British Counterparts Research Articles

Productivity and Skills in Industry and Services—A Britain-German Comparison (Distinguished Lecture)

It is widely accepted that the vocational and professional training system has a major impact on national competitiveness. In this paper a number of German-British studies in manufacturing and services are examined in order to show how skill systems have affected the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the two countries’ productivity performances. The studies have been conducted since the end of the 1980s to 2003 and have revealed specific links between vocational training, products and competitiveness on the basis of matched plant comparisons. The comparison between Britain and Germany has been chosen as these countries have very different national VET systems. The findings suggest that higher levels of apprenticeship training in German companies give them an advantage over their British counterparts with respect to flexibility to changes in markets, technology, quality and supply chains. The paper closes with a short discussion.

Perception and production of L2 Arabic emphatic consonants: The role of communicative and traditional form-based approaches

This study examines the extent to which the communicative and traditional form-based approaches play a role in the perception and production of Arabic emphatic consonants by native English speakers. To this end, 19 English-speaking learners of Arabic from the University of Kansas participated in two experiments: perception and production. The experiments were followed by a 90-min period of instruction. The perception and production experiments included pre and posttests. The results of the experiments showed that there is a positive correlation between both approaches, i.e., communicative and traditional form-based in the perception and production of the Arabic emphatic consonants. The results also showed that the Arabic plain consonants were assimilated to their English counterparts and the emphatic consonants were not assimilated to any category in English. Further, the contrast between plain and emphatic consonants was found to be perceptually salient; both the control and experimental groups’ overall performance on the perception tasks was excellent in both the pre- and post-tests. In closing, the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.

Lexical Bundles and Disciplinary Variation in Master Theses

Lexical bundles, as fixed-form recurrent word combinations of multiple words, constitute a significant portion of academic writing and play a pivotal role in producing fluent texts. Extant studies on lexical bundles have documented difficulties that second language learners, and particularly writers experience in producing these bundles in their academic writing. However, despite an extensive existing body of research on the use of lexical bundles in various fields, the use of such linguistic devices across various disciplines, particularly in the Iranian context is an under-researched area. Thus, this study examined the frequency, functions and structure of 4-word lexical bundle use in master theses of native English-speaking writers and Iranian second language (L2) writers across four different disciplines. For this purpose, two corpora, each containing 60 master theses, 120 theses in total, were selected and analyzed following a corpus-based approach. The findings of the study revealed that, overall, Iranian writers incorporated more lexical bundles in their texts than their native English counterparts and that their use varied functionally and structurally across not only native and nonnative corpora but also across disciplines. The study has important implications for Iranian L2 writers of the respective disciplines as well as genre-based instruction in English for both academic and specific
 purposes.

Editor's Note

Editor's Note

The evolution of wages in early modern Normandy (1600–1850)

AbstractThis article presents new estimates of wages for Normandy between 1600 and 1850. We use a vast array of primary and secondary sources to assemble two new databases on wages and commodity prices to establish a new regional consumer price index (CPI) and twelve regional wage series. We find that unskilled labourers earned similar wages across the agricultural, maritime, and textile sectors. Historical evidence suggests that Norman employers grappled with a tight labour market, which placed more pressure on wage increases. We posit that this situation is best explained by the combination of the early fertility transition, resulting in slow demographic growth and the rapid development of the textile industry accelerated by the arrival of cotton. Finally, we also provide tentative evidence suggesting that labourers with stable employment could have earned a little less than their English counterparts during this period.

Chinese adverbs

AbstractThe category of adverbs in Chinese, as is its counterpart in English, is featured by morphological, syntactic and semantic heterogeneity. The heterogeneity poses the questions of the categorial coherence and the conflicting criteria in identifying adverbs. This paper starts with the definition of adverbs in Cognitive Grammar and analyzes degree adverbs, temporal adverbs, scope adverbs, manner adverbs, attitude adverbs and negation adverbs in Chinese. It is found that they all profile a relationship with a relational trajector, consistent with the proposal in Cognitive Grammar, but the precise relationship has to be specified. Some adverbs can also serve as mental space builders. Moreover, the morphological and syntactic behaviors of adverbs can be motivated to different degrees by their semantic functions. The paper attempts to establish the categorial status of adverbs. It develops the semantic account of lexical categories and motivates the formal aspects of language from meaning.

