UM LAL PG Conference 2001 Presenters

Gusti Astika

University of Melbourne

Task-based approach to syllabus design for students of tour guiding

This study was motivated by the need for an appropriate English syllabus for students of tour guiding at the Tour and Travel Management Department at Satya Wacana University, Indonesia. The present English syllabus was designed on the bases of the teachers' personal experience, intuition, and available published books. Therefore, it is important that the English syllabus for the department is based on empirical findings.

With this background, this study attempts to find answers to the following questions:

1. What tasks are carried out in tour guiding and how do tasks vary according to settings?

2. What language skills are required to accomplish tour guiding tasks?

3. How can the insights from task analysis be applied in syllabus design?

The data for the study were collected from several tours in Bali and classroom observations of English lessons at the department of Tour and Travel Management. The insights from the analysis of data from both settings were used as recommendations for designing a task syllabus for the tour guiding department.

Johanna Barry

University of Melbourne

A multidimensional scaling analysis of tone discrimination ability in Cantonese-speaking children using a cochlear implant

Tone discrimination testing with two groups of profoundly hearing-impaired children using a cochlear implant and one group of normally hearing children suggests that pitch level is perceptually more important than pitch contour. In this paper, discrimination results from these three groups of children are submitted to a multidimensional scaling procedure - INDSCAL. Despite differences in the source of auditory information received and linguistic experience, all the children used 'average pitch height' and 'pitch direction' to make judgements about tone. Analysis of individual subject weights shows that pitch height and direction are similarly salient for both the children using the cochlear implant and the normally hearing children and that pitch height is indeed more important than pitch level. Finally, the two groups of cochlear implant users, employing different speech processing strategies, can be distinguished by the relative salience of pitch direction. These observations are used to explain differences in tone discrimination performance. (Johanna G. Barry, Peter J. Blamey, Lois F.A. Martin)

Joanne Baumgartner

ANU

Key cultural concepts in Australian Aboriginal languages as used in biblical translation

In his book "Bible Translating: An analysis of principles and procedures, with special reference to Aboriginal Languages", Nida says that words are merely vehicles for ideas. However he wrote this book in 1947 during the time of the "Stolen Generation", and it is apparent that his ideas are no longer applicable to to-days' needs for bible translation that can be used by Traditional Australian Aboriginal people.

The necessity in Aboriginal Bible translation to-day is to separate pagan beliefs, and their associated word usage, from Christian beliefs, and its' totally different concepts, and, having done this, to describe the work being translated in Traditional Aboriginal terms.

It is possible to do this using a new language concept called Natural Semantic Metalanguage, NSM, which uses universal terms to identify concepts that are common to all languages, thus preserving the cultural identity already in existence in Aboriginal language use such as is seen in the Pintupi Language of the Central Desert.

This then avoids the confusion that occurs when academic English is applied to languages that require different cultural concepts, such as Aboriginal Languages. This new way of translating can then be used by theologians when applying the current translation techniques.

Judith Bishop

University of Melbourne

Metrical structure, 'primary stress' and intonational pitch accent in Kuninjku

This paper examines the interrelationship of metrical structure and intonational pitch accent in the Kuninjku dialect of Bininj Kun-wok (Mayali), a stress-accent language (Bishop, Fletcher & Evans, 1999; Fletcher & Evans, 2000). In particular, it asks how the presence of multiple strong pitch prominences in the orthographic word may be reconciled with the notion of 'primary stress', and whether it is necessary to assume a phonological word level smaller than the orthographic word, in order to maintain the principle of culminative prominence within the phonological word.

This paper will demonstrate that the phonological word may be defined as the domain of an intonational End Rule in Kuninjku. While words are frequently double-accented in Kuninjku, the default placement of a single accent is on the leftmost foot (thus: End Rule Left). Related to the frequency of double-accentuation in Kuninjku words is a tolerance of regular accentual 'clash' (adjacent intonational accents) unobserved elsewhere in the literature.

