2,276 research outputs found
L'IMMAGINE OLTRE IL DESIGN. Alessi, fabbrica del design italiano
No full textAntologia di elaborati grafici su prodotti Alessi svolti in seno ai Laboratori del Disegno della Facoltà del Design del Politecnico di Milano AA 2006-07 e 07-08.
Volume arricchito da schede di approfondimento critico e metodologico-disciplinare. postfazioni di Alberto Alessi, Arturo dell'Acqua Bellavitis, Flaviano Celasch
Innovative Forms of Autonomy and the Role of Federalism: A Comparative and Theoretical Perspective
No full textThe chapter aims to show how variegate and evolving the law of diversity is in contemporary times. In particular, the focus is on emerging and innovative forms of autonomy, whose distinctive feature is the divergence from the consolidated autonomous models that stem from the liberal-democratic tradition.
These innovations appear to lack comprehensive recognition or conceptual framing. This chapter intends to address this deficiency. It will do this firstly by recognizing these instruments as some of the most innovative tendencies of the law of diversity. Secondly, it will propose to frame these developments as part of a broad federal phenomenon, which provides solid theoretical tools to better understand them and explain their functioning
Introduction
No full textThe chapter illustrates how this edited volume was conceived, its structure and the theoretical framework which the chapters build upon
Standardizing the Language of Corporate Internal Investigative Reports : A Case Study in Appropriated Professional Language Practices
No full textStandardizing language in corporate investigative reports: A case study in appropriated professional language practices
Glen Michael Alessi, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Adopting Gunnarsson's (2009) definition of professional discourse, and drawing on Bhatia's (2008) notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity, this study examines generic and lexico-grammatical features found in a corpus of anonymised internal investigative reports produced by a large multinational company. It considers how insights gained from genre analysis (Bhatia 1993) and corpus-assisted discourse analysis (Partington 2008, 2013) may furnish the company with future recommendations in fine-tuning these reports for a previously unaccounted for external readership of lawyers and paralegals. On a more general scale, my interests attempt to illustrate how academic research findings, based on the study of existing communicative practices, might better inform, improve and shape future professional practice.
My study addresses reports produced by a large multinational corporation which conducts internal investigations regarding problematic employee behaviour, such as misconduct, accidents, theft, complaints, and issues of compliance. These reports are based on investigator- employee interviews and are intended only for internal use only. They may however be unexpectedly required, at a future date, for legal purposes such as in litigation cases between an employee and the company.
The company involved, expressed interest in employing external linguistic expertise - or mediation - in examining how individual reporting could be best standardized, in order to avoid detailed editing and re-writing. In an effort to establish more uniform lexical and grammatical choices amongst authors, the company hopes that the reports might create higher degrees of shared certainty and more objective evaluation of the circumstances between the various cases and investigators. A principle aim is to produce standardized documentation which foreseeably could be better defended in court. In linguistic terms, the company is intent on imposing register variation and re-contextualizing language of these internal reports in order to create documentation which can be legally defended while using English as a Lingua Franca.
Corpus-assisted and genre-based approaches, together with Sketch Engine applications, will provide input into describing current report macrostructure, lexico-grammatical choices, and what suggestions can be made to standardize and render reports written by international agents legally resistant. Particular attention is given to prescribing choice of reporting verbs, contents and moves of the executive summary, vague versus explicit language, expressing factuality and allegations.
References
Alessi, G. M. 2013. The Language of Insurance Claims Adjustments: Interviews or Interrogations? In: Three Waves of Globalization: Winds of Change in Professional, Institutional and Academic Genres. Ed. F. Poppi & W. Cheng. Cambridge Scholars. 23-36.
Bhatia, V. 2008. Genre Analysis, ESP and Professional Practice. English for Specific Purposes 27.2: 161-74
Partington A. 2008. The armchair and the machine: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies. In: Corpora for University Language Teachers. Ed. C. Taylor Torsello, K. Ackerley & E. Castello. Bern: Peter Lang. 189-213.
