Article published In:
BabelVol. 60:1 (2014) ► pp.70–90
Micro-function combination patterns and linguistic adequacy in specialised texts
This paper presents a corpus-based study about differences in micro-function
combination patterns in German and Spanish warranties for household appliances. Firstly
the micro-functional text analysis approach is described. This methodology makes
feasible an empirically motivated stylistic description of specialised texts. The first
large-scale micro-functional text-type analysis was carried out in the stylistic
description of German and Spanish employment contracts. The second part of the paper
analyses the micro-functional composition of German and Spanish warranties and some text
specific combination patterns as well as their language specific differences. It will be
shown that in contrast to German warranties, in Spanish warranties obligations tend to
be expressed as dependent clauses which are subordinate to independent clauses that
reaffirm the validity of the warranty. Moreover it becomes clear that most of these
obligations are formulated in an indirect way. Finally possible reasons for the findings
are explained by means of the politeness theory and language typology with the results
claiming that Spanish texts are more prone to avoid face-threatening acts than German
ones and that they are also more explicit in expression. The paper ends with the
implications these findings hold for the linguistic adequacy of translations.
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Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
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