her camera, believing she is taking an active and
critical stance towards it, yet she is not able to “deterritorize” her point of view. She is only
copying what she thinks the world is doing to her, apathetically yet constantly watching.
astrid’s obsession with the beginning of day and “of things” (2005, 15), is a search for the
moment of origin. Currie, in explaining the Derridean deconstruction of origin, writes:
an origin is the first moment in an historical sequence. It is, in a sense, an easier
moment to mythologise as presence because nothing comes before it and, at the time
it occurs, it has not yet been marked by subsequent moments. This means that when
you want to explain something, its origin is a useful bedrock for the explanation, very
often narrating the history of that something from the point of originary purity and
self-presence. (1998, 82)
In a world plagued with disconnection, astrid is constantly trying to pin down beginnings
and ends to make connections with the confused middle in which she finds herself. Without
the origin her own origin and, as a result, her identity, become null and her story disjointed.
In astrid’s point of view, as seen in the section opening “The Beginning”, she imagines that
the summers in the past, “before she was born”, were much better and more meaningful:
“they were perpetual beautiful summers from May to october” (2005, 19). In her loss of
continuity, astrid yearns for a “time before fragmentation” (Punday 2003, 165). Before her
beginning, the sequence of time seemed to be still in place and her family along with it. In all
her attempts to find the beginning, astrid is detached from her own origin, her mother. Like
all other members of her family, she is entrapped in a meaningless, insignificant, passive, and
flattened middle, unable to find the beginning and grasp or comprehend the end.
astrid’s search for the moment of origin and the beginning, as Currie infers, also reminds us
of St. augustine’s musings on the flow of time and the indeterminacy of the beginning. While
213varIa
in St. augustine the unquestionable presence of logos – as the pure moment of origin and the
absolute truth leading to identicalness of the signifier and the signified – is able to constitute
the connection between the word and the world, astrid’s camera and all her attempts to locate
time end in absence and postponement, or in Currie’s terms: “anticipation of retrospect”
(Currie 2007, 113) when her shots would become meaningful and significant in the future,
making her present and presence worthwhile: “In a hundred years’ time these latches may not
exist anymore and this film will be proof that they did” (2005, 24). This again reminds us of
Bauman’s comparison of the pre-postmodern “pilgrim” with the postmodern “tourist”, the
former moving towards a significant goal while the latter restlessly, in kane’s words, “darting
all over the place” (2020, 138), constantly archiving her present in the hope of it having
a significance for future spectators. however, since the future is as absent as the past, the
present is rendered null as well. Lea maintains: “[the Smarts] regard their experience of the
world as the negative to a rewarding, meaningful, and connected positive print” (2016, 51).
Consequently, astrid’s contemplations can be seen as a postmodern pastiche of St. augustine,
turning what used to be sacred and meaningful into a superficial replica in postmodernism’s
society of spectacle (see kane 2020, 114).
The disconnectedness and apathy of the Smarts does not only emerge in their immersion
in the depthless transience of images and news, it also shows itself in their failed attempts
at recounting real events. for example, Magnus, astrid’s teenage brother, in narrating the
events that lead to the suicide of a female schoolmate whose face was photoshopped into a
pornographic picture and spread in the school as a joke, says: “first they. They then. Then
they. Then she” (2005, 48). Despite his role in the tragic event, Magnus like the rest of the
Smarts is not able to feel anything or sympathize with the situation: “What really shocks
him is that nothing happens. Nothing happens every time he thinks it. Didn’t it matter?”
(2005, 49). he too tries to find solace in signifiers that promise certainty, filtering the reality
in calculus, yet he fails at articulating his emotions. Like the other members of his family,
he wonders about the past, his past as the “hologram boy” (2005, 48). Describing it as an
artificial three-dimensional appearance, Magnus used to be unaware of the illusions of the
world and his own being, and now with the erosion of the hologram boy he has not been able
to conjure a new self for himself and, disillusioned from his artificial beginning, is left with
hollowness, formlessness, and nonexistence.