¿Aviso o Alerta? Developing Effective, Inclusive, and Consistent Watch and Warning Translations for U.S. Spanish Speakers

Abstract Spanish-speaking populations in the United States are more vulnerable in disaster contexts due to inequities, such as language barriers, that prevent them from receiving life-saving information. For the past couple of decades, governmental organizations have addressed these issues by translating weather watches, warnings, and advisories into Spanish. Previous studies suggest that these Spanish translations do not communicate the same level of urgency as their English counterparts. To identify whether these translated products result in inequities between English and Spanish speaker reception and comprehension of forecast information, we asked a representative sample of U.S. English (n = 1,550) and Spanish (n = 1,050) speakers to correctly identify the translations of weather watches and warnings and found significant language inequities. Additionally, we asked U.S. Spanish speakers to indicate the urgency they felt when shown different Spanish words used in weather watch and warning translations. When presented with various translations for watch and warning terminology, respondents consistently rated aviso, the current translation of warning by the NWS and FEMA, as less urgent than many other alternatives. Additionally, the current translation of advisory, advertencia, communicated more urgency than both existing watch and warning translations in Spanish. To increase the effectiveness of severe weather messaging in multilingual contexts, translations should take into consideration factors such as culture and dialects of Spanish speakers in the United States and focus on translating the meaning, not the words, of key risk statements in weather products. We recommend vigilancia for “watch” and alerta for “warning” as research-supported terminologies to communicate urgency in Spanish.

Being as big as small clauses get: the syntax of participial adjuncts in German and English

This paper presents a comparative syntactic account of participial adjuncts in German and English. While the typological literature describes German participial adjuncts as much more restricted than their English counterparts both syntactically and semantically, this paper presents empirical evidence that these differences have been exaggerated. Based on a corpus of more than 3000 participial adjuncts, it is argued that these adjuncts have a clause-like internal structure in both languages. Participial adjuncts are analysed as small clauses that can project all the way up to CP level, with a subject that is either phonetically null PRO controlled via Agree or an overt DP that is case licensed either by an element outside the participial clause or through default case. At the same time, the corpus data show that these participial constructions constitute a versatile group of adjuncts when it comes to their argument-structural properties and categorial nature. An analysis couched within the framework of Distributed Morphology is presented that can account for this diversity. This empirically based and theoretically founded account of participial adjuncts contributes to our understanding of the structural possibilities of small clauses cross-linguistically.

Answering overt wh-questions

Abstract It-clefts in English, their French and German counterparts and pre-verbal focus in Hungarian have been claimed to be semantically related constructions. For example, É. Kiss (1998) terms them identificational focus and Destruel et al. (2015) coin them inquiry-terminating (IT) constructions. Despite their similarities, these constructions also exhibit one major distributional difference: Clefts are usually no natural answers to overt wh-questions whereas pre-verbal focus in Hungarian constitutes the default question-answering strategy. In this paper, I show that it is possible to account for this difference within the Rational Speech Act model (Frank & Goodman 2012) without assuming any semantic differences between the structures. Thereby, I capitalize on the number of alternative constructions that could be used to answer overt wh-questions in the various languages under discussion and on a remarkable semantic property of the constructions under discussion that relates to the way they encode exhaustivity.

Singing Birds, English Romanticism, and Two Bengali Bards in Their Late Romantic Phase

The paper examines how English romanticism in general and romantic poets, in particular, had an impact on concepts of romanticism in our part of the world and why it is important to understand their influence. It argues that we must look at interactions between our leading Bengali poets and their English counterparts to determine the imaginative lineage of the Bengali poets. It specifically focuses on the relationship between birds and bards, and romantic poetic imaginings of the avian lot in Rabindranath and Jibanananda in their late-romantic phase. Spectrum, Volume 16, June 2021: 115-126

US Perspectives and Expectations Regarding the UK’s Tilt to the Indo-Pacific

The US policy community has been taking note of the UK’s ‘tilt’ toward the Indo-Pacific since before their British counterparts referred to it as such. UK contributions to the region were first valued by Americans focused on Pacific naval dynamics, and a broader section of the security community has developed a similar appreciation. However, some Americans continue to doubt the tilt’s sustainability and strategic viability, especially due to the dangers associated with spreading the US–UK alliance too thinly with regard to the huge challenges lurking elsewhere. John F Bradford provides an analytical history of US perspectives and expectations regarding the UK’s growing Indo-Pacific role.◼

Lexical and functional adpositions: the view from <em>of</em> in Old and present-day English

