Pertencer e deslocar virtualmente: Teletandem como espaço antropofágico

Pós-graduação em Estudos Linguísticos - IBILCE

The place of (explicit) grammar within the methods and approaches of foreign language teaching: in the north, in the centre or on the margins?

This article analyzes the role that has been attributed to grammar throughout the history of foreign language teaching, with special emphasis on methods and approaches of the twentieth century. In order to support our argument, we discuss the notion of grammar by proposing a conceptual continuum that includes the main meanings of the term which are relevant to our research. We address as well the issue of "pedagogical grammar" and consider the position of grammar in the different approaches of the "era of the methods" and the current "post-method condition" in the field of language teaching and learning. The findings presented at the end of the text consist of recognizing the central role that grammar has played throughout the history of the methods and approaches, where grammar has always been present by the definition of the contents' progression. The rationale that we propose for this is the recognition of the fact that the dissociation between what is said and how it is said can not be more than theoretical and, thus, artificial.

A Comparative Study of Two Semantic Systems: Body Russian and Russian Phraseology

Grigorij Kreidlin (Russia). A Comparative Study of Two Semantic Systems: Body Russian and Russian Phraseology. Mr. Kreidlin teaches in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of the State University of Humanities in Moscow and worked on this project from August 1996 to July 1998. The classical approach to non-verbal and verbal oral communication is based on a traditional separation of body and mind. Linguists studied words and phrasemes, the products of mind activities, while gestures, facial expressions, postures and other forms of body language were left to anthropologists, psychologists, physiologists, and indeed to anyone but linguists. Only recently have linguists begun to turn their attention to gestures and semiotic and cognitive paradigms are now appearing that raise the question of designing an integral model for the unified description of non-verbal and verbal communicative behaviour. This project attempted to elaborate lexical and semantic fragments of such a model, producing a co-ordinated semantic description of the main Russian gestures (including gestures proper, postures and facial expressions) and their natural language analogues. The concept of emblematic gestures and gestural phrasemes and of their semantic links permitted an appropriate description of the transformation of a body as a purely physical substance into a body as a carrier of essential attributes of Russian culture - the semiotic process called the culturalisation of the human body. Here the human body embodies a system of cultural values and displays them in a text within the area of phraseology and some other important language domains. The goal of this research was to develop a theory that would account for the fundamental peculiarities of the process. The model proposed is based on the unified lexicographic representation of verbal and non-verbal units in the Dictionary of Russian Gestures, which the Mr. Kreidlin had earlier complied in collaboration with a group of his students. The Dictionary was originally oriented only towards reflecting how the lexical competence of Russian body language is represented in the Russian mind. Now a special type of phraseological zone has been designed to reflect explicitly semantic relationships between the gestures in the entries and phrasemes and to provide the necessary information for a detailed description of these. All the definitions, rules of usage and the established correlations are written in a semantic meta-language. Several classes of Russian gestural phrasemes were identified, including those phrasemes and idioms with semantic definitions close to those of the corresponding gestures, those phraseological units that have lost touch with the related gestures (although etymologically they are derived from gestures that have gone out of use), and phrasemes and idioms which have semantic traces or reflexes inherited from the meaning of the related gestures. The basic assumptions and practical considerations underlying the work were as follows. (1) To compare meanings one has to be able to state them. To state the meaning of a gesture or a phraseological expression, one needs a formal semantic meta-language of propositional character that represents the cognitive and mental aspects of the codes. (2) The semantic contrastive analysis of any semiotic codes used in person-to-person communication also requires a single semantic meta-language, i.e. a formal semantic language of description,. This language must be as linguistically and culturally independent as possible and yet must be open to interpretation through any culture and code. Another possible method of conducting comparative verbal-non-verbal semantic research is to work with different semantic meta-languages and semantic nets and to learn how to combine them, translate from one to another, etc. in order to reach a common basis for the subsequent comparison of units. (3) The practical work in defining phraseological units and organising the phraseological zone in the Dictionary of Russian Gestures unexpectedly showed that semantic links between gestures and gestural phrasemes are reflected not only in common semantic elements and syntactic structure of semantic propositions, but also in general and partial cognitive operations that are made over semantic definitions. (4) In comparative semantic analysis one should take into account different values and roles of inner form and image components in the semantic representation of non-verbal and verbal units. (5) For the most part, gestural phrasemes are direct semantic derivatives of gestures. The cognitive and formal techniques can be regarded as typological features for the future functional-semantic classification of gestural phrasemes: two phrasemes whose meaning can be obtained by the same cognitive or purely syntactic operations (or types of operations) over the meanings of the corresponding gestures, belong by definition to one and the same class. The nature of many cognitive operations has not been studied well so far, but the first steps towards its comprehension and description have been taken. The research identified 25 logically possible classes of relationships between a gesture and a gestural phraseme. The calculation is based on theoretically possible formal (set-theory) correlations between signifiers and signified of the non-verbal and verbal units. However, in order to examine which of them are realised in practice a complete semantic and lexicographic description of all (not only central) everyday emblems and gestural phrasemes is required and this unfortunately does not yet exist. Mr. Kreidlin suggests that the results of the comparative analysis of verbal and non-verbal units could also be used in other research areas such as the lexicography of emotions.

