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Linguistic empathy represents a dynamic interpersonal system of language that varies according to the communicative setting. Therefore, it is plausible to assume that there are different patterns (or styles) of empathy construction characteristic of each type of interaction. In the present study, we examine the empathic strategies deployed by participants in two online support groups: a recovery forum from an eating disorder (ED) and a forum for diabetes. The sample from the ED forum includes 50 threads, with a total of 82.562 words. For the diabetes forum, the sample comprises 18 threads, and a total number of 40.932 words. The results indicate that in the ED forum the most common empathy moves are primary emotional reactions and taking the other’s perspective (cognitive empathy). In the diabetes forum, instead, the most frequent strategy was sharing the illness practices as proof of affiliation with the recipient. This contrast in the kind of empathy moves used in each community is related to the different experience of diabetes and EDs., La empatía lingüística constituye un sistema dinámico de lenguaje de carácter interpersonal que varía en función de la situación comunicativa. Puede plantearse, por consiguiente, que existen patrones (o estilos) de construcción empática característicos y particulares para cada tipo de interacción. En el presente estudio, examinamos las estrategias empáticas desplegadas en dos grupos de apoyo en línea: un foro de recuperación de un trastorno de la conducta alimentaria (TCA) y otro dedicado a la gestión y manejo de la diabetes. La muestra extraída del foro de TCA contiene 40 hilos, con un total de 82.562 palabras. Para el foro de diabetes, se han seleccionado 18 hilos con un total de 40.932 palabras. Los resultados indican que en el foro de TCA abundan las muestras de empatía primaria y las correspondientes a la adopción de la perspectiva del otro (empatía cognitiva), mientras que en el foro de diabetes la estrategia más recurrente es compartir las propias prácticas de gestión de la enfermedad como prueba de afiliación con el interlocutor. Este contraste en el tipo de movimientos empáticos empleados en una y otra comunidad se pone en relación con la distinta experiencia de la diabetes y los TCA.

Politici gebruiken Twitter veelal voor zelfpromotie. Door een analyse van Twitterproducties door politici uit verschillende Europese landen, bespreken we hoe zelfpromotie argumentatief het verschil kan maken in de communicatie - vaak via journalisten - met burgers, en onder welke voorwaarden zelfpromotie een redelijk (ethotisch) argument uitdrukt, dan wel een (ethische) drogreden vormt. Eerst laten we zien hoe de Twitter-omgeving bepaalde affordances biedt en andere ontbeert voor politici met een boodschap. Vervolgens gaan we na welke argumentatieve doelen zelfpromotie kan dienen. Tenslotte behandelen we de vraag onder welke omstandigheden zelfpromotie kan beschouwd worden als argumentatief deugdelijk.

In this study, we will present an analysis of how polarization, and more specifically polarizing representations of immigrant communities, are discursively constructed in the online discourse of Belgian French-speaking politicians. Our study is based on Facebook and Twitter messages from leading politicians from all major parties. They consist of two one-month samples, which were collected one month before and during the 2019 electoral campaign for the regional, national and European elections that took place on May 26th. We will show how a variety of linguistic devices, such as deixis and metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), contribute to creating an opposition between an in-group and an out-group and to presenting the out-group as a threat, thus producing polarizing representations of immigrant communities.

This chapter will offer an overview of research on the pronominal system in specialized corpora in Spanish, with a focus on personal pronouns (including person reference through verb morphology), neuter pronouns and demonstrative pronouns. The chapter will deal both with the forms used as well as with the functions these pronouns may fulfill in a variety of specialized corpora. First, the chapter will offer an overview of the variety of forms involved, taking into account the pluricentric nature of the Spanish language and its impact on the paradigms and frequency of the pronouns included in this chapter. Further, I will present the research that has been carried out on the way in which the selected pronouns function in specialized corpora. Given the influence of production and the possibilities for retransmission in the use of deictics and demonstratives, a distinction will be made between spoken, written and digital corpora. Thus, a variety of discourses will be considered, including educational, scientific, professional, political discourses. This section will be followed by a functional approach to the pronouns under consideration, which will allow for showing the diversity of interactive, argumentative and discursive functions the pronouns may fulfill. This overview will furthermore allow for showing the contribution of these pronouns to the creation or strengthening of discursive cohesion and of interactional relations, as well as to identity construction in the context of specialized corpora. Finally, I will point out some aspects that have received less attention in the research on the way these pronouns function in Spanish, in order to suggest avenues for future research., Este capítulo brinda un panorama de la investigación sobre el sistema pronominal en corpus especializados en español, centrándose en los pronombres personales (incluyendo la referencia de persona mediante la morfología verbal), los pronombres neutros y los pronombres demostrativos. Tratará tanto de las formas utilizadas como de las funciones que pueden desempeñar dichos pronombres en una variedad de corpus especializados. En primer lugar, el capítulo ofrece un panorama de la variedad de formas, prestando atención al carácter pluricéntrico del español y su impacto en los paradigmas y la frecuencia de los pronombres en cuestión. Se detalla luego los trabajos hechos sobre el funcionamiento de los pronombres seleccionados en corpus especializados. Visto la influencia del modo de producción y de las posibilidades de retransmisión en el uso deícticos y demostrativos, se distinguirá entre corpus orales, escritos y digitales. Por ende, se abarcarán discursos variados como son los discursos educativos, científicos, profesionales, políticos, entre otros. Se continuará con una aproximación funcional a los pronombres objeto de este capítulo, que permitirá dar cuenta de la diversidad de funciones interactivas, argumentativas y discursivas que pueden desempeñar. Este panorama permite, asimismo, mostrar la contribución de los pronombres a la creación o el refuerzo de la cohesión discursiva o de la relación interaccional, o a la construcción identitaria en el marco de los corpus especializados. En último lugar, se apuntan aspectos menos tratados en la investigación del funcionamiento de dichos pronombres en corpus especializados en español y se sugieren de esta forma pistas para investigaciones futuras.

