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Marina BONDI

Professore Ordinario
Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Culturali

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Pubblicazioni

2024 - Developing local grammars of speech acts in Italian: The case of apology [Articolo su rivista]
Yu, Danni; Su, Hang; Bondi, Marina
abstract

This study explores the viability of applying the local grammar approach to speech act studies beyond English by developing a local grammar of apology in Italian. Drawing on data taken from the spoken Italian corpus of KIPTO, we identified nine functional terms that are commonly associated with the semantics of apologies in Italian. We subsequently used these terms to analyse instances of apologies from a local grammar perspective, leading to the identification of 18 local grammar patterns of apology, with the pattern “Forgiveness-seeking” being the most prominent one. We further discussed the opportunities (e.g., facilitating cross-linguistic speech act studies) and challenges (e.g., corpus availability, identification of speech act instances in corpora) of using the local grammar approach to account for speech acts in languages other than English. Overall, our argument is, and our study shows, that local grammars can be a viable approach to speech act studies in and across various languages.

2024 - The use of code glosses in MA dissertations in English and in Italian: A pilot study in an EMI context [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Nocella, Jessica Jane
abstract

2023 - Boosting Booster Trust: Negotiating a Jungle of Misinformation [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Nocella, Jessica Jane
abstract

Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news are available across diverse media, causing distrust in governmental and health institutions. In this context, the use of language has been of great interest in research, specifically in health communication, on social media, and in traditional news media. Our aim is to analyse and compare how the successive doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been presented in different forms of knowledge communication, namely scientific research papers and the media, including online magazines and newspaper articles. By focusing on frequency, collocates, and phraseology of booster and dose, we trace differences in how boosters are presented in both lay and professional contexts of communication. Scientific discourse shows a marked preference for the more neutral and cautious term dose, which is also associated with the description of administration procedures. News discourse is characterised both by a higher incidence of the word booster (implying a reinforcement of an already existing immunity) and by the choice of referring to the institutional voices recommending vaccines. Results shed light on how different discourses manifest their perceived functions through lexical choice, as well as how news discourse uses and reinterprets scientific discourse in the light of what is relevant to the audience.

2023 - Building trust in the transport sector during the pandemic A cross-cultural analysis [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Nocella, Jessica Jane
abstract

This paper looks at cross-cultural variation in corporate communication over the pandemic, focusing on the language adopted by rail companies in the UK and Italy to enhance trust in safety and highlighting how they engage in communicative action with potential passengers and other online users. The analysis shows that UK companies generally prefer personal forms of self-mention and avoid technicisms, while Italian companies adopt more formal language and more impersonal forms of self-representation. Common elements seem to be related to repeated communicative functions, and the semantic elements they involve, thus highlighting the close link between pragmatic units and lexico-grammatical patterns (with their semantics), as well as the interplay between meaning, dialogic action and context in communication.

2023 - MoReThesisCorpus. Documenting Academic Language as Used in the Theses Submitted to the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; DI CRISTOFARO, Matteo
abstract

2023 - Prologue: state of the art of research dissemination [Prefazione o Postfazione]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The prologue looks at how academic publications have been influenced by the rapid expansion of digital means of communication and by the global extension of the participation framework provided by the web. In a research context that is increasingly digital and international, identity and visibility have become a major issue, especially with the proliferation of academic publications, the availability of new communicative environments – websites, blogs, social media – and the radical changes that have involved even the traditional key elements of publishing – abstracts and journal articles. Attention is paid to the linguistic dimension of this impact, ranging from issues of communicative inequality to the need to compete for visibility and self-promotion: the new context requires attention to a complex media ecology and to the changes taking place in the whole knowledge system. Another key element of the wider social context that is important to consider is the growing social need for academia to engage with stakeholders and the public. Access to knowledge has become a key issue in a “knowledge society”. This involves debates on Public Science – transferring the results of research to professionals or to the wider public, with a view to contributing to society – as well as Open Science – responding to problems of communicative inequality by favouring access to knowledge, for example with open access publishing and education. The role of the web in engaging with the wider public opens a whole cline of possibilities that further characterize the discourse of knowledge, well beyond the basic distinctions traditionally opposing knowledge communication and popularization.

2023 - THE COVID-19 INFODEMIC ON TWITTER: Dialogic contraction within the echo chambers [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, M.; Sanna, L.
abstract

Fake news and misinformation are a key topic when discussing social media analysis research. Special attention has been paid to how social media discourse, rather than focusing on the correct identification of sources and voices, can end up constructing trust and credibility by emphasising shared identities and positions, usually in opposition to other views. Studies on “echo chambers” look at how the views of others are systematically rejected and used instrumentally to support one’s own beliefs. Twitter discourse is often a case in point. The focus of our analysis is on the language that manifests the writer’s position, starting from the concept of engagement as defined in Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework. This indicates the speaker’s degree of commitment to what is being expressed and manifests the speaker’s attitudes to opening and closing the dialogic space for external views. Using a corpus of tweets and one of journalistic texts on the pandemic, we test the hypothesis that the space given to dialogic contraction on Twitter may be wider than that provided by traditional journalism. The study - based on frequency analysis, concordance analysis, and word embedding - centres on a predefined list of appraisal markers indicating contraction or expansion. We look at the relative frequency of these markers and at their role in the ongoing debate. The results show that there are specific markers that dominate Twitter discourse: adversative “but”, negative “no”/“not”, and cognitive verbs like “know” and “think”. A closer analysis of concordances of negatives and cognitive verbs shows that it is possible to identify patterns that are clear signals of explicit denials, whether in representing a position or rejecting it, and that the verbs are used as markers of ideological positioning. Twitter thus turns out to be characterised by positioning that emphasises contrasting views and denial of other positions. (302 words).

2023 - Variations of polyphony in blogs: The case of the Slow Art Day blog [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Nocella, Jessica Jane
abstract

This paper looks at dialogicity in the Slow Art Day blog and focuses on the way the representation of participants encodes the complexity of the communicative action through a polyphony of textual voices. By focusing on posts from the pandemic years (2020 and 2021), and contrasting them with the previous period, we carry out a collocation analysis and a study of semantic preferences (Sinclair 2004) to explore how writers present themselves and how they interact with the reader and other textual voices in a context of cultural intermediation. By looking at forms of address and of self-mention, we trace how this blog enacts different forms of dialogic action with its readers and stakeholders in the extended situational context.

2022 - "Due to Heightened Risk": Qualifying Risk in the Debate over Covid-19 [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Cavalieri, Silvia
abstract

Our paper presents an analysis of the conceptualisation and framing of ‘risk’ in the Covid-19 pandemic. We investigate all occurrences of risk-based vocabulary in two corpora dealing with the spread and the political/social/economic consequences of Covid19 from February 2020 to February 2021 (i.e. the InterDiplo Covid-19 corpus and the CORD-19 corpus). We apply a mixed-method approach to show how the concept of ‘risk’ is lexically qualified in the public communication of a hot issue such as the pandemic. Therefore, after a first recognition of all related expressions of the nominal realization of “risk” in the worldlists of the two corpora, we investigate their concordances to find typical collocations and phraseology used to qualify risk in Covid-19 epidemic. Our results show a clear tendency towards a negative thematisation of “risk” which is characterized by patterns highlighting uncertainty and fear in the fight against a disease spreading on an unprecedented scale and posing total threats that not only involve individuals but affect humanity globally. The focus on the phraseology around the lexical elements helps reconstruct communicative functions and approaches that characterize the two discursive contexts.

2022 - Comparable Corpora in Cross-cultural Genre Studies: Tools for the Analysis of CSR reports [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter explores the potential of corpus tools in cross cultural studies of genres, using a cross cultural analysis of CSR reports as a case study. Based on the assumption that: a) the most important contribution of corpus linguistics lies in providing tools for the calculation of frequencies and for the observation of combination of elements; b) a cross-cultural comparison of genres requires integration of lexical categories with semantic and functional pragmatic perspectives, the chapter looks at how corpus tools (most notably keyness and concordances) can contribute to different ways of integrating these lexical, semantic and functional-pragmatic perspectives in genre analysis and how they can contribute to different, complementary paths of integration (bottom-up and top-down). It also shows that the integration of bottom-up procedures (from lexical units to semantics and functional-pragmatic units) and top-down procedures (from functional-pragmatic units to semantics and lexical units) can actually take place at different levels of textual structure.

2022 - Dialogicity in Individual and Institutional Scientific Blogs [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, M.
abstract

The 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.

2022 - Exploring the echo chamber concept: A linguistic perspective [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Sanna, Leonardo
abstract

Fake news and misinformation are a key topic when discussing social media analysis research. Special attention has been paid to how social media discourse, rather than focusing on the correct identification of sources and voices, can end up constructing trust and credibility by emphasizing shared identities and positions, usually in opposition to other views. Studies on “echo chambers” look at how the views of others are systematically rejected and used instrumentally to support one’s own beliefs. Twitter discourse is often a case in point. The focus of our analysis is on the language that manifests the writer’s position, starting from the concept of engagement as defined in Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework. This indicates the speaker’s degree of commitment to what is being expressed and manifests the speaker’s attitudes to opening and closing the dialogic space for external views. Using a corpus of tweets and one of journalistic texts on the pandemic, we test the hypothesis that the space given to dialogic contraction on Twitter may be wider than that provided by traditional journalism. The study - based on frequency analysis, concordance analysis and word embedding - centers on a predefined list of appraisal markers indicating contraction or expansion. We look at the relative frequency of these markers and at their role in the ongoing debate. The results show that there are specific markers that dominate Twitter discourse: adversative “but”, negative “no”/”not” and cognitive verbs like “know” and “think”. A closer analysis of concordances of negatives and cognitive verbs shows that, it is possible to identify patterns that are clear signals of explicit denials, whether in representing a position or rejecting it, and that the verbs are used as markers of ideological positioning. Twitter thus turns out to be characterized by positioning that emphasizes contrasting views and denial of other positions.

2022 - Risk and Threat during the Covid-19 Pandemic: a Micro-Diachronic Perspective. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Nocella, Jessica Jane
abstract

Communicating risk during the Covid-19 pandemic Since the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, media content has focused on issues related to the virus, ranging from scientific and medical information (i.e. structure of the virus, effects, vaccines, etc.) to safety measures and government restrictions (i.e. lockdown, curfews, use of masks, etc.). Covid-19 discourse has raised much interest in academia, both in linguistics and the social sciences especially concerning the frequently used metaphor of war (Sabucedo et al 2020, Wagener 2020, Castro Seixas 2021, Panzeri et al. 2021, Taylor 2021). Other studies have focused on the communication of risk during Covid-19 from a health perspective to address eventual gaps in the interaction between doctors and virologists and patients and non-experts (Abrams and Greenhawt 2020, Chesser et al. 2020). However, to our knowledge risk is yet to be studied from a linguistic perspective. The aim of this paper is to analyse how risk was conveyed in newspapers and on online magazines during 2020. More specifically, we present a diachronic analysis of the words risk and threat in the Coronavirus Corpus which was created to keep record of the economic, social and political impact of the pandemic. By tracing changes (if there are any) in frequency and meaning over the months, we aim at identifying collocates and phraseology used to convey issues related to risk and virus menace since the start of the outbreak. Results will shed light on the communication of risk and on significant patterns associated to the semantic field of threat during a health emergency.

2021 - "The Scientific Article: Variation and Change in Knowledge Communication Practices". [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, M
abstract

The chapter provides a brief outline of the development of the scientific article, tracing its origins in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its professionalization in the nineteenth, and its specialization in the twentieth. The focus is on how textual organization and language choices mirror changes in the epistemology and writing practices of the scholarly community. The rise of periodical publications in the Age of Empiricism reflected the dominant emphasis on fact, while the style was largely narrative and based on reliable testimony. During the nineteenth century, journals became increasingly specialized and oriented to the professional community: observations and experiments were used to build theory, while greater attention was paid to methodology and precision. With the twentieth century, the proliferation of scientific journals produced forms of highly specialized prose for a large, specialized, international audience, with an increasingly standardized textual structure requiring rigorous descriptions of methodology and results. The IMRAD structure – Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion – thus established itself as a powerful standard over the centuries – a standard which is only partly challenged today by the global dimension of digital communication.

2021 - BOOK OF ABSTRACTS: CLAVIER 2021 CONFERENCE Exploring Words in the Digital Transformation Tools and Approaches for the study of Lexis and Phraseology in Evolving Discourse Domains [Altro]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; Franceschi, Daniele
abstract

BOOK OF ABSTRACTS, edited. The role of the lexicon has been analyzed from the perspective of different theories of language in the 20th and 21st centuries, ranging from structuralist and generative approaches to more recent cognitively oriented studies of word semantics in context. One of the most passionately debated issues in the linguistic literature continues to be whether words have a decontextualized and stable meaning core or a number of more or less nuclear senses that emerge on the basis of the company they keep with other words. The Firthian tradition has provided a foundation for the newly emerging tradition of corpus-driven empirical lexicology, showing that linguists’ appeal to their intuitions for the definition of word meanings is simply not enough and that the observation of actual usage is necessary. Therefore, our objective is to give real evidence of how we use words, phrases and constructions, both in writing and in speech, in various discourse domains and as a result of the digital transformation. The digital transformation has certainly had an impact on methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of lexis and phraseology. Corpus tools have greatly contributed to the development of lexicography, lexicology and lexico-semantics in particular, with attention to extended units of meaning, lexico-grammatical approaches and focus on patterns and constructions, to name just a few. The impact of the digital transformation has also been profound on communication itself. The study of digital discourse has often highlighted elements of innovation and creativity in language use, as well as in the language repertoires of participants (often crossing the borders of languages), thus adding new perspectives to studies on diversity in discourse and variation in language. The extended participation framework of web discourse has opened the way for new communicative situations and wider impact of the ideological dimension of words, for example in the social media. Digital discourse studies have also most clearly highlighted the need to look at the multimodal and multimedia nature of communication on the Web and at the new developments of AI in online interaction. The Conference aims to gather research experiences and findings on these topics from scholars working on different natural languages and addressing different fields of general language and specialized discourse. The talks will address the intense change taking place in the evolving digital media, with new forms of participation and contribution, or will pay attention to the tools offered by the digital transformation for the study of lexis and phraseology both past and present.

2021 - Disseminating the Tangible and Intangible Heritage of Sacred Places in the 21st Century: The Websites of British and Italian Cathedrals. [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Sezzi, Annalisa
abstract

This paper considers how cultural and religious heritage is disseminated in websites presenting British and Italian cathedrals. Sacred places are typically at the intersection of different forms of tourism—cultural tourism and religious tourism—and contribute to the transmission of tangible and intangible assets (“buildings and monuments, artistic objects, and also texts, legends, rites and so on” [Aulet and Vidal 2018, 244]). The study is based on a corpus of webtexts in Italian and English, collected respectively from the official websites of Italian and British cathedrals. The analysis looks at this kind of tourism discourse as a form of expert-to-non-expert communication that makes the visitor take part in an imaginary journey (Bonsignori and Cappelli 2019; Cappelli and Masi 2019; Cappelli 2016) in which different types of explanation (Calsamiglia and van Dijk 2004) are adopted to make specialized vocabulary accessible to visitors. The focus is on definitions and denomination (in relation to both art/architecture and religion). The quantitative study shows that the Italian corpus presents a marked preference for denomination (and denominations in the field of art/architecture in particular), while the corpus of British cathedrals is characterized by a marked preference for definitions. The qualitative analysis suggests that this may also depend on a marked stylistic preference in Italian for introducing the nicknames of the artists or specifying names in the local dialect, as against a clearer intention of disseminating the cultural and religious heritage to non-experts in the corpus of websites of British cathedrals. The cultural and the religious components, however, seem to be equally important in both corpora and are often inseparable for the two often superimposed types of visitors.

2021 - Evaluation of e-health applications for paediatric patients with refractory epilepsy and maintained on ketogenic diet [Articolo su rivista]
Costa, ANNA MARIA; Marchio', Maddalena; Bruni, Giulia; Maria Bernabei, Silvia; Cavalieri, Silvia; Bondi, Marina; Biagini, Giuseppe
abstract

E-health technologies improve healthcare quality and disease management. The aim of this study was to develop a ketogenic diet management app as well as a website about this dietary treatment and to evaluate the benefits of giving caregivers access to various web materials designed for paediatric patients with refractory epilepsy. Forty families participated in the questionnaire survey, from January 2016 to March 2016. All caregivers were exposed to paper-based materials about the ketogenic diet, whereas only 22 received the app, called KetApp, and videos produced by dieticians. Caregivers with free access to web materials were more satisfied than the others with the informative material provided by the centre (p 0.001, Mann–Whitney test). Indeed, they showed a better attitude towards treatment, and they became more aware of dietary management in comparison to the control group (p 0.001). Moreover, caregivers provided with web materials were stimulated to pursue the treatment (p = 0.002) and to introduce it to their children and other people (p = 0.001). Additionally, caregivers supplied with web materials were more willing to help other families in choosing the ketogenic diet (p = 0.004). Overall, these findings indicate that web materials are beneficial for caregivers of paediatric patients with refractory epilepsy in our centres. Thus, the use of e-health applications could be a promising tool in the daily aspects of ketogenic diet management, and it is especially of value in the attempt to start or maintain the diet during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

2021 - Introduction to the monographic section: Metadiscourse devices in academic discourse [Articolo su rivista]
Alvarez-Gil, F.; Bondi, M.
abstract

The contribution provides a breif overview of metadiscourse studies in the field of EAP and introduces the monographic section of the journal

2021 - Knowledge Dissemination and Knowledge Communication in a Digital World [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia
abstract

The issue concentrates on communicating and disseminating specialized knowledge in (hyper-)multimodal ICT environments. Insights into joint compositions of visually instantiated and intentionally co-present texts and images develop on the sidelines of corpus-informed linguistic research on the one hand, and of research in social epistemology on the other.

2021 - Knowledge communication and knowledge dissemination in a digital world [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, M.; Cacchiani, S.
abstract

This introductory article to the special issue provides a brief theoretical introduction to pragmatic research on the communication and dissemination of domain-specific knowledge across new media, discussing some of the central problems, such as the impact of digital technologies on understanding and learning, the changes in the participation framework, their impact on the construction of credibility and identity. We also call attention to the need for multimodal and hypermodal analysis of the processes of recontextualisation in selected genres. In this context, the papers in the special issue converge in presenting a nuanced view of a broad range of phenomena. Our goal is to encourage research on digital discourse to keep up with the present technological developments and the increasing complexity emerging from the ensuing interaction of knowledge transmission and knowledge circulation practices.

2020 - Academics Online: Code Glosses across Research Genres and Public Communication [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

This study focuses on the notion of knowledge dissemination and on the role of blogs in knowledge dissemination today. The issue is explored through a case study of two well-known economists, by comparing their blog posts and their scholarly production of journal articles. A comparison of the general lexis of the two corpora highlighted the presence in journal articles of word forms referring to elements and relations typical of economic reasoning and mathematical demonstration, together with words referring to the structure of the extended text, with limited use of evaluative language, pointing to generality and current relevance. Blog posts, on the other hand, appeared characterized by first person and other forms of self-reference, intertextuality and a marked presence of evaluative words, intensifiers and hedges. It was also important to note that language choice contributes to creating a personal voice and the representation of dialogue with readers. The comparative analysis of code glosses in posts and journal articles by the two authors did not highlight any intense use of code glosses in posts. From a quantitative point of view, code glosses were almost as frequent as in research articles. The expectation that they might be more frequent, as in instructional genres, did not prove correct in these A-blogs. There were peculiarities in the personal tone, in the constant reader engagement and in the frequent involvement of evaluative elements, both attitudinal and epistemic. But the most likely inference from the observation of code glosses in “academic celebrity blogs” is that these are not used to instruct the readers, but rather to engage them in the development of the debate. The prominence of the writer is counterbalanced by a collaborative development of discourse, where the reader is presented as a partner in an open and ongoing dialogue. Overall, then, posts of this kind turn out to be not only sites for disseminating knowledge (and opinions), but above all for managing the blogger’s image (and reputation) in public dialogue with the virtual community.

