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“Kwartalnik Pedagogiczny” 2006 No. 4

SUMMARIES

Andrzej Bogusławski PEDAGOGICAL PARADOXES OF LINGUISTICS

Summary

The author reflects on the question of what in the results of broadly understood investigations of may be particularly weighty in pedagogical activities. The point of departure in this reflection is a definition of (as activity). The definition reads: science is a systematic, publicly relevant cognitive valuation of expressions. From the standpoint of this definition any whose is language is ensured recognition as valid part of science. The „pedagogical paradox” of linguistics lies in the that the overwhelming majority of what is being done in linguistic research does not have a really substantial and indispensable place in justifiably important pedagogical activities. Apart from pathological cases, everyone is in full command of their . Polish is very uniform, so there is no question of evening up regional differences in . Linguistic are also of little value where undeniable advantages can be pursued, such as those deriving from exercises in higher, e.g. rhetorical, areas of language use. Advantages in general offered by science of language are questionable because theories of language as well as theoretical grammatical works either present knowledge a priori which people are in of anyway or are far from being mature. Linguistics can find its most effective public justification in offering assistance to the process of practical acquisition of foreign which really affects the masses. The author illustrates this claim with the example of teaching the Russian language.

Key : pedagogy, science, linguistics, language, acquisition.

Hanna Komorowska LANGUAGE AND IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Summary

The article contains a review of approaches to the teaching of culture in language pedagogy as well as reflections on aspects of culture included in various foreign language teaching methods. New trends in the educational policy of the Council of Europe and the European Union are also presented, special emphasis being given to the of sociocultural knowledge and intercultural competence. The author discusses the role of intercultural competence in the teaching of the so-called international languages vs. the so-called non-international foreign languages as well as the place of culture in foreign language instruction provided for a of communicative purposes. Against this background curricular documents and teaching materials are then analysed, including their reflection in the practice of language teaching. The author presents conclusions for language policy and implications for future research. Key words: foreign language teaching, language and culture, , intercultural competence, European language policy, FLT coursebooks.

Teresa Giermak-Zielińska LANGUAGE, CULTURE, STUDIES

Summary

This paper is primarily concerned with French studies. As evident from the sociological research carried out in Poland in 2004, graduates of French departments in the years 2000– 2003 have found employment as language teachers, relatively few have become translators but the combination of both of these professional activities is frequent. Language studies do not address the specific needs of the translation profession, they do provide, however, considerable knowledge of French literature, culture and language. It is important that the acquired expertise should then be applied to specific translation tasks. The paper discusses, by way of example, the course in translating Old French texts, offered by the author to students of French over a couple of years. The course sought to accomplish a threefold aim: to familiarize the students, using practice based teaching, with a of important concepts from the field of translation , to make students sensitive to the role of cultural elements and to look for translation equivalents expressed in good, standard Polish. That is so because the single biggest difficulty for students is not comprehending the original text, notwithstanding its specific and , but the selection of appropriate lexical and syntactic means in Polish.

Key words: French studies, translation, Old French, Polish, cultural differences, equivalence.

Magdalena Danielewiczowa AL THAT LEXICOGRLAPHY

Summary

This paper presents selected problems of contemporary unilingual . The author claims that lexicography is one of the few linguistic domains of interest to ordinary users of language. reflect the common knowledge, the world view and life of a given language community. They are an inexhaustible source of on a given collective . Among correctly delimited and registered lexical units, one can locate items which define the social identity and draw distinctions between given . The pedagogical task of familiarizing students with advanced modern lexicography is by no means an easy one. Questions on how to delimit lexical units or how to adequately describe their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties are extremely complex. The author illustrates these difficulties by analysing the two Polish expressions: ten cały_ and cały ten_. She points out that definitions of the of expressions in result from a number of interpretive techniques, the most important of which is analysing the expressions in various semantically inconsistent sentences. The resulting lexicographic descriptions of the lexical items ten cały_ and cały ten_have been included in the paper.

