Susan Nacey | Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences (original) (raw)

Articles and book chapters by Susan Nacey

This paper presents empirical evidence into the use of prepositions in learner English, to shed a... more This paper presents empirical evidence into the use of prepositions in learner English, to shed additional light upon the challenge prepositions present. In doing so, this paper looks into one particular variety of L2 learner English, building upon previous work into prepositions in written and spoken Norwegian L2 English: Nacey (2013) and Nacey and Graedler (2015). Nacey (2013: 205-239) examined all prepositions in a selection of written Norwegian L2 English, identifying all metaphorical prepositions and all divergent prepositions, before focusing on case studies of to and on. Nacey and Graedler (2015) examined preposition use in spoken Norwegian L2 English and compared preposition use across the spoken and written modes. Conclusions from these two pieces of earlier work indicate that the most likely source for production of divergent prepositions is negative L1 transfer, i.e. learners may choose a particular English preposition because it is the nearest equivalent to the Norwegian preposition that would have been appropriate had the text been in Norwegian. Despite being the single most likely motivation for divergent prepositions, however, L1 transfer was found to be able to account for less than half of the observed instances in either mode. The present study turns toward the same data, but with a focus on metaphor. The main aim is to discover whether the degree of metaphoricity of a preposition plays a role with respect to divergent choice by language learners.

The present paper adds empirical corpus-based evidence concerning the real magnitude of the chall... more The present paper adds empirical corpus-based evidence concerning the real magnitude of the challenge that PV use presents, by investigating the PV production in written and spoken language of Norwegian advanced learners of English, thus comparing PV use across modes and for an additional group of English language learners. Four related research questions are addressed:

How often do learners produce divergent PVs?
Are there contrasting patterns of PV usage across the spoken and written modes?
Is there a correlation between divergent PV usage and figurative use?
Is there a correlation between divergent PV usage and L1 transfer?

This paper concerns preposition use in oral language produced by advanced Norwegian learners of E... more This paper concerns preposition use in oral language produced by advanced Norwegian learners of English, using primary data from an oral learner corpus (LINDSEI-NO). We investigate the frequency of inappropriate preposition use in approximately 13 hours of transcribed informal interviews, as well as the possible extent to which L1 transfer may play a role in production. The contextually inappropriate prepositions were categorized in terms of factors that may influence preposition use, with particular focus on the congruence between L1 and L2 with respect to syntactic structure and basic meaning. These results about spoken preposition use are then contrasted with results from a corresponding investigation into preposition use in a written learner corpus (NICLE), allowing for comparison of preposition usage across modes.

Twenty years of learner corpus research: Looking back, Moving ahead , 2013

This paper investigates the use of communication strategies by Norwegian learners of English, bas... more This paper investigates the use of communication strategies by Norwegian learners of English, based on transcribed interviews recorded as part of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI) (Gilquin et al. 2010). The data consists of 380 instances of communication strategies which have been categorized according to a taxonomy compiled from various pre-existing taxonomies of such strategies. The study reveals that the learners resort to achievement strategies in 96% of the cases. Among the achievement strategies, L2-based strategies are the most common, which makes sense considering the learners’ fairly high competence level in English. A substantial number of instances of L1-based strategies, such as code switching, can be attributed to the fact that the interviewers understand Norwegian perfectly despite being native speakers of English. This strategy type thus contributes positively to fluency, rather than disrupts communication. Other aspects that are analyzed include the tendency for different strategy types to occur in clusters, and the success of different types of cooperation strategies, where the learner implicitly or explicitly appeals to the interviewer for assistance.

This article presents results from a comparative study of the production of linguistic metaphors ... more This article presents results from a comparative study of the production of linguistic metaphors in argumentative essays written by advanced Norwegian learners of English with those written by A-level British pupils. Instantiations of novel metaphor are focused on here, that is, those linguistic metaphors whose contextual meanings are not lexicalized as entries in standard dictionaries. I present a typology of novel metaphor, and then illustrate this typology with instances from my data. Cases range from the occurrence of deliberate metaphor to L1 transference to problems relating to, for example, homophones, syntax, attribution, and orthography. Significant differences in the observed frequency of novel metaphor types in the two corpora are uncovered, with the Norwegian writers employing more deliberate and non-deliberate novel metaphor.