2020 - Analyzing Academic ELF in Economics [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Vitali, Francesca
abstract

The aim of this study is twofold. It intends to shed light on the differences between the language of published specialised journal articles and that of ELF writing and to provide a better understanding of the impact of literacy brokering activities.. Using comparable corpora of published and unrevised materials (the economics subcorpus of the Sci-ELF corpus, Helsinki), the sudy focused on comparing ELF production with two corpora of published articles (a general one and a small corpus of the same papers once published). The analysis shows that ELF writers have a clear preference for disguising their authorial voice by adopting ‘zero stance’ reporting techniques, and that frame markers are generally used to point to topic-related propositions rather than to argumentative moves. The use of attitude markers, however, reveals that the affective attitude of the author is noticeable, though mostly related to the propotypical patterns with important, stressing the importance of a point or guiding the reader’s perspective towards their desired communicative outcome. Last but not least, unedited research article drafts show a recurring pattern of indirect self-mentions instead of personal pronouns. ELF writers seem to prefer avoiding direct references to their authorial identity and maintaining a more neutral stance, based on prototypical language forms which may be more easily acceptable and understood in an international community (see also Bondi and Borelli 2018) in the logic of the “cooperative imperative”. Published articles, on the other hand, are characterized by a higher level of textual cohesion, as shown by the more frequent use of the consequential conjunction thus, presenting arguments as logical consequences of other propositions. Another interesting feature of published economic research articles involves the more frequent reference to visual representations within the body of the text, which might suggest a preference for more objective and data-supported claims, also confirmed by the use of metadiscursive verbs show and argue as boosters to emphasize the role of the authors and their contribution to knowledge production and dissemination. The most salient feature observed is the prevalence of a stronger and more present authorial voice. Published articles display a strikingly more frequent use of the first person, thus indicating a more intrusive authorial voice. Nevertheless, the increased use of boosters and personal self-mentions resources is compensated by hedging devices and evidential markers, which contribute to moderating the tone of the claims and recognising the value of existing literature. The comparison between unedited and published ELF, despite the small sample of published versions, allowed some further observations. Editors, proofreaders and other figures involved in the process of editing and publishing research articles seem to apply changes to the language of original drafts to convert what could be perceived as an impersonal presentation of data into a more ‘persuasive endeavour involving interaction between writers and readers’ (Hyland 2005). In particular, they emphasize the relevance of the research and its outcome, whereas they don’t seem to worry about other matters of style which may simply reflect cultural diversity and openness to diversity.

2020 - Specialized Communication in English: Analysis and Translation [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; Malavasi, Donatella; Sezzi, Annalisa
abstract

The volume takes on the challenges posed by teaching specialized communication and specialized translation to University students in Italy. In particular it originates from the course of English specialised communication and translation held within the master’s degree programme in Languages for Communication in International Enterprises and Organization (LACOM), at the Department of Studies on Language and Culture of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. The course has been jointly taught by the four authors over the years. The reason behind this clarification is twofold: on the one hand, the contents and the structure of the chapters try to meet students’ actual needs; on the other hand, the teaching experience was the driving force behind the attempt to face the enduring conundrum between theory and practice. In this regard, the volume does not have the ambition to fill this gap, but the network of recurring heuristic tools, concepts, and strategies throughout the chapters, associated with examples and practical resources, disclose the strict connection between these two sides of the same coin. Innumerable other coursebooks attempt to do so, one might say. Yet, the peculiarity of this volume resides in the fact that it outlines a range of approaches to specialized discourse and translation, while focusing on the translation of two specific genres - CSR reports and contracts - whose similarities and divergencies open up readers’ horizons over the complexity of specialized translation in general. Furthermore, the two working languages are Italian and English, and both the translation into one’s own mother tongue and into a foreign language are taken into account. This is again one foot in reality, as specialized translators or enterprises’ employees are often required to translate into English even if they are not native speakers.

2019 - A Genre-Based Analysis of Forward-Looking Statements in Corporate Social Responsibility Reports [Articolo su rivista]
Yu, D.; Bondi, M.
abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports are becoming a widespread corporate discourse practice and are often considered corporate image-building documents. The present study examines forward-looking statements in CSR reports from a genre-based perspective, aiming to better understand the textual practices of reporting genres in a globalized context and to raise awareness about ways they are used to shape perception of corporate activity. Using a corpus of 90 CSR reports in Chinese, English, and Italian and a subcorpus annotated with the "previewing future performance" move, the study combines a focus on genre-related contextual features and rhetorical patterns of CSR reports with a corpus-based study of future markers. The analysis reveals some cross-cultural variation in the distribution of the move, while its commissive function marks a common trend. Words indicating change (miglior*/(sic)/improv*) are found to be frequently used for future reference in all three languages, suggesting that future discourse, though regarded as an optional element of the genre, is widely exploited by companies in actual practice to promote a committed corporate image in CSR. Based on this analysis, the study puts forward the notion of "writing conformity," a general feature of many reporting genres, which may turn out to pose new and important challenges for professional writers.

2019 - Assessing caregiver informative materials on the ketogenic diet in Italy: A textual ethnographic approach [Articolo su rivista]
Cavalieri, Silvia; Marchio', Maddalena; Bondi, Marina; Biagini, Giuseppe
abstract

Caregiver informative materials are an important complement to verbal interaction in medical encounters enhancing caregivers’ health literacy and this is particularly true when dealing with treatments that are still little known, as is the ketogenic diet (KD) for pediatric refractory epilepsy in Italy. Their value is dependent upon whether they contain useful information from the viewpoint of the caregiver and are easily understood. The present study analyses informative booklets on the KD found in the Italian context, combining an ethnographic and a textual perspective, i.e. textual ethnography (Swales 1998) for assessing the quality of written caregiver information on the KD in Italy. We based our analysis on a two-fold methodology involving an Information Satisfaction Questionnaire (ISQ) and the application of a framework theory created by Clerehan et al. (2005), i.e. the Evaluative Linguistic Framework (ELF). Results show that together with the ethnographic assessment of informative materials obtained through the questionnaire, the analysis of key linguistic features gave important evidence to improve the quality of informational texts for caregivers.

2019 - Communicating Specialized Knowledge. Old Genres and New Media [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; Cavalieri, Silvia
abstract

Communicating Specialized Knowledge: Old Genres and New Media was born out of the idea that domain-specific knowledge has two major dimensions to it: on the one hand, peer-to-peer communication that is primarily intended to further research within the disciplines; on the other, domain-external, asymmetric communication of ‘filtered’ knowledge to different types of lay-audiences. Collectively, the chapters in the volume take the reader on a journey through knowledge communication and knowledge (re)presentation strategies that are able to successfully disseminate and communicate. The field domains under scrutiny are medicine and health, corporate communication, cultural heritage and tourism. A number of issues are addressed at the interface of corpus linguistics, genre studies and multimodal analysis. It is hoped that the variety of questions posed and methods used to explore corpus data in context will contribute to further debate among scholars in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, multimodality, media studies and computer-mediated communication, EAP and ESP.

2019 - Communicating specialized knowledge: Introduction and overview [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; Cavalieri, Silvia
abstract

“Communicating Specialized Knowledge: Old Genres and New Media” was born out of the idea that domain-specific knowledge has two major dimensions to it: on the one hand, peer-to-peer communication that is primarily intended to further research within the disciplines; on the other, asymmetric communication of selected, ‘filtered’ knowledge to lay people. Importantly, communicating specialized knowledge involves the construction, presentation and communication of knowledge (Kastberg 2010; Ditlevsen 2011) in texts that effectively adjust to the knowledge background, knowledge- and personality-related needs of the intended addressees within the relevant communicative setting. In this context, research in Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) has made important contributions to the study of ‘internal’, peer-to-peer communication in traditional genres and now remediated and emergent online genres. Working at the interface of theoretical and applied linguistics, specialized lexicography or terminology, and primarily taking genre-oriented and corpus-analytical approaches, LSP scholars have identified a number of recurrent features as broadly characterizing specialized communication in several domains of expertise. To name but a few: terminology, lexical density, extensive recourse to nominalization and modification within the noun phrase, frequent use of the passive voice and syntactically complex clauses, genre- and domain-specific metadiscourse and hedging. The very same features, however, might hinder ‘domain-external’ communication and the ability of experts and professionals to reach out to lay people. This remains a problem that commands scholarly attention in the context of the cultural growth and socio-economic development of contemporary society at large. Taking inspiration from seminal work like Linell (1998) and Calsamiglia and van Dijk (2004), therefore, the focus of LSP studies has recently broadened to cover the merits and demerits of knowledge dissemination and popularization strategies in domain-specific discourses (cf., e.g., Henriksen, Frøyland 2000; Gotti 2014; Garzone, Heaney, Riboni, eds. 2016; Bondi, Sezzi 2017; Salvi, Turnbull, eds. 2017; Engberg et al., eds. 2018). There are several reasons why experts should deliberately carry relevant parts of their specialized knowledge outside of their expert discourse communities and make them accessible to non-experts (adapted from Henriksen, Frøyland 2000; Allan 2002). Access to knowledge is a public good for all (UNESCO 2005). First, citizens interact with domain-specific texts on a daily basis (e.g., bank statements, tax reports and patient information leaflets). Additionally, domain literacy can earn citizens a better job while benefiting the nation as a whole. For instance, promoting financial literacy may help curb blind investments and prevent damage to individual households and the nation. In that sense, effective knowledge dissemination works towards empowerment of lay people, social inclusion and equality in the participation domain. As exposure to information in the digital world continues to grow, questions concerning the discursive strategies and the pragmatics of knowledge dissemination will continue to arise. For instance: • against the backdrop of landmark publications such as Scollon and Scollon (1995), Linell (1998), Calsamiglia and van Dijk (2004) or Gotti (2014), questions about recourse to linguistic knowledge dissemination strategies (cf., e.g. Bondi, Cacchiani, Mazzi, eds. 2015); • based on classics such as Barthes (1977 [1964]), Kress and van Leuween (2010) or Bateman (2014), issues concerning text/image pairs, multimodality and hyperstructural features in hyper-multimodal environments (cf., e.g., Lemke 2003; Engberg, Meier 2015), also in relation to web-page usability (e.g., Nielsen 1999; Farrell 2014; work by their associates at NN/g); • questions about roles and relationships, social maneuv

2019 - Introduction as special editors of volume 9 [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Poppi, Franca
abstract

The issue of health literacy has become central in the debate on healthcare communication, particularly when dealing with chronic conditions. In the definition of the World Health Organization, health literacy is identified as “the cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health” 1. Chronic conditions require constant communication and a variety of communicative channels that might provide support for the patients and caregivers, as well as favour adherence to the recommended healthcare practices. While there has been a considerable body of research into doctor-patient discourse, the majority of the studies have focused on oral interaction and on unmediated consultation, exploring the interaction between patient and doctor. The relative scarcity of linguistic studies on other communicative situations highlights the need for further research on the whole range of communicative practices and situations, such as communication with and through caregivers, communication between patients/caregivers themselves, use of print materials or webmediated genres.

2019 - Knowledge Dissemination on the Web [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Digital tools have greatly influenced communication, cognition and human relations in general. In the fast-changing environment of the Web, the development of digital technologies has influenced the way knowledge is produced, distributed, and used. Starting from an overview of the nature of blogs, we focus here on the role they appear to play in specialized communication and on the theoretical and methodological issues involved in the design of corpora for the study of digital communication (in relation to print publications).Academic blogs can also become sites for knowledge construction. Academics engage in debate with other academics and the wider audience. Researchers engage in new collaborative practices, somehow blurring the distinction between science and public science, between internal communication and external communication. Research genres often take dialogic debates as their starting point and thus contextualize the internal argument within the debates that involve the expert community. The emphasis is on epistemic evaluation and values such as generality, simplicity and novelty. Knowledge dissemination genres, on the other hand, recontextualize expert argument in a wider participation framework. Blog posts present themselves as opening moves in polylogues, addressing the interests of different types of participants. Their dialogicity appears to be clearly based on forms of self-mention and reader’s engagement explicitly suggesting actual turn-taking and highlighting their persuasive and argumentative structure.

2019 - Textual Voices in Corporate Reporting: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Chinese, Italian, and American CSR Reports [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Yu, Danni
abstract

This article investigates direct quotations in a corpus of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports in Italian, Chinese, and English. The corpus is composed of 60 CSR reports published by Italian, Chinese, and American companies in the banking and energy sector. The study aims at exploring what types of textual voices are involved in the discourse of CSR reporting and how different sources of voices are represented, using the framework of social actor representation proposed by Van Leeuwen. The results show that the voices presented in direct quotations are often "orchestrated" by companies into "symphony" rather than "polyphony." Most of the sources of direct quotations are represented as individuals with specified names. The comparative analysis shows that companies from different cultural backgrounds present different preferences in selecting and representing the various sources. The Italian and American CSR reports present more voices from managers, while the Chinese CSR reports show a clearer preference for voices from employees and clients.

2019 - “I am going on a ketogenic diet”. Communicating dietary requirements for pediatric patients [Articolo su rivista]
Sezzi, Annalisa; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the popularizing strategies adopted in the websites of the Matthew’s Friends Foundation (UK) and the Charlie Foundation (US), which promote information on the ketogenic diet (KD), a dietary treatment for intractable epilepsy. The study is part of a wider project meant to explore how knowledge is mediated to patients and their caregivers. The analysis uses discourse and corpus tools to explore the main differences between the two foundations in the use of knowledge dissemination strategies and in the construction of the relationship with the caregivers through the use of multiple textual voices (representing experts and the readers themselves). While focusing on similar aspects and using similar techniques, the two foundations differ in the frequency of use of explanations and question-answer sequences, as well as in the way they interpret their role as mediators of knowledge

2018 - 'Come what come may, Time, and the Houre, runs through the roughest Day' Temporal phraseology and the conceptual space of futurity in Macbeth [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Sezzi, Annalisa
abstract

The paper maps the lexico-grammatical resources of the representation of time in Macbeth, looking in particular at the way futurity is portrayed. The study is based on concordance analysis of the top full lexical items in frequency lists and of time-related keywords (generated using the other Shakespearian tragedies as a reference corpus). Paying particular attention to the occurrences in Macbeth and his wife's speeches, the analysis centres on the collocations and semantic preferences of the items identified. The top full lexical items in the wordlist are shown to be related to the notion of time, especially contrasting the present and the future, hence contributing to the pace of the plot in the play. Keywords highlight the connection of the notion of time with the notion of fear and with the impossibility of predicting the future. In general, the analysis depicts a conceptual space in which time and futurity are not connected to hope but to fear, thus creating a menacing universe that has its origins in the protagonist himself, in the tension between deceitful prediction and frustrated volition.

2018 - Blogs as interwoven polylogues The dialogic action game [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

This paper looks at blogs as dialogic action games characterized by specific communicative purposes and corresponding language use, as described in the MGM. The hypothesis is that web-mediated communication is particularly apt to developing simultaneous conversations within and without the scientific community. Using a small-scale study of blog threads originated by well known economists who write for the academia as well as for the media, I look at how they establish dialogicity and intertextuality in the post and at how they develop interwoven polylogues in comments, thus engaging participants in parallel conversations, some of which are more clearly oriented to sharing views, while others aim at knowledge dissemination and others still at knowledge construction proper.

2018 - CSR between guidelines and voluntary commitments [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Yu, Danni
abstract

The paper focuses on how the legal status of CSR is reflected in EU communication. We look at the range of documents available on the issue on the EU website and – focusing on a policy document and a guidebook - we study how the discursive practices of policy-making and public communication are shaped to reconstruct and transform the representation of social actors. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 presents a critical reading of relevant institutional documents produced by the European Commission and Parliament on CSR. Section 3 introduces the corpus for analysis. Section 4 provides data on specific aspects of the analysis (multimodality/hypertextuality, polyphony and modality) and Section 5 draws some conclusions.

2018 - Dialogicity in Written Language Use: Variation across expert action games [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter looks at dialogicity in written language use, focusing on how expert knowledge is recontextualized in different action games. Using a corpus of journal articles, newspaper columns and blog posts by the same author (Paul Krugman), the analysis centres on: (a) participants (the expert community, the writer and the reader), (b) communicative action and (c) the evaluative dialogue between writer and reader. The study highlights that research action games take scholarly debates as their starting point and involve the expert community, while knowledge dissemination recontextualizes expert argument in a wider participation framework: columns highlight the authority of the writer by presenting a self-contained argument; blogs present the post as the opening move of a polylogue addressing different participants.

2018 - Knowledge Transfer through the Ages [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Brief presentation of the rationale of the MIUR project on "Knoeldge dissemination across genres in English"

2018 - Publishing in English: ELF writers, textual voices and metadiscourse [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Borelli, Carlotta
abstract

In a global academic environment, increasing attention has been paid to the international use of English for publication purposes. The chapter presents a corpus-based study of the differences between authors’ final versions – seen as a case of writing in English as Lingua Franca – and published versions of papers. The economics component of the SciELF corpus – a collection of unrevised articles by ELF users – is compared to a larger corpus of published articles in Business and Economics. The comparison confirms the “cooperative imperative” of ELF users, though limited to a restricted range of general markers, and suggests a “selling imperative” in the process of revision, emphasizing authorial presence through personal deixis, epistemic markers and lexical cohesion.

2018 - The generic structure of CSR reports: dynamicity, multimodality, complexity and recursivity [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Yu, Danni
abstract

This paper examines the CSR report as a corporate communication genre characterized by dynamicity, multimodality, complexity and recursivity. Its socially recognized communicative purpose is to disclose the company’s economic, environmental and social performances which are relevant to its internal and external stakeholders. The study uses a comparative approach to explore the generic features of CSR reports.The paper examines CSR reports in Italian, Chinese and English and provides an account ofn the similarities and variations regarding its generic structure, with a particular focus on the self-presentation section. The analysis investigates five textual aspects of the CSR reports: the part-genres, the two sections of the main report, the lay-out formats, and the rhetorical moves, with a focus on the self-presentation section. The conclusions sum up the results in a discourse-analytic and cross-linguistic perspective.

2018 - Try to prove me wrong: Dialogicity and audience involvement in economics blogs [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Early studies on web discourse focused on the impact of the medium on the hybridization of spoken and written discourse. It is now the time to look more closely into the extended participatory framework of the Web. This paper looks at blogs as public arenas for knowledge construction and knowledge dissemination at the same time, focusing on how experts may interact at different levels with different types of audiences. The hypothesis is that web-mediated communication is particularly apt to developing simultaneous conversations within and without the scientific discourse community. Using a small-scale study of comparable texts produced by well known economists who write for the academia as well as for the media, the paper looks first at how they develop different dialogues in the different communicative contexts (focusing on posts and news columns). The analysis centres on the intense dialogicity of posts, often presented as part of an ongoing conversation, and on the dialogic structure of blog threads. These turn out to be not just polylogues or multi-party conversations, but “interwoven polylogues”, addressing the interests of different types of participants simultaneously, on separate planes. These interwoven polylogues engage participants in parallel conversations, some of which are more clearly oriented to sharing views, while others aim at knowledge dissemination and others still at knowledge construction proper.

2017 - Corpus Linguistics. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter analyzes the contribution of CL to the study of dialogue and language as dialogue, with examples from English linguistics and academic discourse studies. CL has extended the possibilities of dialogue analysis and added to its theoretical-methodological perspectives. The chapter provides some background on CL, with special emphasis on spoken corpora and tools for corpus analysis. It then focuses on the complexity of language in use, the interactional features of language in speech and writing and the importance of CL for studies on language variation. The conclusions also mention the impact of CL in teaching language in a dialogic perspective.

2017 - Knowledge Dissemination across media in English: continuity and change in discourse strategies, ideologies, and epistemologies, PRIN [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Knowledge dissemination (KD) is central to innovation in research and institutional change. The growth of specialization has created the need to make knowledge accessible also to non-experts (or experts in other fields), adopting communicative tools that can reach an ever growing, but not always indefinite, globalized audience. Unsurprisingly the increasing importance of KD has led to the emergence of a wide range of genres – from newspaper or journal articles to more recent web-mediated genres, which cater to different needs. The project aims to investigate the practices and strategies of dissemination to various audiences in a range of different settings. Special attention will be paid to how specific genres have developed over time and how they have been tailored to the addressees’ needs. The focus is on different communicative environments: the press first and the world wide web nowadays, with its growing level of participation and interaction. The study is based on comparable corpora and electronic collections of texts, which will show how domain-specific knowledge is mediated in specialized and popularizing discourse to address different stakeholders. The method employed will combine genre and discourse analysis with corpus linguistics, focusing on: a) the process of KD, tracing the emergence of new genres in a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Among the genres investigated are, e.g., newspapers, scientific and popular magazines from the 16th to the early 20th century, and modern-day journalism and web genres, with their intercultural and multimodal challenges. It will thus be possible to historically contextualize the discursive processes deployed across time; b) KD strategies across disciplines and communicative genres, focusing in particular on lexical and phraseological choices, textual processes, rhetorical structures and communicative strategies adopted: use of metadiscourse, definitions, repetitions, reformulations, analogies and metaphors; reader/listener engagement, simplification and explicitation strategies; multimodality; c) the degree of accuracy, alteration and bias of disseminated knowledge, in particular of sensitive topics, resulting from the transfer of specialised notions to targeted audiences, and especially to the lay public; d) features of KD in the context of highly asymmetrical communication, with special attention to KD intended for children or intercultural audiences, and the intercultural and interdiscursive aspects involved.

