When the local becomes international

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When the local becomes international The lexicogrammar of rhetorical moves in English and Spanish Sociology abstracts Rosa Lorés-Sanz

University of Zaragoza (Spain)

Abstracts play a major role as time-saving and information-managing devices in our globalized world of scientific communication. In many non-Anglophone academic journals the pressure to disseminate results internationally is manifested in the requirement to write an English version of the abstract, usually a requisite for the journal to be included in international databases and citation indexes. In this paper it is my aim to investigate the main lexicogrammatical choices which contribute to the identification of rhetorical moves in research article (RA) abstracts translated into English by Spanish academics, and which are published in prestigious national journals as a requisite for those journals to be included in international databases. To carry out this analysis, three sets of texts have been compiled: (i) Spanish abstracts published in prestigious Spanish journals, (ii) their corresponding English translations published in the same journals; (iii) RA abstracts written in English by Anglophone academics (affiliated to Anglophone institutions) and published in leading international journals whose language of publication is English. I will focus on the discipline of Sociology, an emergent field for Spanish academics in terms of their contribution to the international arena. My ultimate aim is to explore how English translations compare with English L1 abstracts in terms of lexicogrammatical choices. Keywords: research article abstracts, international databases, lexicogrammatical choices, translation, English/Spanish

1. Introduction Within the globalized world of scientific communication we are living in, the genre of the research article (RA) abstract plays a major role as a navigating tool, an essential time-saving and information-managing device. Major international

Languages in Contrast 16:1 (2016), 133–158. doi 10.1075/lic.16.1.06lor issn 1387–6759 / e-issn 1569–9897 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

134 Rosa Lorés-Sanz

scientific databases shelter a massive number of peer-reviewed journals which, at the same time, give voice to thousands of academics publishing their research papers every year. The only way to have relatively quick access to this overflow of information is by reading the abstract. Together with this, although it cannot be claimed that today’s research is done exclusively in English, a substantial part of it is certainly being disseminated in English, especially in certain fields. In this context many non-Anglophone national journals feel the pressure to be included in international databases as a way to disseminate local knowledge and gain prestige. One of the essential requisites for their inclusion is that they provide an English version of the research article abstracts published in the journal. This also means an increasing pressure on non-native academics to write in English, even when their research is published in national journals, with a national scope. The difficulties that non-native users of English face when having to write up their research in English have been explored at length, both from a cross-linguistic and a cross-cultural perspective. The genre of the abstract has become the focus of many of these contrastive studies, probably due to the significance that abstracts have in the management of an overwhelming amount of information. These works have involved the contrast between English and other languages as L1, such as Italian (Diani, 2014), German (Busch-Lauer, 1995, 2014), French (van Bonn and Swales, 2007), Arabic (Alharbi, 1997; Alharbi and Swales, 2011), and Spanish (Alonso-Almeida, 2014; Bellés-Fortuño and Querol-Julián, 2010; Burgess and Martín-Martín, 2010; Divasson and León Pérez, 2006; Lorés-Sanz, 2006, 2009a, 2014; Martín-Martín, 2003, 2005). However, there has been less exploration of the English translations of Spanish abstracts which accompany research articles published in national journals (see Fernández Antolín et al., 2006; López-Arroyo et al., 2007; Perales-Escudero and Swales, 2011). Here the writer presents her research article as well as the accompanying abstract in Spanish, and is requested to supply an English version of it. To start with, then, the conditions of drafting the text change, as do the motivations which compel the writer to produce the English text. Taking into account that lexicogrammatical choices are recurrent and may contribute to the rhetorical characterization of a genre, in the following pages it is my aim to identify the main lexicogrammatical choices made by academics in their English abstracts translated from Spanish. My ultimate aim is to explore how translated abstracts compare with other English texts competing in the territory of international databases and citation indexes. To carry out such exploratory analysis, three sets of texts have been compiled: a corpus of Spanish abstracts, a second set consisting of their corresponding English translations, and a comparable corpus of RA abstracts written in English by Anglophone academics (affiliated to Anglophone institutions). To carry out

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The lexicogrammar of English and Spanish Sociology abstracts 135

this study I have selected abstracts from a single discipline, Sociology, a field to which Spanish academics are now starting to contribute internationally. The focus of study is the multiword sequences which help convey the communicative purpose of text moves (Swales, 1990). These word combinations are some of the linguistic features that writers use to specify the different stages of a certain genre. They represent the writers’ lexicogrammatical choices which will be here identified and contrastively analysed in English as translated from Spanish and in L1 English. This analysis is based on a previous study of the rhetorical structure of these texts (see Lorés-Sanz, 2014), thus allowing to explore the mapping of the lexicogrammar onto the rhetorical structure. As Biber et al. (2004) state, although there is general consensus on the importance of multi-word units, there is little agreement on their defining characteristics, research methodologies “or even what to call them” (Biber et al., 2004: 372), and they mention labels such as ‘lexical phrases’, ‘formulaic expressions’, ‘prefabricated patterns’, to which we could add ‘lexical bundles’. The multi-word units in the present study consist of combinations of words (no fixed number) which tend to occupy a key position (usually initial) in the abstract move and act as indicators or ‘triggers’ (Cortes 2013) of the communicate purpose conveyed by that move. Overall, this piece of research hopes to be a pedagogical contribution to the fields of English for Academic Purposes and translation instruction for Spanish academics writing in English. 2. Corpus description and methodology The present study of lexicogrammatical choices was carried out in a corpus of RA abstracts from the discipline of Sociology, as part of the corpus SERAC 2.0. SERAC (Spanish-English Research Article Corpus) is a corpus compiled by members of the research group InterLAE at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) 1 and covers four major academic divisions, namely, Humanities and Arts, Social Sciences, Biological and Health Sciences and Physical Sciences and Engineering. Each academic division includes three disciplines, and Sociology is one of the disciplinary areas within the division of Social Sciences. A corpus of 90 RA abstracts was collected, which includes (i) 30 abstracts in Spanish (SP-Soc), (ii) the corresponding 30 English translations (ENGTRANSSoc), and (iii) 30 abstracts written in English as L1 (ENG-Soc). This corpus amounts to a total of 13,008 words. The RA abstracts included in the corpus were taken from issues between 2003 and 2010 of six journals in the field of Sociology. 1. See www.interlae.com



