El discurso disidente de la contrapublicidad verde

This paper reflects on the present advertising context, precisely on the ecological message proliferation used to position certain companies and products. Those messages are made to make the consumer believe that he or she is buying something that cares for the environment when it really does not so much. Then, it is explained how subvertising counteracts the role of traditional and hegemonic advertising by means of denouncing that it is not so «green» as it pretends to be.En el presente trabajo reflexionamos sobre el contexto publicitario actual y, en concreto, sobre la proliferación de mensajes en los que la ecología se utiliza para tratar de posicionar todo tipo de productos y entidades, sus causas e implicaciones, teniendo presente que algunos mensajes pretenden hacer creer al consumidor que los productos y/o los procedimientos publicitados son respetuosos con el medio ambiente cuando realmente no lo son o no lo son tanto como pregonan sus campañas. Asimismo, reflexionamos sobre la contrapublicidad en tanto que discurso replicante y alternativo al tradicional y hegemónico, a través del cual se denuncian las inconsistencias que presentan las predicaciones «verdes» de ciertas campañas publicitarias

Innovative designs and applications of Janus micromotors with (photo)-catalytic and magnetic motion

El objetivo principal de esta Tesis Doctoral es el diseño y desarrollo de micromotores Janus biocompatibles y su aplicación en ámbitos relevantes de la salud y de la protección medioambiental. Los micromotores Janus son dispositivos en la microescala autopropulsados que tienen al menos dos regiones en su superficie con diferentes propiedades físicas y químicas, lo que les convierte en una clase distintiva de materiales que pueden combinar características ópticas, magnéticas y eléctricas en una sola entidad. Como la naturaleza del micromotor Janus -el dios romano de las dos caras- los objetivos de esta Tesis Doctoral presentan naturaleza dual y comprenden desarrollos de química fundamental y de química aplicada. En efecto, por una parte, el objetivo central aborda el diseño, síntesis y ensamblaje, así como la caracterización de micromotores Janus poliméricos propulsados por mecanismos (foto)-catalíticos y/o accionados por campos magnéticos. Por otra parte, el objetivo central implica la aplicación de los micromotores desarrollados para resolver desafíos sociales relevantes en los ámbitos químico-analítico, biomédico y ambiental. Partiendo de estas premisas, en la primera parte de la Tesis Doctoral, se sintetizaron micromotores Janus de policaprolactona propulsados químicamente integrando nanomateriales para el diseño de sensores móviles para la detección selectiva de endotoxinas bacterianas. De esta forma, el movimiento autónomo del micromotor mejora la mezcla de fluidos y la eficacia de las reacciones implicadas permitiendo detectar el analito en pocos minutos, incluso en muestras viscosas y medios donde la agitación no es posible. Además, esta autopropulsión es altamente compatible con su empleo en formatos ultra-miniaturizados para el desarrollo de futuros dispositivos portátiles en el marco de la tecnología point of care para aplicaciones clínicas y agroalimentarias. Con el fin de incrementar su biocompatibilidad para aplicaciones in vivo, en una segunda etapa de la Tesis Doctoral, se diseñaron micromotores Janus con propulsión autónoma utilizando luz visible para la eliminación de toxinas relevantes en procesos inflamatorios. El fenómeno autopropulsivo del micromotor y su capacidad de interacción con agentes tóxicos condujo a metodologías más rápidas y eficaces infiriéndose un futuro prometedor de estos micromotores para el tratamiento del shock séptico o intoxicación. En una tercera etapa, se sintetizaron micromotores propulsados por campos magnéticos. Estos micromotores utilizan una aproximación elegante de propulsión, exenta del empleo de combustibles químicos tóxicos como sucede en la propulsión catalítica y, en consecuencia, biocompatible. Asimismo, este mecanismo propulsivo permite controlar e incluso programar su trayectoria para aplicaciones que requieran de un guiado y de un control preciso de esta. De manera específica, estos micromotores han sido aplicados en esta Tesis Doctoral para la liberación controlada de fármacos en el tratamiento de cáncer pancreático y como elementos de remediación ambiental en la eliminación de agentes nerviosos en aguas contaminadas

Aulas, publicidad y ficción televisiva: una experiencia de innovación docente

This paper shows the development and results of an innovative teaching project, conceived to make use of audiovisual texts not only as a pedagogic tool but also as a committed and responsible approach to social reality. The novelty of the proposal is the use of television fiction and, in particular, Mad Men serial, within the framework of university teaching of Advertising, targeting to a critical information management, and to promote the reflection of the students on the advertising phenomenon in the current socioeconomic context.El presente artículo muestra el desarrollo y resultados de un proyecto de innovación docente, concebido para hacer uso de los textos audiovisuales no sólo como herramienta pedagógica sino también como espoleta de una toma de postura comprometida y responsable con la realidad social. La novedad de la propuesta estriba en la utilización de la ficción televisiva y, en concreto, la serie Mad Men, en el marco de la docencia universitaria de la Publicidad, orientada a un manejo crítico de la información, que promueva la reflexión de los estudiantes en torno al fenómeno publicitario en el contexto socioeconómico actual

Flipping the English grammar classroom: a pedagogical experiment for undergraduate students

