bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
La población valenciana durante la década 1981-1991
Authors: Gozálvez Pérez Vicente
Published: April 2016

La evolución del censo de la población valenciana durante los años 1980 ofrece un balance relativamente positivo, debido al incremento reciente de la inmigración neta. En el movimiento natural, la natalidad y fecundidad continúan el descenso iniciado en 1977, mientras la mortalidad, baja por el rejuvenecimiento demográfico producido por la masiva inmigración recibida entre 1960 y 1975, comienza a aumentar durante el último quinquenio debido al envejecimiento progresivo; como resultado, el excedente natural positivo se ve seriamente comprometido. Se acentúa la concentración demográfica en los municipios urbanos, mientras recientemente se intensifica la despoblación de las áreas rurales más desfavorecidas.
Guerra Civil y migraciones en una ciudad de retaguardia: Alicante (1936-1940)
Authors: Moreno Fonseret Roque , Quiñonero Fernández Francisco
Published: April 2016

La guerra civil provocó importantes cambios en la población: una mortalidad elevada, un descenso de la natalidad y de la nupcialidad, el exilio y una movilidad espacial extraordinaria. Este último aspecto, referido a Alicante, es el objetivo de este artículo. Esta ciudad, por su condición de retaguardia, fue un centro receptor de numerosos refugiados, sobre todo mujeres y niños. Después de la guerra, muchos refugiados permanecieron en la ciudad y, además, llegaron los militares victoriosos y el personal de servicios que, con los prisioneros y los reclutas, cambiaron la estructura demográfica considerablemente.
Movimientos interiores y racionamiento alimenticio en la postguerra española
Authors: Moreno Fonseret Roque
Published: April 2016

La clasificación de la provincia de Alicante en cuatro zonas económicas en función del racionamiento alimenticio después de la guerra civil motivó unas diferencias injustas en la dieta, con repercusiones económicas (ocultación, estraperlismo, etc.) y demográficas, fundamentalmente movimientos de población hacia los centros urbanos y sobre todo hacia la capital. Esta emigración afectó como mínimo al 1% de la población, pero el porcentaje fue muy superior en los municipios rurales.
Lawrence and Nature: a Synesthetic Empathy
Authors: Mateo Martínez José
Published: April 2016

The synesthesia is perhaps one of the most significant stylistic recourses used by D. H. Lawrence when he undertakes the task of resolving in a literary fashion one of his favourite topics: the physical and spiritual communion between his characters and Nature. With its use, Lawrence manages, by mixing and confusing the different sensorial perceptions, to enhance the discursive level and the dramatic tension, adding new deep and symbolic tonalities to the narrative momentum. In this paper, we study through selected passages from Sons and Lovers the nature of Lawrence's synesthesias, seen from a linguistic and literary perspective. We also observe up to what point he remains faithful to a "normative" tradition or lets his creativity manifest freely when building them.
The Afro-American Tradition in Toni Morrison's Beloved
Authors: Durán Giménez-Rico Isabel
Published: April 2016

This article is a critical study of Beloved, Toni Morrison's latest novel, and winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Price. In it, I penetrate the linguistic wealth and the stylistic variety of the novel, trying to explore the Afroamerican tradition that pervades it. Themes such as slavery, the impact of the community, human relationships and love in all their facets, the search for one's roots, or the strength of the black female are on this occasion treated by Toni Morrison more bravely and openly than ever, and are surrounded by the evocative symbolism of the African folklore. All these ingredients form a magic story, but non the less credible, which is a mixture of deep reflection, historic document and bitter cry of protest.
Oda a una urna griega
Authors: Keats John , Pujante Sánchez José David
Published: April 2016

Ode on a Grecian urn = Oda a una urna griega / recreación de J. David Pujante
"That" as a Complementer and Relative Pronouns in Mandeville's Travels
Authors: Castillo Orihuela Concepción
Published: April 2016

The aim of this paper is to present a descriptive study of the complementizer «that» and the pronouns «which,» «who(so),» «whom» and «whose» .as used in the relative clauses of Mandeville's Travels, one of the best-known books of the Middle Ages. The scope of the study is both synchronic and diachronic: on the one hand, the features differentiating the syntax of «that» from that of «which» are analyzed within the limits of the aforementioned work, and on the other hand, the use of both «that» and the relative pronouns in that stage of the English language is compared to their behaviour in contemporary English. The first part will lead us to the conclusion that the differences existing between «that» and «which» are those existing between a complementizer and a pronoun, whereas the main conclusion we can extract from the second part is that the use of «that» in the Middle English period is almost identical to its use in contemporary English, which again differentiates the complementizer from relative pronouns.
American poetry: the divided tradition
Authors: Dolan Paul
Published: April 2016

