Questioning in simulated accountant-client consultations:exploring implications for ESP teaching

The field of accountancy plays a vital role in the financial health of modern-day economies. It also attracts very large numbers of students, many for whom English is not their first language, who train in a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate programs at English-medium universities. Yet, surprisingly, the discourse of accountants has been under-reported in the ESP literature (Burns & Moore, 2007a). This paper reports research investigating spoken accounting discourse derived from simulated accountant–client consultations. It draws on the work of Drew and Heritage (1992), in which questioning is identified as a key discursive feature in institutional talk, and also the more recent work reported in Heritage and Maynard (2006), in which the complexity of the formulation of questions and responses is revealed in doctor–patient consultations. The paper discusses the use of simulations in cases where access to actual workplace settings by ESP teachers is unattainable, as well as the usefulness of the interactional data these simulations generate. The paper reports a questioning typology, derived from the data, showing six typical question types found in advice-giving simulated encounters in accountant–client taxation-based consultations: information; clarification; client-specified; backchannel; discourse-related; and interpersonal. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this research for ESP teaching.

English-for-teaching:rethinking teacher proficiency in the classroom

The expansion of English teaching in state education systems places increasing demands on English language teachers and how they are trained. A major thrust of these efforts has focused on improving teachers' English language proficiency. This expectation is manifested in policy and pedagogical directives that teachers 'teach English in English'. We argue for a reconceptualization of teacher language proficiency, not as general English proficiency but as a specialized subset of language skills required to prepare and teach lessons. This concept of English-for-Teaching as a bounded form of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) for the classroom builds on what teachers know about teaching, while introducing and confirming specific classroom language. This article describes how the construct was developed and then describes sample classroom tasks and the language needed to enact them in three major areas: managing the classroom, understanding and communicating lesson content, and assessing students and giving feedback.

Schematic structure and the modulation of propositions in economics forecasting text

Working within the framework of the branch of Linguistics known as discourse analysis, and more specifically within the current approach of genre analysis, this thesis presents an analysis of the English of economic forecasting. The language of economic forecasting is highly specialised and follows certain conventions of structure and style. This research project identifies these characteristics and explains them in terms of their communicative function. The work is based on a corpus of texts published in economic reports and surveys by major corporate bodies. These documents are targeted at an international expert readership familiar with this genre. The data is analysed at two broad levels: firstly, the macro-level of text structure which is described in terms of schema-theory, a currently influential model of analysis, and, secondly, the micro-level of authors' strategies for modulating the predictions which form the key move in the forecasting schema. The thesis aims to contribute to the newly developing field of genre analysis in a number of ways: firstly, by a coverage of a hitherto neglected but intrinsically interesting and important genre (Economic Forecasting); secondly, by testing the applicability of existing models of analysis at the level of schematic structure and proposing a genre-specific model; thirdly by offering insights into the nature of modulation of propositions which is often broadly classified as `hedging' or `modality', and which has been recently described as lq`an area for prolonged fieldwork'. This phenomenon is shown to be a key feature of this particular genre. It is suggested that this thesis, in addition to its contribution to the theory of genre analysis, provides a useful basis for work by teachers of English for Economics, an important area of English for Specific Purposes.

The discourse of online consumer reviews

Review: The Discourse of Online Consumer Reviews, Camilla Vásquez. Bloomsbury, London and New York (2014), 210 pp., £75, Hardback, ISBN: 978-1-4411-9628-6

The missing ingredient:inter-municipal cooperation and central-local relations in the UK

