- Cagliari, Italy
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Two assumptions provide the point of departure for this study. One is that “EU official documents consistently avoid being called ‘translations’ and the designation ‘language versions’ is preferred instead” (Koskinen 2000: 54), and the... more
Two assumptions provide the point of departure for this study. One is that “EU official documents consistently avoid being called ‘translations’ and the designation ‘language versions’ is preferred instead” (Koskinen 2000: 54), and the other recites that “translation in the EU is not translation in the strict sense of the word, but only ‘interlingual text reproduction’ (Kjaer 2007: 19) (cfr. Gibová 2009). The aim is to investigate a series of gender-related informative brochures produced by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), namely “Female genital mutilation”, “Gender equality and digitalisation in the European Union”, and “Gender equality needs to reach everyone: Gender equality and disability”, in order to explore some features of gender discourse and phraseology, metadiscourse and translation issues in the English and Italian versions of the brochures. The quantitative and qualitative analysis will look at the use of peculiar language constructions in the two languages in relation, among other aspects, to gender equality and inequalities, women and men, stereotypes, male domination, female subordination, and the shaping of identity. The features of metadiscourse (Hyland 2019 [2005]) will be scrutinized in the two languages in order to ascertain whether and to what extent they function as rhetorical markers conferring a persuasive rather than merely an informative character to the texts under consideration. It appears also that the underlying aim is to disseminate and circulate gender-related good practices and procedures in controversial cultural contexts and environments, especially those associated with divisive matters. The issue of translation is paramount here, inasmuch as it poses the question of whether the different versions, with clearly somewhat diverse uses of discourse and metadiscourse features, are “translated texts”, “language versions” or “cultural adaptations” of informative texts, thus differentiating and distinguishing them from the two other types of EU texts, namely legislative and administrative (Felici 2010).
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Ce numéro d'Anglophonia/Caliban propose une réflexion sur le rapport des femmes au pouvoir et aux conflits dans le monde anglophone, depuis les femmes pétitionnaires dans l'Angleterre du XVIe siècle jusqu'aux femmes impliquées... more
Ce numéro d'Anglophonia/Caliban propose une réflexion sur le rapport des femmes au pouvoir et aux conflits dans le monde anglophone, depuis les femmes pétitionnaires dans l'Angleterre du XVIe siècle jusqu'aux femmes impliquées dans le Mouvement des droits civiques aux Etats-Unis et à la Secrétaire d'Etat américaine Hillary Clinton. Il confronte ces trois concepts de féminité, de conflit et de pouvoir selon trois axes qui se croisent et qui structurent l'ensemble du volume : une réflexion sur la prise de pouvoir (ou la tentative de prise de pouvoir) à travers la prise de parole, une réflexion sur les femmes de pouvoir, parfois au pouvoir, et enfin une réflexion sur la représentation ou l'autoreprésentation du conflit et du pouvoir au féminin. Ce volume met ainsi en évidence des continuités et des ruptures dans le rapport particulier des femmes au pouvoir, à l'autorité et au conflit dans l'espace culturel anglophone. This issue of Anglophonia/Caliban ex...
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Taking for granted that "metadiscourse embodies the idea that communication is more than just the exchange of information, goods and services, but also involves the personalities, attitudes and assumptions of those who are... more
Taking for granted that "metadiscourse embodies the idea that communication is more than just the exchange of information, goods and services, but also involves the personalities, attitudes and assumptions of those who are communicating" (Hyland 2005: 3), this work aims to analyse the features of metadiscourse in online teaching methodology courses. As we speak or write, we negotiate with our readers or listeners, we make decisions about the effects we want to attain on our audience (Hyland 2005, 2015). Instructors in online teaching methodology courses use a vast array of metadiscoursal features, under the form of commentaries embedded in the oral text, which express the speakers' intentions, and how confident they are about what they are saying, along with directions to the listeners, and logical connectors or frame markers referring to the structure of the oral text. After a categorization of different types of textual metadiscourse in online courses, the present st...