The English-medium international journals from which the subcorpus ENG-Soc was selected were the following (ten texts per journal): British Journal of Sociology (hosted by the London School of Economics), AJS (American Journal of Sociology), published by The University of Chicago Press, and Social Science Research, published by Elsevier. All of them are journals with high impact factors. The Spanish journals from which the Spanish abstracts and their English translations were taken were Papers. Revista de Sociología (hosted by the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona), Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas (REIS), published by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (Spanish Centre for Sociological Research), and Revista Internacional de Sociología (RIS), published by the Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados de Andalucía (Andalucian Advanced Sociological Studies Institute). According to the Spanish journals webpages, the three of them are included in national and international databases and citation indexes.2 The guidelines that both English-medium journals and Spanish journals provide for abstract writing are included in Appendix A. This multilingual corpus was conceived as a combination of a ‘translation’ or ‘parallel’ corpus, consisting of a collection of source texts in Spanish (SP-Soc) and their translations into English (ENGTRANS-Soc), a ‘bilingual comparable corpus’, which includes texts written in English L1 and Spanish (ENG-Soc and SP-Soc), and a ‘monolingual comparable corpus’, which includes texts written in English L1 and in English as the language of translation (ENG-Soc and ENGTRANS-Soc).3 The design of this corpus allows the integration of two perspectives that very frequently share aims, focus, methods and applications, i.e. Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies, which, according to Granger (2003: 25), “rely on the same type of data, use the same software tools and are partly interested in the same corpus-based applications, notably reference materials — dictionaries, grammars — and teaching methods”. In all, the use of a corpus thus designed facilitates crosslinguistic comparison at various levels (see Johansson, 2007 and Granger, 2010). In our case, the exploration of lexicogrammatical choices can be undertaken in: – abstracts written in a source language (Spanish) and their translations into a target language (English), trying to capture the distinctive features of the translation process and product, which falls under the scope of both Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics; 2. Papers. Revista de Sociología (http://papers.uab.cat/); Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas (REIS) (www.reis.cis.es/); Revista Internacional de Sociología (RIS), (http://revintsociologia.revistas.csic.es). 3. For terminological clarification about types of corpora in contrastive and translation studies, see Baker (1993) and Granger (2003, 2010).



– abstracts written in two L1s, as a bilingual comparable corpus, a type of study currently falling under the scope of Contrastive Linguistics; – abstracts written in English as L1 and in English as translated language, a monolingual comparable corpus of interest for both Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies analyses. As mentioned above, to explore the lexicogrammar of RA abstracts it was first essential to identify their rhetorical structure. The identification of the rhetorical structure in terms of moves (Swales, 1990) was carried out following a top-down approach (Pho, 2008) based mainly on interpretation of the function or content of the text, analyzing the communicative function that each move has. Lewin’s (2010) move pattern, which she proposes as a template for the Social Sciences, was used and applied. Lewin (2010: 156ff) proposes a rhetorical structure common to both conference and RA abstracts in the Social Sciences which consists of six moves: – – – – – –

Relevance Aims Gap Method Results Conclusions

All the abstracts included in the corpus under analysis had previously been tagged according to this template (see Lorés-Sanz, 2014). In the present study I focused on the analysis of the multiword sequences that help to convey the communicative purpose of each move. These word combinations were identified and analysed contrastively, in the understanding that they play a significant role in the characterization of abstract moves. This role is partly explained by the indexical function they have, acting as indicators of the communicative function that moves have within the wider context of the abstract. The staging of the texts in terms of moves facilitated the search of recurrent lexicogrammatical choices. This search was done following a ‘corpus-driven’ approach (Tognini-Bonelli, 2001). Whereas a ‘corpus-based’ approach as a methodology uses corpus evidence mainly as “a repository of examples to expound, test, or exemplify given theoretical statements” (Tognini-Bonelli 2001: 10), a corpus-driven methodology is a deductive procedure with which “the theoretical statements are fully consistent with, and reflect directly, the evidence provided by the corpus” (Tognini-Bonelli 2001: 85), and, unlike in the corpus-based approach, theoretical statements do not exist prior to corpus observation. Thus, close readings were done in order to identify lexicogrammatical choices indicating the communicative



purpose of the move in which they appeared. Then AntConc4 was used to account for frequencies in those cases in which lexicogrammatical choices were repeated (i.e. use of self-mentions, use of lexical indicators such as objective, article, Spanish passive se-construction, etc). Intra-rater reliability tests were carried out with a 9-month span of time, yielding 98% of agreement in identification of multiword combinations. As part of the methodological procedure carried out in the present study, I also conducted a qualitative study which consisted of a questionnaire submitted via e-mail to the Spanish signing authors of the 30 RA abstracts selected for the present study. The purpose of the enquiry was to know how the English version of their Spanish abstract had been drafted, whether translators or language reviewers had been involved and, if that had been the case, whether these reviewers were: – – – –

native speakers experts in the field; native speakers non-experts in the field; non- native speakers experts in the field; non- native speakers non-experts in the field.

Interesting results for the study reported here were obtained. Out of the 30 authors contacted,5 16 replied to the questionnaire.6 Although answers from all the authors were not obtained, the percentage of replies received (53%) allows us to observe tendencies as to what the practices of Spanish Sociology academics may be when drafting their Spanish RA abstracts in English. 15 out of the 16 authors had translated the abstracts themselves, of which nine had been sent straight to the editors without revision, five had been previously revised by nonnative speakers who were experts in the discipline, and one had been previously revised by an expert native speaker. The remaining abstract had been translated by a professional translator. These insights have revealed themselves to be very helpful at the time of interpreting results.

