The Discourse of Food Blogs. Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 2020
This volume adopts a multidisciplinary perspective in analyzing and understanding the rich commun... more This volume adopts a multidisciplinary perspective in analyzing and understanding the rich communicative resources and dynamics at work in digital communication about food. Drawing on data from a small corpus of food blogs, the book implements a range of theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches to unpack the complexity of food blogs as a genre of computer-mediated communication. This wide-ranging framework allows for food blogs’ many layered components, including recipes, photographs, narration in posts, and social media tie-ins, to be unpacked and understood at the structural, visual, verbal, and discourse level in a unified way. The book seeks to provide a comprehensive account of this popular and growing genre and contribute to our understandings of digital communication more generally, making this key reading for students and scholars in computer-mediated communication, multimodality, critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and pragmatics.
Positioning Theory (PT) first emerged in the 1980s in psychology studies to investigate how peopl... more Positioning Theory (PT) first emerged in the 1980s in psychology studies to investigate how people occupy and negotiate their place—both physical and social—while interacting with other people. Research in this area has also considered the linguistic and discursive practices that position interlocutors in any form of communication and interaction, affecting in turn the reciprocal perception of ‘the other.’ This mutual positioning eventually shapes—and is shaped—by discourse in any kind of communicative context. Positioning, then, becomes crucial in digital communication, in which boundaries and perceptions of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ are in a way distorted by the absence of a physical space that is replaced by a virtual environment. Considering these premises, this study investigates self-positioning strategies in a corpus of food blogs in English. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the food bloggers employ pronouns to position themselves in the blog posts in order to establish a rapport with their audience, thus creating a peculiar communicative space. Corpus-based methods of investigation are used to explore the corpus, while PT is used to contextualize and interpret corpus data. Results show that the food bloggers in the corpus use pronouns as indexicals that refer to the bloggers’ specific position in the communicative environment to remark their ‘otherness’ with respect to their audience as well as towards specific socio-cultural contexts. In particular, the food bloggers systematically distance themselves both from the community of users following the food blog and from external elements such as brands, institutions, and other cultures’ culinary traditions.
In the first months of 2020, when the Coronavirus pandemic globally broke out, many countries' go... more In the first months of 2020, when the Coronavirus pandemic globally broke out, many countries' governments became aware of the unprecedented risks for their populations' health and of the toll on their countries' health care systems. As a consequence, emergency measures were passed that would limit people's contacts and circulation in closed environments. Some of these drastic and dramatic measures were lockdowns that would severely limit or prohibit the movement of people outside their homes. These measures were communicated to the corresponding populations by the countries' Prime Ministers (PMs) in person via televised press conferences. The study considers the public announcements with which the PMs imposed the first country lockdowns placed in Italy and in the United Kingdom in March 2020. Framed within Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), the study conducts a qualitative analysis of the two statements by the then Italian PM, Giuseppe Conte, and the then British PM, Boris Johnson, focusing on the use of metaphors to refer to the COVID-19 outbreak and the first emergency measures that had to be taken to tackle the tragic situation. Results show that both PMs define the virus with the conceptual metaphor CORONAVIRUS IS CHALLENGE/THREAT, while the solution to the emergency is conceptualised in terms of war effort. Results also show that, while Johnson's speech emphasises the importance of the measures to protect the NHS and people's lives, Conte's statement emphasises the population's emotional commitment and personal sacrifice for the greater good.
Journal of applied linguistics and professional practice, Apr 6, 2021
Celebrity chefs can be seen almost every day on TV shows in the UK, and they also communicate wit... more Celebrity chefs can be seen almost every day on TV shows in the UK, and they also communicate with the public via cookery writing in print and on websites and social media. This study investigates the websites of 10 British celebrity chefs from both a communicative and a linguistic perspective, focusing in particular on the ‘About’ sections, in which they present themselves to the public, and their introductions to each recipe. Eleven chefs have been selected: six male (including one duo) and five female, and covering a range of ages and different degrees of seniority. The aim is to show how the chefs construct their culinary personae and if they keep this consistent across their self-presentation and in the presentation of their culinary know-how. The findings show that in general the chefs tend to reinforce gender-based characterizations, although younger female chefs show a characterization more usually assigned to male chefs.
