Papers by Aleksandra Radovanović
The increasingly rapid environmental degradation, pollution, climate change, and biodiversity los... more The increasingly rapid environmental degradation, pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss have led to the urgent need to address these issues. A response within linguistics is the emergence of ecolinguistics. Focused on fostering environmental awareness and sustainability, ecolinguistics has much to offer. It, however, still seems to be somewhat neglected. This paper sheds light on the current state of ecolinguistics, highlighting its appropriateness for addressing tourism-related texts. After discussing the main aspects of ecolinguistics, and a brief look at some relevant contributions, it ends with a small-scale qualitative analysis of eco-relevant terms in two government documents for defining the course of tourism development in Serbia. The findings indicate a shift towards more ecologically beneficial narrative, yet with a continued focus on economic prosperity.
ESP Today, 2024
Extensive literature recognises the important roles of hedges and boosters in effective (academic... more Extensive literature recognises the important roles of hedges and boosters in effective (academic) writing and demonstrates that writers' linguistic and cultural backgrounds influence their use, hence the stimulus for this corpus-based study. It examines modifiers in managerial responses to negative customer reviews posted on Tripadvisor by comparing lexical expressions of hedging and boosting in a corpus of 456 English-written responses from hotels located in the UK and Serbia. The nuanced insights gained through my analysis provide further evidence of genrespecific effects on the use of modifying expressions in written texts. A key finding is a blurring of the distinctions between texts produced in the L1-and L2-speaking environments. The differences, mostly minor ones, lie in the rates at which grammatical (sub-)classes of lexical items are used for hedging/boosting. The findings also reveal considerable similarities in the extent to which managers from the two countries resort to hedges/boosters and in the repertoires of lexical items they rely on. This may suggest that the modifiers-related distinctions between L1 and L2 writing tend to decrease with increasing degrees of conventionality, whereas they rise with increasing degrees of creativity.
Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación, 2023
This paper explores expressive illocutionary acts in responses to hotel guests' reviews posted on... more This paper explores expressive illocutionary acts in responses to hotel guests' reviews posted on Tripadvisor by comparing their occurrences and realizations in 320 managerial responses in English from English and Serbian hotels, with manifestations of linguistic politeness a focus of analysis. Drawing largely on Leech's (2014) framework, the study attempts to determine whether the acts which tend to come in the form of formulaic, routinized expressions occurring in the responses given by hotels located in different cultural settings exhibit some differences as a reflection of culturespecific politeness values. The analysis has revealed considerable similarity between the two data sets in the lexicogrammatical realization of expressives and the use of resources for politeness. However, some noteworthy points of dissimilarity have emerged which correlate closely with the differences in cultural value preferences of the two countries in Hofstede et al.'s (2010) dimensions of power distance and individualism.
B.A.S. - British and American Studies, 2023
The main purpose of scientific writing is to present objective information based on data and rese... more The main purpose of scientific writing is to present objective information based on data and research. However, in English academia, it is common to mitigate one's claims and allow for other points of view by hedging. In this paper, hedges are explored in the post-method sections of 44 research articles (RAs) in the field of tourism and hospitality, written in English by English and Serbian scholars. A number of established similarities and differences regarding the frequency and use of hedges by native and non-native speakers of English are further discussed and conclusions are drawn regarding cross-cultural aspects of scientific writing.
Patterns and Variation in English Language Discourse. Ninth Brno Conference on Linguistics Studies in English, 2022
The present study explores central modals CAN, COULD, MAY, MIGHT, and the semi-auxiliary verb BE ... more The present study explores central modals CAN, COULD, MAY, MIGHT, and the semi-auxiliary verb BE ABLE TO in tourism discourse with a focus on register variation. A small-scale analysis conducted on the tailor-made corpus (c. 131,000 words) of three text types/registers (promotional texts, e-newsletters, and managerial responses to guests' reviews) revealed an important variation across registers in the distribution of possibility modals, the degree to which their polysemantic nature is displayed and in their capacity to serve specific metadiscoursal functions. The findings clearly indicate that the causes of the observed variation lie in the influence stemming from the differing situational characteristics, especially communicative purposes, interactiveness, topic domains, and personal involvement.
