Assessment of Oral Skills in Adolescents

There is broad consensus on the need to foster oral skills in middle school due to their inherent importance and because they serve as a tool for learning and acquiring other competences. In order to facilitate the assessment of communicative competence, we hereby propose a model which establishes five key dimensions for effective oral communication: interaction management; multimodality and prosody; textual coherence and cohesion; argumentative strategies; and lexicon and terminology. Based on this model, we developed indicators to measure the proposed dimensions, thus generating a self-report tool to assess oral communication in middle school. Following an initial study conducted with 168 students (mean age = 12.47 years, SD = 0.41), we selected 22 items with the highest discriminant power, while in a second study carried out with a sample of 960 students (mean age 14.11 years, SD = 0.97), we obtained evidence concerning factorial validity and the relationships between oral skills, emotional intelligence and metacognitive strategies related to metacomprehension. We concluded that the proposed model and its derived measure constitute an instrument with good psychometric properties for a reliable and valid assessment of students’ oral competence in middle school.

A Pragma-Dialectical Approach to Memory Politics: Spanish Contemporary Memory Politics, Populism Studies, and Argumentative Dialectics

This paper establishes a dialogue between populism studies, typologies of reconstruction of the past, and argumentative dialectics. The paper analyzes what types of argumentative strategies are employed in the context of the discussions regarding Spanish memory politics and how those strategies can be associated with typologies of re-elaboration of the past (Caramani and Manucci 2019). Building from argumentative dialectics (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004), the paper studies argumentation structures uttered after the endorsement of the 2007 Spanish Historical Memory Law and the proposal of the 2021 Draft Democratic Memory Law. Departing from the distinction between diverse strategies of re-elaboration of the past, namely, heroization and cancellation (Caramani and Manucci 2019), the paper questions if Spanish decision-makers’ rhetorical strategies and political decisions in the field of memory politics disclose the adoption of particular types of populist behavior. The paper claims that the argumentative tactics used, in the domain of memory politics, by Spanish left-wing leaders reveal the adoption of a heroization strategy. In contrast, the rhetoric of Spanish right-wing leaders favors a strategy of cancellation. The paper also claims that, in the Spanish case, mainly from 2018 onwards, the adoption by Spanish left-wing leaders of a heroization strategy had two consequences. First, it did not reduce the cultural opportunity structure for right-wing populism. Second, it fostered a cultural opportunity structure for the affirmation of left-wing populism. The paper selected argumentative dialectics as a methodological framework (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004). The paper discusses the scientific significance of analyzing memory politics through the lenses of populism studies.

Persuasion using Argumentative Strategies, Presuppositions and Directives in Al-Aswany's Political Op-ed Articles

The study is concerned with Al-Aswany’s political opinion articles that have been published since 2011 until 2014. The study is concerned with argumentative persuasion. It aims at examining how the use of argumentative strategies, presuppositions and directives persuade the reader into accepting the proposed arguments and analyzing the degree of persuasion present in the text. Moreover, the study aims at examining whether there is an attempt to manipulate the reader. The data used, in this study, are drawn from Al-Aswany’s opinion articles that have been published in Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. The researcher has selected two articles from each year: 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. All in all, eight selected articles are gathered for a qualitative analysis. The findings of the study show that his articles are highly persuasive as he, extensively, uses cognitive directives, establishes a common ground through the use of topos of reality and presuppositions, evokes empathy towards the protesters and the revolutions through humanitarianism and justice while raising a feeling of threat/danger from Mubarak’s old regime. Furthermore, even though the texts are highly persuasive, to claim that there is a manipulation from Al-Aswany’s part , using these linguistic tools and models, can not be strongly suggested.

