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Introduction to the special issue on ESP

The trilingual Sufi dictionary is a pioneer work, still in progress, which is being prepared under the framework of the Applied Linguistics team at the Institute of Research and Studies for Arabization in Rabat-Morocco. The researchers have produced the entries of Arabic Sufi terms with their Arabic definition. These specialized Sufi terms are drawn from Islamic Sufism and can be mostly found in the Qur’an or in the Hadith (Prophet Muhammad’s sayings). Hence, the translation practice referred to in this paper is not only a linguistic process involving the transfer from one language to another (Arabic to English), but also the communication of the Islamic Sufi culture to a foreign culture. As a team member in the Sufi dictionary project contributing to the English translation, I seek in this study to point out the difficulties and challenges encountered and to discuss the extent to which the English language can be accurate for the translation of certain complex Sufi terms and concepts. The data of this paper consists of my English translation of the Sufi dictionary terms, as collected and defined by the group of researchers in Sufism, as well as of my insights offered during terminology meetings. The main challenge of this translation lies in the figurative and referential nature of the Sufi terms during their transfer to English, which is linguistically and culturally different from Arabic.

We know little about the language adolescents use to express their health concerns. Using a mixed-method approach composed of corpus and discourse analysis, this study examines a portion of two and a half million word corpus made up of health questions on different issues and their relative answers. Focussing on these questions and answers posted on the internet resource Go Ask Alice!, the study first delineates patterns of communication and then discusses these as examples of Mishler’s concepts of voice of lifeworld and voice of medicine. According to Mishler the voice of medicine manifests a technical interest and signals a scientific attitude. The voice of lifeworld is characterized by non-technical discourse and directly relates to the patients’ subjective experiences of illness. In particular, the study investigates the ways in which adolescents and health specialists devise their salutations, closings, and pronoun address forms in email. Drawing similar conclusions to those reached by Stommel (2012), the present analysis reveals that health professionals initially use a generic formal recipient design (e.g. Dear Reader) and close emails by giving advice in an authoritative and/or affective stance, whereas adolescents frequently use informal salutations and closings. Furthermore, the pronominal reference in the professionals’ answers can be considered in inclusion (solidarity) and exclusion (power) terms. But the use of third person references in the adolescents’ technical accounts of their own health concerns have a strategic implication for the allocation of blame and responsibility on an external third party. Such linguistic subtleties found in the results suggest that the voice of medicine and the voice of lifeworld are not exclusively employed by doctors and patients respectively. Rather, as health professionals modulate their tone in order to achieve different goals – such as repairing asymmetry in discourse roles – results show how the voice of medicine and the voice of lifeworld categories overlap and adequately describe what actually happens in healthcare discourse.

This paper provides an overview of the current theoretical debate about the relationships between ESP and CLIL. Four domains are considered: 1) the ESP and CLIL continua and their intersection points in order to specify the boundaries of both; 2) the presence of ESP in the theoretical models which attempt to define the different types of language converging in the CLIL event, such as the Language Triptych and the Languages for CLIL model; 3) suggested potential synergies between the two, with special attention to practices which have proven successful in ESP such as needs analysis and genre analysis; 4) classroom research-based recommendations for the reorientation of CLIL along with the principles of ESP/ EAP, since knowledge of the actual language spoken in CLIL classrooms could provide insights for the identification of achievements and weaknesses. The analysis of these issues reveals promising areas for future research and for identifying challenges for the theoretical foundations of CLIL and for effective practice and teacher training.

This paper investigates the popularisation of specialised knowledge via TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Talks. In particular, it explores the linguistic characteristics of talks dated 2010–2015 whose topics involve scientific knowledge. The paper aims to show, on the one hand, the popularising effects of the Internet on scientific discourse and, on the other hand, the contribution of TED to science popularisation and ESP. In particular, it focuses on three aspects of TED Talks: 1) reduced technicality in both content and vocabulary (vs. the specificity of scientific language or jargon), 2) the informal register and conversational or humorous tone (vs. the serious tone of, e.g., medical discourse concerning health risks), and 3) the preference for narrative (vs. informative, expository, or argumentative) text type. In line with popularisation Discourse Analysis, these features contribute to convey scientific knowledge to a wider audience. Hence, they qualify scientific TED Talks as a novel popularisation genre that disseminates specialised knowledge worldwide, by addressing specialists as well as non-expert recipients. The investigation of scientific TED Talks also shows how the Internet revolutionises specialised discourse and its relevant participants, turning one-way scientific communication into public conversations with multiple participants.

