In the course of the last few decades web-based communication has facilitated the dissemination of scientific knowledge and has contributed to making material which was primarily targeted to the expert community also available to the wider public. For such a mass of information to be effectively comprehended, some changes became necessary in order to facilitate web-searches and locate relevant material when browsing online archives. In the light of the above, the genre of research article (RA) abstracts in online academic publications seems to be particularly interesting, since its distinctive generic function is to both attract the readers’ attention and synthetically anticipate the content of the ensuing RA. This paper compares abstracts in print issues and those available in electronic format of the Washington Law Review to see whether and to what extent the concern for piquing readers’ curiosity to continue reading the associated RA has affected abstract writing. The focus will be placed particularly on knowledge dissemination (KD) resources such as the labels used to refer to the associated RA, the verbs employed to describe the type of scientific activity performed by the RA and, finally, the metadiscursive markers (namely frame and endophoric markers) used to provide interpretive guidance to readers.

Climate change constitutes one of the major challenges of our time. The United States, in particular, represent one of the main greenhouse gas emitters in the world. Under the Obama administration, the US promoted a plan to reduce carbon pollution and incentivise clean energy. A constant stream of information on the impacts of climate change was disseminated online. By contrast, President Trump’s election has been linked to a tendency to discredit scientific knowledge. Pursuing an “America first energy plan”, Trump aims at rescinding environmental regulations he considers an impediment to business. The present study analyses a corpus of environmental information about global warming and energy policies published on official governmental websites, comparing the data and reports produced during Obama’s office with the most recent communications which reflect the priorities of Trump’s administration. Applying Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis, the study investigates how scientific knowledge about climate change has been reproduced online to serve different interests and support contrasting ideologies. The paper investigates the selection and prominence attributed to specialised information, the argumentations exploited to justify political choices and the authoritative sources quoted to support positions. Particular relevance is assigned to the discourse accompanying the dismissal of basic climate change tenets and the demolition of environmental programmes operated by the current US Presidency. The study shows how Trump’s reshaping of environmental policy priorities involves refashioning online contents, by excising, hiding or limiting the importance of any mentions to climate change. Moreover, the present administration is shifting emphasis towards usage of fossil fuels, based on an anachronistic contrast between stewardship of natural resources and economic development.

The nativeness principle is a major factor in attitudes to the use of ELF (see: Seidlhofer 2001, 2011; Jenkins 2007). Aside from issues of identity and the maintenance of an increasingly unjustifiable disparity in status between NES and NNES users of English, the emulation required by the nativeness principle is difficult to justify in the face of the fact that no single NS model of English exists (Seidlhofer 2011) and that research shows that NNES users are, in any case, unreliable at identifying NESs (Christiansen 2014), thus casting doubt over whether such models are as important in practice as conventional wisdom maintains. In this paper, we report on an experiment broadly following the matched-guise test technique (Lambert et al. 1960). In this, we collected NNES ELF users’ reactions, in the form of a Likert Scale, to recordings of various speakers, some of whom NES from the inner circle, others highly proficient ELF users from the outer circle (see Graddol 2010). Respondents were presented the same set of six speakers under different randomised guises according to the two parameters of ±NES (Native English Speaker) and ±Celeb (Celebrity), the latter chosen as a feature particularly relevant in the context of models and the motivation for emulation. Respondents, female Italian ELF users, were asked to rate how happy they would be to speak like the persona (whether genuine or invented) in question. The object was to see whether any discernable pattern could be identified in the way that the features of ±NES and ±Celeb interact to affect attitudes to different manifestations of English, and whether a “celebrity effect”, in particular in respect to NNES, can be shown to exist as a possible rival to the nativeness principle. In discussion of our results, we identify a possible third parameter namely affinity between respondent and speaker.

This paper proposes an initial investigation of the poems written by Eduard Limonov. The latter, in fact, is a very well-known novelist and challenging political figure, but few studies have considered his poetry. This research will hence explore to what extent Limonov’s poetry reflects that of his model, Velemir Khlebnikov, as well as the features of Oberiuty’s production (from Harms and Vvedensky, to Oleynikov and Zabolotsky). Finally, this paper also underlines the undisputed originality that characterizes the case study under examination.

