Asian Journal of English Language Studies

23-56

Authors: Paul Lochland

The perception of foreign speech is a complicated process from acoustic and visual cues as well as the attitudes we have towards linguistic variation. We also make judgments about the speech of others, such as accentedness. While most research to date has investigated the accentedness of English as an additional language (EAL) from a native speaker’s (NS) perspective, relatively few studies have considered what EAL users think. Therefore, this study asked 100 EAL users to judge the accentedness of Japanese English, French English, Mandarin English, and German English. Using an online survey, this paper investigated the accentedness rating EAL users give their own accent as well as speakers with the same first language typology, such as Tone, Syllable, Mora, and Stress. The findings show that nonnative speakers (NNS) do not find their own accent to be weaker than other varieties of EAL accents. Likewise, sharing a language typology with one’s interlocutor does not lead to weaker ratings of accentedness. If there is any advantage of sharing a first language typology with one’s interlocutor, the benefits appear to be more speaker-dependent than listener-dependent. Finally, listeners from the same group did not agree on the accent strength of each speaker.

83-109

Authors: Japhet E. Manzano & Zachi Einna R. Orquijo

This study analyzes the transitivity processes in the inaugural speeches of Filipino presidents from 1899 to 2016. Using Halliday’s (1985) transitivity system model, this study aims to examine what process types are present in the inaugural speeches of these Filipino presidents, how these inaugural speeches differ in a diachronic scale, and how these processes are employed in the corpus. Findings revealed that all processes were evident in the inaugural speeches of the Filipino presidents, while the semantic aspect of the diachronic inquiry presented a significant variation of themes. It was further revealed that among these process types, the material process was the most frequently used by the Filipino presidents in presenting solutions to current problems, depicting a new government under their administration, and pertaining to God as divine providence in running the government. It was followed by the relational process, which was employed in explaining concepts, accentuating the prime responsibility of the government and the people, and describing the challenges the government faces; while the mental process was mainly used by the Filipino presidents in expressing their dispositions and political beliefs, manifesting their desire for the welfare of people, and inspiring the public to be part of nation-building. This study mainly puts forward the notion that transitivity processes play a distinct role in the inaugural speeches of Filipino presidents in persuading and informing the public as regards their ideologies and commitments.

127-158

Authors: Raquel R. Jimenez & Rachelle Ballesteros-Lintao

Language and law are considered to be inseparable since language is needed to frame and understand the law. In the Philippines, English is widely used in the legal domain; hence, it is the language employed in court trials. To accommodate court participants who speak languages other than English to actively take part in court proceedings, the court recognizes the value of court interpreting. Court interpreting is perceived to promote successful communication among court participants who speak languages other than the court’s official language. It helps the judges and jury in courts of law to ensure that a message is accurately conveyed and that fair decisions are derived. However, there are cases in which misinterpretation occurs. For instance, an interpreter may have problems translating words in a witness’ testimony from English to Filipino and vice versa, leading to communication breakdown. To avoid this problem, court interpreting should ensure that qualities such as accuracy and completeness are observed. Taking into account the canons set by the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators, Inc. (NAJIT), the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT), and the European Legal Interpreters and Translators Association (EULITA), this study investigated interpreting norms used in selected Philippine courtrooms. Using a qualitative approach, 11 audio-recordings of court proceedings were transcribed and analyzed to determine norm adherence by court interpreters. Findings revealed that court interpreters in the selected court trials adhere to the norms of accuracy, impartiality, competence, professional conduct, and professional relationships. The results of the analysis suggest that the selected court interpreters can successfully perform their interpreting duties in spite of seeming differences in court practices. To promote standard court interpreting practices in the country, this study recommends the creation of court-interpreting policies and guidelines that will serve as bases for court interpreters’ actions and decisions in relation to their jobs. Specifically, these proposed policies and guidelines will highlight the need for code of ethical conduct, qualification standards, enhancement trainings, certification, and language-proficiency test.

