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This article reports the findings of a diachronic study of acknowledgement practices in 300 randomly collected research papers published during three different periods (1998, 2004 and 2012) in the most prestigious American and European astrophysics journals written in English. In order to investigate the influence of these practices on authorship patterns, we analyzed the distribution over time of a series of quantitative variables (number, length and types of acknowledgements, mean number of words/number of acknowledgements per research paper and mean number of acknowledgements/number of authors per research paper, number of named and unnamed acknowledgees, number of identified and anonymous referees, and number of emotionally charged-words). Comparisons between periods were carried out and Student’s t-tests were applied to the quantitative results. Our main findings show that acknowledgements are very common in astrophysics since they are present in 96% of the whole corpus. Financial, mainly public, and instrumental supports are the most frequently acknowledged categories. The number and length of acknowledgements and the mean number of words/number of acknowledgements per research paper grow over time. Financial, instrumental and conceptual assistance, unnamed individuals and anonymous referees increase over time, whereas moral, editorial and unclassified supports, named individuals and identified referees, and emotionally-charged words decline. If we focus on each journal publication context, we can observe that the research papers published in the American journals include more and longer acknowledgements, with a higher mean number of acknowledgements per author, more financial and instrumental supports, and a lower percentage of emotionally-charged words, whereas the European journals contain more conceptual and editorial supports. All these data can be understood in the frame of growing scientific professionalism, while a detailed cross-journal analysis may occasionally suggest honorary/guest/gift authorship.

This paper examines a corpus of 150 titles of research articles published between 2010 and 2013 in Anglo-American natural sciences journals (physics, chemistry and biology) in order to determine their lexical density and grammatical and morphosyntactic features. Towards that end, the frequency of present and past participles, prepositions, coordinating and subordinate conjunctions, and the frequency and length of compound words was recorded in each title. The total number of content and function words was also recorded so as to determine title lexical density. ANOVA tests were applied in order to assess whether statistically significant differences in the frequency of the above mentioned variables were detected within and across disciplines and in the whole corpus. Our results showed that, in the three disciplines, the frequency of the past participle is higher than that of the present participle (p = 0,04). They also disclosed that prepositions are the most frequently used function words and that they outnumber coordinating conjunctions (p = 0,02). Compound words were found to be very frequent, especially 2- and 3-word ones. As for title lexical density, it was found to be similar across disciplines (3,1). The only statistically significant cross-disciplinary difference detected was that present participles are more frequently used in chemistry than in biology (p= 0,001). Our findings reflect the complexity of the scientific concepts expressed in natural sciences research article titles. Because titles are frequently the only section of a paper scientists read so as to decide whether to read on or not, we present a few pedagogical tips that could be applied in reading and/or writing ESP courses. DOI: 10.20420/rlfe.2015.0012

This paper is part of a wider research project which studies the academic writing of the dental Hispano-American community. It aims to describe and to analyze which hedging strategies are used and for what purpose in 40 dental research papers published in Hispano-American journals (1 Venezuelan, 1 Cuban and 2 Spanish) between 1999 and 2005. The frequency of use of hedges in the different rhetorical sections of the dental papers is analyzed: introduction, method, results, discussion and conclusions. In addition, we compare the use of hedging strategies according to the section, journal and nationality. It was found that impersonal constructions and approximators predominated, followed by shields. However, deictics and the compound hedges reported less frequency. Introduction and discussion were the most heavily hedged sections. Nevertheless, hedges were also registered, mainly impersonal type, in method and results sections. Conclusion was the least hedged section. Shields, deictics and compound hedges were found mainly in the introduction and the discussion sections. On the other hand, approximators, shields and impersonal constructions were used in all the sections. The comparisons of our results show statistically significant differences in the use of hedges according to the rhetorical section, and the nationality; we also found differences between the frequencies of use of the five hedging strategies. Hedging is a very frequent strategy in the dental Hispanic RP; therefore, we propose its formal teaching in the dental academic writing courses.

The book Multilingualism, Translation and Language Teaching, The PluriTAV Projec, edited by Juan José Martínez Sierra stems from the PluriTav Project funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and led by researchers at the Universitat de València, Universitat Jaume I, University College London, and the University of Roehampton. The book is divided into 13 chapters within two distinct parts. Part 1 consists of 5 chapters and presents the project rationale, the research and teaching context in which it emerged, its findings, and learning and teaching materials created by project members. Part 2 comprises 8 chapters, each of them featuring a research paper amongst the papers presented at the PluriTAV International Conference Multilingualism, Translation, and Language Teaching, which was held in Valencia, Spain, in 2019. The book is prefaced by an introductory chapter written by the editor and concludes with some final remarks.

Over the last two decades, the active engagement of learners through didactic Audiovisual Translation (AVT) in Foreign Language Learning (FLL) has been receiving increasing attention from both scholars and teachers. Most AVT modes — subtitling, dubbing, audio description (AD), subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) and voice-over — can be employed as didactic resources in FLL and guidelines are available for practitioners (Talaván, 2013, 2020). Empirical research has focused on the benefits of didactic AVT on individual and integrated language skills both in face-to-face and online contexts, English being the main language involved in the pedagogical tasks of most experimental studies (Lertola, 2019). Recently, a related long-term project, TRADILEX (Audiovisual Translation as a Didactic Resource in Foreign Language Education), led by the TRADIT research group at the UNED, has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. The main aim of TRADILEX is to evaluate the degree of FLL improvement in terms of communicative and mediation language skills thanks to the use of didactic AVT tasks. With this purpose, a carefully designed methodological proposal, which includes lesson plans on diverse AVT modes (i.e. subtitling, voice-over, dubbing, AD and SDH), is being piloted with B1 and B2 level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in non-formal educational contexts, in university language centers all over Spain. Teachers play a key role in TRADILEX as they are specifically-trained facilitators of the learning process. Many teachers believe that AVT tasks could be integrated in the foreign language curriculum if proper teacher training is provided (Alonso-Pérez and Sánchez-Requena, 2018). However, it should be noted that teacher training has been largely neglected in the literature (Lertola, forthcoming). Within this context, this paper will present an online teacher training experience on didactic AVT carried out as a pilot study of TRADILEX, involving 12 FL secondary-school in-training teachers at a higher institution in Switzerland. The one-day teacher training was aimed at introducing future teachers to the pedagogical use of AVT tasks by presenting and working with both a dubbing and an AD lesson plan targeted for EFL B1 and B2 level respectively. The paper will analyse and discuss the data gathered through a feedback questionnaire completed by the participants, the assessment of their AVT tasks, and structured as well as non-structured observations. Observations were collected through two ad hoc observation rubrics (one per lesson plan) filled in by the one teacher-researcher and their lecturer as only-observing teacher, as well as from a group interview and personal notes on the experience shared by the subjects taking the course. The results of this small-scale study are encouraging and call for further in-depth analysis of the role of the didactic AVT in teacher training, both for practitioners interested in using it with their students and for FL teacher training courses in general.

