English TodayPub Date : 2022-11-21DOI: 10.1017/s0266078422000293
Hyeon-Seok Kang
{"title":"‘BTS, PSY, BLACKPINK’","authors":"Hyeon-Seok Kang","doi":"10.1017/s0266078422000293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0266078422000293","url":null,"abstract":"Personal names are an important part of people's social identity, and they function socially as labels that both identify and distinguish an individual from others (Watzlawik et al., 2012). Cheang (2008) suggests that personal names can be a vehicle of self-presentation/self-promotion (cf. Goffman, 1980), not just a passive label, if the names are selected by the name bearers themselves. Although self-naming is also observed with a small minority of people who have changed their names given by their parents or close relations, the most common cases of self-presentation/self-promotion seem to be entertainers’ adopted stage names.","PeriodicalId":51710,"journal":{"name":"English Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48007517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
English TodayPub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1017/s0266078422000268
Constantina Fotiou
{"title":"English in Cyprus","authors":"Constantina Fotiou","doi":"10.1017/s0266078422000268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0266078422000268","url":null,"abstract":"Cyprus is an island in the Mediterranean Sea where English has the status of the most popular and important foreign language (Tsiplakou, 2009; Fotiou, 2015) and the majority of its inhabitants are literate in English. While a former British colony, it is generally absent from discussions of places where English has had some special relevance due to historical, political, social and economic reasons. For example, while other small countries with a history of British rule, such as Malta and Seychelles, are part of Crystal's (2003: 62–5) list of English speakers in territories where English has had special relevance, Cyprus is absent from that list. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by providing an overview of the use of English in various domains, i.e. workplace, education, linguistic landscape, the media, and communication between Greek Cypriots, along with a brief historical background. The latter aims to illustrate how Cyprus was different from many British colonies and how this has affected the status of this language in this setting both now and during the colonization period.","PeriodicalId":51710,"journal":{"name":"English Today","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41639626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
English TodayPub Date : 2022-11-11DOI: 10.1017/s026607842200027x
Mian Jia, Y. An
{"title":"Language as an interpersonal marker in English dissertation acknowledgments","authors":"Mian Jia, Y. An","doi":"10.1017/s026607842200027x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s026607842200027x","url":null,"abstract":"Expressing gratitude and patronage in the form of dedication or acknowledgment can be traced back to the 16th century (Görlach, 2004). In the present time, writing an acknowledgment section has become a common practice in scholarly works, such as books, dissertations, theses, and journal articles. Research on acknowledgments as a text type, however, is relatively new. In his pioneering work, Hyland (2003) dubbed dissertation acknowledgments ‘a Cinderella genre’ because it is often regarded as a taken-for-granted component in a dissertation and has not received due academic attention. Unlike other conventional academic genres that aim to establish claims and reputation, dissertation acknowledgments reflect the reciprocal gift-giving among scholars, constituting ‘the most explicitly interpersonal genre of the academy’ (Hyland, 2004: 323). In addition to expressing gratitude to others, writers also use the acknowledgments section to build interpersonal relationships with their academic colleagues and/or professional communities (Chan, 2015). In this study, we adopt computerized text analysis to further explore how language patterns mark the interpersonal features in English dissertation acknowledgments.","PeriodicalId":51710,"journal":{"name":"English Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42287822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
English TodayPub Date : 2022-11-08DOI: 10.1017/s0266078422000256
Fang Qi, Junlong Li
{"title":"Chinese university students’ translanguaging hybrids on WeChat","authors":"Fang Qi, Junlong Li","doi":"10.1017/s0266078422000256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0266078422000256","url":null,"abstract":"The popularity of the online social media in China promotes a dynamic digital drive for both global and glocalised communications, facilitating the emergence of more connected intercultural language practices unimaginable in the past. Social media also creates a vast community where pervasive translanguaging practices take place daily. Translanguaging hybrids coined by Chinese university students on WeChat are exactly a case in point. WeChat is a free platform launched in 2011 by Tencent. Well established in China and the world over, Tencent provides multimodal instant messaging services. Open to world cultures, these students show ingenuity in translanguaging linguistic play in their daily text messages; meanwhile, their creative coinage of translanguaging hybrids influences the entire WeChat community. Written language in the WeChat community, often amounting to a new form of speech, deserves serious scholarly inquiry.","PeriodicalId":51710,"journal":{"name":"English Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45322603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
English TodayPub Date : 2022-09-19DOI: 10.1017/S0266078422000244
M. Modiano
