Papers by Mairi McLaughlin
Discours rapporté, genre(s) et médias, 2014
Since news agencies play a central role in the circulation of information, the aim of this articl... more Since news agencies play a central role in the circulation of information, the aim of this article is to test whether the gender of a source affects the way in which their speech is reported by agency journalists. I use a post-structuralist conception of gender and the large body of work on the enunciative heterogeneity of French media discourse to provide a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of news dispatches. The results highlight the importance of this question and show the need for future research.
L’Histoire du français État des lieux et perspectives, 2014
Cet article se situe au croisement de la linguistique et de la traductologie et il a pour objecti... more Cet article se situe au croisement de la linguistique et de la traductologie et il a pour objectif d’attirer l’attention sur le rôle joué par la traduction dans l’évolution de la langue. La première partie de l’article offre un bref survol du rôle joué par la traduction dans l’évolution du français (ancien français, moyen français et français contemporain). La deuxième partie propose un modèle théorique de la traduction comme facteur dans le changement linguistique en général.
Langages, 2020
Cet article explore la manière dont la langue orale est représentée dans la Gazette d’Amsterdam e... more Cet article explore la manière dont la langue orale est représentée dans la Gazette d’Amsterdam en janvier 1782, et ce, dans trois perspectives. Premièrement, l’examen des différents types de texte publiés permet d’identifier ceux qui sont liés à l’oral. Ensuite, l’analyse de toutes les occurrences de discours rapporté oral éclaircit l’usage qu’en faisaient les correspondants et journalistes historiques. Enfin, les données concernant le discours rapporté permettent d’examiner tous les échanges dialogaux présents dans le corpus. Les résultats sont unanimes : l’oral se trouve certes représenté dans la Gazette d’Amsterdam mais moins souvent qu’il ne l’est dans les journaux contemporains. Quoi qu’il en soit, il mérite l’attention des linguistes qui s’intéressent au discours rapporté, au discours journalistique ou à l’évolution de la langue.
L2 Journal, 2022
This final article brings together reflections written by all of the contributors to the special ... more This final article brings together reflections written by all of the contributors to the special issue on “The Future of Translation in Higher Education”. In August 2021, the final versions of each article were circulated to all of the contributors. Each person had the chance to read all of the articles together and to see the context in which their own contribution would appear. Each person was then asked to submit a short reflection. There was no set formula for the reflections: some general questions were shared to get the ball rolling but each person was free to focus on whatever they found to be most important.
Before submitting the reflections, most of the contributors were able to meet on Zoom in late September 2021. The aim of the virtual meeting was to personalize the process of contributing to—and editing—a special issue and to share ideas for the reflection pieces. That conversation was a highpoint for all of us as we talked about the experiences, both rewarding and challenging, that we had all had as educators and scholars, as members of fields and of institutions. There were moments where experience, contexts and perspectives overlapped but there were also moments where sharp differences were revealed and those moments were often the most instructive. The conversation that we had on Zoom was inspiring both during the process of writing the reflection pieces but also more generally since such moments of connection and personalization had been so lacking since March 2020.
In what follows, each reflection is presented in turn following the order of the articles in the special issue. As we will see, the contributors intervene in a diverse range of ways. Some pieces bring out the most important themes and questions which cut across the special issue. Others situate the work done here more broadly, drawing attention to gaps in the field which should be filled by future research. Some contributors explore how their own take on translation in higher education evolved as a result of reading their work in the context of the rest of the special issue. Still others reflect on the changes that they will make to their own pedagogy after taking part in this special issue. However, they chose to intervene, the contributors’ reflections offer a precious glimpse of the possibility of change coming out of activities such as this which are designed to promote the bridging of theory and practice, or of research, policy and pedagogy.