The current paper reports on empirical evidence from TRADILEX, a project intended to develop a methodological proposal integrating different AVT modes to enhance communicative competence in the L2. To this end, a didactic sequence has been articulated with 15 lessons that will be tested with B1 and B2-level learners from Spanish universities. In this article, we present the results of the pilot study for the subtitling sequence. The participants were students of English Philology (B2) at the University of Jaen. Before working on the lesson plans, participants took an initial test of integrated skills to assess their language command of the L2. Once completed, they started the didactic sequence, consisting of six lesson plans. Finally, participants took a final test of integrated skills, whose results are compared with those obtained from the initial test. The preliminary conclusions of the pilot study confirm that the communicative competence and the translation skills of students were enhanced. Beyond verifying the impact of didactic AVT on the learning process, the paper offers a model for pilot testing that can be used in future studies on didactic AVT.

The aim of this study to shed some light on the way meaning is constructed in different stages in the Brexit process through some covers of The Economist magazine. The present paper lies within the scope of the research into the instantiation of metaphor, metonymy and image schemas. This analysis has been structured according to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Ruiz de Mendoza & Pérez, 2011, among others) on the one hand, and the Multimodal Theory (Forceville 1996, 2009, 2012, 2016; Forceville & Urios-Aparisi, 2009) on the other, which have revealed that meaning is created through modes of communication other than verbal ones. The paper shows the role of monomodal and multimodal metaphor and metonymy as persuasive devices in magazine covers and the image-schematic basis of many metaphors and metonymies. In addition the results reveal that many multimodal metaphors are actually metonymy-based.

There is a greater demand for a wider range of translation services that increasingly involve scientific, commercial, legal, or technical documents. Translation is no longer limited to literary works which have historically been the main focus of the translation industry in Indonesia. As it is believed that university is the best place for translator training (Bernardini, 2004; Maia, 2012), there have been attempts to put legal and economic translation into the curriculum with the premise that students should be exposed to different types of text to ensure that the materials used in translation classes are relevant to market needs (Kelly, 2000; Heidari and Mowlaie, 2016) However, translating business texts is quite challenging for students because it requires knowledge of text type and genre differences in the SL and TL, and the awareness of the relationship between context and register in terms of field, mode, and tenor are vital for the translator (Beeby, 2000). This paper discusses errors produced by Indonesian novice translators in translating terminology in business texts. The samples used in this study were produced by students at the English Department of Politeknik Negeri Padang in West Sumatra, Indonesia. The institution is a vocational college that trains students in practical competencies, including to work as professional translators. The aim of this paper is to identify the strategies used by students in solving translation problems in an effort to better understand the issues faced in the field of translation in Indonesia.

Acquiring academic writing skills in English may be a true challenge, especially for undergraduate students for whom English is not their first language, but still have to accomplish writing tasks in a more or less successful way as a requirement to pass certain subjects and eventually qualify in higher education. Citation is perhaps the most distinctive property of academic writing and, at the same time, a feature which requires learners to understand how citation structures and reporting verbs can express the writer’s stance towards the imported information and the source authors themselves. This paper seeks to explore the use of a corpus of research papers written by native speakers of English in an English for Academic Purposes classroom with non-native speakers of the language. The proposal aims at boosting the students’ academic writing skills by providing them with a set of data-driven learning activities which promote both reflection and practice on a range of citation strategies. Teaching them how to use citation structures and reporting verbs effectively will ultimately allow them to take an adequate stance in their academic papers by shaping their claims in an appropriate way within a given disciplinary discourse community.

This paper looks into the use of modal verbs in a corpus of abstracts excerpted from scientific papers in the field of tourism. These texts have been written by specialists in tourism studies. Our study will show the way in which modality is used to show the authors’ intention as to the contents of their texts. The pragmatic implications of modal uses will be highlighted bearing in mind the purposes of the abstractgenre within the academic paper. The methodology of study is corpus linguistics, and the framework of analysis includes the works of Palmer (1979; Palmer, 1986)and Collins (2009), among others. This paper is part of a larger research on modal verbs in touristic scientific papers.

This paper analyses the length and titling practices in the under-researched field of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Our corpus consisted of 360 articles published between 1995 and 2016 in three CAM journals. The length and frequency of Nominal, Verbal and Question titles were compared across genres and over time. A 40% overall title length increase was found. Our study confirms that title length is related to genre, research paper (RP) titles being significantly longer than reviews and case report titles. Moreover, RP titles were found to exhibit the greatest length increase over time. In this study, Nominal titles were the most frequent title type in the three genres and over the 20-year period analyzed, although they slightly decreased over time. In contrast, Verbal (full sentence) titles increased over time, especially in RP titles. Question titles were the only type that significantly increased over time, especially in review article titles. These findings were compared with those obtained by previous titleology research on conventional (CONV) medicine paper titles. We conclude that although CAM and CONV are divergent approaches to health care, their titling practices revealed more similarities than differences. These similarities may reflect a growing tendency towards practices associated with popular media to attract readership, such as use of Question and Verbal titles. This competition for attention could have serious implications for health care if the trend increases for clinicians to rely on the titles of relevant articles to make therapeutic decisions.

