The presentation of self in résumés: an intercultural approach

In this paper, résumés in two languages and two cultures, Peninsular Spanish and American English, are analysed. For this qualitative analysis, we have relied on the dual perspective proposed by Flowerdew (2005) which postulates a complementary usage of linguistic and ethnographic approaches to the study of genre. The analysis of discourse is based on tenets of genre analysis (Swales 1990; Unger 2007) which have traditionally constituted a substantial part of the theoretical basis of the LSP field. However, it also introduces tenets from sociolinguistics and pragmatics (Brown & Levinson 1987; Scollon & Scollon 2001) as résumés crucially involve the presentation of self – namely the construction of professional identity of candidates (de Fina et al. 2006; Dyer & Keller-Cohen 2000). The ethnographic approach consists of interviews of recruiters from both cultures to find out what their expectations are relative to applicants’ presentation of selves. The results, although tentative, indicate that cultural expectations in terms of what constitutes an adequate résumé vary between the two cultures, especially with respect to the type of personal information provided and the lexico-syntactic structures that candidates use to distance themselves from their achievement

Teaching linguistic politeness: a methodological proposal

The aim of this article is to explore theoretical and methodological aspects of the teaching of pragmatics in a second language. Taking as point of departure the pragmatic continuum, which includes pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, we focus on the promotion of sociopragmatic knowledge in classroom contexts. More specifically, it is argued that a revised contextual and interactional view of Brown and Levinson¿s (1987) model of linguistic politeness, related to such notions as genre and politeness systems, offers suitable tools of pragmatic description for use in teaching and learning second languages. We start with a brief overview of linguistic politeness from a socio-cognitive framework. Then, we revise the main methodological approaches to the teaching of pragmatic knowledge in general and the specific teaching of linguistic politeness in particular. Finally, we make a methodological proposal for use in foreign language instruction

Discourse Analysis and Terminology in Languages for Specific Purposes

Aquest importantíssim recull conté estudis i reflexions sobre temes rellevants en la recerca sobre LSP: anglès mèdic, el llenguatge de la publicitat i periodístic, telecomunicacions i terminologia informàtica, llenguatge comercial i jurídic... Malgrat que gran part dels treballs aplegats es refereixen a l'anglès, també hi ha que tracten l'alemany, francès i altres llengües. Conté textos en anglès, francés, portuguès i castellà

A pragmatic account of listenership : implications for foreign/second language teaching

In our view, there is a general need to gain insights into what a listener does in linguistic interaction and to provide a comprehensive account of listenership from a pragmatic standpoint. This paper examines listener roles and processes in three aspects of communication: verbal understanding, verbal production and negotiation of meaning. Traditional views of communication are invariably speaker-centred and based on coding and decoding processes. This paper contains a critical review of these issues which are then related to foreign/second language teaching. Competent non-native speakers of a language should be able to both produce and interpret language correctly. We believe that social and cognitive pragmatic theories (Linguistic Politeness Theory and Relevance Theory) can be successfully applied to second language production and comprehension. Taking as our starting point Cauldwell’s (1998) caution to the effect that we need knowledge of what happens in real communication before thinking of methodologies to teach foreign languages, this paper reviews the three communicative processes of understanding, production and negotiation, and next addresses the main implications for the establishment of a theory-driven teaching methodology

La presentación de la imagen en conversaciones entre hablantes nativas y no nativas de inglés

En el presente trabajo se evaluan las posibles consecuencias sociales derivadas de una baja competencia conversacional por parte de hablantes no nativos (HNN) en interacción con hablantes nativos (HN). Además de la mera trasmisión de contenidos proposicionales, en el transcurso de una conversación, el hablante presenta una imagen de sí mismo que es valorada por el oyente y se negocia el patrón de relaciones entre eilos. Estas valoraciones y negociaciones están, en gran medida, determinadas por la propia cultura y pueden efectuarse sobre una base errónea cuando tienen iugar entre indi- viduos de dos culturas y/o lenguas distintas quienes juzgan al interlocutor según sus parámetros interactivos idiosıncrásicos los cuales pueden operar de diferente u opuesto modo en la cultura ajena. Nuestro corpus de estudio lo conforman dos conversaciones mantenidas entre tres interlocutoras: cos HNN y una HN. Hemos seleccionado cuatro tenómenos discursivos para su análisis: el uso de estrategias de comunicación de una segunda lengua por parte de las HNN, las introduccio nes de temas a lo largo del desarrollo de la interacción, el empleo de marcadores del discurso y el grado de participación de las interlaeutoras. Nuestra propuesta radica en que estos fenómenos de uso del lenguaje son ilustrativos del grado de dinamismo y compromiso con versacional de las hablantes, los cuales están directamente relacionados con la imagen presentada por las mismas