Tropical eigenwave and intermediate Jacobians

Tropical manifolds are polyhedral complexes enhanced with certain kind of affine structure. This structure manifests itself through a particular cohomology class which we call the eigenwave of a tropical manifold. Other wave classes of similar type are responsible for deformations of the tropical structure. If a tropical manifold is approximable by a 1-parametric family of complex manifolds then the eigenwave records the monodromy of the family around the tropical limit. With the help of tropical homology and the eigenwave we define tropical intermediate Jacobians which can be viewed as tropical analogs of classical intermediate Jacobians.Comment: 38 pages, 8 figure

The International Business Approach to Foreign Language Teaching. Résumé_CV Design

Los profesores de inglés para fines específicos suelen apoyar su labor docente en aproximaciones de tipo lingüístico. En muchas ocasiones, el profesor se limita al estudio de la terminología, la sintaxis y el análisis de ciertos géneros (como el abstract). Sin embargo, los teóricos de la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras que trabajan en el contexto de la Unión Europea mantienen que enseñar culturas es tan importante como enseñar lenguas. En efecto, los licenciados y diplomados que han aprendido listas de vocabulario y que saben cómo redactar un abstract en una lengua extranjera difícilmente lograrán prosperar en el mercado de trabajo europeo. En mis clases de inglés para fines específicos he enseñado a mis estudiantes a diseñar un curriculum en inglés británico. La experiencia despertó el interés de mis discentes, y les ha hecho ver que para trabajar -y acceder- a un mercado de trabajo extranjero es preciso poseer unos conocimientos de la cultura en cuestión. En este ensayo presento el método didáctico que he seguido para enseñar a mis estudiantes españoles cómo diseñar un curriculum en inglés británico.Teachers of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) often rely on a linguistic approach. \ud Terminology, sintax and the analysis of certain genres -particularly the abstract- bias ESP \ud teaching in many instances. Yet foreign language (FL) theoreticians in the European Union \ud proclaim that teaching cultures is as important as teaching languages. Indeed college graduates \ud who have leamed lists of vocabulary and know how to write an abstract in a FL will hardly \ud success in the pan-European job market. I have recently taught my Spanish students of ESP how \ud to write a resume in British English. The experience has tumed out intriguing to my leamers, \ud who have understood that in order to work in -even to access- a foreign job market, one needs \ud to have a thorough knowledge of many cultural aspects of the foreign culture. This paper \ud presents the didactic method I have followed to teach Spanish students how to design a resume \ud in British English

Metapragmatic First-Order Politeness in Peninsular Spanish

Research on Spanish politeness has developed dramatically in the past decade. One of the most influential theses regarding Spanish politeness was posited by Hickey (1991), who, in comparing Spanish to English, concluded that Peninsular Spanish has a positive politeness model. Subsequently, a number of linguists have further compared politeness in Spain to politeness in Britain. In analysing countless samples of expressive politeness (i.e. requests, apologies, terms of address, etc.), these authors have come to the conclusion that positive politeness predominates in Spain. However, such critical tendencies ignore the latest trends in politeness studies: one year after the publication of Hickey´s (1991) essay, Watts et al. (1992) vindicated the need to discern first-order politeness from second-order politeness, and put forward the relevance of metapragmatic discussions of politeness. Descriptivist assessments of Spanish politeness prevent linguists from attempting a metapragmatic methodology that help to determine where Spanish speakers stand in the politeness-impoliteness continuum. Nonetheless, current research on general politeness studies clearly envisages that this is a task that Spanish linguistics will need to fulfil in the long run. This paper offers a metapragmatic examination of linguistic politeness in Spain, based on the data obtained from 100 informants in Extremadura, aged 14 to 20. The information drawn from the survey indicates that, whilst the informants are fully aware of the politeness norms they have been taught by their parents and teachers, their linguistic performance seldom abides by such parameters