1,721,061 research outputs found
The social impact of Covid-19 from the view of Linguistics: Discursive (self-)representations of seniors
No full textThe Covid-19 health crisis has abruptly and dramatically changed the (self-) perception of seniors in society. Whereas, until the pandemic struck, seniors tended to see and describe themselves as younger, very much counting on indicators such as good health, physical appearance and mental capacities, the coronavirus has obliged both governmental institutions and seniors themselves to acknowledge and use people's real or chronological age. Both limits and benefits have been and are being decided based on a strictly age-related basis, making the old 'old again'. The future decisions about possible SARS-Covid19 vaccines and the order of their distribution to the population will rise more questions about the definition of 'old age', its representation, perception and value in societies
From ‘health remedies’ ads to Directives 92/28/EEC and 2001/83/EC: advertising medicinal products in the press (19th-21st c.)
No full texthis paper proposal intends to explore how ‘products aimed at improving one’s health and well-being’ (from drugs to remedies of any sort) went from being widely advertised in the press, in the 19th century, to being banned at European level around the turn of this century.
In order to explore this change, British newspapers and periodicals will be consulted, to collect advertisements of medicinal and other similar products, and investigate a) what kinds of products were advertised, b) whether there were any relevant changes in the categories of products advertised, c) what linguistic strategies (at the lexical, syntactic, rhetorical and discursive level in general) were employed to advertised them.
The method employed will combine studies on domain-specific languages (medical English in particular) for the lexical aspect, but also drawing from approaches in argumentation, media studies, advertising and discourse analysis. Legal discourse considerations will also be necessary, in order to firstly define terms such as ‘(prescription) drug’, ‘medicinal product’, ‘remedy’, etc. and, secondly, to understand the rules introduced by the European directives that started to regulate the field at the end of the 20th century.
The investigation is expected to illustrate the development of drug (and related products) advertising – and the language used to do so – in Britain, from the 19th century to the 21st century, from a linguistic perspective that attempts to bring together advertising, health dissemination, consumer protection and supranational legislation
“Of course there is something here and there I’m afraid I don’t quite understand”: Cesare Pavese’s correspondence with Anthony Chiuminatto as a collaborative translation strategy
No full textItalian writer Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) is also known as an ‘Americanist’ or a disseminator of American culture in Italy during the first half of the 20th century, which he mostly achieved with his work as a translator. Indeed, he translated several novels by contemporary US authors, during a historical period, the ‘Fascist era’, in which this might and was seen as an act of fascination toward an alien and hostile culture and, thus, as an act of rebellion.
Numerous studies have focused on Pavese’s original work as a poet and a novelist, and possibly as many have commented on his contribution to the cultural phenomenon of Americanism. This paper intends to investigate a more specific aspect of his work: his translations. In particular, an attempt will be made to analyse the process followed by Pavese when he translated from English into Italian. This included consulting as frequently and thoroughly as he could with his Italo-American friend Antonio Chiuminatto, by letter. Pavese’s requests were mainly lexical, especially about specific terms and slang expressions or collocations.
The Pavese-Chiuminatto years-long correspondence (as edited by Pietralunga 2007) will therefore be explored, in order to extract Pavese’s linguistic reflections on language(s) and translation. An interpretation of the passages then will be offered according to the notion of ‘collaborative translation’, arguing that Pavese’s celebrated translating activity could hardly have taken place – or at least not as successfully – without consulting with his Anglophone advisor.
Reference
Pietralunga, Mark (ed.) 2007. Cesare Pavese and Antonio Chiuminatto: Their Correspondence. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press Incorporated.
Select bibliography
Dughera, Attilio 1992. Tra le carte di Pavese. Roma: Bulzoni.
Dunnett, J. (2015). The ‘Mito Americano’ and Italian Literary Culture under Fascism. Ariccia: Aracne.
Ferme, Valerio 2002. Tradurre e tradire: La traduzione come sovversione culturale sotto il Fascismo. Ravenna: Longo.
Fernandez, Dominique 1969. Il mito dell’America negli intellettuali italiani dal 1930 al 1950. Translated by Alfonso Zaccaria. Caltanissetta-Rome: Salvatore Sciascia Editore.