Collection of Papers of the Faculty of Philosophy in Priština, 2022
Along with the growing demands on the tourism and hospitality market, soft skills have been incre... more Along with the growing demands on the tourism and hospitality market, soft skills have been increasingly stated as the main prerequisites for employability. Therefore, this study set out to investigate the health tourism students' perceptions of the soft skills they possess with an emphasis on the contribution of English language courses to their development. The data were collected employing the tailor-made questionnaire which addressed 12 soft skills deemed the most necessary for the inclusion in the (health) tourism labour market. Students perceived their soft skills to be at an average to a moderately high level of development. Likewise, an average to a moderately high level of the contribution of English language instruction was noted. These findings indicate that there is much room for improvement and can be informative for various stakeholders in the education process. On the one hand, the study has revealed that the language courses have a favourable impact on soft skills development, and on the other, it has produced a relatively good representation of the enhancements to be made in this regard.
Modality in the language of tourism – An analysis of spa destination websites in English and Serbian
СРПСКИ ЈЕЗИК, КЊИЖЕВНОСТ, УМЕТНОСТ Зборник радова са XV међународног научног скупа одржаног на Филолошко-уметничком факултету у Крагујевцу, 2021
There is a widely held view that the language of tourism is a type of specialised discourse which... more There is a widely held view that the language of tourism is a type of specialised discourse which boasts a remarkable genre variety. It differs from general language and other specialised discourses in terms of prominent functional and linguistic (lexical-semantic and syntactic) features, including the frequent use of modal verbs (modals) (Maci 2018).
This study focuses on a destination website, possibly the most representative tourism discourse genre, which, in addition to being highly informative, mainly serves a promotional purpose. It intends to shed additional light on the use of modals in the promotional texts on the official tourism websites in English in Serbian. In an attempt to offer a detailed account of the investigated items, we have looked into the semantic-pragmatic aspects and rhetorical functions of modal verbs and tried to determine the similarities and differences between the investigated languages in terms of using modals to realise the communicative purpose of the genre in question. To this end, an analysis was carried out on a corpus compiled by retrieving promotional texts from the official websites of two spa destinations, Bath (BTH 21,077 words) and Vrnjačka Banja (VB 21,040 words). Following Biber et al.'s (1999) classification of modals, and thereby distinguishing between possibility modals, necessity modals, and volitional modals, the identified instances were analysed based on а three-fold (epistemic-deontic-dynamic) distinction of modal meanings (Palmer 1990, 1986) incorporating some principles of (applied) discourse analysis (Bhatia 2014).
The analysis has confirmed that modals in English and Serbian share common semantic properties and revealed that they also realise the same "generic values" (Bhatia 2014): descriptions, recommendations, and evaluations. These are rhetorical functions which aid in pursuing promotional aims. We can thus claim that modals serve the communicative purpose, which makes them qualitatively significant elements in the investigated genre. Overall, the findings show that there are some similarities, as well as great differences, between English and Serbian texts, in the ways modals are used in the creation of persuasive texts aimed at converting readers, potential tourists, into actual tourists. Generally, both sub-corpora are characterised by infrequent use of necessity modals as well as great frequencies of possibility modals. In comparison to other types, epistemic modality seems to be least prominent, whereas dynamic modality meanings appear to be prevalent. Also, dynamic modals tend to be most strongly associated with persuasive aims. The most striking difference relates to the overall frequency with English modals outnumbering Serbian ones almost by four to one. Although this can be attributed to the already observed different tendencies of expressing modal meanings in the two languages, it might indicate that modals in the Serbian language material are insufficiently used as effective means for realising the persuasive intent of promotional texts. The goal of any persuasive communication is to build a relationship between the sender and recipient of the message (Bhatia 1993), hence relatively scarce use of Serbian modals, particularly possibility modals with dynamic modality readings, aimed at establishing rapport and engaging readers is particularly significant. Although our findings are fairly limited by the corpus size they might be indicative of where future research could focus.
