International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 Translating Qur’anic Past Tense Structures Which Speak about the Hereafter Mohammad Anwar Shafiq Al-Taher Zarqa University, Jordan Abstract: The study investigates the translation of past verbs in the Noble Qur'an which report Hereafter future events into English. It may be needless to say that the question of viewing time varies among languages. However, it is to be borne in mind that the holy script, believed to be the revelation of God, differs from humans in this matter. For instance, the use of the past tense to convey the future is one of its exclusive features. The purpose is to emphasize the certainty of such incidents and, therefore, push the receivers for more commitment to good deeds and further avoidance of bad deeds.The question raised is whether prominent translators of the Noble Qur’an employ the suitable equivalent techniques which relay the above function by bridging the gap between the past and future.The paper chooses examples of such constructions in the Noble Qur'an. Then, their renditions by Thomas Irving, Mohammed Habib Shakir and Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall are cited and investigated. A number of techniques are chosen by the translators, mainly the present simple, future simple and the modal ‘shall. Keywords: Arabic Translation, Qur'an Translation, Tense shift. 1. Introduction Tenses represent one of the major features of language that expresses the time of an action of the sentence or perhaps the sender’s point of view of this action. However, languages vary in their tense system according to the way past, present and future are viewed and contextualized. Arabic, for example, employs a basic verb pattern system of past and non-past, the former of which is usually identified by certain suffixes. The latter includes present (mostly recognized by given prefixes), command (formed by various morphological mechanisms) and future (annexed to the present by adding the prefix α or the auxiliary ϑϮγ to the main verb). In contrast, the English tense taxonomy is a relatively complicated one, which adds the ‘aspect’ dimension to show more details about the action or state within the past, present or future time. After a language user or learner comes to comprehend the main uses of each tense construction within each time stage, he/she is sometimes encountered by a cross-temporal problem. In English, for instance, the present simple could refer to the future, and the present perfect simple may refer to the past. Likewise, in Arabic, a bare present may refer to the past or future, whereas the past could indicate a command. 51
Al-Taher Translating Qur’anic Past Tense Structures... When it comes to translating an authoritative text, like the Noble Qur’an, the matter becomes even more complicated. This holy script is believed to use the most eloquent grammar and lexis to influence the reader and listener. As the translator is entrusted with the responsibility of mirroring the same force of the original to the TL audience, he/she has to be very careful in choosing the most suitable and adequate structure that satisfactorily serves the function of the structure within the context. The present research looks into those past tense sentences in the Noble Qur’an which talk about the events taking place in the various stages of the Hereafter, i.e., in the future. The paper is intended to explore a number of areas: - An overview of the past and future in English - An overview of the past and future in Arabic - Past tense in the Noble Qur’an - An overview of translating the Noble Qur'an - The translation of past tense structures describing the Hereafter in the Noble Qur'an into English Of the many past structures talking about the Last Day in the Noble Qur'an, 136 examples are chosen according to certain conditions. Then, their translations by Thomas Irving, Muhammad Habib Shakir and Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall are analyzed in terms of grammatical construction and semantic force. 2. An overview of the past and future in English 2.1. Past There are a number of past constructions depending on how to view past events, i.e., aspect. Firstly, the past simple is used to convey an action taking place at a specific time in the past. e.g. - My friend bought a new car yesterday. It could also refer to a past habit which has no existence in the present. e.g. - He always bought his wife flowers. Secondly, the past continuous usually refers to the duration of a past action but interrupted by another short action or time. e.g. - While John was sleeping, Anne entered the room. - I was studying math at 3 p.m. Thirdly, the past perfect places an action prior to another action or time in the past. e.g. - When I arrived at the airport, the plane had left. - We had finished the prayer by midnight. Fourthly, the past perfect continuous is similar to the previous one, but lays emphasis on the duration of the event. e.g. - The police had been looking for the criminal for 5 years before they arrested him. 52
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 On the other hand, the present simple is sometimes employed in what is called ‘historical present’ in the narration of some past events ‘to make the story more vivid and immediate,’ especially when targeting children (Jackson 1995: 90). e.g. The god Indra sentences a heavenly nymph guilty of an illicit love affair to become a mortal and be murdered by a Javanese queen before she can return to heaven. She descends and becomes incarnate in the wife of a Javanese headman. A prince hunting sees her and weds her, though he is betrothed to a princess. (ibid) It is also used when discussing literature and commenting on an ongoing football match. 2.2. Future There are three main future constructions connected to certain aspects. First, the future simple refers to an action expected to take place, usually at a specific time in the future. e.g. -These students will pass tomorrow’s exam. -It may also convey a momentary decision. e.g. The bell is ringing. - I’ll answer. Second, the future continuous refers to a long action, usually interrupted by another short action or time in the future. e.g. - Mom will be cooking when I come back home. - I will be sleeping at 11 p.m. Third, the future perfect refers to an action prior to another action or time in the future. e.g. - By the time you leave, I will have prepared the sandwiches. - By sunset, we will have finished the meeting. On the other hand, the present simple, present continuous and ‘be going to’ are examples of constructions used to convey the future, often in cases of schedules or prior plans. e.g. - The plane arrives in Istanbul at 10:45. - I am leaving for Washington next year. - We are going to build a school in this new neighbourhood. To sum up, in the English language, there is overlap in use between some past and present constructions and between some present and future constructions. However, past structures are not found to refer to any future action. 3. An overview of the past and future in Arabic 3.1. Past A typical use of a past structure is to describe what happened before the moment of speaking. e.g. - .βϣϷΎΑ ϕϮδϟ ϰϟ· ΪϤΤϣ ΐϫΫ Mohammad went to the market yesterday. 53
Al-Taher Translating Qur’anic Past Tense Structures... -.ΔϨϣΎΜϟ ΪϨϋ ΔγέΪϤϟ ϰϟ· ϲϠϋ Ϟλϭ Ali arrived at school at 8 o’clock. Another use is supplication to God. e.g.- .Ϛϟ Ϳ ήϔϏ May Allah forgive you! 3.2. Future There is no independent category called ‘future’. Most of the time, as mentioned earlier, the prefix (α) or the auxiliary ϑϮγ) ( is added to a non- past verb. The former prefix is used to convey a near future, whereas the latter particle tends to be for more remote future. e.g. - .ϒΤΘϤϟ ϰϟ· ΓέΎϳΰΑ ΪϏ ϡϮϘϨγ We will visit the museum tomorrow. - .ΎΒϳήϗ ΎϧΩϼΑ ϰϟ· ΩϮόϧ ϑϮγ We are going to return to our homeland soon. In addition, the present may refer to the future, sometimes when related to a schedule. e.g. - .˯Ύδϣ ΔδϣΎΨϟ ΪϨϋ βϴϤΨϟ ϡϮϳ έΎτϘϟ έΩΎϐϳ The train leaves on Thursday at 5 p.m. It is also common in whether forecasts. e.g. - .ΎϴϓΎλ ϮΠϟ ϥϮϜϳ Skies will be clear. Past and future are, then, found to have different purposes with regard to time. However, the future does not make a reference to past, while the past has a very limited scope of referring to the future (a supplication form of command). 4. Past tense in the Noble Qur’an In the Arabic language, texts belong to three forms: verse, prose and the Noble Qur’an. The uniqueness of the holy script emanates from the fact that it is not the production of humans. Therefore, the Great Creator totally differs from humans in the consideration of time; for time represents a limitation on human beings but not the Creator of time 81( : 2006 ϦϤΣήϟ ΪΒϋ). There is a huge gap between the past and future, which is not bridged by typical Arabic usage. In the Qur’an, however, this gap is a characteristic of its style. The past tense portraying the events of the Hereafter is believed by most exegesis scholars to express the conclusive certainty of their occurrence ˬ 2004 ϱήγϭΪϟ ˬ 2001 ϲόϓΎθϟ ϱέήϬϟ ˬ 1984 έϮηΎϋ ϦΑ ˬ 1420 ϱίήϟ ˬ 1407 ϱήθΨϣΰϟ) ( 2006 ϦϤΣήϟ ΪΒϋ. It is a powerful message to the receiver that he/she has to strongly believe in what is going to take place on the Last Day as if it has already happened or about to happen 10( : 2003 ϲϣϭΪϘϟ ˬ 385 : 1407 ϱήθΨϣΰϟ). Whatever the case might be, the target is to constantly remind the believer of the great reward and punishment awaiting for people on that horrible day. Keeping this in their minds and hearts necessitates doing good deeds and avoiding evil. For example, 54
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 ˶Ϫ͉Ϡϟ ˶Ώ˴ά˴ϋ ˸Ϧ˶ϣ Ύ͉Ϩ˴ϋ ˴ϥϮ ˵Ϩ˸ϐ˵ϣ ˸Ϣ˵Θ˸ϧ˴ ˸Ϟ˴Ϭ˴ϓ ˱Ύό˴Β˴Η ˸Ϣ˵Ϝ˴ϟ Ύ͉Ϩ˵ϛ Ύ͉ϧ˶· ϭ˵ή˴Β˸Ϝ˴Θ˸γ ˴Ϧϳ˶ά͉Ϡ˶ϟ ˵˯Ύ˴ϔ˴ό͊πϟ ˴ ϝΎ˴Ϙ˴ϓ ˱Ύόϴ˶Ϥ˴Ο ˶Ϫ͉Ϡ˶ϟ ϭ˵ί˴ή˴Α˴ϭ ˴ ϝΎ˴ϗ˴ϭ ( 21 ) ˳κϴ˶Τ˴ϣ ˸Ϧ˶ϣ Ύ˴Ϩ˴ϟ Ύ˴ϣ Ύ˴ϧ˸ή˴Β˴λ ˸ϡ˴ Ύ˴Ϩ˸ϋ˶ΰ˴Ο˴ Ύ˴Ϩ˸ϴ˴Ϡ˴ϋ ˲˯˴Ϯ˴γ ˸Ϣ˵ϛΎ˴Ϩ˸ϳ˴Ϊ˴Ϭ˴ϟ ˵Ϫ͉Ϡϟ Ύ˴ϧ˴Ϊ˴ϫ ˸Ϯ˴ϟ Ϯ˵ϟΎ˴ϗ ˳˯˸ϲ˴η ˸Ϧ˶ϣ ˸Ϧ˶ϣ ˸Ϣ˵Ϝ˸ϴ˴Ϡ˴ϋ ϲ˶ϟ ˴ϥΎ˴ϛ Ύ˴ϣ˴ϭ ˸Ϣ˵Ϝ˵Θ˸ϔ˴Ϡ˸Χ˴΄˴ϓ ˸Ϣ˵Ϝ˵Η ˸Ϊ˴ϋ˴ϭ˴ϭ ͋ϖ˴Τ˸ϟ ˴Ϊ˸ϋ˴ϭ ˸Ϣ˵ϛ˴Ϊ˴ϋ˴ϭ ˴Ϫ͉Ϡϟ ͉ϥ˶· ˵ή˸ϣ˴Ϸ ˴ϲ˶π˵ϗ Ύ͉Ϥ˴ϟ ˵ϥΎ˴τ˸ϴ͉θϟ ˸Ϣ˵Θ˸ϧ˴ Ύ˴ϣ˴ϭ ˸Ϣ˵Ϝ˶Χ˶ή˸μ˵Ϥ˶Α Ύ˴ϧ˴ Ύ˴ϣ ˸Ϣ˵Ϝ˴δ˵ϔ˸ϧ˴ Ϯ˵ϣϮ˵ϟ˴ϭ ϲ˶ϧϮ˵ϣϮ˵Ϡ˴Η ϼ˴ϓ ϲ˶ϟ ˸Ϣ˵Θ˸Β˴Π˴Θ˸γΎ˴ϓ ˸Ϣ˵Ϝ˵Η˸Ϯ˴ϋ˴Ω ˸ϥ˴ ͉ϻ˶· ˳ϥΎ˴τ˸Ϡ˵γ Ϯ˵Ϩ˴ϣ ˴Ϧϳ˶ά͉ϟ ˴Ϟ˶Χ˸Ω˵˴ϭ ( 22 ) ˲Ϣϴ˶ϟ˴ ˲Ώ˴ά˴ϋ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˴ϟ ˴Ϧϴ˶Ϥ˶ϟΎ͉ψϟ ͉ϥ˶· ˵Ϟ˸Β˴ϗ ˸Ϧ˶ϣ ϲ˶ϧϮ˵Ϥ˵Θ˸ϛ˴ή˸η˴ Ύ˴Ϥ˶Α ˵Ε˸ή˴ϔ˴ϛ ϲ͋ϧ˶· ͉ϲ˶Χ˶ή˸μ˵Ϥ˶Α ˲ϡϼ˴γ Ύ ˴Ϭϴ˶ϓ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˵Θ͉ϴ˶Τ˴Η ˸Ϣ˶Ϭ͋Α˴έ ˶ϥ˸Ϋ˶Έ˶Α Ύ˴Ϭϴ˶ϓ ˴Ϧϳ˶Ϊ˶ϟΎ˴Χ ˵έΎ˴Ϭ˸ϧ˴Ϸ Ύ˴Ϭ˶Θ˸Τ˴Η ˸Ϧ˶ϣ ϱ˶ή˸Π˴Η ˳ΕΎ͉Ϩ˴Ο ˶ΕΎ˴Τ˶ϟΎ͉μϟ Ϯ˵Ϡ˶Ϥ˴ϋ˴ϭ (14: 21-23) And they all appeared before Allah (on the Day of Resurrection) then the weak said to those who were arrogant (chiefs): 'Verily, we were following you; can you avail us anything from Allah's Torment?' They said: 'Had Allah guided us, we would have guided you. It makes no difference to us (now) whether we rage, or bear (these torments) with patience, there is no place of refuge for us '. 21( ) And Shaitan (Satan) said when the matter has been decided: 'Verily, Allah promised you a promise of truth. And I too promised you, but I betrayed you. I had no authority over you except that I called you, so you responded to me. So blame me not, but blame yourselves. I cannot help you, nor can you help me. I deny your former act in associating me (Satan) as a partner with Allah (by obeying me in the life of the world). Verily, there is a painful torment for the Zalimun (polytheists and wrong-doers, etc '.(. 22( ) And those who believed (in the Oneness of Allah and His Messengers and whatever they brought) and did righteous deeds, were made to enter Gardens under which rivers flow, - to dwell therein forever (i.e.in Paradise), with the permission of their Lord. Their greeting therein will be: Salam (peace .(! 23( ) (translated by Al-Hilali and Khan except the underlined rendered literally) When people read or listen to the three verses above, they are expected to remember that they are going to stand before Allah, who will ask them about their life. Their evil partners, whether among the weak or the arrogant, and their devils will never be of any assistance to them if they are not obedient to the Lord. On the other hand, if they do good deeds, they shall be honored forever. What is even more interesting concerning the setting of the Hereafter scenes in the Qur’an is the shift employed sometimes between the present and past tenses. For instance, ˴Ϛ͋Α˴έ ϰ˴Ϡ˴ϋ Ϯ˵ο˶ή˵ϋ˴ϭ (47) ˱Ϊ˴Σ˴ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˸Ϩ˶ϣ ˸έ˶ΩΎ˴ϐ˵ϧ ˸Ϣ˴Ϡ˴ϓ ˸Ϣ˵ϫΎ˴ϧ˸ή˴θ˴Σ˴ϭ ˱Γ˴ί˶έΎ˴Α ˴ν˸έ˴Ϸ ϯ˴ή˴Η˴ϭ ˴ϝΎ˴Β˶Π˸ϟ ˵ή͋ϴ˴δ˵ϧ ˴ϡ˸Ϯ˴ϳ˴ϭ ϯ˴ή˴Θ˴ϓ ˵ΏΎ˴Θ˶Ϝ˸ϟ ˴ϊ˶ο˵ϭ˴ϭ (48) ˱Ϊ˶ϋ˸Ϯ˴ϣ ˸Ϣ˵Ϝ˴ϟ ˴Ϟ˴ό˸Π˴ϧ ˸Ϧ͉ϟ˴ ˸Ϣ˵Θ˸Ϥ˴ϋ˴ί ˸Ϟ˴Α ˳Γ͉ή˴ϣ ˴ϝ͉ϭ˴ ˸Ϣ˵ϛΎ˴Ϩ˸Ϙ˴Ϡ˴Χ Ύ˴Ϥ˴ϛ Ύ˴ϧϮ˵Ϥ˵Θ˸Ό˶Ο ˸Ϊ˴Ϙ˴ϟ ˱Ύ˷ϔ˴λ ͉ϻ˶· ˱Γ˴ήϴ˶Β˴ϛ ϻ˴ϭ ˱Γ˴ήϴ˶ϐ˴λ ˵έ˶ΩΎ˴ϐ˵ϳ ϻ ˶ΏΎ˴Θ˶Ϝ˸ϟ ˴ά˴ϫ ˶ϝΎ˴ϣ Ύ˴Ϩ˴Θ˴Ϡ˸ϳ˴ϭ Ύ˴ϳ ˴ϥϮ˵ϟϮ˵Ϙ˴ϳ˴ϭ ˶Ϫϴ˶ϓ Ύ͉Ϥ˶ϣ ˴Ϧϴ˶Ϙ˶ϔ˸θ˵ϣ ˴Ϧϴ˶ϣ˶ή˸Π˵Ϥ˸ϟ ˱Ϊ˴Σ˴ ˴Ϛ͊Α˴έ ˵Ϣ˶Ϡ˸ψ˴ϳ ϻ˴ϭ ˱ή˶οΎ˴Σ Ϯ˵Ϡ˶Ϥ˴ϋ Ύ˴ϣ ϭ˵Ϊ˴Ο˴ϭ˴ϭ Ύ˴ϫΎ˴μ˸Σ˴ (18: 47-49) And (remember) the Day We cause the mountains to pass away (like clouds of dust), and you see the earth as a levelled plain, and we gathered them all together so we left none of them behind. (47) And they were set 55
Al-Taher Translating Qur’anic Past Tense Structures... before your Lord in (lines as) rows, (and Allah will say): 'Now indeed, you have come to Us as We created you the first time. Nay, but you thought that We had appointed no meeting for you (with Us).' (48) And the Book (one's Record) was placed (in the right hand for a believer in the Oneness of Allah, and in the left hand for a disbeliever in the Oneness of Allah), and you see the Mujrimun (criminals, polytheists, sinners, etc.), fearful of that which is (recorded) therein. They say: 'Woe to us! What sort of Book is this that leaves neither a small thing nor a big thing, but has recorded it with numbers!' And they found all that they did, placed before them, and your Lord treats no one with injustice. (translated by Al-Hilali and Khan except some of the underlined rendered literally) The above shift between present and past is aimed at keeping the receivers’ attention and, thus, making them feel the horror of that day as they will be totally helpless. It is actually the context which governs the use of one tense rather than another, linking the structure to an intended function ϦϤΣήϟ ΪΒϋ) ( 70ˬ141 : 2006. Therefore, the events relayed in the past tense for the sake of certainty are mixed with others in the present to provide vivid description. This ‘historical’ or ‘narrative’ present, somehow similar to its English counterpart, is used to involve the receiver in live scenes, mixing the past and the future. The shift may take place between incidents of this life and the Hereafter, bringing them to the fore or sending them to the back 43( : 1983 :ΐτϗ). These past tense structures in the Noble Qur’an need careful consideration by the translator when dealing with the Hereafter. He/she has to try to eliminate any confusion for the target language reader that is due to the tense shift or to the gap between the past and future. 5. An overview of translating the Noble Qur'an Religious texts are believed to be more difficult to translate than other texts. They contain sacred ideas and beliefs and, thus, need to be translated 'with a high degree of accuracy.” Translators are expected 'to stick more closely to the original' than in the case of other texts (Al-Khawalda 2004:217). Among these, the Noble Qur’an is a unique text. It is believed by Muslims to be the greatest miracle in language, science, legislation, history, etc. It represents, according to rhetoricians, the highest standard of eloquence in the Arabic language, which has preserved the language for centuries 1981 : ϢϴΣήϟ ΪΒϋ ) ( 252 ˬ 245. The form and meaning of the holy scripture are amazingly intertwined in a particular relationship, as it is 'understood to say what it says in an inseparable identity with how it says it and that its literary power belongs squarely with its religious intent” (Zebiri 2003:97). It is argued that the Noble Qur’an is 'inimitable', it 'can only exist in its original language', and it 'cannot be understood fully by non-Arabic speakers” (Al-Kharabsha and Al-Azzam 2008:1-2). Even those who have already produced translations of the Noble Qur'an, such as Arberry and Irving, conclude 56