Grammar is a key component of any language teaching curriculum, whether it ascribes to structural or to communicative approaches (Ur 2012). Although the attention devoted to grammar has decreased in the latter models ‒mainly because other components have gained relevance‒, students continue to dread grammar lessons. These are infamous for being long and boring, since they typically consist of a lecture from the teacher and are followed by some drill-type activity (Larsen-Freeman 2001). Despite the myriad of pedagogical innovations today, this continues to be the state of affairs in grammar teaching, more so at university level. Indeed, the role of the lecture in undergraduate teaching seems to be irreplaceable, or almost so (Reidsema et al. 2017). The flipped classroom is an educational model that is gaining ground today by challenging the basis of this type of presentation (Kvashnina and Martynko 2016). It provides students with a blended learning experience that affects both the medium and the temporality of teaching, since flipped classrooms often present a combination of asynchronous online learning and synchronous face-to-face lessons (Reidsema et al. 2017). However, the model is best characterised by the way the contents are presented and practiced. Whereas lecturing is the central activity in a traditional classroom and practice is assigned as homework, a flipped classroom does exactly the opposite (Bergmann and Sams 2012). In moving the “information-transmission teaching out of [the grammar] class” (Abeysekera and Dawson 2014: 4), the flipped model enables students to become active and independent in their learning process (Bergmann and Sams 2012: 16). If applied to the grammar lesson, a flipped classroom has the potential of involving students in the contents they are learning and of making this learning more significant (Abeysekera and Dawson 2014).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

The Morphology-Orthography Interface: A Needful Study

The affix -ful in words like needful and hopeful originates in the Germanic adjective full, meaning “filled to capacity” (OED, s.v. full, adj.), and has cognates in most languages of its family, both as a free-standing form and as an adjectival suffix. Though the early -ful formations retained the sense of “full of”, its gradual loss of meaning throughout history has substantiated claims about its grammaticalization. Hopper and Traugott (2003: 7) contend that -ful was first part of a phrase (e.g., “a basket full (of eggs)”), later part of a compound (e.g., “a cupful (of water)”), and, finally, a derivational affix (e.g., “needful”), a hypothesis that Wischer (2011: 359) also supports, though with reservations. At any rate, the shift from an independent lexeme into an adjective-deriving suffix on the part of -ful does not only involve changes to syntax and morphology, but also to orthography (Wełna 2000: 45). Today, its affixal status is reinforced by its spelling: though minimal, the difference between -ful and full is substantial. In the same way that grammaticalization often entails phonetic erosion, the process seems to have taken a toll on spelling as well. However, the complexity of English spelling in the Middle and Early Modern periods and the speakers’ erratic relationship towards it make it highly unlikely for users to have intentionally marked this grammaticalization in orthography. The present paper thus aims to analyse the availability of the syntax/morphology-spelling interface from this particular case study, paying closer attention to the aforementioned periods and by means of a corpus-based investigation that draws data from the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts

“Portugal and England in Africa” (1891) by Guilherme de Vasconcelos Abreu

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

"Write as we speake": on the question of spelling reform today

English has been characterised by the variability of its spelling throughout history, since it was only standardised by the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Other than its history of unstability, the resulting orthographic system would be marked by two events. On the one hand, the original spelling of the borrowed lexicon was adopted and incorporated into the system, which would provide the English language with orthographic input from disparate sources (Cook 2004; Salmon 1999). On the other hand, the standardising process was completed before the end of the Great Vowel Shift, which means that phonological changes thereafter would not be reflected in spelling (Nevalainen 2006; Cook 2004). These circumstances would eventually influence the orthographic depth of the language. Indeed, the English is a deep orthographic system that constantly violates the one-to-one principle (Cook 2004). Such a state of affairs fueled the protests that Milroy and Milroy (2012) dubbed as the ‘Complaint Tradition’ and which addressed the lack of transparency of the new orthographic system. On the premise that “it is so hard to spell English” (Yule & Yasuko 2016: 414), countless attempts at spelling reform have surfaced in dribs and drabs since the sixteenth century until today (Crowley 2012). Though the present state of English orthography corroborates that these proposals have remained largely unsuccessful, the simplification exercise in words like colour/color, anaesthesia/anesthesia or kilogramme/kilogram (Gramley et al. 2021) is often employed as an argument to justify the aforementioned proposals. In light of this discussion, the coexistence of both forms in Present-day English raises the following questions: How are the competing forms distributed today? Do speakers show preference for the simplified forms? If so, is this simplification indicative of spelling reform or are phenomena like Americanisation responsible?Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Quem tramou Yoritomo-Tashi? Ser ou não ser

This article offers a case study of the early-twentieth century Portuguese reception of Yoritomo-Tashi, supposedly a Japanese philosopher who became known through the editing work of B. Dangennes, one of the pseudonyms of a French female author of self-help books by the name of Berthe Blanchard (18[-]–1940). Reception is examined on the basis of translational paratexts used as (re)framing devices to tell different stories about a same author figure and the books he is purported to have written, ultimately shaping the literary and cultural system to which Yoritomo-Tashi belongs. The first (European) Portuguese translation of his work to circulate, made by Bernardo de Alcobaça in 1912, whose paratext frames a Japanese source (con)text, will be discussed as an assumed translation of a non-existent (Japanese) original, that is, as a pseudo indirect translation. The other three existing adaptationswere translated by the end of the 1920s by a different agent, A.Victor Machado, who seems to be aware that Yoritomo-Tashi is a pen name and who gradually restores Yoritomo-Tashi/Dangennes to the French literary system via the paratext. Questions will also be raised about the complicity of the Portuguese translators with Dangennes’s fictitious translation project. This complicity, as shaped by the paratext, will be shown to influence the de facto belonging of an author’s work to the Japanese-Portuguese translation system and to be evidence of a persisting exoticism in early twentieth-century Europe.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio