due to Dr. Richard Schmidt, my second reader, for pushing me to clarify my work ... The paper reports on a longitudinal study of the development of L2 German ...
QUALITIES AS NOUNS: THE EMERGENCE OF GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR IN A LONGITUDINAL L2 GERMAN CORPUS
A SCHOLARLY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE MASTER’S DEGREE IN SECOND LANGUAGE STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF SECOND LANGUAGE STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MĀNOA APRIL 2008
By Castle Sinicrope
First Reader: Dr. Lourdes Ortega Second Reader: Dr. Richard Schmidt
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful to Dr. Lourdes Ortega for her patient guidance, insightful feedback, and supportive encouragement throughout this scholarly paper – as well as throughout my MA studies in the Second Language Studies department. From the conceptualization (and reconceptualizations) of the study to the dotting of my i’s and the crossing of my t’s, I benefited from her great wisdom in all things second language studies, from research design to academic writing. Through her own scholarly work and her committed advising, she inspired me to produce the best work I can. Any errors that remain are mine alone. Immense thanks are also due to Dr. Richard Schmidt, my second reader, for pushing me to clarify my work as well as question my research with a critical eye. I am also grateful to entire Second Language Studies department, both for its support and its students and professors who encouraged scholarly reflection in a community of teachers and researchers. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Georgetown University German Department, its faculty, students, and staff, for their on-going support and collaboration over the past six years. Throughout the many years, I have been encouraged, pushed, and rewarded to engage in the research that culminates in this scholarly paper. In particular, I must thank Dr. Heidi Byrnes for her motivating presence, her boundless energy, and her high expectations, as well as her patience to spend endless hours coding and checking the data in this study. I would also like to thank Dr. John Norris for inspiring me to abandon international relations for applied linguistics and for bridging my undergraduate and graduate experiences through his work in the Georgetown University German Department. Throughout my studies at UH, he has provided guidance and counsel, including discussing this research project, along with many others, on runs through Kailua’s marshes. Lastly, I would like to thank my family and close friends for their constant support throughout graduate school. Through the best of times and the worst of times, they were always there to remind me, whether I wanted to remember or not, that I choose my path in life, and my life, as with my studies and this paper, is what I make of it.
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ABSTRACT The paper reports on a longitudinal study of the development of L2 German writing ability in a college-level program. Drawing on the Systemic Functional Linguistics notion of grammatical metaphor, the study investigated the development and emergence of qualities expressed as nouns in L2 writing. Qualitative and quantitative corpus data revealed expanding grammatical metaphor use as learners advanced through the German curriculum, representing a shift from concrete and informal to abstract and more formal writing. Findings for overall grammatical metaphor use were corroborated by case studies of qualities expressed as adjectives and nouns. A comparison of word frequency, grammatical metaphors, and developmental stages also suggested a relationship between word frequency and emergence of metaphorical forms.
INTRODUCTION Over the past fifteen years, grammatical metaphor has emerged as a promising but understudied area within the research on the development of academic writing in second languages. Identified by Halliday and the other systemic functional linguists (e.g., Eggins et al, 1993; Halliday, 1985, 1998, 1999; Martin, 1993; Ravelli, 1988, 2003), grammatical metaphor is a linguistic resource for condensing and restructuring information in a grammatically incongruent form, a type of writing highly valued by academic and technical discourse communities. The notion of grammatical incongruence, the defining characteristic of grammatical metaphor, refers to an “unnatural” relationship between meaning (semantics) and its expression (lexicogrammatical forms). In grammatically incongruent language, meanings that would naturally be expressed by one grammatical category, such as processes expressed by verbs, are remapped to a different grammatical category, for example, processes expressed as
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nouns. By way of example, Halliday and Matthiessen (1999, p. 230) provide the following illustration of grammatical metaphor: i) The truest CONFIRMATION of the ACCURACY of our KNOWLEDGE is the EFFECTIVENESS of our ACTIONS.i A translation into grammatically congruent language, according to Halliday and Matthiessen, would read something like “If we act effectively, this most truly confirms that we know things accurately.” Thus, grammatical metaphor allows the compact expression of certain meanings (e.g., actions such as to confirm, act and know and qualities such as accurate and effective) via pairings with incongruent grammatical categories (e.g., nouns such as CONFIRMATION, ACTION, KNOWLEDGE, ACCURACY,
and EFFECTIVENESS).
Grammatical metaphor has been investigated in first language acquisition (L1) (Christie, 2002; Derewianka, 1995, 2003; Halliday, 1999; Painter, 2003; Schleppegrell, 2004b) and second language (L2) acquisition of English (Jones, 1990; Schleppegrell, 2004a). To date, the research has focused predominantly on two manifestations of grammatical metaphor: processes/actions expressed as entities (i.e., verbs remapped as nouns) and processes/actions expressed as qualities (i.e., verbs remapped as adjectives), for example, develop (verb) DEVELOPMENT (noun) and develop (verb) DEVELOPING (adjective). Furthermore, with the exception of Derewianka’s indepth case study analysis (1995, 2003), most researchers have provided and discussed examples of grammatical metaphor without a systematic investigation of its development and emergence. Finally, few studies shed light on the development of grammatical metaphor in L1s or L2s other than English (but see Achugar & Colombi, 2008; and Colombi, 2002, 2006 for heritage Spanish; Ryshina-Pankova, 2006 for L2 German). Given such gaps in existing research, the goal of the present study is to describe the emergence of a less commonly studied type of metaphor, namely qualities expressed as nouns (long LENGTH) in developing L2 German writing. To achieve this
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goal, I examine not only the developmental types and range of grammatical metaphors but also the relationship between specific qualities expressed as adjectives and nouns in a longitudinal corpus that spans several years of language learning. The nature of grammatical metaphor and its role in academic writing Grammatical metaphor has a powerful effect on writing and is recognized as one of the most distinctive markers of academic discourse in languages such as English and Spanish. As described above, instead of expressing events and experiences congruently and naturally as everyday language does, grammatical metaphor reconstrues events and experiences in a grammatically incongruent form. To expand on the introductory definition of grammatical metaphor, we can say that in congruent language not only processes and actions are realized as verbal groups, but also participants as nominal groups, qualities as adjectives, logical connections as conjunctions, and circumstances as adverbs and prepositional phrases. In contrast, in grammatically incongruent language, nouns express processes (e.g., DEVELOPMENT, GROWTH) and qualities (e.g., EFFECTIVENESS, ACCURACY) and verbs reconstrue logical connections (e.g., X CAUSES
Y, X LEADS TO Y). With the following example, Christie (2002, p. 47) illustrated the
potential of grammatical metaphor by contrasting the congruent wording of a sentence with its incongruent or metaphorical version: ii) Congruent:
The soldiers attacked the town with guns and then removed the treasure.
Incongruent: The soldiers’ ATTACK on the town with guns LED TO the REMOVAL of the treasure. Here, grammatical metaphors result from the following shifts between grammatical categories: attacked (verb) the ATTACK (noun), and (conjunction) LED TO (verb), removed (verb) REMOVAL
(noun).
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Use of grammatical metaphor can have a profound impact on text organization by condensing clauses into phrases, enabling reasoning within clauses, and allowing writers a greater degree of elaboration, particularly of the noun phrase. Halliday (1998) argued that the nominal group’s potential for more or less indefinite elaboration is the reason for its influence as a powerful meaning-making resource. For example, the process expressed by the verb increasing in the clause poverty is increasing can be reworded metaphorically as a quality expressed by an adjective, as in the phrase INCREASING poverty, or as an entity expressed by a noun, as in the INCREASE
in poverty (Halliday, 1998). In both cases, the metaphorical rewording packs the verb
into the noun phrase and allows the writer to modify the noun phrase and expand the phrase with another verb, as in drastically INCREASING poverty or the sharp INCREASE in poverty spurred nation-wide revolts. Past theoretical research has investigated grammatical metaphor in scientific and academic writing and considered how use of grammatical metaphor results in texts valued by those discourse communities (Eggins, Wignell, & Martin, 1993; Halliday, 1998; Martin, 1993; Ravelli, 1988). In his historical analysis of language and the development of scientific English, Halliday (1998) described the relationship between the emergence of grammatical metaphor in scientific writing and the corresponding ability of early writers such as Galileo and Newton to create technical taxonomies and chains of reasoning. From a social sciences perspective, Eggins, Wignell, and Martin (1993) showed that nominalization, that is, the encoding of processes (verbs), qualities (adjectives) and logical relations (conjunctions) as entities (nouns) characterizes the discourse of history. These nominalizations remove the individual agents and allow the historian to interpret history. The following example from Eggins, Wignell, and Martin illustrates how the agents of the changes have been removed through the grammatically
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metaphorical use of change as a noun, allowing the historian to de-emphasize the actors in history (1993, p. 78): iii) Fundamental CHANGES marking the beginning of the modern world took place. Similar analyses by Martin (1993) revealed grammatical metaphor’s function in creating not only abstraction in history expositions but also technicality in science reports. Martin argues that through grammatical metaphor, history interprets old knowledge whereas science invents new knowledge. Science, for example, takes common sense notions, such as hearing, and “translates” them into technical and specialized knowledge, such as sound (p. 225): iv) SOUND is a compression wave that can be heard. Beyond theoretical research on grammatical metaphor, different studies have traced its emergence and development in first, heritage, and second language acquisition, areas of grammatical metaphor research to which I turn next. Development and emergence of grammatical metaphor in first and second languages Findings from first language research provide different perspectives on the emergence and developmental stages of grammatical metaphor. In his linguistic biography of a child, Halliday (1999) examined early language development and argued that children learn to control grammatical metaphor, particularly the nominalizing type after age nine. Looking at earlier development, Painter (2003) focused on children’s pre-grammatical metaphor period leading up to the emergence and control of metaphorical ability. Based on a detailed longitudinal case study of her son, Derewianka (1995, 2003) proposed a series of chronological stages leading to the full emergence of grammatical metaphor. They are illustrated in Table 1. In the present study, I focus on Process + Range constructions and grammatical metaphors with a brief discussion of technical terms.