2017 - The Generic Structure of CSR Reports in Italian, Chinese, and English: A Corpus-Based Analysis [Articolo su rivista]
Yu, Danni; Bondi, Marina
abstract

Background: This study examines the generic structure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, which are becoming standard practice for corporate communication of social and environmental performance beyond financial disclosure. Literature review: Genre theories provide a framework for exploring genres contextualized in different cultures. Based on the English for Specific Purposes approach of genre analysis, this study compares the move structure of CSR reports in Italian, Chinese, and English from a corpus-based perspective. Research questions: 1. What are the main moves used in CSR reports? 2. Are there any cross-cultural similarities or variations in terms of generic features? Methodology: Combining genre theories with concepts from Systemic Functional Linguistics, we designed an observational framework for move identification. Based on a 15-move scheme, we annotated 18 CSR reports for comparative analysis. Results and conclusions: The CSR report is characterized by rhetorical recursivity and hybridity of speech acts: beyond “reporting” and “presenting,” it is also “demonstrating,” “evaluating,” and “committing.” As a globally established genre, it presents noticeable generic similarity in different languages, suggesting that the communicative purposes of CSR reports are recognized by different cultures. The top six moves in the Performance-reporting section of the CSR reports present identical trends in terms of extensiveness ranking in all three languages. Cross-cultural variations mainly involve the use of optional moves, such as the dominant use of the move “Presenting individual cases” in the Chinese sample. The observational framework for move identification may also be transferable to other genres. The limitations of this study include the sample size and the absence of an author survey. Future research could investigate the CSR report from a diachronic perspective, to explore how its genre structure has developed over time.

2017 - What came to be called: Evaluative what and authorial voice in the discourse of history [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

While acknowledging the importance of specific lexis in profiling discourse communities, studies on academic discourse have paid growing attention to general lexis and its disciplinary specificity. This is particularly true of recent approaches to phraseology in English for Academic Purposes (EAP), including both statistically significant clusters and grammar patterns and semantic sequences. The current paper explores the notion of semantic sequences through a case study of sequences involving relative what. Based on a corpus of academic journal articles in the field of history (2.5 million words), the analysis highlights co-occurrence of what with a range of signals referring to a shift in time perspectives or attribution, and points to the "re-defining" function of what, introducing a re-formulation of what has just been said or proposing an interpretation on the basis of the cotext. A tentative classification of the sequences is provided, building on previous studies on a local grammar of evaluation. The sequences are shown to highlight the argumentative voice of historians interacting with their sources and their discourse community, by showing awareness of different interpretations of people and events in history.

2017 - “I Highly Commend Its Efforts to Ensure Power Supply”: Exploring the Pragmatics of Textual Voices in Chinese and English CSR Reports. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Yu, Danni
abstract

The study explores the use of quoted voices in a corpus of CSR reports in English and Chinese. The article provides first an overview of literature regarding polyphony in CSR, previous studies discussing functions of direct quotations, and a brief discussion of the Appraisal theory proposed by Martin and White (2005). Next, Section 3 outlines the methods and procedures employed for the analysis. The following two sections discuss the results regarding the functions and attitude language used in direct quotations in the CSR report, with particular attention on a comparative perspective. Finally, the last section seeks to provide some interpretative conclusions related to the research questions

2017 - 文本的角色——关于强制阐释的对话 [Il ruolo del testo - un dialogo sull'interpretazione] [Articolo su rivista]
Zhang, Jiang; Menetti, Elisabetta; Giacobazzi, Cesare; Bondi, Marina
abstract

强制阐释是当代西方文论的基本特征,也是其根本缺陷所在。理论与文本之间存在着什么样的关系?阐释是否有边界?什么样的阐释才是确当合理的阐释?这些都是值得深入讨论的问题。多年来,中国社会科学院张江教授密切关注当代西方文论的发展与流变,针对当代西方文论存在的问题及中国当代文论和中国阐释学的构建,提出"强制阐释"这一概念,引起国内外学术界的广泛关注和讨论。近期,张江教授与意大利摩德纳大学语言文化学院的伊拉莎白·梅内迪(Elisabetta Menetti)在编研究员、马丽娜·伯恩蒂(Marina Bondi)教授、凯撒·贾科巴齐(Cesare Giacobazzi)副教授进行座谈,围绕文本的角色和当代文学理论发展现状等主题展开讨论,现整理出这篇对话,以飨读者。

2016 - CSR Reports in English and Italian: Focus on generic structure and importance markers [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter looks at the main tool of CSR communication: the CSR report. Cross-linguistic analysis is centred on the banking sector and the language backgrounds explored are those of Italian and English as an International Language (EIL). Keeping in mind the complexity of lingua-cultural issues involved in any comparison between a national and an international language, the study addresses two research questions. It focuses first on an attempt to look at the CSR report, with a view to defining its global macro-generic structure. It then focuses on the role of importance markers in the reports, with a view to exploring convergences and divergences in the language-specific corpora. After the presentation of the corpus of CSR reports in English and Italian and of the procedures involved in the analysis, the cross-linguistic analysis is divided into two main sections: the first outlines the general structure of CSR reports as a macro-genre characterized by a high degree of recursivity, while the second focuses on importance markers and on the role they play in guiding the reader to identifying the main CSR principles adhered to by the company in such an extended textual form. The aim is also to explore the importance of lexico-semantic patterns and pragmatic functions in a cross-linguistic perspective. Conclusions are drawn as to the nature of the genre and the usefulness of cross-linguistic comparison for the purposes of genre analysis.

2016 - Chrononyms in academic and popular history [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

This chapter pivots around the notion of chrononyms, defined as terms that specify a period or segment of time. Chrononyms are examined in what can be considered their privileged milieu, i.e. historical discourse. In particular, chrononyms are herein conceived as being more than simple temporal designators: they can be considered as complex markers establishing specific chronotopes, evoking different cultural contexts and characterizing the different types of discourse under examination. The analysis is based on two corpora of scientific and popular articles on history and it aims at examining the role and the structure of chrononyms from both a phraseological and textual point of view. Convergences and divergences in their formation and in their identifying and classifying functions seem to characterize these two discourses, both centred on time and on its representation, history.

2016 - Dialogicity in Written Specialised Genres [Recensione in Rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

review of a sseries of studies on dialogicity in academic and professional discourse, illustrating a variety of approaches to the dialogicity of written discourse

2016 - Evidence (re)presentation and evidentials in popular and academic history: facts and sources speaking for themselves [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Sezzi, Annalisa
abstract

The paper pivots around the different roles of evidentials and the different ways in which evidence is represented in the discourse of popular and academic history, thereby exploring the dynamics of both genres from a discourse analytical perspective. The analysis is based on two corpora of academic and popular articles on history. In particular, it is focused on those lexico-grammatical resources for tracing the speaker’s source and mode of information that constitute the distinguishing features of the two genres. The analysis shows that the high frequency of saw in popular articles refers to the narrative of history, and to the evidence provided by historical characters and sources, rather than by the speaker. The frequency of the attributor according in academic journal articles, on the other hand, clearly qualifies as evidentiality in the narrative of historiography, and acts as a marker of the importance of sources in historical reasoning. The different frequencies thus seem to be related to the different communicative and social functions of the two genres and to be closely connected with the triptych of narratives (Bondi 2015) involved in historical discourse.

2016 - Textbooks [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter deals with the role of textbooks in the development of EAP. Satarting with the nature and structure of textbooks, it focuses on corpus-based approaches and critical approaches to the study of textbooks as a genre and draws conclusions on the role of textbooks in EAP practice

2016 - The future in reports: Prediction, commitment and legitimization in CSR [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

ABSTRACT - Company disclosures are often looked at as narrative rather than argumentative or directive texts. And yet “irrealis” statements – references to future or hypothetical processes – do play a role and contribute greatly to the construction of corporate identity. Combining a corpus and a discourse perspective, the paper looks at references to the future in a corpus of CSR (corporate social responsibility) reports. After a preliminary analysis of frequency data, a case study of markers of futurity is presented, focusing on ways of expressing prediction or commitment, together with attitudinal values or evaluations of importance. Keywords and phraseology are studied to highlight how prediction and commitment statements are used to legitimize the company's (past) conduct.

2015 - Bridging across Communities: Time frames and reader's engagement in popular history [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Communicating knowledge to members of different discourse communities requires “mediation” across knowledge asymmetries but also an understanding of the different purposes that may characterize general interest in specialized knowledge. The process can be seen as one of bridging across discourse communities. The process of re-contextualization is particularly intriguing when studied in the field of the humanities, where re-contextualizing is not just a matter of giving the basic preliminary knowledge, but rather a process of highlighting the value of the area investigated, its relevance to the everyday life of readers, or to the communities and identities that characterize their personal experience. The present study looks at deictic references to present time in the discourse of history, exploring how they influence textual sequences and how they involve the different chronotopes (the reader’s present and the past of the historical narrative). Focusing on markers of present reference, the study is based on the assumption that deictics contribute greatly to Reader’s engagement and to the re-contextualization strategies often adopted by history. Combining the tools of discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, the analysis adopts a cross-generic perspective. The aim is to explore the process of re-contextualization in the dissemination of historical knowledge through a study of journal articles and popular articles written by professional historians. Popular history is shown to make makes careful use of deixis in aligning the reader’s perspective with the writer’s or even that of historical characters. In the re-contextualizing of history, time, place and identity seem to play a major role. By careful use of deictic spaces, readers and their world are turned into the privileged point of view from which specialized historical knowledge is looked at.

2015 - Discourse In and Through the Media. Recontextualizing and Reconceptualizing Expert Discourse [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; Mazzi, Davide
abstract

This book stems from the 2013 CLAVIER Conference held in Modena in November 2013 and includes a selection of the papers presented on that occasion. As the title suggests, the aim of the conference was to stimulate the debate on a variety of aspects related to the representation of specialized discourse in and through the media, e.g. voice and point of view, argumentative practices, knowledge construction, multimodality, re-contextualization and re-conceptualization of knowledge, and peer-to-peer communication within genres aimed at knowledge dissemination and popularization. The conference was therefore intended to encourage cross-generic and cross-disciplinary investigations, in an attempt to advocate integrated approaches to the study of media discourse with a view to both theoretical background and practical applications. Recontextualizing and reconceptualizing expert discourse has become increasingly important in modern society. Yet although Knowledge Dissemination (KD) is now receiving increasing attention, the discursive strategies and the pragmatics of KD in and through the media have yet to receive serious consideration. Knowledge dissemination can be seen as a form of ‘asymmetric’ communication between experts and lay-people, or ‘mediation’ of knowledge and intercultural and ‘inter-discourse communication’ (Scollon & Scollon 1995) between members of different cultures, discourse communities and communities of practice. This amounts to re-contextualization (Calsamiglia & Van Dijk 2004) and inclusion of types of ‘intralinguistic’ translations, whereby simplification, explicitation, reformulation (Mauranen 2006), reconceptualization of terms in the subject field ‘translate’ exclusive expertise into ‘comprehensible’ knowledge, suitable to the background of the addressee. In this connection, knowledge dissemination (Engberg 2014: knowledge mediation) is seen as a three-fold intra-linguistic and cross-cultural process that combines representation, construction and communication of knowledge intended for specific addressees (Kastberg 2010; Ditlevsen 2011). The volume is intended to encourage cross-generic and cross-disciplinary investigations, in an attempt to advocate integrated approaches to the study of media discourse with a view to both theoretical background and practical applications. Secondly, it aims to foster debate on a variety of aspects related to the representation of specialized discourse in and through the media, e.g. voice and point of view, argumentative practices, knowledge construction, multimodality, re-contextualization and re-conceptualization of knowledge (hence, knowledge transmission), opinion formation and peer-to-peer communication within web genres aimed at knowledge dissemination and popularization in and through traditional, digital and social media. Taken together, the contributions to the volume provide extensive exemplification of the type of research that is currently conducted on these issues. The variety of the questions posed and the wide array of methods used in the chapters are therefore intended to make a substantial contribution to sharpen existing knowledge and further the ongoing debate among scholars in the field. TABLE OF CONTENTS Marina Bondi: Preface Marina Bondi, Silvia Cacchiani & Davide Mazzi: Discourse in and through the media. Recontextualizing and reconceptualizing expert knowledge I – NEW MEDIA AND NEW MULTIMODAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR KNOWLEDGE DISSEMINATION 1. Cornelius Puschmann: A digital mob in the ivory tower? Context collapse in scholarly communication online 2. Jan Engberg & Carmen Daniela Maier: Exploring the hypermodal communication of academic knowledge beyond generic structure II – DISSEMINATING SCHOLARLY KNOWLEDGE 3. Susan Hunston: Talking science: Science in the news on BBC radio 4. Elsa Pic & Grégory Furmaniak: Comparison as a mode of re-conceptualization in popularization: Focus

2015 - Discourse In and Through the media: Recontextualizing and reconceptualizing expert discourse [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; Mazzi, Davide
abstract

Recontextualizing and reconceptualizing expert discourse has become increasingly important in modern society. Yet although Knowledge Dissemination (KD) is now receiving increasing attention, the discursive strategies and the pragmatics of KD in and through the media have yet to receive serious consideration. Knowledge dissemination can be seen as a form of ‘asymmetric’ communication between experts and lay-people, or ‘mediation’ of knowledge and intercultural and ‘inter-discourse communication’ (Scollon & Scollon 1995) between members of different cultures, discourse communities and communities of practice. This amounts to re-contextualization (Calsamiglia & Van Dijk 2004) and inclusion of types of ‘intralinguistic’ translations, whereby simplification, explicitation, reformulation (Mauranen 2006), reconceptualization of terms in the subject field ‘translate’ exclusive expertise into ‘comprehensible’ knowledge, suitable to the background of the addressee. In this connection, knowledge dissemination (Engberg 2014: knowledge mediation) is seen as a three-fold intra-linguistic and cross-cultural process that combines representation, construction and communication of knowledge intended for specific addressees (Kastberg 2010; Ditlevsen 2011). The main point of this chapter is to consider and discuss research on the recontextualization and reconceptualization of knowledge in and through the media, across genres and knowledge domains. Second, it gives an overview of the chapters included in the volume, thus addressing the tensions embedded in internal and external scholarly communication, KD in corporate communication and from institutions to lay audience, and audience empowerment in traditional and new media. The main emphasis lies on cross-generic and cross-disciplinary investigations, in an attempt to advocate integrated approaches to the study of media discourse with a view to both theoretical background and practical applications, and to foster debate on a variety of aspects related to the representation of specialized discourse in and through the media, e.g. voice and point of view, argumentative practices, knowledge construction, multimodality, re-contextualization and re-conceptualization of knowledge (hence, knowledge transmission), opinion formation and peer-to-peer communication within web genres aimed at knowledge dissemination and popularization in and through traditional, digital and social media.

2015 - I am wild about cabbage: evaluative ‘semantic sequences’ and cross-linguistic (dis)similarities [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Diani, Giuliana
abstract

The paper investigates the phraseology of evaluation in two comparable corpora of discussions from blogs in Italian and in English. Subjectivity markers are taken as an indication of the significant role that the writer’s ‘self’ plays in the genre, ideal territory for an analysis of the language of evaluation. After considering collocates and grammar patterns of the selected markers, the analysis centres on evaluative ‘semantic sequences’ by aligning typical recurrent surface arrangements with strings of prototypical meaning elements such as ‘entity or process evaluated’, ‘evaluation’ and different ‘sources of evaluation’. Four types of sequences are identified: ‘basic’, ‘framed’, ‘dialogic’ and ‘concessive’. The results attest for substantial semantic similarities over and above lexico-syntactic and inter-linguistic mismatches. Semantic sequences can be shown to be useful tools for cross-linguistic analysis.

2015 - Knowledge Dissemination in the Digital Era. Language and Episteme. INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE. 18-20 October, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Italy [Altro]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; Coliva, Annalisa
abstract

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS The CLAVIER group at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and LUIQ Lund are currently organizing a conference on KNOWLEDGE DISSEMINATION IN THE DIGITAL ERA: LANGUAGE AND EPISTEME (KDDE), Modena, 18 - 20 November 2015. The conference brings together know-how and expertize from philosophy (social epistemology), information technology and (applied) linguistics to cast new light on the link between knowledge dissemination strategies as devices for recontextualization and reconceptualization, and credibility and trust generation in selected research blogs, online reference works (e.g. free, also non-institutional, encyclopedias), websites such as Academia.edu, search engines (notably, Google), etc. (See below for more on the conference.) CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION Knowledge construction and knowledge dissemination are key to the socio-economic development of contemporary society and the cultural growth of EU citizens. More particularly, knowledge dissemination in the digital world is now making a significant move from traditional genres to new forms of web-mediated communication. This, however, leaves many open questions about the whys and wherefores of relevance and credibility, trust and reputation, effective and efficient linguistic choices, and multimodal communication. We therefore bring together know-how and expertize from philosophy (social epistemology), information technology and (applied) linguistics to cast new light on the link between knowledge dissemination strategies as devices for recontextualization and reconceptualization, and credibility and trust generation in selected research blogs, online reference works (e.g. free, also non-institutional, encyclopedias), websites such as Academia.edu, search engines (notably, Google), etc. Using the tools of corpus linguistics and genre studies, linguists will concentrate on linguistic and multimodal knowledge dissemination strategies that may improve or undermine the transfer of high-quality information (research results) to peers and professionals, as well as to different types of lay-audiences in highly asymmetric contexts (e.g. children). From a complementary perspective, philosophers will concentrate on epistemic reputation and objective selection of websites, and on the subsequent inclusion of relevant high-quality information. Third, the contribution of information technology will allow investigation into issues such as algorithms for website selection and listing by search engines (Google.com), as well as reflection on document and web-page design. INVITED PLENARY SPEAKERS: Linguistic strand: Naomi Baron – American U, Washington, USA; Anna Mauranen ? U of Helsinki, Finland; Cornelius Puschmann ? U of Friedrichshafen, Germany; Josef Schmied - Chemnitz U of Technology, Germany; Marina Sbisà/Paolo Labinaz - U of Trieste, Italy; Rita Cucchiara - U of Modena; Stefano Ossicini - U of Modena. Social epistemology strand: Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij – U of Kent, UK; Catherine Felix – Lund U, Sweden; Elisabeth Fricker, Oxford U, UK; Emmanuel Genot – Lund U, Sweden; Magnus Jiborn - Lund U, Sweden; Erik Olson - Lund University, Sweden; Gloria Origgi - Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS, France; Rasmus Rendsvig – Lund U; Judith Simon – U of Vienna, Austria, U of Copenhagen, Denmark; Ylva von Gerber – Lund U, Sweden. WORKING LANGUAGE: English.

2015 - La linguistica dei corpora [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Diani, Giuliana
abstract

Negli ultimi decenni, si è assistito a un vivacissimo dibattito in cui gli studi sulle lingue, oltre a dare il proprio contributo ai settori più tradizionali dell’indagine linguistica, hanno aperto nuovi percorsi di ricerca. La linguistica dei corpora ne è un esempio. L'articolo si propone di collocarne lo sviluppo in un contesto teorico e metodologico, menzionando i risultati più significativi della ricerca raggiunti sia nel contesto scientifico internazionale sia in quello italiano. Partendo dal contributo dei corpora alla ricerca descrittiva (con particolare attenzione al confronto interlinguistico e ai linguaggi specialistici), verranno proposte alcune riflessioni – in prospettiva di educazione linguistica – sull’apporto della linguistica dei corpora alla didattica della lingua in generale (e all’insegnamento/apprendimento del lessico in particolare).

2015 - Language policy in web-mediated scientific knowledge dissemination: A case study of risk communication across genres and languages [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The use of English as a scientific and research language in Europe has greatly extended its potentialities in the context of the World Wide Web. Language choice becomes a key issue in European agencies in charge of communicating scientific knowledge at national, supranational and international level. The chapter looks at the language policies adopted by one of these agencies and at the strategies implemented to disseminate specialized knowledge through the different genres of its website. The case study proposed is that of EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) and the issue chosen for the case study is that of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). The chapter explores the genres constituting the thematic sections of the website – moving from scientific reports to guidance documents to website news and popularizing videos – as well as forms and functions of expressions of ‘risk’ in matters of food safety. The focus is on the interplay between language choice and communicative genres in the dissemination of expert scientific knowledge, where English is the dominant language in the most technical sections and translation into other languages is only involved in the introductory and news sections. A small-scale study of translation issues is presented on the basis of a parallel English-Italian corpus of news.