What is American poetry? This paper is a history of the various answers poets have given to that question. They include Whitman's creation of a new form for poetry, one to replace those inherited from England. This new poetry was as radical politically as it was poetically —it was created to include those that other poetic forms had left out. Frost, on the other hand, adapted British verse forms to an American scene and American verse. The contradictory nature of America's response to Europe has shaped the divided tradition of American poetry.
A Sociolinguistic Phenomenon and its Illustration in the Early Linguistic Evolution of D.H. Lawrence
Authors: Montes Granado Consuelo
Published: April 2016

Labov introduced the term lame to refer to isolated individuals on the fringes of vernacular culture. Their linguistic behaviour does not conform to the norms imposed by the vernacular. Social network theory has provided a valuable insight into why individual speakers use vernacular forms with greater or less consistency. In this paper we will argue that D. H. Lawrence experienced the linguistic and ideological conflict of a lame, hovering between loyalties to two different codes, as a result of contradictory influences from his working-class father and his middle-class mother. Feeling an alien in his own community, he finally emerged as the intellectual declassé.
The Extrapolation of Relative Clauses according to the Government and Binding Theory
Authors: Saameño Aivar Emilio
Published: April 2016

This paper is concerned with the analysis of sentences with extraposed relative clauses. This transformation is studied within the framework of GB syntax. Extraposition, as a case of «move a,» must not violate any of the principles forming the subtheories of Universal Grammar. Special attention will be paid to the Subjacency Condition and the problem of where the extraposed clause moves to. Movement rules leave traces which have to be licensed by the principles too. The value chosen in English and Spanish of the pro-drop parameter can explain why extraposition takes place in some sentences, and also why this transformation seldom occurs in Spanish.
Reviews
Authors: Alicante Journal of English Studies Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses
Published: April 2016

Reviews
Why listening to English is difficult for Spanish students
Authors: Eastman Curtis John Kendall
Published: April 2016

We examine the educational and cultural influences as well as some of the psychological and pedagogical factors which conspire to make listening comprehension difficult for Spanish students of English. We propose exercises which students should undertake as preparation and training for listening, and suggest an approach to the presentation and teaching of listening material.
Self-assessment in second language teaching: journals
Authors: Martínez Azorín María José
Published: April 2016

This paper stresses the importance of self-evaluation in the second language class today, and in particular, the advantages of having students keep a regular journal. Taking the methodological framework offered by the Communicative Approach to Language Teaching as a starting point, this essay discusses the dynamic interdependance of purpose, methodology and evaluation within the curriculum. In this sense, formative or ongoing evaluation becomes one of the most practical assessment techniques for controlling our students' progress as well as the effectiveness of our teaching program. Self-evaluation has a number of additional advantages related both to the affective implication of students in introspecting about their learning processes and to students' participation in class management. The essay goes on to discuss the characteristics of a particular self-assessment technique: journals.
Two case studies of community language learning with possible implications for the natural order hypothesis
Authors: Parker Ray
Published: April 2016

This article sets out to describe two experimental series of community language learning—type sessions and to examine the data generated by them in terms of the realisations of functions focused on during them. It goes on to discuss implications that this may have for the natural order hypothesis. It begins with brief descriptions of both the methodology and the hypothesis.
Keys for an investigation into the origins of the communicative methodology in language teaching
Authors: Sánchez Pérez Aquilino
Published: April 2016

The historical study of how languages have been taught and learnt proves again and again that new methods are rarely found. It is more common to find the restatement of similar principles and/or ideas in a different way, closer to the context in which we are involved in each period of time (decade, century, etc.). It has usually been too quickly accepted, particularly since the end of the nineteenth century, that new methodologies will solve the tiresome task of learning foreign languages. According to this belief, the «latest method» is considered the ideal one, the «magic pill» that will substitute old and inefficient recipes. An analysis of the sources that underlie communicative methodology will try to illustrate how it is dependent on previous trends, linguistics, psychology and pedagogy. The understanding and shaping of a communicative methodology will certainly be easier if we go back to the roots and sources from which it emerged.
Poems
Authors: Burns Robert , Hughes Brian , Torres Ribelles Francisco Javier
Published: April 2016

To a mouse, on turning her up in her nest, with the plough November, 1785 ; To a louse, on seeing one on a Lady's bonnet at church = A un ratón, al deshacerle el nido con el arado noviembre, 1785 ; A un piojo, al ver uno en el sombrero de una dama en la iglesia / translated by Brian Hughes and F. Javier Torres Ribelles
Poems
Authors: Plath Silvia , Oliva J.I.
Published: April 2016

The colossus ; Lady Lazarus = El coloso ; Señora Lázaro / translated by J.I. Oliva
Modernism and/or postmodernism in Ulysses
Authors: Almagro Jiménez Manuel
Published: April 2016