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Table 1. L1 developmental stages leading to grammatical metaphor (based on Derewianka, 2003) Category Stage Example M: Where would you like to hang the fan? Pun S: This is a silly suggestions, but it might be cool….get Precursors of it? …cool ‘excellent’ and cool ‘like a breeze.’ grammatical metaphor M. It’s a bit windy out here. Lexical metaphor S: I think it’s the gods having a flatulence. Protometaphor
Transcategorization Then a chemical change occurs. Rankshifting A boy named John Reagan start it of . Process + Range
Types of grammatical metaphor
Technical term Grammatical metaphor
The pilot aged 20 from Clare in South Australia was doing a cross-country training flight. (no example) There was still a lot of POVERTY and BACKWARDNESS. [People were still very poor and backward.] From these two encounters, Slake’s CONFIDENCE grows. [From these two encounters, Slake becomes more confident.]
Note: Examples attested for Nick between ages 8-13 Of the developmental stages outlined in Table 1, Derewianka ascribed Process + Range constructions a unique role in grammatical metaphor’s developmental trajectory: In particular, the Process + Range construction models one of the most significant features of grammatical metaphor – the way in which the nominalising of the process makes available the potential of the nominal group through modification (2003, p. 193). Derewianka also drew a distinction between technical terms and grammatical metaphor. In technical terms, the concept behind the term is defined unambiguously and precisely, and the original underlying metaphor is no longer “in play” (2003, p. 195). That is, there is no longer tension between the meaning’s expression in a metaphorical and incongruent rather than alternative and congruent form. However, in terms of both broad social language use and individual language development, she argued that can be difficult to determine at what point grammatical metaphor loses its metaphoricity and achieves technical term status.
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Moving developmentally beyond Painter (2003) and Halliday (1999), Christie (2002) described the emergence of noncongruent realizations and nominalizations in a child’s secondary education years. Such linguistic abilities, Christie contended, result from student exposure to and interaction with the abstract language of schooling, particularly written texts. Although Halliday (1999), Christie (2002), and Schleppegrell (2004b) positioned the emergence of grammatical metaphor at the onset of adolescence and entry into secondary education, Derewianka (2003) suggested that grammatical metaphor development depends, in part, on the demands of writing tasks on children and their exposure to written texts containing grammatical metaphor. Similarly, Painter (2003) argued that the ability to use grammar develops largely in response to “functional demands of written language” (p. 152). Across the spectrum of studies of grammatical metaphor in writing, researchers have emphasized the need to provide explicit grammatical metaphor instruction in order to apprentice language users, L1 and L2, to academic and technical discourses and provide them with new ways of structuring their writing (Colombi, 2002; Jones, 1990; Martin, 1993; Ravelli, 1988; Schleppegrell, 2004a). For example, recent work by Colombi (2002, 2006) and Achugar and Colombi (2008) analyzed the academic writing development of university-based heritage Spanish speakers, documenting their use of grammatical metaphor as one of several emergent lexico-grammatical features. Based on her findings, Colombi (2002) cited nominalization as “the most important feature of [heritage speakers’] development from more oral language to a more academic register” (p. 77). In later work, Colombi and Achugar (2006, 2008) focused on two of the most frequent kinds of grammatical metaphor that characterize academic Spanish writing: processes and actions (verbs) remapped as entities (nouns) or as qualities (adjectives). Table 2 offers some examples.
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Table 2. Grammatical metaphors in Colombi (2006) Processes remapped as entities Processes remapped as qualities la DIVISIÓN (DIVISION) conclusiones PRODUCTIVAS (PRODUCTIVE conclusions) la LIBERACIÓN (LIBERATION)
cultura y sociedad DOMINANTES (DOMINANT culture and society)
la TRANSMISSION (TRANSMISSION)
reformas PROGRESISTAS (PROGRESSIVE reforms)
Research on the emergence and use of grammatical metaphor in the writing of L2 learners has focused predominantly on academic writing development in L2 English (e.g., Jones, 1990; Schleppegrell, 2004b). Jones (1990) and Schleppegrell (2004a) compared L1 and L2 English writing and analyzed how both groups use grammatical metaphor to create academic discourse. Such analyses revealed that emerging L2 English writers relied less on grammatical metaphor and more on subordination and modal verbs in their writing than proficient English writers. For these developing writers, these linguistic choices often resulted in a more informal, wordy, and less technical writing style. Examples in Table 3 from Schleppegrell (2004a) illustrate aspects of this contrast by comparing what was judged as proficient writing (typically coming from first language writers) and novice writing (typically coming from second language writers) by an instructor in a college-level science course. Table 3. Grammatical metaphor in proficient vs. novice writing (Schleppegrell, 2004a) Proficient writer Novice writer DAB has a temperature DEPENDENCE.
Diffusion coefficient among other things depend largely on temperature.
The three temperatures of acetone that were investigated produced calculated DAB values which increased with INCREASING temperature.
The diffusivity is higher when temperature is raise.
Compared with examples from the novice writer, examples from the proficient writer show grammatical metaphor’s ability to create technicality (temperature dependence) and condense
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meaning by reasoning intraclausally (with increasing temperature) instead of interclausally (when temperature is raise). Preliminary observations for grammatical metaphor in L2 German have been made in Ryshina-Pankova’s examination (2006) of coherence and cohesion. She traced the development of grammatical metaphor in the Theme position, the position before the finite verb: v) Diese KRITIK von Imperialismus ist sehr wichtig eben heute This CRITIQUE of imperialism is very important, even today (Ibid, p. 140) Ryshina-Pankova found that grammatical metaphor in the Theme position progressed from emerging nominal constructions in intermediate writing to original and fresh grammatical metaphors in advanced L2 German writing, nevertheless below the grammatical metaphor use of native Germans, in terms of quantity, range, and effectiveness of use.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS Although Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) characterized grammatical metaphors of the type quality expressed as nouns as one of the two most pervasive types of grammatical metaphor, only Derewianka (1995; 2003) provided a full description of their emergence and use in L1 acquisition. To add an L2 dimension to our existing understanding of this type of grammatical metaphor’s development, the following research questions guide the present investigation of its emergence in a longitudinal corpus of L2 German writing. The first research question aims to provide a broad description of grammatical metaphor’s emergence: Research Question 1: How does grammatical metaphor in the form of qualities expressed as nouns emerge in L2 German writing in terms of developmental types, range of use, and frequency? The second research question focuses on the congruent and incongruent expressions of particular qualities throughout the corpus:
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Research Question 2: What can be learned from analyzing case study pairs of qualities expressed as adjectives and nouns across proficiency levels and within individual writers longitudinally? Finally, the third research question probes a new and hitherto unexplored approach to the study of grammatical metaphor: word frequency. Although the intuition that congruent realizations are more frequent than their corresponding incongruent grammatical metaphors seems implicit in existing work, no research has explicitly examined the relationship between frequency and emergence of grammatical metaphor. Thus, the third and final research question explores word frequency as a new means of studying and understanding grammatical metaphor: Research Question 3: What insights do corpus-based frequency rankings add to an analysis of emerging grammatical metaphor?
METHODOLOGY Curricular Context Over a three-year period from 1997-2000, the Georgetown University German Department (GUGD) developed and established a content-based curriculum with the explicit goal of promoting the acquisition of content as well as acquisition of the German language. Entitled “Developing Multiple Literacies,” the program comprises five curricular levels that reject the divide so common in higher education language departments between contentindifferent courses (lower level courses) and language-indifferent courses (upper level courses). To bridge this gap, the GUGD’s curriculum targets the development of advanced forms of L2 literacy beginning in the lowest level and progressing through the entire program. The curriculum consists of five levels (Developing Multiple Literacies, n.d.): Level 1: Introductory German: Contemporary Germany Level 2: Intermediate Germany: Experiencing the German-Speaking World Level 3: Advanced German: German Stories, German Histories
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Level 4: Choice of one content course among several Level 5: Choice of one content course among several The first three levels must be taken in a fixed sequence, each level either as one-semester intensive course (6 credit hours per week) or as two semester-long non-intensive course (3 credit hours per week). At Levels 4 and 5, students may choose courses in different thematic areas, all considered comparable in difficulty. The present study investigates students’ writing as they traversed Levels 2 through 4. All writing for Level 4 was taken from the elective course Text in Context, which places particular emphasis on written genres. Because Text in Context is required of majors and minors and is highly recommended to all students who have completed Level 3, it was an ideal source for Level 4 data in this study. Participants The data came from the writings of 14ii college-age students as they progressed from intermediate through advanced German courses in the undergraduate program at Georgetown University. All students completed at least 16 credit hours during their study of German at Georgetown. The data for the longitudinal cohort in the present study (k= 42) are a subset of a much larger corpus of L2 German writing (k = 474), investigated for the purpose of assessing student learning in the new curriculum (Byrnes, 2002; Byrnes, Maxim, Norris, & RyshinaPankova, 2005; Developing Multiple Literacies, n.d.). Corpus Data were collected from genre-based writing tasks that students complete at the end of each curricular level. In the German Department’s content-oriented curriculum, genre-based writing tasks play a central role in the learning experience (Byrnes & Sprang, 2004), and students are well-accustomed to the guidelines and expectations. The tasks, summarized in the
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Appendix, were designed to represent the learners’ writing performance at the end of each curricular level and were chosen from a distinct genre that characterizes learning in the classroom at that level. For this study, the collected data were first drafts of the final assignment for curricular Levels 2, 3, and 4, which were written at home, within the span of a week. Although Level 1 data were also potentially available for analysis, two reasons led to their final exclusion: First, with the exclusion of Level 1, the size of the longitudinal cohort doubled in size from N = 7 to N = 14. That is, the requirement of data from all four consecutive levels halved the number of potential participants. Second, preliminary analysis of grammatical metaphor in Level 1 revealed a clear preference for congruent expression in student writing with few or no instances of qualities expressed as nouns. Of the few metaphorical forms that appeared, most resembled the Process + Range type constructions that Derewianka has identified (cf. Table 1), such as Angst haben (to be afraid, lit. to have fear) and Glück haben (to be lucky, lit. to have luck). The only tokens of fully emergent grammatical metaphor were GESUNDHEIT (HEALTH) and KRANKHEIT (SICKNESS) that represented the qualities gesund (healthy) and krank (sick) respectively. By excluding Level 1 data, this study assumes little or no presence of grammatical metaphor in Level 1, the first curricular level, and draws on a larger pool of students’ data from Levels 2-4 to explore the development of grammatical metaphor. The resulting longitudinal corpus of student writing (N = 14, k= 42) comprised 36,898 words, with each learner contributing approximately 650 words at Level 2, 750 words at Level 3, and 1,250 words at Level 4. As part of previous studies of syntactic complexity in the larger corpus (Byrnes, Maxim, Norris, & Ryshina-Pankova, 2005; Norris, 2008) all data had been hand-coded for T-units and clause types following the definition of T-unit as an independent
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clause with all its dependent and embedded clauses (Hunt, 1966; Ortega & Norris, 2004). Table 5 describes the size of the corpus in terms of number of words, T-units, and clauses. Table 5. Corpus size in words, T-units, and clauses Level N/k Words m s Total m Level 2
14
643.14
123.45 9,004
Level 3
14
746.43
90.17 10,450 59.64
Level 4
14
All Levels
42
T-units s Total
69.21 12.10
M
Clauses s Total
969
44.21 13.30
619
4.92
835
40.64 11.01
569
1,246.00 207.94 17,444 87.64 14.17
1227
53.00 17.40
742
36,898
3,301
1,930
Note. N/k: Number of writers and number of writing samples.
