INFECTIOUS DISEASES ARE SLEEPING MONSTERS: Conventional and culturally adapted new metaphors in a corpus of abstracts on immunology

In this paper we examine the role played by metaphor in a corpus of sixty abstracts on immunology from Scientific American. We focus on the distinction between conventional metaphors and culturally adapted new metaphors and discuss the role played by metaphor choice in the communicative purposes of the abstracts and their register features. We argue that one of the main strategies used to attract the reader‘s attention is the combination of highly conventionalized metaphors, which occur more frequently in the corpus, together with what we call “culturally adapted new metaphors”, which display different degrees of creativity and are less frequent in the corpus. Conventional metaphors typically reinforce the world view shared by the scientific community and introduce basic ideas on the subject of immunology. Culturally adapted new metaphors include a cline from slightly new perspectives of conventional models, to highly creative uses of metaphor. Culturally adapted new metaphors appeal primarily to a general readership and not to the scientific community, as they tap human emotions and mythic constructions. These play a crucial role in the abstracts, as they contribute to persuasive and didactic communicative functions in the text

Discourse, Culture and Cognition: The Role of Negation in the Creation of Coherence in Press and Advertising Discourse

Este artículo analiza el papel de la negación en la creación de la coherencia discursiva, entendida como un proceso en el que se crea un mundo textual, en artículos argumentativos y en anuncios publicitarios de prensa en inglés y español. La negación contribuye a la creación de la coherencia al modificar información de proposiciones que se encuentran el discurso o evocada por estas proposiciones, siendo fundamental la evocación de esquemas cognitivos. Proponemos una clasificación de las funciones de la negación en la que se tienen en cuenta los aspectos culturales, cognitivos y textuales que determinan la elección del enunciado negativo.The aim of this article is to argue that negation plays a crucial role in the creation of discourse coherence understood as a process which involves the creation of a textual world. Negation modifies information present in discourse or evoked from propositions in discourse, thus performing different discourse functions in which frame knowledge plays a crucial role. A proposal is put forward for a classification of the cognitive-discourse functions of negative propositions in argumentative discourse with illustrations from extracts from opinion articles, headlines and advertisements in Spanish and British newspapers

Text world creation in advertising discourse

This article explores the way in which text worlds are created in advertising discourse by analysing linguistic choices and features of context which are crucial in the determination of specific relations between sender(s) and target audience(s), in particular, deixis and frame knowledge. The argument is that a text world model is particularly adequate for the description of the way in which advertising discourse is processed in an active, dynamic, context-dependent way. In this process, addressees reconstruct the world projected in the discourse according to their own cultural and personal knowledge from the linguistic and visual clues provided in the advertisement

A discourse-pragmatic approach to negation in J. Heller's "Catch-22"

La tesis es un estudio de las funciones pragmático- discursivas de la negación en la novela catch-22, de j. Heller. El análisis lingüístico de la negación se sitúa en el marco teórico mas amplio de la estilística lingüística. Se parte de una revisión de las teorías sobre la negación, lo que constituye la parte teórica de la tesis, y a continuación se realiza un análisis cualitativo y cuantitativo del corpus. El principal objetivo del estudio es el de verificar las hipótesis que se plantean en la introducción; según estas, la negación en el corpus es un rasgo marcado que contribuye a la creación de un patrón de desviación discursiva que puede percibirse como desfamiliarizador por parte de un lector. Este carácter marcado se debe fundamentalmente a las características idiosincráticas de la negación como fenómeno discursivo, y solo de forma menos significativa a la alta frecuencia de las palabras negativas en el corpu

Text world creation in advertising discourse

This article explores the way in which text worlds are created in advertising discourse by analysing linguistic choices and features of context which are crucial in the determination of specific relations between sender(s) and target audience(s), in particular, deixis and frame knowledge. The argument is that a text world model is particularly adequate for the description of the way in which advertising discourse is processed in an active, dynamic, context-dependent way. In this process, addressees reconstruct the world projected in the discourse according to their own cultural and personal knowledge from the linguistic and visual clues provided in the advertisement

Alice in pragmaticland: Reference, deixis and the delimitation of text worlds in Lewis Aarroll’s Alice books

Alice in pragmaticland: Reference, deixis and the delimitation of text worlds in Lewis Aarroll’s Alice book

Text world creation in advertising discourse

This article explores the way in which text worlds are created in advertising discourse by analysing linguistic choices and features of context which are crucial in the determination of specific relations between sender(s) and target audience(s), in particular, deixis and frame knowledge. The argument is that a text world model is particularly adequate for the description of the way in which advertising discourse is processed in an active, dynamic, context-dependent way. In this process, addressees reconstruct the world projected in the discourse according to their own cultural and personal knowledge from the linguistic and visual clues provided in the advertisement