Conferencias plenarias
SILVIA BETTI - MARINA BONDI - MARÍA DEL PILAR GARCÍA DE MAYO - ISTVAN KECSKES
SILVIA BETTI
Universidad de Bologna
LA VOZ DE LA OTREDAD
La presente intervención pretende tratar el encuentro entre el inglés y el español en los Estados Unidos en algunas de sus variantes y vertientes. En este panorama global y mestizo, de particular interés es el territorio estadounidense porque las continuas migraciones de hispanos hacia el Norte han cambiado el perfil de los Estados Unidos, no solo desde el punto de vista cultural, social, político y económico, sino también debido al contacto entre el inglés y el español que se produce cuando esas poblaciones se encuentran. La relación entre estas dos lenguas en esa peculiar realidad se caracteriza por muchos contactos e intercambios, generando una situación de compenetración y, se podría afirmar, de mutua dependencia.En general, la sustitución lingü.stica se produce dentro de un proceso complejo de mestizaje social, cultural y lingü.stico. Todo esto, considerando las variedades que se denominan español estadounidense general y espanglish, también desde un punto de vista identitario, precisamente como indicio y símbolo de la construcción de una nueva identidad in-between.
SILVIA BETTI es Professoressa associata del Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne de la Universitá di Bologna. Es autora de numerosas publicaciones sobre aspectos sociolingüísticos del español en/de los Estados Unidos, spanglish, lenguaje juvenil y SMS, nuevas tecnologías aplicadas a la enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera, etc. Es Miembro Correspondiente de la Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española y pertenece a su Comisión para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español en Estados Unidos. Actualmente es editora de la revista Glosas de la Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española, y editora de la colección editorial "Cruces y bordes: la voz de la otredad. El inglés y el español en contacto en los Estados Unidos". Roma, Aracne.
Puede encontrar más información sobre Silvia Betti en: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/s.betti
SILVIA BETTI is Professoressa associata of the Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne at the Universitá di Bologna. She is author of numerous publications on sociolinguistic aspects of Spanish in/of the United States, Spanglish, youth language and SMS, new technologies applied to the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language, etc. She is a Corresponding Member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language and belongs to its Commission for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish in the United States. She is currently the editor of the journal Glosas of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language, and the editor of the editorial collection "Cruces y bordes: la voz de la otredad. El inglés y el español en contacto en los Estados Unidos". Rome, Aracne.
More information about Silvia Betti can be found on: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/s.betti
MARINA BONDI
Universidad de Módena
ONLINE ACADEMIC DISCOURSE:
FOCUS ON DIGITAL TEXTUALITY
The talk discusses the impact of digital affordances on the way we use digital texts in academia. The rapid expansion of digital means of communication and the global extension of the participation framework in Web 2.0 have had a major impact on academic life and publications. The current context is briefly outlined touching on different questions: a) the present-day nature of publishing as a massive commercial industry, with the inevitable marketization of knowledge and the need for self-promotion; b) the growing social need for academia to engage with stakeholders and the public; c) problems of communicative inequality and initiatives meant to favour access to knowledge (e.g. open access publishing and education); d) the general need to be “always on” and “fast academia”. The impact of all this on publications can be seen through the development of new communicative formats and radically changed traditional ones. The most obvious changes are related to the new hypertextual, multimodal and interactive features. Using empirical case studies of research articles in different disciplines, we will explore differences in the use of language and aspects of multimodality and intertextuality that characterize today’s research articles when compared to articles of only thirty years ago. Looking at a range of features - titles, rhetorical structure, introductions, methods description, citations use and forms of self-reference – we will study how they have been influenced by digital textuality or by other changes brought about in the discourse community.
Puede encontrar más información sobre Marina Bondi en: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marina_Bondi
MARINA BONDI is full professor of English Linguistics at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy). She is the coordinator of the PhD programme and Director of the CLAVIER Centre (Corpus and LAnguage Variation In English Research). She has published extensively in the field of genre analysis, EAP and corpus linguistics, with a focus on argumentative dialogue and language variation across genres, disciplines and cultures. Her recent interest centres on knowledge dissemination and the impact of digital media on specialized discourse.
More information about Marina Bondi can be found on: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marina_Bondi
MARÍA DEL PILAR GARCÍA DE MAYO
Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
LET THE CHILDREN DO THE TALKING:
A CASE FOR THE USE OF COLLABORATIVE TASKS
BY YOUNG EFL LEARNERS
The teaching of foreign languages to young learners has been considered an essential part of the language teaching profession (Copland & Garton, 2014). In the past twenty years the early learning of English in school settings has grown exponentially worldwide (Enever, 2018). However, it was not until recently that research has placed young English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in focus (García Mayo, 2017). Evidence coming from theoretically-informed research about children’s foreign language learning process is crucial to maximize their opportunities for learning in settings where access to input is restricted. Findings from research are also essential for policymakers to make decisions about adequate educational provision.
