2011

EASTERN AVENUE,
THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
OCTOBER 8 – 9
 Introduction and Welcome
We welcome you to the 5th International Free Linguistics Conference.
The FLC is the first conference of its kind, and it was organised on a
number of principles that were originally envisioned over a cup of
coffee – as many good things are . This vision included providing a
linguistics conference that is highly accessible in that it is completely
free of fees, which are often staggering and prevent students and
scholars from attending; and a conference that provides a forum for
linguists in all areas of research to come together and share their
diverse perspectives, ideas, and issues in an environment free of set
themes and borders.
Based on the continued success of the FLC initiative, we look forward
to offering you another accessible and diverse conference. This year, our
2-day program includes 4 focus speakers and a range of paper
presentations, colloquia, hot topic presentations and poster sessions.
and cultural conceptualisations of English.
Once again, thank you very much for your interest and participation in
this conference. It is only with your continued support that the FLC
initiative continues to grow. We hope you enjoy the conference!
All the best,
Dr. Ahmar Mahboob and Dr. Naomi K. Knight

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 Announcements
This programme outlines the timetable of presentations (pages 3-4),
abstracts for focus presentations (pages 5 – 7), colloquiums abstracts for
papers, hot topics, and poster presentations (pages 5 – 38).
Also included in the conference this year are: a Conference Dinner ($40pp)
and a free Conference Social.
This year’s Conference Dinner – a chance to meet the Conference
organisers and plenary speakers – will be held on Saturday night at Buon
Gusto (368 Abercrombie Street, Chippendale). Following the final focus
speaker presentation by Peter Collins, a walking party will depart from the
foyer to make the short journey to the restaurant together. Registration and
payment for this, at a cost of $40 per person, close at 3 pm on Saturday; to
book please ask at the registration desk.
Lunch breaks are open for participants to find their own meals. On
Saturday, you may walk to the Law School Annex (building next to Eastern
Avenue) to Taste Baguette for lunch. On Sunday, you may want to chip in $5
for a pizza lunch, or, alternatively, you may find lunch in one of the many
restaurants in nearby Newtown and Glebe.

The Conference Social on Sunday will be held in the foyer of the Eastern
Avenue.
Local information, including a restaurant guide, can be found on pages
39 – 43
Please do not hesitate to contact any of our volunteers should you require
assistance.

All the best,

FLC Conference Committee

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 TIMETABLE: Saturday 8 October 2011
Eastern Avenue Complex (EA)
LT 312 403 404 405 406

8:00 – 8:55 Registration

8:55 – 9:00 Welcome

9:00 – 10:00 Focus Speaker: William Greaves & Jim Benson

10:00 – 10:30 Coffee/Posters

Jamila Djumabayeva, Mr. Mohamed Yassine Frej, Assistant Professor Dr.Areewan Iamsa-ard

10:30 – 11:10 Farzad Sharifian Igor Smerdov, Li Chenxin, Ahmad Mohammad AL- Daniel O'Sullivan Sunjida Afrin Khan Rudolof Jibrael Isu
Zhou Conghui Harahsheh

11:15 – 11:55 David Rose Feifei Han Duck-Young Lee Beatriz Quiroz Cecilia F. K. Pun Mira Taitz,
Jane Goodman-Delahunty

12:00 – 12:40 David G. Butt, Hilda Delavari, Malaysia Naomi Ogi Jason Brown Dana Skopal Li Jie
Alison Moore Zoiemiow Vakili
Hamamah

12:40 – 2:00 Lunch

2:00 – 2:40 Stephen Moore Nahid Zarei Hiromi Oda Ononiwu Chukwuma Paul Hastie
Godwin, Martins Lucky
Ataman

2:45 – 3:25 Michele Zappavigna Hongzhi Yang Dorothy Economou Sook Hee Lee Salih Alzahrani

3:30 – 4:10 Shoshana Dreyfus, Pauline Hiromi Teramoto Miguel Farias, Leonardo Hao Chen, Dr. Canzhong Guang Shi Hainan Marie Fellbaum Korpi
Jones Veliz Wu

4:10 – 4:40 Coffee

4:40 – 5:40 Focus speaker: Peter Collins

6:30pm onwards Conference dinner – Buon Gusto

 TIMETABLE: Sunday 9 October 2011
Eastern Avenue Complex (EA)
LT 312 403 404 405 406

8:00 – 9:00 Registration

9:00 – 10:00 Focus Speaker: Peter White

10:00 – 10:30 Coffee/Posters

Mehrdad Safizadeh, Siriporn Atipatha & Nguyen Nhung, Wanvanut Yailaaw

10:30 – 11:10 ATESOL NSW Strategies
and professional learning for
teaching ESL in NSW
11:15 – 11:55
Tariq Elyas, Michelle Picard Ken Tann Mahdiyeh Ghanat Abadi Bong Jeong Lee
Santri Emilin Pingsaboi Anastasopouou Charikleia, Penelope Vos Kiran Pala, Suryakanth VG
Djahimo Dimopoulou Kiriaki

12:00 – 12:40 Dr Mira Kim & Dr Claire Janine Delahunty Arne Bölling Angela Cook Abdullah A. Bin Towairesh
Scott
Amy Suen, Andy Fung

12:40 – 2:00 Lunch

2:00 – 2:40 Professor Jane Goodman- Boluwaji Oshod, Adekunle Samson Olasunkanmi Oluga Firooz Namvar, Jamilah Ping Tian
Delahunty, Ajasin Mustfa, Nor Fariza Mohd
Dr Paula Saunders Nor

2:45 – 3:25 The Centre for English Dr Phiona Stanley Panornuang Sudasna Na Alan Libert Lissette Ramos Marin
Teaching Listening to all Ayuhdya
voices: New Research at the
3:30 – 4:10 Centre for English Teaching, Amella V. Bersalona Laura Ficorilli Hyun Su KIM Temmy Thamrin
University of Sydney

4:10 – 4:40 Coffee

4:40 – 5:40 Focus speaker: Andy Kirkpatrick

5:40 – 5:50 Closing remarks

5:50 – 7:00 Conference social -Eastern Avenue Lobby

 Abstracts
Focus Speakers
Can an ape have a conversation?

James D. Benson William S. Greaves York University

Rationale for a study of a corpus of conversations between language enculturated bonobos and humans.

We argue that apes can adhere to conversational norms, i.e. take turns appropriately, and carry out a
sustained negotiation in ways that humans recognize as such. Our conclusion is based on regularities in
three brief conversations between Kanzi (Savage-Rumbaugh et al 1993) and three different human
interlocutors. Our method of inquiry is oriented to the language as action tradition rather than the language
as product tradition (Bargh 2006:150); that is, we are concerned with ‘the functions and purposes of
language, how people use it to get things done in their daily lives’. Bargh (2006:147) notes ‘amazing
advances in our knowledge of the kinds of psychological concepts and processes that can be primed or put
into motion nonconsciously’, among them ‘social norms to guide or channel behavior within the situation’.
In our view, casual conversation construes just such social norms.

Our analytical framework of casual conversation fleshes out the proposals of Pickering and Garrod (2004)
about automatic processing with a discourse model is grounded in the language as action tradition
(Halliday 1975, Benson and Greaves 2005). The model was originally developed to account for the
normative structures of casual conversation (Eggins and Slade 2005). The model is a layered hierarchy of
increasingly differentiated choices of moves in discourse. The choices are a system of constraints on what
can be said in response to a previous speaker, but these constraints allow for great flexibility, e.g. a speaker
has the choice of responding supportively or confrontationally. The system is shared between interactants,
since they alternate as speaker and addressee. The key point is that the turns in dialogue are coupled.

The three brief conversations with language-enculturated bonobos are sustained and highly coordinated,
and demonstrate that the bonobos have the capacity to keep the perspective of their human interlocutors in
mind. With the interactive alignment model (Garrod and Pickering 2004), these conversations, in which
bonobo and human interlocutors negotiate mutual understanding, can be explained without recourse to
prompting or mindreading, by identifying the processes of alignment and repair, which occur in canonical
moves in dialogue. The findings make it possible to make predictions about a larger scale study of bonobo-
human discourse.

References
Bargh, John A. 2006. ‘What have we been priming all these years?’ European Journal of Social
Psychology, 36:147-168.

Benson, James, and William Greaves. 2005. Functional Dimensions of Ape-Human Discourse. London:
Equinox.

Eggins, Suzanne, and Diana Slade. 2005. Analyzing Casual Conversation. London: Equinox.

Garrod, Simon and Marin J. Pickering. 2004. ‘Why is conversation so easy?’ Trends in Cognitive Science,
8,1:8-11.

Halliday, M.A.K. 1995. 'On Language in Relation to the Evolution of Human Consciousness'. In Allen,
Sture, ed. Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 92. Of Thoughts and Words: the relation between language
and mind. Singapore: Imperial College Press, pp. 45-84.

Pickering, Martin J. and Simon Garrod. 2004. ‘Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue’.
Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 27:169-226.

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 Abstracts
Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue, Murphy, J, Sevcik, R., Brakke, K., Williams, S. and D. Rumbaugh. 1993.
Language Comprehension in Ape and Child. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child
Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

“Grammatical change in Old and New Englishes: the role of colloquialisation and other
‘-isations’”

Peter Collins UNSW

Colloquialisation – the increasing acceptance of colloquialism, particularly in more formal genres – has
been a powerful discourse-pragmatic agent of grammatical change in English since the mid-twentieth
century. Studies of recent diachronic change in British and American English (e.g. Leech et al. 2009)
suggest that it has played a role in, for example, the rise of the quasi-modals (have to, have got to, be going
to, want to, etc.), of the progressive aspect, and of the get-passive. Little is known, however, about the
spread of this development through regional varieties of other than the two inner circle ‘supervarieties’,
British and American English. Using data derived from a number of sources, including the International
Corpus of English, Brown family corpora, and the Corpus of Historical American English, I shall explore
the impact of colloquialisation on a number of grammatical features across a range of World Englishes of
both the “Inner Circle” and the “Outer Circle”. Attention will also be paid to such complementary
processes as grammaticalisation and Americanisation, and explanations pursued in the light of independent
evidence of the relative evolutionary statuses of the Englishes (q.v. Schneider 2007) and their characteristic
style orientations.

References Leech, Geoffrey, Marianne Hundt, Christian Mair, and Nicholas Smith. 2009.
Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schneider, Edgar. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Yin and Yang rhetoric and the prospects for public discourse in China

Andy Kirkpatrick Griffith University

Abstract

In this presentation I shall first briefly review the Chinese rhetorical tradition and outline some principles
of rhetoric in Chinese. I shall then argue that the Chinese rhetorical tradition and ways of persuasion are
not being taught to Mainland Chinese students today, with the exception of a small minority of students in
Departments of Chinese. Indeed, Chinese university students receive far more instruction in Anglo rhetoric
and how to write academic English than they do in Chinese rhetoric and how to write academic Chinese.

The lack of interest in the Chinese rhetorical tradition can, in large part, be traced to the Cultural
Revolution (1966-1976), when a new aggressive and highly antagonistic rhetorical style was adopted. Mao
himself often adopted this style.

The adoption of this new aggressive (yang) rhetorical style, coupled with the neglect of the study of
Chinese rhetoric, has made it extremely difficult for concerned and responsible Chinese citizens to engage
in constructive public discourse.

I will illustrate my argument by analyzing examples of contemporary Chinese rhetoric, including samples

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 Abstracts
from Mao, the Cultural Revolution, the annual petition written by the mothers of those who died during the
Tiananmen massacre of June 1989, and the infamous Charter 08.

I shall conclude by suggesting that, until China reintroduces Chinese rhetoric as a serious subject for study,
the prospects for a civic-minded and constructive public discourse in China will remain bleak. This, in
turn, means that the prospect of a mature civic society developing in China also remains bleak.

Title? A ‘fair and balanced” exploration of media bias – Appraisal meets the Murdoch empire.

Peter R. R. White. School of English, Media and Performing Arts, UNSW

It is generally agreed that all media texts are “subjective” in some sense, and consequently that notions of
“media objectivity” are a stratagem by which mainstream news journalism tendentiously lays claim to a
special epistemic status for its texts. But where does that leave us with notions of news media “bias” and
news media “fairness”? Do we simply accuse of bias any journalistic text which doesn’t support our own
particular axiological preferences?

Recently the Murdoch press in Australia has been accused of gross bias in its coverage of climate change
and the government’s actions towards introducing a tax on companies which pollute the atmosphere with
carbon emissions. In response, News Corporation representatives and defenders insist they are simply
“holding the government to account”, as is the duty of the news media in its “4th estate” role.

Is it possible to adjudicate such claims and counter claims by reference to some systematic, transparent and
principled discourse analytical methodology, a methodology which would not only demonstrate that
relevant texts are subjective and axiologically interested (since this is the case with all media texts), but
which would also demonstrate that they are so axiologically interested as to be egregiously unfair and
journalistically improper?

This paper will investigate the possibilities for developing such a discourse analytical methodology. In the
context of an analyses of the Australian news media’s coverage of climate change, it will outline a
framework for characterising and measuring various types of journalistic bias, drawing on insights from
Systemic Functional Linguistics in general, the Appraisal framework more narrowly, and from some key
argumentation theorists.

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 Colloquia

ATESOL NSW - Strategies and professional learning for teaching ESL in NSW

Robert Jackson - President, ATESOL NSW and ACTA

Sue Bremner - Board member, ATESOL NSW
Maya Cranitch - Associate Academic, ACU
Katherine Brandon - Professional Support and Development Officer, English Australia
Kathleen Rushton - Associate Director Professional Experiences (Primary), Faculty of Education and
Social Work, University of Sydney

Abstract

This hands-on workshop will showcase effective ESL teaching strategies for different sectors and
educational contexts.

About ATESOL NSW - ATESOL NSW is the professional association for Teaching English to Speakers of
Other Languages (TESOL) in NSW. Our members come from all education sectors: early childhood,
primary, secondary, tertiary, ELICOS, adult and community education. Our mission is to advocate on
behalf of and improve educational outcomes for learners of English as an additional language or dialect
(EAL/D), including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students who speak traditional Indigenous
languages, creoles and varieties of Aboriginal English."

Listening to all voices: New Research at the Centre for English Teaching, University of Sydney

Patrick Pheasant
Dr Stephen Howlett
John Gardiner
Bradley Christmas
Lydia Dutche

Abstract

The Centre for English Teaching (CET) at the University of Sydney is pleased to present a colloquium
sharing research conducted by staff and teachers at the Centre. These papers are part of an ongoing
program of engaged enquiry and curriculum renewal at the Centre which aims to take into account not only
the latest research but also the voices of both teachers and students.

CET Teacher, Bradley Christmas explores the role of brainstorming in improving students’ writing. This
action research project explores the effects of brainstorming techniques on students’ perceptions of their
writing performance.

