Authoring support for Spanish language writersa genre-restricted case study

  1. Rosa Rabadán
  2. Isabel Pizarro
  3. Hugo Sanjurjo-González
Revista:
Revista española de lingüística aplicada

ISSN: 0213-2028

Año de publicación: 2021

Volumen: 34

Número: 2

Páginas: 671-711

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.1075/RESLA.19048.RAB DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Otras publicaciones en: Revista española de lingüística aplicada

Resumen

Authoring support consists of (semi)automated aids to be used at different stages during the writing process. Language information, however, tends to be restricted to areas such as spelling and grammar checking or term banks, and text construction difficulties that writers face concerning the structure of particular genres, associated sentence formulations or genre-specific vocabulary have not received proper attention. An additional gap in the research is that this support is generally addressed to English language users. This paper addresses these concerns focusing on a particular genre: the company’s directors’ report, and on Spanish language writers writing in English. A custom-made monolingual corpus has been analyzed using Bhatia (1993, 2004) and Swales (1990, 2004) definitions of genre and move combined with theme characterization. Recurrent strings for each move/step, which are conventionally associated with each rhetorical unit, were identified and formulated as “meta-strings.” The bilingual glossary includes domain-specific items as well as move/step or genre-specific lexical and phraseological options, i.e., elements used irrespective of the business, places or people involved. The results are valuable by themselves, as an analysis of the genre, but also as the empirical basis for the authoring support tool that we present here, and as language training materials.

€ Ver financiación

Información de financiación

This research has been funded by the Spanish Agency for Research, Development and Innovation (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) [FFI2016-75672-R].