Kate Bisshop

University of Melbourne

"They're actually faking it!": Women reinventing themselves

Self-help books are an element of western popular culture designated as part of 'women's domain'. They are predominantly directed towards and read by women, while their theories are endorsed by other 'women's genres' such as magazines and television talk shows. In particular, self-help books dealing with relationships and relying on the gender difference model of miscommunication have achieved unprecedented popularity amongst women readers, despite what critics regard as their negative messages for women. They proffer the notion that male and female communication styles are 'different but equal', a claim which has led to condemnation by many feminist academics on the grounds that ideas of 'difference' inevitably lead to notions of male 'dominance' and female 'deficit'. But are these concerns valid? Using a constructivist approach to gain insight into the act of reading self-help and its consequences for women, the responses of two groups of women readers were used to construct a possible interpretation of women's individual readings of a text, and of their understandings of language, gender and communication.

This research reveals the limitations of our understandings of the complex phenomenon of gender. It illustrates the contradictory ways in which women use language in the construction of their gendered subjectivities, and the diverse ways in which women understand the function and power of language and speakers. It argues that 'disproving' difference is potentially less useful than understanding how gender difference functions within each individual's complex system of beliefs about language, gender and communication.

Nisakorn Charumanee

University of Melbourne

An examination of the relationship between educational policy and EFL curricula in Thai universities

This study aims to examine the relationship between educational policy and EFL curricula in Thai universities. The perceptions of EFL needs in relation to levels of EFL policy were investigated along with the evaluation of the perceived effectiveness of EFL curricula for first year students in Thai universities. The methods employed were a survey and a case study. Survey questionnaires were designed to elicit the perceptions of EFL needs in relation to levels of policy and the views on the existing compulsory course from the English Department Heads, English teachers and first year students across 18 public universities in Thailand. The case study was conducted at Prince of Songkla University (PSU), Hat Yai. Specifically, a Foundation English subject offered for first year students at PSU was examined in depth for the same purpose. Interviews and classroom observations were employed in the case study.

The combined results from the survey and the case study reveal the following major findings. The overall results suggest that the perceptions of EFL needs are highly related to government and ministry policy statements regarding EFL learning in Thailand. In practice, however, it is revealed that the actual implementation of compulsory English curricula in Thai public universities does not correspond with or reflect the perceived needs stated in the policy. The main problems for the mismatches are the overemphasis on grammar and the lack of individual skills practice (listening, speaking, reading and writing) in compulsory English curricula.

Sarah Cutfield

University of Melbourne

Arguing for the argument in Lardil (or Goldilocks and the three-place predicates)

In this talk I discuss problems with the notion of 'argument' in Lardil (Mornington Island). This pertains especially to the marking of the RECIPIENT as a verbal allative. Relevant syntactic issues include concord vs. agreement (i.e. intra- vs. interphrasal) relationships in nominal tense marking, as well as topicalization and relativization of NPs.

The status of the INSTRUMENT NP is similarly controversial. Case-stacking would normally indicate argument status of the embedded NP. However, phonological final segment deletion may mean that the relevant case form is not realized.

In discussing these issues I question whether a syntactic framework can be developed to categorize these NPs as arguments, or whether their relationship to the predicate should instead be described in semantic terms.

Emilia Djonov

University of NSW

Language, images, hyperlinks: Interactivity in edutainment websites for children

This paper aims to explore the semiotic construction of the edutainment genre in hypermedia texts (i.e. texts created through the use of language as well as other semiotic systems which have a hypertextual structure). For this purpose, interactivity is defined as the meeting point for entertainment and education realized by visual-verbal and hypertextual relationships.

Following the principles of Systemic Functional Theory (Halliday (1994) in analysing language and logico-semantic relationships and Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) for the analysis of visual-verbal relationships), three edutainment websites for children are analysed. Examples from these websites serve to illustrate how visual and verbal resources combine to engage the audience's attention and how hyperlinks foster learning through establishing logico-semantic relationships between web pages. In addition, it is also argued that the use of language, images and hyperlinks is always ideologically laden.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) Introduction to Functional Grammar. Edward Arnold, London.

Kress, G. and Theo van Leeuwen (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual

Design. Routledge, London.