The Gothic as a Practice: Gothic Studies, Genre and the Twentieth Century Gothic

<p>Gothic studies, the specialist academic field that explores the Gothic text, has developed substantially over the last twenty-five years. The field often frames the Gothic as a serious literature, involved in historic discourse, and having special psychological acuity; this thesis suggests that there are a number of problems with these argumentative strategies, and that the academy now makes claims for the Gothic that are discontinuous with how this popular genre is understood by most readers. While Gothic studies is the study of a genre, curiously, it has seldom engaged with theorisations of genre. Nevertheless, an understanding of what genre is, and how it alters reading practice, is crucial to understanding the Gothic text. This thesis attempts to reconcile and develop a number of disparate approaches to genre through Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus. It argues that genre is not a set of textual conventions but a group of procedures that facilitate and modify both writing and reading practices. Consequently, genres like the Gothic should be seen as discrete historicised phenomena, which retain a cohesive practical sense of how they ought to be performed before they hold discursive properties. Rather than arguing for the literary value of the Gothic, this thesis understands the genre as a popular practice. The consequences of this theorisation of the Gothic are explored in case studies of particular moments in three separate Gothic fields. Firstly, the American Gothic of the mid-nineteen-eighties, particularly Stephen King's It, Joyce Carol Oates' Mysteries of Winterthurn, and Toni Morrison's Beloved, facilitates a discussion of the relationship between Gothic and literary practices. The Gothic text has its origins in 'lowbrow' popular culture, even as it sometimes aspires to 'highbrow' literary performances. Secondly, the English Gothic of the nineteen-sixties is used to stage a discussion of both the way that readers become involved and immersed in the Gothic text, creating a distinct subjunctive 'world', and of the way that Gothics define themselves in relation to each other. The discussion refers to Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out, which heavily influenced the field, as demonstrated in works by Susan Howatch, Kingsley Amis, Robert Aickman and Mervyn Peake. Wheatley's depiction of the black mass became a key Gothic procedure, and can be read as this particular field's metaphor of its own practice. Thirdly, New Zealand's underdeveloped Gothic field provides a venue to explore the Gothic's relationship with nation and national literature, and how the practice is involved in landscape. Frank Sargeson's stories and his novella The Hangover, together with Janet Frame's A State of Siege are texts authored by canonical New Zealand writers that participate in a local Gothic, although their participation in popular genre has been little recognised. This thesis argues that the Gothic is a commonsense cultural practice, facilitated through the canniness of habitus.</p>

The Gothic as a Practice: Gothic Studies, Genre and the Twentieth Century Gothic

<p>Gothic studies, the specialist academic field that explores the Gothic text, has developed substantially over the last twenty-five years. The field often frames the Gothic as a serious literature, involved in historic discourse, and having special psychological acuity; this thesis suggests that there are a number of problems with these argumentative strategies, and that the academy now makes claims for the Gothic that are discontinuous with how this popular genre is understood by most readers. While Gothic studies is the study of a genre, curiously, it has seldom engaged with theorisations of genre. Nevertheless, an understanding of what genre is, and how it alters reading practice, is crucial to understanding the Gothic text. This thesis attempts to reconcile and develop a number of disparate approaches to genre through Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus. It argues that genre is not a set of textual conventions but a group of procedures that facilitate and modify both writing and reading practices. Consequently, genres like the Gothic should be seen as discrete historicised phenomena, which retain a cohesive practical sense of how they ought to be performed before they hold discursive properties. Rather than arguing for the literary value of the Gothic, this thesis understands the genre as a popular practice. The consequences of this theorisation of the Gothic are explored in case studies of particular moments in three separate Gothic fields. Firstly, the American Gothic of the mid-nineteen-eighties, particularly Stephen King's It, Joyce Carol Oates' Mysteries of Winterthurn, and Toni Morrison's Beloved, facilitates a discussion of the relationship between Gothic and literary practices. The Gothic text has its origins in 'lowbrow' popular culture, even as it sometimes aspires to 'highbrow' literary performances. Secondly, the English Gothic of the nineteen-sixties is used to stage a discussion of both the way that readers become involved and immersed in the Gothic text, creating a distinct subjunctive 'world', and of the way that Gothics define themselves in relation to each other. The discussion refers to Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out, which heavily influenced the field, as demonstrated in works by Susan Howatch, Kingsley Amis, Robert Aickman and Mervyn Peake. Wheatley's depiction of the black mass became a key Gothic procedure, and can be read as this particular field's metaphor of its own practice. Thirdly, New Zealand's underdeveloped Gothic field provides a venue to explore the Gothic's relationship with nation and national literature, and how the practice is involved in landscape. Frank Sargeson's stories and his novella The Hangover, together with Janet Frame's A State of Siege are texts authored by canonical New Zealand writers that participate in a local Gothic, although their participation in popular genre has been little recognised. This thesis argues that the Gothic is a commonsense cultural practice, facilitated through the canniness of habitus.</p>

Persuasion using Argumentative Strategies, Presuppositions and Directives in Al-Aswany's Political Op-ed Articles

