- Argumentation, Discourse Analysis, Semantics, Pragmatics, Rhetoric, Professional genres and discourses in corporate contexts, especially financial and media communication, and 24 moreArgumentation Theory and Critical Thinking, Media Discourse, Economic Discourse, Economics Discourse, Financial Discourse, Modality, Argumentation Theory, Intercultural Pragmatics, Evidentiality, Multimodality, Visual Rhetoric, Visual Argumentation, Metaphor and Analogy, Discourse, Digital Rhetorics, Lexical Semantics, Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Textual analysis, Cognitive Linguistics, Linguistics, Construction Grammar, Genre, Visual Semiotics, Pragma-Dialectics, and Discourse Markersedit
PurposeThe article tackles the under-defined notion of communication in strategic communication research and elaborates a taxonomy of semiotic processes, which distinguishes different types of communicative and signalling events. The... more
PurposeThe article tackles the under-defined notion of communication in strategic communication research and elaborates a taxonomy of semiotic processes, which distinguishes different types of communicative and signalling events. The purpose is to offer an improved analysis of the processes by which meaning emerges from strategic communication situations.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed taxonomy is based on a conceptual framework combining semiotics, linguistic pragmatics and signalling theory. Several real cases of strategic communication are analysed to exemplify the taxonomy.FindingsDifferent sub-types of signalling events are highlighted and explained. The communicative function of performed behaviours (i.e. when actions speak and do it louder than words) depends on how informative and communicative intentions are managed by the message source and inferentially interpreted by different receivers. It is suggested that the ways in which meaning is signalled can be best understood with an argumentative perspective that foregrounds the inferential processes of persuasion, interpretation and decision-making. The limitations of the transmission vs. ritual and the one-way vs. two-way theories of strategic communication are highlighted.Originality/valueThe article discusses strategic communication events with the under-considered perspective of communication theories in the fields of semiotics and pragmatics. Signalling phenomena are interpreted from a communicative viewpoint, emphasising the argumentative dynamics that constitute them.
Research Interests:
This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Italian modal verb dovere with the conditional tense, taking as a starting point the underspecified modal semantics of both the modal verb and the... more
This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Italian modal verb dovere with the conditional tense, taking as a starting point the underspecified modal semantics of both the modal verb and the conditional form. The analysis focuses in particular on the difference between epistemic readings of dovere in the indicative and conditional moods. We observe a number of constraints imposed by the "epistemic" reading of the conditional form of dovere over argumentative sequences in discourse, which are not imposed by the indicative form. On this basis, we suggest that the "epistemic" reading with the conditional emerges as a pragmatic free enrichment after alethic or deontic saturation of the modal basis of dovere in a hypothetical frame, whereas with the indicative, the modal saturation is truly doxastic, implying a metarepresentation of speaker’s beliefs, and thus transforming dovere into an evidential for the concerned infe...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Italian modal verb dovere with the conditional tense, taking as a starting point the underspecified modal semantics of both the modal verb and the... more
This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Italian modal verb dovere with the conditional tense, taking as a starting point the underspecified modal semantics of both the modal verb and the conditional form. The analysis focuses in particular on the difference between epistemic readings of dovere in the indicative and conditional moods. We observe a number of constraints imposed by the "epistemic" reading of the conditional form of dovere over argumentative sequences in discourse, which are not imposed by the indicative form. On this basis, we suggest that the "epistemic" reading with the conditional emerges as a pragmatic free enrichment after alethic or deontic saturation of the modal basis of dovere in a hypothetical frame, whereas with the indicative, the modal saturation is truly doxastic, implying a metarepresentation of speaker’s beliefs, and thus transforming dovere into an evidential for the concerned infe...