Features of the corpus’ syntactic complexity had also been previously described, including mean length of T-unit, mean length of clause, and clauses per T-unit. Table 6 shows general increases in mean length of T-unit and mean length of clause across curricular levels with a slight increase followed by a decrease in clauses per T-unit. These numbers suggest that, although the clauses and the T-units continue to grow in length, the writers, particularly at Level 4, rely less on subordination and more on other means for complexifying their writing. Table 6. Syntactic complexity of corpus Level T-unit Length m s Level 2 9.33 1.79
Clause Length m s 5.71 0.78
Clauses/T-Unit m S 1.65 0.22
Level 3
12.56
1.43
7.47
0.63
1.69
0.20
Level 4
14.3
1.88
8.97
1.09
1.60
0.14
One possible explanation is that, as the writers become more advanced learners, they depend less on clausal elaboration and more on phrasal elaboration (Byrnes & Sinicrope, 2008; Norris, 2005). Grammatical metaphor’s ability to reword clauses as phrases might play a role in these syntactic developments in two ways: 1) in the overall lengthening of clauses through nominalization and elaboration, and 2) in the reduction of clauses per T-units through shifts from clausal configurations to phrases (i.e., from interclausal to intraclausal reasoning). 15
Coding To address the developmental questions posed in the current study, data coding encompassed the identification of a range of metaphorical forms, from Process + Range-like expressions and fixed phrases to full-fledged grammatical metaphors. Following Ravelli (1988) and Ryshina-Pankova (2006), two devices for detecting grammatical metaphor were used in the coding phase: derivation and agnation. In derivation, the presence of derivational suffixes often marks a class shift, such as a shift from verb to noun, and serves as a signal that the form in question may be incongruent and should be further analyzed. For example, the productive German suffix -keit marks the derivation of the noun NOTWENDIGKEIT (necessity) from the adjective notwendig (necessary) in the following grammatical metaphor. Unless otherwise noted, all examples come from the learner data with misspellings and non-targetlike choices left intact. (1)
die NOTWENDIGKEIT einer wirtschaftlichen, politischen, und institutionellen Integration the NECESSITY of an economic, political, and institutional integration (Student 1096, Level 4)
Agnation, in contrast, refers to the fact that most grammatical metaphors have corresponding clausal realizations. That is, grammatical metaphor can be unpacked from incongruent phrases into congruent clauses, as illustrated in (2) and (3). (2)
Metaphorical:
Fritz-vannahme erklärte auch DEN WERT DES SPRACHELERNEN. Fritz-vannahme also explained the VALUE OF LANGUAGE LEARNING. (Student 2080, Level 4)
(3)
Congruent Agnate: Fritz-vanname erklärte auch wie wertvoll es ist, Sprache zu lernen. Fritz-vannahme also explained how valuable it is to learn languages.
Although derivation and agnation can be useful for detecting grammatical metaphor, both Ravelli and Ryshina-Pankova note that they have shortcomings: Not all derivational suffixes denote metaphorical change, and not every incongruent form can be reworded congruently. Thus, they were regarded as devices rather than rules in this study.
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Final identification of grammatical forms followed a conservative approach outlined by Derewianka (1995), in which she argued that the criterion of being “unpackable” is a necessary prerequisite for grammatical metaphoricity: The term grammatical metaphor should be reserved for those instances which are “unpackable,” where every step between the most congruent and the most metaphorical versions of the agnate clauses is relatable to the system and all unpackings are related systematically (Chapter 8). Such a conservative approach differs from more liberal interpretations of grammatical metaphor (e.g., Martin, 1992). In past liberal interpretations of grammatical metaphor, the term grammatical metaphor has included generalizing nominals (e.g., process, action, event), nominalizations of mental processes (e.g., idea, concept), text references (e.g., this, that), and metadiscoursal nominals (e.g., example, point, conclusion). In contrast, the definition of grammatical metaphor in this study required that a metaphorical wording be rewordable as a corresponding clausal configuration with similar lexical items. Examples (4) and (5) below show generalizing and metadiscoursal nominals process and point which have been excluded on the basis of Derewianka’s more conservative approach to grammatical metaphor: (4)
Generalizing nominal (excluded): Prozess (process) …aber ich sehe gefährliche Elitismus in ein paar Aspekte des Prozess …but I see dangerous elitism in several aspects of the process. (Student 3043, Level 4)
(5)
Metadiscoursal nominal (excluded): Punkt (point) Der Punkt ist nicht, dass das heutige Europa und das damalige Amerika gleich sind The point is not that contemporary Europe and the earlier America are the same. (Student 2106, Level 4)
Use of diversity in example (6), however, fits within a conservative definition by virtue of being “unpackable” into a clausal structure:
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(6)
Grammatical metaphor (included): VIELFALT (DIVERSITY) Ähnlich wie die EU ist die USA bekannt wegen ihrer VIELFALT. Similar to the EU, the USA is known because of its DIVERSITY. Unpacked: Similar to the EU, the USA is known because it is diverse. (Student 3110, Level 4) In terms of metaphorical types and the development of grammatical metaphor from Level
2 to 4, Process + Range constructions were included because they represent developmental forms and are evidence for the emergence of incongruent modes of meaning-making. Although Process + Range constructions traditionally fall under the category of verbal processes expressed as nouns, German also exhibits Process + Range-like constructions where an adjectival quality, rather than a verbal process, is expressed metaphorically as a Range with a lexically empty verb. Examples from the L2 German corpus express predominantly affective and emotional states, including Angst haben (to be afraid, lit. to have fear), Glück haben (to be lucky, lit. to have luck), and Erfolg haben (to be successful, lit. to have success). Because these early emerging prototypes appear as the most frequent form of qualities construed as nouns in the lower levels and to differing degrees in high levels, they are included in coding and analysis. Correspondingly, the same meaning could be expressed as qualities in adjective form: glücklich, ängstlich, and erfolgreich (lucky, afraid, and successful). One could argue that the so-called congruent realizations appear to be derived from the so-called incongruent, nominal forms by way of the derivational suffixes –lich and –reich. Semantically, however, they express qualities: the quality of being afraid, the quality of being lucky, and the quality of being successful. The nominal forms in these affective and emotive expressions have their own grammatical power of objectification. As such, they merit further study to investigate what kind of role they might play within a conceptual and developmental approach to grammatical metaphor in L2 German.
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Also included in coding and analysis were a group of developmental grammatical metaphors in the form of fixed phrases and collocations.iii Although fixed phrases offer limited potential for modification of the nominal group, they show a progression from congruent to incongruent modes of expression, that is, from adjectival to nominal forms. Examples from the student data ranged from text organization collocations to spatial expressions, such as im Allgemeinen (generally, lit. in the general) from allgemein (general) and in der Nähe (near, lit. in the vicinity/nearby). Fixed phrases and Process + Range constructions will be referred to as metaphorical forms throughout, a term that also includes full-fledged grammatical metaphors. Excluded from coding and analysis, however, were grammatical metaphors that have solidified as technical terms, such as die Arbeitslosigkeit (unemployment), die Souveränität (sovereignty), and die Fremdenfeindlichkeit (xenophobia). As past researchers have acknowledged, there is no clear division between status as grammatical metaphor and status as a technical term (Derewianka, 1995; 2003; Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999). However, in cases of grammatical metaphor, the word or phrase is characterized by tension between its incongruent, metaphorical expression and a potentially more congruent, natural expression. In instances of technical terms, in contrast, the notion is defined precisely and unambiguously without tension between the meaning and the lexico-grammatical form. Coding in this study drew on the surrounding context to identify technical terms where metaphoricity had been lost and grammatical metaphors where metaphorical meanings were still “in play” (Derewianka, 1995; 2003). Table 7 illustrates the differences. In the SICHERHEIT (SECURITY/SECURENESS/CERTAINTY) example, the same learner, 1097, exhibits technical use, referring to internal and external security (in line with national security) and metaphorical use, referring to the secureness (i.e., how secure) the European Union is. Similarly, the examples for
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STABILITÄT (STABILITY) contrast its use as a highly specialized technical term, Preisstablität (price stability) in conjunction with another highly specialized technical term, Inflationsrate (inflation rate) with its use as a grammatical metaphor to describe how stable great American political institutions are. Finally, the two examples for Freiheit (freedom) show its use as a technical term, as an example of an abstract value, and its use as grammatical metaphor to elaborate on the qualities, being creative and being free, that are prerequisites for a free market. Table 7. Context-dependent technical terms and grammatical metaphors Word
Sicherheit
Technical Use Die Begründung ist aktuell heute wie gestern: innere- und außere Sicherheit, Wirtschaftswachstum, eine beachtliche Einheit zu sein.
Metaphorical Use Die Europäier müssen die SICHERHEIT ihrer Union sich selbst versichern.
The reason is timely today as yesterday: internal and external security, economic growth to be a formidable unity.
The Europeans must ensure the SECURENESS/SECURITY of their union themselves.
(Student 1097, Level 4)
Stabilität
Die Länder, die vorher eine hohe Inflationsrate hatten, können jetzt die Preisstabilität genießen.
Aber durch den Universalismus der Bundesregierung gibt es in Amerika ein sicheres Vertrauen in der STABILITÄT der größeren politischen Institution.
The countries that previously had a high inflation rate can now enjoy price stability.
But through the universalism of the federal government there exists in America a firm faith in the STABILITY of larger political institutions.
(Student 2086, Level 4)
Freiheit
(Student 1097, Level 4)
(Student 2075, Level 4)
Die EU ist an Ideale und Werte, wie Freiheit und Demokratie, gegründet.