2015 - Preface [The Dissemination of Contemporary Knowledge in English: Genres, Discourse Strategies and Professional Practices] [Prefazione o Postfazione]
Bondi, M.
abstract

2015 - Probably most important of all. Importance markers in academic and popular history articles [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Evaluations of importance are central to the nature of academic discourse, with its need to establish and share disciplinary knowledge. This study shows how importance markers help guide the reader in recognising coherence relationbs, while reflecting the value system of the community. Using corpora of journal and popular articles in history, the analysis examines nouns and adjectives of importance, adverbials and framing statements. By constituting identification and cohesive structures that thematise evaluation and increase writer visibility, importance markers contribute greatly to knowledge construction in research articles, while in knowledge dissemination they are less frequent and oriented towards generalising.

2014 - Abstracts in academic writing [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; R., Lorés Sanz
abstract

The book brings together a rich variety of perspectives on abstracts as an academic genre. Drawing on genre analysis and corpus linguistics, the studies collected here combine attention to generic structure with emphasis on language variation and change, thus offering a multi-perspective view on a genre that is becoming one of the most important in present-day research communication. The chapters are organized into three sections, each one offering distinct but sometimes combined perspectives on the exploration of this academic genre. The first section looks at variation across cultures through studies comparing English with Spanish, Italian and German, while also including considerations on variation across genders or the native/non-native divide. The second section centres on variation across disciplines and includes a wide range of studies exploring disciplinary identities and communities, as well as different degrees of centrality in the disciplinary community. The third and final section explores language and genre change by looking at how authorial voice and metadiscourse have changed over the past few decades under the influence of different media and different stakeholders.

2014 - Academic English across Cultures [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; C., Williams
abstract

Il volume raccoglie interventi sull'inglese del discorso accademico in prospettiva cross-culturale. Gli interventi affrontano aspetti del discorso scritto e parlato in ottica sia analitico-descrittiva, sia metologico-didattica

2014 - Changing voices: authorial voice in abstracts [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Diverse 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.

2014 - Connecting science. Organizational units in specialist and non-specialist discourse. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The 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.

2014 - Foreword [ESP Across Cultures: Academic English across Cultures] [Breve Introduzione]
Bondi, Marina; C., Williams
abstract

breve introduzione al volume curato dagli autori sul tema dell'EAP

2014 - Historical Academic Writing between local and transnational communities [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Sezzi, Annalisa
abstract

In 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.

2014 - Il progetto IBI/BEI nella scuola primaria: Rapporto di monitoraggio [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Cavalieri, Silvia; Bondi, Marina; Poppi, Franca; Stermieri, Anna
abstract

Obiettivo del monitoraggio è quello di fornire un quadro che consenta una riflessione sul progetto e, più ampiamente, sull’istruzione bilingue come componente curricolare e modalità operativa. L’azione di monitoraggio ha coinvolto tutte le parti interessate: dirigenti, docenti, genitori e bambini. Gli ambiti di indagine sono stati: a) motivazione ed atteggiamento di alunni, personale e genitori; b) buone pratiche; c) competenze acquisite dagli alunni. Gli strumenti utilizzati per raccogliere le informazioni sono stati molteplici: a) un questionario rivolto a tutti i docenti del progetto su: motivazioni, modalità di progettazione, modalità di implementazione e impatto dell’esperienza IBI/BEI, nonché esigenze formative del docente1; b) interviste semi-strutturate/ focus group con i dirigenti scolastici e con un campione rappresentativo di docenti, di bambini e di genitori, per approfondire motivazioni e percezioni presso tutte e sei le scuole coinvolte; c) analisi di un task comune somministrato a tutti gli alunni, per ottenere una misurazione preliminare dei risultati conseguiti nella lingua inglese. La relazione documenta le diverse fasi della ricerca ed evidenzia i risultati positivi del progetto.

2014 - Integrating corpus and genre approaches: phraseology and voice across EAP genres. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

This chapter deals with a study of personal pronouns in context and aims at revealing trends in popular and research articles written by historians. Focusing on two pronouns that turn out to be positive and negative keywords when comparing popular and research writing, the analysis has focused first on distinguishing averred from attributed forms and then on patterns of semantic preference and semantic sequence. Corpus and genre have played a key role in approaches to English for Academic Purposes (EAP) over the past 20 years. The interplay between the two notions, far from leading to contradictory methods, has proved extremely fruitful both from a descriptive and from a pedagogic point of view (Swales 2002). The integration of tools that can be related to the two notions has provided excellent means for the analysis of language variation across genres, cultures and disciplines. Swales’s (1990) seminal book on genre analysis initiated a vast area of EAP studies combining descriptive and pedagogic interest in the role of genre-based studies (Bhatia 1993, 2004; Berkenkotter/Huckin 1995; Johns 1997, 2002; Hyland 2000, 2006; Paltridge 2001; Swales 2004). Genre, defined as a class of communicative events with a particular purpose recognized by a discourse community (Swales 1990), rapidly became the focus of analysis and the key organizing principle of pedagogic programmes. Genres are staged, goal-oriented social processes in Hallidayan terms (cf. Halliday/Matthiesen 2004, Martin/Rose 2007). This means that they are described in terms of sequences of moves and steps (representing their generic structure) with elements of variation: there can be optional moves, a flexible order, and patterns of embedding and repetition. The fact that they are seen as social processes accounts for their dynamism (change across different contexts, in response to new media or to changes in the cultural and disciplinary background) and for the major role played by intertextual reference to other texts. Corpus approaches to language analysis (e.g. Sinclair 1991, 2004; Stubbs 1996, 2001; Tognini Bonelli 2001; Hunston 2002) have greatly contributed to register studies, as “a corpus is a collection of naturally occurring language text, chosen to characterize a state or a variety of a language” (Sinclair 1991: 171). Specialized corpora can thus be used to describe the practices of particular discourse communities (Biber et al. 1998; Ghadessy et al. 2001; Gavioli 2005; Connor/Upton 2004; Biber 2006). Wordlists reveal the range and frequency of occurrence of language items; concordances allow the study of specific items in their lexico-grammatical, semantic and pragmatic environment; phraseology contributes to the exploration of systematic relations between text and form (Sinclair 2004). Genre studies have rapidly taken advantage of the potential of corpus linguistics (e.g. Hyland 1998; Bondi 1999) and have become firmly rooted in a growing body of literature focusing on the integration of corpus and discourse approaches (Partington et al. 2004; Baker 2006, Ädel/Reppen 2008). This means relating textual practices to language choice, so that statements about genre can be supported with reference to data and, on the other hand, corpus data are not only described but also interpreted in terms of textual structure and social action (Bondi 2008). Attention to frequency and patterns highlights the existence of systematic relations in texts on a functional or semantic basis. The whole process can be seen as a form of interaction between the analyst and different types of data and methodological tools. Moving beyond the corpus-based vs corpus-driven distinction (Tognini-Bonelli 1993), but still keeping the distinction in mind as a heuristic tool, corpus work can be seen as both ‘catalysing’ the analysis (in a corpus-driven direction) and supporting the interpretation of data in terms of discourse (in a corpus-based dire

2014 - Introduction [Abstracts in Academic Discourse. Variation and Change] [Breve Introduzione]
Lorés Sanz, Rosa; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The introduction points out the relevance of the book in the context of linguistic research on academic writing, in particular focusing of the various perspectives that approach academic abstracts as a genre.

2013 - Academic Discourse across Cultures [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Il volume - special issue di una rivista - affronta il tema della variazione cross-culturale del discorso accademico e contiene contributi di numerosi significativi autori internazionali

2013 - Argumentation in higher education. Improving practice through theory and research [Recensione in Rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

review of Andrews' work, with reference to the field of argumentation studies, literacy education and English for academic purposes

2013 - Foreword [Volume 10 of ESP Across Cultures] [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Foreword to an edited special issue of the journal, focusing on academic English across cultures

2013 - Historians as recounters: description across genres [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The basically narrative nature of history is widely recognized and temporal notions are often focused on in the applied linguistics literature on historical discourse (Coffin 2006). Setting the scene for the narrative, however, is often equally important. How do historians represent the places where the action takes place? How are these represented in popularising discourse? The paper aims at providing an overview of variation across specialist and non-specialist genres in the discourse of history. The functions of descriptive elements are explored in two corpora: a corpus of academic journal articles and a corpus of popularisations (from History today). The methodology adopted combines a corpus and a discourse perspective (Baker 2006) while focusing on the lexis of space representation (Gerbig 2008). Analytical tools from studies of description (Merlini Barbaresi 2009) suggest focusing on the construction of visual elements and subjectivity- selective elements, verbs of movement/ perception, markers of viewer’s perspective and position. These are seen to play a role in textual interaction and in narrative structures (especially in creating the setting and relating it to the theme). Corpus tools used are keywords (Wordsmith Tools 5) and concordance analysis of selected items (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) A preliminary analysis of frequency data offers an overview of quantitative variation. Special attention is paid to existential "there" as an Attention-managing device (Ehlich 2007), drawing attention to elements in the 'space' of the world of the story ("there was hardly any street") and places in the text/discourse ("there are important differences"). In the narrative, existential "there" contributes to a) Presenting actors/processes (characterizing individuals in the 'story') b) Interpreting events (mostly followed by abstract nouns - "there was a spectacular shift", "a rigid division", "a steady growth" - and often negative, measured against unstated expectations: "little attempt", "no conclusive evidence", "no institutional distinction") The representation of places is shown to contribute to creating the setting and stages in the narrative, highlighting the significance of the data and the conclusions produced, leading the reader’s gaze from exemplification to generalization and mapping the territory of current debate with different degrees of explicitness. Existential patterns and deictics play important textual functions in descriptions, as resources by which the author negotiates his/her position with the reader according to genre-specific orientations: present-day relevance in popularizations, the line of argument in journal articles.

2013 - Introduction [Space, Time and the Construction of Identity. Discursive Indexicality in Cultural, Institutional and Professional Fields] [Breve Introduzione]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The Introduction aims at positioning the volume in the context of the studies on the construction of cultural,institutional and professional identities in discourse. In particular this volume focuses on the representation of space-time as a fundamental tool of identity construction.

2012 - Authorial voice in textbooks: between exposition and argument [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The notion of voice has been discussed from different perspectives in academic discourse studies, often in relation to discursive identity and self-representation in research genres. Not much attention has been paid, however, to what constitutes authorial voice in a textbook. Textbook writers tend to hide behind the values of the community, often attributing stance to the community in general, but attention should be paid to ways of expressing epistemic and deontic modality, attitudinal values or evaluations of importance. Focusing on authorial voice in academic textbooks, this chapter looks at writers’ professional identities, studying how writers relate discursively to their object of discourse as well as to other textual voices, especially other discourse participants - the student-reader and the discourse community at large. The chapter presents an overview of the literature on voice in textbooks showing that this has often looked at textbooks as merely expositive texts, concealing the argumentative nature of science in an attempt to offer an established view of the discipline. The literature review also shows that a range of lexico-grammatical tools can be used in the typical moves of instructional discourse. These include self-mention, forms of engagement and markers of evaluation, highlighting the writer’s interpretative position in the text and the dialogic involvement of other voices: issues like factivity, hedging, attribution, metadiscourse and repetitive textual structures can contribute to the voice of the textbook writer addressing the student as well as the colleague. The overview of the literature is followed by a sample study of a corpus of academic history, representative of the authorial voices university students are exposed to in their early studies. Historical discourse seems to deviate from some specific tendencies noted in the hard and social sciences. Hedging, for example, is found to be more frequent in textbook chapters than in journal articles, but it is also accompanied by greater display of data and facts. The overview of positive and negative keywords reveals a varied use of authorial voice: the Textbook writer moves between the Recounter (with an emphasis on facts and the narrative) and the Intepreter (assessing historical actors and processes of change), whereas the researcher talking to other researchers in the journal article highlights the Academic Arguer (placing the research in the context of a debate). Markers of importance prove to be in line with this tendency, variously showing a preference for forms that assess entities and processes, rather than alternative perspectives. The voice of the Interpreter, supported by the authority of the Recounter, may well be the most suitable for a genre addressing such a wide range of readers with their background knowledge and expertise.

2012 - CLAVIER 2012: Corpus and Genre in English for Academic Purposes, International Seminar (Modena 12-13 April 2012) [Altro]
Bondi, Marina; Diani, Giuliana
abstract

Research on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has shown an increasing interest in the developments in corpus linguistics and genre analysis over the last two decades. The major contribution to EAP has come in the description of the specific features of academic discourse. The joint contribution of corpus-based studies and discourse analytical methods can be seen as one of the reasons for the current burgeoning of EAP studies, with important repercussions on didactic approaches. A significant development in this respect is the recent change of focus from EAP teaching to EAP learning. The Seminar focused on such issues in order to provide a better definition of the methods of investigation of academic English, the tools, the approaches, the new perspectives, bringing together two complementary strands of linguistic investigation – corpus analysis and genre analysis. The Seminar described the extent to which the English language and generic resources are creatively exploited in academic discourse, variously responding to or determining new scenarios, with a special interest in technological developments which have radically changed the way knowledge is disseminated across academic communities. This is also the main general objective of the CLAVIER research group (Corpus and Language Variation Research Group), a research centre recently founded by the Universities of Bergamo, Firenze, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Rome “Sapienza”, and Siena, and currently based in Modena. The point of departure is the invaluable contribution of two complementary strands of linguistic investigation – corpus analysis and discourse analysis – to research on language variation in English, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. One of the purposes of the CLAVIER Seminar 2012 was to reinforce national and international cooperation with scholars and research centres that can widen and complement the interest in English academic discourse currently driving research at the centre. The seminar brought together different perspectives on English academic discourse. Plenaries, papers and the round table gave a special insight into the following topics: 1) genre and textual analysis in EAP; 2) corpus analysis in EAP; 3) contrastive EAP rhetoric; 4) pedagogical implications in EAP; 5) English as Lingua Franca in academic settings; 6) translation and terminology in EAP.

2012 - Connectives [Voce in Dizionario o Enciclopedia]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Connectives (or connectors) (French connectif/connecteur, Italian connettivo/connettore, Spanish conector, German Konnektor/Konnektiv) are a key feature of language in use and have been studied from many different points of view—syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and cognitive. The article presents an overview of recent approaches to connectives.

2012 - LINKD 2012 Workshop - Language(s) In Knowledge Dissemination. Modena, 11-13 October 2012. University of Modena and Reggio Emilia [Altro]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; Seidenari, Corrado; Sezzi, Annalisa; Sorrentino, Daniela; Diani, Giuliana; Poppi, Franca
abstract

Knowledge Dissemination (KD) has become increasingly important in modern society for the socio-economic and cultural development of citizens. The issue of how experts communicate their specialist knowledge to lay-people has been widely discussed in the press and is often tackled in terms of "translating" otherwise exclusive knowledge into more comprehensible language. Comprehensibility can be seen as a matter of simplification, explicitation or formulation in terms that are suitable to the level of knowledge of the addressee. The issue can also be studied in terms of re-contextualizing knowledge. As the applied linguistics literature on popularising is not extensive, useful indications can come from studies on intercultural communication, when looking at KD as "mediation" of knowledge between members of different communities, each with their peculiar cultural and communicative practices. KD can be seen as an example of "inter-discourse communication" i.e. communication that cuts across the boundaries of discourse communities characterized by different types of knowledge. While the issue of KD has often been studied in relation to sciences that require exclusive expertise - e.g. chemistry or physics, the LINKD workshop would like to consider both "hard" and "soft" sciences. The objective of the workshop is to explore the language processes involved in KD in a theoretical, descriptive and applied perspective. In particular, it aims to provide a clearer definition of the nature of popularizing discourse, by means of an analysis of its strategies across disciplines and languages, also including the discursive construction of professional identity and intercultural communication, a closer lexical investigation of specific domains, the deployment of lexicographic tools and an investigation of the use of visual elements in popularisation. Two complementary strands of linguistic investigation - corpus analysis and genre analysis - will be brought together to ascertain how far KD is actually characterized by intense use of metadiscourse, forms of readers' engagement, systematic use of definitions, reformulation, higher degrees of explicitness, careful use of word-image relationship. The basic strands of analysis concern: i) intralinguistic analysis of the recontextualization process that leads from a specialized texts to its popularization outside the circle of domain-specific experts; ii) multilingual analysis of the internal features of knowledge dissemination, aimed at defining its strategies in different genres, media, domains; iii) thematic exploration of the multiple formats of KD, ranging from introductory readings to scientific reports, travel literature or children's books.

2012 - The evolution of the abstract as a genre: 1988-2008. The case of applied linguistics [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Cavalieri, Silvia
abstract

Academic genres have been the centre of genre-based discourse studies over the last two decades and the rhetorical structures (IMRD) of the abstract have been tackled from a variety of perspectives (Swales, 1990; Ventola, 1994). The present study investigates the evolution of the abstract as a genre over a time span of twenty years (1988-2008) considering in particular the field of applied linguistics in order to demonstrate the rapid changes in communicative practices and linguistic patterns due to the pressure of technological innovations. The analysis is carried out on two corpora of abstracts (70 for 1988, 70 for 1998 and 70 for 2008) collected from applied linguistics journals and the study proposes an integration of corpus and discourse perspectives to make two main points. Firstly, the significant change in the genre textual patterns corresponds to a shift of the focus of the discipline from a more theoretical to a more empirical research perspective outweighing the results and discussion sections. Secondly, this shift also produced an interesting evolution of the role of the researcher and of his/her presence in the genre and consequently in the academic discourse community. To achieve these purposes, the analysis considers the distribution of metadiscourse items in the genre focusing the attention on frame markers (Hyland 2005) for what concerns textual metadiscourse, and on self mentions (Hyland 2005) for what concerns interpersonal metadiscourse. Results will show an increase of textual metadiscursive items linked to empirical considerations on data and results discussion and at the same time will highlight a massive presence of personal self mentions of the researcher from 1988 to 2008 abstracts.

2012 - Voice in textbooks: Between exposition and argument [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, M.
abstract

2012 - and now i’m finally of the mind to say i hope the whole ship goes down…: markers of subjectivity and evaluative phraseology in blogs [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bondi, Marina; Seidenari, Corrado
abstract

The paper is part of a research project on evaluative meanings in Italian and English web-logs. Web-logs may be regarded as increasingly popular, virtual arenas where information (including news) is produced, shared and – crucially – commented on evaluatively. Our focus here is on how bloggers evaluate the news in English and in Italian. Looking at business, politics and sport news on dedicated web-logs, we investigate the phraseology most frequently employed in comments on a piece of news. The data for our study are taken from the Business, Politics and Sport sections of a blog corpus that collects texts dating from September 2008 to September 2009: in all 3,042,023 running words. Our methodology is adapted from Gledhill's (2000) study on Salient Grammatical Words (SGW). We start with an overview of the keyword lists extracted from the blog corpus, looking at potential markers of the nature and structure of news blogs. We then focus on markers of subjectivity, draw their collocational profile, identify evaluative uses in context, and, following Hunston (2008) and Groom (2010), explore the semantic sequences they are characterized by. Markers of subjectivity are found to be involved in similar semantic sequences in the two languages, though characterized by different syntactic patterns and collocational profiles. The analysis confirms the importance of evaluation in blogs, as well as the key role of semantic sequences in a contrastive analysis of patterns.

2012 - “A hypnotic viewing experience: Promotional features in the language of exhibition press announcements” [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Lazzeretti, C:
abstract

Museums have become fully active cultural agents, pursuing educational aims but also trying to attract the largest number of visitors. Exhibition press announcements (EPAs) issued by museums reflect this tendency and address journalists as if they were ‘customers’ in a very competitive market. Building on Bhatia’s work on promotional genres (1993, 2004) and recent corpus-based studies devoted to press releases (Catenaccio 2008; Lindholm 2008; McLaren and Gurâu 2005), this paper investigates lexico-grammatical forms typical of EPAs with the aim to demonstrate that they carry a strong promotional intent and reflect the value-system of the professional communities involved, i.e. art journalists and museum professionals. The study was carried out on a corpus of contemporary Anglo-American EPAs and shows the recurrent use of linguistic patterns that express positive evaluation of the exhibition, especially with regard to the semantic areas of novelty, quality, extensiveness and exclusiveness. Emotional linguistic features are also used in order to create ‘news value’ and excite curiosity around the artists and their artworks.

