\nUniversity of Bamberg
\n<valentin.werner
![\"atmark\"](\"http:\/\/www.tesl-ej.org\/atmark.png\")
uni-bamberg.de><\/p>\n\nAbstract<\/h3>\n
English-language, and especially US-American TV series have been identified as a major point of contact with the target language for learners of English as a Foreign Language, and the discourse represented there constitutes authentic material that is easily accessible. While the potential of using TV discourse in language education has been widely recognized for aspects such as listening comprehension and vocabulary development, the area of grammar has remained less well investigated. This may be due to the fact that TV discourse, which regularly aims to approximate spoken usage, stereotypically has been associated with \u201cungrammatical\u201d content in terms of highly informal and non-standard usage. The present study explores sections of the TV Corpus<\/em> to assess the actual presence of such usage (e.g. hedges like sort of<\/em>, ain\u2019t<\/em> as a negator, double comparatives, etc.). From a language-educational perspective, it is suggested that TV discourse is well suited to illustrate different kinds of grammaticality and appropriateness in specific registers in a contextualized manner, with a particular view on informal spoken usage, a topic commonly considered underrepresented in language-pedagogical practice. It is further argued that grammaticality and appropriateness may differ across varieties of English as represented in TV discourse and that engaging with these issues will help to raise students\u2019 language awareness.<\/p>\n
Keywords: <\/strong>TV discourse, telecinematic language, language awareness, grammaticality, appropriateness, pop culture<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Television Drama, Language Awareness and L2 Acquisition<\/h3>\n
Telecinematic language, and especially the fictional narrative represented in TV series has been assigned an increased \u201ccultural legitimacy\u201d (Mittell, 2015, p. 37), particularly in the past two decades. The associated type of scripted narrative, conventionally labelled TV discourse (TVD) or telecinematic discourse (see Piazza, Bednarek, & Rossi, 2011 for discussion), has been assessed from both linguistic and language-educational perspectives. A converging finding of descriptive linguistic studies is that the conversation as represented in TVD is similar to or at least approximating naturally occurring conversation in most respects (see, e.g., Levshina, 2017; Quaglio, 2009). Others, however, have noted that there are some differences due to the markedly different production and reception circumstances between the scripted and the natural variants, and certain subgenres, for instance sitcoms vs. soap operas (see Al-Surmi, 2012) may resemble natural conversation more than others. This closeness of TVD to natural conversation has sparked interest among language educators, who have engaged with the topic for a considerable time (for early studies, see, among others, Handscombe, 1975; McLean, 1976; Peters, 1980) and have come to support TVD as a \u201csurrogate or model of spoken English in the English language teaching classroom\u201d (Bednarek, 2018, p. 244).<\/p>\n
TVD seems to be particularly relevant in teaching contexts for several specific reasons. One is the persisting under- and misrepresentation of speech and the peculiarities of conversational grammar in language-educational textbooks and materials (Carter & McCarthy, 2017; Cullen & Kuo, 2007), which may lead to learners\u2019 speech sounding unnatural and too formal (Dose, 2013b; Gilmore, 2010). Very much on a related note, but taking into account potential difficulties that learners may have when confronted with authentic (non-scripted) conversational material, Dose (2012, p. 103) has called TVD an \u201causpicious compromise between artificial textbook dialogues and the overwhelming \u2018messiness\u2019 of genuine language data\u201d. She refers to the fact that TVD as a rule lacks performance errors and contains fewer instances of overlapping speech, which may be hard to process by language learners, especially in earlier stages of proficiency.<\/p>\n
In addition to its inherent quality of \u201cpolished\u201d spokenness (see Queen, 2015), other rationales mentioned for using TVD in the language classroom are its everyday relevance and interest for the language learner, as well as its authenticity. As to the former, a recent survey has shown that TV is the medium most commonly used by European citizens (84% claiming daily use) and that watching over the internet is increasingly popular among the younger population (European Commission, 2018). This practice, nurtured by the widespread online availability (e.g., on streaming services) and easy accessibility of relevant artifacts, facilitates watching TV in a foreign language (Montero Perez & Rodgers, 2019; Peters & Webb, 2018).<\/p>\n
As regards authenticity, it has repeatedly been suggested that using relevant authentic materials, such as TVD, may (i) offer learners the chance to encounter realistic (spoken) language beyond the confines of the foreign language classroom, that is, the type of language they are most likely to encounter outside of an institutionalized context (Grant & Starks, 2001) and (ii) lead to heightened levels of learner motivation, a key variable in the language learning process (Jones & Cleary, 2019; Willmorth, 2005). Another basic rationale for employing TVD for language-educational purposes is grounded in cognitive psychology, where, according to the \u201cmultimedia principle\u201d (Mayer, 2014), rich multi-channel input (i.e., speech and moving images in the case of TVD) results in higher learning gains (Gilmore, 2010, 2011; Montero Perez & Rodgers, 2019; Webb & Rodgers, 2009; see also Vanderplank, 2010).<\/p>\n
