2,366 research outputs found
Changing voices: authorial voice in abstracts
No full textDiverse internal and external factors can act as vehicles of change in academic discourse: the socio-cognitive needs of individual users, the influence of material conditions of the world, variation in disciplinary ethos and (local) academic cultures, the development, growth and status of different channels of communication. Abstracts have recently become a standard feature of research articles across most disciplines. The current growth of English as the international language of research publicationshas intensified cultural contact and possibly brought about new international standards in rhetoric and language use. The spread of electronic journals and databases has favoured features that facilitate the extraction of information, often based on a selective rather than sequential reading pattern. Increased competitiveness may also have influenced formats and style of presentation, giving abstracts both informative and promotional value. The present study carries out a micro-diachronic analysis of authorial "voice" in three comparable corpora of abstracts in the fields of economics, linguistics and history. Focusing on a range of markers of authorial voice, the analysis shows the interrelatedness of voice markers in abstract writing. The notion of voice, though fuzzy and open-ended, proves helpful in bringing together different markers of the presence of an author: forms of self-reference as well as other markers of stance and argument. Cross-disciplinary analysis shows elements of convergence and divergence across disciplines. When looking at convergences, the statistically significant increase of self-referential "we" over the time span considered is shown to be part of a general increase in first-person markers. This in turn is accompanied by a steady increase in personal references and – above all – of “locational” self-reference (reference to the paper) in subject position, producing “framing sequences” that highlight the informative structure of the abstract and authorial academic voice at the same time. When looking at disciplinary preferences, on the other hand, we notice that in the corpus of history authorial visibility relies more on contrastive connectors, evaluative adjectives and locational self-mention than on personal references. The economic corpus shows a decided preference for personal markers, while keeping at average levels in all other forms. Linguistic abstracts, finally, show a marked preference for locational self-reference and modalization. The results of the analysis confirm the hypothesis that these diverse features can be seen as a series of options (micro-systems of meaning)marking the author’s presence in the text (discourse persona). The diachronic perspective also shows that present-day scholars are becoming aware of the need to facilitate readers’ access to the text and to attract readers’ attention within a growing body of publications. The study also suggests increasing awareness of a writer’s need to sustain a reputation and to acknowledge the expertise of readers by choosing modalized statements and ‘non-subjective’ forms of self rererence
Historical Academic Writing between local and transnational communities
No full textIn recent papers (Bondi 2007a, 2007b, 2009, Bondi/Silver 2004, Bondi/Mazzi 2008), introductions and conclusions of English and Italian historical research articles have been investigated taking into consideration the different textual voices therein involved. In this study, we continue this line of work by comparing their structure and their textual voices. These liminal spaces are conceived as the gateways that give historians an access to their colleagues’ works and show the rhetorical traditions of local disciplinary communities. Hence, they seem to be the ideal research objects for identifying cross-cultural variations and similarities. In fact, the transnational and national analogies and differences are thought to be useful for enhancing the disciplinary debate on the teaching of academic discourse across languages and cultures and the awareness of both the general and the peculiar features of RAs. In order to detect them, the methodological approach integrates the tools of genre studies and of corpus linguistics, thus combining a quantitative and qualitative analysis, in order to examine two sets of small comparable corpora of openings and conclusions derived from English and Italian RAs. The results reveal that the rhetorical structures of the openings and of the conclusions are similar in English and Italian RAs: openings start from a specific fact and move to general observations, partly following Swales’ CARS model, while conclusions are characterized by a move that can be defined “Recapitulation and synthesis”. Dissimilarities emerge when the textual voices are concerned: borrowing Bakthin’s terminology, English openings and conclusions are mainly “dialogic” whereas Italian openings and conclusions are essentially “monologic”. The epistemology of historical research articles is then similar but they have different forms of dialogism
The Wounded Body. Memory, Language and the Self from Petrarch to Shakespeare
No full textThis edited collection explores the image of the wound as a ‘cultural symptom’ and a literary-visual trope at the core of representations of a new concept of selfhood in Early Modern Italian and English cultures, as expressed in the two complementary poles of poetry and theatre. The semantic field of the wounded body concerns both the image of the wound as a traumatic event, which leaves a mark on someone’s body and soul (and prompts one to investigate its causes and potential solutions), and the motif of the scar, which draws attention to the fact that time has passed and urges those who look at it to engage in an introspective and analytical process. By studying and describing the transmission of this metaphoric paradigm through the literary tradition, the contributors show how the image of the bodily wound—from Petrarch’s representation of the Self to the overt crisis that affects the heroes and the poetic worlds created by Ariosto and Tasso, Spenser and Shakespeare—could respond to the emergence of Modernity as a new cultural feature
Connecting science. Organizational units in specialist and non-specialist discourse.
