Susan Nacey
I currently work as the Vice Dean for Research at the Faculty of Education and Natural Sciences, part of Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences (formerly Hedmark University of Applied Sciences). Researchers at this faculty work in many and varied fields, including biotechnology, sustainable living, teacher training education, etc.
My current research interests are metaphor and learner language, with a focus on Norwegian L2 English. I published a monograph entitled 'Metaphors in Learner English' in 2013, dealing with metaphors produced in the written English of Norwegian students, as well as methodological issues concerning the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP).
I was also responsible for collecting the Norwegian version of the LINDSEI corpus (spoken learner English). The interviews and transcriptions are now completed and have been sent to Louvain. I have carried out some preliminary research on the data on communication strategies, prepositions, and phrasal verbs.
My current projects include 1) exploring metaphor in the online discourse of survivors of relationship abuse, 2) co-editing a volume on identifying metaphor in languages other than English (and co-creating the Scandinavian procedure), 3) exploring metaphor in online college promotional videoclips, and 4) exploring how L2 metaphorical competence changes with increasing English proficiency (from ages 5-19).
My current research interests are metaphor and learner language, with a focus on Norwegian L2 English. I published a monograph entitled 'Metaphors in Learner English' in 2013, dealing with metaphors produced in the written English of Norwegian students, as well as methodological issues concerning the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP).
I was also responsible for collecting the Norwegian version of the LINDSEI corpus (spoken learner English). The interviews and transcriptions are now completed and have been sent to Louvain. I have carried out some preliminary research on the data on communication strategies, prepositions, and phrasal verbs.
My current projects include 1) exploring metaphor in the online discourse of survivors of relationship abuse, 2) co-editing a volume on identifying metaphor in languages other than English (and co-creating the Scandinavian procedure), 3) exploring metaphor in online college promotional videoclips, and 4) exploring how L2 metaphorical competence changes with increasing English proficiency (from ages 5-19).
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Articles and book chapters by Susan Nacey
1) How often do learners produce divergent PVs?
2) Are there contrasting patterns of PV usage across the spoken and written modes?
3) Is there a correlation between divergent PV usage and figurative use?
4) Is there a correlation between divergent PV usage and L1 transfer?
Although all four of the authors mentioned above stress the mutual substitutability of the four constructions in certain contexts, they also all maintain that there exist subtle distinctions between them, in other words contexts in which the substitution of one for the other would lead to differences in interpretation. There is, however, considerable disagreement between these and other authors as to the exact nature of the relevant distinctions (see also, for example, Mair 2003).
In this paper we attempt to pin down more closely the extent and nature of the similarities and differences between the various constructions containing begin and start using translation corpora, a source of evidence which is as far as we know not previously mined. We look at how constructions containing begin and start are translated into Norwegian, a language which contains the cognate verbs begynne and starte. Our data for this part of the study come from the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (see Johansson 2007), which contains 426 tokens of begin and 277 of start. We then use the Oslo Multilingual Corpus to examine translation equivalents of constructions containing the Norwegian matrix verbs begynne and starte into French, German and English. We investigate the extent to which cross-linguistic similarities and differences in choice of translation options may mirror putative lexical, constructional, functional and formal similarities and differences in the original expressions. In so doing, we utilize translation corpora to shed light on the degree to which begin and start may be considered synonymous.
It is necessary to differentiate various meanings of these expressions in order to pinpoint cross-linguistic similarities and differences. Although a relatively high degree of mutual correspondence is found, the relationship is said to be asymmetrical, especially as regards "head"/"hode", since English seems to employ more metaphorical meanings of this lexeme."
An overview."
writers want to distance themselves from it. Motivations for their use vary. Little research has been carried out on scare quotes even though they are a common occurrence in both native speaker and non-native speaker writing. Discussion of scare quotes seems to be primarily restricted to a small number of contributions by linguists in online language blogs or magazines (see e.g. Jacobs 2003; McWhorter 2005; Trask 2000), as well as a few prescriptive admonishments in various language style guides. Taking as its starting point previous research into learner compensation strategies (Poulisse 1993), this paper sets out a taxonomy intended to account for the various possible uses of the quotes. This framework is then utilized in the investigation of the occurrences of scare quotes in essays
written by the two groups of students, to discover whether Norwegians and British novice writers employ scare quotes in similar ways. The overall goal is to shed some light on a previously overlooked feature of student writing. Data for the study comes from approximately 25,000 words of text found
in argumentative essays written by Norwegian university and college students and collected in the Norwegian component of the International Corpus of Learner English. In this study, the Norwegian use of scare quotes is contrasted with British use in roughly 25,000 words of argumentative essays collected in the
Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (see Granger 2007a).
The Metaphor Identification Procedure applied to the ruling in a US Supreme Court case."
Personification of the iPhone- different perceptions of the iPhone, depending on whether people love it or hate it."
Conference presentations by Susan Nacey
I propose that an additional criterion dividing creativity from error in learner language concerns the degree of deviation from native-speaker English, rather than the merely the occurrence of deviation in and of itself. When deviation is wide, the metaphor has a better chance of being accepted as creative; when there is only a small degree of deviation, metaphor will more likely be perceived as error.
