01 Editorial.qxd ibérica 43 (2022): 1-6 iSSN: 1139-7241 / e-iSSN: 2340-2784 Editorial This spring issue is the first that has been processed entirely through the new OJS platform, and also the first produced entirely under the new editorship of Ruth Breeze and Maria Kuteeva. Our first task is to express our sincere appreciation of Carmen Sancho Guinda for the incredible work she did during her time as Editor-in-Chief. Carmen took over from Carmen Pérez Llantada as Editor-in-Chief in 2018 and devoted herself to the task of editing Ibérica with extraordinary enthusiasm, true professionalism and a wonderful eye for detail. In issues 36 to 42 she was able to build on the sound foundations laid by Jordi Piqué, Ana Bocanegra and Carmen Pérez- Llantada. She also consolidated Ibérica’s reputation as a truly international journal with a vision of specialised communication that encompasses but also considerably expands the traditional understanding of languages for specific purposes. In this editorial we also need to thank the President of AELFE, Alejandro Curado, the Board of Directors, and the members of the Editorial and International Advisory Boards, who have all helped to shape the journal over the years. Particular appreciation is due to Alejandro Curado, and to AELFE Treasurer, Ignacio Guillén, for their support during the challenging period of transition from the old online format to the OJS platform. We believe that issue 43 constitutes a positive start to the new phase in Ibérica’s development, in that it represents a number of tendencies that are likely to gain currency in the years to come. While academic writing and English for professional purposes are clearly themes that are here to stay, the articles in this issue also show the close relationship between LSP and the growing fields of CLIL and EMI, which was analysed by Dafouz in her recent guest article for this journal (2021). Perhaps as a sign of things to come, this issue also includes three articles related to the discourse of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which explore linguistic, discursive and multimodal aspects of this important area. Moreover, we are very pleased that the articles in this issue focus on specialised discourse in languages other than English, including our traditional association with Spanish, but also, in this case, Russian and Montenegrin. We hope that more authors will feel inspired to explore specialised languages and their didactics 1 ibérica 43 (2022): 1-6 EDITORIAL in other languages, or to develop comparative studies. The brief overview that follows should serve as a guide to issue 43, and an indication of the journal’s current scope. In the guest article for this issue, RAFFAELLA NEGRETTI and LISA MCGRATh offer an innovative vision of academic writing as a performance on a specific stage, and argue for a more context-sensitive, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to teaching academic writing. They urge teachers to give greater priority to helping students develop metacognitive and self- regulatory competences that will serve them better in today’s increasingly complex knowledge economy, in which interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge transfer are highly valued. Continuing in the area of academic writing, GuANGWEI hu and MILLER REyES PEREz then centre on the interesting topic of nominalisation, which constitutes a key linguistic resource in advanced academic writing. using methodology based on Systemic Functional Linguistics, they compare texts written by students who received explicit instruction in nominalisation with those by a control group. They found that the instruction group made strategic use of nominalisations that contributed to the cohesion and thematic development of the text, as well as helping them achieve a more authoritative, informationally-dense style. OLGA BOGINSKAyA then tackles the asymmetrical relationship between legal professionals and lay participants in the Russian courtroom, taking the example of explanations and instructions given to juries, showing how explanatory strategies are used to overcome technical expert texts, and make abstract legal concepts clear for lay participants. her analysis provides an interesting point of comparison for legal linguists, as well as a basis for devising strategies useful in professional-lay communication. The next article, by BIxI JIN, takes us to a different area of LSP, with a focus on vague language in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports. Vague language has long been a subject of interest to linguistics and philosophers alike, because there are various kinds of indeterminacy that can be used for a wide range of very different reasons. In this study, Jin examines vague language relating to quantity, degree, time and stance-taking, and identifies a number of strategies that may motivate their use, particularly avoiding commitment, exerting a persuasive function, and downplaying unfavourable information. This study adds to the existing literature on CSR and complements previous reflections on vague language. 