6826 research outputs found
Sort by
Identidad y agencia en el aula: La Calderona y La Baltasara como ejes de una experiencia afectiva en torno al teatro barroco
Get PDFEste artículo presenta una experiencia didáctica desarrollada en un curso universitario sobre teatro español del Barroco en el grado de español de la California State University, Bakersfield, centrada en las figuras históricas de La Baltasara y La Calderona. La propuesta integra contenidos literarios, culturales y de género con el desarrollo de la competencia lingüística y reflexiva, prestando especial atención a factores afectivos, socioemocionales y psicológico-aptitudinales. Mediante rutinas de pensamiento, actividades de creación en línea y análisis comparativos, el estudiantado exploró temas como la individualidad femenina, la expresión personal y los sistemas de poder que condicionan la identidad. En sintonía con los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS 5, 4 y 10) y con la competencia global, la experiencia permitió visibilizar trayectorias femeninas históricamente silenciadas, fomentar la empatía, el pensamiento crítico y la agencia personal, y promover una enseñanza de lenguas más inclusiva, conectada con las realidades sociales del estudiantado y orientada al fortalecimiento de su identidad y sentido de agencia.This article presents a pedagogical experience carried out in a university course on Spanish Baroque theater within the Spanish major at California State University, Bakersfield, focused on the historical figures of La Baltasara and La Calderona. The proposal integrates literary, cultural, and gender-related content with the development of linguistic and reflective competence, paying special attention to affective, socioemotional, and psychological-aptitudinal factors. Through thinking routines, online creative activities, and comparative analyses, students explored topics such as female individuality, personal expression, and the power structures that shape identity. In alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 5, 4, and 10) and global competence, the experience made it possible to bring visibility to historically silenced female trajectories, foster empathy, critical thinking, and personal agency, and promote a more inclusive approach to language education—one that is connected to students’ social realities and oriented toward strengthening their identity and sense of agency
Review of Drees-Alvarez, Nicole. 2024. Modificaciones léxicas fonológicamente motivadas en el Área Metropolitana de Guadalajara (México): Un estudio pragmático-lingüístico. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.
Get PDF
Voice-placing strategies and folk ideas of L2-accented Icelandic.: Perceptions of familiarity, cultural stereotypes, and phonological features
Get PDFFor a long time, Iceland has been a monoethnic and monolingual speech community, in which the Icelandic language has both served as a main element in the construction and maintenance of national identity and in which a stable evaluation system has been in place for the standard variety. Recently, however, new demographic and sociolinguistic circumstances have emerged due to increasing immigration, and, thus, rising numbers of L2 speakers of Icelandic. Against this background, it is interesting to investigate what ideas L1 speakers connect with L2 accents in Icelandic and how they link different L2 accents with the geographic origin of the L2 speaker.
Drawing on methods rooted in perceptual dialectology and folk linguistics, five focus groups with thirty-two L1-speaker participants were conducted, employing a semi-structured interview guide. The participants were presented with a voice-placing task involving six verbal guises and asked to elaborate on their choices freely, thus providing emic themes connected to their voice-placing strategies. Verbal guises were produced by one L1 speaker of Icelandic and five L2 speakers with L1 American English, Danish, Tagalog, Lithuanian, and Polish. Consistent with the folk linguistic approach taken in this study, data analysis employed concepts from grounded theory.
Results show that participants identify an L2 accent with great precision but experience difficulties locating an L2 accent. As to their voice-placing decisions, they resort to three main strategies, i. e. perceptions of familiarity with an accent, cultural stereotypes, and phonological features in L2 speech. Those strategies are further influenced by folk ideas on and perceptions of the speakersʼ L2 competence and accent-mimicking ability, their effort towards learning Icelandic, and perceptions of accentedness and distinct phonological features
English as an International Language at United World College East Africa.: Attitudes to native and outgroup accents
Get PDFThis paper reports on a small-scale project on English as an International Language (EIL) conducted at United World College East Africa (UWCEA), Tanzania, Moshi campus – a highly diversified multicultural community, which offers a microcosm of EIL in action.
The study examines the respondents’ preference for either nativeness or intelligibility principle (cf. Levis 2005, 2020), and their attitudes to native and outgroup accents with respect to comprehension, familiarity, and recognition (cf. Tajfel/Turner 1979).[1] It also sketches an accent profile of a United World College (UWC) student to formulate general characteristics of an EIL user. The study is based on the responses of 40 students to 32 Likert scale items.
The findings prove that firstly intelligibility is valued over nativeness and speaking English with a foreign accent does not imply unintelligibility and incomprehensibility. Secondly, immersion in a multi-accent community is alleged to positively affect the respondents’, recognition, and familiarity with English accents. Contrary to Smith/Nelson’s (2006) finding, native English accents are reported to be easier to understand than outgroup ones. It is also confirmed that familiarity with accents enhances their comprehension, as well as that immersion among East African English users improves the ability to recognise this accent.
The examined users of EIL share some accent attitudes. They believe their English has features of many Englishes (82.5%), aim at being understood (65%), do not deliberately use their L1 accents in English (62.5%) and some overtly admit to neutralizing their L1 accents in English (42.5%). In addition, half of the informants strive for a native English accent (50%) and nearly the same number of them prefer one variety of English over others (47.5%).