4. AntConc was used to carry out the electronic exploration of typical lexicogrammatical units: http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html 5. In the case of co-authored articles all the authors were contacted but replies about the same abstract were not duplicated. 6. The distribution of answers from the authors publishing in the three journals were the following: four from authors publishing in Papers, seven from REIS and five from RIS.



3. Results The exploration of the lexicogrammatical choices in the three linguacultural contexts represented in the corpus was based on a previous study (Lorés-Sanz, 2014) whose focus had been the analysis of the rhetorical structure of the abstracts, applying the rhetorical template proposed by Lewin (2010) for the Social Sciences. Table 1 below summarizes results from this previous study, indicating the presence of moves in Sociology RA abstracts in the three subcorpora: Table 1. Percentage of texts (raw numbers in brackets) which include each rhetorical move in the three subcorpora (30 texts in each subcorpus). SP-Soc

ENGTRANS-Soc

ENG-Soc

Relevance

46.6% (14)

46.6% (14)

60% (18)

Gap

20% (6)

20% (6)

50% (15)

Aims

93.3% (28)

93.3% (28)

96.6% (29)

Method

50% (15)

50% (15)

70% (21)

Results

56.7% (17)

56.7% (17)

96.6% (29)

Conclusions

16.7% (5)

16.7% (5)

60% (18)

As one of the most noticeable results it was found out that there is no variation between the rhetorical structure of Spanish texts and their English translations, which makes us think of a ‘move by move’ translation strategy. This is not surprising, taking into account the request by some Spanish editors to include identical content in one and the other version, as can be read in their websites. The most relevant insights derived from this preliminary study were the following: – All the moves are more frequent in L1 English than in Spanish abstracts, and, consequently, more frequent than in English abstracts translated from Spanish. L1 English abstracts are, therefore, longer and more informative than the Spanish abstracts and their English translations. – In the three linguistic contexts Aims, Method and Results are the more recurrent moves. This was quite an expected finding, since these were the moves, together with Conclusions, that journal editors more frequently requested to be included in the guidelines for abstracts. – In both L1 English and Spanish Sociology abstracts (and, as a result, in English translations) to state the aim of the RA is almost a compulsory move (96.6% and 93.3% presence of the Aims move respectively). – The presence of Results in the Spanish and translated abstracts is low when compared to the L1 English abstracts. Results seem to have an obligatory



presence in Anglophone contexts, whereas this does not seem to be the case in the Spanish context. – The moves Gap and Implications also have a significant presence in L1 English abstracts and a much lower presence in the Spanish abstracts and, therefore, in translated abstracts. The low frequency found in the Gap move in Spanish is in line with Fernández Antolín et al.’s (2006) findings about medical Spanish abstracts, which reveal that indicating a gap is not very popular among the Spanish medical community in comparison to the Anglophone practice. As the authors hypothesize (2006: 8), “Spanish authors prefer highlighting the principal findings of their own study rather than indicating other studies’ failures.” Overall, this rhetorical behavior may also have to do with the Spanish tendency to avoid criticism, observed in other academic texts such as research articles (Burgess, 2002; Mur-Dueñas, 2010) and book reviews (Lorés-Sanz, 2009b, 2012; Moreno and Suárez, 2008, 2009). The low presence of the Conclusions move is especially remarkable, given the fact that two of the three Spanish journals included in the study specifically mention the need to refer to conclusions in the abstract. As was argued in Lorés-Sanz (2014), this contrastive pattern of presence-absence of moves in the three linguacultural contexts may have certain implications as to the way English abstracts translated from Spanish may be received by their addressees in international databases. It may be hypothesized, for instance, that the fact that the gap is not mentioned, results are not stated and conclusions are not drawn may eventually hinder the potential contribution of the research encapsulated in the abstract, and, as a result, the piece of research it refers to, the RA, may even be judged as uninteresting by the reader. Moreover, as we will now see, each move presents its own lexicogrammatical peculiarities across linguistic and cultural contexts, showing different degrees of similarity and differences between the L1 English texts and the English translations. 3.1 Lexicogrammatical choices in the Relevance move As seen in Table 1, Relevance is a more frequent move in English (60%) than in Spanish and the corresponding English translations (46.6%), where the contextualization of the research seems not to be considered an obligatory section. What is common, though, is that no phraseological or lexicogrammatical sequence was identified as typical in any of the three linguacultural contexts under study. The initial section serves as a framework for the research presented, and, in that sense, its phraseology very much depends on the topic of that research. The



following examples (1a–c) are opening sentences indicating the research relevance in Spanish, in the English translations and in L1 English texts:

(1) a. Las ONG, como cualquier otro tipo de organizaciones sociales, reflejan las desigualdades de género en su estructura y funcionamiento interno. [SP-Soc 15] b. In the same way as any other type of social organization, NGOs evidence the existence of gender inequalities in their structure and [ENGTRANS-Soc 15] internal functioning. c. There have been calls from several sources recently for a renewal of class analysis that would encompass social and cultural, as well as economic [ENG-Soc 1] elements.