Unlike astrid and Magnus who are questioning the givenness of signifiers and their magical
power in conjuring the truth of the world in the word, Michael, their stepfather, is still
faithful to clichés. In the first section told from his point of view we read: “Dr Michael Smart
had been reduced to cliché” (2005, 69). he believes a cliché is “true, obviously, which was
why it had become cliché in the first place; so true that cliché actually protected you from its
own truth by being what it was, nothing but cliché” (2005, 70). he is articulate in analysing
and theorizing a cliché (“he could crack a cliché wide open with a couple of properly pitched
words”) and citing canonical titles and eminent seminars on it. however, Michael, too, feels
the difference between the past and the present and recognizes the recent depletion and
dysfunctionality of old truths that once looked authentic and timeless. he ponders on how in
the past everything felt newer, when he was “a fresh-faced (cliché!) twelve-year-old”, unlike
the twelve-year-old astrid for whom “nothing was new and everything was so already known
214 Sara Nazockdast, Zohreh ramin Becoming the Rhizomatic Outsider: A Study of the Narrative Deconstruction ...
and been and done and postmodern-t-shirt regurgitated” (2005, 70–71). he is yearning
for a time when the acceleration of use had not made everything over-used and “misted by
overexpression” (2005, 69), a time when clichés were still “fixed impression[s]” (2005, 270),
unquestionable and eternal. With the fall of metanarratives, postmodernism with its strength
to reproduce and propagate in great numbers and short time is constantly pasting the leftovers
and contriving new unities that are inevitably hollow, like astrid’s “empty pear peel” that
resembles the real one (2005, 28). even Magnus’ pornographic creation that makes him god
(2005, 50) is a cliché. Clichés are clown-like pastiches in language; residues detached from
depth and meaning, they grotesquely hover around in language unaware of their hollowness.
Michael, like his clichés, rambles on trying to deny his obsoleteness and dysfunctionality.
eve, the middle-aged mother of the family, shares the feeling of depletion and inauthenticity.
as her name suggests, she is supposed to be the beginning and the beginner, the origin of
all. eve was previously married to adam, another beginner, yet she is now severed from her
original story and entrapped in an insignificant and flattened middle in her life, her marriage,
her motherhood, and her career. kermode believes the linear conception of time inaugurated
with the Bible and with its story of the beginning – adam and eve, and the story of the end
– apocalypse: “It begins at the beginning (‘In the beginning...’) and ends with a vision of the
end (‘even so, come, Lord Jesus’); [...] Ideally, it is a wholly concordant structure, the end is
in harmony with the beginning, the middle with beginning and end” (2000, 6). however,
with the metanarratives of linear stories of concord between the beginning, the middle, and
the end fallen from their credibility in the postmodern era, we need new concords to escape
the idea that the end is our death and nothing more (2000, 58). as a postmodern individual,
eve has lost her sense of agency and authenticity for she feels like an insignificant, random
presence in the middle, “cut off at both ends” (Bauman 1995, quoted in kane 2020, 92),
with no beginning and no overview of a meaningful end. She describes the last words of her
mother before her death as “meaningless” (Smith 2005, 302), like the meaninglessness of the
absolute end itself which is approaching closer. The middle for eve means being dropped into
predefined roles and subjugating “standards”:
It is very very hard work indeed […] to be a woman and alive in this hemisphere
in this day and age. It asks a lot, to be able to do all the things we’re supposed to do
the way we’re expected to do them: talent. Sex. Money. family. The correct modest
intelligence. The correct thinness. The correct presence. (2005, 97).
