This thesis focuses on the explicitation of Latin-Greek terms in medical brochures that are intended for laypeople. It analyzes the presence of LG terms and the explicitation strategies in English...Show moreThis thesis focuses on the explicitation of Latin-Greek terms in medical brochures that are intended for laypeople. It analyzes the presence of LG terms and the explicitation strategies in English medical brochures that were translated from Dutch in comparison to non-translated medical brochures originally written in English. This study uses a comparable corpus methodology and its aim is to determine whether the translated brochures contain more LG term explicitation compared to the non-translated brochures. This is because research in Translation Studies has shown that the level of health literacy differs among laypeople, meaning that the medical brochures should be written in an understandable manner for everyone (Montalt, Zethsen, & Karwacka, 2018). Making a text comprehensible for laypeople can be done by using explicitation, which is adapting a unit of the text more extensively, for instance by omitting or adding terms. In this thesis, the LG terms found are classified into the following six categories that determine the explicitation strategy: definition/explanation, reformulation, exemplification/illustration, analogy, synonym, and hyperonym. This thesis compares the explicitation of LG terms in translated Dutch-English to non-translated English brochures, because it has been shown that English has had a better influx of Latin-based terminology compared to Northern European languages, that is Scandinavian or Germanic languages (Askehave and Zethsen, 2002; Zethsen, 2004). The results of this thesis show that the non-translated medical brochures in English actually contain a higher frequency of LG term explicitation compared to the medical brochures translated from Dutch. Possible reasons for these results could be that LG terms in everyday English are not as well-known and present as expected and there might exist a discrepancy between what can and cannot be considered lay terms when writing and translating medical brochures.Show less
Slang is a nonstandard informal vocabulary peculiar to a group. In this digital age, the reproduction and evolution of slang words has become faster due to the digital platforms that they are often...Show moreSlang is a nonstandard informal vocabulary peculiar to a group. In this digital age, the reproduction and evolution of slang words has become faster due to the digital platforms that they are often used in. Research has been done on the lexical aspects of slang and slang in general (Sornig (1981); Metcalf (2002)), and on forms of digital slang (McCulloch (2019)), but none view slang as a mode of translation and applied it to to other types of text besides messages on social media. This thesis will address where digital slang terms come from, and if their origins can help explain how likely they are to be understood by someone who speaks regular English. To do so I will annotate a slang translation of Harry Potter, and research the etymological origins of the slang to try to discover - using Metcalf’s (2002) FUDGE theory - which slang terms are more likely to be understood. I expect to find that the slang terms that more closely resemble regular English words are more likely to be understood.Show less
Pragmatic competence is a fundamental aspect of communicative ability and key to successful interaction between two or more interlocutors within a given socio-cultural context. It is widely...Show morePragmatic competence is a fundamental aspect of communicative ability and key to successful interaction between two or more interlocutors within a given socio-cultural context. It is widely accepted that its absence entails misunderstandings or communication breakdowns (Alsuhaibani, 2022; Tulgar, 2016). Therefore, teaching pragmatics in EFL classrooms is a crucial issue since it prepares second language learners to communicate effectively within an intercultural and multicultural context, which is, in fact, the ultimate goal of second language learning. Yet, in Greek EFL classes, pragmatics instruction is often absent. Admittedly, Greek EFL teachers are not native speakers of the language and have been taught English and its pragmatics as second-language learners themselves. Consequently, their limited exposure to the target L2 socio-cultural context may imply teachers’ low level of pragmatic knowledge, which influences their teaching of pragmatics. Besides, there are other issues that EFL instructors should deal with that hinder the incorporation of pragmatics in their lesson plans. This thesis aimed to investigate Greek EFL teachers’ pragmatic competence, their beliefs on L2 pragmatics instruction, and the challenges they face in integrating it into their EFL classroom. To achieve the thesis objectives, a mixed-methods research design was employed, using questionnaires (pragmatic comprehension scenarios, DCT, Likert-scale self-reports) and semi-structured interviews to collect data, which were then analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The present thesis showed that the 72 Greek EFL teachers who participated in the questionnaire have a relatively high level of pragmatic competence. This thesis also identified no correlation between teachers’ pragmatic competence and their years of teaching experience or their residing/studying/working abroad using the target language. Moreover, it is found that although most teachers do not include structured pragmatic instruction in their lesson plans, they do value L2 pragmatics teaching. Finally, teacher and learner factors, as well as the Greek EFL context itself, pose significant challenges in incorporating L2 pragmatic instructions in Greek EFL classrooms.Show less