2011 - Appartenenze Multiple: prospettive interdisciplinari su immigrazione, identità e dialogo interculturale [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; Buonanno, Giovanna; Giacobazzi, Cesare
abstract

L'interesse per lo studio dei rapporti fra culture si è notevolmente intensificato negli ultimi decenni, per l'impatto di consistenti flussi migratori e di una dimensione largamente globale delle relazioni economiche e culturali. La centralità del tema è particolarmente evidente in alcuni ambiti disciplinari: gli studi linguistici, letterari e giuridici sentono facilmente l'esigenza di confrontarsi con la diversità, sia che si tratti di guardare a questionidi cambiamento linguistico, di contatto culturale, di multilinguismo, di politica linguistica o di relazioni internazionali.Il tema delle appartenenze multiple costituisce il luogo di incontro di diverse discipline in questo volume. Sia che si guardi al mondo attuale, caratterizzato da globalizzazione e intensi flussi migratori, sia che si guardi alle origini coloniali del contatto o alle forme di contatto che sempre hanno caratterizzato le culture con la circolazione delle persone e delle idee, quello che interessa è la possibilità di stabilire un confronto e un dialogo fra mondi che si incontrano, talvolta anche in seno ad un solo individuo o ad una sola comunità.

2011 - CLAVIER 09 - Corpus Linguistics and Language Variation [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; G., Palumbo
abstract

The 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).

2011 - From Ninni Puf to Uini il Puh: translations of a classic in the making [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Sezzi, Annalisa
abstract

Since its publication in 1926, Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne has been a never-ending source of rewritings. The aim of this paper is to analyze its two first Italian translations, so as to get a sense of how translations can reveal how a book of children's literature establishes itself as a classic. The first Italian translation of Winnie-the-Pooh is dated 1936 and was issued by the publishing house Il Genio (Rome). The translator is Lila Jahn and the title is L'orsachiotto Ninni il Puf. The second translation in chronological order was issued by the same publishing house 13 years later, in a translation by Elda Zuccaro, under the title Uini il Puh. By focusing particularly on proper names, wordplays and other elements typical of children's books, a plausible hypothesis can be formulated: the second translation seems to be a sort of philological rectification of the first one, after the book had achieved huge popularity around the world and was on the verge of being recognized as a classic of children's literature.

2011 - Introduction [ CLAVIER 09 – Corpus Linguistics and Language Variation] [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; Palumbo, Giuseppe
abstract

Corpus-based research is not in opposition to other methodologies of language investigation, such as those favoured by researchers studying language as a system or an ability. The analysis of corpora can shed light on language used as a medium of communication, especially where it successfully manages to relate the patterns and regularities it identifies to accurate descriptions of users and situations. At the same time, corpus research can also provide insights into some systemic aspects of a language. In this respect, the way has been shown (as in so many other areas of language research) by the work of the late John Sinclair (see, in particular, Sinclair 1991; Sinclair, Mauranen 2006), who never hesitated to draw implications from corpus studies that were of significant relevance not only for applied linguistics but also for the description of language as a whole. Individual papers are briefly summarized and discussed in order to unveil the potential of corpus linguistics for the study of variation across languages and language varieties, genres and time.

2011 - Introduzione [Appartenenze Multiple. Prospettive interdisciplinari su immigrazione, identità e dialogo interculturale] [Prefazione o Postfazione]
Bondi, Marina; G., Buonanno; C., Giacobazzi
abstract

L'introduzione affronta il tema delle appartenenze multiple in prospettiva lingusitica, individua le complesse prospettive multidisciplinari richieste dall'argomento e introduce i saggi presentati nel volume

2011 - Other Languages, other Cultures [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The aimof this chapter is to explore how the study of culture can be enhanced by a plurilingual perspective through cross-linguistic (and cross-cultural) analysis. The inextricable link between our perceptions of language, culture and identity suggests that cintactwith other languages contributes to cultural awareness. Starting from some general comments on the interplay between language, identity and culture, the section moves on to highlight perspectives that may well complement those presented in previous sections and help outline a background for current debate on the study of culture - cross-cultural analysis and the study of cultural keywords.

2011 - Promoting the theatre production presentations as a genre [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Stermieri, Anna
abstract

La sempre più ampia diffusione dei generi promozionali ha attirato un crescente interesse da parte dei linguisti. Numerosi studi si sono concentrati sugli effetti che le potenzialità comunicative legate al World Wide Web hanno avuto su generitradizionali, causati dall’inevitabile processo di remediation (Bolter, Grusin 1999), accompagnato da aspetti di multimodalità e dalle specificità della comunicazione multimediale. Tuttavia, scarsa attenzione è stata dedicata all’ambito dell’industria culturale. Questo studio si aggiunge ai pochi precedenti riguardanti generi legati alla promozione del prodotto culturale (Kathpalia 1997; Radighieri 2007) e prende in esame la web production presentation. L’analisi è basata su un piccolo corpus di production presentations (30.800 parole; 118 testi), pubblicate tra il 2009 e il 2010 sui siti web di 14 enti teatrali britannici.Una prima analisi qualitativa e quantitativa completata su un sample corpus di 28 testi ha permesso di delineare la struttura delle mosse retoriche del genere. Successivamente, l’analisi si è focalizzata sullo studio delle concordanze di play e production, al fine di descrivere le modalità con cui l’aspetto promozionaledel genere viene realizzato nel testo. I risultati mostrano la presenza di una struttura definita, che combina elementi di descrizione e valutazione tipici dei generi promozionali, e un forte uso della valutazione finalizzata alla costruzione della credibilità e dell’identità positiva dell’istituzione.

2011 - Tracking Language Change in Specialised and Professional Genres. International conference. Modena: 24-26 November 2011 University of Modena and Reggio Emilia [Altro]
Poppi, Franca; Bondi, Marina; Diani, Giuliana; Cavalieri, Silvia
abstract

The nature of genres has always been defined as both static and dynamic, functioning as discursive action within particular social, historical and cultural contexts but open to individual and collective creativity and innovation. Corpora can be powerful tools in tracking this kind of change, as clearly shown by a well-established tradition in historical linguistics, where growing interest has been shown in the diachronic analysis of specialized genres. Elements of change, however, can also be seen at work in contemporary discourse. As a consequence, there is an increasing need for diachronic approaches that may help map changes brought about for example by new technologies or globalization. Nowadays, with the recession of the traditional constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements brought about by globalization, new cultural and linguistic interconnections are being established, for example in academic and professional settings. This state of things can account both for the emergence of new ‘globalizing genres’, and for the implementation of a series of adaptations to the existing ones, as possible solutions to guarantee the success and survival of different genres in an era which celebrates the need for a ‘global reach’. The conference intends to focus on such issues in order to provide a better definition of the methods of investigation of language change, the tools, the approaches, the new perspectives, bringing together two complementary strands of linguistic investigation - corpus analysis and genre analysis. The conference purports to describe the extent to which language resources and generic resources are creatively exploited in discourse, variously responding to or determining new socio-cultural scenarios, with a special interest in technological developments which have radically changed the way specialized knowledge is disseminated. In particular, contributions are invited, focusing on textual, intertextual, organizational aspects of genres, as well as on interdiscursivity and other aspects which contextualize genres as reflections of changing disciplinary and professional cultures, investigating how their integrity is negotiated and exploited, in the following domains: Academic Professional Institutional

2011 - What is most important: marking significance in academic discourse [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The aim of this paper is to study how evaluation of importance can contribute to guiding the recognition of coherence relations. Focusing on expressions of importance and their textual and interactive functions in academic discourse, the paper explores how their frequencies, meanings and uses vary across disciplines. Using two corpora of journal articles from two “soft” disciplines: history and economics (2.5 m words each), the analysis starts with an overview of frequency data and moves on to the most frequent co-texts and collocates in which selected expressions are found, with a view to identifying collocations, multi-word markers, patterns of semantic preference and textual patterns. Expressions of importance are shown to contribute to establishing both lexico-semantic patterns and textual relations. Fronted adverbials and introductory framing clauses act as explicit discourse markers signalling emphasis in listing and general-specific patterns. Lexical choices and patterns are also related to the epistemology of the disciplines examined. The study suggests arguing for a multidimensional view of importance markers.

2010 - Abstract writing: the phraseology of self-representation [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

There has been increasing interest in the structure of research article abstracts from the point of view of genre studies. A key issue in defining the structure of the genre seems to be the relationship between the abstract and the abstracted article, i.e. the way the structure and content of the article itself are represented, in a multiple semiotic process in which words are used to represent and interpret verbal objects. By guiding the reader’s interpretation of the abstracted text, abstracts can be seen to offer a persuasive representation of the argumentative structure of the text and a representation of the writer as a competent researcher. Using comparable corpora of abstracts from applied linguistics, the paper focuses on an analysis of forms of self-representation in the genre and looks at the phraseological patterns that emerge, arguing for a view of phraseology that combines lexical, syntactic and semantic considerations. The phraseological patterns of framing sequences are shown to act also as forms of self-promotion, variously constructing the discursive identity of the writer as researcher or arguer. The analysis of the phraseological patterns of markers of claim-making such as "argue" or "suggest" shows that these play a significant role in the structure of applied linguistics abstracts. The two verbs, however, though similarly frequent, have shown different semantic preferences. The lemma "argue" in framing sequences shows a preference for personal framing, though well balanced with attribution to the text itself; the constructs originated by the process are mostly presented as full propositions (arguing that, rather than arguing for or against). The sequences with "suggest", on the other hand, tend to favour impersonal framing, having mostly research components as origins and often dynamic constructs as their object. The phraseological trends thus highlighted seem to match well with the discourse functions observed and with the preference for argue-constructions in argumentative abstracts. From a pragmatic point of view, suggest-type framing seems to contribute more to displaying membership (for example by emphasizing expertise in the research process), whereas argue-type framing emphasizes claiming significance and ultimately the argumentative dimension of scientific discourse.On a more general level, this paper looks at the structure of abstracts in terms of the general structure of the abstracted paper, focusing on two key issues in academic discourse: its reflexivity and its argumentative nature. The focus on the representational nature of abstract highlights the importance of framing sequences. Their phraseological nature is well signalled by formulaic language, but a full understanding of its working requires going beyond lexical strings and looking at the intersection of syntax and semantics.

2010 - Arguing in economics and business discourse: phraseological tools in research articles [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The paper looks at the representation of argument in the discourse of business and economics through the meta-argumentative phraseological elements that characterize research articles. The research article represents the most distinguished channel of knowledge dissemination within the community and plays a crucial role in the process of knowledge construction by providing a forum in which academics can set out their views in the form of arguments. Keeping in mind the basically dialogic and argumentative nature of academic discourse, the paper looks at the variety of phraseological tools employed by scholars in the field of business and economics in order to represent their own argument. Exploring the role of reflexive language in business and economics research articles can also be seen to contribute to an exploration of the discipline specificity of “general academic language” (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 (Sinclair and Mauranen 2006). Even closely related areas like economics and business studies can be shown to reflect different epistemologies and different rhetorical preferences. The analysis is based on two comparable corpora of journal articles of about 2.5 million words. The methodology adopted ranges from comparison of frequency data to contextual analysis of phraseological units. Focusing on the extended unit of meaning (Sinclair 1996), phraseology is identified on the basis of a combination of frequency-based information and semantics. Drawing in particular on studies of an EAP-specific phraseology, the paper looks at both quantitative and qualitative factors in order to identify the data. Quantitative analysis of repeated strings of words is seen as an excellent starting point, but this needs to be related to significant functions, such as for example discourse relations. Mere lexical repetition, furthermore, does not account for repeated patterns involving a range of semantically related lexical items, as shown in Groom (2005) and Charles (2006). The focus here is on organizational discourse units (Sinclair and Mauranen 2006) and meta-argumentative phraseology in particular. look at phraseology as a signpost to discourse organization, i.e. “elements which organize unfolding discourse”, whether addressed at interpreting the interactive moves at play or signaling textual coherence and cohesion (Sinclair and Mauranen 2006: 70). The analysis offers an overview of variation in phraseology across business and economics, while focusing on one of the most typical phraseological items of the two corpora: "on the other hand". The discussion of the data focuses on disciplines and their variety of languages.

2010 - CLAVIER 2010: Transferring Knowledge across Disciplines and Academic Communities, International Seminar (Modena, 7-8 June 2010) [Altro]
Bondi, Marina; Diani, Giuliana
abstract

The interest demonstrated by linguists for forms of knowledge dissemination across academic communities has stimulated a variety of studies in applied linguistics. The role of scientific writing in the social construction of science has contributed to founding numerous historical studies on genres of scientific communication. More recently, a number of studies have combined linguistic and rhetorical analysis and explored variation across disciplines. In a similar way, there has been an attempt to tie textual structures to social and cultural factors which may influence linguistic use, along with increased interest by analysts for knowledge dissemination between experts and non-experts for didactic purposes. The Seminar brought together the latest research of scholars engaged in the analysis of forms of knowledge dissemination across disciplines and academic communities. This is also the main interest of the CLAVIER research group (Corpus and Language Variation Research Group), a research centre recently founded by the Universities of Bergamo, Firenze, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Rome “Sapienza”, and Siena, and currently based in Modena. One of the purposes of the CLAVIER seminar 2012 was to reinforce national and international cooperation with scholars and research centres that can widen and complement the interest in knowledge dissemination from a theoretical, descriptive and applied perspective. The seminar brought together different perspectives on knowledge dissemination across disciplinary communities. Plenaries and papers gave a special insight into the following topics: 1) comparison of academic genres, disciplines and linguistic-cultural contexts; 2) argumentation in academic genres; 3) intercultural communication and academic communities; 4) English as lingua franca in expert/non-expert communication; 5) using corpora as an innovative tool in exploring academic language; 6) implications for language teaching for academic purposes. Plenaries by Ken Hyland (City University of Hong Kong) and Paul Thompson (University of Birmingham). Papers by Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli (Università di Firenze), Vanessa Leonardi (Università di Ferrara), Franca Poppi and Gillian Mansfield (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia / Università di Parma), Micheal Glenn Alessi (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia), Giuditta Caliendo (Università di Napoli, Federico II), Julia Bamford (Università di Napoli, L’Orientale), Silvia Cacchiani (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia), Davide Simone Giannoni (Università di Bergamo), Maximillian Gold and Claire Wallis (Università di Cagliari), Anthony Baldry and Rosalba Rizzo (Università di Messina), Maria Teresa Musacchio and Giuseppe Palumbo (Università di Padova / Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia) Ágnes Sándor (Xerox Research Centre Europe, France).

2010 - Conveying deontic values in English and Italian contracts: a cross-cultural analysis [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Diani, Giuliana
abstract

Legal language has been the centre of increasing scholarly interest over the last two decades, and the importance of this field is constantly growing in LSP studies. The present study investigates the deontic values conveyed by legal texts, and in particular by contracts, from a cross-cultural perspective (English and Italian). While valuable analyses have already been carried out on the topic in English legal texts, mainly statutes (Gotti & Dossena eds. 2001), cross-cultural analyses of the issue are still relatively rare in contracts, and often limited to general pragmatic features (Frade 2005). Our interest combines a focus on contrastive rhetoric (Connor 2002, 2004; Mauranen 2001), with an interest in linguistic resources in English and Italian. From this perspective, a comparative dimension of the analysis seems important, one which would allow for the study of linguistic variation across cultures. From a methodological point of view, the study adopts a position which shows the need to integrate corpus and discourse perspectives in the analysis of textual data. This allows for an integration of qualitative and quantitative methods, of text and corpus work, as well as of co-text and context analysis.

2010 - Giornata di Studi "La trasmissione del sapere nelle diverse comunità accademiche: una prospettiva plurilinguistica" (Modena, 9 giugno 2010 - Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia) [Altro]
Bondi, Marina; Diani, Giuliana; Preite, Chiara
abstract

L’incontro si propone come momento di riflessione sul tema della trasmissione del sapere interna alle diverse comunità scientifico-accademiche attraverso un’indagine plurilingue, che coinvolge alcune delle principali lingue europee (italiano, inglese, tedesco, francese, spagnolo). L’interesse mostrato per le forme di divulgazione scientifica interne alle diverse comunità accademiche da linguisti attenti al contributo di filosofi della scienza, epistemologi, sociologi e storici della scienza ha consentito un grande sviluppo degli studi linguistici teorici e applicati in questo campo di studio. Il ruolo della scrittura scientifica nella costruzione sociale della scienza ha aperto la strada a numerosi studi storici sui generi della comunicazione scientifica. Più recentemente, diversi studi si sono proposti di unire l’analisi linguistica e quella retorica mostrando anche interesse nella variazione tra aree disciplinari. Parallelamente, si assiste anche ad un tentativo di collegare le strutture testuali ai fattori sociali e culturali che possono influenzare l’uso linguistico e ad un maggiore interesse degli analisti per i meccanismi di trasmissione del sapere nella comunicazione fra esperti e non-esperti e nella comunicazione didattica. L’interesse da parte di molti ricercatori si è incentrato anche sulle ricerche nel campo della linguistica dei corpora, enfatizzando il potenziale di una small corpus linguistics per la didattica delle lingue per scopi accademici. Ci si propone pertanto di avviare una riflessione ampia su alcune dimensioni fondamentali della ricerca in questo campo: a) confronto tra generi orientati alla trasmissione del sapere, ambiti disciplinari e contesti linguistico-culturali b) dimensione linguistica dell’argomentazione nei vari generi del discorso scientifico-accademico c) comunicazione interculturale e comunità scientifico-accademica d) inglese come lingua franca nella comunicazione fra esperti e nella comunicazione didattica e) strumenti della linguistica dei corpora nell’analisi del lessico e fraseologia accademica f) implicazioni per la didattica delle lingue per scopi accademici.

2010 - I corpora come risorsa per l’apprendimento: integrare corpus, testo e discorso specialistico, RILA, XLII(1), 59-80. [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Radighieri, Sara
abstract

Scopo di questo lavoro è una riflessione sulle potenzialità dell’uso di piccoli corpora nella didattica dell’inglese specialistico e sulle attività che il docente può proporre per sviluppare l’autonomia del discente. Integrando attività che muovono dal corpus al testo e viceversa, il docente può articolare una percorso sulla variabilità della lingua attraverso i generi e rendere il discente ‘consapevole’delle numerose potenzialità linguistiche – espressive e comunicative – della lingua oggetto di studio. L’esperienza a cui si fa riferimento – rivolta all’approfondimento linguistico di apprendenti avanzati di inglese L2 - è legata al linguaggio specifico dell’arte, ma non si incentra tanto sugli aspetti strettamente disciplinari del discorso, quanto sulla variabilità di elementi generali, quali il linguaggio valutativoi attraverso i generi. Partendo da una riflessione sulle collocazioni più comuni fino all’uso di espressioni più complesse (multi-word units), sono state proposte attività utili allo sviluppo di competenze linguistiche in ambiti specifici. Lo scopo delle attività non è tanto di fornire informazioni su singole espressioni, quanto di illustrare un percorso integrato che intende fornire al discente un momento di riflessione sulla lingua stessa e sul proprio processo d’apprendimento. I corpora sono visti come risorsa per il discente, in attività di apprendimento che sviluppano consapevolezza linguistica e abilità comunicative.

2010 - Keyness in texts [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; M., Scott
abstract

The volume collects papers on the notion of keyness. The investigations presented are focused on keyness in a corpus perspective, mostly involving attention to text and discourse. They are, however, illustrative of different topics, approaches, methods and theoretical assumptions, ranging from semiotics to critical discourse analysis. - Perspectives on keywords and keyness: an introduction - M. BondiSection I Exploring Keyness- Three concepts of keywords - Michael Stubbs- Problems in investigating Keyness, or clearing the undergrowth and marking out trails - Mike Scott.- Closed-class keywords and corpus-driven discourse analysis - Nick Groom- Hyperlinks: Keywords or Key Words? - Jukka Tyrkkö- Web semantics vs the semantic web: the problem of keyness - Francois RastierSection II - Keyness in specialised discourse- Identifying Aboutgrams in Engineering Texts - Martin Warren- Keywords and phrases in political speeches - Denise Milizia- Key words and key phrases in a corpus of travel writing: From Early modern English literature to contemporary 'blooks' - Andrea Gerbig- History v. Marketing: keywords as a clue to disciplinary epistemology - Donatella Malavasi & Davide Mazzi- Metaphorical Keyness in Specialised Corpora - Gill PhilipSection 3 - Critical and Educational perspectives- A Contrastive Analysis of Keywords in Newspaper Articles on the “Kyoto Protocol” - Erica Bassi- Keywords in the Korean national consciousness: a corpus-based analysis of school textbooks - Soo Hee Fraysse-Kim- General spoken language and school language: Key words and discourse patterns in history textbooks - Paola Leone

2010 - Metadiscursive practices in introductions. Phraseology and semantic sequences across genres [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The study of metadiscursive practices is particularly fruitful in introductory part-genres where the representation of disciplinary discursive procedures plays a major role for the discourse community. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which some English metadiscursive expressions (forms of self-mention and illocution markers in particular) are used to offer a representation of academic argument in different genres. The paper concentrates on the representation of discourse procedures in introductory moves, looking in particular at how economists identify their research purposes and their discourse space, while providing a definition of their topic or contextualizing their research in current debates. The study is based on two small corpora of article introductions and textbook introductions. The approach adopted looks at phraseology as a perspective integrating meaning, form and function. The phraseological patterns identified are analyzed as sequences of semantic units - involving reference to a textual source, a discourse procedure and a cognitive construct. Cross-generic variation highlights a different lexical range and different lexical combinations in the two corpora examined. This is interpreted in terms of the ethos of the discourse community and the different role played by argument in the two genres.

