Tourism Promotion and Disability

This study illustrates the preliminary results of a corpus-based analysis aimed at discovering the main linguistic features characterising the promotion of tourism for special-needs travellers. Even if accessible tourism represents an important sector in the market, not only for its social and moral importance but also for its strong economic potential, detailed research on the linguistic properties of tourism for disabled people is still rather limited and mainly tends to focus on the problems of physical access rather than considering the ways to improve its promotional strategies. Through a comparative corpus-based analysis, this paper will investigate the relevant linguistic features of a corpus of promotional materials advertising holidays and tourist services for the disabled, and relate them to the communicative strategies of two other corpora dedicated to the standard and translational language of tourism. The aim of this research is to show how mainstream tourism discourse still considers disability as a taboo topic, mostly ignoring or vaguely mentioning it in the general promotion of tourist destinations. The study will also attempt to suggest new linguistic and social attitudes aimed at stylistically improving and further including the accessible tourism sector within the overall tourism promotion.

Techniques of Linguistic Cognitive Manipulation in the Information and Psychological Confrontation Environment

The article is devoted to the scientific understanding of the linguistic and cultural factors of shaping external ideology of governance in Ukraine during the preparation and conduct of a series of low-intensity conflicts (“color revolutions”) in 2004-2014. Using linguistic methods of semantic, structural, contextual, discourse and communicative analysis, the author studies verbal forms of linguistic cognitive manipulation with the public opinion of the Ukrainian society focusing on the techniques of polyphonic attack, conceptual modeling and reframing. Communicative strategies and methods of indoctrination of the population are viewed in the environment of the information and psychological war launched by the US-led collective West in the digital space of mass media and the worldwide web with the aim of alienating Ukraine from the geopolitical space of Russia and turning it into an antipode state of the Russian Federation. The author focuses on verbal forms and means of indoctrination identified in communicative strategies of disinformation, data blocking, falsifying truth, fake messages, tabooing of signs, distortion of the true semantic meaning and substitution of concepts that are used by subjects of information and psychological influence in the synergetic coupling of media resources of the media of Ukraine and the collective West. The author concludes that some processes are underway in the interdiscursive environment of the “post-Maidan” Ukraine that structure a new dominant information need of the society around the image of Russia as an enemy and aggressor. Russian linguistic and cultural pattern holders demonstrate speech behavior in Ukraine that has been formed under the external ideology of governance and illustrates the destructive changes in the values of Russian self-identity, which is a consequence of linguistic cognitive manipulation of the public opinion under the imposed information model of total Russophobia.

EFFECTS OF COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES AND WRITING SKILLS ON STUDENTS’ LEARNING AT SECONDARYLEVEL IN PAKISTAN

The study examines the effects of communicative strategies and writing skills on students learning atsecondary level in Pakistan. The study is experimental in nature and the researcher applieda pre-test post-test equivalent group experimental design to draw the conclusion.For the facilitation of study, the researcher presumed the male students of grade 10 studying at Government Higher Secondary School Renala Khurd.Government Higher Secondary School Renala Khurd was selected as population in Okara district as the spot for intervention.The selection of the students was made through convienience and informed consent which tantamounted to simple random sampling technique. Experimental group and control group comprised of thirty students each as such sample size for this experimental study was stretched over 60 students. The experimental group was exposed to communicate through communicative language teaching-based activities included in the (NECL, 2006) for grade 10 while the control group was imparted intervention through traditional methods for two months.

‘And we are Stuck in One Place, Minister.’ A Study of Evasiveness in Replies to Face-Threatening Questions in Slovak Political Interviews on Scandals (A Combined Approach)

The phenomenon of political evasiveness in the genre of a political interview has been the focus of several discourse studies employing conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis and the social psychology approach. Most of the above-mentioned studies focus on a detailed qualitative analysis of political discourse identifying a wide range of communication strategies that permit politicians to ambiguate their agency and at the same time boost their positive face. Since these strategies may change over time and also be subject to a culture specific environment, the aim of this paper is to discover a) which evasive communicative strategies were employed by Slovak politicians in 2012–2016, b) which lexical substitutions were most frequently used by them to avoid negative connotations of face-threatening questions, and finally, c) which cognitive frames formed a frequent conceptual background of their evasive political argumentation. The paper will draw on a combination of quantitative and qualitative approach to the analysis of non-replies devised by Bull and Mayer (1993) and critical discourse analysis in the sample of five Slovak radio interviews aired on the Rádio Express. The selection of interviews was not random- in each interview the politician was asked highly conflictual questions about bribery, embezzlement or disputes in the coalition. Based on qualitative research of Russian-Slovak political discourse (2009) by Dulebová it is hypothesized that a) the evasive strategy of ‘attack’ on the opposition and ‘attack on the interviewer’ would occur in our sample with the highest prominence in the speech of the former Prime Minister Fico, and b) the politicians accused of direct involvement in scandals would be the most evasive ones.

Error Analysis of College Students’ Spoken English

Based on the theory of Error Analysis, this thesis records the production of spoken English of first year college students of Northwestern Polytechnical University as samples. After listening to the recorder repeatedly and carefully, the author classifies and describes the errors found in the corpus, investigates the causes of these errors and provides solutions to these problems. It is found that there are errors of performance, phonological errors, lexical errors, grammatical errors and pragmatic errors in this study. Reasons for these errors can be explained from the perspectives of interlingual transfer, intralingual interference, cognitive and affective factors, and communicative strategies. Accordingly, some countermeasures could be taken to effectively decrease errors.