The objective of this paper is, on the one hand, to present and highlight the importance of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in the use of academic English within a scientific environment and, on the other, to provide insights into understanding the disadvantage that non-native English-speaking scholars experience in international publishing.This paper begins by highlighting the importance of developing awareness of intercultural competency and sensitivity in academic writing and concludes by pointing out the need for increased understanding and tolerance on behalf of the editors and peer-reviewers of international academic journals. It emphasizes the need to promote acceptability and intelligibility, rather than mere conformity to the norms of the standard language, and it humbly aims at shifting long-established perceptions in the academic community.

The syntactic parser ARTEMIS (Automatically Representing Text Meaning via an Interlingua-based System) is a prototype intended to process natural language within the environment of the Functional Grammar Knowledge Base (FunGramKB) (Periñán-Pascual & Arcas-Túnez, 2010). Different from other parsing devices, ARTEMIS is grounded on two functional linguistic models: Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) (Van Valin & La Polla, 1997; Van Valin, 2005) and the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM) (Ruiz de Mendoza & Mairal Usón, 2008). However, certain adjustments have to be made to both models in order to meet the requirements derived from the fact that ARTEMIS follows the paradigm of Unification Grammars, in such a way that to comply with this paradigm, the GDE (Grammar Development Environment) within ARTEMIS needs to integrate two types of constructs: a catalogue of Attribute-Value Matrixes (AVMs) to describe grammatical units, and a set of production rules (grammatical, lexical and constructional) to allow it to produce a feature based grammar. It is the aim of this paper to give an overview of the investigation carried out so far within ARTEMIS in relation to these two aspects. We will do so by revisiting the literature in relation to the adjustments made to the linguistic models, especially to the RRG, and by reviewing the efforts made to describe the units and design the rules necessary for the parsing of simple sentences in English. Our paper will conclude by pointing at prospective research needed for the completion of this project.

The paper addresses the role of the cognitive model profile, one of the fundamental constructs in LCCM Theory (a.k.a. access semantics), in meaning construction and knowledge representation with respect to the concept of Europe. The study is based on a corpus of news articles retrieved from the Guardian from May 2004 through December 2009 (approximately 930,000 words) and focuses on the lexical item Europe (over 4000 corpus occurrences). The study takes its theoretical underpinnings from LCCM Theory, a theory of lexical representation and semantic composition, which delineates the roles the linguistic and the conceptual systems play in meaning construction (e.g., Evans 2009, 2013). The paper documents the immense semantic potential of the lexical item Europe as manifest in the Guardian’s discourse under analysis. In terms of knowledge representation, to account for the coherent body of multimodal knowledge which the lexical item Europe affords access to, its cognitive model profiles relevant to its two lexical concepts are constructed. As far as the role of the cognitive model profile in meaning construction is concerned, the study demonstrates how the context, specifically the co-text, determines the activation of a respective portion of the cognitive model profile of the lexical item Europe.

The paper addresses metaphor as a cognitive-semantic device which is able to reveal intuitive mechanisms of the thinking process, thus filling the gaps in the sphere of logically objective human knowledge and opening the possibility to describe abstract concepts of the human mind in terms. This paper substantiates the principal possibility of conceptual modeling of the metaphorization process and describes its baseline algorithm, identifies complex metaphors and establishes the cognitive-semantic features of their functioning. The main conclusion of the reasoning confirms the hypothesis that different image schemes have different strength of heuristic potential, which determines the fullness of metaphorical descriptions of concepts.

Brand designers often consciously or unconsciously make use of cognitive operations to convey positive values to brand names. This paper aims to look into the most prominent axiological values in Moroccan drink brand names and how they are introduced through cognitive operations such as comparison metaphors, correlation metaphors, domain expansion, domain reduction and metonymic chains. In addition, we will show the verbal or visual modes in which they are manifested. To this end, we have selected a corpus of sample brands taken from the Office Marocain de la Propriété Industrielle et Commerciale (OMPIC). This work has been structured according to the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor and Metonymy (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 1999; Ruiz de Mendoza & Pérez, 2011) and extended to axiological semantics (Krzeszowski 1997, 2004) and to specialized discourse (Felices Lago, 1996, 1999, 2002; Koller, 2009, among others). With this study we will give an account of the cognitive means used to denote values linked to this product category.

This paper presents a critical stance in the face of the technology-enhanced language learning (TELL) hype in higher education (HE). This hype, largely driven by institutional – instrumental and financial – imperatives has come under increasing scrutiny in recent times. Indeed, emerging discourses surrounding the broader context of technology-enhanced learning question the focus on technology-led innovation rather than pedagogy-led innovation as well as a number of scholarly aspects that remain largely undertheorised (cf. Bayne, 2014; Kirkwood & Price, 2013, 2014). In this paper we thus set out to articulate the challenges we face as language educators in the HE context and, in so doing, bring to light the glaring methodological gap that emerges from these. This discussion is complemented by practical examples from ongoing curricular innovation in intermediate Spanish language courses. These practical examples illustrate the pedagogical strategies we have implemented to respond to these challenges critically, but also, creatively. These strategies integrate theoretical principles from cognitive grammar (cf. Llopis-García, 2011) and an affective engagement approach to address specific pedagogical concerns that have emerged in these courses.