Student perceptions of writing skill transfer from genre-based direct entry programs to university are
investigated by CET Teacher John Gardiner. This paper investigates the student perceptions of writing skill
transfer from a genre‐based direct entry course at CET to their university course.

CET Director Patrick Pheasant explores in his doctoral research the aesthetic experience in the ESL
classroom, how this affects language learning and how it can be heightened, focused and maximised in an
adult learning context.

CET Head of Administration, Dr Stephen Howlett explores in his thesis the experiences of a cohort of sub-
 Abstracts
continental students studying in an Australian university to identify the interaction between commercial
sustainability and its effect on good practice.

CET Teacher, Lydia Dutcher researches the uses of Conversation Analysis methodology to investigate
interactions between learners of varying proficiency levels in order to understand the strategies these
learners use to initiate and maintain communication.

Summary

Patrick Pheasant, CET Director, University of Sydney has taught ESL for sixteen years in Japan, The
Netherlands, USA and Australia. Originally a high school drama teacher, he has qualifications in
education, TESOL, change management and occupational health. He is currently completing a Doctor of
Education at the University of Sydney.

Single papers, hot topics and poster

presentations

Silence with Agreeing and Disagreeing Responses in Australian Society

Ahmad Mohammad AL-Harahsheh, PhD Candidate in Applied Linguistics, Edith Cowan University, WA

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the use of silence with agreeing and disagreeing
responses in casual conversation in Australian English. Twelve dyadic conversations were conducted for
30 minutes each. The participants were 24 university students at Edith Cowan University (Western
Australia): 12 males and 12 females. They were grouped into two main groups: friends and strangers.
Ninety seconds are analysed from the beginning, the middle, and the end of each conversation; these
extracts were chosen randomly. The theoretical framework of this study draws on Conversation Analysis.
One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study is that silence can accompany agreeing and
disagreeing responses, since silence serves to confirm, to emphasise and to acknowledge what the current
speaker has said.

Maa in Verbal Clauses in Faify Arabic

Salih Alzahrani - University of Newcastle

Negation is a universal phenomenon that plays a significant role in Classical Arabic as well as Modern
Standard Arabic morphologically, syntactically and semantically. When a statement is negated, it means
that there are changes in its meaning and/or its truth. Negation also causes morphological and syntactic
changes.

Languages use different means to mark sentence negation. Some languages such as Standard French
(Pollock 1989, cited in Ouhalla 2002) and West Flemish (Haegeman 1995, cited in Ouhalla 2002) mark
negation on sentences using two elements. Others like Italian (Belletti 1990, cited in Ouhalla 2002) and
English mark it only with one element. Arabic dialects have both types of variation Ouhalla (1993:299).

Faify Arabic (henceforth FA) uses a very simple way to express negation. It is easily accomplished by the
use of maa where this negative particle does not have any morphological effect on the following word
and/or phrase. I suggest that this dialect has almost lost all the eight negative particles which exist in
Arabic.

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 Abstracts
I suggest that maa can be used to negate different types of clauses in FA. In verbal clauses, it occurs before
both the perfective and imperfective forms of verbs.

The Development of Thai Diploma Students’ English Communicative Skills

Using Local Learning Resources

Siriporn Atipatha - Bansomdejchapraya Rajabhat University, Bangkok

Nguyen Nhung - Bansomdejchapraya Rajabhat University, Bangkok

The research titled “The Development of Thai Diploma Students’ English Communicative Skills Using
Local Learning Resources in the Concentrated Language Encounter” was aimed to investigate the
development of Thai diploma students’ English communicative skills: reading, writing, listening, and
speaking using Bangkok local learning resources in the concentrated language encounter teaching method
and to study students’ attitude and suggestion toward the use of local learning resources in the concentrated
language encounter teaching method. The 30 subjects were randomly selected from the 1st year Thai
diploma students, Siam Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand. The subjects were taught by the
concentrated language encounter teaching method with Bangkok local learning resources for 6 fifty-minute
periods. The instruments were English reading, writing, listening, and speaking tests and the attitude and
suggestion questionnaire toward the use of local learning resources in the concentrated language encounter
teaching method. The data were statistically analyzed by t-test for dependent samples. The research
showed that there was significant difference in English reading, writing, listening, and speaking scores
between the pretest and the post test at the 0.05 level.

Time-saving Talk: A Study on the Effect of Speech Rate on Listener Comprehension

Amella V. Bersalona - University of the Philippines, Philippines

The study investigated the effect on listener comprehension of a speech delivered at different speech rates
using two methods: Speed Changing Method and Altered Pause Time.

The message used for the study was a five-minute, 750-word speech that has a standard rate of difficulty. It
was normally delivered at 150 words per minute. This five-minute speech was compressed into a three-
minute-and-twenty-second speech with a rate of 225 wpm. Using a computer, two types of speech
compression techniques were used to produce this rate: Speed Changing Method and Altered Pause Time.

The effect of speech rate on listener comprehension was measured by administering a 30-item, four
alternative comprehension tests. The independent t-test was used to analyze the data and compare the
scores of the respondents.

The results showed that the scores of the Regular Rate group were superior to those obtained from the
faster rate group using either method. There was, however, no significant difference between the scores of
the respondents who listened to the speech using the Speed Changing Method and those who listened to it
using the Altered Pause Time.

The results suggest that a fast speech rate has a significant effect on listener comprehension. A speed of
225 wpm is too fast and inappropriate for introducing new topics to the respondents since a comprehension
loss of 12-13% (i.e., in comparison to the Regular Rate) was apparent at this rate. In terms of speech
compression techniques, the findings support the application of the Speed Changing Method over Altered
Pause Time in terms of efficiency, or ease of use.

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 Abstracts
A Namescape of Sydney

Arne Bölling - Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University

This paper reports on a current PhD project examining the toponyms of Sydney's shires, cities and suburbs.

A database, including the bounded localities in the County of Cumberland, is compiled from primary and
secondary sources as well as personal communication. The date of establishment, the meaning of each
name, who bestowed the toponyms and the language from or via which they were transferred to Australia
are recorded.

Mapping the data both chronologically and regionally, answers to the following research questions will be
provided:

− Are there any differences in place-naming patterns/practices between Sydney and

Melbourne?

− What factors influence place-naming patterns?

− Are there any differences in the bestowal of indigenous vs introduced toponyms? If so,
why?

Additional fields of research include:

− Applying the Australian National Placenames Survey place-name typology (see Tent and
Blair 2011) to clarify whether it is suitable for further research on Australian placenames;

− Placename changes affecting present names to see if these function as indicators of

identity.

References

Appleton, Richard and Barbara Appleton (1992). Cambridge Dictionary of Australian places. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Bölling, Arne. A Namescape of Melbourne – cities, shires and suburbs. Unpublished master thesis.

Kennedy, Brian and Barbara Kennedy (2006). Australian Place-names. Rydalmere: Hodder and Stoughton.

Tent, Jan and David Blair (2011). ""Motivations for naming: The development of a toponymic typology for
Australian placenames."" Names: A Journal of Onomastics, Vol. 59, No. 2, pp. 67-89.

Similar Place Avoidance: An Innate Property of Grammar?

Jason Brown - University of Auckland

Similar Place Avoidance (SPA) is a phenomenon well-known to adult languages. This includes the
categorical variety that has traditionally fallen within the scope of the OCP, but also the gradient variety
that stands as a set of statistical tendencies. In both cases, consonants within a root that share the same
place of articulation are avoided. The existence of SPA across languages is so robust that is has been
claimed to be a statistical phonological universal (Pozdniakov & Segerer 2007). Given these claims to
universality, this study aims to investigate whether SPA is present in the speech of children.

While children often exhibit a stage of consonant harmony, there has been virtually no research involving
possible gradient patterns of SPA for children. This study observes place co-occurrence figures from a
single child (Smith 1973) over time in order to make a first pass at establishing a course of development
for SPA. This is an exceptionally complex endeavour, as the child in question also exhibits consonant

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 Abstracts
harmony; thus, these two courses of development will be compared.

The findings are telling: while SPA for the set of labials is indeed pronounced, SPA for the dorsals is
exaggeratedly so. It is also no coincidence that this particular child exhibits a categorical dorsal harmony,
though after the age of the gradient SPA. Thus, SPA may be an innate component of the child’s phonology;
furthermore, given this sequencing, it appears as though SPA may in fact prime the later stage of consonant
harmony.

Context Networks:
Elaborating and Testing the Parameters of Field, Tenor and Mode in Natural Settings

David G. Butt - Macquarie University, Australia

Alison Moore - University of Wollongong, Australia

The “context of situation” and the “context of culture” are the ‘ground’ against which the ‘figure’ of our
linguistic behaviour takes on its meaning. Our instantial utterances receive their “valeur” from the
differences they make in a social situation, their semantic consequences in the “living of life” (Hasan,
1996).

In functional linguistics, therefore, a necessary task is to establish any motivated alignments between
differences and changes at the level of context and the semantic and lexicogrammatical consequences of
such conditions in the social background. This is not a straightforward matter. But it is tractable; and it
needs to receive attention proportional to the importance of context as a level in a realizational model of
language.

In this talk, I demonstrate the tool power of network treatments of context modelling: there is first a brief
global perspective on the 3 parameters as simultaneous systems; and then I offer a closer examination of 3
‘difficult’ zones of contextual differentiation (1 from each parameter). The discussion uses a wide spectrum
of empirical sources, chiefly drawn from contexts of care (medical/ psychiatric); from teaching; and from
political discourse.

Linguistics might be characterised as a study of ‘news of differences that make a difference’ (to conflate
Saussure 1916 with Bateson 1980). The aim of this discussion is to encourage a radical concreteness about
context variation – to assist researchers in developing their own descriptions by applying and adapting the
work of Halliday, Hasan, and other contributors to Firth’s “polysystemic” tradition.

Bateson, G. (1980). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Glasgow, Fontana/Collins.

Hasan, R. (1996). Introduction. Ways of Saying, Ways of Meaning: Selected Papers of Ruqaiya Hasan. C.
Cloran, G. Williams and D. Butt. London and New York, Cassell.
Saussure (1916/1974). Course in General Linguistics, Fontana/Collins.

Pragmatics in Preeschool Children

Anastasopouou Charikleia - MP, University of Patra, Greece

Dimopoulou Kiriaki - MA, Randboud University, Netherlands

Background: It is well known, that Pragmatic Skills at the pre-school years play a very important role in
the child`s further academic and social development. On the other hand communication and pragmatic
difficulties very often are presented as a core symptom in children with developmental disorders.

Aims: The aim of the present study was to assess the pragmatic skills of typically developing Greek
children four to five years old. There are no standardized tests for pragmatic skills in Greek, that is why we
chose to use the test of the “Pragmatics Profile of Everyday Communication Skills in Pre-school Children”
of Hazel Dewart and Susie Summers (1995 version) for our research. This test gives us the opportunity of

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 Abstracts
using it as a means of evaluation and measurement of the pragmatic skills of typically developing children
of preschool age, so that we can get the complete picture of these children’s communication, and be able in
the future to use it in screening evaluations of children with pragmatic deficits.

Methods & Procedures: After translation and relevant adjustments of the test, we administered it, in the
form of a questionnaire, to 59 parents who had children at the appropriate age.

Through the use of descriptive statistics (distribution and analysis of percentages) the differences between
the two sexes (boys-girls) that took place in our research were examined, and the four categories in which
the test is separated were related to each other: A. Communicative Functions, B. Response to
Communication, C) Interaction and Conservation, D) Contextual Variation.

Outcomes & Results: Results showed that girls generally and specifically in each category of the test
scored higher than boys and appeared to use more mature communication skills.

Conclusion: Another goal of the present study was to make a qualitative comparison between the results of
our study and those of other similar studies which have used atypical children, such as children in the
spectrum of autism, deaf children, children with Specific Language Impairment etc. Results showed little
differences between typically and non-typically developed children. That considered to be predictable
among some basic aspects of communication because of the global characteristics of the children’s need of
expressing communication. The ultimate goal was to track down the communication ‘behaviors’ of these
children and wherever possible, to come up with general conclusions on their pragmatic skills having as
an initiating point the relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995).

Thematic Choices in Government Work Reports in Chinese and English

Hao Chen - a postgraduate of Macquarie University

Dr. Canzhong Wu - the senior lecturer of Macquarie University

China’s government work reports are the reporting texts that are produced by the Chinese central
government and delivered usually by the Premier on the behalf of the State Council to the National
People’s Congress for deliberation. They typically comprise three parts: 1) Review of national economy
and social development in the past few years, 2) Main objectives and tasks for the next five years, and 3)
Work for the year of report.

These texts are not just interesting in terms of political jargons, but also in terms of grammatical structures,
particularly when studied with reference to their English translations. This paper looks at the 2011
government work report and its English translation from a textual perspective, comparing the thematic
choices in both texts, and investigating how the textual meaning is conveyed from Chinese into English, to
what extent themes are preserved or changed, and what translation strategies are used in the translation
process.

Lexical Neologisms in Mandarin Chinese and the Problem of Classification

Angela Cook - Griffith University

Many linguists have tried to classify Chinese lexical neologisms before. However, previous researchers
have often focussed only on a small subset of all lexical neologisms. Even where an attempt has been made
to present a comprehensive overview of lexical change in Mandarin Chinese, the resulting system of
categorisation has frequently been incomplete, internally inconsistent or poorly structured. This has
frustrated the efforts of linguists to draw any meaningful comparisons between lexical change in Mandarin
Chinese and other languages. This paper represents a fresh attempt to present an overarching classification
of the different types of lexical developments that have arisen in written and spoken Mandarin over the

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 Abstracts
past three decades. Careful cross-linguistic analysis reveals that examples of almost all the equivalent
categories of lexical innovations noted in the literature on English language change can likewise be
provided in relation to Mandarin Chinese. In addition, Mandarin offers a surprisingly large number of
options for creating and adopting lexical neologisms not available to speakers of English. Overall, this
paper presents a picture of Mandarin speakers as cultivating a flexible, creative, playful approach to their
use of language.

Free to be yourself?: exploring identity in online discussion

Janine Delahunty - University of Wollongong, Australia

In an effort to better understand the role of interaction in online learning, the discussion forums of one
TESOL distance education subject were examined, revealing emergent themes relating to identity. This
presentation will show how language choices reveal a process of identity building as students project an
impression of themselves, and attempt to ‘find’ and negotiate their positioning within the group. As the
forum posts bear the meaning-making load, this can be understood and explained using Systemic
Functional Linguistics, more specifically through the lens of Transitivity and Appraisal – systems
identified in the SFL model as important for realizing understandings of the world and for enacting
interpersonal relationships respectively. The preliminary results show that students create multiple
identities for themselves, and can also take on ‘assigned’ identities. This process of constructing identities
through online discourse occurs dynamically over the duration of the intake, creating an ‘ebb and flow’
effect as students both align with and move away from others.

Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by International Postgraduate Students

at the University of Malaya

Hilda Delavari - University of Malaya, Malaysia

Zoiemiow Vakili - University of Malaya, Malaysia

This paper investigates the use of English vocabulary learning strategies among a small group of 16
international postgraduate students with different backgrounds and levels of English proficiency
knowledge at the University of Malaya. English was considered as their second or foreign language. The
framework of the study was based on Oxford’s Strategy Inventory (SILL,1990).The purpose of the
language learning strategies becomes obvious when Oxford (1990) defines them as specific actions taken
by learners to make learning easier, faster ,more enjoyable , more self directed, more effective and more
transferable to new situations. To achieve this end as Nibset and Shucksmith (1986) state, successful
language learners develop a range of strategies from which they are able to select appropriately and adapt
flexibly to meet the needs of a specific context. A quantitative method was done in terms of questionnaire
in order to find out whether they used direct strategies or indirect strategies. The analysis of the data
showed that they used both types of strategies. At the end we concluded that the participants of the study
used language learning strategies consciously or unconsciously although they were not familiar with the
different categories of vocabulary learning strategies.

THE CONSTRAINTS IN INTRODUCING NEW TEACHING METHODS IN RURAL AND

DISADVANTAGED SCHOOLS IN INDONESIA: A CASE STUDY

Santri Emilin Pingsaboi Djahimo - Nusa Cendana University, Kupang-NTT, Indonesia

This paper reports the findings of qualitative research undertaken by the writer in 2008. The field research
was conducted in three different rural areas in the province of East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia.
One randomly chosen eighth-grade class in each of three schools was studied for two months, with the

11
 Abstracts
whole study spanning six months during the year of 2008.

The main purpose of the study was to examine the constraints inhibiting the introduction of new teaching
methods into rural and disadvantaged schools in Indonesia, taking into account the physical, cultural and
socio-economic contexts. The exemplificatory and exploratory purpose was to identify the effectiveness of
the innovation of teaching English using games and pictures in improving vocabulary acquisition of EFL
students of Junior High Schools in rural areas in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia.

The qualitative data were collected through two interview sessions (pre- and post-treatment), direct
observation and field notes. The main interpretation of the study is explained qualitatively by: identifying
the constraints and affordability of introducing new teaching methods into rural and disadvantaged schools
in Indonesia.

The result shows that introducing educational innovations in rural areas is viable as long as it is easily
achieved and fits in with local expectations. However, not all schools in all areas can accept innovation;
one school in the study rejected this educational innovation because of the community’s strict cultural
values. This study had clearly focused aims and was conducted only for a short period of time. Therefore
the sustainability of this innovation cannot be assured as some aspects of the longer term issues were
beyond the scope of the study.

Antonymy and Graduonymy

Jamila Djumabayeva - National University of Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan

In European linguistics synonyms and antonyms were studied separately and they have been studied as two
different, opposite phenomenon. But nowadays, in Uzbek linguistics these two oppositions – synonyms
and antonyms – were joined into one phenomenon as g r a d u o n y m y. What’s that? This phenomenon
was introduced by the Uzbek linguist professor H. Nigmatov, O. Bozorov. This word means gradation of
words. A special research work has been made by Sh. Arifjanova. In Uzbek linguistics the units situated
from the right and left side of a graduonymic row’s centre/dominant are synonyms, the last word on the
right and the last word on the left are antonyms, e.g. tiny ~ small ~ medium ~ big ~ enormous ~ gigantic.
According to this phenomenon, sameness, synonyms, differentiation, the words with opposite meanings,
synonyms and antonyms were joined – they are joined in one graduonymic relation.

On the basis of antonyms and synonyms have been made an attempt to create graduonymic lines (nouns,
according to the size e.g. room? flat? hut? home? house? bungalow ? dwelling? fortress? castle? palace;
according to the expressiveness of an adjective: thin? gaunt? slight? willowy? lean? slim? slender? bony;
verb, according to the expressiveness like? be infatuated with? love? be smitten with? adore? idolize? be
besotted with? worship? dote on; noun, according to the age newborn? infant? toddler? child?
teenager/adolescent? youngster? middle-aged? man/woman? old man/old woman, oldster).

The main part of the graduonymic line is the middle word or we can say the main word, the first and last
words are antonyms. It’s reasonable to consider first of all if with the help of semantic oppositions can be
created graduonymic lines.

The main conclusions are:

• Polar antonyms include as a middle member of a graduonymic line “normal” (in most
cases);

• Overlapping antonym pairs can’t create together one single graduonymic line, separately
can;

• Equipollent antonym pairs can be members of a graduonymic line but they can’t be in the
polar position.

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 Abstracts
References:

− Arifjonova, Sh. O’zbek tilida lug’awiy graduonimiya (Lexical graduonymy in Uzbek).

Dissertation. Tashkent. 1994

− Bozorov, O. O’zbek tilida darajalanish. (Graduonymy in Uzbek) Tashkent, 1996

− Compact Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus, Oxford University Press, 2008.

− Cruse D.A. Lexical Semantics. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1986.

− In-Seok Young. On antonomy in English. Language and linguistics. Volume 19.

− Nigmatov, H., Rasulov R. O'zbek tili sistem leksikologiyasi asoslari. (Basics of Uzbek
system lexicology). Tashkent. 1995.

− Lyons J. Vvedeniye v teoreticheskuyu lingvistiku. (Introduction to the theoretical

linguistics) Moscow. Progress. 1978.

Your Place or Mine? Understanding Spatial Meanings in Texts

Shoshana Dreyfus - University of Sydney

Pauline Jones - University of Wollongong

In this paper we present recent work on the investigation of discursive construals of place. Within SFL
theory, place has been accounted for within the Transitivity constituent of circumstance of place, however
beyond this, place has not received much attention. As educators and analysts, we have found that
circumstances of place construe an abundance of meanings beyond what the theory could account for, and
the more delicate descriptions proposed in this paper enable richer and deeper investigations of the kinds of
meanings construed in texts.

We examine a number of texts written for children and young people; texts which are concerned with
place, contestation over place and displacement, in order to demonstrate the usefulness of extended
descriptions of place. In doing so, we present a developing framework for capturing nuances in meanings
about place that enables us to distinguish between abstract places such as in situations of conflict and
physical places such as in my village. The framework has also helped recognize something of the
important meanings that are imbued in expressions of place such as from our country and from my family.

Such delicate descriptions of place have given us a richer ‘toolkit’ for exploring the meanings of texts that,
in turn, has significant pay-off for our educational interventions in two ways. With respect to language-in-
text, this have given us insights into abstractions and the way they unfold in texts; and have shown us how
deeper understandings of place can make the notion of ‘setting’ more explicit in literary texts. With respect
to language-in-development, we have found that circumstances of place can exemplify social realist
notions of semantic gravity and density (Maton 2011). We are also able to demonstrate how the move into
abstraction from childhood to late adolescence identified by Christie & Derewianka (2008) is reflected in
spatial meanings in texts. Throughout, we suggest that, rather than being peripheral, circumstantial
elements are integral to the realization of our cultural narratives (including the struggles and their
consequences) as text.

Maton, K. 2011. Theories and things: The semantics of disciplinarity. In F. Christie and K. Maton (eds.),
Disciplinarity: Systemic Functional and Sociological Perspectives. London: Continuum. 62-84.

Christie, F. & Derewianka, B. 2008. School Discourse. London: Continuum.

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 Abstracts
Telling a Different Story: Knowledge and Stance in Verbal-visual News Displays

Dorothy Economou

This paper uses a socio-semiotics, in particular Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) Appraisal Theory
(Martin and White, 2006) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to compare three verbal-visual news
‘displays’ (Keeble, 2007) or ‘standouts’ (Economou, 2006). Each standout, comprising news photos,
headlines and captions, introduce the same 2009 news feature story on the issue of asylum seeker policy in
Australia, written by well-known journalist-political analyst David Marr. Each standout appeared in a
different news site – the print Age (Melbourne), the print Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), and the Online
SMH.

Produced by news editors and news designers, the aims of such standouts are to encapsulate the ensuing
story as well as attract a wide readership to it. These three standouts produced for the one story are thus
considered here in terms of how they re-contextualise the same knowledge, as well as construct an
evaluative stance towards it.

Significant epistemic and evaluative differences were found in the three standouts and these were
examined in terms of editorial aims, editorial voice and target readership in each context. Questions that
this study raises about ‘re-packaging’ and ‘selling’ the same story differently in different media sites are
considered, particularly in respect to readers who do not read the written story.

References

Economou, D. 2009 Photos in the News: Appraisal Analysis of Visual Semiosis and Verbal-visual
Intersemiosis. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Sydney.

Economou, D. 2006 ‘The Big Picture’ in L. Lassen, J. Strunck and A. Vestergaard (eds) Mediating
Ideology in Text and Image. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.112-234.

Keeble, R. 2006 (4th edn) The Newspaper Handbook. London: Routledge.

Martin, J. R. and White, P.R.R. 2005 The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke and
New York: Palgrave.

Analysis of Saudi Arabian Policies, Curricula and Enacted Curriculum:

Pre and post 9/11 Socio-Political Approach

Tariq Elyas - King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Michelle Picard - University of Adelaide, Australia

There has been limited research that has focused on the role of culture and teaching/ learning identities in
EFL, and how these issues impact on EFL policy, curriculum, the use of textbooks and pedagogy (Field &
Leicester, 2003). Even less research has focussed on these issues in the Gulf context. Some international
research has explored the role of culture and geopolitical factors affecting EFL policies (Byram & Risager,
1999; Önlan, 2005; Risager, 2006). Some other studies (several in the Gulf context) have explored global
historical and political developments and how they have affected cultures and hence EFL curricula within
those cultures (see e.g., Kramsch, 1993, 1998; Kramsch et al. 1999, Al-Qahatani, 2003; Karmani, 2005a,
2005b, 2005c; Al-Asmari, 2008, Elyas, 2008a, 2008b). A few studies have explored the enacted curriculum
(specifically in relation to teachers’ use of textbooks) in Gulf countries, and its relationship to the local
culture(s) and Discourses (AlShumaimeri, 1999; Al-Issa, 2006, Al-Alamri, 2008; Elyas, 2009a, 2009b).
This paper is the first in Saudi Arabia context to examine the full range of documents including policy,
curriculum and to explore how these documents arise out of cultural identities, and in turn may have a
range of effects on teacher and learner identities. Hence, this paper briefly explores selected English and
general education policy documents, curricula and textbooks within Saudi Arabian context from a Critical
Discourse Analysis perspective, and examines how they have changed pre-and-post 9/11.

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 Abstracts
EFL AND ESL STUDENTS’ METAPHORICAL CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF LANGUAGE
LEARNING

Miguel Farias - Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile

Leonardo Veliz - Deakin University, Australia

Forceville & Urios-Aparisi (2009) have explored metaphors in modes other than purely linguistic ones.
Metaphor as a mode of thinking and reasoning can by all means occur in such forms as images, pictures
and gestures; that is, in various non-verbal forms. In this paper particular attention is paid to non-verbal
forms of metaphorical depiction. We have examined EFL and ESL students’ drawings in order to both tap
into their mental representations of what ‘language learning’ means to them and get closer insights into
these learners’ belief system. The objective of the analysis is three-fold: firstly, we attempt to scrutinize
their metaphorical conceptualisations in order to find out the extent to which Chilean EFL and Australian
ESL students’ drawings differ from each other with regards to what ‘language learning’ is to them.
Secondly, we also look into the question of how their metaphoric representations are in line with what
Block (2003) discusses as “acquisition metaphor” and “participation metaphor”. Do they view the process
of learning another language as purely acquiring elements or as a participatory interactive process? Finally,
as our data were collected from two groups with different cultural backgrounds, we focus on how their
representations may be idiosyncratically different, or, perhaps similar. Results indicate that the
metaphorical depictions from both groups share common traits that allow us to postulate the presence of a
cognitive metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson (1980) to the extent that language learning is understood as a
dynamic, progressive and positive process. "

Ethnography of Communication: the Tool Room

Laura Ficorilli - Macquarie University

This paper is a preliminary analysis of a work in progress and part of a PhD project which investigates
communication patterns, skills and management on the factory floor of a manufacturing company. It
explores the various facets of ethnography and the forms it takes on when it is conducted in complex,
hectic environments and ‘communities’.

Often if not always used as a complementary albeit powerful, instrument to define and capture the
‘background’ of action and speech, ethnographic approaches are here critically reviewed in relation to the
specific context under investigation. Two major aspects of conducting ethnography will be analysed: the
techniques employed during fieldwork and the position and subjectivity of the researcher. Both these
aspects, it will be shown, will converge into the interpretation process.

Specifically it will be shown how some of the traditional fieldwork techniques such as observation, field
notes, question asking have to be utilized in a fluid and dynamic way (consider your participants,
maintenance operators moving around the floor of an industrial plant). In the same way, the position and
subjectivity of the ethnographer will have to be of the same type, fluid and dynamic (e.g.: consider yourself
on the factory floor, you are given a visibility vest and a pair of goggles for safety reasons, you are the only
woman among men).

It will be argued that, indeed, ‘ethnography is a strange animal’ (Blommaert, 2006), chameleonic and
visible at the same time whose tools have to be adapted to dynamic and at times unpredictable
circumstances.

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 Abstracts
Local-grammar Based Approach to the Recognition of Variants of Loanwords

Mohamed Yassine Frej - DICORA, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea
Prof. Jee-Sun Nam - DICORA, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea

Many studies have investigated the role Loanwords play in second language learning. While English
loanwords can be considered as an effective tool in teaching Korean to speakers of other languages, there
are some problems connected with the variation of the spelling of English Loanwords. Even though there
is an official norm imposed by the Korean government about the transliteration of loanwords in Korean,
we observe people use, especially in internet documents, many variants of the standard spelling of
loanwords. The variant spellings of loanwords are idiosyncratic phenomena that are problematic not only
for natural language processing applications, but also for second language learners who get confused about
the right spelling of a given loanword. This would hamper their second language learning process. In this
paper, to account for this problem, we propose a finite-state methodology named Local-Grammar Graph
(LGG) to describe and recognize these various spellings of loanwords. Through LGGs we can control all
variations of a given loanword and are definitely more effective and less time-consuming than having to
describe the variations one by one in a list form. Unitex system (Paumier 2003) has been developed to
transform the LGGs into finite-state transducers, which can be integrated in E-learning systems, will offer
an adequate environment for this work. The methodology we present here may be applied on other
languages.