In this lecture I will focus on current research with Spanish EFL children (age range 8-12) while they perform several collaborative tasks (oral and oral+written) in both mainstream and Content and Language integrated learning (CLIL) contexts (García Mayo, 2018, 2021). On the basis of data analyzed from cognitive-interactionist (Long, 1996) and sociocultural (Vygotsky, 1978) perspectives, I will show how children are able to negotiate for meaning with age- and proficiency-matched peers and to focus on formal aspects of the language without the teacher’s intervention. Issues related to the impact of task modality on language-related episodes and of task repetition on collaborative patterns and L1 use will also be considered, together with the importance of agency in pair formation. I will conclude by highlighting both ethical and methodological challenges in this type of research and by pointing to interesting topics for the future research agenda. Pedagogical take-aways will also be provided, as transfer of knowledge from researchers to practitioners should be the goal of this type of research.
MARÍA DEL PILAR GARCÍA DE MAYO es catedrática de Lengua y Lingüística Inglesa en el Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana de la Universidad del País Vasco. Sus publicaciones abarcan las áreas de adquisición de la morfosintaxis inglesa en segundas (L2)/terceras lenguas (L3) y el estudio de la interacción conversacional en EFL. Es coeditora de la revista Language Teaching Research. Actualmente es directora del grupo de investigación Language and Speech (www.laslab.org), distinguido por el Gobierno Vasco por su excelencia en la investigación en este campo. Es miembro del Consejo Rector de la Agencia Estatal de Investigación.
Más información sobre María del Pilar García Mayo en: http://www.laslab.org/pilar/
MARÍA DEL PILAR GARCÍA DE MAYO is Full Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). She is the director of the research group Language and Speech (http://www.laslab.org), highlighted by the Basque Government for excellence in research, and has been the principal investigator in projects funded by the Spanish State Research Agency- Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI). She is also the director of the MA program Language Acquisition in Multilingual Settings.
Prof. García Mayo has published widely on the L2/L3 acquisition of English morphosyntax and the study of conversational interaction in EFL. She has been an invited speaker to universities in Europe, Asia and North America and is an Honorary Consultant for the Shanghai Center for Research in English Language Education She is the editor of Language Teaching Research and belongs to the editorial board of numerous journals, among others Language Teaching for Young Learners. She was the international relations representative of the Spanish Society for Applied Linguistics and a member of AILA Executive Board-International Committee.
More information about María del Pilar García Mayo can be found on: http://www.laslab.org/pilar/
State University of New York, Albany, USA
LANGUAGE VARIATION AND TEMPORARY NORM DEVELOPMENT IN INTERCULTURAL INTERACTION
The presentation addresses and important issue of intercultural interactions: how can language variations develop into temporary norms in intercultural discourse?
It is argued that although variation and norm are seemingly contradictory phenomena, intercultural interactions where interspeaker variation is generally high, may show something different. Language variation is usually attributed to differences in the social characteristics of speakers (gender, ethnicity, age, etc.) using the language. In addition to this in intercultural interactions there are intralinguistic factors that speakers use to create temporary extensions of the system so as to meet their immediate communicative needs. Words, expressions and sentence structures created for this purpose use the potentials of the target language system. These variations are motivated by communicative and contextual factors and start to develop into temporary norms that support understand between communicative partners.
Based on this phenomenon it is claimed that the traditional approach to the notion of “norm” is untenable because it is mainly prescriptive and considered a diachronic phenomenon (see Havránek 1964; Labov 1972; Bartsch 1987; Milroy and Gordon 2003). Analysis of intercultural interactions (Kecskes 2019 showed that norm development is not necessarily just a diachronic process, but it can also be synchronic and temporary. Even if interlocutors spend only a short time together, they attempt to co-construct some temporary norms that become a part of their emergent common ground.
In order to support the claims and demonstrate how this process works in interactions language data will be analyzed from group discussion sessions.
ISTVAN KECSKES es catedrático de Lingüística y Educación en la State University of New York at Albany. Es el director de los programas de posgrado de ESL en dicha Universidad. Es presidente de la Asociación Americana de Pragmática (AMPRA) y presidente de la Asociación de Investigación del Chino como Segunda Lengua (CASLAR). Es redactor jefe de la revista Intercultural Pragmatics (Mouton de Gruyter) y Chinese as a Second Language Research, y coeditor fundador del Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. Ha publicado extensamente en el campo de la pragmática (intercultural). Algunos de sus libros en esta materia son English as a Lingua Franca: The pragmatic perspective (2019, CUP) e Intercultural Pragmatics (2013, OUP).
Puede encontrar más información sobre Istvan Kecskes en: https://www.albany.edu/faculty/ikecskes/
ISTVAN KECSKES is distinguished full professor of Linguistics and Education at the State University of New York at Albany. He is the director of ESL Graduate Programs in that University. He is the President of the American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA) and the President of the Chinese as a Second Language Research (CASLAR) Association. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Intercultural Pragmatics (Mouton de Gruyter) and Chinese as a Second Language Research, and the founding co-editor of the Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. He has published extensively in the field of (intercultural) pragmatics. Some of his books in the field include English as a Lingua Franca: The pragmatic perspective (2019, CUP) and Intercultural Pragmatics (2013, OUP).
More information about Istvan Kecskes can be found on: https://www.albany.edu/faculty/ikecskes/