Novel metaphors written by advanced Norwegian learners of English provide support for this hypothesis. By way of example, consider the following, where the metaphorical embodiment of message results in an unconventional collocation with stand, rather than an alternative such as endure:
…the methods might change but the message will stand.
Here, both Norwegian and English share an underlying conceptual metaphor which is linguistically encoded in slightly different ways, just enough to be perceived as somehow wrong, rather than creative – regardless of provenance, authorial intention or degree of interpretability.
This observation has important implications for the role of metaphor in EFL teaching. It has been suggested that learners be encouraged to “…produce what they perceive as ‘creative’ metaphor” (Littlemore 2009: 101) in an effort to make their English more closely resemble that native-speaker English. In so doing, however, EFL learners risk being judged linguistically incompetent due to unconventional phraseology (see e.g. Danesi 1993, MacArthur 2010, Philip 2006).
References
Danesi, Marcel (1993). "Metaphorical competence in second language acquisition and second language teaching: The neglected dimension." In Language, communication and social meaning. J. E. Alatis (ed.) Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 489-500.
Littlemore, Jeannette (2009). Applying cognitive linguistics to second language learning and teaching. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
MacArthur, Fiona (2010). "Metaphorical competence in EFL: Where we are and where we should be going? A view from the classroom." In AILA Review, vol. 23, 155-173.
Philip, Gill (2006). "Drugs, traffic, and many other dirty interests": Metaphor and the language learner. Retrieved September 18, 2007 from http://amsacta.cib.unibo.it/archive/00002125/.
Prodromou, Luke (2007). "Bumping into creative idiomaticity." In English Today, vol. 23 (1), 14-25.
"
The space available for messages on church marquees is extremely restricted due to practical considerations of traffic patterns near the sign (motorists must be able to digest the contents in a brief moment while driving by) and local zoning regulations which regulate the size of signs. Consequently, careful consideration must be given to the message, which ideally should be inspirational, thoughtful and/or humorous to attract the maximum amount of (preferably) positive attention (J.M. Stewart Corporation 2010, Verbrugge 1999: 13-19).
Deliberate use of conventional metaphor, such as the word play that frequently features in puns, newspaper/sports headlines, and bumper stickers, provides one effective means of fulfilling church requirements (see Steen 2008: 223). In particular, bridge metaphors, which exploit a “common boundary between two fields” (Kittay 1987: 275) by simultaneously affording a literal and metaphorical reading, would appear to be especially effective. Documented examples of such messages from how-to books as well as both online and coffee-table photo collections of marquees are replete with pithy captions such as the light-hearted For a healthy heart, give your faith a workout or play on words To prevent sinburn use sonscreen, the more ominous Turn or burn, and the thought-provoking Aim at nothing and you will always hit it (see e.g. Claassen 2005, Glusenkamp 1996, Harvey 2007, Paulson and Paulson 2006, Verbrugge 1999, Wikihow 2008).
This study is a corpus-driven pilot project, where a small corpus of weekly photos of church marquees has been collected in 2010 over a four-month period. Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostal denominations are represented in the corpus, together with nondenominational Christian churches. The primary purpose is to shed light on the degree to which documented collections of church signs reflect actual church practice, focusing on the use of metaphor in the messages, in terms of both frequency and type. The study thus weds two areas which have been the focus of little to no academic research: American church marquees and bridge metaphors.
Books by Susan Nacey
Book Reviews by Susan Nacey
1) How often do learners produce divergent PVs?
2) Are there contrasting patterns of PV usage across the spoken and written modes?
3) Is there a correlation between divergent PV usage and figurative use?
4) Is there a correlation between divergent PV usage and L1 transfer?
Although all four of the authors mentioned above stress the mutual substitutability of the four constructions in certain contexts, they also all maintain that there exist subtle distinctions between them, in other words contexts in which the substitution of one for the other would lead to differences in interpretation. There is, however, considerable disagreement between these and other authors as to the exact nature of the relevant distinctions (see also, for example, Mair 2003).
In this paper we attempt to pin down more closely the extent and nature of the similarities and differences between the various constructions containing begin and start using translation corpora, a source of evidence which is as far as we know not previously mined. We look at how constructions containing begin and start are translated into Norwegian, a language which contains the cognate verbs begynne and starte. Our data for this part of the study come from the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (see Johansson 2007), which contains 426 tokens of begin and 277 of start. We then use the Oslo Multilingual Corpus to examine translation equivalents of constructions containing the Norwegian matrix verbs begynne and starte into French, German and English. We investigate the extent to which cross-linguistic similarities and differences in choice of translation options may mirror putative lexical, constructional, functional and formal similarities and differences in the original expressions. In so doing, we utilize translation corpora to shed light on the degree to which begin and start may be considered synonymous.
It is necessary to differentiate various meanings of these expressions in order to pinpoint cross-linguistic similarities and differences. Although a relatively high degree of mutual correspondence is found, the relationship is said to be asymmetrical, especially as regards "head"/"hode", since English seems to employ more metaphorical meanings of this lexeme."
