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Linguistic and Extra-linguistic Factors in Multilingual Interactions
Olga Medvedeva, Vilnius University
The common European arena of socio-economic and cultural activities that involve speakers
of 23 official languages of the EU, not to count all the other indigenous languages of the peoples of
Europe, constitute a most interesting subject for linguistic studies. The numerous initiatives in the
political sphere as well as the current European economic and social policies have created a basis
for promoting linguistic and cultural diversity and the development of multilingualism in Europe
(EC Commission Communication, 2005). The actual interaction of bearers of different languages,
the enormous amount of multilingual communication on everyday and official levels have inspired
linguistic research into language interference, borrowings and neologisms, translation and
interpretation, all these issues are evidence of the interplay of intrinsic language features
(similarities and differences of grammar or lexis, etymology, etc) and some extra-linguistic factors,
such as cultural peculiarities, history, socio-economic or political environment.
The life and international cooperation in a plurilingual environment enhances the importance
of intercomprehesion that is understood as an ability to co-construct meaning in the context of the
encounter of different languages and to make pragmatic use of this in a concrete communicative
situation (Capucho, Cox, 2004). The notion of Discursive Competence and its linguistic, textual and
situational dimensions reveal subtle interpretative processes that underlie communication in general
and multilingual communication in particular.
Another interesting aspect of the multilingual human interaction is the constantly renewed
knowledge of the world that may come through a foreign language and that in the course of
common activities is subsequently represented by expressive means of another language or
languages. The dialogical character of all languages (Bakhtin, 1981) allows them to remain
dynamic, relational and engaged in the process of constant re-description of the world. The
intensive co-operation within the framework of the EU, with all its numerous structures,
institutions, levels of bureaucracy has caused semantic changes in the existing language means and
has led in terms of vocabulary extention to coining new lexical and phraseological units.
The so-called Eurospeak is actually a jargon used by a new community of the EU officials to
denote new concepts that are taking shape within the EU domain; new lexical units are appearing,
their origin roots in different languages used by the EU officials, some grammar or semantic
elements may be traced back to different languages. Let us analyze just one example of such new
lexical units – the word toilettage. The term means the meticulous process of clearing up new laws
before they are published or new EU treaties before they are signed, it comes from the word toilet the act or process of dressing or grooming oneself < F toilette - small cloth. The existence of lexical
units of the same origin in most European languages in combination with the vivid semantic core of
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the word makes the word toilettage most acceptable for denoting the newly emerged concept. As in
case of other jargons, Eurospeak shows a person’s belonging to a certain social group; it is
characterized by specific stylistic features, adds expressiveness as connotational meaning to words
denoting fully or partly new phenomena.
In today’s Europe the role of English as lingua franca is undisputable and acknowledged de
facto, if not de jure; the statistics show that the biggest part of the whole amount of EU legislation
originates in English (88% - according to Vicente, 2005). The bulk of the documentation translated
at the Directorate General for Translation includes all the draft legislation, official reports and
communications, correspondence and speeches, administrative documents, papers and numerous
web publications. It is clear that composing, completing or translating these materials takes some
time and they currently exist in the so-called draft version. Later the initial texts undergo a number
of changes and modifications in terms of both content and language. The comparative analysis of
such texts provides an opportunity to study interaction of the nominative means in different
languages as well as to get a deeper insight into the general and culture-related cognitive processes
that take place in multilingual interactions.
The aim of the article is to present the comparative study of the expressive means used in
English, Lithuanian and Russian texts with a specific objective to analyse linguistic and extralinguistic factors that are involved in multilingual activities within one area of reference, namely the
European Higher Education Area. The main content of these texts covers social trends and
processes; the subject matter is not confined only to specific issues in this area. Nevertheless, one
has to admit that some lexical units are typical terms with all their linguistic properties
(Реформатский, 1961).
About 30 main documents of the Bologna process that originated in English and were later
translated into the languages of the countries-participants were subjected to analysis. The choice of
this area of multilingual interactions was influenced by the following considerations:
1. the documents describe activities of a relatively wide area, they reflect social concepts,
involve abstract notions and thus give a wider potential of national variations and social
constructs.
2. like many social concepts, the terms used in education are less specific:– they are commonly
used by people outside the profession and therefore get less restricted definitions. In
comparison with other professional areas (law, medicine), education allows a less rigid
stance in its regulating documents; thus many terms are still in the process of being created;
the on-line dictionaries give “ no-entry” to quite a lot of English terms.
3. language is applied in historically and culturally diverse educational systems, therefore
involvement of both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors is assumed; the relevant extralinguistic factors come to the fore in choosing the specific means to denote either a newly
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introduced concept or to adjust the existing term to a new phenomenon or object of
nomination.