She collects the stories of the people who have died “before their time” in the Second World
War, and gives them “a voice – but a voice that tells his or her story as if he or she had lived
on” (2005, 92). eve is not able to find the purposeful sequence in these real life-stories, and
attempts to create fictional stories, narrative concords, in order to defy the absurdity and
futility she sees in them; new stories that would obliterate the morbid randomness of the real
end, “the absolute end” (2005, 225), and displace it with a new beginning, middle, and end
that would perhaps make the life narrative a meaningful and significant whole. Despite these
attempts to create and change, eve is not able to write; she, too, is consumed by emptiness,
inauthenticity, and passivity. It is to this world with the hollow existence of things and people
that Smith introduces another character: amber.
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6 Rhizomatic Subversion and the “Creative Possibility of
Ambiguity”
Lea claims that if we want to summarize Smith’s fiction in one word, it would be “but”. as
one of her fictional characters puts it “ ‘but’ […] always takes you off to the side, and where
it takes you is always interesting” (Smith 2012, 175; Lea 2016, 26). This questioning of fixity
is more perceptibly conveyed in Smith’s use of diverse characters and point of views “to reflect
the crumbling of singular, authoritarian voices in contemporary discourses” (Lea 2016, 17).
however, ambiguity in Smith’s novels and short stories goes beyond this stylistic feature and
is her artistic signature. Smith’s works are built upon, borrowing Lea’s words, the “creative
possibilities of ambiguity”, suggesting that her works aim at eradicating the set lines of long
stablished definitions and certainties and thus opening up new and diverse outlooks.
In most of Smith’s works it is with the entrance of an “outsider” that the barren solipsism
of individual point of views (Lea 2016, 48) is interrupted and the dysfunctional narrative
conventions are displaced by creative divergences. amber in The Accidental is a stranger who
arrives at the door of the Smarts’ holiday house. No one knows where she comes from, but
all the Smarts are amazed and influenced by her. amber is the interruptive, accidental, and
impossible (for she is not wholly real) character who emerges in the lives of the Smarts and
exposes the hole behind their cardboard walls; as Lea asserts “amber exemplifies a familiar
trope in Smith’s writing: the external catalyst propelled into the world of the narrative in
order to make apparent to the protagonists the limits of their ingrained vision” (2016, 48).
examples of other works by Smith in which a character who is not completely material or
physically present emerges and through his/her ghostlike presence/absence or impossibility
exposes the unreality of the world of the characters include the ghost of Sara Wilby in Hotel
World (2001), Miles in There But For The (2011), the spirit of a renaissance fresco painter in
How To Be Both (2014), and alhambra/amber in The Accidental (2016, 48).
With the entrance of amber, the reader gradually comes to realize that “amber ‘is’ alhambra”
(Currie 2007, 116). of the five characters that spend the summer in the holiday house
throughout the story, amber is the only one who does not have a point of view section
assigned to her. on the other hand, as alhambra and an immaterial voice she is the only one
that has a first-person point of view. alhambra is a conjured spirit of classical cinema. her
memories are those of the history of the cinema since its invention and fragments of all the
famous movies that have shone on the screen and more:
I was formed and made in the Saigon days, the rhodesian days, the days of the rivers
of blood. DISeMBoWeL eNoCh PoWeLL. apollo 7 splashdowned […] I was
born in a time of light, speed, celluloid [...]. The eidoloscope [...]The silver screen. The
flicks. [...] Misty watercolour memories. (2005, 13)
Lea believes “amber’s lack of definition is key to her catalytic impact on the family.” She is the
ambiguity that inaugurates creative possibilities (2016, 63). In other words, borrowing from
Currie’s Derridean observation, she is a lie that tells the truth about a lie (Currie 2007, 49).
amber/alhambra’s nonphysical emergence, representing the Derridean “possibility of surface
without depth” and “Phantasma” subverts the logocentric and a priori rules of the being
216 Sara Nazockdast, Zohreh ramin Becoming the Rhizomatic Outsider: A Study of the Narrative Deconstruction ...
built upon the first-personal presence as the locus in time and space. Like the Derridean
supplement, alhambra/amber is the absence that exposes the ontological lack of the origin
and becomes more real than other characters and their deceiving reality.