This article addresses the distinction amongst adpositions between those adpositions which are lexical and those which are functional. The article uses a corpus linguistic approach to address outstanding questions: whether there are two distinct subclasses of adposition, whether the distinction is a continuum amongst adpositions, and how— by what properties— lexical and functional adpositions are distinguished. The article argues for a primarily semantic, multifaceted distinction amongst adpositions, best understood as a continuum. The distinction is argued to be quite small, such that lexical and functional adpositions are not strongly differentiated and an argument is made in support of the more functional status of adpositions generally. A “bottom up” approach is used, which builds from the observable differences between two adpositions, one lexical, and one functional, to characterizations about the nature of the lexical versus functional distinction amongst adpositions. The adpositions used as the basis for this approach are Old English ofOE and its present-day English counterpart ofPDE. Of in the history of English offers a uniquely ideal case-study for an investigation into lexical and functional adpositions, given the uncontroversial functional status of ofPDE and the accepted lexical status of ofOE. The article identifies differences between ofOE and ofPDE primarily in semantics, in the number of available semantic relations. Syntax, morphophonology, and the possible replacement of an adposition by case are found not to represent areas of major difference between the adpositions. Instead, there is continuity between the adpositions in syntax and semantics. The historical evidence provides an opportunity to explore the grammaticalization of an adposition from lexical to functional. The comparative findings have consequences for the retention of meaning in semantic expansion and contradict notions of coevolution between syntax and semantics in grammaticalization. The context-specific nature of grammaticalization is also questioned on the basis of the comparison between the adpositions.

High use of direct questions and relative absence of promotional intention in Japanese peer-reviewed research article introductions compared to their English counterparts

This study aims to describe the rhetorical features of Japanese and English research article introductions (RAIs) in the discipline of Japanese Literature. The analysis revealed that significantly more Japanese RAIs used question-raising to establish research niches. Notably, half of the Japanese RAIs that used question raising did not use other Move 2 steps. One-third of the Japanese RAIs used gap indication. These findings suggest not only that establishing a clear niche is relatively unimportant in Japanese RAIs but also that question-raising serves as an effective rhetorical strategy that meets the audience's expectations. Semantic feature analysis further revealed that the Japanese RAIs were less likely to rely on epistemology, not creating a research space in previous studies. In contrast, the English RAIs were characterized by promotional features such as significantly higher centrality claims. Nevertheless, the overall macro-rhetorical structures between the two datasets were similar. This study found no evidence that Japanese RAIs delay the presentation of research and purpose, contrary to previous reports on other Japanese written genres; however, the Japanese RAIs tended to not detail their research. It was concluded that the Japanese and the English RAIs were organized in a way to satisfy local and international audiences’ expectations, respectively.

Forgiveness and mental Well-being: a transnational comparison

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate forgiveness and mental well-being amongst Forgiveness and mental well-being were investigated amongst British European and Nigerian African samples to compare and determine the similarities and differences in dispositional forgiveness levels between the two populations conducted in terms of their general samples, gender and age and the difference in mental well-being scores between the two samples. Finally, the relationship between forgiveness and mental well-being in both groups was examined. Design/methodology/approach The Bolton Forgiveness Scale and the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale were administered to the participants (Nigerian n = 1,164, British n = 855). SPSS was used to analyse data; a series of t-test was conducted; and Eta-squared and Z-value were calculated to determine the magnitude of each significant difference among variables and the magnitude of the difference in the correlation coefficient among variables, respectively. Findings Statistically significant results suggested significant differences in the way and manner dispositional forgiveness is conceptualised and practised within one group relative to the other, whereas non-significant results indicated similarities in forgiveness opinions and practises between the two groups. Overall British sample, men and those aged 36–55 reported higher levels of forgiveness than their Nigerian counterparts. However, Nigerians under the age of 35 reported higher levels of forgiveness than their British counterparts, and there was no statistically significant difference between the forgiveness levels of British and Nigerian women. Furthermore, the British total sample, men and women, all had higher well-being scores than their Nigerian counterparts. Research limitations/implications Forgiveness varies according to culture. The findings of this study suggest that the individualistic/collectivistic cultural arguments long held by some authors may not adequately explain the differences and similarities in forgiveness conceptualization and practise across cultures. As a result, research may focus on a variety of factors such as educational background, income, socioeconomic level and religion, among others. Second, consistent with previous studies, this research suggests that forgiveness is positively related to mental health and well-being. Finally, one of the limitations of this study is its exclusive focus on two countries, namely, the UK and Nigeria. Future research could include more countries with both individualistic and collectivistic societies. Originality/value This paper, which is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first to examine forgiveness and mental well-being in a comparative perspective between British European and Nigerian African samples, has made a unique contribution to the forgiveness and mental well-being literature and in particular, has provided a solid foundation and resources for future research of a similar nature in Africa, where little or no research had been conducted previously.