An overview."
writers want to distance themselves from it. Motivations for their use vary. Little research has been carried out on scare quotes even though they are a common occurrence in both native speaker and non-native speaker writing. Discussion of scare quotes seems to be primarily restricted to a small number of contributions by linguists in online language blogs or magazines (see e.g. Jacobs 2003; McWhorter 2005; Trask 2000), as well as a few prescriptive admonishments in various language style guides. Taking as its starting point previous research into learner compensation strategies (Poulisse 1993), this paper sets out a taxonomy intended to account for the various possible uses of the quotes. This framework is then utilized in the investigation of the occurrences of scare quotes in essays
written by the two groups of students, to discover whether Norwegians and British novice writers employ scare quotes in similar ways. The overall goal is to shed some light on a previously overlooked feature of student writing. Data for the study comes from approximately 25,000 words of text found
in argumentative essays written by Norwegian university and college students and collected in the Norwegian component of the International Corpus of Learner English. In this study, the Norwegian use of scare quotes is contrasted with British use in roughly 25,000 words of argumentative essays collected in the
Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (see Granger 2007a).
The Metaphor Identification Procedure applied to the ruling in a US Supreme Court case."
Personification of the iPhone- different perceptions of the iPhone, depending on whether people love it or hate it."
I propose that an additional criterion dividing creativity from error in learner language concerns the degree of deviation from native-speaker English, rather than the merely the occurrence of deviation in and of itself. When deviation is wide, the metaphor has a better chance of being accepted as creative; when there is only a small degree of deviation, metaphor will more likely be perceived as error.
Novel metaphors written by advanced Norwegian learners of English provide support for this hypothesis. By way of example, consider the following, where the metaphorical embodiment of message results in an unconventional collocation with stand, rather than an alternative such as endure:
…the methods might change but the message will stand.
Here, both Norwegian and English share an underlying conceptual metaphor which is linguistically encoded in slightly different ways, just enough to be perceived as somehow wrong, rather than creative – regardless of provenance, authorial intention or degree of interpretability.
This observation has important implications for the role of metaphor in EFL teaching. It has been suggested that learners be encouraged to “…produce what they perceive as ‘creative’ metaphor” (Littlemore 2009: 101) in an effort to make their English more closely resemble that native-speaker English. In so doing, however, EFL learners risk being judged linguistically incompetent due to unconventional phraseology (see e.g. Danesi 1993, MacArthur 2010, Philip 2006).
References
Danesi, Marcel (1993). "Metaphorical competence in second language acquisition and second language teaching: The neglected dimension." In Language, communication and social meaning. J. E. Alatis (ed.) Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 489-500.
Littlemore, Jeannette (2009). Applying cognitive linguistics to second language learning and teaching. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
MacArthur, Fiona (2010). "Metaphorical competence in EFL: Where we are and where we should be going? A view from the classroom." In AILA Review, vol. 23, 155-173.
Philip, Gill (2006). "Drugs, traffic, and many other dirty interests": Metaphor and the language learner. Retrieved September 18, 2007 from http://amsacta.cib.unibo.it/archive/00002125/.
Prodromou, Luke (2007). "Bumping into creative idiomaticity." In English Today, vol. 23 (1), 14-25.
"
The space available for messages on church marquees is extremely restricted due to practical considerations of traffic patterns near the sign (motorists must be able to digest the contents in a brief moment while driving by) and local zoning regulations which regulate the size of signs. Consequently, careful consideration must be given to the message, which ideally should be inspirational, thoughtful and/or humorous to attract the maximum amount of (preferably) positive attention (J.M. Stewart Corporation 2010, Verbrugge 1999: 13-19).
Deliberate use of conventional metaphor, such as the word play that frequently features in puns, newspaper/sports headlines, and bumper stickers, provides one effective means of fulfilling church requirements (see Steen 2008: 223). In particular, bridge metaphors, which exploit a “common boundary between two fields” (Kittay 1987: 275) by simultaneously affording a literal and metaphorical reading, would appear to be especially effective. Documented examples of such messages from how-to books as well as both online and coffee-table photo collections of marquees are replete with pithy captions such as the light-hearted For a healthy heart, give your faith a workout or play on words To prevent sinburn use sonscreen, the more ominous Turn or burn, and the thought-provoking Aim at nothing and you will always hit it (see e.g. Claassen 2005, Glusenkamp 1996, Harvey 2007, Paulson and Paulson 2006, Verbrugge 1999, Wikihow 2008).
This study is a corpus-driven pilot project, where a small corpus of weekly photos of church marquees has been collected in 2010 over a four-month period. Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostal denominations are represented in the corpus, together with nondenominational Christian churches. The primary purpose is to shed light on the degree to which documented collections of church signs reflect actual church practice, focusing on the use of metaphor in the messages, in terms of both frequency and type. The study thus weds two areas which have been the focus of little to no academic research: American church marquees and bridge metaphors.