Numerosi studi nell’ambito della ricerca in didattica della matematica hanno ormai da tempo evidenziato come esistano profonde connessioni tra apprendimento della matematica e dimensione linguistica. La presente dissertazione si pone... more
Numerosi studi nell’ambito della ricerca in didattica della matematica hanno ormai da tempo evidenziato come esistano profonde connessioni tra apprendimento della matematica e dimensione linguistica. La presente dissertazione si pone sulla scia di queste ricerche: partendo dal presupposto che una visione integrata tra le due discipline rappresenti un fecondo terreno di indagine, viene presentata una ricerca interdisciplinare il cui obiettivo è indagare la testualità del libro di testo scolastico di geometria, mostrando al contempo la profondità di risultati che un approccio di ricerca interdisciplinare consente di raggiungere. La tesi è di natura cumulativa e si inserisce all’interno del progetto FNS Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, tra lingua comune e linguaggio specialistico (progetto n. 176339), il cui intento è di indagare, da un punto di vista congiunto tra didattica della matematica e linguistica, le caratteristiche a più livelli di un corpus, denominato DFA-Ita...
Research Interests:
Journalists’ expectations concerning the way in which the audience will react to news strongly influence their decisions in newsmaking. This article investigates the argumentative dimension of journalists’ anticipatory inferences in... more
Journalists’ expectations concerning the way in which the audience will react to news strongly influence their decisions in newsmaking. This article investigates the argumentative dimension of journalists’ anticipatory inferences in newsroom editorial conferences. In order to study journalists’ reasoning processes concerning audience uptake that lead journalists to publish a certain news instead of another or to publish a news in a certain way, we will use the Pragma-Dialectical framework at the interactional level and Argumentum Model of Topics at the inferential level. Through a case study, we will investigate the anticipation of the audience interest and the anticipation of the audience persuasion, showing how editorial conferences function as places of reflection in which certain kinds of standpoints are at stake and particular aspects of the audience uptake are anticipated.
L’article présente une approche de l’étude du discours de la finance capable de relier l’articulation pragmatique et rhétorique des textes, la définition des genres de discours et le fonctionnement social et institutionnel d’un vaste... more
L’article présente une approche de l’étude du discours de la finance capable de relier l’articulation pragmatique et rhétorique des textes, la définition des genres de discours et le fonctionnement social et institutionnel d’un vaste domaine d’activité humaine. Un modèle théorique du fonctionnement du discours en contexte social est présenté et appliqué à la reconstruction de la sphère financière et de son « système de genres ». Les articles de presse économique-financière offrent une courte illustration de la manière dont cette approche peut éclairer le fonctionnement pragmatique et rhétorique d’un genre particulier et l’analyse de textes individuels.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
A partire dal corpus del progetto Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, fra lingua comune e linguaggio specialistico del Fondo nazionale svizzero, viene presentata un’analisi di esempi tratti dai libri di testo di geometria in... more
A partire dal corpus del progetto Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, fra lingua comune e linguaggio specialistico del Fondo nazionale svizzero, viene presentata un’analisi di esempi tratti dai libri di testo di geometria in lingua italiana della scuola primaria e secondaria di primo grado. L’analisi si basa sull’applicazione delle categorie di tipo retorico classico: inventio, dispositio ed elocutio, oggi afferenti ai domini degli studi linguistici, in particolare delle teorie dell’argomentazione. Attraverso l’analisi condotta, vengono evidenziate da un lato la profondità delle riflessioni che queste lenti teoriche consentono di raggiungere nello sviscerare un testo argomentativo di matematica, dall’altro la grande varietà di scelte possibili adottate dai libri di testo, che possono avere un effetto comunicativo sul lettore-studente.