No full textThe paper aims at providing an overview of variation across specialist and non-specialist genres in the discourse of science. The focus is on “general language” – and organizational units in particular (Sinclair and Mauranen 2006) - rather than specific terminology. Growing attention has been paid to the tools of discourse organization and their evaluative implications, with a view to their discipline specificity (Hyland 2000, Hyland and Bondi 2006). Disciplines are often characterized by their argumentative strategies as well as by their content, and phraseology can be a helpful signpost to discourse organization. How are these reflected in popularising discourse? How is the “same content” presented to the non specialist reader?
The paper explores the variety of organizational units employed by the discourse of physics and biology in the SPACE Corpus, a corpus of academic journal articles and relative popularisations collected at the university of Chemnitz.
The corpus allows a double dimension of comparison: across disciplines and across genres (and tenors). The methodology adopted combines a corpus and a discourse perspective (Bondi 2007). A preliminary analysis of frequency data (frequency wordlists and statistical keywords) offers an overview of quantitative variation. Attention is paid both to a range of organizational units, from general connectives (but, if) to other discourse markers involving meta-argumentative and self-reflexive lexis (in the case of). The study is based on the analysis of concordances and clusters; the co-text of the nodes is analyzed with a view to their textual patterns, so as to bring out the semantic and pragmatic implications of many organizational units. Special attention is paid to the ways in which the generic and argumentative structure of discourse is represented across the whole field, highlighting for example convergences and divergences between specialist and non-specialist discourse. Frequencies and patterns are interpreted in the light of factors characterizing academic discourse and specific disciplinary values.
Organizational units are shown to contribute to highlighting the significance of the data or conclusions produced, as well as to mapping the territory of current debate. They thus also become resources by which the author negotiates the his/her position with the reader according to genre-specific orientations
Dialogicity in Individual and Institutional Scientific Blogs
No full textThe paper focuses on variation across institutional and individual scientific blogs, i.e., blogs that are managed by journals, magazines or associations involved in the dissemination of scientific information and blogs that are managed by individual researchers. Using comparable corpora of posts from different scientific disciplines, look in particular at markers of dialogicity, i.e., the representation of participants (markers of self-reference, reader-reference, as well as representation of the scientific community and markers of attribution), markers of communicative action (organizational units and metastatements), and evaluative dialogue (evaluative lexis and dialogic contraction or expansion). Concordance analysis of keywords and key-phrases (as calculated by Wordsmith Tools 8.0) shows that blogs managed by individual scientists emphasize personal voice and interpersonal elements, while institutional blogs are comparatively more informational. Dialogicity markers are shown to contribute to defining how bloggers manage subjective and intersubjective positioning and construct their credibility, thus defining the nature of their relation to the audience and ultimately the functions of blogging
Introduction
No full textThe semantic field of the wounded body concerns both the image of the wound as a traumatic event, which leaves a mark on someone's body and soul (and prompts them to investigate its causes and the solutions to fix it), and the motif of the scar, which draws attention to the fact that time has passed and urges those who look at the marks on his body to engage in an introspective and analytical process. By studying and describing the transmission of this metaphoric paradigm through the literary tradition, the collected essays tried to show how the image of the bodily wound could respond to the complex interplay of some key issues which inform the emergence of introspective learning, the reshaping of the moral Self between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, and the concept of body politic
A new method of measure of bubble gas volume shows that interleukin-6 injected into rats has no effect on gas embolism