Wir glauben, dass die Kreativität und FREIHEIT der Bürger die Voraussetzung für eine auf wissen und technologie basierende Marktwirtschaft und Produktivität sind.
The EU is founded on ideals and values like freedom and democracy.
We believe that the creativity and FREEDOM of the citizens are pre-requisites for a market economy and productivity based on knowledge and technology.
(Student 2098, Level 4)
(Student 2086, Level 4)
In light of the relative newness of L2 grammatical metaphor studies, coding followed a joint coding approach rather than independent coding and inter-coder reliability method. All data
20
were double coded by two raters, and cases of discrepancies between raters were resolved through discussion. By showing detailed definitions and examples, it is hoped that readers and future researchers will benefit from the comprehensive information, should they wish to undertake similar analyses with L2 data of their own. For these reasons, the findings presented below should not be read in statistical terms but rather as one among a variety of possible descriptions and interpretations of the data.
RESULTS Research Question 1: How does grammatical metaphor in the form of qualities expressed as nouns emerge in L2 German writing in terms of developmental types, range of use, and frequency? Analysis of the corpus revealed a general development along the curricular levels from a smaller range of metaphorical forms to a broader range. The comprehensive hand-coding revealed not only an increase in overall grammatical metaphor use but also an increase in the variability of its use: Data from the upper levels exhibited the widest range of different types of metaphorical forms, particularly full-fledged grammatical metaphor, as well as a simultaneous higher use of particular grammatical metaphors. Table 8 provides an overview of metaphorical forms across curricular levels. Table 8. Metaphorical forms across curricular levels Level Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Total
Process + Range constructions
Fixed phrases
Grammatical metaphor
Total
Types
Tokens
Types
Tokens
Types
Tokens
Types
Tokens
2 2 6
13 3 19
5 3 4
13 5 7
21 15 62
37 47 190
28 20 72
63 57 216
35
25
274
336
21
To show the developmental trajectory of the participants, level-by-level analysis is presented, followed by a brief analysis of different types of metaphorical forms across curricular levels. Data from Level 2 in Table 9 show a rough balance between the earlier emergent stages, Process + Range constructions and fixed phrases, and the later, more developed grammatical metaphor stage. Process + Range constructions and fixed phrases are dominated by two metaphorical forms whose metaphoricity has by-and-large been lost: 12 instances of Angst haben (to be afraid, lit. to have fear) and 7 cases of in Frieden (in peace). For both expressions, the “congruent” realization is less natural and, furthermore, does not led to a change from phrasal to clausal configuration: ängstlich sein (lit. to be afraid) and friedlich (peaceful). Other emergent metaphorical forms also describe emotive and affective states, such as Mut haben (to have courage), and in Ruhe (in quiet/stillness) or spatial relationships, such as in der Abstand (in the distance) and in der Nähe (in the vicinity). Table 9. Metaphorical forms in Level 2 data Metaphorical form
Types
Tokens
Process + Range constructions
2
13
Angst haben – to be afraid lit. to have fear (12)iv Mut haben – to be courageous; lit. to have courage (1)
13
im Alter von – at the age of (1) in der Abstand – in the distance (1) in Frieden – in peace (7) in Ruhe/von der Ruhe – in/from quiet/stillness (2) in der Nähe – nearby; in the proximity; lit. in the nearness (2)
Fixed phrases
Grammatical metaphors
Totals
5
21
Ähnlichkeit - similarity (1) Alter – age (1) Angst – fear (4) Anwesenheit – presence (1) Dunkelheit – darkness (3) Ewigkeit – eternity (1) Frieden – peace (4) Geheimnis – secret (1) Heftigkeit – ferocity (1) Konstante – constant (1) Leidenschaft - passion (3)
37
28
Examples
Möglichkeit – possibility (1) Notwendigkeit - necessity (1) Schmerz – pain (2) Schock – shock (3) Schwerfälligkeit – clumsiness (1) Stärke – strength (2) Traurigkeit – sadness (1) Wahrheit – truth (3) Wirklichkeit – reality (1) Zufall – coincidence (1)
63
22
Of note, however, are four uses of ANGST as a grammatical metaphor in its own right, as in the following example: (7)
Die Verzweiflung und die ANGST fühlte meinen Körper. Doubt and FEAR filled my body. (Student 3043, Level 2) In contrast with the predominant use of one Process + Range construction (Angst haben)
and one fixed phrase (in Frieden), use of full grammatical metaphors at Level 2 is much more varied with 21 different types and no type exhibiting more than 3 or 4 cases: 67% of the grammatical metaphors are unique (14/21). Although a number of the grammatical metaphors characterize affective and emotive states, LEIDENSCHAFT (PASSION) SCHMERZ (PAIN), SHOCK (SHOCK), and TRAURIGKEIT (SADNESS), others express more abstract qualities as nouns, EWIGKEIT (eternity), KONSTANTE (CONSTANT), MÖGLICHKEIT (POSSIBILITY), and NOTWENDIGKEIT (NECESSITY). Finally, overall grammatical metaphor use in Level 2 does not result in complex writing or require major rewordings, as in this example of grammatical metaphor in a prepositional phrase. (8)
…und er sah mich durch die DUNKELHEIT. …and he saw me through the DARKNESS. (Student 1097, Level 2)
A few uses, however, exhibit integration of qualities expressed as nouns in surprisingly advanced writing for second year L2 learners. (9)
Vielleicht seine grosse ÄHNLICHKEIT mit Herrn Sommer oder sein Anblick, als ich und mein Freund über Herr Sommer sprachen, war der Grund, warum ich ihn so schnell vertraut habe. Perhaps his great SIMILARITY to Mr. Sommer or his look as I and my friend talked about Mr. Sommer was the reason, why I trusted him so quickly. (Student 2095, Level 2) Data for Level 3, summarized in Table 10, reveal a shift away from Process + Range
constructions and fixed phrases toward greater use of grammatical metaphor. However, when compared to Level 2 data, the variation in metaphorical wordings, emergent forms and full-
23
fledged grammatical metaphors combined, decreases. Although grammatical metaphors make up a greater portion of metaphorical wordings in Level 3, learner use is concentrated in two high frequency grammatical metaphors, MÖGLICHKEIT (POSSIBILITY) and SCHWIERIGKEIT (DIFFICULTY). The two Process + Range constructions, Erfolg haben (to be successful; lit. to have success) and Glück haben (to be lucky; lit. to have luck) occur only once and twice respectively. Like the Level 2 Process + Range constructions, they describe qualities of emotion and affect in nominal terms. Of the three observed fixed phrases, im Allgemeinen ( in general; lit. in the general) and in Wirklichkeit (in reality) differ from Level 2 in that they function more as text markers rather than reflect on emotional states or spatial relationships. Similar to Level 2, more than 66% of the developed grammatical metaphors are unique in the data (10/15). In contrast with Level 2 data, however, the two high frequency tokens MÖGLICHKEIT (POSSIBILITY) and SCHWIERIGKEIT (DIFFICULTY), comprise over half of the grammatical metaphor use in Level 3 (31/45 or 66%). Table 10. Metaphorical forms in Level 3 data Metaphorical form Process + Range constructions
Types
Tokens
2
3
Fixed phrases
3
5
im Allgemeinen – in general; lit. in the general (3) in der Nähe – nearby; lit. in the vicinity (1) in Wirklichkeit – in reality (1) Älte - [the] old [ones] (1) Alter – age (2) Angst – fear (1) Freiheit – freedom (1) Gegenwart – presence (1) Intelligenz – intelligence (1) Junge – [the] young [ones] (1) Klüger – [the] smarter [ones] (1)
a
Grammatical metaphors
15
47
Totals
20
55
Examples Erfolg haben – to be successful; lit. to have success (1) Glück haben – to be lucky; lit. to have luck (2)
Materielle - material (2) Möglichkeit – possibility (18)a Nützlichkeit - usefulness (1) Schwierigkeit – pain (13) Wahrheit – truth (2) Widerwärtigkeit - unpleasantness (1) Zufall – coincidence (1)
Includes compound nouns Ausbildungsmöglichkeiten (educational possibilities) and Arbeitsmöglichkeiten (work possibilities)
Of the remaining grammatical metaphor types, a number reconstrue physical and intellectual human qualities as nouns, such as ÄLTE ([THE] OLD [ONES]), JUNGE ([THE] YOUNG [ONES]), and
24
INTELLIGENZ (INTELLIGENCE). Others express abstract qualities in nominal form, such as FREIHEIT (FREEDOM), GEGENWART (PRESENCE), NÜTZLICHKEIT (USEFULNESS), and Wahrheit (TRUTH). Complexity and integration of grammatical metaphors in L2 writing at Level 3 remains low, with many congruent rewordings resulting in parallel rather than additional clausal configurations. In Example 10, the main clause die Familie Ngoc hatte die MÖGLICHKEIT (the Ngoc Family had the opportunity/possibility) can be reworded as Es war möglich für die Familie Ngoc (it was possible for the Ngoc family), a more congruent expression of possibility/ opportunity yet in a parallel, not additional, clause.v (10) Im Jahre 1993 hatte die Familie Ngoc die MÖGLICHKEIT Vietnam zu besuchen In 1993, the Ngoc family had the OPPORTUNITY/POSSIBILITY to visit Vietnam. (Student 3072, Level 3) As in Level 2 data, grammatical metaphors in Level 3 sometimes appear in prepositional clauses that replace subordinate clauses, achieving the kind of intraclausal reasoning described by Schleppegrell (2004a; See p. 8). In Example 11, a more congruent expression of DIFFICULTY in the phrase nach der SCHWIERIGKEITEN des Marktes (after the DIFFICULTIES of the market) would have been nachdem es für den Markt schwierig war (after it was difficult for the market). The non-target-like use of beginnen (to begin) as an unconjugated and misplaced verb shows the effects of grammatical metaphor’s cognitive load on developing L2 writers. A more target-like integration of process of beginning would have resulted from an additional genitive construction with the noun der Beginn (beginning) such as nach der SCHWIERIGKEITEN des Beginns des Markets (after the DIFFICULTIES for the market at the beginning; lit. after the DIFFICULTIES of the beginning of the market. In its pursuit of nominalization, this developing writer’s text illustrates both the successes and challenges of incongruent making-meaning in an L2.
