Learning the Disciplines Through Linguistic Feedback: Contribution to the Development of a Discipline-Specific, Formative Evaluation of Students’ Assignments

Students write to learn. Besides, enculturation to the disciplinary discourse happens during writing. Feedback on the assignments from the students scaffolds students’ writing development and learning paths. However, knowledge about the relationship between language, including argumentation in the discipline, on one hand, and the content of the discipline, on the other, is needed. This article is based on a socio-cultural approach to writing in the disciplines, and theory on feedback, and focuses on the relationship between the meso-level of texts (sentences, clauses, word choice) and the content of the discipline. We discuss how insight into the meso-level of texts may be used to improve and to develop feedback and formative evaluation. Cases from an intervention project in a Danish upper secondary school are included, and indicate that teachers and students assign a lower priority to feedback on the meso-level. This article claims that providing feedback on the meso-level strengthens writing development and students’ learning processes. To illustrate how this may be accomplished two texts are analyzed: one from a history class and one from a biology class.

The Grammaticalization of Catalan anar (‘to go’) + Infinitive for the Expression of Perfective Past: A Diachronic, Corpus-Based Perspective

This study constitutes an exploratory analysis of the grammaticalization cline of anar (‘to go’) + infinitive in Catalan to express perfective past (e.g., va arribar ‘s/he arrived’). Our research interest primarily lies in diachronically tracing the evolution of this grammatical change, which appears to be unprecedented in other Romance languages (e.g., Spanish, French), in which the construction has instead led to the expression of a near and/or intentional future. A gap in research is found in the fact that there have been few corpus-based, pragmatic approaches to the matter. We base our theoretical framework on the definition of grammaticalization by Hopper and Traugott (2003) and a number of related publications (Alturo 2017, Pérez-Saldanya & Hualde 2003). Critical items (N=346) were retrieved from the diachronic corpus CICA (11th-18th c.) and subsequently analyzed in the light of pragmatic factors, establishing a three-stage cline based on Segura (2012). Results show how informative bridging contexts are in shaping grammaticalization processes, as they highlight the challenges of tracing a grammaticalization process based on corpora of literary texts. A discussion follows on the identification of potential next steps that might be useful in complementing our own research.

The Importance of Writing Scoring Rubrics for Saudi EFL Teachers

This mixed-method study explored the perspectives of Saudi EFL teachers concerning the use of Writing Scoring Rubrics (WSRs) to correct students' written work and instruct EFL writing classes. The study sample included 106 Saudi EFL teachers, who answered the twenty-one close-ended questions and the first open-ended question, with twenty-five answering the second open-ended question. The findings reveal that the teachers frequently employed in-class correction and feedback to correct their students' written work, with nearly one-third used assessment techniques that included WSRs, self-assessment, peer editing, journals, and portfolios. The results of the second question indicate that Saudi EFL teachers generally engage students in creating customized WSRs. The findings also revealed that Saudi EFL teachers consider WSRs beneficial to both students and teachers and might be viewed by some experienced EFL teachers as a practical correction or assessment method that improves students' writing. Therefore, this study contributes to a growing body of literature highlighting the importance of WSRs in teaching and assessing writing skills.

The Study on Translation of Culture-loaded Words in Aerial ChinaⅠ- Jiangxi from the Perspective of Semantic and Communicative Translation

Aerial ChinaⅠ- Jiangxi has been widely accepted by foreign audiences. In this documentary, there are many culture-loaded words with Jiangxi cultural characteristics. We all know that the translation of Chinese culturally-loaded words has long been a tricky problem. Take the translation of culture loaded words in Aerial ChinaⅠ- Jiangxi as an example, this paper discusses how Newmark's communicative translation and semantic translation theory are applied to the translation of Chinese culture loaded words. It is considered that semantic translation and communicative translation are not completely opposite but complement each other. Good translation works are usually the perfect combination of the two. In order to help translators better translate culture loaded words and achieve the real purpose of cross-cultural communication.

An Experimental Verification of Some Cross-linguistic Sound Symbolisms

A recent investigation of 6452 languages (Blasi et al., 2016) uncovered a number of cross-linguistic correspondences between speech sounds and meaning. For example, the phone [z] was associated with the meaning ‘star.’ In the present study, 16 of these sound symbolisms were tested by presenting English and Spanish speakers with pairs of nonce words along with a definition of the words. Their task was to choose the word that sounded best with the meaning given. One member of the pair of words contained phones found to be associated with the meaning of the word while the other did not. For instance, participants were asked to choose between [zolz] and [folf] as the word they felt was most likely to mean ‘star. ‘ Seven of the sound and meaning correspondences observed in the study by Blasi et al. (2016) were corroborated by both Spanish and English speakers. Three additional sound correspondences were only significant in one of the experimental languages.

