1,720,997 research outputs found
Pragmatics in Translation. Mediality, Participation and Relational Work, written by Daria Dayter, Miriam A. Locher, and Thomas C. Messerli
No full textRecensione del volume BOMBI, Raffaella (2005) La linguistica del contatto. Tipologie di anglicismi nell’italiano contemporaneo e riflessi metalinguistici. Roma: Il Calamo [Lingue, culture e testi 11, pp. 378, ISBN 88-89837-03-9]
No full textAddress strategies in a British academic setting
Full text linkThe English system of address constitutes an exception among the European languages, in that it does not have a grammatical distinction between a formal pronoun of address and an informal one. Rather, English speakers exploit lexical strategies (i.e. nominal vocatives). This study aims to shed light on the address strategies used by students and members of the teaching staff in academic interactions, with reference to the University of Reading (UK). Data from semi-structured interviews and video-recordings outline an unmarked pattern of asymmetry between the parties, in which students mainly employ formal vocatives towards lecturers (title+surname, honorifics), while lecturers frequently use first names and other informal expressions. Reciprocal informal vocatives, by contrast, emerges as a marked practice, which is resisted or delayed in time. This asymmetrical distribution of forms questions classical models and previous research on address and calls for the necessity of new components for the understanding of the phenomenon
Taking Stance in English as a Lingua Franca: Managing Interpersonal Relations in Academic Lectures
No full textEnglish is undoubtedly the lingua franca of global communication today, and plays a major role in the internationalisation of universities, where it is increasingly being used as the medium of instruction. The use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in higher education has spread at different speeds throughout Europe over recent decades, with Nordic and central-western countries leading the way and the regions of southern Europe lagging behind. In Italy, English-taught programmes are a rather new and emerging phenomenon which needs to be empirically investigated to uncover the complex mechanisms of classroom interaction in this foreign language.
The present volume focuses on one aspect of ELF academic exchanges that is deemed crucial in the transmission of knowledge in the educational setting, namely the management of interpersonal relations and the expression of interpersonal stance in the classroom. To this end, a model has been developed along the four dimensions of formality, power, social distance and respect, and has been applied to the analysis of a corpus of ELF lectures recorded in an Italian university.
The examination of naturally occurring ELF lectures reveals a complex combination of linguistic strategies that lecturers exploit at the macro-level of discourse (interpersonal episodes) and at the micro-level of lexis and morpho-syntax (direct questions, comprehension checks, imperatives, personal pronouns, and terms of address) to express interpersonal meanings and build rapport with their students, in response to specific expressive and communicative requirements brought about by ELF academic interaction
English Lingua Franca: Reality or fiction? Assessing the debate on the status of English as language of global communication.
No full textThe prominent role of English as language of global communication has long been acknowledged in the literature. Quite recently, a new research paradigm has made its way into the discussion, aimed at investigating the use of English as Lingua Franca (ELF) in international exchanges. The present paper constitutes an attempt to assess the main positions in the current debate on ELF communication. On the one hand, some scholars consider ELF as an emerging independent variety characterized by distinctive formal features and interactional strategies that guarantee successful communication among non-native speakers of English. On the other hand, other researchers challenge this view and regard ELF as a register and the putative distinctive traits as features of learner's interlanguage systems. In the concluding part of the paper, the thorny issue concerning the role of participants' native languages and cultures in shaping ELF discourse is addressed, by reviewing the main hypotheses put forward in recent studies
“What the hell’s going on?” A diachronic perspective on intensifying expletives in original and dubbed film dialogue
No full textFilm dialogue is characterised by strong emotionality expressed through
many linguistic traits, not least swearing and taboo language. Using the
Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue (PCFD), this short-term diachronic study
explores how a set of English intensifying expletives, namely bloody,
fucking, (god)damn, the fuck and the hell, are deployed in Anglophone
films and how they are dubbed into Italian in a timespan of more than
two decades (1995-2017). Results show a significant growth in the frequency
of intensifying expletives in English film dialogue over time confirming
the increase in swearing in Anglophone telecinematic products (Azzaro
2018). The opposite direction is taken by dubbing, where omission and
mitigation of expletives have increased considerably in the last decade,
leading to a reduction of the pragmatic force of the original texts. The
wide repertoire of translational routines employed in dubbing indicates
an orientation to both source language expressions (calques) and target
language patterns. These findings lead us to reflect on censorship, source
text interference, target text adaptation, hybridisation and the increase of
phraseological variability over time, which testifies to the dynamicity of
translational routines in dubbing and to the distinctiveness of audiovisual
discourse in itself
The pragmatic functions of tu and lei in films: Converging patterns of address across translated and original Italian dialogue
No full textAddress pronouns are strategies employed to position participants and express interpersonal meanings in real-life communication and on-screen. They straddle two areas of typological contrast as languages differ in terms of presence/absence of grammatical address and subject obligatoriness. In Italian, a binary distinction is established between the informal T-pronoun tu and the formal V-pronoun lei, while English lacks a T/V distinction. Concurrently, whereas English is an obligatory subject language, subject pronouns are as a rule optional in Italian. As no research has tackled the pragmatics of expressed address pronouns in film dialogue and audiovisual translation from English, the study investigates the occurrence of tu and lei in a corpus of original and dubbed Italian films and their discoursal and interpersonal functions. These were found to include shift of focus of attention, turn management, contrast, conflict, politeness and character's identification, variably associated with each address pronoun. The qualitative and quantitative analyses reveal noticeable convergence between translated and original dialogue, with dubbing reflecting the pragmatic expressiveness of domestic Italian films, while showing no shining through of the source language. Address pronouns play a crucial role in Italian film language, adding pragmatic weight to characters’ turns and enriching the dialogue intradiagetically and extradiagetically
A model of stance for the management of interpersonal relations: formality, power, distance and respect
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