Applied Linguistics

The aim of this paper is to present on-going research (BFF 2003-02540 with the acronym DUFIE Diccionario de unidades fraseológicas inglés/español) of contrastive phraseology in English and Spanish, exposing in the introduction the main tenets of idioms and collocations from a contrastive perspective and analysing the most salient collocational structures in the subsequent sections, with a focus on the commonest types of verb + noun combinations, and especially on delexicalised verbs, of little lexical import. The corpora used all throughout are the BNC (British National Corpus) and CREA (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual), both over a 100 million words, linguistically representative and of easy access. Results show that quantitative and qualitative comparison of collocations are much needed to highlight the similarities and even more the lexical and typological differences among the two languages for a more fruitful use by ESL (English as a Second Language) and ELE (Español co...

This paper explores the pedagogical implications of contrastive analyses of light verb constructions containing get and take in English and Spanish based on electronic corpora, the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA). The main tenets of collocations from a contrastive perspective-and the points of contact and departure between both languages-are discussed prior to examining the commonest types of verb+ noun combinations (i.e., take a bath, take advantage of), verb+ adjective (i.e. get ready, get worse, get angry), verb+ participle (i.e., get married, get dressed) as significant cases of so-called "light", "empty", "thin", "stretched" or "support" verbs. A quantitative and qualitative-oriented case study is accordingly conducted, determining the weight of get and take in stretched collocations in the BNC and of the Spanish equivalent verbs constructions within the CREA. Based on empirical data obtained this way, this paper provides relevant insights for more accurate translations, helping to enhance the collocational competence of L2 students, who tend to avoid constructions including empty verbs in favour of full verb forms. The findings in this study shed light on the potential of corpora resources for improving the collocational usage of foreign-language learners, as quantitative and qualitative comparisons of collocations serve to highlight the similarities and, more importantly, the lexical, cognitive and typological differences between these phraseological constructions in the two languages, thereby substantiating the very useful role that corpus analysis may play for language teaching in general and for collocational knowledge and proficiency in particular.

This study adopts a systemic functional approach (Halliday 1994, 2004) and Young's taxonomy for lectures to explore the discourse strategies that lecturers use in MICASE (Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English) as well as the structure that they usually follow in the delivery of the subject content. Results confirm firstly that academic lectures are a complex genre which not only contains ideational content but also evaluates the subject matter, and reflects the lecturer's tenor with the students. MICASE lecturers demonstrate their authority to students through the use of disciplinary resources, formal conventions and idiosyncratic style. They also take a personal position towards issues in an unfolding explanation using epistemic adjectives and adverbs and stance markers with certain differences according to academic divisions.

This paper addresses some theoretical issues in cross-linguistic phraseology analysis 2 and focuses on problems which arise in connection with finding pragmatic adequate equivalents which are lexical items of both source and target language which can be used in the same situations. The paper tries to elaborate some principles of contrastive idiom analysis from a functional perspective through both the use of empirical data concerning the real usage of idioms (examples from the BNC) and a sound theoretical background. Relevant parameters of cross-linguistic comparison (Semantics, Syntax and Pragmatics) will be discussed with several examples trying to offer a typology of non-parallel features between L1 and L2 idioms and collocations. This paper ends up with a practical example of idioms related to body parts and their pragmatic expression in English and Spanish.

Localización: Cultura, lenguaje y representación= Culture, language and representation: revista de estudios culturales de la Universitat Jaume I= cultural studies journal of Universitat Jaume I, ISSN 1697-7750, Nº. 5, 2007 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Metáfora y ...

According to cognitive linguistics, language has an experiential origin based on perception, sensory motor activities and our knowledge of the world. Our thought operates by establishing similarities, links and associations that enable us to talk about one thing in terms of another as shown in the example of love as a journey (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). Metaphor and metonymy are conceptual and linguistic tools that make possible most of these cognitive operations. Since metaphor is an essential element of human communication, the discourse of specialised disciplines includes metaphorical mappings and numerous examples of metaphorical expressions, for example in economics, where business is mapped in terms of war (White, 2004; Herrera & White, 2000), electrotechnics with electrical components understood as couples (Roldán-Riejos in preparation) or in civil engineering where a bridge is conceptualized as a person (Roldán-Riejos, 2013

This paper provides an overview of an ongoing research project work: "A Polytechnical Bilingual Dictionary of Metaphors: Spanish-English/English-Spanish" done by the UPM consolidated research group "DISCYT" (Estudios Cognitivos del Discurso Científico-Técnico).