The study is concerned with Al-Aswany’s political opinion articles that have been published since 2011 until 2014. The study is concerned with argumentative persuasion. It aims at examining how the use of argumentative strategies, presuppositions and directives persuade the reader into accepting the proposed arguments and analyzing the degree of persuasion present in the text. Moreover, the study aims at examining whether there is an attempt to manipulate the reader. The data used, in this study, are drawn from Al-Aswany’s opinion articles that have been published in Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. The researcher has selected two articles from each year: 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. All in all, eight selected articles are gathered for a qualitative analysis. The findings of the study show that his articles are highly persuasive as he, extensively, uses cognitive directives, establishes a common ground through the use of topos of reality and presuppositions, evokes empathy towards the protesters and the revolutions through humanitarianism and justice while raising a feeling of threat/danger from Mubarak’s old regime. Furthermore, even though the texts are highly persuasive, to claim that there is a manipulation from Al-Aswany’s part , using these linguistic tools and models, can not be strongly suggested. However, further studies using different linguistic instruments might yield more accurate results.

From scientific arguments to scepticism: Humans’ place in the Greenhouse

This article investigates the different roles attributed to humanity in the climate change debate, through the depiction of the greenhouse effect. Our hypothesis is that the stance associated with different genres will not only demonstrate different conceptualisations of the greenhouse effect but also convey different views on humans’ capacity (or lack of capacity) to mitigate climate change. The corpus under study is composed of texts pertaining to three genres which display particular viewpoints: scientific papers present a documented view on the phenomenon, online forum discussions present exchanges between users who endorse or question particular characteristics of the Greenhouse, and sceptical newspaper articles explicitly deny the existence of an anthropogenic phenomenon. Through a corpus-based, cognitive and pragmatic analysis of the metaphorical expression greenhouse effect, the research shows that humans’ place(s) in the Greenhouse is a significant part of environmental argumentative strategies.

The Epistemic Parity of Religious-Apologetic and Religion-Debunking Responses to the Cognitive Science of Religion

Recent work in the cognitive science of religion has challenged some of the explanatory assumptions of previous research in the field. Nonetheless, some of the practitioners of the new cognitive science of religion theorize in the same skeptical spirit as their predecessors and either imply or explicitly claim that their projects undermine the warrant of religious beliefs. In this article, I argue that these theories do no additional argumentative work when compared to previous attempts to debunk religious belief and that these recent debunking efforts are very much motivated by methodological commitments that are shared with canonical research. I contend that these argumentative strategies put debunkers very much on an epistemic par with religious apologists: both advocate responses to the cognitive science of religion that are primarily motivated by methodological commitments.

El alcance argumentativo del sistema de citas y referencias en las habilidades de escritura académica de universitarios

El artículo revisa la función de las citas en la escritura académica, y presenta las estrategias utilizadas en el Centro de Escritura de la Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo para la enseñanza de las técnicas de citación y referencia desde una propuesta integral de redacción que incluye la planificación, la textualización y la revisión, y a su vez, contextualiza a las citas y paráfrasis como estrategias argumentativas consistentes en la incorporación de diversas voces en el discurso, para el desarrollo de comparaciones, presentación de puntos de vista y de datos previos, que otorgan dialogicidad al texto. Con estas estrategias, se muestra cómo el problema de la citación debe abordarse más allá de una sanción del plagio, para convertirla en una posibilidad de redacción académica útil y correspondiente con los usos de cada disciplina científica. This article reviews the role of citations in academic writing, and presents the strategies used in the Writing Center of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo for teaching citation and reference techniques from a comprehensive proposal of writing. It includes planning, textualization and revision, and in turn, it contextualizes citations and paraphrases as argumentative strategies. The incorporation of diverse voices in the discourse for the development of comparisons and the presentation of points of view and previous data grant dialogicity to the text. These strategies show how the problem of citation should be addressed beyond the condemnation of plagiarism. These strategies also show how citation can become a possibility to enhance academic writing in keeping with the specificities of each scientific discipline.

For or against genetically modified foods: Different discursive strategies in Chinese social media

This study investigates the discourse of a long-lasting social debate over the safety of genetically modified food in China. Based on data from the social media platform WeChat, it adopts the perspective of critical discourse analysis to analyze what strategies are used in discourses of Chinese genetically modified foods to construct identities of the two opposing sides in genetically modified debates. The two sides use different rhetorical devices, argumentative strategies, and intertextual historical elements. Specifically, opponents of genetically modified food are inclined to use metaphors, moralization, intertextual proverbs, and revolutionary inflection to legitimize their position, while supporters often use irony, authorization, and historical allusions to legitimate as well as enhance their hegemony. I suggest that exploring how each side strategically constructs a discourse may facilitate better understanding and mitigate conflict between the two polarized viewpoints represented in social media.