Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 35, Issue 2, 2022

Abstracta

Las evaluaciones sociales que hacen los individuos hacia las variedades lingüísticas son objeto de estudio de la sociolingüística desde hace tiempo y han ganado protagonismo en el siglo veintiuno. Esto es así porque de estas actitudes se deduce hacia dónde se encaminará la lengua en el futuro. En esta investigación se presentan los resultados de un estudio de actitudes hacia el castellano y el andaluz a partir de una muestra de 70 jóvenes mallorquines. Siguiendo la metodología del proyecto PRECAVES XXI, se presentan los resultados sobre el reconocimiento de las variedades, la valoración directa que se hace de ellas (dimensiones cognitiva y afectiva) y la proximidad que establece el grupo entre su variedad y las variedades castellana y andaluza. Las principales conclusiones indican que tanto el reconocimiento de las variedades como su valoración es positiva y que los mallorquines perciben mucha proximidad con el castellano (su variedad propia), pero no con el andaluz.

Abstracta

La incorporación de estudiantes chinos al sistema universitario español ha comportado un incremento en los certificados académicos que se reciben en la administración universitaria y que se usan para valorar la admisión de estos estudiantes. Estos certificados a menudo se presentan acompañados de una traducción notarizada realizada en el país de origen, China. A partir de un corpus bilingüe de 30 certificados emitidos en chino con sus traducciones al español validadas mediante testimonios notariales, hemos realizado un análisis contrastivo minucioso de las traducciones con sus respectivos originales fijándonos en cuatro dimensiones –aspectos microtextuales, paratextuales, de macroestructura y de superestructura– y teniendo en cuenta también las diferencias en los contextos legislativos del procedimiento notarial en China y en España. Los resultados del análisis nos han permitido reflexionar sobre la calidad relativamente baja de estas traducciones, en cuanto a contenido y en cuanto a aspectos formales, así como sobre los problemas que podrían ocasionar las carencias detectadas.

Abstracta

Este artículo explica el corpus RLD, una recopilación de sentencias dictadas por jueces del Tribunal Supremo y del Tribunal Constitucional que han optado por el uso de diccionarios y la gramática del español como autoridad lingüística en la redacción de dichas sentencias judiciales. Las cuatro fases seguidas para la construcción del corpus –(i) diseño, (ii) implementación, (iii) revisión y (iv) publicación– se explican detalladamente. El objetivo del corpus, que incluye 1940 sentencias emitidas entre los años 2012 y 2018, es proporcionar una muestra de datos representativos y empíricamente satisfactorios del empleo de los diccionarios y la gramática como autoridad lingüística en la jurisprudencia española. Este corpus viene a cubrir un vacío en los estudios de lengua y derecho: por una parte, la ausencia de grandes corpus de textos jurídicos compartidos, disponibles para cualquier investigador o grupo de investigación interesado; y, por otra, la necesidad de analizar empíricamente el uso del diccionario y la gramática en las sentencias del Tribunal Supremo y del Tribunal Constitucional.

Abstracta

Dadas las características generales e intemporales a nivel universal del tabú de la muerte, este artículo tiene el objetivo de realizar un análisis contrastivo del eufemismo en chino y español de este tema a través de asociaciones conceptualizadas de metáfora, metonimia y su interacción. La base teórica en la que se sustenta el estudio deriva del modelo cognitivo propuesto por Lakoff & Johnson en 1980 en su célebre libro Metáforas de la vida cotidiana. Construimos diez principales mecanismos comunes y tres específicos respectivos de proyección conceptual en ambas lenguas respecto a dicho tema. Al final, basándonos en las muestras resultantes, concluimos con la importancia de las características de la cultura material, la psicológica y la institucional de ambas regiones a la hora de desarrollar manifestaciones eufemísticas de la muerte.

Abstract

In adult learners’ collaborative dialogue, oral+written tasks have been found to promote a greater incidence and resolution of language-related episodes and to demand higher levels of accuracy than oral tasks thanks to the extra time learners have to reflect on their written outcome. No previous studies have tested whether asking learners to attend to accuracy in both modalities would yield similar results. The present study with 23 dyads of young English learners supports the superiority of the oral+written modality in the promotion of learning opportunities, even if learners are encouraged to focus on form in the oral modality, a result reinforced by the incorporation of target-like resolved episodes in the written product. However, the intragroup analysis reveals that young learners focus on meaning in equal terms, present low rates of target-likeness, and do not elaborate their resolutions, all of which can be ascribed to their younger age and developing metalinguistic awareness.

Abstract

Phraseological modification (PM) is a recurrent stylistic resource in specific types of texts, mainly journalistic texts, advertisements and literature. Since literary works are complete texts, the analysis of PM in these texts can go beyond the mere identification of the changes that the units have undergone, facilitating, in turn, the exploration of their stylistic effects. This paper explores the use of PM in a fable written by Luis Sepúlveda, The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly. The aim is to determine the extra value that modifications bring to the text by finding out not only the number and types of units modified but also the effects achieved. The results show that the author’s choice of phraseological units (PUs) and modification procedures is not arbitrary. In this text, PM directly relates to distinctive features of fables, namely the humanisation of animals and humour, providing new semantic and symbolic dimensions absent in other fables which lack this pervasive use of modifications. Creative PU variation takes animal humanisation a step further by anthropomorphising animals and distancing them from humans at the same time. This, in turn, sustains the moral lessons of the story.

