Jacob Thøgersen

Stepping into the same river twice: on the discourse context analysis in the LANCHART project

The question of comparability in sociolinguistic studies is both obviously methodologically crucial and rarely addressed. If not addressed at all in sociolinguistic investigations of language change in real time, the analyst will invariably run the risk of comparing inherently different pieces of data material. But the question is, whether it is at all possible to achieve comparability? In this paper we argue that methodological considerations of comparability are necessary ingredients in any study of change in real time, and we present the apparatus used to achieve comparability in the LANCHART study, viz. the so-called Discourse Context Analysis (DCA). The DCA is the basis for the phonetic analysis in the LANCHART study since it selects maximally comparable sections of passages for analysis. However, in this paper it is also shown to function as a fruitful analytic tool in its own right, illuminating changing interactional patterns in sociolinguistic interviews which are likely to reflect changes in how people interact with one another in society at large.

Stylistic and Pedagogical Consequences of University Teaching in English in Europe

This chapter investigates differences in teaching style in science teaching as a consequence of different mediums of instruction. The same teacher teaching a similar class in Danish (L1) and English (L2) is analysed using first a qualitative analysis of parallel short excerpts from the lectures. Secondly, the L1 and L2 lectures are compared quantitatively with corpora of spoken and written texts in the two languages in a number of register dimensions. The lecturer changes register to some degree when changing language. In English, his performance is more like written registers; in Danish they are more like spoken registers. The relatively small Danish seminars are found to stylistically resemble American large-scale lectures more than comparable small American seminars. The pedagogical consequences of the change in register are then discussed, arguing that a shift to L2 re-focuses the role of the lecturer to that of ‘discourse coach’ rather than ‘discourse guide’.