1,720,966 research outputs found
Gender and Social Class: A Variationist Phonological Analysis of Gay Language in London
No full textThis paper investigates the linguistic mechanisms employed by gay men. Its aim is to identify the specific use of some socio-phonological variables associated with English-speaking gay people, as a means of identity construction and then discuss the role played by two social variables, i.e. gender and social class, during the process. The role of sexuality in the construction of gender, as well as the importance of social class, are still highly debated in linguistic circles. Linguistically, gay style has been associated with features such as: more varied pitch, clearer releases of stop consonants, and even a falsetto voice (Gaudio 1994; Podesva et al. 2002; Levon 2007). Despite being aware that a speaker’s gender influences the way he or she engages in linguistic practice, sociolinguistics remains stuck in a model that interprets gender as a normative biological sex and excludes any contribution of sexuality in the construction of gender
“Italian Hospitality Workers’ Re-Conceptualisations, Positioning & Discourses in Post-Brexit and Post-Pandemic London”
No full textIn 2023, the UK media started denouncing the ‘hospitality crisis’ (The Economist 2022) caused by staff shortages (Foster 2023), and the cost-of-living crisis consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit. Such a crisis worsened hospitality workers’ already fragile well-being (Chen & Wang 2023; Kotera et al. 2021) and increased mental health issues (Gardner 2022). In particular, the shortage of staff - caused by Great Resignation (Klotz 2021) during the pandemic and the impossibility for new immigrants to work in the UK after Brexit - redefined the dynamics present in hospitality workplaces. The present contribution will present a novel understanding and conceptualisation of the hospitality crisis, by addressing the (lack of) valorisation of migrant workforce and their differentiated skills (e.g., linguistic, communication, and cultural skills), while observing how Italian hospitality workers socially position themselves within the hosting society and within a professional market that has deeply changed after 2020.
Through Narrative Analysis (De Fina 2015) and Discourse Analysis (Handford & Gee 2013), the chapter aims to offer insights about Italian hospitality workers’ current conceptualisation of their professional value and reflects on the contrasting opinions of those involved in this sector. The data here presented were collected within the 2022 project “Migrant food, languages, and identities in the dawn of the post-Brexit and COVID-19 era”, funded by Research England through University of Westminster (London), where participants, Italian and Greek hospitality workers, discussed their working conditions and highlight issues caused by Brexit and by the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapter will draw upon extracted narratives from the audio video recordings of the six dinners wherein participants explore their migratory trajectories and their professional life to discuss how exclusion, lack of representation and the feeling of being ignored have had an impact on migrant workers’ mental health and well-being in the workplace
Aspetti della variazione morfosintattica nel parlato di emigranti di ritorno in area irpina
No full textLanguage contact, variation and change across the Italian communities of Bedford, Peterborough and Loughborough in the post-Brexit era
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
““Please accept my apologies”: English, food, and identity in TripAdvisor discourse
No full textDiscourse on food offers interesting viewpoints on diasporic identities. In the wake of previous research (Guzzo & Gallo, 2019), this paper investigates the multi-layered relationship between food, digital discourse and identity in the Loughborough Italian Community. New technologies are transfiguring social interactions and negotiations of social identities. In particular, the exponential growth of the Internet urges us to carefully explore digital networked environments, where people can communicate with each other with no space and time limits. The Web offers new interesting perspectives on the use of English for specific purposes (ESP), a broad research area that, according to Posteguillo (2002), should be sustained by related electronic fields, in order to gain better insights into cyberspace and its users. Our paper considers cross-cultural communication in online discourse and identity in migration contexts. It investigates TripAdvisor interactions in food-related practices through the CMC framework, by taking into account managers’ replies to negative reviews. In particular, we consider digital discourses to provide innovative perspectives on Loughborough Italians’ identity-marking processes in public asynchronous communication, by looking at how pragmatic strategies may be significantly culture-sensitive and how they may reveal cross-cultural differences and/or alignments. Specifically, we investigated two main categories, identified as our variables: apologising and denial of apologies
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