199 research outputs found
Newspaper discourse informalisation: a diachronic comparison from keywords
No full textIn this paper, I provide an overview of certain types of salient items found
in the keyword lists of the SiBol 1993 and SiBol 2005 corpora with the
objective of diachronic analysis of a particular text type, namely, that of
British broadsheet newspapers. I analysed the keyword lists (see Partington,
2010: Section 2) in search of items that could be assigned to semantic sets,
which could be glossed as hyperbole, vagueness and informal evaluation. The
appearance of these sets in the keywords for 2005 seems to point to changes
over time in newspaper prose style. The newspapers under consideration thus
appear to have altered both in their function and in their relationship with
their readership; and this is reflected in the salient lexis and its contexts of
use. An increase in conversational and informal styles emerges, along with a
notable increase in a particular kind of evaluative and promotional language
as a result of a proportional increase in soft news, supplements and reviews
Anatomy of a context: English Language Teaching in Italy
No full textL’insegnamento delle lingue straniere in Italia attraversa una fase di transizione: infatti sono in atto processi di trasformazione sia a livello scolastico, con il progetto “Lingue 2000”, sia a livello universitario, con la riforma dei programmi.
Le suddette scelte curricolari rappresenteranno, per le strutture scolastiche ed universitarie, un’aumentata richiesta di prestazioni in un’area disciplinare che è relativamente debole rispetto ad altri paesi europei, malgrado gli investimenti stanziati a varie riprese.
Questa situazione di ipotrofia viene rilevata dall’analisi dei risultati delle prove di certificazione internazionale. Viene evidenziata la necessità di una coerenza didattica che tenga realisticamente conto della situazione in cui si opera.
Le difficoltà incontrate dovrebbero essere utilmente interpretate come sintomi che ci possono aiutare a fare una diagnosi delle esigenze dell’insegnamento linguistico nella scuola e nell’università italiana, favorendo la creazione delle condizioni essenziali per un apprendimento più efficace.
Per garantire queste condizioni, qualsiasi struttura dovrà fare delle accurate scelte di gestione delle proprie risorse.
Il libro dunque si pone come una sorta di visita specialistica dello stato di salute dell’insegnamento della lingua straniera in Italia davanti ad un’aumentata richiesta di prestazioni rappresentata dalle recenti innovazioni.
E’ necessario partire dalla conoscenza delle condizioni dell’ambiente esterno, con particolare riferimento al reale bisogno della lingua inglese in Italia. Tali riflessioni non trascurano il problema del rischio d’imperialismo linguistico né il ruolo giocato dai mezzi di comunicazione di massa.
In quest’ottica viene raccolta un’anamnesi che elabora dati provenienti dall’analisi dei programmi scolastici, dal pre-progetto “Lingue 2000” e dall’osservazione dell’attuale ecosistema universitario.
Da ultimo, suggerendo aggiustamenti sulla gestione delle risorse e sul consolidamento degli aspetti che appaiono più fragili, si esprime una prognosi relativa alle prove cui l’università italiana si troverà sottoposta nell’ambito delle prossime riforme.
Infine vengono date alcune indicazioni terapeutiche per potenziare il campo della ricerca e della didattica, cosa che produrrebbe effetti positivi sulla qualità dell’insegnamento linguistico.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT
The outcomes of learning are profoundly affected by context. This book surveys the context of English language teaching in Italy through the analysis of a series of factors which affect both learning and teaching. The essential conditions for language teaching are identified and ways of evaluating programme design and description. The role of English in Italy is scanned and the teaching of English in schools comes under the microscope; and the university context, both in terms of programmes and the basic assumptions behind the provision of resources. The book examines particular innovations in both contexts: the Progetto Lingue 2000 and the recent university reforms and recounts the impact of certification on one Italian context. The author provides criteria for making the context more language friendly and for the best use of resources. This is a revealing case study for all involved in English Language Teaching in a European context and will be of use to the local teachers’ resource centres,university programme managers, practising teachers, trainees and their trainers, as well as to those working in ELT publishing. It puts together key elements of research so that theory can feed fruitfully into practic
The Public Accounts Committee: dialogistic positioning and face threatening acts in public.
No full textDoing distance locally and getting up close globally: the balancing act of transnational news channels”
No full textControl: A semantic feature in evaluative prosody. Corpus Lingustics 2011. Birmingham 20-22 July 2011
No full text
Men at Work: Living in a contracted dialogistic space, the uncomfortable life at Number 10
No full textThe intentions of this paper are to show how Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies (hereafter CADS) can reveal the ways in which the construction of a working identity is achieved through language. External perceptions of the Number 10 team and their roles are considered and then, by analysing a small corpus (39,000 words) of transcribed data from the Hutton Inquiry, we attempt to discover the construction of their working identity through their own words and the use of particular patterns of linguistic resources
Public apologies and Press Evaluations
No full textThis paper is concerned with the representation of public apologies in the media and the way the apologies are framed and evaluated. Using a series of corpora from written and spoken sources, namely, the SiBol corpus comprising c.300,000,000 words of UK broadsheet newspaper texts, a corpus of White House briefings (c.1,500,000 words) a TV news corpus (c. 600,000 words) and an ad hoc search-word-generated corpus of tabloid newspapers in their online form with apology as the search term (circa 194,000 tokens). Using the CADS methodology a number of preferred patterns of representation were found which evaluate public apologies, mostly negatively, through a number of parameters: timeliness, sincerity, spontaneity and what might be called the humiliation facto
- …
