«While pragmatics has been consistently defined as the study of language in its sociocultural context, it is unclear what an individual needs to know in order to be pragmatically competent and communicate appropriately and effectively in a given situation»

Veronika Timpe-Laughlin, Jennifer Wain and Jonathan Schmidgall
«Defining and Operationalizing the Construct of Pragmatic Competence: Review and Recommendations»
ETS Research Report Series, vol. 2015, n.º 1

ETS Research Report Series (@ETSresearch) | Educational Testing Service | Princeton | New Jersey | United States of America

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«Abstract

»This review paper constitutes the first step within a larger research effort to develop an interactive pragmatics learning tool for second and foreign language (L2) learners and users of English. The tool will primarily endeavor to support pragmatics learning within the language use domain “workplace.” Given this superordinate objective, this paper is subdivided into 2 parts.

»In the first section, we provide a detailed overview of previous (empirical) research, theories, and frameworks of communicative competence to review the role of pragmatics as an essential component of L2 communicative language ability. A principled, systematic, and exhaustive literature search was conducted via key word searches, and the selected literature was categorized and coded using NVivo 10 software.

»Next, 12 distinct models of communicative language ability that contain components of pragmatic knowledge were identified and analyzed.

»The commonly identified constitutive components were then reconceptualized into a proposed construct of pragmatic competence. The challenges of operationalizing pragmatic competence in both instruction and assessment are discussed.

»The second part of the paper constitutes a domain analysis of pragmatics in the language use domain “workplace.” First, the literature is reviewed for communicative tasks and activities that feature prominently in different workplace settings across various English-speaking countries. Then, we suggest and exemplify different model task types that can be employed in the context of learning and assessment materials that aim to foster pragmatic-functional awareness in both English as a foreign language (EFL)/English as a second language (ESL) learners and first language (L1) speakers alike.

»Pragmatic Competence Revisited

»While pragmatics has been consistently defined as the study of language in its sociocultural context (Crystal, 1985, 1997; Kasper, 1997), it is unclear what an individual needs to know in order to be pragmatically competent and communicate appropriately and effectively in a given situation. In short, what exactly constitutes pragmatic competence?

»To arrive at a construct of pragmatic competence, it is useful to review how pragmatic competence has been conceptualized in various (empirical) studies as well as models and frameworks of CLA. Based on close review of the body of literature identified in the systematic review and the results of different vote counts, we will first present the widespread distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. Second, we will discuss three primary classifications of communicative competence models in which pragmatic competence is situated before finally proposing a construct of pragmatic competence.

»Definition of Key Terms: Knowledge, Competence, Performance

»In this paper, we have adopted the distinction between knowledge, competence/ability, and performance as delineated by Purpura (2004). Knowledge, as Purpura argued, describes “a set of informational structures that are built up through experience and stored in long-term memory” (p. 85) in the form of mental representations. Thus, pragmatic knowledge would comprise mental representations of informational structures related to pragmatics. Pragmatic competence or ability—which we use synonymously—goes beyond mere information structures and also includes “the capacity to use these informational structures in some way” (Purpura, 2004, p. 86; italics in the original) in order to convey meaning. Ultimately, pragmatic performance refers to the use of pragmatic phenomena in actual communicative events.

»Hence, performance is competence that can be observed. However, it is not necessarily a direct reflection of the competence as various factors such as situational constraints, task demands, or memory can interfere with performance.

»A Fundamental Distinction: Pragmalinguistics Versus Sociopragmatics

»As cited and reviewed in almost all of the examined publications, there seems to be a general consensus that pragmatic competence consists of two distinct, yet interrelated subcomponents: pragmalinguistic competence and sociopragmatic competence.

»As defined by Leech (1983), pragmalinguistics constitutes “the more linguistic end of pragmatics” (p. 11), or the linguistic strategies and resources needed to encode and decode a given illocution. For example, a linguistic strategy for making a request is conventional indirectness (e.g., Could you clean the dishes?), while the linguistic resources to realize this conventionally indirect request can include questions, modals, or hedges (Roever, 2006).

»Thus, pragmalinguistics is rather language specific and more closely interrelated with grammatical knowledge. Sociopragmatics, as the “sociological interface of pragmatics” (Leech, 1983, p. 10), is concerned with the rules and conventions of situationally, culturally, and socially appropriate and acceptable language use. This includes knowledge about “the taboos, mutual rights, obligations, and conventional courses of action that apply in a given speech community” (Roever, 2006, p. 230). Thus, a sociopragmatically competent language user—aware of sociocultural variables such as social distance, relative power, and degree of imposition (Brown & Levinson, 1987)—knows when, for example, conventional indirectness may be more appropriate than directness.

»For language users to be pragmatically successful, they must be able to consider, select, and “combine elements from these two areas in accordance with [their] illocutionary, propositional and modal goals” (Kasper, 1989, p. 39). As Roever (2011) contended, “Competent speakers of a target language can recognize a situationally appropriate speech style and produce it, indicating through their use of linguistic features that they recognize the social rules and norms of the speech event” (p. 471).

»Hence, this binary, psycholinguistic structure of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics positions pragmatic competence on a continuum with grammar at the one end and sociology at the other, which makes pragmatic competence an adaptive process mediated by the linguistic resources of an individual as well as the modalities, constraints, and sociocultural conventions of a given language use situation.

»Given this interconnectedness with other areas of language ability, pragmatic competence needs to be considered within the wider context of CLA. Already in 1989, Stalker pointed out that “[t]he theoretical fit of communicative competence with pragmatics is quite unsettled, but needs to be considered” (p. 183)—a call that has surfaced repeatedly in pragmatics literature (e.g., Eslami-Rasekh, 2005; Roever, 2011). In response to that call, a closer look was taken at different models and frameworks of communicative competence to review the role of pragmatics as an indispensable component of (L2) CLA.

»Frameworks of Pragmatic Competence Revisited

»A count of all of the frameworks and models in the examined body of literature identified 12 distinct models of CLA that contained, in one way or another, components of pragmatic knowledge. These reviewed frameworks can roughly be grouped into (a) functional, discourse-oriented models, (b) component models, and (c) componential, meaning-oriented models. However, it needs to be noted that this tripartite classification should not mask the fact that considerable overlaps and similarities exist between frameworks as they draw and build upon one another.

»Functional-Discourse Models

»In three of the frameworks reviewed, pragmatic competence is primarily described and viewed from a functional, discourse-oriented perspective (Bialystok, 1993; Halliday, 1973; van Dijk, 1977). Halliday’s (1973) and Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) conceptualization of the linguistic system, for example, places heavy emphasis on the sociocultural context that mediates meaning in language use situations. They put forth what Canale and Swain (1980) have called a “meaning potential approach to language” (p. 18).

»That is, the social context or system mediates a language user’s behavioral options, which are then realized in a set of semantic options (i.e., what they can mean or the meaning potential), which are then ultimately realized as a set of grammatical options (i.e., the actual utterance). Hence, in Halliday’s view, sociocultural context provides the frame and constraints within which language is organized on multiple levels (strata). The components of the semantic system—ideational, interpersonal, and textual—may be broadly viewed in terms of pragmatic functions and are given principal emphasis.

»The ideational component pertains to the expression of content, including experience (experiential) and abstract relationships (logical). The interpersonal component is concerned with social, affective, and conative functions. The textual component is focused on the language resources needed to create a text, including structural (theme, voice, information structure) and nonstructural (e.g., cohesion). In Halliday’s conceptualization, the three functional components of the semantic system provide organizational structure that is intersected by lexicogrammatical groups.

»This approach emphasizes that grammatical and pragmatic components are inherently intertwined: functional components of the semantic system provide context (i.e., inform sociopragmatic meaning) and thus help determine the relative importance of lexicogrammatical groups across these components.