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 that it is untranslatable 'because each time one returns to the Arabic text, he finds new meanings and fresh ways of interpreting” (Al-Jabari 2008:18-19). It is 'impossible to find any language which is able to find equivalent expressions and meanings to the lofty language of the Qur'an” (ibid). Literal translation of the Qur’an is opposed by many. It is said to have 'produced ponderous and laboured style in English', and thus created “a difficulty in readability and understanding” (Abdul-Raof 2001:181-2). They find that the wealth of the language of the holy book in terms of vocabulary, structures and metaphors – let along the truth of content – makes it impossible to accept literal rendition ( ϥΎπϣέ 1998: 329-353). In practice, a translator of the Qur’an is encountered by the basic question of equivalence, which has witnessed the most heated debate among scholars of translation. For instance, some deny the existence of complete equivalence because each linguistic unit contains “a set of non-transferable associations and connotations” (Bassnett 1991: 15). If there can never be absolute synonymy between words of the same language, how could equivalence be found between different languages (Bell 1993: 6)? If such equivalence cannot be achieved between texts produced by humans, it is impossible between God’s word and its human translation. Therefore, the challenge for the translator is to try and achieve equivalence on certain levels or in certain aspects of the ST, depending on a number of factors, such as the type and context of the text. Some specify a function for equivalence, such as relaying the “communicative effect…determined by the initial communicative situation and its components” (Sanchez-Ortiz 2000:96). Skopos theorists use the concept commission to refer to the purpose of the translation (Vermeer 1989: 184). However, most arguments over equivalence take a binary form. One example is the distinction between formal and dynamic equivalence. The former aims to allow the target text reader to understand “as much as possible of the form and content of the ST message.” On the other hand, the latter aims to achieve “equivalent effect” between what the target text audience experiences and what the source text audience does (Nida 1964: 157-9). Another one calls the main translation methods semantic and communicative. The first is set at the author’s level, in contrast with the second which is more likely to create what is also described as “equivalent effect” because it is set at the receiver’s level (Newmark 1988: 48-9). Upon the literature on the unique nature and grandeur of the language of the Noble Qur’an, in addition to the brief on the issue of equivalence, the paper adopts a dynamic, communicative approach. Bearing in mind that the topic under scrutiny is basically a structural rather than a cultural one, content must be assigned priority over form in a bid to reflect the force of the function of the original message. 57
Al-Taher Translating Qur’anic Past Tense Structures... 6. The translation of past tense structures describing the Hereafter in the Noble Qur'an into English As mentioned earlier, in both Arabic and English, there is a great deal of overlap between the past and present as well as between the future and present in terms of their daily use. However, the huge gap between the past and future has not been bridged. The case here not only constitutes a distinguished feature of the Noble Qur’an, but it is also atypical of the Arabic language. Bearing in mind the exceptional nature of the Qur’anic text, a translator needs to exert great efforts to reflect its literary power in order to affect the minds and hearts of receivers. As the form and meaning of the Noble Qur’an are closely associated, any rendition to another language would most probably lead to a sacrifice of either. In fact, the English language system seems to be unable to employ any past tense structure for conveying the future. Therefore, a translator is encountered by the challenge of choosing an alternative time construction which can put across the intended meaning of the certainty of the Hereafter actions. 7. Research method To examine possible techniques which put across the effect of past structures referring to the Hereafter, a number of steps were taken. First, all the instances of past verbs that indicate the Hereafter were identified. Second, the following verbs were omitted from the list: - ϝΎϗ (said), being a high frequency verb - βΌΑ, Ϣόϧ, ˯Ύγ, Ϧ˵δΣ (How bad! vs. How good!), being emotive rather than expressing actions or states - ϥΎϛ (was/were), being semantically elusive - ˷Ϊϋ, ϞόΟ, ΄θϧ (prepared, made, created), as they could sometimes express actual past in the future - Verbs mentioned in conditional or other similar complex sentences, as they are in the subjective mode - verbs mentioned within quotations, as they may refer to actual past in a previous life time - any action which might have other past interpretations by some exegesis scholars. Thus, the 136 verbs left indicate pure future actions but in a past form. Third, their renditions by Irving, Shakir and Pickthall were picked up in a bid to investigate each translator’s favoured construction(s). Fourth, as each translator uses more than one form to translate them, percentages were calculated for every construction. 8. Results Examination shows that the three translators have used five major techniques to convey the Hereafter verbs. 1. Past simple The structure has been employed only 5 times by Irving and 2 times by Shakir, but never by Pickthall. 58
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 e.g. - “ϥϮ˵˶ΰ˸Ϭ˴Θ˸δ˴ϳ ˶Ϫ˶Α Ϯ˵ϧΎ˴ϛ Ύ˴ϣ ˸Ϣ˶Ϭ˶Α ˴ϕΎ˴Σ˴ϭ Ϯ˵Ϡ˶Ϥ˴ϋ Ύ˴ϣ ˵ΕΎ˴Ό͋ϴ˴γ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˴ΑΎ˴λ˴΄˴ϓ” (16: 34) The evil deeds which they had been doing assailed them, and what they had been sneering at swept in around them! (Irving) The past simple represents a completely formal equivalent which does not reflect the effect of the original on the TL audience, as it unconsciously links the construction to past time events. Native speakers of English are not accustomed to use it to covey the future. 2. Present simple This construction has been used 16 times by Irving, 25 times by Shakir and, interestingly, 76 times by Pickthall. e.g. - “ ˱Ϊ˴Α˴ Ύ ˴Ϭϴ˶ϓ ˴Ϧϳ˶Ϊ˶ϟΎ˴Χ ˵έΎ˴Ϭϧ˴Ϸ Ύ˴Ϭ˶Θ˸Τ˴Η ˸Ϧ˶ϣ ϱ˶ή˸Π˴Η ˲ΕΎ͉Ϩ˴Ο ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˴ϟ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˵ϗ˸Ϊ˶λ ˴Ϧϴ˶ϗ˶ΩΎ͉μϟ ˵ϊ˴ϔϨ˴ϳ ˵ϡ˸Ϯ˴ϳ ˴ά˴ϫ ˵Ϫ͉Ϡϟ ˴ϝΎ˴ϗ ˵Ϣϴ˶ψ˴ό˸ϟ ˵ί˸Ϯ˴ϔ˸ϟ ˴Ϛ˶ϟ˴Ϋ ˵Ϫ˸Ϩ˴ϋ Ϯ˵ο˴έ˴ϭ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˸Ϩ˴ϋ ˵Ϫ͉Ϡϟ ˴ϲ˶ο˴έ' (5: 119) God said: 'This is a day when their truthfulness will benefit the truthful: they shall have gardens through which rivers flow, to live in ever and ever.' God approves of them, while they are pleased with Him; that will be the supreme Achievement. (Irving) ϰ˴Ϡ˴ϋ Ϯ˵ο˶ή˵ϋ˴ϭ (47) ˱Ϊ˴Σ˴ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˸Ϩ˶ϣ ˸έ˶ΩΎ˴ϐ˵ϧ ˸Ϣ˴Ϡ˴ϓ ˸Ϣ˵ϫΎ˴ϧ˸ή˴θ˴Σ˴ϭ ˱Γ˴ί˶έΎ˴Α ˴ν˸έ˴Ϸ ϯ˴ή˴Η˴ϭ ˴ϝΎ˴Β˶Π˸ϟ ˵ή͋ϴ˴δ˵ϧ ˴ϡ˸Ϯ˴ϳϭ' ˱Ύ˷ϔ˴λ ˴Ϛ͋Α˴έ ˴ϊ˶ο˵ϭ˴ϭ (48) ˱Ϊ˶ϋ˸Ϯ˴ϣ ˸Ϣ˵Ϝ˴ϟ ˴Ϟ˴ό˸Π˴ϧ ˸Ϧ͉ϟ˴ ˸Ϣ˵Θ˸Ϥ˴ϋ˴ί ˸Ϟ˴Α ˳Γ͉ή˴ϣ ˴ϝ͉ϭ˴ ˸Ϣ˵ϛΎ˴Ϩ˸Ϙ˴Ϡ˴Χ Ύ˴Ϥ˴ϛ Ύ˴ϧϮ˵Ϥ˵Θ˸Ό˶Ο ˸Ϊ˴Ϙ˴ϟ ϻ˴ϭ ˱Γ˴ήϴ˶ϐ˴λ ˵έ˶ΩΎ˴ϐ˵ϳ ϻ ˶ΏΎ˴Θ˶Ϝ˸ϟ ˴ά˴ϫ ˶ϝΎ˴ϣ Ύ˴Ϩ˴Θ˴Ϡ˸ϳ˴ϭ Ύ˴ϳ ˴ϥϮ˵ϟϮ˵Ϙ˴ϳ˴ϭ ˶Ϫϴ˶ϓ Ύ͉Ϥ˶ϣ ˴Ϧϴ˶Ϙ˶ϔ˸θ˵ϣ ˴ Ϧϴ˶ϣ˶ή˸Π˵Ϥ˸ϟ ϯ˴ή˴Θ˴ϓ ˵ΏΎ˴Θ˶Ϝ˸ϟ 'Ϊ˴Σ˴ ˴Ϛ͊Α˴έ ˵Ϣ˶Ϡ˸ψ˴ϳ ϻ˴ϭ ˱ή˶οΎ˴Σ Ϯ˵Ϡ˶Ϥ˴ϋ Ύ˴ϣ ϭ˵Ϊ˴Ο˴ϭ˴ϭ Ύ˴ϫΎ˴μ˸Σ˴ ͉ϻ˶· ˱Γ˴ήϴ˶Β˴ϛ (18: 47-49) And (bethink you of) the Day when We remove the hills and ye see the earth emerging, and We gather them together so as to leave not one of them behind. 48. And they are set before thy Lord in ranks (and it is said unto them): Now verily have ye come unto Us as We created you at the first. But ye thought that We had set no tryst for you. 49. And the Book is placed, and thou seest the guilty fearful of that which is therein, and they say: What Kind of a book is this that leaveth not a small thing nor a great thing but hath counted it! And they find all that they did confronting them, and thy Lord wrongeth no one. (Pickthall) The present simple does not seem to accomplish the equivalent effect, since it serves as a scene-setter rather than an indicator of certainty. 3. Present perfect This structure has been chosen 9 times by Irving, only once by Shakir and 15 times by Pickthall. e.g. - “˱ϻ˸Ϯ˴ϗ ˵Ϫ˴ϟ ˴ϲ˶ο˴έ˴ϭ ˵Ϧ˴Ϥ˸Σ͉ήϟ ˵Ϫ˴ϟ ˴ϥ˶Ϋ˴ ˸Ϧ˴ϣ ͉ϻ˶· ˵Δ˴ϋΎ˴ϔ͉θϟ ˵ϊ˴ϔϨ˴Η ϻ ˳ά˶Ό˴ϣ˸Ϯ˴ϳ” (20: 109) On that day intercession will only benefit someone whom the Mercygiving has permitted to enjoy it, and whose statement has pleased Him. (Irving) -“˱ήϳ˶ή˴Σ˴ϭ ˱Δ͉Ϩ˴Ο ϭ˵ή˴Β˴λ Ύ˴Ϥ˶Α ˸Ϣ˵ϫ˴ΰ˴Ο˴ϭ (11) ˱έϭ˵ή˵γ˴ϭ ˱Γ˴ή˸π˴ϧ ˸Ϣ˵ϫΎ͉Ϙ˴ϟ˴ϭ ˶ϡ˸Ϯ˴ϴ˸ϟ ˴Ϛ˶ϟ˴Ϋ ͉ή˴η Ϳ ϢϫΎϗϮϓ” (76: 11-12) Therefore Allah hath warded from them the evil of that day, and hath made them find brightness and joy; 12. And hath awarded them for all that they endured, a Garden and silk attire. (Pickthall) 59
Al-Taher Translating Qur’anic Past Tense Structures... It is noticeable here that Pickthall tends to use the old suffix ‘eth’ for the present simple ‘s’ and the old ‘hath’ rather than ‘have’ or ‘has’, following an approach of translating the Noble Qur’an which makes it sound biblical. The present perfect might be helpful in limited cases when the action precedes other ones in terms of time, but not in referring to a list of future actions. 4. Future Simple This construction has been frequently selected 95 times by Irving, in contrast with 29 times by Shakir and 39 times by Pickthall. e.g. - “˴ϥϭ˵Ϊ˴Θ˸Ϭ˴ϳ Ϯ˵ϧΎ˴ϛ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ͉ϧ˴ ˸Ϯ˴ϟ ˴Ώ˴ά˴ό˸ϟ ˸ϭ˴˴έ˴ϭ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˴ϟ Ϯ˵Βϴ˶Π˴Θ˸δ˴ϳ ˸Ϣ˴Ϡ˴ϓ ˸Ϣ˵ϫ˸Ϯ˴ϋ˴Ϊ˴ϓ ˸Ϣ˵ϛ˴˯Ύ˴ϛ˴ή˵η Ϯ˵ϋ˸Ω ˴Ϟϴ˶ϗ˴ϭ” (28: 64) Someone will say: 'Appeal to your associates!' So they will appeal to them, yet they will not answer them. They will see the Torment-if only they had accepted guidance! (Irving) - “ Ύ˴Ϩ˸ο˴ή˴ϋ˴ϭ (99) ˱Ύό˸Ϥ˴Ο ˸Ϣ˵ϫΎ˴Ϩ˸ό˴Ϥ˴Π˴ϓ ˶έϮ͊μϟ ϲ˶ϓ ˴Φ˶ϔ˵ϧ˴ϭ ˳ξ˸ό˴Α ϲ˶ϓ ˵ΝϮ˵Ϥ˴ϳ ˳ά˶Ό˴ϣ˸Ϯ˴ϳ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˴π˸ό˴Α Ύ˴Ϩ˸ϛ˴ή˴Η˴ϭ ˱Ύο˸ή˴ϋ ˴Ϧϳ˶ή˶ϓΎ˴Ϝ˸Ϡ˶ϟ ˳ά˶Ό˴ϣ˸Ϯ˴ϳ ˴Ϣ͉Ϩ˴Ϭ˴Ο” (18: 99-100) And on that day We will leave a part of them in conflict with another part, and the trumpet will be blown, so We will gather them all together; And We will bring forth hell, exposed to view, on that day before the unbelievers. (Shakir) The future simple conveys the real time when the actions are going to take place. The equivalence of function displays how certain the fact that humans are going to witness those future events. 5. ‘Shall’ This modal verb has been employed 10 times by Irving, 77 times by Shakir and just 4 times by Pickthall. e.g. - “˴ϥϭ˵ή˴Θ˸ϔ˴ϳ Ϯ˵ϧΎ˴ϛ Ύ˴ϣ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˸Ϩ˴ϋ ͉Ϟ˴ο˴ϭ ͋ϖ˴Τ˸ϟ ˸Ϣ˵ϫϻ˸Ϯ˴ϣ ˶Ϫ͉Ϡϟ ϰ˴ϟ˶· ϭ͊Ω˵έ˴ϭ ˸Ζ˴ϔ˴Ϡ˸γ˴ Ύ˴ϣ ˳β˸ϔ˴ϧ ͊Ϟ˵ϛ Ϯ˵Ϡ˸Β˴Η ˴Ϛ˶ϟΎ˴Ϩ˵ϫ” (10: 30) There shall every soul become acquainted with what it sent before, and they shall be brought back to Allah, their true Patron, and what they devised shall escape from them. (Shakir) -“ (52) ˱ΎϘ˶Α˸Ϯ˴ϣ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˴Ϩ˸ϴ˴Α Ύ˴Ϩ˸Ϡ˴ό˴Ο˴ϭ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ˴ϟ Ϯ˵Βϴ˶Π˴Θ˸δ˴ϳ ˸Ϣ˴Ϡ˴ϓ ˸Ϣ˵ϫ˸Ϯ˴ϋ˴Ϊ˴ϓ ˸Ϣ˵Θ˸Ϥ˴ϋ˴ί ˴Ϧϳ˶ά͉ϟ ϲ˶Ύ˴ϛ˴ή˵η ϭ˵ΩΎ˴ϧ ˵ϝϮ˵Ϙ˴ϳ ˴ϡ˸Ϯ˴ϳ˴ϭ Ύϓ˶ή˸μ˴ϣ Ύ˴Ϭ˸Ϩ˴ϋ ϭ˵Ϊ˶Π˴ϳ ˸Ϣ˴ϟ˴ϭ Ύ˴ϫϮ˵ό˶ϗ˴Ϯ˵ϣ ˸Ϣ˵Ϭ͉ϧ˴ Ϯ͊Ϩ˴ψ˴ϓ ˴έΎ͉Ϩϟ ˴ϥϮ˵ϣ˶ή˸Π˵Ϥ˸ϟ ϯ˴˴έ˴ϭ ” (18: 52-53) And on the day when He shall say: Call on those whom you considered to be My associates. So they shall call on them, but they shall not answer them, and We will cause a separation between them. And the guilty shall see the fire, then they shall know that they are going to fall into it, and they shall not find a place to which to turn away from it. (Shakir) ‘Shall’ is traditionally believed to be a variation on the modal ‘will’ when the subject is I or we, especially in British English, conveying intention or ‘intermediate volition’ (Quirk et al. 1972: 99). However, in the American English, it is more common in formal, legal documents (ibid). Thus, ‘shall’ seems to be another equivalent of the Arabic structure in question, due to its emphasis on function and formality, especially in American 60
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 English. The percentage of the use of each of the above strategies is shown in Table 1. 9. Conclusion There are two main reasons to make the translation of the Noble Qur’an into English a very hard task. The first is the uniqueness of its language and the second is the remoteness between the SL and the TL, mainly in grammatical and cultural terms. They maximize the translator’s responsibility for selecting the structures and vocabulary which achieves the utmost possible level of equivalence. On the bases of the above data analysis, the following observations can be made: First, the past simple, which is the direct equivalent of the Arabic past verb, is ignored by the three translators in most cases. It seems to be unfit for the original function of certainty of future actions in the TL. Second, the present simple may be relevant for its ‘historical’ function; it is used to set a vivid scene for the listener or reader. However, it does not serve the purpose of future certainty. Although Pickthall has used it a lot to convey the future, it may actually be more appropriate for Qur’anic present tense verbs which describe the Hereafter, as they are believed to be scene-setters. Third, the present perfect could be a good choice only when an action has already preceded another one or has a direct effect on it. Fourth, the future simple and the modal ‘shall’ – which are favoured, respectively, by Irving and Shakir – are argued here to be excellent choices. The former represents a natural equivalent of the required function of certainty of Hereafter events. There is no doubt, for believers, that they will experience these events as soon as this life comes to an end and the Hereafter begins. The latter addresses the topic from another angle. Because it implies formality and loftiness and it gives biblical flavour, ‘shall’ could be communicatively successful in reflecting some of the grandeur of the Noble Qur’an. However, it is likely to have a more powerful effect on native speakers of American English than on speakers of British English. Table 1. Techniques for translating past verbs in the Noble Qur’an which speak about the Hereafter Verb form Irving Shakir Pickthall Past simple 5 (3.76%) 2 (1.47%) 0 (0%) Present simple 16 (11.76%) 25 (18.32%) 76 (55.88%) Present perfect 9 (6.61%) 1 (0.73%) 15 (11.02%) Future simple ‘will’ 95 (69.85%) 29 (21.32%) 39 (28.67%) ‘Shall’ 10 (7.35%) 77 (56.61%) 4 (2.94%) Others 1 (0.73%) 2 (1.47%) 2 (1.47%) 61
Al-Taher Translating Qur’anic Past Tense Structures... Mohammad Anwar Shafiq Al-Taher Department of Translation Zarqa University Jordan Email: [email protected] 62
