Maria Josep Cuenca

Mecanismos lingüísticos y discursivos de la argumentación

Una programacion de la ensenanza de la lengua que tome como punto de partida sus usos y funciones en la interaccion social tiene que sustentarse en el conocimiento de los mecanismos linguisticos y discursivos que pueden caracterizar los diferentes usos de la lengua, los distintos tipos de discurso. Este articulo presenta el conjunto de todos aquellos recursos linguistico-discursivos que caracterizan la argumentacion a partir de los planteamientos actuales sobre tipos de textos y de discursos y sobre las caracteristicas dialogicas del discurso argumentativo.

Contrasting the form and use of reformulation markers

This article deals with the form and use of reformulation markers in research papers written in English, Spanish and Catalan. Considering the form and frequency of the markers, English papers tend to prefer simple fixed markers and include fewer reformulators than Spanish and Catalan. On the contrary, formal Catalan and Spanish papers include more markers, some of which are complex and allow for some structural variability. As for use, reformulation markers establish dynamic relationships between portions of discourse which can be identified in our corpus with expansion, reduction and permutation. The analysis of the corpus shows that English authors usually reformulate to add more information to the concept (expansion), whereas Catalan and Spanish authors reduce the contents or the implicatures of the previous formulation more frequently than English.

Use and translation of demonstratives in fiction: a contrastive approach (English-Catalan)

Demonstratives are usually described as prototypical situational space deictics, but corpus analysis shows that situational deixis is not the most frequent function that they perform. This article shows the complexity of the use of demonstratives and the effects of such complexity on translation by analyzing some English examples and their translation into Catalan in two novels. Specifically, the English demonstratives this/these/that/those and their Catalan counterparts have been identified as a first step of the analysis. Secondly, their use has been analyzed taking into account the differences of the two deictic systems and other relevant variables. Finally, the general strategies activated in translation have been identified and described. The contrastive analysis highlights that non-situational uses outnumber situational ones, both in the English originals and the Catalan translations. It also gives some evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the different behavior of situational and non-situationa...

The Conceptualisation of austerity in the Portuguese, Spanish and Irish Press

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the conceptualisation of austerity in three different European cultures by identifying metaphorical expressions used in one representative newspaper of the Portuguese, the Spanish and the Irish press between 2011 and 2012. The metaphors were identified by searching for three keywords from the field of economy and politics (austeridade-austeridad-austerity, corte-recorte-cut and divida-deuda-debt) and were then classified according to the type of schema they instantiate, namely, propositional schema, image schema or event schema. Assuming the general framework of Cultural Linguistics and corpus-based and discourse-based approaches to conceptual metaphor, the study highlights how metaphor can be a powerful conceptual and discourse strategy to frame economic, political and social issues and to serve emotional and ideological purposes. Through metaphor, the strongly mediatised political and economic debate about austerity measures and policies becomes effectively persuasive and manipulative. The analysis shows that the newspapers resort to the same schemas and metaphors. However, the differences in the frequency of the types of schema and the specific metaphors suggest that different socio-historical and cultural conceptualisations result in the different types and rates of metaphors in the three cultures under analysis, i.e. a deep conservative morality of self-discipline and punishment, in the case of Portugal; a strong sense of outrage against austerity measures and their creditors, in Spain; and the idea that the crisis and its effects were hitting the country but not as seriously as others, in Ireland.

Usos y estrategias de traducción inglés-español de los demostrativos en narrativa de ficción

La caracterizacion tradicional de los demostrativos en terminos de proximidad o distanciasituacional es problematica cuando se aplica al analisis de textos reales, pues con frecuenciaremiten a otras unidades textuales o discursivas y son, por lo tanto, no situacionales. El analisiscontrastivo del uso de estos elementos deicticos pone de manifiesto este hecho y ayudaa caracterizarlos en las diferentes lenguas consideradas, en nuestro caso, el ingles y el espanol.La investigacion que presentamos aqui parte de un corpus de narraciones de ficcion en ingles(que muestra un sistema demostrativo binario) y sus traducciones al espanol (que exhibe unsistema ternario). Se han analizado los demostrativos this/that y these/those del ingles, y susrespectivas traducciones al espanol, teniendo en cuenta si son situacionales o no situacionalesy si aparecen en el mundo de lo narrado (es decir, el discurso directo) o en el mundode la narracion (el discurso del narrador). El objetivo general del analisis es identificar lasestrategias de traduccion de los demostrativos (basicamente, mantenimiento o cambio delcentro deictico o neutralizacion del valor deictico), y poner de relieve las diferencias interlinguisticas.Nuestro analisis muestra que los demostrativos situacionales y los no situacionalessiguen diferentes patrones de traduccion. En general, tanto en ingles como en espanol, losdemostrativos situacionales responden a la distribucion del espacio deictico en cada lenguay tienden a mantenerse en las traducciones. En cambio, los demostrativos no situacionales,que combinan las propiedades de la deixis y la anafora, tienden a neutralizarse, ya que, enespanol, comparten uso y distribucion con la elipsis y los pronombres personales. El analisiscontrastivo, pues, pone de manifiesto que la descripcion de los demostrativos en terminos deoposiciones espaciales ofrece solo una explicacion parcial de su uso y traduccion, especialmenteen el caso de los demostrativos no situacionales.