Showing papers in "Lingue e Linguaggi in 2018"

Direct hate speech vs. indirect fear speech. A multimodal critical discourse analysis of the Sun’s editorial "1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ sympathy for jihadis"

Abstract: After the 2015 Paris attacks, hate speech against Muslims gathered momentum and further legitimized in popular media outlets across Europe. After “decades of sustained and unrestrained anti-foreigner abuse, misinformation and distortion”, the United Nations accused some British newspapers of “hate speech” (ECRI 2016). Following on previous research (Sindoni 2016, 2017), this paper sets out to investigate how hate speech in mainstream British media is constructed both verbally and multimodally, with particular reference to the investigation of rhetoric inducing anti-Muslim and Islamophobic hatred. The paper adopts a multimodal critical discourse framework of analysis (Fairclough 2000; Machin, Mayr 2012). As a case study, the “1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ sympathy for jihadis” The Sun ’s editorial reporting on a poll conducted by Survation and related multimodal materials will be investigated with a view to unearthing 1) linguistic strategies, such as classification of social actors, including, but not limited to, personalisation vs. impersonalisation, data aggregation, and structural opposition (van Leeuwen 1996; van Dijk 1993b); 2) visual strategies (Kress, van Leeuwen 2006; Bednarek, Caple 2012, 2015), including representational techniques (e.g. reactional processes, dimensional and quantitative topography), interactive perspectives, and organisational distribution of visual items. Considering the combination of linguistic and visual news value (Bell 1991; Bednarek, Caple 2014), the paper will ultimately suggest that 1) resources need to be investigated in their reciprocal interplay to scrutinize the covert agenda of media outlets that may promote indirect forms of hate speech and that 2) less explicit forms of hate speech are no less dangerous than explicit incitement to racial hatred in that they can foster a siege mentality by drawing on an us/them rhetoric.

Irony as a complex attitude

Abstract: – Verbal irony is a complex mode of communication which has attracted the attention of scholars from several different fields.Scientific and literary analyses have contributed to shedding light on specific aspects of irony and have provided cumulating evidence of its protean nature and cognitive complexity. Attempts to pin down the nature of verbal irony in terms of antiphrasis have proven to be reductive. Indeed, a growing body of literature has pointed out that what is at stake in irony is not simply saying the opposite of what is meant but rather communicating an attitude. This insight, however, needs to be refined.In this paper irony is argued to be the emergent interpretation of a cluster of attitudes that may surface in different forms and modulate different interpretations of irony, ranging from gentle and jocular to more sarcastic and biting. Riassunto – L’ironia verbale e una forma di comunicazione complessa, che e stata analizzata nel tempo da piu prospettive. I tentativi di ricondurla essenzialmente ad un procedimento antifrastico si sono ben presto rivelati riduttivi. Analisi scientifiche e letterarie hanno contribuito alla comprensione di aspetti specifici dell’ironia, mostrandone la natura mutevole e illustrandone la complessita cognitiva. Gli studi piu recenti convegono sull’ipotesi che le espressioni ironiche non comunichino semplicemente il contrario di cio che e detto, bensi comunichino atteggiamenti. Il concetto di atteggiamento diventa dunque cruciale nella definizione della natura dell’ironia e pertanto l’ipotesi richiede di essere approfondita. Questo articolo propone che l’ironia sia l’interpretazione emergente di un insieme di atteggiamenti che si combinanto ed affiorano in superficie in modi e forme diverse, dalla giocosita, al sarcasmo, dalla bonarieta alla critica graffiante. L’ipotesi teorica e che questo insieme di atteggiamenti sia rappresentato da una categoria di ordine superiore ATT, che include atteggiamenti mentali, sentimenti ed emozioni, che deve essere prevista nella rappresentazione pragmatica di cio che e detto per consentire la corretta interpretazione dell’ironia nel contesto d’uso.

Español e italiano en el paisaje lingüístico de Milán : ¿Traducción, mediación o translanguaging

Abstract: – Taking as a starting point the well-known definition of Linguistic Landscape (LL) (Landry and Bourhis 1997), this paper aims at proposing a model to describe the relationship between the different languages used in the LL units which can be observed in immigration contexts. After a brief overview of Latin American immigration in Milan and a review of the different approaches in this field of research, a theoretical and methodological framework will be set up, combining different perspectives from discourse analysis, critical sociolinguistics of globalization and social constructivism. Subsequently, the photographic data which constitutes the basis of a research project on the Milanese LL will be presented, describing the methodological approach used in collecting and analysing data. Finally, the model concerning the management of multilingualism in LL will be outlined and some examples will be discussed, in order to demonstrate its sustainability and to highlight the actors’ metapragmatic awareness (Caffi 2017). As it will be illustrated, the main modalities used to manage the contact between Italian and Spanish are translanguaging, hybridization, translation and mediation; some monolingual items in Spanish will also be considered.