Key words: lexicography, lexical item, meaning, semantic definition. Jolanta Zając THE PRAGMATIC DIMENSION OF CONVERSATIONAL AND ITS PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Summary

Contemporary foreign language teaching methodology relies heavily on the communicative function of language. This function indicates what meanings and linguistic forms will guide the learner towards maximally complete pragmatic competence in speech and . It is the former type which is my primary concern, as it is most commonly associated with everyday . Teaching speaking in a foreign language is far less intuitive today than it used to be thanks to psycholinguistic research and discourse analyses, which both explain the complex mechanisms of and inspire pedagogic innovations. Speaking is motivated by and traceable to its original stimulus, while withdrawal may be motivated not only by ignorance but above all by various communicative anxieties which effectively hinder conversational efforts. A closer look at the nature of the communication process and a careful consideration of the communication units used in the production of speech enable a more efficient organization of communicative tasks, with due attention paid to their complexity and specificity. By drawing upon the research on conversational discourse and its pragmatic conditioning it becomes possible to improve communicative authenticity. This can be done by making our learners aware of and sensitive to certain communicative mechanisms which up to now tended to get lost in textbook materials and exercises with excessive “pedagogic orientation”.

Key words: foreign langue teaching, conversational discourse, communication process, pragmatic competence in speech.

Romuald Gozdawa-Gołębiowski TEACHING INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH: AN INTERCULTURAL OR ANTICULTURAL APPROACH?

Summary

This paper examines the uneasy relationship between language and culture in the foreign language teaching . For the purposes of this discussion the of the term culture has been reduced to four pedagogically relevant areas: culture as product, artefact, social and linguistic behaviour. Is cultural neutrality a possible and desirable alternative to any intercultural communicative approach (for example as proposed by Michael Byram and his followers)? While for the majority of natural languages this “anticultural crusade” seems entirely pointless, in the case of English there has been an exponentially growing number of non-native users (a billion in ’s estimate) who employ English to satisfy basic communicative needs rather than to demonstrate cultural identity. For this reason it is proposed that the so-called native-speaker norm be abandoned in teaching and testing international English. This implies: putting more on functional adequacy at the cost of grammatical correctness, resigning from the excessive testing of semantically and syntactically unpredictable formulaic patterns and idiosyncratic (non-rule-governed) grammatical constructions, and introducing cultural references from outside of the English- speaking countries. There is a clear need for a lot of further discussion about the role of culture and the driving forces behind it in language learning, not least because we are all witnessing the twin processes of de- and internationalization of English.

Key words: language, culture, interculturality, culture-neutral teaching, international English, cultural identity, native speaker, formulaicity.

Piotr Stalmaszczyk GENERATIVE IN SEARCH FOR THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE

Summary

The article discusses the developments in Chomskyan , from the theory of Government and to the more recent , with special on the of language, grammar and . distinguishes between “internal language” (comparable, to some extent, to de Saussure’s langue), i.e. an appropriate mental state or competence, and “external language” (comparable to Saussurean parole), i.e. performance, associated with behavior. Language, the Chomskyan object of study, is a recursive procedure that generates an infinity of expressions, each regarded as a collection of information for other systems of the -brain. In the Chomskyan approach to language and linguistic theory, the syntactic module is independent, autonomous and apart, other contemporary approaches to linguistics, however, stress the convergence among syntax, and . The second part of the article briefly introduces the theory of Conceptual Semantics, as developed by . According to Jackendoff, the organization of language includes three autonomous levels of structure: phonological, syntactic and semantic/conceptual, and these language specific components interface with non-linguistic components, such as vision, action, and auditory factors.

Key words: generative grammar, Universal Grammar, conceptual semantics, Noam Chomsky, Ray Jackendoff.

Bożenna Chylińska BETWEEN THE BLACK AND THE WHITE GOD. LANGUAGE AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS UNDER

Summary

Slavery and its distinctive pattern of race relations exercised a decisive role in shaping American society. No one planned the creation of black slavery in America; it was a synthesis of an interaction between the colonists and their environment. Nevertheless, a social structure resembling a racial caste system emerged as a central of Anglo-American society. The American slaveholders claimed slavery to be in accordance with Christian faith and they sought the justification of slavery in the Bible. From the very beginning of their bondage, blacks were experiencing the dehumanizing of slavery. The system penetrated every sphere of blacks’ lives . Forced to abandon their traditional religious practices, they were frequently discouraged from acquiring their masters’ religion as preaching was usually done under the proslavery banner. Living in the “cultural void”, cast between their traditional African Supreme Deity and the God of their white masters, African Americans were left with the help of neither.