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 References References in English Abdul-Raof, Hussein. (2001). Qur'an Translation, Discourse, Texture and Exegesis. Richmond: Curzon Press. Al-Hilali, Mohammad and Muhsin Khan. (1998). Noble Qur'an: English Translation of the Meanings and Commentary. (2007 ed.). Medina: King Fahd Complex. Al-Jabari, Raed. (2008). Reasons for the Possible Incomprehensibility of Some Verses of Three Translations of the Meaning of the Holy Quran into English. MA Thesis. Salford: University of Salford. Al-Kharabsheh, Aladdin and Bakri Al-Azzam. (2008). ‘Translating the invisible in the Qur’an’. Babel, 54 (1): 1-18. Al-Khawalda, Mohammad. (2004). ‘The deterioration of the usage of ‘kaana’ in the Holy Quran via translation’. Babel, 50 (30): 215-229. Bassnett, Suzan. (1991). Translation Studies. (revised ed.). London & New York: Routledge. Bell, Roger. (1993). Translation and Translating: Theory and Practice. London: Longman. Irving, Thomas. (1998). The Qur’an. (3rd ed.). Essex: Amana Trust Books. Jackson, Howard. (1995). Grammar and Meaning. London: Longman. Newmark, Peter. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. New York: Prentice Hall. Nida, Eugene. (1964). Toward a Science of Translating: with Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating. Leiden: Brill. Pickthall, Mohammad Marmaduke. (2001). The Glorious Qur’an. Yew York: Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an. Quirk, Randolf, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. (1972). A Grammar of contemporary English. London: Longman. Sanchez-Ortiz, Maria. (2000). ‘Equivalence and adequacy in translation’. In Myrian Salama-Carr (ed.), On Translating French Literature and Film II, 89-97. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Shakir, Mohammad Habib. (1999). The Qur’an Translation. (10th ed.). New York: Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an Inc. Vermeer, Hans. (1989). 'Skopos and ccommission in translational action'. In Andrew Chesterman (ed), Readings in Translation Theory, 173-187. Finland: Loimann Kirjapaino Oy. Zebiri, Kate. (2003). ‘Towards a rhetorical criticism of the Qur'an’. Journal of Qur'anic Studies, 5 (2): 95-120. References in Arabic .ϢϳήϜϟ ϥήϘϟ .ήθϨϠϟ ΔϴδϧϮΘϟ έΪϟ :βϧϮΗ . 1 . ρ ήϳϮϨΘϟϭ ήϳήΤΘϟ .( 1948 . ) ΪϤΤϣ ϦΑ ήϫΎτϟ ΪϤΤϣ ˬέϮηΎϋ ϦΑ 63
Al-Taher Translating Qur’anic Past Tense Structures... . 1 . ρ Ϣϴψόϟ ϥήϘϟ ήϴδϔΗ Ϧϣ ϢϴϫΎϔϤϟϭ έΎΛϵ ΓϮϔλ .( 2004 . ) ΪϤΤϣ ϦϤΣήϟ ΪΒϋ ˬϱήγϭΪϟ .ϊϳίϮΘϟϭ ή θϨϠϟ ϲϨϐϤϟ έΩ :νΎϳήϟ ˯ΎϴΣ· έΩ :ΕϭήϴΑ . 3 ρ .( ήϴΒϜϟ ήϴδϔΘϟ) ΐϴϐϟ ϴΗΎϔϣ .(˰ϫ 1420 . ) ήϤϋ ϦΑ ΪϤΤϣ ϦϳΪϟ ήΨϓ ˬϱίήϟ .ϲΑήόϟ ΙήΘϟ .ΔΒΤϤϟ έΩ :ϖθϣΩ . 1 ρ .ϪϴϧΎόϣ ϲϓ ΎϫήΛϭ ϥήϘϟ ΔϤΟήΗ .( 1998 ) .ΓΪΠϧ ˬϥΎπϣέ 3 . ρ . ϞϳΰϨΘϟ ξϣϮ Ϗ ϖΎϘΣ Ϧϋ ϑΎθϜϟ .(˰ϫ 1407 . ) ϭήϤϋ ϦΑ ΩϮϤΤϣ ϢγΎϘϟ ϮΑ ˬϱήθΨϣΰϟ .ϲΑήόϟ ΏΎΘϜϟ έΩ :ΕϭήϴΑ . ήϴΘδΟΎϣ ΔϟΎγέ . ϒϬϜϟ ΓέϮγ ϲϓ ΔϴΑϮϠγ ΕΎγέΩ .( 2006 . ) Ϊϴόγ ΪϤΤϣ ϥϭήϣ ˬϦϤΣήϟ ΪΒϋ . ΔϴϨσϮϟ ΡΎΠϨϟ ΔόϣΎΟ .ΔΜϳΪΤϟ ΔϟΎγήϟ ΔΒΘϜϣ :ϥΎϤϋ 1 . ρ . ϢϳήϜϟ ϥήϘϟ Δϐϟ .( 1981 . ) ϞϴϠΠϟ ΪΒϋ ˬϢϴΣήϟ ΪΒϋ 1 . ρ . ϲ˶ϧΎ˴ό˴Ϥϟ ˶ϖ˶Ύ˴ϗ˴Ω ˴Ϧ˶ϣ ˶Ϟ˸Τ͉Ϩϟ ˶Γ˴έ˸Ϯ˵γ ˸ϲ˶ϓ Ύ˴Ϥ˶ϟ ϲ˶ϧΎ˴ϴ˴Βϟ ˵ή˸ϴ˶δ˸ϔ͉Θϟ .( 2003 . ) ΡΎΘϔϟ Ϊ Βϋ ϊϳΩϭ ϲϣΎγ ˬϲϣϭΪϘϟ .ΡΎοϮϟ έΩ :ϥΎϤϋ .ϕϭήθϟ έΩ :ΓήϫΎϘϟ . 1 . ρ ϥήϘϟ ϲϓ ΔϣΎϴϘϟ ΪϫΎθϣ .( 1983 . ) Ϊϴγ ˬΐτϗ . 1 . ρ ϥήϘϟ ϡϮϠϋ ϲΑϭέ ϲϓ ϥΎΤϳήϟϭ Ρϭήϟ ϖΪΣ .( 2001 . ) ϦϴϣϷ ΪϤΤϣ ˬϲόϓΎθϟ ϱέήϬϟ ΓΎΠϨϟ ϕϮσ έΩ :ΕϭήϴΑ 64
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 Introduction to Arabic Literary Journalism: A Critical Study Samah Jumaa Abu Marzouk United Arab Emirates University, UAE Abstract: This paper examines Al Adab Al Sahafi: (Arabic literary journalism) as a possible branch of Anglo-American literary journalism, analyzing extracts from works c c of Al Jahith, Abu: Hayan Al Tawhedi:, Ya aqub Sanu: and Ghassan Kanafany according to the criteria set out by a number of Anglo-American literary journalism scholars such as Thomas Connery, Kevin Kerrane, Ben Yagoda, and Norman Sims. This paper also briefly surveys humor in Al Adab Al Sahafi: to the end of understanding its role at overcoming challenges of limited freedom of expression in the Arab world. c Keywords: literary journalism, Al Adab Al Sahafi, Al Jahith, Ya aqub Sanu, Kanafany. 1. Introduction Connery defines literary journalism as “nonfiction printed prose whose verifiable content is shaped and transformed into a story or sketch by use of narrative and rhetorical techniques generally associated with fiction” (1992:xiv). It was popularized in the sixties by journalists such as Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Joan Didion. However, according to Connery, its tradition goes back to before the nineteenth century when precursors such as Daniel Defoe, William Hazlitt and Charles Dickens wrote a variety of the genre (ibid:17). In A Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism, Connery examines the works of Mark Twain, John McPhee, and James Agee, who were not strictly literary journalists. They were best known for a more traditional category of writing like fiction. Similarly, Arabs have been producing journalism with a literary flare since the turn of the ninth century. Al Jahith as such was described by Mahmoud Adham, author of Adab Al Jahith Min Zaweya Sahfiya (Literature of Al Jahith, A Journalistic Prospective) as the pioneer of those who were half journalists, c c half fiction writers (1986:14). Egyptian theatre man Ya qub Sanu: started his own newspaper in 1878. Abu Naddara (The Man with Spectacles) was the first of its kind in terms of political daringness, detachment from formal Arabic, utilizing satire as well as other techniques usually associated with fiction. It was also the first newspaper to make use of pictorial sketches alongside its stories. 2. Arabic literary journalism: obstacles and pathways In an article titled Literary Journalism in the Middle East: The Paradox of Arab Exceptionalism David Abrahamson and Ibrahim Abu Sharif argue that there is a “relative absence” (2012:23) of literary journalism in the Arab world. They claim that “Exceptions exist, extraordinarily skilled journalists whose work can 65
Abu Marzouk Introduction to Arabic Literary Journalism ... comfortably be located within the genre – but their rarity support the validity of the generalization” (ibid:2). Their argument is based on three assumptions. First; much of the world’s literary journalism finds its expression in a western form, therefore a rarity in English translated texts or others that have been originally written in English, equals an overall absence thereof. Second, the article eliminated the possibility of some variety of literary journalism written in Arabic speculating that “a dearth of a literary form in one language may reasonably lead to the inference that there is a similar dearth in another, namely English and Arabic” (ibid:2). And third, they put freedom of expression as a precondition for any form of journalism to flourish. Indeed, most of the world’s leading literary journalism is of Anglo- American origins. Yet, literary journalism in essence is about extrapolating universal significance from isolated experience (Ashdown ed.1985:xxx), as well as extracting a reality found by focusing on the internal rather than the external (Connery 1992:17).True there are issues with regards to censoring and restricted freedom of press in the Arab world, but an argument can be made for such to become a motivation to stretch creativity and actually write better nonfiction. Furthermore, holding the American interpretation of literary journalism on a pedestal, is pigeonholing and goes against the universality of the genre, as John S. Bak wrote in the introduction to Literary Journalism Across The Globe “we should pit international literary journalists against Wolfe’s manifesto at times, if only to demonstrate that a European, African or Asian literary journalism is not like an American … but that it nonetheless advances our understanding and appreciation of the form” (Bak& Reynolds ed. 2011:18). This paper attempts to do just that, analyzing Arabic extracts and juxtaposing them against Anglo-American criteria, only to further explore the features of Arabic literary journalism. These include excerpts from Al Jahith’s Book of Misers, and c c Book of Animals, Y aqub Sanu: whose journalism, according to kendall, was the starting point for nineteenth century Egyptian literary journalism, and Ghassan Kanafany, as a fairly recent example of contemporary Arabic literary journalism. Moreover, it is also arguable that this type of cultural expression has not reached its highest potential yet. Indeed, there are obstacles in the face of producing the kind of writing reminiscent of John Hersey’s immortal depiction of the horrors of war in Hiroshima. Such masterpiece was only possible through appropriate financial and creative support. The very kind Hersey received from his editors at The New Yorker (Roiland 2011:26-27). Moreover, it is as Sims Correctly concluded “funny thing about giving writers lots of time, money, space, and freedom—you tend to get the best writing in the country in return.” (Sims 2008:169). Journalists in the Arab World lack such support. However, what Abu Sharaf considers an obstacle, can be viewed differently. If there is one thing that tyranny does is that it breeds creative writers, and equally, “sharp readers” (Douglas and Malti-Douglas 1994:5). Oppression has fueled the production of 66
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 literary journalism as much as, if not more than, freedom has. Having been denied the freedom to express the truth, censored journalists simply experiment with literary techniques to couch the truth in subversive ways. An example of such was the literary journalism produced in communist controlled Slovenia, where journalists disguised their take on the current state of affairs, as stories (Bak& Raynolds 2011:6). Likewise, the absence of free press in the Middle East, encouraged resorting to literary techniques, therefore going back to an art form that was practiced as early as the eight century, by philosophers like Al Jahith, for a different purpose. Unlike Slovenians, Arab censored journalists, often use humor to mask criticism. One reason is that it is difficult to condemn a humorist. An accusation needs to be based on either what has been said literally or what rests between the lines. What has been said literally is usually not the point, thus the accusation does not have an effect. If the accusation is based on what has been said between the lines, the humorist can always claim he never said it (Qassim 2007:22-23). 3. The father of Al Adab Al Sahafi Literary journalism in the region arguably dates back to the eight century. The work of the Al Jahith, is not only important for its literary journalistic merit, but for the study of humor therein. There are possibly two functions to humor in Arabic literary journalism in general, and the satirical column specifically; both a disguise and means to draw a broad audience. These are functions imposed by demands of an era in which opinions cannot be explicitly expressed. However, Al Jahith and many before him witnessed a different time, one that scholars were not suppressed. Abu: Haya:n Al Tawhedi: wrote Mathaleb Al Wazi:rayn (Flaws of the Two Ministers) lashing out at princes and ministers of his time (Ibrahim n.d:44) without fear or discretion. Literary journalism as well as humor of that time was means of expressing the reality of an incongruous community. Roiland wrote “there has historically been a need for literary journalists to both thoroughly report on an event and present it in a manner that will engage and c incite the public” (2011:20). Abu: Othman Amro Bin Bahr Al Jahith lived at such time. The Abbasid Caliphate was built on the ruins of the Ummayed Caliphate in 132 AH. On the one hand, it was the Golden Age of Islamic knowledge. Mosques were the equivalent of open universities. Libraries such as the House of Wisdom (Husain 1988:25) were built on a massive scale to encompass the huge amount of works written as well as exported and translated from other languages. On the other hand, the empire was being torn apart by internal strife. The Abbasi Caliphs depended heavily on the support of Persians to overthrow the Ummayed rule, that Arabs were beginning to feel alienated, therefore several fractions of the empire rebelled and started their own autonomous states, among which were the Fatimiyas in Egypt, and Al Hamdaniyas in Syria (ibid:20). Persians, followed by Turks, continued to grow more powerful to the point where they had total control of the Caliphs. There was also the incongruity manifested in the spread of prostitution, same sex relationships, and extravagant life style, against the massive numbers 67
Abu Marzouk Introduction to Arabic Literary Journalism ... of mosques overflowed with the pious. Such environment breaded a kind of journalism that depicted the mishaps of society in a style governed by Al zurf (humor). Al Jahith’s society, according to Husain “veered away from its natural course, thus becoming a target for ridicule” (1998:26). A statement supported Al Jahith who said “when limits are exceeded, even in religion or wisdom, which are the best of things, they become ugly and disrespected” (Husain 1988:26). Mahmoud Adham described Al Jahith as a “literature man and a journalist all in one” (1986:223). In a section titled Al Adab Al Sahafi:, Adham puts forward a number of criteria that a piece of ‘literary journalism’ needs to have, one of which is innovation, saying Just as a literary figure needs to be innovative when choosing a concept for a piece, a well practiced journalist needs to be just as innovative in finding the right concept. An idea that is new, fresh and unvisited, or perhaps an old concept viewed from a different angle (1986:25). Adham, therefore, predated Kerrane and Yagoda who suggested innovation as a precondition for literary journalism (1997:14) in their book The Art of Fact. Furthermore, he suggested that pictorial representation alongside a story, or what we now call Caricatures to be part of the growing genre (1986:27), an art form introduced by Al Jahith and envisaged by other Arab c c literary journalists such as Ya qub Sanu: . Journalistic writing before Al Jahith was dry and void of character, until he started a new trend through which the written word became a “mirror of life and society” (Adham 1986:42-43). His stories were product of what Kerrane and Yagoda call a process of active fact gathering (1997:13), observing, testing his sources and letting the reader know where he got the information from, sometimes citing two sources for the same story. He also warned the reader whenever was skeptical of the authority of the narrator; in The Book of Animals he said: .... ήΎσ ϥϮϓήόϳ ϢϬϧ ϥϮϳήΤΒϟ Ϣϋί Ϊϗϭ Sailors “claimed” they knew a bird that ….. (Al Jahith 1965:234) c Note his choice of wording, za am or ‘claimed’ suggests that he neither trusts nor questions the credibility of the source. Yet when he is certain, he lets the reader know by saying, for instance: ϩήΒΧ ϰϟ ϦϜγϭ ϪϠϘόΑ ϖΛ ϦϤϣ ϩέ Ϧϣ ϲϧήΒΧ ΪϘϓ ˬ ϥΪϛήϜϟ ϥήϗ Ύϣϭ As for Rhinoceros, one that I trust his intellect and rest upon his word, saw it and informed me ... (Al Jahith 1968:129) Whenever he was dubious of a story told to him, he would insinuate such, for instance: ϦϜϴϟ ϦϜϟϭ ˬ Ϫϟ έΎϜϧϻ ϲϨΒΠόϳ ϻ Ϛϟάϛ ϭ ήΒΨϟ άϬΑ έήϗϻ ϲϨΒΠόϳ ϻϭ ˬΎϬόϤδΗ ϥ ΖΒΒΣ Δϳϭέ ΎϬϨϜϟ ϭ .Ϟϴϣ ϩέΎϜϧ ϰϟ ϚΒϠϗ But it is a story I wished you to hear, I do not fancy validating, or rejecting it, though your heart should lean towards rejection. (Al Jahith 1967:34) He also stated in the following section titled Al Shak Wa Al Yaqi:n (Doubts and Affirmations); 68