{"title":"The future of British English in the European Union","authors":"M. Modiano","doi":"10.1017/S0266078422000244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078422000244","url":null,"abstract":"In the three years and seven months between the referendum on 23 June 2016 and 31 January 2020, when the UK officially left the European Union, there was much speculation over what status English would have in the EU after the withdrawal of the UK. It is now apparent that English has continued to flourish. This is supported by statistics for Member States which chart the extent to which English is a school subject. Well over 95% of the children in the EU are taught English as a mandatory subject. Official EU figures also show that 38% of the population is proficient in English as a second language, three times more than both French and German (Special Eurobarometer 386: Europeans and their Languages, 2012). Moreover, although some, such as Danuta Hübner, EMP, wanted to question whether or not English could maintain its status as an official language in the EU, it is now apparent that it will not be possible to remove English in this respect (with changes requiring a unanimous vote in the Council, which Ireland has said it will not support [European Commission, 2016]), (The Guardian 27 December 2019). English has also retained its position as one of the three ‘procedural’ or ‘working languages’ alongside French and German. This has taken place despite the fact that without the UK, no Member State has English as its official EU language, and only approximately one percent of EU citizens have English as a mother tongue.","PeriodicalId":51710,"journal":{"name":"English Today","volume":"39 1","pages":"149 - 154"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48996999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
English TodayPub Date : 2022-07-28DOI: 10.1017/S0266078422000207
R. Oladipupo, Elizabeth Akinfenwa
{"title":"Educated Nollywood artistes’ accent as a Normative Standard of English pronunciation in Nigeria","authors":"R. Oladipupo, Elizabeth Akinfenwa","doi":"10.1017/S0266078422000207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078422000207","url":null,"abstract":"The English language, although a second language, plays a prominent role in Nigeria. As the official language in the media, governmental administration, education, law courts, commerce, entertainment and politics, it has assumed a hegemonic position over indigenous Nigerian languages (Oladipupo, 2021). In view of its long years of interaction with these languages, the absence of native models, and the influence of Nigerian teachers who lack Standard English pronunciation competence (Awonusi, 2015; Akinjobi, 2020), it has been nativised and acculturated (Adegbija, 2004). This has, therefore, resulted in a Nigerian English (NigE) variety that is markedly different from Standard British English, its precursor and target model, at the syntactic (e.g., Akinlotan, 2021), pragmatic (e.g., Fuchs, Gut & Soneye, 2013) and phonological (e.g., Awonusi, 2015; Akinola & Oladipupo, 2021) levels.","PeriodicalId":51710,"journal":{"name":"English Today","volume":"39 1","pages":"207 - 217"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43424291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
English TodayPub Date : 2022-07-27DOI: 10.1017/S0266078422000232
S. Miguel
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"S. Miguel","doi":"10.1017/S0266078422000232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078422000232","url":null,"abstract":"On September 8, 2021, the then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, met Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for a dialogue in Düsseldorf’s Schauspielhaus theatre. Adichie had just published Notes on Grief, but the two women’s talk largely centred around her commitment to feminism. Adichie rose to fame after her novel Americanah was published in 2013. Both the BBC and the New York Times Book Review acclaimed it as one of the most influential books of the decade, establishing Adichie firmly among the most important English-language writers. TEDx talks, Beyoncé’s sampling her 2013 TEDx speech ‘We should all be feminists’ in her song ‘Flawless’ and the use of exactly that slogan on t-shirts by luxury brand Dior have established her well beyond the intellectual writers’ scene. Adichie’s contemporaries include Ayobami Adebayo, Sefi Atta, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, and Chibundu Onuzo, among many others. In fact, Nigerian novelists have successfully contributed to the international English-language literature scene for decades, ever since Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). As well as in high literature, Nigeria has also established itself in the film and music industry. Known around the world as Nollywood, Nigerian films continue to spread across and influence the film scenes elsewhere on the African continent, such as Wakaliwood, a film studio located in Uganda’s capital Kampala. These developments indicate that English in Nigeria is no longer the sole provenance of elites, giving rise to an English-medium cultural scene. Nativised Nigerian English has strongly established itself both in an institutionalised and standardising variety as well as in its pidignised form, Nigerian Pidgin English, and a number of other sub-varieties. It is particularly Nigerian Pidgin English, for which world-wide influence has been documented (Mair, 2013). Of course, these developments are mirrored in research on varieties of English. When the concept of world Englishes originated at two conferences in 1978, at the East-West Center in Hawaii and at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Nigerian English was part of the endeavour, at the time represented through Ayo Bamgbose, who is now in his early 90s. A decade later, when Sidney Greenbaum (1988) proposed the collection of corpora of English to complement those covering British and American English, Nigeria was, besides India, singled out to represent countries where English is an official language in what today is known as the International Corpus of English (ICE). However, it took until 2007 for the idea of a Nigerian component to be (re-)conceived by Ulrike Gut. When the Nigeria component became available to the research community in 2014, the corpus was presumably the fastest collected one within the ICE family. This was due to the excellent work of Ulrike Gut, who lead the ICE-Nigeria team, but particularly to a highly successful collaboration with local Nigerian colleagues. This success is matched by a","PeriodicalId":51710,"journal":{"name":"English Today","volume":"38 1","pages":"141 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48073833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}