Carla Finocchiaro

University of Melbourne

Does Italian language have a role in the lives of third generation ? An international comparison

This paper presents the findings of a project on language maintenance and use within three generations of one extended Italian family living abroad in three different countries. There are thirty-seven informants in all. Of these, eight are first generation, twelve are second generation and seventeen are third generation. A case study approach was taken for the project as it encourages a multiplicity of methods of data collection. The methods used in this case study were the ethnographic interview; observations on and tape recordings of everyday use of language; also, the third generation informants in each of the three countries were asked to undertake specific linguistic tasks using the Italian language. This paper compares the results of the linguistic tasks conducted with the third generation informants and discusses factors influencing their present ability to communicate in the Italian language. Examples of these factors include geographical position of the given country, language policies, attitudes towards the Italian language, family structure, education level of previous generations.

Marguerite Fitzgerald

University of Melbourne

Features of noun incorporation: A study of Oceanic languages

Noun Incorporation (NI) is the process whereby a noun stem is compounded to a verb stem forming a larger, and more specific, verb. Existing to various degrees cross-linguistically, it is widely accepted that it is a productive process in many Oceanic languages. The particular type of NI typically seen is that of object incorporation, where the object is incorporated and the resultant clause becomes intransitive.

In traditional definitions, it has been stated that an intransitive verb plus an object is a sufficient condition to identify NI. However, there are examples of such constructions in Oceanic, which can be argued to not be instances of incorporation. There are also many examples of compounding that exhibit many features of classically defined NI.

This paper aims to examine the issues surrounding the definition of NI, using Oceanic languages as a reference. By determining which are the distinctive features of NI and similar constructions, a more fine-grained set of criteria is established for their identification and definition.

Alice Gaby

University of Melbourne

When is a 3-place predicate not a 3-place predicate?

Focusing largely on Australian languages, this paper challenges the idea that the arguments or number of 'places' of a predicate can simply be 'read off' a sentence. Instead, I demonstrate that identifying these places involves the synthesis of several kinds of linguistic cue. Since these cues form a continuum, there are many examples of predicates whose 'place' or transitivity status is intermediate. Reflexive and reciprocal clauses demonstrate this intermediacy particularly clearly.

Antoine Guillaume

La Trobe University

Auxiliary verbs in Cavineña: what do they do?

In this paper I discuss two auxiliary verbs in Cavinenya, an Amazonian language spoken in Northern Bolivia (Takana family). These auxiliaries, ju- and a-, are interesting because they 'enter in construction' with many types of words, forming what I will call the 'auxiliary construction'. Among the types of words auxiliaries are used with are verbs (plain or derived), adjective-like modifiers, nouns and borrowed words. Another point of interest is that both auxiliaries are 'tagged' for transitivity and that they allow play with the transitivity of the resulting construction.

Georgina Heydon

Monash University

'You have the right to remain silent': A challenge to preference in police interviews?

Sequences in the police interview data examined in this study appear to challenge some of the theoretical assumptions about 'preferred' responses to certain types of utterances (as in Conversation Analysis).

Police evidentiary interviews with suspects provide a source of institutional language data in which the contributions of participants may be critical to their future, in the context of a subsequent court case. An analysis of the interactional strategies of police interview participants demonstrates that the contributions of the suspect are highly constrained in a number of ways, including allowable turn types and the management of topic initiations. If assumptions about preference based on ordinary conversation are used to interpret non-response in this particular institutional setting, then these interactionally restricted contributions, which will be presented as evidence, may be susceptible to misinterpretation in a way that is unlikely to be addressed by the judicial system. This paper concludes that linguistic analysis can present a case against the erosion of the defendant's rights, in particular the right to silence.

Daphne Huang

University of Melbourne

Language choice/Code choice in email writing amongst Taiwanese in the 20-35 years age group

The research project is to investigate code-switching behaviour in emails among a group of eight young Mandarin-English bilinguals living in Taiwan. Both languages are being examined. The data I have collected since March this year includes 67 emails. I will show the patterns of language choice of each individual and explore the relation between language choice and sociolinguistic variables such as interlocutor, topic shift, and interaction type. I shall discuss the relation between language choice and email length as well as the symmetrical (or asymmetrical) relationship of the communication with examples. Another issue that I would like to pursue is that of identity. The issue of identity is of great importance for this study because these are a group of friends who are all Chinese native speakers and who all live in Taiwan, yet communicate with each other by email, largely in English. There is also code-switching and use of Mandarin. Their identity is thus marked by their email communication. Appellation is one such example. The data will show that code-switching is the language of choice for this particular group of young people. It is my aim to further explore whether this choice is only significant for this particular group or whether it is a crucial feature of Taiwanese people communicating with each other by email.