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 Ϫϟ ΔΒΟϮϤϟ ΕϻΎΤϟ ϭ ϦϴϘϴϟ ϊοϮϣ ΎϬΑ ϑήόΘϟ ˬϪϟ ΔΒΟϮϤϟ ΎϬΗϻΎΣ ϭ Ϛθϟ ϊοϮϣ ϑήϋΎϓ άϫ ΪόΑ ϭ .ΖΒΜΘϟ ϢΛ ϒϗϮΘϟ ϑήόΗ ϻ ϚϟΫ ϲϓ ϦϜϳ Ϣϟ ϮϠϓ ˬΎϤϠόΗ Ϫϴϓ ϙϮϜθϤϟ ϲϓ Ϛθϟ ϢϠόΗϭ Know when to place doubt, and know when to rest assured. Learn to doubt what needs to be doubted. This process is necessary to learn how to stop and verify (ibid:35). By asserting the importance of verifying one’s data Al Jahith not only supports but predates Talese’s argument that while literary journalism reads like fiction, it is not fiction, and should be “as reliable as the most reliable reportage” (1993:vii). In the Book of Misers Al Jahith collects, interprets and by the same token, mocks misers, beggars, fishermen, traders, singers, panders and even the Baghdadian elites, debunking the mishaps of his society as well as human weaknesses in general. A function he shares with Palestinian journalist/novelist Ghassan Kanafany, who views Al Maqala Al Sakhera (the satirical column or essay) as a weapon that exposes and destroys masks (Kanafany 1996:14). Adham wrote “Al Jahith’s misers were not recollected from the pages of history, they came out of his environment, he stemmed their stories from friends and neighbors from Al Basra or Bagdad and others” (1986:66). He was a great “photographer, one that knew exactly how to transfer a scene with all its details on paper, aided by a miraculous ability to observe. Such gift enabled him to stay true to the original scene, all the while perfecting his story telling techniques” (ibid:80), again fulfilling another criteria, set many centuries later by Kerrane and Yagoda, Wolfe and Barbara Lounsberry; the art of constructing scenes. Al Jahith’s style was characterized by simplicity of language and attention to c detail. He, as Abd Al Hali:m Husain, author of Al Sukhreya fi: Adab Al Jahith (Satire in The Literature of Al Jahith) claimed “steered clear of metaphors unless needed to highlight the overall picture. He did not fictionalize, for he believed the reader would drift away from the reality, the author was trying to convey, and so his books were conceived as factual, honest and unembellished” (1988:44-45). He often resorted to dialogue and other such techniques associated with literature. As Husain wrote: Al Jahith resorted to some techniques associated with theatre, even though Arabs did not get acquainted with theatre until centuries after his c time. He depicted the character of “Ahmed Bin Abd Al Waha:b” at c Resalat Al Tarbe wa Al Tadwi:r (Letter of Squaring and Circling) in artistry unprecedented in the history of Arab Literature, combining in his depiction of the latter as a human symbol of arrogance, the psyche of a philosopher with the spirit of a scholar (1988:239). The Jahithian approach fueled generations to write in a way that acts as both; a window for his mastery in capturing real life onto paper, and a mirror because he allowed readers to relate and reflect upon their lives (Masse n.d:Slide 8). Ibn Qutaibiya, Abu Al Mutaher Al Azdi:, Al Washa , Abu: Haya:n Al c c Tawhedi:, Ibn Al Jawzi:, and Abd Al Azi:z Al Beshri: were among many that were influenced by the Jahithian style. Al Beshri: specifically is of grave 69
Abu Marzouk Introduction to Arabic Literary Journalism ... importance here for his articles arguably act as a bridge between Al Adab Al Sahafi: (Arabic literary journalism) and Al Maqala Al Sakhera (the satirical essay). True, Al Jahith’s literary journalism is vastly different from what we identify now as Al Maqala Al Sakhera or satirical column, for he wrote volumes varying in subject matter, factual, using humor both as technique and as an end by itself. On the other hand, Al Maqala Al Sakhera is closer to what the west identifies as the Sketch, which is significantly shorter, and could contain fictional elements. Al Beshri: a pioneer of Al Maqala Al Sakhera, and according to Husain “was imitating Al Jahith in style, mockery and lightheartedness, he was – just as his predecessor- excellent at depicting scenes” (1988:122) which made him known in Egyptian circles and around the Arab world as Sheik Al Sakheri:n ( master satirist). Therefore, an argument can be made that the origin of Al Maqala Al Sakhera leads back to Al Jahith as well. 4. Al Adab Al Sahafi: and the Sketch Exploring Arab literary journalism is –for the most part- the aim of this paper, but because Arab scholarship in this area is scarce compared to its Anglo- American counterpart, There is a need to apply the latter’s criteria to the end of, investigating the differences as well as the similarities which in turn will further our understanding of Arabic literary journalism specifically and the whole discipline generally. There have been at least four distinct time periods, where a significant amount of literary journalistic works were produced in America: 1890s, 1930s- 1940s, 1960s-1970s, and today (Roiland 2011:22). My concern is the nineteenth century, which manifested itself in the art of the sketch. Defined as a “brief vignette often about a seemingly inconsequential aspect of daily life, which allowed the writer to experiment with his writing voice and perspective, these could be factual or fictional, funny or straight, informative or descriptive” (Sims 2008:46). Sketches were simple and widespread in newspapers and the foremost practitioner of this art form was Mark Twain, whose stories “challenged readers to get into the habit of being skeptical of all texts and to exercise judgment about the voice of the newspaper narrator” (Sims 2008:50). Twain’s sketches often contained fictionalized elements, which later writers would subsequently eschew due to the rising professional standards of the job (Roiland 2011:22). Abu Naddara, a newspaper started in 1878 by Egyptian theatre man c c Ya qub Sanu: , is an example of the earlier Arab sketch. Elisabeth Kendall, author of Literature, Journalism and the Avant-Garde, wrote that the real birth of Egyptian journalism with both a political and literary impact was achieved through his efforts, for he identified with ordinary Egyptians and expressed his c political opposition through satirical journalism (2006:14). Ya qub made a name for himself through theatre, and was nicknamed Egypts Molière (Baignieres c 2009:27). Kendall views Abu Naddara as a continuation of Sanu: ’s theatrical activity, for it contained theatrical sketches and dialogues incorporating narrative and satirical elements (2006:15). However, it is important to point out that materials for his sketches were solely derived from his surroundings; Abu 70
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 Naddara was “the tongue through which Egyptians expressed their sentiment” (Abdu 1953:53). He also drew much of his inspiration from letters sent to him by the public, and was successful in capturing the tone of Egyptian national consciousness and hostility towards the Khedive and the British (Kendall c 2006:15). Sanu: wrote Abu Naddara in Egyptian dialect, thus identifying with ordinary Egyptians. He also wrote in standard Arabic, Turkish, Levantine and sometimes French (Abdu 1953:54) which helped increase readership. The first run of Abu Naddara, however, lasted only two months and c Sanu: was allegedly exiled to France for having incurred the wrath of the Khedive through his satire (Kendall 2006:15). Two months afterwards he started a sister newspaper called Abu Naddara Zarqa: (The Man with Blue Spectacles) and continued to lash out at the Khedive and the British. c Perhaps the two most distinguishable literary techniques, that sat Sanu: c apart from contemporaries like Abd Allah Nadi:m were his unique dialogues and heavy use of symbolism. His dialogues at times would assume a rhythmic flow that made it read like a poem. The following is an example from the first th issue of Abu Naddar Zarqa:, dated 7 August 1878 (Abdu 1953:86).A dialogue c between Sheik Al Hara (the mayor) symbolizing Khedive Isma el, Abu Naddara c symbolizing Sanu: and by a larger context Egyptian middle class, and Abu Al Ghulb Al Falla:h symbolizing the peasant population in Egypt. The sketch features pictorial representation of Sheik Al Hara on his knees begging Abu Naddara to stop publishing his newspaper, while Abu Naddara is standing tall with his cane and spectacles and Abu Ghulb Al Falla:h next to him insinuating unity among the Egyptian public. Abu Ghulb is conversing in rural Egyptian dialect, encouraging Abu Naddara to keep writing. The dialogue makes use of c masculine rhyme and is written in both Cairene and S aidi dialect, the two most spoken varieties of Arabic in Egypt. ϲγΎϗ ΎϬΑήο ϚΗΪϳήΟ ˬΓέΎΤϟ Φϴη ϚϤϋ ϰϠϋ ΓέΎψϧ ϮΑ Ύϳ ϖϔη ˬΔΑϮϨϟ ϱΩ Ϧϣ ΔΑϮΘϟ :ΓέΎΤϟ Φϴη - ϊΟέ ΓΪϳήΠϟ ϲϨϋ Ζόϓέ Ϋ ˬΔΒόμϟ ΔϔϴΨϤϟ ΎϬϟϮϗ΄Α ΔΒϋήϟ ϲΒϠϘϓ ΖτΣ ϱΩ ˬϲγέ ϰϠϋ ΎϬϨϣ ϑΎΧ .ΓΪϴϤΤϟ ϲϘϳήτϟ ϒϴϛ ϰϘΑ ϡϮϠόϣ ϊϴϤΠϟ ΪϨϋ ϙ ήϣ Ζϧ ϩΩ ˬΏϮτϟΎΑ ϙϮϤΟέ Ϯϟ ϭ ΏϮΘΗ Ύϣ ϙήϤϋ Ζϧ :ΓέΎψϧϮΑ - .ϡϮθϣ Ύϳ ϚϴϠϋ ϖϔη έϮΠϟϭ ϢϠψϟ Ϧϣ ΎϨϠΘΟ ϩΩ ˬΓέΎδΧ ϩΩ ήϳΎϐϟ ϲϓ ΔΠϔθϟ ˬΓέΎψϧϮΑ Ύϳ ζΠϔθΗ Ύϣ :Ρϼϔϟ ΐϠϏϮΑ - ( 1953:87 ϭΪΒϋ) .έϮΘϟ ϰϠϋ ΝϮδϟ ϝΰϨϳ Ύϣ ϱί ΎϨϴϠϋ ϝίΎϧϭ Shiek Al Hara: have mercy Abu Naddara, your paper is hitting me hard. It is petrifying me with its strong discourse. If you stop writing, I will behave myself. Abu Naddara: you will never change. How can I pity you when everyone is aware of your doings. Abu Ghulb Al Falla:h: don’t pity him Abu Naddara, it is a waste on him. His unfairness is making us suffer, beating us up like bulls. By the turn of the twentieth century, Al Maqala Al Sakhera continued to evolve, focusing more on literary techniques, while staying true to the facts. Humor remained the running thread and go-to technique to mask political agendas in addition to it being a way for identify with different demographics. 71
Abu Marzouk Introduction to Arabic Literary Journalism ... Ghassan Kanafany, a Palestinian activist and novelist, wrote a column between 1967 and 1972, in 'Al Saya:d' magazine, 'Al Muharrer' and 'Al Anwa:r' weekly annex. All were published in Lebanon, and were widely read. In the preface to Fares Fares, titled 'On Ghassan-Fares Fares- Kanafany's serious humorous essays' Mohammed Dakroub wrote: Through these collated articles, scholars can now study the art of 'the essay’ according to Ghassan Kanafany, and how he artistically sculpts them to take the form of short stories through an eye catching opening, a peek, a slow process of finding resolve and finally, an unexpected conclusion that opens the door for other questions to be asked (Kanafany 1996:22). An argument can be made here that Kanafany fits Adham criteria of those who ventured into journalism through literature or vise versa (1986:26-27). As a novelist, critic, and person, Kanafany was serious. In his fiction he maintained what Kilpatrick called 'an understated realism' (1999:12) achieved through his careful depiction of the Palestinian peasant. Death was a frequent end to many c of his protagonists, such as Abu Qais, Ass ad and Marwan in Men in the Sun or c Jada an in Falcon. The serious tone in The Land of Sad Oranges is equally inescapable, the orange; a symbol of land and to some extent, hope, is portrayed in the end as 'dried up and shriveled'(ibid:80), in turn, Letter From Gaza's protagonist refuses to leave his country to live in the land 'where there is greenery, water and lovely faces' and opts to 'learn from [his cousin's] leg, amputated from the top of the thigh, what life is and what existence is worth'(ibid:111-115). However, in his column, Kanafany “was able to emancipate himself from being: the responsible, committed Palestinian activist.'(Kanafany 1996:8), writing on a variety of subject matter in lighthearted humor. In an article titled 'On Sexuality: Progressing Towards Decadence' Kanafany puts forward his unique perspective on relationships: In mating season, female spider pretentiously shies away from the male who is – like your average idiot - thinks he owns the situation, and before he knows it, she is devouring his upper half while the lower is still engaged in sexual intercourse … sometimes the male would be fully aware of the trap, so he rushes through the process and sets his six legs on fire, if he is distined to make it, he metamorphoses into a philosopher, until next mating season. … What is a man, anyway, if not a spider? Sometimes a spider is better off, for he has six arms – and us – how often are we failed by a pair of hands, helpless to put out the fire burning our loins. At least a spider dies satisfied. (ibid:164-167) This extract, fulfils - for example – Lounsberry’s four constitutive features of literary Journalism (1990:xiii): documentable subject matter chosen from the real world; here the author presents a unique prospective on a topic almost discussed to death, an approach extremely innovative and showcases both creativity and a sharp eye. Exhaustive research; the original article contains verses of poetry, classical examples from both theatre and literature as well as his own observations from the kind of conduct he witnesses on the streets of 72
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 Beirut. Portraying a scene and fine writing using a literary prose style ; the author uses his literary background to draw a picture of the male spider preoccupied with the mating process, negligent of the fact that the female is about to devour him. Other criteria such as voice is present in the sketch titled 'On Writing About Pens, Not Books' Kanafany achieves literary effect through code switching. Linguist Reem Bassiouney argues the use of Standard Arabic is a form of detachment from reality, while None-Standard Arabic is a manifestation of attachment (Bassiouney 2010). In this article Kanafany writes about a seemingly insignificant encounter, but he exaggerates giving it character, and voice. He writes: Ϊϴϟ ϩάϫ .ΔϴλϮμϠϟ ωϮϧ ϊθΑ ϲϟ ΔΒδϨϟΎΑ ϥϼΜϤϳ ΎϤϬϨϜϟ ϭ ΎϤϬϓήϋ ϻ ϦϴϠΟέ ϰϠϋ ΪϳΪη ΪϘΣ ήϤο Ϧϣ ίΎϔϗ ΖΤΗ ΐϬϨϟ έΎϔχ΄Α ΓΩϭΰϤϟ ϩάϫ ϭ ΔϴϟϭΆδϤϟ ϡΪόϧ ωέΫ ΪΟϮΗ ίΎϔϘϟ ϭ Ϊϴϟ ˯έϭϭ ˬΐϳάϬΘϟ ήϳήΣ ϪΘϴϘΘϟ ΎττΨϣ ΎμϴϤϗ βΒϠϳ ϞΟέ ϝϭϻ .ΎϬϨϴόΑ ΔϧΎϴΨϟ ϲϫ ωέάϟ ΐϳάϬΘΑ ϲϨϣ ΐϠσ ϦϴΣ ήϓΎδϧ ϥ Ϛηϭ ϰϠϋ ΎϨϛ ϭ ΕϭήϴΑ έΎτϣ ϲ ϓ .ΓέΩΎϐϤϟ ΓέΎϤΘγ ϪΑ ϼϤϴϟ ϲϤϠϗ ϩήϴϋ ϥ ˬϪϟ ϞϴΜϣ ϻ !ϪθτϠϓ - Ύϣ έΎτϣ ϲϓ ήπΤΘϣ ϼΟέ ϲϘΘϠϳ ήπΤΘϣ ϞΟέ ϱ ϥ΄η ˬϊΒτϟΎΑ ϲϤϠϗ ϪΘϴτϋ I possess grave spitefulness towards two gentlemen I do not know, but both represent the ugliest form of banditry. This robbing hand masked under a silk glove of politeness, behind the hand and glove lays an arm of irresponsibility; this arm is treason itself. The first was wearing a striped teashirt when I met him in Beirut airport. We were about to depart when he asked in unprecedented politeness, to borrow my pen. As a gentlemen who just met another gentlemen in an airport I, of course, gave him my pen - -- and he stole it! (Kanafany 1996:142). Kanafany built up a scene, using a variety of techniques related to fiction such as synecdoche (robbing hand), Personification (arm of irresponsibility) and metaphor (under a silk glove of politeness). He uses Standard Arabic throughout the entire excerpt, therefore, and according to Bassiouney establishing a barrier, distancing himself from his piece and by the same token, the reader, until the very end when he swiftly switches to dialect using the verb latash which is Lebanese lexicon for saraq. With such technique, the author was able to achieve two purposes; first he establishes He established his voice as well as a humorous effect through breaking the linear stream of Standard Arabic with as few as one word, genuine and spontaneous. We know while the author is of Palestinian origin, he is acquainted with Lebanese vernacular and so we process the word latash as coming from Kanafany the person and not the writer, therefore establishing a connection with him on a more intimate level, hence taking down all barriers. Second, he achieves comic effect through a similar process of breaking the linear stream of Standard Arabic with dialect, and having it come at the very end, it was the equivalent of a punch line, what twelfth-century doctor, Ibn al-Mutran calls “astonishment” (Kishtainy 1985:5) or “a sudden conclusion” (Gruner 2011:8) that leads to a burst of laughter. 73