2010 - Perspectives on keywords and keyness: an introduction [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Starting from the different interpretations of the expression "key words" - as searching tools, in text mining and classification, but also as analytic tools in text interpretation and discourse analysis - this chapter focuses on the relationship between words and text, looking at the co-text of the word, but also at the cultural context that informs the text, where culture is taken to mean the repertoires of meanings shared within a community (e.g. national, or local, but also disciplinary). Keywords are often taken to be markers of the “aboutness” and the style of a text; in this chapter we lookat what structures of textuality keywords point to and how far they are also informed by the position of the writer, in the context of text production. The words and expressions that recurrently identify the conceptual structures and the organizational structures of a text or corpus can be studied to illuminate features of the discourse that produces the text or corpus. The keywords that point to the aboutness of a text or corpus will be key to the ontology of the discourse. The keywords that point to textual organization will be key to the epistemology. We explore these preliminary statements through a case study of a landmark text: the General Theory by John Maynard Keynes.

2010 - Standardized Language Testing in Teaching and Research. University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, December 2-4, 2010 [Altro]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; S., Morgan; G., Porcelli; Radighieri, Sara; Robustelli, Cecilia; Silver, Marc Seth
abstract

The conference provided scholars, teachers and students specializing in language assessment an open forum for discussing current research issues from the field of language testing. The main focus of the conference was on teaching methodologies, new technologies, standardization of language levels, evaluation and assessment, the test-taker. The conference prompted lively debate around the following topic areas: evaluation vs assessment in Language Testing; models of communicative language ability and L2 assessment; levels, domains, frameworks and Language Testing; technology in language assessment: developing online test tasks for LSPs; task and performance based language assessment; assessing/testing the language of primary school teachers; research and Language Testing/assessment; language policy/ies and the setting of language standards; socio-cognitive and socio-pragmatic factors in Language Testing; item writing and test production Codes of practice and language testing as a profession

2009 - CLAVIER 2009: Corpora and Language Variation in English Research, International Conference [Altro]
Bondi, Marina; Cacchiani, Silvia; Cavalieri, Silvia; Diani, Giuliana; Palumbo, Giuseppe
abstract

Corpora – principled collections of data in electronic format – have emerged over the last decades as a powerful analytical tool both in applied and theoretical linguistics. They have turned out of particularly significant importance in studies on language variation and language varieties. Indeed, the wealth and amount of data made available through corpus compilation and query tools have increasingly enabled researchers to explore differences across spoken and written discourse, social, diachronic and geographic varieties, age groups, gender, idiolects, etc. The widening of studies on language variation and language varieties, however, still calls for discussion on significant methodological issues, which pose, among others, the following questions: What are the major methodological problems in the research field? What is the role of the comparative perspective? Which tools and methodology best suit research? The conference focuses on such issues in order to provide a better definition of the concepts under investigation and bring together significant and innovative contributions in what is now understood as a widely researched area, thus presenting new tools and perspectives to be investigated. This is also the main general objective of the CLAVIER research group (Corpus and Language Variation Research Group), a research centre recently founded by the Universities of Bergamo, Firenze, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Roma “La Sapienza”, and Siena, and currently based in Modena. The point of departure is the invaluable contribution of two complementary strands of linguistic investigation - corpus analysis and discourse analysis – to research on language variation in English, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. One of the purposes of the 2009 CLAVIER conference is to reinforce national and international cooperation with scholars and research centres that can widen and complement the interest in language variation currently driving research at the centre. Plenaries by Udo Fries (University of Zürich), Anna Mauranen (University of Helsinki), Josef Schmied (University of Chemnitz), Geoffrey Williams (University of Bretagne-Sud). The conference brought together different perspectives on language variation and use. Plenaries and papers gave a special insight into the following topics: a. using historical corpora to investigate diachronic language variation; b. using corpora as an innovative tool in exploring geographic varieties; c. corpus linguistics in the investigation of non-native language use in professional settings; d. corpus linguistics tools, special languages, and specialist lexicography.

2009 - Historians at work: Reporting frameworks in English and Italian book review articles [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, M.
abstract

2009 - Linguistica dei corpora e EAP: Lingua, pratiche comunicative e contesto d’uso [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Diani, Giuliana
abstract

Research on EAP has shown an increasing interest in the developments in corpus linguistics over the last two decades. The major contribution of corpus linguistics to EAP has come in the description of the specific features of academic discourse. This chapter reviews the main directions of recent literature in this area, showing how the analysis of large quantities of data has made it possible to study the particular characteristics of different discourse domains and to investigate phenomena of variation. In terms of pedagogy, the chapter considers how the use of corpora has had a considerable impact on EAP teaching and learning. The increased familiarity of students with electronic tools for analysis can contribute to the development of their language awareness and can favour learner autonomy.

2009 - Strumenti per la definizione di un profilo linguistico dell’insegnante di L2 nella scuola primaria. [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bondi, Marina; Poppi, Franca
abstract

Le riflessioni effettuate in seno ad un progetto europeo di ambito linguistico, (Autonomy in Primary Language Teacher Education, finanziato dal programma comunitario Socrates e condotto nel triennio 1998-2001) hanno fornito le basi per procedere successivamente alla formulazione di un profilo specifico del docente di lingua nella scuola primaria e delle sue esigenze professionali. Tale profilo è stato dapprima validato a livello provinciale e successivamente a livello regionale (Bondi e Poppi, 2006).La versione iniziale di tale profilo ha costituito la base di partenza per l’elaborazione di una certificazione che sostituisce l’attestazione generica delle competenze linguistiche richieste dalla normativa con un percorso di certificazione specificamente mirato a riconoscere le abilità specifiche dell’insegnante di lingua straniera nella scuola primaria, il Certificate of English for Primary Teachers (CEPT), sviluppato dai Centri Linguistici d’Ateneo di Modena e Reggio Emilia e di Parma.

2009 - “In the wake of the Terror: phraseological tools of time setting in the narrative of history” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Adverbial tools of time setting have long attracted the attention of linguists and discourse analysts, but little attention has been paid to the variety of tools employed to designate time periods or phases and their evaluative implications. The notion of chrononyms is well known to historians themselves, often debating around the issue of periodization and the denomination of historical periods or units. Discourse analysts, on the other hand, have not dealt adequately with the language of periodization. And yet it looks like an ideal place for an exploration of the role of phraseology in historical discourse: how do historians construct their representation of historical periods? How do they identify phases in historical development? An empirical study of such nominalizations and of the time adverbials they constitute can help answer these questions.The chapter intends to explore the variety of phraseological tools employed in a corpus of academic journal articles to identify or classify temporal units. Section 2 briefly presents the corpus of articles used for the study and the tools for analysis. Section 3 focuses on the most frequent phraseological sequences found in the corpus, and looks at chrononyms – noun groups identifying periodization - with their evaluative implications and their textual patterns. Section 4 looks more closely at adverbial phraseology, studying in particular the co-text of complex prepositional phrases expressing ‘transitional’ time setting (in the wake of, in the aftermath of, on the eve of). In the conclusions, frequencies and patterns are interpreted in the light of factors characterizing academic discourse and specific disciplinary values.

2009 - “Perspective and Position in Museum Websites" [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter reports on an exploratory study of museum websites, focusing on the interplay between description and evaluation in multimodal art texts. Of the various genres involved in such websites – ranging from FAQs to annual reports – it was decided to focus on that most likely to illustrate this interplay: exhibition presentations. The study is based on the analysis of exhibition presentations in the websites of five London museums. The focus is on the presentation pages, but pages of virtual tours and “room guides” have also been considered for a qualitative analysis. Presentations of exhibitions are an obligatory feature of the websites of museums that hold temporary exhibitions. In general, they belong to a macro-section called “Exhibitions” – mostly divided into current, past and future exhibitions - and they may themselves be micro-sites, rather than simple pages. The corpus shows great variety in dimension, ranging from single-page and single-paragraph presentations (especially of future exhibitions) to full-length micro-sites, including a range of pages and options. The chapter also deals with background theoretical and methodological issues, while looking at websites from a genre analysis perspective. Section 3 provides an overview of exhibition presentations and their generic features. Section 4 deals with issues of description and evaluation, focusing on the expression of perspective and position and looking at their interplay in a small sample of cases.

2009 - “Polyphony in academic discourse: a cross-cultural perspective” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

This study is part of a wider research project investigating language variation in academic discourse across genres, disciplines and languages. The paper starts by outlining the basic assumptions of the study and proceeds to illustrate its “double” cross-cultural perspective: in the context of an approach to writer’s identity based on the notion of multiple identities, its focus lies on both national and disciplinary communities. The study is based on the analysis of the openings of historical research articles in English and in Italian and uses openings in economics research articles for disciplinary comparison. Including consideration of both rhetorical development and language features, the notion of polyphony is used to explore the way the writer’s voice interacts with other voices in the incipit of the research article across disciplines and across national academic cultures.

2009 - “Representing Historians at Work in Italian and English: Reporting frameworks in Book Review Articles” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The study focuses on two small corpora of book review articles in history and looks at the lexicalization of discursive procedures in English and in Italian, keeping in mind the tension between narrative and argument that characterizes historical discourse. Cross-linguistic examination of how argument is represented in both corpora pays particular attention to the representation of the reviewed author’s discourse, while studying the values reflected and implied by the different lexical choices in context. Special attention is paid to collocation, lexico-grammatical patterns and semantic preference, following a recent upsurge of interest in corpus-based approaches to the phraseological features of academic discourse. The general questions addressed are: how do historians represent the activity of their community in terms of argument? Is the variety of lexical tools employed in one language peculiarly distinctive? Does it reflect different value systems?

2009 - “Writing economic history: the narrator and the arguer” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The aim of this chapter is to look at the peculiarity of the tension between narrative and argument, or between perspective and position, through the case study of a contemporary economic historian – Douglas Dowd. His work can be looked at as an example of both interdisciplinarity and individuality (with particular reference to the narrative dimension of his fundamentally economic work). Economic history is first of all an area of study where the modes of discourse of different disciplines like history and economics mix and mingle. Within this combination, different ideological and theoretical positions can be assumed. Academic discourse, however, is also a site for individual variation, like all other forms of writing. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, the paper tries to identify features of (inter) disciplinary identity by comparing a corpus of Dowd’s work to an economic corpus and an historical corpus. The focus then shifts to Dowd’s ideological position, identified by the writer himself as “radical”, before moving to an analysis of the most individual and original peculiarities of his writing, which are illustrated through a few sample features.

2009 - “Writing history: argument, narrative and point of view” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Mazzi, Davide
abstract

This paper is part of a wider study on cross-disciplinary language variation in the humanities and social sciences. By relying on a 2.5-million-word corpus, the paper explores the specific interplay of narrative and argument in historical discourse, with a view to the implications for the analysis of point of view. First of all, shifting points of view in the language and structure of historical research articles are analysed in a textual pragmatic perspective, by showing the implications of adopting different temporal perspectives and disciplinary positions to look at historical events. Secondly, moving on to an overview of recurrent phraseological elements in the corpus, we carry out a functional analysis of the most frequent element, i.e. the point-of-view shifter at the same time, showing that it opens a descriptive perspective in narrative and a dialogic perspective in argument. The conclusions emphasise the textual and discoursal functions of point-of-view shifters.

2008 - "The words of equity: an analysis of a corpus of judgments" [Capitolo/Saggio]
Mazzi, Davide; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The paper focusses on the discursive construction and implementation of the notion of equity in a corpus of equity judgments. By drawing on established tools of corpus linguistics, the analysis sheds light on the use of a set of peculiar lexico-grammatical devices from both a quantitative and a qualitative point of view.

2008 - "’In this article we focus on…’: metadiscourse across disciplines" [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Mazzi, Davide
abstract

The paper moves from a broad notion of metadiscourse, focusing on ‘locational metatext’ comprising “linguistic elements that refer to the text itself or parts of it” (Dahl 2004: 1811), and “rhetorical metatext” (Dahl 2004: 1812), whereby the writer interacts with the reader by making explicit the rhetorical acts he performs in the argumentative process. The aim of the paper is to explore the frequency and use of metadiscursive patterns involving these elements in English research article openings, by comparing two soft-science disciplines, i.e. economics and history. More specifically, data are examined through corpus linguistics tools, in order to focus on disciplinary similarities and differences in terms of common metadiscourse functions. Furthermore, more distinctive aspects are investigated bearing on authorial presence in the organisation of discourse towards both its content and the readership right from the beginning of research articles. Finally, the overall epistemological configurations revealed by collocational and phraseological patterns are evaluated.

2008 - Emphatics in academic discourse Integrating corpus and discourse tools in the study of cross-disciplinary variation [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The role played by mitigation in academic discourse has been widely debated in the literature, but little attention has been paid to emphatics, expressions used to intensify the degree of certainty of an utterance and to increase its illocutionary force. Focusing on the use of adverbs in journal articles and on their evaluative orientations/parameters, the chapter looks at how their frequencies, meanings and uses vary across two “soft” disciplines: history and economics. Combining a corpus and a discourse perspective, emphatics are shown to signal “engagement” as well as “stance”, by positioning research in the context of disciplinary debate, highlighting the significance of the data or the conclusions produced, negotiating convergent or conflicting positions with the reader.

2008 - Forms of metadiscourse in English academic writing: a cross-disciplinary and cross-generic analysis of meta-argumentative phraseology [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Diani, Giuliana
abstract

This paper focuses on the role of meta-argumentative phraseology in English academic writing from a cross-disciplinary and cross-generic perspective. Special attention is paid to different types of organizational discourse units: interaction-oriented (meta-discursive) and text-oriented (meta-textual). Drawing in particular on corpus-based approaches to phraseology, the study focuses on how phraseological units vary across academic disciplines (with their variety of languages and approaches) and genres (with their variety of communicative purposes and functions).

2008 - Le voci del testo: la rappresentazione dell'argomentare nella scrittura accademica in italiano e in inglese [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Diani, Giuliana
abstract

Questo lavoro presenta alcune considerazioni preliminari sugli strumenti della rappresentazione del discorso argomentativo, della sua “proiezione” nel book review article, studiati in prospettiva comparativa italiano-inglese. La proiezione argomentativa verrà analizzata attraverso un elemento chiave quale le voci che argomentano nel testo. Partendo dal discorso disciplinare della storia, si procederà a una riflessione cross-linguistica italiano-inglese sulle strategie argomentative che si realizzano attraverso una rappresentazione dell’argomentare nei corpora in esame. In particolare verranno messi a fuoco gli strumenti linguistici della proiezione argomentativa, e si metterà in luce il rapporto tra le diverse voci che sono rappresentate nei testi. L’analisi si focalizza sui segnali espliciti di riferimento diretto al recensore o all’autore recensito nel testo, identificando le lessicalizzazioni dell’azione verbale associate alle diverse voci, ma rilevando anche la presenza di forme nominali. Particolare attenzione verrà prestata anche ad aspetti fraseologici, attraverso una analisi di specifici elementi lessicali, delle loro collocazioni più rappresentative e dei pattern semantici che costituiscono. L’analisi evidenzia una significativa divergenza nelle forme di riferimento esplicito alle procedure argomentative nelle due culture in esame.

2008 - “Adverbial Marking of Stance and ‘Disciplinary Culture’ in Academic Research Articles” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Mazzi, Davide; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The paper is intended to investigate cross-disciplinary variation in academic discourse. On the basis of two comparable corpora of research articles from history and economics, it carries out a concordance-based analysis of adverbials of stance. Findings show that stance adverbials are capable of reflecting deeply-rooted disciplinary practices in both research areas under analysis.

2008 - “Disadvantage before the law: Bleak House”. [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Cavalieri, Silvia
abstract

The paper focuses on the representation of interaction in courtroom scenes in Dickens's Bleak House and attempts to identify the linguistic strategies employed by legal professionals to manipulate their socially disadvantaged interlocutors. In particular, the analysis focuses on how questioning can contribute to the predominance of the machinery of Justice in witness examination. Legal-lay discourse involves a complex dialogic play between two broad ways of making sense of the world: one based on the subjective reconstruction of personal experience (lay people); the other on detached analysis following logical principles (legal professionals). The tools for analysis are drawn mostly from pragmatics and conversation analysis, though adapted to the peculiarities of fictional dialogues. Lexico-grammatical features of style may be observed to interpret the peculiarities of characterization, but the focus of our attention is on language as action and interaction, as Dickens uses dialogue to show how disadvantage is not intrinsic in the formal features of one’s language but rather in the way this is interpreted by other participants and in the way the interaction is structured by those who control its management. The paper illustrates the issue with reference to the interactions between a representative of the Court and three characters representing different forms of inadequacy in their own mastery of language. The disadvantage of Mr Tangle, a lawyer concerned with the “Jarndyce and Jarndyce” suit, represents power relationships inside the discourse community and professional disadvantage due to lack of clarity (BH: 7). The questioning of Mrs Piper represents the disadvantage of ordinary people who lack awareness of courtroom conventions in the reconstruction of facts (BH: 127). The little crossing sweeper Jo represents an issue that is acquiring growing importance nowadays - the disadvantage of children before the law (BH: 128-130). This is the scene where lack of knowledge leads to reciprocal misunderstanding and rejection of the witness: the child cannot interpret the judge’s questions and the judge cannot interpret the child’s answers.The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 deals with the preliminary issue of how hierarchical control of legal procedures can create inequalities among members of the same discourse community (e.g. legal professionals). Section 3 briefly reviews literature on the disadvantage of lay-people in courtroom interaction and focuses on the role of questions, presenting a classification along a cline of coerciveness. On the basis of the classification presented, sections 4 and 5 analyse scenes of witness questioning showing different ways in which witnesses can be led astray and even rejected in examination procedures.

2008 - “Per concludere veramente: Signalling conclusions in historical research articles in Italian and in English” [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Mazzi, Davide
abstract

The paper focusses on the most widely spread linguistic elements through which historians mark their shift to concluding remarks in historical research articles in Italian and English. Data do not only reveal that different signals are used across the two disciplines, but they also illustrate that their choice underlies broader epistemological stances, i.e. a more or less dialogic way of positioning research contributions

2007 - Componenti del profilo linguistico [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Poppi, Franca
abstract

Il profilo dell'insegnante di L2 (lingua inglese) nella scuola primaria è inteso ad identificare il nucleo centrale di conoscenze e abilità linguistiche necessarie per un insegnamento efficace, così come a delineare ulteriori aree di sviluppo professionale. La conoscenza del profilo rappresenta uno degli strumenti utili al formatore per informare il proprio lavoro agli obiettivi finali da fare conseguire ai docenti, programmare le attività di formazione ed eventuali momenti di tirocinio guidato, valutare l'efficacia del percorso formativo posto in essere.

2007 - Devising a language certificate for primary school teachers of English [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina; Poppi, Franca
abstract

Quite often the complexity and fluidity of an L2 teacher's interactional work is understated. In fact, the dual nature of language as a subject and vehicle places extreme demands on language teachers. The attempt to devise a tool that might be used to assess the interactionl skills and professionalism of language teachers cannot, therefore, be said to be definite and comprehensive. Therefore, the Certificate of English for Primary Teachers is flexible eough to meet the different needs of a wide range of language teachers operating in manifold contexts. Since it is not possible to separate language, pedagogy and language awareness when considering the role of the primary langauge teacher, the certificate which has been developed highlights and supports these connections.