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Launched on ‘International Women’s Day’ on 7 March 2008, Wikigender is a project created by the OECD Development Centre that aims to facilitate the exchange and improvement of knowledge on gender-related issues around the world. Girls: A... more
Launched on ‘International Women’s Day’ on 7 March 2008, Wikigender is a project created by the OECD Development Centre that aims to facilitate the exchange and improvement of knowledge on gender-related issues around the world. Girls: A No Ceilings Conversation was an event hosted on 17 April 2014 by the Clinton Foundation ‘No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project’, was designed to foster and advance progress for women and girls worldwide. The two projects are investigated here as new types of communication on the World Wide Web. The analysis tries to ascertain whether and to what extent the generic features and discursive strategies of the two new collaborative platforms contribute to the co-construction of information, the dissemination of knowledge and awareness, and the development of a participatory agenda (Jones 2008; Campagna, Garzone, Ilie and Rowley-Jolivet 2012) on themes related to gender as well as resistance to inequality and otherness. An examination of these two e...
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Actors and Actions in Prenups and Capitulaciones Matrimoniales: A Cross-Cultural Study The investigation of a corpus of American prenuptial agreements and Spanish capitulaciones matrimoniales shows how the popularity of premarital... more
Actors and Actions in Prenups and Capitulaciones Matrimoniales: A Cross-Cultural Study The investigation of a corpus of American prenuptial agreements and Spanish capitulaciones matrimoniales shows how the popularity of premarital contracts is spreading everywhere. The American and the Spanish documents, juridically diverse in many aspects, embedded in two different legal systems, belong to the genre of contracts and are classified as a type of negotiation/mediation. The lexical and semantic analysis focuses on the specialized terminology used to refer to the human actors and their actions within the documents. The aim is to discover whether and how legal, intercultural and sociological divergences emerge from the textual context. Participants play several roles in the various semantic-pragmatic units constituting the contract, being in turn considered as contracting parties, married couple, notary public, parents, esposos, padres, and otorgantes. Their actions are highlighted by a ...
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The idea of writing and signing prenuptial agreemen ts is not a new one in common law countries, both legally and culturally. Women have always wanted to make sure that they would not find themselves homeless in case of a divorce or death... more
The idea of writing and signing prenuptial agreemen ts is not a new one in common law countries, both legally and culturally. Women have always wanted to make sure that they would not find themselves homeless in case of a divorce or death of their spo u e (Stoner K.E. and Irving S., 2008:1-2). Prenuptial, antenuptial, premarital agreements are, in fact, contracts signed in contemplation of divo rce for protection against post-nuptial disagreements t o handle the financial aspects of marriage. More precisely, they “describe the rights, duties and ob ligations of prospective spouses during and upon termination of marriage through death or divorce” ( Greenstein 1992). In history we have several examples of contracts of these type: dowries were considered a type of prenuptial agreements. In Ireland, for example, a C eltic institution foresaw that men and women had to contribute an equal amount from their own property and they had to keep account of the profits of thei r conjoint resourc...
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Research Interests: Psychology, Narrative, Cognition, Psycholinguistics, Consciousness, and 3 moreConscience, Image, and Cohesion
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Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), or out-of-court settlement, refers to dispute resolution processes and techniques, such as negotiation, mediation and arbitration, that fall outside traditional judicial processes. ADR is being... more
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), or out-of-court settlement, refers to dispute resolution processes and techniques, such as negotiation, mediation and arbitration, that fall outside traditional judicial processes. ADR is being increasingly conducted online. Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) applies traditional alternative dispute resolution methods to disputes solved online by either relying upon technologies or through procedures taking place entirely online. The analysis of two websites providing ODR will try to highlight, from an intracultural perspective, to what extent the features of obscure and ambiguous legalese shade into plain English expressions and structures, pursuing clarity and understanding, thus producing texts closer to and more intelligible for the layperson. The linguistic study is conducted within the investigation of the websites’ general ‘architecture’ which uncovers how texts, images and symbols synergically convey both verbal and nonverbal communication, ...