This paper examines different options used by writers in reports and studies to control information from two departments of the European Commission: EU Maritime Affairs and Fisheries and Agriculture and Rural Development, using the web as corpus. These two Directorates or Commissions have the power of initiative, are responsible for policy formulation and policy implementation. Two comparable sub-corpora of reports and studies have been selected from the two Directorates. Fifteen markers related to key areas of root modal expression are presented: modal-evaluative adjectives like essential, necessary, suitable and appropriate (Van linden 2012); the semi- modals (e.g. have to, be able to, be supposed to, need to) (Leech et al. 2009); the emerging modal want to (Verplaetse 2010) and expressions with comparative adverbs (e.g. had better, would rather) (van der Auwera et al. 2013). The study of these markers reveals that shared norms and action in these two EU areas are constantly colle...

Neste traballo explórase a relación entre unidades pluriverbais con carácter metafórico e metonímico (expresións idiomáticas e refráns) do inglés e do español. Hai veces en que a linguaxe figurativa se preserva na tradución, mais hai outras en que a imaxe se perde ou se substitúe por unha diferente. Estudaranse trinta unidades pluriverbais no discurso, proporcionando algúns datos sobre a súa orixe e as estratexias de tradución utilizadas. Palabras clave: refrán, expresión idiomática, tradución, metáfora, metonimia. The relationship among metaphorical and metonymic multiword units (proverbs and idioms) in English and Spanish is explored. There are times when the figurative language is preserved in the translation but there are others when the image is lost or portrayed by a different image schema. Thirty highly frequent multiword units in discourse are studied, providing some clues about their origin and the translation strategies used.

This chapter examines thirty blogs for women engineers from a multimodal perspective, offering new ways of analysing their content and communicative strategies. The qualitative study focuses on how the interplay of different modes such as image, writing, typography and colour can be handled and how interpersonal and ideational realizations are construed. The final aim is to unravel relevant meaning-making practices used in these blogs, which want to achieve different objectives: overcome the limitations women still face in engineering by showcasing opportunities, change the perception of women engineers in society and redress the gender imbalance in engineering companies.

This article examines a variety of options for expressing speaker and writer stance in a subcorpus of MarENG, a maritime English learning tool sponsored by the EU (35,041 words). Non-verbal markers related to key areas of modal expression are presented; (1)epistemic adverbs and adverbial expressions, (2) epistemic adjectives, (3) deontic adjectives, (4) evidential adverbs, (5) evidential adjectives, (6) evidential interpersonal markers, and (7) single adverbials conveying the speaker’s attitudes, feelings or value judgments. The overall aim is to present an overview of how these non-verbal markers operate in this LSP genre. An examination of the data show that in expressing stance, MarENG speakers and writers use three primary means: epistemic adjectives are more frequent than epistemic adverbs, the deontic adjectives necessary and essential, and centralized assessment adjectives combining with intensifiers, mainly with a positive axiology. They are also keen on more subtle and less...

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Resumen Este trabajo presenta algunos datos sobre la actitud del hablante en la web 2.0, más concretamente en los blogs de temas relacionados con la telecomunicación. El objetivo es describir la actitud del hablante en este tipo de textos en inglés a través de los adverbios y expresiones adverbiales. Para llegar a conclusiones, se analiza tanto desde un punto de vista cuantitativo como cualitativo, cuál es y cómo se manifiesta la actitud del hablante a través de los adverbios en este tipo de discurso y se contrastan los resultados con otros de estudios previos. Para ello, se trabaja sobre un corpus creado ad hoc, con textos provenientes de la web 2.0, en concreto blogs de contenido relacionado con la telecomunicación. El estudio se apoya en herramientas informáticas específicas para el análisis del texto como AntConc o LingPipe.

This paper aims to delve into figurative language productivity in engineering and on examples of lexicalization and meaning construction. Particularly we focus on the domain of objects associated to homes and clothes. We believe that this type of analysis can shed light into the study of knowledge representation and improve understanding of technical language. We argue that metaphorical correlations are established on the grounds of (1) resemblance, either perceptual or functional (Evans 2013) and (2) metonymic relations of part/whole, cause/effect. The spanish and english cross-linguistic study proves that one-to-one metaphorical correspondences are rare. The results lead us to attribute a similar role to imaginative, experiential, cultural, and sociohistorical factors in the construction of meaning in engineering through metaphor and metonymy.

The White Divel or the Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, with the Lije and Death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian Curtizan constituye una de las tragedias más interesantes de la primera dramaturgia postshakesperiana. 1 A partir de la narración de unos hechos escuetos acaecidos en la Italia del Cinquecento,2 Webster crea una obra barroca, ajena a la expresión clásica de los isabelinos, desengañada y violenta, una reflexión brillante y poética sobre la exacerbación de las pasiones-el poder, el deseo-empleando como vehículo la "tragedia de venganza".