Pragmática de la puntuación y nuevas tecnologías

La puntuación ha evolucionado a lo largo de la historia, no solo en cuanto al número de signos, sino también con respecto a su función de guía en la (re)presentación y el procesamiento del texto. El objetivo del presente artículo es discutir la pragmática de la puntuación en los principales modos de comunicación mediada por ordenador. Mi propuesta consiste en considerar que las nuevas formas escritas de interacción mediada por ordenador situadas en el polo de la inmediatez comunicativa han dado lugar a un particular sistema de puntuación metarrepresentativa que compite con los códigos de puntuación tanto retórico como gramatical

"I Am a Waste of Breath, of Space, of Time": Metaphors of Self in a Pro-Anorexia Group

According to recent research on eating disorders, heavy users of pro-anorexia (pro-ana) sites show higher levels of disordered eating and more severe impairment of quality of life than non-heavy users. A better understanding of how pro-ana members self-present in the virtual world could shed some light on these offline behaviors. Through discourse analysis, I examined the metaphors the members of a pro-ana group invoked in their personal profiles on a popular social networking site, to talk about the self. I applied the Metaphor Identification Procedure to 757 text profiles. I identified four key metaphorical constructions in pro-ana members' self-descriptions: self as space, self as weight, perfecting the self, and the social self. These four main metaphors represented discourse strategies, both to create a collective pro-ana identity and to enact an individual identity as pro-ana. In this article, I discuss the implications of these findings for the treatment of eating disorders

Pragmática de la Puntuación y Nuevas Tecnologías

La puntuación ha evolucionado a lo largo de la historia, no solo en cuanto al número de signos, sino también con respecto a su función de guía en la (re)presentación y el procesamiento del texto. El objetivo del presente artículo es discutir la pragmática de la puntuación en los principales modos de comunicación mediada por ordenador. Mi propuesta consiste en considerar que las nuevas formas escritas de interacción mediada por ordenador situadas en el polo de la inmediatez comunicativa han dado lugar a un particular sistema de puntuación metarrepresentativa que compite con los códigos de puntuación tanto retórico como gramatical.Punctuation has evolved through history, not only in the number of marks, but also with regard to their function in guiding the (re)presentation and the processing of the text. My aim in this article is to discuss the pragmatics of punctuation in the main computer-mediated modes of communication. My proposal is to consider that the new computer-mediated written interactions in the pole of communicative immediacy have given rise to a particular metarepresentative system of punctuation that competes with the traditional rhetorical and grammatical codes of the same

Self-presentation processes in personal profiles in a pro-anorexia group

This paper presents the results of a content analysis of 1000 personal profiles posted on a pro-anorexia (pro-ana) group from the social networking site Xanga. Applying methods of computer-mediated communication discourse analysis, the visual and verbal strategies of self-presentation in pro-ana members? profiles were examined. Competence, ingratiation, exemplification and supplication emerged as the main self-presentation strategies identified in the text-based profiles. In contrast to other online self-presentations (such as personal home pages and weblogs), new contents and meanings related to a pro-ana social identity were assigned to these strategies in the group. The analysis of the profile pictures revealed that pro-ana users of the site tended to remain visually anonymous, resorting to images of models and celebrities, and reproducing the thin ideal. Based on these findings, this study advances some conclusions about how the pro-ana identity is constructed in social networking sites

Investigaciones sobre la naturaleza de acento a través del visi-pitch

Este artículo tiene un doble objetivo: en primer lugar, determinar los valores acústicos del rasgo acentual en español, a partir de los datos obtenidos de analizar pares de términos que se diferencian sólo por la posición del acento. Una vez hecho esto, pretendemos comprobar hasta qué punto es cierto que uno de los dos integrantes de los compuestos pierde el acento

Producciones del rasgo acentual mediante síntesis de voz

En este artículo se describe un método de síntesis del rasgo acentual en un sintetizador de voz PCF 8200 de Philips y se demuestra que los vaiores aportados por el análisis de la voz no siempre se corresponden con los que es necesario introducir en un sintetizador para que los hablantes reconozcan ese rasgo

Vaguedad y relevancia: metáforas en los titulares de prensa sobre las enfermedades poco frecuentes

El presente estudio propone un análisis pragmático-discursivo de las metáforas en los titulares de las noticias de prensa española dedicadas a las enfermedades poco frecuentes. El corpus comprende las piezas periodísticas correspondientes a dos periodos temporales: de julio a septiembre de 2014 (776 noticias), y de enero a mayo de 2015 (2521 noticias). La descripción semántico-pragmática de las metáforas se ha llevado a cabo combinando las predicciones de la teoría de la relevancia y de la teoría de la metáfora conceptual. Se ha procedido, asimismo, a la exploración discursiva de las metáforas en el marco del análisis crítico de la metáfora. Los resultados revelan que el contenido conceptual y expresivo de dos metáforas conceptuales principales –LA ENFERMEDAD ES UNA CONTIENDA y LA ENFERMEDAD ES UN VIAJE– imponen un determinado marco conceptual e ideológico desde el que interpretar las EPF.This study aims to develop a pragmaticdiscursive analysis of the metaphors deployed in the Spanish newspaper headlines about rare diseases. The corpus comprises the news published during two time periods: from July to September of 2014 (776 articles), and from January to May of 2015 (2,521 articles). The description of the semantics and pragmatics of the metaphors identified in the corpus was performed by combining the predictions from Relevance Theory and from Cognitive Metaphor Theory. A complementary discursive analysis in the framework of Critical Analysis of Metaphor was also conducted. The results showed that the conceptual and expressive content conveyed by two main conceptual metaphors –ILLNESS IS A CONTEST, and ILLNESS IS A JOURNEY– set a specific conceptual and ideological frame to make sense of these illnesses

Evaluation of immunomodulatory effects of lactic acid bacteria in turbot (Scophthalmus maximus)

7 pages, 4 figures.In the present work, the effects of several lactic acid bacteria on the immune response of turbot (Scophthalmus maximus) macrophages have been studied both in vitro and in vivo. Out of six lactic acid bacterial strains tested, only heat-killed Lactococcus lactis significantly increased the turbot head kidney macrophage chemiluminescent (CL) response after 24 h of incubation. Nitric oxide (NO) was also significantly enhanced by this bacterium after 72 h of incubation with either viable (103 and 106 cells/ml) or heat-killed (106 cells/ml) bacteria. Viable Leuconostoc mesenteroides (106 cells/ml) was also capable of significantly increasing NO production. Since L. lactis proved to be the strain with more effects on the host immune function, further in vivo and in vitro experiments were conducted with this bacterium. The in vitro capacity of L. lactis to adhere to turbot intestinal mucus was positively confirmed. When orally administered, L. lactis significantly increased the macrophage CL response and the serum NO concentration after 7 days of daily administration. The antibacterial effect of the extracellular products from the six LAB strains against the fish-pathogenic bacterium Vibrio anguillarum was also demonstrated in vitro.This work was partially supported by the project 1FD97-0044-C03-03 from FEDER funds and a grant from Caixa Galicia (Spain). L. Villamil acknowledges the University of Vigo for a research fellowship. C. Tafalla acknowledges the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) for a research fellowship.Peer reviewe