The more and more prominent role of English in the Spanish Education system has brought to the foreground the relevance of research in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language (FL). At no other time in the history of Spanish education have teachers of English been so knowledgeable about pedagogy, learning theories and curriculum planning or had so many resources at their disposal. Yet, and despite considerable progress made over the years, students rarely achieve high levels of proficiency in English at the end of a course of study. Why? This monograph alone does not intend to answer the question. Neither does it aspire to cover the entire range of variables that directly or indirectly have an impact on FL teaching and learning. The purpose of this monograph is to be the first of a series which provides state-of-the-art overviews of what is already known and of what requires further study in a wide range of fields to which foreign language teaching and learning can be applied. To this end, the papers published within this volume cover the research domains of Information and Communication Technology –in connection with students’ perceptions–, Content and Language Integrated Learning –in relation with students’ anxiety levels and attitudes–, needs analysis, interlanguage and textbooks and the intercultural communicative competence. The evidence provided by the five selected papers about the situation in Spanish institutions will map out the current interdisciplinary findings on a specific common problem facing educationalists: how to promote better English learning. Two features make the volume especially appealing: the presence of all levels of education and the incorporation of an often neglected group of learners: adult learners of English in the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas (Official Language School). DOI: 10.20420/rlfe.2015.0001

Studies of cross-cultural rhetorical variation, and how the influence of the cul- ture and the linguistic and structural aspects of a person's L1 may affect his/her writing in an L2, are often labelled Contrastive Rhetoric research. This paper reviews the field of Contrastive Rhetoric (CR) with a special focus on academic/scientific and professional contexts. A revision of Kaplan's (1966) pio- neering work in CR, and the subsequent criticism it has received, is followed by a comprehensive overview of how this area of research has evolved in recent years, and by a survey of the latest variables which are being considered in contemporary CR research. On the basis of the results obtained in these CR studies, this paper discusses the issue of whether scientific discourse is universal or whether it is culture-specific, i.e. governed by socio-cultural factors.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the presence of persuasion markers in the eighteenth century texts of the Corpus of English Philosophy Texts (CEPhiT), a sub-corpus of the Coruña Corpus.2 It is also my intention to ascertain to what an extent the genteel, social and religious ideology of the period is present in both the texts and in prefaces to these works written by the authors themselves. The paper will be organized as follows. Section One describes the function of persuasion in the author-reader relationship of eighteenth century English-speaking countries, as well as the dominant ideological postulates which underpin it. Section Two presents the methodology and the corpus material selected for the analysis, Biber’s Multidimensional Analysis (MD henceforth) and CEPhiT, respectively. Section Three sets out the analysis of data, through which I offer a quantitative approach to persuasive strategies followed by a functional interpretation, paying special attention to the text-type/genre variable and comparing overall results with those that refer specifically to female authors. Conclusions and final remarks will be discussed in Section Four.

This paper considers the changing referent of the colour terms maroon and magenta. Maroon was a specialised technical term in the mid-eighteen-hundreds within the field of artists’ colours, and the term magenta was introduced in 1860 in the newly-invented chemical dye industry. Both terms spread out into general usage, and in the case of maroon, caused earlier meanings to be disturbed and displaced so that today they are either forgotten or shifted into register-specific usage (namely, North American bureaucratic English and other Extraterritorial English bureaucratic varieties). It is speculated that the English artists’ colours firm of Winsor and Newton had a role in retarding the American sense-development of the colour term maroon, as this firm had a near-monopoly in late nineteenth-century America. Thus, the paper offers a description of semantic change from specialised usage to general usage, with a restriction of specialised usage remaining in a specific functional context. Data is taken from artists’ handbooks, tint-cards and paint catalogues; from police report forms, wanted persons notices, and other official bureaucratic forms; and mention is also made of the novels and letters of Charles Dickens.

The appropriate use of hedging in scientific discourse is a vital skill for wri- ters presenting their knowledge in an academic discourse community and much work has therefore been done on this relevant feature, especially on its use in the rhetoric of specialized texts in English. Some authors believe that there are considerable differences in styles of writing in particular cultures (e.g., see Connor and Kaplan 1987, Mauranen 1993b and Valero-Garcés 1996). But not until very recently and mainly as a result of the growing interest in contrastive rhetoric has Spanish language been studied as well. In this paper I will examine the range of expressions in English and Spanish medical research articles that are commonly known as hedging. Although hedging typical realisation might be considered to be the modal verb forms, they are not the only devices available. In our research, we have also considered the role of passive voice in modulating specialized discourse.This study based on a corpus of 10 Research Papers (RP) in English and 10 RP and 10 Case Reports (CR) in Spanish sets out to find reasons behind the existence of a wide range of hedging realisations. Drawing upon Swales (1990) genre analy- sis framework, it will be shown that hedging features are related to linguistic forms through functional and conventional associations. Thus, showing the factors influencing the choice of expression we will explain the meanings conveyed by each realisation and expose the similarities and differences between Spanish and English hedging devices in medical research papers. Key words: Discourse analysis, hedging, cross-linguistics and LSP.

The Problem-Solution pattern has been widely considered a key discourse- organizing resource in technical discourse (Hoey, 1983, 2001). This paper aims at exploring the role of the pattern in a corpus of construction engineering textbooks. The paper contends that use of the pattern facilitates the introduction of specialized knowledge, scaffolded by means of lexical resources which allow the reader to recognize and interpret the staging of the pattern. The analysis centers on the building, as it is the main product and the process of the construction profession, and more particularly on how disciplinary discourse is constructed around the problems that affect the building. Findings show that the textual use of the Problem-Solution pattern is closely connected to the pragmatic problem- solving nature of the engineering discipline. The social dimension of this discipline is textualized in their concern to analyze the cause and the effect of the building problems for which adequate solutions should be provided. Drawing on the perspective of applied discourse analysis (Bhatia, 2004), the paper finally discusses the textual use of the lexico-grammatical, semantic and rhetorical resources of the pattern in the light of the specific professional culture and disciplinary community practices in which the text is produced. l

This paper seeks to validate the use of translation as a methodological procedure that facilitates learners' interpretation of professional writing practices. We mainly contend that translation activities can become an adequate linguistic input in the teaching of professional written genres as regards the analysis of the linguistic, rhetorical and social components of these genres. Relying on the students' comparison of source text and target text, the paper discusses (i) how translation- based assignments reinforce the acquisition of lexico-grammatical patterns at a textual level, (ii) how L1 to L2 transfer foregrounds the way texts are organised and the way thematic elements are semantically connected within a rhetorical structure, and (iii) how translation-based noticing helps teachers raise learners' aware- ness of interpersonal mechanisms, epistemic positions and, more broadly speaking, of the construction and negotiation of social relations in the professional arena. As reported in the paper, teacher/students discussion in an ESP classroom illustrate the role of translation as a suitable pedagogical means to raise students' awareness of those textual, rhetorical and social aspects involved in professional genres.