Recontextualización sociolingüística y superdiversidad. El árabe en el paisaje lingüístico del barrio de Lavapiés en Madrid

Abstract: – The aim of this article is to analyze the process of sociolinguistic recontextualization of Arabic as diasporic language in the linguistic landscape in Lavapies neighborhood in Madrid. The sociolinguistic recontextualization will be analyzed in the article from three axes. First, I will describe the regime and patterns of language use in the linguistic landscape (LL). Secondly, I will examine the interests that exist behind the visibility of Arabic as a minority language and the function(s) that its relocation in the LL develops, in a zone not only of contact with Spanish as a hegemonic language, but also within multilingualism and superdiversity. By function, I refer to the linguistic-communicative, socio-identity and ethnic place-making (Scollon, Scollon 2003) of Arabic in a sociolinguistic regime and a dynamic and multilingual LL. Finally, I will analyze how space is restructuring, in spite of the existence of power relationships linked to the rules of use and construction of space. I will find out if there are phenomena such as spatial marking and new referential functions of the reproduction of space through its resemiotization and the relocation of Arabic as a minority and diasporic language.

‘Tweeting engagement’. Strategies of identity construction and ‘alignment-disalignment’ in Donald Trump’s use of social media

Abstract: The main aim of this study is to describe the linguistic and discursive strategies of speaker-hearer alignment used by Donald Trump in his tweets about ‘fake news’. As previous work by Miller (2002; 2004) and Quam and Ryshina-Pankova (2016) has shown, Engagement theory (Martin and White 2005) can shed light on particular strategies politicians employ to strengthen their arguments and persuade their audiences to adopt their views. Starting from the assumption that Donald Trump’s use of Twitter played in his favour already in the 2016 Presidential campaign, the present analysis shows that Donald Trump tends to privilege meaning-making choices which ‘fend off’ or ‘shut down’ dialogistic alternatives: typically, his tweets contain either ‘bare assertions’ which take shared assumptions for granted, or ‘contractive heteroglossic’ options that make the dialogic space very constrained. In general, the ‘Engagement moves’ deployed are quite limited and repetitive, consisting mainly of ‘Denials’, ‘Pronouncements’, and ‘Counters’: this might work to Donald Trump’s advantage, as repetitions can give the speaker an air of authority and provoke an unconscious response of support among his followers (Lakoff 2016). This study also shows that the distribution of linguistic and discursive strategies in Donald Trump’s tweets is very similar to the distribution of the same resources in non-Twitter contexts: therefore, his ‘Engagement style’ in Twitter does not seem to be due to the character-limit of the platform, but to a more general ‘cross-media’ tendency that tends to tune down alternative positions.

From the VVINGPP construction to the VVING pattern. A descriptive account

Abstract: In the first part of this paper, we assess Goldberg’s (2006, pp 50-52) account of the English syntactic pattern she labels “VVingPP construction” (eg The toddler went screaming down the street ), which is based on five constraints concerning argumenthood, verb types, transitivity, extended meaning, and constituency On the basis of an analysis of data collected from dictionaries, corpora, and literary works, we argue that Goldberg’s account needs to be refined A much more complex picture emerges from our analysis than is assumed by Goldberg, whose constraints are often violated Drawing on these observations, in the second part of the paper, we propose, in the case at hand, replacing Goldberg’s notion of ‘construction’ with that of pattern , intended as a cluster of occurrences whose common (formal and semantic) traits must be captured at a more abstract level Moreover, we observe that the instantiations of the pattern are related via family resemblance not only with each other but also with occurrences which do not feature a PP This suggests that a more general VVing pattern can be posited, which portrays the integration of two events At the same time, the data also suggest that low-level generalisations of limited scope can still be drawn over clusters of occurrences characterized by the interaction between V, Ving, and (possibly) PP By focusing on both the former and the latter generalisations, it is possible to notice that the event integration can be described in terms of causality and/or temporal coextension Nella prima parte di questo contributo, viene esaminato il resoconto offerto da Goldberg (2006, pp50-52) del pattern sintattico inglese da lei definito “VVingPP construction” (eg The toddler went screaming down the street ), che si basa su cinque restrizioni riguardanti predicazione, tipi di verbo, transitivita, significato esteso e costituenza Sulle basi dell’analisi dei dati raccolti da dizionari, corpora e opere letterarie, si mette in luce che il resoconto di Goldberg e troppo semplicistico e, in ultima analisi, non particolarmente accurato Infatti, dalla nostra analisi emerge un quadro molto piu complesso di quanto assunto da Goldberg, le cui restrizioni sembrano essere violate troppo facilmente per essere mantenute Nel contempo, si osserva la presenza di una ragguardevole varieta semantica nei dati Sulla base di queste osservazioni, nella seconda parte dell’articolo, si propone che la nozione di ‘costruzione’ di Goldberg potrebbe non essere ideale e si possa sostituire con quella di pattern , inteso come un gruppo di occorrenze i cui tratti comuni (formali e semantici) devono essere catturati ad un livello piu astratto Inoltre, si osserva che le rappresentazioni del pattern sono collegate da somiglianze di famiglia non solo tra loro, ma anche con occorrenze che non presentano un sintagma preposizionale Questo suggerisce che si possa postulare un pattern piu generale, VVing, che esprime l’integrazione di due eventi Allo stesso tempo, i dati suggeriscono anche che possono essere formulate generalizzazioni meno astratte di portata piu limitata, caratterizzate dall’interazione tra V, Ving ed (eventualmente) PP Concentrandosi sia sulle une che sulle altre generalizzazioni, e possibile notare che l’integrazione tra i due eventi puo essere descritta in termini di causalita e/o coestensione temporale