189-219

Authors: Anthony Lemuell S. Cabañas & Marilu Rañosa-Madrunio

In the absence of a medical professional, patient information leaflets (PILs) serve as consumers’ source of legitimate information about what a medical drug contains, what risks are involved in taking it, and how it should be safely administered and handled. More than just being a reference material, PILs guide consumers to make informed healthcare decisions for themselves. Hence, PILs become problematic when they defeat their purpose of delivering comprehensive information and become a source of confusion to consumers. Guided by the user-based tripartite model of communicative effectiveness (Garner et al., 2012), this paper evaluated the readability and comprehensibility of existing PILs culled from three common nonprescription medications in Philippine households – fever reducers, cough and cold remedy, and anti-inflammatory drugs. Forty-two PILs were collected and subjected to a readability test using the measures of text readability and easability of Coh-Metrix. Of the 42 leaflets, three were randomly selected – one for each medication category – to undergo user-testing via cloze procedure taken by 41 adult participants. Results revealed that based on the readability test, the existing PILs were found to be more academic-oriented rather than spoken-like, thus requiring high-skilled reading. Moreover, a user-testing of the leaflets revealed that only less than half of the participants demonstrated an independent level of understanding of the materials. This was further supported by an analysis of the difficulty index of the leaflets’ information content, which found that most of the existing PILs contain texts with high difficulty, raising concerns over the materials’ suitability for nonspecialist readers.

241-279

Authors: Aries John G. Enardecido

This study critically analyzes different linguistic expressions that are ideologically and indexically used by self-identified bisexual members of PlanetRomeo, a gay-dating website. Using lexico-grammatical analysis and selective self-presentation as lens, the study examines the textual areas of 167 online dating profiles of Filipino bisexual men. Findings indicated an emerging subcultural lingo, which is characterized by word connotations, echoic binomials, and negations. Moreover, the study offers insights into the identity-construction efforts of bisexual men through their language use, which allow them to occupy attractive and marketable identities in the contemporary period. More importantly, it sheds light on how these men’s linguistic constructions of desired and desirable identities also work toward the marginalization and disenfranchisement of other identities. Overall, this study hopes to contribute to the area of sexual identity construction in and through discourse and to contemporary understandings of the ways in which identities are read as either desirable or undesirable by a particular community, and the hierarchies and judgments that such readings entail for members of the community.

25-42

Authors: Marie Claire Duque-Cruz

This paper examines how machismo is negotiated and enacted between and among men in competitive sports (i.e., basketball), and how it is (re)produced in social-media discourse. By employing van Dijk’s (2016) sociocognitive approach to critical discourse study, the polarization strategies and the ideologies built in the norms and values in discourse were subjected to micro- and macro-analysis. This paper addresses the gap in research as most critical studies in gendered language in sports are centered on male domination over females, and less academic attention is given to the materializations of machismo between and among men. This paper reveals significant and interesting findings on how the social constructions of masculinity become problematic, especially when men are placed under public scrutiny.

67-82

Authors: Marvin Dominic B. Buena

This study stylistically analyzes the semantic deviations in “Poem 130” by Jose Garcia Villa, a Philippine national artist for literature. Aside from the eccentric commas, his comma poem contains semantic deviations. Qualitative data were gathered to determine the functions of the semantic deviations found in the said poem. Findings revealed that the poem’s semantic deviations focus on images which, at the outset, seem nonsense or absurd, but would lead to the realization of the aptness of these semantic deviations for finding meanings in the poem. Using Leech’s (2008) stylistic analysis of semantic deviations, it was found that these deviations manifest an excellent metaphorical sense, which is another feature of the poem aside from its eccentric use of commas.