Currie asserts alhambra/amber’s multiplicity undermines linear temporality which applies only
to unified beings (2007, 119). her wristwatch has stopped at 7, suggesting that the time does
not apply to her. It cannot be established that she is or is not. She is not a zero or a nonbeing,
or if she is (echoing Magnus’ confused calculations: “what does 0 =?” (2007, 176)) she is a zero
that equals one, and two, and more. She is the embodiment of Derridean inventive impossible
and secret, for “an invention must announce itself as invention of that which would not appear
possible” (Miller 2001, 69) to be an invention. When contemplating on her name, eve says:
“amber was an exotic fixative. amber preserved things that weren’t meant to last. amber gave
dead gone things a chance to live forever. amber gave random things a past” (2005, 166). Like
the secret that is an “act of survival after death” (2005, 72), amber in her phantasmatic in-
betweenness becomes the source of survival and regeneration for the Smarts.
as an outsider, amber defies all the authorial rules in Smarts’ lives. In the larger scale of the
overall form of the story too, alhambra’s impossible first-person point of view, talking about
her beginning before the chapter entitled “The Beginning”, interrupts the spatiotemporal
narrative conventions. acting like the liminal Derridean parergon that reinforces the
supplement and deconstructs the ontological division between in and out, alhambra/amber
deconstruct the spatial relation between the centre and the periphery and temporal beginning
and end. Currie connects these features of amber with another Derridean metaphor, the
paradoxical notion of a pocket larger than the whole:
amber’s externality to time, like the word ‘beginning’, has a graphic dimension.
… She is a framing device for the novel as a whole […] she is, in Derrida’s words,
‘invagination’, or ‘an internal pocket which is larger than the whole’ (Derrida 1992b,
228; Currie 2007, 117).
amber/alhambra encapsulates Smith’s spatiotemporal deconstruction by being impossibly
both within and without time and space of her story (Currie 2007, 119). as Derrida maintains
“deconstructive inventiveness can consist only in opening, in uncloseting, destabilizing
foreclusionary structures so as to allow for the passage toward the other” (2007, 45); it is
by unravelling spatiotemporal location and unity that spaces are opened for the emergence
of the “multiplicity of voices of the other” (2007, 61). In this way, amber/alhambra as the
indefinite is able to disrupt the defined realms of presence in her incorporeal multiplicity, and
the beginning and end in her timelessness and thus “preserve”.
amber and alhambra’s superficial yet inventive presence with no ontological depth can
also be associated with the rhizome. In their impossible presence, they function as the sites,
bodies without organs (Deleuze and guattari 1987), welcoming difference and temporary
becomings. Unlike the three-dimensional structure of a tree developing an interconnected
and concordant whole, the rhizome “has no beginning: no roots. It has no middle: no
trunk. and it has no end: no leaves. It is always in the middle, always in process. There is no
particular shape it has to take and no particular territory to which it is” (May 2005, 133–34).
217varIa
Both alhambra and amber treat set definitions and divisions of time and space as clichés and
open up spaces for accidental and parallel emergences of becoming both within the lives of the
Smarts and the overall narrative; as alhambra says: “I’ve had the time of my life and for all we
know I’m going to live forever” (2005, 105). The alhambra/amber character does not unfold
in a unified way with narrative beginnings and ends, but in constant transformations, with a
lack of identity and random plural sprouts: “The tree imposes the verb ‘to be’, but the fabric
of the rhizome is the conjunction, ‘and ... and ... and ...’. This conjunction carries enough
force to shake and uproot the verb ‘to be’” (Deleuze and guattari 1987, 25). Multiplicity is
not only conveyed in amber/alhambra’s already mentioned deconstruction of one beginning
and one end, and hence the verb “to be”, but also in them being conjunctive parallels (at the
end of the story eve, too, joins them in parallelism).