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Thirty-five years have passed since Chrissie Maher shredded official documents outside the Houses of Parliament in London and began her fight against the use of over-complicated sentences and legalese, thus giving birth to the Plain... more
Thirty-five years have passed since Chrissie Maher shredded official documents outside the Houses of Parliament in London and began her fight against the use of over-complicated sentences and legalese, thus giving birth to the Plain English Campaign. Since then, the plain English movement has grown especially in English-speaking countries, even if “it took a little longer before plain language principles began to penetrate the legal sphere” (Williams 2005: 169). The present study aims to carry out a comparative analysis to investigate the criteria used in different countries (the UK, the USA and New Zealand) to assess the clarity of language and the usability of institutional and governmental websites which have committed to adopting Plain English and to employing more user-oriented web editing techniques. The evaluative criteria in the three countries, in addition to “people’s choice” surveys, reveal that nonsensical and unintelligible texts justify the presence of booby prizes suc...
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Quatre locuteurs anglo-americains doivent raconter une histoire a partir d'une serie d'images. Ils doivent raconter cette histoire deux fois : d'abord rapidement, puis plus lentement. Une analyse qualitative et quantitative... more
Quatre locuteurs anglo-americains doivent raconter une histoire a partir d'une serie d'images. Ils doivent raconter cette histoire deux fois : d'abord rapidement, puis plus lentement. Une analyse qualitative et quantitative des productions orales est ensuite operee sur les erreurs produites par chaque sujet. L'A. conclut qu'aucune generalisation ne peut etre faite sur l'analyse d'erreurs de productions orales
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Immigration has emerged as a prevalent political issue throughout the entire European Union over the past few years. Hardly a day goes by without news stories of people fleeing the Middle East and Northern Africa to reach the shores of... more
Immigration has emerged as a prevalent political issue throughout the entire European Union over the past few years. Hardly a day goes by without news stories of people fleeing the Middle East and Northern Africa to reach the shores of Europe, or without an act of violence, the emergence of a new association or political party, or debates on policy initiatives taken by EU Member States. In this respect, and in ways which were almost completely ‘unexpected’ some years ago, nearly every single aspect of political discussion has been affected by the issue of immigration. In every European country new movements have emerged, anti-immigrant political parties have obtained electoral advances and have altered the balance of political forces. This new balance has influenced policy changes in the EU as Members States have attempted to deal with the challenges that threaten understandings, agreements, social policy and the political and social construction of Europe itself. By adopting CDA (F...
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The power of attorney is one of the most frequently used instruments in international legal practice, both in Common Law and Civil Law contexts. Internationally known as a legal-lay contractual agreement, it is locally adapted and drafted... more
The power of attorney is one of the most frequently used instruments in international legal practice, both in Common Law and Civil Law contexts. Internationally known as a legal-lay contractual agreement, it is locally adapted and drafted to suit specific, local realities. Generally, contracts lie within those genres which combine ‘highly formal traits with features typical of the written mode’ (Gotti 2005, p. 21). Additionally, as contracts, powers of attorney can be considered as highly codified and standardised, with easily predictable sentences and constructions, rich in formulaic expressions (Gotti 2005, p. 21), thus showing a crystallized and conventional use of certain routines. Starting from the assumption that legal language is inherently complex, obscure and over sophisticated (Di Renzo Villata 2007, p. 4), the present study investigates the power of attorney as a legal genre, identifying its particular move structure (Bhatia 2003). The qualitative and quantitative analysi...