Franzina, Emilio 1996. Dall’Arcadia in America. Torino: Edizioni della Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli.
Mesiano, L. (2007). Cesare Pavese di carta e di parole. Bibliografia ragionata e analitica. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.
Ragone, Giovanni 1999. Un secolo di libri: storia dell’editoria in Italia dall’Unità al post-moderno. Torino: Einaudi.
Stella, Maria 1977. Cesare Pavese traduttore. Roma, Bulzoni
Polarisation of Expertise in The News Media: The Thai Cave Boys’ Rescue
Full text linkA corpus of English language texts from news media sources worldwide was analysed to verify how the polarisation of the various options reported about the rescue of 12 Thai boys trapped in a cave in 2018 was constructed linguistically and realised discursively. Quantitative findings were interpreted from the perspectives of domain specific languages, media language studies and media psychology. News sources were able to construct polarised opinions among experts but not among lay audiences, for lack of expert knowledge of both the journalists and their readership
Tony Harrison : a war poet
Full text link"Tony Harrison poeta di guerra contemporaneo" (Tony Harrison: A Contemporary War Poet): come tradurre il linguaggio della guerra, aspetti lessicali e discorsivi
L'intervento all'interno della tavola rotonda ripercorre una selezione di componimenti dell'autore dedicati al conflitto e alla guerra, ed esamina le scelte traduttive nelle versioni in italiano. In particolare, sono esaminati gli aspetti lessicali e discorsivi che emergono sia dagli originali sia dalle traduzioni, in un'ottica comparatistica anglo-italiana. Viene inoltre proposto un confronto con il più famoso gruppo di war poets, quelli che hanno scritto della prima guerra mondiale, i.e. Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Philip Larkin, Rupert Brooke, Herbert Read, W.N. Hodgson, Wilfred Gibson.
L'intervento parte dalla considerazione che, quando si nominano i “war poets” della letteratura inglese, ci si riferisce prettamente a Sassoon e poeti coevi, che hanno descritto la prima guerra mondiale. Tuttavia, ci sono ovviamente state altre guerre dopo quella, così come ci sono stati altri poeti che ne hanno cantato la storia. Successivamente, ci si concentra su Tony Harrison, noto come un poeta di guerra, e si affrontano le seguenti domande di ricerca.
- Di quale guerra è poeta TH?
- come è cambiata la guerra dalla WWI?
- come è cambiato il poeta di guerra?
- come è cambiato il linguaggio del poeta di guerra?
Le risposte a tali domande e le relative considerazioni sono corredate da esempi da confronti di poesie di Tony Harrison e dei poeti della prima guerra mondiale, tratti da entrambe le versioni inglese e italiana e analizzati anche in prospettiva comparatistica
Of course there is something here and there I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. Cesare Pavese’s correspondence with Anthony Chiuminatto: a collaborative translation strategy?
