Università del Salento: ESE - Salento University Publishing
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“It was about a Chinese idol”. Murder and the empire in Fergus Hume’s The Golden Wang-ho
Full text linkThis essay focuses on Fergus Hume’s 1901 novel The Golden Wang-ho, whose most striking character is the Chinese monk Jinfou. At the time of its publication, China was at the forefront of international news, with the Boxer uprising, the rescue of the Beijing Legation quarter, and the ongoing tension among the Western powers on the still doubtful fate of the Qing empire. It is likely that Hume meant to capitalise on the public’s interest with a China-themed story, but his text also offers an intriguing example of the formal and ideological flexibility of turn-of-the-century crime fiction. In particular, the depiction of Jinfou, combined with the representation of other characters variously involved in the imperial project, conveys a multi-layered image of Britain’s engagement overseas, which is further reinforced by the comments of the narrator. I suggest that, in this work, Hume plays with current stereotypes about crime and ethnicity, challenging readerly expectations both through his plot twists and his formal choices
The voice-over technique in four films by Sarah Polley
Full text linkThis article discusses the use of the voice-over technique in four films by the Canadian actress, director and screenwriter Sarah Polley: Away from Her (2006), Take This Waltz (2011) Stories We Tell (2013) and Women Talking (2022). In order to inscribe the critically neglected tool within an irreducibly audiovisual ensemble and unpack its multifaceted and multifunctional meaning-making system, a multimodal stylistic lens and toolkit have been adopted. Results show that the cinematic strategy is used across the films by the Canadian director with different extent, in different forms, and with different functions, thus showing the artist’s talent and creativity. The voice-over functions are mainly related to the enactment of processes of characterisation, narration, and screen adaptations. However, and most interestingly, the strategy is used to question and challenge the very modes and forms of these phenomena. In Away from Her, it challenges the traditional characterisation of a patient affected by Alzheimer’s disease as a passive and weak human being. In Stories We Tell, it subverts the narration process itself as univocal, linear, and stable, showing an ultimate meta-narrative concern. In Women Talking, it negotiates the process of screen adaptation, by replacing the male narrator of the adapted text with a female homodiegetic retrospective voice-over narrator as survivor and witness. Even its (almost) absence in Take this Waltz can be perceived as meaningful, as it is related to the multimodal shaping of the trope of absence that Polley presents as her main aim
A comparative analysis of environmental discursive strategies: Joe Biden and Donald Trump
Full text linkThis article presents a comparative discourse analysis of environmental rhetoric in the speeches of Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr., focusing on their contrasting approaches to climate change. Drawing on a small, focused corpus of eleven texts—including presidential speeches and electoral debates delivered between 2017 and 2022 – the study combines tools from discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to investigate how language constructs political stances, social identities, and ideological positions. Particular attention is paid to vocabulary (including “hooray” and “boo” words), grammatical structures (such as nominalizations and ergative constructions), and rhetorical strategies (metaphors, euphemisms, dysphemisms, and logical fallacies). Trump’s emphasis focuses on nationalistic, adversarial, and economically framed discourse, in which climate regulations are depicted as threats to prosperity and freedom, while environmental issues are minimized or reframed through euphemism. By contrast, Biden seems to employ a cooperative and institutional rhetoric, aligning environmental action with justice, responsibility, and global leadership, often invoking collective pronouns and legal-rational authority. The analysis demonstrates how similar keywords (e.g., “clean,” “jobs,” “freedom”) are strategically deployed to produce divergent ideological narratives. Ultimately, this study illustrates how environmental discourse functions as a site of political struggle in U.S. presidential rhetoric, where language not only reflects but actively shapes competing visions of economic development, environmental responsibility, and global governance
Weibull Sine Generalized Distribution Family: Fundamental Properties, Sub-model, Simulations, with Biomedical Applications
Full text linkThis study explores the integration of trigonometric functions into traditional statistical models, focusing on the development of the Weibull Sine Generalized (WSG-G) family of distributions. A special case was formulated name Weibull Sine generalized exponential (WSG-E) distribution. This new distribution extends the baseline exponential distribution, accommodating heavier tails and outliers, thereby effectively modeling positively skewed data. Key statistics such as mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis indicate the distribution's capacity to handle clustered data. A simulation study demonstrates the performance of Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE), revealing convergence in the mean squared error and root mean squared error for the parameter with increasing sample sizes, although convergence is less evident for other parameters. The WSG-E distribution's applicability is further illustrated through its fitting of medical datasets on bladder cancer remission times and growth hormone deficiency in children, both characterized by extreme values. Overall, the WSG-E distribution proves to be a robust model for skewed data, and future research could extend this framework to additional continuous distributions