This lack of recurrent lexicogrammatical choices indicating the communicative purpose of this move may well be the natural result of its function as an opening section, which makes unnecessary the use of phraseology indicating the transition between moves, typical in mid positions. 3.2 Lexicogrammatical choices in the Gap move The move which indicates the gap in the research is much less frequently found in Spanish (only 20%), and therefore in the translated versions into English, than in the abstracts written in L1 English (50%). As commented above, the scarce reference to gaps found in the Spanish texts and in their English translations may be connected to an assumed reluctance to criticize peers’ research in the Spanish academic context. The fact that few texts include a gap (15 in L1 English and only 6 in Spanish and translated English) does not yield enough reliable data, but it offers interesting insights as to the lexicogrammatical preferences in the three linguacultural contexts. As shown in Table 2, in the three contexts, conjunctions and discourse markers indicating contrast and concession are used, especially so in the case of L1 English (13 in 15 abstracts). Within this category, the types and tokens found in ENG-Soc are the following: although (5), despite (3), however (2), yet (2), in contrast (1). In ENGTRANSSoc the lexical preferences are but (2), although (1) and however (1). It is interesting to notice that but does not appear in the L1 English texts. The use of but in translated English is the result of a direct translation procedure, as is the case in example (2b).



Table 2. Lexicogrammatical choices to indicate the gap in the three subcorpora (types and tokens). Percentages are given for the frequency of use of tokens with respect to the number of texts in which the move appears. Move 2. Gap SP-Soc

ENGTRANS-Soc

ENG-Soc

Use of conjunctions, discourse markers and sentence adverbs

4 (66.6%)

4 (66.6%)

13 (86.6%)

Use of semantic indicators of gap

2 (33.3%)

2 (33.3%)

2 (13.3%)

Total number of abstracts including Gap

6 (20%)

6 (20%)

15 (50%)

(2) a. Cada una de ellas es sugerente, pero insuficiente. Tienen una validez parcial. [SP-Soc 2] b. Each of them is evocative but clearly insufficient. They all have partial validity. [ENGTRANS-Soc 2]

The lexicalization of the gap without the reinforcement of a discourse marker is found both in L1 English and in Spanish (and, consequently, in the English translation): (3) a. Research on the new managerial regimes has been hampered by its neglect of the question of human agency, — specifically, the nature of workers’ responses to the advent of the new forms of work organization. [ENG-Soc 24] b. Sorprendentemente, estas fracturas sociales quedan eclipsadas con frecuencia tras unos discursos que apelan a los imperativos económicos [SP-Soc 27] c. Amazingly, these social upheavals often become eclipsed by discourses [TRANS- Soc 27]

However, taking into account the frequency of use of lexical means to indicate a gap in Spanish and translated English (2 instances in 6 texts) and in L1 English (2 instances in 15 texts), a clear tendency is observed in English L1 to express the gap mainly by means of grammatical means (use of conjunctions) rather than through lexical indicators. 3.3 Lexicogrammatical realizations in the Aims move The statement of aims seems to be a compulsory move in all the subcorpora, being an obligatory section in ENG-Soc (only 1 abstract does not include it), and



the most frequent move by far in Spanish (only 3 abstracts do not present it) and translated English. As regards the lexicogrammatical resources used to indicate aims in the three linguacultural contexts under study, both similarities and differences have been observed. Table 3. Lexicogrammatical choices to indicate aims in the three subcorpora (types and tokens). Percentages are given for the frequency of use of tokens with respect to the number of texts in which the move appears. Move 3. Aims SP-Soc

ENGTRANS-Soc

ENG-Soc

Abstract rhetor (this paper) + active verb (mental/cognitive process)a

8 (28.6%)

13 (46.4%)

14 (48.3%)

Endophoric marker (in this article) + self mention (I/we/ the authors) + active verb (mental/cognitive process)b

1 (3.6%)

7 (25%)

4 (13.8%)

Self-mention (I/we/the authors) + active verb (mental/cognitive process)

___

___

5 (17.3%)

Frame markers announcing aims: (The purpose/aim is)

8 (28.6%)

5 (17.6%)

2 (6,9%)

Passive voice

___

3 (10.7%)

4 (13.8%)

Passive se-construction

11 (39.3%)

___

___

Total number of abstracts including Aims

28 (93.3%)

28 (93.3%)

29 (96.7%)

a

The sequence ‘this + textual noun’ is thoroughly discussed in Swales (2005), Perales-Escudero and Swales (2011), and Wuff et al. (2012) among others. b See ‘framework sequences’ in Bondi (2010) and Burgess and Martin (2010).

Some of the lexicogrammatical features which are very frequent in L1 English are also adopted in the translated texts. This is the case of: – Abstract rhetor (this paper) + active verb (mental/cognitive process) (e.g. this paper aims). – Endophoric marker (in this paper) + self-mention (we/I) +active verb referring to a mental or cognitive process (e.g. in this paper I intend). – Passive voice (e.g. is briefly outlined). Other lexicogrammatical realizations are mainly transferred from Spanish into English. This is the case of frame markers announcing aims, as in (4a–b).

(4) a. El propósito de este artículo es identificar los rasgos más prominentes modelo de política familiar de los países del sur de Europa. (SP-Soc 5)



b. The purpose of this article is to identify the most prominent features of a family policy model in Southern European countries(ENGTRANS-Soc 5)

There are other units that are typical of the Spanish language and cannot be transferred into English. This is the case of the Spanish passive se-construction, which appears 11 times in the Spanish subcorpus. Here translation compensates for its lack of correspondence in English with the use of other common resources available: – Use of self-mentions in translation (5 tokens): (5) a. Aquí se efectúa una revisión de las mismas b. We here revise these interpretations

(SP-Soc 2) (ENGTRANS- Soc 2)

– Use of a textual noun + active voice (3 tokens): (6) a. En esta investigación se examina la relación entre la conducta individual de las personas y su percepción social sobre la conducta de los españoles. (SP-Soc 12) b. This paper examines the relationship between individual behaviour and social perception regarding Spaniards’ behaviour on environmental issues. (ENGTRANS-Soc 12)

– Use of passive voice (3 tokens): (7) a. En esta nota se lleva a cabo un análisis de la frecuencia, participación y las jornadas no trabajadas en huelgas durante el periodo 1987–2006. (SP-Soc 12) b. In this article, an analysis is made of the strike frequency, participation and lost working days during the period 1987–2006. (ENGTRANS-Soc 12)