Re-thinking synonymy: semantic sameness and …

Non-finite complement constructions with the English matrix verbs begin and start exhibit a degre... more Non-finite complement constructions with the English matrix verbs begin and start exhibit a degree of similarity, if not outright synonymy, along two axes. On the one hand there is the contrast between the two matrix verbs. As Dixon puts it, “In many sentences start and begin may be substituted one for the other with little or no change in meaning” (Dixon 2005: 181). On the other hand, it is often difficult to discern substantive differences in meaning between pairs of constructions containing the same matrix verb but differing in choice of complement form. Thus Quirk et al. (1985: 1192), commenting on the choice of to- infinitive or -ing complements, note that in the case of many examples “there is no observable difference of meaning between the constructions”. Freed also underlines the similarity between the various constructions in certain contexts, writing “there are cases or contexts in which the difference between them does not matter” (Freed 1979: 75). This impression of mutual entailment is also emphasised by Egan (2008), who writes “There are many cases where a begin construction may be seen to entail a start construction, a to infinitive construction an -ing construction, and vice versa (i.e. there are many utterances of the type ‘she began to do X’ which, if true, guarantee the truth of ‘she started to do/doing X’)” (Egan 2008: 256).
Although all four of the authors mentioned above stress the mutual substitutability of the four constructions in certain contexts, they also all maintain that there exist subtle distinctions between them, in other words contexts in which the substitution of one for the other would lead to differences in interpretation. There is, however, considerable disagreement between these and other authors as to the exact nature of the relevant distinctions (see also, for example, Mair 2003).
In this paper we attempt to pin down more closely the extent and nature of the similarities and differences between the various constructions containing begin and start using translation corpora, a source of evidence which is as far as we know not previously mined. We look at how constructions containing begin and start are translated into Norwegian, a language which contains the cognate verbs begynne and starte. Our data for this part of the study come from the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (see Johansson 2007), which contains 426 tokens of begin and 277 of start. We then use the Oslo Multilingual Corpus to examine translation equivalents of constructions containing the Norwegian matrix verbs begynne and starte into French, German and English. We investigate the extent to which cross-linguistic similarities and differences in choice of translation options may mirror putative lexical, constructional, functional and formal similarities and differences in the original expressions. In so doing, we utilize translation corpora to shed light on the degree to which begin and start may be considered synonymous.

This paper presents a corpus-based cross-linguistic examination of one aspect of the overt expres... more This paper presents a corpus-based cross-linguistic examination of one aspect of the overt expression of causality, comparing and contrasting the uses of six conjuncts of result in two languages. The actual lexemes in the study are English so, therefore, and thus, together with Norwegian så, derfor, and således. Using data from the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus, profiles for each of the six conjuncts are first developed on the basis of semantic, syntactic, and discourse features. The three pairs of expressions are then contrasted cross-linguistically in order to discover how these words differ from one another in their usage. The semantic analysis is based upon the idea of a scale of speaker involvement which has been developed by several researchers who have contrasted causal connectives in Dutch, French, and German. Bernd Kortmann’s scale of informativeness (1991) also provides the framework for an examination of the variation in interpretation of the six lexemes. The syntactic analysis primarily involves an examination of sentence positioning, and the discourse analysis looks into both overall frequency as well as distribution in the categories of fiction and non-fiction. The translations of the six conjuncts are then examined to discover what happens to them in the translation process.

"This article presents a corpus-based study of the metaphorical and metonymical use of the words ... more "This article presents a corpus-based study of the metaphorical and metonymical use of the words "head" and "heart," together with the Norwegian correspondents "hode" and "hjerte." The continuum between metaphor and metonymy is explored, as well as the extent to which the non-literal expressions containing "head"/"heart" and "hode"/"hjerte" correspond to each other. The data analyzed is gathered from the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus.
It is necessary to differentiate various meanings of these expressions in order to pinpoint cross-linguistic similarities and differences. Although a relatively high degree of mutual correspondence is found, the relationship is said to be asymmetrical, especially as regards "head"/"hode", since English seems to employ more metaphorical meanings of this lexeme."

Consumerism on TV: Popular Media from the 1950s to the Present, 2015

""Looks at the American television of the 1950s, exploring consumerism as manifested in the weekl... more ""Looks at the American television of the 1950s, exploring consumerism as manifested in the weekly dramas, as well as the quiz shows (including the Quiz Show Scandal) and the Nixon/Khruschev Kitchen Debate.

An overview."

By analyzing the experiences of diplomats and other individuals who have been in... more By analyzing the experiences of diplomats and other individuals who have been involved in negotiation, theoreticians have created hypotheses concerning the crucial elements for successful mediation. To evaluate the accomplishment of such academic writers, one may examine whether these theories may then be practically applied to actual cases of mediation. Consequently, this paper will first outline the broad tenets of mediation theory, then present a case study of Henry Kissinger’s 1976 mediation attempt of the Rhodesian conflict, and finally relate the hypotheses to the actual occurrence of mediation to try to determine the theory’s validity.