Conversational Competence and the Socio-academic Dilemma of International Students

Ononiwu Chukwuma Godwin - Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Martins Lucky Ataman - Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

A comparably under-researched language-user-group is the L2 international students on a temporary stay

abroad, who already possess a measure of the L2 (English) competence but are handicapped in this lingua
franca context by such linguistic factors as phonological and lexical variations between their known variety
and the dialect in the place of study. Foreign students in this situation suffer communication challenges
which severely affect their social and academic interactions.

Considering the existence of varieties of Standard English and the consequent mutual intelligibility
problems between speakers of various varieties or dialects, this study seeks to investigate the
conversational competence and the socio-academic dilemma of international students based on a
questionnaire survey of international postgraduate students at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Malaysia.
A three part instrument was used to collect data from a sampled group of 70 students and was meant to
elicit respondents’ English language proficiency level and their experiences with using English abroad with
emphasis on their conversational skill experience with co-international students. The results indicate that
dialectal differences and irregular use of English account for the conversational difficulties of international
students and suggest that most of them would benefit from remedial grammar classes based on the
contextually relevant English variety or dominant colloquial dialect.

Chances are Quadrillion to One: Probabilistic Language in Forensic Expert Evidence

Professor Jane Goodman-Delahunty - Charles Sturt University, Australia

Dr Paula Saunders - Charles Sturt University, Australia

The interests of justice are best served when scientifically sound and unbiased expert witness testimony is
presented in court. It is equally important that jurors understand the testimony of the experts in order to
reach a fair verdict. Jurors are frequently called upon to evaluate forensic evidence, such as DNA and
fingerprint traces, in criminal trials. This evidence is presented by forensic experts who summarise their
findings using probabilistic language such as “150 quadrilliion times more likely” to quantify the

16
 Abstracts
likelihood of a random match between samples of biometric data from the accused and the crime scene.
Research has shown that jurors reach different estimates of culpability based on variations in the
terminology used by the experts to express this probability: statistics presented as percentages vs
frequencies are more persuasive and statistics expressed in percentages closer to 100% are more strongly
associated with culpability. Currently, experts witnesses are advised to avoid traditional statistical
terminology due to common misconceptions regarding the power and conclusiveness of forensic scientific
data and instead are advised to describe the relative rarity of a DNA profile match as “weak” “strong”
“very strong” or “extremely strong”. These proposed linguistic alternatives have not been well-tested.
This presentation draws on past research and current practice to make recommendations on language for
experts to use to best assist jurors to render unbiased and fair verdicts.

The Challenges for Non-Native English Speakers in Writing for International Scientific Publication
in English

Hamamah - UNSW, Australia

Scientific international publication is highly valued in scholarly life. Through Research Articles (RAs)
scholars secure academic prestige and promotion (Canagarajah, 2002, p.33). However, it is taxing for non-
native English speakers in quest of publishing in English in international journals. While research and
writing are always locally situated, the publishing activity is influenced by the powerful and complex
global practices (Lilis and Curry, 2010, p. 1). The aim of this study in progress is to extend our
understanding of the processes, which includes the perceptions, problems, and strategies, that Indonesian
academics, as non-native English speakers, go through in attempting to publish scientific articles in an
international refereed journal in English. This study is meant to help academics in periphery countries to
open the doors of publishing networks internationally.

References:

Canagarajah, S. (2002). A Geopolitics of Academic Writing. USA, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh

Press.

Lilis, T.M. and Curry, M.J. (2010). Academic Writing in a Global Context: The politics and Practices of
Publishing in English. USA, New York: Routledge.

Chinese EFL Learners' Attribution Beliefs and Self-Efficacy in English Reading

Feifei Han - University of Sydney, Australia

This presentation reports a study on self-efficacy and attribution beliefs in reading English as a foreign
language (FL) with a group of 159 Chinese university EFL learners majoring in Business Management.
The participants answered two questionnaires asking them to report their self-efficacy and attribution
beliefs to FL reading. The English reading achievement was tested through a reading test with a format of
College English Test Band-4. The results showed that Chinese students had different attribution beliefs to
success and failure of English reading: they attributed the success of English reading frequently to the
effort, the use of reading strategies and the English teachers, whereas the most frequent factors to which
they attributed the failure of English reading were the bad luck, poor English teachers as well as the
difficult reading tasks. The results of the multiple regression analysis indicated that self-efficacy and
attribution beliefs (i.e. attribution to strategies and mood) in FL reading together explained about 17 % of
variance in FL reading achievement. The study also found that both self-efficacy and attribution beliefs
differed among high-, medium-, and low-achieving readers. High-achieving FL readers demonstrated
higher self-efficacy than medium-achieving readers, who again were more confident than their low-
achieving counterparts. Additionally, high-achieving FL readers tended to attribute English reading to the
use of reading strategies, and to view reading achievement as changeable over time, more often than

17
 Abstracts
medium- and low-achieving readers. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research are also
articulated.

Tone, Tonality and Tonicity in Tikhak Tangsa

Paul Hastie - Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University, Melbourne

Tikhak is a Tibeto-Burman language of North East India. A variety of the Tangsa language network, Tikhak
is classified under the Bodo-Jingphaw-Konyak branch, aka the ‘Sal’ language group (Burling 1983).
Tangsa dialects are collectively called ‘Naga, Tase’ in the online reference database Ethnologue . Despite
this lumping, morphological and phonological difference is widespread across 70 known Tangsa varieties,
and a ‘Tikhak group’ seems to constitute a justifiable sub-grouping based on grammatical and phonological
factors (Morey 2009).

According to modern geo-national borders, Tangsa communities have been migrating from Burma into
India over several centuries, however many Tangsa people consider either side of the Eastern Indo-
Burmese border as merely adjacent regions of their traditional land. Tikhak are thought to be one of the
earliest Tangsa peoples to make this journey.

Tikhak has three lexical tones, however the tone system appears to be in a state of change, and possibly in
the process of becoming moribund. While use of lexical tone varies, the system is perhaps on the decrease
in Tikhak, whereas the intonational systems are robust and perhaps becoming moreso. Increasing contact
with non-tonal languages (Hindi, Assamese, English) are a likely factor behind this change. In this view,
the systems of tonicity and tonality appear to be taking an increasing functional load, while the system of
tone as an experiential resource is becoming more highly constrained.

References

Burling, Robbins, 1983. The Sal Languages - Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area (v7.2)

Morey, Stephen, 2009 Tangsa Agreement Markers (RCLT seminar paper, La Trobe University)

The Evaluation of Graduate Diploma in Teaching Profession (International Program) English

Department Faculty of Education Bansom

Assistant Professor Dr. Areewan Iamsa-ard - Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University

The aim of this qualitative research is to explore the evaluation of Graduate Diploma in Teaching
Profession (International Program) English Department Faculty of Education Bansomdejchaopraya
Rajabhat University through CIPP Model in 4 aspects: context, input, process and product. Data are
collected through 2 approaches i.e. (1) completion of 5-point rating scale questionnaire based on CIPP
Model by 2 groups of population; total 13 students and 12 lecturers of Graduate Diploma in Teaching
Profession (International Program) in academic year 2010 and (2) structured interviewing with the same
groups of populations in (1).The analysis of data is presented in forms of percentage, arithmetic mean, and
standard deviation.

The findings reveal that most of the 2 groups of subjects generally agree to evaluate the quality of the
curriculum in 4 aspects of CIPP Model at high level. After analysis of each aspect, product is ranked as the
most satisfactory particular preceding to input, context, and process respectively. Moreover, the strengths
of the program are found to be qualified and experienced teaching staffs and concordance between
curriculum and the need of learners as well as requirements of the authorities. The suggestions from the
respondents also include some necessary improvements for further curriculum development such as the
systematization of process and administration, strong management of educational supervision, and
providing high quality of materials and documents.

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 Abstracts
Syntax – Phonology (Posleksikal) of Dawan Language

Rudolof Jibrael Isu – English Study Program, Teacher Training and Education Faculty, PGRI University
NTT Kupang, Indonesia

This paper discusses the problem of phonological processes of Dawan language at the level of syntax.
Various phonological processes were analyzed using optimality theory. This theory proposes that input and
output and the relationship between the two. The relationship between input and output was mediated by
two formal mechanisms, namely generator and evaluators. In a generator that was created various
candidates. One of the various candidates to be the optimal candidate after passing through a variety of
constraints created by the evaluators.

Interpreting Grammatical Metaphor: A Cognitive-functional Perspective

Li Jie, Ph.D. - professor of English in the Foreign Languages Department at Shantou University,
P.R.China

The previous researchers of grammatical metaphor focused mainly on such issues as the metafunctions, the
classifications of grammatical metaphor and its identifications in discourse. However, they have done little
to probe into the cognitive aspects of the grammatical metaphor phenomenon, not to mention any attempt
at exploring metaphor from an integrative perspective of cognitive linguistics and functional grammar, so
that it seems not possible to investigate the grammatical metaphor phenomenon thoroughly, and there have
heretofore not been a satisfactory explanation given to this issue. This paper is going to study the lexico-
grammatical metaphorical phenomenon in the English language. Grammatical metaphor was treated by
previous studies as an alternative expression of a meaning or “same signified, different signifier” in
Halliday’s words, but the present paper will treat it as a cognitive-functional construct of linguistic
representation for human experience. By looking for a linkage between functional and cognitive
approaches to metaphor as a theoretical basis, the author attempts to build up an integrated model, hoping
to show how the two approaches in combination can throw light on grammatical metaphor and how the
cognitive and functional factors may result in the occurrence of grammatical metaphor.

Linguistic Chauvinism Constraining Linguistic Right of Indigenous Children in Nation States: Cases
of Bangladesh and Australia

Sunjida Afrin Khan - Junior Lecturer, Centre for Languages (CfL), BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Studies into national education policies have repeatedly found that states are mostly manipulative and
exclusionary when it comes to language policies. It is important to keep in mind that the language policies
of many states are implicit, at times fuzzy, and to locate the hidden agendas one needs to scrutinize the de
facto practices of that country. Exclusionary education policy can lead to the inevitable corollary of
violation of elementary linguistic rights. In Bangladesh, for example, there are forty-five indigenous
languages that are endangered now; in fact, some of them are almost dying. Linguistic constrain can be one
of the reasons for the major drop out of indigenous children whose mother tongue is not Bangla. Another
example can be Australia where, even though bilingual education has been proved to be essential for the
cognitive development for the children of Indigenous communities, the policy has failed to ensure
linguistic right for the children in the Northern Territory who are monolingual in a language other than
English, which can cause death of the rest of the endangered Indigenous languages in Australia.

There is a host of interlinked socio-economic factors, for example, nationalism, linguistic chauvinism, that
are contributing to the blotting out of our linguistic diversity. It is anticipated that this paper will stimulate
significant discussion on using evidence based research to unearth the propaganda and ideology behind the
exclusionary education policies of different nation states, especially Bangladesh and Australia.

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 Abstracts
Interactional Functions of Korean -nikka and -nuntay

Hyun Su KIM - The Australian National University

This study aims to investigate the interactional functions of -nikka and -nuntay in Korean, which have been
known as ‘indirect quotation markers’ in the literature of Korean linguistics. These markers have been
examined mainly in terms of semantic and syntactic perspectives, and their role in the spoken discourse or
in two-way communication has not been fully and systematically explored even though some aspects of
their behaviour ‘beyond a sentence’ have been reported; e.g., these markers display the hearer’s co-
alignment (Kim & Suh, 1994).

To obtain rich contexts, the current study adopts various data sets for its analysis, which include TV drama
scripts, comic books and telephone conversations. For a theoretical framework, the notion of involvement
(Chafe, 1982, 1985; Tannen, 1985, 1989; Arndt and Janney, 1987; Lee, 2007) will be used to identify the
features of spoken discourse, looking at how the speakers use the target markers to invite involvement of
the hearer. The current study will reveal that, while these markers share similarities that they are indirect
quotation markers and frequently used in casual conversation, each marker indicates different functions
from the other: In brief, the speakers use -nikka to repeat a previous utterance and show their attitude of
complaining or urging. On the other hand, the speakers use -nuntay to elicit certain kinds of feelings and
attitudes such as surprise and anger from the hearers. The marker is also used to introduce metaphors into
the context for initiating, extending and concluding stories.

Advanced Bilingual Enhancement:

Developing Translation and Interpreting Students’ Linguistic Competence

Dr Mira Kim - University of New South Wales

Dr Claire Scott - University of New South Wales

This paper reports on an ongoing project that addresses the unequal development of Translation and
Interpreting (T&I) students’ working languages. The project explores the persistent challenge in T&I
education by drawing on two major educationally oriented theories: one is a language theory, known as
systemic functional linguistics (SFL), which Kim has successfully applied to translation teaching (c.f. Kim
2009), and the other is an educational theory known as socio cultural theory (SCT), which has been a
powerful source of inspiration for great numbers of translator educators around the world since Kiraly
(2000) started to advocate it for innovative translator education (c.f. Kearns 2008). The primary outcome
of this project will be a program of learning activities in modular form, which T&I educators can
incorporate into their curricula to create a multitude of scaffolded acquisition enhancement experiences for
their students. This paper will mainly discuss the theoretical and methodological framework of this project
and present the findings of a pilot study analysing English skill needs of international students studying
T&I at Masters level at UNSW.

References

Kearns, J. (ed.) (2008) Translator and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods and Debates, London and New
York: Continuum.

Kim, M. (2009) ‘Meaning-oriented assessment of translations: SFL and its application to formative
assessment’, in C. Angelelli and H. E. Jacobson (eds.), 123-157.

Kiraly, D. C. (2000) A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education, Manchester: St. Jerome.

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Reflective Feedback Using Digital Technology for Developing Oral Communication

Marie Fellbaum Korpi - The University of Western Sydney, Australia

This paper presents the results of an ongoing research project using a model of video capture, digital
recording, and web-technology to underpin the methodology of training and assessing ‘at risk’ students of
nursing and secondary education in Australia. The project is innovative in that it delivers a means of
providing multi-source feedback on speech behaviours, such as articulation, intonation, and other prosodic
behaviours, in addition to voice projection, posture and body language. The method provides systematic
and formative feedback to students on their oral communicative skills for their profession.

Addressing the need for broader components in assessing language ability of non-native speakers aspiring
to be professionals, such as teachers or nurses, the use of modern technology as a tool for training students
is combined with instruments to develop self-reflection and self-monitoring, leading to continuing self-
assessment in order to improve their speech. The combination of reflective tools and individual speech
captured digitally, allows students to track changes in their communication skills both verbally and
nonverbally, leading to speech which exudes confidence and authority necessary for their respective
profession.