The thrust of the argument presented in this chapter is that inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in the United Kingdom reflects local government's constitutional position and its exposure to the exigencies of Westminster (elected central government) and Whitehall (centre of the professional civil service that services central government). For the most part councils are without general powers of competence and are restricted in what they can do by Parliament. This suggests that the capacity for locally driven IMC is restricted and operates principally within a framework constructed by central government's policy objectives and legislation and the political expediencies of the governing political party. In practice, however, recent examples of IMC demonstrate that the practices are more complex than this initial analysis suggests. Central government may exert top-down pressures and impose hierarchical directives, but there are important countervailing forces. Constitutional changes in Scotland and Wales have shifted the locus of central- local relations away from Westminster and Whitehall. In England, the seeding of English government regional offices in 1994 has evolved into an important structural arrangement that encourages councils to work together. Within the local government community there is now widespread acknowledgement that to achieve the ambitious targets set by central government, councils are, by necessity, bound to cooperate and work with other agencies. In recent years, the fragmentation of public service delivery has affected the scope of IMC. Elected local government in the UK is now only one piece of a complex jigsaw of agencies that provides services to the public; whether it is with non-elected bodies, such as health authorities, public protection authorities (police and fire), voluntary nonprofit organisations or for-profit bodies, councils are expected to cooperate widely with agencies in their localities. Indeed, for projects such as regeneration and community renewal, councils may act as the coordinating agency but the success of such projects is measured by collaboration and partnership working (Davies 2002). To place these developments in context, IMC is an example of how, in spite of the fragmentation of traditional forms of government, councils work with other public service agencies and other councils through the medium of interagency partnerships, collaboration between organisations and a mixed economy of service providers. Such an analysis suggests that, following changes to the system of local government, contemporary forms of IMC are less dependent on vertical arrangements (top-down direction from central government) as they are replaced by horizontal modes (expansion of networks and partnership arrangements). Evidence suggests, however that central government continues to steer local authorities through the agency of inspectorates and regulatory bodies, and through policy initiatives, such as local strategic partnerships and local area agreements (Kelly 2006), thus questioning whether, in the case of UK local government, the shift from hierarchy to network and market solutions is less differentiated and transformation less complete than some literature suggests. Vertical or horizontal pressures may promote IMC, yet similar drivers may deter collaboration between local authorities. An example of negative vertical pressure was central government's change of the systems of local taxation during the 1980s. The new taxation regime replaced a tax on property with a tax on individual residency. Although the community charge lasted only a few years, it was a highpoint of the then Conservative government policy that encouraged councils to compete with each other on the basis of the level of local taxation. In practice, however, the complexity of local government funding in the UK rendered worthless any meaningful ambition of councils competing with each other, especially as central government granting to local authorities is predicated (however imperfectly) on at least notional equalisation between those areas with lower tax yields and the more prosperous locations. Horizontal pressures comprise factors such as planning decisions. Over the last quarter century, councils have competed on the granting of permission to out-of-town retail and leisure complexes, now recognised as detrimental to neighbouring authorities because economic forces prevail and local, independent shops are unable to compete with multiple companies. These examples illustrate tensions at the core of the UK polity of whether IMC is feasible when competition between local authorities heightened by local differences reduces opportunities for collaboration. An alternative perspective on IMC is to explore whether specific purposes or functions promote or restrict it. Whether in the principle areas of local government responsibilities relating to social welfare, development and maintenance of the local infrastructure or environmental matters, there are examples of IMC. But opportunities have diminished considerably as councils lost responsibility for services provision as a result of privatisation and transfer of powers to new government agencies or to central government. Over the last twenty years councils have lost their role in the provision of further-or higher-education, public transport and water/sewage. Councils have commissioning power but only a limited presence in providing housing needs, social care and waste management. In other words, as a result of central government policy, there are, in practice, currently far fewer opportunities for councils to cooperate. Since 1997, the New Labour government has promoted IMC through vertical drivers and the development; the operation of these policy initiatives is discussed following the framework of the editors. Current examples of IMC are notable for being driven by higher tiers of government, working with subordinate authorities in principal-agent relations. Collaboration between local authorities and intra-interand cross-sectoral partnerships are initiated by central government. In other words, IMC is shaped by hierarchical drivers from higher levels of government but, in practice, is locally varied and determined less by formula than by necessity and function. © 2007 Springer.

The discourse of academic seminars:structures and strategies of interaction

Seminar discussion is an important mode of instruction in Higher Education. However, the discourse of discussion in academic seminars has been little investigated. Until now, there has existed only a limited amount of empirically based language description which could be used to inform those working in the field of English for Academic Purposes. The present study investigates discussion in seminars on a MBA programme and offers frameworks to account for central aspects of the verbal interaction: exchange patterns; acts and moves initiating exchanges and strategies. Three subgenres of seminar discussion are examined: the discussion following the presentation by an outside speaker; the discussion following the presentation by students and non-presentation tutorial discussion. Exchanges are found to be basically two-part structures of initiation and response. Some extended patterns are brought to light and it is argued that the major impetus prolonging exchanges in discussion is a third-part move registering dissatisfaction with the initial responses given. Exchanges are observed to be driven by moves functioning as elicitations although acts at initiation both ask for information and ideas and propose them. Initiation may be complex and involves a mixture of the acts. Textual signalling and attitudinal strategies used in seminars are explicated. The latter are accounted for in terms of the face concerns of the speakers. The features are examined across the three subgenres. Some quantitative variations were observed. These variations are discussed in the light of situational variables such as levels of participant status and knowledge. Theoretical implications are drawn and applications for syllabus and methodology in English for Academic Purposes are suggested.