This paper presents the findings of a comparative investigation into the use of scare quotes in t... more This paper presents the findings of a comparative investigation into the use of scare quotes in the English written production of Norwegian university students and the writing of British A-level students. The use of scare quotes usually signifies that the term in quotation marks is somehow inappropriate and that the
writers want to distance themselves from it. Motivations for their use vary. Little research has been carried out on scare quotes even though they are a common occurrence in both native speaker and non-native speaker writing. Discussion of scare quotes seems to be primarily restricted to a small number of contributions by linguists in online language blogs or magazines (see e.g. Jacobs 2003; McWhorter 2005; Trask 2000), as well as a few prescriptive admonishments in various language style guides. Taking as its starting point previous research into learner compensation strategies (Poulisse 1993), this paper sets out a taxonomy intended to account for the various possible uses of the quotes. This framework is then utilized in the investigation of the occurrences of scare quotes in essays
written by the two groups of students, to discover whether Norwegians and British novice writers employ scare quotes in similar ways. The overall goal is to shed some light on a previously overlooked feature of student writing. Data for the study comes from approximately 25,000 words of text found
in argumentative essays written by Norwegian university and college students and collected in the Norwegian component of the International Corpus of Learner English. In this study, the Norwegian use of scare quotes is contrasted with British use in roughly 25,000 words of argumentative essays collected in the
Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (see Granger 2007a).

"A squib for the Researching and Applying Metaphor newsletter. The Metaphor Identification Pr... more "A squib for the Researching and Applying Metaphor newsletter.

The Metaphor Identification Procedure applied to the ruling in a US Supreme Court case."

"A squib for the Researching and Applying Metaphor newsletter. Personification of the iPhone- ... more "A squib for the Researching and Applying Metaphor newsletter.

Personification of the iPhone- different perceptions of the iPhone, depending on whether people love it or hate it."

Conference presentations by Susan Nacey

Mastering English prepositions is generally acknowledged as difficult, "… a traditional and recur... more Mastering English prepositions is generally acknowledged as difficult, "… a traditional and recurring nightmare for all learners of English" (Littlemore & Low 2006: 285). In determining the appropriate preposition, learners face multiple challenges, including e.g. the polysemous nature of English prepositions as well as a lack of complete correspondence between English preposition use and preposition use in the learner's L1. Such potential problems are compounded by the manner in which prepositions may be presented in grammar books, where their various meaning extensions are frequently portrayed as arbitrary, leaving learners with few options other than to memorize prepositions "narrow context by narrow context" (Lindstromberg 1998: 227) and/or develop good dictionary-using habits (see e.g. Parrott 2010). This paper adds empirical evidence concerning the real magnitude of the challenge that preposition use presents, through investigating the use of English prepositions in oral language produced by advanced learners. This investigation answers the following questions: 1) How often do these learners produce an inappropriate preposition? 2) Is there a correlation between inappropriate use and L1 influence? 3) Is there a significant difference between Norwegian learners' preposition use in oral and written language? The data for the investigation is the Norwegian subcorpus of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (Gilquin et al. 2010). The subcorpus contains 50 interviews of advanced English L2 students, amounting to approximately 13 hours of recorded and transcribed conversation.

"Prodromou (2007: 21) observes that “What is considered creative in the mouth of an L1-user is of... more "Prodromou (2007: 21) observes that “What is considered creative in the mouth of an L1-user is often seen as deviation in the mouth of even the most advanced successful bilingual user of the language.” Judgement of acceptability is thereby attributed to who has the authority to say something rather than what is said. This paper sheds further light on perceptions of error and creativity in the language of EFL learners by focusing on the complex concept of metaphorical creativity.

I propose that an additional criterion dividing creativity from error in learner language concerns the degree of deviation from native-speaker English, rather than the merely the occurrence of deviation in and of itself. When deviation is wide, the metaphor has a better chance of being accepted as creative; when there is only a small degree of deviation, metaphor will more likely be perceived as error.

Novel metaphors written by advanced Norwegian learners of English provide support for this hypothesis. By way of example, consider the following, where the metaphorical embodiment of message results in an unconventional collocation with stand, rather than an alternative such as endure:
…the methods might change but the message will stand.
Here, both Norwegian and English share an underlying conceptual metaphor which is linguistically encoded in slightly different ways, just enough to be perceived as somehow wrong, rather than creative – regardless of provenance, authorial intention or degree of interpretability.

This observation has important implications for the role of metaphor in EFL teaching. It has been suggested that learners be encouraged to “…produce what they perceive as ‘creative’ metaphor” (Littlemore 2009: 101) in an effort to make their English more closely resemble that native-speaker English. In so doing, however, EFL learners risk being judged linguistically incompetent due to unconventional phraseology (see e.g. Danesi 1993, MacArthur 2010, Philip 2006).