Financiadores

Referencias bibliográficas

  • Adolphson, E. (1998) Writing instruction and controlled language applications: Panel discussion on standardization. InProceedings of the Second International Workshop on Controlled Language Applications (p.191). Pittsburgh, PA: Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University.
  • Altenberg, B. (1988) On the phraseology of spoken English: the evidence of recurrent word-combinations. InA. Cowie (Ed.), Phraseology: Theory, analysis and applications (pp.101–122). Oxford, UK: OUP.
  • Anthony, L. (2014) AntConc (Windows Version 3.4.3) [Computer software].
  • Berber-Sardinha, T. (2000) Comparing Corpora with WordSmith Tools: How large must the reference corpus be?InA. Kilgarriff & T. Berber Sardinha (Eds.), Proceedings of The Workshop on Comparing Corpora, Held in conjunction with The 38th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2000) (pp.7–13). New Brunswick, NJ: Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.3115/1117729.1117731
  • Bhatia, V. K. (1993) Analysing genre: Language use in professional settings. London: Longman.
  • Bhatia, V. K. (2004) Worlds of written discourse: A genre-based view. London: Continuum.
  • Bhatia, V. K. (2010) Intercursivity in professional discourse. Discourse & Communication, 21(1), 32–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481309351208
  • Biber, D. & Conrad, S. (2009) Register, genre, and style. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511814358
  • Biber, D., Connor, U., & Upton, T. A. (2007) (Eds). Discourse on the move. Using corpus analysis to describe discourse structure. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.28
  • Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. https://doi.org/10.1162/089120101300346831
  • Bondi, M. (2011) Perspectives on keywords and keyness: An introduction. InM. Bondi and M. Scott (Eds.), Keyness in texts (pp.1–18). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.41.01bon
  • Cortes, V. (2004) Lexical bundles in published and student disciplinary writing: Examples from history and biology. English for Specific Purposes, 23(4), 397–423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2003.12.001
  • David, C. (2001) Mythmaking in annual reports. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 15(2), 195–222. https://doi.org/10.1177/105065190101500203
  • De Groot, E. B. (2008) English annual reports in Europe: a study on the identification and reception of genre characteristics in multimodal annual reports originating in the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom. Utrecht: LOT.
  • Delahaye, A., Booth, C., Clark, P., Procter, S. & Rowlinson, M. (2009) The genre of corporate history. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 22 (1), 27–48. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810910933898
  • Ditlevsen, M. G. (2010) The diversity of the annual report in an international context, Fachsprache3–4, 163–178. https://doi.org/10.24989/fs.v32i3-4.1396
  • Ditlevsen, M. G. (2012) Telling the story of Danisco’s annual reports (1935 through 2007–2008) from a communicative perspective, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 26(1), 92–115. https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651911421132
  • Dragsted, B. (2014) A case study of letters to shareholders in annual reports before, during and after the financial crisis. LSP Journal, 5(2), 84–104.
  • Ebeling, J., & Ebeling, S. O. (2013) Patterns in contrast. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.58
  • EUR-Lex (2015) eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32015L0849. Last accessed5 November 2021.
  • Flowerdew, J. & Wan, A.(2010) The linguistic and the contextual in applied genre analysis: The case of the company audit report. English for Specific Purposes, 29(1), 78–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2009.07.001
  • Garzone, G. (2004) Annual company reports and CEO’s letters: Discoursal features and cultural markedness. InC. N. Candlin & M. Gotti (Eds.), Intercultural Aspects of Specialized Communication (pp.311–341). Bern: Peter Lang.
  • Garzone, G. (2005) Letters to shareholders and Chairman’s statements: Textual variability and generic integrity. InP. Gillaerts & M. Gotti (Eds.), Genre Variation in Business Letters (pp.179–204). Bern: Peter Lang.
  • Gómez González, M. A. & García Varela, A. P. (2014) Discourse-organizational patterns in English and Spanish. Some notes on the thematic management of news reports. RESLA, 27(1), 87 – 117. https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.27.1.04gom
  • Henry, A., & Roseberry, R. L. (2001) A narrow-angled corpus analysis of moves and strategies of the genre: Letter of application. English for Specific Purposes, 20(2), 153–167. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(99)00037-X
  • Hyland, K. (1998) Exploring Corporate Rhetoric: Metadiscourse in the CEO’s letter. The Journal of Business Communication, 35(2), 224–245. https://doi.org/10.1177/002194369803500203
  • Hyland, K. (2008) Academic clusters: Text patterning in published and postgraduate writing. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 18(1), 41–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2008.00178.x
  • Izquierdo, M., Pizarro, I., & Rabadán, R. (2015) Keyness across business genres: Audit Reports and Directors’ Reports. Paper presented at the36 ICAME conference. 27–31 May 2015. Universität Trier.
  • Jameson, D. A. (2000) Telling the investment story: A narrative analysis of shareholder reports. International Journal of Business Communication, 37(1), 7–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/002194360003700101
  • Johnson, S., & Ensslin, A. (2006) Language in the news: Some reflections on keyword analysis using WordSmith Tools and the BNC. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics, 11: 96–109.