Nasmilah Imran

University of Newcastle

Cultural influences on Indonesian learners' strategies in learning English as a Second Language (ESL)

This study investigated the issue of the influences of culture on the Indonesian learners' strategies in learning ESL, with special reference to Makassarese and Buginese students. These cultural influences were seen as major determinants in the success of teaching and learning English both in formal and informal settings. The subjects of the study were five groups of students taking English language and English literature as their majors in English Department at Faculty of Letters, Hasanuddin University, Makassar (Indonesia). The findings of the study suggest that Makassarse/Buginese culture to a large extent influences the three types of learners' strategies used; metacognitive/cognitive strategies, communication strategies, and social strategies. (Wenden & Rubin, 1987). These cultural influences have given some positive and negative effects on learning ESL which vary between male and female learners, and learners with high level of proficiency and those with low level. It is significant to note that formally, cultural considerations be taken into account as part of a second language program design. This refers to classroom instructions, teacher-learners interactions, material provision, teaching methods, and all other related aspects. In terms of language learning in informal setting, learners had better be advised to use supportive and relevant strategies as those successful learners have done, and try to step farther beyond some cultural barriers which make the learning unlikely to happen.

Gumock Jeon

University of Melbourne

Hypertext and language learning

The presentation intends to summarize a research proposal titled 'Web-based writing for second language literacy development' and to seek further clarification of the concerns that might arise.

The computer has brought changes in almost every area of our contemporary lives and its impact on the concept of literacy has been significantly recognised. This recognition has generated an urge that educators, particularly language teachers should incorporate the changing concept of literacy to their teaching practices. In fact, second language teachers have started to respond to the urge by encouraging their students to create hypertext using the Web. With an acknowledgement of the significance of new literacy on one hand, and its implication for L2 language teaching on the other hand, the proposed research aims to explore second language learners' webpage writing process. The main issues to be addressed through the presentation are: the concept of new literacy; the impact of hypertext as a new literacy form; and its application for L2 learning in general and L2 writing in particular. Also other related concerns for the implementation of the research will be discussed.

Sandra Kipp

University of Melbourne

A community and its language(s)

This presentation explores the ways in which group identification, social networks, external circumstance and individual biography shape the patterns of language use within a bilingual community. The community under investigation is a small rural settlement in the Western District of Victoria, at and around the beginning of the twentieth century, and the languages involved are English and German. The study is largely based on audio-taped data collected in the 1960s, and a unique aspect of the work is the reconstruction of a speech community through the use of archival evidence and oral history techniques.

Apart from the insights gained into the processes of language shift, the study also investigates the linguistic characteristics of the participants' German, establishing both commonalities and differences, which may be traced back to both group and individual factors.

Heeok Kyung

University of NSW

How are communication difficulties triggered by lexical elements repaired in NS-NNS conversations?

In this presentation there is a discussion of the special forms a non-native speaker (NNS) and a native speaker (NS) of English employ in order to deal with communication difficulty triggered by lexical elements and how various types of lexical repair are constructed in NS-NNS interactions. The data for this presentation were derived from conversations between pairs of native speakers and upper-intermediate levels of non-native speakers. They were collected from various natural settings. The problematic areas, where the participants had communication difficulties, were identified in the data. Several relevant examples found in the data will be demonstrated in order to discuss the nature of how NS and NNS tend to resolve communication difficulties triggered by lexical elements and to move toward mutual comprehension.

Iwa Lukmana

Monash University

Aspects of terms of reference to a third person in Sundanese

Reference basically concerns the relation between a linguistic expression and an entity in the world to which it anchors. In addition to this referential dimension, which points to the identification of the referent, reference is often associated with some social notion. In this case, certain linguistic realisations of reference are subject to social explanation. The talk will focus on this second notion.