James Joyce's Ulysses has been traditionally read as the great work of Modernism, characterized by its encyclopaedic, totalizing quality, while developing techniques to help create that effect. In spite of initial forebodings, the reader becomes accustomed to a certain narrative stability in the text. However, from "Sirens" onwards, the reader begins to feel that s/he is reading a different novel, different in fact with each new episode. The reflexion upon the quality of the episodes of the second half of the novel should force the reader to reconsider as well the previous episodes. In this way s/he will find evidence (such as the breakdown of the epistemological component or the equation between language and reality) which enables the reader to re-assess the novel also from the premises of postmodernism.
In a word: the importance of Shakespeare's subtexts
Authors: Cederstrom Lorelei
Published: April 2016

The subtexts of Shakespeare's plays often provide surprisingly accurate insights not only into the central themes of the plays, but also a greater understanding of the unifying elements. The subtexts from a representative sampling of plays from each of the major periods reveals that such subtextual elements as repeated words, near synonyms and recurrent images are fairly accurate assessors of the playwright's central intent. The best way to approach the plays is through a method that considers not only the text and plot, but the poetic devices that arise by considering the subtext. This study explores the nature-nothing subtext in King Lear, the seeing-seeming disparity in Othello, the repeated references to chains and gold in A Comedy of Errors, the explorations of fortune in As You Like It, the persistent emphasis on words and voices in Coriolanus, and the subtextual significance of wonder and rebellion in The Tempest. In each case, attention to the sound devices, repetitions and patterns of imagery yields a more thorough understanding of the play under consideration than the standard imagery studies or plot analyses.
Female flânerie in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage
Authors: Hidalgo Andreu Pilar
Published: April 2016

I take as a starting point the often-repeated assertion that the literature of modernity describes the experiences of men, and the long-established connection between the public sphere and the city in modernity. From Baudelaire's definition of the flâneur to Benjamin's elaboration of the concept, it is inevitable that some contemporary critics should have explored the role (if any) of the flâneuse in modernism. Dorothy Richardon's Pilgrimage presents an intriguing case of female flânerie. The potent Woolfian image of the room as the space of female creativity has obscured the equally potent image of the street (specifically London street) as the site of female empowerment. In Pilgrimage, the pervasive questioning of men's values, men's culture and men's language is bound up with Miriam Henderson's having the freedom of the London streets.
Neo-Aristotelian criticism in the U.S.A.: the Chicago School, contribution to a basic bibliography
Authors: García Rodríguez Francisco Javier
Published: April 2016

In this bibliographic essay I first give some of the reasons that, in my opinion, had led to the lack of knowledge about the Chicago School as regards the Literary Criticism. Afterwards I have prepared a basic bibliography on Neo-Aristotelians, which up to the present time, has been little known due to its dispersion and lack of organization in a general project. The primary sources show an intellectual activity which has been both long and huge, regarding time and its interests respectively; whereas the secondary sources embody a fair view of the response that the Chicago School has been given throughout the years. This bibliography is meant to be neither exhaustive nor critic, but a first serious approach to the theoretical and critical activity of a group of scholars with common interests who are a very important milestone in the 20th-century American literary criticism.
Contextual deletion of object and ambiguity in machine translation
Authors: Álvarez Benito Gloria , Amores Carredano José Gabriel de
Published: April 2016

Constructions surfacing as intransitive are highly ambiguous in English. They may be the reflection of a true intransitive verb or, rather, the result of one of the linguistic processes which derive an intransitive construction from a canonical transitive one (e.g. contextual deletion of an understood object, deletion of an optional reflexive marker or disergativization). This type of lexical/structural ambiguity poses many problems in Machine Translation. In this article we offer a possible solution which has been implemented in JULIETTA, a Lexical-Functional Grammar-based machine translation prototype.
Thomas Nelson Page's "No Haid Pawn": the gothic horror of the southern plantation
Authors: Manuel Cuenca Carme
Published: April 2016

The stories included in In Ole Virginia have been traditionally regarded by critics as the epitome of plantation fiction since they have been read as the recreation of a dead civilization generating mythical qualities. However, "No Haid Pawn", a tale told by a white man, sheds light on a new facet of Thomas Nelson Page as a postwar Virginian and a southern writer, as well as on his views about what slavery really meant for the Old South.
Bernard Shaw's Ibsenisms
Authors: Ortiz Javier
Published: April 2016