»A similar discourse focus is maintained by van Dijk (1977), who described language use as a function-oriented, conventional system that has developed over time in a given speech community. Within this view of language, van Dijk framed pragmatic competence as a theory of action. Reminiscent of speech act theory, he argued that “by speaking we DO something” (p. 167) and carry out particular speech acts that carry distinct language use functions. These speech acts in turn are phrased and uttered according to the conventions that govern a given language use context. Thus, pragmatics is understood as dealing with the relationships between utterances and (a) the acts performed through these utterances and (b) the features of the context that promote appropriate language use.

»The former conceptualization concerns the illocutionary force of an utterance, whereas the latter involves the sociolinguistic conventions and norms that are related to language use in a given speech community. Van Dijk argued that the meaning of linguistic acts in the context of specific language use events only becomes accessible in interpretation—a point that is elaborated on by Bialystok (1993) and eventually Purpura (2004).

»Bialystok (1993) described a framework of communicative competence that is largely coherent with Halliday’s (1973) and van Dijk’s (1977) functional, meaning-driven orientations but emphasizes the role of cognitive processing components. Communicative competence (learner competence) is described as a processing ability consisting of two components: analysis of knowledge and control of processing. From a pragmatic perspective, the first component consists of the process of analyzing knowledge in order to decode and encode speech intentions across three levels: conceptual (meaning), formal (structural), and symbolic.

»The second component requires directing attention to relevant and appropriate information to apply pragmatic knowledge in real-time communication. Within this framework, pragmatic competence is described as the use of these processing components across three pragmatic phenomena (turn-taking, cooperation, and cohesion). Bialystok highlights several aspects of the framework that may be particularly relevant for adult L2 learners to develop pragmatic competence, including the need to build or enhance symbolic representations that link forms to social contexts.

»In sum, these three discourse-oriented models view language as a multidimensional (sociosemiotic) system. Therein, pragmatics constitutes a meaning-providing element that is largely synonymous with functional-discourse features. The meaning that is created and mediated through the context becomes overt primarily in the coherent flow of discourse and the interlocutor’s interpretation thereof. Hence, all three models feature a meaning-driven view of language use.

»Limitations and Recommendations for Further Research

»Throughout this paper, we pointed out a number of aspects that require further, empirical investigation if this construct is to be used on a large scale in teaching and assessment. Before we outline future directions for pragmatics research, we need to acknowledge two main limitations of this paper. First, each of the components of pragmatic competence included in the proposed construct would require a book-length treatment to fully outline their nature, intricacies with other language use components, and their role in form-function mapping processes. That is to say, each of the concepts referred to and reviewed in this paper can be discussed in much more detail.

»For example, speech acts as a component of illocutionary knowledge can be discussed further in reference to speech act theory. Moreover, meaning making could further be related to Schmidt’s (1993) noticing hypothesis, Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness, or Sperber andWilson’s (1995) relevance theory. However, given this paper’s focus on pragmatic components in frameworks of CLA, these further connections to branches of philosophy of pragmatics may be added and elaborated on in future scholarly work on pragmatic theory.

»Second, while the construct proposed in this paper strives to account for a variety of languages across a broad range of language use contexts, it is based on research that focused on ELLs. Schneider (2010), for instance, has criticized that “[s]cholars working in the Anglo-American tradition of pragmatics [...] are primarily interested in pragmatic universals, i.e., the fundamental workings of human communication” (p. 249). Given the focus on ELLs in systematically selecting the underlying body of literature, this approach may be equally criticized for an ethnocentric view of seeking pragmatic universals. However, this focus was chosen due to the ultimate goal of the larger project: the development of a theory-based learning and (formative) assessment tool that promotes pragmatic awareness in ELLs.

»In addition to these two main limitations, a number of crucial directions for further research—primarily in relation to the pragmatic construct proposed here—shall be acknowledged. Among the many aspects to be investigated are the following:

»1. A number of implications with regard to pragmatic learning and assessment were outlined; however, an in-depth discussion and examination of the development and acquisition of pragmatic competence is beyond the scope of this paper (for more detailed studies on pragmatic learning, see Kasper & Rose, 2001; Kinginger, 2008; Taguchi, 2012; Timpe, 2013). From a developmental angle, detailed (empirical) investigations of the various sociopsychological factors and their influence on pragmatic learning, form-function processing and use, and L1 influence needs to be conducted.

»2. Although this proposed construct is based on some empirical findings and results from validation studies (Bachman & Palmer, 1982; Grabowski, 2009; Taguchi, 2012), the empirical evidence is scarce and a large number of components still require validation. For example, research on cognitive processing of form-function mapping processes may shed light on the interconnectedness of pragmatic-functional knowledge and other language components. Moreover, rhetorical and interpersonal meanings as put forth by Purpura (2004) were included in the proposed construct. However, these types of meaning have not been empirically validated yet.

»3. The construct of pragmatics proposed here focuses exclusively on verbal communication skills. However, as Savignon (1983, 2002) argued, the nonverbal dimension of communication needs to be considered as well in order to account for the multimodality of language and, thus, provide for a holistic form of interactive language use. Hence, the construct may eventually require some elaboration to also include other modalities.

»4. Pragmatic phenomena in language use situations, for example, when English is used as a lingua franca (ELF) or as an international language (EIL) require further research as they may provide additional insights that have not been accounted for in enough detail in this model (e.g., the impact of an L2 speaker’s native language). Some first steps into that direction were explored by Kuchuk (2012) and Knapp (2011).

»5. To implement pragmatic learning and (formative) assessment, a more thorough understanding of different TLU domains is required. For instance, foundational research regarding the probability of occurrence of pragmatic phenomena and relevance to L2 learners’ communicative needs is essential. For the TLU domain, workplace, an investigation and thorough analysis of sociolinguistic phenomena, both within as well as across different tasks, could provide further insights that can be used to design learning material and tasks to foster EFL/ESL pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic awareness.

»6. The need to develop learning materials and test formats that are (a) grounded in a framework for learning such as the Universal Design for Learning (for more information see http://www.cast.org/udl/), (b) administratively feasible, and (c) aid (instructed) learning and assessment. For example, many textbooks have been accused of not providing the rich and adequately contextualized input needed to facilitate pragmatic learning (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig, Hartford, Mahan-Taylor, Morgan, & Reynolds, 1991; Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Gilmore, 2004; Usó-Juan & Ruiz-Madrid, 2007). In addition to the lack of adequate materials,Thomas (1983) has argued that pragmatic phenomena provide a particular challenge with regard to language teaching. For instance, correcting pragmatic infelicities that stem from sociopragmatic miscalculation is much more delicate than correcting a grammar mistake because sociopragmatic decisions are social before they are linguistic. Although language learners are susceptive to being corrected with what they view as linguistic, they are much less amenable to being corrected in terms of their social judgment (see also O’Keeffe et al., 2011). Thus, learning material with a rich contextualization that learners may use independently while obtaining feedback may be a means to providing pragmatic instruction.

»Hence, a large amount of foundational research needs to be conducted in order to inform the instruction and assessment of pragmatic competence and further develop the construct of pragmatics proposed in this paper.»

«When the morphological verbal repetition are used to duplicate a pleasant atmosphere, it may convey for the Chinese readers the same pragmatic value as the diminutive does in the original context»

Zhishuo Ding
«Pragmatic reproduction of cultural-linguistic referents in translation from Spanish to Chinese»
Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación, vol. 81 (2020)
Número monográfico: «TAME, gramaticalización e interfaz sintaxis-pragmática del español y el mapudungún»

Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación (CLAC) | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | ESPAÑA

Se incluye a continuación un extracto seleccionado de las páginas 137, 138 a 139 y 149 a 151 de la publicación en PDF. Las referencias pueden consultarse en la ubicación original.

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«Abstract

»This paper examines the pragmatic translation of cultural-linguistic items through a relevance-theoretic study. The results suggest: 1) implicative value of the cultural-linguistic items is context-dependent and 2) loss of the linguistic form might imply the loss of the implicit clue.

