Montserrat González

Pragmatic Markers in Oral Narrative: The case of English and Catalan

This book presents the multifunctional nature of pragmatic discourse markers in English and Catalan oral narratives from the point of view of text linguistics and contrastive analysis. It is argued that English and Catalan markers are distributed and operate differently at four different levels in the varied discourse structures of the text, i.e. at the ideational, the rhetorical, the sequential, and the inferential levels. The results confirm the distinctions in functional-systemic levels, and indicate that the nature of the two languages has a direct influence on the presence and nature of markers in the texts. The study is built up on a corpus of English and Catalan elicited narratives of native speakers, adopting the sociolinguistic Labovian framework adapted to the situation of educated adults. The study results in a better understanding of the contribution of pragmatic markers to the organization and the interpretation of oral texts, bringing insights from relevance and cognitive approaches to text structure, and moving from descriptive to theoretical levels of analysis and discussion.

Calidad percibida y sexo de los pacientes atendidos en un hospital universitario

Resumen Objetivo Conocer si el sexo de los pacientes ingresados en un hospital universitario de tercer nivel asistencial influye en la percepcion de la atencion recibida en el mismo. Material y metodo Estudio epidemiologico descriptivo de tipo transversal con una orientacion retrospectiva, en el que se han analizado los resultados obtenidos en las 3.829 encuestas de opinion al usuario recogidas entre los anos 1998 y 2000, mediante los estadisticos de la prueba de la t de Student-Fisher, en el caso de las variables cuantitativas, y de la prueba de la c2, en el caso de las cualitativas. Resultados El analisis de la comparacion de las respuestas proporcionadas por los varones y por las mujeres ha puesto de manifiesto significacion estadistica en la mayor parte de las mismas. Los varones dan respuestas mas positivas que las mujeres. Destacan, por su mayor grado de significacion (p Conclusiones En este estudio, varones y mujeres manifiestan diferentes puntos de vista sobre las distintas variables que configuran la calidad asistencial. El analisis de sus opiniones deberia realizarse de forma separada. Ello permitiria plantear enfoques organizativos diferenciados en funcion de quien recibe el servicio, puesto que el objetivo de un hospital centrado en el paciente ha de ser proporcionar la asistencia que este precise, en unas condiciones que satisfagan sus necesidades.

Pragmatic markers and discourse coherence relations in English and Catalan oral narrative

This article explores the role that markers play in the pragmatic discourse structure of Catalan and English oral narratives. It is argued that their meaning is directly related to the sort of coherence relation that they establish with preceding and following propositions and discourse segments, centring the discussion on four discourse structures/components: ideational, rhetorical, sequential and inferential. The aim is to show the textual form-pragmatic function relationship by means of specific lexical units placed at specific parts of the narrative. The hypothesis held in this article is that pragmatic markers help in the organization of narrative segments and that their semanticopragmatic traits make them appropriate for their use in specific segments.

La Gestión de las reclamaciones en el Plan de Calidad Hospitalario

Resumen Introduccion Las reclamaciones de los clientes representan una oportunidad de mejora en la calidad del servicio proporcionado. El desarrollo de Institutos de gestion clinica configura un modelo organizativo que puede ser utilizado para cambiar el papel de estas entidades en los planes de calidad hospitalarios. Material y metodos El diseno del trabajo corresponde con un estudio epidemiologico descriptivo que integra las reclamaciones presentadas durante 1997, 1998 y 1999 en la Unidad de Atencion al Cliente (Direccion Tecnica) del Hospital Clinico Universitario de Barcelona. Para los diferentes tipos de reclamacion considerados se ha tenido en cuenta la clasificacion establecida por el Servicio Catalan de la Salud. Se ha cuantificado la tasa de reclamacion por actividad asistencial desarrollada y la media del tiempo de respuesta a la reclamacion como parametros de evaluacion. Resultados Se han presentado un total de 2.479 reclamaciones durante el periodo considerado. La tasa de reclamacion ha evolucionado de 2,54 por mil actos asistenciales en 1997 a un 1,53 por mil en 1999. La media de 20 dias de respuesta correspondiente a 1997 se ha reducido a 13 en 1999. Conclusiones La implicacion de los Institutos en el proceso de gesti on de las reclamaciones, asi como la utilizacion de parametros cuantificables y objetivos que faciliten la integracion de estas nuevas unidades organizativas en el Plan de Calidad, ha permitido mejorar los resultados relacionados con esta importante tematica.

Communicating Epistemic Stance: How Speech and Gesture Patterns Reflect Epistemicity and Evidentiality.

This study investigates how epistemic stance is encoded and perceived in face-to-face communication when language is regarded as comprised by speech and gesture. Two studies were conducted with this goal in mind. The first study consisted of a production task in which participants performed opinion reports. Results showed that speakers communicate epistemic stance both verbally and non-verbally, and that specific prosodic and gestural patterns are used to express different epistemic and evidential meanings. The second study consisted of a rating task in which listeners rated the degree of certainty expressed by the opinion reports. Results showed that the number of gestural high certainty markers used by a speaker was a good predictor of the perception of epistemic high certainty. We thus claim that prosodic and gestural markers can be regarded as overt manifestations of epistemicity and evidentiality, and they appear to be especially effective in the communication of epistemic stance.

From truth-attesting to intensification: The grammaticalization of Spanish la verdad and Catalan la veritat

The aim of this article is to discuss and illustrate the grammaticalization process and the polysemic and polyfunctional nature of the Spanish and Catalan markers la verdad and la veritat, from an original objectified referential meaning of the forms (‘tell the truth’, opposite to ‘tell a lie’) to a highly subjectified procedural meaning of the markers (figuratively/metaphorically: ‘frankly/sincerely/honestly’). The pragmatic meaning of these markers stems from the loss of semantic features (i.e. semantic bleaching) and the different uses that they can adopt in a variety of syntactic and pragmatic contexts, where their (inter)subjective, evaluative, and intensifying modal dimensions are fully manifested. In lexical terms, they are noun phrases that can take variable and invariable forms. In morphological terms, the variable form is inflected in number (Sp. cantar las verdades; ‘tell the truths’) and has a referential value, whereas the invariable form, prosodically extraposed, or followed by a verbal predicate when working as pragmatic marker (Cat. la veritat, no m’agrada; ‘frankly, I don’t like it’), is always uninflected and is polyfunctional, with a procedural value. When followed by a verbal predicate (la verdad/veritat es/és que; ‘the truth + be + that), la verdad and la veritat acquire a structural dimension, besides their modal illocutionary one, being used as boundary markers that separate description of facts from first person evaluation, in a monologued stretch of discourse. In an interactional context, the marker frequently prefaces counter expectations. In order to show its grammaticalization process, I will discuss and exemplify their role as (a) evidential marker with a truth-attesting value (‘tell the truth’), (b) epistemic modality markers used to introduce the speaker’s attitude to the content of the proposition (modal meaning) or to the addressee (affective meaning) in the context of an utterance (‘frankly’, ‘honestly’), (c) intensifiers or boosters used to modify the illocutionary force of a speech act (‘really’, ‘truly’), and (d) discourse boundary markers used to delimit real-world facts (description) from personal opinion (evaluation; ‘in fact’, ‘actually’). In order to account for their polysemic and polyfunctional dimensions, I will propose salient meanings and prototypical functions.