[1] In this paper the term outgroup, a concept introduced in Tajfel/Turner’s (1979) social identity theory, is used as a substitute for non-native in contrast with native. However, in the questionnaire, to avoid misunderstanding among the respondents, the term non-native was applied
Conventionalization, expectation, politeness and pragmatic impact: A German perspective
Get PDFWhile politeness has originally been closely associated with indirectness in early politeness research, the field has since moved to a view that conventionalized indirectness tends to be the preferred option by interlocutors. The approach to conventionalization posits that conventionally indirect forms are considered to be the most polite. However, equating indirectness to politeness has been shown to be problematic. While indirectness may well remain an important construct within some cultural contexts, this certainly does not hold across all cultures and lingua-practices. This paper discusses the relevance of the concepts of conventionalization vs. expectation as a research construct and explores the link between communicative conventions, expectation, politeness and pragmatic impact within a German cultural framework. The data indicates that while many Anglo-Saxon cultures express face concerns and relational work through overt politeness markers and avoid direct communication, German culture does not show a dispreference for directness. The insights from this paper further reinforce this well-documented tendency. Furthermore, the findings suggest that relational work is actually achieved via the use of explicit, direct communication and modal particles that express contradiction. The evidence suggests that greater confrontational responses to the previous speaker can equal greater support of the conversational partner
Durch Eye Tracking Einblicke ins wissenschaftliche Lesen gewinnen? : Eine Diskussion auf Grundlage bestehender Forschung
Get PDFThis paper discusses the potential for employing eye-tracking technology in the investigation of academic reading in higher education. The necessity to examine academic reading within this specific context has become evident due to its pivotal role in academic pursuits and the significant research gaps that persist in this field. For instance, while practitioners in higher education are well aware of the comprehension difficulties students face when reading academic texts, these challenges are rarely investigated empirically. In recent years, eye-tracking has become a well-established method in the field of reading research, as it enables the real-time measurement of readers’ eye movements while processing linguistic stimuli.
Such measurements have the capacity to reveal patterns that may be indicative of comprehension difficulties. Beyond its application in L1 reading research, eye-tracking has also gained prominence in the fields of second language acquisition and multilingualism, offering valuable insights into natural reading processes in both L1 and L2 contexts. It is evident that using eye-tracking technology within the context of academic reading holds considerable potential for revealing specific challenges that both domestic and international students face when processing academic German texts
„… und Asymmetrisches wurde symmetrisch…“ : Eine produktionsbasierte und zielgruppensensible Annäherung an Leichte und Einfache Sprache am Beispiel kausaler Ausdrucksformen im Italienischen
Get PDFWhile the concept of barrier-free communication is well established in German-speaking countries, it remains at an early stage of development within Romance-language contexts. Nevertheless, awareness of the issue is increasingly evident in both popular and academic discourse across these regions. This trend is particularly pronounced in the case of Italian, which constitutes the subject language of the present study.
Numerous manuals and guidelines conceptualise Easy and Plain Language as subsystems of historical languages. These resources are grounded in a robust linguistic framework and aim to optimise texts to enhance comprehensibility. However, it is apparent that the practical implementation of such guidelines frequently diverges from their theoretical underpinnings in texts labelled as accessible. In addition, linguistic scholarship has critically examined the theoretical and conceptual foundations of Easy and Plain Language. Particular attention has been drawn to the heterogeneous nature of the target audience and the overly restrictive approach to permissible linguistic resources. These factors substantially influence the textual, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic dimensions of linguistic signs – dimensions that are often insufficiently explored in Easy Language research.
In response to these criticisms, the present article adopts a language-production-oriented and target-group-sensitive perspective, employing verbalisation strategies associated with a semantic relation – namely, causality – as a case study. The article pursues two principal objectives: first, through a primarily qualitative analysis, it aims to demonstrate the extent to which existing manuals and guidelines underestimate the linguistic competence of a specific target group – Italian-speaking individuals with Broca’s aphasia. In contrast to the majority of empirical studies on Easy Language, which predominantly focus on receptive skills, this article foregrounds the productive linguistic abilities of its addressees.
To enable a more nuanced interpretation of the findings, the concept of “familiarity” is introduced as an operational term. Although the notion of familiarity is frequently invoked in research on accessible communication and language acquisition, it has yet to attain a clear and systematic definition within established terminological frameworks. In the present study, its operationalisation is proposed on the basis of frequency-related, language knowledge-oriented, and automatisation-driven parameters, encompassing all levels of linguistic analysis
Data sources:
BORIS Portal Bern Open Repository and I...BAF-Online: Proceedings of the Berner Al...HASBonline – Hefte zur Archäologie des M...Informationswissenschaft: Theorie, Metho...Jahrbuch Diakonie SchweizJournal of Eye Movement ResearchJournal of Radiation Oncology Informatic...
BOP SerialsVersants. Revista suiza de literaturas r...BORIS Theses
BOP SerialsVersants. Revista suiza de literaturas r...BORIS ThesesAccess Repository Dashboard
Do you manage BOP Serials? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!