»The study aims to expose the pragmatic values conveyed by the cultural-linguistic elements of Spanish and its Chinese translation. Furthermore, it explores how much original Spanish linguistic elements are accessible to the target readers of the Chinese translation. Based on a Spanish novel, namely La Colmena, and its Chinese translation Feng Fang, linguistic cultural referents from the Spanish original and their translations were compared, considering their cognitive contexts.

»This research points to the fact that the cognitive-environmental values of cultural-linguistic elements are generally underestimated, especially in Spanish-to-Chinese translation and, a large number of Spanish linguistic items do not maintain their implicatures in the Chinese translation due to different contextual assumptions.

»Introduction

»As the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states, language and culture affect each other; meanwhile, culture is reflected through language. Undoubtedly, each culture has its own linguistic regularities, which might not have equivalence in other cultures. In the study of Nida (1945, 203-208) regarding cultural segments, linguistic culture was proposed as one of the basic categories in cultural translation that would hinder successful communication between works and readers.

»There are a number of studies which concentrate on linguistic culture or focus on semantic or pragmatic features (Wu 2013; Mangiron 2008; Molina 2006; Nida 1945), but still, the implicative quality of cultural-linguistic elements has not yet been thoroughly documented.

»Gutt (2014), who introduced relevance theory into translation studies, points to the fact that one of the features contributing to the interpretation of the implicature is the cognitive context, which has two primordial factors: contextual effect and its processing effort.

»Despite an increasing number of translation studies focusing on relevance theory, the scholarly references on the relevance-theoretic view of cultural-linguistic study are scarce, particularly relating to translations between Spanish and Chinese.

»To fill the gap in systematic cultural-linguistic research from a relevance-theoretic viewpoint, a Spanish postwar novel, La Colmena, and its Chinese translation Feng Fang, have been selected in order to explore the pragmatic reproduction of cultural-linguistic elements in literary translation from Spanish to Chinese.

»Firstly, the pragmatic features of cultural-linguistic manifestations will be described, comparing both cognitive contexts of Spanish and Chinese readers. This will be followed by an analysis of how source and target readers are capable to grasp the pragmatic meaning of each cultural-linguistic instance considering both contextual effects and processing effort.

»This study differs from other research in the following ways:

»1) it describes the cultural-linguistic features from a relevance-theoretic perspective, which gives prominence to the essential role played by the cognitive context in linguistic manifestations;

»2) it aims to work with the pragmatic qualities of given Spanish and Chinese cultural-linguistic utterances, which will shed new light on intercultural research between Spanish and Chinese;

»and 3) it highlights the need for the systematic study of the linguistic culture between Spanish and Chinese from a cognitive-contextual perspective.

»Discussion

»On one hand, as it is shown in the first example, when the proper names are related with the Catholic religion, which is not one of the contextual assumptions of Chinese readers, the religious values carried in each linguistic item are lost in the translation.

»These pragmatic properties are implicatures created by the author for the characterization of Mrs. Visitación. But the target readers lose this due to their different cognitive environments. As for the second example, the same cultural-linguistic item, rojo (‘red’), is related with different contextual assumptions in each culture due to the different social development of Spain and China.

»Even though the reproduction, a new created term, 红鬼 (‘red monster’), could also be understood as a pejorative term, it does not exist in the previous contextual assumption of Chinese readers. Hence, the translated term will require more processing effort, and the contextual effect reduces as well. These results demonstrate that the accessibility of the implicatures of the cultural-linguistic elements depends on the contextual assumptions of the target readers.

»If the Chinese readers do not have the corresponding contextual assumptions, like Catholicism or other social phenomena of Spain, it would demand more processing effort to decode the pragmatic values hidden in the cultural-linguistic manifestations.

»On the other hand, when the Chinese linguistic form erhuayin or the morphological verbal repetition are used to duplicate the pleasant atmosphere, they may convey the same pragmatic value as the diminutive does in the original context. But, when the linguistic form is not maintained in the translation, as shown in the example (3), the implicature hidden in these cultural-linguistic items along with the negative attitude of Mrs. Visitación about the non-Catholics, would be missing, thereby reducing the context effect.

»As for idiomatic expressions in examples (4) and (5), when the translator tries to reproduce the original idiomatic expressions or sayings with Chinese Chengyu or other Chinese idiomatic forms, the contextual effect of the Chinese readers is enhanced. And the contrary is proved when the idiomatic form is not maintained in the target text, like the first instance 蠢女人 (‘stupid woman’) of the example (4). This may due to the fact that the contextual assumptions of the intensifying function of the Chinese idiomatic formations help reduce the processing effort.

»Above all, this may suggest that the original linguistic formation might convey the implicative stimulus. When the linguistic form is not maintained in the target text, the communicative clue for the implicature might also disappear. It would be complicated for the target readers to associate the translated items with the original pragmatic quality, and thus, diminish the contextual effect.

»Conclusion

»This article has pragmatically explored the reproduction of cultural-linguistic items with an original Spanish novel and its Chinese rendition. The relevance theory is incorporated as the orientation of this study, which mainly concerns the cognitive context in translation studies. In this sense, it compares the Spanish and Chinese contextual environments and explores the processing efforts that the cultural-linguistic instances take to generate the contextual effect in each context.

»By such means, this article proves the implicative values conveyed by the cultural-linguistic issues, in particular, within the Spanish and Chinese cognitive contexts and verifies the convenience of the relevance theory in exploring such values in linguistic culture. The study clearly shows that the interpretation of the implicature conveyed by the cultural-linguistic instances requires similar cognitive context. The results might also indicate a regularity that the linguistic formation might be the stimulus that carries implicatures.

»When the linguistic forms are lost in the translation, the meaning it conveys may also disappear. The undertaking here demonstrates how the cases presented of many Spanish cultural-linguistic instances require more processing effort in the target context than it does in the original one due to the cognitive-contextual differences between Spanish and Chinese cultures.

»Moreover, as indicated previously in the section 2.3, most of the existing pragmatic-oriented systematic approaches and classifications for linguistic culture are limited to external contextual features. Even though Wu’s study (2013) concentrated on the cognitive contexts of China and Spain, this research is mainly within an audiovisual frame, while many of literary cultural-linguistic elements could not find a suitable category, like idiomatic expressions and so on. All these descriptions clearly illustrate the demand for a new cultural-linguistic classification and systematic study of Spanish and Chinese translation within a cognitive standpoint.

»Finally, further research into a larger corpus is suggested to shed more light on the new cultural-linguistic taxonomy as well as to explore the cognitive relationship and contextual differences between Spanish and Chinese linguistic items. Moreover, supplementary research is recommended to interview the translators with the purpose of exploring their attitudes about the cultural-linguistic translation. In short, this article could enhance the cognitive-contextual consideration given to the cultural-linguistic study, especially by exploring the contextual effects in Spanish and Chinese circumstances.»

Informe de la Real Academia Española sobre el lenguaje inclusivo y cuestiones conexas

Real Academia Española
Informe de la Real Academia Española sobre el lenguaje inclusivo y cuestiones conexas


Más información: «Resumen de la intervención del director de la RAE en la rueda de prensa celebrada el día 20 de enero de 2020 para presentar el Informe sobre el lenguaje inclusivo en la Constitución»

Se incluye a continuación un extracto seleccionado de las páginas 26 a 30 de la publicación en PDF. Las referencias pueden consultarse en la ubicación original.

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«Síntesis y conclusiones

»a) La Academia redacta este informe tomando como referencia el uso mayoritario de la comunidad hispanohablante en todo el mundo. Ese uso, documentado en los corpus lingüísticos de la RAE, especialmente el Corpus del Español del Siglo XXI (CORPES), es el fundamento sobre el que se basan las obras descriptivas y normativas de la Academia, entre cuyas tareas no forma parte la de impulsar, dirigir o frenar cambios lingüísticos de cualquier naturaleza.