This paper looks at the ever-growing influence of new technologies on the process of teaching and learning foreign languages. An analysis is made of the main tools currently used by language teachers, both general tools, such as blogs and wikis, and tools designed specifically for teaching. There is also a study of the most important authoring systems, on the one hand, and of the computer applications used to create interactive materials for didactic purposes, on the other. The paper then scans academic articles published in journals and comments on the results achieved with the use of those tools. These results are, in most cases, highly positive. Finally, there is a review of published studies dealing with so-called computer-mediated communication, focusing on the effect it has on the process of learning a foreign language.

The lexical approach identifies lexis as the basis of language and focuses on the principle that language consists of grammaticalised lexis. in second language acquisition, over the past few years, this approach has generated great interest as an alternative to traditional grammar-based teaching methods. From a psycholinguistic point of view, the lexical approach consists of the capacity of understanding and producing lexical phrases as non-analysed entities (chunks). A growing body of literature concerning spoken fluency is in favour of integrating automaticity and formulaic language units into classroom practice. in line with the latest theories on SlA, we recommend the inclusion of a language awareness component as an integral part of this approach. The purpose is to induce what Schmidt (1990) calls noticing, i.e., registering forms in the input so as to store them in memory. This paper, which is in keeping with the interuniversity Research Project “Evidentiality in a multidisciplinary corpus of English research papers” of the University of las Palmas de Gran Canaria, provides a theoretical overview on the research of this approach taking into account both the methodological foundations on the subject and its pedagogical implications for SLA.

This paper investigates the use of epistemic expressions in scientific English. The main aim of this research is to analyse if native speakers of English use epistemic modality in the same way than non-native speakers of English and to detect the most outstanding cognitive implications of this fact. The corpus used in this research contains 50 research papers written by native English speakers and 50 scientific papers written by Spanish researchers who use English to communicate internationally. As epistemic modals are used to indicate the possibility of some piece of knowledge, this paper focuses on epistemic modal verbs in order to detect if native speakers of English and non-native speakers of English commu- nicate modality in the same way, or if there are differences in frequency and use. The results obtained in this analysis indicated that there are differences in the frequency of use of epistemic expressions, even if the intention of the writers is the same.

This paper introduces the action-oriented foundations of TRADILEX (Audiovisual Translation as a Didactic Resource in Foreign Language Education), a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation which involves researchers from twelve universities across Europe and the UK. TRADILEX sets out to gather data on the improvement in the linguistic skills perceived through the use of captioning (i.e., interlingual and intralingual subtitling) and revoicing (i.e., dubbing, voice-over and audio description) through an action-oriented approach (AoA). In order to enhance learners’ communicative competence, as well as reception, production and mediation skills in an integrated manner, a methodological proposal for a didactic sequence of audiovisual translation (AVT) tasks has been developed. This methodological proposal is currently being piloted with B1 and B2 adult learners of English as a foreign language utilising – and adapting – the recent illustrative descriptors (Council of Europe 2018) for AVT instruction. This research effort sets out to better understand and evaluate the potential benefits of action-oriented AVT tasks in foreign language education (FLE). This project advocates for a wider integration of AVT in the FLE curriculum, thus fostering visual literacy and mediation skills, whilst promoting an active use of AVT practices and technologies in the classroom.

This paper examines the reshaping of an audiovisual translation (AVT)-focused language course to make it suitable for children in an online context. Captioning and revoicing have shown to be notably powerful tools, given the potential of rich, contextualised audio-visual input to keep learners’ motivation high, promote well-being and facilitate foreign language acquisition. Nonetheless, the use of combined AVT modes has received scarce attention, and the number of studies devoted to young people is very limited. Therefore, resources available are understandably lacking for teachers who continue to report difficulties in managing online contexts and designing effective learning experiences in this extended pandemic period. This is the first study appraising children’s perceptions of the use of both Zoom and AVT-based tasks in the learning of Italian online. It also proposes a theoretical framework and provides a practical example for moving an AVT-focused language course online. After two years from its initial blended implementation, the course (omitted for anonymity) conducted as part of (omitted for anonymity) was rethought to be moved online. The 6-week course ran three times for a total of 27 hours and involved 38 children, aged 9-12 years. Data have been collected from an end-module questionnaire, a final interview and in-class observations. Findings reveal the suitability of an AVT-focused language course online for children who show a positive attitude towards Zoom and both AVT modalities. They prefer revoicing as an online synchronous collaborative activity, which prevents isolation and fosters sociability. Captioning was perceived as the most difficult AVT task, although some had fun experimenting as remote independent learners. Results show the capacity of young people to use the Aegisub software autonomously but also their need for parental support at home. The benefits and challenges identified during the learning process were crucial for formulating recommendations for teachers and call for further research on AVT in early educational contexts.

