Domande orale Lingua inglese

Origins of ESP

English for specific purposes, refers to the teaching and learning of English as a language where the goal is to use English in a particular (particular) domain. An important characteristic of ESP courses is that the content and the aims of the course are oriented to the specific needs of the learners.

The starting point of ESP is set in 1962 with the work of John Swales, ‘Episodes in ESP’. The central focus was English for science and technology in academic context.

The early years of ESP history

In 1962 John Swales published ‘Episodes in ESP’ and the central focus was English for science and technology in academic context. His first attempt involved statistical grammar counts within written discourses to find out general sentence-level characteristics of EST (English for Science and Technology). In 1972 it was published ‘Grammar and Technical English’ which included contrastive discourses analysis for Spanish, Macedonian and Japanese, investigating both lexical and grammatical EST features.

Tarone’s contribution to ESP

The ESP studies grew a lot thanks to Tarone’s contribution. In 1981 Tarone and her colleagues published ‘The ESP journal’, one of the most important volumes of these studies, which focused on a main characteristic of scientific prose: the use of passive in academic papers. The research was carried testing hy(i)pothesis about the functions of a specific grammatical feature. Moreover, it introduced the involvement of an expert to test their conclusions.

What happened in 1981 in ESP history

John Swales published ‘Aspects of Article Introductions’. The approach described in this work became widely recognized and the movement expanded a lot, even though ESP continued to be limited and was considered irrelevant by most of the TESOL community. ESP researchers proposed to break from ESP’s self-imposed limit and interest on EST and decided to broad a definition of ESP which included English for academic and for occupational purposes. The period that goes from 1981 to 1990 was the most inclusive in terms of topics.

Selinker

In 1988 Selinker carried the studies identifying two new ESP approaches: “consultations with subject - specialist informants” and “rhetorical/ grammatical analyses” of specific types of texts, generally in science and technology disciplines. In this period, the approach was getting more focused on detailed questions.

The modern age of ESP

The Modern Age of ESP covers the period from 1990 to 2011. During this period two new international journals were issued: the journal of second language writing and the journal of English for academic purposes. As scholars needs to publish on international journals to be promoted, the journals became central to an understanding of ESP research, promoting and motivating the interest from University worldwide on ESP topics.

Culture and translation

How culture influences translation

Every culture is different and what is considered appealing for one culture may not be considered the same for another culture. The fact that people have different cultural conceptualization must be taken under consideration when we want to promote a product. If we want to produce translations that are effective in their context, we need to know more about cross-cultural contexts. Cultural profiling aims at accumulating cultural knowledge in order to compare, contrast, interpret and understand the effects of culture in specific contexts. There are 7 cultural dimensions in which culture differ:

• Religion beliefs
• Individualism or collectivism
• Indulgence or restraint
• Power distance
• Uncertainty avoidance
• High vs low context
• Orality or literacy

How religion influences translation

Religion is a set of beliefs, practices and moral aspects driven by specific laws shared within a group. People of different religions have distinct habits, needs, expectations and preferences in daily life. It also influences the behaviour of people: it teaches people on how they should behave in society and to understand what is acc(x)eptable and what is not, it also shapes the culture, attitudes and values in society.

Indulgence vs re(i)stra(e)int according to Hofstede

The distinction was proposed by Hofstede and regard the fulfilment of desires. Indulgence stands for the tendency to satisfy the natural human desires, such as have fun and enjoy life, while restraint people live with more strict social norms.

Tourism promotional materials

TPMs

TPMs: (tourism promotional materials) they are the collection of media, such as brochures, websites, postcard etc… that are used to increase the selling of tourism products. Today the internet has become the main channel for promotion of tourism due to its speed, accessibility and cost-effectiveness. More and more tourists do researches online to seek for info-promotional materials on tourists’ destinations and products.

Tourism promotion techniques

There are different promotion techniques used to persua-(ei)de potential tourists. One of them is keying, which means using keyword to represent tourist concepts and the(i)mes, in order to fire the imagination of the tourist by complying with his needs and expectations about holidaying.

Then there is contrasting: the use of contrast to highlight the gap between ordinary life and the promoted destination, it’s obtained by using lexical opposition or idetional meaning. We also find ex/o/ting, which is used to create stylistic effect and to reflect the unique qualities of the destination by creating interest in the reader. Then there is the comparing, used to reduce strangeness and to give familiarity, it can be expressed by using metaphors, similes. We also find poetic devices, such as alliteration, consonance, assonance, used as tools to arrest the readers’ attention. Then there is the use of humor to promote tourism product in a funny way; Pearce said that humor might have a 3 part role to play: to establish comfort level, to boost concentration and to connect tourists to their presenters.

What is keying

Keywords are instrumental in representing tourist concepts and the(i)mes, in order to fire the imagination of the tourist by complying with his/her needs and expectations about holidaying. Keying is done in a highly euphoric, evalua(e)tive manner, in order to emphasise the positive values of the tourist destination. Keying is especially important in the website modality, whose users do not really read, but rather scan, skim and scroll in search of keyw