This paper deals with the complex and ambiguous admiration that Bernard Shaw professed for the Scandinavian play wright Henrik Ibsen. Throughout Shaw's professional life as a critic, he devoted a great deal of his writings to analyze and decipher Ibsen's plays for British audiences. Shaw wrote three sets of critical essays on Ibsen: The Quintessence of Ibsenism, Our Theatres in the Nineties, and The Prefaces. The article emphasizes not only the evolution in Shaw's Ibsen criticism, but also the parallelism of that evolution with the confirmation of Shaw himself as a world renown playwright. In The Quintessence Shaw discusses Ibsen's plays superficially, since he himself was in the process of becoming a playwright of the sort of Ibsen. In Our Theatres Shaw orientates his criticism around the plays themselves—he does not need to hide Ibsen's achievements from the British audience any more, as he already claims to master drama creation as much as Ibsen did in his time. Finally, in The Prefaces the critic shows many reservations towards Ibsen's dramaturgy becoming the ultimate estimations of Shaw's Ibsen interpretations.
Youth and student slang in British and American English: an annotated bibliography
Authors: Rodríguez González Félix
Published: April 2016

This article contains an annotated bibliography of the slang used by young people, and specifically the slang of students, in both Britain and the United States. In addition, there is a brief account of the English influences on foreign youth slang. Some introductory remarks on the expressive nature of the language of such groups are also made.
Q.D. Leavis: a bibliography of primary and secondary sources
Authors: Díaz Fernández José Ramón
Published: April 2016

Critics usually describe Q. D. Leavis as the author of the influential Fiction and the Reading Public and as F. R. Leavis's wife. However, although both critics are concerned with the relationship between literature and life, she has a style of her own and wider interests. The present bibliography of all writings by and about her is an attempt to contribute to her long-due recognition as an important figure in contemporary literary criticism.
Poems
Authors: Blake William , Fernández de Bobadilla Lara Natividad
Published: April 2016

Introduction (from Songs of Innocence) ; The Garden of Love (from Songs of Experience) = Introducción (de Cantos de inocencia) ; El jardín del amor (de Cantos de experiencia) / translated by Natividad Fernández de Bobadilla Lara.
Argument structure: English verbs of suiting
Authors: Cortés Corinne
Published: April 2016

Intermediate to advanced students of English grammar are often confronted with grammatical paradoxes for which traditional grammar can only offer a descriptive solution. One such paradox is illustrated by the so-called verbs of suiting. These verbs are apparently transitive in structure but do not follow the same patterns of data found with true transitive verbs. In light of the aforementioned paradox, this paper has two purposes. The first purpose, the more specific, is to show that there is a principled reason behind the paradox suggested by English verbs of suiting, namely that such verbs do not assign an external theta role. The second purpose, the more general, is to establish a set of diagnostics, for both students and teachers of English grammar, which can be used to determine whether or not a given verb assigns an external theta role.
Imposture in Decline and Fall
Authors: Megías Rosa Manuel
Published: April 2016

This article deals with an analysis of the characters in Decline and Fall, and the position they occupy in the novel. The main theme of the article is imposture. Paul Pennyfeather, the protagonist of the novel, goes from place to place, making a circular movement whose starting is also its end. Following Paul Pennyfeather, I try to demonstrate that most of the characters of the novel occupy a place that does not belong to them.
Yeats's evolution from The Shadowy Waters to At the Hawk's Well
Authors: Pérez Vázquez Ángel
Published: April 2016

My purpose in this essay is to study the evolution of Yeats's dramatic style from The Shadowy Waters to At the Hawk's Well. I will be considering changes in dramatic technique as well as in Yeats's world-view. As a middle point between these two plays, I have also chosen to study The Hour-Glass (1914), the last play that Yeats wrote before adopting the Noh form in At the Hawk's Well (1917), and which, for Francisco Javier Torres Ribelles "can be considered the expression of Yeats's own symbolist theories" (26). The version of The Shadowy Waters that I will be referring to is the final acting version of 1911. Occasional references to other works by Yeats, both dramatic and poetic, will nevertheless be included.
A new approach to the use of translation in the teaching of L2
Authors: Valdeón García Roberto Antonio
Published: April 2016

The traditional Grammar-Translation method has been replaced in recent decades by the communicative method, which focuses on the importance of the students' oral skills and their ability to be understood by native speakers of the language they are studying. However, this method has now come under scrutiny as more teachers become aware of the need of combining the ability to communicate with a more traditional approach which enables students to attain a good command of L2. Thus, traditional exercises can be revised and updated to achieve this objective. The translation exercise is one of these. In this article we provide the reader with a general view of translations as a teaching method, followed by a study of three texts and some ideas to make this exercise more appealing.
Ulysses and heteroglossia: a Bakhtinian reading of the "Nausicaa" episode
Authors: Caneda Cabrera María Teresa
Published: April 2016

This article is an attempt to approach James Joyce's Ulysses from a Bakhtinian perspective, not only to reinforce the opening thesis (Ulysses is the novel par excellence in the light of Bakhtin's theory of the genre) but also to discover the implications of Joyce's use of the so-called "heteroglossia". Ulysses contains an elaborated dialogue of languages which do not exclude each other but intersect in many different ways. This study approaches the "Nausicaa" episode as a paradigmatic microcosm in which heteroglossia is organized and incorporated according to the same procedures which articulate the whole novel. The analysis of all the voices which participate in the narrative reveals the various mechanisms and meaningful implications of the dialogical interaction within the text.
Breaking moulds, smashing mirrors: the intertextual dynamics of D.H. Lawrence's "The Lovely Lady"
Authors: Díez Medrano Conchita
Published: April 2016