  • Kashiha, H., & Chan, S. H. (2014) Using multi-word units to take a stance in academic lectures. Journal of Language and Communication1(1). 31–40.
  • Kohl, J. (2008) The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market. Cary, North Carolina: SAS Publishing.
  • Kohut, G. F. & Segars, A. H. (1992) The president’s letter to stockholders: An examination of corporate communication strategy. International Journal of Business Communication, 29(1), 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/002194369202900101
  • Kuhn, T. (2014) A survey and classification of controlled natural languages. Computational Linguistics40(1), 121–170. doi:  10.1162/COLI_a_00168 https://doi.org/10.1162/COLI_a_00168
  • Kwan, B. S. C. (2006) The schematic structure of literature reviews in doctoral theses of applied linguistics, English for Specific Purposes, 25, 30–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2005.06.001
  • Lewin, B. A., Fine, J. & Young, L. (2001) Expository discourse: A genre-based approach to social science research texts. London: Continuum.
  • Mobasher, A., Ali, A. M., Abdullah, F. S., & Chan, M. Y. (2013) Review of studies on corporate annual reports during 1990–2012. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 2(2), 133–141. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.2n.2p.133
  • Moreno, A. I. & Swales, J. (2018) Strengthening move analysis methodology towards bridging the function-form gap. English for Specific Purposes, 50, 40–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2017.11.006
  • Nickerson, C. & De Groot, E. B. (2005) Dear shareholder, dear stockholder, dear stakeholder: The business letter genre in the annual general report. InP. Gillaerts & M. Gotti (Eds.), Genre variation in business letters. (pp.325–346). Bern: Peter Lang.
  • Oevermann, J. & Ziegler, W. (2018) Automated classification of content components in technical communication. Computational Intelligence, 34(1), 30–48. doi:  10.1111/coin.12157 https://doi.org/10.1111/coin.12157
  • Parkinson, J. (2017) The student laboratory report genre: A genre analysis. English for Specific Purposes, 45(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2016.08.001
  • Pizarro Sánchez, I. (2017) A corpus-based analysis of genre-specific multi-word combinations: Minutes in English and Spanish. InE. Egan & H. Dirdal (eds.), Cross-linguistic correspondences. From lexis to genre. (pp.221–252). Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.191.09san
  • Prasad, A. & Mir, R. (2002) Digging deep for meaning: A critical hermeneutic analysis of CEO letters to shareholders in the oil industry. Journal of Business Communications, 39(1). 92–116. https://doi.org/10.1177/002194360203900105
  • Rabadán, R. (2016) Proposals in meeting minutes An English-Spanish corpus-based study. Languages in Contrast, 16 (2), 213–238. https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.16.2.03rab
  • Rabadán, R., V. Colwell & H. Sanjurjo-González (2016) BiTeXting your food: Helping the gastro industry reach the global market. InA. Moreno Ortiz and C. Pérez-Hernández (eds.), CILC2016 (EPiC Series in Language and Linguistics, vol.1) (pp.361–371).https://doi.org/10.29007/4xtp
  • Rutherford, B. A. (2005) Genre analysis of corporate annual report narratives. A corpus linguistics-based approach. International Journal of Business Communication, 42(4), 349–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021943605279244
  • Sanjurjo-González, H., H. Alaiz-Moretón, N. Ramón, B. Labrador and I. García (2019) Developing an open writing aid for non-native speakers of English: An ontology-based approach, 14th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI) (pp.1–6). Coimbra, Portugal: IEEE. https://doi.org/10.23919/CISTI.2019.8760895
  • Scott, M. (2008) WordSmith Tools (Version 5). [Computer software]. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.
  • Scott, M., and Tribble, C. (2006) Textual patterns: Keyword and corpus analysis in language education. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 10.1075/scl.22 https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.22
  • Siegel, M. (2018) Authoring support for controlled language and machine translation: A report from practice. InG. Rehm, F. Sasaki, D. Stein & A. Witt (Eds.), Language technologies for a multilingual Europe (pp.85–102). Berlin: Language Science Press.
  • Suter, H.-J. (1993) The wedding report. A prototypical approach to the study of traditional text types. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.27
  • Swales, J. (1990) Genre analysis. English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Swales, J. (2004) Research genres: Exploration and analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139524827
  • Thomas, J. (1997) Discourse in the marketplace: The making of meaning in annual reports. Journal of Business Communication, 34(1), 47–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/002194369703400103
  • Upton, T. A. & Cohen, M. A. (2009) An approach to corpus-based discourse analysis: The move analysis as example, Discourse Studies, 11(5), 585–605. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445609341006
  • Yang, R., & Allison, D. (2003) Research articles in applied linguistics: Moving from results to conclusions, English for Specific Purposes, 22(4), 365–385. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(02)00026-1
  • Zanola, A. (2010) The annual report: an interdisciplinary approach to a ‘contaminated’ new genre. Paper presented at theconference Genre on the move. Hybridization and discourse change in specialized communication. Naples, December 9, 2009. https://www.academia.edu/28961086/THE_ANNUAL_REPORT_AN_INTERDISCIPLINARY_APPROACH_TO_A_CONTAMINATED_NEW_GENRE_diLast accessed5 November 2021.
Fuente de los datos: Dialnet