Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies 

About: Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies is an academic journal published by AEDEAN (Asociacion Espanola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos). The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Narrative & Computer science. It has an ISSN identifier of 0210-6124. It is also open access. Over the lifetime, 189 publications have been published receiving 649 citations. The journal is also known as: Atlantis, revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos & Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos.

Pedagogic Criticality and English as a Lingua Franca

Abstract: This article discusses the pedagogic relevance of recent theory and research in the use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), particularly focusing on the implications of this field for language teacher education and development. Research in ELF has begun to pose some critical challenges to established principles and practice in English language teaching. The consensus among researchers is that ELF empirical data and theoretical discussions hold implications for all manner of professional concerns, including the language syllabus, teaching materials and language assessment. There has to date, though, been relatively little in-depth exploration of what teachers might do in order to respond to ELF in practice. Modifying the language syllabus or teaching materials in response to ELF requires substantial rethinking of current approaches. I report here on continuing attempts to incorporate an ELF perspective in the language classroom, using practitioner-oriented research to re-examine current methodologies and consider how we might develop materials and tasks that better incorporate aspects of English as used in lingua franca interactions. I examine the feasibility of developing an ELF orientation to language by adopting a critical approach to language pedagogy and professional development, exploring ways in which teachers might move beyond a conventionally norm-driven approach to additional language education.

A Multimodal Approach to Foster the Multiliteracies Pedagogy in the Teaching of EFL through Picturebooks: The Snow Lion

Abstract: espanolEnsenar lenguas en el siglo veintiuno implica prestar atencion a las demandas pedagogicas multimodales de un mundo digital global. Para alcanzar este objetivo, la ensenanza efectiva del ingles requiere una preparacion de los instructores para guiar de manera consciente el desarrollo de la literacidad de los alumnos e integrar las distintas maneras de construir significado que van mucho mas alla del mero uso de la lengua. Este articulo suscribe la nocion de literacidad como un concepto multidimensional y propone un conjunto de herramientas multimodales como medio para que los maestros de ingles como lengua extranjera (ILE) trabajen con elementos literarios y visuales clave. Centrandonos en la lectura de The Snow Lion (Helmore and Jones 2017), analizamos la relacion caracteristica entre palabras e imagenes que define el album ilustrado e implementamos la pedagogia de las multiliteracidades, que consta de cuatro procesos de conocimiento, esto es, experimentar, conceptualizar, analizar y aplicar. El objetivo final es guiar a jovenes estudiantes en la produccion de significados y en el pensamiento critico en el marco del aula de ILE a traves del analisis e interpretacion de los albumes ilustrados. EnglishTwenty-first-century language education involves paying attention to the multimodal pedagogical demands of a global digital world. To this end, effective English language teaching (ELT) requires preparation on the part of instructors in terms of consciously guiding learners’ literacy development and integrating multiple modes of creating meaning that are broader than language alone. This article supports the notion of literacy as a multidimensional concept and proposes a multimodal toolkit as a means for teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) to work with key literary and visual elements. Focusing on the reading of The Snow Lion (Helmore and Jones 2017), we discuss the meaningful interaction between words and images that defines picturebooks and implement the multiliteracies pedagogy approach, which is comprised of four knowledge processes, i.e., experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing and applying. The final objective is to guide young students to produce meaning and think critically in the EFL classroom through the analysis and interpretation of picturebooks.

Time’s Up for a Change of Political Focus: Katniss Everdeen’s Ecofeminist Leadership in The Hunger Games Film Series

Abstract: This article explores Katniss Everdeen’s ecofeminist political agency in The Hunger Games film series (2012-2015) in the light of global social movements in the late 2010s. As a young destitute woman who defies the oppressive rules of an oligarchic and patriarchal totalitarian order, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) represents the utopian potential of intersectional politics forged across class, gender, racial and geopolitical borders. In opposition to ecocidal and patriarchal conceptions of progress, Katniss’s ecofeminist heroism is illustrative of the emergence of cosmopolitan political imaginaries that advocate sustainable, egalitarian collective futures constructed beyond the methodological frameworks of neoliberal globalisation and material dialectics. Contemporary with young activists like Greta Thunberg, one of the founders of the ecological movement Fridays for Future, Katniss can be taken as a cinematic representative of a new generation of utopian political actors for whom individual well-being is tied to ecosocial welfare and cosmopolitan inclusion.

Euphemistic Metaphors in English and Spanish Epitaphs: A Comparative Study

Abstract: Following the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, it is the aim of this paper to analyse the conceptual organisation underlying death-related metaphorical expressions in English and Spanish. With this in mind, this paper presents a comparative study of death metaphors in a sample of epitaphs from Highgate Cemetery (London, UK) and from the Cemetery of Albacete (Albacete, Spain) focusing specifically on those aimed at substituting the notions of ‘death’ and ‘dying’. The results obtained reveal that the conceptual organisations that underlie the euphemistic metaphors for death in English and Spanish derive both from our common bodily experience and from specific cultural constraints. Although the set of conceptual metaphors for the domain of death is similar in both languages, the Spanish epitaphs show a clear preference for source domains in which Jewish-Christian beliefs and political issues play a crucial role, whereas the English epitaphs tend to display a more optimistic, life-like approach to death.

The Role of Semiotic Metaphor in the Verbal-Visual Interplay of Three Children’s Picture Books. A Multisemiotic Systemic-Functional Approach

Abstract: This paper aims to explore how the use of semiotic metaphors in picture books contributes to children’s understanding of the stories. The three picture books selected for analysis were written during the twentieth century and respond to a standard of literary quality: Guess How Much I Love You (1994), Where the Wild Things Are (1963) and Gorilla (1983). The concept of semiotic metaphor as a tool to create ideational meaning is analysed within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Systemic-Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis. Kay O’Halloran extends the Hallidayan concept of grammatical metaphor to the semiotic metaphor in order to determine how verbal and visual modes interact with each other in multimodal texts. Like grammatical metaphor, semiotic metaphor also involves a shift in the grammatical class or function of an element. As this process does not take place intra-semiotically, but rather inter-semiotically, the reconstrual produces a semantic change in the function of that element, creating a new way of making meaning and representing reality. The results of the analysis show that semiotic metaphors are essentially used in children’s tales to facilitate young children’s understanding of the story by making some abstract phenomena related to states of being more concrete and specific. Keywords: Systemic Functional Linguistics; grammatical metaphor; semiotic metaphor; verbal-visual intersemiosis; picture books