109-149

Authors: Ryan Glenn C. Conda

Stance-taking is one aspect of academic-writing conventions that college students need to attend to in order to improve their scholarly writing. Stance includes the ways writers express their value judgments and attitudes to forward a proposition and be aligned with other authors in the field (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Du Bois, 2007). This study aims to describe the ways students establish their stance in their literary-analysis papers. While most researchers on stance-taking followed Hyland’s (2005, 2010) framework, it cannot be denied that nuances appear in the ever-evolving dynamics of writing as a social act from authors. While Hyland’s framework is heavily informed by a bulk of data involving advanced and published researchers only, the present study followed Aull and Lancaster’s (2014) framework as this is informed by rather inclusive research data from amateur to advanced writers. The researcher examined the stance-taking linguistic markers used in the literary-analysis papers through the following: expressing commitment (use of hedges and boosters), reformulating and exemplifying (use of code glosses), and expressing concession and contrast (use of adversative or contrast connectors). Nine recorded interviews and 58 literary-analysis papers written by college students from a Philippine state university served as research data. Findings revealed that students used more boosters to express commitment to their claims, which would increase their authorial presence in the essays. Most of the time, the students used code glosses, boosters, and adversative or contrast markers to evidentialize their claims and refer to other authors in order to align themselves and eventually reveal their position on the topic(s) they discuss. The students, however, have limited understanding of the functions of stance-taking as they reasoned that these are only used to sound more convincing and persuasive. The study recommends the explicit instruction of linguistic markers of stance and their functions so that students can expand their rhetorical options for academic writing.

169-188

Authors: Natalie Soong Shuyi; Willy A. Renandya

Textbooks are an essential component in the classroom, making it extremely crucial to regularly evaluate textbooks used in schools so that their pedagogical contributions towards the teaching and learning processes can be guaranteed. The study aimed to identify and analyse the cognitive levels of questions available in Secondary Three All About English textbooks, which have been used in Singapore since 2013. The objective of carrying out the analysis was to determine the overall cognitive rigour of questions, using a matrix superimposing two taxonomies: Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy and Webb’s Domain-of-Knowledge (DOK) model. The sample of this study consisted of questions from the Express and Normal Technical (NT) English language textbooks published by Hodder Education, where 346 questions were analysed in total. The cognitive rigour matrix was used in the classification of the questions. The results revealed that in the Express level textbook, most questions were within the cell [2,3] (35.9%), consisting of Understand and “Strategic Thinking” questions. In contrary, for the Normal Technical level textbook, most questions were within the cell [5,4] (17.6%), consisting of Evaluate and “Extended Thinking” questions. Overall, there was a good mix of Lower-order thinking skill (LOTS) and Higher-order thinking skill (HOTS) questions. However, not all cognitive levels were clearly varied, with an overemphasis on Understand and Evaluate questions, neglecting Remember and Apply questions. In light of the results, it is recommended that coursebook writers should incorporate questions of varied cognitive demands. We recommend that teachers should regularly evaluate the effectiveness of school textbooks so that there is closer alignment between the curriculum and the textbooks that teachers use in the classroom.

25-55

Authors: Roy Randy Y. Briones

The research article abstract is one of the most important sections of any journal article, but conventions on how it is written may vary in accordance with the contexts that surround them. This study analyzes the moves that occur among a corpus of 29 semi-randomly selected online research article abstracts taken from three Middle East and North Africa (MENA)-based journals in applied linguistics. Using Hyland’s (2000) Introduction-Purpose-Methods-Product-Conclusion (I-P-M-Pr-C) move structure as framework and as a result of the analysis of the corpora, it can be surmised that the Purpose (P), Method (M), and Product (Pr) moves are the most prevalent across the corpora of two of the three journals. In addition, only three abstracts out of 29 feature the complete and sequenced I-P-M-Pr-C structure that Hyland (2000) developed. These results suggest the following: Hyland’s move structure may be individually evident across the corpus, but it is not sequenced in the order that Hyland’s structure is originally presented. This study also posits the influence of journal-writing conventions, such as abstract lengths, on how writers compose their abstracts and thus results in the foregrounding of some moves (e.g., Purpose, Method, Product), the backgrounding of others (e.g., Introduction, Conclusion), and the existence of mixed moves. Lastly, implications for the teaching of writing and other directions of related research are provided.