It appears that there has been variation in the linguistic realisation of reference to a third person in Sundanese workplaces. Seventeen terms have appeared in the database, identified through a survey that accounted for any term reported. The talk will describe the sociolinguistic contents of each of the terms and the reason behind the ordering of the terms. The social factors to be discussed include age, gender, occupation, social status, social distance, and formality.

Geoff Millar

University of Melbourne

Working within the Zone

In recent years a growing number of educationalists have adopted a Vygotskian sociocultural framework as a theoretical basis for their work, and with it the notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), a concept which has been seen as classically exemplified in one-to-one writing tutorials. Recent work by Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994, 1995) and Nasserji and Swain (2000) has examined the elicitation techniques that ESL tutors use to encourage students to perceive and correct their own errors, and their findings are seen to support the Vygotskian view of learning as the 'internalisation' or 'appropriation' of what is first enacted through social contact and interaction. In the dialogic interaction of a one-to-one tutorial, a tutor constantly adjusts the nature and quantity of her feedback to suit the student, and it is argued that negotiation of this sort is crucial to ensure that the tutor's feedback is within the learner's 'zone of proximal development', if the student is to be able to learn from it. The present paper considers the implications of translating this form of teaching into the medium of asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC), under conditions which minimise the mutual interaction of tutor and student.

Tim Moore

University of Melbourne

Cars, bands, films: Towards a local grammar of popular culture nomenclature

An interesting focus of discourse analysis in recent years has been on 'language in restricted domains', also known as 'sub-languages' (Lehrberger, 1986). A principal aim of the analysis is to develop what Gross (1993) calls 'local grammars'. One such sub-language, which has already received some coverage in the literature, is the language of newspaper headlines, whose grammar has been found to have its own distinctive syntax and lexis.

This paper provides some preliminary findings and very tentative conclusions about another sub-language, one of interest to applied linguistics working in the area of popular culture - this is the language of product nomenclature. Examples are taken from three fields - the naming of car models, rock bands and films. A number of patterns - lexical, syntactic and phonological - will be discussed for each field. For example, a key structural element in the syntax of rock band names is the definite article. A variety of explanatory models are considered for the patterns observed, including genre, intertextuality and linguistic novelty. The research is thought to be contributive to the theoretical field of local grammars, but also has practical application to the professional field of marketing and product promotion.

Stephen Morey

Monash University

New insights into a dead language - examination of texts in the Aboriginal language of Gippsland

Although the last fluent speakers of the Gippsland language, also known as Ganai, passed away some generations ago, the language was recorded by amateur researchers in the 19th century. A sketch grammar written by R.H. Mathews in 1902 has formed the basis of later research into this language, but there are other materials which have not been explored.

This paper will discuss three stories collected by A.W. Howitt and John Bulmer and published in 1876. The stories appear to be traditional stories and the analysis of them contains very interesting insights into the grammar of this language. The language appears to show some syntactic features not discussed by Mathews and not found in neighbouring languages.

Kerry Mullan

La Trobe University

Engaging with the French

This paper illustrates how the cultural concept of l'engagement (literally 'commitment' or 'involvement'), is the key to French interactional style. It is based on a corpus of the recorded conversations of six native French speakers. The conversations were analysed with the aim of looking at co-operative interactional strategies, and more particularly the importance of expressing opinions. Using a short excerpt from one of the recorded conversations, certain features of French interactional style will be examined, such as frequent interruptions, overlaps, and disagreements, all of which can be seen to display a closeness between the interlocutors. The paper also looks at the concepts of la franchise ('frankness') and to renvoyer la balle ('toss the ball back'), both of which are extremely important in French interactional style. The paper will show how French interaction is a combination of co-operation and conflict, and how both of these are essential elements in the concept of l'engagement.

Clodagh Norwood

La Trobe University

Two modal clitics in Karo Batak

The most conservative languages of the Austronesian family, spoken in Taiwan, the Philippines and Northern Sulawesi, have distinct verbal paradigms via affixational differences for the expression of modality. Many Austronesian languages have lost these paradigmatic distinctions, relying instead on separate auxiliaries for the expression of mood. Karo Batak, a Western Austronesian language of Northern Sumatra, has two verbal clitics which I argue are remnants of mood marking. One of these clitics is cognate with a verbal clitic found in two of the somewhat less conservative languages of central Sulawesi. This, along with other morphosyntactic and lexical evidence, may be suggestive of a sub-grouping relationship between these languages and Karo Batak.