This study stems from the international project LUCIDE and its findings on the benefits of multilingualism in urban communities, and illustrates their applicability to the academic context and communities. The aim is to present evidence and reasons why supporting multilingualism is advisable and to offer suggestions in order to enhance multilingualism in academic writing. It draws both from the LUCIDE research on urban multilingualism and from recent research on English as a Lingua Franca and on the consequences for plurilingual researchers of the fact that English is the most widespread language in academic writing. Research in the above-mentioned fields seems to show that promoting multilingual practices brings practical advantages to researchers and institutions in terms of regained confidence in individual voices, even while still choosing to write in English. According to such research, promoting multilingualism is also important in terms of engaging with non-Anglophone (not necessarily local) communities of practice and target audiences, embracing the richness of diverse cultures and profiting from the specific abilities, creativity and competences that plurilingual researchers with a multicultural background have been shown to possess. Another reason for enhancing multilingual practices in academic communities is that it brings institutions and their practices closer to the everyday experiences and realities of multilingual and multicultural European cities.

Academic discourse has been a much-explored field of research, especially scientific academic discourse. Recently, research interest has also focused on institutional academic discourse; in particular, CDA research has pointed out how university discourse has undergone a process of marketization. In changing their communicative style, universities tend to borrow commercial models and words from the business domain and use persuasive techniques. In addition, significant theoretical investigation on the interaction between visuals and language has demonstrated that technological developments have led to the fact that visuals are becoming increasingly central in communicative events. Against this framework the present paper aims at exploring how students, one of the main addressees of web-mediated university communication, are depicted in both visual and written components of the websites. To this purpose, a corpus of web pages of UK universities has been assembled. The corpus-based analysis of the AcWaC-Eu corpus, a 40-million word corpus, has been integrated by a multimodal analysis of a subcorpus of English university websites. The analyses have highlighted the existing trend of representing students as ‘consumers’ to whom a full array of services and possibilities is offered.

The main aim of this study is to carry out a socio-linguistic analysis of definitions adopted in online glossaries for the conceptualisation of immigrant integration and closely related terms with regard to processes (integration, migration, immigration) and actors (host society, migrant, immigrant). Migration to a country changes the size and the composition of the receiving country or society raising problems of adaptation between the citizens of the host country and the newcomers in operationalising processes of acceptance of migrants with a view to creating and maintaining forms of immigrant integration. In order to be successful, enhancing bilateral adaptation should be a primary objective at institutional level. On the one hand, the newcomers have to adapt to the indigenous population and the institutions of the host society, on the other hand, the host society and its institutions have to give opportunities to the newcomers to co-act and co-construct ways of living together. In light of this, studies of immigrant integration have produced a number of different terms, like “absorption, adaptation, race relations cycle, assimilation, acculturation, inclusion, incorporation (…) ‘integration’” (Bosswick & Heckmann 2006, p. 2). The terms under scrutiny in the present paper are analysed in definitions adopted in online glossaries (namely EU and IOM) in an attempt to shed light on the role of definitions as elements in argumentation (cf. Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, (1958) 1966) and social transformation as a set of moves in “re-scaling” the discourse of immigrant integration (cf. Fairclough 2007). Some vagueness in language resulted from ideological implications in definitions and calls for redefinition in view of clarity of intent towards acceptance and respect for a more effective cooperation and inclusion among institutions and social actors.

The article is an endeavour to delineate and classify statutory texts in English contingent on the various legal contexts they originate in. It starts with an overview and a critique of the different classifications of legal traditions followed by a proposal for an approach to systematizing legal systems based on Bhatia’s (2010) multidimensional and multi-perspective model for analysing written discourse which underpins the importance of context in genre theory.