accordingly, if the postmodern world is inevitably two-dimensional, the simulacra of
capitalism takes on an arborescent form in order to enforce the hegemonic standards of the
majority, while the rhizomatic superficiality is creative and “minoritarian”. as the rhizome
emerges “from a variety of perspectives that are not rooted in a single concept or small group
of concepts” (May 2005, 134), it is able to grow outside the “molar lines of the majority” and
become minoritarian and subversive “in favor of difference as yet unactualized” (May 2005,
150). Lea quotes Murray in saying “the force from outside is also a force from inside that
reveals to Smith’s characters that they have the choice of ‘opening [their] world out into wider
worlds or different forms or different notions’” (quoted in Lea 2016, 49). In cracking the
illusive walls of simulacra, “deterritorrized” spaces open up for new forms that stand outside
the boundary of dominant lines before the eyes of the characters who are so used to watching
and being watched within the lines that they no longer see.
for instance, amber rejects becoming a part of Michael’s cliché fantasies (Smith 2005, 86).
By throwing astrid’s camera from the bridge and breaking it, amber forces her to dismiss
both the capitalist technological imperatives of world time and the logocentric signifiers
in language, in order to experience time authentically and in an accidental way. Magnus
abandons his blinding and dysfunctional signifiers of logic and is able to finally feel sad:
“Is there a calculus for sadness? Calculus enables you to reach the correct answer without
necessarily knowing why. Is there a calculus that lets you understand why and how you reached
a wrong answer? The letters had come. It was the end result. Something was wrong with it”
(2005, 249). furthermore, with amber he directly experiences what he used to “watch” in
the false reality of pornographic clichés. eve, on the other hand, leaves her family and all the
imposed roles she had to fulfil at the end and becomes another amber to a strange family by
arriving unexpectedly at their door. Instead of uselessly looking for contrived concords in her
reinvented real stories, she changes role with amber and becomes fictional, yet more real than
what she used to be in becoming dynamically inventive. amber, in robbing the Smarts’ house
and emptying it of all their possessions, even taking away the doorknobs that mark the safety
and security of their simulacrum, seems to have, as eve believes, brought about the “absolute
end” (2005, 225), but ironically in her annihilation of false appearances and signifiers, she
creates a new beginning and a blank page for diversity, circularity, and becoming-minority.
amber is the rhizomatic empty pocket that cracks the walls of the framing simulacra and
makes room for the outside and subversive, and alhambra the liminal parergon that exposes
the void at the heart of the narrative linearity and the story of the moment of origin. By
218 Sara Nazockdast, Zohreh ramin Becoming the Rhizomatic Outsider: A Study of the Narrative Deconstruction ...
joining the alhambra/eve nomadic non/existence, eve becomes a minoritarion site of struggle
rather than an ontological being (Deleuze and guattari 1987), and only then is she able to
survive eradication.
In its recognition of the foundational impact of visual technology and the culture of spectacle
in the postmodern conception of time, The Accidental breaks its generic frame and merges
with cinema. Deleuze claims after the Second World War, and as a result of the spatiotemporal
crisis discussed earlier, cinematic productions outside the mainstream developed time-images
(Deleuze 1989),3 leading to the emancipation of time from action, agent, meaning, and
sequence of movement-images (Deleuze 1986, Cinema 1) that were based on determinacies
of time and space. In time-images the central “being” of action dissolves into the “may-
being” of time, and the spatial metaphor of surface and depth transform into the temporal
metaphor of all-becoming and everywhere stretched (1989, 31). Deleuze, following Derrida
in introducing his notion of time-images, asserts everything is indeed a mere sign and time-
images function like language (1989, 22): on the surface and without depth. “Crystal-image”
is one of the main stylistic features in which these transformations are envisaged: “for there
to be a crystal-image, the actual and the virtual must become indiscernible” (1989, 68–92).4
In the simultaneous presence of parallels, the dividing line between the real and the virtual
is obliterated. alhambra as the time-image collage of fragments of movement-image cinema
and amber as the outside of time are crystal-images that gradually obliterate the reality of
eve and make her another parallel replication. Within the narrative structure of the story at
the end, and unlike the conventional completion in movement-images, we go back to the
beginning in circularity: “We see in the crystal the […] non-chronological time” (Deleuze
1989, 81/108–9). amber is simultaneously eve’s past (she is like a younger eve), present,
and future (eve becomes amber). The conjunctive structure of the rhizome in alhambra
“and” amber “and” eve “preserves” time in becoming, which is also a becoming minor to
the authoritative system of thought. as we can see, the rhizomatic art is able to change the
passive postmodern archetype of the tired tourist to rhizomatic archetypes: the forger, the
player, and the “deterritorized” artist, embodied by Smith’s amber, alhambra, and at the
end eve who are able to disrupt and make change. Lea’s observation that Smith’s works are
embodiments of “but” that leads to “creative possibilities of ambiguity” can thus be explained
in The Accidental’s rhizomatic form.
