International Journal of English Studies 2024, V. 24, N. 1
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- PublicationOpen AccessA corpus analysis of the aktionsarten of English-speaking patients with Alzheimer’s disease : a role and reference grammar account.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) Suárez Rodríguez, AlejandroIn this paper, we aim to describe the frequency and relative distribution of verb use by English-speaking patients with Alzheimer’s disease along its three stages. To do so, we apply the semantic representation of Role and Reference Grammar by means of the lexical aspect or Aktionsart to samples of verbs taken from the Pitt corpus of American patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Then we apply descriptive statistical measures and hypothesis testing to the samples. Our results show that patients systematically use states as the preferred type of verbs in the three stages when compared to the rest of Aktionsarten. We also show that there exists a statistically significant relation between the lexical aspect of verbs and the stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Among the explanations for these results, we propose that states may be used as the default Aktionsart because of its easier cognitive processing.
- PublicationOpen AccessOn political dream teams and financial killers : sports anglicisms and metaphorical uses in Spanish digital press.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) Lujan-García, Carmen; Núñez Nogueroles, Eugenia EsperanzaThe presence of English borrowings is becoming frequent in Spanish. This paper deals with the use of Anglicisms, including some cases of pseudo-Anglicisms and hybrid formations, in sports. The analysis of the digital edition of various Spanish newspapers, using the Anglicisms search tool ‘Observatorio Lázaro,’ has revealed a variety of functions that are fulfilled by these English(-looking) lexical items, such as their metaphorical uses. This study provides examples of new compound terms as well as hybrid formations and clippings, among others, some of which intend to have certain pragmatic meanings, e.g. being euphemistic or producing ironic and humorous effects on the reader. In addition, it is worth mentioning the usage of English football nicknames that seem to be getting more and more familiar to the Spanish sports audience. The orthographic inconsistency of many of the collected sport-related words is also examined and evidences the recent incorporation of these terms into Spanish.
- PublicationOpen AccessAbortion bans and handmaid protests : the connectedness of the Handmaid's Tale to the disruption of reproductive rights.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) Tabuyo-Santaclara, SaraMargaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale has gained relevance in recent years due to the popularity of the series adaptation by showrunner Bruce Miller. The genesis of the novel is tightly bound to the sociopolitical context in which it was conceived in the 1980s while the show was released just a few months after Donald Trump’s election, both contexts marked by the looming threat of the limitation of access to safe abortion. The aim of this article is to analyze The Handmaid’s Tale as a cultural artifact that transcends the fictional realm and has spilled into the real world by inspiring a global protest movement against restrictions on reproductive rights. While the handmaid protest movement has garnered media attention, its articulation and effectiveness present limitations.
- PublicationOpen AccessA longstanding duality : discursive construction of the EU vs the UK in the British broadsheets' news discourse of the Brexit Referendum.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) Javadinejad, ArashThe relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union has always been tumultuous and problematic, and European integration has always been a controversial topic in the UK’s contemporary politics. However, current research on the Brexit referendum's news discourse hardly addresses this topic directly. Therefore, this paper analyses the discursive construction of the UK versus the EU during the campaign coverage of the Brexit referendum in major British broadsheets. To do so, a corpus of four major British broadsheets along ideological lines (left-right) and Brexit stance (Leave-Remain) was analysed by applying a mixed method approach of Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies (Discursive News Values Analysis along with some Corpus Linguistic tools and techniques). The way news values were adopted in the campaign coverage of the British broadsheets shows a certain continuation of historical discourses around the relationship of the entities. The results show that news values during the campaign coverage were adopted by the pro-leave outlets to construct a highly negative and elite-associated image of the EU in contrast to the UK, while the pro-remain broadsheets mostly focused on a limited, practical and economic argument in favour of the EU, maintaining and highlighting the importance of UK independence.
- PublicationOpen AccessCommunity, exposed singularity and death in Mrs Dalloway.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) López Sánchez-Vizcaíno, María JesúsThis essay brings Virginia Woolf and Jean-Luc Nancy into dialogue, focusing on their similar critique of essentialized models of community and evocation of forms of being-with that derive from the experiences of singularity and death. It identifies two forms of community in Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway (1925). The first one corresponds to Nancy’s conception of the immanent community, built upon essence and fusion, and in which death is provided with an ideological meaning. In Woolf’s novel, this communitarian logic traverses the official, ritualistic way in which England has sublimated the death and loss caused by the First World War, and the repressive conventions and the authoritarian spirit of the governing classes. An alternative kind of community, however, is suggested in Mrs Dalloway, one that can be identified with Nancy’s conception of the inoperative community: a community of singular beings who share their finitude, exposure and death. Blanchot’s ideas on the transient community of lovers and Butler’s theorization of a ‘we’ based upon common vulnerability and loss also shed light on this novel’s concern with antisocial bonds between characters that escape traditional forms of affiliation.