Code switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, or ‘code’, by someone engaged in speech or text. It is a practise employed by multilinguals in both oral and written...Show moreCode switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, or ‘code’, by someone engaged in speech or text. It is a practise employed by multilinguals in both oral and written conversations. Different multilinguals will have different switching patterns. These patterns can vary depending on the speaker’s language proficiency, community norms, the typology of their languages, and the cultural or political relations these languages might have with one another, among many other reasons. Code switching between Spanish and English and Spanish and French has been the subject of various studies. Although trilingual research is rare (e.g. Parafita Couto et al., 2023; Valdés Kroff et al., 2023), there has also been some research on the connection between Spanish, French and English, but most of this work is based in the French-speaking provinces of Canada (e.g. COLEM, 2023; Pato, 2019, 2022). This paper aims to study the code-switching patterns among a set of trilingual siblings living in Geneva who have Colombian heritage and attend a British school in the city. The participants recorded themselves for up to 30 minutes having casual conversations following a prompt in three separate occasions. The switches were identified alongside general information about the corpus, such as how many languages were present in each clause, the clauses’ matrix language, the general use of each language in the corpus, among others. This paper focuses on intraclausal switching. We followed Deuchar et al. (2007)’s methodology which categorises each intraclausal switch into insertion, alteration, or congruent lexicalisation according to the code switching pattern it most aligned with following Muysken’s typology of bilingual speech patterns (2000).Because English, Spanish and French are typologically similar, combined with the fact our participants are fluent in all three languages, and due to the culturally open context of Geneva, we expected alternation to be the dominant switch pattern in the recorded conversations. Having said this, since the participants go to a British school where their education is mainly in English, and because the Colombian community in Geneva is not as big as other bilingual communities around the world, a dominant insertional pattern was also a possibility. The corpus was composed of mainly unilingual clauses with 7.8% of the first recording being bilingual clauses, 19.6% of the second recording, and 8.95% of the third. Only three clauses in the entire corpus were trilingual out of 1215. Once we had analysed the entirety of the conversations, the dominant pattern was indeed overwhelmingly insertion with 77.55% of the switches in the corpus presenting this pattern. Congruent lexicalisation was present in 11.56% of the switches and alternation in the other 10.88%. Although these results do not necessarily align with our expectations of codeswitching in Switzerland, we believe our participants’ specific background, namely the fact that language separation is encouraged in the different spheres of their lives, could explain the prevalence of insertion over alternation in our case study. We hope our research will contribute to bigger corpus studies of trilingual codeswitching patterns in different communities.Show less
The introduction of the concept of exaptation into the field of linguistics. A comparison of the history of the concept in evolution and linguistics. The various changes it underwent and the...Show moreThe introduction of the concept of exaptation into the field of linguistics. A comparison of the history of the concept in evolution and linguistics. The various changes it underwent and the transformation that was required to fit it into the field of linguistics. It further explores the impact it had on both fields.Show less
The patient information leaflet contains a lot of Latin-Greek medical terminology which laypeople often do not understand. Many studies have been performed that focus on how Latin-Greek medical...Show moreThe patient information leaflet contains a lot of Latin-Greek medical terminology which laypeople often do not understand. Many studies have been performed that focus on how Latin-Greek medical terminology is translated into different languages, looking at different language pairs. However, little research has been done on the translation of Latin-Greek terminology in English-Dutch patient information leaflets. In order to fill this gap, this thesis analyzes the use of Latin-Greek terminology in the English PILs and the popularization strategies that were used to translate the terms for Dutch laypeople. This study poses two questions. Firstly, whether more Latin-Greek terms are used in the English PILs, as many English lay terms are Latin or Greek-based terms. Secondly, whether there is a significant difference in the number of occurrences of popularization strategies containing Latin-Greek terminology, lay terminology and explication in the English and Dutch PIL sections. The results show that more Latin-Greek terms that are used in the English PILs are indeed Latin or Greek-based terms. The second question, however, could not be answered, as the results of the analysis showed similar number of occurrences of popularization strategies. Further and more extensive research has to be done on the use of Latin-Greek terms and popularization strategies in PILs in order for the second research question posed in this study to be answered.Show less