As always lexicographers fall behind the extremely fast development of new lexical units;
bilingual or multilingual glossaries have become most widely used resources in translating and
interpreting. The existing glossaries vary a lot in terms of coverage and accuracy, but their
importance for tracing the process of interference, rejection or acceptance of a new linguistic unit is
of undeniable linguistic interest.
The amount of new materials requires substantial effort and time for full range research. At this
stage we present the first results of our pilot investigation, which, nevertheless, allow us to trace
some tendencies in the development of new lexical units in respective national languages in the
course of multilingual interactions. The lexical units that possess a certain degree of transparency
(intercomprehensibility) may get fixed in the terminology of the relevant area in different
languages.
Empirical analysis
The examples are presented in the order English / Lithuanian / Russian.
Ex.1 mobility / mobilumas / мобильность
The term “mobility” is derived from the Latin “movēre” and possesses some typical
characteristics of a term: one-to-one correspondence to an element of a closed terminological
system (in social sciences- the movement of people in a population, as from place to place, from job
to job), lack of connotation. The words in Lithuanian and Russian mobilumas, мобильность have
the same etymology, their terminological meanings are fixed in dictionary definitions. But these
languages have also synonyms derived from another source: mobility - movement, mobilumasjudrumas, мобильность- движение; they denote the general concept of change in position or place
and are more general in meaning than the terms mobility / mobilumas / мобильность which are
used to denote a special purposeful kind of movement of groups of people supported by certain
social arrangement. The terminological character of the words in all three languages is reinforced
by their usage in other areas of social activities – cf. mobility of labour force in economics, mobility
of troops. Thus, we can speak about the fact of transference of the term from one terminological
system to another: in many ways mobility of students and teachers is similar to mobility of labour
force.
Ex.2 credit / įskaita / зачет
The English word credit is derived from the Latin “credere” with the basic meaning “trust”.
In modern English the word has a well-developed semantic structure based on the same semantic
core “trust, recognition”. The word has acquired the terminological meaning in such areas as
commerce, banking, accounting, and also in education –official acceptance and recording of the
work completed by a student in a particular course of study, entry on record to show that a course
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of study has been completed. This meaning can be traced back to the main meanings: cf.
commendation or honor given for some action, etc; ascription or acknowledgment of something as
due or properly attributable to a person, etc.
The Latin root gave rise to several lexical units also in Lithuanian and Russian: kreditas,
akreditacija, кредо, кредит, аккредитив; they preserve the semantic core of the etymological
source; but unlike the English “credit”, the Lithuanian “kreditas” and the Russian “кредит” are used
mainly as commercial and accounting terms: cf.komercinis pasitik÷jimas, davimas prekių į skolą;
…sąskaitos dešinioji pus÷; prekių ir pinigų skolinimas ; paskola; банковский кредит. The clearcut terminological character of the Lithuanian “kreditas” and the Russian “кредит” makes it highly
unlikely for a native speaker of Lithuanian or Russian to relate the words to the field of education.
The original terms įskaita in Lithuania and зачет in Russian are based on the concept of reporting
and getting registered the result of your studies; in both languages they are terms with a fixed
domain of application - studies, usually at college / university levels. The Lithuanian įskaita used to
exist in the language as the only term to denote the conventional way of registering academic
progress. But as a result of the European integration and the increased cooperation between
European and Lithuanian higher educational institutions, the original term įskaita is gradually
giving way to „kreditas“ that is directly related to the English „credit“. At present the terms įskaita
and kreditas are used interchangably with some prevalence of the word „kreditas“ in formal
documents as in “ECTS – Europos kreditų perk÷limo sistema”. In Russian official documents the
original term зачет or зачетная единица is used (ECTS – Европейская система зачетных
единиц ), but in less formal communication (speeches, spoken exchanges) the unit „кредит-часы”
is becoming more and more frequent. We definitely can observe in this case a trend towards
uniformity that will eventually lead to approximation of the terminological systems that will
undoubtedly facilitate multilanguage professional interaction.
So far we have analysed cases of close semantic relations that stem from one and the same
etymological origin with a slight difference only due to morphological or phonetic peculiarities of
the language system. In further examples we can observe different semantic relations among the
related terms.