25
(11) Nach der SCHWIERIGKEIT des Marktes beginnen* florierten die Wirtschaft und die Leben den Vietnamesen. After the DIFFICULTIES of the market to begin*, the economy and lives of the Vietnamese flourished. (Student 3110, Level 3) Data from Level 4 exhibit a significant expansion of metaphorical forms with the greatest increase in the range and frequencies of fully developed grammatical metaphors, summarized in Table 11. As in Levels 2 and 3, Process + Range constructions remap emotional and affective qualities as nouns. Two new types, Geduld haben (to be patient; lit. to have patience) and Spannung haben (to be excited/tense; lit. to have excitement; tension) show minimal use in addition to expressions observed in previous levels. Although most Process + Range use is unique, Angst haben (to be afraid; lit. to have fear) appears 12 uses, complemented by 3 uses as a full grammatical metaphor. Examples 12 and 13 contrast Angst as a Range in the Process + Range constructions Angst haben and as a grammatical metaphor whose agent has been fully lost. (12) Der Artikel "Aufstand der Zwerge" von Petra Pinzler und Joachim Fritz-Vannahme verdeutlich die Angst, die die kleinere Länder Europas, hinsichtlich der Grösse der Bevölkerung oder der geografischen Grösse, vor der Beherrschung der grösseren Länder haben. The article “Aufstand der Zwerge (Uprising of the Dwarves)” by Petra Pinsler and Joachim Fritz-Vannahme clarifies the fear that the smaller European countries have of the control of the larger countries with regard to the size of the population or the geographic size. (Student 3030, Level 4) (13) Es ist auch klar, dass die ANGST für das Verschwinden nationalstaatlicher Souveränität eng mit der verwindenen Sprachgrenzen in Europa verknüpft ist It is also clear that the FEAR of the disappearance of national sovereignty is closely interwoven with the disappearing language borders in Europe. (Student 2075, Level 4)
26
Table 11. Metaphorical forms in Level 4 data Metaphorical form Process + Range constructions
Fixed phrases
Grammatical metaphors
Types Tokens
6
4
62
Examples
19
Angst haben – to be afraid; lit. to have fear (12) Erfolg haben – to be successful; lit. to have success (2) Geduld haben – to be patient; lit to have patience (1) Glück haben – to be lucky; lit. to have luck (1) Sinn machen – to make sense; lit. to make meaningfulness (1) Spannung haben – to be excited/tense; lit. to have excitement; tension (2)
7
im Allgemeinen – in general; lit. in the general (1) in der Nähe/von der Nähe – nearby; lit. in the nearness; vicinity (2) im Wesentlichen – in essence (4) in Wirklichkeit – in reality (1)
190
Abstand – distance (3) Ähnlichkeit – similarity (12) Alter – age (4) Angst – fear (3) Dominanz – dominance (2) Einheit – unity (5) Einzigartigkeit - uniqueness (1) Erfolg – success (13) Erkenntlichkeit - gratitude (1) Fähigkeit – ability (10) a Freiheit – freedom (5) Frusterationen – frustrations (1) Gefahr – danger (2) Gemeinsamkeit – commonality (4) Geschlossenheit – closeness (1) Gierigkeit – greed (2) Gleichförmigkeit – equability (1) Gleichheit – equality (1) Größe – size; largeness; the large ones (8) Grösseres – a bigger [one] (1) Grosszügigkeit – generosity (1) Haupttätigkeit – main activity (1) Kleinen – the small [ones] (3) Kraft – power (5) Kreativität – creativity (1) Legitimität – legitimacy (2) Macht – power (10) Mehrheit – majority; the most (3) Mehrkulturellenkeit multiculturalism (2) b Möglichkeit – possibility (6) Nachdruck – insistence (1)
Nachteil – disadvantage (1) Nähe – vicinity (1) Notwendigkeit – necessity (5) Realität – reality (1) Schwierigkeit – difficulty (8) Selbständigkeit - autonomy (1) Sicherheit – secureness; security (7) c Spannung – excitement; tension (5) Stabilität – stability (2) Stärke – strength (2) Stolz – pride (6) Toleranz – tolerance (3) Uneinigkeit – disunity (2) Unsicherheit – insecurity (1) Untertanentreue – loyalty (1) Verantwortlichkeit – accountability (1) Verantwortung – responsibility (1) Vergleichbarkeit – comparability (4) Verschiedenartigkeit – diverseness (2) Verschiedenheit – diversity (2) Vielfalt – diversity (3) Vielfältigkeit - diversity; multiplicity (1) Vielsprachlichkeit – multilingualism (1) d Voreingenommenheit – prejudice (2) Vorteil – advantage (1) Wert – value (4) Wichtigkeit – importance (2) Willigkeit - willingness (1) Wirklichkeit – reality (1) Zugehörigkeitsgefühl – sense of belonging (2) e Zusammengehörigkeit – togetherness (1)
Totals 72 216 Includes Handelsfähigkeit (ability to trade) (3) and Handlungsfähigkeit (ability to act) (1) b Creative learner word using suffix –keit: multikulturell (multicultural)+ noun-iness multikulturell(en)+keit (2) c Includes Sicherheitsgründe (security reasons) (1) d Creative learner word using suffix –keit: vielsprachlich (multilingual) + noun-iness vielsprachlich+keit (1) e Includes Kolonienzugehörigskeitgefühl - sense of belonging to the colonies (1) a
27
The small number of fixed phrases in Level 4 continue to take on a predominantly textstructuring role with the exception of one case of in der Nähe (nearby; lit in the nearness). Like Angst haben, the emergent metaphorical form in der Nähe observed in Levels 2-4 also exhibits a more developed metaphorical use as a grammatical metaphor Nähe in Level 4 (see Example 14). The simultaneous repetition of the congruent form nahe (near) to modify the incongruent form Nähe (nearby) shows how developing L2 writers can become “stuck” at the transition between congruent and incongruent writing. (14) Diese Situation geschah, weil die Osteuropäer bereits mehrsprachig von der nahen NÄHE ihrer kleinen Länder sind. This situation occurred because the Eastern Europeans are already multilingual from the near NEARNESS (VICINITY) of their small countries. (Student 2080, Level 4) A similar repetition can be seen in the example with Sicherheit versichern (to secure security) in Table 7. In Level 4 data, the L2 writers deploy grammatical metaphors in more complex writing by two different means. First, use of grammatical metaphor in prepositional phrases expands to encompass the more “advanced” German prepositions, including trotz (despite), wegen (because of), bezüglich (concerning), anstelle (in place of), and hinsichtlich (regarding), illustrated in Table 12. Table 12. Grammatical metaphors in prepositional phrases in Level 4 Preposition Excerpt trotz den SCHWERIGKEITEN trotz despite the DIFFICULTIES
Source Student 2086
wegen
wegen des ABSTANDES und UNEINIGKEIT because of the DISTANCE and DISUNITY
Student 2095
bezüglich
bezüglich dieser VERGLEICHBARKEIT concerning this COMPARABILITY
Student 3110
anstelle
anstelle KOLONIENZUGEHÖRIGSKEITgefühl in place of a sense of BELONGING TO THE COLONIES
Student 1097
hinsichtlich
hinsichtlich der GRÖSSE der Bevölkerung oder der geografischen GRÖSSE regarding the SIZE of the population or the geographic SIZE
Student 3030
28
Even more important is the second means for more complex deployment of grammatical metaphor: the emerging ability to integrate grammatical metaphor in the text. In Level 4, the participants begin to organize their text around grammatical metaphor, particularly through topicalization and the foregrounding of grammatical metaphors as the agents. Both short, concise examples and longer, more complex excerpts reveal this developing tendency in the L2 texts. Example 15 shows the use of grammatical metaphor to condense text. (15) Die EINHEIT der Währungspolitik stellt die Inflationsrate der Mitglieder gleich. The UNITY of the monetary policy puts the inflation rate of the members on par with each other. (Student 2086, Level 4) In contrast, Example 16 typifies the intricate elaboration afforded by grammatical metaphor: (16) Die einige ÄHNLICHKEITEN zwischen der Gründungsgeschichte der USA und der gegenwärtigen europaischen Situation, geben uns eine WILLIGKEIT zu kooperieren, und ein Empfinden für die politische Frage in der Nähe. Several SIMILARITIES between the founding stories of the USA and the present European situation give us a WILLINGNESS to cooperate and a sensitivity for the political question in the proximity. (Student 2098, Level 4) Both uses allow the writers to remove human agents, an important characteristic of advanced technical and abstract writing.vi In summary, level-by-level analysis revealed a general trajectory from both emergent and developed metaphorical forms in Level 2 to predominantly grammatical metaphors in Level 4. Across the curriculum, participant writing showed continued use of Process + Range constructions and fixed phrases complemented by an increasing range and frequency of fullfledged grammatical metaphors. Although the coded data exhibited a high degree of variability within and across levels, a number of metaphorical forms can be traced across multiple curricular levels.
29
Table 13 summarizes the different types and frequencies of Process + Range constructions, fixed phrases, and grammatical metaphors in Levels 2-4. With the exception of a few cases, the metaphorical forms did not comprise enough data points for in-depth analysis longitudinally. However, the higher grammatical metaphor usage in Levels 3 and 4 reflected the general trend towards increased expression of qualities as nouns. Table 13. Metaphorical forms across multiple levels Metaphorical form
Form
Levels 2
3
4
Angst haben – to be afraid; lit. to have fear Erfolg haben – to be successful; lit. to have success Glück haben – to be lucky; lit. to have luck
12 0 0
0 1 2
12 2 1
Fixed phrases
im Allgemeinen – in general; lit. in the general in der Nähe – nearby; lit. in the nearness in Wirklichkeit – in reality
0 2 0
3 1 1
1 1 1
Grammatical metaphors
Abstand/in der Abstand – distance; in the distance Ähnlichkeit – similarity Alter – age Angst – fear Freiheit – freedom Möglichkeit – possibility Notwendigkeit – necessity Schwierigkeit – difficulty Wahrheit – truth Wirklichkeit – reality Zufall – coincidence
1 1 1 4 0 1 1 0 3 1 1
0 0 2 1 1 16 0 13 2 0 1
3 12 4 3 5 6 5 7 0 1 0
Process + Range constructions
Qualitative analyses of select examples provided additional insight as to how the developing L2 writers make use of metaphorizing resources in the lexico-grammar. In Levels 2 and 3, the writers explored a small range of grammatical metaphors without realizing the full potential of grammatical metaphor as a linguistic resource. In Level 4, the L2 writers began to integrate grammatical metaphors to remove human agents and reasoned within clauses using phrasal elaboration. Through this integration and resulting text complexification, the developing writers achieved the kind of language that distinguishes informal, congruent prose from more formal and abstract writing.