References

Danesi, Marcel (1993). "Metaphorical competence in second language acquisition and second language teaching: The neglected dimension." In Language, communication and social meaning. J. E. Alatis (ed.) Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 489-500.
Littlemore, Jeannette (2009). Applying cognitive linguistics to second language learning and teaching. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
MacArthur, Fiona (2010). "Metaphorical competence in EFL: Where we are and where we should be going? A view from the classroom." In AILA Review, vol. 23, 155-173.
Philip, Gill (2006). "Drugs, traffic, and many other dirty interests": Metaphor and the language learner. Retrieved September 18, 2007 from http://amsacta.cib.unibo.it/archive/00002125/.
Prodromou, Luke (2007). "Bumping into creative idiomaticity." In English Today, vol. 23 (1), 14-25.

This paper presents the results of an exploratory investigation into the use of metaphor in a par... more This paper presents the results of an exploratory investigation into the use of metaphor in a particularly American form of advertising, namely church marquees. Such marquees are outdoor changeable copy or LED signs, typically located on church property but visible to passing motorists. They serve various purposes, which include informing the congregation of church events, boosting the church’s attendance –and by extension– finances, and allowing the minister a means of influencing and/or serving the local community. Active users change their captions weekly. In essence, these signs are billboards for the Lord, one-sentence sermons (J.M. Stewart Corporation 2008, Rentaria 2005, Shafrir 2007).

The space available for messages on church marquees is extremely restricted due to practical considerations of traffic patterns near the sign (motorists must be able to digest the contents in a brief moment while driving by) and local zoning regulations which regulate the size of signs. Consequently, careful consideration must be given to the message, which ideally should be inspirational, thoughtful and/or humorous to attract the maximum amount of (preferably) positive attention (J.M. Stewart Corporation 2010, Verbrugge 1999: 13-19).

Deliberate use of conventional metaphor, such as the word play that frequently features in puns, newspaper/sports headlines, and bumper stickers, provides one effective means of fulfilling church requirements (see Steen 2008: 223). In particular, bridge metaphors, which exploit a “common boundary between two fields” (Kittay 1987: 275) by simultaneously affording a literal and metaphorical reading, would appear to be especially effective. Documented examples of such messages from how-to books as well as both online and coffee-table photo collections of marquees are replete with pithy captions such as the light-hearted For a healthy heart, give your faith a workout or play on words To prevent sinburn use sonscreen, the more ominous Turn or burn, and the thought-provoking Aim at nothing and you will always hit it (see e.g. Claassen 2005, Glusenkamp 1996, Harvey 2007, Paulson and Paulson 2006, Verbrugge 1999, Wikihow 2008).

This study is a corpus-driven pilot project, where a small corpus of weekly photos of church marquees has been collected in 2010 over a four-month period. Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostal denominations are represented in the corpus, together with nondenominational Christian churches. The primary purpose is to shed light on the degree to which documented collections of church signs reflect actual church practice, focusing on the use of metaphor in the messages, in terms of both frequency and type. The study thus weds two areas which have been the focus of little to no academic research: American church marquees and bridge metaphors.

Books by Susan Nacey

"Metaphors in Learner English" investigates metaphorical expressions produced in learner English.... more "Metaphors in Learner English" investigates metaphorical expressions produced in learner English. A thorough discussion of the concept of metaphor and how it appears (or not) in the educational setting envisioned by the 2001 Common European Framework of References for Languages (CEFR) provides the theoretical foundations. Methodological concerns are also aired, through a rigorous examination of the recently developed Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) and its potential for application to the English of novice writers. The core of the book presents and explores the empirical results of a systematic identification of every metaphorically used word in 40,000 words of text—20,000 produced by Norwegian advanced learners of English (L2 English) and 20,000 produced by English A-level students (L1 English). Issues concerning metaphorical creativity are raised, addressing the borderline between 'innovation/creativity' and 'error' in the metaphorical production of foreign language learners. Additionally, the link between metaphoricity and prepositions in learner language is investigated, through the development of a framework for the categorization and causal explanation of preposition errors in learner language.

Book Reviews by Susan Nacey

ICAME Journal, Volume 38, Apr 2014

Errors and disfluencies in spoken corpora results from a pre-conference workshop held in 2009 at ... more Errors and disfluencies in spoken corpora results from a pre-conference workshop held in 2009 at the 30 th ICAME conference at Lancaster University, dealing with issues that had arisen during the compilation of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI). The workshop focused primarily on the distinction between errors and disfluencies, the practicalities of mark-up and annotation of spoken learner language, the possible functions of hesitation, together with various pedagogical implications of corpus research into errors and disfluencies. This monograph includes five individual articles, a mix of papers presented at that workshop as well as invited contributions from other scholars working in the field. The overall goal is to shed additional light on certain phenomena restricted to spoken language, such as fillers, silent pauses, speech rate and error rate.

How often do learners produce divergent PVs?
Are there contrasting patterns of PV usage across the spoken and written modes?
Is there a correlation between divergent PV usage and figurative use?
Is there a correlation between divergent PV usage and L1 transfer?