D. H. Lawrence's aversion against Platonic idealism evidences itself in his repeated attempts to debunk in his fictions the way in which women disown their own bodies by unconsciously moulding themselves according to "men's theories of women." One of such fictions would be "The Lovely Lady," a story which characteristically engages in a silent dialogue with traditional discourses about women. In so doing, it cogently exposes the male glance that inhabits the mirror in which the woman protagonist sees herself reflected and, concurrently, subvert the traditional binary paradigm witch/angel in which she has been kept a prisoner all her life.
Sequence and hierarchy in discourse organization
Authors: Stoll Dougall Pamela
Published: April 2016

This paper discusses the sequential and hierarchical dimensions of discourse as understood from differing standpoints by conversation analysis and discourse analysis. Section 1 is devoted to the conception of discourse as a linear sequence, which enables the description of the internal structure of exchanges, while section 2 concerns itself with the notion of hierarchy, more suitable for examining the internal structure of moves. In section 3 the functional hierachical discourse model put forward by Roulet et al. (1987) is considered as a synthesis of both approaches supplying a framework for the description of both the linear and hierarchical nature of discourse, monologal as well as dialogal. Section 4 examines one case of implicit dialogism in written monologue, providing a brief illustration of the type of analysis rendered by that discourse model.
Linguistic and paralinguistic aspects in legal interpretation: some strategies and programs
Authors: Valero Garcés Carmen
Published: April 2016

In Spain the increase in minorities who speak different languages and come from different cultures has, on a social level, given rise to a growing sense of concern with regard to their integration into society, and, at the judicial level, when it comes to regulating their stay in the country. However, in my opinion, there is one aspect that is being overlooked in official circles: the lack of attention to the immigrants' linguistic problems and the need for competent interpreters. First, I will analyze a few examples of legal translation and interpretation taken from court rooms; then, I will explain briefly some programs on community interpreting, and will analyze the role of the interpreter as well, the result of which could wind up causing a different or even the opposite social/psychological effect on the receiver. I will make references, primarily, to United States federal, state, and municipal court cases because it is there that a Spanish-English interpreter is most often needed, for the very fact that Spanish is the most widely spoken language after the official language. All of this is done with the idea of calling attention to the need for the creation of training programs for legal interpreters.
From emotional orphanhood to cultural orphanhood: spiritual death and re-birth in two novels by Tony Morrison
Authors: Vega González Susana
Published: April 2016

This paper aims to analyze the process of spiritual death and sometimes ensuing re-birth Morrison's characters undergo in two of her novels: Sula and Tar Baby. Special attention will be paid to the female protagonists, Sula and Jadine, and their emotional and cultural "orphanhood" caused by their detachment from the ancestors and the community. Neither a total detachment nor an unquestioning submission to the establishment within the community is convenient; Morrison's eclectic position in this sense will be explained through this analysis.
Language transfer: interlingual errors in Spanish students of English as a foreign language
Authors: Alonso Alonso María Rosa
Published: April 2016

This paper aims at finding out the most common types of interlingual errors that Spanish students make when they are learning English as a foreign language. The subjects that have taken part in this study are a group of twenty eight first-year High School students. The interlingual errors obtained from the corpus have been divided into four types: transfer of structure, overextension of analogy, interlingual/intralingual and substitution. Each of these types has been analysed separately taking into account the wordclass where it occurs.
Writers, novels and banyan trees: notes on Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy
Authors: Fernández Sánchez José Francisco
Published: April 2016

Vikram Seth's first prose novel A Suitable Boy (1993) has been considered by critics and reviewers as a return to traditional ways of writing, particularly after the eighties, a decade of experimentation in the novel. However, a close reading of the book may reveal connections in the narrative with a contemporary mood also found in other recent novels. The aim of this article is to show that Seth's work is deeply embedded in the ideological issues of its time, despite Seth's anti-intellectual statements in a conversation with the author which is also recorded here.
Mismatches between teachers' expectations and students' performances
Authors: Tragant Mestres de la Torre Elsa
Published: April 2016

This paper draws from a larger study that examined the structuring of language lessons (Tragant 1994), that is, how teachers set the stage for activity and how they bring activity to a close. One major observation in that study was that there were times where what the teacher told students to do differed from what some students ended up doing in their groups or individually. The present article intends to present, classify and interpret the instances where that mismatch occurred. The data consists of eighteen transcripts from three undergraduate EFL classrooms at a major university in Spain. The analysis of the data points to three types of mismatches (simplified performances, adapted performances and overworking behaviours) and relates them with a number of aspects of the activity (i.e., the linguistic requirement and the activity-type) and with the instructor's teaching style.
New physics, old metaphysics: quantum and quotidian in Ian McEwan's The Child in Time
Authors: Wright Derek
Published: April 2016