Against the background of these more general arguments, a considerable number of studies have been conducted to explore the specific potentials of using TVD for language-educational purposes. While the focus traditionally has been on listening comprehension (as stated in Al-Surmi, 2012; Gilmore, 2010) and (incidental) vocabulary learning (e.g., Csomay & Petrovi\u0107, 2012; d\u2019Ydewalle & van de Poel, 1999; Frumuselu, de Maeyer, Donche, & Colon Plana, 2015; Neuman & Koskinen, 1992; Peters & Webb, 2018; Webb & Rodgers, 2009), we also find investigations (i) that specifically consider TVD for the teaching of pragmatic aspects (e.g., Abrams, 2014; Bardovi-Harlig & Mossman, 2016; Bruti, 2018; Grant & Starks, 2001; Washburn, 2001), (ii) that highlight the multiple options that working with TVD offers beyond the development of mere language skills (for example in terms of serving as a stimulus for follow-up tasks or as a content resource; Donaghy, 2019), (iii) that have a practical focus and present and evaluate concrete lesson series and plans and resources (e.g., Bonsignori, 2018; Gilmore, 2010; Urisman, 2014; Wang, 2012), (iv) that conduct experimental intervention studies to assess learning gains (e.g., Jones & Cleary, 2019) or (v) that specifically discuss implications for materials design (e.g., Jones, 2017).<\/p>\n
What seems to be underrepresented, however, are studies that explicitly focus on grammar (for an exception, see Jones & Hor\u00e1k, 2014) and related wider domains, such as register awareness (but see Dose, 2013a; Jones & Cleary, 2019) and sociocultural awareness (but see Kaiser, 2011; Washburn, 2001). This is surprising, as the suitability of using TVD for \u201cteaching pupils or students about many different aspects of language use, including expressions that might traditionally be neglected in textbooks or classroom teaching\u201d (Bednarek, 2018, p. 245), that is, language variation observable in terms of informal spoken and non-standard features (and their sociocultural implications), has been mentioned in the literature.[1]<\/a> Thus, authors apparently value using TVD as a pedagogical option that facilitates contextualized language practice (Donaghy, 2019; Grant & Starks, 2001) and recurrently have acknowledged the potential of TVD for relevant activities in passing (Wang, 2012; Willmorth, 2005; see also Liu & Lin, 2017). However, they have left the connection of informality and non-standardness to the broader topics of grammaticality[2]<\/a> and language awareness implicit. This is unfortunate, given the fact that, crucially despite ample descriptive linguistic research, language-educational practice still is largely oriented toward a (written, formal, and often, British) standard and remains ignorant of variation and linguistic diversity. Informal and non-standard features are therefore persistently viewed as \u201cinappropriate\u201d, \u201cincorrect\u201d or \u201cungrammatical\u201d in teaching (Mumford, 2009; Saraceni, 2017).<\/p>\n
The present investigation attempts to put such beliefs into perspective, starting from the simple observation that scripted TVD mirrors conversation and thus carries important characteristics of its unscripted counterpart. The main line of argumentation pursued is that the occurrence of variation, inherently manifest in the occurrence of informal and non-standard features (Queen, 2015), and the alleged ungrammaticality of relevant features should be embraced rather than ignored in language education. This does not imply that learners do not need to be familiarized with the conventions of standard English. However, it is suggested that dealing with variation and contrasting relevant features with standard usage opens avenues for work on the broader goal of raising the students\u2019 (meta-)language awareness.<\/p>\n
Language awareness has been shown to be an important generic factor for successful foreign language learning (Andrews, 2008) and can be defined as \u201cexplicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language learning, language teaching and language use\u201d (Svalberg, 2012, p. 376). It is a multifaceted construct that includes issues such as register awareness (context-dependence of the appropriateness\/grammaticality of various structures) as well as the recognition of variation and complexity (e.g., of the co-existence of various dialects and sociolects). Activities related to language awareness have been claimed to foster noticing as a \u201cconscious registration of attended specific instances of language\u201d (Schmidt, 2010, p. 725), with the eventual aim to transfer input to intake, so that language learners are enabled to deal with different forms of language they are confronted with in various situations (see Jones & Cleary, 2019). It will be argued that using TVD as an authentic type of dramatized material holds particular potential for developing register awareness. At the same time, it is suggested that using TVD to these ends may help to counter persistent approaches in language-educational practice that misrepresent speech (Jones & Hor\u00e1k, 2014), that do not reflect variation, and that ignore non-standard features (Saraceni, 2017). On another note, given the extent of contact that students have with TVD outside of institutional contexts, an analysis of relevant material may be informative for language educators in terms of which textual and linguistic varieties learners encounter in their day-to-day contact with English (Grau, 2009).<\/p>\n