This paper tackles outdated news about COVID-19 as a type of misinformation from an argumentative perspective, focusing on the fact-checker Snopes. In rapidly changing information environments the circulation of outdated news can be... more
This paper tackles outdated news about COVID-19 as a type of misinformation from an argumentative perspective, focusing on the fact-checker Snopes. In rapidly changing information environments the circulation of outdated news can be highly detrimental causing risky behaviors. Such type of misinformation is difficult to pin down through fact-checking since encompassing different types of contents, motivations and channels. To fully understand this phenomenon we deem necessary to move away from a naïve view of fact checking to an argumentative one. But what are the argumentative configurations of outdated statements in the context of the current information ecosystem? To answer this question we rely on the distinction between upstream and downstream argumentation to anchor the kind of issues put forward by outdated statements. We then take as a sample all the news that have been rated as “outdated” and “miscaptioned” by Snopes during the pandemic and analyse the type of source, the se...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the financial domain to the analysis of Earnings Conference Calls. We propose the formal description of ECC dialogue games: its locution rules... more
The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the financial domain to the analysis of Earnings Conference Calls. We propose the formal description of ECC dialogue games: its locution rules and protocol. We also test its descriptive validity on an annotated corpus.
Research Interests:
The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the financial domain to the analysis of Earnings Conference Calls. We propose the formal description of ECC dialogue games: its locution rules... more
The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the financial domain to the analysis of Earnings Conference Calls. We propose the formal description of ECC dialogue games: its locution rules and protocol. We also test its descriptive validity on an annotated corpus.
Research Interests:
The aim of this article is to contribute to the theoretical development of multimodal metonymy and the argumentative and rhetorical role that the trope can fulfil in multimodal advertising campaigns. A model for the analysis of multimodal... more
The aim of this article is to contribute to the theoretical development of multimodal metonymy and the argumentative and rhetorical role that the trope can fulfil in multimodal advertising campaigns. A model for the analysis of multimodal tropes in page-based advertising messages is developed by drawing insights from different disciplines. This model involves the identification of the elementary and layout components of the message, the description of its multimodal structure (in terms of the visual structure and the contribution of the verbal component), the reconstruction of its meaning operation, and the reconstruction of its enthymematic structure. In particular, the meaning operation is reconstructed by the employment of Conceptual Integration Theory, which we have slightly revised in order to better account for metonymical mappings. The enthymematic structure is reconstructed following the Argumentum Model of Topics, a model of argument schemes that enables one to make explici...
Research Interests:
Adversative connectives have been analyzed as articulating explicit and implicit facets of argumentative moves and have been thus recognized as potential argumentative indicators. Here we examine adversative connectives Ger. aber, Fr.... more
Adversative connectives have been analyzed as articulating explicit and implicit facets of argumentative moves and have been thus recognized as potential argumentative indicators. Here we examine adversative connectives Ger. aber, Fr. mais, It. ma (‘but’) in young children’s speech in the context of the ArgImp project, a research endeavor seeking to understand in which situations children aged between two and six years engage in argumentation and how their contributions are structured. Two multilingual corpora have been collected for the project: (1) everyday family conversations, (2) semi-structured play activities and problem solving in a kindergarten setting. Through the detailed analysis of a small collection of examples, we consider the indicative potential of adversative connectives for identifying argumentative episodes in interactions involving young children and for the reconstruction of the inferential configurations of children’s contributions to these argumentative discu...
Research Interests:
This special issue aims to explore the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of meaning in terms of their significance and relevance in the study of argumentation. Accordingly, the contributors to the project, who have all presented their... more
This special issue aims to explore the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of meaning in terms of their significance and relevance in the study of argumentation. Accordingly, the contributors to the project, who have all presented their work during the 2nd Argumentation and Language conference, which took place in Lugano in February 2018,1 have been specifically instructed to produce papers which explicitly tackle the importance of the study of meaning for that of argumentative practices. All papers therefore cover at least one aspect of this complex relationship between argumentation and meaning, which contributes to delivering a state-of-the-art panorama on the issue. Drawing from computational linguistics, semantics, pragmatics and discourse analysis, the contributions to this special issue will illuminate how the study of meaning in its different forms may provide valuable insights for the study of people’s argumentative practices in different contexts, ranging from the political ...