- PublicationOpen AccessInverse translation as a pedagogical tool in the English for Specific Purposes (esp) classroom.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) Cerezo Herrero, Enrique; Pérez-Sabater, CarmenThe aim of this paper is to analyse the potential of inverse translation as a pedagogical tool in the promotion of written expression skills in the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classroom. Nowadays, we are witnessing a renaissance of translation in teaching practice. As a result, the number of studies trying to delineate the scope of translation in current FL T contexts has proliferated in the last two decades. With a view to adding to the existing literature, we have carried out a longitudinal study, for which a series of translations have been completed during a language course. A pre-study and post-study questionnaire have also been administered in arder to gauge the participants' perspective regarding the use of translation in the language classroom. The results showcase that translation has been extremely beneficia! in terms of enhancing written expression, drawing the students' attention to certain recurring mistakes, and creating metalinguistic awareness.
- PublicationOpen AccessA posthuman gothic tale : Kelly Link’s Two Houses.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) Muñoz-González, EstherIt is at the intersection of Posthuman thought, Gothic narratives, and the New Weird mode where “Two Houses” from Kelly Link’s Get in Trouble (2016) can be framed. In the story, six female astronauts alternate years of hibernation and moments of wakefulness in search of a habitable planet. The House of Secrets spaceship is controlled by the AI Maureen. Isolated in space, the astronauts amuse themselves by telling ghost stories. Through the stories, the reader is gradually dislocated from the recognizable landscape of a technologically plausible speculative fiction story to be plunged into a Gothic world of murder, haunted houses, and ghosts. The purpose of this paper is to trace the intersection of Posthuman thought and Gothic characteristics in the story to discuss the slippery relationship between what we believe we are and what we actually are.
- PublicationOpen AccessChallenging domesticity : Disruptive representations of domesticity in women’s art, literature and the architecture during the 20th and 21st century.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) Martin Castillejos, Ana M.; Melero Tur, Sofia; Morales Jareño, IsabelThis article aims to reflect on how the current changes in the context of domesticity are the result of multiple contributions from women working in different fields. It is a collective effort that began to bear fruit in the second half of the 20th century, when an open war against former traditional standards already existed. In that respect, there is a reference to female artists, writers and architects from the last two centuries which calls that notion into question: from artists present at the Women House exhibition celebrated in 2018 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington D.C., USA), where many described the domestic realm as a trap to female writers and architects who equally defy and revise previous conceptions of domesticity. All in all, it seems clear that the theoretical approach that supports the need to reshape old domesticity standards works in conjunction with many hands-on efforts, some of which will be shown below.
- PublicationOpen AccessThe affordances of telecollaboration to teach apologies.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) Di Sarno-García, SofiaThis study presents the results of three telecollaboration projects carried out between Spanish-speaking students and their English-speaking counterparts. The aim is to explore the affordances of telecollaboration for the development of Spanish learners`use of apologies in English. To investigate its suitability, a control group and three experimental groups were set. Quantitative analysis of the responses to a pre- and post-test, as well as quantitative content analysis of the strategies used to apologise in role-playing tasks have been carried out. The results revealed that there is a tendency toward improvement in the three experimental groups, as opposed to the control group. In line with this, the control group used a smaller range of strategies to apologise. It is concluded that the first experimental group is the one that obtained better results than the rest.
- PublicationOpen AccessVictorian eco-spiritualism : environmental citizenship and the occult revival in nineteenth-century women’s writing.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) Contreras Ameduri, ClaraThe purpose of this article is to explore the notion of environmental citizenship in the work of nineteenth-century spiritualist women. By examining female occultist participation in vegetarianism, anti-vivisection, and anti-industrial communalism, it is possible to observe an eco-spiritualist line in women’s writing, one which facilitated a more holistic and respectful approach to non-human subjectivities. Such texts therefore offer useful evidence of how spiritualist beliefs allowed women to influence public policies regarding the human-nature relationship in the long nineteenth century.
- PublicationOpen AccessRevealing silences : Voiceless traces of gendered trauma in female holocaust survivors’ writing.(Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones., 2024) Miñano Mañero, LauraThis paper intends to unravel the nexus between sexual violence and silence in textual and figurative silence in female Holocaust survivors’ writing. I will argue that these tropes allow authors to acknowledge and explore the nature of a gender-specific trauma. The sources under examination encompass Ruth Klüger (2001), Gisella Perl (1948), Judith Magyar-Isaacson (1990), Judith Dribben (1970) and Elzbieta Ettinger (1986), whose works significantly delve into these unspoken realms. I suggest that the tension between the endured sexual violence and the challenges of bearing witness to it is mirrored in these silences, which are infused with narrative strategies that gender the Shoah, illustrate embodied experience and reclaim the victim’s agency. Though feminist Holocaust scholarship has recently turned its focus to the study of sexual violence, its imbrication with silence merits further scrutiny. My approach provides a new framework to stimulate this discussion by igniting the reflection on literary silences.