Linkage in narratives: A comparison between monolingual speakers of French and Italian, and early and late French-Italian bilinguals

In the course of language acquisition learners have to deal with the task of producing narrative texts that are coherent across a range of conceptual domains (space, time, entities) -- both within as well as across utterances. The organization of information is analyzed in this study, on the basis of retellings of a silent film, in terms of devices used in the coordination and subordination of events within the narrative sequence. The focus on subordination reflects a core grammatical difference between Italian and French, as Italian is a null-subject language while French is not. The implications of this contrast for information structure include differences in topic management within the sequence of events. The present study investigates in how far Italian-French bilingual speakers acquire the patterns of monolingual speakers of Italian. It compares how early and late bilinguals of these two languages proceed when linking information in narratives in Italian.

“Jo wunderbar so im apriu kann man nicht mehr erwarten, capisci?” Multilingualism in a German language class for retired Italian migrants in Berne

Our proposal presents some aspects and results of a project of the University of Bern dealing with the consequences of retirement on multilingual competences. Referring to De Bot (2007), who defined "language related major life events" as moments in life relevant for changes in multilingual competences, we assume that retirement can be a turning point in a language biography. Firstly, there are phenomena, such as the cessation of the use of a foreign language, which was formerly related to work. Secondly, retirement might elicit the improvement of foreign language skills as a way to spend excess time after retirement or as a “cognitive exercise”. Many language schools have identified the people of advanced age as a group of major interest and increasingly offer so-called 50+ (fifty plus) courses in their curriculum. Furthermore, the concept of lifelong learning is increasingly gaining importance, as the reference by the European commission (LLP) indicates. However, most of the programs are intended for educated middle-class people and there are considerably fewer offers for people who are less familiar with learning environments in general. The present paper aims at investigating the multilingual setting of an offer of the second kind: a German language course designed for retired, established Italian workforce migrants living in the city of Berne, Switzerland. The multilingual setting is given by the facts that migrants living in Berne are confronted with diglossia (Standard German and Swissgerman dialects), that the Canton of Berne is bilingual (German and French) and that the migrants' mother tongue, Italian, is one of the Swiss national languages. As previous studies have shown, most of the Italian migrants have difficulties with the acquisition of Standard German due to the diglossic situation (Werlen, 2007) or never even learnt any of the German varieties. Another outcome of the linguistic situation the migrants are confronted with in Berne, is the usage of a continuum of varieties between Swissgerman dialect and Standard German (Zanovello-Müller, 1998). Therefore, in the classroom we find several varieties of German, as well as the Italian language and its varieties. In the present paper we will investigate the use of multilingual competences within the classroom and the dynamics of second language acquisition in a setting of older adults (>60 years old), learning their host country’s language after 40 years or more of living in it. The methods applied are an ethnographic observation of the language class, combined with qualitative interviews to gain in-depth information of the subjects’ life stories and language biographies.