L2 Journal, 2022
This special issue brings together a set of papers which look to the future of translation in hig... more This special issue brings together a set of papers which look to the future of translation in higher education. It is a direct response to the flurry of publications which over the last two decades have highlighted and explored the value of translation as a pedagogical tool in modern language learning. In a now oft-cited early example, Cook (2007, p. 396) decried the marginality of translation in “mainstream applied linguistic and English language teaching theory” and called for a return to translation both in the language classroom and as a “major topic for applied linguistic research”. This call echoes through subsequent publications and now, at the start of the third decade of the millennium, there certainly is an ample body of scholarship, theory, and methodology that centers on translation in the language classroom. The changes are so dramatic and the signs so positive that some have gone so far as to speak of a “translation turn” in language teaching (Carreres, Mu oz-Calvo, and Noriega-S nchez, 2017b, p. 99, our translation). On the ground, however, things are not always so rosy and we are still very far today from a situation in which translation is systematically used in language instruction, especially in the Anglophone countries where translation was long overlooked. Rather than adding to the now numerous calls for the use of translation in the language classroom, the papers in this special issue seek to move the debate forward by exploring what we refer to as the implementation problem and the question of impact. The papers exploring the implementation problem address the gap that can exist between scholarly literature where translation is now valorized and classroom practice where it can often remain marginal. The papers exploring the question of impact, on the other hand, draw attention to the wider effects that the (re-)introduction of translation into the language classroom will have in order to reimagine translation right across higher education.
Manual of Romance Sociolinguistics, 2018
This chapter examines the effects that contact with English has on the Romance languages. It adop... more This chapter examines the effects that contact with English has on the Romance languages. It adopts an innovative approach by exploring the effects of contact in a comparative dimension across three languages: French, Italian and Spanish. Most of the work concerns the European standard languages or varieties of these languages spoken as a result of colonization and/or migration in North America. The chapter begins with an overview of the history and nature of contact between English and the Romance languages. There follow two sections devoted to, first, the effects of contact at the lexical level and, second, the effects of contact at all other levels. The chapter illustrates the benefits of adopting a comparative approach in contact linguistics. In particular, this new approach allows us to capture larger generalizations about language contact both within this family and cross-linguistically.
6e Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française, 2018
Cette enquête a pour objectif d'examiner l'usage des temps verbaux dans la presse française histo... more Cette enquête a pour objectif d'examiner l'usage des temps verbaux dans la presse française historique. Le travail se base sur un échantillon d'environ 1,000 instances de formes verbales finies extraites de la Gazette. L'échantillon couvre la période qui va de la parution de la Gazette en 1631 jusqu'à la Révolution en 1789. A travers une analyse quantitative de l'échantillon conjuguée à une analyse qualitative d'exemples particuliers, nous traçons l'évolution de la sélection des temps verbaux dans la presse d'actualité historique. Les résultats font état de changements touchant d'une part le genre journalistique et d'autre part la langue française pendant cette période.
Abstract. Verb tense in historical news discourse. The aim of this study is to analyse the verb tenses used in historical French news discourse. The work presented here is based on a sample of around 1000 tokens of finite verb forms taken from the Gazette. The sample covers the period from the founding of this newspaper in 1631 to the French Revolution of 1789. The study traces the evolution of verb tense selection in French news discourse through quantitative analysis of the sample and qualitative analysis of individual examples. The results highlight changes taking place during this period which affect the journalistic genre on the one hand and the French language on the other.
Cultural Reception, Translation and Transformation from Medieval to Modern Italy. Essays in Honor of Martin McLaughlin, 2017
Cet article vise à attirer l’attention sur la traduction comme facteur de diffusion de l’innovati... more Cet article vise à attirer l’attention sur la traduction comme facteur de diffusion de l’innovation linguistique et scientifique dans la presse d’information aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Lieu de vulgarisation, la presse représente elle-même un premier type de traduction mais il sera montré que la traduction propre de textes journalistiques faisait partie intégrante l’industrie de la presse à ses tous débuts. Ensuite, nous utiliserons des analyses linguistiques d’un corpus de textes journalistiques datant des XVIIe et XVIIe siècles pour étudier l’apport linguistique de la traduction. Il sera démontré en particulier que la traduction des articles était une source d’emprunts lexicaux aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles tout comme elle l’est de nos jours. Nous montrerons également que la conceptualisation et le statut de la traduction auraient pu être touchés par la présence de comptes rendus discutant soit des ouvrages traduits, soit des ouvrages qui traitent de la traduction comme thème.
This article explores the relationship between news translation and culture through linguistic an... more This article explores the relationship between news translation and culture through linguistic analysis. It is based on two corpora of translated news texts, each consisting of c. 237,000 words. One corpus represents the translation carried out by international news agencies in the contemporary news industry, whereas the other corpus represents the first two centuries of periodical news in French . Through the analysis of the lexis of translated news, I show that translation in the press can be considered both a silent witness to the relationships between peoples and also a channel for innovation in cultural systems.
