My presentation at the 11th English as a Lingua Franca conference, Kings College London, July 2018.
This presentation reports on a study comparing how multilingual English speakers in two English as a lingua franca (ELF) corpora orient to personal finance as a conversational topic. Personal finance talk is defined as (1) talk that explicitly mentions possessing, spending, receiving or needing money; and (2) talk wherein an individual’s mortgage, rent payment, debt, scholarship, bank account balance, inheritance, family finances, salary/wages, or the price of their assets are mentioned. The two corpora interrogated are the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and the Asian Corpus of English (ACE). The data are situated in the Leisure sections of the two corpora: Informal, unguided talk without assigned interactional roles. A frequency analysis of finance-related keywords (e.g. money) in each dataset (uttered by interactants during personal finance-related talk) reveals that ACE interactants use the keywords far more frequently than VOICE interactants. For greater descriptive insight, selected segments of talk-in-interaction are analysed, combining Conversation Analytical methods with Spencer-Oatey’s (2008) rapport management framework. The latter examines how talking and being asked about their finances impacts participants’ interactional rights and their ‘face’, i.e. their desire to be positively evaluated by others. Given the large number of Asian people presently migrating to European countries (OECD, 2012), the study is timely in reporting how samples of Asian and European multilinguals differently orient to personal finance talk, with its associated complexities for interactional rapport.
3. How do ELF speakers in European and Asian corpora talk about and
respond to talk about personal finance in non-formal interpersonal
interaction?:
(1) A speaker’s own personal finance;
(2) A co-present interlocutor’s personal finance;
(3) A non-present third party’s personal finance.
4. There are cultural constraints on certain conversational
subjects, relegating them to the domain of the unsaid.Typical
examples of these are
SEX, EXCRETION and MONEY.
Should speakers not heed these social taboos, or not take the
necessary precautionary linguistic introductions, they risk
shocking their listeners (Dolitsky 1983, p. 40).
5. Personal finance talk encompasses:
(1) Talk that explicitly mentions: (a) possessing money; (b) spending money;
(c) receiving money; or (d) needing money.
(2) Talk wherein an individual’s mortgage, rent payment, debt, scholarship,
bank account balance, inheritance, family finances, salary/wages, or the price
of their assets are mentioned.
6. ➢ One million words
➢ Naturally-occurring spoken data
➢ English as a lingua franca
➢ Range of contexts
➢ Transcribed texts + sound files
➢ Free access
# of
interactions
# of speakers # of words Total time % of total
corpus
VOICE 26 116 101,214 10 h 30m 10
ACE 32 107 114,606 10 h 16 m 10
Leisure:
8. Words with zero occurrence:
▪ Income
▪ Finance/financial
▪ Cash
▪ Wealth/wealthy
▪ Loan
▪ Wages
▪ Repay/repayment
▪ N=19
▪ VOICE = 24
▪ ACE = 213
Keyword VOICE
frequency
ACE frequency
Money 4 78
Pay/paid/payment 13 44
House 1 24
Salary 0 23
Cheap/cheaper 1 13
Rich 0 11
Bank 0 10
Expensive 4 3
Mortgage 0 3
Expense 0 2
Poor 0 2
Cost 1 0
9. Test statistics:
Ranks
N Mean
Rank
Sum of
Ranks
ACE -
VOICE
Negative
Ranks
2a 1.50 3.00
Positive
Ranks
10b 7.50 75.00
Ties
7c
Total
19
a. ACE < VOICE
b. ACE > VOICE
c. ACE = VOICE
Test Statisticsa
ACE - VOICE
Z -2.827b
Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)
.005
a. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test
b. Based on negative ranks.
11. VOICE personal finance talk:
SX-2: it's austrian one
S3: austrian you bought it here
S4: how much is it
S4: how much
S5: yah got it ninety
S2: ninety nine zero
SX-4: ni- nine zero
SX-3: xxx very expensive
S1: ninety
S4: oh my god @@@
S5: er that was all my all my souvenir money
so i have xxxxx myself
SX-3: erm are you hh crazy
<<<gives amount
<<<request for
amount information
<<<negative(?) assessment of
purchase
<<<implied negative
characterisation of S5
12. ACE: One’s own personal finances:
S1: but still it's just like the money issue that we try not to spend too much at the moment
because we don't know you know?
S2: wait till you are my age you will feel everything is easier you have the house and the
mortgage has been taken care of and yeah you feel it's much easier yeah i think i think i think
that i have i have been through that stage already
S1: actually i haven't done with the mortgage with the condominium it's just it's left some amount of
money which is OK you know we it's affordable you know we can with our money with our salary we
can pay that you know easily but NOW we are you know we are working on bigger things yeah
<<<positive evaluation of financial status
<<<mentions debt, characterises as ‘affordable’
13. Non-present third party’s personal finances:
S3: yah now er because that my cousin and my uncle many many of them they buy a a land and they
se- they sell and they buy and they sell and they buy so now they are very rich <soft> yah they're
very rich </soft>
S4: how old is your uncle now
S3: just er forty @@ <1> @@ </1>
S2: <1> @@@ </1>
S2: <2> so by forty </2>
S4: <2> and when did when did </2> when did she er when did he start er buy and selling houses
or:
S3: erm: (.) i don't i’m not sure i’m not ask him about this but er (.) erm one of my neighbor she
just a she just er twenty two years old but now she own she has that two <soft> <L1vn> tỉ
</L1vn> </soft> two two billion <L1vn> việt nam đồng {vietnam's currency} </L1vn> and she
about (5) and now she’s twenty six but she is very very rich and i want to be very very rich like her
<<<NP 3rd party
characterised as ‘rich’
<<<affiliates to NP 3rd party’s status
14. ACE:Asking about others’?
S4: so how much do you make a month now
S2: erm not much because i’m just er a student a student
S4: no you said you’re having a job with high <7> salary </7> right
SX-f: <7> yah </7> what this
S2: <8> high salary </8> er to a student
S1: <8> i think </8>
S4: for student how much
S2: <9> erm: (.) like </9>
S3: <9> it quite rude ask this this question no </9>
S2: one article is e:r about four hundred (0.4) four hundred thousand dong (0.6) a::h
one chatting event (.) is abou:t a on:e (.) million- (.) >↑AH NO no-< (.) oh yah one
million a::h dong [(0.5) ◦so◦
S3: [huh (.) <it’s higher than my co::mi::c> ((in singsong voice))
<<<disalignment by RP
<<<on-record PF query
<<<repeated query
<<<dismisses
evasive response
15. S1: okay so you are going to take cab tonight as well
S2: (.) think so
S1: you're so rich <1> everyday you go </1>
S2: <1> NO: i </1> just lazy you know
S1: <2> yeah i know that one is confirmed </2>
S2: <2> and then the okay time is money </2> @@@
S1: o:h your time is money
S2: yeah
S1: so
S2: what
S1: everyday you got like nine hours' working so you got a lot of money
S2: yeah
S1: @ <3> @@@@ </3>
S2: <3> @@@@ </3>
S1: okay
ACE: Jocular targeted hyperbole:
<<<hyperbolic ‘rich’
characterisation
<<<shared laughter
<<<jocular sarcasm
<<<‘rich’
characterisation
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