Research Interests:
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project [name omitted for anonymity]. This interdisciplinary project builds on Argumentation theory and developmental sociocultural psychology for the study of children’s argumentation. We... more
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project [name omitted for anonymity]. This interdisciplinary project builds on Argumentation theory and developmental sociocultural psychology for the study of children’s argumentation. We reconstruct children’s inferences in adult-child and child-child dialogical interaction in conversation in different settings. We focus in particular on implicit premises using the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) for the reconstruction of the inferential configuration of arguments. Our findings reveal that sources of misunderstandings are more often than not due to misalignments of implicit premises between adults and children; these misalignments concern material premises rather than the inferential-procedural level.
Research Interests:
The chapter reconstructs the most relevant “flavors” of modality (alethic , deontic , deontic-practical , anankastic, and epistemic) in terms of a relational , discourse sensitive, context dependent , procedural approach to the... more
The chapter reconstructs the most relevant “flavors” of modality (alethic , deontic , deontic-practical , anankastic, and epistemic) in terms of a relational , discourse sensitive, context dependent , procedural approach to the interpretation of modal constructions. The approach, while inspired by Relative Modality and the formal semantics tradition, integrates pragmatic insights and it is cast as a tool for the actual analysis of discourse and argumentation . This approach to the typology of modal “flavors” is needed because the full indicative potential of a modal emerges only when its conversational background has been specified. At this point, the modal will act as a guide in the clarification of argumentative confrontations, in the specification of the logical type of the standpoint, in the recovery of premises as well as in the determination of the inferential structure of the argument (argumentation scheme ), where the flavor of modality can help by suggesting the locus-relation invoked by the argumentation scheme. The semantic category of evidentiality , which is closely related to epistemic modality , is also briefly examined in relation to argumentation , with a survey of the most basic categories of evidence sources encoded by languages (perception, testimony, inference ).
Research Interests:
The chapter outlines the profile of argumentation theory as a scientific enterprise and discusses how the study of meaning in its semantic and pragmatic aspects can contribute to the descriptive and normative study of arguments expressed... more
The chapter outlines the profile of argumentation theory as a scientific enterprise and discusses how the study of meaning in its semantic and pragmatic aspects can contribute to the descriptive and normative study of arguments expressed in ordinary discourse. In doing so, the main features of normative-pragmatic theories of argumentation are introduced, with particular reference to the theory Pragma-Dialectics. Two other general theoretical tools used in the book are also introduced, namely Congruity Theory, a broad approach to representing semantic and pragmatic meanings in discourse, and the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT ) , a semantically informed approach to the inferential schemes underlying ordinary arguments . The last section of the chapter considers how the semantic considerations that occupy the center stage in this book also contribute to an understanding of how argumentation is deployed in concrete contexts of social interaction.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In the following pages we will look at what really happens when people argue in support of an apology. We will do that through the lens of Congruity Theory, a theory of the semantics and pragmatics of discourse initiated by Eddo Rigotti,... more
In the following pages we will look at what really happens when people argue in support of an apology. We will do that through the lens of Congruity Theory, a theory of the semantics and pragmatics of discourse initiated by Eddo Rigotti, using linguistic data from English and Russian. It will turn out that apologies are an interesting case study for approaching the issue of argumentative discussions arising from non-assertive speech acts, and that argumentation can function as a reactive to uncover the covert directive nature of English apologies, revealing them as requests of forgiveness, and showing that, after all, they don’t differ too much from Russian apologies, which show their directiveness up-front. We will also see that excuses and justifications can support an apology as arguments, but, if they are too good, they will certainly ruin it.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In this article we present an exploratory investigation of pictorial and multimodal metaphors appearing in print product advertisements; the aim is to ascertain their relevance for the arguments that the ads put forth. Departing from the... more
In this article we present an exploratory investigation of pictorial and multimodal metaphors appearing in print product advertisements; the aim is to ascertain their relevance for the arguments that the ads put forth. Departing from the working hypotheses that advertising is an argumentative activity type employing pictorial and multimodal metaphors, and that these are often examples of visual argumentation, we analyze a small corpus of print product ads by employing the theoretical frameworks offered by Blending Theory and the Argumentum Model of Topics. This allows us to reconstruct the enthymematic structure of advertising arguments highlighting the correspondence between rhetorical tropes and argumentative loci.