Requesting is a speech act that we produce frequently in all areas of our daily lives: at home, at work, at the supermarket, at school, etc. Our way of speaking and acting varies according to the relationship we have with the interlocutor, the nature of what we are asking for, the channel used, as well as the language we speak and the culture to which we belong. Therefore, there is a multitude of ways of formulating this act. This thesis analyses the requests made by two groups of students to their teacher: on the one hand, speakers from Madrid who express themselves in Spanish, their mother tongue, and, on the other hand, French-speaking Belgian students of Spanish as a foreign language. By means of a contrastive analysis, this study focuses on both the production and the perception of this act in a corpus containing oral data (Naturalised Interactions), written data (Discourse Completion Tests) and data from perception questionnaires. The analysis of all these data focuses on several factors: (i) the request strategy, (ii) the use of mitigation devises and (iii) the forms of address used towards the addressee. The results of this thesis allow us to qualify those reported in the linguistic tradition: Spanish speakers are not more direct than French speakers in Spanish. Moreover, when speakers consider it inappropriate to carry out the request, the results highlight the possibility of not producing it or of carrying out the action themselves. On the other hand, this thesis offers new perspectives on the different methodologies that can be used for studies in pragmatics. It also points out the importance of valuing a qualitative analysis of the data and of including the situation as a variable for its interpretation. Finally, this doctoral research offers possible applications for language teaching in general and Spanish as a foreign language in particular., La requête est un acte de langage que nous produisons de manière fréquente dans tous les domaines de notre vie quotidienne: en famille, à l'école ou au travail, au supermarché, etc. Notre façon de parler et d'agir varie selon la relation que nous entretenons avec l'interlocuteur, la nature de ce que nous demandons, le canal utilisé, mais aussi selon la langue que nous parlons et la culture à laquelle nous appartenons. Aussi existe-t-il une multitude de façons de la formuler. Cette thèse analyse les requêtes formulées par deux groupes d’étudiants envers leur professeure : d’une part, des locuteurs espagnols de Madrid s’exprimant dans leur langue maternelle, et de l’autre, des belges francophones qui étudient l’espagnol comme langue étrangère. À travers une analyse contrastive, cette étude se centre à la fois sur la production et la perception de cet acte dans un corpus reprenant des données orales, écrites et extraites d’un questionnaire de perception. L’analyse de ces données comprend plusieurs facteurs : (i) la stratégie-même de la requête, (ii) le recours à des phénomènes d'atténuation pour réduire la force illocutoire, et (iii) les formes d’adresse utilisées envers le destinataire. Les résultats de cette thèse permettent de nuancer les résultats rapportés pour les groupes de locuteurs dans la tradition linguistique : les locuteurs espagnols ne sont pas plus directs que les francophones en espagnol. Par ailleurs, si les locuteurs considèrent peu approprié de faire la requête, les résultats soulignent la possibilité de ne pas la produire ou de réaliser l’action par soi-même. En outre, ce travail offre un éclairage nouveau sur les différentes méthodologies qui peuvent être utilisées pour des études en pragmatique. Il souligne également l’importance de valoriser une approche qualitative des données et d’inclure la variable de la situation dans l’interprétation des données. Enfin, cette recherche doctorale offre des possibles applications pour l’enseignement des langu, (LALE - Langues et lettres) -- UCL, 2022

The terms professional communication or professional discourse are relatively recent notions in the field of discourse studies in Spanish. As López Ferrero (2002) points out, they were first used to replace the notions languages or communication for specific purposes to show the more discursive orientation of these studies, as opposed to research that was at the beginning focused on terminological and stylistic studies. In this chapter, we present a review of recent research on this discursive macrogenre, aiming to illustrate the two following aspects: on one hand the changes as to theoretical-methodological perspective in the last two decades and the most frequently studied discourse genres, with an ever clearer tendency towards interdisciplinarity and towards the combination of discourse studies from a critical perspective, the ethnographic orientation, and the rhetorical-argumentative dimension, and, on the other hand, the analysis of the communicative and persuasive strategies in the professional discourses analysed by the authors and by other researchers, taking into account situations of conflict - i.e. employee-client communication, professional discourses in the public sphere (mainly by multinational corporations), or conflict between capitalism and other forms of businesses, among others.