A phonetico-phonological study of Spanish declaratives which integrates the description of intonation tunes together with their pragmatic interpretations in the framework of a multilevel theory of communication is absent in most intonational accounts. In this paper, we contribute with a discourse-oriented analysis of read-news speech in Spanish. Its integrated two-fold orientation in terms of the universally well-accepted intonational framework, the Autosegmental-Metrical Theory, together with another universally recognised cognitive theory of communication, Relevance Theory, reveals that boundary tones stand as a powerful phonological unit to lead subjects through a structured discourse, and a contextualised presentation of information. In addition, our multilevel model of boundary tone interpretations also accounts for the socio-cultural use of politeness together with its orientation towards the different individuals in the communicative act: the speaker, the hearer, or both.

The focus of my research is Narrative Instances (NIs) of Admission Interviews (AIs) in Public Mental Health carried out in Youth Centres of Mendoza Province, Argentina, within the framework of MOdEAS project. The aim of this paper is to show the functional relation between NIs and Verbal Actions (Paris 2012, 2009, Paris et al. 2008) that are expressed in the AIs: , , , etc. Verbal Actions (VAs) are theoretical constructs that capture the interactional nature of conversations and are defined by an information structure based on five attributes. Paris (2012:3) argues that the abstract scheme used to define VAs can be realised in various and different ways. According to my hypothesis, the nucleus of VAs is expressed in the evaluative constituents of the different categories of NIs, which makes it possible to establish relationships between type of VA and type of appraisal (subsystem of attitude) (Martin y White 2005). I also sustain that non-evaluative constituents of NIs are the “rhetoric structure”, i.e. each of the non-evaluative constituents has a rhetoric function (Mann et al., 1992; Mann y Thompson, 1988; Paris, 2010) which contributes to the effective completion of the VA. In this paper, I illustrate the relation between nucleus and rhetorical structure of the VAs (París 2012), and (Salmaso 2013) with a NI that belongs to the category Narrative.

Titles are the first point of contact with readers and are encoded to provide concise information on the paper’s contents. Data from available surveys show that the structural construction conforms to four different layouts, namely nominal, compound, full-sentence and question, with a prevalence of the former two formats and an increase in the use of the latter ones. The aim of this paper is to discuss the state of the art of title encoding practices in three written genres commonly employed in Food Science: research articles, short communications and poster presentations. Findings indicate the prevalent occurrence of nominal and compound layouts and the lack of question titles in the three genres analysed. Results also show that titles have a mean length of 15.3 words in research articles, of 14.6 words in short communications and of 12 words in poster presentations. The data are shared to offer a framework of current praxis in Food Science and to inform teachers and authors on how to shape informative titles for their research.

This paper explains the use of the Schema Theory in planning and preparing a Physiology lesson in a CLIL tertiary context in a Spanish university. The adopted combination of methods used in applying the theory is transferable to any context and subject. Scaffolding for content and language learning was undertaken using schema-building through activities involving: (1) sequencing; (2) using an exercise with causality language for purposeful reading (3) outlining; and (4) commentating on a video. Since CLIL practices have often lead CLIL theory, the study is organized into two parts. The first part is described in this article, and the second part, involving feedback from the students in this study, is work in progress. The required Physiology lesson lent itself to outlining a reading, and applying top-down structuring of information and schema building, as well as to the use of causality. The video commentary activity, on the other hand, catered for a more bottom-up approach. The paper focuses on the design of materials and activities as part of the ongoing CLIL collaboration between the language and the content professors. Other than the Schema theory and top-down bottom-up information processing, the designed activities were based on the principles of social constructivism through language scaffolding and peer collaboration.

Following the multicompetence framework (Cook and Li, 2016; Ortega, 2016), this paper aims at (a) analysing differences in the use of conjunctions across the L1 Spanish and the L1/L2 Spanish groups and the L1 English and the L1/L2 English groups and (b) determining the possible occurrence of crosslinguistic influence across groups. Findings revealed that no significant differences were found across the L1 Spanish and the L1/L2 Spanish groups, while the L1/L2 English group produced more conjunctions than the L1 English group. No evidence of crosslinguistic influence was found. It seems that proficiency and training in academic writing may be more relevant than being a native or non-native academic writer.

In our globalised world, the need of a common language is encouraging the massive learning of English. Much effort has been dedicated to help improve proficiency at different levels of language learning, but, as students face greater levels of complexity, proficiency in pragmatic aspects of language continues being deficient (Romero-Trillo, 2002; Author and Carrió Pastor, 2013). This must be addressed in the Foreign Language (FL) classroom (Sperber and Wilson, 1995; Wang, 2007). In this regard, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), grounded on the communicative approach, has provided guidelines to teach and established Foreign Language proficiency levels. The CEFR Companion Volume proposed more detailed descriptors to identify and outline language proficiency. The present paper displays a 10-year pseudo-longitudinal study of a learner corpus of 125 written texts produced by University students in which pragmatic (coherence and cohesion) errors are analysed. The aim of the study has been to examine improvement in student production in the years subsequent to the publication of the reference book. Results point to errors that have been minimised after training and instruction, but they also identify some recurrent errors in English as an FL writing.

This paper examines English-medium instruction lectures at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) and problematises the extent to which English is only the ‘medium’ or the ‘lingua franca’ to obtain a teaching-learning purpose as regards content or whether these lectures are also sensitive to language learning. The analysis is concerned with metalinguistic comments made by EMI lecturers during their lessons in which they ‘focus on form’, i.e., shift from the topic they were discussing (course-related content) to English language forms (e.g., vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.). It analyses this as a pragmatic strategy among others employed by the lecturers to prevent and overcome difficulties of comprehension experienced by their students. The corpus for the study consists of 14 hours of audio-recorded lectures in two different disciplines (Business Administration and Nanoscience). The methodology relies on a discourse-pragmatic analysis of the transcribed lectures as well as on semi-structured interviews with the lecturers, which serve to understand their perception of their use of this and other pragmatic strategies. The results of the study contribute to providing evidence of the supportive attitude of EMI lecturers who focus on form to assist their students with disciplinary language but who consider themselves as non-language teachers.