No full textThe Italian writer Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) is also known as an ‘Americanist’, or populariser
of American culture, mainly thanks to his work as a translator in Italy during the first half of
the twentieth century. Between 1929 and 1933, he entertained frequent and detailed consultations
by letter with his Italian-American correspondent Antonio Chiuminatto. Pavese’s requests were
mainly lexical, focusing especially on slang and idiomatic expressions. The Pavese-Chiuminatto
correspondence is thus explored, examining their collaboration, how it worked and developed, and
extracting Pavese’s metalinguistic reflections on slang and language in general. Finally, the
epistolary is framed within the notion of ‘collaborative translation’, in order to understand
Chiuminatto’s contribution to Pavese’s famous translation activity and the possible implications
for his well-known role as an Americanist
Old, female and COVID-19+: issues of age and gender in the midst of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic
Full text linkAlthough it is still unclear whether COVID-19 infected elderly people more
than young people, seniors fell victim to it more frequently and severely. This
exploratory sample study addresses the impact of the pandemic on the
socially vulnerable group of older women, by analysing their representation
in supranational institutional publications. To do so, documents were
collected from the WHO website that dealt with COVID-19, women and older
people. Findings show that very few of these documents deal with older
women and COVID-19. Those that do were examined discursively following a
CDS qualitative approach. The analysis suggests that older women are little
investigated, and that more qualitative studies are needed to explore their
presence in supranational institutional discourse, if material is quantitatively
limited
SARS-CoV-2 as an 'illegal alien': linguistic and discursive representations in the press
Full text linkThis paper is divided into three sections. The first addresses 'people on the move', reviewing the main Critical Discourse Studies publications about migrants of the past 25 years. The second section is about 'viruses on the move', describing how the Covid-19 diffusion has been constructed by news media using the same discursive construction employed to describe migrants. Finally, the third section presents a brief case study on the multiple referents of the newly coined term 'Covid refugee'. Hopefully, the paper contributes to the reflection on the discourses of migration and of the recent pandemic, and highlights how linguistic representations cognitively shape reality, which is in turn regulated by laws, in turn formulated through the very medium of language
The Young and the Ageing: ethical aspects in the representation of age groups in healthcare websites : the cases off Australia, New Zealand and South Africa
Full text linkAustralia, New Zealand and South Africa are three English-speaking countries from the southern hemisphere of the world. Yet, while the populations of the former two have been steadily ageing for the last twenty years , that of the latter has undergone the opposite process , the gap between the younger and the elderly being further enlarged by the dramatic incidence of AIDS-related mortality among its working-age population . These noticeable demographic trends resulted in all three countries implementing age-specific policies – as can be easily ascertained by browsing the respective national healthcare systems’ websites – with Australia going as far as having an appointed Minister for Ageing. Indeed, websites have now established themselves worldwide as an indispensable interface for communication between institutions and citizens, and healthcare is no exception.
The research presented in this proposal is part of a larger project in progress at the Universities of Milan and Varese (Italy) called “Ideological, ethical and emotional aspects of English medical discourse”, investigating the composite relationship between healthcare, ethics and the web . Specifically, the present paper would like to explore how age issues are communicated by Australian, New Zealand and South African healthcare institutions via the web, focussing in particular on the ethical aspects typically connected to them. The outlined analysis will be carried out by referring to current discourse analytical perspectives within a systemic functional communicative framework, with the ultimate aim of providing possible insights into (in)effective institution-to-citizen web communication of ethically-marked medical topics.
Select bibliography
- FAIRCLOUGH, N. (2003), Analysing Discourse: Textual analysis for social research, London, New York, Routledge.
- GARZONE G., RUDVIN M. (2003), Domain-specific English and Language Mediation in a Professional and Institutional Setting, Milano, Arcipelago.
- GARZONE, G. & S. SARANGI EDS (forthcoming), Discourse, Ideology and Ethics in Specialised Communication, Peter Lang.
- GREGO, K. (forthcoming), “Medical English and institutional communication: linguistic accessibility to ethically-sensitive topics in national health systems’ websites – UK vs. USA”. In Proceedings of the conference I International Conference on Language and Healthcare, Alicante, Spain, 24-26 October 2007.
- GREGO, K. & A. VICENTINI (forthcoming), “Building South African web identity: health care information for citizens vs. foreigners”. In Proceedings of the conference Discourse and Identity in Specialized Communication, Gargnano del Garda (Italy), 25-26 June 2007.
- HALLIDAY, M.A.K. (1985), An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London/Baltimore, Md., USA, Edward Arnold.
- STATISTICS SOUTH AFRICA (2006), Adult mortality (age 15-64) based on death notification data in South Africa: 1997-2004. Report no. 03-09-05 (2006), Pretoria, Statistics South Africa.
- UNITED NATIONS, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS, POPULATION DIVISION (2007), World Population Prospects. The 2006 Revision, CD-ROM Edition, Extended Dataset, New York.
Data on Australia available on http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_country_prof_results.asp?crID=36&cpID=21 (consulted on 13 February 2008).
Data on New Zealand available on http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_country_prof_results.asp?crID=554&cpID=21 (consulted on 13 February 2008).
Data on South Africa available on http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_country_prof_results.asp?crID=710&cpID=21 (consulted on 13 February 2008)
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