Mitigation of claims in medical research papers: A comparative study of English and Spanish writers

Since its inception in 2004, Communication & Medicine has been consistently interrogating the `black box’ of what is routinely characterised as `the communicative turn’ in healthcare practice in clinical and public health domains. It is now firmly established as a leading forum for these critical debates[EN] This study identifies variation in the use of mitigation devices in medical written English between authors with English as their first language and those with Spanish as their first language. A corpus of 30 medical research papers written in English and published in international journals was compiled, 15 by researchers with Spanish as their first language and 15 by native English-speakers, and this was compared with a second corpus of 15 medical papers written in Spanish. By a comparative analysis of how mitigation devices were used in both corpora, it was possible to establish whether their frequency and the rhetorical strategies adopted varied depending on the writers’ linguistic background.Carrió Pastor, ML. (2016). Mitigation of claims in medical research papers: A comparative study of English and Spanish writers. Communication and Medicine. 13(3):249-261. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/80668S24926113

Cartografía de la interferencia cultural de la variación terminológica

CLINA is a Translation Studies journal that addresses the growing need for dissemination platforms to showcase recent advances in Translation, Interpreting and neighboring disciplines.[EN Communication in a specific setting should be carried out efficiently since language miscomprehension can prevent the message from reaching the audience adequately. More specifically, the correct use of particular terms is essential in specific texts to describe concepts. These terms could be expressed differently when used in other languages and this fact could cause interferences in language communication. In this paper, the main objective was to determine if the written form of terms varied and interfered with cross-cultural communication. Furthermore, to determine the causes of term variation across languages in texts written in different languages, it is important to establish clear distinctions between the semantic fields of words. The corpus of this research was composed of twenty texts written in English and the same twenty texts written in Spanish that transmitted the agreements of the United Nations related to specific topics. They were written in the official languages of the United Nations in such a way that there was not an original or target language, they were supposedly written originally in all the languages at the same time. In order to determine if the written form of terms varied in a specific setting, the selected texts were analysed with Wordsmith Tools 5.0. First, the key words of the texts in Spanish and in English were identified, and then the written forms and the use of synonyms in Spanish and in English were compared and contrasted. The results showed that there were variations in the interpretation of terms when expressed in different languages and those may be due to cross-cultural interference.[ES] La comunicación en un entorno específico debe de realizarse de forma eficiente, puesto que una comprensión incorrecta puede producir que ciertos mensajes no lleguen a la audiencia de forma correcta. De forma más específica, el uso correcto de un término concreto es esencial en textos específicos para describir conceptos. Estos términos se pueden expresar de forma diferente cuando se usan en otras lenguas y este hecho puede causar interferencias en la comunicación lingüística. En este artículo, el objetivo principal es determinar si existe variación en la forma escrita y si este hecho pudiera interferir en la comunicación entre culturas distintas. Así mismo, determinar las causas de la variación de términos cuando se escriben en otras lenguas es importante para poder diferenciar los campos semánticos de las palabras. El corpus de esta investigación está compuesto de veinte textos escritos en inglés y en español cuyo objetivo es transmitir los acuerdos de las Naciones Unidas respecto a cuestiones específicas. Están escritos en las lenguas oficiales de las Naciones Unidas, por lo tanto, en principio no existe una lengua original y una lengua meta. Para determinar si variaba la forma escrita de términos en contextos específicos, se analizaron los textos con Wordsmith Tools 5.0. Primero identifiqué las palabras clave de los textos en inglés y castellano y a continuación comparé su forma escrita y el uso de sinónimos tanto en inglés como en castellano. Los resultados mostraron que existen variaciones en la interpretación de términos cuando se escribían en lenguas diferentes y ello podría ser debido a la interferencia entre distintas culturas.Carrió Pastor, ML. (2015). Mapping the cultural interference of term variation. Clina. 1(1):29-45. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/78079S29451