Voicing beliefs and dilemmas from WE- and ELF-aware reflective teacher education contexts

Abstract: – The social fragmentation processes due to the recent tidal migration flows, together with the diffusion of technologies and social networks, have created new sociolinguistic environments where languages are undergoing a transformative process. As a result of increasing global mobility, the sociolinguistic reality of English, and its different realisations have become much more complex and controversial than those of other languages in the world. Issues of identity, standards, proficiency levels, intercultural communication and language relevance for English language learners and teachers, demand for a paradigmatic orientation and a reconsideration of the English curriculum, teacher education, research and classroom practice. Language teacher education is a field where, according to local contexts and to pedagogical traditions, different theoretical frameworks are being used, specific approaches adopted, course components differently combined, and teachers’ and trainers’ espoused theories and beliefs about English are often challenged. The purpose of this presentation is to describe and discuss a World English (WE) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)-aware approach embedded in English language teacher education courses in Italy. The adoption of such an approach elicited teachers’ awareness of changes occurring in the current status of English and induced a reflective perspective on the implications of teaching it within a moveable scenario where English teaching traditions are often challenged. The relevance of this approach will be discussed and teachers’ voices from three teacher education courses will be reported as representative of emerging dilemmas and a shift in perspective.

Are native speakers the only model for ELF users

Abstract: – In this paper, we report on an experiment broadly following the matched-guise test technique (Lambert et al 1960) In this, we collected NNES ELF users’ reactions, in the form of a Likert Scale, to recordings of various speakers, some of whom NES from the inner circle, others highly proficient ELF users from the outer circle (see Graddol 2010) Respondents were presented the same set of six speakers under different randomised guises according to the two parameters of ±NES (Native English Speaker) and ±Celeb (Celebrity), the latter chosen as a feature particularly relevant in the context of models and the motivation for emulation Respondents, female Italian ELF users, were asked to rate how happy they would be to speak like the persona (whether genuine or invented) in question The object was to see whether any discernable pattern could be identified in the way that the features of ±NES and ±Celeb interact to affect attitudes to different manifestations of English, and whether a “celebrity effect”, in particular in respect to NNES, can be shown to exist as a possible rival the nativeness principle (see Seidlhofer 2001, 2011, Jenkins 2007) In our conclusions, we identify a possible third parameter namely affinity between respondent and speaker

Learners’ awareness and attitudes towards ELF: A pilot study in an Italian University context

Abstract: This paper presents the initial results of a pilot study conducted at the University of Calabria, (Italy). The purpose was to investigate learners’ attitudes and beliefs towards ELF issues and the relationship between ELF awareness and classroom practices. In particular, it aims to explore learners’ awareness of the plurality of English in evolving sociolinguistic environments and their attitudes towards learning and teaching English as a second language at the University level. It is argued that although ELF empirical findings and theoretical arguments have raised profound concerns about current principles and practices in ELT, the classroom world has not been greatly affected by these issues. Through the analysis of the findings, this paper draws attention to the need to reconsider learners’ established beliefs in terms of learning and teaching goals. It is highlighted that learners need to be encouraged to become critical language users, capable of evaluating the cultural and linguistic input provided in class, from an ELF-oriented perspective, and therefore become actively engaged in their learning process.