2 ibérica 43 (2022): 1-6 EDITORIAL After this, we turn again to comparative LSPs, with Branka Živković’S in- depth study of moves and steps in lecture introductions in English and Montenegrin. Comparisons of this kind between lectures delivered in British universities (the corpus of British Academic Spoken English, or BASE), and lectures given in other languages and academic cultures, open up interesting new perspectives and have obvious implications for teacher training in English Medium Instruction (EMI) in the expanding circle (see Breeze & Sancho Guinda, 2021). The next paper, by ADRIáN GRANADOS, MARíA DOLORES LóPEz-JIMéNEz and FRANCISCO LORENzO, brings us a sorely-needed longitudinal study of students’ writing in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in secondary education. Focusing on writing in history classes over three years of secondary school, they find that students come to use more lexical items, and gradually employ terms with a higher degree of abstractness and associability. This can be seen as evidence of growth in their disciplinary writing competences, revealing an increasing grasp of history literacy. Their findings also provide an interesting complement to the study by hu and Reyes Perez (this issue). Returning to the theme of CSR, PILAR PéREz CAñIzARES then turns to the importance of visual images in CSR reporting, using quantitative content analysis (QCA) to establish the frequency of visual elements in reporting by Inditex, the world’s biggest fashion retailer. She documents three distinct phases in the use of images in Inditex CSR reports, and offers the tantalising suggestion that pictures may present topics and serve aims which do not coincide with those of the written text. Metaphors, metonymies and other types of figurative language may prove particularly challenging for students in LSP contexts. In the next paper, ANTONIO JOSé JIMéNEz-MuñOz and ANA CRISTINA LAhuERTA-MARTíNEz address university ESP students’ conceptual competence and its relationship to their overall L2 competence. Comparing across CEFR levels, these authors find that students below B2 may have greater difficulty in discerning the difference between figurative and literal expressions. Regarding discipline, they also identify differences in students’ ability to decode metaphorical language, and recommend that practice at interpreting non- literal language should be factored into ESP courses. The next article, by BELéN LóPEz ARROyO and LuCíA SANz-VALDIVIESO, returns to one of the classic themes of LSP in Spain, namely the language 3 ibérica 43 (2022): 1-6 EDITORIAL of tasting notes. The innovative angle here is the comparison between two different professional specialties within this field, that is, wine tasting and olive oil tasting. Their corpus-based approach shows almost identical rhetorical structures regarding moves and steps, but interestingly reveals that the genre of the wine tasting note seems to be more conventional and consolidated than that of the oil tasting note. This could be explained by the fact that wine tasting is a more established activity with a longer discursive tradition. In the last article we return to the theme of CSR, and RICARDO JIMéNEz and JOAN FONTRADONA bring us a diachronic case study of one major Spanish bank’s CSR discourse over a 7-year period. The main contribution of their paper is that it develops a useful methodology combining corpus linguistics and framing analysis, which they use to track how the bank’s corporate reporting changed as a result of adopting the united Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The issue ends with three book reviews: the first is of Carmen Sancho Guinda’s recent edited volume Engagement in Professional Genres, followed by a review of Ethnographies of academic writing research: Theory, methods, and interpretation, edited by Ignacio Guillén-Galve and Ana Bocanegra-Valle, and finally a review of Corpora in ESP/EAP Writing Instruction, edited by Maggie Charles and Ana Frankenberg-Garcia. Peer reviewers for this issue include, in alphabetical order, Martín Aoiz, Ismael Arinas, Elisabet Arnó, Elvis Buckwalter, Stefania Consonni, Isabel Corona, Larissa D’Angelo, Ana María Fernández Vallejo, Johann Fischer, Kayo Kondo, Maria Kuteeva, Esther Linares, Stefania Maci, Raffaella Negretti, Ramón Plo, Johannes Schnitzer and Rachel Whittaker. We know that we often make heavy demands on reviewers, and so we would like to express our sincere gratitude to them for their dedication and professionalism. Our thanks also go to the members of the Editorial Team, to Associate Editor Begoña Bellés Fortuño, and to Book Reviews Editor Jesús García Laborda for his unceasing dedication to the journal. Ruth Breeze and Maria Kuteeva Universidad de Navarra (Spain) and Stockholm University (Sweden) Editors-in-Chief iberica@aelfe.org 4 Breeze, R., & Sancho Guinda, C. (2021). Teaching English Medium Instruction Courses in Higher Education. Bloomsbury. Dafouz, E. (2021). Crossing disciplinary boundaries: English-medium education (EME) meets English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Ibérica, Journal of the European Association of Languages for Specific Purposes, 41, 13-38. ibérica 43 (2022): 1-6 EDITORIAL References 5