APAC 2014

E-language Today: From web to corpus to classroom

Professor Ronald Carter

IMs

EmailSNSs

SMSDiscussion BoardsBlogs

WHY study e-language?

• Significance: 100 billion emails per day; 300 million tweets; 72 hours of new You Tube video. Language change in the 21st century.

ELT: learners, teachers, materials writers. (What is standard and what is not standard?)

New vocabulary and grammar: (e-banking; netiquette; trolls; flaming, spam; virus etc) plus:

New language

• logograms (2day); • non-standard forms (wot); • abbreviations (lol; BFN, OMG, TTYL)• emoticons # ;p ;) :-* • omissions (xlnt).• punctuation• New grammar: speech or writing?

A: Gotta go

B: ttylA: talk to you soonB: which means tomorrow right?A: I’d forgot that

•CANELC, the Cambridge and Nottingham e-Language

Corpus, a one million word corpus.

• Part of the two billion word Cambridge English corpus

CANELC contains:

More than one e-language variety (emails, blogs, texting, facebook, twitter)

Texts from a range of contributors (in terms of age, gender and occupation).

Texts covering a wide range of themes.

E-Language examples

Pronouns

Personal pronouns are particularly frequent, with you, I and it ranking highly, along with the demonstratives this and that.

This underlines the personal, immediate and real time nature of most e-communication. next week, next year, this morning, at the moment, last night.

Forgotten your password?: Spoken e-language grammar

Didn’t know that film was on tonight? (I)

Sounds good to me. (That/It)

Lots of things to tell you about the trip to Barcelona. (There are)

A: Are you going to Leeds this weekend?

B: Yes, I must. (go this weekend)

Spoken e-language grammar Ellipsis and utterance length

• Utterance chunking• Opening clauses with conjunctions• Independent dependent clauses.

A: Gotta goB: ttylA: talk to you soonB: which means tomorrow right?A: I’d forgot thatB: cos we’re seeing David.A: Must go. Alright. See you later alligator.

Texting and vagueness

Hi, been v busy with work, glad wk nearly over, v v tired! Ur wk ok? Re tomo, Jenns keen and I am kind of… ill pick you up at I dunno 6.45pm. Thatll give enough time to get there, park and that. X

Blogs: speakerly writers and writerly speakers

Right, so there I was sitting in Mick Jagger’s kitchen while he went about making us both afternoon tea. Well, you can imagine how long it took to get him to talk about the Rolling Stone’s latest album. Exactly.. You’ve got it. Over two minutes.

Closings in e-language

The most common closings in e-language are x, xx, xxx.

This most commonly features in SMS messages and least frequently in blog data.

Writing or Speech?

Internet language is identical to neither speech nor writing but selectively and adaptively displays properties of both…. It does things that neither of the other mediums does.

Crystal Internet Linguistics (Routledge, 2011)

ELT futures: e-language and communication

plus or minus? • The changing language

• The continuum from formal to informal language use

• Spoken language futures (skype; video-conferencing etc)

ELT futures: classroom power dynamics• mobile devices (tablets, smart phones, webcams) classroom

management and classroom interactivity

• bring the real world and authentic language into the classroom and take the classroom into the real world (supplement or substitute for real communication?)

• the ‘flipped’ classroom: learner autonomy; learner-centred to learner know-how to learner-empowered (24/7 access)

• personalised and adaptive learning and testing; blended courses.

ELT futures: some concerns

• Language and content development? [Free apps and freeware].

• Games and language learning; Multimodal learning (learning with film, u-Tube, video and image).

• Motivation and learning.

• Learning theory and learning styles: individualised and group learning.

• Is learning linear or a more complex, non-linear, dynamic process? Evidence that technologies enhance learning?

Speech, classrooms and the internet

• the internet provides:

examples of ‘real’ spoken language and also new genres of ‘speech-like’ written communication. We suggested that producing ‘written as if spoken’ language in the form of text messaging or online chat can sometimes scaffold students to then move on to real life speaking. Technology provides exciting opportunities for students to interact with spoken language in ways which allow them to replay, rehearse, and repeat oral language in non-threatening and supportive contexts … and provides them with opportunities to create their own listening materials….

Walker, A. and White, G. Technology Enhanced Language Learning (OUP, 2012).

Examples• Dragon dictation

• Voki http://www.voki.com/.

• Chatbots http://www.cleverbot.com/

Corpus technologies

Description of the language.

Learner language and learner profiles. (English Profile Project).

E-technologies: some conclusions

• create a more participatory, involved and motivated classroom culture

• digital technologies may be global but change is incremental, social, local, classroom-specific and culture-specific.

• rethink established pedagogy and wisdoms. • Teachers are the human channel between the

student and the technology. We should continue to be alert to language change and continue to be our own experts.

• xxx?

Further Reading: e-communication• Baron, N. Always On: Language in an online and mobile world (Routledge

2008)• Goddard, A and Geesin, B Language and Technology (Routledge, 2011)• Crystal, D. Internet Linguistics (Routledge, 2011).• Crystal, D. Language and The Internet (CUP, 2006)• Davis, B and Brewer, J. Electronic Discourse: Linguistic individuals in

virtual space (Bloomsbury, 1997).• Page, R. Stories and Social Media (Routledge, 2011)• Seargeant, P. and Tagg, C. (eds) Language and Social Media:

communication and community online. (Palgrave, 2013). • Stanley, G. Language Learning with Technology. (CUP, 2013)• Tagg, C.The Discourse of Text Messaging: analysis of SMS communication.

(Continuum, 2012). • Tannen, D. and Trester A.M. (eds) (2013) Discourse 2.0: Language and

new media Georgetown University Press, • Sindoni, M. G. Spoken and Written Discourse in online interaction

(Routledge, 2013).• Walker, A. and White, G. Technology Enhanced Language Learning (OUP,

2012).

Further Reading: English Language

Carter, R, McCarthy, M, Mark, G and O’Keeffe, A.

English Grammar Today: An A-Z of Spokenand Written Grammar (CUP, 2011)

Contact: ronald.carter@nottingham.ac.uk