Paisaje lingüístico. Un recurso TIC-TAC-TEP para el aula

Abstract: – The aim of this article is to show how the methodological approach known as the Linguistic Landscape (LL) provides new resources for the analysis of sociolinguistic changes to multilingual contexts associated with migratory flows and globalisation. Linguistic landscapes are also extremely useful when designing metalinguistic awareness activities within the framework of Critical Linguistic Education. The study analyses the linguistic landscape of the Sabon industrial zone that surrounds a number of schools based in the municipality of Arteixo, situated in the province of A Coruna (Galicia, Spain). In recent decades, the municipality has undergone a series of major changes, many of which are related to migratory trends. Our work considers the transformation of the linguistic landscape of the municipality’s industrial estate, situated on land used almost entirely for farming until the 1970s. However, industrialisation has led to its intense gentrification. The results of our research will allow for the design of TIC (Information and Communication Technology), TAC (Technology of knowledge adquisition) and TEP (Technology of empowement and participation) resources for social inclusion in MAVEL (Maps for an Atlas of linguistic education in superdiversity): http://avel.cesga.es/.

Native speaker standard English versus English as a lingua franca. Where would Shakespeare stand

Abstract: – Sceptics of the utility of studies into ELF (English as Lingua Franca) typically dismiss it as a kind of “Broken English”: a “degrammaticalised” code akin to a so-called pidgin. The implication is that ELF variations are only explicable in terms of interlanguages (Selinker 1972) and ELF users are merely L2 learners who fail to achieve full competence and who involuntarily mix elements from their L1 with the target language. In essence, according to this view, ELF users’ major failing is their inability to replicate Native Speaker Standard English sufficiently well. By contrast, scholars specialising in ELF emphasise, among other things (such as the rights of ELF users to negotiate their own norms), how the notion of the existence of a single, immutable standard is highly questionable (Seidlhofer 2011). As many descriptive, as opposed to prescriptive, linguists of all persuasions have pointed out, a key feature of any linguistic system is its power to generate new structures and forms and generally to be creative, which if course is a central factor in linguistic change and the evolution of languages in general (Seidlhofer, Widdowson 2009). Indeed, according to Widdowson (2015), the emphasis of ELF is not the variety of a homogenous speech community but of the variations that spontaneously emerge when speakers of different L1s communicate with each other. In this chapter, we will examine the English of William Shakespeare, the “nation’s bard” (Hudson 2008) and a figure often appropriated by prescriptionists as an exemplar of the beauty and power of the English language (rigorously in the singular). We analyse Shakespeare’s English as an example of a variation of English in order to illustrate how processes such as adaptation and accommodation together with strategies such as translanguaging (Garcia and Li 2014), inherent in ELF, are neither new nor foreign and can be found in native speaker variations of English, even those which enjoy the highest artistic prestige.

(Co)constructing use, belonging and legitimacy. A study of English language ownership in Italy

Abstract: The conviction that the ownership of English is shared among its users worldwide has long been held by linguists whose work has ushered in new paradigms in the ways of conceptualizing and researching language. Yet, research that explores how English users understand and construct ownership is lacking in many contexts. The present article aims to fill this gap by investigating the nature of language ownership among English learners in Naples, Italy. Drawing on the framework for language ownership delineated in Seilhamer (2015), questionnaire data and interview moments with four case study participants are analyzed to explore how high school students construct relationships with English and understandings of ownership in terms of prevalent usage, affective belonging, and legitimate knowledge. The findings unveil the dynamic ways in which understandings of language ownership, which is agentively (co)constructed and negotiated, are capable of continuously shifting in different settings and with different interlocutors.

‘Meat gives you cancer’. The popularisation of scientific news with public health relevance

Abstract: Early in October 2015, the International Agency on Cancer Research (IARC 2015a) evaluated the carcinogenicity of red and processed meat. On 24 October, the World Health Organization (WHO 2015a) issued a statement reporting the IARC press release on the subject. On 22 October, the Daily Mail (2015) anticipated these results, giving rise to the latest ‘meat-cancer scare’ on the international media. This case study analyses a small corpus of institutional documents and English-language press articles, collected in the eight days following the publication of the news. Based on a sociological model of public vs popular communication of science (Bucchi, Neresini 2008), integrated with methodological tools from critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1995, 2003; Eisenhart, Johnstone 2008; Wodak 2013), argumentation theory (van Eemeren, Grootendorst2004), and making reference to science popularisation studies (Calsamiglia 2003; Garzone 2006; Caliendo, Bongo 2014), the qualitative analysis shows how the pattern of diffusion of scientific news with public health relevance is changing. No longer following a top-down approach, power relations at work in this type of communication are changing, being increasingly affected by bottom-up interference and feedback, in a progressively more dialogic and negotiated scenario of communication.