85-114

Authors: Vivien Sigrid B. Iñigo

Studies have presented various definitions of learner autonomy, the benefits it offers, its implications for teaching and learning (Borg & Al-Busaidi, 2012), and the beliefs and practices of students and teachers about it. However, no substantial body of literature has been conducted to compare how college English language learners from two different disciplines view learner autonomy. Hence, this study aims to determine how the liberal arts and natural sciences students differ in their beliefs and practices about learner autonomy, how autonomous they feel as English language learners, how learner autonomy helps them in second language learning, and how they differ in their views about the promotion of learner autonomy by their English language teachers. The present study analyzed data obtained from questionnaires and focus group discussions involving the learners, which were all compared to support and validate specific conclusions, present quantitative and qualitative findings, and interpret better the students’ questionnaire responses. The findings revealed that there was a slim difference between the beliefs and practices of the two groups of learners based on the quantitative aspect of the research, but the qualitative data, in a way, say otherwise. Several themes surfaced from the learners’ comments such as Independence and Activities. The present study challenges the assumption that different areas of discipline have varied ways of learning at least in the aspect of second language learning.

157-176

Authors: Abegail N. Eclipse; Pia Patricia P. Tenedero

This study describes the linguistic landscape (LL) of the Manila Central Post Office (MCPO), one of the landmark government offices in the capital of the Philippines. This unconventional choice of locale partially fills the gap in extant LL studies that focus more on streets and neighborhoods. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered to determine the dominant language in signage found in the public-access spaces of the MCPO and the communicative functions of the said signs. Findings show that English is the dominant language of the signs. Using Finocchiaro and Brumfit’s (1983) categories of communicative functions, it was found that most English signs serve referential and directive functions. Finally, the interview responses of key personnel of the MCPO reveal important insights into the intersection of language use and function. Implications call for a review of government language policy Executive Order 335.

15-32

Authors: John Michael B. Magtira; Alejandro S. Bernardo

Newspaper editorials comprise a portion of media discourse deemed to be important in the field of research in both intercultural rhetoric analysis and English as a Second Language or Foreign Language studies. Thus, this study aims to explore the different kinds of textual features and rhetorical strategies employed in the editorial headlines of the American newspaper, The New York Times (NYT), and the Philippine newspaper, Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI). The study analyzed 50 headlines culled from the electronic versions of both the NYT and the PDI. Based on Alireza and Samuel’s (2012) framework, the study applied a systematic contrastive textual analysis in investigating the said headlines. The results point to the fact that differences between the two sets of headlines exist, specifically in terms of the use of presuppositions and rhetorical devices.

49-70

Authors: Shielanie Soriano-Dacumos; Marilu Rañosa-Madrunio

In the Philippines, the increasing number of issues about beauty-product hazards has become an involuntary outrage since mass media exposed the tremors brought by chemical contents in cosmetic items. Under certain circumstances, even if business owners designed and manufactured their products as vigilant and watchful as possible, consumers remain susceptible to a certain degree of risks associated with beauty-product use. The practicability and viability of upholding consumer safety were made possible as this paper examined 45 beauty product-warning texts in the Philippines. A range of linguistic features, such as signal words (Shuy, 2008), orders of nouns (Lakoff, 1987; Lyons, 1977), synthetic personalization (Fairclough, 1989), tenor and field continuum (Halliday, 1985), attributive adjectives (Marza, 2011), manner, temporal, and spatial adverbs, were employed to determine the lexical features of warning messages. Using qualitative analysis, the results revealed that cautionary texts may have some lapses on the use of noun abstractness, synthetic personalization, field continuum, adjectives, and adverbs. Such an investigation brought up the transparency of communicative features of safety texts. Moreover, conditional sentences and the use of declarative and imperative sentences were analyzed, which disclosed the manufacturers’ practice on anticipating emergencies. The results display significant implications for the product-liability law in the country, which can further bridge consumers’ vital access to safety, hence bringing to light the real purpose of product-warning texts in the mainstream Philippine market.