Abu Marzouk Introduction to Arabic Literary Journalism ... 5. Humor in Al Adab Al Sahafi The Middle East is perceived, typically by the west, as a hub for conflict. In fact, Nichole Force, author of Humor’s hidden Powers, concluded at one of her chapters that the world is convinced Arab communities “lack a sense of humor” (2011:19). Contrary to popular belief, humor is deeply rooted in Arab/Islamic culture. The word laughter appears a number of times in Quran, sometimes as one of God’s blessings, as a sign of fulfillment or as an expression of ridicule (Kishtainy 1985:19). Likewise, humor is as present in Sunnah as seriousness is (Al Obaidy 2011:19 ). It was said that Prophet Mohammed (SAAW) used to laugh until his molars appear (Al Obaidy 2011:56). He also reportedly said “I joke and I say nothing but the truth” (Kishtainy 1985:18). Prophet Mohammed’s humor was didactic and did not seek to criticize or ridicule, unlike that of Al Jahith, which was the offspring of an age full of contradictions (Husain 1988:16), indeed he was humorously critical, yet it was not malice. Al Jahith was zarif (funny) by nature; he spared nothing and no one from his mockery, including himself. On the other hand, humor of Abu Hayan Al Tawhedi:, a fourth century (AH) philosopher files under Gallows. Coined by the Germans; the term refers to cynical humor that derives from stressful or traumatic situations (Force 2011:4-5). As a child Al Tawhedi: was unprivileged, both his parents passed away while still very young. He then went on to live with his uncle, who was anything but nurturing. Al Tawhedi:’s humor acted as a mirror of his tortured soul, it was “part of his pessimistic philosophy on escaping reality, denouncing it and by the same token, mocking it” (Ibrahim n.d:250). Humor in Arab/Islamic history is abundant; it takes on many functions, and this section is intended to briefly highlight three facets of humor in history and contextualizes each in terms of humor in Arab Literary Journalism today. Al Maqala Al Sakhera makes use of Al Jahithian humor, aims to entertain, criticize c c and identify. Abd Al Aziz Al Beshri:, Ahmed Khalid Tawfiq, Dina Rayan, Jihan Al Gherbawi: to mention a few. As for Al Tawhedi: humor enthusiasts, c c Yousef Ma ati:, Zakareya Tamer, Mahmoud Al Sa dani:, and Mohammed Al Maghoot are good examples. Analysis as well as a process of compare and contrast between articles from these two categories will certainly benefit the study of Arabic literary journalism, but the author will leave that to future research. As for function of humor in Al Adab Al Sahafi: generally and Al Maqala Al Sakhera specifically, some root for humor’s protesting abilities such as Kathleen Stokker who argued in Folklore Fights The Nazis¸ that Norway’s occupation humor had played a significant role in developing a resistance mentality among the people (1997:17). While Kishtainy on the other hand questions the use of humor as a positive weapon in the battle against oppression, he argues that people joke about their oppressors, not to overthrow them but to 74
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2014 endure them” (1985:7). Dwelling on both motives can also be subject matter for future research. References: Abdou, Ibrahim. (1953). Abu Naddara: Emam Al Sahafa Al Fukaheya Al Musawara Wa Za'eem Al Masrah Fe Mesr 1839-1913 (Abu Naddara: Dean of Pictorial Satirical Journalism and a Theatrical Leader in Egypt 1839-1913). Cairo: Dar Al Kotub Al Mesreya. Abusharif, Ibrahim and David Abrahamson. (2012). ‘Literary Journalism in the Middle East: The Paradox of Arab Exceptionalism’. In Richard Lance Keeble & John Tulloch (eds.), Global Literary Journalism: Exploring the Journalistic Imagination, 1-13. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Adham, Mahmoud. (1986). Adab Al Jahith Men Zaweya Sahafeya (The Literature of Al Jahith from a Journalistic Prospective). Cairo: Al Ahram. Al Obaidi, Laila. (2010). Al Fekh Fi: Al Islam (Humor in Islam). Beirut: Dar Al Sakqi. Ashdown, Paul (1985). James Agee: Selected Journalism. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Bak, Rernolds (eds.).(2011). Literary Journalism Across The Globe. Amherst and Boston:University of Massachusetts Press. Bassiouney, Reem. (2010). ‘Redefining Identity Through Code Choice In Al- Hubb fl ‘l-Manfa By Baha Tahir.’ Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 10(5): 101-118. Connery, Thomas B. (1992). A Source Book of American Literary Journalism: Representative Writers in an Emerging Genre. Westport: GreenWood Press. Douglas, Allen and Fedwa Malti-Douglas. (1994). Arab Comic Strips: Politics of an Emerging Mass Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Force, Nichole. (2011). Humor's Hidden Power: Weapon, Shield & Psychological Salve. Los Angeles: Braeden Press. Gruner, Charles R. (2011). The Game of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of why we laugh. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Haron, Abd Al Salam Mohammed. (Ed.). (1965). Kitab Al Hayawan (The Book of Animals) (Vol. 2nd ). Cairo: Mustafa Al Babi Al Halabi & Sons. Haron, Abd Al Salam Mohammed. (Ed.). (1965). Kitab Al Haywan (The Book of Animals) (Vol. 3rd). Cairo: Mustafa Al Babi Al Halabi & Sons. Haron, Abd Al Salam Mohammed (Ed.). (1968). Kitab Al Hayawan (The Book of Animals) (Vol. 7th). Cairo: Mustafa Al Babi A Halabi & Sons. Haron, Abd Al Salam Mohammed (Ed.). (1967). Kitab Al Hayawan (The Book of Animals) (Vol. 6th ). Cairo: Mustafa Al Babi Al Halabi & Sons. 75
Abu Marzouk Introduction to Arabic Literary Journalism ... Hartstock, John C. (2000). A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Modern Narrative Form. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Hussain, Abd Al Haleem. (1988). Al Sukhreya Fe Adab Al Jahith (Satire in the Literature of Al Jahith).Tripoli: Al Dar Al Jamaheriya. Ibrahim, Zakareya. (n.d). Abu Hayan Al Tawhede: Adeeb Al Falasefah w Faylasouf Al Odaba' (Abu Hayan Al Tawhede: Literary Man and Philosopher) Cairo: Al Dar Al Masreya. Kanafany, Ghassan. (1996). Fares Fares. Beirut: Dar Al Adab. Kanafany, Ghassan. (1999). Men in the Sun & Other Palestinian Stories. Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Keeble, Richard and John Tulloch. (eds.).(2012). Global Literary Journalism: Exploring The Journalistic Imagination. New York: Peter Lang. Kendall, Elisabeth. (2006). Literature, Journalism and the Avant-Garde: Intersection in Egypt. New York: Routledge. Kishtainy, Khalid. (1985). Arab Political Humour. London: Quartet Books. Lounsberry, Barbara. (1990). The Art of Fact: Contemporary Artists of Nonfiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Masse, Mark.(n.d.) Introduction to Literary Journalism [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from: http://mhmasse.iweb.bsu.edu/presentations.html O'Rourke, Meghan (2003) ‘Literary License: Defending Joseph Mitchell's composite characters’.Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/ culturebox/2003/07/literary_license.html c c Penier, Paul. (2009). Alboum Abu Naddara: Ya qoub Sanu: (Abu Naddara's c c Album: Ya qoub Sanu: ) (H. Ibrahim, Trans.). Cairo: National Center for Theatre, Music and Folk Arts. Qassim, Andrea. (2007). Arab Political Cartoons: The 2006 Lebanon War. Master, Lunds University. Roiland, Joshua M. (2011). Engaging the public: Toward a political theory of literary journalism. PhD Thesis, Saint Louis University. Sims, Norman. (2008). True Stories: A century of literary Journalism. Evanston, IL: NorthWestern University Press. Stokker, Kathleen. (1997). Folklore Fights The Nazis. London: The University of Wisconsin Press. Talese, Gay. (1993). Fame and Obscurity. New York: Ballantine Books. Yagoda, Ben and Kevin Kerrane (eds.).(1997). The Art of Facts. New York:Touchstone. Zavarzadeh, Mas’ud. (1976). The Mythopoeic Reality: The Postwar American Non-fiction Novel. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 76
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2015 At the Intersection of L1 Congruence and L2 Exposure: Collocational Knowledge of Advanced Arab Users of English Alla Zareva, Old Dominion University Asmaa Shehata, University of Notre Dame Abstract: The study is quantitative research, examining the effects of learning environment and native language (L1) on the collocational knowledge of advanced Arab users of English as a second language (ESL) (n=34) and foreign language (EFL) (n=33). The participants were university students who completed two collocation tests, containing verb-noun and noun-adjective congruent (collocations with L1-L2 translation equivalents) and incongruent (L2-specific) collocations. The results showed that the two groups markedly differed in their collocational knowledge (both productively and receptively), with the ESL participants performing significantly better than the EFL students. As to the effects of the native language, the results revealed that the ESL participants experienced noticeable effects of Arabic both receptively and productively with the influences being significantly stronger for the incongruent collocations (L2-only) than the congruent ones (L1-L2). Interestingly, the EFL participants showed less L1 effects in their production and perception of collocations. The findings suggested that both L1 congruence and second language (L2) exposure have an effect on the acquisition of English collocations. The findings are discussed in light of some pedagogical expectations and instructional recommendations that can improve advanced ESL and EFL Arab students’ collocational knowledge productively and receptively. Keywords: advanced ESL learners, advanced EFL learners, L1 Arabic, collocations, L1 congruence 1. Introduction and overview of the literature Many recent discussions of second language (L2) competence have brought to the fore the central role of lexical competence at any level of language proficiency. Within the area of lexical research, scholars have also stressed the importance of knowing multiword items, referred to as formulaic language (e.g., idioms, collocations, phrasal expressions, etc.), in addition to knowing single words. Some of these items have been shown to be learned, accessed, produced, and processed very much like single words or faster than free combinations (Conklin and Schmitt 2008, Jiang and Nekrasova 2007, Schmitt and Carter 2004, Schmitt and Underwood 2004, Underwood, Schmitt and Galpin 2004). Furthermore, as Erman and Warren (2000) have noted, their significant presence in written and spoken language suggests that multi-word combinations cannot be considered marginal phenomena in language use. The researchers found that prefabricated expressions constituted 58.6% of the spoken English and 52.3% of 77
Zareva and Shehata At the Intersection of L1 Congruence ... the written English discourse they analyzed which shows English native speakers’ considerable preference for using such items in their communication. By and large, collocations can be described as a subcategory of formulaic language that is a transitional area between idioms and free combinations (Benson, Benson and Ilson 1986; Laufer and Waldman 2011; Wolter and Gyllstad 2011). There are a variety of approaches to defining and, respectively, studying collocations which shows that the notion of a collocation is not unanimously agreed upon. In the phraseological tradition, collocations are typically identified as combinations in which either word can take on a meaning which it does not have in non-collocational environments (e.g., red tape) or there are restrictions on the substitutability of the words forming the collocation (e.g., Howarth 1998; Nesselhauf 2005). Thus, the criteria used for categorizing different types of word combinations within this tradition are phraseological and include semantic transparency, degree of substitutability, and degree of productivity (Howarth 1998b; Nattinger & DeCarrico 1992). Respectively, the collocations are classified on a continuum based on these criteria—e.g., free combinations, restricted collocations, and idioms. Another approach to defining collocations comes from the so-called ‘neo- Firthian’ tradition which takes a frequency-based angle to it. In other words, collocations are seen as words which appear together more often in a particular language than their individual frequencies would predict (Hoey 1991; Kjellmer 1990). In that sense, they are considered predictable combinations—i.e., when you come across one of the words, the chances of finding the other one increase (Durrant and Schmitt 2009). In this view, frequent collocations are taken to indicate the presence of semi-preconstructed phrases or formulaic sequences which are stored and retrieved from memory as a whole 'rather than being subject to generation or analysis by the language grammar' (Wray 2002: 9) and, given their frequency in natural language, they are hypothesized to be crucial to the ‘naturalness’ of native production (Durrant and Schmitt 2009; Hoey 2005: 2–7; Kjellmer 1990). Finally, the statistical tradition of identification of collocations adds another confirmation check to the non-randomness of co-occurrence of some words. Within this approach, a collocation is considered to be a statistical association of words, rather than random combination or a relatively fixed expression (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan 1999). Hence, the collocational strength between words can be calculated by using ‘association measures’ of collocational strength. Several such measures have been proposed as a means of identifying word pairs and all of these measures (e.g., t-score, MI score, etc.), generally, work on the principle of “comparing the number of times a collocation appears in a corpus with the number of times it would be predicted to appear by chance on the basis of the frequency of its component words” (Durrant and Schmitt 2009:167). Given the presence of these strong traditions of defining collocations, for the purposes of this study, we follow Wolter and Gyllstad’s (2011) approach of acknowledging those traditions of defining collocations—i.e. the frequency- 78
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2015 based tradition (frequency of occurrence in naturally produced language), the statistical one (the statistical strength of co-occurrence of two lexical items within a given span) as well as the phraseological one (a level of idiomaticity and fixedness of the string). Thus, we adopt their definition of collocations which is generally shared by other researchers as well, i.e.: “A collocation is a sequence consisting of two or more words which co-occur more frequently than chance would predict based on the frequency of occurrence of the individual constituent words. In terms of compositionality, we envision collocations residing in the middle ground between free combinations and pure idioms, thus with a varying degree of frozenness” (Wolter and Gyllstad 2011: 434). Generally, if we assume that the collocational relationships are a fundamental organizing principle in the vocabulary of any language (McCarthy 1990), the study of their emergence, development, and maintenance in the L2 acquisition process can give us valuable insights into the formation of systematic and meaningful links between words in the L2 lexicon. The formation of those links presupposes not only knowledge of individual words but also knowledge of how they fit together—a characteristic feature of lexical knowledge that has been pointed out in a number of lexical competence frameworks (e.g., Richards 1976; Nation 2001; Wray 2002). Thus, the realization that the mental lexicon contains multiword items alongside single words has recently given rise to a good number of studies exploring L2 learners’ collocational knowledge, especially because collocations have been observed to benefit L2 learners in several ways. For instance, a number of studies have found that collocational knowledge aids both L2 production and comprehensibility in a variety of ways. On the production side, the use of pre-set expressions not only helps L2 users increase their fluency (Ellis and Sinclair 1996) but also allows them to free cognitive resources and allocate them to higher level language processes such as message organization, selection of appropriate structures, etc. (Matrinez and Schmitt 2012; Yamashita and Jiang 2010). Furthermore, according to Kjellemer (1992), the more accurately L2 learners use collocations, the fewer pauses and hesitations they make during long stretches of discourse. By doing so, their speech sounds more natural and is more easily understood by native speakers (NSs). Similar findings have emerged in L2 writing as well. Overall, L2 students have been found to be perceived as more proficient when they use formulaic language (Boers, Eyckmans, Kappel, Stengers and Demecheleer 2006) and their writing is considered smoother and more natural (Ohlrogge 2009). Finally, given the large number of pre-fabricated structures in the specialized vocabulary of the academic disciplines, the need for L2 users to use phraseological language in professional discourse has become even more pressing. In this regard, Gledhill (2000 cited in Laufer and Waldman 2011) has argued that it is not possible for writers to write fluently without good knowledge of the phraseology of the field in which they are writing. Despite all advantages formulaic language can offer, the majority of L2 studies have found that collocational knowledge is also one of the problematic 79