Español lengua global”. Il successo del Made in Spain

Abstract: In this paper I will analyse the political process, also actively involving the main Spanish and Hispano-American companies, leading to the understanding and promotion of Spanish language as an essential resource for the development of Spain’s economy. The process completed by the President Pedro Sanchez’s new-elected government in the second half of 2018, started in the early 90s and involved a plurality of voices from the political and academic sphere as well as from the business world ( RAE , ASALE , Telefonica , Banco Santander ). All these institutions, in many occasions, promoted and guided specific actions supporting this shared glottopolitical goal. In particular, the analysis will examine the project “Espanol lengua global” as a part of the wider Marca Espana that can be considered the last act of the former Spanish President’s Mariano Rajoy’s linguistic policy.

Disciplinary cultures in academic posters. A textual and visual metadiscourse analysis

Abstract: Numerous studies have, over the years, confirmed that academic discourses have unique features revolving around the concept of ‘community’ (Hartley 2006; Hyland 1998, 2001, 2004; Swales 2004; Thompson 2001), revealing that authors belonging to different disciplinary fields display different writing techniques and are urged early on in their academic career to conform to discipline-specific conventions and genre-specific rules. Continuing a cross-disciplinary research on the academic poster genre (D’Angelo 2016), I seek here to highlight significant differences regarding word count, the layout of posters, as well as discipline-specific patterns concerning the use of textual interactive and interactional metadiscourse resources and visual interactive resources. The framework of analysis, drawn in part from Kress (2010) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2001, 2002, 2006) visual analyses, will be applied to academic posters produced within the disciplines of Applied Linguistics, Medicine, Economics, Biology and Geography. The results widen the current knowledge on academic posters by mapping which textual and visual metadiscourse strategies are employed where and why, and as a consequence, which textual and visual metadiscourse strategies should be well known to poster authors, depending on their academic community.

Linguistic landscape e contesti educativi. Uno studio all’interno di alcune scuole italiane

Abstract: – Linguistic Landscape (LL) is defined as the study of languages in their written form in the public space. One of the most recent and interesting developments in the field sees LL related to educational contexts. The aim of the study presented here was to observe, document and analyse the linguistic occurrences in written form on signs in a sample of Italian secondary schools. The research seeks to give a full overview of the functions of the so-called Linguistic Schoolscape, paying particular attention to the presence of immigrant languages, the characteristics of multilingual signs and the differences between top-down and bottom-up signs. The data presented here are intended to contribute to research in a number of respects: to the development of LL studies in school structures, towards a greater understanding of language dynamics within Italian schools and as a contribution to educational research. The Italian school is in a moment of great linguistic turmoil due to many factors, such as the high number of first and second generation immigrant pupils and the pressure from the Council of Europe, which is pushing for plurilingual and intercultural education to be implemented. The observation of the LL of classrooms and corridors appears to be a useful tool in order to obtain a first picture of how these factors influence and find space within the school walls.

Representing culture in Opencourseware lectures. A corpus-based semantic analysis

Abstract: This paper explores the representation of culture in a corpus based on fifteen OpenCourseWare (OCW) lecture transcripts available from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University. The corpus is divided into three components of five lectures each from the broad disciplinary areas of humanities, soft sciences, and hard sciences, thus allowing for a contrastive analysis of cultural references across different domains of specialized knowledge. The analytical approach is based on the concept of a “cultureme”, i.e., a unit of analysis for a culture-specific phenomenon and its linguistic expression. The corpus was processed with the semantic annotation tool of Wmatrix that automatically assigns lexical items in a corpus to pre-established semantic domains. The lexical items in domains associated with human cultural experiences (e.g., education, religion, history, food and drinks, sports, the media, entertainment, geographical names, proper names) were then examined to identify culturemes. Extensive follow-up cross-domain analysis was necessary to tease out culture-specific meanings across the corpus. The results indicate that, although not present in high frequencies, a number of culturemes were dispersed throughout the corpus, with most referring to the domain of education, followed by government & politics and entertainment. The paper concludes with some reflections on the pedagogical implications of the findings in the context of helping L2 learners cope with the comprehension challenges of culture-specific meanings in lecture discourse.

Language Landscape. An innovative tool for documenting and analysing linguistic landscapes

Abstract: – Language Landscape (www.languagelandscape.org) is a website aimed at documenting, investigating and promoting linguistic diversity. It is a user-generated map, where particular instances of language use in speech, sign or writing can be geo-tagged on the map of the world with the information about when and by whom they were made. In this article, we propose that Language Landscape (henceforth LL) can be a valuable tool for studying the fluidity of linguistic landscapes, and explain why this is the case. We show how the website can be used in researching linguistic landscapes, and discuss the issues pertinent to doing research on crowd-sourced data. We discuss one method of studying linguistic landscapes in particular, namely Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Subsequently, we focus on those functionalities of LL which are particularly useful to scholars investigating linguistic landscapes from the CDA perspective, pointing to those features of the website that can contextualise and enrich such studies.

