285 research outputs found
The Language of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Gerry Adams vs. Ian Paisley
No full textIn Northern Ireland, the conflict between Unionists and Republicans, Catholic and Protestants saw its peak during the ‘Troubles' of 1969-1993. Today, after four decades of physical violence, the peace process has reached a successful ending and a war of words has finally replaced real war.
To study how this move from arms to political debate occurred, a written corpus was collected, comprising annual party conference speeches given during the years 1993-2004 by the leaders of the two main and opposed political parties of Northern Ireland, Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley. By comparing these texts, it was possible to observe the development of their discourse from a short-term diachronic perspective.
A Critical Discourse Analysis approach is considered particularly suitable for dealing with political speeches, but contributions from different fields and disciplines are also considered.
The discourse analysis of the texts collected is supported by computer-aided analysis. Two aspects are being focussed on, in particular: 1) the use of same/different linguistic resources by the same orators to discuss same/different subjects over the years; and 2) the overall influence of language on politics, i.e. how words are used to exercise power.
It is hoped that the present study may help clarify aspects of the evolution of political discourse in Northern Ireland, in general, and of the argumentative skills and strategies of the above two politicians, in particular
Assessing Specialized Translation In Academic Contexts: A Case Study
No full textThis paper discusses translation assessment, first of all by briefly outlining the topic, then by restricting the reflection to specialized translation in didactic contexts and, finally, by discussing how to determine assessment criteria in one specific academic case, the ‘English specialized translation’ course of the ‘Lingue moderne per la comunicazione e la cooperazione internazionale’ Master’s programme of the University of Milan, Italy. Both generic (common to all Master’s programmes in the same ministerial class) and specific (typical of this course) factors were listed, examined and summed up in a preliminary study that may be used as the basis for developing a possible translation assessment model applicable to the case considered
‘The physics you buy in supermarkets’: writing science for the general public : the case of Stephen Hawkings
No full textFollowing the fall of the great ideologies that informed the 19th and 20th century, science took their place in people’s imagery. In the same period, science and its corollary practical application – technology – underwent unprecedented developments, culminating in the rapid and ground-breaking advances of the past half century, with the notable prominence of the internet and all web-related technology. The general public can enjoy all the applied benefits of technology but not the research behind or beyond it: science has become a new religion, scientists a new caste. What happens when one of the caste opens up to the public?
Between 1988 and 2010, the renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking wrote five popular science books aimed at bringing physics closer to a wider audience than the mere academia. The operation proved very successful – with his best-seller alone (A brief history of time, 1988) reported to have sold over 10 million copies (Paris 2007) – and made him into an acclaimed popular author.
This study will consider Hawking’s books especially written for popularizing purposes, presenting reflections on the relationship between ESP, popularization and translation, and focusing in particular on Hawking’s first such work, A Brief History of Time, which was made into an even more popular adaptation titled A Briefer History of Time (2005) and translated, in both its versions, into Italian. The aim of the paper will be to detail how the subject has been adapted and transferred from a high into a popular (writing) and an even more popular (re-writing) level, and then into another language (translation), what relationship there is between these passages, and how Hawking’s book has affected the recent trend towards science popularization. This will be done by comparing the works against the general features of English for Scientific/Academic Purposes, to single out their variation from – or conformity to – the established norms of this specialized language, providing a textual analysis and highlighting relevant lexical and syntactic phenomena. An interpretation of such phenomena will be proposed according to Critical Discourse Analysis methodology, i.e. considering language in light of the many social, cultural and economic variables informing this type of communication
The popularisation of Darwin(ism) in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Century British press : Darwin at Down House
No full textMedical English and institutional communication: linguistic accessibility to ethically-sensitive topics in national health systems’ websites – UK vs. USA
No full textThe present paper proposal stems from a wider research project currently in progress at the University of Milan, Italy, called “Ideological, ethical and emotional aspects of English medical discourse”, collecting databases of spoken and written English texts to investigate medical communication in health-care and its ethical and ideological implications.
The present day debate over ethics in medicine is no longer restricted to specialist expertise: start/end-of-life issues, stem cell research and mental health are just a few of the many medical topics brought to laypeople daily by the mass media, and the interest shown by the public towards medicine and ethics is easily noticeable, for example, in the presence of a dedicated health channel in any major newspaper’s website. Any individual will at some point in life need health care: this alone justifies such an interest. Not only, the higher life expectancy and worsening environmental and lifestyle conditions in developed countries have been increasing the number of different pathologies and of individuals suffering from them , thus chances are unfortunately multiplying to be personally affected by any of these diseases. Access to an efficient health care system then becomes of paramount importance.
