Università del Salento: ESE - Salento University Publishing
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Problematizing Western reparations for colonial injustices: clearing the way for african ubuntu dignity restoration
Get PDFI problematize dominant Western theories of material compensations as not persuasive enough to compel colonial perpetrators of injustice to compensate Africa. I highlight seven theoretical and practical problems associated with material compensations for Africa. The first is the problem of identifying the actual African victims and second, the problem of using counter-factual calculations to determine the amount of compensation required. The third problem is that of burdening primary perpetrators of injustice to pay compensations while the fourth relates to using the collective guilty principle to identify burden bearers. The fifth problem is that of burdening secondary Western beneficiaries while the sixth is the problem of burdening Western knowledgeable beneficiaries. The last problem relates to burdening Western involuntary beneficiaries of injustices. I instead defend the African ethicists' emphasis on restoring the lost dignity of victims, supported by the equal sacrifice principle. I find the equal sacrifice/dignity restoration alliance more plausible
Webbasierte Tools für die Transkription und Analyse von Reden. Hilfreiche Instrumentarien für die (Polito)Linguistik
Get PDFTo conduct a linguistic analysis of political speeches, it is essential to obtain their transcription. However, not all speeches delivered by political representatives are readily transcribed and accessible. Moreover, transcribing speeches that last more than some minutes is time-consuming and for this reason written texts, short political speeches, or speeches that already have an official transcription are more likely to be considered by linguistic disciplines. Tools and technology developed by the speech processing community facilitate the transcription process. The audio signal tends to be neglected in some linguistic disciplines, which focus exclusively on the content or the argumentative structures of speeches, without considering the relevant role of voice characteristics in the success or effectiveness of a speaker. In fact, this often happens in politolinguistics and this paper presents a possible alternative path for transcription of political speeches with BAS web tools, based on previous studies carried out for transcription in other disciplines. The use of such tools opens the perspective of including the signal in the analyses. The corpus of speeches used as examples was collected for a doctoral project on political speeches in Germany and Italy. The aim of this study is not to outline a technical perspective on the development and commands of transcription tools or software, but to show how to solve common problems that researchers in political language could face, once they want to consider for instance longer speeches delivered at political conventions and not transcribed before. Based on the problems and solutions that have been found for the doctoral project, researchers in the (polito)linguistic field could also determine whether the presented tools are applicable for their research and perhaps useful to make time-consuming tasks as transcribing easier. The article will present such tools, discuss their advantages and disadvantages, and conclude with examples and recommendation of best practices
Die Datenbank „Studentische Referate in der Fremdsprache Deutsch“ und ihre Anwendung in einer Pilotstudie zur rhetorischen Sprechwirkung
Get PDFThis article introduces a database designed to evaluate students’ public speaking proficiency at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia: “La comunicazione accademica studentesca orale in LS (tedesco), L1 italiano” (Academic student oral communication in FL German, L1 Italian). Central to the project is the collection of audio and video recordings capturing student presentations delivered in German L2, which will be inserted into the BAS CLARIN Repository (Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals, LMU Munich). The corpus consists of audio and video material and is currently being constructed through various transcription phases, with special emphasis on the tool OCTRA for orthographic transcription and lexical recognition. A longitudinal study utilizes a sub-corpus of paired video recordings of the same students, taken two years apart, revealing valuable insights into rhetorical speech effects. The analysis aims to track changes or improvements in speaking proficiency over time, highlighting the development or persistence of skills, and exploring differences between self-assessment and external evaluations. Additionally, the study will investigate differences in presentation styles and effectiveness between in-person and online settings. Key aspects under examination include overall impression, clarity, naturalness, perceived competence, and speaking style, based on phonetic features such as speed, pausing, articulation precision, variation, and emphasis
Exploring Italian university students’ self-directed exposure to English input in informal settings. Insights into motivation and agency
Get PDFExposure to comprehensible input is essential for second language (L2) acquisition. In our globally interconnected era, technological advancements offer ample opportunities for accessing English. Understanding how Italian university students navigate this landscape is important, particularly considering the challenges they encounter in achieving English proficiency. In this study, we explored the reasons for university students’ self-directed exposure to English input during their leisure time. Using the self-determination theory (SDT) framework, we conducted and analysed 21 semi-structured interviews with students at a medium-sized university in northern Italy, and conducted a thematic analysis to classify their motivations as intrinsic or extrinsic. A custom scale was also developed to assess the elaborateness of their expressions of agency. Our analysis revealed the presence of both intrinsic (e.g. immersion, entertainment, and personal interests) and extrinsic (e.g. improving English proficiency) motivations, together with elaborate expressions of agency being linked to specific behaviours, particularly when accessing English to enhance language skills. The results suggest that university students can capitalise on the abundant input that is available via technological resources by leveraging their motivation and agency