»b) En el presente informe se han expuesto dos interpretaciones de la expresión “lenguaje inclusivo”:

»1) Una, restrictiva, en que las referencias expresas a las mujeres se llevan a cabo únicamente a través de palabras de género femenino (como sucede en la expresión “los españoles y las españolas”), o, en todo caso, con términos que eviten el uso genérico del masculino (“la población española”, “el pueblo español”, “las personas españolas”).

»2) Otra, más amplia, en que los términos en masculino incluyen en su referencia a hombres y mujeres cuando el contexto deja suficientemente claro que es así, como sucede en la expresión “el nivel de vida de los españoles”.

»La Constitución de 1978 se ha inclinado generalmente a favor de la segunda interpretación.

»c) Se entiende que poseen interpretación inclusiva en el texto constitucional los grupos nominales formados por sustantivos de persona en masculino plural (“los españoles”, “los ciudadanos”, “los jueces”, “los electores”, etc.), si bien se han introducido algunas reflexiones que afectan a los artículos 30, 39.3 y 49. Poseen asimismo interpretación inclusiva las expresiones indefinidas formadas por estos sustantivos, sea en singular, sea en plural (“cualquier ciudadano”, “ningún español”, “sindicatos de trabajadores”, etc.), así como los grupos nominales definidos formados por sustantivos masculinos en singular, igualmente con valor genérico, cuando el contexto determine claramente dicha interpretación (“el candidato”, “el detenido”, etc.).

»d) Se ha explicado que los grupos nominales definidos referidos a personas y construidos en masculino singular pueden poseer o no lectura inclusiva en español en función de factores contextuales, y se han resumido las diferencias lingüísticas que se reconocen entre la llamada “lectura referencial” y la denominada “lectura predicativa”. Las denominaciones que aluden a cargos de carácter único (como “el Rey”, “el Presidente del Gobierno” o “el Defensor del Pueblo”) reciben en la Carta Magna la segunda interpretación, que se caracteriza por ser inclusiva.

»Aun así, no se oculta en el presente informe que el alto valor simbólico de nuestra Constitución hace de ella un texto máximamente representativo del que se espera que enfatice, en la medida de lo posible, la igualdad de hombres y mujeres en derechos y obligaciones —y especialmente en su acceso a puestos de máxima responsabilidad—, siempre y cuando su traducción verbal no infrinja normas o principios lingüísticos firmemente asentados.

»e) La forma en que el texto constitucional conjugue los factores jurídicos, lingüísticos y políticos a los que se alude brevemente en el presente informe depende en gran medida de la voluntad del legislador. Se han expuesto tres opciones que responden a dicho propósito integrador, en lo relativo a la mención de las expresiones definidas que designan en singular puestos o cargos únicos, y se han examinado sucintamente algunas ventajas e inconvenientes de cada una (§ 3.2.2, párrafos e-g). La tercera de ellas no plantea problemas jurídicos ni lingüísticos, pero es cierto que no tiene tan en cuenta las consideraciones políticas o sociológicas señaladas, a diferencia de las otras dos.

»En cualquier caso, se ha resaltado aquí que las razones que podrían conducir a modificar este aspecto de la redacción del texto constitucional no son de naturaleza lingüística, sino de carácter estrictamente político. Se estima, por todo ello, que no es tarea de la Real Academia Española valorar su relevancia social, ni decidir, en consecuencia, cuál de esas opciones podría ser la más conveniente.

»f) Se ha recordado en las páginas precedentes que la Constitución Española solo alude expresamente a la Reina en un artículo. Se han mencionado algunos argumentos relativos al uso de los sustantivos “rey” y “reina”, así como a la interpretación del plural “reyes”, que abonarían un posible cambio del texto constitucional en lo que respecta a la forma de designar lingüísticamente al Jefe del Estado. Se ha explicado por qué se consideraría pertinente nombrar de forma explícita a la Reina junto al Rey, quizá alternando la expresión disyuntiva “el Rey o la Reina” con “la Corona” y con otras fórmulas similares.

»Se ha recordado asimismo que la palabra “princesa” no aparece en nuestra Carta Magna y se ha sugerido la posibilidad de que se agregue expresamente la mención a la Princesa en los tres únicos artículos en los que el texto constitucional alude al Príncipe. En cualquier caso, se recuerda que los preceptos relativos a la Corona no han planteado, cuarenta y un años después de haber sido redactados, ningún problema de interpretación.

»g) A título comparativo, se han examinado en el presente informe las constituciones vigentes en cuatro países hispanohablantes (Chile, Colombia, México y Venezuela) y en tres países europeos en los que se habla una lengua románica (Francia, Italia y Portugal). En ninguna de estas tres últimas constituciones se han encontrado grupos nominales coordinados formados por nombres de persona con desdoblamiento de género. Estos desdoblamientos son también inexistentes en las constituciones de Chile y Colombia; son muy raros en la de México, infrecuentes en la Constitución venezolana de 1999, y frecuentísimos, en cambio, en la de 2009, cuyo modelo de sintaxis constituye una verdadera isla en el conjunto de las lenguas románicas.

»Salvo en esta última Constitución, en todas las que se mencionan en el presente informe se hace un amplio uso de los grupos nominales en masculino con interpretación inclusiva, de acuerdo con el segundo de los sentidos de la expresión “lenguaje inclusivo” a que se ha hecho referencia en estas páginas.

»h) Las constituciones que se han examinado coinciden en destacar la igualdad de derechos y deberes de todos los ciudadanos, independientemente de su sexo, pero —con la sola excepción a la que se acaba de hacer referencia— en todas ellas se aplican las convenciones gramaticales características de las lenguas románicas. Se considera, por tanto, que estas convenciones —que imponen ciertas formas de concordancia a sustantivos, adjetivos o indefinidos— no establecen diferencias sociales entre hombres y mujeres. Es oportuno recordar en este sentido que el uso del masculino plural con sentido inclusivo es absolutamente general en español, tanto en la lengua oral como en la escrita.

»Se registra de forma ubicua en textos literarios, técnicos, científicos, jurídicos, ensayísticos, periodísticos, publicitarios y de otros tipos en todos los países hispanohablantes, así como en todos los registros verbales, sean formales o no. Se considera deseable, por todo ello, que los textos jurídicos no introduzcan una distancia mayor de la que ya existe entre el lenguaje oficial y el usual.

»i) Se ha observado que algunos hablantes optan por desdoblar las expresiones que designan personas como signo visible de su adhesión pública a la causa de la igualdad de hombres y mujeres en la sociedad moderna. Aun cuando sean minoritarias, esas opciones forman parte de la libertad de los hablantes para elegir su forma de expresarse. No obstante, y como se ha recordado en este informe, la Real Academia Española no puede desestimar usos lingüísticos mayoritarios en el mundo hispánico (en todos los registros verbales), y recomendar en su lugar opciones minoritarias que no contradicen la interpretación generalizadora de las fórmulas a las que pretenden sustituir.

»Sería absurdo concluir que el grupo mayoritario de los hispanohablantes que emplean el masculino plural en su interpretación inclusiva, de acuerdo con los usos generales de la lengua española en todo el mundo, no comparte tales objetivos de igualdad, no sostiene esos mismos valores o no aspira a los mismos ideales.

»j) En el texto que la Vicepresidenta del Gobierno dirige a la Real Academia Española se afirma que “el lenguaje, como forma de expresión y comunicación, puede ayudar a construir una sociedad más respetuosa e inclusiva de todas las personas que conforman nuestra ciudadanía”. Así es, sin duda alguna. Cualquier gobierno debe trabajar para que en nuestra sociedad se generalice el trato verbal respetuoso hacia hombres y mujeres, se impulse una educación igualitaria que conduzca a la desaparición de las expresiones degradantes u ofensivas dirigidas a cualquier persona por razón de su sexo o su condición social, desaparezcan las actitudes paternalistas hacia las mujeres (sin duda expresadas a través del lenguaje) y se afiancen las condiciones laborales y sociales que terminen con situaciones históricas de prolongada desigualdad.