Korean Students’ Early Study Abroad, English and Globalisation

Bong Jeong Lee - University of Technology, Sydney

Until the late 1980s, Koreans leaving for a foreign country for study purposes, ‘yuhaksaeng’ (the Korean
term for international students), were mostly bachelor’s or master’s degree holders. Since the 1990s,
Korean students in pre-adulthood from primary to high school age have emerged as a new group of
‘yuhaksaeng’, increasingly comprised of a considerable number of the country leavers. While adult
yuhaksaeng aims to obtain overseas degrees, these young students’ study abroad is more sparred by
Korea’s ‘English fever’, or “collective neurosis of English fever” (Y-M Kim 2002).

English in Korea has been “a much sought after resource” (Park 2004) as a ladder for upward social
mobility since the transitional military government was established shortly after the end of Japanese
colonial period in 1945. While the status of English throughout most of 20th century was highly related to
Korea’s economic and military dependence of the United States, the recent intensification of its value in
Korean society is situated in the local globalisation processes in Korean society since the 1990s. This
paper examines how the local process of globalisation in Korean society is involved in Korean students’
early study abroad, and what linguistic concerns mediate this phenomenon.

Kim, Y.-M. 2002, 'Collective neurosis of English fever', Education Review, vol. 9, pp. 56-64.

Park, J.S.-Y. 2004, 'Globalization, language, and social order: ideologies of English in South Korea',
Dissertation thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Interactive Attitude in Japanese

Duck-Young Lee - Australian National University, Australia

During the past four decades, a number of approaches have made invaluable contributions in the area of
spoken discourse: For example, Conversation Analysis (Schegloff, 1972; Schegloff and Sacks, 1973;
Schegloff et al., 1977) sheds light on various aspects of interaction, by taking a closer look at specific
micro-structural patterns such as turn-constructional units, turn-taking procedures, adjacency pairs, etc.;
Interactional Linguistics (Ochs et al., 1996) aims at a grammatical description of talk-in-interaction, and
clarifies the way in which syntax, lexis, and prosody are used and their role in the conversational
organization; and a great number of researches have been undertaken on the issue of Discourse Markers

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(Schiffrin, 1987; Fraser, 1988; Redeker, 1991; Norrick, 2001; among others).

Adopting findings of recent researches in these approaches, the current study investigates linguistic forms
and strategies in Japanese, which operate in close relation to the interaction between communication
participants. More specifically, it assumes that those linguistic forms and strategies are a manifestation of a
speaker’s attitude of undertaking interaction with the conversation partner. Based on a 550-minute-long
corpus of 34 conversations between speakers with various social backgrounds collected in diverse
situational contexts, the study further shows that the interactive attitude can be divided into six subgroups
according to the purpose which the speaker attempts to achieve through the operation.

An Implementation of Team Teaching Strategy Based on Interpersonal Meaning Driven Pedagogy:

Teaching Academic Essays in a Business

Sook Hee Lee - Charles Stuart University, Sydney Centre

This paper provides the results of implementing a ‘Team Teaching’ strategy in teaching two academic tasks
required at a University in Sydney: an argumentative/persuasive essay and a business report. The teaching
was focused on structures of the tasks, key language aspects and referencing as the students first language
was not English. An Australian genre-based approach in writing and appraisal theory (evaluative
language), which has newly emerged within a Systemic Functional Linguistics framework (SFL), was
mainly utilised via contextual, textual, and intertextual approaches. A survey was conducted on lecturers
and students from three classes to identify their perceptions and measure the evaluations of team teaching.

Results show that both students and lecturers displayed positive attitudes towards content, and manner of
language teaching. Both groups showed much more positive attitude for the language teacher than the
content itself. The results also indicate that while team teaching can be quite effective, it cannot be a
panacea for students who are potentially at risk and gained direct entry. The results have significant
pedagogic implications in that team teaching, incorporated with interpersonally-oriented pedagogy within
the SFL framework, adds a significant value to the study support programs.

Defining Interjections in Turkic Languages

Alan Libert - University of Newcastle, Australia

Interjections have been dealt with in various ways in grammars of Turkic languages and various words
have been placed in this class. In this paper I will survey the treatment of interjections of Turkic languages
in works both by western linguists and by native speakers of these languages and I will formulate a new
definition of the class.

Curiously, some grammars, e.g. Lewis (1967), do not even discuss a class of interjections, although they
may mention individual interjections. Some authors, e.g. Kornfilt (1997), do treat these words as a class,
but include in this class words that other authors consider to belong to another part of speech. For example,
Hacieminoglu (1992), although he does have a class of interjections, places elbette ‘of course’ (an
interjection for Kornfilt) among the ‘kuvvetlendirme edatlari’ (‘strengthening particles) rather than among
the interjections.

I will argue that such widespread disagreement may be partly due to the lack of a principled definition of
interjections, which in turn could be due to the fact that they have been neglected when compared with
other parts of speech. My definition limits interjections to those words which can felicitously be uttered in
the absence of an interlocutor, while many of the supposed interjections of Kornfilt and others will be
shown to be adverbs or words of some other class.

References

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Hacieminoglu, N. (1992) Turk Dilinde Edatlar. Milli Egitim Bakanligi Yayinlari, Istanbul.

Kornfilt, J. (1997) Turkish. Routledge, London.

Lewis, G. (1967) Turkish Grammar. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Negotiating One’s Expertise through Appraisal in CVs

Dr Caroline Lipovsky - University of Sydney

In the recruiting process, CVs represent the image that job applicants create for themselves in their
endeavour to obtain a job interview. Based on their impressions of these CVs, recruiters then make
decisions about job applicants’ employability. The aim of this paper is to use empirical data to explore how
applicants construct their professional identity through appraisal in their CVs.

Drawing on analysis of a set of CVs collected in France that uses Systemic Functional Linguistics
Appraisal theory (Martin and White 2005), I will highlight how job applicants negotiate their professional
expertise in their CVs and will identify the characteristics of successful applications. The CV analyses will
be complemented by recruiters’ comments on their impressions of the CVs.

Martin, J. R. and White, P. R. R. 2005. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.

Terminological Needs of the Air Transportation Committee of the Academy of Persian Language and
Literature in Neologism

Ghanat Abadi, Mahdiyeh - The Academy of Persian Language and Literature, Iran

It is about a century that Academy of Persian Language and Literature under different names have tried to
promote Persian language, literature and terminology. Terminology department is one of the different
departments of Academy and nearly fifty professional committees contribute to this department. Air
transportation committee which has started to work since 2000 is one of them. This committee has selected
equivalents for about one thousand terms of this domain in its life span among which is a large number of
neologisms.

The large number of terminological gaps in the air transportation field in Persian language and lack of
Persian equivalents due to the short period of familiarity of Iranian people with this knowledge and the
international spoken language which is used in flight conversations have led the air transportation
committee to make neonyms.

The neonyms in contrast to the standardized equivalents have less chance for being accepted. After finding
the most frequent and correct equivalent for a terminological unit among some preexisted equivalents, you
can standardize this equivalent and be sure of your success. But neologisms should have many
characteristics to be accepted by the society.

We mentioned unambiguous, brief, concise, grammatically and phonologically well-formed, and

transparent neologisms which are able to be the basis for possible derived forms have a reasonable chance
of being accepted. What makes the neonyms of the air transportation field to have these characteristics to
be accepted is the usage of a full combination of electronic and updated monolingual and bilingual
glossaries and dictionaries in different languages and even Persian language in the terminological sessions
of the committee.

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Academic Literacies for the World Food System:
The Case Study of a Chilean Student in the Discipline of Agribusiness

Lissette Ramos Marin - The University of Adelaide, Australia

Academic Literacy cannot be considered as a single and general skill that can be learnt, but a process
where socialization plays a main role in providing students with the necessary linguistics tools to develop
in a particular disciplinary community. From this perspective the literacy practices and events are of some
importance to expose the process itself. In order to support this, the Theory of systemic Functional
Linguistics (Halliday, 1994) and Language Socialisation Theories (Vygotsky, 1978) provide what is
necessary to analyse the texts and discourses involved in such activities. Particularly oral and written texts
can be analysed to understand how meaning is conveyed in a particular discipline. Socialisation theories,
the following sections will describe the literacy practices of an international first year student in the
discipline of Agribusiness. The study is based on qualitative methodology in the form of a case study. Data
consists of recorded lecture sessions, field notes and written and oral assignments. In addition to that
material, two interviews will be considered for analysis. The discourses involved in each literacy event are
to be described and analysed to expose how knowledge is construed among the participants of the
discipline.

Teaching Applied Linguistics: Freedom Rules

Stephen Moore - Macquarie University

This presentation is concerned with the teaching of applied linguistics as a discipline in higher education in
Australia. Whatever else applied linguistics is concerned with, the need to effectively communicate
discipline-specific knowledge and skills to our students remains constant and fundamental to their learning
experiences. A review of the literature reveals that unlike the physical sciences (e.g., chemistry; physics) or
social sciences (e.g., education; law) there are virtually no reports of studies focused on teaching in our
particular discipline. One reason why the field of applied linguistics has not been the subject of much
pedagogical enquiry could be its perceived complexity as a unified field, as evident from its competing
epistemologies (see, for example, Richards 2003). The current study has therefore focused on three
important sub-disciplines of the field (i.e., second language acquisition; language testing and assessment;
and pragmatics) to investigate teaching approaches used in those specific sub-fields. Six lecturers of
postgraduate applied linguistics programs in Australia were interviewed to gain insights into the teaching
approaches (based on Trigwell et al. 1994) that they adopted in face-to-face teaching of their particular
sub-discipline. The study found that while each sub-discipline attracted some similarity in teaching
approach, different approaches were favoured by all six lecturers. Factors strongly influencing teaching
approaches include personal philosophies of teaching and learning; the nature of the sub-discipline; the
nature of the student cohort; and institutional constraints.

The Lingua Franca Perspective of Word Combinations Usage in the Writing of Postgraduate
Students

Firooz Namvar - University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia

Jamilah Mustfa - University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia
Nor Fariza Mohd Nor - University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia

It is widely acknowledged that word combinations, in particular collocations, play an important role in
second language learning, particularly at the intermediate and advanced levels. However, learners'
difficulties with collocations have not been investigated in detail to date. This study intended to determine
the underlying causes of collocation misuse by exploring the influence of L1 and the cultural background
of learners on the proper production of collocations.

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Thirty Iranian postgraduate students participated in this study and their academic writings have been
analyzed to determine the odd collocations they made and to identify the basis for their difficulties in
producing collocations. A focus group interview has been used to determine the influence of L1 and
cultural background of the learners on the production of collocations.

According to the world Englishes studies and from the perspective of Lingua Franca, we cannot say all the
collocations produced by students are wrong but their collocation production is related to the learners’ first
language and cultural background. The result showed that learners have difficulties with both lexical and
grammatical collocations in their writing. First language influence appeared to have a strong effect on the
learners’ production of collocation. In addition, as language and culture are not separable, the cultural
difference between the first language and target language caused students to come up with odd lexical
collocations. The results indicated that learners are often not aware of the collocations and are not able to
control their collocation production.

On the Cognitive Mappings between Human Body Parts and the Semantic Space in Gesture
Language Experiments

Hiromi Oda - Waseda University

This presentation describes how subjects in Gesture Language Game invented mappings between their
upper body parts and the semantic space that is defined in the experiment. After a quick introduction of the
framework of the Gesture Language Game, the mappings that emerged in the experiment will be
examined. The ultimate goal of this investigation is to create a model of mappings emerged in the
experimental settings.

The experimental format of Gesture Language Game (Oda & Takei, 2003; Oda, 2006) requires two
participants to establish communication only with gestural signs, which need to be invented and agreed
upon by the subjects on the spot. Since only two signs for “Yes” and “No” were given at the beginning,
they need to come up with signs that can express exact locations of objects against backgrounds or those
that can convey object movements in relation to other objects, as well as other basic signs for animals,
humans and various simple objects.

The mappings invented by the subjects included various types; one of straightforward mappings included
the one between the locations of objects on a road and those of a hand. The mapping between the space
defined in front of subjects and the special relations of objects in the drawings was often observed, and, in
a few sessions, an object that was previously introduced was ‘held’ by one hand to be continuously referred
to throughout the discourse.

Re-consideration of the Functions of Japanese Interactive Markers ne and na

Naomi Ogi - Australian National University, Australia

This study aims to investigate the functions of two Japanese interactive markers ne and na, and shed light
on some aspects of conversation patterns of the spoken discourse. While it has widely been acknowledged
that these markers commonly share the functions such as ‘seeking agreement’, ‘showing agreement’ and
‘confirming information’, little attention has been paid to their differences. For example, their
distributional facts have been well known; i.e. na is used by male speakers only while ne is used by both
male and female speakers; and na is used only when the speaker is socially higher than or equal to the
hearer while ne does not have such a restriction. However, to the best of my knowledge, no attempt has
been made to systematically account for these distributions, despite the possibility that these distributions
could be a key for understanding the genuine properties of these markers.

This study first assumes that their shared functions can be unified in terms of the speaker’s ‘incorporative’

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attitude. Further, it argues that the use of these markers is not directly controlled by the speaker’s gender
and social status, but it is rather determined by a tone (or attitude) associated with a particular marker; that
is, na has a special property to indicate the ‘camaraderie’ tone of the speaker while ne does not. Linguistic
evidence such as their distributional facts in terms of the speaker’s gender and social status is also
discussed in close connection with the speaker’s particular attitude indicated by each marker.

A Critique of the Linguistic Sexism of Selected English Countries' National Anthems

Samson Olasunkanmi Oluga - Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman
Kampar/Perak Campus, Malaysia

It is surprising that the national anthems of many English-speaking countries of Europe, Asia, Oceania,
Africa and the Americas still contain gender-biased words or expressions that discriminate or alienate
based on sex or gender. This is contrary to the position / campaign of the feminist linguists the world over
who advocate the use of gender-neutral / gender-balanced words or expressions in all forms of human
communication. For example, we have expressions like “Men of every creed and race”, “True patriot love
in all thy sons command”. “The labour of our heroes past”, “Knowledge and truth our forefathers spread”,
“Oh thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand”, “O arise all you sons of this land”, “The order of the sacred
land is the might of the brotherhood of the people” and “May he who rules, for wisdom be regarded” in the
national anthems of New Zealand, Canada, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, United States, Papua New Guinea,
Pakistan and Malta. This paper presents the outcome of a linguistic examination of the anthems of sixty-
two (62) countries where English is spoken as first, second or official language. It critiques the forms of
linguistic sexism discovered in the anthems of thirty-eight (38) countries out of the anthems of the sixty-
two (62) countries linguistically examined. The paper advocates linguistic overhaul of the anthems of
affected countries in favour of gender-neutral or gender-balanced language.

