1,721,827 research outputs found
Perotti traduttore degli opuscoli plutarchei De Alexandri Magni fortuna aut virtute e De fortuna Romanorum
No full textThe article focuses on the chronology of Perotti’s early translations of three opuscula Plutarchi (namely, De invidia et odio, De Alexandri Magni fortuna aut virtute and De fortuna romanorum) and on the relationship between Perotti’s translations of the two latter treatises and the preceding ones by Iacopo Angeli da Scarperia. G. Abbamonte argues that the De Alexandri
Magni fortuna aut virtute is the earliest of the three translations, and F. Stok presents a list of the testimonia transmitting the Plutarch translations made by Perotti and describes the relationship among the manuscripts
Prefazione introduttiva e metodologica
No full textIt is mainly within and around Mediterranean itineraries that the European Union seeks its in/tangible cultural heritage, an important component of both individual and collective identities. This volume brings together different strands of analysis, helping to shed light on the multifaceted entities that constitute the vibrant socio-semiotic landscape of the Mediterranean. The volume views this scenario from a cross-cultural perspective, and investigates the domains of national identities and stereotypes, advertising and social media, TV series, myths and festivals, landscapes, culture-bound terms, migrating words and food.
Given the variety of perspectives and methodological approaches with a specific focus on the prominent role of English in representing the Mediterranean heritage, despite the fact that it is a non-Mediterranean language, this volume can offer useful insights to students and practitioners of discourse analysis, bridging the gap between academic research and class practice at the university level. From an educational perspective the book, which also includes practical worksheets, can be used in first and second level degrees in Foreign Languages, Communication, Political Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies, as well as courses in linguistics, multimodal studies, critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics
I paratesti nelle edizioni a stampa dei classici greci e latini (XV-XVIII sec.)
No full textIl concetto di “paratesto”, introdotto da Gérard Genette (1987), è applicabile con profitto ai libri manoscritti e a quelli a stampa prodotti nel corso dei secoli XV-XVII. In questo periodo, una gran parte della produzione libraria riguardò opere antiche pubblicate ora in originale, ora in traduzioni latine o in vernacolo; altre volte a tali opere furono affiancate varie tipologie di commenti e discussioni erudite. In questo processo di pubblicazione dei testi antichi si verifica un tipo di relazione inconsueto tra “autore” e libro, in quanto l’autore antico è pubblicato attraverso nuove e “ingombranti” figure di mediatori, quali il curatore dell’edizione o lo stesso stampatore. Le alterità prodotte dal nuovo mezzo di pubblicazione e da questo cortocircuito tra l’autore antico e colui che decide di rimetterlo in circolazione impongono a quest’ultimo di dare ragione al pubblico di lettori delle proprie scelte editoriali: la sede privilegiata, in cui esporre le motivazioni che hanno indotto a riproporre un autore antico, è rappresentata da alcune sezioni paratestuali, soprattutto quelle iniziali e finali, come la dedica o l’Epistola lectori, vera novità introdotta dalla stampa; inoltre, le finalità scolastiche o erudite di molte edizioni di classici favoriscono lo sviluppo di indici sempre più ricchi e dettagliati, che permettono una lettura selettiva, ad locum o ad indicem appunto, che rappresenta un nuovo modo di leggere i classici rispetto alle epoche precedenti. Il volume offre un’ampia casistica di episodi “editoriali” nei quali l’elemento paratestuale gioca un ruolo di primo piano. Si analizzano dunque le modalità in cui vengono introdotte, commentate, glossate, indicizzate opere di autori greci (Erodoto, Aristotele, Plutarco, Cassio Dione, Museo) e latini (Virgilio, Catullo, Properzio, Tibullo, Ovidio, Persio) soffermandosi anche sui loro editori e commentatori, spesso celebri umanisti (Mattia Palmieri, Niccolò Perotti, Pomponio Leto alias Sabino, Aldo Manuzio, Ambrogio Leone, Erasmo da Rotterdam, Beato Renano, Pier Vettori), senza infine trascurare alcuni casi significativi di paratesti a edizioni di “nuovi” classici (Sannazaro, Garcilaso de la Vega)
Food, Family and Females: (Southern) Italy in U.S. Advertising
No full textAt the cross-over of Italian and North American lingua-cultural frameworks the complex issue of national identities plays a pivotal role, which is variously represented and advertised in media communication.
A country is not only represented through its geography and landscapes, arts, products and artefacts, but also through the verbal output and receptivity of its speech community that shares metaphors, images, icons (Hymes 1980), and through the recurring topics (and even commonplaces or truisms) that frequently occur in discursive interactions. Such mis/representation contributes to shape what Anderson defined Imagined Communities (1983). Imagined communities and national identities are not a clear-cut and a once-and-for-all affair: they mainly consist in a dynamic interplay of symbols, clichés and conventional, anachronistic behavioural models, which are easily communicated through media, and commercials. It is by now a shared notion that when exposed to overused representations on a regular basis, viewers absorb biased contents a-critically. In this perspective, Gerbner (1993, 2002) among others illustrated how media are responsible for shaping or ‘cultivating’ viewers’ conceptions of social reality. By acting as a pervasive sixth sense, visual media often construct and broadcast unbalanced portrayals, which are predictably filtered through and mediated by the viewers’ race, socioeconomic status, area of residence, and racial predisposition.
Such stereotypical representations are an effective way of simplifying and diffusing complex notions by representing marked clichéd traits, and may even increase emotional identification, contributing to the creation of cultural boundaries between Us and Others, i.e. insiders and outsiders of one’s specific national community. In our case, Americans of Italian heritage are frequently represented through anachronistic behavioural models, such as the ethnocentric sense of family, fixation on food, and mafia.