Psychology of disaster, state of emergency and their effects on health, 2021
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have been imposing various measures. In Serbia, t... more In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have been imposing various measures. In Serbia, the president declared a nationwide state of emergency in a televised address on March 15. This study aims to investigate the citizen’s attitudes towards this declaration by taking a genre of comment to a news article as a source of insights. Largely relying on the tools of a corpus-based approach, the analysis was performed on a small-scale corpus comprising the comments posted in response to relevant news articles on four web portals. The study employed a combination of software-assisted and manual analysis methods. As expected, the keyword and collocation analysis indicates that the comments revolve around the corona virus disease, the state of emergency, emergency measures and the president. It has also shown that the investigated comments serve as a vehicle for expressing personal views, approvals or disapprovals, posing questions regarding the implementation of emergency measures, in general, or in specific cases, or making suggestions. This point has been addressed further in the second part of the analysis focused on discerning the underlying attitudes. Based on the findings, information-centred comments (further grouped into three categories) are less represented in the
corpus than expressions of attitude with the comments taken as negative attitudes slightly outnumbering those qualified as positive. Also, the analysis has revealed that the citizens' attitudes tend to vary widely going from one extreme to the other, possibly due to the fact that public health-related matters have easily slid into the political arena.
Nasledje, Kragujevac, 2020
Given notable merit of translation in accessing meanings of a linguistic form, this study attempt... more Given notable merit of translation in accessing meanings of a linguistic form, this study attempts to look into the English semi-modal be about to through the lens of its Serbian equivalents. The overall objective is to approach the construction from a contrastive and translation-descriptive perspective. А methodological framework comprises a contrastive and qualitative analysis, supported by quantitative data. Thee unilateral contrastive analysis was carried out on the sentential corpus composed of the excerpts from three English novels and their Serbian translations. It revealed as many as 16 various Serbian morphosyntactic, grammatical, and lexical forms which convey meanings of be about to in the present and/or past tense. Accordingly, it confirmed that immediate future time reference did not exhaust the semantics of be about to (Comrie 1985: 95) and had provided an account of its aspectual and modal meanings which are far from being sharply separable and mutually exclusive. In this regard, the meanings of dynamic modality surfacing through translation deserve a specific mention.
ESP Today, 2020
This study focuses on the modal notion of necessity expressed by the central modal auxiliaries an... more This study focuses on the modal notion of necessity expressed by the central modal auxiliaries and other semantically related modal expressions in English for Tourism. The general aim is to offer detailed coverage of the investigated items by placing considerable emphasis on variability in terms of specialised registers. Specifically, I intend to explore the similarities and differences among necessity modals related to modal meaning and their distribution, and observe whether there are any register-induced variations. To this end, the analysis has been conducted on a small-scale specialised corpus which contains texts from one spoken, and two written registers (promotional website and online responses to consumers' reviews). A conflation of relevant perspectives underpins the qualitative analysis. A descriptive account is based on the distinction between epistemic and root necessity, and the parameters of strength and source in case of root modal uses. Quantitative findings point to a low frequency of identified items as well as to marked variation in their distribution across the registers. Overall, the use of necessity expressions is contingent on the medium of communication, communicative purpose and interactants.
