Abstract
This volume is the fifth in the Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics series. In the editors’ own words, it aims ‘to explore the comparability of discourse-pragmatic characteristics of genres across European languages, using parallel corpora (aligned translated texts) and/or comparable corpora (genre-matched original texts)’ (p. 1). The languages in question are English (involved in all chapters), Czech, Dutch, French, Polish, Norwegian and Swedish. The discourse-pragmatic characteristics include modality, cohesion, discourse markers and information structure. The distinction between parallel and comparable corpora is central to the volume, as it leads to a structural division between Part I (‘Contrastive Analysis with Parallel Corpora’) and Part II (‘Contrastive Analysis with Comparable Corpora’), while Part III is more specifically devoted to the issue of genre (‘Contrastive Analysis Across Genres of English’).
The volume starts with a chapter by the editors, in which they introduce some of the key concepts in the volume (contrastive analysis and the evolution of the field, the notion of genre and its link with related terms, parallel and comparable corpora and their advantages/limitations). They also provide an overview of the chapters in the three parts.
Part I has four chapters relying on parallel corpora. Karin Aijmer investigates obligation in English and Swedish, with a focus on the modal auxiliaries must/måste and their translations in the other language. She shows how genre (fiction/non-fiction) and various linguistic factors (e.g. type of subject, speech act, positive/negative evaluation) affect the use and distribution of these obligation markers. Lieven Buysse considers the translations and back-translations of the English so and the Dutch dus. Beyond their overall mutual translatability, he looks into the different functions they fulfil and the extent to which these functions correspond to each other cross-linguistically. Michaela Martinková and Markéta Janebová focus on one word in one language, namely the Czech particle prý (‘allegedly’), but use parallel data in English as a lens to reveal its meanings. The particle emerges as an evidential marker, more than an epistemic one. Magdalena Szczyrbak studies English modal adverbs of certainty (indeed, necessarily, of course, clearly, obviously) and their translations in Polish. The genre investigated is that of legal discourse, whose argumentative force is compared in the translated and original texts.
Part II is made up of two studies relying on comparable corpora. Hilde Hasselgård deals with the placement of English and Norwegian adverbial clauses. Next to the influence of genre (fiction/news), the study considers factors such as the form and meaning of the clause, its information structure and its (non-)iconic order. Diana Lewis compares English and French political speeches from the point of view of additive coherence relations. She provides an overall picture of additive markers and a more detailed case study of two of these markers, indeed and en effet.
In Part III, the focus is on genres. Catherine Chauvin examines the use of cohesive devices in the genre of stand-up comedy. She argues that, next to the devices traditionally recognized as creating cohesion, callbacks (i.e. references to previous jokes) help structure a show and should thus be included in the repertoire of cohesive devices. Laura Hidalgo-Downing and Yasra Hanawi compare two political speeches addressed to the Arab world by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. They study the different types of stance found in the speeches, including negation, which Obama appears to use to ‘deconstruct’ previously held assumptions and promote new ideas. Tereza Guziurová analyses engagement markers in two genres, undergraduate textbooks and research articles in linguistics. The main focus is on we, a pronoun which is very frequent in both genres but fulfils partly distinct functions.
The different chapters illustrate the variety of discourse-pragmatic topics that can be explored in corpus linguistics. Next to the quantitative refinement they allow for, corpora give access to authentic examples of language in context. This, in fact, is one of the assets of the book: not only do the contributors illustrate their points with many corpus examples, but they also provide detailed descriptions of these. The careful analysis of corpora also brings to light aspects that might otherwise have remained unnoticed, such as the role of negation in recontextualization (Hidalgo-Downing and Hanawi), the use of callbacks to create cohesion (Chauvin) or the effect of omissions in translations (Martinková and Janebová, Szczyrbak). Interestingly, the findings are not restricted to the linguistic features under study (modal auxiliaries of obligation, adverbs of certainty, adverbial clauses, etc.), but they also say something more general about the rhetoric of the languages considered or the style of the writers/speakers whose production is examined.
The contrastive perspective adds an interesting dimension to the volume, showing how discourse-pragmatic features compare across languages (Parts I and II) or, in a broader sense of the term ‘contrastive’, across genres (Part III, with the exception of Chauvin’s paper, which is not really contrastive in nature). One of the main contributions of the volume is its demonstration that cross-linguistic correspondences are contextually bound, being dependent on factors such as the direction of translation, the presence of certain items in the sentence or, indeed, genre, another central element of the book. With respect to genre, one may regret the lack of contributions dealing with spontaneous speech, especially for the study of phenomena like pragmatic markers which are, as Buysse himself points out, ‘rather more typical of spoken registers’ (p. 37). That this is not only due to the limited range of genres existing in translation (see introductory chapter) appears from the fact that the chapters in Parts II and III do not rely on such data either. However, the analyses of writing and prepared speech brought together in the volume constitute sufficient evidence that genre should not be neglected in contrastive/discourse-pragmatic studies, and yet another proof – if one was needed – that all languages are ‘polylithic’, not monolithic, entities.