Unraveling Contradictions: Which Glosses Facilitate Reading Comprehension Among ELLs, and Why?

This critical literature review provides study details for 36 studies examining the effect of glossing for language acquisition among English language learners (ELLs). Useful tables include specificity of participants, gloss types, target vocabulary items and text information about all studies. An analysis of these studies reveals that glossing is an effective means to enhance reading comprehension among ELLs. However, gloss language—whether L1 or English, may depend on learner factors. Other findings include the importance of proximity of gloss to text and the need for glosses that do not require readers to leave the text to access meaning. Considerations such as text genre, text length, targeted items for glossing, number of items to gloss, and gloss presentation are also examined and discussed, including which gloss types may result in trade-offs when glossing is used as a means to promote incidental vocabulary acquisition through independent reading. Several recommendations for further research are offered.

Generic Fluency in Professional Subtitling:

This article evaluates the translation of neologies in professional subtitling of audiovisual science fiction from the point of view of genre-specific features. Neologies are seen to be the most important linguistic element of science fiction as they produce the science fiction genre-specific cognitive estrangement and hence cognitively estrange the viewer from reality. Evaluating the translation of neologies is thus used as a tool to evaluate the transfer of the source text genre to the target text and to hypothesise whether the target text meets the expectations of the viewers. When the neologies are retained as genre-specific features of science fiction, the target text genre is seen to be generically fluent and the target text meets the viewer’s expectations. Even though the translation solutions which render the genre unfluent (misplace the science fiction cognitive estrangement produced by the source text) are in minority in the study material, the neologies can be seen to normalise towards common language in the translation process. This means that as neologies are considered as one of the producers of the science fiction genre-specific cognitive estrangement, the source text genre becomes less accessible for the target text viewer. Lay summary Science fiction is one of the most popular contemporary film and tv-series genres. The audience has expectations on the content of a science fiction film or tv-series based on their previous experiences with the genre, in other words, the genre-specific features. This article evaluates the translation of neologies in professional subtitling of audiovisual science fiction from the point of view of these genre-specific features. Neologies are seen to be the voice of science fiction as they cognitively estrange the viewer from reality. Evaluating the translation of neologies is used as a tool to evaluate the transfer of the source text (the original tv-series) genre to the target text (the subtitled tv-series) and to hypothesise whether the translation meets the expectations of the viewers. When the dialogue’s neologies are retained in the subtitles, the target text is seen to meet the viewer’s expectations. The study revealed that the neologies can be seen to normalise towards common language in the translation process. This means that as neologies are considered as one of the producers of the science fiction genre-specific cognitive estrangement, the source text genre becomes less accessible for the target text viewer.

Metadiscursive Markers and Text Genre: A Metareview

Given the interest in the study of metadiscourse as the communication of ideas and the way people use language in different communicative situations, this paper attempted to find the degree of confluence between metadiscourse markers from different studies and to show how patterns of metadiscourse analysis based on various written genres can be applied to a wider range. The mean values for the frequency of marker use and their respective deviations were determined by comparing a significant number of studies on metadiscourse elements. To ensure comparability, those following Hyland’s model were chosen. The units of analysis were grouped into two broad categories based on discursive characteristics: Academic genres (research articles, theses, and textbooks) and non-academic genres, which included documents ranging from newspaper editorials or opinion columns to Internet texts and other forms of digital communication. The results of our study highlight that the disparity in interactive markers between academic and non-academic texts is relatively small. This difference has been identified by previous studies, and it is confirmed herein that the difference may be related to the use of academic language, the topic, or the object of study. In contrast, the mean values of the interactive markers in non-academic texts are considerably higher than those in academic texts. At the same time, the texts seem to be organised along two axes (interactional and interactive) in distinct areas. Despite our initial assumptions that the data would be subject to individual variations, that differences would be found between different sections of the same genre within the same academic discipline, and that the results would vary if certain texts were added or excluded, we observed certain trends in the behaviour of the documents, although it prevailed that, within each category, the texts should be studied individually.

Areal variation in Middle High German

Using the Corpus der altdeutschen Originalurkunden ‘Corpus of Old German Original Charters’ (Wilhelm et al. 1932–2004), we will show that charters offer valuable information on dialectological differences during the Middle High German period. This text genre is unsurpassed in terms of its geographical resolution even though it faces certain challenges due to its partially formulaic style. With two well-known phenomena, i.e. inflected forms of the infinitive (‘gerunds’) and so-called ‘contracted’ verbs like haben/hân ‘have’, we will show how these materials can be analysed and put into perspective with other sources like the new Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik by Klein, Solms & Wegera (2018).

