Publication: TV Discourse, Grammaticality, and Language Awareness
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Date
2021
Authors
Werner, Valentin
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Publisher
Otto-Friedrich-Universität
Abstract
English-language, and especially US-American TV series have been identified as a major point of contact with the target language for learners of English as a Foreign Language, and the discourse represented there constitutes authentic material that is easily accessible. While the potential of using TV discourse in language education has been widely recognized for aspects such as listening comprehension and vocabulary development, the area of grammar has remained less well investigated. This may be due to the fact that TV discourse, which regularly aims to approximate spoken usage, stereotypically has been associated with “ungrammatical” content in terms of highly informal and non-standard usage. The present study explores sections of the TV Corpus to assess the actual presence of such usage (e.g. hedges like sort of, ain’t as a negator, double comparatives, etc.). From a language-educational perspective, it is suggested that TV discourse is well suited to illustrate different kinds of grammaticality and appropriateness in specific registers in a contextualized manner, with a particular view on informal spoken usage, a topic commonly considered underrepresented in language-pedagogical practice. It is further argued that grammaticality and appropriateness may differ across varieties of English as represented in TV discourse and that engaging with these issues will help to raise students’ language awareness.
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Keywords
TV discourse, telecinematic language, language awareness, grammaticality, appropriateness, pop culture