Issues in creating a corpus for EAP pedagogy and research

UK universities are accepting increasing numbers of students whose L1 is not English on a wide range of programmes at all levels. These students require additional support and training in English, focussing on their academic disciplines. Corpora have been used in EAP since the 1980s, mainly for research, but a growing number of researchers and practitioners have been advocating the use of corpora in EAP pedagogy, and such use is gradually increasing. This paper outlines the processes and factors to be considered in the design and compilation of an EAP corpus (e.g., the selection and acquisition of texts, metadata, data annotation, software tools and outputs, web interface, and screen displays), especially one intended to be used for teaching. Such a corpus would also facilitate EAP research in terms of longitudinal studies, student progression and development, and course and materials design. The paper has been informed by the preparatory work on the EAP subcorpus of the ACORN corpus project at Aston University. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An investigation into formal and functional characteristics of qualifications in legislative writing and its application to English for academic legal purposes.

The present investigation is based on a linguistic analysis of the 'Housing Act 1980' and attempts to examine the role of qualifications in the structuring of the legislative statement. The introductory chapter isolates legislative writing as a "sub-variety “of legal language and provides an overview of the controversies surrounding the way it is written and the problems it poses to its readers. Chapter two emphasizes the limitations of the available work on the description of language-varieties for the analysis of legislative writing and outlines the approach adopted for the present analysis. This chapter also gives some idea of the information-structuring of legislative provisions and establishes qualification as a key element in their textualisation. The next three chapters offer a detailed account of the ten major qualification-types identified in the corpus, concentrating on the surface form they take, the features of legislative statements they textualize and the syntactic positions to which they are generally assigned in the statement of legislative provisions. The emerging hypotheses in these chapters have often been verified through a specialist reaction from a Parliamentary Counsel, largely responsible for the writing of the ‘Housing Act 1980’• The findings suggest useful correlations between a number of qualificational initiators and the various aspects of the legislative statement. They also reveal that many of these qualifications typically occur in those clause-medial syntactic positions which are sparingly used in other specialist discourse, thus creating syntactic discontinuity in the legislative sentence. Such syntactic discontinuities, on the evidence from psycholinguistic experiments reported in chapter six, create special problems in the processing and comprehension of legislative statements. The final chapter converts the main linguistic findings into a series of pedagogical generalizations, offers indications of how this may be applied in EALP situations and concludes with other considerations of possible applications.

Computer-aided categorisation and quantification of connectives in English and Arabic (based on newspaper text corpora).

This study presents a detailed contrastive description of the textual functioning of connectives in English and Arabic. Particular emphasis is placed on the organisational force of connectives and their role in sustaining cohesion. The description is intended as a contribution for a better understanding of the variations in the dominant tendencies for text organisation in each language. The findings are expected to be utilised for pedagogical purposes, particularly in improving EFL teaching of writing at the undergraduate level. The study is based on an empirical investigation of the phenomenon of connectivity and, for optimal efficiency, employs computer-aided procedures, particularly those adopted in corpus linguistics, for investigatory purposes. One important methodological requirement is the establishment of two comparable and statistically adequate corpora, also the design of software and the use of existing packages and to achieve the basic analysis. Each corpus comprises ca 250,000 words of newspaper material sampled in accordance to a specific set of criteria and assembled in machine readable form prior to the computer-assisted analysis. A suite of programmes have been written in SPITBOL to accomplish a variety of analytical tasks, and in particular to perform a battery of measurements intended to quantify the textual functioning of connectives in each corpus. Concordances and some word lists are produced by using OCP. Results of these researches confirm the existence of fundamental differences in text organisation in Arabic in comparison to English. This manifests itself in the way textual operations of grouping and sequencing are performed and in the intensity of the textual role of connectives in imposing linearity and continuity and in maintaining overall stability. Furthermore, computation of connective functionality and range of operationality has identified fundamental differences in the way favourable choices for text organisation are made and implemented.

The role of the English language in the context of national development vision 2025 with specific reference to agriculture in Tanzania