»Pero, como se ha explicado en las páginas precedentes de este informe, todo ello es por completo independiente de las diferencias convencionales entre las lenguas. Tal como se ha recordado, las situaciones de igualdad o desigualdad entre hombres y mujeres en determinados países (europeos o no) son enteramente independientes de las opciones gramaticales que cada idioma elige en dichos territorios para codificar la interpretación inclusiva del género masculino.

»k) Se repite con frecuencia que los hablantes son los dueños de la lengua y que no debe atribuirse ese papel a las instituciones, sean políticas o culturales. Precisamente porque ello es así, debe confiarse en la conciencia lingüística de los hispanohablantes para averiguar si en nuestra lengua son o no inclusivos los sustantivos masculinos de persona que aparecen en expresiones como “ella y yo somos amigos”, “los deberes de los funcionarios públicos”, “la casa de mis padres”, “los derechos del defendido” o “los españoles son iguales ante la ley” (art. 14 de nuestra Constitución).

»Resultaría escasamente democrático sostener que los hablantes nativos desconocen si esos sustantivos son o no inclusivos —o, lo que sería aún peor, negarles la capacidad de determinarlo—, y entender que han de ser los poderes públicos quienes lo decidan, en virtud de su compromiso con la igualdad de hombres y mujeres en todos los ámbitos de la sociedad.

»l) Sean o no obras académicas, de los diccionarios, de las gramáticas y de cualquier estudio lingüístico que opte por abordar estas cuestiones cabe esperar el análisis detallado de los usos asentados en las diversas comunidades, así como de la variación que se produzca en ellos. Si se constatara que los usos lingüísticos actuales se modifican con el tiempo, y que los cambios consiguientes llegan a generalizarse, esas mismas obras deberían reflejar tales modificaciones, al igual que testimonian otros muchos cambios gramaticales y léxicos que han tenido lugar en nuestra lengua a lo largo de los tiempos».

«These are the monks who still preserve ancient texts around the world»

Columba Stewart, O.S.B. (Order of Saint Benedict) (@ColumbaStewart)
America. The Jesuit Review (@americamag)

Abadía de Cluny.

«In 1142, a powerful Benedictine abbot traveled to Spain. Known as Peter the Venerable for his wisdom, he ruled a federation of 600 monasteries from his base at the Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy. The journey across the Pyrenees was long, and his agenda was packed with kings, bishops, abbots and complex negotiations.

»Abbot Peter’s visit to Toledo, which had been reconquered a few decades earlier after almost four centuries of Muslim rule, led him to a surprising decision. He summoned Christian scholars of Arabic and set them to work translating Islamic texts into Latin. Pre-eminent among them was the Quran itself, entrusted to an English cleric who had learned Arabic to gain access to scientific literature in that language, including Arabic translations of otherwise lost classical Greek texts.

»What was this abbot thinking? He was not a scholar of comparative religion, as you might find in a modern university. He was a medieval abbot, facing a powerful and highly literate religious tradition he considered to be fundamentally incompatible with his own. His intention was adversarial. Nonetheless, he embraced the humanistic principle that to understand people of another culture, with different beliefs, we must listen to them in their own voice, learning their language, reading and understanding their texts.

»As a Benedictine monk, Abbot Peter belonged to a community of readers engaged in the study of Christian sacred texts and related literature. That is the truth behind the familiar trope of a monk hunched over a copy desk, quill in hand, writing texts on reams of parchment: a belief in the power of words. Their labor of copying was for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of understanding, understanding for the sake of worship and thanksgiving. Abbot Peter could see that the same was true of the followers of Islam. That shared experience made intellectual engagement—and debate—possible.

»We monks put down deep roots and try to cultivate through communal monastic practices the grounded humanity that Greek philosophers and their Christian heirs characterized as learning “to dwell with the self” (habitare secum). At its best, that monastic stability frees the mind to roam widely and to make unexpected applications of what is found. Alongside the theological tomes would be texts of philosophy, grammar and mathematics, astronomy and history, medicine and law. Benedictines have always been inventors or early adopters of technology. Clocks were developed in the Middle Ages to wake up monks for early prayers. The introduction of movable type and mechanical printing came as a great relief: The second book printed on Gutenberg’s equipment was a Benedictine psalter.

Psalterium Benedictinum cum canticis et hymnis (1459).

»What We Learn From Manuscripts

»Even though manuscripts—handwritten books— are at least several technological stages behind the ways we access information today, we still rely on them for access to the past. Consider: Anything written before the invention of printing has come down to us in the form of a manuscript. A surprising number of those texts have not yet been printed or put online, and we keep finding new texts in manuscripts that have lain hidden for centuries. In many parts of the world, printing came late or was little used, so even less of the literature of these communities is available in modern formats. To know what is most important to such communities, to understand the questions they asked and what gave them purpose and identity, we need to read their manuscripts.

»Manuscripts matter even for well-known texts, because each manuscript is unique. The texts will vary from the same writings found in another manuscript because there was no standard edition from which every scribe would copy.

»Those differences might be slight or substantial, even to the point of changing the meaning of the text. Scribes would “polish” a text by smoothing out the spelling or grammar, or they might amp up or tone down controversial passages. Nor were they infallible; they always made mistakes. The cumulative effect of those human interventions is that every manuscript must be approached on its own terms, as a particular incarnation of the writings it contains. Framing the text are readers’ notes in the margins, ownership inscriptions on the flyleaves, the scribe’s sign-off at the end. Together they form the manuscript’s cultural genome and allow us to place it within a cultural lineage.

»One will find thousands of manuscripts in the great libraries of Europe and North America on display and available for study, all of them cataloged and usually well known to scholars. Much of what we think we know about the past has been written on the basis of the manuscripts in the British Library, the Vatican Library, the French Bibliothèque Nationale and their peer institutions. Their collections of Latin and other European manuscripts are vast and comprehensive, accounting for the great majority of surviving Western manuscripts.

»When we consider other cultures represented in the collections of those great libraries, our footing is less sure. All of those manuscripts came from somewhere else, often the spoils of war and colonial expansion, like many of the artistic treasures in major museums. The manuscripts taken to Western libraries provide only a partial view of their source cultures. To rely on them alone is akin to looking at a mummy in a museum display and assuming we understand ancient Egyptians. What about the manuscripts the European and American explorers and collectors never found? Or the cultures they were not interested in plundering?

»Saving Cultural Treasures From War

»The work I do today to preserve manuscripts began in 1965 as an effort by my monastery to microfilm Latin manuscripts in European Benedictine libraries. It was two decades after the devastation of the Second World War, three years after the Cuban missile crisis and during a very chilly phase of the Cold War. We feared that the European Benedictine heritage would be vaporized if there were a World War III. Monte Cassino in Italy, the mother abbey of the Benedictines, had been totally destroyed in 1944. A nuclear war would be far more devastating.

»There was nothing we monks in Minnesota could do to protect the churches and cloisters, but we could microfilm their manuscripts and keep backup copies in the United States. The Vatican Library had done something similar in the 1950s, depositing microfilms of many of its manuscripts at Saint Louis University in Missouri. Our project started in Benedictine monasteries in Austria, employing local technicians to involve them in the preservation of their own heritage. The scope of the work soon widened to libraries of other religious orders, then to universities and national libraries. The pace was swift, and the result, by the end of the 20th century, was a film archive of almost 85,000 Western manuscripts.

»Along the way there came a serendipitous event that changed the course of the project. An American scholar of biblical texts approached us with the idea of microfilming manuscripts in the monasteries and churches of Ethiopia. This great African nation is the home of an ancient Christian community that had never undergone the narrowing of the biblical canon —the official list of writings constituting the Christian Bible— that occurred in other parts of the early Christian world. Consequently, Ethiopian Christians preserved a broad array of writings later excluded from the Bible of the Byzantine and Roman traditions. Microfilming began in 1971, with the work done by Ethiopians, the technical support from us and funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other foundations.