Nasalization of stressed vowels in Albanian (especially in the northern Albania Geg dialect) is considered by Albanologists as a very problematic phenomenon and a case study difficult to be solved. The current paper proposes an analysis that frames the phenomenon both at a synchronic and diachronic level. The development of vowel nasalization is investigated by taking into account the most accredited theories in the acoustic-coarticulatory field as well as linguistic universals concerning the spreading of nasalization in the vowel systems of various languages of the world. From a diachronic point of view, particular attention is paid to the original conditions of Albanian vocalism and, above all, to the aspects concerning the results of IE * o and and * e (as well as * a and * e from Latin borrowings). The evolution of these sounds helps to determine both the phonetic conditioning which originated nasalization and its periodization: nasalization developed only before a tautosyllabic nasal consonant (except for those cases where it is a result of analogical leveling) and must have been stabilized after the diphthongization of mid vowels *e and * o . Finally, based on the data available today concerning the geographical distribution of nasal vowels in the Albanian speaking area (including Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro), an alternative hypothesis about the diffusion of the phenomenon is offered. Nasalization in Albanian may have had a gradual spreading, relatively to the number of vowels involved, through a process blocked at its initial stage in the southern Tosk area and in some peripheral Geg areas, and not uniformly extended to the whole Albanian speaking region.

Abstract ˗ The University of Genoa and Minority Language Speakers. On the one hand, the Erasmus students; on the other foreign students, in our case Latin American speakers, who live permanently in the city or in the surrounding areas. The former object of a minimum communication attention from the Institution, the latter approved to the student rank and as such neither passively nor actively acting on the Linguistic landscape of the University. Not visually, at least. However, going to dig into the life stories of a group of Latin American students enrolled in the Department of Political Science in Genoa, we are faced with a group of learners who have very little to do with the children of the early diaspora that attest an unprecedented identity and linguistic repositioning of this important slice of the Genoese ethnoscape. The mature relationship with the language of the country of adoption, the use of Spanish in their families, the root of the community they belong to and the success aroused by the Spanish in the university classrooms, allows them to get closer in a learning environment without the insecurities and remorse observed in previous studies on linguistic contact in Genoa in education. This cannot but guide the educational choices and more generally the linguistic policy of a University naturally projected towards Latin America.

Abstract – The aim of this article is to analyze the process of sociolinguistic recontextualization of Arabic as diasporic language in the linguistic landscape in Lavapies neighborhood in Madrid. The sociolinguistic recontextualization will be analyzed in the article from three axes. First, I will describe the regime and patterns of language use in the linguistic landscape (LL). Secondly, I will examine the interests that exist behind the visibility of Arabic as a minority language and the function(s) that its relocation in the LL develops, in a zone not only of contact with Spanish as a hegemonic language, but also within multilingualism and superdiversity. By function, I refer to the linguistic-communicative, socio-identity and ethnic place-making (Scollon, Scollon 2003) of Arabic in a sociolinguistic regime and a dynamic and multilingual LL. Finally, I will analyze how space is restructuring, in spite of the existence of power relationships linked to the rules of use and construction of space. I will find out if there are phenomena such as spatial marking and new referential functions of the reproduction of space through its resemiotization and the relocation of Arabic as a minority and diasporic language.