The construction of textual cohesion in Spanish and Italian, as mother tongues and as second languages

Abstract: This paper analyses 80 narrative texts concerned with Italian and Spanish as L1s and L2s We shall compare the way both native speakers and learners build textual cohesion when faced with a narrative task involving several referential restrictions: contrasts of entity and polarity; maintenance of the same predication; temporal shifts; etc The stimulus used to collect the data is The Finite Story by Dimroth (2006) Our work adds to the debate about the learners’ tendency to establish anaphoric linkage according to the specific grammaticized or lexicalized (readily encodable) concepts of their mother tongue even when their competence in L2 is advanced and their L1 is typologically and genetically very close to the L2 Nevertheless, our native and acquisitional data show that grammatical and lexical facts cannot exhaustively explain the speakers’ choices with respect to textual cohesion and the construction of perspective in a given language; an integrative explanation is therefore necessary We propose to combine the Quaestio model with an enunciative framework Finally, we will offer some reflections about the functioning of languages in general, which will contribute to general linguistic theory as well as to the domain of second language acquisition

“A sign of a letter coming”. Adapting Munro’s (faked) epistolary correspondence

Abstract: This article examines American director Liza Johnson’s adapted film Hateship Loveship (2013), based on Alice Munro’s short story “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage” (2001). It forms part of an ongoing project on Munro television and film adaptations, acknowledged as other, distinct, independent stories generated by the writer’s storytelling impulse, by the story(re-) telling tension inherent in her narrative. Specifically, this work concentrates on the film adaptation of the epistolary correspondence. Pervasive and pivotal, letters are indeed at the core of the story, as epistles ostensibly exchanged by an adult couple are actually faked by two young girls. In metafunctional terms, these letters operate in the narrative at the ideational, interpersonal and textual levels: by conveying information about characters, events, places; by establishing social relations among characters and between the narrator and readers/spectators; by configuring fractured and layered textuality. The short story and the film offer distinct treatments of the letters in terms of presence, distribution, remediation, and transcodification, which in turn impacts narrative development, focalization and engagement.

Analisi traduttiva degli aspetti linguistici e culturali nel doppiaggio spagnolo di Breaking Bad

Abstract: Many studies on AVT have been focused towards different aspects, such as: subtitling, synchronization, oral discourse, dubbing, multimodality, translating strategies, censor, specific cultural aspects, new technologies, teaching methods, accessibility, integrated approaches. Starting from the most recent researches on AVT, this study focuses on the specific cultural and linguistic-specialized aspects of the fictional discourse of the AmericanTV series Breaking Bad , broadcasted in Spain in 2009 by Comedy Central , AMC Espana , unencrypted by Telemadrid and dubbed by SDI Media of Madrid . The series has also been broadcasted in Argentina since 2008 to 2013, dubbed by Palmera Record in neutral Spanish, according to the regulation of the Decreto 933/2013 by Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. The Ley del Doblaje promotes the standardisation of the dubbing companies (art.5,6,7) and the supremacy of neutral Spanish as the most comprehensible dubbing language for all native Spanish-speakers. This article is based on a comparative study about dubbing translation according to a descriptive approach. It is aimed at identifying the most effective translation techniques in both peninsular Spanish and neutral Spanish, used to achieve the equivalent effect and in order to find out the implicit differences between them and the final effect of the AVT translation.

Epistemic modality in the visual ‘art of dissent’: the expression of ‘realism’ in ideological and political Sardinian murales

Abstract: This study, part of an ongoing research project based on identity and authenticity in building the image of Sardinia in international tourist discourse, will focus on the active roles played by the ‘language’ (both visual and verbal) to “narrate the story of the many Sardinian identities and myths: rebellion against authority, ethnic uniqueness and strenuous protection of local values” (Fodde, in print). The study tries to investigate the rationale that lies behind, and the rhetorical and pragmatic content of the social and political wall murals created between the late 60s and early 70s in Sardinia, as well as the representational function they have played not only as an instrument to describe class conflicts, but also the active role they have served in efforts to catalyze cultural support for the organization of political goals. Initially introduced in the late 60s to reproduce scenes of everyday life, wall murals quickly became the striking medium used by political activists to express themes beyond local events: criticism of the capitalist society, denunciation and social conquest, accompanied by a sensibility and by a feeling of disillusion concerning the Italian government’s centralization policy. Therefore, a political, social and historical analysis of the main events that have led to this mural production is necessary to understand the wider context in which the factors and the dynamics of this form of “artification” (Cozzolino: 2014: 167) has acted. The methodology refers to modality as one of the key dimensions of “social semiotics” (van Leeuwen 2005: 91) and aims at analyzing the ways in which the symbolic contents of Sardinian murals create a communal self-identification, legitimizing this form of narrative to further ideological and political goals. In more specific terms, attention is called to the concept of epistemic modality of mural images, with the scope of providing a systematic and comprehensive account of the grammar of their visual design. By analyzing the formal elements and the structures of the murals’ design, that is colour, perspective, framing, composition, and the texturing of their texts, this contribution aims to examine the ways in which mural images communicate meaning and create the truth or reality values of their representations.