7 Conclusion
In this study it was described that with the temporal crisis of the postmodern era and the fall
of metanarratives of meaningful progression, human beings were severed from a historical
context, lost the concord between the beginning and the end, and, as result, were reduced
to flattened insignificant middles. Like a tired tourist who satisfies herself with constant
archiving as a validation of her identity, the postmodern subject aimlessly wanders around
living advertised and preplanned experiences, finally being reduced to dead clichés.
3 Deleuze’s examples of time-images in cinema include orson Wells’ Citizen kane and The Lady from Shanghai and
works by fellini and antonioni.
4 other types of time images are opsigns, sonsigns, chronosigns, noosigns, and lectosigns, which are omitted here die
to the focus of the research.
219varIa
In this context the postmodern narrative becomes an act of survival by dismissing its
suppositions of linearity and seamlessness and remains a source of assigning meaning to the
individual human experience. Philosophers such as Derrida claim the two-dimensionality
of fiction is the perfect medium for deconstructing the metaphysics of presence and thus
welcoming the emergence of the excluded other. In line with Derrida’s deconstruction of
being, and informed by Deleuze’s rhizomatic creative becoming, it is argued that postmodern
fiction dismisses the arborescent structure of presence with its need for beginning and
end, and replaces it with diverse, superficial, incorporeal, and accidental emergences. as
the postmodern narrative is able to corporealize the Derridean supplement and Deleuzian
“deterritorized” rhizomatic in its ontological deconstruction, it becomes the perfect medium
for inventing forges that break the framing walls of dominant signifiers and open up blank
spaces for authentic, minor, and subversive emergences.
Through rhizomatic characters of amber and alhambra that deconstruct the metaphysics
of being and origin, and in line with the Derridean potentials of the non-truth of the
fictional, The Accidental undermines the organic form of narration that lead to exclusion and
hierarchization, and develops characters that emerge not from essences and roots that are
prior to language but on the surface of language and fiction with no claim to depth and truth.
Their fictive emergence seems to be supplementary to the real and the present, but they lead to
“creative possibilities of ambiguity” that undo paralyzing codifications. alhambra and amber
are not truly born, they are “fictional” and “impossible”, yet they engender multiple births
and beginnings like themselves. as the paradoxical yet creative force, freeing eve from her
walls of assigned roles and fixating definitions, they obliterate the distinguishing line between
real and virtual and substitute the verb “to be” with its certitude and temporal centrality
with “becoming” as the possible supplementary. Perhaps the rhizomatic form is the new
concord of our era, helping us to survive the depthlessness of our world, and to continuously
reinvent ourselves as active agents. In Smith’s optimistic glance to the future, the postmodern
archetype of the tired tourist is substituted by a “deterritorized” and “minoterian” nomad
artist and forger who, in a Deleuzian vein, embraces randomness, multiple presences, and the
destructive yet creative state of becoming.
at the end it is worth mentioning that in The Accidental authenticity is found outside the
walls of the flashing and fleeting spectacles of the simulacra, and within a more direct and
creative encounter with the world and others. Since the first publication of the book in 2005,
the virtual culture of spectacle has expanded even more and worked its way even deeper into
our existence, marking another digital revolution. This makes us wonder if once again a new
concord is required, perhaps one that uses the inescapable simulacra rhizomatically to subvert it.