No full textBondi M, Cavaggioni A, Gasperetti A, Rubini A. A new method of measure of bubble gas volume shows that interleukin-6 injected into rats has no effect on gas embolism. Undersea Hyperb Med 2009 1 36 (2):1031 115. The pleiotropic cytokine interleukin-6 increases in the plasma of rats after an air dive. Interleukin-6 shares both of inflammatory and anti-inflammatory properties and may condition the vascular system and gas embolism after an air dive. Up to now it is not known whether interleukin-6 has an effect on gas embolism. Aim of this work is to study the effect of interleukin-6 on gas embolism after a standard decompression protocol in a rat model. The volume of gas bubbles was measured in the heart cavities with a new method based on the buoyancy of the heart at different pressures which is physically sound, accurate and precise down to 10(-4) cm(3). No effect was found after injecting physiological doses of interleukin-6 at different times before the air dive. The mortality of the rats in the first half hour after the decompression was associated with a substantial gas volume measured in the heart. Multi-variate logistic regression analysis showed that the female rats had a higher risk compared to male rats of developing a substantial bubble volume and of not surviving; the spring-summer season was a risk factor for the survival. Further studies are needed to see whether interleukin-6 in association with other cytokines has ail effect on gas embolism
AI and writing: Challenges and opportunities for ESP and professional communication.
No full textArtificial intelligence (AI) has recently expanded its applications to almost all areas of human activity. Its ability to identify and predict language patterns has transformed academic and professional writing by empowering the creation, editing, and translation of texts. The article looks at the impact of AI in the context of specialized writing studies. After a brief overview of the literature on AI as a professional and learning tool, the article focuses on AI use in the various phases of (teaching) writing. The results of a small survey on the attitude of a group of students towards AI are presented in section 4, exploring both challenges and opportunities of using GPTs as resources for the teaching and learning of writing. Creativity and accuracy are seen as key issues. The chapter closes with brief conclusions on the role of AI in specialized writing.Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently expanded its applications to almost all areas of human activity. Its ability to identify and predict language patterns has transformed academic and professional writing by empowering the creation, editing, and translation of texts. The article looks at the impact of AI in the context of specialized writing studies. After a brief overview of the literature on AI as a professional and learning tool, the article focuses on AI use in the various phases of (teaching) writing. The results of a small survey on the attitude of a group of students towards AI are presented in section 4, exploring both challenges and opportunities of using GPTs as resources for the teaching and learning of writing. Creativity and accuracy are seen as key issues. The paper closes with brief conclusions on the role of AI in specialized writing
CLAVIER 09 - Corpus Linguistics and Language Variation
No full textThe articles included in this special issue of R.I.L.A- - Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata reflect the wide spectrum of applications of corpus-based methodologies for language research. The papers represent a selection of the contributions that were presented at the international conference CLAVIER 09 - Corpus Linguistics and Language Variation. M. Bondi, S. Cacchiani, G. Palumbo provide an introduction to the volume. The first four articles (Part 1) discuss the potential of corpus linguistics (J. Schmied; G. Williams; N. Nagy; S. Rastelli, F. Frontini). Many of the questions raised int he four initial chapters are further investigated in the papers that follow. The papers in Part 2 use corpora to address variation across languages (L. Caiazzo; E. Incelli; G. Balirano, S. Guzzo; Z. Mustafa Awad; P. Sambre; D. Cesiri, L. Colaci; J. Turbull; C. Samson; E. Manca; D. Milizia; S. Castagnoli; S. Anselmi). The papers in Part 3 use corpora to address variation in languages (R. Mayoral Hernandez, A. Alcazar; A. Sharokny-Prehn, S. Hoeche; R. Marti Solano; P. Urena Gomez-Moreno)
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