A contrastive analysis of epistemic modality in scientific English

This paper investigates the use of epistemic expressions in scientific English. The main aim of this research is to analyse if native speakers of English use epistemic modality in the same way than non-native speakers of English and to detect the most outstanding cognitive implications of this fact. The corpus used in this research contains 50 research papers written by native English speakers and 50 scientific papers written by Spanish researchers who use English to communicate internationally. As epistemic modals are used to indicate the possibility of some piece of knowledge, this paper focuses on epistemic modal verbs in order to detect if native speakers of English and non-native speakers of English communicate modality in the same way, or if there are differences in frequency and use. The results obtained in this analysis indicated that there are differences in the frequency of use of epistemic expressions, even if the intention of the writers is the same.Carrió Pastor, ML. (2012). A contrastive analysis of epistemic modality in scientific English. Revista de Lengua para fines específicos. 18:115-132. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/78138S1151321

CARTA DE LA EDITORA

Carrió Pastor, ML. (2008). CARTA DE LA EDITORA. Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas. 3. doi:10.4995/rlyla.2008.685SWORD

Cross-cultural variation in the use of modal verbs in academic English

The Linguistic Association of Finland was founded in 1977 to promote linguistic research and the teaching of linguistics in Finland by offering a forum for discussion, both in Finland and abroad.English academic writing has some specific characteristics that have been broadly defined by researchers. Nevertheless, English is undergoing constant modification as a result of being used as a lingua franca by international speakers. In this paper, my main objective is to determine whether language variation may be identified in cross-cultural communication when modal verbs of ability and possibility are used by speakers with different linguistic backgrounds. Furthermore, I would like to establish whether English writers tend to be more explicit than Spanish writers when both groups use English to communicate. The two corpora used in this study consisted of a set of fifty academic papers written in English by Spanish researchers and a set of fifty academic papers written in English by native English-speaking researchers. Both corpora were analysed to identify synchronic language variation in academic English when used by writers of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The results showed that there are disparities in the use of possibility and ability modal verbs and the conclusion reached is that writers with dissimilar mother tongues express volition through modal verbs differently in international journals.Carrió Pastor, ML. (2014). Cross-cultural variation in the use of modal verbs in academic English. Sky Journal of Linguistics. 27(1):153-166. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/78182S15316627

A proposal for the detection and classification of discourse errors

Our interest lies in error from the point of view of language in context,therefore we will focus on errors produced at the discourse level. The main objective of this paper is to detect discourse competence errors and their implications through the analysis of a corpus of English written texts produced by Higher Education students with a B1 level (following the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). Further objectives are to propose categories which could help us to classify the different errors in the interlanguage of second language learners and to identify the causes of these errors in the different stages of second language learning in order to offer opportunities for improvement. The methodology followed is a mixed research method which includes quantitative and qualitative analyses of the corpus.Mestre-Mestre, EM.; Carrió Pastor, ML. (2013). A proposal for the detection and classification of discourse errors. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences. 95:528-534. doi:10.1016/jsbspro.2013.10.678S5285349

English as a second language: variations and pedagogical implications

Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center.In this paper, English texts written by Spanish learners with B2 level of proficiency, following the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), were contrasted with texts written by native English speakers in order to detect the most common writing changes (variations) motivated by the mother tongue of the writers. Our objective was to determine the causes of these variations in language production and to explain the pedagogical implications that could be derived from our findings. The results showed that there are differences in the texts produced by writers with different linguistic and cultural antecedents, although their language proficiency was high enough to not produce grammatical errors. The grammatical items analysed in the texts produced by native and non-native writers to look for language variation were articles, the passive voice, tenses, relative clauses, and certainty and uncertainty expressions. Most of the variations found were caused by the interference of the mother tongue, as a consequence, most of the pedagogical implications focused on avoiding these variations.Carrió Pastor, ML.; Alonso Almeida, F. (2014). English as a second language: variations and pedagogical implications. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences. 116(1):377-381. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.225S377381116