Regardless of a multifaceted, ever-developing reality, these cultural etiquettes are perpetuated, often construing derogatory meanings that can alter audience attitudes towards minorities, such as American women of Italian heritage who are frequently represented through anachronistic behavioural models, especially in TV commercials. Indeed, the real societal groups can be very different from the frozen image of the ‘advertised’ communities. In 1980s-1990s US TV commercials, Italian American women were depicted either as caring mothers and good-cooks, or overweight grandmothers wearing housecoats or aprons – often with a funny or ironic effect. The typically Italian deli-food fixation is displayed in the setting of welcoming kitchens, and the sense of family appears to be ethnocentric/clannish. In late 1990s-2010 US TV commercials the evolution and foregrounding of ‘updated’ stereotypes is recognizable, though always revolving around food (facilitated) preparation and consumption as the pivot of family life.
Drawing on selected TV commercials, we investigated from an evaluative semantic (Hunston &Thompson 2000; Martin & White 2005; Bednarek & Martin 2010; Fleitz 2010) and multimodal discourse analysis perspective (van Leeuwen 2008, 2013; Kress-van Leeuwen 2001, 2006) the (mis-)representation of Italian American women in US advertising in a diachronic perspective.
Our analysis highlighted how nation-based stereotypes are re-mediated through inter/intra-textual references in a process of re-semiotization that appears to be a successful social practice and a fundamental component of marketing strategies.
Is there any scope, however, for boundary-crossing, meaningful, informative memes in the contemporary US commercial semiosphere? Are genuine Italian artifacts and products actually advertised? Are authentic cultural values, practices, skills and traditions transmitted? Apparently not. Racisms and gender bias in their variety of forms and instantiations have a long history in advertising, inescapably leading to pervasive stereotyping, that is still being written. Not only Italian Americans, but also (or mainly) African Americans, or Asian Americans etc. are frequently framed into unflattering frozen portrayals by national or local brands and agencies to meet the audience expectations – a privilege of Italian Americans being the Mafia connection, not to mention the ‘Guidos’ and ‘Guidettes’ (Cavaliere 2012). However, with the world of social media acting as ‘taste-police’ and giving immediate feedback, many such campaigns quickly garner criticism for being (overtly) racist and get shut down. In this fluid scenario, we could even speak of a lively cross-media communication (or feedback) and reciprocal influence, which, in the long run, could change the dynamics of advertising. But, for the time being, ‘upgraded’ stereotypes are continuously shaped to meet and reinforce the perceptual expectations of the audience, according to the characteristics of the advertised goods. Such ongoing re-contextualization of the ‘Italian’ social/ethnic group in the US commercial semiosphere is mainly carried out through the advertising practices of quoting, paraphrasing, genre-mixing and hybridization, equivocation, ambiguity and shift in expectations – often leading to final effects of surprise. We can say that advertisers have re-voiced/ mimicked fictional old-worlds thanks to the potential of semiosis for mobility across boundaries and practices. Thus, local meanings and fossilized metaphors are continuously created, which can produce comic, grotesque and even paradoxical effects, and a persuasive, if inaccurate, meta-fictional setting is shaped, where the womanly stereotype is reinforced by the ethnic stereotype, thus creating an updated and more alluring commodification of the ‘Italian caring mamma’ and Womanly Homemaker
Mediterranean Heritage in Transit - (Mis)representations via English
No full textIt is mainly within and around Mediterranean itineraries that the European Union seeks its in/tangible cultural heritage. It aims to develop reflective societies, where knowledge can be created in connection with peoples’ heritage, in keeping with its strategic research agenda. In the same years as the McDonaldization/Starbuckization of society (Ritzer 1993; 2008), aspects of Mediterranean cultures have both survived and flourished beyond their natural boundaries, frequently acquiring new connotations/meanings through the medium of communication in English. Through diverse awareness-raising initiatives, it encourages peoples to repossess and safeguard their own unique, ‘indigenous’ cultures. The focus is on “the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces [...] – that communities recognize as part of their cultural heritage” .
In this arena of contemporary cultural heritage, this volume brings together many different strands of analysis, helping to shed light on the complex and multifaceted phenomena that constitute the vibrant socio-semiotic landscape of the Mediterranean. The latter, in fact, can be seen both as the possible unifying referent of diverse physical and anthropic environments, and as a metonymic embodiment of contemporary social and lingua-cultural paradigm shifts. Such issues have been investigated across a wide range of (transdisciplinary) theoretical analytical frameworks, and also from an educational perspective. Mediterranean Heritage in transit views this vibrant scenario from a dynamic cross-cultural perspective, and investigates the domains of identities and stereotypes, advertising, films, myths and festivals, landscapes, fluid knowledge and new technologies, culture-bound terms, migrating words and food.The book also includes worksheets for each chapter with proposed activities for university students who may be engaged in analyzing webpages, reading and producing tourist brochures, studying subtitling techniques in TV series and comparing multi-language subtitles and dubbing, or replicating experiments, such as implementing a sociolinguistic survey after the design of specific research questions. All these activities are designed to put best practices into effect by enhancing the reading and learning experience and encouraging self-study and self-evaluation in keeping with the theoretical strands proposed in the chapters, thus incorporating research into classroom procedures. The assumption is that a sound method can be successfully reproduced in other contexts: teachers and researchers will be able to transfer their experiences to other contexts, for example by adopting the chapters’ analytical frameworks, methods and contents in other social, linguistic and cultural contexts.
The volume’s principle value, then, can be found in its double design: the chapters can and should be read as research papers and can be utilized both as sources for structuring activities in a range of different classes, and as materials for self-study. The underlying rationale of the book lies in the attempt to bring to the fore the prominent role of English in representing the Mediterranean heritage, although it is a non-Mediterranean language. At the same time it attempts to bridge the gap between academic research and class practice at the university level
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