ESP in Spain: goals, achievements and prospects

This paper aims to describe the development of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) as specialised language study and research at tertiary level in Spain over the past twenty years. The year 1992 is chosen as a starting point because AELFE, the Association of Languages for Specific Purposes, was founded in Madrid at the time. As more members from other countries have joined in, this Association has served as an academic landmark for the development of ESP within the umbrella of applied linguistics. ESP has reflected the social changes, educational shifts, linguistic trends, and technological innovations involved in academic and professional contexts. The evolution of the specialised language practitioner’s scenarios and communicative situations has turned ESP into a lively and stimulating action, though not lacking in controversy, e.g., a general increase in the ESP teacher’s workload. Different lines of work and research have been followed from the inception of AELFE until the implementation of the Bologna agreement in our universities. The examination of such variables is conducted in the light of some quantitative and qualitative findings.

Large-scale testing of proficiency in English: Back to multiple choice?

The paper analyses whether that a properly designed multiple choice test can discriminate with a high level of accuracy if a student in our context has reached a B2 level according to the CEFRL.

Consulta on-line basada en corpus de construcciones con preposición en el texto técnico en inglés y su traducción al español

Basándonos en la recopilación inicial de preposiciones, locuciones preposicionales, términos con preposición dependiente y phrasal verbs utilizados en el texto técnico realizada en otros proyectos anteriores del Departamento de Lingüística Aplicada a la Ciencia y a la Tecnología, el objetivo de este trabajo es completar, organizar, actualizar y dar visibilidad a esta información inicial. Tras realizar un proceso exhaustivo de verificación, unificación, clasificación y ampliación de la información existente, en caso necesario, el listado resultante se utiliza para elaborar un glosario de términos con preposición. El objetivo final de este proyecto es que este glosario esté a disposición de los usuarios, a través de una consulta on-line, en la página del ILLLab (http://illlab.euitt.upm.es/wordpress/), dependiente del Departamento de Lingüística Aplicada a la Ciencia y a la Tecnología. Para incluir en el glosario ejemplos actualizados de textos técnicos, se ha recopilado un corpus lingüístico de textos técnicos, tomando como base diferentes números de la revista IEEE Spectrum, en su edición digital, publicados entre los años 2009 y 2012. El objetivo de esta recopilación es la de ofrecer al consultante diferentes ejemplos de uso en el texto técnico de los distintos términos con preposición que componen el glosario, de manera que pueda acceder de manera rápida y sencilla a ejemplos de uso real de los términos que está buscando, con objeto de clarificar aspectos relacionados con su uso o, en su caso, facilitar su aprendizaje. Toda esta información, tanto el listado de términos con preposición como las frases pertenecientes al corpus recopilado, se incorpora a una base de datos, alojada dentro de la misma página web del ILLLab. A través de un formulario de consulta, a disposición del usuario en dicha página, se pueden obtener todos los términos recopilados que coincidan con los criterios de búsqueda introducidos. El usuario puede realizar dos tipos de búsqueda principales: por preposición o por término completo. Además, puede elegir una búsqueda global (entre todos los términos que integran el glosario) o parcial (en una sola de las categorías en las que se han dividido los diferentes términos, de acuerdo con su función gramatical). Por último, se presentan unas estadísticas de uso de los términos recopilados dentro de los diferentes textos que integran el corpus lingüístico, de manera que pueda establecerse una relación de los que aparecen con más frecuencia en el texto técnico. ABSTRACT. Based on the initial collection of prepositions, prepositional phrases, dependent prepositions and phrasal verbs used in technical texts collected on previous projects in the Department of Applied Linguistics to Science and Technology, the aim of this project is to improve, organize, update and provide visibility to this initial information. Following a process of verification, unification, classification and extension of existing information, if necessary, a glossary of terms with preposition is built. The ultimate objective of this project is to make this glossary available to users through an online consultation in the ILLLab webpage (http://illlab.euitt.upm.es/wordpress/). The administration of tis webpage depends of the Department of Applied Linguistics in Science and Technology. A linguistic corpus of technical texts has been compiled, based on different numbers of the IEEE Spectrum magazine, in its online edition, published between the years 2009 and 2012. The aim of this collection is to provide different examples of use in the technical text for the terms included in the glossary, so that examples of the actual use of the terms consulted can be easily and quickly accessed, in order to clarify doubts regarding their meaning or translation into Spanish and facilitate learning. All this information, both the list of terms with prepositional phrases as well as the corpus developed, is incorporated in a database. Through a searching form, the ILLLab's user may obtain all the terms matching the search criteria entered. The user can perform two types of main search: by preposition or by full term. Additionally, a global search can be selected (including all terms included in the glossary) or a partial one (including only one of the glossary's categories). Finally, some statistics of use are presented according to the various texts included in the corpus, so a relation of the most frequent prepositions in the technical text can be established.