After thirty years of vacillation, the Tanzanian government has made a firm decision to Swahilize its secondary education system. It has also embarked on an ambitious economic and social development programme (Vision 2025) to transform its peasant society into a modern agricultural community. However, there is a faction in Tanzania opposed to Kiswahili as the medium of education. Already many members of the middle and upper class their children to English medium primary schools to avoid the Kiswahili medium public schools and to prepare their children for the English medium secondary system presently in place. Within the education system, particularly at university level, there is a desire to maintain English as the medium of education. English is seen to provide access to the international scientific community, to cutting edge technology and to the global economy. My interest in this conflict of interests stems from several years' experience teaching English to students at Sokoine University of Agriculture. Students specialise in agriculture and are expected to work with the peasant population on graduation. The students experience difficulties studying in English and then find their Kiswahili skills insufficient to explain to farmers the new techniques and technologies that they have studied in English. They are hampered by a complex triglossic situation in which they use their mother tongue with family and friends, Kiswahili, the national language for early education and most public communication within Tanzania, and English for advanced studies. My aim in this thesis was - to study the language policy in Tanzania and see how it is understood and implemented; - to examine the attitudes towards the various languages and their various roles; - to investigate actual language behaviour in Tanzanian higher education. My conclusion is that the dysfunctionality of the present study has to be addressed. Diglossic public life in Tanzania has to be accommodated. The only solution appears to be a compromise, namely a bilingual education system which supports from all cases of society by using Kiswahili, together with an early introduction of English and its promotion as a privileged foreign language, so that Tanzania can continue to develop internally through Kiswahili and at the same time retain access to the globalising world through the medium of English.

Metaphor in (Arabic-into-English) translation with specific reference to metaphorical concepts and expressions in political discourse

Cognitive linguistics scholars argue that metaphor is fundamentally a conceptual process of mapping one domain of experience onto another domain. The study of metaphor in the context of Translation Studies has not, unfortunately, kept pace with the discoveries about the nature and role of metaphor in the cognitive sciences. This study aims primarily to fill part of this gap of knowledge. Specifically, the thesis is an attempt to explore some implications of the conceptual theory of metaphor for translation. Because the study of metaphor in translation is also based on views about the nature of translation, the thesis first presents a general overview of the discipline of Translation Studies, describing the major models of translation. The study (in Chapter Two) then discusses the major traditional theories of metaphor (comparison, substitution and interaction theories) and shows how the ideas of those theories were adopted in specific translation studies of metaphor. After that, the study presents a detailed account of the conceptual theory of metaphor and some hypothetical implications for the study of metaphor in translation from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The data and methodology are presented in Chapter Four. A novel classification of conceptual metaphor is presented which distinguishes between different source domains of conceptual metaphors: physical, human-life and intertextual. It is suggested that each source domain places different demands on translators. The major sources of the data for this study are (1) the translations done by the Foreign Broadcasting Information Service (FBIS), which is a translation service of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United Sates of America, of a number of speeches by the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein during the Gulf Crisis (1990-1991) and (2) official (governmental) Omani translations of National Day speeches of Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman.

Translation and peace:Arabic, English and Hebrew versions of Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives

The present thesis examines Palestinian-Israeli peace initiatives as politically negotiated texts and their different Arabic, English and Hebrew language versions. Its aim is to make a contribution to a deeper understanding of the role of translation and recontextualization of politically negotiated texts in situations of ongoing contemporary conflict. In modern Translation Studies, although research exists on the translation of political texts following functional (e.g. Schäffner 2002) or systemic-linguistic (e.g. Calzada-Pérez 2001) approaches or applying narrative theory (Baker 2006), peace initiatives and politically negotiated texts are still a largely under-researched genre of political texts. The thesis – which takes 31 Arabic, English and Hebrew language versions of 5 different Palestinian-Israeli peace initiatives as its corpus – operates within the framework of product-oriented Descriptive Translation Studies (Lambert and Van Gorp 1985) and Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1992). For all of the peace initiatives analysed, there exist several language versions which were made available in different contexts by different institutions and for different readerships and purposes. The thesis pursues a top-down approach. It begins with presenting the socio-cultural and political contexts of the production of the original versions of the respective peace initiatives (the source texts) and their different language versions (target texts), focusing on their underlying functions and principles of audience design. It then moves to examine how the textual profiles of the language versions of peace initiatives reflect aspects of ideology, political affiliation and power relations at both the macro- and micro-structural levels. The final step is to account for these aspects in terms of socio-political and institutional conditions of the production of the translations. The overall textual analysis demonstrates that when translated, peace initiatives can be interpreted differently by different institutions in their attempt to promote their respective political interests and narratives. Also, it is very frequently that translations produced in one specific institutional context are recontextualised for use in another one. Such recontextualisation goes hand in hand with further textual amendments. To summarize, the thesis demonstrates how these translations – as products – are (re)framed and (re)contextualized in different institutional settings in order to serve different purposes. These texts, thus, play different roles in situations of ongoing contemporary conflict depending on the institutional context in which they are presented and the purposes they set to serve. These main findings make an original contribution to the discipline of Translation Studies in respect of emphasizing the need to study translations in their socio-political, historical and institutional contexts.