The Grammar of Dissent. Green Day’s Evolving Critique of American Society
Full text linkThis research explores the intersection of music, language, and social critique through a linguistic analysis of the American punk rock band Green Day. While music and lyrics are powerful tools for expressing cultural and political ideologies, the punk rock genre is particularly notable for its historically anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian themes. As one of the most commercially successful punk bands, Green Day has brought this tradition of dissent to a mainstream audience, crafting lyrics that capture the anxieties and frustrations of American society. This paper utilises Corpus Linguistics (CL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as methodological frameworks to examine the evolution of Green Day’s social commentary throughout their discography. By analysing the thematic focus, rhetorical strategies, and linguistic choices in their lyrics—from their early work in the late 20th century to their more recent releases—this study traces how the band’s critique of American society has shifted and adapted over time. The analysis aims to reveal how a popular music artist can both reflect and shape broader socio-political discourses, offering insights into the dynamic relationship between popular culture, language, and ideology
Music and Discourse: Theoretical and Empirical Insights
Full text linkThis special issue brings together research exploring both the language of music—particularly lyrics and sound—and the surrounding discursive practices that shape how music is discussed, interpreted, and experienced. It examines the diverse ways music communicates, offering novel theoretical and empirical insights into how meaning is produced across texts, genres, and contexts. Specific attention is given to areas where existing research remains limited, including the synchronic and diachronic analyses of musical texts and genres, the multimodal, multilingual, and contrastive perspectives, and the situated meanings and values of music creation, performance, and consumption. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches—such as corpus linguistics, discourse and genre analysis, translation studies, multimodality, phonetics and phonology, and applied linguistics—this issue seeks to advance our understanding of music as a linguistic, social and communicative phenomenon
Quando 'carduni' non è né CARDO né CARDUUS. Problemi di una categoria speciale nell'etnofitonimia dialettale calabrese
Full text linkItL'articolo mira ad illustrare la necessità di una categoria nel dendrogramma lessico-semantico che sia sovra-generica. Questa categoria l'abbiamo chiamato HUB perché comanda e distribuisce in categorie subordinate (generi, specie e sottospecie) tutte le voci e semantemi connessi. L'esempio scelto per l'analisi e per la breve discussione è quello del calabrese carduni / cardunaru -a.EnThe present article aims at illustrating the necessity of positing a new category in the lexical-semantic tree-diagram of natural objects and plants. This category has been named the 'hub', subordinate to life-forms but superordinate to the genus category, because it commands and co-ordinates lower level categories such as genus and species etc. The example we have chosen is in Calabrian as in other southern Italian dialects that of a Romance derivative of Latin carduus, i.e. late Latin cardō, -ōnem, contrary to what happens in the central and northern Romance dialects of Italy, which dominates folk names for a large number of plants in an apparently disorderly manner
Consonanti occlusive sorde aspirate (VOT) in area siciliana. Prime evidenze
Full text linkItBenché i tratti fondamentali del consonantismo storico siciliano siano ben noti, gli studi sulla variazione allofonica di alcune di queste consonanti e sulla loro distribuzione all'interno della nostra isola sono molto meno frequenti. Per quanto riguarda le occlusive sorde, è noto che queste sono realizzate con VOT positivo in alcuni dialetti meridionali (soprattutto nella penisola salentina e in Calabria) e nel corrispondente italiano regionale. Non vi è, invece, alcun riferimento in letteratura alla presenza di occlusive sonore articolate con VOT positivo anche in vari dialetti e varietà di italiano parlate nella Sicilia centrale. In questo saggio ci limitiamo a evidenziare la presenza di questo fenomeno consonantico analizzando le occlusive sorde prodotte - in diversi contesti fonetici e prosodici, in parole dialettali e italiane - da due giovani parlanti di Canicattì (in provincia di Agrigento), rimandando a un'altra occasione le indagini che ci consentiranno di tracciare l'isofona siciliana relativa a questa caratteristica fonetica e di analizzarne le possibili implicazioni diastratiche e, soprattutto, storiche.EnThe fundamental historical features of Sicilian consonantism are well known. However, studies on the allophonic variation of some of these consonants and their distribution within our island are much less frequent. With regard to voiceless plosives, it is well known that these are realised with positive VOT in some southern dialects (especially in the Salento peninsula and Calabria) and in the corresponding regional Italian. However, there is no reference whatsoever in the literature to the presence of voiced occlusives articulated with positive VOT even in various dialects and varieties of Italian spoken in central Sicily. Here, we simply aim to highlight the presence of this consonantal phenomenon by analysing the voiceless plosives produced - in different phonetic and prosodic contexts, in dialectal and Italian words - by two young people from Canicattì (AG), leaving aside for another time the investigations that would allow us to trace the Sicilian isogloss relating to this phonetic feature and analyse its possible diastratic and, above all, historical implications