Partington, A., Duguid A. & C. Taylor. 2013. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and practice in corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins
A new method for identifying dynamical transitions in rubble-pile asteroid scenarios
No full textContext. Evidence supports the idea that asteroids are rubble piles, that is, gravitational aggregates of loosely consolidated material. This makes their dynamics subject not only to the complex N-body gravitational interactions between its constituents, but also to the laws of granular mechanics, which is one of the main unsolved problems in physics.Aims. We aim to develop a new method to identify dynamical transitions and predict qualitative behavior in the granular N-body problem, in which the dynamics of individual bodies are driven both by mutual gravity, contact and collision interactions.Methods. The method has its foundation in the combination of two elements: a granular N-body simulation code that can resolve the dynamics of granular fragments to particle-scale precision, and a theoretical framework that can decode the nature of particle-scale dynamics and their transitions by means of ad hoc indicators.Results. We present here a proof-of-concept of the method, with application to the spinning rubble-pile asteroid problem. We investigate the density-spin parameter space and demonstrate that the approach can identify the breakup limit and reshape region for spinning rubble-pile aggregates.Conclusions. We provide the performance of several ad hoc indicators and discuss whether they are suitable for identifying and predicting the features of the dynamical problem
Giorgio Manganelli e il teatro
No full textNel 1967 Manganelli, che proprio quell’anno si sarebbe proclamato araldo della letteratura come menzogna, pubblicava sul «Verri» un articolo in cui illustrava la sua personalissima idea di teatro, compendiata nel congeniale e versatile binomio di cerimonia e artificio: «una idea piuttosto perplessa, e tuttavia eccitata: un sistema di diffidenze, irritazioni e imprecise speranze». Questo articolo, che secondo qualche interprete andrebbe letto come un vero e proprio manifesto programmatico, è semmai un valido documento dell’atteggiamento ambivalente, misto di perplessità ed eccitazione, sempre mostrato da Manganelli nei confronti del teatro, sin dalle pagine dei suoi giovanili quaderni di appunti, dove il futuro scrittore già tradiva un certo imbarazzo verso una forma d’arte che, ai suoi occhi, appariva troppo compromessa con la vita, e dunque, come dirà poi nel Discorso dell’ombra e dello stemma, costantemente minacciata del rischio di diventare antropomorfica.
Pur senza mai sciogliere del tutto le proprie riserve, Manganelli non ha però voluto rinunciare all’opportunità di «cimentarsi con la sfida del testo teatrale»; e dal 1963, anno in cui il suo primo esperimento drammatico, il monologo Iperipotesi, veniva messo in scena nel corso del convegno fondativo del Gruppo 63, per oltre un decennio si è volentieri improvvisato drammaturgo ogni qualvolta gli si è presentata l’occasione, mosso dalla curiosità e dalla segreta “imprecisa speranza” di «trovare [...] il sentiero che conduce al teatro». Sfortunatamente quel sentiero si è rivelato per lui non privo di qualche accidente, tra rappresentazioni mancate e accoglienze nient’affatto calorose; tanto che, dopo l’ennesima delusione, lasciata ormai ogni speranza, si è a malincuore rassegnato a desistere dall’impresa.
I suoi «vaghi, frammentari» contatti col mondo del teatro, «alleati – diceva lui – delle sue sindromi depressive», sono comunque all’origine di un eccentrico repertorio di testi, finalmente riuniti in una raccolta pressoché completa, Tragedie da leggere, pubblicata nel 2005 per la cura di Luca Scarlini. Al curatore spetta anche l’indiscutibile merito di aver accuratamente ricostruito, attraverso un paziente lavoro di ricerca, tutte le tappe della travagliata avventura teatrale di Manganelli, e di aver richiamato l’attenzione degli studiosi sulle sue “tragedie da leggere”, cui le opere maggiori hanno finito inevitabilmente per rubare la scena.