2007 - Historical research articles in English and in Italian: a cross-cultural analysis of self-reference in openings [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The analysis explores the openings of research articles in historical writing in Italian and English. The features of different “academic cultures” are not only seen in the different role attributed to narrative or expositive/argumentative elements in the opening: they are also reflected in self-reference and lexical choice. The study is based on two comparable corpora of openings and combines corpus and discourse tools of analysis. Focusing on the statement of purpose in openings, the study shows that the English corpus is clearly characterized by frequent statements of purpose. Intentionality is mostly expressed through modal "will" and the purpose is often attributed to the text itself, mostly identified by its genre (article, paper, essay). In the Italian corpus, the statement is slighltly more limited (possibly deferred), but above all it is often more indirect and less formulaic. The expression of intention is much more explicitly lexicalised, and the presence of 1st person singular is much greater, while self-reference nouns referring to the discourse product are used much more sparingly in statements of purpose, which often tend to present the text through generalized spatial reference rather than through a denomination of its academic genre. All in all, Italian historians, while showing a tendency to dominate openings in their personal relationship to the object of investigation through evaluative comments and personal statements, tend to make use of highly indirect statements of purpose, which offer the reader an idea of the key topics or points often without without explicitly relating them to specific purposes or positions. Writers in English, on the other hand, show greater awareness of the reader’s need for a specific statement of purpose, while at the same time foregrounding the role of the text itself, on a par with the writer. Use of more or less standardized signals may lead to different emphasis on dialogic and monologic positioning of the writer’s thesis. The general trend can also be closely related to both disciplinary and general academic traditions.

2007 - Key-.words and emotions: a case study of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Using public discourse on Northern Ireland as a case study of a theme, i.e. conflict in its various dimensions – physical, ideological and dialogical – the paper looks at ways in which the representation of conflict contributes to developing an argumentative position. In particular it looks at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, focusing on politicians discussing their present and past evaluations and positions, mostly by displaying emotions. The idea is to study how ideological and dialogical conflict is transposed from courtroom discourse to news discourse. The specific linguistic aim of the paper is to bring together the analysis of key-words and the study of evaluative meanings. The paper looks at the interplay between the two, in order to see how the analysis of key-words can be brought to bear on the identification of the speaker’s evaluative position or point of view. The various meanings of the expression “key-words” are discussed and related to Speaker/ Writer’s point of view and to Listener/Reader’s engagement.Following procedures which are based on a mixture of endogenous and exogenous criteria, the paper explores tools for the identification of key-words on the textual and discourse levels relying on the network of collocational and lexico-semantic relations which are established among the single elements.The analysis includesdifferent aspects: a general analysis of statistical key-words, a study of reporting tools in courtroom and news discourse, a qualitative analysis of how emotions are staged in public discourse, with a discussion of how this contributes to the representation of positions in a debate.

2007 - “Authority and expert voices in the discourse of history” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

This study proposes an overview of the types of voices involved in the presentation of historical research and discusses them with reference to the role they play in the construction of the writer’s identity. Taking a broad view of the writer’s voice, and focusing on the interplay between textual voice and time setting, the study shows how the Writer establishes a position by evaluating both entities or events in the world of the narrative and the sources used to reconstruct events. Different lexicalizations are shown to express modal evaluation – the writer’s taking responsibility for the predication and the predicate’s characterization in terms of certainty – and affective evaluation – categorizing phenomena and evaluating them in terms of desirability. The study also shows how the peculiar temporal perspective of historical discourse allows the writer access to further knowledge, e.g. in speculation about future events. with writers showing forms of alignment and disalignment with the voice of experts, i.e. sources that are given voice in the text. The voices of experts (Expert voices) are shown to have a significant role in the construction of the writer’s argument.

2007 - “The Future in History: Projecting Expectations in Historical Discourse” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Mazzi, Davide; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The paper aims at exploring the linguistic resources through which historians project futurity in their disciplinary discourse. By using corpus evidence from a collection of specialised research articles, results reveal a complex network of rhetorical strategies behind the use ofphraseology embedding futurity: for instance, the construction of disciplinary authority and credibility

2006 - Academic discourse across disciplines. [Curatela]
Hyland, K; Bondi, Marina
abstract

This volume reflects the emerging interest in cross-disciplinary variation in both spoken and written academic English, exploring the conventions and modes of persuasion characteristic of different disciplines and which help define academic inquiry. This collection brings together chapter by applied linguists and EAP practitioners from seven different countries. The authors draw on various specialised spoken and written corpora to illustrate the notion of variation and to explore the concept of discipline and the different methodologies they use to investigate these corpora. The book also seeks to make explicit the valuable links that can be made between research into academic speech and writing as text, as process, and as social practice.

2006 - Il futuro nel passato nel testo storico inglese: voce narrante e tempo della narrazione [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Silver, Marc Seth
abstract

L'articolo tratta la nozione di futurità dal punto di vista della pragmatica testuale e si incentra sull'analisi del discorso della storia. Prendendo le mosse dalla natura inerentemente modale della nozione di futurità, lo studio percorre la varietà e la complessità degli strumenti che consentono allo storico di proiettare sezioni del suo testo in un tempo futuro rispetto a quello della sequenza narrativa. L'area degli avverbiali di tempo che consentono di creare uno spostamento verso un "futuro nel passato" diviene oggetto di indagine particolare, con l'intento di mettere in luce aspetti e tendenze che caratterizzano il riferimento ad un futuro nel passato, nonché l'impatto di questa forma di riferimento sulla visibilità dello scrittore e sull'autorevolezza della sua voce testuale.

2006 - Introduction [Academic Discourse across Disciplines] [Breve Introduzione]
Hyland, Ken; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The introduction outlines the importance of disciplinary variation in academic discourse studies and presents the sections and chapters of the volume.

2006 - Introduction [Managing interaction in professional discorse] [Breve Introduzione]
Bondi, Marina; Bamford, Julia
abstract

This book is a selection of papers from a conference held in Florence in 2005 intitled "Language and text variation in business and economics. The papers collected have been chosen because they cluster round two interconnected themes: the discourse of intercultural communication in ELF and interdiscourse seen through the perspective of the recontextualization of previous discourses. The collection aims at highlighting convergencies between intercultural communication and other forms of communication which can be classified as interdiscourse communication.

2006 - L’insegnante di lingua straniera nella scuola primaria: per un profilo e per una certificazione delle competenze [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Poppi, Franca
abstract

Nel corso degli ultimi anni si è assistito, a livello europeo, alla promozione di iniziative finalizzate allo studio delle lingue straniere nell'ambito dell'insegnamento elementare, intese ad aumentare il numero di ore di contatto tra gli insegnanti e gli alunni o a facilitare l'introduzione di una seconda lingua nell'istruzione secondaria.

2006 - Managing interaction in professional discorse: intercultural and interdiscoursal perspectives [Curatela]
J., Bamford; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The volume collects papers that cluster around two interconnected themes: the discourse of intercultural communication in ELF and interdiscourse seen through the perspective of the recontextualization of previous discourses. The collection aims at highlighting convergences between intercultural communication and other forms of communication cutting across boundaries of groups or discourse systems. The focus is on academic and professional genres in the discourse of business and economics: lessons, articles, textbooks, meetings, annual reports, websites etc.

2006 - Teaching English. Ricerca e pratiche innovative per la scuola primaria [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; D., Ghelfi; B., Toni
abstract

La pubblicazione propone contributi di carattere scientifico e didattico sull'insegnamento dell'inglese nella scuola primaria. Ne risulta un quadro articolato che, a partire dalla rifelssione sul profilo linguistico dell'insegnante di scuola primaria, document alcune pratiche innovative in ambito di didattica e di formazione.

2006 - “A case in point”: signals of narrative development in business and economics" [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter analyses signals of narrative development in research articles in closely related disciplinary fields: business and economics, showing that cross-disciplinary variation can be seen at work even when focusing on neighbouring discourses.Using both a discourse and a corpus perspective, the paper explores the variety of languages and of approaches which characterise the two sub-disciplines: the demonstrative logic of mathematical economics and the factual reasoning of business studies. These are seen at work both at the level of generic structures and of lexical signals. At the level of generic structure, business studies show a preference for empirical research and for a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodological procedures, often combined, whereas economics proves to be more often characterized by theoretical, model-based research rooted in formal analysis. The feature is further explored at the level of the narrative moves more often associated with qualitative research, thus showing the importance of the interplay between narration and evaluation in these moves. The focus on the interplay between narration and evaluation is carried on to lexical analysis, with reference to labelling nouns referring to the narrative structures of discourse ("case"). Potentially narrative signals are related to greater use of reflexive narrativity in business discourse and greater use of scenario reasoning in economics: narrative inserts are usually meant for model-testing in economics, while they are more often seen as tools for model-developing in business.The chapter also shows that corpus and discourse perspectives can be fruitfully brought into dialogue, in a research process that is at the same time originated and supported by both points of view, interactively producing a clearer picture.

2005 - "Metadiscursive practices in academic discourse: variation across genres and disciplines" [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter studies metadiscursive practices in academic writing with a view to a definition of how they vary across genres and disciplines. Comparative analysis of textbook introductory chapters and abstracts in the field of economics shows that metadiscursive practices play a major role in the two generic structures. Introductive chapters of textbooks centre on generic reference to the disciplinary community and use metadiscourse to highlight moves like: identifying a problem, presenting methodological tools, representing debate within the discipline, guiding the reader through argument. Abstracts, on the other hand, constitute a basically reflexive practice themselves and focus their reflexive activity on specific reference to the abstracted paper, in a representation of how researchers go about their research.The overview and the analysis confirm the expectation that the syntactic foregrounding of argumentative procedures, mostly linked to thematization of discourse constructs is really constitutive in abstracts, part of the abstract’s textual structures, whereas in textbooks, the representation of processes in relation to their human agents and their frequent nominalization is mostly attributable to the ideational dimension of textbooks, part of a strategy meant to offer the reader a representation of the argumentative procedures of the community.The findings presented here restate the need to consider multiple dimensions of language variation in the analysis of discourse patterns and their signals. The interplay between text and context can be analyzed with different degrees of delicacy, with reference to both discourse, defined as the general field of social activity in which the speech event takes place, and to genre, defined as the class of communicative events to which the specific set of texts belongs. Meta-argumentative expressions can be seen as constitutive in the definition of both academic discourse in general and academic abstracts in particular. The analysis also shows a close link between language choice and epistemology in academic discourse. When considered from the point of view of variation across disciplines, this case study confirms that metadiscursive expressions highlight issues that reflect the epistemological ethos of the disciplines: metadiscursive practices play a constitutive role in both fields, economics and history, but tend to represent discipline-specific argumentative procedures. As for the specific metadiscursive expressions that characterise the two disciplinary corpora and their typical lexico-grammatical patterns, the analysis shows differing patterns. Illocution markers tend to be more clearly foregrounded in the economics corpus, where they are also preferably associated to subjects that may be classified as discourse participants or discourse units. History, on the other hand, shows a clear preference for less “representational” textual patterns. Discourse processes are often thematized only in an introductory framework, which is then followed by sequences of direct statements about the object of discourse.

2005 - "PLEASE (Primary Language teacher Education: Autonomy and self-evaluation" [Capitolo/Saggio]
Poppi, Franca; L., Low; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The last ten years have seen a major Europe-wide initiative to extend the teaching of modern foreign langauges to rpimary age pupils, either to increase the time available for the first foreign language, or to facilitate the introduction of a second or third in the secondary stages of schooling.

2005 - "People in Business: the representation of self and multiple identities in business e-mails" [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Recent research on written business discourse has paid growing attention to the effects of new technological developments such as fax or e-mail, often highlighting the conversational nature of e-mail communication, as against traditional written correspondence. The study explores two related issues by comparing small corpora of business e-mails: a) the interplay between interactional and transactional elements in e-mail message exchanges and b) the impact of the frequent opportunity of contact offered by the medium on the generic structures of the messages. The corpora collected represent highly differing ELF (English as a lingua franca) business communication settings – the external correspondence of a small company with a good international network and the internal correspondence of a multinational. The study explores the way in which the two situations create a textual identity for the participants and a sense of ‘community’ among them. This leads to a consideration of genre issues in terms of genre mixing and genre structuring. Starting from an exploration of the identities displayed in the messages, the analysis reveals the positive effects of a tension between the multiple identities that may characterize the interactants. The interplay between professional, corporate and national identity can produce a great variety of combinations. Emphasis on positive interpersonal relations, common interests and shared identities can contribute to successful communications. A potentially threatening cultural gap or conflict of interests can be played down by highlighting other forms of community membership, mostly by creating the idea of a symmetrical belonging to a hyperordinate community. This is the case with the emphasis on a common professional identity in the external communication of the textile company and with the emphasis on a common corporate identity in the internal communication of the packaging multinational. Forms of self representation were found across many different genres and communicative purposes, but they played a key role in informative genres like ‘Office news’ – work-related announcements, the updating of information on personnel and personnel structure. These may both contribute to adding an interactional component to a basically transactional business exchange and constitute the main purpose of an exchange. Conclusions are drawn as to the ways in which the conversational features of e-mail exchanges may influence the nature itself of established genres. Emphasis may be placed on personal and conversational elements in business e-mails, especially in trying to create positive rapport and patterns of solidarity. In general, stylistic practices in e-mail messages reflect an attempt to balance externally generated prescriptions for linguistic style with user-generated coping strategies in constructing discourse (Baron 2003).

2005 - Cross-cultural encounters: linguistic perspectives [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; Maxwell, N. E. D. S.
abstract

The volume includes a selection of papers presented at the AIA conference on "Cross-cultural encounters". The theme is explored from a variety of linguistic perspectives, ranging from translation studies to language policy, language varieties and studies of intercultural and interdiscourse communication. Current interest in cross-cultural encounters in the context of postcolonial, globalized and hybrid identities becomes the starting point for an exploration of the wide range of topics and approaches that characterize research in English Linguistics as currently carried out in Italy.

2005 - Dialogue within discourse communities. Metadiscursive perspectives on academic genres [Curatela]
Bamford, J.; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The book explores aspects of reflexivity and interactivity in a variety of academic genres: oral and written, scientific and educational. Academic discourse is explored from a variety of perspectives that take a dialogic view of language use as their starting point, ranging from conversation analysis to descriptive or applied genre studies. Particular attention is paid to the way metadiscursive expressions contribute to a representation of the communicative procedures that characterise the ongoing (scientific and educational) dialogues.

2005 - Introduction [Dialogue within Discourse Communities : Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres] [Breve Introduzione]
Bamford, Julia; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The introduction deals extensively with the keywords of the book: the definition of academic genres and patterning in genres, the interactive nature of discourse, the problems of defining a discourse community, variation across speech and writing, and metadiscourse. The final section introduces the organization of the book, basically focusing on metadiscursive practices in written and spoken genres.

2005 - Metaargumentative expressions across genres: representing academic discourse [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The study is based on the analysis of three small corpora, which weredesigned to compare economics textbooks, economics abstracts andhistorical abstracts. The analysis focuses on meta-argumentativeillocution markers, i.e. those referenes to discourse procedures thatsignal an argumwntative element in discourse. The study highlights thedifferent representations of disciplinary argument offered bydifferent genres and different disciplines. syntactic foregrounding ofargumentative procedures, for example, is shown to be part of theabstract's textual structures, whereas in textbooks it is mostlyattributable to the ideatrional dimension of introductory chapters.Meta-argumentative expressions also highlight different textualpatterns in the structure of economic and historical abstracts. Thestudy includes an analysis of selected lexical items, which arestudied from the combined point of view of corpus and text analysis.

2004 - Academic discourse, genre and small corpora [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; Gavioli, Laura; Silver, Marc Seth
abstract

Academic discourse studies have recently shown increasing interest for features of writer/reader interaction, metadiscourse and evaluation. The volume explores the potential contribution of corpus linguistics to the study of academic spoken and written genres, with a view to both their lexico-grammar and their typical textual structures.

2004 - Introduction [Academic discourse, genre and small corpora] [Breve Introduzione]
Bondi, Marina; Gavioli, Laura; Silver, Marc Seth
abstract

The volume collects papers which focus on a number of features of academic discourse using tools offered by Corpus Linguistics. Academic discourse can be studied to see the ways in which the experts of a discipline construct their own activity in terms of a "conversation" within and around the scientific community. The tools of corpus analysis, especially with reference to small, specialized corpora, have greatly contributed to the study of language variation across genres and across disciplines both from a descriptive as well as from a didactic point of view.

2004 - Textual Voices: A Cross Disciplinary Study of Attribution in Academic Discourse [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina; Silver, Marc Seth
abstract

The article focuses on disciplinary differences in the use of textual voices by comparing article openings in two 'soft disciplines': history and economics. The study starts from a description of the corpus compiled and of the analysis carried out on typs and functions of attribution. the discussion then concentrates on the status o fthe article openings in terms of the main function of the research article, i.e. that of establishing knowledge claims in the different disciplines.

2004 - Varietà di Lingue/varietà di Testi [Direzione Collane scientifiche]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

La collana intende promuovere gli studi intorno alla variabilità della lingua e dei testi. Accoglie monografie e volumi collettanei sulle varietà testuali e sulle varietà storiche, geografiche e occupazionali delle lingue, in prospettiva teorica e applicata. I volumi mettono a fuoco diversi aspetti dell'uso linguistico in una o più lingue e forniscono un contributo di rilievo alla ricerca linguistica e alle prospettive interdisciplinari interessate alla comunicazione. Si accettano contributi su diverse lingue europee. Le lingue di pubblicazione sono: italiano, inglese, francese, tedesco, spagnolo.

2004 - Weaving voices: a study of article openings in historical discourse [Capitolo/Saggio]
Silver, Marc Seth; Bondi, M.
abstract

The study starts from a description o fthe corpus of historical articles analyzed and of the type of analysis carried out on their openings. Attention is paid to the ways in which emphasis is placed on phenomenic rather than epistemic textual elements. The main focus will then shift to the ways in which the openings in the corpus often weave different types of voices, thus using voice identification (or mixing) in order to establish the writer's position.

2004 - “If you think this sounds very complicated, you are correct”: Awareness of Cultural Difference in Specialized Discourse [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Starting from a brief sketch of key terms in intercultural and interdiscourse perspectives, the chapter focuses on types of differences that may be foregrounded in ‘border’ communicative situations, i.e. situations that cut across cultural boundaries. The author argues that the notion of cultural identity can only be studied within the framework of a system of multiple identities that are manifested in discourse. Two main situations are analysed in terms of: a) the language codes used and the role they play in the communicative event; b) the types of identities involved in the interaction, including the patterns of symmetry/asymmetry in participant identities and c) patterns of tension between identities; the acculturation vs hybridization attitudes shown. The study focuses on the textual realization of participants roles and relationships and highlights the need to consider the types of identities involved, the patterns of symmetry/asymmetry in participant identities and the patterns of tension between identities. Idenities are taken to be scalar: they relate to the extremes, but never fully coincide with either, moving between local and global, expert and non expert, insider and outsider, or any other way in which we represent ourselves as both inner and outer members of communities.The study of textbook adaptation helps to explore the interplay between national and disciplinary cultures. Interdiscourse communication proves to be aimed at acculturation in the professional community: textbook writers show great awareness of the need to mediate knowledge, but also of the readers’ need to be accepted in the disciplinary/professional community. The case of business correspondence in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) helps to explore the interplay between corporate and national culture in ELF business settings and the specificities of this kind of communicative situation.Effective communication may be the result of heightened awareness of multiple identities in the participants, which leads them to strategies of hedging and boosting differences. If emphasizing what people have in common plays down possible differences in community membership, in a multi-membership perspective, emphasis of one type of difference may play down difference in another type of community membership. Study of border communicative situations reinforces the view that all dialogue is in a way intercultural.

2004 - “The discourse function of academic connectors in abstracts” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The paper provides a brief analysis of the ways in which contrastive markers signal the argumentative roles played by textual units in the structure of abstracts. The study focuses on a case study of "however" as a contrastive connector in historical abstracts. This admittedly limited point of view helps discuss the core meaning of contrastive expressions and their role in specific generic structures and discipline-specific argumentative procedures. Perhaps most importantly, the findings show the need to consider multiple dimensions of language variation in the analysis of discourse patterns and their markers. The interplay between text and context can be analysed with different degrees of delicacy, with reference to both discourse – defined as the general field of social activity in which the speech event takes place – and to genre – defined as the class of communicative events to which the specific set of communicative events examined belongs. The meta-argumentative dimension of contrastive connectors can be seen as constitutive in the definition of both academic discourse in general and academic abstracts in particular. In addition to that, the study shows the close link between language choice and epistemology in academic discourse, i.e. the way they represent their own activities and procedures as against major methodological debates. Finally, the study also contributes to showing the need for corpus-based analyses to complement more intensive studies of particular texts, and vice versa. Text and discourse studies can only be fully developed when closer analysis of particular instances of communicative events is integrated with quantitative data from wider textual bases. These provide the necessary background and support to textual interpretation.

