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DOI:10.29013/EJLL-23-3-14-19
LINGUISTIC AND PRAGMATIC ASPECTS OF PUBLIC SPEECH IN THE ENGLISH AND UZBEK LANGUAGE (USING TED TALKS VIDEO MATERIALS)
Feruzakhon Mansurova 1
1 Independent researcher, EFL teacher, of Boarding school 5 in Kokand, Uzbekistan
Cite: Mansurova, F. (2023). Linguistic and Pragmatic Aspects of Public Speech in the English and Uzbek Language (Using ted talks video materials). European Journal of Literature and Linguistics 2023, No 3. https://doi.org/10.29013/EJLL-23-3-14-19
Abstract
This article discusses the importance and elements of public speaking in linguistics. The aim of the study was to clarify the linguistic and pragmatic features of delivering public speech with the help of effective TED Talks videos. According to the gathered data, the researcher recommends interactive and authentic materials to overcome glossophobia in students and improve their public speaking in both English and Uzbek.
Keywords: public speaking, TED Talks, glossophobia, linguistic and pragmatic aspects, authentic material, communicative competence
Introduction
Speaking is considered to be one of the most important skills a person has to master. People express their feelings in various ways, which means that speaking is vital to individual's living process as it is the most natural way to communicate. It is essential to express oneself in words and converse with others in order to deliver a message Speaking skill is the use of language in a simple voice; knowing and being able to use a language and uttering words. Since human beings are easily impressed by others' thoughts, public speech has always been the most effective method to persuade and motivate people no matter which language it is delivered. Human speech is not just about producing and articulating words. It is vital to combine the way to convey a message
with your own skills. Although logical arguments are important, the emotional content has a great impact on a person's mind. In other words, public speaking is being able to speak effectively in front of a community by presenting the art of speaking. In addition to English scientific researches, linguistic features of public speech has also been investigated in the articles and books of Uzbek linguists (Qo'g'urov R., Begmatov E., 1992). Nowadays current lectures take place not only in academic settings but also gradually spread among ordinary people through offline and online modes. In this case, using public speech is developing in various aspects via modern technologies, especially, the most popular format has become TED Talks, which is viewed and subscribed substantially on You Tube. Below, the impor-
tance of public speaking in English and Uzbek language is discussed.
Literature review
Public speaking is a person's ability to present or convey a topic orally in front of a particular audience. Lucas (2009) states that speaking in public means expressing his/ her notion to public and they have important message to deliver. However, if the speech does not contain any message or purpose, that speech cannot be considered as public speaking (Stephen E. Lucas, 2009; Yildiz Y., 2020) mentions that communicative skills can be improved when both listeners and speakers engage in meaningful conversation in the target language (Yildiz Y., 2020). The most important reason why public speaking became so widespread is that it is compatible with human nature. As emotional aspects of people have always been considered to be prior to rational dimension which means that speaking in public manipulates and impacts person's perceptions (Mastrangelo L., 2009; Steels E., 1997) proves that language has a constructive aspect to societies. Therefore, using it appropriately is a crucial factor in guiding community and an expert of public speaking has an ability to change even the whole society (Steels E., 1997). Each country has its own experience on this subject and one of the thinkers who wrote necessary words on this subject in history is Aristotle. In his work called Rhetoric, he explains the rules of effective public speaking and these rules have existed until today (Nichols M. P., 1987). As a matter of fact, the importance of public speech has never changed from the ancient era to the modern age because it is possible to manipulate people's mind with the effective use of language and it will continue to be important in the future (Chollet M., Wörtwein T., Moren-cy L. P., Shapiro A., & Scherer S., 2015). Because it is a crucial ability to acquire and has a tremendous impact on a person's career and level of success in the workplace. While making a public speech, there are various linguistic aspects and rules that a person should take into consideration. For instance, person's tone of voice, intonation, attitude, body language emotions are crucial to affect the audience's perceptions. Moreover, such as dressing, eye contact, posture and other codes are crucial
to make it more impressive. In addition to the abovementioned components, the level of listeners' comprehension, their cultural beliefs and attitudes have tremendous effects to the speaker's message. For this reason, addressing to the audience without considering their values may bring adverse results that a speaker has never expected (Turner K. J., Osborn R., Osborn M., & Osborn S. 2018). In this situation, linguistic and pragmatic aspects should be clarified. Linguistic aspects are concerned with the linguistic level of language like phonology, lexis, morphology, syntax, semantic (grammar and meaning) as well as the textual competence (cohesion and coherence). With regards to the pragmatic aspects of communicative competence, it is the speaker's ability to use linguistic knowledge in different social contexts and situational interactions to convey meaning, and the ability of the listener to use the knowledge to perceive the intended message. Pragmatics has an important contribution in speech as it focuses on the appropriateness of language in its social context and it emphasizes the function of language to achive communicative goals. To clarify, pragmatic competence focuses on extralinguistic level of language such as interactional skills, socio-cultural framework, functions and language variations (EL-Samir Sausen, 1999).