Some interesting differences between L1 English and translated English are found at the lexical level. A case in point is the term artículo, which is frequently used in Spanish in various patterns (as abstract rhetor, as part of a frame marker or as an endophoric marker, for example). Only in the Aims move it appears 21 times in the 28 abstracts under study. The English term article only appears twice in the same move in 29 texts, paper being the term favoured by native writers. But the English translated texts include 16 uses of article, obviously a result of the practice of literal translation from Spanish, e.g. (8). (8) a. El artículo defiende la potencialidad de un análisis que considere los discursos como jugadas estratégicas. (SP-Soc 23) b. The article defends an analysis that considers discourses as strategic moves. (ENGTRANS-Soc 23)



A similar case in point is the term objetivo, which in Spanish acts as a semantic indicator of the Aims move and appears eight times. No instance of the word objective is recorded in L1 English, but in the English translations, seven cases are identified, including (9b). (9) a. El objetivo de este trabajo es el de proponer un concepto de evolución social genuinamente sociológico. (SP-Soc 1) b. The objective of this work is to propose a sociological concept of social (ENGTRANS-Soc 1) evolution.

It seems, then, that with regard to the Aims move, translated abstracts into English tend to adapt their syntactic choices to structures favoured in L1 English (e.g. ‘this+textual noun’, use of self-mentions, use of passive voice), whereas differences from L1 English are rather observed at the level of lexical selection. Thus, a certain degree of accommodation to the target language may be perceived in the case of syntactic structures, whereas lexical choice seems to be more influenced by the source texts in Spanish. In other words, drawing on two well-known assumptions about the specific properties of translations (Teich 2003), Spanish “shines through” in the lexical choices made in the English translations, whereas adjustments of syntactic structures are made in line with the TL (English), as a result of which certain features are over-used (e.g. endophoric marker + self-mention + active verb) in a process of TL normalization. As a consequence, the English translation is different from any L1 English abstract. 3.4 Lexicogrammatical realizations in the Method move The Method section is more frequent in L1 English (70%) than in Spanish/translated English (50%) but the three linguacultural contexts present similar lexicogrammatical choices, although with different frequencies of use, as shown in Table 4. As can be observed, some structures are used in the three linguacultural contexts to similar degrees. This is the case of abstract rhetors, as in (10a–c). (10) a. Para ello [el artículo] parte de las oscilaciones y contradicciones en los discursos de madres de clases populares (SP-Soc 23) b. It [the article] takes as an example the discursive oscillations and contradictions denied (ENGTRANS-Soc 23) c. The study relies on data from the 2001 panel of the American Housing Survey (ENG-Soc 23)



Table 4. Lexicogrammatical choices to indicate methods in the three subcorpora (types and tokens). Percentages are given for the frequency of use of tokens with respect to the number of texts in which the move appears. Move 4. Methods SP-Soc

ENGTRANS-Soc ENG-Soc

Semantic indicators: present participle (using, drawing on) + noun

1 (6.7%)

1 (6.7%)

13 (62.9%)

Semantic indicators: prepositional phrases (by means of/through the use of, thanks to)

2 (13.3%)

2 (13.3%)

___

Self mention (exclusive we) + active verb (use)

3 (20%)

8 (53.3%)

3 (14.3%)

Abstract rhetor + epistemic verb (the study/this research)

1 (6.7%)

1 (6.7%)

2 (9.5%)

Passive voice

___

3 (20%)

2 (9.5%)


7 (46.6%)

___

___

No indicator

1 (6.7%)

___

1 (4.8%)

Total number of abstracts including Method

15 (50%)

15 (50%)

21 (70%)

Some structures which appear in translated English are clearly transferred from the Spanish source text. This is the case of lexical indicators such as prepositional phrases (by means of, through the use of), which are not present in ENG-Soc: (11) a. A través de distintos análisis de regresión se testan las tres perspectivas (SP-Soc 14) teóricas b. The three theoretical viewpoints are tested, independently and jointly, (ENGTRANS-Soc 14) through various regression analyses

Others are overwhelmingly used in L1 English and are almost nonexistent in translated English, in that sense also showing that the influence of the source language (SL, Spanish) over the target text (TT) is stronger than that of the target language (TL). This is the case of the sequence -ing (using, drawing on, by examining, by analyzing) + noun, e.g. (12), which used as a non-finite subordinate clause allows Methods to be encapsulated within Results: (12) Using contemporary data on recent marriages from the early 1970s through to the mid-1990s, [RESULTS] we show that these two countries share a broadly similar pattern of educational homogamy. (ENG-Soc 3)



Some other lexicogrammatical patterns only exist in Spanish (i.e. passive se-construction, as shown in example (13) and discussed in Section 3.3). (13) Para dicho análisis, se describe y cuantifica primero

(SP-Soc 16)

Some structures are more frequently found in translated English than in both Spanish and L1 English, probably as a means of compensation for other structures (impersonal se-construction) that do not exist in the TL. This is the case of the sequence self-mention (exclusive we) + active verb: (14) a. Para ello vamos a analizar la adaptación que están experimentando los jóvenes en las siguientes dimensiones: socioeconómica, relaciones mixtas, referentes culturales, normas y transnacionalidad. (SP-Soc 25) b. We analyze the adaptation that the youths are experiencing in the following dimensions: socioeconomic, mixed relationships, relating cultural, norms and transnationalism. (ENGTRANS-Soc 25) c. We combine 2000 US Census data and 2000 Uniform Crime Report data (ENG-Soc 29)

Some patterns identified in translated English can be considered to be an adjustment to the properties of the TL (L1 English) and they are even overcompensated, thus tending towards TL normalization (Teich 2003). This is the case of the passive voice, which is used in translation to compensate for the lack of an equivalent structure in English to the Spanish se-passive construction: (15) a. In order to carry out this study, first the very phenomenon of occupational segregation is described and quantified (ENGTRANS-Soc 16) b. Williams’s different formulations of the concept are discussed in terms of their ways of relating reflexive experience (ENG-Soc 2)

In all, Spanish and L1 English make different lexicogrammatical choices to express Method. English L1 favours the semantic indicator ‘present participle (using, drawing on) + noun’, whereas in Spanish it is mainly the use of the se-passive structure which predominates. Translated English, in contrast, follows the SL in the (non-) use of semantic indicators, and the TL in the use of the passive voice, and it finds its own way in the overuse (in comparison to SP-Soc and ENG-Soc) of the sequence ‘self-mention (exclusive we) + active verb’, which seems to be a device used to compensate for the lack of an equivalent in English of the Spanish passive se-construction.