Word-formation and the translation of Marvel comic book charactonyms

This article analyzes the solutions given in Spanish translations to the morphological creativity shown in the names of Marvel comic book characters. The English versions almost invariably provide a full description of the hero (or villain) by means of a wide variety of word-formation mechanisms leading to highly expressive charactonyms. Indeed, examples shall be listed of names of comic book heroes created through compounding, derivation, including prefixation or suffixation (both classical and Anglo-Saxon but also from other origins), lexical blending, abbreviation, clipping, onomatopoeia, and borrowings from Spanish or from other languages. Early translations into Spanish seemed to be slightly less expressive than the original, even when the same word-formation mechanism was used, usually due to either problems of transparency mainly in some of the word parts or to translation constraints. In later periods, a number of factors, including the influence from other media featuring the same characters and the general trend towards globalization through English, have led translators to choose repetition as the most frequent strategy, which has almost eliminated the creative power of wordformation mechanisms in Spanish and their ability to convey the stylistic effects found in the English versions.

Las TIC al servicio del conocimiento avanzado multilingüe: la Biblioteca Digital Plurilingüe del Mediterráneo-IVITRA

Este estudio analiza la importancia de las TIC al servicio de las bibliotecas en general y, en concreto, el potencial de las bibliotecas digitales. En este trabajo se reflexiona sobre la importancia de las bibliotecas digitales no sólo como repositorios de contenidos, sino también como centros de creación de conocimiento. Se reflexiona sobre la importancia de la constitución de bibliotecas digitales especializadas en áreas culturales relacionadas y sobre el hecho de que sean multilingües, a fin de preservar los contenidos en sus lenguas originales, al tiempo que debe trabajarse con la traducción multilingüe (de y a muchas lenguas) como herramienta fundamental para la mejora de la difusión y conocimiento del patrimonio que se contiene en tales bibliotecas. En este sentido se explican las características de la Biblioteca Digital Plurilingüe del Mediterráneo-IVITRA.

A proposal for teaching with authentic texts in order to develop social awareness in a language subject in tertiary education

The University of the 21st century has to establish links with society and prepare students for the demands of the working world. Therefore, this article is a contribution to the integral preparation of university students by proposing the use of authentic texts with social content in English lessons so that students acquire emotional and social competencies while still learning content. This article will explain how the choice of texts on global issues such as racism and gender helps students to develop skills such as social awareness and critical thinking to deepen their understanding of discrimination, injustice or gender differences in both oral and written activities. A proposal will be presented which involves using the inauguration speech from Mandela's presidency and texts with photographs of women so that students analyse them whilst utilising linguistic tools that allow them to explore a text's social dimension.