Ma, se è interessante conoscere le vicende che hanno portato l’agorafobo Manganelli a vestire i panni del drammaturgo, è invece indispensabile comprendere le ragioni del suo ambivalente atteggiamento di fronte al teatro, nonché al più grande autore drammatico di tutti i tempi, William Shakespeare. Verso di lui e verso i suoi altrettanto grandi personaggi, Manganelli ha sempre nutrito un’ammirazione incondizionata e perciò inconfessabile, tale da fargli compiere le più spericolate acrobazie pur di riportare il teatro di Shakespeare nel territorio meno compromesso della letteratura, non senza qualche inevitabile forzatura e contraddizione. Anziché tentare di smorzarle, è proprio su queste contraddizioni che conviene concentrare l’attenzione, a partire da quella più clamorosa. Perché è senza dubbio degno di nota il fatto che Manganelli, così sospettoso nei confronti del teatro, e fermamente intenzionato ad assomigliarlo il più possibile alla letteratura, sia invece arrivato a concepire la scrittura come «luogo di eventi sostanzialmente teatrali», dove lo scrittore, «eroico guitto», si trasforma nell’istrione di se stesso, al fine, solo implicitamente dichiarato, di «ingannare e illuminare il lettore», e soprattutto di proteggere la parte più intima di sé, nascondendo dietro un apparato di finzioni le proprie più segrete veritàIn 1967 Manganelli, who in the very same year declared himself as herald of the literature as a falsehood («letteratura come menzogna»), published on «Il Verri» an essay with the purpose to explain his very personal idea of theatre, summarized through the congenial and versatile combination of ceremony and artifice: a quite confused and yet excited idea: a scheme of suspicions, annoyance and fuzzy hopes («una idea piuttosto perplessa, e tuttavia eccitata: un sistema di diffidenze, irritazioni e imprecise speranze»). The essay, which – according to some annotators – should be considered as a manifesto, is instead a valuable treatise about the two-sided attitude, mingled and excitement, Manganelli always had towards theatre, as it came out from the pages of his early notebooks, in which he betrayed embarrassment in front of an art form that he regarded as too much intertwined with everyday life and constantly threatened by the risk of becoming anthropomorphic, as he later wrote also in his Discorso dell’ombra e dello stemma.
By the way, without making known his ideas on theatre, Manganelli never gave up the opportunity of attempting to measure himself with the theatrical play. So, starting from the first stage play of his first drama monologue Iperipotesi, acted out during the Gruppo 63 foundational meeting, he gladly accepted every chance to work as a dramatist for over a decade, fueled both by curiosity and by his secret “fuzzy hope” to find the path to theatre («trovare [...] il sentiero che conduce al teatro»). Unfortunately for him, that path to theatre wasn’t very smooth, amid missed performances and somehow a not so favourable welcome, up to the point that, after the umpteenth disappointment, once abandoned all hope, he reluctantly resigned himself to give up the undertaking.
Manganelli’s vague and fragmented contacts with theatre, which he defined as allied to his depressive syndromes, represent the basis of an odd collection of works, brought together in the Tragedie da leggere anthology (Aragno, 2005), published and edited by Luca Scarlini. Scarlini is also eligible as the one who accurately reconstructed, through a painstaking research work, all Manganelli’s theatrical stages, bringing the scholars’ attention on his “tragedie da leggere”, however overshadowed by Manganelli’s major works.
In any case, one the one hand, it is interesting to understand the reasons why the agoraphobic Manganelli worked also as a dramatist, on the other, the comprehension of his two-sided approach to theatre and to the major dramatist ever, William Shakespeare, must be considered as essential. In fact, Manganelli always brought forward a strong, unreserved and therefore unmentionable appreciation towards Shakespeare and his famous characters, emotions that led him do his utmost and face some contradictions and twistings to translate Shakespeare’s theatre into the less involved with everyday’s life dimension of literature. Manganelli’s contradictions represent the item on which we should put our focus: the author, while being really cautious against theatre and absolutely willing to compare it to literature, at the same time considers writing as a place made of basically theatrical events («luogo di eventi sostanzialmente teatrali»), in which the writer, as a heroic player («eroico guitto»), becomes a histrionic impressionist of himself («istrione di se stesso») with the implicit purpose to deceive and illuminate the reader («ingannare e illuminare il lettore») and, most of all, to shelter his inner side by hiding his innermost thoughts behind a fiction displa
Standardizing the Language of Corporate Internal Investigative Reports: Linguistic Perspectives on Professional Writing practices.