Zareva and Shehata At the Intersection of L1 Congruence ... areas for L2 learners at all proficiency levels. One of the reasons is probably linked to the fact that collocations often times vary considerably from language to language and this variation is usually not guided by logical or semantic reasons (Nesselhauf 2005; Pawley and Syder 1983; Wolter and Gyllstad 2011). In this regard, several L2 studies (Bahns and Eldaw 1993; Granger 1998; Nesselhauf 2003; 2005) have empirically shown that even L2 learners at an advanced level of proficiency often struggle to activate appropriate collocations in their production. Granger (1998) also found that L2 learners used fewer collocations than NSs and that they were able to indentify far fewer combinations than the NS group. Overall, the common conclusion across these studies is that, in general, L2 learners' collocational knowledge (especially, EFL learners’ knowledge) lags behind their general knowledge of single word vocabulary. This state of affairs may be partly due to several reasons, including (1) the specific nature of the collocations—i.e., even though they are lexically constrained, they are largely semantically transparent and not likely to cause problems in comprehension; (2) the fact that collocations have been largely neglected in EFL instruction, hence, failing to raise learners’ awareness of collocations as a potential problem in language learning; (3) the lack of explicit instruction in the composition of collocations and how they compare to learners’ L1 (whenever possible); (4) the insufficient practice of collocations in order to automatize their production, etc. In sum, regardless of some of the design weaknesses of earlier studies, their results are largely in agreement that collocational knowledge and use are a problematic area for L2 learners and, respectively, an aspect of L2 learning that needs more pedagogical attention and empirical research. One of the areas that has attracted more interest in the last couple of decades is the influence of learners’ L1 on their processing and production of L2 collocations. The general finding of the studies following this line of investigation has been that even advanced L2 users perform significantly better on collocations that have exact L1 translation equivalents (i.e., congruent collocations) than on collocations that are L2 specific and do not have word-for- word L1 translations (i.e., incongruent collocations) (Nesselhauf 2003; 2005; Sadeghi 2009; Wolter and Gyllstad 2011; Yamashita and Jiang 2010). In this regard, Wolter and Gyllstad (2011) investigated the influence of L1 on how advanced L2 users of English (L1 Swedish) process congruent and incongruent collocations, compared to free combinations. The researchers found that their participants responded faster to congruent collocations, but some items in the incongruent condition also showed priming effects while others did not. Thus, they hypothesized that the L1 seems to have a considerable influence on the development of both L2 interlexical and intralexical links and, in that, it facilitates access to L2 collocations with equivalent forms in the L1. In addition, once an L2-only collocation is recognized as such, it is likely stored as a unit and can be activated in a fashion that is similar to congruent collocations. Along similar lines, given the possibility of a dual activation in the processing of L2 collocations (regardless of whether or not we are dealing with 80
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2015 a single or separate lexicons in the bilingual memory), it is not a surprise that several usage-based collocation studies with ESL and/or EFL learners from a variety of L1 backgrounds have found that the L1 is prominently present in their production of L2 collocations (e.g., Bahns and Eldaw 1993; Bahns 1993; Channell 1981; Ghadessy 1989; Herbst 1996; Lewis 2000; Webb and Kagimoto 2011). Nesselhauf (2003), for example, has found that German university students learning English experienced considerable difficulties producing the correct verb in various verb–noun (V-N) collocations (e.g. *make one’s homework instead of do one’s homework) and approximately half of their errors were a result of L1 interference. Similar results were obtained by Sadeghi (2009) who used a variety of collocational structures (e.g., V-N, Adj-N, non- noun, verb-preposition, etc.) to study the L1 impact on advanced Arabic- speaking L2 users of English. He also concluded that the differences between L1 and L2 collocational patterns contributed substantially to his participants’ collocation production errors for both the proficient as well as less proficient EFL learners. Bahns and Eldaw (1993) determined that their L2 participants were twice as likely to provide an unacceptable translation of a collocate as they were to provide an unacceptable translation of a single word. Thus, the results of these studies seem to agree on, at least, two points: (1) there are positive as well as negative influences of L2 users’ L1 on their productive L2 collocational performance and (2) the magnitude of this influence is unexpectedly high for even advanced L2 users of English. Unfortunately, only a small number of studies have explored the collocational knowledge of Arabic-speaking learners of English, especially considering the effects of learning environment (ESL and EFL) as a factor. Similarly to other EFL learners, Arab learners of English also have difficulties with the acquisition of English collocations which have been attributed to a range of reasons–e.g., unfamiliarity with English collocational structures, negative transfer from Arabic, fewer opportunities to encounter collocations in their daily input (Hussein 1990), learners’ being accustomed to learning mostly individual words rather than collocations (Farghal and Obiedant 1995), etc. In addition, even fewer studies have looked at the collocational knowledge of ESL learners who, like the EFL learners, have also been reported to have difficulties with collocations. The few recently published studies that have compared the effects of immersion-based programs and EFL context of learning on the collocational usage/production of English-learning students seem to have arrived at conflicting findings. For instance, Nesselhauf’s (2005) research on collocation usage among advanced German EFL students has found that an increased exposure to English in English-speaking countries leads to just a slight improvement in the number of collocations produced correctly by students. Even more worryingly, she further argued that the length of stay in English- speaking countries did not seem to contribute to an increased use of collocations among her participants. Instead, there was even a trend in the opposite direction. Groom (2009), on the other hand, found that not only his participants’ (Swedish 81
Zareva and Shehata At the Intersection of L1 Congruence ... advanced students) collocation accuracy was positively correlated to their length of L2 immersion but their use of more varied collocations also increased. Even though in recent years the difference between ESL and EFL contexts of learning has been considered to be largely blurred, there is a sense among L2 researchers that these two contexts are neither fundamentally different nor fundamentally similar (Gass 2013). Thus, in general, in terms of amount of exposure and input, it would be fairly safe to assume that L2 users in an ESL environment have more experience with and exposure to English collocations than the ones in an EFL environment. Consequently, one would intuitively expect that their L2 collocational knowledge would be better developed, more independent of their L1, and more readily available than EFL learners’. The present study is an attempt to add to the small body of research exploring the role of L1 on ESL and EFL learners’ collocational knowledge and find out whether or not context of exposure helps learners develop more autonomous representations for L2 collocations. It will address the following research questions: 1. Does context (ESL vs. EFL) have an effect on participants’ overall receptive and productive knowledge of collocations? 2. How do Arabic-speaking ESL and EFL students compare on their receptive and productive knowledge of different lexical types of collocations (i.e., V-N and Adj-N collocations)? 3. Does the L1 have similar effect on ESL and EFL participants’ receptive and productive collocational knowledge? 2. Method 2.1. Participants Two groups of students (n= 67), studying in two different learning environments—ESL (n = 34) and EFL (n = 33) —participated in the study. The ESL participants were Arabic-speaking students who, at the time of the experiment, were regularly enrolled in different graduate and undergraduate programs at Ohio University in the USA. They were majoring in a variety of disciplines—i.e. chemistry, linguistics, media, modern languages, education, engineering, international development, economics, telecommunications, African studies, and biology. The participants in this group came from eight Arabic-speaking countries: Egypt (n = 6), Jordan (n = 8), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (n = 8), Syria (n = 3), Sudan (n = 3), Kuwait (n = 2), Iraq (n = 2), and Morocco (n = 2). They had studied English formally for a period of 10 to 20 years (M =9.9 years). Both genders were represented in the sample (females = 12 and males = 22) and the participants’ ages ranged from 19 to 38 years (M =28 years). All ESL participants were advanced users of English whose paper- based TOEFL scores were in the range of 567 to 620 (M = 594). At the time of the data collection, they had lived and studied in the U.S. for over four years (M = 4.5 years) on average and were at different stages of completing their respective academic degrees. 82
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2015 The EFL group consisted of advanced Arabic-speaking learners of English–33 fourth year students majoring in English in the English Department (Faculty of Education) at Ain Shams University in Egypt. They were of both genders (females = 31 and males = 2) between the ages of 20 and 24 (M =20.7 years). At the time of data collection, along with completing their degree in English, they had been learning English as a foreign language in Egypt for, at least, ten years (M =13.8 years), starting in elementary school and continuing all the way through college. None of the participants in this group had studied English in an English speaking country. Their English proficiency was considered advanced, based on their admission test scores in the English Department which ranged from 45 to 49 (M = 47) out of 50 possible. On average, as far as length of English language learning experience is concerned, the EFL participants did not differ significantly from the ESL group (p >.05). 2.2. Item selection The test instruments were designed in several steps. First, a pool of collocations was compiled based on reviewing several previously published studies on collocational knowledge (e.g., Bahns and Eldaw 1993; Channell 1981; Farghal and Obiedant 1995; Gitsaki 1999; Hussein 1990; McIntosh 1961; Nesselhauf 2003; Siyanova and Schmitt 2008; Zughoul and Abdul-Fattah 2003, etc.). In general, dependent on the head word of the string, there are several different types of lexical collocations in English—e.g., V-N (e.g., take advantage, make a difference), Adj-N (e.g., second chance, political party), noun-noun (e.g., potato salad, family friend), adverb-adjective (e.g., quite sure, very good), verb-adverb (e.g., run fast, get together), adverb-adverb (e.g., right now, pretty well), etc. However, their frequency of occurrence as well as the degree of difficulty they pose for language learners seem to suggest that V-N and Adj-N collocations are two of the most problematic structures, which is probably why they are also frequently used in research studies (e.g., V-N collocations: Bahns and Eldaw 1993; Nesselhauf 2003; Laufer and Waldman 2011; Wolter and Gyllstad 2011; Zughoul and Abdul-Fattah 2003; and Adj-N collocations: Channell 1981; Durrant and Schmitt 2009; Farghal and Obiedant 1995; McIntosh 1961; Siyanova and Schmitt 2008; or both: Abu Naba'h 2012; Gitsaki 1999; Hussein 1990; Peters 2009; Sadeghi 2009; Yamashita and Jiang 2010). Thus, we extracted all V-N and Adj-N collocations, used in the published research we reviewed, which resulted in 315 collocations—227 V-N and 88 Adj-N collocations. Next, we consulted the CO-BUILD English Collocations on CD-ROM (1995) and the Oxford Collocation dictionary for Students of English (2003) to make sure that the expressions were listed as collocations in those two sources and identify the most frequent ones. This procedure narrowed down the number of collocations to 86 altogether. In the following step, since we were interested in the influence of the participants’ L1 on their receptive and productive knowledge of collocations, we needed to isolate from the remaining collocations (1) items that that were 83
Zareva and Shehata At the Intersection of L1 Congruence ... translation equivalents in the participants’ L1 (Arabic) and L2 (English) as well as (2) items that were collocations only in English but not in Arabic. To this end, a bilingual dictionary (Abu-Ssaydh 1995) and two NSs of Arabic were consulted which resulted in the selection of 32 collocations—16 V-N and 16 Adj-N collocations. Each category consisted of eight English collocations which have literal Arabic equivalents (L1-L2 or congruent collocations) and eight items without literal Arabic equivalents (L2-only or incongruent collocations) (Appendix A). Finally, the selected items were validated by obtaining the frequency of occurrence and the Mutual Information (MI) score for each collocation from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (Davies 2008). As of present, the corpus consists of more than 450 million words of American English texts, compiled from 1990 to date, across five registers of spoken and written language—spoken discourse, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic journals. Given that collocational expressions can be considered statistical associations of words, rather than relatively fixed expressions (Biber et al. 1999), the expectation was that both their frequency in the corpus and MI score (a measure of the strength of the relationship between two words which indicates the likelihood of their appearing together more than chance) will confirm their frequent usage as collocations in contemporary English. For the V- N collocations, the span was set at two words to the right of the node word (the base form of the verb and all its inflected forms) to allow for articles and other pre-modifying words before the noun object. For the Adj-N collocations, the search was set within a span of one word to the left of the node word (the noun) since determiners will typically occur before the adjective. Indeed, the analysis showed that (1) based on their MI score (an MI score of 3 and above is considered to show significant non-randomness of co- occurrence of two words [Hunston 2002]), the words in the selected items co- occur well above random level of co-occurrence and (2) the collocations are relatively frequently used in the corpus. On average, the V-N collocations have an MI score = 5.32 and their rate of occurrence in the corpus was 4.7 times per million words; the Adj-N collocations have an MI score = 7.02 and they occur at the rate of 3.4 times per million words. 2.3. Test instrument Once our selection of 32 target items was compiled and validated, the productive and the receptive tests were designed as follows: 2.3.1. The productive test consisted of the 32 target collocations which were further divided into two sub-tests. One of the tests included the 16 target V-N collocations (8 congruent [L1-L2] and 8 incongruent collocations [L2-only]) which were used in a gap-filling activity. The gaps were in restricted sentences that allowed, for the most part, only one possible answer. Each sentence included the noun part of the collocation and the participants were asked to 84