The study investigates the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on institutional tourism communicatio... more The study investigates the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on institutional tourism communication. In view of the necessary changes occurred in the tourism field since the start of the pandemic, a comparison will be made with the results of a previous study on the English and the Italian versions of the seven tourism board websites corresponding to the seven "provinces" in the Veneto region (Cesiri 2019). The present study analyses the changes in the communicative strategies used by the tourist board website of the Veneto Region, that collects all the websites of the provinces, examining how the territory is presented to prospective visitors as well as how the website informs prospective visitors about the pandemic and the regulations in place to prevent contagion. The Italian and the English versions of the website are investigated using Fairclough's (2003) approach to discourse analysis. Particularly relevant is the notion of 'presupposition,' namely any kin...
Paleontology is “the science of prehistoric life – of the fauna and flora of the geologic past” (... more Paleontology is “the science of prehistoric life – of the fauna and flora of the geologic past” (Schindewolf 1993, p. 1), thus it is a complex, hybrid domain that combines methods of analysis from a wide range of disciplines, from the hard sciences (ex., biology, zoology, geology, chemistry, etcetera). Paleontology is also a discipline that is extremely popular among the general public, since “dinosaurs embody the drastic changes that life on Earth has undergone. Chasing after dinosaurs is really a quest to fill in part of our own backstory […]” (Switek 2014). Such popularity creates specific expectations in the public, who wants to receive reliable as well as enjoyable representations of their favorite prehistoric creatures. Children in particular are enthusiastic about dinosaurs as it is demonstrated by merchandise of all sorts, dedicated exhibitions, narrative and syllabus books, movies, websites, and TV shows. The present study investigates the animated series Dinosaur Train , c...
The Discourse of Food Blogs. Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 2020
This volume adopts a multidisciplinary perspective in analyzing and understanding the rich commun... more This volume adopts a multidisciplinary perspective in analyzing and understanding the rich communicative resources and dynamics at work in digital communication about food. Drawing on data from a small corpus of food blogs, the book implements a range of theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches to unpack the complexity of food blogs as a genre of computer-mediated communication. This wide-ranging framework allows for food blogs’ many layered components, including recipes, photographs, narration in posts, and social media tie-ins, to be unpacked and understood at the structural, visual, verbal, and discourse level in a unified way. The book seeks to provide a comprehensive account of this popular and growing genre and contribute to our understandings of digital communication more generally, making this key reading for students and scholars in computer-mediated communication, multimodality, critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and pragmatics.
Positioning Theory (PT) first emerged in the 1980s in psychology studies to investigate how peopl... more Positioning Theory (PT) first emerged in the 1980s in psychology studies to investigate how people occupy and negotiate their place—both physical and social—while interacting with other people. Research in this area has also considered the linguistic and discursive practices that position interlocutors in any form of communication and interaction, affecting in turn the reciprocal perception of ‘the other.’ This mutual positioning eventually shapes—and is shaped—by discourse in any kind of communicative context. Positioning, then, becomes crucial in digital communication, in which boundaries and perceptions of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ are in a way distorted by the absence of a physical space that is replaced by a virtual environment. Considering these premises, this study investigates self-positioning strategies in a corpus of food blogs in English. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the food bloggers employ pronouns to position themselves in the blog posts in order to establish a rapport with their audience, thus creating a peculiar communicative space. Corpus-based methods of investigation are used to explore the corpus, while PT is used to contextualize and interpret corpus data. Results show that the food bloggers in the corpus use pronouns as indexicals that refer to the bloggers’ specific position in the communicative environment to remark their ‘otherness’ with respect to their audience as well as towards specific socio-cultural contexts. In particular, the food bloggers systematically distance themselves both from the community of users following the food blog and from external elements such as brands, institutions, and other cultures’ culinary traditions.
