Contributions of the philosophy of science to juridical semantics

The roles and functions of abstracts in a conference system of genres

An abstract is a broad academic genre, recognisable by its overall social function, communicative aim and rhetorical organisation. It has, however, a wide variety of sub-types geared to particular kinds of social interaction, of which we have little knowledge. For example, despite its importance for the careers of academics, the conference abstract, submitted to compete for a slot on a conference programme, is an occluded genre. It is therefore rarely taught in academic-writing courses.

In this paper, the interdependency of form, content, function and social context of the Conference Abstract (CA) and the Paper Abstract (PA), respectively, is explored. Twenty-eight CAs concerning automotive crash-safety were compared with their PA counterparts in refereed conference papers. Although CAs and PAs belonged to the same superordinate genre, were written by the same author, and dealt with identical topics, their different communicative purposes and intertextual relationships in the conference system of genres shaped their form and content.
I argue that in order to understand the production and interpretation processes of different types of abstracts, we need to know what roles they play within the community they serve as well as within the system of genres they belong to.

Sahian, Prof. Hilda

ESP and EAP material writing at University of Tucumán, Argentina

The primary need of ESP and EAP at Universidad Nacional de Tucumán is teaching reading comprehension (one skill) to undergraduate and graduate students of science, technology and humanities.

As publishers do not produce materials for limited markets, no teaching material fits the needs and covers the specific subject area/s of our students. Thus, material writing, to match the needs of the audience, becomes the first task ESP teachers have to cope with.
This paper intends to demonstrate:

a) that the selection and organization of the material to be used in class is the key element to fulfill general and specific objectives.

b) that teachers should be aware of the kind of texts and subject matter to be used.

c) that the organization of the material should be coherent and sequenced within the course units according to what the learners will need.

d) that the texts chosen should be capable of generating classroom activities and exploiting different exercises.
Sancho Guinda, Carmen
Epistemic tides and personal strongholds: Embedded discursive subspaces in the research article.
This paper reports a study in progress aimed to analyze the most salient features of the implicit epistemic and affective contract between author and reader underpinning research articles. A corpus of 50 samples written by native and non-native (Spanish) speakers of English and dealing with fields/disciplines related to engineering has been surveyed in order to determine:
a) How the different factors (i.e. subjectivization, perspectivization and epistemic modality) interact in context

b) what type of embedded subdomains they define in discourse

The theoretical framework employed comprises the works of Brown & Levinson (1978), Hernández Flores (1999) and Coates (1987) on the concepts of face, politeness and modal interpersonal meanings, Biber et al (1988, 1999), Neff et al (2000) and Stubbs (1996) on stance markers, Sirbu (1988), Giacalone Ramat (1999), Nuyts (1992) and Lyons (1977) on objective and subjective modality, and Sanders & Spooren (1996) and Langacker (1991) on subjectivity and perspective.
There is evidence that Spanish authors tend to use more perspectivizacion but less epistemic markers and subjectively oriented deontics than native English speakers. The whole study contributes to breaking with Lyons’ dichotomy of objectivity/subjectivity and establishing a continuum in which modality plays a multifunctional, polypragmatic role as evidentiality evaluator and as a conveyor of interpersonal meaning.
Scarpa, Assoc. Prof. Federica
Idiolectal and culture-specific features in the language of migration studies in English: A translator’s perspective
In the last decade, international migration has become a major theme of public interest and the cause of a growing “Fortress Europe” policy stance among many Western European countries, as immigrants are frequently held responsible for causing politico-economic problems such as unemployment and pressure on social services. A number of studies have focussed on the language of migration in politics and the media in Britain, with special reference to discourses of xenophobia and social exclusion (among others, Gordon and Rosenberg 1989; van Dijk 1991, 1993). However, no attention has been paid to the language of migration research, an interdisciplinary topic which has attracted the academic interest of sociologists, economists, geographers and others. This paper aims at providing an introduction to the translation problems caused by the idiolectal and culture-specific features of the academic language of migration studies in English which, like other special languages, should in fact be characterized by objectivity, emotional detachment and a common terminology unbiased by the nationality of the researchers.
Gordon P. and Rosenberg D. (1989) Daily Racism: The Press and Black People in Britain, London, The Runnymeade Trust.

van Dijk T. (1991) Racism and the Press, London, Routledge.

van Dijk T. (1993) Elite Discourse and Racism, London, Sage.


Schaarschmidt, Prof. Gunter
Multilingualism and terminography
It has been observed in situations of multilingualism, i.e., where LSP terminology must serve bi- or multilingual communities, that in partial lists or dictionaries, a reference to the second or third language term is a convenient shortcut to lengthy descriptive explanations or definitions of the term. This fact raises the question whether in such situations monolingual dictionaries make any sense at all since knowledge of a second or third language will probably have to be built into such dictionaries in any case. The present paper will highlight three cases, one each from Europe (Upper Sorbian), North America (Inuktitut), and Asia (Tagalog), where globalization seems to point to the necessity of preparing bi- and multilingual terminological dictionaries, at least as an interim solution and an antidote to the many "local Englishes" that seem to have evolved when things are allowed to go their own course.


Schweigkofler, Anny
Zur dialogischen Erschließbarkeit von Rechtssprachen: Chancen und Wege interkultureller Fachkommunikation
see: Stefania Cavagnoli

Shaw, Philip