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2015 complete the collocational string by filling in the missing verb part. The second test consisted of the 16 Adj-N collocations (8 congruent [L1-L2] and 8 incongruent collocations [L2-only]) which were also incorporated into sentences with an adjective gap to be filled in (Appendix B). To ensure that the individual words in the sentences were predominantly high frequency words so that knowledge of individual words would not hamper the participants’ responses to the test items, the sentences were run through vocabulary profile software (Cobb 2002). The analysis showed that about 92% of the words used in the productive test were from the first 2,000 most frequent words in English (1K = 86.3 % and 2K = 5.6%). Given the high proficiency of the participants, our expectation was that they had good knowledge of the individual vocabulary items used in both tests. 2.3.2. The receptive test of collocational knowledge included the 32 target collocations, plus another 18 distracter items (9 V-N and 9 Adj-N expressions) with low frequency of occurrence and MI score in COCA (mean frequency = .2 per million words for both V-N and Adj-N expressions and MI score < 2), which rendered them acceptable free combinations. So, a total of 50 items were used in the receptive test where each item was presented in a short sentence and the sentences were randomized (see Appendix C). The analysis of the vocabulary profile of the sentences showed that 92% of the words used in the receptive test were from the first 2,000 most frequent words in the English language (1K = 86.2 % and 2K = 6.3%) which confirmed that the lexical composition of the productive and the receptive tests was similar and individual words are unlikely to cause comprehension problems. The context of the sentences in the productive and receptive tests was kept as culturally and socially neutral as possible. However, there were some cultural references in some of the sentences (e.g., Hollywood, McDonald’s, Coca Cola, etc.) which were not considered to be semantically opaque for the age, educational experience, and proficiency level of the participants in both groups. Finally, to evaluate the extent to which both tests provided consistent information about the participant’s mastery of collocations, the tests’ internal consistency reliability was measured. The productive test appeared to have good internal consistency reliability as measured by Chronbach alpha (Į = .87 for the ESL group and Į = .81 for the EFL group) and so did the test of receptive collocational knowledge (Į = .72 for the ESL group and Į = .78 for the EFL group). All values are considered to be in the acceptable range of good reliability (McMillan 2012). 85
Zareva and Shehata At the Intersection of L1 Congruence ... 2.4. Procedure and scoring The participants completed all tests in writing. First, they filled out a short demographic questionnaire and the two productive tests of collocational knowledge (V-N and Adj-N tests) in two consecutive days. They were limited to 10 minutes per test. Next, to allow for sufficient time between the productive and receptive test, each group was given the receptive test of collocational knowledge three weeks later. For this test, the time limit was set at 30 minutes. The data gathered from the three tests were scored as follows. In the productive test of collocational knowledge: (1) Each sentence gap that was completed with the intended target word—a verb or adjective that completed a collocational string in the sentence—was given 2 points. (2) Even though the gaps were well-constrained meaning-wise by the surrounding context, a few sentences allowed for more than one possible word to be inserted in the gap. In those cases, if the inserted word was, respectively, either a verb or adjective that acceptably completed the sentence gap (acceptability was based on whether or not the combination occurred at least 10 times in COCA), it was awarded 1 point. (3) Sentences in which the collocation gap was left blank or the inserted word was incorrect, were given 0 points. (4) Similarly to other collocational studies (e.g., Nesselhauf 2003), grammatical errors (e.g. incorrect verb forms [e.g., *maked instead of made, *she take instead of she takes or she took, etc.]) or spelling errors (e.g., *gians instead of gains) were not considered in the analysis. So, if the completed word was lexically correct, any other errors were ignored. For example, if the gap in the sentence There were ______________ rain and strong winds during the afternoon storm was filled in with the adjective heavy, it was given 3 points (even if, let’s say, the word heavy may have been misspelled as *hevy); if the word torrential was inserted—2 points; and, if it was completed with strong, mighty or left blank—0 points. In coding the participants’ responses in the receptive test, only the 32 target items were considered in the analysis. The correct responses received 1 point and the incorrect ones—0 points. 3. Results The first hypothesis tested in the study examined whether the ESL and EFL participants differed in their receptive and productive knowledge of collocations. Thus, the two groups were compared on their receptive and productive overall test scores as well as across the categories (V-N congruent and incongruent; Adj-N congruent and incongruent). As the ANOVA results show (see Table 1), the two groups markedly differed in their productive collocational knowledge along all categories, with the ESL participants performing significantly better than the EFL students (p < .001). It is also important to note the large effect sizes along all categories of productive knowledge which revealed that the distinction between ESL and EFL students explained a large proportion (ranging 86
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2015 2 2 from Ȧ = .15 to Ȧ = .54) of the variance in the dependent variables. The differences between the two groups in their receptive knowledge of collocations, however, were non-significant across all dependent variables (p > .05). Table 1. Descriptive statistics and ANOVA results comparing the ESL and EFL participants’ receptive and productive collocational knowledge 2 Collocational M SD F Ȧ knowledge Productive ESL EFL ESL EFL collocational (n = 34) (n = 33) (n = 34) (n = 33) knowledge Total score 43 22.5 12.06 9.79 58.07* .46 Total score: verb- 24.5 16.3 6.74 6.55 25.64* .28 noun collocations x verb-noun: 13.2 10.1 3.02 4.05 12.78* .15 congruent 11.3 6.2 4.03 3.04 34.22* .33 x verb-noun: 18.5 6.2 6.07 5.02 80.82* .54 incongruent 10.4 3.5 3.98 2.85 67.90* .50 Total score: 8.3 2.8 2.96 2.57 60.38* .47 adjective-noun collocations: x adjective-noun : congruent x adjective-noun: incongruent Receptive collocational knowledge Total score 27.6 28.9 3.70 2.17 3.01 - Total score: verb- 14.4 14.2 .25 .26 .27 - noun collocations x verb-noun: 7.5 7.4 .9 1.03 .2 - congruent 6.8 7.3 1.3 1.1 2.67 - x verb-noun: 13.3 14.7 .33 .34 .42 - incongruent 7.0 7.4 1.2 .61 3.02 - Total score: 6.3 6.8 1.5 .86 3.04 - adjective-noun collocations: x adjective-noun: congruent x adjective-noun: incongruent * p < .05 p > .05 87
Zareva and Shehata At the Intersection of L1 Congruence ... Paired-samples t-tests were conducted to find out whether the ESL and EFL students performed equally well productively and receptively on the different types of collocations (V-N and Adj-N collocations) and identify certain areas of difficulties these two collocation types may create for each of the groups. For the ESL group, the paired-samples t test (t (33) = 8.05, p < .001, d = .98) showed that their production of V-N collocations (M = 24.5, SD = 6.74) was significantly better than that of Adj-N (M = 18.5, SD = 6.07). Similarly, the EFL participants’ paired-samples t test (t (32) = 9.12, p < .001, d = 1.11) showed significantly better production of V-N (M = 16.3, SD = 6.6) than Adj-N collocations (M = 6.2, SD = 5.02). As far as the participants’ receptive collocational knowledge was concerned, the same direction of significant difference between the V-N (M = 14.4, SD = 1.82) and Adj-N (M = 13.3, SD = 2.15) collocations held true for the ESL participants (t (33) = 4.27, p < .001, d = .52). However, there were no significant differences for the EFL group (p > .05). Finally, to address the question about the effect of the participants’ L1 on their perception and production of collocations, we compared their performance on congruent (L1- L2) and incongruent (L2 only) collocations both receptively and productively. The results (see Table 2) revealed that the ESL participants consistently experienced noticeable effects of Arabic both receptively and productively with the influences being significantly stronger for the incongruent collocations (L2- only) than the congruent ones (L1-L2). All effect sizes were medium to high (range d =. 45 to d =. 82). The EFL participants seemed to show less L1 effects in their production and perception of collocations. Only the difference between V-N congruent and incongruent collocations was significant, while receptively—only the difference between Adj-N congruent and incongruent collocations was above chance. In both cases, the incongruent collocations were responded to less correctly which suggested that, in the cases where the English collocation did not have an equivalent translation in the participants’ L1, their responses tended to be noticeably incorrect. The effect sizes were medium (d = .54) to high (d = 1.34). 5. Discussion The current study set out to examine several aspects of the productive and receptive collocational knowledge of advanced Arabic-speaking ESL and EFL users of English. One of the questions we addressed was whether an ESL environment would have any noticeable effects on participants’ receptive and productive knowledge of collocations, compared to an EFL context of learning and use. More specifically, we were interested in how L2 participants’ knowledge of collocations possibly changes as a result of changes in the educational learning environment—i.e. living and studying in an English speaking country (ESL environment), compared to living and studying English in a non-English speaking context (EFL environment). Such a comparison is valuable because it can potentially show whether collocations represent an absolute challenge for language learners or 88
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2015 whether there is a means to acquire and produce them correctly, smoothly, and readily in communication when exposure to collocational usage in natural language increases. Table 2. Paired sample t-test comparing ESL and EFL participants’ productive and receptive knowledge of congruent and incongruent collocations. Collocational knowledge ESL (n = 34) EFL (n = 33) Productive collocations M SD t-test d M SD t-test d x verb-noun: 1.88 2.29 4.79* .82 3.88 2.89 7.71* 1.34 congruent : incongruent x adjective-noun: 2.41 3.51 4.01* .69 .70 2.07 1.94 - congruent : incongruent Receptive collocations x verb-noun: .71 1.31 3.13* .54 .12 1.22 .57 - congruent : incongruent x adjective-noun: .72 1.60 2.68* .45 .61 1.12 3.11* .54 congruent : incongruent * p < .05 p > .05 One of the most interesting findings from this line of investigation was that exposure and use of collocations in an ESL environment had a noticeable impact on advanced Arab users’ overall production of collocations as well as across all different collocational types (V-N and Adj-N both congruent and incongruent collocates). On average, the ESL participants were able to produce correctly 66% of all collocations, with greater success rate in the production of V-N collocations (75%) than Adj-N collocates (56%), while the EFL participants were successful in only 31% of their collocational production with a better success rate in V-N (50%) than adjective - noun collocates (13%). In this regard, the findings of the present study corroborate the findings from several other studies (Abu Naba'h 2012; Hussein 1990; Mahmoud 2005; Sadeghi 2009) which have found relatively low collocation knowledge of Arabic-speaking university students majoring in English in EFL contexts –51.9% of erroneous collocations in Hussein’s (1990) study, 64% in Mahmoud’s (2005) study, 57.6 % in Sadeghi’s (2009) experiment, and 69% in this study. This is a disturbing finding, especially considering the magnitude of the erroneous production. Based on the personal experience of one of the researchers, one of the reasons for this state of affairs with the EFL Arabic-speaking participants in this study lies in the tradition of teaching and learning vocabulary as primarily single lexical items in Egypt (and, evidently, in other Arabic countries [see, for instance, Abu Naba'h 2012; Farghal and Obiedant 1995]) at all educational levels of foreign language learning. Consequently, such an approach largely deprives learners of opportunities to practice collocational expressions in the 89