Teme, 2020
The current study seeks to investigate evasion in Parliamentary Questions in the National Assembl... more The current study seeks to investigate evasion in Parliamentary Questions in the National Assembly of Serbia. The objectives of the research are to determine whether and how frequently the members of the Government provided evasive responses and how they did it. The analysis comprising a qualitative and a quantitative method was conducted on the data that comprised the transcripts of three Parliamentary Questions. The responses were classified into answers, intermediate responses and evasive responses. Each identified evasive response was analysed in terms of its level of evasion, the practices involved and the agenda shifts that occurred. The results reveal that evasion did occur in the investigated data. As described and exemplified in the study, the medium level of evasion was the most prominent, and the Government members employed overt and covert practices, as well as three types of agenda shifts in evading answers. These results match those observed in previous studies on evasion in Question Time in other parliaments. ЕВАЗИВНОСТ У ПОСЛАНИЧКИМ ПИТАЊИМА СКУПШТИНЕ СРБИЈЕ Апстракт Намера аутора овог рада је да истражи евазивност током посланичких питања у Народној скупштини Србије са циљем да испита да ли су и колико често чланови Владе избегавали одговоре на питања и како су то чинили. Квалитативна и кванти-тативна анализа спроведена је на материјалу сачињеном од транскрипата посла-ничких питања са три седнице Скупштине. Одговори су класификовани као "прави одговори", посредни одговори и евазивни одговори, а сваки идентификовани евазив-ни одговор је потом даље анализиран у погледу нивоа евазивности, примењених те-хника и промена тема до којих је дошло. Резултати показују да евазивност јесте била присутна у испитиваном језичком материјалу. Као што је у раду описано и поткреп-љено примерима, одговори средњег степена евазивности били су најучесталији, а чланови Владе су при избегавању одговора примењивали отворене и прикривене те-хнике, као и три типа променa темa. Ови резултати су у сагласности са резултатима претходних студија о евазивности током посланичких питања у другим пар-ламентима. Кључне речи: евазивност, посланичка питања, одговор, промене теме.
Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies, 2020
This study seeks to investigate auxiliary will from an English-Serbian contrastive perspective. I... more This study seeks to investigate auxiliary will from an English-Serbian contrastive perspective. It aims to: 1) identify the translation equivalents (TEs) of will in Serbian and reach conclusions about similarities and differences between the two languages, and 2) observe and discuss the nature of Serbian counterparts. A unilateral contrastive analysis was carried out on the sentential corpus comprising the excerpts from two acclaimed English novels and their published Serbian translations. The TEs of epistemic will and dynamic will are discussed concerning semantic peculiarities surfacing in translation. Specifically, the type of a modal meaning, non-factuality, and the speaker's commitment to the realisation of the situation referred to are pointed out.
Specijalna bolnica in Serbian and its English Equivalents
SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation, 2019
The current study seeks to investigate the corresponding English equivalents of specijalna bolnic... more The current study seeks to investigate the corresponding English equivalents of specijalna bolnica, and to identify the problems in rendering this lexical item into English. The analysis starts from the renderings of specijalna bolnica on the investigated institutions websites. The findings reveal that the translators opt for formally corresponding lexical items, which results in the transparent target language collocations. A translator's choice should be governed by the purpose of translation, prospective readership and the English language variant. Yet, in the case of particular institutions increasingly expanding into the field of health tourism, an effect-oriented descriptive equivalent is recommended.
Srpski jezik, 2019
Considerable controversy surrounds the future tense, making its theoretical status the object of ... more Considerable controversy surrounds the future tense, making its theoretical status the object of a long-standing debate. This paper intends to contribute to this line of research by providing evidence from a language widely accepted as having an uncontroversial future tense. It aims to pursue the following questions: whether Serbian has a clear-cut future tense and whether there is linguistic evidence to subsume this grammatical form under mood. To this end, the future tense in Serbian is scrutinised against the backdrop of the arguments presented in the debate on will. The theoretical account is supported by illustrative examples extracted from the contrastive senten-tial corpus compiled for the purposes of this research. The findings indicate that the Serbian future tense is not beyond dispute and point to the criticality of the conceptual argument. Also, the explanatory framework based on tense as an epistemic category (Lyons 1977) and modality as epistemic deixis (Frawley 1992) suggests that is to be subsumed under mood as the concepts of non-factivity, non-remoteness and irrealis modality clearly indicate its modal semantics.
Vestnik za Tuje Jezike, 2018
To start reducing the probable discrepancy between English for Tourism Purposes (ETP) learners’ p... more To start reducing the probable discrepancy between English for Tourism Purposes (ETP) learners’ pragmatic and grammatical development, the pragmatic facets of the polyvalent grammatical categories should be reflected in the instruction. The study focused on tense and aspect with two complementary aims: 1) to identify and set forth a characterization of tense and aspectual verbal forms used as the internal pragmatic modifiers contributing to politeness in ETP, and 2) to highlight
the relevant points and outline the proposals for ETP teachers. The listening scripts from four textbooks were used in an analysis primarily oriented towards pragmalinguistics. The study confirmed the association between the investigated linguistic items and politeness, and provided the theoretical account of the hypothetical past, past tense and progressive aspect, but also shed light on the politeness effects conveyed by future-reference verbal forms. It also suggested an
approach in ETP instruction based on raising students’ pragmatic awareness.