30
Research Question 2: What can be learned from analyzing case study pairs of qualities expressed as adjectives and nouns across proficiency levels and within individual writers longitudinally? Three grammatical metaphors, ÄHNLICHKEIT (SIMILARITY), MÖGLICHKEIT (POSSIBILITY), and SCHWIERIGKEIT (DIFFICULTY), and their congruent realizations, ähnlich (similar), möglich (possible), and schwierig (difficult) were selected for case study analyses based on frequency of use throughout the corpus (See Table 13). Two comments precede the analysis. First, given the different thematic foci of the writing tasks across the curriculum, only very general case study pairs could be studied longitudinally across the corpus. Although the studied pairs may not be the most interesting examples of grammatical metaphor, they provide the opportunity to chart development and use longitudinally. Second, the grammatical metaphor MÖGLICHKEIT (POSSIBILITY) could be unpacked yet another step beyond the congruent realization of möglich (possible) to an even more congruent verbal realization in können (can; could). However, given its relatively frequent use as both an adjective and a noun expressing the quality of possibility in the corpus, MÖGLICHKEIT is treated as a grammatical metaphor of the type quality expressed as noun in the following analysis. For the three sets of qualities expressed as adjectives and nouns, the figures in Table 14 show a general development from no use or predominantly adjective use in Level 2 to the appearance of nominalized forms in Levels 3 and 4. This change represents a shift from the mostly congruent expressions of qualities as adjectives to a combination of congruent and metaphorical forms. MÖGLICHKEIT (POSSIBILITY) and SCHWIERIGKEIT (DIFFICULTY) show the greatest growth in metaphorical use between Levels 2 and 3 with a slight decrease in nominalized forms in Level 4. Use of ÄHNLICHKEIT (SIMILARITY), in contrast, increased most from Level 3 to Level 4. Compound nouns such as LEBENMÖGLICHKEITEN (LIVING POSSIBILITIES),
31
ARBEITSMÖGLICHKEITEN (EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES), and ZUKUNFTSMÖGLICHKEITEN (FUTURE POSSIBILITIES)
were included in the calculations for MÖGLICHKEIT.
Table 14. Qualities as adjectives and nouns across levels ähnlich Ähnlichkeit möglich Möglichkeit Level similar similarity possible possibility 2 4 1 2 1 3 6 0 1 18 4 25 12 19 6
schwierig Schwierigkeit difficult difficulty 1 0 7 13 9 8
Given the small number of occurrences for each case study pair, an average of less than one occurrence per writer, and the increasing length of each text moving through the levels (see Table 5), these numbers must not be over-interpreted. Nevertheless, the data suggest an emerging and increasing use of grammatical metaphor in Levels 3 and 4. Mapping individual use of the adjective-noun pairs to express qualities revealed more nuanced results than the level-by-level analysis. Whereas the level-by-level analysis showed a general emergence of grammatical metaphor in the form of qualities expressed as nouns in the higher curricular levels, individual development toward nominal forms varied (See Table 15). For example, data for Student 2080 exhibit mostly congruent, adjective use with two examples of qualities expressed as nouns in Level 3, MÖGLICHKEIT (POSSIBILITY) and SCHWIERIGKEIT (DIFFICULTY) but no grammatical metaphor use in Level 4. Additionally, given the extremely small n-sizes, often zero or one occurrences for an individual at any level, the following numbers should be interpreted only as possible indicators of larger patterns of congruent and incongruent language use. These limitations aside, however, data for the case study pairs suggest a similar trajectory for a number of the individuals as for the group overall. Student 1096, for example, expressed qualities as adjectives using both ähnlich (similar) (Levels 2, 3, 4) and schwierig (difficult)
32
33
1
1
4
2080 2086 2095 2098 2106 3005 3030 3043 3072 3110
Totals
1
1
1096 1097 1117 2075
adj
2
1
1
noun
6
2 1
1
1
1
adj
3
0
noun
25
5
4
2 2 2 3
2 2 1 2
adj
4
12
1 3 1 1 1 2
2
1
noun
2
1
adj
2
1
1
noun
1
adj
3
18
7
3 3
4 1
noun
19
2
1 2 1 8 4
2 1
adj
Table 15. Qualities as adjectives and nouns within individuals and across levels ähnlich – Ähnlichkeit möglich - Möglichkeit similar- similarity possible - possibility Individual Level Level 4
6
1
1 2
2
noun
1
1
adj
2
0
noun
7
3
1
1
1
1
adj
13
7
1
1
2 2
noun
Level 3
9
1
2
1
3 1 1
adj
4
schwierig - Schwierigkeit difficult - difficulty
8
1
3
1 1
1 1
noun
(Level 4). Although congruent adjective use spanned all levels, signs of grammatical metaphor first emerge with Möglichkeit (possibility) (Levels 3, 4), Ähnlichkeit (similarity) (Level 4), and Schwierigkeit (difficulty) (Level 4). Examples 17 and 18 from Student 1096 contrast the congruent adjectival wording of the quality of being similar in Level 2 with its incongruent nominal counterpart from Level 4. (17) Er suchte eine person, die ähnlich ihn war. He searched for a person who was similar to him (Level 2). (18) Keine Frage: Unmissverständliche sind die ÄHNLICHKEITEN zwischen den Erfahrungen in beiden Kontinenten. Without question the SIMILARITIES between the experiences on both continents are unmistakable. (Level 4). Research Question 3 What insights do corpus-based frequency rankings add to an analysis of emerging grammatical metaphor? To compare grammatical metaphor data with frequency rankings, an established and reliable frequency dictionary for the German language was necessary. At the time of analysis, the only such dictionary was Jones and Tschirner’s Frequency dictionary of German: Core vocabulary for learners (2006), whose rankings, though useful, are limited to the first 4,000 most frequent words in the German language. Despite these limitations, Jones and Tschirner’s pioneering dictionary provided a solid foundation for frequency analyses of L2 German. Word frequencies reported in Jones & Tschirner (2006), shown here in Table 16, reveal that all of the adjectives in the study occur more frequently than their grammatically metaphorical noun counterparts in the German language. These figures reinforce the notion that grammatical metaphors, in this study, qualities expressed as nouns, are less natural (i.e., less frequent) than their corresponding congruent realizations, here, qualities expressed as adjectives. Of the case study grammatical metaphors, Möglichkeit (possibility) ranks the highest as 286th
34
most frequent word, followed by Schwierigkeit (difficulty) at 866th most frequent words in the German language. The frequency of Ähnlichkeit (similarity) lies beyond the scope of Jones & Tschirner (2006) and can only be described as the 4,000th + most frequent word in German. Of the case study grammatical metaphors, the more frequent Möglichkeit (possibility) and Schwierigkeit (difficulty) emerge in Level 3. Furthermore, the noun Möglichkeit (possibility) is more frequent than the studied adjectives ähnlich (similar) and schwierig (difficult). Table 16. Frequency rankings for qualities expressed as adjectives and nouns (Jones & Tschirner, 2006) Adjective-Noun Pair Word Frequency Ranking ähnlich 425 ähnlich – Ähnlichkeit (similar – similarity) Ähnlichkeit 4,000+ möglich – Möglichkeit (possible – possibility)
möglich Möglichkeit
156 286
schwierig – Schwierigkeit (difficult – difficulty)
schwierig Schwierigkeit
471 866
Turning to developing metaphorical forms, in particular Process + Range constructions, Jones and Tschirner’s dictionary also allows frequency-based accounts for their early emergence. Side-by-side comparisons of word frequencies in Table 17 lend support to the claim that metaphorical forms in Process + Range constructions lose their metaphoricity. Although all of the nouns in Table 15 may occur as independent grammatical metaphors, they rank as significantly more frequent than their adjective counterparts, perhaps as an outcome of their use in Process + Range constructions. Whether such rankings result from a high use of Process + Range constructions or the use in Process + Range construction leads to greater use in general is unclear. Not surprisingly, the majority of the adjective forms are morphologically derived from the nouns via suffixation. Regardless of the underlying reason, such frequency-based findings support discussions in past research (e.g., Derewianka, 1995; 2003) and provide further evidence for the status of Process + Range as an emergent and developmental grammatical metaphor stage.
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Table 17. Frequency rankings for qualities expressed as adjectives and in Process + Range constructions (Jones & Tschirner, 2006) Noun Adjective Process + Range construction word frequency word frequency Angst haben to be afraid
Angst fear
465
ängstlich afraid
4,000+ a
Erfolg haben to be successful
Erfolg success
577
erfolgreich successful
841
Geduld haben to be patient
Geduld patience
3,732
geduldig patient
4,000+ a
Glück haben to be lucky
Glück luck
763
glücklich lucky
1,189
Mut haben to be courageous
Mut courage
2,549
mütig courageous
4,000+ a
Sinn machen to make sense
Sinn meaning
321
sinnvoll meaningful
1,266
Spannung haben to be tense
Spannung tension
2,119
gespannt tense
4,000+ a
a
Frequency rankings not covered in Jones & Tschirner (2006)
DISCUSSION This study provided a longitudinal perspective on the development and emergence of grammatical metaphor in L2 German writing. Data used in this study drew on the writings of 14 L2 participants as they traversed the curriculum from intermediate to advanced levels (i.e., from second-year curriculum to fourth year curriculum). In light of the data, the findings reported here highlight the importance of a developmental approach that encompasses the study of “gateway” stages as well as full-fledged grammatical metaphors. Such a developmental approach is critical because the developmental stages of grammatical metaphor, Process + Range constructions and fixed phrases, not only play an important role in early stages of grammatical metaphor but exist alongside it in later stages. The expression of emotive and affective qualities, (e.g., fear, courage, success) appeared as both early metaphorical forms and as complements to expanding 36
grammatical metaphor use in more advanced L2 writing. Although data from Research Question 1 showed a general trend from the expression of physical and emotional human qualities (e.g., AGE, SADNESS, PAIN)
to abstract qualities expressed as nouns (DIFFICULTY, ABILITY, SIMILARITY),
one of the most frequent metaphorical forms, even in Level 4, was the emotive state of Angst haben (to be afraid; lit. to have fear). Analysis for Research Question 2 revealed a more nuanced picture of developing L2 writers use of congruent and incongruent modes of meaning-making. The study of select adjective-noun pairs illustrated how the participants expressed qualities as adjectives and qualities as nouns as they progressed through the Georgetown University German Department curriculum. These analyses showed a general trend from no use or predominantly congruent use in the lower levels to mixed use and the emergence of nominal forms in the upper levels. However, it should be noted that a variability between students and sparse data weakened the overall pattern. The comparison of frequency rankings for Research Question 3 added additional insights to broad findings for Research Question 1 and case study analysis for Research Question 2. Although limited to the Process + Range constructions and case study pairs in this study, frequency data provided support for two intuitions regarding the emergence of grammatical metaphor. First, for the case study pairs, all congruent adjectival expressions were more frequent than their grammatical noun counterparts. Second, the metaphorical ranges, qualities expressed as nouns in Process + Range constructions, were found to be considerably more frequent than their more “congruent,” adjective counterparts. The quantitative figures provide possible clarification for their early emergence: the words are simply more frequent in the German language. These results also support the claim that such expressions have lost their grammatical metaphoricity.