A Study of Customer Service Agent’s Pragmatic Identity Construction in Complaint Responses

Positioned within rapport management theory proposed by Spencer-Oatey, this article investigates the customer service agent’s pragmatic identity construction in complaint response calls. Drawing on data of 42 complaint handling recordings from the customer care center of a Chinese airline company, this study tries to address these three research questions: 1) What types of pragmatic identities do the customer service agents construct in complaint response calls? 2) How are these pragmatic identities constructed through rapport management strategies? 3) What interpersonal functions do these pragmatic identities perform? By adopting a qualitative research method, this study has found that the agents mainly construct three default identities and one deviational identity in complaint response calls by employing nine rapport management strategies from four rapport management domains. These different pragmatic identities mainly perform three kinds of interpersonal functions: support face needs, support sociality rights and obligations, and support interactional goals. The findings further validates the feasibility of rapport management theory in the study of identity construction, and provides new ideas for future study on pragmatic identity construction in institutional communications.

The Pragmatics of Blackmail in English and Iraqi-Arabic

Verbal offences are language crimes that are committed by mere utterances of certain words or expressions whether they are accompanied by physical acts or not. One of those crimes is blackmail. This crime has been studied and compared legally but its linguistic aspect has not been given much attention. This study tries to emphasize this crime pragmatically and contrastively in English and Arabic. No study has shed light on such aspects concerning the study under investigation. The researcher has not found any previous related study to get a benefit from about this topic. There is an attempt to achieve the following aim which is shedding light on the similarities and differences in strategies of blackmail between English and Arabic in terms of speech act, implicature and impoliteness theories. The present study hypothesizes the following: English and Arabic are different from each other in expressing blackmail in terms of speech act theory, implicature and impoliteness. To support or refute the hypothesis of the study, data consisting of 20 complaints in English and Arabic were collected from Courts of Appeal in Iraq, Britain and the United States. They are analyzed in terms of an eclectic model. The results arrived at are: English and Arabic are different in blackmail in terms of the locutionary acts and illocutionary acts. Concerning impoliteness, the same strategies are applied to the verbal offence in both languages. As far as implicature is concerned, the two languages are different in blackmail.

The Effect of Gender on the Bilingual and Bicultural Identity of the Iraqi EFL Learners' Recognition and Production of Request

This study examines the effect of gender on students' bilingual and bicultural identity in their recognition and production of request is studied. This means that it investigates to what extent the learners’ mother tongue and culture influence their recognition and production of request in the EFL and the effect of gender on such an identity. The study aims at exploring and identifying the linguistic patterns of request in English used by Iraqi EFL learners, those patterns of request transferred from Iraqi EFL learners’ mother tongue, and the Iraqi EFL learners’ cultural patterns and cultural realization of request transferred from Arabic culture into the EFL. Some hypotheses of the study state that there is a bilingual and cultural identity in using request by Iraqi EFL learners, females are better than males in request perception and production and they are worse in Arabic monolingualism and monoculturalism, students are better in English monolingualism and monoculturalism than in the other request features, students’ English monolingual and monocultural identity is more apparent in request perception than in production. To validate or refute its hypotheses, a test comprising recognition and production has been constructed and applied to fifty Iraqi EFL learners at fourth year, Department of English, College of Education for Humanities, University of Thi-Qar at the academic year (2020-2021). After data analysis, some conclusions are arrived at. The study concludes that Iraqi EFL learners are pragmatically incompetent and they have a bilingual and bicultural identity because of their mother tongue and culture interference.

A Pragma-Stylistic Study of Implicature in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Twelfth Night

Implicature is commonly defined as the dissimilarity between what is said and what is meant. The variance lies between the conspicuous meaning of written and spoken words and the meaning that lies beneath what is said. This study aims at analyzing and discussing Shakespeare's Hamlet and Twelfth Night in terms of generalized and particularized conversational and conventional implicature. The model used in the analysis is coined from a variety of pragmatic theories, implicature, Grice's maxims, irony, indirect speech acts, context, and hedges. It is hypothesized that the number of implicature cases in Twelfth Night is bigger than that in Hamlet, generation of implicatures by the characters in the two plays is highly determined by social factors, Hamlet and Cesario use implicature more than other characters, the most used implicature is the particularized one, the purpose of using implicatures differs in the plays, implicature is generated from flouting Grice's maxims and most implicatures are made by violating the relation maxim. The study concludes that the implications in Hamlet are more than those in Twelfth Night, that Shakespeare uses two implicatures generalized and particularized, and that Implicature in Hamlet and Twelfth Night is generated mostly by violating the maxims of quality. As for the least flouted maxim in the two plays is the maxim of quantity.

Earning the Keys to the Kingdom: Students’ Language Awareness, Identity and Representations of English-Speaking Others

The present linguistic reality involves finding ways of communication in the globalized environment, where people move all around the world in order to find work, learn, or share experiences. One issue arising from English language teaching is that it has mainly overlooked teaching culture across the curriculum, thus allowing the increase of negative attitudes and stereotypes. This paper is set out to determine to what extent English language teaching (ELT) materials demonstrate the traits of the English-speaking Other, it what ways children are accessing the target ‘Kingdom’, and which are the best teaching strategies to provide them with the keys to the target world. Anchoring our perspective in CLIL and the 4 Cs, this study looks at ways of developing cutting-edge syllabi to develop intercultural awareness and preventing stereotypes. Findings from the application of the syllabi and resulting from an analysis of the cultural content of two internationally distributed ELT textbooks are reported. The present research put in evidence that cultural aspects are practically absent from the analyzed textbooks, thus lacking a key dimension in English Language Teaching and Education. Therefore, some recommendations for future textbook writers and EFL classroom practice are suggested.