No full textDrawing on Bhatia's (2008) notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity, this study examines generic and lexico-grammatical features found in a corpus of anonymised internal investigative reports produced by a large multinational company. It considers how insights gained from genre analysis and corpus-assisted discourse analysis (Partington 2008, 2013; Alessi 2013 ) may furnish the company with future recommendations in fine-tuning these reports for a previously unaccounted for external readership by lawyers and paralegals. On a more general scale, my interests attempt to illustrate how academic research findings, based on the study of existing communicative practices, might better inform, improve and shape future professional practice.
My study addresses reports produced by a large multinational corporation, which conducts internal investigations regarding problematic employee behaviour, such as misconduct, accidents, theft, complaints, and issues of compliance. These reports are based on investigator-employee interviews, which were intended only for internal use only. They may however be unexpectedly required, at a future date, for legal purposes such as in litigation cases between an employee and the company.
The company involved, expressed interest in employing external linguistic expertise - or mediation - in examining how individual reporting could be best standardized, in order to avoid detailed editing and re-writing. In an effort to establish more uniform lexical and grammatical choices amongst authors, the company hopes that the reports might create higher degrees of shared certainty and more objective evaluation of the circumstances between the various cases and investigators. A principle aim is to produce standardized documentation, which foreseeably could be better defended in court. In linguistic terms, the company is intent on imposing register variation and re-contextualizing language of these internal reports in order to create documentation, which can be legally defended while using English as a Lingua Franca.
Corpus-assisted and genre-based approaches, together with Sketch Engine applications, will provide input into describing current report macrostructure, lexico-grammatical choices, and what suggestions can be made to standardize and render reports written by international agents legally resistant. Particular attention is given to prescribing choice of reporting verbs, contents and moves of the executive summary, vague versus explicit language, expressing factuality and allegations.
References
Alessi, Glen M. "The Language of Insurance Claims Adjustments: Interviews or Interrogations?" Three Waves of Globalization: Winds of Change in Professional, Institutional and Academic Genres. Ed. Franca Poppi and Winnie Cheng. [S.l.]: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2013. 23-36. Print.
Bhatia, V. "Genre Analysis, ESP and Professional Practice." English for Specific Purposes 27.2 (2008): 161-74
Partington Alan. 2008. The armchair and the machine: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies, in Carol Taylor Torsello, Katherine Ackerley, Erik Castello (eds) Corpora for University Language Teachers, Bern: Peter Lang, 189-213.
Partington, Alan, Alison Duguid & Charlotte Taylor. 2013. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and practice in corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Dynamical System Description of the Solar Radiation Pressure and j2 Phase Space for End-Of-life Design and Frozen Orbit Design
No full textn this work we review the effect of solar radiation pressure on the eccentricity of circumterrestrial orbits, perturbed also by the oblateness of the Earth. We compute the equilibrium points of a reduced system of equations describing the time evolution of the eccentricity, the longitude of the ascending node and the argument of pericenter, and their linear stability. This analysis is the basis for understanding how the phase space is organized in terms of central and hyperbolic orbits. The role of the initial phase with respect to the Sun and of the magnitude of the inclination evolution is also examined. The results follow previous investigations performed by the authors, providing a more complete picture of the whole dynamics, that can be applied to design convenient end-of-life strategies for small satellites equipped with a solar sail or to determine quasi stable Sun-following orbits for satellites swarms
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