3.5 Lexicogrammatical realizations in the Results move The move in which authors present findings from their research in the abstract is almost always present in L1 English (96.6%), whereas it is much lower in Spanish and translated English (56.7%). As in the previous cases, in this move there is also a lexicogrammatical behavior to observe, as illustrated in Table 5. Table 5. Lexicogrammatical choices to indicate results in the three subcorpora (types and tokens). Percentages are given for the frequency of use of tokens with respect to the number of texts in which the move appears. Move 5. Results SP-Soc


Abstract rhetor (the paper/the analysis)+ epistemic verb (demonstrates/argues)

7 (41.2%)

8 (47%)

11 (37.9%)

Self mention (we/the author(s)/I) + active verb (epistemic verb)

1 (5.9%)

2 (11.8%)

10 (34.5%)

Passive voice

___

3 (17.6%)

3 (10.3%)


5 (29.4%)

___

___

No lexicogrammatical indicators

4 (23.5%)

4 (23.5%)

5 (17.2%)

Total number of abstracts including Results

17 (56.7%)

17 (56.7%)

29 (96.7%)

As was the case in Method, some structures are favoured in the three linguacultural contexts to state Results. This is the case of abstract rhetors followed by epistemic verbs, for instance in the sequences the study argues / los resultados confirman, etc. (16) a. The paper demonstrates how the very different starting point of social distance approaches also leads to strikingly different theoretical conclusions about the nature of stratification and inequality.(ENG-Soc 1) b. Los resultados muestran que las personas cuya frecuencia de comportamientos pro-ambientales resultó ser moderada mostraron una clara tendencia a atribuir a los españoles esa frecuencia en su comportamiento pro-ambiental. (SP-Soc 12) c. The results showed that individuals with a moderate frequency of proenvironmental behaviours tended to project their own behaviour on all Spaniards. (ENGTRANS-Soc 12)

A lack of lexicogrammatical indicators is also found in the three subcorpora to a smilar extent:



(17) a. In Germany, any moves away from separate gendered spheres in terms of either wives’ relative earnings or husbands’ relative participation in housework increase the risk of divorce. In the United States, however, the more stable couples are those that adapt by displaying greater gender equity. (ENG-Soc 5) b. Ello no tan sólo inhibe la terciarización, sino que también dificulta el planteamiento de demandas al Estado de bienestar en favor del desarrollo de medidas de política familiar. (SP-Soc 5) c. This not only inhibits tertiarization, but also hinders demands for family policy measures from the welfare state. (ENGTRANS-Soc 5)

Some realizations are found in L1 English and less frequently so in the other linguacultural contexts. This is the case of self-mentions (exclusive we and use of noun groups like the author/s) followed by an epistemic verb: (18) Contrary to expectations based on spatial assimilation theory, we find that many foreign-born households reside in significantly better neighborhoods than their native-born counterparts. (ENG-Soc 23)

It may be inferred, therefore, that translated English follows the SL conventions with regard to the tendency to avoid self-mentions to state results. As happens in the rest of the moves, the Spanish passive se-construction is an overpresent device in SP-Soc to state results: (19) Si bien la baja tasa de ocupación femenina se halla probablemente asociada con una escasez de medidas amigables para las familias (SP-Soc 5)

Some other realizations are only found in English, both L1 and translated English. This is the case of the passive voice, never used in Spanish but found in the translated English texts as an equivalent structure to the Spanish se-passive: (20) a. It is argued that we need a much more complex and less linear notion of how families change across generations and in time. (ENG-Soc 26) b. En nuestro trabajo se presentan interrelaciones significativas entre la actitud socio-política (ideología),[…] (SP-Soc 26) c. In this paper significant interrelationships found among socio-political attitudes (ideology), […] are described and analysed. (ENGTRANS-Soc 26)

As regards translated English, the use of self-mentions is slightly higher than in the corresponding Spanish source texts, as self-mentions are one way to compensate for the lack of an equivalent in English for the se-passive structure in Spanish, in that sense also showing some alliance with the TL preferences:



(21) a. Y, por otro, se estudiará la excesiva visibilidad de aquello que se sale de la norma, a partir de los procesos de cambio en los roles de género que se están produciendo en algunas ONGD. (SP-Soc 15) b. On the other hand, we focus on the excessive visibility of anything that goes against established rules, starting out from the processes of change in the gender roles that are occurring in some Development NGOs. (ENGTRANS-Soc 15)

