Lingua e Traduzione Inglese 2

Highly binding texts

Scientific texts: They perform a cognitive function, based on assertions subjected to the true/false criterion. Example: scientific and formalized descriptions and definitions.

Normative texts: They perform a prescriptive function, based on an event of coercive will governed by a system of principles. Example: laws, decrees, regulations, administrative documents, contracts.

Technical-operational texts: They perform an instrumental-regulatory function, based on the receiver’s adhesion to the instructions given by the sender. Example: instructions for appliances or tools, instructions given to receivers to perform certain operations (game, movements).

Moderately binding texts

Expository texts: They have an explanatory-argumentative function, explaining something to someone, negotiating practical issues or discussing various theses. Example: treaties, manuals, encyclopedias, critical essays, political speeches.

Informative texts: They have an informative function, making information available, popularizing various notions. Example: journalistic texts.

Mildly/not binding texts

Art or literary texts: They have an expressive function, based on the sender’s intention to express feelings. Example: artistic works, advertising texts, literary texts, proverbs, prayer texts.

These languages work differently according to the culture in which they are used. Cultural mediation is very important in translation.

Reasons for ESP emergence

• Demands of a Brave New World: The end of WW2 brought a demand for an international language to communicate. English was chosen, considering the economic power of the USA. Also, with the oil-crisis in the ‘70s, Western money and knowledge flowed into oil-rich countries, and English became the language. English is now subjected to people’s wishes, need and demands.
• Revolution in linguistics: Linguists, aware of the world changes, began to focus on how language is used in real situations. Traditionally, language studies focused on the grammatical rules, but it was discovered that language varies according to contexts. It’s found that spoken and written English are different. If language varies according to the context, it’s possible to create language instructions to meet the needs of learners in specific contexts.
• Focus on learner: ESP was influenced by psychology. Attention is given to the ways learners acquire language and the ways language is acquired. Learners employ different learning strategies, different skills, and have different needs and interests. Focus on the learners’ needs is as important as the method used to spread linguistic knowledge.

English for Special Purposes

English for Occupational Purposes, English for Academic Purposes, English for Professional Purposes:

• English for Science and Technology
• English for Medical Purposes
• English for Legal Purposes
• English for Professions
• English for Management Finance
• English for Business purposes
• English for Engineering
• Legal English

ESP is a branch of English language teaching students the language necessary to perform certain roles efficiently. The ESP teacher meets the students’ specific needs.

Different phases of ESP

ESP is now in a fourth phase, with a fifth phase starting to emerge.

• The early years (1962-1981)
• The recent past (1981-1990)
• The modern era (1990-2011)
• The future (2011-now)

Different ESP phases

1. Register analysis: 1960s-70s, work of Strevens, Ewer, Swales. The analysis aims at identifying the grammatical and lexical features of the registers and at creating a syllabus that prioritizes the language forms students meet in their Science Studies. Rapidly overtaken by the development of linguistics.
2. Rhetorical or discourse analysis beyond the sentence: The main authors are Widdowson and the Washington School of Selinker, Trimble, Lackstrom, and Todd-Trimble. In the first stage, ESP focused on language at the sentence level, on sentence grammar, but in the following, it focuses on the level above the sentence, how sentences are combined to produce meaning. They research organizational patterns in texts and their linguistic means.
3. Target situation analysis: Most useful approach. It sets the existing knowledge on a more scientific basis, establishing procedures for language analysis closer to learners’ reasons for learning. ESP courses enable learners to function adequately in a target situation, ESP courses should first identify the target situation and then carry out an analysis of the linguistic features, forming the syllabus. Munby’s model produces a profile of the learners’ needs in terms of communication purposes, communicative setting, functions, language skills, etc.
4. Skills and strategies: Look below the surface, considering not the language itself but the thinking processes that underlie language. Underlying all language use there are common interpreting processes which enable us to extract meaning from discourse. The focus isn’t on the surface forms of the language, but on the underlying interpretative strategies that learners use to cope with the surface forms (ex. guessing the meaning of words from context).
5. Learning-centred approach: The main concern is the notion of language learning. ESP has developed at different speeds in different countries. One of the first steps when dealing with specialized languages is to identify the level of specialization. The level of specialization demanded by the situation changes the approach towards the study and the use of specialized languages.