Pauline Nott

University of Melbourne

Early communication development of hearing impaired children using cochlear implants and hearing aids: Techniques of assessment

The paper reported here is part of an ongoing research project looking at the early communication development of hearing impaired children using cochlear implants and hearing aids. As the age of implantation continues to fall below two years of age, it has become increasingly difficult to test the communication skills and progress of these children using conventional procedures. This paper contrasts a range of both performance-based and parent-report tools to determine which are able to be completed over a two year period post implantation or aid fitting. Further a "diary" technique to analyse early lexical development was implemented to see whether it was a viable technique to use with parents of young hearing impaired children and to determine whether it provided qualitative information that was not available from existing test procedures. Attempts were made to validate the diary technique using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) by calculating the percentage of agreement between the words reported by the parent in the diary and those scored by the parent on the CDI at regular intervals. A range of issues concerning the differences between the two techniques and the appropriateness of their use in research is discussed.

Erich Round

University of Melbourne

Lexicon versus prosody as the carrier of semantic information: the contrasting case of 'some' quantifiers in Germanic languages

Four related Germanic languages - English, Swedish, German and Dutch - show an interesting contrast in how they encode a number of subtly different meanings which in English can all be expressed using the lexeme 'some'. English and German tend to rely upon prosodic differentiation in cases where Swedish and Dutch use a strictly lexical strategy. It then comes as somewhat of a shock to find that one, relatively marginal meaning of 'some' can be distinguished from the other meanings solely by prosodic means in all four languages, and moreover, it is fairly much the exact same intonation contour in each language.

Caesar Ruddyanto

University of Melbourne

Language cultivation in Indonesian

This paper reports on some aspects of a project evaluating corpus planning in Indonesian carried out by the National Centre for Language Development and Cultivation (NCLDC). The planning was introduced long before the establishment of the NCLDC, which is established to conduct corpus planning towards a language able to cope with modern concepts in science and technology.

Despite success in producing a large amount of scientific terminology, there are problems faced by the language users with the changes. In this paper I will point to shortcomings of the policy and report on a survey conducted among bureaucrats, journalists and teachers of different age groups living in Jakarta. The survey suggests that the NCLDC's efforts do not really come across. The respondents either were not aware of the propagated items or misunderstood the purpose of the planning.

Mink Schapper

La Trobe University

Taboo or not Taboo: the language and culture of an organisation

Each culture manifests its uniqueness through its artefacts, its language and its cultural mores and assumptions. The concept of organisations as cultures comes from management and organisation theory. Using ethnography of communication, I look at organisation cultural difference as reflected through choice of discourse topic.

The subject for this paper is an amalgamated community health centre.

In a detailed study of a short excerpt from the data I look specifically at the softening and hedging devices used: I mean, I guess, I feel, like, kind of, sort of, maybe, stuff, whatever, it might, um, HRT, V + past, can + V, pause, repetition.

The high concentration of these devices in such a short extract, an introduction to a topic at a meeting in the organisation, suggests that this is not a favoured topic.

Ruth Singer

University of Melbourne

The Inclusory Construction in Australian Languages

The Inclusory Construction commonly takes the form 'Sally we(dual)-went' or simply 'Sally we(dual) went' and is usually translated as 'Sally and I (went)'. Among Australianists this construction has been referred to as the Inclusive Construction by some (Blake 1987, Goddard 1985) and 'compound reduction' by Hale (1966) and others.

I follow Lichtenberk (2000) in my approach to typology of the construction - as an alternative to coordination or comitative strategies rather than a type of either. The variation found in the form the construction in Australian languages will be outlined.

In relation to the inclusory construction, it will be argued that it is possible to view something as a construction cross-linguistically without maintaining that it has a syntactic or genetic unity across all the languages in which it occurs. A way of defining the construction using both absolute and prototypical features will be proposed.