Key words: religious identity, black conscience, language, black culture, black slavery, American South, black slave , black slave testimonies, black slave — white master relations.

Małgorzata Grzegorzewska OF ONE SPEECH, MANY TONGUES AND THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN BIBLICAL TRADITION AND CONTEMPORARY

Summary

The essay analyses selected passages from The Old and , ranging from the mythological account of the Deluge and the story of Babel, through the chronicles of Israel, down to the New Testament and the about the miraculous “gift of tongues”. In the quoted examples language serves as an important feature of tribal or national identity, a means of communication and . It also serves as a powerful weapon in wars. Furthermore, the biblical narratives prove that the process of recognising and/or establishing one’s selfhood through language needs to be construed in the double of Latin words ipse: something that is variable, but always distinct from others, and idem: always the same, “identical with itself”. Neither can consciousness be divorced from group identity (frequently connected with identification based on the principle of mother tongue). This conundrum may be solved through a reference to modern narratology which proposes the concept of “narrative identity” comprising the dialectical notions of “sameness” and “diversity”. On these terms, “the gift of tongues” cannot be interpreted as a new for the idyllic pre-Babel uniformity of some lingua franca for all people, but rather serves as a reminder that true identity can be found only when differences are respected and diversity is preserved.

Key words: Bible, identity, self, narration, lingua franca, gift of tongues.

Andrzej Pawelec LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM: CAN ONE “ACQUIRE” ANOTHER LANGUAGE?

Summary

The so-called “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” stirred a heated debate concerning the limitations imposed by a language on perception and mental states of its users as well as on the possibility of intercultural communication. There are several formulations of this hypothesis — from “” through “linguistic relativism” up to “thinking for speaking” — but even the weakest one has pessimistic pedagogical implications. The author attempts to show — following Gadamer — that the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is commonly misunderstood. Language does not impose a specific perspective on the world but makes it possible for us “to have a world”. In other words, thanks to language we are not under the direct pressure of our environment and we can extend the limits of our experience: we can assume and preserve in culture various postures which help reveal new aspects of the world. Following Merleau-Ponty, the paper presents an interpretation of this hypothesis which reveals most clearly the challenges facing learners who want to “acquire” another language. According to this interpretation, language is best understood as a kind of gesticulation in a cultural space constituted in a of expression. The author discusses a few examples belonging to the domain of contrastive grammar of English and Polish. He claims that the cognitive of these examples — however useful and clear — does not reveal the true nature of the linguistic differences involved.

Key words: intercultural, communication, linguistic differences, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Błażej Gałkowski FORMULAIC COMPETENCE AND THE PROBLEMS OF CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Summary

The paper looks at the phenomenon of formulaicity in foreign language teaching with special emphasis on the relationship between formulaic language and the questions of culture and identity. It investigates the three main dimensions of formulaicity (the linguistic aspect, the psycholinguistic aspect and the sociolinguistic aspect) and presents a model of formulaic competence, with three sub-competences: lexicogrammatical competence, processing competence and sociocultural competence. By exposing the different mechanisms which account for the external symptoms of formulaicity, the model makes it possible to assess the relevance of the formulaic focus in language teaching to the actual learner needs.

Key words: formulaic language, formulaic competence, foreign language teaching, culture, identity.

Ewa Mioduszewska THE GURU EFFECT AND SOPHISTICATED UNDERSTANDING

Summary

Dan Sperber has introduced the notions of three comprehension strategies and of what he has called the guru effect. The paper’s aim is to show how the strategies influence the effect. The first two parts are purely expository. Part one is an of what the guru effect is. Part two is a description of the three comprehension strategies. Both parts are based on Sperber’s two papers “Understanding verbal understanding” (1994) and “The guru effect” (2006). Part three analyzes a passage that may give rise to the guru effect, according to the three comprehension strategies. It turns out that the third strategy, that of sophisticated understanding, does not allow the reader/hearer to treat the guru effect in terms of , i.e. as part of inferentially communicated content.

Key words: , communication, inferences, , , P. Grice’s theory of , guru effect, interpretation, comprehension.