This paper investigates how argument structure constructions (see e.g. Goldberg 1995) are used by Italian newspapers to portray gender-based violence (GBV), how their usage affects responsibility attribution to perpetrators, and how such usage is perceived by Italian readers. The assumption is that constructions critically affect meaning: constructional choices prompt different viewpoints of the same event. For the corpus study, we collected 40 articles from local newspapers and annotated 720 constructions denoting GBV events. Constructions suppressing/backgrounding the perpetrator or depicting the event as a bare happening were the most frequent. Building upon these results, for the perception study, 274 participants read an author-constructed news report portraying GBV and answered four speculative questions about the identity of the perpetrator and the victim. Respondents were divided into groups and each group was presented with a stimulus article containing different constructions of the GBV event surrounded by the same information frame. In line with previous studies, it was found that the perpetrator could be assigned less responsibility when the passive and nominal constructions were employed.
What are speech data? The question is not as trivial as it may seem: every day both theoretical and applied linguistic research come up against problems deriving from bad data management. This topic is particularly thorny in interdisciplinary approaches such as the speech forensics analysis, whereby the recorded speech can be exploited as legal clues, with important repercussions on public security and citizens’ rights. The datum does not exist in nature, being it a consequence of the human analysis of a given phenomenon. In fact, data extraction is based on explicit and implicit theories implemented by the researcher within the application of specific frameworks. Researchers and professionals working on empiric data should be more aware of these underlined processes in order to avoid data misuse and, indeed, maximize results. In this paper, we will briefly address the issue of the speech data epistemology with a particular focus on the interdisciplinary required in forensics among linguistics and engineering, by discussing examples from Italian real cases. The analysis of speech for forensic purposes requires a strong interdisciplinary approach, especially for what it concerns collection, classification, treatment of acoustic data, and their following transcription and analysis. Moreover, it must be clarified what different experts (e.g., lawyers vs. linguists) mean as “datum”.
Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: Celata, C., Meluzzi, C. and Ricci, I. (2016 ABSTRACT: SoPhISM (The SocioPhonetics of verbal Interaction: Sicilian Multimodal corpus) is an acoustic and articulatory sociophonetic corpus focused on whithin-speaker variation as a function of stylistic/communicative factors. The corpus is particularly intended for the study of rhotics as a sociolinguistic variable in the production of Sicilian speakers. Rhotics are analyzed according to the distinction between single-phase and multiple-phase rhotics along with the presence of constriction and aperture articulatory phases. Based on these parameters, the annotation protocol seeks to classify rhotic variants within a sufficiently granular, but internally consistent, phonetic perspective. The proposed descriptive parameters allow for the discussion of atypical realizations in terms of phonetic derivations (or simplifications) of typical closure-aperture sequences. The distribution of fricative variants in the speech repertoire of one speaker and his interlocutors shows the potential provided by SoPhISM for sociophonetic variation to be studied at the 'micro' level of individual speaker's idiolects.Keywords: rhotics; articulatory sociophonetics; phonetic annotation; coda /r/; Sicilian. RESUMEN: Sociofonética de la variación de las róticas en los dialectos sicilianos y en el italiano deSicilia: corpus, metodología y primeros resultados.-SoPhISM (SocioPhonetics of verbal Interaction: Sicilian Multimodal corpus) es un corpus sociofonético acústico y articulatorio centrado en la variación individual en función de la variedad de la lengua y de los factores estilísticos y comunicativos del habla. El corpus está concebido particularmente para el estudio de /r/ en cuanto variable sociolingüística en el habla italiana y dialectal de locutores sicilianos. Las róticas se analizan teniendo en cuenta la distinción entre monofásicas y multifásicas, y la presencia de fases de constricción y abertura. Sobre la base de estos parámetros, el protocolo de anotación intenta clasificar las variantes dentro de una perspectiva fonética suficientemente minuciosa y, al mismo tiempo, internamente coherente. Los parámetros descriptivos propuestos permiten discutir ciertas realizaciones atípicas como derivaciones fonéticas (o simplificaciones) de secuencias típicas de cierre-apertura. La distribución de las variantes fricativas en el repertorio de un hablante y de sus interlocutores muestra el potencial proporcionado por SoPhISM para el estudio de la variación sociofonética en el nivel "micro" de los idiolectos.Palabras clave: róticas; sociofonética articulatoria; anotación fonética; /r/ en coda; siciliano.
This paper deals with the use of personal pronouns (PPs) in Ancient Greek in two Aristophanes’ comedies (i.e.LysistrataandEcclesiazusae). The main purpose of this study is to show that Ancient Greek PPs often have a pragmatic function, in particular linked to the speaker’s communicative goals. The analysis highlights the presence of a gender-related distribution and a context-dependent use of personal pronouns. In particular, male characters prefer 1st person singular pronouns, whereas female characters use more 1st person plural pronouns with an inclusive value. Moreover, in two communicative frameworks it is possible to notice how PPs are used for their value of membership categorization. In this respect PPs can be considered possible markers ofautonomíaorafiliación(see Bravo 1999). Some peculiar instances of referential ambiguities concern in particular the use of 1st and 2nd person plural pronouns in both comedies.The analysis shows that use of Ancient Greek PPs varies according to gender and context. Moreover, it is clear that in both comedies this variation should be explained mainly as a pragmatic strategy of membership categorization, thus showing instances of non-prototypical uses of PPs similar to other languages (e.g. Spanish, English, Modern Greek).
In this paper we present a sociolinguistic research conducted on Italian schoolchildren learning English as LS. Following on from renowned researchers, we focused on a less studied population, that is school-aged monolingual children. Our participants consist in 15 students of a 4th grade class at a primary school in Pavia, all aged around 9 y.o, 7 boys and 8 girls. All children do not present any recorded cognitive problems and they are all Italian L1 speakers with little or no use of other languages at home, and English learnt as LS since the beginning of primary school at age 6. We recorded all children performing a task of re-narration of a “Tom & Jerry” cartoon, firstly in Italian and then, after one week, in English. The corpus consist of about 2h 45’ of recordings, transcribed and annotated in ELAN. Lexical knowledge in English was also tested through a questionnaire before the recordings. The results were analyzed both qualitatively and, partly, quantitatively. During qualitative analysis, two elements were observed: (1) general tendencies in speakers general behavior and (2) differences in the relationship between syntactic-conversational system and gesture system in relation to L1/L2. The quantitative analysis show a difference in the use of beats gestures and iconic ones between L1 and LS, but also between boys and girls.
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