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List of
Contributors
225
Mohammed Ademilokun
obafemi awolowo University, Nigeria
mohmilokun@yahoo.com
Lilijana Burcar
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
lilijana.burcar@ff.uni-lj.si
Gašper Ilc
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
gasper.ilc@ff.uni-lj.si
Nikola Jokić
University of graz, austria
nikola.jokic@uni-graz.at
Niloufar Khosravi Balalami
University of Malaya, Malaysia
khosravi.niloufar@gmail.com
Žan Korošec
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
zan.korosec@pef.uni-lj.si
Frančiška Lipovšek
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
franciska.lipovsek@ff.uni-lj.si
Gabrijela Petra Nagode
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
gabrijela.nagode@gmail.com
Sara Nazockdast
University of tehran, Iran
s.nazockdast63@ut.ac.ir
Katarina Petrović
Unversity of Novi Sad, Serbia
katarinapetrovic1106@gmail.com
Mariangela Picciuolo
University of Bologna, Italy
mariangela.picciuol2@unibo.it
Karmen Pižorn
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
karmen.pizorn@pef.uni-lj.si
Zohreh Ramin
University of tehran, Iran
zramin@ut.ac.ir
Festa Shabani
University of Prishtina, kosovo
festa.shabani@uni-pr.edu
Rotimi Taiwo
obafemi awolowo University, Nigeria
ferotai@yahoo.com
Dragana Vuković Vojnović
University of Novi Sad, Serbia
vukovic.vojnovic@gmail.com
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS
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ELOPE Vol. 20, No. 1 (2023)
Journal Editors
Smiljana komar, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Mojca krevel, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Guest Editors
frančiška Lipovšek (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
gašper Ilc (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Editorial Board
Lisa Botshon, University of Maine at augusta, United States of america; Biljana Čubrović,
University of Belgrade, Serbia; Michael Devine, acadia University, Canada; Dušan
gabrovšek, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; Michelle gadpaille, University of Maribor,
Slovenia; Meta grosman, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; allan James, University of
klagenfurt, austria; victor kennedy, University of Maribor, Slovenia; Bernhard kettemann,
University of graz, austria; alberto Lázaro, University of alcalá de henares, Spain;
J. Lachlan Mackenzie, vU University amsterdam, Netherlands; tomaž onič, University
of Maribor, Slovenia; roger D. Sell, Åbo akademi University, finland; andrej Stopar,
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; rick van Noy, radford University, United States of
america; terri-ann White, University of Western australia, australia
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Technical Editor
andrej Stopar, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Proofreading
Paul Steed
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ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries is a double-blind, peer-
reviewed academic journal that publishes original research articles, studies and essays that
address matters pertaining to the english language, literature, teaching and translation.
The journal promotes the discussion of linguistic and literary issues from theoretical
and applied perspectives regardless of school of thought or methodology. Covering a
wide range of issues and concerns, eLoPe aims to investigate and highlight the themes
explored by contemporary scholars in the diverse fields of english studies.
Published by
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Issued by
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Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko, Filozofska fakulteta, Univerza v Ljubljani
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Universal Decimal Classification (UDC)
kristina Pegan vičič
Journal Design
gašper Mrak
Cover
Marjan Pogačnik: Zimsko cvetje, 1994
7.6 x 10.0 cm; colour etching, deep relief
owner: National gallery, Ljubljana,
Photo: Bojan Salaj, National gallery, Ljubljana
Printed by
Birografika Bori
Number of Copies
110
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.20.1
online ISSN: 2386-0316
Print ISSN: 1581-8918
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