In this article, I present results from an investigation of translation in the press from English... more In this article, I present results from an investigation of translation in the press from English into Italian. The investigation combines fieldwork carried out in an international news agency with the linguistic analysis of a corpus of translated news dispatches. The investigation revolves around three case studies concerning adjective position, passive constructions, and verbal -ndo forms. I use the case studies to determine whether (and to what extent) news translation could be a source of syntactic borrowing in contemporary Italian. The results are interpreted in the context of a larger project on syntactic borrowing in French and Italian. By
situating the results in this broader context, I am able to draw theoretical conclusions about news translation as a source of linguistic change, and more generally about the linguistic outcomes of language contact.
La revue Le discours et la langue. Revue de linguistique française et d'analyse du discours, se p... more La revue Le discours et la langue. Revue de linguistique française et d'analyse du discours, se propose de diffuser les travaux menés en français et sur le français dans le cadre de l'analyse linguistique des discours. Elle entend privilégier les contributions qui s'inscrivent dans le cadre des théories de l'énonciation et/ou articulent analyse des marques formelles et contexte socio-discursif et/ou appréhendent des corpus inédits (notamment électroniques).
Journal of French Language Studies
This article suggests a refinement of the link between dislocated constructions and the oral code... more This article suggests a refinement of the link between dislocated constructions and the oral code. The research is based on an investigation of a mixed-medium corpus of contemporary French, including spoken language, journalistic prose and literary fiction. It is shown first that the form and function of dislocations vary according to the level of orality of the voice in which they are found: in particular, the intermediary nature of citations in newspaper articles is emphasised. It is then argued that the strict association of dislocation with the stylistic function of orality should be modified, since conveying orality does not always seem to be the primary motivation for dislocation.
princeton.edu
Given the very diverse nature of translation studies -something that is clearly illustrated by th... more Given the very diverse nature of translation studies -something that is clearly illustrated by the range of topics that have already been covered in this seminar -I want to start by describing my approach and the context of my work. To begin with, I"m a linguist and my area of specialism is variation and change in French and general Romance syntax. However, from the first piece of research I carried out as a Masters student in France, I was struck by how important the language of translation could potentially be for the evolution of French syntax. There is certainly historical evidence that translation has influenced the development of different languages in the past. If we take sixteenth-century France as an example, this is a period characterised by the expansion of what will become the French language into new functional domains: it is replacing Latin, for example, as the language of administration and learning. During this period, translation has an effect on the language at several levels: first, at the sociolinguistic level translation from Latin contributes to the growing prestige of French because it was thought that being able to translate classical texts into French showed that it was capable of treating the same subjects as the classical languages. Second, at the linguistic level this period sees the borrowing of words from both Latin and Greek and also from the Italian dialects. Even some basic words in contemporary French were borrowed from Italian in this period such as réussir (to succeed) and manquer (to miss / be absent). Perhaps more significantly, morphemes were also borrowed from Italian and Latin in this period. A good example is the suffix -esque that is still used in contemporary French in words such as arabesque, grotesque, burlesque. Finally, it has also been suggested that the syntax of French might have changed under influence from Italian at this stage : 28, Pope 1952: 31, Huchon 2002. For example, it 1 Some of the data discussed in this presentation were originally published in McLaughlin (2008).
French studies, Jan 1, 2008
This article presents the results of the investigation of a corpus consisting of translated and o... more This article presents the results of the investigation of a corpus consisting of translated and original French taken from contemporary prize-winning fiction. The focus of the inquiry is the difference between original and translated French and the consequences for the voice of the translator. The differences between the two language types are examined through a case study of the syntactic structure known as dislocation. Through careful analysis of the form, function and usage of this construction in the two language types, I arrive at several conclusions. First, the very existence of formal, functional and usage variation highlights the differences between translated and original language, and this may in future play a greater role in governing the composition of corpora in linguistic research. Second, the way in which this variation manifests itself has consequences for the status that translation holds in a specific culture and the effects that translation can have on the target language. Finally, variation between the two language types is shown to be relevant to the debate regarding the voice of the translator: Lawrence Venuti's invisibility theory is reworked to include three types of invisibility.