In dit onderzoek laten we de argumentatieve functies zien van zelfverwijzing en zelfpromotie in de tweets van Nederlandstalige politici en experten in de beginfase van de covid-19-pandemie. Daartoe combineren we pragmatisch-discursieve analyse en inzichten uit argumentatietheorie. In de eerste plaats bespreken we verschillende manieren waarop sprekers hun ethos, dat wil zeggen hun geloofwaardigheid voor zover dat blijkt uit taalgebruik, op kunnen bouwen en argumentatief kunnen benutten. In de tweede plaats bekijken we hoe strategieën van zelfverwijzing en zelfpromotie kunnen bijdragen aan ethosopbouw en ethosgebruik. Ten slotte bekijken we hoe deze fenomenen interageren in tweets gepubliceerd door Nederlandstalige politici en experten in de eerste maanden van de pandemie. We laten zien dat de politici meer aan ethosopbouw doen dan de experten en meer collectieve zelfverwijzing gebruiken, vaak naar de regering of soms ook naar de volledige bevolking. De experten ondersteunen in hun tweets meer het ethos van anderen en gaan pas over tot ethosopbouw via verschillende zelfpromotiestrategieën wanneer hun ethos wordt aangevallen.

The collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013 brought the unsustainability of fashion production processes to the public attention and gave rise to the creation of the Fashion Revolution movement. Online campaigns such as #FashionRevolution are described as examples of connective action in digital activism, different from collective action in social movements Bennett and Segerberg (2012). Highfield (2016: 103) notes that, in connective action, “political engagement is also personalized and digitally mediated, as social media and other digital technologies offer additional means for organization.” In this study, we adopt an interdisciplinary perspective combining linguistics, argumentation studies and communication studies, through which we analyze the calls for action in a multilingual corpus of tweets with the hashtag #FashionRevolution, published in 2020 in view of and during the Fashion Revolution week. In our analysis, we want to answer the question how the call for action to change the fashion sector is formulated as well as which actors are being presented as responsible for the problems related to fashion sustainability as well as for possible solutions, and whether a distinction is being made between environmental and social sustainability in this context. At a broader level, we then also want to show which mechanisms underlie digital activism related to sustainability. We have collected tweets containing the relevant hashtag in the period before and during the 2020 fashion week. This were annotated for different parameters related to our research questions, which were constructed bottom-up by bringing together the expertise of the different researchers involved. This has allowed us to adopt a more interdisciplinary approach, taking into account argumentative, linguistic and communicational aspects. Thus, in addition to overarching information such as the type of action called for and the person presented as responsible, we included communicational information such as

De quelle manière les activités de la représentation politique se donnent-elles à voir sur un espace médiatique particulier, Twitter, à l’occasion des campagnes des élections européennes de mai 2014 et mai 2019 ? A partir de l’analyse comparative des biographies et des publications sur le dispositif Twitter de députés européens candidats à leur ré-élection dans quatre pays (Belgique, Espagne, France, Royaume-Uni), nous tentons d’appréhender les stratégies discursives de mise en scène de soi sur Twitter en partant du principe que celles-ci fournissent des indications sur la manière dont les députés conçoivent leurs rôles. Si en effet il est possible d’identifier différents rôles donnés à voir sur le dispositif, en 2014 comme en 2019, la standardisation des registres et la disparition des contextes d’action ne permettent pas d’en savoir en réalité beaucoup sur les députés ni de les distinguer significativement les uns des autres., How are the activities of political representation staged on a particular media space, Twitter, in the context of the campaigns for the European elections of May 2014 and May 2019? Based on a comparative analysis of the biographies and publications on Twitter of MEPs standing for re-election in four countries (Belgium, Spain, France, United Kingdom), we attempt to apprehend the discursive strategies of self-presentation on Twitter on the assumption that these provide indications on how MEPs conceive their roles. If indeed it is possible to identify different roles staged on Twitter, in 2014 as in 2019, the standardization of repertories and the disappearance of contexts of action do not actually tell us much about the MEPs nor to distinguish them significantly from each other.

