Emoticons in transactional and interactional exchanges: social networking chitchat versus working negotiation

Abstract: emoticons are ordinarily linked to more colloquial computer-mediated exchanges such as informal emails, chats, comments on social networking sites, etc. In these genres, the interactional function of language is also predominant even if there can also be transactional elements. The question rises whether more transactional and formal exchanges make a similar use of emoticons. This paper aims to compare the use of emoticons in two contrastive datasets of computer-mediated communication where either the interactional or transactional function predominates to find out whether emoticons are used as much in transactional as in interactional encounters and whether they perform the same functions.Resumen: en general, los emoticonos se asocian a contextos de carácter informal (mails informales, chats, redes sociales, etc.). En estos géneros, predomina la función interactiva del lenguaje incluso cuando hay cierta transacción. Esto nos lleva a plantearnos si los emoticonos tienen las misma frecuencia de uso y sirven para desempeñar las mismas funciones en aquellos intercambios mediados por ordenador de carácter más formal. El objetivo de este estudio es comparar el uso de los emoticonos en dos bases de datos: una de carácter interactivo frente a otra transaccional y ver si la frecuencia de uso y las funciones desempeñadas son equiparables.</jats:p

Typographic Alteration in Formal Computer-mediated Communication

AbstractComputer-mediated communication (CMC henceforth) is a typical example of multimodal communication inasmuch as it usually makes use of the textual channel in combination with the visual one –e.g. layout, colour, emoticons, typographic alterations of the textual code, etc. These multimodal elements have traditionally been linked to more informal computer-mediated exchanges and hence studied in genres such as informal emails, chats, social networking sites, etc. The question rises whether more formal exchanges make a similar use of typographic alterations or whether it is indeed limited to informal CMC. In order to answer this question, the present study focuses on analysing these multimodal elements in a corpus of pedagogical e-forums, where the transactional function surpasses the interactional one (Brown and Yule, 1983) and formality seems to be expected

Peer-assessment in the ESL classroom: a practical project

The Common European Framework is aimed at bringing the learner back to the centre of the teaching-learning process. As teachers, we should become helping tools intended to raise the learner’s awareness of their own potential. Within this framework, self-assessment gains more importance that it has been usually given to. Quite surprisingly, however, peer-assessment1 is hardly ever mentioned in the CEF. This paper is aimed at exploring the use of peer-assessment in the ESL classroom while describing and analysing a three-month project.El Marco Común Europeo tiene como objetivo situar al estudiante en el centro del proceso de aprendizaje. Como profesores, deberíamos convertirnos en herramientas destinadas a despertar la conciencia del alumno sobre su propio potencial. En este marco, la auto-evaluación adquiere mayor importancia de la que se le ha dado normalmente. Sorprendentemente, sin embargo, la evaluación por pares apenas si es mencionada en el Marco Común Europeo. Este artículo pretende explorar el uso de la evaluación por pares en la clase de inglés como segunda lengua además de describir y analizar un proyecto práctico que ha tenido lugar durante tres meses

Aprendiendo a aprender: técnicas de auto-evaluación en el aula de inglés

El Marco Común Europeo de Referencia (2001) sitúa al alumno en el centro del proceso de aprendizaje y pondera la responsabilidad y la autonomía como elementos centrales del mismo. La capacidad de autoevaluación es parte esencial de dicho proceso puesto que dicta las pautas a seguir y los objetivos ya alcanzados. Sin embargo, aunque se admite la innegable importancia del uso de técnicas de autoevaluación en el aula, no se le concede el énfasis que merece y se relega a futuras investigaciones. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo analizar el uso de distintas técnicas de autoevaluación en un aula real de lengua inglesa (nivel pre-intermedio o B1 de acuerdo con los descriptores del Marco Común Europeo) y su utilidad en el proceso formativo de los veinticinco alumnos universitarios que participaron en este estudio.The Common European Framework of Reference (2001) positions the student in the centre of the learning process and favours responsibility and autonomy as its core elements. Self-assessment is regarded as an essential part of this process since it establishes the guidelines to be followed and the objectives that have already been achieved. However, although it is undeniably accepted that self-assessment techniques should be used in the classroom, it is not stressed enough and neglected as the aim of future research. The present paper aims to analyse the use of different self-assessment techniques in an actual English class (pre-intermediate or B1 level according to the can-do statements of the Common European Framework) and their real usefulness in the learning process of the twenty-five university students who took part in this study

‘A promise is a promise… but what about threats?’: an English-Spanish contrastive analysis of the verbs promise-prometer and threaten-amenazar