Lexical variations in business e-mails written by non-native speakers of English

The LSP Journal - Language for special purposes, professional communication, knowledge management and cognition focuses on interlinking research across these areas. The areas of research are of vital importance to the development, exchange and acceptance of new ideas and products in scientific domains as well as in trade and public services at national and international levels.English is the lingua franca used in business communication. Therefore the number of non-native speakers of English already outnumbers native speakers provided that worldwide enterprises use English for international communication. The Internet has also increased the use of English as an international language, in this way; it is used by speakers with different linguistic backgrounds. This variety of authors produces differences or variations in language use. In this paper we contrast business e-mails written by Spanish agents who work in an exporting company in India and China. Our main aim is to analyze the possible variations due to the mother tongue and the socio-cultural context and to classify lexical variation in business English used as a global working language by non-native speakers. We intended to determine the causes of variation and their influence on discourse. We analyzed and contrasted sixty e-mails written by two groups of nonnative English speakers. Group A was composed of native speakers from Pakistan and Group B was composed of native speakers from China. The corpus analysis was carried out manually. We classified the occurrences in categories depending on the cause of the variation. After the analysis, we observed that the lexical variations found were caused by sociolinguistic and cultural influences.Carrió Pastor, ML.; Muñiz Calderón, R. (2012). Lexical variations in business e-mails written by non-native speakers of English. LSP Journal - Language for special purposes, professional communication, knowledge management and cognition. 3(1):4-13. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/78139S4133

PRAGMATIC ERROR IDENTIFICATION IN A COMPUTER-ADAPTIVE TEST OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Este trabajo esta licenciado bajo una Licencia Internacional Creative Commons Atribución-No Comercial-Sin Derivados 4.0. Patrocinador(es):[ES] Este trabajo analiza las razones por las cuales un grupo de estudiantes falla las preguntas específicas que evalúan su competencia pragmalingüística en la prueba de dominio Oxford Online Placement Test (OOPT). El objetivo de este estudio es descubrir qué tipo de deficiencias en la competencia lingüística de estos estudiantes pueden estar implicadas en la producción de errores en estas preguntas, según su propia percepción y desde una perspectiva cognitiva y metalingüística. Para ello, se diseñó un cuestionario de valoración restrospectivo que fue realizado por cuarenta y cuatro estudiantes de primer curso en la Facultat de Magisteri, Universitat de València (España) que debían acreditar tener un nivel B1 de lengua inglesa al acabar el curso. Los resultados indicaron que el motivo de error más frecuente en la parte de comprensión pragmática del OOPT era el desconocimiento de parte del vocabulario contenido en los diálogos que conformaban las preguntas correspondientes a esta parte de la prueba[EN] This paper analyses the reasons why a group of students fails the specific items that assess the pragmalinguistic competence in English in the Oxford Online Placement Test (OOPT). The work at hand aims to find out what deficiencies in their linguistic competence are involved in their production of errors in these items. The research has been carried out according to the students own perception and from a cognitive and meta-linguistic perspective. For this purpose, a retrospective questionnaire was designed and administered to forty-four students, taking an English course at the Facultat de Magisteri, Universitat de València (Spain). These students should certify a B1 level of English when finishing the course. The results showed that the most frequent source of errors in the pragmatic comprehension part of the OOPT was unawareness of some vocabulary contained in the dialogues corresponding to this part of the test.Carrió Pastor, ML.; Martín Marchante, B. (2016). Identificación de errores pragmáticos en un test adaptativo de inglés como lengua extranjera. ELIA: Estudios de Lingüística Inglesa Aplicada. 16:79-102. doi:10.12795/elia.2016.i16.04S791021

A contrastive analysis of metadiscourse features in business e-mails written by non-native speakers of English

Peer-review under responsibility of Universidad Pablo de Olavide.Metadiscourse is usually studied in terms of a cross-cultural exploration of interpersonality, mainly in academic English, but we believe that this approach could be applied to other genres. The main purpose of this study is to compare some metadiscourse features used in digital business communications. More specifically, we focus on the interactional metadiscourse devices categorised as boosters. We analysed and compared a corpus of one hundred emails written by two groups of non-native speakers of English working in an export company and using English to communicate in a business environment. One group was composed of workers from Spain and the other was composed of workers from China. Our aim was to analyse the differences in the use of boosters and the causes of variation in their use, which may be related to the need to employ assertiveness or politeness in business contexts.Carrió Pastor, ML.; Muñiz Calderón, R. (2015). A contrastive analysis of metadiscourse features in business e-mails written by non-native speakers of English. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences. 173(1):214-221. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.02.055S214221173