Perspective on Language Acquisition and Code-mixing among Yoruba-English Bilinguals: why the
Mixing will always Hinder the Acquisition

Boluwaji Oshodi - Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

Adekunle Ajasin - University Akungba Akoko Nigeria, Malaysia

Code-mixing is a concept which is prevalent among people who speak and make use of two languages
(bilinguals). In SLA (Second Language Acquisition), research have shown that influence from the L1
(through concepts like interference, transfer etc) are factors which constrain learners from achieving the
native-like competence in the L2. This work however takes a different view by looking at the negative
effects of the L2 on the L1. Using spontaneous and written data collected from a group of L2 English
Yoruba native speakers, (Yoruba-English bilinguals) the paper highlights the negative effects of the L2
(English) on the L1 (Yoruba) among this group in their acquisition of Yoruba vocabularies as a result of
code-mixing, and affirms that based on the structure of some Yoruba words (especially the borrowed and
the derived ones) coupled with the low frequency of their occurrence and constant substitution for English
ones which is prevalent in their speech, Yoruba-English bilinguals will continue to experience serious
difficulty with the acquisition and use of a number of Yoruba words an act which may signal impending
danger for the Yoruba language. Also, from the conflicting results obtained from the two sets of data (oral
and written), the result of this study further confirms the opinion being expressed in some quarters of SLA
research that, written data are not reliable to ascertain the true level of acquisition, they only reflect
comprehension and not internalization

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Learning to Listen: Listening to Learn - the Development of a Teaching-Learning Cycle for
Listening Comprehension

Daniel O'Sullivan - University of Sydney

This paper reports on research conducted at Navitas English Manly, an ESL school for adult international
students. The focus of the research is to develop a listening pedagogy, based on the Teaching Learning
Cycle (Rothery 1996), developed within ‘Sydney School’ genre pedagogy (Green & Lee, 1994).

‘Sydney School’ genre pedagogy has been developed over the last 30 years in order to make visible
literacy practices for success in education, the community and employment. This approach to literacy and
learning programs has been informed by systemic functional linguistics (eg Halliday 1994), genre theory
(eg Martin & Rose 2007, 2008), Bernstein’s work on educational psychology (1996/2000) and by
Halliday’s work on language development (eg Halliday 1993).

The aim is to identify the macro-generic structure of the listening lesson for the development of Learning
to Listen: Listening to Learn, a Teaching-Learning Cycle which aims to build students’ knowledge about
language and develop strategies for better comprehension of language use in ‘real’ life situations.

This paper proposes a model based on a pedagogy that is principled, theoretically informed and context
sensitive. The project also builds on the scant research into listening comprehension to propose an adapted
Teaching-Learning Cycle which can be used with any text in any context and can be of benefit to both
teachers and students.

References

Bernstein, B. (1996/2000). Pedagogy, Symbolic control and Identity: Theory, Research, critique (Revised
ed.). Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield

Green, B & Lee, A (1994). Writing Geography: Literacy, Identity and Schooling. In Freedman, A. &
Medway, P. (eds). Learning and Teaching Genre. New Hampshire, Heinemann/Boynton Cook: pp. 46-59.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1993). Towards a Language-Based Theory of Learning Linguistics and Education, 5,

93-116.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd ed.). London: Arnold.

Martin, J., & Rose, D. (2007). Working with Discourse: Meaning Beyond the Clause (2nd ed.). London:
Continuum.

Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2008). Genre Relations: Mapping Culture. London: Equinox.

Rothery, J. (1996). Making changes: developing an educational linguistics. In R. Hasan & G. Williams
(Eds.), Literacy in Society (pp. 86-123). London: Longman.

Unpacking Textuality: an Overview of Tertiary Students' Writing

Cecilia F. K. Pun - City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR/University of Sydney, Australia

This paper investigates the construal of textuality in English language writing produced by second
language learners at tertiary level in Hong Kong through a Discourse Semantics perspective. In particular,
the focus of this paper is to reveal the unfolding of textual continuity in students’ text through bringing
Periodicity, internal and external Conjunction, Abstract Entities, and Ideation (nuclearity) (Martin & Rose
2007; Martin 2010) together.

The texts in this study come from an English enhancement project, the Language Companion Course

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(LCC) conducted at the City University of Hong Kong (Webster & Chan, 2008 and Mahboob, Dreyfus,
Humphrey & Martin forthcoming). In conjunction with Sydney University, this project used Sydney
School genre pedagogy to design support materials to assist students in their independent writing. The
students then have the input of a language coach who helps them redraft their assignment before they
submit it to the lecturer.

This study explores the textuality in students’ texts and attempts to model the patterns of texture with the
above mentioned tools for future pedagogical implications. The preliminary results show that the LCC
project supports students to improve their writing in terms of textuality with room for further
improvement.

‘What’s going on, who’s involved and how?’: an SFL Perspective on the Experiential Grammar of
Spanish

Beatriz Quiroz - University of Sydney, Australia

The purpose of this paper is to explore, within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL),
the resources available for the construal of inner and outer experience in the Spanish clause. This account
is part of a broader PhD research focusing on the experiential and interpersonal lexicogrammar of Spanish,
based on spoken and written data from Chilean Spanish.

First, a general exploration of the Spanish clause is introduced as a basic experiential configuration of
process, participants and circumstances, and compared with those resources described for English
(Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999, 2004). Discussion is then undertaken on the exploration of language-
specific ‘reactances’ counting as grammatical evidence for process types and degrees of nuclearity
(Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999; Martin 1996). A further step is taken towards a view on the function of
Spanish configurations in discourse, particularly, their deployment as part of text-wide resources for the
construal of the field and the tracking of participants (Martin 1992; Martin and Rose, 2007).

The approach adopted provides useful insights on grammatical phenomena that are often problematic in
non-SFL accounts, including ‘clitic doubling’ and ‘middle voice’. Furthermore, a text-oriented perspective
contributes to a better understanding of the specificities of Spanish grammar as well as their repercussions
for text patterns. Furthermore, descriptive issues are raised in relation to the grammatical evidence needed
in the description of experiential meanings in languages other than English, including the interaction with
interpersonal and textual resources in the clause.

Phylogenesis of the Dreamtime

David Rose - University of Sydney

The ancestors of Indigenous Australians probably arrived on the continent 40-50,000 years ago. Yet their
languages share a comparable meaning potential with spoken registers of familiar Eurasian languages, with
a similar spread of realisational strategies (Rose 2001, 2005). Furthermore the majority of Australian
languages belong to a single homogeneous family, covering most of the continent. Although the fluidity of
cultural processes is often valorised, the relative homogeneity of Australian languages, and their
comparability with other language phyla suggest a very slow rate of change. Indigenous Australians
themselves also claim that their languages and cultural practices originated at the very beginning of human
society, in the Dreaming, and that maintaining these practices precisely is their sacred obligation.

This paper draws on evidence from linguistics, archaeology, palaeoclimatology and mythological corpora,
to sketch the evolution of Australian cultures over the immense history of their time in the continent. Four
broad phases are proposed, beginning with initial settlement. The broad division of Australian languages
into southern/eastern and northern phyla is then associated with the drying of the continent at the height of

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the last ice age 28-15,000 years ago. The distribution of major cultural blocs is related to repopulation at
the end of the ice age 13-7,000 years ago. And finally, contemporary language and dialect boundaries are
linked to climatic changes 6-2,000 years ago.

Rose, D. 2001. The Western Desert Code: an Australian cryptogrammar. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics

Rose, D. 2005. Narrative and the origins of discourse: patterns of discourse in stories around the world.
Australian Review of Applied Linguistics Series S19, 151-173

The study of Canadian & Persian Perceptions of (Im)politeness

in Intercultural Apology Forms

Mehrdad Safizadeh - Takestan Azad University, Iran

Dr. Mahmood Farokhpay - Takestan Azad University, Iran

Academic study of the relationship between language and culture has long been of great importance. Here,
politeness or apology has been under focus. This study attempts to explore the degree of perceptions of
(im)politeness, apology , in particular, here, by Canadian and Persian speakers. This study is based on a
sample conversation in English and its equivalent translation into Persian in the form of a questionnaire
and questions. It is given to Canadian and Iranian male and female students to reveal the gender and
cultural differences. This analysis seeks to hypothesize that there are cultural and gender differences in the
(im)politeness level of perception. The present study provides useful implications in developing
conversation materials and learning and teaching conversations for teachers, students, writers and
translators

Who Is Polite and Who Is a Native Speaker?: Email Communication in Academia

Professor Farzad Sharifian - Monash University, Australia

In the last two decades, email communication has become the default form of communication between
staff and students in academic contexts (e.g., Biesenbach-Lucas, 2007; Bloch, 2002). However, a clear set
of norms about how to write an “appropriate” email does not appear to have emerged. In fact academic
staff members often express frustration about dealing with what they consider to be “inappropriate” emails
from their students, and some students express concern about not knowing how to write appropriate emails
to their lecturers. Despite the rapid growth in the volume of email communication within academia, there
has been very little empirical research on perceptions of what is ‘appropriate’ in email communication
between staff and students. The study reported upon in this presentation explored a number of staff and
students’ perception of ‘polite’ email by eliciting their attitudes towards a sample of emails written by a
group of university students. The results reveal that perceptions of ‘politeness’ email are far from unified
among staff or and students. The results also reveal that perceptions of whether the author of a particular
email is a native speaker of English or not are equally varied and complex. In many cases identification of
first language background of the writer of a particular email is far from accurate. Further rigorous research
is needed to examine perceptions of ‘appropriate’ email in academia from a variety of perspectives.
Research of this kind has significant implication for the quality of academic life for staff and students.

References:

Biesenbach-Lucas, S. (2007). Students writing emails to faculty: An examination of e-politeness among

and non-native speakers of English. Language learning & technology, 11(2), 59-81.

Bloch, J. (2002). Student/teacher interaction via email: the social context of Internet discourse. Journal of
Second Language Writing, 11(2), 117-134.

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An Analysis of Attitude in Chinese Courtroom Discourse

Guang Shi - Hainan University, China

Zhejiang University, China

This paper analyzes the attitude expressions in the audio recording transcripts of eight court trials within
the framework of appraisal systems in Systemic Functional Linguistics. The findings indicate that 1)
judgement (attitude towards people and their behaviours) is the most important way for subjects in the
courtroom to express attitude, followed by appreciation (evaluation of things), while affect (feeling) is the
least frequently used; 2) most of the attitude expressions are negative, demonstrating that negative attitude
towards people and things is the basic thinking disposition of the subjects in the courtroom; and 3) the
three sub-systems have specific features. The first of these specific features is that subjects in the
courtroom express their attitude toward people primarily according to social sanction. ‘Legality’ is a
prominent category of ‘propriety’, which is, in turn, a subtype of ‘social sanction’ in the system of
judgement. Second, judgement-invoking appreciations outnumber the sum total of ‘reaction’,
‘composition’, and ‘valuation’, which are the three types of non-judgement-invoking appreciations.
Finally, due to its potential negative influence on the speakers, affect is not frequently resorted to in the
courtroom. These findings support the idea that the appraisal systems can be genre dependant and can shed
light on our understanding of the characteristics of attitude expressions and their interpersonal functions in
Chinese courtroom discourse.

Which Perspective? The Relationship between the Text, the Writer and the Reader
in the Context of a Public Information Document

Dana Skopal - Macquarie University, Australia

Applied linguistics as a field of study allows us to analyse the use of language in a range of contexts,
including information documents issued by government organisations. Text analysis can in the first place
provide a researcher with an understanding of the lexico-grammatical structure and coherence of a written
text. Interviewing the author can provide insights into how the text was constructed, which presents links
to the text analysis. The third critical component of the communication process is the reader. If the text is a
public information document written by officers in a government department, can we define the reader?
How does a member of the public construe the contents of such an information document?

This paper outlines current research in Australia on the readability of public information documents from
the three tiers of government: federal, state and local. The first issue to be discussed is: What perspectives
should the analysis take when the starting point is such a document; and how does a multidimensional
model of genre analysis (Bhatia, 2004) apply? Secondly, the paper considers whether a multi-perspective
approach (Bhatia, 2004; Candlin & Crichton, 2011) provides the appropriate analytical framework for the
researcher to collect and interpret the three types of relevant data – i.e. from the text analysis, the author
interviews and readability testing.

References

Bhatia, V. K. (2004). Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-Based View. London: Continuum.

Candlin, C. N., & Crichton, J. (2011). Introduction. In C. N. Candlin & J. Crichton (eds.), Discourses of
Deficit, (pp. 1-22). Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.

30
 Abstracts
A Narrative Analysis of Chinese College Students’ Typical Problems in English Argumentative
Writing

Igor Smerdov - Guangxi University, Xingjian College, China

Li Chenxin - Guangxi University, Xingjian College, China
Zhou Conghui - Guangxi University, Xingjian College, China

We analyze distinctive characteristics of Chinese college students’ writing habits within the teaching
framework of product-process approach to Writing and the peer error-correction-based collaborative
teaching. This embedded case-study and qualitative research is supported by the quantitative analysis of
data obtained from the teaching a class of 30 students and narrative analysis of 180 participants’ essay and
drafts. Supplementary methods we utilized are the narrative inquiry of students discursive patterns, lexical
analysis, thematic progression analysis, systemic analysis of the students’ essays, summarizing our
findings in the tables that represent the most typical statements made by the participants of the experiment.
We analyze student’s group and individual progress: essays have become more coherent; they contain less
redundancies and generalized statements. Students started using real life examples, paying attention to the
overuse of keywords, avoided rhetorical questions in the first paragraph; started supporting ideas by giving
persuasive reasons and particular examples related to real life situations; stated topic sentences in the first
paragraph and put forward the main idea firstly; concluded the essays with extended ideas expressed in
synonyms to key words. Stagnation: L1 rhetorical influence e.g. dominant overgeneralizations.
Weaknesses of peer-editing and overlooked mistakes: usage of plural, subject-verb agreement, subjunctive
mood. The study is supplemented with 100 open-ended questionnaires documenting learners’ support of
the collaborative and peer-editing methods compared to traditional methods. Our paper serves as a warning
to prospective teachers of English in Asia that teaching here is not transferring knowledge only, but
eradicating culturally embedded narratives and stereotypes.

“Fifty k’s south of woop woop”:

Making Native English Speakers More Internationally Intelligible

Dr Phiona Stanley - University of South Australia

International students in Australia are sometimes criticised for their levels of proficiency in English. But
let’s not blame only the students. Instead, for some, the struggle to understand may be a question of local,
culture-bound varieties of English sometimes encountered on campus. This paper reports on an initiative to
help native English users investigate their own language, analyse its intelligibility, and grade their output
so as to be more comprehensible to an international audience.

Native users are among the least internationally intelligible speakers of English (Kachru & Nelson, 2001).
This is a complex product of factors. These include unfamiliar words and phrases as a result of cultural
deixis, colloquialisms, unfamiliar metaphors, and low incidence lexis. There is also the question of how
spoken language is rendered: accent, pace, pausing, and stress timing are all salient. Further, there is the
issue that, in some English language teaching contexts, learners may have had little exposure to natural,
spoken English and, instead, may have met a version more akin to written English, read aloud. This means
that listeners may find it difficult to process natural speech, with all its redundancy, repetition, and
reformulations, and may need paralinguistic information, including visuals and gestures, to support
meaning.

This paper reports on an initiative developed at the University of South Australia to raise academic and
professional staff awareness of their own English. It provides som engaging, interactive tasks, sample texts
for analysis and discussion, and other strategies that have been profitably used in professional
development.

31
 Abstracts
The Hierarchical Acquisition of English Perception and Production in Thai Speakers with English
Phonological Awareness

Asst.Prof.Dr. Panornuang Sudasna Na Ayuhdya - Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University, Bangkok,

Thailand

The purposes of the present study were to investigate the hierarchical acquisition of English consonant
perception and production in terms of different pronunciation features in Thai –English bilinguals in
relation to English phonological awareness and also, to examine the relationship between hierarchical
English consonant perception and production acquisition in Thai – English bilinguals. The research
methodology was 100 prime-target paired auditory lexical decision task and 50 token production task. The
subjects were 200 Thai-English bilinguals and were spitted with the levels of phonological awareness
using the phonological awareness test. The research results revealed that there was the coherent of
perception and production hierarchy obtained in both High and Low groups of subjects. It can be seen that
comparing among three phonetic features, the voicing features was the feature with the best perception and
production results, then places of articulation and manners of articulation orderly. It can be implied that the
voicing feature should be the first feature that the learners of English can be developed before the other
features as places of articulation and manners of articulation. The research results were explained and
summarized based on the proposed model of language-specific perception and production and additionally,
the hierarchy of English consonant perception and production in terms of different pronunciation features.

Mobile Apps for Your Hong Kong Adventure—A Case Study of Hong Kong Travel Guide Apps from
a Multisemiotic Perspective

Amy Suen - The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Andy Fung - The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Tourism industry is one of the four key industries in Hong Kong (Cheng, 2009: 32). It contributes hugely
to the social and economic development of Hong Kong (Lam and Hsu, 2004: 463). The Hong Kong
Tourism Board has recently developed a series of mobile apps which provides tourists with the latest travel
information as well as fun games. This paper examines the multisemiotic features of these Hong Kong
travel guide apps so as to explore how meanings are conveyed in the medium of smartphone.

The major areas of research in the hotel and tourism industry in the past ten years have been focusing on
management, service, food, marketing, job and customer satisfaction towards hotels (e.g. Mongiello and
Harris, 2006, Eusebio et.al., 2006, Akbaba, 2006, Geddie, 2005, MacLaurin, 2004) and linguistic research
are limited (hotel encounters e.g. Cheng 2004, and Martin and Davies 2006; email customer service e.g.
Frey et.al, 2003 and Schegg et.al, 2006, hotel websites e.g. Suen 2009, travel brochures e.g. Ip, 2008 and
Kong 2006). However, no study has been found on travel guide apps.

The frameworks of Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and Martin and White (2005) are adopted for the
analysis of visual images and language of the apps. The findings show that travel mobile apps rely heavily
on hyperbolic language and fascinating visual images. Unlike printed travel guide books, the interactive
features of travel mobile apps could enhance reading experience and hence, more interpersonal.

Cognitive Structures of Visual Experience: An Experimental Study

Kiran Pala, Suryakanth VG. - International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India

Human agents perceive the world of information as patterns through various senses and associate them
with their personal experiences. This helps raise some significant research questions aimed at a deeper
understanding of how the complex patterns of symbols are shaped by an interplay of experience, exposure,
use, interaction that constitute the cognitive structures of symbol transduction.

32
 Abstracts
In this paper we would like to investigate how perceptual organization of the world affects communication
and language learning. This issue has different nuances associated with it. The point to be highlighted is
that if language has a connection to the way we organize our perception, we can aim at unraveling the
complex ways in which language and language perception interact with each other by probing how
language is affected by experience through which perception is telescoped and how our perceptual
organization is molded and altered by language. In a way aspects of our perceptual world can thus be
bootstrapped from language and intricacies of language can also be divulged from perceptual patterns as
shaped by linguistic experience in multilingual settings.

To scout out the pivotal role visual and motor experience of symbols in a certain language plays in shaping
language perception in general and a host of other related answers to questions as outlined above, we
would like to conduct an experimental study. Results from such a study are believed to have ramifications
for the interface between language and visual perception in a more specific sense.

Mapping the Discursive Field of Crime and Justice Using the Q Method

Mira Taitz - Charles Sturt University, Australia

Jane Goodman-Delahunty - Charles Sturt University, Australia

While free debate is considered a hallmark of democratic society, the discursive field constrains and shapes
how arguments are made, and the very content of what is imagined, both in the political arena and the jury
room. Punitive discourses of needing to get “tough on crime” influence both the progress of criminal
justice reform (making restorative justice approaches politically problematic), and the abilities of jurors to
set aside personal prejudice to apply the law evenly. The utterances of individuals in the media become
sound-bytes, as phrases and metaphors come to exert their own agency. Within a political debate or the
jury deliberation room, speakers expressing their “own” opinion on an issue speak through discourse, as it
speaks through them. Using Q-methodology, the contemporary discursive field on crime and justice was
examined by presenting 500 jury-eligible Australians with statements about justice drawn from media
sources such as letters to the editor. Participants rated their agreement with viewpoints such as “we need a
tougher stance on crime”, “judges live in another world”, “politicians feed on public fear”, and “the system
unfairly penalizes the most vulnerable.” Open-ended responses were also sought on desired changes to
Australia’s legal system. Results revealed how statements clustered, allowing us to construct typical
narrative profiles which constitute this discursive field. A critique of Q methodology is offered, assessing
whether using the language of the field rather than researchers’ language in survey design is valuable, or
whether it imposes unhelpful discursive constraints on participants’ views.

Impact of Language
An Iconography of Hope: Reconciling Identities and Axiologies

Ken Tann - The University of Sydney, Australia

Following the wake of the 2011 tsunami disaster, hundreds of thousands lost their homes, and were left in a
desperate need of help. There was a widespread call for humanitarian aid in international media, leading to
various fundraising efforts around the world. As part of this promotion of awareness, newspapers and
television lauded the ‘Japanese spirit’ in the face of disaster, making the word ‘gaman’ (perseverance) an
iconic catchphrase of the times. This paper will examine the linguistic development of this epideictic
discourse of reconciliation and inclusion that emerged recently in the media as an attempt to transcend
differences between Japan and ‘the West’.　

The historical tendency to exoticize Japan both in academia and popular writing has led many scholars to
conclude that ‘Japanese’ identity is established in contrast to ‘the West’ (e.g. Dale 1986; Befu 1992;
Iwabuchi 1994; Aoki 1999). I have previously explored through the framework of iconography recently
developed in Systemic Functional Linguistics (e.g. Tann 2010; Martin, Maton & Matruglio 2010;

33
 Abstracts
Humphrey 2011) how this contrastive rhetoric has systematically axiologized the ‘Japanese’ against its
Western Other. In light of the disaster, charity organizers found themselves with the task of overcoming
this axiology to ensure that victims receive the help they need. Adopting a Positive Discourse Analytical
approach (Martin 2004, 2006), I shall trace the introduction of the discourse of ‘gaman’ into popular
consciousness intertextually, to discuss the potential and costs of its treatment by the media, and to
demonstrate how the framework may contribute productively to PDA.

Exploring the Positioning of Recently Arrived Migrants in Their Host Society:

A Case Study of an ESL Written Assessment Task

Hiromi Teramoto - The University of Adelaide

The presentation explores how a written assessment task administered in an ESL class functioned to
specify normative value positions and how the task setting influenced available responses for the students.
It examines the task setup including the task prompt, topics preselected by the teacher for selection and the
assigned text-type. The analysis incorporates a general framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics
(SFL). It also adopts a Bernsteinean framework, and the written assessment task is conceptualised as
evaluation of knowledge (Bernstein 1972). The investigation is an offshoot of a larger study that explored
the socially constructed nature of adult newcomers to Australia, through the examination of the social
practices that surrounded them.

Implications of the analysis include the potential risk of written assessment tasks to inadvertently position
the students in their socially constructed role. It will be argued that there is need to reconsider what it
means to make the task topic 'relevant' and 'familiar' to the students. It will also be argued that we need to
critically examine how a written assessment task setup creates particular relationship between students and
social debates.

Attitude Toward Minangkabau: The Case of Minangkabau Youth Attitude toward a Well – known
Minangkabau song “Ayam Den Lapeh"

Temmy Thamrin - Linguistics program, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University,
Melbourne Australia/English Department, Faculty of Humanities Bung Hatta University Padang,
Indonesia

The aim of this study is to describe the language attitudes of Minangkabau youth in West Sumatra
Province, Indonesia. Like other local languages in Indonesia, the Minangkabau language keeps changing.
In this study, I argue that at present in urban Minangkabau, the Minangkabau communities, the language is
in decline. Indonesian language (BI) is replacing Minangkabau language in every domain of language use.
This paper is the part of my PhD dissertation. More particularly, in this talk I will attempt to look into the
attitudes of Minangkabau youth about the well-known traditional song “Ayam Den Lapeh”. This research
includes 200 students from six areas in West Sumatra, Indonesia. The students were given the script of the
song without the title, and were asked to write about their understanding of the song. The results reveal that
the answers can be categorized into four different categories. They are (1) knowing the song and
understanding the meaning correctly; (2) knowing the song but not knowing the meaning; (3) Knowing the
song but giving the meaning incorrectly; and (4) never heard of the song. Overall, 75 % only know the
literal meaning (3).

34
 Abstracts
Publishing Emotion:
A Stratified Approach in Understanding Illustrated Facial Expressions

Ping Tian - The University of Sydney

Facial expression is considered here as one form of publishing. It reveals various emotions, happiness,
surprise, fear, anger, contempt, disgust and sadness etc. Frequently encountering faces as we all do, the
interpretation of facial expression often raises debates (Ekman, 1985). It is also often argued whether facial
expressions are universal or specific to certain culture (Darwin 1872/1965, Ekman 2003, Russell 1994).
From a social semiotic perspective and particularly, drawing on Hjelmslev’s (1943/1961) language theory
of expression and content, this paper proposes a stratified approach in understanding illustrated facial
expressions. This approach allows the investigation of faces to be separated into stratified two planes:
expression plane and content plane (Tian, 2011). The major concern on the expression plane is the semiotic
resources involved in constructing a face, i.e., dots, lines and shapes. It is also investigated at this level the
various ways these resources are combined. On the content plane, types of emotions, negative, neutral and
positive are considered. Visualizations will be provided in explaining theses in detailed.

The analysis and findings of facial expressions presented in this paper are generated from the study of an
archive of 482 illustrations of faces (Tian, 2011). These illustrations are collected from ten children’s
picture books published in between year 1980 and 2000, by the well-known picture book artist Anthony
Browne. It is argued that an image, e.g., an illustrated face has a broader range of meaning potential and
hence the interpretation. Language of emotions narrows down meanings and hence it is relatively more
delicate and specific in the process of publishing emotions. It is also argued that a stratified approach
enables explicit interpretation. It is important to know what kind of semiotic resources are involved in
constructing facial expressions, however, it is more important to know how these resources are or can be
combined. This is significant for the creation and interpretation of illustrated facial expressions, or images
and multimodal texts in general.

Darwin, C. (1872/1965). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.

Ekman, P. (1985). Telling lies: clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage. New York:
Norton.

Ekman, P. (Ed.). (2003). Emotions inside out: 130 years after Darwin’s the expression of the emotions in
man and animals. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.

Hjelmslev, L. (1943/1961). Prolegomena to a theory of language [originally titled ‘Omkring sprogteoriens

grundlæaeggelse’, published Munksgaard: Copenhagen (1943); translated by Francis J. Whitfield].
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Russell, J.A. (1994). Is there universal recognition of emotion from facial expression? A review of the
cross-cultural studies. Psychological Bulletin, 115 (1): 102-141.

Tian, P. (2011). Multimodal evaluation: Sense and sensibility in Anthony Browne’s picture books. PhD
Thesis. Sydney: The University of Sydney.

Reclaiming English by ‘speaking English our way’:

English Language Teaching Policy and Practice in Sri Lanka

Namala Lakshmi Tilakaratna, University of Sydney

This paper looks at the highly complex issue of policy-making related to English teaching in Sri Lanka
through an analysis of recent government policy as disseminated through press releases and newspaper
articles. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis and critique of government policy in engaging

35
 Abstracts
with English as the language of globalization. In Sri Lanka, English has historically been viewed by the
majority as the language of the elite and of the ‘coloniser’ (Kandiah 1984). The prestige of English remains
today as it is considered a prerequisite for securing jobs in both the private and public sectors (Raheem &
Ratwatta 2004) and a precondition for social mobility (Fernando 1977; Parakrama 1995). Despite the Sri
Lankan government’s repeated attempts to create language policy in order to make English more accessible
to the larger community, it has remained a gatekeeper for many. As the government acknowledges the
importance of English for employment and business in a globalized world, the agenda is on creating policy
and practice that identifies Sri Lankan English as a recognised variety in the place of Received
Pronunciation and ‘British English’. Therefore, the most recent government initiative for teaching English,
with training and support by the English and Foreign Language University in Hyderabad, focuses on
displacing the association of English with power and prestige. The manner in which the government hopes
to achieve this is through an attempt to legitimise ‘speaking English our way’ by promoting the teaching of
Sri Lankan English. It is argued that the government has understood the value of English in a global/local
setting and is attempting to transform English to suit the particular socio-political context of Sri Lanka in
order to empower the monolingual masses. The extent to which this is achievable and the manner in which
the vernacular languages are effected by this initiative will be discussed.

References

Fernando, C. (1977). English and Sinhala Bilingualism in Sri Lanka. Language in Society 6(3), 341 - 360.

Kandiah, T. (1984). ""Kaduva"": Power and the English language weapon in Sri Lanka In P. C.-T. A. Halpe
(Ed.), Honouring EFC Ludowyk. Colombo: Tisara Prasakayo.

Parakrama, A. (1995). De-hegemonizing language standards: learning from (post)colonial Englishes about
""English"". Hampshire: Macmillan Press.

Raheem, R., & H. Ratwatte. (2004). Visible strategies: invisible results: language policy and planning in
Sri Lanka. In S. M. A. T. S. Mansoor (Ed.), Language policy, planning and practice - A South Asian
perspective (p. 14). Karachi: Oxford University Press.