From the original article to the summary for patients: Reformulation procedures in intralingual translation

The wider access to information and the tendency toward patient education have increased the demand for medical texts aimed at a wide, non-specialized, heterogeneous audience. In this context, it is essential to know what procedures are required to make specialized knowledge accessible to non-experts. This paper presents a corpus-based exploratory study that describes the procedures employed to reformulate, intralingually, medical knowledge from a highly specialized genre, the original article (OA), into a genre derived directly from it but addressed to laymen, namely, the summary for patients (SP). The linguistic and textual changes that take place when translating an OA into an SP are taken as the basis for explaining the reformulation procedures used. The results of the study contribute to the characterization of the SP from a text genre perspective, and provide keys to writing and reformulating for both medical translators and experts in the field, who are often called upon to carry out these intralingual translations.

Deteção de linguagem tendenciosa em decisões judiciais

The linguistic expression of subjectivity is a complex phenomenon that has been the object of reflection by several sub-areas of Linguistics and, more recently, of Computational Linguistics. Linguistic subjectivity, in terms of the linguistic expression of the speaker's opinions and attitudes, affects all levels of discourse organization and is present, to different degrees, in diverse textual genres. Subjectivity and bias are connected, in the sense that the presence of bias in discourse has been related, both in Linguistics and Computational Linguistics, to the occurrence of signs of subjectivity. Court decisions are an argumentative text genre that may convey traces of subjectivity but should not be biased. As a discourse that represents the State’s position on social matters, it should reflect the principle of Equality. Nonetheless, a preliminary analysis of cases of gender violence reveals that this is not always the case. The research proposed in this paper aims to study the linguistic formulations that convey subjectivity and bias in court decisions on gender violence against women. The goal is to develop a linguistic model to detect these instances of bias, with a future possibility of application in a tool for automatic detection of gender bias in discourse, fueled by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. A corpus of court decisions on gender violence has been extracted from the public access database of Instituto de Gestão Financeira e Equipamentos da Justiça (IGFEJ), and has been subject to analysis. A set of examples has been compiled in the analytical section of this study, demonstrating the possibility of connecting certain linguistic features, such as mitigation and intensification mechanisms, evidential expressions and counter-argumentative movements, to the presence of subjectivity and bias in discourse.

Metadiscourse in Business English: Ideas for the EBC Class

Metadiscourse has been defined as the discourse used by writers to help their readers connect, interpret and evaluate their attitudes towards the referential material presented (Vande Kopple, 2002). In his study on CEO’s letters, Hyland (1998b) examined metadiscourse as the manifestation of a writer’s linguistic and rhetorical presence in the text and looked at the persuasive nature of business communication. An awareness of the rhetorical power of metadiscourse in this text genre is vital for professional development, particularly in the teaching of business English. This study was designed to examine the use of interactive and interactional metadiscourse in Business English writing through an analysis of the Enron Email Dataset and the Business Letter Corpus. The data analysis was conducted following Hyland (2005, 2019), in order to understand how content and discourse are set up to orient and persuade the reader. Although this study focuses specifically on interactional metadiscourse, the results are expected to be relevant for the ESP classroom, particularly in English for Business Communication (EBC) classes (Bhatia & Bremner, 2012). Acquiring conscious awareness of the rules and conventions to master formal writing can be of great help to business students in order for them to become successful writers in both academic and professional environments.

Pakubuwana IV Sebagai Maecenas: Tinjauan Kritis Beberapa Teks Pengětan Sejarah Wayang

Pakubuwana IV (reigned 1788-1820) despite of his popularity in political history and literature, also considered a founder of the iconography and performance principles of Surakartanese style wayang kulit (shadow puppet) as written in the pengětan (i.e. “memorial”) texts, particularly in Surakarta version. The pengětan text genre as a literary work was rarely studied and only taken for granted by the puppeteers in Java because of its legitimative and semi-mythological nature. It leads to an uncertainty about the facts contained inside and causing a dispute in the society. This article would objectively discover about “how was the real influence of Pakubuwana IV in the Surakartanese style wayang kulit’s history and development?” and “did pengětan text were able to provide objective facts in minor field of historiography, including art history?” This article aims to discover the real influence of Pakubuwana IV in Surakarta-style wayang kulit history and development through textual approach using pengětan texts comparison as the its method, along with contextual approach with the contemporary wayang artefacts. The result of this research shows that Pakubuwana IV gave a crucial contribution in Surakarta-style wayang kulit. On the other hand, critical readings of pengětan manuscripts are needed to analyze the historical and political nature on its narrative so it could give a much comprehensive facts dealing with art and culture historiography.