This article investigates McEwan's poignant figurative use of ideas from the New Physics, his testing of their availability to quotidian reality, and determines to what extent and with what results—wonder, illusion, dementia, psychosis—the protagonist's behaviour is affected by a quantum mindset. An attempt is made to identify and define the kind of worldview and time-concept, physical or metaphysical, which is ultimately upheld by the novel's narrative structure and style, and to ascertain how far these are rooted in the Newtonian tradition of empirical realism which the book's theoretical discourse challenges. Time-reversal and parallel worlds theory are considered in the context of the novel's millenial-dystopian political vision.
Grammar: relevance-theoretic concerns
Authors: Yus Ramos Francisco
Published: April 2016

Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986) provides an interesting cognitive framework for the study of how interpretation takes place in face-to-face interaction. However, the applicability of this theory extends beyond conversation and this article also outlines how grammar can be analysed from a relevance-theoretic perspective. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of different studies of grammatical aspects of sentences which overlap with more traditional approaches in order to obtain a more accurate and context-centred picture of grammar. The extensive bibliography provided will surely be useful as a starting point for analysts interested in grammar from a pragmatic perspective.
Communication in relevance theory
Authors: Franken Nathalie
Published: April 2016

Sperber and Wilson (1995) ground their definition of communication on their criticism of Grice's intentional definition of non-natural meaning. In such a perspective, communication is considered as an act rather than as a process. Sperber and Wilson propose two definitions of this fundamental concept. In a first time, they argue that communication involves two specific intentions; afterwards, they equate it with ostension. This paper examines and criticizes their proposals, confronting them to ordinary intuition. Some crucial issues are discussed: the equivalence of Sperber and Wilson's two definitions, the nature of the evidence used in communication, the intentionality of communication, the content of the communicative intention, the notion of mutual manifestness, and the problem of infinite regress.
When is relevance? On the role of salience in utterance interpretation
Authors: Giora Rachel
Published: April 2016

Relevance Theory assumes different processing models for similar utterances without motivating the discrepancy (see Giora, 1998). On some occasions (e.g., Sperber and Wilson, 1986/95: 237), it seems to assume a direct access model upon which the contextually appropriate interpretation (e.g., the figurative interpretation of metaphor) is accessed directly without having to process a contextually inappropriate interpretation, (e.g., the literal meaning of metaphor). On other occasions (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95: 242), it seems to assume a special sequential model upon which the contextually inappropriate meaning or structure is involved in deriving the intended meaning. The graded salience hypothesis (Giora, 1997) may help reconcile the inconsistency. According to the graded salience hypothesis, salient (i.e., coded) meanings of words or expressions (whose degree of salience is affected by e.g., frequency, familiarity, conventionality) and salient (e.g., frequent) structures should always be accessed and always first, regardless of contextual bias or speaker's intent. According to the graded salience hypothesis, direct process should apply when salient information is intended, i.e., when salient information is compatible with contextual information. Sequential process should be induced when less salient meanings are intended (e.g., the literal meaning of conventional idioms). On such occasions, salient meanings would not be bypassed; Rather, they would be activated first, rejected as the intended meaning and reinterpreted in consistency with the Principle of Relevance. Given the graded salience hypothesis, processes consistent with the Principle of Relevance may apply at different temporal moments of understanding, depending on the salience status of the discourse components involved.
The possible place of relevance theory in a cognitive explanation of literature
Authors: Guijarro Morales José Luis
Published: April 2016

The concept Literature is a complex one. Relevance Theory can describe in a cognitive and scientific way its communicative operations that do not distinguish it from other types of discourse in a fundamental way. What is urgently needed is a cognitive scientific approach to the artistic aspects of this concept. In this paper, a possible way is offered in outline.
Is relevance theory asocial?
Authors: Jary Mark
Published: April 2016

This paper challenges the view that Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory is intrinsically asocial. To this effect, it is firstly shown how Relevance Theory provides a more satisfactory explanation of the 'politeness' of imperative sentences than Brown & Levinson's treatment. Secondly' supposed examples of the theory's inability to explain socially motivated instances of language use presented by O'Neill are examined and shown to be well within its explanatory power. Finally, a more general argument is presented. Recent insights from evolutionary psychology are drawn on in order to demonstrate how Sperber & Wilson's account of the way humans interpret utterances is able to accommodate a social dimension.
Unembedded definite descriptions and relevance
Authors: Stainton Robert
Published: April 2016