Critical perspectives on ESP

Different levels of popularization often combine and interact. The term popularization can also be applied to various television and cinematographic products that somehow ‘translate’ specialized discourse.

We can refer to three main trends in the theoretical approaches to English for Special Purposes:

• The sociodiscoursal (focusing on genre theory and genre-informed pedagogy)
• The sociocultural (focuses on theories of situated learning and their practical corollaries)
• The sociopolitical (emphasizes theories and applications of critical Pedagogy)

This model of ESP syllabus can be applied to situations of popular products as well, since they often try to respond to the audience's needs. Generally, in the fictional world of TV series or comic books, there’s a character who is the “layman” or the learner of the situation. According to Needs Analysis, the way specialized languages are taught and learned depend on the needs of the learners. The protagonist, so, could be described as an ESP practitioner as a teacher, in charge of explaining the terminology and notions to other characters who aren’t specialists. Thanks to the identification process, the extra-textual receiver (spectator/reader) is like a learner. The advantage is that the spectator is not actually taught any lesson but is also entertained (edutainment: blend of education and entertainment).

The functions and the tools of television have changed, compared to those of the beginning, through the new media. The increasing intrusion of specialized languages in mass and popular products should be considered from a quantitative and qualitative point of view.

The nature and main features of specialized language

The nature of specialized languages

Understanding the technical and specialized aspects of these languages is essential for everyone:

• Because the popularization of various specialized languages places them at the center of people’s daily lives.
• Because the increasing specialization in our societies requires that everyone has some knowledge of these languages, to be a functional member of society.

Specialized languages are often perceived as “esoteric”, so only a few people have some knowledge.

“Languages for special purposes”, “specialized languages”, “micro languages” and “technolects” imply some differences in their meaning. According to Gotti (and Cortelazzo), special languages indicate those languages that use their own rules and particular symbols, different from those of the common language.

Similarly, the expression micro language seems inadequate, as it refers to the image of a microcosm not provided with all the expressive potentialities typical of the standard linguistic system.

Sometimes specialized languages are equated with the restricted languages, but they actually refer to “restricted codes that make use only of some phrases of the common language for specialized communication [such as the codes] of the flight controllers, which exchange predetermined messages using pre-made phrases containing predetermined variants”.

The expression sectorial languages is vague because of the heterogeneity of the various sectors.

The society demands a higher degree of comprehensibility in terms of specialized languages, especially our age, characterized by migratory flows, requiring non-native speakers to decode documents and texts to understand, approve or sign them. The global world needs to translate these languages interlingually.

Even native speakers (non-specialists) struggle in comprehending specialized documents.

Intralingual and intersemiotic translation might be the first step towards an objective approach to specialized languages. It’s important for interlingual translators too, who must know the genres to translate them.

General features of specialized languages

• Monoreferentiality: Each word has only one referent, the meaning of a word in a specialized context is different from the meaning in general English (ex. mouse = animal and computer tool). However, some words in specialized fields can be characterized by polysemy.
• Precision: It is essential because any ambiguity might lead to disastrous consequences, even putting lives in danger (ex. language of the law, medicine, technology).
• Conciseness: Tendency to pack information into the shortest possible linguistic form. Presence of complex nominal groups, compounds, acronyms, and abbreviations.
• Transparency: In compound words in specialized languages, analyzing each component of the word, the meaning will become apparent.
• Lack of emotivity: Specialized language is generally objective and impersonal.

Specialized English is different from general English, in structure, grammar, punctuation, etc. It’s easy to be tricked.