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Through similar and expanded studies, future researchers will continue to broaden understanding of grammatical metaphor’s development along the continuum from incipient to fully acquired forms as well as the interplay between congruent and incongruent modes of meaning-making. Insights on the notion of grammatical metaphor in an L2 Three different phenomena in the data warrant brief discussion: constellations of grammatical metaphor, use of suffixation to create grammatical metaphor, and the nature of elaboration of grammatical metaphor. Among others, Halliday and Matthiessen (1999), describe the tendency of grammatical metaphors to group together in constellations or syndromes with other nominal forms. Although past researchers describe groupings of grammatical metaphors among themselves, L2 data in this study showed instances of combination with more general nominal forms, particularly technical terms and common nouns. In Example 19, the structure of the sentence around the technical term Regierung (government) sets up the need for additional nominal actors, and the technical term Autorität (authority) exerts further pressure to nominalize, leading to the use of the grammatical metaphor LEGITIMITÄT (LEGITIMACY). Without the presence of Autorität (authority), the sentence could easily be recast in a more congruent mode: Die Leute haben die Regierung legitim gemacht (The people made the government legitimate). (19) Die Regierung wurde Autorität und LEGITIMITÄT durch die Leute gegeben . The government was given authority and LEGITIMACY through the people. (Student 1117, Level 4) Similarly, the presence of the common nouns Sprache (language) and Kultur (culture) and the technical term Nationalismus (nationalism) in Example 20 forces the metaphorical use of hohes ALTER (high age) instead of the more congruent expression Europa ist alt (Europe is old).
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(20) Ein hohes ALTER, unterschiedliche Sprachen, unterschiedlich Kulturen, und stark Nationalismus machen die Situation Europas völlig anders als die USA. A high AGE, different languages, different cultures, and strong nationalism make Europe’s situation completely different from the USA. (Student 3072, Level 4) Data in the study also revealed evidence for the increased use of suffixation in grammatical metaphor. To express qualities as nouns, the German language has three reliable and productive suffixes, -keit, -heit, and –tät, all of which occur in this study. Thus, many complex nouns in German can be created by following the form of adjective + nominal suffix = quality expressed as noun, for example, ähnlich (similar) + keit (noun-iness) = Ähnlichkeit (similarity). A survey of Tables 9, 10, and 11 reveals that use of grammatical metaphors with nominal suffixes increases across levels. When compared with Levels 2 and 3, learner production in Level 4 exhibits the widest range of grammatical metaphors using suffixation, in particular with –keit which results in 25 unique grammatical metaphor types. Overall, learners made use of grammatical metaphors with the suffix –keit the most across the entire corpus (31 types, 114 tokens), followed by –heit (12 types, 32 tokens) and –tät (4 types, 6 tokens). Table 18 below provides examples of each type. Of note, all three of the case study grammatical metaphors were derived from their congruent forms vis-à-vis the nominal suffix –keit. Table 18. Examples of grammatical metaphor with nominal suffixes in learner production Suffix Examples -keit -heit -tät
Einzigartigkeit – uniqueness, Möglichkeit – possibility, Vielfältigkeit – diversity, Dunkelheit –darkness, Einheit – unity, Freiheit – freedom Kreativität – creativity , Legitimität – legitimacy, Realität – reality
Increased use of these grammatical metaphors with nominal suffixes alone does not show learner awareness of the powerful nominalizing resources of German suffixes.
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Two examples of creative student writing, however, suggest that some learners recognize the role of –keit in reconstruing qualities as nouns. In Examples 21 and 22, the developing writer creatively combines mehrkulturellen (lit. more + cultures), presumably an attempt at multicultural, with the suffix –keit, resulting in the non-target-like yet completely comprehensible MEHRKULTURELLENKEIT (MULTICULTURALISM). The fact that the writer uses the phrase twice suggests that it is not simply a slip of the proverbial pen. (21) Amerika wurde an MEHRKULTURELLENKEIT begründet (line 83). America was founded on MULTICULTURALISM. (22) Europa muss für MEHRKULTURELLENKEIT und Verständigung vorbereiten (line 138). Europe must prepare for MULTICULTURALISM and understanding/compromise. (Student 3072, Level 4) Similarly, the student in Example 22 appends the suffix –keit to vielsprachlich (lit. many + linguistic/language-related), a non-target-like attempt at multilingual. The resultant grammatical metaphor meaning MULTLINGUALISM, VIELSPRACHLICHKEIT, is not far from the target-like grammatical metaphor VIELSPRACHIGKEIT. (23) Eine Schwerpunkt des Multikulturismus europas ist VIELSPRACHLICHKEIT. A focal point of Europe’s multiculturalism is MULTILINGUALISM. (Student 2098, Level 4) Through such “slips” in the Level 4 writing, it is possible to imagine that some advanced L2 German writers in this study have not only acquired knowledge of the nominalizing resource but are consciously (or unconsciously) deploying it. A final discussion point regards the degree of elaboration of grammatical metaphor. Of particular interest in future research is whether or not the developing L2 writers make use of grammatical metaphor’s ability to enable greater expansion of the noun phrase, for example, through pre-modifying adjectives and or post-modifying genitive constructions. According to Halliday (1999), the power of grammatical metaphor lies in its ability to enable indefinite
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expansion and elaboration. Although elaboration was not the focus of analysis in the study, a brief review of pre-modifying adjectives shows potential for future research. Of the grammatical metaphors in Level 2, only a few uses included pre-modifying adjectives (4/37; 10%) such as neuentdeckte STÄRKE (newly discovered STRENGTH) (Learner 3110) and völlige DUNKELHEIT (complete DARKNESS) (Learner 2075). Level 3 data show a slight increase in pre-modifying adjectives (6/47; 13%) with more elaborate examples: unzählige und genaue MÖGLICHKEITEN (innumerable and definite POSSIBILITIES/ OPPORTUNITIES) (Learner 1096) and neue und höhere SCHWIERIGKEITEN (neue and greater DIFFICULTIES) (Learner 2095). Use of adjectives to modifying grammatical metaphor continued to increase in Level 4 (44/190; 23%) and comprised mostly one word modifications with a few longer exceptions from the same writers who showed early use in Level 2: das gleiche schreckliche ANGST (the same awful FEAR) (Learner 3110) and politische und rechliche SICHERKEIT (political and legal SECURITY) (Learner 2075). In addition to pre-modification with adjectives, grammatical metaphor also enables expansion of the noun phrase through post-modification with genitive constructions and prepositional phrases. Examples of grammatical metaphors embedded in genitive constructions can be seen in die EINHEIT der Währungspolitik (Example 15) and der SCHWIERIGKEIT des Marktes (Example 11). Future research, then, could investigate the extent to which elaboration and modification emerge after L2 writers develop grammatical metaphor abilities.
LIMITATIONS From a functional perspective, two major limitations constrain the interpretation and generalization of this study’s findings: sample size and task effect. Even a corpus of 36,898 words with an average of more than 2,600 words per learner provided only limited data for the longitudinal study of specific grammatical metaphors. The 300-plus hand-coded metaphorical
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forms provided ample data for a general investigation but not an in-depth analysis of particular metaphorical forms. To address these short-comings, future researchers might conduct a more fine-grained analysis that compares the overall expression of qualities as adjectives and nouns instead of individual cases. Alternatively an in-depth case study of one individual’s longitudinal production could explore developmental stages in greater detail and contribute additional insights to the emergence of grammatical metaphor in an L2. As suggested in the literature, task type and task topic may also play important roles in the kinds of grammatical metaphor that developing writers use. The Level 3 task, a journalistic article, may require more compact and technical prose in comparison with the Level 2 task, a literary writing assignment. Perhaps the use of emotive and affective metaphors in Level 2 resulted more from the content and nature of the narrative writing task (one that focuses on imagining and recounting personal experiences) than patterns of grammatical metaphor development. Similarly, the content of the task for Level 4, a speech comparing the European Union and the establishment of the United States, may have promoted the use of abstract and thematic grammatical metaphors like FREEDOM (FREIHEIT), UNITY (EINHEIT), and SIMILARITY (ÄHNLICHKEIT) while the Level 3 task, an article about the hardships of immigration, may have encouraged higher use of expressions like Erfolg haben (to be successful; lit. to have success), DIFFICULTY
(SCHWIERIGKEIT), and POSSIBILITY (MÖGLICHKEIT). However, the developing L2
writers continued to rely on expressions of physical and emotional human qualities characteristic of the Level 2 task in the more technical Level 3 and Level 4 tasks (See Tables 10 and 11). Similarly, learners continued to use high frequency expressions from the Level 3 task, namely DIFFICULTY
and POSSIBILITY, in their Level 4 writings. Taken together, these findings suggest that
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task effect alone may not account for the data and that, in addition to task effect, a developmental trajectory also provides explanatory value for the learner production. Above and beyond the functional issues of sparse data and task effect, two additional issues also posed challenges in this study: the question of nature of grammatical metaphor in a little unexplored language, German, and the application of a developmental model of first language acquisition to second language acquisition. In his reflections on possible grammatical metaphor models and taxonomies for German, Steiner (2002-2003), questioned universal notions of congruence as a basis for grammatical metaphor across languages. Based on his examination of grammatical metaphor in translated German and English, Steiner argued that the same structure across different languages may be more or less metaphorical relative to the language in question. Nonetheless, both Halliday (1998, 1999) and Colombi (2006) contend that nominalization, as well as other types of grammatical metaphor, characterizes academic writing in Chinese and Spanish respectively, as it does in English. Like previous work, data in this study of L2 German also suggest a relationship between grammatical metaphor use, in particular the expression of qualities as nouns, and level of abstraction and advancedness. However, as Steiner states, careful consideration of what constitutes grammatical metaphor in German as compared with other languages is both useful and necessary for future research. Turning to the second issue, it also remains unresolved whether and how a developmental model from L1 acquisition (c.f. Derewianka, 1995, 2003; Halliday, 1999) applies to L2 acquisition. Does the cognitive maturity of L2 learners result in a similar but accelerated development or an entirely different one, as compared with L1 development? If adult language learners are already apprenticed to academic discourse and can express events and experiences incongruently in their L1 using grammatical metaphor, will they do so earlier in their L2s? How do adult language learners make
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use of their existing L1 language skills and cognitive development? From the data, it would seem that grammatical metaphor emerges sooner and unfolds faster in adults second language acquisition than in child first language acquisition.