Dental Students in Egypt: To What Extent Do They Perceive and Comply with Infection Control Measures?

This study was carried out in the dental school of Ahram Canadian University in Egypt to investigate the knowledge and compliance of senior students and interns toward infection control practices. A self‑administered questionnaire was employed with questions pertinent to the participants’ knowledge of risks in the dental settings, the practice of hand hygiene, the use of protective equipment, and the management of sharp injuries, among others. Although the knowledge and practice of the 240 surveyed participants were good; they were not up to the coveted standards. Despite being an integral part of their curriculum, an alarming percentage (19.6%) of the participants denied receiving knowledge about infection control instructions. Meanwhile, only 72.5% were aware of being at risk in the dental settings, and 78.3% confirmed their practice of hand hygiene. On the other hand, 84.6% of the surveyed participants confirmed the availability of protective equipment and 94.2% of them expressed their willingness to apply infection control measures in the future. The defects in the knowledge and practice mandate corrective actions to promote and upgrade the students’ compliance. Meanwhile, other gaps can be rectified via developing state-of-the-art communicative strategies. Efforts are warranted to enhance the attitude and motivate the students to conform to the protective safety measures. With all the infection control procedures already established in dental schools, the challenge lies in improving the students’ compliance with these recommendations.

A Study of Communicative Strategies of Thai and Filipino Teachers of English

There are many non-native English language teachers communicating with each other on a daily basis in English. The communicative strategies of non-native English language teachers can be easily identified. This study investigated the communicative strategies used by Thai and Filipino teachers. This research focused on the teacher’s interaction, the framework of communicative strategies of ASEAN English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) speaker, and the lack of studies in communicative strategies. In addition, the study aimed to investigate the significant relationship and communicative strategies between intercultural teaching personnel. The population sample consisted of Thai and Filipinos teachers who provide classroom instruction in English. The research tools used to collect data included a questionnaire, observations during two pair speaking tasks, and a Jigsaw task. A stimulated recall interview was performed after the tasks. All conversations and interactions were recorded and then transcribed. The results revealed that as listeners, “Listen to the message” was ranked the highest among the communicative strategies used by both the Thai and Filipino teachers. “Non-verbal language” was ranked the highest for the Thai teachers; while, “Persuasion” was most frequently used by the Filipino teachers. A Chi-square test showed that there was a statistically significant relationship between communicative strategies used by the Thai and Filipino teachers. Based on the findings of the study, communicative strategies identified in this study should be incorporated into English curriculums and English language teaching in Thailand. Educators, teachers, and non-native English learners should adopt these communicative strategies to promote mutual understandings in the ELF context.

HEDGING IN TED TALKS: A CORPUS-BASED PRAGMATIC STUDY

Hedging is a communicative strategy and a form of pragmatic competence which plays a central role in delivering the intended message of the speaker. Commonly observed in two-way conversations, hedges as hedging devices are also present in monologues. This study investigates the most common hedges used in popular monologues TED Talks as well as observes the various communicative strategies they denote. 130 transcripts of the talks, taped from 2002-2019 taken from the official website of TED (ted.com), are collected to build a corpus of 337,302 tokens. Through corpus-based analysis using concordance software AntConc 3.5.0, 48 most common hedges are inserted for frequency search. The search hits show that the most frequently-used hedges in the corpus are ‘just,’ ‘could,’ ‘you know,’ ‘actually,’ ‘I think,’ and ‘kind of’ with the numbers of occurrence 1107, 554, 541, 530, 390, and 309 respectively. From the analyses of the functions of the most frequent hedges, it can be concluded that each of the hedges serves distinctive pragmatic strategy which contributes in the communicative processes of the talks.

The multivoiced English-for-young-learners subject in Sweden: Spaces for plurilingualism?

Already in primary school in Sweden, English is one of several language subjects within a larger curriculum. Despite this, the curricular space for the English subject to leverage and contribute to plurilingual competence has hitherto received little attention. This study centres on the construction of the primary English subject in the 2011 (revised 2018) curriculum, also in relation to other language syllabi, using the concept of ‘voice as perspective on topic’ (Linell, 2009) to analyse ideologies that are salient, backgrounded, and absent in the English syllabus and those transcending language syllabi boundaries. Findings show that different voices are salient in the English subject in years 1–3 and 4–6, constructing an oral-based and fun subject contra an increasingly academic and communicatively-focused subject respectively. Monoglossic ideologies in English language teaching are challenged insofar as English is not positioned as a language belonging to specific nations or speakers. However, there exists no explicit space for plurilingual competence in assessment, where instead pupils’ monolingual performances are assessed. In addition, unlike other language syllabi, the English syllabus contains no explicit mention of multilingual awareness-raising of languages in the learners’ repertoire, thereby limiting explicit space for plurilingualism. Nevertheless, across the language syllabi, a functional view of language is salient, where communicative strategies, language form for functionally justified ends, and text genres form part of the core content of the education. This creates implicit spaces for teaching and learning in the English subject to leverage and contribute to developing underlying functional linguistic proficiency (see Cummins, 2000, 2007).