Definite descriptions (e.g. 'The king of France in 1997', 'The teacher of Aristotle') do not stand for particulars. Or so I will assume. The semantic alternative has seemed to be that descriptions only have meaning within sentences: i.e., that their semantic contribution is given syncategorimatically. This doesn't seem right, however, because descriptions can be used and understood outside the context of any sentence. Nor is this use simply a matter of "ellipsis." Since descriptions do not denote particulars, but seem to have a meaning in isolation, I propose that they be assigned generalized quantifiers as denotations — i.e. a kind of function, from sets/properties to propositions. I then defend the pragmatic plausibility of this proposal, using Relevance Theory. Specifically, I argue that, even taken as standing for generalized quantifiers, descriptions could still be used and understood in interpersonal communication.
The Duchess of Malfi and El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi revisited: some differences in literary convention and cultural horizon
Authors: García García Luciano
Published: April 2016

From the large bulk of national English and Spanish drama, those plays which happen to coincide in dealing with the same subject offer themselves as a privileged domain where a fruitful contrastive analysis can be carried out with a view to eliciting the divergent conventions and ideological values which rule in different and even opposing ways the production of literary works in seventeenth century England and Spain. To analyse and contrast some of those elements in The Duchess of Malfi and El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi and put them in relation with their social, ideological and canonical context is the aim of this paper as a way of showing not only the literary practice in different societies, but how the notion of value in its Bakhtinian sense must be taken into account when assaying the appreciation of literary works stemming from divergent backgrounds.
A linguistic needs analysis for EFL at the university level
Authors: Morell Moll Teresa
Published: April 2016

This paper deals with determining the linguistic competence of university students in EFL classes that are part of an English Studies degree. It suggests a language deficiency analysis (i.e., a combination of their target situation and their actual situation) to aid in the selection of language content to be taught. The proposed needs analysis makes use of the Oxford Placement Test (OPT), which is described as a sound standardized test for university EFL classes. The results obtained by students in the English Studies Department at the University of Alicante are used to explain how the OPT can be used to determine the students' linguistic competence, their language knowledge, their linguistic needs and their progress in linguistic competence.
Paradoxical time and providential history in Shakespeare and Bacon
Authors: Rodríguez García José María
Published: April 2016

Few of Shakespeare's tragic characters have had so many detractors as Richard II, who has been variously dismissed as a capricious tyrant, a self-absorbed poet, and a Protean dramatic force whose unpredictable actions at times threaten the structural integrity of the play. This perception has in turn influenced the interpretation of Bolingbroke as a competent antagonist who brings much-needed order to the chaotic universe of the first two acts of Richard II. This essay sides with the minority of defenders of Richard-the character as the central intelligence who exerts the greatest control over the dramatic events as they are represented upon the stage and on the page. In discussing Richard's recourse to constructions of human history imported from providentialist historiography I make ample use of Francis Bacon's own self-representations as the abused Messiah of experimental philosophy.
Tiresias and the Basilisk: vision and madness in Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling
Authors: Stott Andrew
Published: April 2016

This essay examines the prevalent and recurring references to vision and sight that appear in Thomas Middleton and Samuel Rowley's play of 1622, The Changeling. The play, set in Alicante, is a revenge tragedy of sexual lust and violent obsession. Middleton and Rowley use the metaphors of sight, culled and adapted from the Petrarchan tradition, as a means of expressing evil, danger, and deceit, particularly when the viewing subject is female. There follows an examination of the reasons for gendering vision and expressing the visual field in this wholly negative way. Following the Protestant reformation of the 1530s, and its violent consolidation under the Somerset protectorate, England experienced a period of iconoclasm and image breaking that had significant repercussions for concepts of vision and visuality up until the Civil War. The language of The Changeling, it is argued, is symptomatic of the iconophobia and visual neuroses experienced in many areas of discourse -including poetry, theology and theology- during the English renaissance. Finally, these ideas are brought together in two figures invoked by the authors, the basilisk, the mythical creature that had the ability to kill with its gaze alone, and Tiresias, a blind prophet of profound insight.
Many questions and few answers: on conversion in English
Authors: Valera Hernández Salvador
Published: April 2016

Conversion is a well-known word-formation process which, a priori, seems relatively easy to identify. However, a close look at its basics brings to light some critical questions which still remain unanswered to this day. The very nature of this operation, and the concepts of full and partial conversion are therefore here examined in the light of a need for explicit criteria for recognition of actual cases of conversion. Evidence supporting this need is supplied by a review of a variety of processes which have the same results as conversion when they operate on English adjectives and adverbs.
A feminine subject in postmodernist chaos: Janette Winterson's political manifesto in Oranges are not the only fruit
Authors: Calvo Pascual Mónica
Published: April 2016