Research Interests: Conceptual Metaphor, Argumentation, Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Multimodality, Argumentation Theory and Critical Thinking, and 9 moreBlending Theory, Visual Arguments, Multimodal metaphor, Visual Argumentation, Argumentative, Conceptual Blending Theory, Multimodal Argumentation, Metaphor and Argumentation, and Metaphor and Analogy
In this paper we investigate the interface between the semantics and the discourse functions of the Italian modal adjective possibile (possible‘) in a corpus of economic-financial news. Our aim is to show how a context-dependent semantic... more
In this paper we investigate the interface between the semantics and the discourse functions of the Italian modal adjective possibile (possible‘) in a corpus of economic-financial news. Our aim is to show how a context-dependent semantic analysis of the adjective based on Relative Modality (RM) and a careful examination of linguistic constraints and contextual saturation sheds light on the distinctive role played by possibile at a discourse level. Drawing from previous work about lexical modals in RM vein, we define possibile as a relational operator linking the modalised (prejacent) proposition to another set of propositions which is saturated in the situational or discourse context of utterance (conversational background). In order to look at the saturation of the conversational backgrounds, we have annotated at different levels (syntactic and semantic) 222 occurrences of possibile in a theoretically representative sample of the corpus. The different syntactic constructions of the...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Our contribution proposes a semantic and argumentative analysis of the Italian modal adverb 'forse'. This marker is mainly used to express bilateral epistemic possibility, but is found also in concessive moves, conjectural... more
Our contribution proposes a semantic and argumentative analysis of the Italian modal adverb 'forse'. This marker is mainly used to express bilateral epistemic possibility, but is found also in concessive moves, conjectural questions and polemical questions. Starting out from recent research on possibility modals and from considerations about paths of semantic change in the case of 'forse' and of other epistemic adverbs in European languages, it is hypothesized that forse combines epistemic and inferential features. An empirical study has been conducted on a corpus of economic-financial news to support this hypothesis. The results suggest that the adverb is best described as combining two discourse operations involving two different conversational backgrounds, i.e. inference from a set of premises and epistemic evaluation based on a set of known facts. This analysis accounts for various cohesive and argumentative functions found in the corpus, which 'forse' sh...
Research Interests:
Why do people from different cultural backgrounds often misunderstand each other even when they usea common language to interact? Why do arguments that we find reasonable not seem so to members of other cultural groups? Global Linguistics... more
Why do people from different cultural backgrounds often misunderstand each other even when they usea common language to interact? Why do arguments that we find reasonable not seem so to members of other cultural groups? Global Linguistics addresses these and other basic questions about language and discourse in intercultural communication, providing a solid and accessible introduction to "global linguistics": an interdisciplinary field combining insights from contact linguistics, pragmatics, conceptual metaphor theory and argumentation theory.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée printemps 2010 Vereinigung für angewandte Linguistik in der Schweiz Associaziun svizra da linguistica applitgada Association suisse de linguistique appliquée Associazione svizzera di linguistica... more
Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée printemps 2010 Vereinigung für angewandte Linguistik in der Schweiz Associaziun svizra da linguistica applitgada Association suisse de linguistique appliquée Associazione svizzera di linguistica applicata Vereinigung für angewandte ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The paper addresses the notion of communication context as a key for understanding communication sciences as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry. A semantic analysis of the word context allows us to grasp the double relationship between... more
The paper addresses the notion of communication context as a key for understanding communication sciences as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry. A semantic analysis of the word context allows us to grasp the double relationship between the context and the contextualized: the context sets the constitutive conditions of the contextualised and at the same time the context is affected (changed) by the contextualized. From the language sciences it emerges a twofold view of communication context as having both an interpretive and a constitutive dimension.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The present special issue of Studies in Communication Sciences originates from the conference “Argumentation in Dialogic Interaction”, which was held in Lugano on July 1-4 2002. The conference, hosted by the Faculty of Communication... more
The present special issue of Studies in Communication Sciences originates from the conference “Argumentation in Dialogic Interaction”, which was held in Lugano on July 1-4 2002. The conference, hosted by the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the University of Lugano, was jointly organized by three scholarly associations: the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA), the International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA), and the International Association for the Study of Controversies (IASC). The conference’s chief aim was to explore the relationships between the objects of study of these three associations, as well as the differences and complementarities in the approaches adopted by the different research traditions these associations represent. We can say that the conference was a remarkable success, not only regarding the number of attendants and the quantity and quality of paper presented, but also for the quality of the scientific dialogues (arguments...