Ever since the introduction of Translation Universals, their existence has been widely debated. Explicitation and implicitation are no exception to this. These Translation Universals, both...Show moreEver since the introduction of Translation Universals, their existence has been widely debated. Explicitation and implicitation are no exception to this. These Translation Universals, both separately and together, have been studied in a variety of genres and text types. This thesis examined explicitation and implicitation in Dutch Patient Information Leaflets (PILs). It looked at how explicit the Dutch PILs were, what the rate of explicitation to implicitation was, and which explicitation and implicitation strategies were used. To study this, a bilingual parallel corpus of English and Dutch PILs of orally taken contraceptives was analysed. The source and target texts were compared side by side and occurrences of explicitation and implicitation were identified, the rate of explicitation to implicitation was calculated and the different implicitation strategies used were determined. The results show a rate of 60% explicitation and 40% implicitation, with 234 explicitation shifts and 156 implicitation shifts identified. Additionally, a wide range of explicitation and implicitation strategies was found, with the most common explicitation strategies being the addition of a connective element, the filling of an elliptical structure and the use of lexical repetition. The most commonly used implicitation strategy, by far, was the use of a hypernym. Overall, Dutch PILs were more explicit than English ones, especially concerning connectives, though English PILs were more explicit in regard to hyponyms. With this research into explicitation and implicitation, we are one step closer to either confirming or disputing these Translation Universals, using the method proposed by Chesterman (2010). Additionally, by researching the explicitness of PILs, we contribute to the existing research on their lay-friendliness.Show less
Dialects have been studied in different ways for centuries, from the dialectal maps that pioneered the field to the contemporary analysis between urban speech and rural speech. Through the medium...Show moreDialects have been studied in different ways for centuries, from the dialectal maps that pioneered the field to the contemporary analysis between urban speech and rural speech. Through the medium of drama scripts produced by Dublin playwrights, this thesis studies how Dublin speech has shifted in its representation and, by extension, how the variety has shifted. With the aim of giving insight into the accuracy of representation, the sociolinguistic aspects of how language varieties are represented by characters of different backgrounds and how this intersects with the aspect of time. By analyzing nine separate plays written by three authors, across about 80 years, the study concluded that drama encapsulates a high degree of non-standard variety-specific features. These are especially apparent in the use of grammatical features, phrasal constructions, and vocabulary. The incorporation of the Irish language and the use of minor respellings to portray non-standard speech was, however, concluded to be mainly stylistic. Yet, a lot of items corresponding to documented Dublin features were found in the texts. Out of these it was the grammatical items that stood out the most. Several grammatical forms were found across all authors, specific forms that also corresponded to Irish and Dublin features. Lastly, this study could not add much to the sociolinguistic aspects of literary non-standard representation. As the play portrayed working class speakers without any upper-class characters involved.Show less
The current study offers the first clause type anticipation based on the prosody of Beijing Mandarin for native Taiwan Mandarin listeners, building upon the research of Gryllia et al. (2020). By...Show moreThe current study offers the first clause type anticipation based on the prosody of Beijing Mandarin for native Taiwan Mandarin listeners, building upon the research of Gryllia et al. (2020). By conducting an online audio-gating experiment, our findings indicated that TM listeners encounter difficulties anticipating wh-questions based on BM prosodic cues, whereas the anticipation of declaratives was more successful. The effect of the clause types intended by the BM speaker was significant from Gate II, and the effect of tones in Gate III suggested an intertwined interaction between tone and intonation. Additionally, the impact of the gate and its interaction with the intended clause type was also shown to influence the clause type anticipation.Show less
