A Cognitive Linguistic Comparative Analysis Of Physics Terminologies In Arabic And French
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Date
2016-12
Authors
Lahlou, Hicham
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Studies on the misunderstanding of scientific terms in different languages
suggest that non-Western students face more difficulties in conceptualising scientific
terms than Western students. These problems are generally caused by students’ native
language incommensurability with Western languages, their pre-existing knowledge
about scientific terms, and the polysemous senses of such terms. The present research
investigates this issue in the context of Morocco, where Arabic is the medium of
instruction for science subjects at school level and French at the tertiary level. The
study set out to identify the similarities as well as differences between Standard Arabic
and French terminologies denoting physics concepts. To achieve this objective, 16
Arabic physics terms and 16 French equivalents, selected from Moroccan middle
secondary and higher secondary physics textbooks, were analysed with regard to their
polysemous meanings, prototypes, and conceptual metaphor as well as metonymy
based on Lakoff’s (1987) idealised cognitive models (ICMs). The data for the analysis
of ICMs comprised meanings of the selected physics terms in Arabic and French
derived from dictionaries and two comparable Arabic and French corpora, the
ArabiCorpus and the Concordancier-Corpus Français. The corpora were also
employed to generate data on the most frequent collocates of the 16 physics terms to
unravel their prototypes in each language. To complement the textual analysis, focus
group interviews were conducted to investigate Moroccan students’ conceptualisations
of the physics terms and to find out if the change in the medium of instruction from
Arabic to French at the university level affects their understanding of the terms. The
findings of the present research reveal that there are both similarities and differences
between Arabic and French terminologies in terms of meanings, prototypes, and
metaphorical as well as metonymic meaning projections. This indicates the universal
characteristics and culture specific characteristics of Arabic; the similarities identified
support the linguistic universals (in the present study across Arabic and French) while
the differences found support the notion of linguistics and cultural relativism. The
present research also discovered that Moroccan students’ conceptualisation of physics
terminology is not only affected by linguistic differences between Arabic and French,
but also by their everyday language which is usually a Moroccan dialect. These
findings have important implications for science curriculum design, education and
language policy in Morocco in particular, and in other non-Western contexts in
general. The current research also contributes to the field of cognitive linguistics with
new knowledge on the universal and culture-specific use of conceptual metaphor and
metonymy in Arabic as well as French.
Description
Keywords
Misunderstanding of scientific terms , in different languages