We present a multi-layer annotated corpus of 112 argumentative microtexts encompassing not only argument structure and discourse relations (Stede et al., 2016), but also argument schemes — the inferential relations linking premises to... more
We present a multi-layer annotated corpus of 112 argumentative microtexts encompassing not only argument structure and discourse relations (Stede et al., 2016), but also argument schemes — the inferential relations linking premises to claims. We propose a set of guidelines for the annotation of argument schemes both for support and attack relations, and a new user-friendly annotation tool. The multi-layer annotated corpus allows us to conduct an initial study of dependencies between discourse relations (according to Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann and Thompson, 1988)) and argument schemes. Our main contribution is that of offering the first resource for the combined study of (argumentative) discourse relations and inferential moves.
Research Interests:
The paper builds upon Rigotti (this volume), in applying Congruity Theory to argumentation. Argumentative processes are shown to operate both at the interpersonal level, and at the intra-personal level in soliloquy. In fact, all... more
The paper builds upon Rigotti (this volume), in applying Congruity Theory to argumentation. Argumentative processes are shown to operate both at the interpersonal level, and at the intra-personal level in soliloquy. In fact, all persuasive processes contain, in order to succeed, an element of soliloquial argumentation: to persuade through argumentation means to induce somebody else to let him/herself be convinced by the argument. Extending the notion of reflexive predicate to connective predicates, I interpret the individual decision making as a sui generis interaction between two participant roles (the arguer and the decider, i.e. the Aristotelian krités) realized by the same person. The notion of connective predicate shows its usefulness also in addressing dialogue coherence. Two major approaches to coherence are considered. The first approach moves “from above” trying to define the joint projects of the participants (Clark 1996) in terms of shared dialogue games (Mann 2002a) or s...
- Explores the role of modal expressions as argumentative indicators by using the Italian modal system as a case study. - Uses predictions/forecasts in the business-financial daily press to investigate the relation between modality and... more
- Explores the role of modal expressions as argumentative indicators by using the Italian modal system as a case study.
- Uses predictions/forecasts in the business-financial daily press to investigate the relation between modality and the context of argumentation.
- A specialist research monograph that could simultaneously provide background information and be used as an inspiration or methodology guide for PhD students.
This book addresses two related questions that have first arisen in Toulmin’s seminal book on the uses of argument. The first question is the one of the relationship between the semantic analysis of modality and the structure of arguments. The second question is the one of the distinctive place, or role, of modality in the fundamental structure of arguments. These two questions concern how modality, as a semantic category, relates to the fundamental structure of arguments. The book addresses modality and argumentation also according to another perspective by looking at how different linguistic modal expressions may be taken as argumentative indicators. It explores the role of modal expressions as argumentative indicators by using the Italian modal system as a case study. At the same time, it uses predictions/forecasts in the business-financial daily press to investigate the relation between modality and the context of argumentation.
- Uses predictions/forecasts in the business-financial daily press to investigate the relation between modality and the context of argumentation.
- A specialist research monograph that could simultaneously provide background information and be used as an inspiration or methodology guide for PhD students.
