Contribution of Urban Vegetable Gardens to Health

The inclusion of urban agriculture in cities is presented as a potential tool to for the promotion of healthy and sustainable urban environments which can be especially beneficial for vulnerable groups. The aim of this study is to analyze the health effects experienced by people over 65 years engaged in a network of gardens already established in Barcelona. An exploratory descriptive design was conducted, by semi-structured interviews with six gardeners from Barcelona to discuss their perceptions regarding how their participation in the urban gardens influenced their health. Gardeners said they had perceived an increase in physical activity, quality (but not quantity) of the vegetables they consume and in social relationships, and benefits to their psychological well-being. The inclusion of vegetable gardens in cities seems to provide numerous benefits, such us promoting healthy environments and lifestyles and increasing urban sustainability, so it is proposed as a possible strategy to address multiple problems in a cross-cutting manner.La inclusión de espacios para la agricultura en las ciudades se presenta como una potencial herramienta de promoción de entornos urbanos saludables y sostenibles, pudiendo ser especialmente beneficiosa para colectivos vulnerables. El objetivo de este estudio es analizar los efectos percibidos sobre la salud por personas mayores de 65 años que participan en una red de huertos ya instaurada en Barcelona. Se llevó a cabo un diseño exploratorio-descriptivo, realizando entrevistas semiestructuradas a seis hortelanos de Barcelona para analizar sus percepciones acerca de la influencia de la participación en los huertos sobre su salud. Los hortelanos manifestaron haber percibido un incremento en su actividad física, en la calidad (aunque no en la cantidad) de las verduras que consumen y en sus relaciones sociales, y beneficios en su bienestar psicológico. Las diferentes aportaciones de los huertos urbanos observadas en este estudio y en investigaciones anteriores sugieren que destinar espacio para la agricultura en las ciudades podría contribuir a fomentar entornos y estilos de vida saludables y una mayor sostenibilidad urbana, por lo que se plantea como una posible estrategia para abordar múltiples problemas de forma transversal

On the universality of the politeness concept of ‘face’: Evaluation strategies for construing ‘good face’ across writing cultures: writers’ voice in academic book reviews

One important academic writing skill is the ability of writers to construe an appropriate representation of themselves and their work through their textual voice. One way in which writers achieve this is by intruding into their text in order to explicitly signal or conceal their personal responsibility for the ideas referenced in it. However, writers’ decisions in this respect have shown to be highly problematic in English for Academic Purposes (EAP), especially for non-native English speakers. Our paper hypothesizes that a part of this problem might be related to differing crosscultural notions of good face, partly reflected in the ways and the extent to which writers typically intrude into their texts by means of a specific type of evaluation device: writers’ visibility and invisibility strategies. We explore this hypothesis by comparing the actual practices followed by writers from two different but comparable writing cultures to express one specific type of claim (a critical comment on a book under review) in one specific genre (an academic book review) and one disciplinary field (literature). Our comparison is based on two corpora consisting of 20 texts in British & American English and 20 in Castilian Spanish. The results show that reviewers from these two comparable reviewing writing cultures differ greatly in their preferences for reaffirming or suppressing their personal identity when expressing critical comments on a book under review. In particular, the preferred choice by British and American scholars is to create a textual voice for themselves that presents itself as speaking on behalf of other readers, thus creating a perspectivizing face-saving effect. By contrast, Castilian Spanish literary scholars prefer to create an objectivizing face-saving effect by speaking on behalf of an impersonal entity. This conclusion has implications for Politeness Theory since it indicates that the notion of good face is culturally determined in this respect. We discuss our results in the light of information obtained through a pilot e-mail interview with relevant informants.This presentation is Ana I. Moreno’s short version of the full-length paper published as Moreno and Suárez (2011) (see full details below) with a greater emphasis on the concept of good face (drawn from O’Driscoll, 1996) for its usefulness and relevance in crosscultural studies of academic writing. The paper was presented under the title ‘Evaluation across reviewing writing cultures: writers’ intrusion into the expression of critical comments on academic books under review’ at the Int-Eval: International Workshop on the Evaluative Function of Language: Evaluation across Text Types and Cultures, October 6 – 8, 2011, UNED, Madrid, Spain

Direct research promotion in RA discussion sections through English and Spanish: Teaching implications for Spanish social scientists.