»The situation in Ethiopia worsened when a violent revolution deposed the emperor and installed a communist government hostile to the church. What had begun as a kind of archeological expedition to discover ancient texts became a rescue project to preserve manuscripts in a nation convulsed by political upheaval and then a civil war. The cameras kept going, working throughout the 1970s, 1980s and into the early 1990s. In the end, 9,000 manuscripts were microfilmed under often-harrowing circumstances.

»The Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library also demonstrates what happens to manuscripts in times of turmoil. A few years back, a professor from Howard University approached one of our experts for help identifying an Ethiopian manuscript recently donated to the university. She showed him photographs of the manuscript, and he recognized it as one of the thousands microfilmed in our project. After it was photographed in 1976, the manuscript had been taken out of Ethiopia and found its way into a private collection in the United States.

»Unlike most stories of this kind, this one had a happy ending: Howard University repatriated the manuscript to the monastery in Ethiopia from which it had been taken. Sadly more typical is the case of another, even more valuable, Ethiopian manuscript microfilmed in the 1970s. That one is now in a well-known private collection. In its online catalog, the provenance given for the manuscript is simply the name of the dealer from whom it was purchased.

»By the time those manuscripts were taken out of Ethiopia, the colonial era was over. International protocols and national laws regulated the export of cultural heritage. Neither of these manuscripts should have adorned a private collection or enriched a dealer. This story illustrates two of the greatest threats to cultural heritage: the desperation that leads people to sell off their own heritage in order to feed their families and the profiteering by those who exploit that misfortune.

»Lebanon and Syria

»The Ethiopian project inspired another serendipitous chapter in our work. Just after the turn of the millennium, Orthodox Christians in Lebanon asked for our help in dealing with the aftermath of a civil war that had ended about a decade earlier. Collections had been moved, valuable manuscripts had been stolen and held for ransom, and some had simply disappeared. We launched a project in northern Lebanon in April 2003, at the same moment that U.S. ground forces were approaching Baghdad.

»As our work in Lebanon expanded, we extended the project to Syria, forming partnerships with several church leaders in Aleppo, as well as in Homs and Damascus. Things were going well, and we even found a partner in Iraq. But then, in 2011, Syria began to unravel as the spirit of the Arab Spring spread across the region. Three years later came the conquest by ISIS of much of northern Iraq, driving tens of thousands of Christians and Yazidis from Mosul and the villages of the Nineveh Plain.

»ISIS broadcast videos of its crude but effective demolition of ancient Assyrian and Christian monuments in Iraq, and we watched the destruction of so much in Syria, including historic places like Palmyra. In Turkey, where we had worked with the Armenian community in Istanbul, and more extensively in the Syriac Christian libraries of the southeast, the areas we had visited so many times became no-go zones because of rising tensions between Kurds and Turks. As is often the case for ethnic and religious minorities, the Christians—those who had not already emigrated—were caught in the middle.

»The human toll among our friends and colleagues was immense. In 2013, the Syriac Orthodox bishop of Aleppo, Mor Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim, was kidnapped along with his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Metropolitan Boulos Yazigi. They were never heard from again. Mor Gregorios had been an enthusiastic supporter of our work with his community’s manuscripts in Aleppo. Many of those manuscripts had been carried to Aleppo in 1923 as Christians fled the Turkish city of Sanliurfa, known in ancient times as Edessa, the very cradle of Syriac Christianity.

»Qaraqosh, Iraq

»In Iraq it would be even worse. Our partner there, Najeeb Michaeel, a Dominican friar, had established a center for digitization of Christian manuscripts in Qaraqosh, an ancient Christian village between Mosul and Erbil. Since 1750, Father Najeeb’s community had been in Mosul, the ancient city of Nineveh where the prophet Jonah preached repentance. The kidnapping and murder of the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paul Rahho in 2008 made it too dangerous for clergy to remain in Mosul, and they relocated to Qaraqosh. With our help, his team digitized thousands of Syriac, Arabic and Armenian manuscripts.

»Then came the summer of 2014, the summer of ISIS. It did not seem at that time that ISIS was moving east from Mosul into the Nineveh Plain, and Father Najeeb’s village of Qaraqosh was guarded by Kurdish militias as part of the outer ring of defenses of their autonomous region. Nonetheless, Father Najeeb decided to begin to move the manuscripts and archives of the Dominicans to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. It was a wise move.

»On the morning of Aug. 6, the feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus, the Kurdish guards in Qaraqosh retreated from an ISIS advance. Residents of that and the many other villages of the Nineveh Plain had only hours to grab what they could and get to Erbil, travelling 40 miles in the heat of the Iraqi summer. I visited them many times, marveling at how they recreated a kind of village life in the refugee camps.

»As the refugees started over in Erbil, ISIS was demolishing ancient Nimrud with barrel bombs, destroying the artifacts in the Mosul museum with sledgehammers and dynamiting churches. Only after the retreat of ISIS from the Nineveh Plain in 2016 and the final reconquest of Mosul in 2017 did the picture become clear. Major manuscript collections in Mosul had been destroyed, leaving behind only the digital images and a handful of severely damaged volumes.

»Most collections outside of Mosul, however, had been saved. This was the case at Mar Behnam Monastery, where some 500 manuscripts were hidden behind a false wall during the two-year occupation of the monastery by ISIS. When the monks returned to their wrecked home, they found the manuscripts safe in their hiding place, a still-beating heart in the battered and bruised body of the cloister.

Fr. Nageeb Michael, OP, examines a damaged manuscript at the Centre Numérique des Manuscrits Orientaux in Qaraqosh, Iraq.

»I began this essay with Peter the Venerable for a reason. For a Benedictine monk to partner with a Dominican friar or a Syriac Orthodox bishop to preserve Christian manuscripts is understandable. It might not be as readily apparent why we have become so involved with the digital preservation of manuscripts belonging to Muslim communities in Africa, the Middle East and south Asia.

»In 2013, the Palestinian field director for our work with Christian manuscript libraries in the Old City of Jerusalem told me about a recent conversation with a friend about his work preserving manuscripts. The friend belongs to an old and distinguished Muslim family. Fascinated by David’s work, he said, “What about us? We have manuscripts too.” On my next trip to Jerusalem, I met with members of that family and saw their library.

»As I learned more about their family’s library and discussed the project with our board, I became convinced that we must work with them. Their Islamic manuscripts and the Syriac Christian manuscripts we had been digitizing at a monastery only a few minutes’ walk from that home belong to a cultural ecosystem that has existed since the arrival of Islam in Palestine in the seventh century. Christians and Muslims have greeted each other in the streets, done business, engaged in religious disputes and have read each other’s books. Like Peter the Venerable, their interest may have been for the sake of persuasion or refutation, but it also led to the sharing of scientific and historical knowledge.

»Timbuktu, Mali

»This new phase of our work soon led to an even larger involvement with Islamic manuscript heritage from another fabled place: the desert city of Timbuktu in northern Mali. Timbuktu was at one time a center of political power, trade, religion and culture. Located in the Sahel, the transitional zone between the desert to the north and the savanna to the south, the city was the terminus of trans-Saharan, savanna and forest trade routes that brought salt, goods and travelers from North Africa and even beyond, as well as slaves and gold, textiles and other goods from the south. And, of course, there were manuscripts traveling the same pathways.

»The recent story of Timbuktu is once again a tale of manuscripts moved and manuscripts hidden. Knowing that something was coming—as did Father Najeeb in Iraq—Dr. Abdel Kader Haidara quietly sent the manuscripts of his own family’s library and those of more than 30 other families up the Niger River to Bamako, the capital of Mali, in case the threats of religious and ethnic rebel groups to capture Timbuktu and purge its culture of supposed “non-Islamic” elements should come to pass.

»In June 2012, those threats were realized. Timbuktu was occupied for several months, its shrines to Muslim saints destroyed, its superb music silenced, the tourist trade on which it depended for economic survival extinguished. Early reports suggesting that its manuscripts had been burned proved to be incorrect: Only a few manuscripts left behind as a false trail had been destroyed. All the others were safe, whether moved to Bamako or hidden in Timbuktu.

