This volume offers a fresh intercultural perspective on the discursive and rhetorical challenges non-Anglophone scholars face while writing and publishing in English for an international readership. ...The volume presents a wide spectrum of text-based intercultural analyses of academic texts written in L2 English. Placed in the context of a rapidly increasing role of English as the universal language of scientific and scholarly communication, the contributions attempt to explore native language influence on L2 English academic texts or, conversely, the influence of rhetorical or discursive features of English on L2 texts. Covering texts from Chinese to Lithuanian authors, the chapters in this volume offer a rich selection of lexico-grammatical, discursive and rhetorical elements analysed and compared across genres, disciplines and languages both within synchronic and diachronic perspectives. This volume will be of interest to both experienced and novice researchers in such fields as English for Academic Purposes, Intercultural Rhetoric, Genre Theory, Corpus Linguistics, and English as a Lingua Franca.
English Medium Instruction (EMI) is being fostered by universities across the world to promote their internationalization with an increasing number of courses taught through English both at graduate ...and postgraduate level. This requires university lecturers to be offered opportunities for professional development. It is the aim of this paper to present an extended training programme -CLIC@unizar (Content and Language Integrated Competences at the Universidad de Zaragoza)- developed at our institution which seeks to foster not only the communicative skills but also the pedagogical skills of those lecturers teaching through the medium of English or who are planning to do so. The training itinerary is grounded on previous research on EMI professional development programmes, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP), and methodological principles promoting the students’ active role and their development of communication and digital competences. The use of digital tools and technologies which promote online collaboration, especially HyperDocs and Google Apps for Education (mostly Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Forms), has been integrated in the itinerary following the SAMR Model (Puentedura, 2013). The use of these digital tools has allowed us to include multimodal ways to provide participants with input, make them interact with the material, with us and among themselves, and produce output as demonstrations of their learning. It is essential to make ICLHE (Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education) teachers aware of their need to adapt their methodology or adopt new ones to be effective in their teaching in an L2.
Role of POLE and POLD1 in familial cancer Mur, Pilar; García-Mulero, Sandra; Del Valle, Jesús ...
Genetics in medicine,
12/2020, Letnik:
22, Številka:
12
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Germline pathogenic variants in the exonuclease domain (ED) of polymerases POLE and POLD1 predispose to adenomatous polyps, colorectal cancer (CRC), endometrial tumors, and other malignancies, and ...exhibit increased mutation rate and highly specific associated mutational signatures. The tumor spectrum and prevalence of POLE and POLD1 variants in hereditary cancer are evaluated in this study.
POLE and POLD1 were sequenced in 2813 unrelated probands referred for genetic counseling (2309 hereditary cancer patients subjected to a multigene panel, and 504 patients selected based on phenotypic characteristics). Cosegregation and case-control studies, yeast-based functional assays, and tumor mutational analyses were performed for variant interpretation.
Twelve ED missense variants, 6 loss-of-function, and 23 outside-ED predicted-deleterious missense variants, all with population allele frequencies <1%, were identified. One ED variant (POLE p.Met294Arg) was classified as likely pathogenic, four as likely benign, and seven as variants of unknown significance. The most commonly associated tumor types were colorectal, endometrial and ovarian cancers. Loss-of-function and outside-ED variants are likely not pathogenic for this syndrome.
Polymerase proofreading-associated syndrome constitutes 0.1-0.4% of familial cancer cases, reaching 0.3-0.7% when only CRC and polyposis are considered. ED variant interpretation is challenging and should include multiple pieces of evidence.
Although research articles (RAs) have been frequently characterised by impersonal language, which entails the use of nominalisations and passive sentences, self-mentions, that is, explicit references ...to the RA author(s), are found to intermingle with those impersonal constructions. These self-references can be considered a rhetorical strategy that scholars may use to present themselves as authorial selves, promoting themselves and outlining their specific, novel contribution to their discipline. This paper aims at quantitatively and qualitatively analysing the use and distribution of self-mentions—realised by self-references (i.e., first person singular and plural pronouns and possessive adjectives) and self-citations—in a comparable corpus of business management RAs written in English for an international readership by scholars based at North American universities and RAs written in Spanish for a national readership by scholars based at Spanish universities. The former were found to make greater use of self-mentions than the latter. Significant differences were also found in the distribution of self-mentions and the rhetorical functions both groups of scholars most commonly perform through the use of exclusive
we. The different results in both sub-corpora suggest that the use of self-mentions in RAs is not only conditioned by the discipline to which the authors belong but also by the specific cultural context in which RAs are produced and distributed.