Abstract

This study investigated the role of teacher feedback in presenting students’ voice and writing quality of personal statements (PSs). PSs are essays intended to grant writers’ admission into graduate programs. Twenty third-year undergraduate students majoring in English participated in this study. Three drafts were collected in an English as a foreign language (EFL) writing class, and teacher feedback was given on the first two drafts. Three participants were interviewed to share their thoughts about voice development and revisions. Drafts 1 and 3 were analyzed using an analytic voice rubric, a holistic rating, and an analytic rubric. It was found that students presented a unique voice in Draft 3 and improved their writing quality by using teacher feedback in classroom contexts. Overall voice was found to strongly correlate with writing quality. Findings of the study demonstrate the importance of teacher feedback in improving students’ abilities to articulate their voice and writing quality in EFL writing.

Abstract

The media is currently one of the main channels of opinion on the Andalusian variety of Spanish. They show the struggle between those who propagate the idea that it is just another Spanish dialect and those who disqualify Andalusian people because of their pronunciation. Additionally, there is a fluctuation between those communicators who maintain their Andalusian vernacular features in the media and those who change some of them for phonetic results closer to those of the central-northern part of Spain. In this research, using PRECAVES XXI methodology, we survey the perception that a group of Andalusian journalism students have of Andalusian and Castilian varieties, as they are supposed to have an immediate impact on their future profession. Our results show that most of them identified Castilian Spanish as the most prestigious language model, that affective characteristics of Andalusian Spanish were evaluated fairly positively, and that some negative stereotypes about the latter still persist.

Resumen

El presente estudio tuvo dos objetivos. El primero fue determinar el efecto de la subjetividad y de la explicitud de las relaciones de coherencia causal en el procesamiento y en la comprensión de estudiantes chilenos de educación básica. El segundo fue determinar si tal efecto varía dependiendo del nivel socioeconómico (NSE). Para ello, se implementó un experimento de lectura autocontrolada con ventana cumulativa en el que participaron estudiantes de educación básica provenientes de colegios públicos (NSE bajo) y privados (NSE alto) chilenos. Los datos revelaron un bajo nivel general en comprensión, el que incluso es más bajo en estudiantes con NSE bajo. También se observó que el efecto de la subjetividad de la relación es mayor que el de su explicitud. En cuanto a la diferencia entre colegios, se observó que los estudiantes con NSE alto presentan mejores resultados al procesar y comprender las relaciones subjetivas en comparación con relaciones objetivas.

Abstract

This paper explores two different translation strategies to the issue of sound (operetta) stylisation in the poem “Hermitage” [Pustelnia] by Wisława Szymborska (1981), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The methodology borrows from Gideon Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies (1995, 2012), Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory (1978, 1990). A comparative study of two different translations of the poem conducted by two teams of prominent translators is carried out. This method of exploration intends to reveal the underlying translation mode, the first one towards the text’s accuracy and the second one towards the text’s adequacy.

It is argued that the translators’ domesticating procedures, preeminent in the second translation, succeed in recreating the invariant source sound stylisation and the poem’s discursiveness, though at the expense of the semantics of the original. Relying on polysystem theory, the author concludes with the correspondence between the target texts’ divergent positions in the polysystem and their translation modes, each adopted in a different historical and cultural context.

Abstract

The current study examines variable clitic placement (CP) in Spanish in a Mexican community in the metropolitan Atlanta area. By employing sociolinguistic interview data from 20 first-generation Mexican speakers, clitic frequencies and constraints are analyzed. Tokens of proclisis and enclisis were coded for linguistic and social factors that potentially influence clitic usage (e.g., topic persistence, specific clitic used, English proficiency, age, gender), and a logistic regression analysis was carried out using Rbrul (Daniel Johnson, 2009). Results indicate a proclisis rate of 64%, which is comparable to other varieties of Mexican Spanish. The regression analysis revealed that CP is sensitive to the particular construction used, the specific clitic, the presence of a pause, and the speaker’s gender. Additionally, English proficiency showed no effect on CP. This analysis supports previous research that CP is impermeable to contact-induced change and also reveals new conditioning factors (specific clitic, presence of a pause) that have not been examined in previous literature.

Abstract

The acquisition of pragmatic competence, namely, the capability to ‘produce and comprehend […] discourse that is adequate to the L2 socio-cultural context’ (Istvan Kecskes, 2013, p. 64) is a major challenge for learners with a medium-to-advanced level of language proficiency, and a main concern for teachers. To study it, two approaches exist: the ethnopragmatic perspective (Anna Wierzbicka, 2004) and the intercultural pragmatics perspective (Laura Maguire & Jesús Romero-Trillo, 2013). Because of its complexity, the study of emotions is core in pragmatic competence acquisition.

This paper explores the way English as a lingua franca (ELF) users with different L1s express their emotions, as compiled in the Corpus of Language and Nature (Romero-Trillo et al., 2013). To do so, 115 texts from L1 German speakers and 115 texts from L1 Brazilian Portuguese speakers are explored following corpus-based and corpus-driven approaches. The former was conducted by analysing the presence in the subcorpora of the items in two emotion word lexicons. To complement the information obtained, further corpus-based analyses of the use of modals and intensifiers employed by the participants to express emotion were conducted. The corpus-driven approach allowed the manual identification of any linguistic unit employed by ELF users to express emotion which had not been previously considered. The results cast light on the linguistic units that ELF users from the two backgrounds employ to express emotion in the same situations. The findings highlight the differences and similarities in their use of the language as well as the suitability of the lexicons to study emotion in ELF.

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