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Papers by Mairi McLaughlin
Before submitting the reflections, most of the contributors were able to meet on Zoom in late September 2021. The aim of the virtual meeting was to personalize the process of contributing to—and editing—a special issue and to share ideas for the reflection pieces. That conversation was a highpoint for all of us as we talked about the experiences, both rewarding and challenging, that we had all had as educators and scholars, as members of fields and of institutions. There were moments where experience, contexts and perspectives overlapped but there were also moments where sharp differences were revealed and those moments were often the most instructive. The conversation that we had on Zoom was inspiring both during the process of writing the reflection pieces but also more generally since such moments of connection and personalization had been so lacking since March 2020.
In what follows, each reflection is presented in turn following the order of the articles in the special issue. As we will see, the contributors intervene in a diverse range of ways. Some pieces bring out the most important themes and questions which cut across the special issue. Others situate the work done here more broadly, drawing attention to gaps in the field which should be filled by future research. Some contributors explore how their own take on translation in higher education evolved as a result of reading their work in the context of the rest of the special issue. Still others reflect on the changes that they will make to their own pedagogy after taking part in this special issue. However, they chose to intervene, the contributors’ reflections offer a precious glimpse of the possibility of change coming out of activities such as this which are designed to promote the bridging of theory and practice, or of research, policy and pedagogy.
Abstract. Verb tense in historical news discourse. The aim of this study is to analyse the verb tenses used in historical French news discourse. The work presented here is based on a sample of around 1000 tokens of finite verb forms taken from the Gazette. The sample covers the period from the founding of this newspaper in 1631 to the French Revolution of 1789. The study traces the evolution of verb tense selection in French news discourse through quantitative analysis of the sample and qualitative analysis of individual examples. The results highlight changes taking place during this period which affect the journalistic genre on the one hand and the French language on the other.
situating the results in this broader context, I am able to draw theoretical conclusions about news translation as a source of linguistic change, and more generally about the linguistic outcomes of language contact.
Before submitting the reflections, most of the contributors were able to meet on Zoom in late September 2021. The aim of the virtual meeting was to personalize the process of contributing to—and editing—a special issue and to share ideas for the reflection pieces. That conversation was a highpoint for all of us as we talked about the experiences, both rewarding and challenging, that we had all had as educators and scholars, as members of fields and of institutions. There were moments where experience, contexts and perspectives overlapped but there were also moments where sharp differences were revealed and those moments were often the most instructive. The conversation that we had on Zoom was inspiring both during the process of writing the reflection pieces but also more generally since such moments of connection and personalization had been so lacking since March 2020.
In what follows, each reflection is presented in turn following the order of the articles in the special issue. As we will see, the contributors intervene in a diverse range of ways. Some pieces bring out the most important themes and questions which cut across the special issue. Others situate the work done here more broadly, drawing attention to gaps in the field which should be filled by future research. Some contributors explore how their own take on translation in higher education evolved as a result of reading their work in the context of the rest of the special issue. Still others reflect on the changes that they will make to their own pedagogy after taking part in this special issue. However, they chose to intervene, the contributors’ reflections offer a precious glimpse of the possibility of change coming out of activities such as this which are designed to promote the bridging of theory and practice, or of research, policy and pedagogy.
Abstract. Verb tense in historical news discourse. The aim of this study is to analyse the verb tenses used in historical French news discourse. The work presented here is based on a sample of around 1000 tokens of finite verb forms taken from the Gazette. The sample covers the period from the founding of this newspaper in 1631 to the French Revolution of 1789. The study traces the evolution of verb tense selection in French news discourse through quantitative analysis of the sample and qualitative analysis of individual examples. The results highlight changes taking place during this period which affect the journalistic genre on the one hand and the French language on the other.
situating the results in this broader context, I am able to draw theoretical conclusions about news translation as a source of linguistic change, and more generally about the linguistic outcomes of language contact.
Cet ouvrage présente les résultats de la première grande étude de la langue de la presse française historique. Il a un double objectif : éclairer l’histoire
du genre journalistique, et explorer ce qu’une étude de périodiques historiques peut apporter à la compréhension de l’histoire de la langue.