In the first months of 2020, when the Coronavirus pandemic globally broke out, many countries' go... more In the first months of 2020, when the Coronavirus pandemic globally broke out, many countries' governments became aware of the unprecedented risks for their populations' health and of the toll on their countries' health care systems. As a consequence, emergency measures were passed that would limit people's contacts and circulation in closed environments. Some of these drastic and dramatic measures were lockdowns that would severely limit or prohibit the movement of people outside their homes. These measures were communicated to the corresponding populations by the countries' Prime Ministers (PMs) in person via televised press conferences. The study considers the public announcements with which the PMs imposed the first country lockdowns placed in Italy and in the United Kingdom in March 2020. Framed within Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), the study conducts a qualitative analysis of the two statements by the then Italian PM, Giuseppe Conte, and the then British PM, Boris Johnson, focusing on the use of metaphors to refer to the COVID-19 outbreak and the first emergency measures that had to be taken to tackle the tragic situation. Results show that both PMs define the virus with the conceptual metaphor CORONAVIRUS IS CHALLENGE/THREAT, while the solution to the emergency is conceptualised in terms of war effort. Results also show that, while Johnson's speech emphasises the importance of the measures to protect the NHS and people's lives, Conte's statement emphasises the population's emotional commitment and personal sacrifice for the greater good.
Journal of applied linguistics and professional practice, Apr 6, 2021
Celebrity chefs can be seen almost every day on TV shows in the UK, and they also communicate wit... more Celebrity chefs can be seen almost every day on TV shows in the UK, and they also communicate with the public via cookery writing in print and on websites and social media. This study investigates the websites of 10 British celebrity chefs from both a communicative and a linguistic perspective, focusing in particular on the ‘About’ sections, in which they present themselves to the public, and their introductions to each recipe. Eleven chefs have been selected: six male (including one duo) and five female, and covering a range of ages and different degrees of seniority. The aim is to show how the chefs construct their culinary personae and if they keep this consistent across their self-presentation and in the presentation of their culinary know-how. The findings show that in general the chefs tend to reinforce gender-based characterizations, although younger female chefs show a characterization more usually assigned to male chefs.
The study investigates the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on institutional tourism communicatio... more The study investigates the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on institutional tourism communication. In view of the necessary changes occurred in the tourism field since the start of the pandemic, a comparison will be made with the results of a previous study on the English and the Italian versions of the seven tourism board websites corresponding to the seven "provinces" in the Veneto region (Cesiri 2019). The present study analyses the changes in the communicative strategies used by the tourist board website of the Veneto Region, that collects all the websites of the provinces, examining how the territory is presented to prospective visitors as well as how the website informs prospective visitors about the pandemic and the regulations in place to prevent contagion. The Italian and the English versions of the website are investigated using Fairclough's (2003) approach to discourse analysis. Particularly relevant is the notion of 'presupposition,' namely any kin...
Paleontology is “the science of prehistoric life – of the fauna and flora of the geologic past” (... more Paleontology is “the science of prehistoric life – of the fauna and flora of the geologic past” (Schindewolf 1993, p. 1), thus it is a complex, hybrid domain that combines methods of analysis from a wide range of disciplines, from the hard sciences (ex., biology, zoology, geology, chemistry, etcetera). Paleontology is also a discipline that is extremely popular among the general public, since “dinosaurs embody the drastic changes that life on Earth has undergone. Chasing after dinosaurs is really a quest to fill in part of our own backstory […]” (Switek 2014). Such popularity creates specific expectations in the public, who wants to receive reliable as well as enjoyable representations of their favorite prehistoric creatures. Children in particular are enthusiastic about dinosaurs as it is demonstrated by merchandise of all sorts, dedicated exhibitions, narrative and syllabus books, movies, websites, and TV shows. The present study investigates the animated series Dinosaur Train , c...