The aim of this paper is to investigate ‘I promise’ and its counterpart in (Peninsular) Spanish prometo. After briefly revisiting the theoretical debate on performativity and performative verbs, the paper adopts a corpus-based approach to quantify the main uses of ‘I promise’ in both languages. This contrastive analysis has an ultimate didactic purpose, since these verbs can raise problems of understanding and use for Spanish learners of English as a foreign language (EFL henceforth) and of translation studies. In order to carry out this analysis, the British National Corpus and the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual were used, manually fine-graining the initial automatic search. To make both datasets comparable, only the oral and the fiction sections were considered since they are both shared by the two corpora. Interestingly, during the analysis there has also emerged an unexpected result which seems to be pointing out to the beginning of a linguistic change in Spanish. Thus, it can be observed that there is an emergent use in Spanish of the verb amenazar (‘to threaten’), sometimes with the action function of “promising”. This emergent use seems to be especially frequent in computer-mediated communication (e.g. blogs, forums, etc.) but it is still extremely rare in English

Flöck, Ilka. 2016. Requests in American and British English. A contrastive multi-method analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 264.

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EMOTIONAL SELF-PRESENTATION ON WHATSAPP: ANALYSIS OF THE PROFILE STATUS

Self-presentation can be defined as “the process through which individuals communicate an image of themselves to others” (Yang and Brown, 2015: 404) and it is an essential part of human communication. Self-presentation has been widely studied both in face-to-face communication and online. Most online research, however, has focused on social networking sites, blogs, chatrooms, etc. while less attention has been paid to other online means of communication such as WhatsApp despite the growing im-portance of WhatsApp as a means of communication. The present paper aims to redress this imbalance by analysing self-presentation on WhatsApp; more specifically, by paying attention to emotional self-pre-sentation in profile status. To that purpose, a corpus of 206 WhatsApp statuses was gathered in Spanish. Results show the existence of recurrent patterns connected to variables such as sex1 or age, which play a crucial role in determining the emotions users choose to display in their profile status

Aprendiendo a aprender: técnicas de auto-evaluación en el aula de inglés

El Marco Común Europeo de Referencia (2001) sitúa al alumno en el centro del proceso de aprendizaje y pondera la responsabilidad y la autonomía como elementos centrales del mismo. La capacidad de autoevaluación es parte esencial de dicho proceso puesto que dicta las pautas a seguir y los objetivos ya alcanzados. Sin embargo, aunque se admite la innegable importancia del uso de técnicas de autoevaluación en el aula, no se le concede el énfasis que merece y se relega a futuras investigaciones. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo analizar el uso de distintas técnicas de autoevaluación en un aula real de lengua inglesa (nivel pre-intermedio o B1 de acuerdo con los descriptores del Marco Común Europeo) y su utilidad en el proceso formativo de los veinticinco alumnos universitarios que participaron en este estudio.The Common European Framework of Reference (2001) positions the student in the centre of the learning process and favours responsibility and autonomy as its core elements. Self-assessment is regarded as an essential part of this process since it establishes the guidelines to be followed and the objectives that have already been achieved. However, although it is undeniably accepted that self-assessment techniques should be used in the classroom, it is not stressed enough and neglected as the aim of future research. The present paper aims to analyse the use of different self-assessment techniques in an actual English class (pre-intermediate or B1 level according to the can-do statements of the Common European Framework) and their real usefulness in the learning process of the twenty-five university students who took part in this study

CLIL and translation in tertiary education

In the past decade, Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been steadily gaining ground in tertiary-level education, with an increasing number of programmes being implemented. However, and despite this growing trend, there is still a wide scope for research in this area. More specifically, one of the aspects which have hardly received any attention is the role of CLIL lecturers as translators. The aim of this paper is to prove how translation has a say in the quality and performance of lectures in this teaching context. For that purpose, a twofold approach has been followed. On the one hand, eight lecturers’ actual production has been qualitatively analysed following the phasal analysis of lectures as proposed by Young (1994). On the other, the lecturers’ recognition of their role as translators in CLIL lessons has been considered as well. To this double aim, lectures belonging to the fields of Physics and Engineering have been recorded, transcribed and analysed, with special attention being paid to phasal division. As for our next goal, the answers to a 26-item questionnaire addressed to lecturers and containing reflections on their translating activity have also been thoroughly studied. Findings show that translation does indeed play a pivotal role in the linguistic quality of lectures, with those phases in which translation applies resulting in lower levels of L1 interference. Further research on this area may indeed determine how valuable translation skills are in order to develop a higher efficiency in the preparation and delivery of university lectures.