Over the last few decades, researchers have increasingly published their research in English-medium scientific journals, mainly because of their greater prospects for international recognition and career promotion. Of all possible academic genres, the research article continues to be the pre-eminent genre of the academy, and the empirical research article is the most relevant for Spanish scholars. Discussion and/or other Closing (DC) sections in this subgenre in English-medium journals are especially difficult for social scientists to write when English is not their first language. This intercultural rhetoric research explores the possible negative transfer of their research promotional behaviour in Spanish when they write DC sections for publication in English. Drawing on recent strengthened move analysis methodology and employing quantitative and qualitative methods, I compared the extent to which authors writing in English and in Spanish as L1 promote their own research in DC sections. To do so, I systematically annotated ten pairs of comparable DC sections from the Exemplary Empirical Research Articles in English and Spanish Corpus for their communicative functions which, for the first time, were validated by the article authors themselves. Additionally, I used an online survey to understand their promotional behaviour better. This innovative methodology confirmed that the writers in the study were more promotional in English than in Spanish. In particular, authors in English highlighted more positive aspects of their studies and applications of their results while in Spanish they were more neutral and focused largely on statements of contribution and relevance to the zeitgeist. It was also found that the inclusion of specific rhetorical steps was affected by different levels of culture (unstated general communication norms, reviewing and socialisation processes, as well as research assessment policies). These findings demonstrate how social scientists’ promotional approaches are complex and merit further attention. Implications for the teaching of academic writing in English for publication purposes are drawn

Appendix 3. Extract 2 from the ENEIDA Interview (Phase 2)

This appendix consists of the selected questions from the ENEIDA Interview (Phase 2) (see below) on which Moreno’s (2022) study was based. The study focussed on the “local” rhetoric of Limitations in the Discussion (and/or other closing) (DC) sections of empirical research articles (RAs), due to Spanish scholars’ perceived difficulty integrating Limitations in these sections

Revised coding scheme of communicative functions in empirical research article discussion (and/or other closing) sections

This table is an adaptation from Moreno’s (2021) minor revision of the coding scheme of communicative functions in empirical research article discussion (and/or other closing) sections (Table 2) in “Strengthening move analysis methodology towards bridging the function-form gap”, p. 52, by A. I. Moreno and J. M. Swales, 2018. English for Specific Purposes, 50, 40-63. (Copyright 2017 Elsevier Ltd.). (Copyright 2022 by Ana I. Moreno)

The communication problems of Spanish researchers to get research articles published in Applied Linguistics English-medium journals: proposal and analysis

This paper is a revised version of a three-hour seminar given in Spanish at the VIII Semana de la Ciencia en Madrid, Spain, 18 November 2008, under the title: ¿Es el discurso científico universal en su contenido y forma?. The purpose of this seminar was to introduce a non-specialised audience to a relatively new field of research within Applied Linguistics, known as Intercultural Rhetoric. This research field mainly seeks to describe and explain the communication problems encountered by writers for whom English is an additional language when they express their ideas in some genre (usually in English) in order to communicate with an international audience. It also aims to identify the main accommodations that are necessary for these writers to be successful. In the present seminar I focus on the academic genre known as the research article in English and on one neglected population of writers: Spanish researchers, in one particular academic discipline, Applied Linguistics (AL). In order to situate the types of communication problems Spanish researchers in AL experience when operating in this genre, I first describe the context in which these problems can be best detected, the review process of a manuscript submitted for publication in journals of this discipline. Then, based on a small corpus of reports from peer reviewers in AL, I give account of various types of communication problems which make it necessary for Spanish authors in AL to revise their manuscripts and I discuss the most difficult problems to repair. The framework of analysis that I propose first distinguishes between problems with language form versus problems with language content/discourse conventions. It also distinguishes between general communication problems, problems specific to scientific communication and intercultural communication problems. Finally, based on previous empirical Spanish-English contrastive studies of academic discourse which reveal relevant crosscultural rhetorical differences, I launch the hypothesis that that such differences in rhetoric might account for some of the communication problems observed in the peer review process of this small sample of manuscripts. This paper can be cited as follows: Moreno, A. I. (2012). The communication problems of Spanish researchers to get research articles published in Applied Linguistics English-medium journals: proposal and analysis. URL: https://buleria.unileon.es/handle/10612/1756 [06/06/2012

Appendix 4. Full examples of the rhetorical purposes of segments in Limitation sequences in English and Spanish

This appendix offers the complete segments illustrating the categories in Moreno’s (2022) study. These represent the rhetorical purposes identified in Limitation sequences within social science (SSC) Discussion (and/or other closing) (DC) sections of exemplary empirical research articles in English and Spanish from the Exemplary Empirical Research Articles in English and Spanish (EXEMPRAES) Corpus