El paisaje lingüístico desde la lingüística perceptiva

Abstract: – This piece of research explores the possibilities to analyze the messages that conform the linguistic landscapes in its different levels (unit, sub-unit and sign; Calvi 2016, p. 130), applying the conceptual framework developed by Lopez Garcia (1988, 1989, 1996, 2005) in the Perceptive Linguistic Theory. Specifically, we aim to know if the different modalities of linguistic hybridization that appear in the linguistic landscape documents could be explained applying the concepts devised by the Gestalt Theory to stablish the principles that govern the human perception and organization of visual stimulus (such as figure-ground scheme or the perceptual organization laws). In a complementary way we also study the linguistic landscape in the broader context of the cultural contact history (Burke 2009). The elements that are part of linguistic landscapes are seen together with other artefacts and practices, in specific geographic, temporal and social situations, and they constitute another way to study the relationships that arise among the cultures that merge in the multi-diverse scenarios of our cities. For the purposes of this research we have used commercial signs included in the Linguistic Landscape of Lavapies (Madrid), a corpus that contains 140 pictures recolected in November 2016.

“Good Morning, Vietnam!” The discursive construction of nationhood in the War Remnant Museum wall-texts

Abstract: When the tourism industry is operatively organized by governmental institutions, it seems that the destination is commodified in ways that are ideologically constructed so as to ‘educate’ tourists to perceive them as having a historically different identity This seems to be what happens when visiting the War Remnant Museum (WRM) in Vietnam The WRM is a war museum, in Ho Chi Min City, containing exhibits related to the Vietnam and Indochina wars in a series of themed rooms; they include graphic photography accompanied by wall-texts, in English, Vietnamese and Japanese, covering the effects of such chemicals as Agent Orange andother defoliant sprays, the use of napalm and phosphorus bombs and other war atrocities Since, in some guidebookswritten for an international Western audience,we readthat the Cold War is dealt with by looking at the US with a benevolent eye, there seems to be some dissonance between what the Cold War is, how it is described in guidebooks and what is told about the WRM The purpose of this study is to analyse the discursive construction of Vietnamese identity through the descriptions of war in the wall-texts found in the WRM More specifically, this study aims to investigate how the WRM frames Vietnamese identity construction and how this can be inscribed in the tourist experience This corpus-based methodological approach (WordSmith Tools and WMatrix) is grounded in critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1989, 1992, 2001, 2006, 2014) What seems to emerge from this investigation is that the Vietnamese war, as depicted by the WRM,isnot simply the other side of the coin Reality is filtered through anideological lens of political interpretation usedby the Vietnamese which frames discursive processes and strategies that establish the social order and power relations in a useful way in the construction of a strong national identity to be reproduced in WRM wall-texts Such an analysis can provide useful insights intomultifaceted aspects of the institutional discourse(s) related to the construction of a national identity and at the same time linked to the commodification of war

An embodied stylistics approach to acting interpreters’ exploration of Shakespeare’s verse drama. A case-study analysis

Abstract: – This chapter explores the nature of poetry as a dramatic use of language, showing the relevance of Experientialist theories in Cognitive Linguistics to the empirical experience of acting Shakespeare’s verse out. The assumption is that an overt and collectively-shared embodiment of meanings, accomplished through the use of creative writing and drama techniques, can enhance the interpreters’ awareness of the formal and metaphorical characteristics of this poetic text. This also entails the interpreters’ rediscovery of the ‘embodied’ nature of their own ‘schemata’ (or background experience) at the source of their emotional and conceptual responses to the poetic language of Shakespearean characters. Interpreters are therefore defined as acting interpreters when they act poetry out in a real space, appropriate it into their own schematic identities as they embody and authenticate its meanings, and then analyze its effects on themselves and on the other acting interpreters inter-acting with them. Embodied Stylistics is therefore meant not as the analysis of the text as such but, instead, as the analysis of the acting interpreters’ responses to the poetic patterns of the text. This theoretical argument becomes actualized in the experience of ‘poetic meaning embodiment’ reported by the case-study subjects as ‘acting interpreters’ (some of them acclaimed British actors and stage directors) and an embodied-stylistic analysis will be carried out precisely on the ethnographic data collected during their creative-writing and poetic-drama workshops.