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: To contextualize the present research, the following section provides a more detailed overview of statements on the issues of informality and variation in previous linguistic and language-educational research, both in general and pertaining to TVD specifically. After a few notes on data and methodology, the next section contains the results of a corpus-based investigation of TVD with a view on variation and non-standard usages. Based on this exploration, the concluding part discusses the issues of grammaticality and appropriateness, and relates this to language-educational implications for the broader domain of language awareness.<\/p>\n
Conversational and Non-standard Grammar, and the Properties of TV Discourse<\/h3>\n
Quantitative corpus-based analyses (see, e.g., Bednarek, 2018; Berber Sardinha & Veirano Pinto, 2017; Levshina, 2017) have shown that certain linguistic features, such as routine speech-act formulae (e.g., for greetings and apologies), discourse features characteristic of referential immediacy (e.g., first- and second-person personal pronouns, temporal and spatial deixis), or markers of expressivity (e.g., evaluative adjectives, swearwords) are overrepresented, while other features, such as disfluency markers or past-referring tense-aspect forms are underrepresented when TVD is compared to unscripted conversational data. However, a large degree of linguistic overlap has been universally acknowledged. Thus, it is not surprising that from a language-educational perspective TVD has been welcomed as a rich and authentic source of input that resembles naturally occurring informal conversation to a considerable degree (Al-Surmi, 2012; Donaghy, 2019; Grant & Starks, 2001; Peters & Webb, 2018; Quaglio, 2009; Quaglio & Biber, 2006). Further, it has been submitted that the informal nature of TVD contributes toward the realism of TVD (Bednarek, 2012, 2018). Such findings have led to statements that using TVD may even be preferable to textbook dialogues in terms of contextualization and perceived naturalness (Dose, 2013b; Jones & Hor\u00e1k, 2014; Washburn, 2001).<\/p>\n
These views are grounded in a general discontent with traditional materials and approaches to grammar that are biased toward various versions of standard written grammar (see, e.g., Cullen & Kuo, 2007). By contrast, using authentic (conversational) material is viewed favorably in the recent literature on grammar instruction. There, conversational grammar is recognized as equally systematic and relevant, and therefore worth studying in its own right (Carter & McCarthy, 2017; Fern\u00e1ndez Gavela, 2015; Hilliard, 2014; Larsen-Freeman, 2011; Leech, 2000; Thornbury & Slade, 2006), a view echoed in studies that focus on what Urisman (2014) \u2013 somewhat vaguely \u2013 has labelled \u201creal language and grammar\u201d in TVD specifically. It is clear that such a perspective is diametrically opposed to traditional ones that tended to stigmatize spoken discourse as \u201cunsystematic\u201d, \u201cungrammatical\u201d or simply \u201cbad\u201d language (Grau, 2009; Willmorth, 2005), so that a revised and more nuanced conceptualization of \u201cgrammaticality\u201d may be required (see \u201cDiscussion and conclusion\u201d). Note, however, that, despite positions advocated in the literature, the traditional view may persist in language-educational practice. Grau (2009), for instance, in her survey of attitudes of EFL teachers in Germany, noted that \u201c[s]ome teachers expressed concern about the English language TV programmes available to their students, considering the fact that they often feature a language that differs strongly from Standard English\u201d (p. 170).<\/p>\n
To pave the way for the assessment of whether TVD can be employed to illustrate instances of \u201cungrammatical\u201d language (in terms of informal use and (non-standard) variation), it is crucial to establish an inventory of potential grammatical features to be tested. Note that fairly broad conceptualizations of \u201cgrammar\u201d as well as of \u201cinformality\u201d and \u201c(non-standard) variation\u201d are applied, also taking into account the fact that boundaries between \u201cinformal\u201d and \u201cnon-standard\u201d usage may be fuzzy, while items toward the non-standard end \u201cwould be regarded by linguistic purists as ungrammatical\u201d (Cullen & Kuo, 2007, p. 365; see, e.g., Category C in Table 1). What unites the features in question, however, is that they are unlikely to regularly and frequently appear in textbooks (Carter & McCarthy, 2017; Fern\u00e1ndez Gavela, 2015).<\/p>\n
Two baselines are taken. The selection of grammatical items studied first relies on the list provided in Cullen and Kuo (2007), which has served to inform several previous studies, including ones on TVD (Jones & Hor\u00e1k, 2014). They divide the features into three categories, as shown in Table 1.<\/p>\n
Table 1. Features of informal grammar (adapted from Cullen & Kuo, 2007)<\/h4>\n