This paper intends to explore Jeanette Winterson's novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) in its reconciliation of postmodernist notions of identity, formal experimentation, and political commitment from the margins of patriarchal society. For this purpose, I shall focus first on Winterson's position with respect to different postmodernist topics and polemics that she deploys so as to reinforce the political agenda that lies behind the writing of the novel. Then, I shall try to unravel how the novel is structured as a chaotic system constituted by several layers of signification whose interaction creates infinite patterns of interpretation. Finally, I shall put forward how this postmodernist antitotalizing narrative strategy recalls in its functioning and implications the kind of writing proposed by French feminists such as Luce Irigaray and Hélene Cixous as the essentially "feminine" expression, in order to conclude that it is this chaotic structure that allows Winterson to provide a space for a female subject defined not in polar opposition to "man" but in her own "feminine", postmodernist terms.
Searching for the source: Neil Gunn's Highland River
Authors: Clark Mitchell David
Published: April 2016

Neil Gunn's Highland River is arguably the most European of the Scottish novels to come out of the period often misleadingly referred to as the Scottish Literary Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s. This article argues that the novel is an important work, largely-ignored outside Scotland which successfully unites the Scottish metaphysical tradition with many of the formal and thematic devices of twentieth-century European modernism.
The pragmatic function of theme: the case of the conditional subordinates
Authors: Lorés Sanz Rosa
Published: April 2016

The present paper discusses the possibility of adopting a politeness theory approach to the various problems raised by the speaker's choice of Theme. The discussion will focus on the case of the clause complexes which contain an adverbial subordinate of condition. In the present paper I argue that the ordering 'subordinate + main' is often perceived by the participants in conversation as being more polite than the reverse order 'main + subordinate'. The implications that this discussion has for an understanding of the general concept of Theme will also be discussed. Among others, Halliday, Fries and Downing's views on the issue of theme, as well as Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory will be reviewed and adopted as theoretical standpoints.
Addicted to fun: courtship, play and romance in the screwball comedy
Authors: Ruiz Pardos Manuela
Published: April 2016

During the 1930s and early 1940s Hollywood produced a cycle of many romantic comedies -including titles like It Happened One Night (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Awful Truth (1938), Holiday (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940) and others- which have been grouped under the label of screwball comedy. In these narratives a new rhetoric largely based on concepts such as fun, eccentricity, adventure and partnership was articulated on the screen so as to visualize emerging patterns of coupledom and ultimately to define contemporary romantic and marriage ideals. In this paper I intend to explore the meanings of play and the pursuit of fun within the romantic ethos endorsed by screwball comedies as well as the centrality of these notions within the narrative structure of these texts in the light of the contemporary discourses on coupledom and the prevailing courting rituals which, by the 1930s and 1940s, were significantly grounded in the cultivation of leisure and the search for enjoyment as the main avenues towards romantic fulfilment.
Auden and Rilke
Authors: York Richard Anthony
Published: April 2016

This article traces Auden's references to the poetry of Rilke, showing his influence to be strongest in the late 1930's. It then compares some poems by Auden with similar works by Rilke. It argues that Auden shared with Rilke a concern with the development of the individual from childhood and with the relation of the individual sensibility to the external world and also an aesthetic and symbolist dimension, but that the effect of this in his writing is always modified by his concern with morality and his feeling that this has priority over aesthetics, and by Auden's scepticism concerning the more Romantic or mystical aspects of Rilke's thought.
Dwelling in marble halls: a relevance-theoretic approach to intertextuality in translation
Authors: Almazán García Eva María
Published: April 2016

In this article we explore the possibility of using a relevance-theoretic approach for translating intertextual references in a literary context. On the basis of an example taken from L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, we propose an interpretation of the original text based on concepts taken from Relevance Theory (henceforth RT) as designed by Sperber and Wilson (1986) and developed by Blakemore (1992). Gutt's contribution (1991), viewed as an insightful but still preliminary step towards an application of RT to the theory and practice of translation, is then made to crystalize in valid criteria which may orient the translator in the decision-making process.
Making the implicit explicit for successful communication: pragmatic differences between English and Spanish observable in the translation of verbs of movement
Authors: Edwards Marion
Published: April 2016

This article considers the translation of verbs of movement within texts between English and Spanish in general and includes a closer study of the English motion and manner verbs in The Fencing Master, the English translation of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel El maestro de esgrima. This study was originally sparked off by the following observation: "Spanish translators omit manner information about half of the time, whereas English translators actually add manner to the Spanish original in almost a quarter of their translations". (Slobin, 1996/99: 212). After considering relevant theoretical issues related to observations in early Translation Studies, studies within Pragmatics and finally within Cognitive Linguistics, I turn to the novel itself and focus on the differing methods employed for dealing with the verbs of movement in the translation of this novel and classify them. This article argues that Slobin's observation above can be modified as we conclude that it is for pragmatic reasons that the English translation explicitly states what is in fact implicit in the Spanish original.