This specific study focuses on English medical discourse and institutional communication on the Internet. In particular, it will take into account the national health care systems’ websites of the USA and the UK, as conceptually different types of health care systems (mostly privately-funded vs. mostly publicly-funded) among developed English-speaking countries.
The research will take the point of view of the user-patient and it will be aimed at establishing:
- the degree of general accessibility (user-friendliness) of each website (e.g. choice, quality and quantity of information provided; genres, media and language employed; etc.);
- the degree of accessibility of specific medical topics/issues, chosen among the most ethically connotated (e.g. cancer, AIDS, euthanasia, etc.).
The analysis, carried out using tools from Semantic Analysis (Halliday 1985), Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1995) and Computational Linguistics (Sinclair 1991), will be essentially linguistic in nature, although it might have to consider other aspects of the Internet “multigenre” (Garzone 2007) (e.g. graphics, layout, multimedia resources, etc.) whenever these should prove semantically relevant to institution-patient communication, and thus to the present research.
The ultimate hope is for this study to expand to explore other English and non-English-speaking countries’ national health systems’ websites, and possibly contribute to the drawing up of tentative guidelines for user-friendly Internet institutional communication in the medical field.
Essential bibliography:
- Fairclough Norman (1995), Critical Discourse Analysis, Harlow, Longman.
- Halliday, Michael A.K. (1985), An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London/Baltimore, Md., USA, Edward Arnold.
- Garzone, Giuliana (2007), “Genres, multimodality and the world wide web: theoretical issues”, in Multimodality in corporate communication : web genres and discursive identity, edd. G. Garzone, G. Poncini & P. Catenaccio, Milano, Franco Angeli, pp. 15-30.
- Gotti, Maurizio (2003), Specialized discourse: linguistic features and changing conventions, Bern, Peter Lang.
- Sarangi S., Roberts C. (eds.) (1999), Talk, work and institutional order: Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter.
- Sinclair, John (1991), Corpus Concordance Collocation, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
- World Health Organization (WHO) (2003), “Gender, Health and Ageing”, http://whqlibdoc.who.int/gender/2003/a85586.pd
Age-specific Tourism: Representations of Seniors in the Institutional Discourse of Tourism
No full textAccuracy, definition, integrity in medical terminology
No full textAccuracy, definition, integrity are the cornerstones of correct information. The importance of fidelity in words is not only a due act, but above all an act of faith for those who believe in the teaching of human life
Accuracy: The Mediterranean diet
An Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the Mediterranean diet rests on fragile foundations and data. Based on the "Seven Countries Study", designed and led in the 60s by the American nutritionist Ancel Keys, enrolled only men, and never established a link between diet and mortality. In the then life style, more than just a way of eating, the wheat was whole, the bread was "full-grain bread". In the subsequent translation the global spread the term "full-grain" simply disappeared. The habits of that time envisaged principles that in no way could be equally considered in following years, when everything changed.
Definition of description. The rare diseases
A disease is rare if its prevalence is of five people affected per 10,000 inhabitants. This relationship is fixed but the conditions that fall into it are not. A genetic syndrome, i.e. a set of signs due to a single mutation, usually originate from a description, not from a discovery. The term description well defines something that can include or exclude during times, that can evolve. Understanding the concept of description means understanding the evolution of definitions and discovering cases where no one would ever look.
Integrity. Sex and gender medicine. The foundation of gender medicine.
Each human being, is identified as male or female according to sex-chromosomes and, if linked to social interaction as humans are, by its gender
Sex and gender have a different meaning and are expressed separately, in almost all languages (not in German for example). The two terms are not interchangeable, they are not synonyms. Having eliminated the term 'sex' from the definition of gender medicine has opened the door to a confused perspective and has paved the way to the inclusion of topics that have little or nothing to do with the original principle
Perspectives on specialised and professional communication in times of rapid sociotechnical evolutions: an introduction
No full textThis book deals with discursive aspects of specialised communication, looking in particular at the role and scope of language and discourse in professional practice across a variety of fields and modes. Its chapters are diverse in their outlooks, analytical procedures, and object of enquiry, and span across different specialised domains, settings, genres, and media (from face-to-face communication to television, from traditional websites to social networking sites). In broad terms, they are all set in a discourse-analytical framework and share the ultimate purpose of providing new insights into the evolution of discourse practices used by professionals in a variety of specialised genres at a time characterised by rapid scientific and dramatic technological advances accompanied by important societal, sociotechnical and cultural transformations
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