Literature for children is often designed to stimulate imagination through variants of the “real” world that we inhabit, expanding their potential for construing different possible worlds – variants that include imaginary characters like animals with human traits or toys that are somehow animated and conscious. Here we will examine one version of Margery William’s classic nursery tale The Velveteen Rabbit, or How Toys Become Real, where the theme of “real” and imaginary characters and worlds is construed both linguistically and pictorially. (...) We will show how the theme is construed in both text and image, and how the two complement one another, together keeping the two worlds apart while at the same time representing the Velveteen Rabbit’s transformation from toy rabbit to real rabbit. (shrink)

This article discusses the conceptual difficulties that are involved in the understanding of several basic linguistic notions: namely language, dialect, sociolect, register, style, genre, and in particular, variety. Using the definitions provided in various sources, particularly introductory textbooks and dictionaries of linguistics, I examine the ways in which these terms are explained, and discuss how there is actually no consensus on how they are understood and conceptualised. This is particularly true for the term variety, which is regarded by many linguists (...) as a neutral and ideology-free unit for research. In this article, I show that whether a set of linguistic features is regarded as a variety depends on three main factors; there is no absolute – and thus, ideologically neutral – way that linguists can refer to this concept when considering what is or is not a linguistic variety. (shrink)

The fast changing business environment and the ever-growing de- mand facing professional communicators in the 21st century pose new challenges to language learners and teachers alike. Competitive business organizations at- tempt to recruit employees who have excellent linguistic competence coupled with nonlinguistic competences and skills. It is not easy to acquire these addi- tional competences and skills. However, most of them are transferable and can be greatly improved if students are provided with adequate teaching materials and appropriate input from the (...) teacher. The aim of the paper is to address the complexity of ESP teaching today. Firstly, it presents an overview of the changes that have occurred in the practice of teaching ESP in the last few decades. It also sheds some light on the increasing importance of needs analysis. Then it presents new developments in teaching English for professional communication at the ter- tiary level of education. These developments include content-and-language integrated learning, use of didactic case studies, corpus studies con- ducted for teaching purposes and aimed at identifying high-frequency language elements: terms, specialized lexis items, collocations, formulae, acronyms, etc., that need to be prioritized in language courses, more effective course-books with higher terminology indexes, extended use of online materials, teach- ing writing for specialized purposes, and teaching cross-cultural and social skills. The new approach is more challenging for ESP teachers and requires much higher qualifications, such as content knowledge and transferable skills. In order to increase students’ employability and promotion opportunities, we need teaching materials and approaches that help streamline students’ efforts, economize on time, and increase the effectiveness of language courses. (shrink)