While first-language (L1) corpora have been a key tool for linguistic research in Spanish, their use for pedagogical purposes is still limited, and more corpora are needed that document the varieties of Spanish used by learners or heritage speakers of the language. In this article, we provide an overview of the research that has already been carried out with available Spanish corpora and we propose avenues for further development of the areas where there is room for growth. As an introduction to this special issue, we also summarize the highlights of each of the six articles in this volume. Finally, we conclude with a call for collaboration among Spanish corpus researchers to address the current limitations when it comes to creating corpora that include oral and longitudinal data, that are more accessible, and more useful for daily use in classrooms of Spanish as a second, foreign or heritage language., Aunque los corpus han sido un instrumento clave en el desarrollo de la investigación lingüística en español, su uso para fines pedagógicos sigue siendo limitado. Se necesitan además más corpus que documenten las variedades utilizadas por aprendices y hablantes de herencia de español. En este artículo, ofrecemos una panorámica general de la investigación que ya se ha llevado a cabo con los corpus disponibles y proponemos sugerencias de desarrollo en ciertas áreas con potencial de crecimiento. Como introducción a este monográfico, también resumimos los contenidos de los seis artículos que componen este volumen. Finalmente, concluimos llamando a la colaboración entre investigadores en corpus en español para atajar las limitaciones actuales del campo, así como la creación de más corpus orales o longitudinales, que sean más accesibles, y que resulten más útiles para las necesidades diarias en las aulas de español como lengua extranjera, segunda lengua o lengua de herencia.

This presentation will present preliminary results of the broader Action de recherche concertée project Discourse, populism and democracy. Tracking the uses of populism in media and political discourse (TrUMPo). As such, it offers an interdisciplinary approach drawing on linguistics, communication science and political science to the question who is being called populist. More concretely, we will show how the label ‘populist’ is used in 2019 press, parliament and Twitter discourse from Belgium, France and Spain, by looking into who labels whom as populist, as well as with which aim this is being done. We will show that ‘populist’ is not only used to refer to persons or groups that are considered as populist in academia but is also regularly used to discredit an opponent and occasionally to (self-)enhance by claiming a stronger link with and/or representativeness of the people. Thus, in general societal debate, the term ‘populist’ is used in a much broader sense than in academia, leading at times to mismatches as to the discussions concerning populism and or populists. With this contribution, we aim to contribute to a clearer understanding of how the term ‘populist’ is used in society at large in Belgium, France and Spain.

In light of the ongoing public controversy surrounding fashion sustainability, this paper sets out to identify misalignments that relate to the definitions of sustainable fashion. It does so by examining the discourse of different agents in this polylogical argumentation - fashion companies and the European Parliament as well as citizens, small brands and NGOs - as revealed through documents and tweets published online. Our findings show misalignments in the opening stage of the argumentative discussion at the level of explicit and implicit definitions of sustainability as well as in how the agents responsible are discursively portrayed. We argue that the existence of these misalignments may explain the ongoing controversy surrounding sustainable fashion: the different actors do not share univocal starting points and representations of this phenomenon. Methodologically, this paper also advances research on argumentative polylogues, by demonstrating a method for comparing argumentation by different actors using different data sources.

In this talk, we look into how Belgian, Dutch and Spanish politicians and experts involved in the covid-19 crisis construct self-reference on Twitter and on how this self-reference ties in with the ways they explain or justify the positions they adopt. In the first place, we analyze how these persons construct their self-reference on Twitter, taking into account the different affordances of Twitter, such as the content of tweets and of the biography. We also focus on whether these persons construct an explicit self-reference through 1st person forms or rather avoid such explicit self-reference. In the second place, we analyze how the communicative functions of this self-reference connect to the argumentation developed, or prepared, in the tweets. Indeed, self-reference contributes to self-introduction, and to the creation of a public persona. Through a comparison of politicians and scientific experts, we will to show the specific roles that self-reference hold in the discourse of each group. We expect self-reference to be more important in politicians’ discourse, for the reason that when arguing, politicians face more problems when polishing their public persona, or when trying to keep it intact, than experts do.

In this paper, we analyze who is represented as responsible for ethical and environmental problems related to the fashion industry as well as for possible solutions to these problems, in a corpus of tweets containing the hashtag #FashionRevolution. This corpus contains messages produced by experts, companies, NGOs and consumers in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. We look into the representation of agentivity, namely who among the agents related to fashion sustainability is represented as agentive for the causes or possible solutions of problems related to sustainability in the fashion industry, as well as into whether these agents are represented in an explicit or implicit way and whether this is justified argumentatively. We furthermore look into whether tweeters define about which type of sustainability (ethical, environmental or both) they are talking. Through the combination of these analyses, we show how misalignment can occur in this Twitter polylogue regarding the definition of the sustainable issues at hand as well as regarding who can play a crucial part in solving these issues. By analyzing a multilingual corpus, we aim to contribute to analyzing how these online discussions evolve at the European level and how they are potentially construed differently across linguistic communities.