Zareva and Shehata At the Intersection of L1 Congruence ... process of their language learning and language mastery. As pointed out by many researchers, teaching collocations explicitly should be seen as an important aspect of L2 instruction that every sound L2 pedagogy should provide to students at all levels of language proficiency in any teaching context. Another finding from this line of analysis was that the ESL participants performed better in the production of collocations than the EFL ones. It is an interesting finding from, at least, two perspectives. First off, the majority of the ESL participants in this group were not majoring in English. They were studying in graduate and undergraduate programs in a variety of disciplines—e.g., African studies, biology, chemistry, economics, education, engineering, international development, media, modern languages, etc. In that sense, it was very unlikely that their better collocational production was a result of special instruction on collocations they may have received while studying in their respective academic programs. In general, our results are in line with Groom’s (2009) findings about the positive effect of immersion in English-speaking countries and an increased exposure to collocationally rich language on ESL advanced users’ production of collocations. However, we are quick to caution here that this conclusion is tentative and should be regarded as subject to challenge and confirmation by future research that looks at the impact of immersion on the development of learner’s collocational knowledge across different proficiency levels, different collocation structures, length of stay, age, L1 backgrounds etc. among other variables that should be considered in such analyses. Quite surprisingly, learning environment and exposure did not have any noticeable effects on participants’ receptive collocational knowledge and their ability to identify them as such. Even more interestingly, the EFL group had a trend of detecting collocations slightly better than the ESL group. Overall, both groups had a high success rate in their receptive collocational knowledge performance—the ESL participants were successful in identifying correctly 86% of the collocations and the EFL participants—90%. This high success rate was also consistently preserved across the different types of collocations which showed that, receptively, the ESL participants were as sensitive to V-N (90% identified correctly) and Adj-N collocations (83% identified correctly) as the EFL participants (V-N collocations—89% and Adj-N ones—92% identified correctly). We attribute this result to the fact that the participants in this study were advanced users of English who were, evidently, receptively highly sensitive to the notion of collocations and (probably) aware of its importance in language use. Nonetheless, their production of collocations (especially for the EFL students) was lagging far behind their receptive knowledge. In this regard, Nesselhauf (2003) has rightly pointed out that comprehension of collocations does not normally produce problems for advanced L2 learners because they may understand the meaning of a collocation from the meaning of its parts, even if its form differs from the learners' L1. In other words, the participants most probably hold in their memory chunks of meaningful groupings of items as a result of segmenting language for reception and production (Nation 2001) which 90
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2015 knowledge they can readily apply to the recognition of such meaningful units (including collocations) but cannot as readily activate in their production. Along the same lines, a primary goal of language instruction, especially in an EFL context, should be to offer plenty of opportunities to practice collocations in production in order to move those items from learners’ receptive knowledge to their productive knowledge of collocations. Another question we attempted to address in this study was the extent to which the participants’ L1 (Arabic) influenced their perception and production of collocations. The research into the psychological reality of the L1 effects on L2 users’ collocational knowledge suggests that both languages seem to be activated in processing L2 collocations and, whenever an L2 collocation has an L1 translation equivalent, the L1 provides a faster access to that collocation. Whenever an L2 collocation does not have an L1 translation equivalent (i.e. it is specific to the target language), there are, at least, two possible outcomes: first, if the L2 collocation is recognized as a collocation in the L2, it is processed in a manner that is similar to the translation equivalent collocates; however, whenever it is not recognized as an L2 collocation, it is processed as a free combination (Wolter and Gyllstad 2011). In light of this psychological state of affairs, as we pointed out earlier, it is not surprising that all usage-based studies have found that the L1 has a substantial influence on L2 users’ collocation production, but what is surprising is the considerable magnitude of this influence for L2 users who are at an advanced level of proficiency. The results of the present study are largely in agreement with the findings from other studies within the L1 influence area of investigation. There were positive as well as negative effects possibly stemming from the participants’ L1 (in this case, Arabic) on both their receptive and productive performance on the collocation tests. The analyses of their congruent and incongruent collocations showed that both groups were more successful with collocations that had direct translations in Arabic than with the ones that did not. These differences were much more consistent for the ESL group who maintained the trend of noticeably better performance on the V-N as well as Adj-N congruent collocations both receptively and productively than on the incongruent ones. The EFL group showed mixed results—i.e. productively, they performed better (above chance) on the V-N congruent collocations but not on the Adj-N ones while, receptively, the trend was reversed. Unlike other studies, in our discussion of the findings, we will attempt to highlight the beneficial effects of the native language (Arabic) on L2 collocational knowledge and how it can be used to facilitate the learning of collocations rather than treat those influences as negative. By and large, the findings suggest that, for the ESL group, the L1 is very likely to aid positively the production of L2 collocations resulting, on average, in 79% of correct L1-L2 V-N and 63% correct L1-L2 Adj-N responses. The possible influence of Arabic was even stronger on the EFL participants’ collocational production as they were almost twice more likely to produce correctly congruent V-N collocations (61%) than incongruent ones (36%). Their performance on the Adj-N 91
Zareva and Shehata At the Intersection of L1 Congruence ... collocations, though, was miserably low in both categories (15% correct L1-L2 vs. 14% correct L2-only Adj-N collocations). Quite unexpectedly, all participants’ success rate went up remarkably high on their receptive test of collocational knowledge, where the ESL participants still responded better to the L1-L2 than the L2-only collocations (94% vs. 85% V-N and 88% vs. 79% Adj- N collocations). The EFL participants identified equally well both categories of V-N collocations (93% L1-L2 and 91% L2-only collocations) but did better on the L1-L2 Adj-N (93%) than L2-only Adj-N collocations (85%). Overall, the results from this line of analysis seemed to reveal several trends: First off, if in fact the participants’ relied on their L1 collocation knowledge in processing L2 collocations (both in productively and receptively), we can argue that it can help them a great deal (between 60% and 94%) perform successfully if they are indeed explicitly aware of the 1-to-1 correspondence between certain L1 and L2 collocations. However, there is a chance that, if they are not explicitly aware of the 1-to-1 L1-L2 correspondence, no positive effects coming from the L1 will kick in and they will process (if at all) an otherwise legitimate collocation like a free combination, as Wolter and Gyllstad (2011) predicted. In this regard, we recommend that EFL instruction should take advantage of all possible positive effects stemming from the native language by making learners explicitly aware of L1-L2 correspondences in teaching collocations. This recommendation is completely in line with recent findings regarding the positive effects of using L1in L2 teaching. Secondly, and equally importantly, the participants seemed to be fully capable of developing stable intralexical links (L2-only specific collocations), in addition to L1-L2 collocational connections, though, productively, these links were not quite on a par with their interlexical ones, especially for the EFL group. In this regard, as we have pointed out earlier, EFL teaching practices should provide as many opportunities to students as possible to work in the direction of automatizing the collocations they can recognize as such receptively so that they become more readily available in their production. Third, if we can assume that the advanced ESL participants were more language “users” than “learners,” since they were studying in degree-granting rather than ESL programs in the USA, the results suggest that we should still expect some inconsistencies in their collocational usage (between 20% and 30%). Given that collocations are as prominently used for academic purposes as they are in everyday communication, any language-related work with those students should be in the direction of sensitizing them to the notion of collocations to such an extent that they become “life-long collocation learners” academically, professionally, and in general. Next, based on the results of this study, we would argue that, even though the participants’ knowledge of L2-only collocations was not as well developed as their knowledge of collocations with L1 translation equivalents, it did not lag far behind it (more so for the ESL than EFL participants). This seems to imply that, with systematic instruction in the development of students’ collocational 92
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2015 knowledge and explicit teaching/deconstruction of both congruent and incongruent collocations (see Nesselhauf 2003; 2005 for more detailed teaching recommendations), particularly in EFL context, it would be possible to stabilize both students’ congruent and incongruent collocations and move the ones that they do not recognize as collocations to a state of being recognized as such. Such an instructional strategy will most probably benefit students’ perception and production of collocations both qualitatively and quantitatively. Finally, both groups performed better on V-N than Adj-N collocations which implies that V-N collocations seem to be less problematic for both ESL and EFL Arabic-speaking students. The present study does not allow us to offer any specific explanation in this regard, so the reasons why certain collocation structures are more problematic than others are yet to be uncovered by future research. We can only speculate that this state of affairs may partly be a result of stronger teaching emphases on V-N than Adj-N collocations. 6. Conclusion The present study attempted to examine the influence of learning environment (ESL vs. EFL) and L1 on the perception and production of L2 collocations by advanced Arabic-speaking L2 users of English. In our view, researching the influence of these two variables is important empirically, theoretically, and pedagogically as it will allow us to set our expectations in all three areas more realistically. The findings suggest that the ESL environment had noticeable impact on participants’ production of collocations. It is highly possible that this influence is a result of the combined effect of exposure and usage rather than exposure alone, so future research should examine each of those variables in greater detail and determine the relative contribution of each one of them. Quite unexpectedly, learning environment did not have any significant effects on participants’ ability to identify L2 collocations which suggests that production, rather than receptive knowledge, of L2 collocations is more susceptible to environment influences. As far as the influence of the L1 is concerned, the results revealed that the L1 possibly had a strong positive influence, particularly receptively, whenever L2 collocations had L1 translation equivalents. However, productively, the strength of this influence was much weaker, especially for the EFL learners, which suggests that there are possible L1 benefits if congruent collocations (that they can otherwise recognize receptively) are automatized to an extent that makes them readily accessible when needed in usage. Otherwise, in production, especially for Adj-N collocations, it did not seem to matter much whether the collocations were congruent or incongruent. Whether or not the incorrect responses were a result of negative transfer (if they can all be attributed to the L1 at all) is a line of analysis we did not pursue in this study since the positive L1 effects, for the most part, were stronger than the negative ones, but it will be interesting to disentangle the negative transfer from sheer lack of knowledge of certain L2 collocations. 93
Zareva and Shehata At the Intersection of L1 Congruence ... Alla Zareva Department of English 5000 Batten Arts and Letters Old Dominion University Norfolk, VA 23529 E-mail: [email protected] Asmaa Shehata Department of Classics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 [email protected] 94
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International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) Vol. 15, 2015 Appendix A Congruent and incongruent collocations used in the productive and receptive tests of collocation knowledge. Category Congruent (L1-L2) Incongruent (L2-only) collocations collocations Verb-noun collocations change one’s mind catch fire have an effect do good make a difference gain weight play a role give birth spend time keep an eye on take action make a mistake take time take advantage tell the truth take place Adjective-noun fine arts black eye collocations golden age capital punishment last chance fast food middle class heavy rain old age red tape political party second thoughts public opinion short cut white lie soft drinks Appendix B Productive tests of collocational knowledge Test 1 Write down the verb which best completes the blank in the sentences below. 1. It's true that we ______________ weight when we eat more than we should. 2. Governments should ______________ the necessary actions to stop the massacre. 3. Inborn abilities always______________ an effect on what we become. 4. Tom’s wife ______________ birth to a son yesterday. 5. She ______________ a lot of her time reading. 6. The robbery ______________ place at about 3:30 a.m. yesterday. 7. It will ______________ you good if you exercise more often. 8. Do you think there is a chance that John will ______________ his mind? 9. It usually ______________ time to change laws. 10. Parents can ______________ a role in preventing childhood obesity. 99
Zareva and Shehata At the Intersection of L1 Congruence ... 11. The lantern was kicked and the barn ______________ fire. 12. Don’t lie, just ______________ the truth! 13. Could you ______________ an eye on my bag for a while? 14. Last July, Mike ______________ the mistake of going to work on a strike day. 15. What difference does it ______________ if your friend does not have a car? 16. This book describes ten ways to ______________ advantage of the Internet. Test 2 Write down the adjective which best completes the blank in the sentences below. 1. Are you having ______________ thoughts about coming with me to Brighton? 2. If you do not take the ______________ cut, the hotel is four miles further down the road. 3. The main ______________ parties in the U.S. are the Democrats and the Republicans. 4. Today is your ______________ chance to submit your paper. 5. Many people die of ______________ age around the world. 6. McDonald's is one of the largest ______________ food chains in the U.S. 7. The boxer gave him a ______________ eye, so he was taken to the hospital. 8. The term ______________ arts is used to refer to the visual arts such as painting and architecture. 9. Although no executions were ordered until 1980, the state reestablished ______________ punishment in 1982. 10. There were ______________ rain and strong winds during the afternoon storm. 11. Everyone knows that a little ______________ lie is sometimes necessary in a time of crisis. 12. China hopes to grow its ______________ class to more than half of its total population by 2020. 13. Bureaucracy and______________ tape are the real problems in this company. 14. The 1930s and 1940s are considered the ______________ age of Hollywood. 15. Politicians are trying to influence the ______________ opinion on the topic. 16. Coca Cola mainly produces ______________ drinks rather than juices or water. 100
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