2004 - “Weaving voices: a study of article openings in historical discourse” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Silver, Marc Seth; Bondi, Marina
abstract

The study looks at forms of reported discourse in the openings of historical research articles and shows that there is a strong tendency to make intensive use of both direct and indirect discourse in forms where a plurality of voices are woven into a complex dialogic pattern. The opening may indeed identify a research space within a disciplinary debate, but the creation of a research space is often realized by dramatizing a position (or a variety of positions) and gradually building a complex of voices that indirectly help establish the writer’s voice. Patterns of identification are shown to contribute to the creation of the writer’s dominant position. This position is more often built on the representation of the phenomenic object of investigation than on contextualizing his/her own argument in an epistemic debate. This is related to the narrative dimension of history and to the “quotation fever” of historians in connection with the changing role of quotation in historiography. What seems to characterize the corpus of historical openings is largely the fact that – rather than placing the article in the context of a debate within the discourse community – they seem to make intensive use of reported discourse in forms of dramatization of the voices of sources. This may be explained by the role played by verbal sources and narrative structures in historical discourse (and particularly in some approaches to historical discourse).

2003 - Dialogue Analysis 2000 [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; Stati, S. E. D. S.
abstract

The volume celebrates the 10th anniversiary of the international Association for Dialogue Analysis in the year 2000. part 1 discusses general methodological issues - mostly within the framework of discourse and conversation analysis - whereas part II presents specific case studies. the volume includes contributions that address both traditional areas of dialogue analysis such as politeness, and more recent areas of interest such as argumentation or the analysis of dialogic interaction in specific contexts.

2003 - Evaluative Language Use in Academic Discourse, Special Issue of Jeap (Journal of English for Academic Purposes) [Curatela]
Mauranen, A.; Bondi, Marina
abstract

collection of papers on the role of evaluative language use in spoken and written academic discourse

2003 - Fostering autonomy: implementing change in teachers' education. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Poppi, Franca; L., Low; Bondi, Marina
abstract

Few teachers will disagree with the importance of helping language learners become more autonomous, but in spite of widespread agreement on the importance of autonomy and independence, there remains a good deal of uncertainty about their application to language education. For instance, some people believe that autonomy is something that teachers do to their learners; in other words that it is a new methodology. This is not true, but it is not entirely false either, for learners are unlikely to become autonomous without active encouragement from their teachers. Therefore the development of learner autonomy will depend crucially on the initiatives teachers take. The question is, what kinds of initiatives should teachers take? First of all it is necessary for teachers' attitudes to learning and teaching to change.

2002 - "Discorso scientifico e insegnamenti linguistici: l'inglese delle scienze sociali in una prospettiva di confronto" [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Il contributo enuclea le problematiche del contatto e della divergenza fra italiano e inglese nell'ambito delle scienze sociali, illustrando le problematiche legate al diverso contesto istituzionale, accademico e linguistico.

2002 - The PLEASE website: Primary Language teacher Education: Autonomy and Self-Evaluation [Software]
Bondi, Marina; L., Low; Poppi, Franca
abstract

Although the letter 'T' for teacher is missing in the PLEASE acronym for the website, the taecher is very much at the heart of the website in terms of the langauge learning pupils undertake at priary school. Moreover, even though the project was addressed to teachers, it was taken for granted it would inevitable influence their teaching and their learners' learning process as a whole.

2002 - “Attitude and episteme in academic discourse: adverbials of stance across genres and moves” [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The paper is based on the analysis of comparable homogenous corpora of academic texts, including abstracts, research articles and textbook chapters. Focusing on adverbials of stance, the paper tries to highlight the forms and functions of evaluative metadiscourse across genres. Biber’s classification – and the class of “attitude adverbials” in particular - is discussed against the data in our corpus. Particular attention is paid to planes of discourse and the way the affect the expression of stance. Variation across genres is related to the different role played by reflexivity in the different genres. The paper also discusses a working methodology for the analysis of evaluation in academic English that unites the interest in structural aspects with the interest in interactive and socio-cultural processes.

2001 - Small Corpora and Language Variation. Reflexivity across genres. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

This chapter explores ways in which small corpora can be used to study language variation across genres within a given discourse area. Focusing on academic genres and on the field of economics, the chapter shows how corpus work can be used to study different features, ranging from a variety of functional units to specific lexico-grammatical patterns. Activities to be used with students are illustrated and exemplified.

2001 - “Towards a language profile for the FL primary teacher” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter presents and analyzes the FL teacher profile developed within a European LINGUA project on teacher education. Its main focus is on the language needed for the classroom and for professional development

1999 - Consapevolezza linguistica e riflessione sulla lingua [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Il contributo propone una metodologia rivolta allo sviluppo di capacità coinvolte nella consapevolezza linguistica, indicando sequenze di attività e obiettivi da verificare per sviluppare nel docente la capaictà di analizzare la lingua e notarne le caratteristiche

1999 - Destini dell'argomentare in alcune trasposizioni della Christmas Carol [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Il cpaitolo affronta un'analisi di alcune trasposizioni della Christmas Carol, guardando in aprticolare al modo in cui re-interpretano il dialogo argomentativo che caratterizza alcune scene

1999 - Language Awareness and EFL Teacher Education [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter presents a methodology for FL teacher education, with a view to developing language awareness skills. The process of discovery, analysis, classification and interpretation of data is illustrated with work on text and on concordances, so as to combine top down and bottom up approachese

1998 - "Men of Fact and Calculations. Quantifiers and worlds of reference in economics textbooks" [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The study highlights how combined use of vague quantifiers and hypotheticality markers can be studied by comparing corpora of economics texts. Comparison of American and Birish textbooks reveals more convergences than divergences, reflecting both different apporaches to economics and a common approach to its teaching.

1998 - Dialogues within Discourse Communities in Economics Textbooks [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter illustrates the different functions of reader-writer dialogue and dialogue with the quoted sources in economics textbooks. particualr attention is paid to the way these dialogues contribute to constructing the writer's position

1998 - Forms of Argumentative Discourse. Per un'analisi linguistica dell'argomentare. [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Studiosi di diversa formazione discutono in questo volume l'apporto delle discipline linguistiche all'analisi del discorso argomentativo. I contributi esplorano la dimensione linguistica dell'argomentare, mettendone in luce la centralità in diverse tecniche e strategie argomentative, nonché in diversi generi e ambiti del discorso. Muovendosi dal testo dialogico a quello monologico, dal discorso accademico a quello politico, da generi consolatori a forme conflittuali dell'argomentare, dall'attenzione al dato metalinguistico a quello socio-culturale, il testo percorre una gamma vasta ma coerente di approcci agli aspetti discorsivi e testuali dell'argomentazione, approcci che ricollegano gli studi linguistici ad un'area di lunga tradizione nel campo degli studi filosofici, logici, retorici.

1998 - Libri di testo e argomentazione riportata. Esempi di metapragmatica nell'inglese degli economisti [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Lo studio mette a fuoco gli strumenti linguistici della rappresentazione del discorso riportato nei manulai di economia, evidenziandone il ruolo fondamentale nel delineare la posizione dell'autore nei confronti delle tematiche affrontate e delle voci selezionate

1997 - L'argomentazione analogica nei generi del discorso economico: un esempio di analisi [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter presents an analysis of analogical argument across genres by comparing Samuelson's writings of different types (textbook chapters, research articles, comments). Analogies are shown to play different roles in the three genres.

1997 - Reported argument in economics textbooks. A meta-pragmatics of argumentative dialogue [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The paper presents a classification of forms of reported dialogue in economics textbooks, based on the types of voices and their role in the construction of the writer's position.

1997 - The Rise of Abstracts. Development of the genre in the discourse of economics [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The paper traces the development of abstracts as a genre in the discourse of economics through the design and analysis of a diachronic corpus of abstracts from the American Economic Review.

1997 - Understanding Arguments. La logica informale del discorso [Curatela]
Bondi, Marina; Bussi, GIUSEPPINA ELISA; F., Gatta
abstract

The volume collects a number of studies focusing on argumentation from a linguistic point of view. The collection ranges from theoretical contributions to descriptive ones and offers innovative ways of looking at argumentative discourse

1996 - Language Variations across Genres. Quantifiers and Worlds of Reference in (and around) economics textbooks [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The articles presents an analysis of elements of the language of economic argumentation in English. The analysis centres on the co-occurrence of hypothetical examples and simplified quantitative elements, suggesting that these reflect the typical structure of economic reasoning by scenarios.

1996 - World of Fact and World of Hypothesis in Economics Textbooks [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The paper analyzes the signals of hypotheticality found in a corpus of economics textbooks and relates them to typical rhetorical moves.

1995 - Analysing Economics and News discourse. Reading Materials [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Bondi, Marina; G., Del Lungo Camiciotti
abstract

This book aims to provide reading materials for teaching English to students of economics. The book is meant to develop their critical reading skills on a variety of textual genres which they may encounter in the course of their studies: textbooks, treatises, research articles, news articles, and so on. The volume includes both a selection of reading materials and three methodological chapters meant as an introduction to critical reading. These are based on the asumption that EAP students should reach beyond the general reading skills and strategies and develop a critical awareness of the specific features of the discourse areas and genres they need to tackle in their studies.

1995 - By Word of montage. A study of quotations in British tv news [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo rpesenta una analisi comaprativa di un coprus di articoli e di news televisive. Dal confronto delle forme di discorso riportato nei due generi emerge una netta preferenza del discorso televisivo per le forme dell discorso diretto e per l'uso della citazione per montaggio con cornice interpretativa.

1995 - Determinanti e pronomi: lo sfondo nozionale [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Il capitolo presenta una rassegna di elementi caratteristici dei determinanti e dei pronomi in una prospettiva testuale

1995 - Strumenti del riferimento in inglese: i determinanti [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

presenta una analisi dei determinanti in inglese

1994 - Gli studi sul tradurre: riflessioni sulle competenze del traduttore [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

La traduzione è vista come "quinta abilità" in un tentativo di individuarne le componenti e le specificità dal punto di vista del profilo del traduttore

1994 - L'ordine delle parole in inglese [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Il capitolo affronta alcune questioni relative all'ordine delle parole in inglese, sostenendo la necessità di considerare il problema in una prospettiva testuale e pragmatica. In questa chiave sono discussi fenomeni che riguardano tanto il gruppo nominale e verbale, quanto la frase nucleare e complessa. Particolare attenzione è dedicata alle diverse funzioni (ideative, testuali e interpersonali) degli elementi tematizzati.

1993 - Analogies as Bridges: the Case of Dickens' Speeches [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Il saggio presenta una analisi del ruolo delle analogie nella retorica Dickensiana.

1993 - L'esperienza di Modena [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

presentazione di una esperienza di formazione degli insegnanti di L2 alla scuola primaria, dalla definizione del profilo alla valutazione dell'esperienza

1993 - L'inglese per studenti della Facoltà di Economia - English for Students of Business and Economics [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Bondi, Marina; M. G., Busà; G., Del Lungo; Poppi, Franca
abstract

Il volume contiene un saggio introduttivo sulle caratteristiche dei linguaggi specialistici e dell'inglese dell'economia, in una prospettiva di analisi del discorso. Le linee metodologiche illustrate nel saggio sono poi esemplificate nell'analisi di materiali autentici, con attività rivolte a studenti di economia.

1990 - Exploiting Literary Texts in TEFL: Reading, Response, Analysis [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The paper discusses the potential use of literary texts in language teaching and illustrates how to structure communicative activities around a text, in ways that both elicit the student's response to the text and lead the student to develop analytical skills.

1990 - Off-air recordings: what interaction? The case of news and current affairs programmes [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter analyzes the structure of TV news items. Starting form a corpus of British TV news from different channels, the analysis focuses on the sequences of steps and the role of quotations and forms of reported speech, with a view to the nature of broadcast discourse, sharing features of both spoken and written language.

1989 - Dickens e il dicorso politico. Analisi di una contraddizione. [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Il volume affronta la rappresentazione del discorso politico - discorso pubblico per eccellenza - nell'opera dickensiana. il caso del discorso politico ben si presta ad evidenziare la duplicità dell'atteggiamento dell'autore nei confronti della persuasione. Autore di satira impietosa nei confronti degli oratori, critico esplicito della verbosità e della convenzionalità dei discorsi pubblici, Dickens non sa sottrarsi alla grande attrattiva che ll'oratoria esercita su di lui e, nell'argomentare, ricorre spesso alle stesse strategie che sono oggetto della sua critica. Il volume considera tanto la produzione narrativa, quanto - in primo luogo - i discorsi tenuti dallo scrittore.

1989 - English [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

La sezione affronta una rassegna degli aspetti caratterizzanti della lingua inglese in prospettiva didattica. Soffermandosi sui diversi livelli di analisi (fonetico-fonologico, morfo-sintattico, lessicale e testuale), si illustrano ipotesi descrittive e percorsi didattici, con l'obiettivo di guidare le sceltye didattiche dell'insegnante.

1988 - Il testo psicologico. Approccio alla traduzione e alla lettura in lingua inglese. [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Bondi, Marina; R., Rossini Favretti
abstract

Il volume contiene una parte introduttiva di riflessioni teorico-metodologiche sull'analisi del discorso specialistico e sulle problematiche traduttive del testo psicologico. La seconda parte comprende invece una serie di analisi guidate che affrontano i diversi generi della comunicazione accademica nel campo della psicologia.

1988 - La traduzione in prospettiva testuale [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo propone una rivalutazione delle attività di traduzione nella didattica della lingua. La traduzione è vista come strumento per sviluppare la consapevolezza della lingua, particolarmente in prospettiva testuale.

1987 - Considerazioni su una tipologia di testi [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo propone una attenzione centrale alla varietà dei testi e ad una loro tipologizzazione come strumento centrale nella deifinizione del syllabus e come oggetto di particolare attenzione per lo sviluppo di competenze testuali e sociolinguistiche.

1987 - Grammatica e insegnamento dell'inglese [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'inserto affronta sistematicamente il ruolo nella glottodidattica contemporanea e propone tanto nuovi approcci comunicativi alla grammatica quanto metodolgoie attive per lo sviluppo delle competenze grammaticali.

1987 - Il discorso politico - Lingua e civiltà [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo illustra il potenziale del testo politico nella lezione di lingua, come strumento per lavorare sul rapporto tra lingua e cultura, lingua ed istituzioni, lingua ed ideologia, con particolare riferimento al lessico e alle strutture argomentative

1987 - Scuola primaria e lingua straniera: un approccio al problema [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L' opera vuole dare un'idea completa delle problematiche inerentil'insegnamento precoce della lingua straniera. L'autrice parte dall'esame dei problemi di ordine biologico e psicologico e, attraverso una panoramica delle esperienze già fatte in ambito europeo, arriva al problema glottodidattico vero e proprio. Sulla base dell'approccio scelto si elabora una concreta programmazione. Il volume si conclude con la presentazione ed analisi dell'unità didattica. In appendice il lettore troverà una serie di esemplificazioni del progetto ILSSE.

1987 - Traduzione sì, ma... [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo affronta il tema della traduzione nella didattica della lingua. La traduzione è vista come strumento di sviluppo delle competenze testualie e sociolinguistiche, più che di quelle morfo-sintattiche. Una attenzione alla traduzione comunicativa consente di favorire anche la creatività dello studente e la sua capacità di riformulare effficacemente. Il suo uso richiede uan chiara definizione dello scopo della traduzione in classe.

1985 - Election '83. Workbook [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Bondi, Marina; P., Leech
abstract

The workbook complements a collection of essays on political discourse and multilingua communication (Rossini Favretti eds.). Documents from the UK 1983 General Election are investigated in their specificity and typology. Manifestos, political speeches, newspaper reports and party election broadcasts are analyzed comparatively, highlighting the function of different discursive practices in constituting objects as well as subjects of discourse. Discourse is thus investigated in its representative strategies and its enunciative modalities.

1985 - Il contributo della linguistica alla didattica dell'inglese [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo affronta il ruolo degli studi linguistici nella formazione dell'insegnante di inglese ripercorrendo i contributi più significativo degli studi linguistici nell'insegnamento della fonetica, della grammatica, del vocabolario e della pragmatica comunicativa.

1985 - Un esempio di analisi linguistica. 'Style in Fiction' [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo illustra il modello di Leech e Short in "Style in Fiction" esemplificandone il contributo all'analisi stilistica con l'analisi di un brano di Golding.

1984 - A proposito dello scrivere [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo affronta il ruolo della scrittua nel curricolo di lingua. L'importanza della produzione scritta è sottolineata sia in relazione alla acquisizione di competenze comunicative, sia in relazione a competenze sociolinguistiche e testuali

1984 - L'analisi degli errori - Considerazioni generali ed implicazioni specifiche [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo traccia il contributo dell'analisi contrastiva e della'analisi degli errori, nelle rispettive caratteristiche, alla formazione dell'insegnante e alle attivitià didattiche che può proporre. Gli esempi fanno riferimento al contrasto italiano-inglese e all'apprendente italofono di inglese.

1984 - La battaglia dei 'manifesti' nascosti [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Il capitolo esamina gli aspetti della campagna elettorale britannica dell''83 che hanno messo in risalto tanto i programmi ("Manifestos") quanto le passioni linguistiche dei politici, sempre pronti ada analizzare i discorsi e le scelte linguistiche dell'avversario. Dall'osservazione di questo costante interpretare le intenzioni dell'altro nascono considerazioni sulla natura stessa del programma elettorale e proposte di analisi linguistica per i tre programmi principali della campagna studiata.

1984 - Per una lettura attiva - indovinare intelligentemente [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo propone una rassegna di approcci alla lettura attiva ed una proposta di sequenze per guidare lo studente alla comprensione del testo

1984 - Problemi morfo-sintattici della traduzione italiano-inglese [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

Il capitolo affronta le principali problematiche morfo-sintattiche della traduzione italiano-inglese, selezionando esempi ai diversi livelli di analisi: dall'ordine degli elementi nel gruppo nominale e nella frase, ad aspetti di coesione, alla scelta della seconda o terza persona nell'allocuzione al lettore

1983 - Alcuni aspetti di base dell'approccio funzionale [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo presenta e discute le nozioni fondamentali dell'approccio funzionale riconducendole al background istituzionale, linguistico-filosofico e socio-linguistico, deineandone implicazioni metodologiche.

1983 - Per una grammatica della coesione in inglese [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo affronta il tema della coesione in inglese e discute criticamente gli approcci sviluppati dalla scuola hallidayana, illustrandone le potenzialità descrittive ed esplicative, nonché le implicazioni didattiche.

1983 - Role play e simulazione [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo discute il potenziale di role-play e simulazione nello sviluppo di competenze comunicative e dialogiche nell'pprendente di L2.

1982 - Appunti sullo sviluppo di una nozione: dall'enunciato al testo e dal testo al discorso [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo traccia lo sviluppo dell'attenzione alla testualità nella linguistica e nella didattica delle lingue. le nozioni centrali sono quelle di enunciato, testo e discorso. le implicazioni didattiche delle diverse prospettive sono presentate e analizzate.

1982 - Atti linguistici e testo drammatico. Saggio applicativo su 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead' di Tom Stoppard [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether speech act theory can be usefully adopted in the definition and analysis of a dramatic text. The key notions are presented ina few introductory remarks on speech acts and text theory. The idea of macro-speech act is employed in an attempt to define both the literary text in general and the dramatic text as a macro-act of fiction based on a principle of cooperation in construction. The case study presented is that of of dialogue in Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead".

1982 - Dalla lettura alla scrittura: implicazioni didattiche di una linguistica del discorso [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo affronta il ruolo della lettura e della scrittura e la necessità di integrare le abilità in un currricolo di L2. propone attività di pre-lettura, di accompagnamento della lettura e di riutilizzazione, che mettono a fuoco aspetti testuali quali coreferenza e contiguità semantica, connettori, selezione e gerarchia nell'organizzazione dell'infrmazione. Su qiesta base si propongono anche attività per la composizione.

1982 - Verso una nozione di discorso: implicazioni didattiche [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

The chapter looks at the implications of the notions of discourse for the teaching of English. The main focus is on pragmatic meanings of cohesive elements and word order.

1981 - Un panorama della teoria degli atti linguistici come base di un approccio funzionale [Articolo su rivista]
Bondi, Marina
abstract

L'articolo presenta una rassegna delle nozioni chiave che stanno alla base dell'approccio funzionale, tracciando lo sviluppo di interessi che vanno dalla nozione di testo e discorso a quella di atto linguistico, ricavandone le implicazioni didattiche.