To ensure the global communication and visibility of their investigations, international research projects leverage online settings and endorse specific digital academic practices. Twitter as a ...Social Medium for Research Purposes has become an effective outlet to widely disseminate their project development, knowledge production and research findings. To meet these aims, research groups display pragmatic strategies responding to three overarching communicative intentions –informative, interactional and promotional– as well as metadiscursive markers to establish links through their texts with the audience. This paper analyses these practices by looking into the metadiscoursal realisations of a taxonomy of twenty-seven data-driven pragmatic strategies in ten Horizon2020 research project Twitter accounts. First, we revisit metadiscursive adjustments for the digital environment of Twitter. Then, we identify salient metadiscourse features instantatiating the pragmatic strategies using NVivo. In general, interactional metadiscursive features predominate over interactive ones, being attitude markers, self-mentions and directives characteristic markers in informative, promotional and interactional strategies, respectively. Moreover, some metadiscourse categories are found to rely on non-verbal markers for their realisation. The analysis expands the understanding of complex digital discursive practices developed by researchers to disseminate their results, account for their funding, make themselves visible and engage multiple audiences.
The communication of science goes hand in hand with technological development and, in general, with the need to apply scientific advancements to the improvement of human wellbeing ...
The expression of attitudinal meaning is negotiated in research articles (RAs) on the basis of shared disciplinary values. The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of the broader cultural context ...in the expression of attitudinal values, trying to ascertain to what extent language/culture values may be overridden by disciplinary ones. Thus, the paper explores attitude markers in a corpus of RAs from Business Management in two different sociocultural contexts: international American and local Spanish. Overall, results indicate a similar frequency of use and tendencies in the rhetorical purposes of attitude markers in the two sub‐corpora. It could be concluded that a common set of disciplinary values is shared by scholars from these two cultural contexts in this field when publishing their RAs.
La expresión de contenidos atitudinales se negocia en los artículos de investigación con arreglo a valores disciplinares compartidos por sus miembros. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el papel del contexto cultural más amplio en el que se enmarca el artículo de investigación publicado en la expresión de valores atitudinales, con el propósito de discernir hasta qué punto los valores disciplinares pueden suprimir aquellos de índole lingüística/cultural. Así, el artículo analiza el uso de marcadores atitudinales en un corpus de artículos de investigación en Dirección y Organización de Empresas en dos contextos socio culturales diferentes: el norteamericano (internacional) y el español (local). En términos generales, los resultados indican una frecuencia de uso y tendencias en los propósitos retóricos de los marcadores atitudinales similares en los dos corpora. De estos resultados se infiere que existe un conjunto de valores disciplinares compartidos por ambos grupos de autores, pertenecientes a distintos ámbitos socioculturales, pero al mismo campo disciplinar, a la hora de publicar sus artículos de investigación.
Early-onset colorectal cancer (EOCRC), defined as that diagnosed before the age of 50, accounts for 10-12% of all new colorectal cancer (CRC) diagnoses. Epidemiological data indicate that EOCRC ...incidence is increasing, despite the observed heterogeneity among countries. Although the cause for such increase remains obscure, ≈13% (range: 9-26%) of EOCRC patients carry pathogenic germline variants in known cancer predisposition genes, including 2.5% of patients with germline pathogenic variants in hereditary cancer genes traditionally not associated with CRC predisposition. Approximately 28% of EOCRC patients have family history of the disease. This article recapitulates current evidence on the inherited syndromes that predispose to EOCRC and its familial component. The evidence gathered support that all patients diagnosed with an EOCRC should be referred to a specialized genetic counseling service and offered somatic and germline pancancer multigene panel testing. The identification of a germline pathogenic variant in a known hereditary cancer gene has relevant implications for the clinical management of the patient and his/her relatives, and it may guide surgical and therapeutic decisions. The relative high prevalence of hereditary cancer syndromes and familial component among EOCRC patients supports further research that helps understand the genetic background, either monogenic or polygenic, behind this increasingly common disease.
► The language and context of publication affect the use of metadiscourse in business management RAs. ► Local RAs in Spanish and international RAs in English feature a different use of metadiscourse. ...► The divergent use of metadiscourse creates a different writer–reader relationship in each context. ► Differences in the encoding of interpersonality should be taken into account by prospective RA authors. ► Disciplinary fields can present language/cultural sub-sets which show different writing conventions.
In the last few decades the interpersonal nature of academic communication has been stressed in English for Academic Purposes literature. Taking metadiscourse as the analytical framework, this paper focuses on the cross-cultural analysis of interpersonally driven features in research article writing in a single discipline, Business Management. It aims at analysing to what extent the different contexts (i.e. the US international and the Spanish national) influence the strategic use of metadiscourse features in this discipline. The analysis is based on a corpus of 24 research articles from this discipline: 12 of them written in English by scholars based at North-American institutions and published in international journals, and another 12 written in Spanish by Spanish scholars and published in national journals. Significant differences are reported on the overall frequency of metadiscourse features as well as on the particular incidence of some categories in the two sub-corpora. The particular linguistic/cultural contexts of publication seem to influence scholars’ rhetorical choices when writing their research articles. New knowledge appears to be interpersonally negotiated in different terms in research articles in the two cultural contexts within this disciplinary domain.
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