Ex.3 peer review / ekspertinis patikrinimas / экспертная проверка, коллегиальная оценка
The English word peer derives from Latin pār - equal. In modern English its semantic
structure among other meanings includes the meanings a person of the same legal status and a
person who is equal to another in abilities, qualifications, age, background, etc. These semantic
features are activated in the term peer review that means observation and inspection by the peers
from another institution. Peer reviews are well-established practices at universities of many
countries. This term is usually not translated into other languages and is used in its original form
(ex.German). In the suggested Lithuanian translation ekspertinis patikrinimas we can see that
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other semantic components come to the foreground. The Lithuanian ekspertas denotes not someone
with equal qualifications, but a person with superior qualities, with expertise in a certain area of
knowledge or skills. Considerable transformation of the etymological form of the word makes the
word “peer” an alien symbol: we find no semantic or structural analogy in modern Lithuanian or
Russian, unless we go all way back to the Latin pār. The modern English word peer is too
“awkward” to be accepted in its present form. More to it, the concept expressed by the term “peer
review” is not institutionalised in the Lithuanian or Russian educational systems. Most probably it
will eventually become conventional in the respective languages alongside the growing integration
of different educational systems. It is noteworthy that, for example in Russian texts, alongside the
word combination экспертная проверка, some glossaries interpret the term peer review as
коллегиальная оценка. In this case the component коллегиальная (<L collegium) emphasizes
the involvement of several agents/ reviewers; the activity is performed by a group of people, which
goes too far away from the actual meaning of the English term peer review. We can assume that, in
comparison with the English word combination, the Lithuanian and Russian counterparts bring to
the fore other semantic components that embrace the national specific features of the respective
educational systems.
Ex.4 kick-off meeting / pirmas susitikimas / первая встреча партнеров
The English texts of the Bologna process documents contain several phrasal verbs used in
the attributive functions (kick-off meeting, follow- up group). Being specific units of the English
language, the phrasal words produce a vivid stylistic effect: the text becomes less formal, their
verbal nature adds to the feeling of dynamism; their rich polysemantic nature evolves a variety of
associations. The word “kick-off” in kick-off meeting revives the inner form of the word as used in
its original referential area: (soccer) a kick that puts a stationary ball into play. In its figurative
meaning the word means an initial stage of something, start, beginning.
The words in the current Lithuanian and Russian translations lack the playfulness of the English
word; they just render its semantic core “begin, start”. The imagery character of the original English
word becomes absolutely lost (compare the word combinations tolesn÷s veiklos grup÷, рабочая
группа, pirmas susitikimas, первая встреча партнеров).
To sum up, the undertaken analysis lets us speak of the involvement of both linguistic and
extra-linguistic factors in shaping the form and semantics of the related lexical units in the
languages, when the bearers of these languages get engaged in multilingual interactions. Since
multilingual interactions have become a reality and tend to spread across the nations, the necessity
for the intercomprehensible presentation of newly emerged concepts and notions can be hardly
overestimated.
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References
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ndex/en_html[2005, November 22]
Bakhtin, M.(1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Ed M.
Holquist, trans. C.Emerson& M.Holquist. Austin:University of Texas Press
Capucho, F., Cox, I.(2004). EU & I – Pioneer Experimentation in Intercomprehension
Methodology. In Best Practices of Learning Less Widely-used Languages in Multicultural and
Multinational Europe. Vilnius: Lietuvos kalbos instituto leidykla
Реформатский,
А.А.(1961).
Что
такое
термин
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терминология.
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Dictionaries
Dabartin÷s lietuvių kalbos žodynas.(2005).Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas.
Lyberis, A. (2002). Sinonimų žodynas. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas.
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Svarbiausi Bolonijos proceso dokumentai. Bolonijos-Bergeno laikotarpis 1999-2005m.(
2005). Vilnius: LR Švietimo ir mokslo ministerija.
www.europa.eu.int/comm./education/index/en_html
www.eurydice.org
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Abstract
The European Union as a reality of co-existence of culturally and linguistically diverse
communities presents a considerable interest in studying language creation, language interference
and usage. The peculiarities of the so-called EU English (Eurospeak) reflect the profound impact of
political, socio-economic and cultural changes on the development of indigenous languages; many
studies carried out in this field highlight the influence of a more powerful culture language ( in most
cases, a more widely used language ) on less widely spread and consequently less influential ones.
Considerable changes in the lexis of European languages have been noted as a result of daily
interaction of people who use more than one language in their professional contacts with speakers
of other languages. In many cases the changes arise from the emergence of different realia
previously not covered by the language or non-language experience.
In the article I will present the results of the comparative study of texts in three languages - English,
Lithuanian and Russian – that cover one area of common activities, namely, the building of the
common higher education system. Most official documents originated in English were subsequently
translated into other languages; the main concepts, fixed in special terms in English, later found
their expression in other languages. The study of nomination of abstract notions is of particular
interest regarding culturally relevant cognitive processes. The comparative study of the texts of
official documents has led to distinguishing some linguistic and non-linguistic factors that influence
the process of creating or borrowing terms that are used to denote newly emerged notions. The
results seem to be of theoretical interest (cognitive processes, theory of translation) as well as of
practical use, e.g. in cross-cultural studies and multilingual interactions.
25.11.