»Why It Matters Here and Now

»The intellectual pathways we trace in our preservation efforts reveal the original “internet of things,” the manuscripts that traveled in a merchant’s chest, in a monk’s pocket or in a pilgrim’s pouch across the known world. Their power was in their words, words usually read aloud, in the way of traditional reading. As listeners heard, they heard another person’s voice in real time.

»In those manuscripts are stories, reflections on stories, ideas spun from human observation and experience. These manuscripts changed the world because their words were heard. They were taken seriously, seriously enough at times to prompt rebuttal or controversy, admiration or adoption. But they were heard.

»We are at great risk of losing the capacity to listen and, therefore, of losing our ability to understand. The opening word of St. Benedict’s Rule is, appropriately, obsculta, or “listen.” Equally endangered are the stores of wisdom contained in the manuscripts of the world, targeted by those fearful of difference or threatened by imaginations broader than their own. The wisdom contained in them is eroded by the forgetting that besets a diaspora community severed from its roots, resettled in a strange place and often undergoing the slow but inexorable loss of its language and distinctive ways.

»What happens when we fail to listen, or forget the wisdom of the ancestors? No institution, however venerable, is immune to the consequences of forgetting its ideals or ignoring the voices of its critics. Peter the Venerable was abbot of Cluny at its zenith; six centuries later, the monastery and its great church were plundered and its library burned. At one time Cluny had represented a great reform of Benedictine life. At its end, it represented everything the poor had come to hate about the concentration of wealth and power in the church and the aristocracy.

»And yet, Benedictines are still here. As the motto of the bombed and rebuilt abbey of Monte Cassino proclaims, Succisa virescit: “Cut it back, and it flourishes.” Humbled by the Reformation, the French Revolution and its aftermath, we had to rethink what it means to be monks in the modern world. We are still working on that.

»What is true of my small part of the human community is also true of nations when they forget to listen, or simply give up trying. Our fragile planet has never been so threatened, nor the human beings who inhabit it so divided. The terrain for rational discourse has shrunk to a narrow strip between camps defined and limited by their political views, religious beliefs, race or ethnic identity, beset by anxiety that easily becomes fear and then violence. In such times as these, we must dig deeply into our respective stores of wisdom and offer whatever we find for the sake of mutual understanding, the only possible basis for reconciliation and for the resolve to move forward for the common good.

»Our Common Enemy

»We are today facing a new temptation to ostracize and demean, this time because of the sincerely held religious beliefs of our Muslim sisters and brothers. This is not simply a divisive geopolitical issue but an urgent local problem, even in my adopted state of Minnesota with its immigrant Somali and other Muslim communities. As medieval Christian scholars of Arabic manuscripts came to understand, their enemy was not Islam, however deep their theological differences. The common enemy was—and remains—the fanaticism and ignorance that make understanding impossible.

»My roots in an ancient monastic tradition give me a certain perspective, and dare I say, a certain confidence and hope when considering the work that lies before us. I recall the story told long ago by a young African man, confused and emotionally tormented, who heard the voice of a child chanting, Tolle, lege; tolle, lege. “Pick it up and read it. Pick it up and read it.” He picked up the book at his side, and he read it, as if for the first time. His name was Augustine, and in time he would become the finest writer of Western Christianity. But first he had to pick up the book—of course it was a manuscript—and read. May we do the same.

»This article also appeared in print, under the headline “The Monks and the Manuscripts,” in the January 6, 2020, issue».

.../... Read all on America

«Leer es saber comprender y, sobre todo, saber interpretar»

Israel Acosta Gómez, José Manuel Suárez Meana, Maritza Esther Águila Consuegra, Gladys María Betancourt Rodríguez, Maidelys Rodríguez Álvarez
«El sentido de una comprensión de textos con sentido. Un estudio de caso»
Revista de Ciencias Humanísticas y Sociales (ReHuSo), vol. 5, n.º 1 (2020)

Revista de Ciencias Humanísticas y Sociales (ReHuSo) (@RehusoS) | Universidad Técnica de Manabí | Facultad de Ciencias Humanísticas y Sociales | Portoviejo | ECUADOR

Se incluye a continuación un extracto seleccionado de las páginas 92 a 94 y 103 a 104 de la publicación en PDF. Las referencias pueden consultarse en la ubicación original.

Enlace HTML.

«Resumen

»La comprensión es un proceso mediante el cual originamos significados al comprender un texto, y en donde el receptor comienza por reconocer las palabras y signos auxiliares, dependiendo del contexto, de las características del texto y la situación comunicativa que se plantee, para luego dotar de sentido, y codificar el conocimiento del mundo, de la ideología, en la reconstrucción de los hechos evocados por el autor-emisor. La presente investigación, aborda una problemática actual dentro de las condiciones de la enseñanza actual; identificada además como un problema de la práctica donde se desempeña el autor de este trabajo. En consecuencia, el objetivo consignado es proponer una estrategia de enseñanza-aprendizaje, que en función del diseño de actividades docentes, se potencie la comprensión del texto poético desde esencias meta cognitivas, reflexivas y estratégicas.

»Para la consecución de este fin se ejecutó una sistematización de los presupuestos filosóficos, psicológicos, sociológicos y pedagógicos que sustentan el problema; se empleó un sistema de métodos que permitieron un diagnóstico inicial y final, del nivel de desarrollo de habilidades para la comprensión de textos que poseen los estudiantes de Décimo grado. Su aplicación permitió apreciar las dificultades y potencialidades para dar solución al problema detectado.

»Introducción

»La educación cubana se sustenta en los principios de la teoría marxista-leninista y martiana, además del rico caudal de ideas nacidas de una personalidad como la de Fidel, de ahí que su máxima aspiración sea formar generaciones de hombres y mujeres con un amplio espectro en todas sus potencialidades, aptos para recibir y disfrutar de los logros de la cultura nacional.

»Pero, a nivel mundial, la acumulación constante de nuevos descubrimientos, teorías, planteamientos, investigaciones, datos, informaciones constituye un acervo fundamental al que las personas deben acudir en busca de nuevos conocimientos que ponen en duda los adquiridos anteriormente. Tal situación implica un proceso de perfeccionamiento de la educación, y por ende, una revolución en la enseñanza.

»El apresurado desarrollo científico-técnico y la compleja dinámica social de la época contemporánea, plantean cada vez más a la educación, exigencias más elevadas en cuanto a la preparación de los estudiantes, de manera que estos pueden cumplimentar satisfactoriamente las tareas que en el orden profesional, social y personal requiere la vida. Actualmente la escuela cubana está inmersa en un período de transformaciones, encaminadas a resolver la gran contradicción que se presenta entre la escuela y la sociedad.

»Se ha puesto de manifiesto que en la escuela no existe un alto nivel de explotación del potencial del desarrollo humano de los niños, adolescentes y jóvenes.

»En el Informe Central al Tercer Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba, efectuado en 1986, el expresidente Fidel Castro, al valorar los logros alcanzados por la educación, señaló limitaciones que aún prevalecen en los escolares entre los cuales señala, el desarrollo insuficiente en los alumnos, de la capacidad para el razonamiento, así como el pobre desarrollo de los intereses cognoscitivos y adecuados hábitos de estudio.

»Esta acumulación ha incitado que se acreciente cuantiosamente el intercambio y el desecho de la información que caduca. Precisamente, una de las necesidades básicas del hombre moderno es la de informarse. La dinámica propia de las sociedades obliga al hombre a procurarse los distintos medios para saber sobre todo lo importante que pasa en cualquier lugar de la tierra. Por tanto, este intercambio supone, ante todo, razonamiento, trabajo continuo para poder leer el mundo, porque leer es, básicamente, saber comprender y sobre todo saber interpretar, o sea saber llegar a las esencias para estar en posición de establecer nuestras propias opiniones.