El estudio del paisaje lingüístico de la migración en Milán. Perspectiva etnográfica y localización espacial

Abstract: – The Linguistic Landscape (LL) of Milan reflects the trends of global international migration in this city, which since the 90s has received a massive wave of immigrants from over 150 countries seeking economic opportunity. The city, thus, is characterized by the transnationalization of the labour force (Sassen 2005), which has created translocal communities and identities, spatially mixed in a polycentric pattern. Over time, a growing number of immigrants started their own shops, becoming participants in the LL and building a complex network of relationships with their communities, the host society and other migrant groups. In this superdiversity context (Vertovec 2007), the bottom-up texts on the storefronts demonstrate how shop owners affirm their identities and the relative status of their communities within the LL (Landry, Bourhis 1997; Bagna et al. 2007; Blommaert 2013), creating new linguistic, symbolic, cultural and social spaces (Cenoz, Gorter 2006; Calvi 2016). This paper builds on a previous analysis of the main communication strategies deployed in the commercial LL of migrants in three neighborhoods of Milan (Uberti-Bona 2016), furthering the study of the variables implied. Actors compose their multimodal displays through consideration of their shops’ positions, both in terms of spatial localization on the street and of social relation to the surrounding urban, demographic, and commercial context. The respective roles played by these and other factors can be better ascertained investigating the actors’ intentionality through interviews about their migratory and working experiences, and about their choices in the production of the LL. The paper thus combines the previous etic analysis of two examples of LL with the study of their spatial context and with the emic point of view expressed by the shop owners in three one-on-one, unstructured, interviews.

Meccanismi dell’umorismo verbale in ‘Cuatro corazones con freno y marcha atràs’ di E. Jardiel Poncela: i giochi di parole

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine one of the essential mechanisms in the verbal humour of Enrique Jardiel Poncela’s theatrical works, specifically focusing on one of his plays: Cuatro corazones con freno y marcha atras (1936) In this text, the use of the pun is almost always present and it is often the basis upon which misunderstanding is produced by exploiting the language polysemous potentialities In some cases, this strategy results as self-sufficient with respect to the action; in others, it unfolds along with the events, thus highlighting their effects

Job advertisements on Linkedin. Generic integrity and evolution

Abstract: This paper focuses on job advertisements posted on LinkedIn, a Social Networking Site (SNS) tailored to the workplace environment. The job advertisement is a long-lived genre, which existed mainly in the daily/weekly press environment in the form of classified ad until it migrated to the Web. A further development came from the rise of SNSs: the job advert moved to an online community context, with all the social implications of this fact. The aim is to describe the peculiarities of the LinkedIn job advertisement as a sub-genre, identifying similarities with and differences from job ads posted on other online platforms, as well as from the traditional printed job ads published in newspapers. Findings provide evidence of a significant degree of generic integrity, with some changes due to the migration to the web environment, and even more meaningful changes due to the re-contextualization of the genre in a SNS.

Riformulazioni e reinterpretazioni transmediali di Romeo and Juliet

Abstract: – This chapter examines a selected corpus of multisemiotic reformulations of Romeo and Juliet , which is subject to multimodal processes of re-narration and re-interpretation that are meant to make Shakespeare’s tragedy more accessible to different types of implied receivers, according to their age, gender and familiarity with the media hosting the retextualizations. Three case studies shall be explored: a short clip produced for the British Council and available on the Internet in the context of the Shakespeare Lives! festival; an online video game commissioned by ‘Shakespeare Country’ in order to promote Warwickshire county to international tourists as well as to introduce children and younger receivers to the basic story of Romeo and Juliet ; an amateur video game that resorts to discourse hybridization between the original text, intralinguistic simplification and the style of ‘Japanese role-play games’ in order to foster an interactive re-enactment of the play. By means of multimodal analyses of the selected corpus of extracts, this chapter will enquire into the cognitive-functional nature of the ‘transmedial reformulations’ under discussion, revealing the influence of the authors’ expectations concerning implied receivers on the verbal and multimodal aspects of target versions, and the pragmatic inferences that senders wish to prompt in viewers and players through the associations between register features, lexical and structural dimensions, and non-verbal characteristics.

De Charlie Hebdo à Nice. Le discours émotionné des titres des unes italiennes et françaises

Abstract: Based on the methodology proposed by Christian Plantin, this contribution aims to underline the function of the pathemic orientation of the headlines of the front pages of six prestigious showcases of the Italian and French press, within fifteen days after the three attacks that bloodied France in 2015 and 2016. The comparison of the six newspapers will reveal the different strategies governing the use of affective rhetoric and the implicitness of the political nature of titles.