The Use of Address Pronouns in Different Situations in the City of Riyadh

Abdullah A. Bin Towairesh (BA) KSU, MA (UQ) - PhD Candidate, School of Languages and Comparative
Cultural Studies, The University of Queensland

The aim of this study is to investigate the address pronouns used in different situations in the city of
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and how these pronouns are used in relation to the social context. The tools used to
achieve these goals include: questionnaires, focus groups, the observation of natural data and the analysis
of a local Saudi TV show.

This study helps us in capturing aspects of the social structure of the Saudi society and the way in which
members of this society deal with each other. The address pronouns variations that this study investigates
include: age-based differences and social status-based differences. The use of address pronouns in
different settings including the home environment, the work place and at schools has also been looked at in
the effort to produce a comprehensive map for address pronouns in the city of Riyadh. This study can be
the basis for future studies in pragmatics and in social structure in Saudi Arabia and it also contributes to
our knowledge about the sociolinguistic situation in that region.

Esperanto: A Mobile Language Bridge to Asia

Penelope Vos - graduate of Murdoch University, Australia

Freeling 2010 saw the presentation of the Apprenticeship Language Learning (ALL) Strategy as a tool to

36
 Abstracts
counter Australia's ""Monolingual Mindset"" by making the simplest form of bilingualism - mastery of
Esperanto- a normal and integral part of primary schooling, by generalist teachers.

This year I would like to present a case study of two schools which have been early adopters of the strategy
using the "Talking the the Whole Wide World" resources, both Montessori and mainstream.

The schools have made a decision to provide integrated Esperanto education in order to give them early
experience of successful use of a foreign language. They are preparing to start corresponding, on an equal
basis, in Esperanto in 2012.

The presentation will show some of the early language learning experiences of the classes in Sydney and in
Jakarta as they look forward to making contact using their new language.

Integration of Local Knowledge in English Communicative Teaching: Case Study of Phrapradaeng

Local Knowledge, Thailand

Wanvanut Yailaaw- Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University, Bangkok, Thailand

The purposes of the research titled “Integration of Local Knowledge in English Communicative Teaching:
Case Study of Phrapradaeng Local Knowledge, Thailand” were 1) to study the need of local community to
integrate the topics of Phrapradaeng local knowledge in English communicative teaching, 2) to develop the
teaching lesson plan for English communication using the selected topics of Phrapradaeng local
knowledge, and 3) to compare the achievement of English communicative skills in the Thai primary school
students before and after using the developed teaching lesson plan for English communication using the
selected topics of Phrapradaeng local knowledge. The 50 subjects were randomly selected from 10th Grade
students from local primary school, Phrapradaeng, Thailand. The subjects were taught by the teaching
lesson plan for English communication using the selected topics of Phrapradaeng local knowledge for 6
fifty-minute periods. The topics were selected according to the study of the need of local community. The
instruments were English communicative tests and the lesson plan. The data were statistically analyzed by
t-test for dependent samples. The research showed that there was significant difference in English
communicative scores between the pretest and the post test at the 0.05 level.

Case Study: Chinese EFL Teacher’s and Learners’ Beliefs within an Activity Theory Framework

Hongzhi Yang - University of New South Wales, Australia

Current studies about the relationship between teachers’ and learners’ beliefs present two major limitations.
First, they use questionnaires without connecting teachers’ and learners’ actions in real contexts. Second,
they only examine the influence of teachers’ beliefs on learners, but not vice versa (Barcelos, 2003). This
case study explores the interrelationship between teacher’s beliefs and practices, and the reciprocal
relationship between teacher’s and learners’ beliefs in the Chinese EFL context.

An activity theory framework was used to explore how teachers’ beliefs, treated as a kind of psychological
artefact, mediate and are mediated by their practices, and to reveal how teachers’ and learners’ beliefs
mediate with each other in the context of the classroom. Data derives from one purpose-selected case study
conducted in an EFL Chinese university context, and includes in-depth interviews with both students and
teachers, and video-recorded classroom observations.

The results indicate that teachers’ beliefs are socially constructed and the relationship between beliefs and
behaviours is a complex one mediated by many factors, such as learners’ beliefs, what is happening in the
classroom, as well as teachers’ interpretation of what is happening. In addition, teachers' lack of awareness
of learners’ beliefs may cause misunderstanding which prevents successful teaching and learning, even if
both teachers and learners have similar beliefs. Therefore, teacher education programs should train teachers

37
 Abstracts
to pay attention to learners’ beliefs and incorporate learners’ preferences into their teaching.

CoffeeTweets: Bonding around the Bean on Twitter

Michele Zappavigna - University of Sydney, Australia

This paper considers how users of the microblogging service, Twitter, affiliate through discourse about
coffee. While, ‘coffeetalk’ (Gaudio, 2003), a commodified from of conversation, has traditionally occurred
in social contexts such as coffeehouses where casual and institutional talk are interwoven, computer-
mediated conversation (CMC) often references this practice. The data analysed is a subcorpus of
approximately 17 000 tweets containing the word ‘coffee’ (282 000 words) drawn from HERMES, a 100
million word Twitter corpus. I investigate the process of ‘hashtagging’, whereby topics are assigned to
microposts with the hash symbol #, in effect providing an ideational center for ambient bonding. I will also
look at some of the identities associated with the ambient bonds construed. The work draws upon coupling
theory (Martin 2000; Zhao 2011) and the concept of affiliation (Knight, 2010).

The Relationship between Gender and Corrective Feedback

Nahid Zarei - Islamic Azad University, Maragheh Branch

As teachers, we try to provide different types of corrective feedback in our classes hoping that our students
' errors will be eradicated on the spot. Nevertheles, most of the time it is never so. The learners' uptake, of
course, depends on many factors some of which may be affective, cognitive, age, gender, time of
correction, students' learning ability, developmental stage, their attention and so on. There are different
strategies for error correction during communication activities in the classroom (Hedge, 2008; Brown,
2007), but they cannot be prescribed for every situation. As it was mentioned above, many factors will
have an impact on the choice teachers make.

This paper intends to investigate whether there is a relationship between gender and the choice of these
strategies. The research question is: Do males and females prefer the same strategies of error correction in
communicative activities? To this end, a questionnaire, consisting of 24 questions, was used as the research
tool. There were 205 participants 48.8 of whom were girls and 51.2 were boys. They were all taking
intermediate English course at Iran Language Institute, one of the most popular English schools with
approximately 150000 learners all over the country. Chi-square and Cross-tab were applied to analyze the
data. The results revealed significant differences (p<0.05) among boys and girls in 6 items.

This study can be invaluable for all ELT practitioners and English teachers, especially those who are
managing mixed (boys and girls) classes.

38
 Local Information
HOW TO GET TO ...
King Street, Newtown
By Foot:
King Street in Newtown is within walking distance from the University. From
the Camperdown Campus, head down to City Road and turn right. City Road
eventually merges into King Street. You’ll know it’s King Street when you see a
big furniture store the left side of the road, or when you reach the Thai 9
restaurant on the right side.
By Bus:
If you exit the University from the City Road side of Camperdown Campus,
you’ll need to cross the street and head for the bus stop which is just outside
Wentworth Building. Take one of the 422, 423, 426 or 428 buses and it will take
you straight down City Road which eventually merges into King Street. You’ll
know it’s King Street when you see a big furniture store on your left.
Glebe Point Road
By Foot:
Follow University Place (outside Fisher Library, head left when you’re facing
it) and turn right down University Avenue. Follow the Avenue down until you
reach Parramatta Road (outside the University gates). Turn right on Parramatta
road and then left down the street with Cucina di Lusso on the corner.
Broadway Shopping Centre
By Foot:
Continue down Parramatta Road past Glebe Point Road. The enormous
complex is on your left, just before the next intersection.
The City
By Foot:
From the Camperdown Campus, turn left down City Road and continue until
you reach Parramatta Road. Cross the road and turn right down Broadway.
You’ll pass a few restaurants on your left, as well as UTS. Broadway turns into
George Street. If you continue down George Street you’ll pass the Queen
Victoria Building and Myer. The walk will take approximately 30 mins.
By Bus:
Exiting the Camperdown Campus on City Road, you’ll find two bus stops
where you can take any of the 422, 423, 426 or 428 buses down George Street to
Railway Square (Central Station) or further down to the city centre.

39
 Local Information
LOCAL EATERIES
In Newtown
Campos Coffee
193 Missenden Rd, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9516 3361
One word: COFFEE. Often listed as having one of the best coffees in Sydney,
Campos is one not to miss for any coffee lover. Friendly service, but may be a
longer wait during busy hours.
Old Fish Shop Café
239a King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9519 4295
This café may look less inviting and dark inside, but once you get seated you’ll
find the dim quietness comforting. Partly because it serves fantastic coffee and
partly because it is a great place to people watch or have long conversations
kept alive by tangents, as the staff are never in a hurry to kick you out.
However, the menu does feature more snacks than meals.
Mickey’s
232 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9565 2300
This café/restaurant is great for all day breakfast. The dimmer interior is a
comfort to those who have eyes that are sensitive to the glare of the Australian
sun, and combined with the lounge atmosphere and round tables, this café is
ideal for small intimate groups. The cakes that are out on display have a way
of looking at you that makes for a hard choice (recommendation: Banoffee pie
– if you can get it!). Mickey’s is also open for dinner. Approx. $15-20pp for
breakfast/lunch.
Gelatomassi
262 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9516 0755
If you want ice cream, this is it. The boss is full-blooded Italian, and their
gelato and sorbets are made fresh on site everyday. They have a million
flavours to choose from, as well as pancakes and crepes.
Burgerlicious
215 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9519 7401

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 Local Information
At Burgerlicious you can choose the contents of your own burger. The meal
deal (burger/fries/salad/drink) is pretty good value for money.
Newtown Thai I/II
177/105 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9557 2425/ 9519 1197
The two restaurants are only a few hundred metres apart, but both are student
favourites with cheap prices, generous portions and high quality dishes. Lunch
specials (stir frys and curries) are quick and of high standards at only $6.
Green Palace Thai (Vegetarian)
182 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9550 5234
A great vegetarian restaurant with lots of different tofu options. With a lovely
and peaceful atmosphere, Green Palace Thai is available for both lunch and
dinner. Approx. $10-20pp.
Green Gourmet (Vegetarian)
115-117 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9519 5330
Never tried vegetarian food that tries to look like meat? Sounds bizarre, but
this is the typical ambition of Chinese vegetarian restaurants, and Green
Gourmet is one of the best in Sydney. Vegetarians eat your heart out! Although
these dishes look like typical Chinese food…it’s all vegetarian! Various
mushrooms, dough flavoured with a wide range of sauces – sweet, tangy, salty;
the extensive menu will arouse the appetite of vegetarians and meat-eaters
alike. Small, cosy restaurant that is roomy enough for medium sized groups.
There is also a buffet option. I recommend ordering a few dishes to share; this
means more options for tasting and brings the cost down to a reasonable price
per person. Approx $20pp.
The Italian Bowl
255 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9516 0857
Authentic Italian choose-your-own pasta & sauce – on the go! Once you decide
which pasta and which sauce you want, your order is made on the spot…
which means you can watch your meal being prepared (for you control freaks
out there). The aroma will make you impatient despite the quick service. A
good hearty meal, recommended for pairs or small groups as there is limited
seating (however, take away is an option). Approx $10-15pp.

41
 Local Information
Tre Viet Restaurant
152-154 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9516 5500
Never tried Vietnamese food? Tre Viet is a great place to start – with an
authentic selection and friendly staff. Available for lunch and dinner. Approx.
$10-15pp.
Kai On King
129 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
(02) 9519 0646
Kai On King serves some of the best sushi in Sydney. Available are some
unique dishes that cannot be found in other Japanese restaurants – eggplant
sushi, anyone? For the creative and adventurous, but also with more
traditional sashimi/sushi dishes on the menu. Highly recommended. Approx
$20-25pp.
In Glebe
Badde Manors (Vegetarian)
37 Glebe Point Road, Glebe, NSW 2037
(02) 9660 3797
A cosy old-style café, Badde Manors has an extensive menu for vegetarians.
Excellent for breakfast and lunch with a lively atmosphere. Approx $15pp.
Cucina di Lusso
University Hall, Shop 7, 281-285 Parramatta Rd (Cnr Glebe Point Rd)
Glebe, NSW, 2037
(02) 9660 7555
Fantastic Italian food, with a separate menu catered specifically for University
students. Service is down-to-earth and friendly. Approx $20-30pp.
SUPERMARKETS
Franklins
259 King St, Newtown, NSW, 2042
Broadway Shopping Centre
Cnr Bay St & Broadway, Broadway, NSW 2007
There’s more than just a supermarket here – it’s like a Westfield, just not called
Westfield. And there’s great sushi on level 1, and a fabulous fruit and veggie
market downstairs.

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 Frequently Asked Questions
PAYPHONES
• Outside Fisher Library
• Outside Ralph’s Café, Arena Sports Centre
• Outside the Carslaw Building Complex
• Level 2, Manning House
• Wentworth Building

PHOTOCOPYING
Fisher Library
Eastern Avenue Sat: 9am-5pm
Sun: 1pm-5pm
(02) 9351 2993
The biggest library in the southern hemisphere, it contains all your
linguistic needs (you’ll probably find the Fisher Research collection most
helpful), as well as computer/internet access and a photocopy lab.
Officeworks
1 Ross Street
Glebe, NSW 2037
(02) 8572 8300
Sat : 8am - 6pm
Sun : 9am - 6pm

ATMs
NAB ATM Broadway Shopping Centre
CBA ATM Holme Building
ANZ ATM Ground Level, Wentworth Building, Outside Hermann’s Bar
Unicom Credit Union ATM Courtyard, Manning House

43
 Special Thanks To:
Conference Committee
Chief Volunteer Coordinator: Douglas Rees
Director of Catering and Hospitality: Tobin Bales
SU Linguistics Society President: Veronica Wagner

Volunteers
Yalun An Kunlong Jin
Adam Percival Liangzheng Liu
Anthony Radford Okada Sakura
Ching Cheung Ran Zhao
Fei Xiao Shuwei Liu
Gayatree Devi Bheergoonath Tian Yu
George Ridgway Tsukasa Sato
Glenn Windschuttel Veronica Wagner
Jack Well Xiaoxi Liu
Ji Li Xin Zhang
Jie Weng Yiran (Gloria) Li
Jittimaporn Tonjumpa Youheng Wei
Joanna Cuenco Zhi LI

44
 Sponsors

Department of Linguistics, The University of Sydney

Faculty of Arts, The University of Sydney
School of Letters, Arts and Media, The University of Sydney
Sydney University Linguistics Society

45
 THANKS FOR MAKING
FLC 2011
A SUCCESS!

WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AGAIN AT THE

FREE LINGUISTICS CONFERENCE 2012

OCTOBER 13-14

FOR UPDATES AND INFORMATION

PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE:
http://www.freelinguistics.org