This thesis presents a contrastive analysis between the observational stand-up comedies of the Greek Lambros Fisfis and the American Jim Gaffigan. The analysis criterion was the different...Show moreThis thesis presents a contrastive analysis between the observational stand-up comedies of the Greek Lambros Fisfis and the American Jim Gaffigan. The analysis criterion was the different linguistic devices used on the grounds of the first Knowledge Resource, the Language, offered by the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo & Raskin 1991), the four Humor Identification Forms (Shade 1996), and the five levels of linguistic analysis (morphology, syntax, phonetics-phonology, semantics, and pragmatics). To what extent does each comedian rely on the different linguistic devices corresponding to the five levels of linguistic analysis to elicit laughter from the audience? Subsequently, how different or similar is each comedian’s approach regarding the different levels of analysis from which they draw their devices and the different types of the devices themselves? To answer these questions, I present a comparative analysis of the linguistic devices used in 15 clips from Fisfis’ playlist on YouTube, “Να ένας Σοφός” (Here is a Wise Man) and Gaffigan’s playlist on YouTube, “Laugh Society” respectively. The results suggest that both comedians relied mainly on the Verbal Humor Identification Form, and Fisfis used more devices than Gaffigan on the morphological, phonetic-phonological, and pragmatic levels. Gaffigan, on the other hand, used more devices than Fisfis on the syntactic and semantic levels.Show less
The research relates to the use of conditionals in the warning paragraph of medicinal contraindications in a patient information leaflet (PIL) or Package Leaflet (PL), and whether aspects of the...Show moreThe research relates to the use of conditionals in the warning paragraph of medicinal contraindications in a patient information leaflet (PIL) or Package Leaflet (PL), and whether aspects of the language used can be identified as a source of anxiety for patients with prescription medicines.Show less
This thesis examines body-part and non-body-part idiom translation by student translators from Japanese into English or Dutch. Several researches have been conducted regarding the perceived...Show moreThis thesis examines body-part and non-body-part idiom translation by student translators from Japanese into English or Dutch. Several researches have been conducted regarding the perceived translatability of body-part idioms, but the actual translation of these idioms as well as student translation has not been widely researched. Body parts are a major aspect of figurative language, but body-part idiom translation, the image of body parts in translation, is an area that is under researched. By examining the strategies student translators use as well as their reflections on the translations, this study argues that both body-part and non-body-part idioms are preferably translated using figurative language. In addition, body parts and their image (or other images) can and do play a part in the translation decision, however, no strong preference for body parts to be transferred can be detected in this study. However, this study also argues that other images, might play a role in the translation decision for student translators.Show less
The present study aims to investigate the use of Japanese loanwords in Mandarin Chinese-speaking Otaku communities by combining database observation with three elicitation tasks: 1) a questionnaire...Show moreThe present study aims to investigate the use of Japanese loanwords in Mandarin Chinese-speaking Otaku communities by combining database observation with three elicitation tasks: 1) a questionnaire on knowledge and using circumstances of the loans, 2) a set of read-aloud tasks following the questionnaire in Task 1 for tonal assignment strategies, and 3) a timed loanword-identification task. Linguistic dimensions of the data are carefully investigated, and variations in different individuals’ uses are also observed. Based on these findings, the role of misperception and identity in tonal adaptation, the limbo between code switching and lexical borrowing, as well as the role of orthographic representations are reflected on.Show less
This thesis examines whether native speakers of Dutch can aspirate unvoiced word-initial plosives in English as a second language and if they are able to do so to the same degree as native speakers...Show moreThis thesis examines whether native speakers of Dutch can aspirate unvoiced word-initial plosives in English as a second language and if they are able to do so to the same degree as native speakers of English. Aspiration was measured in word-initial unvoiced plosives /p, t, k/ using Voice Onset Time (VOT). Influence of sex, age, age of onset of the second language, and self-reported general pronunciation ability in English were also examined. Native Dutch VOT generally lies between 0-20ms, while native English VOT is anywhere between 50-100 ms. Using recordings from 19 participants who read both Dutch and English sentences out loud, it was found that participants increased their aspiration with an average of 10 ms when switching from Dutch to English. The analysis also shows that two participants out of 19 had an average VOT at a native-like level (>50 ms). Further investigation showed that sex, age, and age of onset did not influence VOT. Participants who graded their general pronunciation abilities with an 8 or higher did show a bigger increase in VOT, but there was no correlation to higher VOT in English when compared to other speakers. Other results showed that /p, t, k/ were not aspirated to the same extent, with /t/ being aspirated significantly more and /p/ significantly less. Lastly, the co-existence of words in both English and Dutch did not significantly alter the VOT, only when words started with /k/ did aspiration significantly improve when the exact word also existed in Dutch. These results conclude that native speakers of Dutch increase aspiration and can aspirate to a native-like degree while speaking English. Any defining factors of the participants who were able to do so are not available due to the limited sample size.Show less