»Por estas y otras razones es por lo que autores de diferentes latitudes se encargan de la temática, entre ellos están: Gremiger, de Acosta, C. (2000); Gómez-Villalba, E. & Pérez González, J. (2001); Villamizar Durán, G. (2003); Cassany, D. (2003); Montealegre, R. (2004); Pinzás García, J. (1986); Blanco Iglesias, E. (2005); Escalante de Urrecheaga, D. & Caldera de Briceño, R. (2008); Colomer, T. (2005, 2009); Millán, N. R. (2010); Solé, I. (2012); Llamazares Prieto, M. T., Ríos García, I. & Buisán Serradel, C. (2013); Arias Vivanco, G. E. (2018).

»También, desarrollar en cada estudiante la habilidad de comprender, por medio de una actividad lectora eficiente, le hace al estudiante aumentar la curiosidad, el ansia de conocer, educarse en el amor hacia el saber, el interés por la actividad cognoscitiva, al constituir una de las tareas más importantes y necesarias de los centros educacionales, para la construcción de dinámicas educativas más sensibles.

»Por ende, el doctor de la universidad de Los Andes, Gustavo Villamizar Durán (2003), señala que:

»“Cuando nos enfrentamos al proceso de lectura y comprensión de un texto se está siempre prediciendo posibles interpretaciones que son el resultado de saberes y operaciones cognitivas de diversa índole, es decir, de la experiencia que es la variable socio-cognitiva que coadyuva al entendimiento textual.

»Para la comprensión de un texto es necesario el conocimiento de todas sus palabras y símbolos especiales, ella no es una suma, sino la integración de las unidades de sentido, es también, un proceso-producto-resultado de las actitudes conscientes de los lectores modelos que sí saben disfrutar y emocionarse. En consecuencia, el objetivo consignado es proponer una estrategia de enseñanza-aprendizaje, que en función del diseño de actividades docentes, se potencie la comprensión del texto poético desde esencias metacognitivas y reflexivas”.

»Conclusiones

»El análisis de los referentes teóricos y metodológicos, relacionados con la enseñanza aprendizaje del Español-Literatura, permite corroborar los niveles de desempeño y la importancia de la comprensión de textos como un proceso estructurado en niveles, aspectos que favorecen el desarrollo desde niveles inferiores hasta la producción de conocimientos de manera independiente y creativa en condiciones cambiantes, además de la necesidad de una dirección correctamente organizada, desde el punto de vista didáctico del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la comprensión. El diagnóstico ejecutado permite identificar que la muestra en su mayoría presenta serias insuficiencias en la comprensión de textos, apreciándose falta de creatividad, inadecuada preparación lingüística, superficial análisis de los textos, escasa calidad de las ideas, entre otras.

»Las propuesta y validación de actividades docentes se caracterizan por aprovechar el potencial de lo afectivo para desarrollar lo cognitivo y procedimental, sus acciones, orientación, ejecución y control transfieren en todo momento a la búsqueda de la independencia cognoscitiva del estudiante y logran un protagonismo en la obtención del nuevo conocimiento, de procedimientos para obtenerlo, de su aplicación práctica y desarrollar formas de comunicación, que benefician la interacción de lo individual con lo colectivo, al permitir corroborar a docentes para trazar la vía de solución en la realidad educativa encontrada a través de un pre-experimento pedagógico de grupo único con medida pre-test y pos-test, lo cual manifiesta su efectividad en la práctica pedagógica, para demostrar que los estudiantes que desarrollan sus conocimientos y estrategias para comprender, se formen como lectores que valoran críticamente lo que leen, en la reconstrucción de su horizonte cultural-comunicativo en el leer, aprender y disfrutar del texto como recurso constructivo y motivacional.

»Vieiro & Amboage (2016) lo certifican al aludir que “el texto proporciona información al lector, aunque la información extraída del mismo depende de cómo el receptor construya los significados integrándolos con sus conocimientos previos, así como con las circunstancias que rodean a la situación de interacción texto-lector”. Las actividades docentes aplicadas fueron efectivas por cuanto se logró que estas se correspondan con las características de los estudiantes de la muestra, así como con sus fortalezas y limitaciones. Se tuvo en cuenta las características de los textos, tipos de preguntas, componentes o invariantes de la asignatura y los diferentes niveles de comprensión del texto. Estas favorecen el desarrollo de la imaginación y la creatividad, todo lo cual contribuyen a ser dinámicas, variadas, instructivas, diferentes de aquellas que se utilizan diariamente. Permitió el desarrollo de los intereses cognitivos desde la asimilación y acomodación de los procesos perceptivos, de atención y de la memoria semántica de los estudiantes-lectores, como bien lo manifiestan (Cassany, 2003; Coll &Mauri, 2008; Solé, 2012; Rienda, 2014; Puente et al., 2019)».

«Consumers Are Text-Obsessed». Text Communication. The Next Generation of Business Communication. 2019 Report, by EZ Texting

EZ Texting (@EZTexting)

The EZ Texting Releases 2021 Business Texting Trends Report is avalaible here.

«CONSUMERS ARE TEXT-OBSESSED

»Mobile Phone Usage Has Reached an All-Time High

»Our 2019 survey results confirm that mobile phone usage is at an all-time high. In fact, for many consumers, the first urge to check their phones happens immediately upon waking.

»Our research finds that most consumers check their phones within three minutes of waking, and nearly all consumers check their devices within 30 minutes.

»It’s Not Just Millennials Anymore

»Of course, heavy device usage also continues throughout the day. On average, consumers check their mobile devices at least five times per hour, relying heavily on the medium to communicate with family, friends, and businesses alike.

»Younger generations are likely to check in even more frequently, with consumers between 18 and 29 viewing their mobile devices at least seven times per hour. Even consumers over 60 typically view their devices three or more times per hour!

»Native Messaging Dominates Mobile Usage

»These days, we do everything with our mobile devices, pulling out our minicomputers to reserve a ride, order groceries, or check in with friends on social media. However, the simplest function — sending a message — commands more of our time than any other activity, including social media, gaming, online shopping, and consuming content.

»Text messaging is the top activity performed on a mobile device.

»In terms of how they message, consumers tend to prefer to keep it simple and are more likely to use their phone’s native text messaging app than any other messaging platform. According to our survey, the native text messaging app’s usage is three times higher than Facebook Messenger, six times higher than WhatsApp, and 11 times higher than Instagram.

»Text Messages Are Deemed Worthy of Consumer Attention

»With a nearly 100% read rate, text messages are highly visible and likely to be seen by consumers. In fact, most consumers check new messages within five minutes of receiving them. Consumers also reply to nearly all of their incoming messages.

»Our research confirms that texting is a high priority — more than half of consumers respond to texts in less than three minutes of receiving them, and 78% of consumers respond to texts in 10 minutes or less.

»HOW CONSUMERS PREFER TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR BUSINESS

»Text Messages Are Highly Desirable

»Consumers use text messaging to stay connected, be more productive, and simplify communications. Not only is it a high-priority medium, it’s also a highly preferred one. Consumers want to be able to connect to friends, family, and businesses efficiently by keeping their communications direct and to the point.

»In fact, our study shows that 69% of consumers across all age groups and 75% under the age of 44 want to be able to contact a business via text. Furthermore, 54% are actually frustrated when they’re unable use the medium to connect with a business.

»Unfortunately, most consumers are only able to reach out to a business via phone or email, not because that’s their medium of choice, but because businesses either do not offer texting or choose not to use it. In fact, while our survey indicates that 64% of SMBs are set up to receive text messages, only 13% of SMBs surveyed use the medium to communicate with their customers.

»As a result of the low availability of texting, those who do utilize the technology wind up reaping the rewards. Our study shows that 86% of small business owners who use text messaging find that it offers a higher rate of engagement than email marketing. Businesses are also more likely to receive a response via text message than any other platform used».

.../... Continue reading on EZ Texting

You may also be interested in this review by Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead (@GabsP78):

«54% of Consumers Want Marketing Text Messages But Only 11% of Businesses Send Them», Small Business Trends (@smallbiztrends).