ESP Practitioners and Content Teachers Collaboration in ESP Syllabus Design: English for Health Tourism Case in Point
Although the necessity for collaboration between
content teachers and FLSP practitioners has been... more Although the necessity for collaboration between
content teachers and FLSP practitioners has been widely
recognised, it is rather underdeveloped in Serbian tertiary
education institutions (Đorović and Mirić, 2011; Mirić and
Đorović, 2015). Therefore, we set out to investigate the
collaborative practice involved in the design of English for
Health Tourism Purposes (EHT) syllabus.
The general aim was to explore whether and how the
collaboration between ESP practitioners and content teachers
could contribute to an effective EHT syllabus designed to
accommodate the students’ linguistic and professional needs.
The small-scale questionnaire survey was carried out among the
content teachers. The results obtained have confirmed the initial
position that the information provided by content teachers is
valuable for ESP syllabus designers. The study has also
demonstrated that content teachers lack awareness of their
beneficial role.
У светлу дискусије о семантичком статусу футура у лингвис-тичкој теорији, првенствено англистичке... more У светлу дискусије о семантичком статусу футура у лингвис-тичкој теорији, првенствено англистичке провенијенције, у раду се додатно продубљује испитивање могућности сагледавања фу-тура I као члана модалне категорије у српском језику са намером да се тиме расветли фазична, модално-темпорална природа ове категорије. Понуђена теоријска разматрања поткрепљена су при-мерима употребe футура у простим реченицама ексцеирпираним из Корпуса савременог српског језика. Kвалитативнa анализа мо-далног значења, илокуционог потенцијала, опредељења субјекта према истинитости и нефактуалност пропозиције исказа који садрже футур I не заснива се само на једној теорији неке одређе-не школе, већ је примењен шири семантички приступ. Спрове-дена анализа упућујe на закључак да се семантичке категорије модалности и глаголског времена прожимају у толикој мери да је тешко могуће до краја разрешити питање категоризације футура I, чиме се потврђује фазичност испитиване језичке категорије и постојање континуума на релацији модалност–немодалност. Кључне речи: футур I, епистемичка модалност, волитивност, опредељење, говорни чин.
The current study inquires into the Internet affordances and utility and focuses on its effective... more The current study inquires into the Internet affordances and utility and focuses on its effective integration into English for Specific Purposes instruction at the Faculty of Hotel Management and Tourism. As no technological tool can of itself bring any improvements in learning, prior to its inclusion, the specific instruction context is to be investigated in order to make informed decisions in line with students' needs and interests and curricula objectives. For this reason, a survey on students' perceptions and attitudes was carried out. The findings enabled identifying the instructional aspects to be enhanced by the Internet and pointing out suggestions and remedial aspects. In general, the findings support the idea that the Internet maximum benefits can only be achieved through promoting two types of EFL language learning: overt and covert learning. Also, the overall integra-tive pedagogical approach is advocated.
The current study attempts to investigate the semantic domain of dynamic modality in English and ... more The current study attempts to investigate the semantic domain of dynamic modality in English and Serbian by focusing on the dynamic modals in English and their translation equivalents in Serbian. It tends to fill the existing research gap regarding a comprehensive contrastive analysis tackling all dynamic modality subtypes in the investigated languages. Cross-linguistically, modality is expressed by different grammatical categories with a tendency for typologically related languages to convey modal meanings by similar devices. We expect the analysis to show that both English and Serbian have grammatical devices to express dynamic modal meanings and that dynamic modality is expressed in similar ways in the two languages. Two complementary objectives underlie the analysis: to identify and provide an account of the devices used to express dynamic modality in English and Serbian and to compare and contrast the two languages. The unilateral contrastive analysis, guided by the principles set in Đorđević (1994), used a semantically based tertium comparationis, i.e. the principle of translation equivalence seen in terms of semantic equivalence. The analysis was carried out on the corpus compiled for these purposes comprising the excerpted examples from two novels by Kazuo Ishiguro (Ishiguro 2005, 2016) and their published Serbian translations (Išiguro 2003; Ишигуро 2009).