It is perceived, therefore, that the ENG-Soc context favours the use of personal forms and abstract rhetors to introduce results which, together with the use of textual nouns followed by active verbs, makes us conclude that English encourages the use of the active voice, either with personal or with impersonal agents. Spanish relies on both abstract rhetors and se-passive constructions to state results, which may imply that there is a tendency to avoid referring to the authors as active agents in the achievement of results. The translations into English of the Spanish abstracts involve an increased used of the active voice and of the presence of the personal agents in comparison to Spanish, thus showing a certain degree of alignment with the TL norms. Lexical preferences in the Spanish texts which are then transferred into the translated English texts are also observed in the Results move with regard to the use of abstract rhetors to indicate results: L1 English favours analysis and paper, and to a lesser extent, results. Spanish favours resultados and, as a consequence, translated English abstracts use results almost exclusively. As observed in previous moves, therefore, SL (Spanish) lexical preferences shine through the process of translation and manifest themselves in the translated text. 3.6 Lexicogrammatical realizations in the Conclusions move The final move, Conclusions, has a very low presence in the Spanish texts and in their English translations (16.7%) and a much more significant presence in L1 English (60%). In spite of the low frequencies, some insights can be gained from the observation of the phraseological behavior in the three linguacultural contexts: The most common strategy to state conclusions in the three linguacultural contexts is the use of abstract rhetors followed by an epistemic verb in the active voice: (22) a. […] the paper argues that the relation between interdependency complexity and social discipline is contingent and variable […]. (ENG-Soc 7) b. El artículo concluye usando una encuesta oficial para analizar la cultura subyacente en el servicio público español y sus efectos sobre la percepción de los problemas morales. (SP-Soc 5)



Table 6 Lexicogrammatical choices to state conclusions in the three subcorpora (types and tokens). Percentages are given for the frequency of use of tokens with respect to the number of texts in which the move appears. Move 6. Conclusions SP-Soc


Abstract rhetors (This conclusion /these findings + epistemic verb (suggest(s), contribute(s), imply)

3 (60%)

4 (80%)

13 (72.2%)

Self mention (we/the author(s)/I) + active verb (mental/epistemic)

1 (20%)

1 (20%)

4 (22.2%)

Passive voice

___

Passive SE-construction

1 (20%)

___

___

Total no of abstracts including Conclusions

5 (16.7%)

5 (16.7%)

18 (60%)

1 (5.5%)

c. The article concludes by using an official survey for analysing underlying culture In the Spanish public service and its effects on the perception of moral problems. (ENGTRANS-Soc 5)

Self-mentions are also found in the three subcorpora, although the low figures found in Spanish and translated English do not really yield reliable conclusions: (23) a. The authors use these results to predict the decline in friendship segregation that would occur if across- and within-school residential segregation were eliminated in U.S. metropolitan areas. (ENG-Soc 11) b. […] lo que nos permite concluir que, en lugar de pretender una teoría que incluya todos los problemas de la acción colectiva, deberíamos identificar patrones sistemáticos de comportamiento, susceptibles de ser (SP-Soc 28) contrastados empíricamente. c. [we] conclude that no single theory may address all collective action problems, but systematic patterns of behavior may be identified and (ENGTRANS-Soc 28) empirically confirmed.

As expected, an instance is found in the Spanish subcorpus of a passive se-construction, which is then translated into English as an abstract rhetor followed by epistemic verb in the active voice: (24) a. También se pone de manifiesto la utilidad social del concepto de capital social como predictor de la calidad de vida. (SP-Soc 4) b. As well as [sic] this paper shows the utility of social capital concept as a quality life predictor. (ENGTRANS-Soc 4)



The use of the passive voice is only found in English L1: (25) Instead, it is argued that a complete explanation of women’s labour market choices after childbirth, and of the outcomes of those choices, depends as much on understanding the constraints that differentially affect women as it does on understanding their personal preferences. (ENG-Soc 5)

Thus, no significant differences are found among the three subcorpora to state conclusions. In all the cases, abstract rhetors and self-mentions, that is, the active voice, is favoured over the impersonal and passive voice. 4. Concluding remarks A series of insights can be gained from the study carried out in this paper which, based on a rhetorical analysis of the abstract, help characterize the lexicogrammar of Sociology RA abstracts in the three linguacultural contexts under study, and, more specifically, of the English abstracts translated from Spanish. To start with, in all the three linguacultural contexts there is a predominance of impersonal forms or forms in which there is no overt personal agent (abstract rhetors, passive voice, se-passive) over personal forms (use of self-mentions) to state aims, methods, results and implications. And this is especially so in the case of Spanish abstracts, where in certain moves only agentless forms are used. This finding is in line with the results obtained in previous contrastive English-Spanish studies on various academic genres (see Lorés-Sanz 2006, 2009a, 2009b, 2011; Martínez, 2005; MurDueñas, 2007) which show that in the Spanish academic culture in general the author’s voice seems to be less personal, as manifested in the less frequent use of self-mentions in Spanish. In contrast, although agentless forms are still more frequent in L1 English abstracts (ENG-Soc) than personal forms, the use of self-mentions is well represented in these texts, especially in the case of Results. This is in line with the assumption that in Anglophone cultures there is a much stronger tendency to project an individual voice rather than a collective or an impersonal voice. As has been anticipated in the previous section, the behavior of the translated texts with regard to the choice of the lexicogrammar can be analysed attending to the hypotheses formulated by Teich (2003) to cater for phenomena that take place in translation. In hypothesis 1, the SL “shines through”, that is, the TT conforms with the textual expectations of the SL. In hypothesis 2, the tendency in the TT is towards TL conventions. Here there is an adjustment to the properties of the TL, thus tending towards TL normalization.



