Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This study offers a linguistic analysis of language borrowing in expertly produced paraphrases. Within the context of higher education, paraphrase writing, an essential skill for source-based writing tasks across the curriculum and a key component in the development of disciplinary expertise, represents a challenge for students and teachers because 1) there is no precise and generally accepted definition of acceptable academic paraphrase, 2) discussions of paraphrase are more often framed in terms of plagiarism than effective writing, and 3) little is known about the linguistic (or rhetorical dimensions) of paraphrases in writing published by experts. The present study analyzes five corpora of paraphrase/source passage pairs (n = 233) produced by expert writers. Corpora 1 and 2 contain exemplar paraphrase/source passage pairs drawn from writing guides and handbooks designed for college students. The remaining three corpora of paraphrase/source passage pairings were assembled using award-winning published articles in three disciplines. Using Keck’s (2006) taxonomy for classifying paraphrases, the study found that about 27% of the average paraphrase of the expert writers analyzed here is made up of language found in the source passage. Paraphrase patterns of expert academic writers point toward a potential continuum of acceptable language borrowing practices likely driven by disciplinary differences. Implications for writing development, writing pedagogy, plagiarism policy, and further research are discussed.

El objetivo de este trabajo es describir tres investigaciones desarrolladas en el contexto de intercambios y aportes de la Red Argentina de Instituciones Lectoras y Escritoras de Educación Superior, RAILEES, que estudian las prácticas letradas en la formación de grado. Comparten una perspectiva crítica y democratizadora de los conocimientos en el nivel superior, con aportes de resultados a políticas institucionales que involucran la alfabetización académica, disciplinar y profesional como vías privilegiadas para acceder, participar y producir conocimiento, según las particularidades de cada campo del saber.

Writing proficiently in any language requires knowing about much more than grammar, lexis, register, genres, audience and rhetorical situation. It also requires that writers call upon implicit sociocultural and contextual inferences made via indexes. Indexes convey a wide range of sociocultural information about social background, professional and cultural identity, affective and epistemological positioning, gender and ethnicity. The ways in which this information is indexed, however, can vary significantly from one language to another, making indexicality a significant concern for international writers as they negotiate their positions through writing. This paper describes a novel method in writing research, indexical analysis, which is used to identify how French politeness norms are indexed in application letters written in English by first-language (L1) French students. It was found that although their writing was considered grammatically correct, divergences in terms of where and how politeness was expressed resulted in a negative evaluation by readers. Developing more conscious awareness of the implicit norms that organize thoughts and attitudes for both writers and readers may allow for better recognition of how indexes may differ across languages.

Chile has received massive waves of immigration in a relatively short time, notably from Haiti. These migratory movements have highlighted the lack of preparation of Chilean public schools to incorporate young people from Haiti, or other non-Spanish-speaking students, into the educational system. The creation of public policies to address the teaching of Spanish as an additional language in school would help these adolescents achieve a higher level of academic and socio-cultural integration; however, there is resistance among teachers, administrators, and education scholars on this point. In this article, we aim to show how these resistances stem from a lack of consideration regarding what the teaching and learning of an additional language truly implies.

This study aimed to contrast metadiscourse use across languages in abstracts in the field of Soil Science. Three corpora were compared: abstracts published in Spanish by Spanish speakers; abstracts published in English by Spanish speakers; and abstracts published in English by English speakers. Metadiscourse occurrences were qualitatively coded using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software and interpreted in relation to independent variables language of publication, writers’ dominant language, and abstract rhetorical structure. Findings suggest an overall preference for boosting and a tendency to rely heavily on interpersonal features when presenting and discussing research outcomes, which may be accounted for in terms of the promotional function of the genre. Contrastive corpus analysis indicates a shift from Spanish local patterns of interaction when publishing in English towards dominating patterns of negotiation in the additional language, which might be attributed to the external demands posed by differing socio-pragmatic contexts of publication. Few divergencies observed in the use of hedging features and in the setting up of research background might indicate coexisting communication patterns and deliberate participation strategies by Spanish speakers.

This plenary address reconsiders the impact of writing on culture and governance in the ancient Middle East and China.

Modern binarism and coloniality is the reign of 'the one', they constitute an 'episteme of the expurgation', a logical relation of exteriority and exclusion. But, in addition, with the binary identity formula of the supposedly universal and neutral one, and the other, which is only a surplus, an anomaly, the transit and circulation between the collective positions are closed, since they all become colonized by a logic univocal. Here then the problem of difference arises, or rather, difference arises as a problem. In the worldview of Western coloniality, the different is invalidated as such, thereby unleashing an 'eternal war' against difference. We see here that that 'primal unity' is not just any random unity, but rather a unity of which only Western culture is considered the legitimate heir, the unity of origin is the truth of the West. From this logic, the present work tries to investigate and open some paths that make possible the possible break with the binarism of Western coloniality present in language and the exploration and search for new linguistics, others that are located from other vital spaces where the subalternities and a recognition of the other.

La situación de desplazamiento de la lengua mapuche ha motivado el desarrollo de políticas públicas para su revitalización, pero aún no se dispone de un instrumento para medir la competencia en Mapudungun en niños. Se presenta Mapudunguken un Cuestionario de competencia oral en Mapudungun y se describe su proceso de construcción. Participaron del estudio 99 escolares (6 a 11 años) de escuelas rurales de la región de La Araucanía. Los resultados mostraron bajos niveles de desempeño. Los índices de confiabilidad fueron aceptables, y por tanto se concluye que el instrumento cumple con las condiciones necesarias para evaluar la competencia lingüística en mapudungun.

Introduction: infections associated with health care (IACS) have a strong social and economic impact; likewise, they constitute an indicator of the quality of care in hospitals. Objective: to identify the risk factors that influence independently to acquire bacteremia associated with health care.Methods: an observational, analytical study of cases and controls was carried out, 48 cases and 144 controls were selected. With a ratio of 1:3. Univariate and multivariate statistical analysis was performed.Results: in the univariate analysis, comorbidity, the use of a nasogastric tube and a bladder catheter did not show a statistically significant influence, while the multivariate analysis showed that the most important independent factor was the use of a central venous catheter (OR 11,837 adjusted CI 95% 4,493–31,180), followed by the presence of septic shock on admission to the PICU (OR 4,908 adjusted 95% CI 1,152-20,907) and the presence of ostomies (adjusted OR 10.44 95% CI 2,806−17,836) in a similar way.Conclusions: comorbidity, the use of a nasogastric tube and the use of a bladder catheter did not contribute to the risk of acquiring healthcare-associated bacteremia.The presence of a central venous catheter, the presence of septic shock on admission to the PICU, and the presence of ostomies were the highest risk factors.