What is real language?

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s_allard
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What is real language?

Postby s_allard » Thu May 18, 2017 11:37 am

In another thread I suggested that the wording "real language" in the title 'Comics/graphic novels as a way of learning real language" was a slight misnomer. From my point of view, the original wording seems to imply that there is a real language, i.e that of comics, and that there exists an unreal language, whatever that is. In fact, the discussion was about the informal spoken language, certainly a very real thing but that does not mean that other forms of speaking or writing are less real. I gave the example of the language of a government letter that I received the other day.

But since the discussion was about informal spoken language in comics and graphic novels, there is the question of how "real" is the language of their dialogues. My position is that this material is realistic-looking in its efforts to represent the spoken language in general. For language learners like us this is very useful material and highly recommended. But how does it compare to how people really talk in informal situations?

If you look at transcriptions of real informal conversations, we see a number of characteristics that are rarely rendered in these literary representations of informal speech:
1. Many incomplete or clipped speech units.
2. Hesitations and pauses while elaborating speech
3. Backtracking and reformulation
4. Mistakes that are often immediately corrected
5. Many repetitions and redundancies as a way of emphasizing or clarifying a point
6. Grammatical irregularities that arise out of speaking quickly
7. Many contextual references to other items in the conversation.
8. Many conversation fillers such as "Uhm".

In fact, much informal spoken language is very difficult to understand when read from a transcript. It can sound like a lot of gibberish. A typical example that one sees in the press from time to time is telephone conversations recorded by the police. Recently I heard a recording of a conversation between a Mexican narco and his politician buddy. It's quite enlightening to see how people really talk

Comics and graphics novels basically present a cleaned-up or literary version of the informal spoken language. They are realistic-looking not real. I wonder what people think.
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Re: What is real language?

Postby Serpent » Thu May 18, 2017 12:06 pm

As Khatzumoto wrote...

(post contains some inappropriate language)
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Re: What is real language?

Postby aaleks » Thu May 18, 2017 12:06 pm

As I see it... :roll:
The language in comics is a written form of informal speech. There is no need to "litter" it by putting in all those pauses or repetitions etc. to make it more realistic. It is enough to use informal patterns and cliche.
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Re: What is real language?

Postby Random Review » Thu May 18, 2017 1:04 pm

LeCon wrote:I don't really understand the reason or need for this thread.

Of course actual spoken language has clipping and backtracking and self-correction etc but who on earth, from a language learning perspective, would ever learn that stuff? You wouldn't.

Neither would language teaching materials ever try to mimic that sort of language because it would look rubbish. Nobody wants to read a page of 'Uhh...bu...well, i didn't tr...mean to say...' etc.

Comics and graphic novels are a way of seeing real language in terms of content. Of course they won't be written totally as people speak because it would make for a crap comic.

Also, nobody said that other forms of language were 'less real'. It was you that said that, and now you are refuting yourself.

They are as realistic from a learning material perspective as you can get, along with TV shows, etc. without actually being surrounded with native speakers all the time. They present language content in structures and wording as they are actually used in real life. It's the difference between 'Avez-vous une table pour deux' and 'POUR DEUX!'. Real usage. Whether or not the person says 'POUR...*turns to friend* deux? Oui deux....DEUX.' in real life, the words and ways of using them are the same.

That was the point which you seem to have completely missed.


Why not? It's an interesting enough discussion so far.

Have to say I think Serpent knocked it out of the park with that link, though. :lol:
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Re: What is real language?

Postby Random Review » Thu May 18, 2017 1:11 pm

LeCon wrote:
Random Review wrote:
Why not? It's an interesting enough discussion so far.

Have to say I think Serpent knocked it out of the park with that link, though. :lol:

I think it's related enough to the original thread to just be a comment on that. Don't think it warranted a separate thread. But it's not a problem ! 8-)


Yeah, I can see why s_allard thought it warranted a separate thread; but I can also see your point that it would add to the discussion in that thread quite well.

I'm pretty sure the mods can merge the threads if they feel it's worth it.
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Re: What is real language?

Postby s_allard » Thu May 18, 2017 1:15 pm

The title of this thread is: "What is real language?". It is not: "Are comics/graphic novels useful for learning informal spoken language?" Nobody disagrees that graphic books are useful. In fact there is a separate thread for that. The question here is what constitutes real language. The best way to decide that is to look at transcripts of real informal conversations. And, as I pointed out, we see all sorts of things that we don't see in the graphic novels. So, what is real?

From a language learner's perspective, while graphic books are great tools, we will not to speaking our TL with them. At some point we will be using the language for real with native speakers. That's when the real real language comes into play. If you want to be able to interact with native speakers, you have to know how they speak. Which is why IN ADDITION to reading lots of graphic books, it would be advisable to actually listen to real speech with transcripts as you might find on Youtube.
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Re: What is real language?

Postby aokoye » Thu May 18, 2017 2:25 pm

I think perhaps a better question for me is what is not real language? What is "fake" language and does such a thing even exist?
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Re: What is real language?

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Thu May 18, 2017 2:36 pm

aokoye wrote:I think perhaps a better question for me is what is not real language? What is "fake" language and does such a thing even exist?


Fake language would be something artificially created in order to show a word usage, grammatical construction, or conjugation.

John walked the store. John saw a dog. It was a big dog. The dog growled at John. John ran away screaming.


No one actually talks OR writes like that.

I think "real language" would be language that was intended by its content, rather than its form, to transmit information. So slang, most poetry, narrative, and non-fiction would certainly fall into "real" language. Conjugations or declensions, or other similar things are not "real", even if they are in sentences.

I think we can all generally agree that sentences used to illustrate vocabulary, grammar, or other similar topics are usually written specifically to demonstrate that feature in specific, rather than accidentally containing that term or formation.
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Re: What is real language?

Postby aokoye » Thu May 18, 2017 4:44 pm

SophiaMerlin_II wrote:I think we can all generally agree that sentences used to illustrate vocabulary, grammar, or other similar topics are usually written specifically to demonstrate that feature in specific, rather than accidentally containing that term or formation.

If you're calling that "fake language" then by that standard most if not all graded readers for L1 English speakers would be fake language. As would a lot of English children's literature.
Additionally sentences like:
I want to know why you were crossing the treacherous river.

Would also be fake as the above sentence was written solely to illustrate grammar - more specifically for my syntax class to practice writing sentence trees.
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Re: What is real language?

Postby zenmonkey » Thu May 18, 2017 7:45 pm

"Real" language is an agreement between two or more people on a game of meaning.
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