If the delivery of public speech in the English and Uzbek languages are compared, they differ from each other in terms of both linguistic and pragmatic aspects. English speeches tend to be very emotional, quite moving and impressive. Speakers use many gestures, high intonation and body language to convey the target meaning. However, in Uzbek public speech, the speaker does not usually tend to speak with frequent use of gestures or body language. Therefore, the way of delivery seems to be a bit monotonous as it is not as emotional as English speech. In Uzbek public speaking, the attitude of interlocutors is more important than the quality of a message delivery effect while English speeches focus on the effectiveness of persuading and conveying a message.
Towards the end of the 20 th century, electronic tools became available to help people enhance the quality of their public speech delivery. N. D. Galskova states that the process of teaching should be based on "an
authentic foreign text as a unit of communication", which presents signs of another foreign language linguistic community and the information should be socially significant and culturally specific (Galskova N. D., 2003). In the modern education, people share their experiences not only face-to-face conferences but also on different online platforms. One of the most popular language platforms is international "TED Talks", where people from all over the world can access. Many schools use authentic and official video materials to develop learners' visual education, communication skills and personal public speech. TED, which officially stands for Technology Entertainment Design, is well-known with its annual conferences and the main goal of this platform is distribution of unique ideas. The platform is one of the most successfully implemented projects as people from different parts of the world enjoy viewing useful live and online videos. Media resource TED Ed (http://ed.ted.com) can be considered as innovative educational development. The main difference between innovative electronic resources and traditional ones is their interactivity, which stimulates learners' independent learning activities and involves active learning (Osin A. V. 2010). Therefore, students are involved in a live native speech, perceive the reaction of audience, feel public atmosphere, enter into discussion instead of working with ready-made tasks in a textbook. In fact, TEDx Talks's You Tube Channel has 38.800.000 subscribers with 202.117 videos uploaded so far (videos lectures are shorter than 18 minutes) and the overall channel views are 7.4 B according to 2023 statistics (E-resource: https://www.speakrj.com/audit/report/UC-sT0YIqwnpJCM-mx7-gSA4Q/youtube).
Methods
This study combined qualitative and quantitative research approaches and used
an opinion poll among senior students of Kokand Pedagogical Institute. It sought to answer the questions: "What are the causes of speech anxiety among university students?". Students' answers were acquired deliberately. In order to conduct linguistic investigation, the researcher wanted to compare the students of two different faculties (Faculty of English and Uzbek philology) in order to compare linguistic and pragmatic aspects of learners' public speech in the Uzbek and English language. For the purpose of the study, forty students were selected among final year students, 20 students from Uzbek and the others participated from English faculty. Fourth year students were considered the most suitable participants as they had more experience in making presentations among the audience. Besides, they can analyze the causes of their linguistic problems in public speech which the research intended to investigate. As an exploratory research, the researcher utilized the technique of gathering information with the help of interviews and questionnaires where participants filled in their responses. The researcher also asked questions like "Do you use authentic videos for public speech development?", "Do you find TED Talks useful?". The data obtained were subsequently analyzed and conclusions were made from findings. The discussions will be described below.
Results and discussions
The findings are presented in charts, tables and graphs to present the quantitative data obtained. It summarizes the demographics of participants, their individual prior involvement and experience in public speaking and the causes of their problems confronted with public speaking. The other part presents a qualitative analysis of respondents taken from participants through interviews and open-ended questions in the questionnaire. The findings are discussed in turns.