The pressure on scholars who use English as an Additional Language (EAL) to publish their research in English-medium journals has recently been extended to those postgraduate students who seek to complete their PhD programmes. However, in higher education institutions worldwide, few training courses on English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) are being offered in order to provide students with effective rhetorical strategies which could facilitate the integration in their disciplinary communities. In this paper we report on the design and implementation of an ERPP training course for doctoral students in the fields of Arts and Humanities, which is based on the prior compilation of a corpus of research articles selected by the participants, a genre-analysis of the texts and a critical-pragmatic approach to the teaching of the socio-cultural features that underpin the whole process of publishing one’s research. On the basis of the analysis of the responses to a post-course evaluation questionnaire we also aim to examine the participants’ perceptions of the pedagogical intervention. The results indicate that, through their active participation in the course, the students acknowledge having gained a better understanding of the socio-pragmatic context involved in the publishing process, including awareness of the predominant rhetorical structures of research articles and abstracts, the prevalent academic practices in both national and international settings, and of potential variation in communicative strategies in their specific disciplinary areas.

The concept of representativeness is the main distinguishing characteristic of specialised corpora in comparison to other sets of texts. The Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing currently comprises four published subcorpora (astronomy, life sciences, history, and philosophy) plus three others under compilation (physics, chemistry and linguistics). In this paper we aim to assess the lexical density of the text samples in CETA, the Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy, by means of the ReCor tool, a posteriori. The study is motivated by the following question: does quantitative representativeness analysis using ReCor provide, in the form of a cross-check, further validation of previous research on the representativeness of CETA? Previous work (Crespo and Moskowich, 2010) has indicated that the CETA corpus is well designed and valid for the purposes for which it was intended. We will here suggest metrics to measure these findings. The most important contribution of this study is to offer quantitative data collection results using the ReCor tool, which allows data triangulation and consequently ensures overall data quality. Results show that data analysis with the ReCor tool supports previous findings, and thus we are able to verify that CETA is indeed representative of the language of its time and register.

Within the framework of comparative studies, this paper discusses the use of passives and relative clauses in Freshwater Ecology research articles. In a corpus of 20 articles, a critical analysis was undertaken in order to highlight existing differences between native and non-native English-speaking authors, male and female researchers, time periods and journal categories. Results revealed non-native English research writers making more use of both passives and relative structures. However, only gender differences were found in the use of relative clauses, with female researchers employing more relatives than their male counterparts. Temporal differences are consistent with previous research that noted a shift towards a less formal discourse in scientific writing. From a didactic point of view, findings of this study are expected to broaden the knowledge of existing variations in scientific writing so that EAP scholars may develop practical writing strategies at the undergraduate or postgraduate level in universities worldwide.

Addressing the growing need to re-examine current approaches and teaching methods within the scope of ESP, this paper starts by describing the preliminary states of V-interESP – an international joint research project involving students and faculty from Lithuania, Portugal and Serbia. This project has two primary goals: to understand the role digital technology, and particularly videos, can play in enhancing students’ learning experiences within ESP settings; and to promote the study participants’ creativity as well as intercultural awareness and communication. Thus, in this study, the authors present preliminary research findings, based on the students’ answers to an entry questionnaire. Data focusses on students’ profiles and their perceived potential of using video to learn ESP, in particular regarding student motivation and the development of communication skills, as well as creative abilities.

This paper aims to analyse the extent to which the latest changes to the foreign language certificate regulation have influenced undergraduates’ motivation to learn English, especially among final year students at the Centro de Magisterio La Inmaculada. The main reason why we focused on the students in question is the fact that they are divided into different groups depending on their major subject (Science, English, Physical Education and Attention to Diversity), which has enabled us to observe four different profiles. Furthermore, we wanted to explore the possible differences between them regarding two main issues: their motivation to study English as a Foreign Language and their opinions about the change in foreign language regulation at the University of Granada. In order to examine these questions, we created a questionnaire that gathered both quantitative and qualitative data. The results confirmed our hypothesis: the latest regulation has affected students’ motivation towards EFL learning. Now, more than ever, undergraduates opt for learning English to obtain a B1 certificate that will allow them to graduate from University. Moreover, there have been some significant differences between the groups, especially in the case of future English teachers and the rest of specialities.

This paper analyzes the genre of popularization article discussing autism published by the magazine Science Daily. The objective of this research is to define this genre and describe its structure, language and most common rules. The method applied involved the analysis of 50 samples of texts following the models proposed by Bhatia (2004) and Swales (1990). Results suggest that there is a usual common structure among the texts of this genre and there are also some language forms that occur in most of the texts such as length, moves and steps, morphology composition, and the use of pronouns and verbs. In conclusion, after analyzing the results obtained from our corpus, a series of rules have been suggested in order to define the most common structure and forms within the genre of popularization articles published by Science Daily that discuss the topic of autism.

This paper, which forms part of the research for my doctoral dissertation, presents a new taxonomy of what I have named social characteristics of individuals. This is a new approach which reorganises the traditional concepts of face and social rights. Social characteristics are understood and emphasised differently by every culture. Thus, social characteristics will be dealt with by every cultural group, depending on and according to the cultural values of that group. On the other hand, these four social characteristics of individuals can be attacked or threatened by a series of impoliteness strategies. As an example, this article will analyse two of the most studied cultural dimensions: power and identity. To illustrate these ideas, I will present the data obtained from some questionnaires done by two different groups of respondents, a Spanish one and an American one. The different values that these two cultures have will reflect on their answers.

The cultural content of textbooks has become an important issue since the main goal of teaching English as a foreign language has shifted from communicative competence to intercultural citizenship. This paper reviews the trends in teaching culture in EFL and examines different approaches to the cultural analysis of textbooks. Then, our study analyses the cultural content of two editions of an intermediate (B1) EFL textbook using our own cultural content checklist. By comparing older and more recent editions, we examine how comprehensive the cultural content is in each book and determine how many thematic categories are covered in both textbooks.