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The ongoing Pan-European integration process has profoundly influenced the nature of European law and its development, demanding a review of “the ways of how language […] is materialized” (Gibova, 2009, p. 192). EU multilingualism is thus... more
The ongoing Pan-European integration process has profoundly influenced the nature of European law and its development, demanding a review of “the ways of how language […] is materialized” (Gibova, 2009, p. 192). EU multilingualism is thus becoming an intricate concept since “EU translation is […] becoming the language of Europe” (Gibova, 2009, p. 192) encompassing a supranational view of the world conveyed in EU-wide legislation. Very much in line with this assumption, and taking into account the teaching experience in Specialised Translation Masters’ courses training would-be professional translators, this study examines a corpus of European Parliament Regulations on immigration. In order to understand whether dissimilarities and/or congruencies occur between the EU working language, i.e., English, and the Italian versions, the metadiscourse framework by Hyland (2005), comprising both interactive and interactional features, is used as the point of departure for the analysis of para...
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A socio-rhetorical discourse community consists of a group of people who come together to pursue objectives that predate those of socialization and solidarity, and who aim to develop and maintain their own discoursal characteristics. We... more
A socio-rhetorical discourse community consists of a group of people who come together to pursue objectives that predate those of socialization and solidarity, and who aim to develop and maintain their own discoursal characteristics. We have examined MOOCs (Massive Open Online courses) and teacher training educational platforms in order to ascertain whether and to what extent they may be identified as networked learning tools and discourse communities characterized by a commonality of goals, mechanisms and procedures of intercommunication, exchange of knowledge, information, as well as specialized genres and their terminology. MOOCs and learning platforms have dramatically changed the way people learn. Starting from ongoing research, we analyze the metadiscoursal features of an ad hoc corpus of online filmed lectures drawn from two MOOC providers (FutureLearn and Coursera). We look at both interactive and interactional resources (to guide the listener through the texts and to involv...
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Starting from the assumption that “if corpora are to play a role in the translation professions of tomorrow, it is important that they impact on the education of the students of today” (Bernardini & Castagnoli, 2008, p. 40), this study... more
Starting from the assumption that “if corpora are to play a role in the translation professions of tomorrow, it is important that they impact on the education of the students of today” (Bernardini & Castagnoli, 2008, p. 40), this study endeavours to show how translation corpora of parallel texts (in English and in Italian) can be used in a Specialised Translation Master’s degree classroom. The point of departure is to examine parallel or aligned texts (originals and their translations) taken from the various European Union websites available for citizens to read and consult. The corpora currently being gathered include a variety of text typologies ranging from legal documents (such as regulations or directives), to administrative documents (such as White and Green papers) or informative texts (such as leaflets, brochures or web texts) (Felici, 2010, p. 101), all of them dealing with migration and asylum issues. The various types of documents are analysed quantitatively and qualitati...
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Launched on ‘International Women’s Day’ on 7 March 2008, Wikigender is a project created by the OECD Development Centre that aims to facilitate the exchange and improvement of knowledge on gender-related issues around the world. Girls: A... more
Launched on ‘International Women’s Day’ on 7 March 2008, Wikigender is a project created by the OECD Development Centre that aims to facilitate the exchange and improvement of knowledge on gender-related issues around the world. Girls: A No Ceilings Conversation was an event hosted on 17 April 2014 by the Clinton Foundation ‘No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project’, was designed to foster and advance progress for women and girls worldwide. The two projects are investigated here as new types of communication on the World Wide Web. The analysis tries to ascertain whether and to what extent the generic features and discursive strategies of the two new collaborative platforms contribute to the co-construction of information, the dissemination of knowledge and awareness, and the development of a participatory agenda (Jones 2008; Campagna, Garzone, Ilie and Rowley-Jolivet 2012) on themes related to gender as well as resistance to inequality and otherness. An examination of these two examples of on-line communication will entail a scrutiny of new digital genres (Yates, Orlikowski and Renneker 1997), of the genre-specifi c features of web communication (Gruber 2008), and of the democratizing impetus embedded in their discourse. Promoting the exchange and creation of information and increasing citizens’ access to it enables readers to simultaneously become users, writers and critics; it seems to be the new trend of new web-mediated forms of communication that is resulting in the ‘democratization’ (Fairclough 1992; 1995a; 1995b; 1998) of several types of discourse.