Abstract – Defined by some critics as the exemplification of “pop trash” and “nastiness” of contemporary political culture, feared by translators and interpreters for the roughness and vulgarity of certain expressions and the lack of cohesion, mocked and criticized by the intellectual elite accustomed to the political correctness of the diplomatic world, Trump's communicative style has secured his victory, as The Guardian was also forced to admit in an article of November 11, 2016 entitled “Winning The language that got Trump elected”. Then, since the day of the election result, “revisionist” comments of the program of a potential transformational leader and astonished acknowledgement of the effectiveness of the “new”, “unmistakable” style of Donald Trump's communication have multiplied. The purpose of the essay is to provide a brief overview of the communicative strategies adopted by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, while contextualizing them in the research field of presidential discourse studies in order to identify some characteristic features that can be highlighted not only in a synchronic analysis but also in a comparative diachronic perspective that looks at the rhetoric of his predecessors. Abstract - Definito da qualche critico come l'esemplificazione del pop trash e della nastiness della cultura contemporanea, lo stile comunicativo di Trump, temuto da traduttori e interpreti per la rozzezza e volgarita di talune sue espressioni e per la mancanza di una struttura testuale riconoscibile, deriso e criticato dalle elite intellettuali abituate al politically correct del mondo diplomatico, gi ha pur sempre assicurato la vittoria, com'e stato costretto ad ammettere il Guardian in un articolo dell'11 novembre 2016, dal titolo Winning Words: The language that got Trump elected. E cosi, dal giorno dei rsultato elettorale si moltiplicano i commenti revisionisti e di sorpresa costatazione dell'efficacia del nuovo e inconfondibile stile della comunicazione di Donald Trump. Lo scopo del saggio sara quello di fornire una breve panoramica delle strategie comunicative adottate da Trump inquadrandole nel contesto degli studi della retorica presidenziale, al fine di individuare aspetti piu o meno nuovi e caratteristici che si palesano non solo attraverso uno studio sincronico ma soprattutto in un confronto diacronico con la retorica dei predecessori.

Abstract – Following different paths, Arsene Darmesteter and Michel Breal formalize the notions of semantique and polysemie . Breal’s Essai de semantique (1897) - in which semantics is set up as an autonomous discipline, independent of etymology, lexicography and even rhetoric - can be seen as a systematization of the emancipation of polysemy as the autonomous science of the meanings of the words - a theory proposed by Darmesteter in La vie des mots (1887). Breal and Darmesteter share the common point of view of anti-etymologist polysemic multiplication of the meanings of a word, while they disagree on the adoption of the speaker’s point of view. Starting from the pre-existent connection in the two authors between polysemy and semantics, aimed at identifying the polysemic factor as a mediating factor in the relationship between etymological and synonymic instances, I intend to analyze the productivity of this connection in the semantic dynamics related to the transition from Latin to Romance languages. In particular, I focused my attention on the following different instances: the enrichment and loss of lexemes; the transfers, extensions or generalizations, reductions or specializations; the rework in the relationship between signifiers and meanings, both for similarity (metaphors) and contiguity (metonymies); shift due to taboo; the restructuring of the semantic fields, with particular attention to the semantic field of colors and of numbers; the resemanticization by re-motivation of meaning (folk etymology). Abstract - Arsene Darmesteter e Michel Breal formalizzano, seguendo percorsi diversi, le nozioni di semantique e di polysemie . L’emancipazione, proposta da Darmesteter ne La vie des mots (1887), della polisemia quale scienza autonoma dei sensi delle parole trova una sistematizzazione ne l’ Essai de semantique (1897) di Breal, in cui la semantica si configura come disciplina autonoma, indipendente dall’etimologia, dalla lessicografia e anche dalla retorica. Breal e Darmesteter condividono un punto di vista anti-etimologista della moltiplicazione polisemica dei sensi di una parola, mentre cio che li distingue e l’adozione del punto di vista del soggetto parlante. Partendo dal nesso esistente nei due autori tra polisemia e semantica, mirante ad individuare nel fattore polisemico un elemento di mediazione nel rapporto tra istanze etimologiche e sinonimiche, si intende analizzare la produttivita di tale nesso nelle dinamiche semantiche riguardanti il passaggio dal latino alle lingue romanze. In particolare, si e concentrata l’attenzione sulle diverse istanze di: arricchimento e perdita di lessemi; trasferimenti, estensioni o generalizzazioni, riduzioni o specializzazioni; rielaborazioni nel rapporto tra significanti e significati, sia per somiglianza (metafore) sia per contiguita (metonimie); mutamenti per tabuizzazione; ristrutturazione dei campi semantici con particolare attenzione al campo semantico dei colori e a quello dei numeri; risemantizzazione mediante rimotivazione di significato (etimologia popolare).