A number of recent linguistic contributions focus on the study of English for Specific Purposes (... more A number of recent linguistic contributions focus on the study of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), a discipline that studies the use of English for communicating specific and specialized knowledge in the global context. However, as specialised terms often enter the general lexicon as well, diachronic linguistic inquiry is essential to study the development of ESP as also the evolution of general English. Specific terms become, then, part of the general public's linguistic repertoire, contributing to the spread of 'scientific' lexis and to the popularisation of specialized knowledge. One example of a discipline that awaits further linguistic investigation is archaeology, a field that is becoming increasingly popular among the general public both due to the desire to rediscover our ancient past and also thanks to the spread of popularised publications, journals, television programmes and movies (Clack & Brittain 2007). The investigation of a historical corpus of archaeology texts and essays is therefore important for studying the evolution of the discipline's specific discourse in English and how the language of archaeology in English has evolved to become a distinct branch of ESP. A previous contribution (Cesiri forthcoming) considers the linguistic features of present-day cultural heritage research articles (of which archaeology constitutes an important part). In continuation of this study, my article will seek to investigate the linguistic features characterising publications in English on archaeology. I will consider in particular the beginning of the discipline, that is to say the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which are the core centuries in the development of scientific techniques in archaeology and it gaining a proper academic
The present study is meant as a continuation of a national project (protocol n. 2008_C7BR9H) part... more The present study is meant as a continuation of a national project (protocol n. 2008_C7BR9H) partly funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Scientific Research and entitled The popularization of scientific discourse in a diachronic perspective. The project section for which the present author is responsible deals with the analysis in terms of word-formation of botany popular terms as contained in botany texts addressed to non-experts published in Ireland during the nineteenth century (1735–1898, in particular; see Cesiri 2012 and forthcoming). The time span taken into consideration is part of the Late Modern English (LModE) period, one in which botany takes the shape of a modern science ‘cultivated’ (in every sense) by the layman as well; the text types analyzed in the project are manuals of botany addressed to amateurs, containing a terminology which includes both the Latin (scientific) terms and the English (popular) terms for the species listed. The research p...
The Organising Committee is happy to present the International Conference on "Food x Language: ad... more The Organising Committee is happy to present the International Conference on "Food x Language: adapting and representing food across media and genres in English and in Spanish" ("Lengua y comida: adaptaciones y representaciones de la comida a través de los medios de comunicación y de los géneros textuales en inglés y español"). The event will take place on 17th and 18th October 2024 in Ca' Bernardo, one the buildings hosting the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies at Ca' Foscari University of Venice.
Multimodal digital communication is the main theme of this conference meant to attract multidisci... more Multimodal digital communication is the main theme of this conference meant to attract multidisciplinary research on a wide range of issues from teaching and learning to analysing multimodal digital data appearing in multiple communication arenas.
Rome, Italy
University of “Tor Vergata”
20 – 22 June 2019
Marina Bondi
Carey Jewitt
Rodney Jones
Gunther Kress and Jeff Bezemer
David Machin
Theo van Leeuwen
_________________________________________________
A-MODE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
Elisabetta Adami – University of Leeds, UK
Cristina Arizzi – University of Messina, Italy
Styliani Karatza – National and Kapodistrian University of Athens,
Greece, and University of Leeds, UK
Ivana Marenzi – L3S Research Center, Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany
Ilaria Moschini – University of Florence, Italy
Sandra Petroni – University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, Italy
Marc Rocca – Rocca Creative Thinking Limited, UK
Maria Grazia Sindoni – University of Messina, Italy
Uploads
Books by Daniela Cesiri
Papers by Daniela Cesiri
Rome, Italy
University of “Tor Vergata”
20 – 22 June 2019
a-mode.eumade4ll.eu
_________________________________________________
Keynote speakers:
Marina Bondi
Carey Jewitt
Rodney Jones
Gunther Kress and Jeff Bezemer
David Machin
Theo van Leeuwen
_________________________________________________
A-MODE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
Elisabetta Adami – University of Leeds, UK
Cristina Arizzi – University of Messina, Italy
Styliani Karatza – National and Kapodistrian University of Athens,
Greece, and University of Leeds, UK
Ivana Marenzi – L3S Research Center, Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany
Ilaria Moschini – University of Florence, Italy
Sandra Petroni – University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, Italy
Marc Rocca – Rocca Creative Thinking Limited, UK
Maria Grazia Sindoni – University of Messina, Italy