CONCLUSION Although our body of grammatical metaphor knowledge continues to expand, future research on grammatical metaphor is needed in three concrete and fundamental ways. First, theoretical research is needed to understand the nature of grammatical metaphor in by-and-large unstudied languages. Greater understanding of the nature of grammatical metaphor in other languages, in turn, will provide a strong foundation for the second area research needs: expanded grammatical metaphor research in L2s other than English. Despite English’s status as global language, language learners across the world face the daily challenge of learning to makemeaning and operate in academic discourses in languages other than English. Thirdly and lastly, future research in L2 writing development is needed to discover if and how the ability to use grammatical metaphor in one’s L1 facilitates its development in the L2. To conclude, it is hoped that the both the findings and preliminary observations, as well as the limitations and challenges, in this study will motivate future researchers to expand L2 research on grammatical metaphor. The importance of continued grammatical metaphor research lies not only in understanding grammatical metaphor and its emergence but also in fostering of advanced language capacities, L1 and L2, through its development.
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i
Throughout the paper, small capitalization signifies use of grammatical metaphor, as contrasted with use of italics to highlight words or phrases in examples and in the text body. In the opening sections, Roman numerals are used to list examples from the literature. Examples from the study’s data are listed using arithmetic numbers. ii
In Byrnes & Sinicrope (2008), data from 16 longitudinal students were analyzed for relative clause development. In this study, the number has been reduced to 14 because two of the students completed an early version of the Level 3 task that was later modified. These differences, mostly in thematic content, were not expected to affect syntactic complexity in the previous study. In this study, however, task content was anticipated as playing a role in language selection, particularly of grammatical metaphors. For this reason, 2 longitudinal students were excluded, reducing the overall count to 14. iii
Although Derewianka (1995, 2003) does not include fixed phrases or collocations in her developmental sequence, they have been included in this study to provide a fuller picture of the shift from congruent to incongruent meaningmaking. iv
Numbers in parentheses refer to the number of tokens for each type. For example, Angst haben occurred 12 times in the Level 2 data, indicated by (12). v
The most congruent rewording of Möglichkeit (possibility) is the modal können (can), which would result in the wording die Familie Ngoc konnte.
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REFERENCES Developing Multiple Literacies: A curriculum renewal project of the German Department at Georgetown University, 1997-2000. (no date). http://www3.georgetown.edu/departments/german/programs/curriculum/index.html. Achugar, M., & Colombi, M. C. (2008). Systemic Functional Linguistic explorations into the longitudinal study of advanced capacities: The case of Spanish heritage language learners. In L. Ortega & H. Byrnes (Eds.), The longitudinal study of advanced L2 capacities (pp. 36–57). New York: Routledge. Byrnes, H. (2002). The role of task and task-based assessment in a content-oriented collegiate foreign language curriculum. Language Testing, 19, 419-437. Byrnes, H., Maxim, H. H., Norris, J. M., & Ryshina-Pankova, M. (2005). Revisiting writing development: A curriculum-based study of syntactic complexity. Symposium presented at the 14th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA). Madison, WI. Byrnes, H., & Sprang, K. (2004). Fostering advanced literacy: A genre-based cognitive approach. In H. Byrnes & H. H. Maxim (Eds.), Advanced foreign language learning: A challenge to college programs (pp. 47–85). Boston, MA: Heinle, Thomson. Christie, F. (2002). The development of abstraction in adolescence in subject English. In M. Schleppegrell & M. C. Colombi (Eds.), Developing advanced literacy in first and second languages: Meaning with power (pp. 45–66). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Colombi, M. C. (2002). Academic language development in Latino students’ writing in Spanish. In M. J. Schleppegrell & M. C. Colombi (Eds.), Developing advanced literacy in first and second languages: Meaning with power (pp. 67–86). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Colombi, M. C. (2006). Grammatical metaphor: Academic language development in Latino students in Spanish. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Advanced Language Learning: The Contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky (pp. 147–163). London: Continuum. Derewianka, B. (1995). Language development in the transition from childhood to adolescence: The role of grammatical metaphor. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of English and Linguistics: Macquarie University, Sydney. Derewianka, B. (2003). Grammatical metaphor in the transition to adolescence. In A. M. SimonVandenbergen et al., Grammatical metaphor: Views from systemic functional linguistics (pp. 185–219). Philadelphia/Amsterdam: Benjamins. Eggins, S., Wignell, P., & Martin, J. R. (1993). The discourse of history: Distancing the recoverable past. In M. Ghadessy (Ed.), Register analysis: Theory and practice (pp. 75– 109). London: Pinter.
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Halliday, M. A. K. (1998). Things and relations: regrammaticising experience as technical knowledge. In J. R. Martin & R. Veel (Eds.), Reading science: Critical and functional perspectives on discourses of science (pp. 185–235). London: Routledge. Halliday, M. A. K (1999). Grammar and the construction of educational knowledge. In R. Berry, B. Asker, M. Lam, & K. Hyland (Eds.), Language analysis, description and pedagogy (pp. 70-87). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Press. Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. (1st ed.). London: Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). London: Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K. & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (1999). Construing experience through meaning: A language-based approach to cognition. New York: Cassell. Hunt, K. W. (1966). Recent measures in syntactic development. Elementary English, 43, 732– 739. Jones, J. (1990). Grammatical metaphor and technicality in academic writing: An exploration of ESL (English as a second language) and NS (native speaker) student texts. In F. Christie (Ed.), Literacy in social processes (pp. 178–98). Deakin University, Australia: Centre for Studies of Language in Education. Jones, R., & Tschirner, E. (2006). Frequency dictionary of German: Core vocabulary for learners. London: Routledge. Martin, J. R. (1992) English Text: System and structure. Philadelphia/Amsterdam: Benjamins. Martin, J. R. (1993). Life as a noun: Arresting the universe in science and humanities. In M. A. K. Halliday & J. R. Martin (Eds.), Writing science: Literacy and discursive power (pp. 221–67). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Norris, J. (2008). Validity evaluation in foreign language assessment. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Norris, J. M. (2005). Investigating syntactic complexity from cross-sectional, longitudinal, and multitask perspectives. Paper presented in colloquium “Revisiting L2 writing development: A curriculum-based study of syntactic complexity,” Heidi Byrnes convener, at the 14th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), Madison, WI, July 29. Norris, J., & Ortega, L. (2002). Using CHILDES for the analysis of L2 German data from the GUGD Multiple Literacy FL program. Handout from workshop, Georgetown University, September 20-21, 2002.
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Ravelli, L. (1988). Grammatical metaphor: An initial analysis. In E. H. Steiner & R. Veltman (Eds.), Pragmatics, discourse and text: Some systemically-inspired approaches (pp. 133– 47). London: Pinter. Ravelli, L. (2003). Renewal of connection: Integrating theory and practice in an understanding of grammatical metaphor. In A-M. Simon-Vandenbergen et al., Grammatical metaphor: Views from systemic functional linguistics (pp. 37–63). Philadelphia/Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ryshina-Pankova, M. (2006). Constructing coherent and cohesive textual worlds in advanced foreign language learner writing. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Painter, C. (2003). The use of a metaphorical mode of meaning in early language development. In A-M. Simon-Vandenbergen et al., Grammatical metaphor: Views from systemic functional linguistics (pp. 151–167). Philadelphia/Amsterdam: Benjamins. Schleppegrell, M. J. (2004a). Technical writing in a second language: the role of grammatical metaphor. In L. J. Ravelli & R. A. Ellis (Eds.), Analysing academic writing: Contextualized frameworks (pp. 172–189). London: Continuum. Schleppegrell, M. J. (2004b). The language of schooling. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Steiner, E. (2002/3). Ideational grammatical metaphor: Exploring some implications for the overall model. Languages in Contrast 4, 137–164.
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Placing narration Personal about personal lives and public into the context of a literary work, literary conventions
Level II Imaginative treatment of personal relationships
Placing personal experiences into a broader social context
Making an argument about social, political, economic developments in societies
Level III Multicultural lives in contemporary German [„Zu Hause in Deutschland? Porträt einer vietnamesischen Familie“ Journalistic treatment „At home in Germany? Portrait of a Vietnamese Family“]
Level IV Germany’s role in the EU; issues pertaining to creation of the EU constitution [“Die Verfassung der Europäischen Union und der Vereinigten Staaten: Mögliche Vergleiche und Lehren“ Speech before a German Rotary Club audience “The constitution of the EU and the U.S.: Possible comparisons and lessons”]
[„Alternatives Ende zu Patrick Süskinds Roman „Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer“ Alternative ending to Patrick Süskind’s novel „The story of Herr Sommer“]
[„Krank in Deutschland“ Letter to a friend „Sick in Germany“]
Public
Public
Personal and familiar
Narrating about personal circumstances, expressing wishes and plans
Level I Issues of personal well-being and planning
Audience
Textual focus
Thematic focus
APPENDIX: Prototypical Performance Writing Tasks (PPTs), Levels 1-4
Coordination, subordination, embedded clauses, nominal structures: nominalizations, extended attributes
Lexicogrammatical realizations of comparison and contrast, logico-semantic relationships, classification and laws, argumentation
Coordination, subordination, embedded clauses
Lexicogrammatical realizations of comparison and contrast
Coordination, subordination, embedded clauses
Narrative structures Description Dialogue
coordination and subordination
Chronological narrative structures Hypothetical structures
Lexicogrammatical and discourse features