Claudia Slegers

La Trobe University

Deaf culture and sign language at work: An ethnographic approach

Deaf Australians who use Auslan (Australian Sign Language) are striving to be recognised as a cultural and linguistic minority within the broader hearing culture. Work-in-progress will be presented on the communication styles of Deaf Australians, and how these interactional norms may differ from Australian English speakers. The study focuses on workplace communication.

An anthropological linguistic approach is used to examine what language and communication tell us about Deaf cultural values and meanings. Perspectives from discourse analysis are employed to connect the micro-level phenomena analysable through video recordings and transcripts with the background of peoples' broader social relations. Initial findings will be presented from a pilot study involving semi-structured interviews with 10 Deaf and hearing workers, natural interaction data from video-recorded workplace meetings, and observation.

Renata Summo-O'Connell

University of Melbourne

Second generation Italian speakers: Not an easy ride

This paper refers to a study conducted in Victoria amongst secondary school students of German, Chinese and Italian of various backgrounds and focuses specifically on the Italian second generation group, their features and perceived needs. It moves then to discuss the many implications of the study, particularly in relation to further data gathered in the last three years amongst adult second generation learners of Italian.

The picture emerging from the study shows the pressing need for awareness of all the issues involved for policy makers, language methodology, materials production and further sociolinguistic studies.

Giao Quynh Tran

University of Melbourne

Pragmatic and discourse transfer

It is said that learning a second language is like living another life. That other life involves the notion of culture, just as 'second language acquisition' includes 'second culture acquisition'. When the learners' first language (henceforth L1) and second language (hereafter L2) have a greater culturally and socially perceived distance (such as English and Vietnamese), the L1 sociocultural influences on L2 acquisition is more likely, and may manifest itself at the level of pragmatics and discourse. However, to date little is known about pragmatic and discourse transfer in Vietnamese-English interlanguage. In this study data were elicited from native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) making a complaint. The data reveal a different orientation of the Vietnamese learners from the NS. The differences are mainly in complaining strategy selection and in the length of the complaints. The findings show that L1 social and cultural factors do affect learners' use of the target language (TL). This study supports the view that there is pragmatic and discourse transfer in L2 learners' interlanguage and suggests that L2 learners need to learn about the native norms in this inherently face-threatening speech act in order to avoid misinterpretation.

Catherine Travis

La Trobe University

From connective to discourse marker: Semantic and functional extensions of Spanish
o sea

This paper presents an analysis of the Spanish discourse marker o sea, which derives from a connective meaning 'or be it' and is used similarly to English I mean. The study is based on four hours of conversational Colombian Spanish, in which there are close to 100 tokens of the discourse marker. The most basic function of o sea in the data (accounting for around three quarters of the total number of tokens) is to add information to prior discourse, be that a specification, a modification or a completion of something that has been said. This use is illustrated below.

El agua no es -- no es transparente, como en la costa del Caribe. .. O sea, es= -- café.

'The water's not -- It's not clear, like on the Caribbean coast. O sea, it's brown.'

O sea is also used in what appear to be extensions of this basic function to introduce a background comment about something the speaker wishes to go on and say and to introduce a conclusion drawn from prior discourse. The functions of o sea will be defined in accordance with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, and it will be shown that the meanings it carries as a discourse marker are directly related to its use as a connective: as a connective, o sea presents one noun phrase as an alternative for another, and as a discourse marker it presents an alternative wording, and in so doing, adds information to what has been said.

Plenary speaker

Associate Professor Terry Crowley

University of Waikato

The consequences of vernacular (il)literacy in the Pacific

Recent arguments have suggested that literacy in the Pacific does not give added status to vernaculars and that it should be actively discouraged because it was not part of traditional linguistic ecologies, to avoid weakening them, leading to the replacement of languages by colonial languages. This discussion disputes this interpretation, arguing that, as Pacific cultures have changed since colonial contact, literacy-whether in local or metropolitan languages-has been incorporated into linguistic ecologies. Language planners should be encouraged to promote vernacular literacy because it can provide access to locally relevant information, for its potential educational benefits, and also because it has the potential to increase the prestige of undervalued vernaculars.