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Papers by Aleksandra Radovanović
This study focuses on a destination website, possibly the most representative tourism discourse genre, which, in addition to being highly informative, mainly serves a promotional purpose. It intends to shed additional light on the use of modals in the promotional texts on the official tourism websites in English in Serbian. In an attempt to offer a detailed account of the investigated items, we have looked into the semantic-pragmatic aspects and rhetorical functions of modal verbs and tried to determine the similarities and differences between the investigated languages in terms of using modals to realise the communicative purpose of the genre in question. To this end, an analysis was carried out on a corpus compiled by retrieving promotional texts from the official websites of two spa destinations, Bath (BTH 21,077 words) and Vrnjačka Banja (VB 21,040 words). Following Biber et al.'s (1999) classification of modals, and thereby distinguishing between possibility modals, necessity modals, and volitional modals, the identified instances were analysed based on а three-fold (epistemic-deontic-dynamic) distinction of modal meanings (Palmer 1990, 1986) incorporating some principles of (applied) discourse analysis (Bhatia 2014).
The analysis has confirmed that modals in English and Serbian share common semantic properties and revealed that they also realise the same "generic values" (Bhatia 2014): descriptions, recommendations, and evaluations. These are rhetorical functions which aid in pursuing promotional aims. We can thus claim that modals serve the communicative purpose, which makes them qualitatively significant elements in the investigated genre. Overall, the findings show that there are some similarities, as well as great differences, between English and Serbian texts, in the ways modals are used in the creation of persuasive texts aimed at converting readers, potential tourists, into actual tourists. Generally, both sub-corpora are characterised by infrequent use of necessity modals as well as great frequencies of possibility modals. In comparison to other types, epistemic modality seems to be least prominent, whereas dynamic modality meanings appear to be prevalent. Also, dynamic modals tend to be most strongly associated with persuasive aims. The most striking difference relates to the overall frequency with English modals outnumbering Serbian ones almost by four to one. Although this can be attributed to the already observed different tendencies of expressing modal meanings in the two languages, it might indicate that modals in the Serbian language material are insufficiently used as effective means for realising the persuasive intent of promotional texts. The goal of any persuasive communication is to build a relationship between the sender and recipient of the message (Bhatia 1993), hence relatively scarce use of Serbian modals, particularly possibility modals with dynamic modality readings, aimed at establishing rapport and engaging readers is particularly significant. Although our findings are fairly limited by the corpus size they might be indicative of where future research could focus.
corpus than expressions of attitude with the comments taken as negative attitudes slightly outnumbering those qualified as positive. Also, the analysis has revealed that the citizens' attitudes tend to vary widely going from one extreme to the other, possibly due to the fact that public health-related matters have easily slid into the political arena.
the relevant points and outline the proposals for ETP teachers. The listening scripts from four textbooks were used in an analysis primarily oriented towards pragmalinguistics. The study confirmed the association between the investigated linguistic items and politeness, and provided the theoretical account of the hypothetical past, past tense and progressive aspect, but also shed light on the politeness effects conveyed by future-reference verbal forms. It also suggested an
approach in ETP instruction based on raising students’ pragmatic awareness.
content teachers and FLSP practitioners has been widely
recognised, it is rather underdeveloped in Serbian tertiary
education institutions (Đorović and Mirić, 2011; Mirić and
Đorović, 2015). Therefore, we set out to investigate the
collaborative practice involved in the design of English for
Health Tourism Purposes (EHT) syllabus.
The general aim was to explore whether and how the
collaboration between ESP practitioners and content teachers
could contribute to an effective EHT syllabus designed to
accommodate the students’ linguistic and professional needs.