The Hellenic Emergency Laparotomy Study (HELAS): A Prospective Multicentre Study on the Outcomes of Emergency Laparotomy in Greece

BackgroundEmergency laparotomy (EL) is accompanied by high post-operative morbidity and mortality which varies significantly between countries and populations. The aim of this study is to report outcomes of emergency laparotomy in Greece and to compare them with the results of the National Emergency Laparotomy Audit (NELA).MethodsThis is a multicentre prospective cohort study undertaken between 01.2019 and 05.2020 including consecutive patients subjected to EL in 11 Greek hospitals. EL was defined according to NELA criteria. Demographics, clinical variables, and post-operative outcomes were prospectively registered in an online database. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to identify independent predictors of post-operative mortality.ResultsThere were 633 patients, 53.9% males, ASA class III/IV 43.6%, older than 65 years 58.6%. The most common operations were small bowel resection (20.5%), peptic ulcer repair (12.0%), adhesiolysis (11.8%) and Hartmann’s procedure (11.5%). 30-day post-operative mortality reached 16.3% and serious complications occurred in 10.9%. Factors associated with post-operative mortality were increasing age and ASA class, dependent functional status, ascites, severe sepsis, septic shock, and diabetes. HELAS cohort showed similarities with NELA patients in terms of demographics and preoperative risk. Post-operative utilisation of ICU was significantly lower in the Greek cohort (25.8% vs 56.8%) whereas 30-day post-operative mortality was significantly higher (16.3% vs 8.7%).ConclusionIn this study, Greek patients experienced markedly worse mortality after emergency laparotomy compared with their British counterparts. This can be at least partly explained by underutilisation of critical care by surgical patients who are at high risk for death.

The Ideological Recontextualisation of Modern Fatherhood in Scandinavian and British Nordic Noir Crime Series

Nordic Noir crime series have enjoyed much popularity and positive critical attention in Britain, as have many other aspects of Scandinavian ways of life, and the extent and nature of this cultural curiosity in the years following the international release of the originary <em>Forbrydelsen/The Killing</em> (2007) deserves further analytical attention. This article investigates one important manner in which culturally specific and ideologically charged content was received and negotiated in Britain in this period by comparing how conceptions of modern fatherhood are expressed in Scandinavian crime drama and British adaptations of the Nordic Noir crime genre. Nordic Noir series based in both cultures can be seen to share a strong thematic focus on fatherhood, especially centred on characters that embody features associated with openly affectionate and hands-on fatherhood, or “modern dads”. However, there are notable differences in how the figure of the modern dad is represented in Scandinavian crime drama and British series that appropriate key genre features of Nordic Noir, which suggests that the construct has undergone what is termed “ideological recontextualisation”. The Scandinavian modern dad characters tend to be heroes, their capacity for involved, selfless love and care for their children unproblematised and uncontested within the story worlds, while their British counterparts are far more suspect entities. Their seemingly close and loving interaction with children may be potentially sexually motivated, immaturely or selfishly handled, or even serve to mask their criminal intent, and they typically turn out to be the villains of the stories. The Scandinavian ideology connected to modern fatherhood appears, then, to have been an object of both fascination and contestation in British culture in this period, and may have been more resistant to undisputed cultural importation than female main characters with attachment issues and woolly jumpers.

Patronage and Power in the Medieval Welsh March: One Family’s Story, by David Stephenson

This monograph by David Stephenson is, according to its subtitle, ‘one family’s story’, and it focuses on Hywel ap Meurig and his descendants, who became an important family of administrators—among other things—from their base in Herefordshire and adjacent regions. However, simply calling this work a family history would be to underplay its importance in scholarship on medieval Wales. Taking into account this one family over a period of two centuries—from the 1250s up to 1422—Stephenson discusses major events in both Welsh and English history, including a superb account of the March of Wales and its central place in medieval history. The author is, of course, well-known for his work on medieval Wales and the March, with an emphasis in his recent publications on bringing the study of the March of Wales to the fore. This present work is specific and is not intended to be a general introduction to the March, but the explanation of what the March was in the Preface would easily work as a first stop for examining Marcher history. Here, Stephenson states that in studies of the March ‘the Welsh population is often pictured as being of little account, the principal focus being on the Marcher lords themselves’, but this book demonstrates brilliantly the critical importance of a slightly lower level in society, described by him as ‘the gentry’. The Welsh gentry in the March is rightly described by Stephenson as an ‘elusive group’ compared to their English counterparts and is an under-studied subject, but this work proves the value of looking at one family as a case-study. It may be that families such as this one, Hywel ap Meurig and his descendants, have been neglected as they do not fit into the category of ‘heroic Welshmen’: instead, they were quite the opposite, and focused their energies on looking eastward to England, and by the third generation the men had stopped using the traditional patronymic form and had adopted more Anglicised naming patterns. However, as Stephenson shows, the family was able to advance their administrative careers because of their Welsh origins, rather than despite them, and as Marcher men they were able ‘to move easily from milieux which were predominantly Welsh to association with officials who were overwhelmingly English’, and it was their background that meant that they could transition freely from the March into both England and Wales.