This book addresses two related questions that have first arisen in Toulmin’s seminal book on the uses of argument. The first question is the one of the relationship between the semantic analysis of modality and the structure of arguments. The second question is the one of the distinctive place, or role, of modality in the fundamental structure of arguments. These two questions concern how modality, as a semantic category, relates to the fundamental structure of arguments. The book addresses modality and argumentation also according to another perspective by looking at how different linguistic modal expressions may be taken as argumentative indicators. It explores the role of modal expressions as argumentative indicators by using the Italian modal system as a case study. At the same time, it uses predictions/forecasts in the business-financial daily press to investigate the relation between modality and the context of argumentation.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The book provides an introduction to an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that can be called "global linguistics" (GL). GL emerges to tackle the ever-growing phenomenon of intercultural communication (IC) in today's world of... more
The book provides an introduction to an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that can be called "global linguistics" (GL). GL emerges to tackle the ever-growing phenomenon of intercultural communication (IC) in today's world of international contacts. The specific aim of GL is to look at the form and contents of dialogues among speakers of different cultural backgrounds who will use a "default language" or koiné (usually English) to interact, in order to detect communication breakdowns at various levels of "depth", as well as the opportunities for developing sound intercultural communication practice. The book includes an accessible presentation of fundamental questions concerning languages and language use. Among the questions addressed are the universal design features of languages, the connection between language and conceptual systems, how people use language to coordinate their actions and interact in a variety of social contexts, and the place of language in a semiotic view of culture. The volume also addresses how language, context and culture shape the way in which we argue a point and try to persuade other people, and why intercultural argumentation is both necessary and risky.Global Linguistics: An Introduction describes fundamental notions in linguistics and cognate fields and is thus well-suited for use as a textbook in courses dealing with IC in general. At the same time, the book is of general interest to scholars in linguistics and communication studies, as it places particular emphasis on theoretical models such as argumentation theory and conceptual metaphor theory, which are generally not presented in textbooks on language and IC.
Research Interests:
Scienze della comunicazione: Cosa fanno i laureati della facoltà luganese? Dove nasce questa scienza, tra le più antiche e attuali? Parla il decano, Andrea Rocci
Intervista a cura di Claudio Mésoniat
Intervista a cura di Claudio Mésoniat
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The paper discusses a type of destructive argument where the targeted viewpoint is refuted thanks to an analogy between its propositional content and a non-factual state of affairs. The analogy can be either same-domain or figurative. The... more
The paper discusses a type of destructive argument where the targeted viewpoint is refuted thanks to an analogy between its propositional content and a non-factual state of affairs. The analogy can be either same-domain or figurative. The paper proposes an analysis in terms of the Argumentum Model of Topics, showing that these refutations draw their force from the recognition of an incongruity in the content of the argument which is found to be equally
applicable to the content of the refuted viewpoint. Depending on the nature of the refuted standpoint, the incongruity can be ontological, practical or moral-social. Nonfactual analogical refutations are found to have a deductive force. Yet, they are redundant when they are accompanied by arguments targeting directly the incongruity in the standpoint.
applicable to the content of the refuted viewpoint. Depending on the nature of the refuted standpoint, the incongruity can be ontological, practical or moral-social. Nonfactual analogical refutations are found to have a deductive force. Yet, they are redundant when they are accompanied by arguments targeting directly the incongruity in the standpoint.
Research Interests:
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project [name omitted for anonymity]. This interdisciplinary project builds on Argumentation theory and developmental sociocultural psychology for the study of children’s argumentation. We... more
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project [name omitted for anonymity]. This interdisciplinary project builds on Argumentation theory and developmental sociocultural psychology for the study of children’s argumentation. We reconstruct children’s inferences in adult-child and child-child dialogical interaction in conversation in different settings. We focus in particular on implicit premises using the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) for the reconstruction of the inferential configuration of arguments. Our findings reveal that sources of misunderstandings are more often than not due to misalignments of implicit premises between adults and children; these misalignments concern material premises rather than the inferential-procedural level.