The small-scale questionnaire survey was carried out among the
content teachers. The results obtained have confirmed the initial
position that the information provided by content teachers is
valuable for ESP syllabus designers. The study has also
demonstrated that content teachers lack awareness of their
beneficial role.
This study focuses on a destination website, possibly the most representative tourism discourse genre, which, in addition to being highly informative, mainly serves a promotional purpose. It intends to shed additional light on the use of modals in the promotional texts on the official tourism websites in English in Serbian. In an attempt to offer a detailed account of the investigated items, we have looked into the semantic-pragmatic aspects and rhetorical functions of modal verbs and tried to determine the similarities and differences between the investigated languages in terms of using modals to realise the communicative purpose of the genre in question. To this end, an analysis was carried out on a corpus compiled by retrieving promotional texts from the official websites of two spa destinations, Bath (BTH 21,077 words) and Vrnjačka Banja (VB 21,040 words). Following Biber et al.'s (1999) classification of modals, and thereby distinguishing between possibility modals, necessity modals, and volitional modals, the identified instances were analysed based on а three-fold (epistemic-deontic-dynamic) distinction of modal meanings (Palmer 1990, 1986) incorporating some principles of (applied) discourse analysis (Bhatia 2014).
The analysis has confirmed that modals in English and Serbian share common semantic properties and revealed that they also realise the same "generic values" (Bhatia 2014): descriptions, recommendations, and evaluations. These are rhetorical functions which aid in pursuing promotional aims. We can thus claim that modals serve the communicative purpose, which makes them qualitatively significant elements in the investigated genre. Overall, the findings show that there are some similarities, as well as great differences, between English and Serbian texts, in the ways modals are used in the creation of persuasive texts aimed at converting readers, potential tourists, into actual tourists. Generally, both sub-corpora are characterised by infrequent use of necessity modals as well as great frequencies of possibility modals. In comparison to other types, epistemic modality seems to be least prominent, whereas dynamic modality meanings appear to be prevalent. Also, dynamic modals tend to be most strongly associated with persuasive aims. The most striking difference relates to the overall frequency with English modals outnumbering Serbian ones almost by four to one. Although this can be attributed to the already observed different tendencies of expressing modal meanings in the two languages, it might indicate that modals in the Serbian language material are insufficiently used as effective means for realising the persuasive intent of promotional texts. The goal of any persuasive communication is to build a relationship between the sender and recipient of the message (Bhatia 1993), hence relatively scarce use of Serbian modals, particularly possibility modals with dynamic modality readings, aimed at establishing rapport and engaging readers is particularly significant. Although our findings are fairly limited by the corpus size they might be indicative of where future research could focus.
corpus than expressions of attitude with the comments taken as negative attitudes slightly outnumbering those qualified as positive. Also, the analysis has revealed that the citizens' attitudes tend to vary widely going from one extreme to the other, possibly due to the fact that public health-related matters have easily slid into the political arena.
the relevant points and outline the proposals for ETP teachers. The listening scripts from four textbooks were used in an analysis primarily oriented towards pragmalinguistics. The study confirmed the association between the investigated linguistic items and politeness, and provided the theoretical account of the hypothetical past, past tense and progressive aspect, but also shed light on the politeness effects conveyed by future-reference verbal forms. It also suggested an
approach in ETP instruction based on raising students’ pragmatic awareness.
content teachers and FLSP practitioners has been widely
recognised, it is rather underdeveloped in Serbian tertiary
education institutions (Đorović and Mirić, 2011; Mirić and
Đorović, 2015). Therefore, we set out to investigate the
collaborative practice involved in the design of English for
Health Tourism Purposes (EHT) syllabus.
The general aim was to explore whether and how the
collaboration between ESP practitioners and content teachers
could contribute to an effective EHT syllabus designed to
accommodate the students’ linguistic and professional needs.
The small-scale questionnaire survey was carried out among the
content teachers. The results obtained have confirmed the initial
position that the information provided by content teachers is
valuable for ESP syllabus designers. The study has also
demonstrated that content teachers lack awareness of their
beneficial role.