Functions and Translation of Palestinian Dialect in Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses

The problems that translators of fiction, especially novels, face when translating dialects from one language to another vary because dialects are distinct as much as cultures and language systems are distinct. It is noticeable that Palestinian authors use colloquial language in dialogues and special expressions, striving to attain aesthetic and cultural merits or more realism in the text. Thus, an accurate translation of literary dialect is necessary to preserve the effect of the colloquial language that increases the authenticity of the testimony and adds a sense of reliability since mistranslation of it might undermine the subject matters of the literary work. Therefore, studying dialect translation issues by situating these studies into their contexts can be very effective since it helps both translators and readers recognize their own functionality. This paper examines Nancy Roberts’ translation of the Palestinian dialect from Arabic into English in Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses. It seeks to identify the problems experienced by the translator when dealing with dialect in the novel under study. It also focuses on how the loss of translation can lead to the loss of repertoire of implications embedded in the dialects employed in Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses. The data of the study consists of Palestinian dialect utterances and expressions and their English translations. The novel is teeming with utterances having traces of the Palestinian dialect. However, the researchers analyze a number of random examples that are assumed to be the most representative of each function on basis of their own judgment. The paper analyses the source text dialectical utterances for their functions as well as their socio-cultural implications. The study involves a descriptive analysis in tandem with a comparative textual analysis. The data of the ST will be classified according to their different functions, and then data will be compared with their English counterparts to examine the different strategies used in translating the dialect. House's model (1997) of register analysis in tandem with Venuti’s (1995) theory of domestication and foreignization is adopted as the theoretical framework of the analysis. In light of these models, the study proceeds to discuss translation strategies used to deal with dialect and how these strategies affect the implications and messages encoded in dialectical usage. Furthermore, it deals with dialect markers and the extent to which these markers were preserved in the target text. We suggest in this article that Nasrallah’s use of local dialect in his work is testimonial and historical in attitude. The dialect the author uses retrieves collective memories that local collective memoirs also share while bearing witness to historic events remembered and commemorated. The study reveals that there are mismatches in the register variables between the source and the target text considering that the majority of the dialectical utterances are standardized. It also shows that Palestinian dialect performs various functions in the novel such as signalling familial relationships, signalling social distance, asserting the Palestinianism of the story, generating humor, and codification. Furthermore, the study reveals that the identity of the dialect is attained through phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical markers. Standardization of dialect markers conceals the traces of the existence of dialect in the text. Thereby, the study contends that domesticating the dialect markers utilizing standardization strategy threatens and undermines the contours of the national identity of dialect and consequently the national identity of the text as whole. Thereby, domesticating the dialect by the means of standardization hurdles the functions meant by the employment of Palestinian dialect in the text as well as the Palestinianism of the text constructed through the use of dialect.

Referential Cohesion in the Translation of English-swahili Healthcare Texts

Referential cohesion in African languages is a largely neglected area of study. Given the foregoing, this study, theoretically anchored on Descriptive Translation Studies and Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) seminal model, explores referential cohesion in the translation of English-Swahili healthcare texts with an endeavour to describe its use and establish if there is variation when texts are translated. Cohesion in translation is fundamental since it is the basis of a network of relations that allows readers to interpret a text. The results show that personals and demonstratives are the most widely used references in both the source and target texts. Further, anaphoric reference is the most prevalent. In addition, it emerged that the translated Swahili text uses more reference items than their English counterparts. This is partly due to explicitation and the nature of the Swahili verb. This study brings to the fore the role of translators in making texts cohesive notwithstanding the reference items used in the source texts.

Cross-cultural dialogue in the Polish-English translation of neologisms

AbstractThe article discusses selected neologisms that Stanisław Lem, a Polish science-fiction writer, created for two of his numerous short stories featuring Ijon Tichy, a space traveler. It is not only their surprising and appealing structure that makes these creations and their English counterparts an interesting subject for analysis, but also, and more importantly, the fact that they carry specific allusions, which renders them humorous in their contextual appearance. All these characteristics contribute to a translation challenge present in the neologisms analyzed. The article focuses on how – and with what result – this challenge has been approached by the translators who handled it in an endeavor to expand the dialogic space between the author and his audience.