An examination of the role of the concept of the community within the current reorganisation of English local government

The thesis will examine the role and impact of the concept of the community within the structural reorganisation of English local government between 1992 and 1995. The methodological approach adopted within this thesis has been to compare the use, application and significance of the community with a case study of a specific local authority and its preparations for reorganisation. The authority in question was Wychavon District Council located in the County of Hereford and Worcester. The conclusions from this case study were then compared to the role and significance of the community in the reviews of other local authorities in England. This study produced two important results. These were that there was an established body of literature which argued that the community could be of value to local government and that the community should be identified by measuring individuals sense of belonging and feelings of attachment, as well as such daily activities as shopping and working (which help to stimulate these feelings). The then Conservative Government even instructed the specially appointed Commission to apply this particular interpretation of the community to their reviews, and to attempt to base any new unitary authorities upon the social and spatial area it created. The Conservative Government also gave the Commission a Community Index to assist with the identification of communities, and appointed the pollsters MORI to support the Commission with the task of identifying the emotional and more subjective senses of community. The Commission eventually came to rely entirely on the MORI polls, and whilst these polls attempted to faithfully apply the Governments interpretation of the community, they unfortunately produced small and often complex communities, which the Commission felt could not be applied to its reviews. This therefore led to the community becoming a secondary consideration to the factors of cost and efficiency. Furthermore the problematic nature of the community - that is, the production of small and complex communities - was repeated in this thesis' own survey of community identities in the District of Wychavon. In fact this authority's proposals for reorganisation were based almost entirely upon the factors of cost, size and efficiency.

Aspects of the learner's dictionary with special reference to advanced Pakistani learners of English

The present work is an empirical investigation into the lq`reference skills' of Pakistani learners and their language needs on semantic, phonetic, lexical and pragmatic levels in the dictionary. The introductory chapter discusses the relatively problematic nature of lexis in comparison with the other aspects in EFL learning and spells out the aim of this study. Chapter two provides an analytical survey of the various types of research undertaken in different contexts of the dictionary and explains the eclectic approach adopted in the present work. Chapter three studies the `reference skills' of this category of learners in the background of highly sophisticated information structure of learners' dictionaries under evaluation and suggests some measures for improvement in this context. Chapter four considers various criteria, eg. pedagogic, linguistic and sociolinguistic for determining the macro-structure of learner's dictionary with a focus on specific Ll speakers. Chapter five is concerned with various aspects of the semantic information provided in the dictionaries matched against the needs of Pakistani learners with regard to both comprehension and production. The type, scale and presentation of grammatical information in the dictionary is analysed in chapter six with the object of discovering their role and utility for the learner. Chapter seven explores the rationale for providing phonological information, the extent to which this guidance is vital and the problems of phonetic symbols employed in the dictionaries. Chapter eight brings into perspective the historical background of English-Urdu bilingual lexicography and evalutes the currently popular bilingual dictionaries among the student community, with the aim of discovering the extent to which they have taken account of the modern tents of lexicography and investigating their validity as a useful reference tool in the learning of English language. The final chapter concludes the findings of individual aspects in a coherent fashion to assess the viability of the original hypothesis that learners' dictionaries if compiled with a specific set of users in mind would be more useful.

Maintenance of communication in primary classrooms : some evidence for the role of elicitation and code-switching in English medium schools in Kenya, with implications for teaching

This is a study of specific aspects of classroom interaction primary school level in Kenya. The study entailed the identification of the sources of particular communication problems during the change-over period from Kiswahili to English medium teaching in two primary schools. There was subsequently an examination of the language resources which were employed by teachers to maintain pupil participation in communication in the light of the occurrence of possibility of occurrence of specific communication problems. The language resources which were found to be significant in this regard concerned firstly the use of different elicitation types by teachers to stimulate pupils into giving responses and secondly teachers' recourse to code-switching from English to Kiswahili and vice-versa. It was also found in this study that although the use of English as the medium of instruction in the classrooms which were observed resulted in certain communication problems, some of these problems need not have arisen if teachers had been more careful in their use of language. The consideration of this finding, after taking into account the role of different elicitation types and code-switching as interpretable from data samples had certain implications which are specified in the study for teaching in Kenyan primary schools. The corpus for the study consisted of audio-recordings of English, Science and Number-Work lessons which were later transcribed. Relevant data samples were subsequently extracted from transcripts for analysis. Many of the samples have examples of cases of communication breakdowns, but they also illustrate how teachers maintained interaction with pupils who had yet to acquire an operational mastery of English. This study thus differs from most studies on classroom interaction because of its basic concern with the examination of the resources available to teachers for overcoming the problem areas of classroom communication.