Conceptualisations across English–Greek parallel press data: a foreign language teaching perspective

Abstract

Translation studies can lend valuable insights to foreign language (FL) teaching, in that contrastive analyses of parallel data can enhance intercultural competence in the FL classroom. The paper focuses on variation in metaphorical conceptualisation to raise intercultural awareness between the English and Greek languages. The data comprise a sample set of eight press article pairs from a wider 2011–2012 parallel press corpus (English>Greek). Findings suggest that translation practice may reveal a rich set of varied conceptualisations across versions which may improve learners’ intercultural competence, including illocutionary and strategic competences. This is because collocational shifts traced in parallel data can indeed be sites where intercultural conceptual variation is effectively manifested, while the collocational shifts identified in a parallel corpus can be creatively exploited by FL instructors and material designers to raise learners’ metaphorical and collocational intercultural awareness. The approach also fosters critical thinking in that the varied conceptualisations focused upon across versions may convey more than language/culture-specific awareness, allowing access to the public and political spheres as well as the ethical dimensions of experience.