Table 1. General information about the respondents involved among two different groups
Faculty The number of participants Age Gender L 1
Uzbek 20 18-24 2 male, 18 female Uzbek
English 20 18-28 8 male, 12 female Uzbek
Section 1. Applied Linguistics Figure 1. The students' prior knowledge in public speaking
The bar chart students' prior knowledge in public speaking. Students in Uzbek language faculty said that they did not have enough experience in public speaking (15% minority responded in affirmative, 85% said they had never had public speech) while the ones from English faculty mentioned that they usually had power point presentations and speech contest (25% students attest to having spoken in public before). However, they said that it was not presented among a lot of audience.
Before discussing about the following reasons, the researcher wants to state the fact that 75% of the students had glossophobia, which is the fear of making speech in public. Actually, it is a social phobia and the terms such as "the fear of speaking in public", "ner-
99 it 1 »J. 99 l it •
vousness , speech anxiety and communication apprehension" are used interchangeably (Segar G., 2021).
Figure 2. Causes of students' problems in public speech
The pie chart shows that all forty respondents in the research acknowledged that some problems causes them to be reluctant to make a public speech. The problems shown by the participants were also stated in the findings of earlier studies (Fish B., 2001). Majority (40%) of the students admitted low self-confidence as the main reason of reluctance in public speaking. This was followed by students' fear of crowd with 30% respectively mentioning that they are not educated and knowledgeable enough to express their ideas in formal occasions. Furthermore, 20% students claimed that their family background may cause their initial inconvenience
in public speaking. To illustrate, one participant proved that "students who suddenly come to town from a traditional Uzbek family in a village setting feel daunting experience in front of large crowd. According to the data gathered from students, it is clear that a kind of prior upbringing each student receives before tertiary education may negatively impact on their self-confidence in front of people. This research result aligns with Cherry's (2012) observation stating that an authoritarian parenting style expects a child to obey strict rules set by parents (Cherrry K., 2012). In fact, in many cultural settings in Uzbekistan, it is almost taboo for offspring to
keep quiet and listen when elders are speaking. Although this is a respectful habit, such cultural norms cause timidity in many Uzbek youth resulting in speech apprehension challenges later in life when they have to speak in public. Apart from this, 10% belongs to too much use of vernacular by students (a form of language, especially the one that is not official that ordinary people use). This was also emphasized in the arguments of Kankam and Boateng (2017) affirming that overuse of vernacular is the main reason of shyness caused by the fear of making errors (Kankam P. K., & Boateng S. O., 2017). However, if these results are compared to English speaker,
they are free to express their ideas in public with emotions and gestures. Young children in English families are quite free in front of parents and they have other socio-cultural norms. These are the other factors that affect English students feel quite independent in public. After TED Talk videos were recommended and utilized, students were asked to participate in the questionnaire in order to share what kind of influence TED Talks had on linguistic and pragmatic factors of their public speaking skills.
The results of the questionnaire are shown in the table.
Table 2.
№
Statement
Students in English philology
Students in Uzbek philology
1 I feel motivated by TED Talks speeches
2 I am improving my listening skills
3 I learn how to use facial expression
4 I am learning about gestures
5 I am learning different accents
6 I am improving my self-confidence
7 I am learning word and sentence structures
I am enhancing my intonation, tone and voice pi
I am learning the correct pronunciation
10 I am learning fluency
11 I am learning grammatical accuracy
12 I am learning to deliver ideas to others
13 I am learning to keep eye contact
14 I am improving my world outlook
8
9
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ +
+ + +
+
+
It is clear that the students of both faculties found TED Talks useful and effective to develop their linguistic and pragmatic aspects of their public speech.
Conclusion
Based on the abovementioned results, the researcher concludes that each public speech has its function: to entertain, influence, motivate or influence the audience. A person who makes a public speech can achieve his/ her intention only when the audience can re-
member the message that they have heard and learnt. It is proven that in comparison with English students, Uzbek tertiary students deal with glossophobia which is the fear of presenting ideas in public. The study emphasizes that with the help of TED Talk videos, learners achieved positive effects in terms of linguistic and pragmatic factors. They can boost their confidence in speaking, promote oral communicative skills, enhance their proficiency, message delivery to public and expand their world outlook.
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submitted 8.08.2023; accepted for publication 3.9.2023; published 8.10.2023 © Mansurova, F. Contact: feruz.m.sh@mail.ru