The aim of this paper is to undertake a study on advertisements released on youtube concerning integration of people with Down Syndrome. This study will be based on the different elements included (visual, audio and dialogues) in the advertisements done in Spain and United States in the year 2018 commemorating the international day. As everybody knows, developed countries have as one of their social objectives to promote tolerance and acceptance of the different minority groups no matter the condition: race, genre, sexual orientation, different capacities or so. This is an aim that should be recognised in every country to be considered developed and forward-looking thinking. In order to perform this, associations and organisms try to attract the attention of the citizens through advertisements in which sameness and equality is the main message. To do this, language and images play a decisive role. But these videos are not considered advertisements as such as their aim is social and not mercantilist. So, features will vary. We shall analyse these resources and conclude with the degree of efficacy.

This paper examines the occurrence of I am thinkingin political speeches as opposed to general discourse. This combination containing a verb traditionally considered incompatible with the progressive seems to be evolving and extending its range of functions. Data drawn from a reference corpus of British English shows that I am thinkingserves a wide array of discursive functions, besides its basic propositional cogitate meaning (parenthetical, filler, narrative and interpretative). In political speeches the construction has developed an almost exclusive cohesive role, i.e. the speaker’s clarification of a previous utterance. This use, which derives from the interpretative progressive, is not available with the simple form, I think, a phrase extensively studied in the past decades as an epistemic unit with dissimilar functions in different types of discourse (Simon-Vandenbergen 2000). This analysis, furthermore, makes an important contribution to the understanding of the progressive as a marker of contingency (Goldsmith & Woisetschlaeger 1982; De Wit & Brisard 2014), highly interpretable in a situational or linguistic context.

ABSTRACT Much has been written about the complex and secluded world of the metaphor, albeit the study of the power of the conceptual metaphor as a persuasion tool behind the shadows of certain socio-political and economic interests is still a partially unexplored world. Hence, this paper aims to study the conceptual metaphor in financial press articles. In the interests of carrying out such purpose, this empirical study stems from the analysis, from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective, of the typology and connotation (positive or negative) of the conceptual metaphors used, as well as we will establish a longitudinal study of the use of both positive and negative metaphors in the 3 months prior to Brexit day vote. To do this, a corpus based on 15 articles retrieved from the prestigious British financial journal The Economist has been compiled. In addition, in order to carry out a comparative analysis of the discourse, a corpus-based study pertaining to the same journal (Rojo and Orts, 2008) has been used. Findings suggest that the connotation in the use of metaphors is strongly influenced by the proximity of the Brexit vote day. Likewise, data also revealed that socio-political context plays a fundamental role as far as the use of different typology of metaphor is concerned. Keywords: Cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, Business English, financial language and corpus. RESUMEN Mucho se ha escrito sobre el complejo y recóndito mundo de la metáfora, si bien el estudio del poder de la metáfora conceptual como herramienta de persuasión detrás de ciertos intereses socio-políticos y económicos sigue siendo un mundo parcialmente inexplorado. Por ende, este trabajo persigue el estudio de la metáfora conceptual basado en artículos de prensa financiera. En aras de llevar a cabo tal propósito, el objetivo de este estudio empírico yace en el análisis, desde una perspectiva tanto cuantitativa como cualitativa, de la tipología y connotación (positiva o negativa) de las metáforas conceptuales utilizadas, así como también estableceremos un estudio longitudinal del uso de metáforas de corte positivo y negativo en los 3 últimos meses hasta el día de la votación para el Brexit en el Reino Unido. Para ello, se ha compilado un corpus basado en 15 artículos pertenecientes al prestigioso periódico financiero británico The Economist. Además, para poder llevar a cabo un análisis comparativo del discurso, se ha utilizado un estudio basado en un corpus perteneciente al mismo periódico (Rojo and Orts, 2008), aunque en este último el estudio se centra en el contexto de la Crisis Sistémica Global de 1997. Los hallazgos sugieren que la connotación en el uso de las metáforas se encuentra influenciado por la proximidad del día de la votación sobre el Brexit. De igual manera, los datos también revelaron que el contexto socio-político juega un papel fundamental en lo que al uso de las diferentes tipologías de metáforas se refiere.

The submitted paper deals with analysis of grammatical means of textual cohesion in English in a specific genre of legal register, i.e. in appellate court decisions. The theoretical framework of analysis is the theory of textual cohesion introduced by Halliday and Hasan in their work Cohesion in English (1976), which considers only intersentence cohesive ties to be textually cohesive and which distinguishes four categories of grammatical cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction. In the analysed texts, all the instances of these four categories of grammatical cohesion are identified and statistically evaluated. The aim of the analysis is twofold. The first goal of research is to find out what kinds of cohesive devices appear with the highest frequency. Another focus of analysis is to find out whether the grammatical means of textual cohesion under analysis contribute to the stylistic qualities of the analysed texts and make them unambiguous and clear enough for interpretation. The findings of the analysis as well as their subsequent comparison with other registers indicate that the most frequent grammatical means of textual cohesion, namely demonstrative reference and additive conjunction, significantly contribute to precision, formality and logical organization of the analysed genre of legal English. DOI: 10.20420/rlfe.2015.0010

This paper examines the impact of Spaniards’ and North-Americans’ level of context dependence (Hall, 1976) on the engagement markers (Hyland & Tse, 2004) used on the presentation page of 100 business websites from the toy sector (50 from Spain and 50 from the US). Following an observational and a quantitative analysis, the findings reveal remarkable statistical differences in the interactional discourse of this digital genre, which may be a valuable source of information for export companies to introduce their products abroad by means of their business websites. In addition, we believe that the business website can be used in the teaching and learning of Spanish and English for professional purposes, with a special focus on the way interactional discourse is produced and interpreted in this digital genre cross-culturally.