Taking these hypotheses into account, conclusions can be drawn with regard to the translated texts under study. A tendency towards accommodation to Spanish conventions (SL shining through) can be observed at the level of semantic and lexical choices. This is observed, for example, in a similar frequency of use found in ENGTRANS-Soc as regards semantic indicators of Gap and Methods, as well as frame markers in Aims. Spanish shines through not only in the preference for semantic over grammatical indicators, but also in the lexical range of those semantic indicators (e.g. use of nouns such as article and objective, which are quite unusual in L1 English). In contrast, there is a tendency towards TL conventions with regard to the choice of grammatical indicators, for example the use of the passive voice in most of the moves, which comes as a result of the lack of an equivalent structure in English to the Spanish passive se-construction. Moreover, sequences that are found in the three linguacultural contexts are more intensely found in translated English, such as abstract rhetors followed by an epistemic verb in the active voice to state Results and Conclusions. Again this overcompensation found in translation can be interpreted as the consequence of a lack of an equivalent structure in English for the Spanish passive se-construction. Self-mentions are also overcompensated in the Methods move to cater for the lack of the passive se-construction. An explanation to this may be found in the perception that Spanish writers have of stating methods as a less face threatening than other communicative acts such as explaining results or drawing conclusions: especially in certain disciplines there might be a wide consensus on the methods applied, or they are well known to the members of the disciplinary community, and their statement does not involve a serious risk to the writer’s face. Thus, the fact that the Results and Implications moves are more face-threatening for the writer may explain why Spanish academics opt for the use of more shields (i.e. impersonal and agentless forms) in English than when stating aims and describing methods, which involve a lower risk. As a result of the combination of “SL shining thorough” and “TL normalization” processes, a hybrid text emerges with its own lexicogrammatical peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, which does not follow suit the ST from which it emerged nor is it a mirrored image of the TL in which it is written. However, it is the result of the combination of both ST and TL, an instance of what Frawley (1984) called the “third code”. However, these instances of a third code cannot and should not be explained only in terms of SL shining through and TL normalization processes. We cannot ignore the conditions under which the English translations were drafted. Let’s return to the data gathered from the questionnaires sent to the Spanish writers. As mentioned above, 15 of the 16 authors who replied to the questionnaire had translated the texts themselves and one had used a professional translator. The fact that



almost all the authors had opted for their own translation demonstrates a (perhaps too optimistic) confidence in their own knowledge of the English language. In my view, this confidence does not stem (exclusively) from a self-perceived good knowledge of English (in fact, some of the abstracts contain serious syntactic and grammatical mistakes) but from the writers’ perception of the English abstract as an accessory to their texts. What is more, lack of awareness of the impact that their English abstracts may have in an electronically globalized academic world may partly explain the linguistic and rhetorical carelessness that some of the English abstracts under study show. This is also demonstrated by the fact that nine writers out of 15 sent their English translations straight to the editors, without revision. The remaining six writers had their texts revised, five of them by non-native speakers experts in the discipline and 1 by an expert native speaker, thus showing that, if reviewers are called for, these tend to be experts in the discipline rather than experts in the language, thus revealing a primacy of content over form. In all, there seems to be little consideration for the abstract as an academic genre as well as a lack of awareness about the impact that the use of English as a lingua franca may have for the dissemination of their work. This can explain why, at least in the case of the Sociology writers under study, not much consideration is given to the drafting of English texts. Having said that, their English abstracts are playing in the same pitch as those by other international writers, who are also making use of English as an international language of communication seeking to disseminate their research results in the global academic contexts. Thus, the use of syntactic structures and lexis of English abstracts as translated by Spanish researchers here described is, without doubt, also contributing to the way research in Sociology is being disseminated globally in English.

Acknowledgements This research has been carried out within the framework of the research group InterLAE (www. interlae.com), financially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (FFI2012–37346) and Gobierno de Aragón (H21). I am also grateful to my colleagues, Pilar Mur-Dueñas and Silvia Murillo, for their insightful comments on the contents of this paper.

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Appendix. Journals guidelines The six journals from which the 90 abstracts under analysis were retrieved included some guidelines for the writing of these texts. Given the impact that the rhetorical structure of abstracts has on the interpretation of results, I have considered it necessary to include those guidelines here. A) Spanish journals: Papers. Revista de Sociología

“El texto de los artículos y notas irá precedido de un resumen de no más de 250 palabras (que expondrá clara y concisamente los objetivos, metodología, principales resultados y conclusiones del trabajo).” [The text will be preceded by an abstract not longer than 250 words, which will state in a clear way the objectives, methodology, main results and conclusions from the research.]

Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas (REIS)

“Los trabajos irán precedidos de un breve resumen de entre 100 y 150 palabras, que tendrá una versión en español y otra en inglés, siendo ambas de idéntico contenido. El resumen debe exponer con claridad la finalidad del estudio o investigación (objetivos); los procedimientos básicos (métodos); los principales hallazgos (resultados), y las conclusiones más relevantes, así como resaltar los aspectos nuevos e importantes del estudio.” [The papers will be preceded by a short abstract (100–150 words), in both Spanish and English, of identical content. The abstract must state in a clear way the purpose of the research (aims), the basic procedures undertaken (methods), the main findings (results) and the most relevant conclusions, as well as highlight the new and important aspects of the study.]


158 Rosa Lorés-Sanz Revista Internacional de Sociología (RIS)

“Es imprescindible que cada trabajo conste de un resumen de un máximo de 150 palabras tanto en español como en inglés así como de un máximo de cinco palabras clave, no incluidas en el título, igualmente en español y en inglés.” [An abstract must be included of up to 150 words both in Spanish and English, as well as five key words, not included in the text, also in Spanish and English.]

B) English journals: British Journal of Sociology

“An abstract of up to 300 words, giving a concise statement of the intention, results and conclusions of the paper should be attached to the article.”

AJS (American Journal of Sociology)

“Your abstract should be as close to 100 words as possible. It should include your research question or puzzle, identify your data, and give some indication of your findings. Your abstract is likely to be sent by email to potential readers: giving an accurate and efficient statement of your project is likely to increase your chances of enlisting their aid. Unfocused, verbose abstracts may make it harder to place your paper with referees. Papers without an abstract cannot be sent to readers for peer review.”

Social Science Research

“A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, references should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.”

Author’s address Rosa Lorés Sanz Dpto. de Filología Inglesa y Alemana Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Universidad de Zaragoza C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12 Zaragoza 50009 Spain [email protected]
