Indicatori linguistici percettivi e cognitivi

Il libro presenta i risultati dell’analisi qualitativa e quantitativa di un corpus di 780 testi scritti da 260 Soggetti (Studenti della Scuola di Specializzazione per l’Insegnamento Secondario (SSIS) dell’Università di Macerata) successivamente alla visione di tre brevi filmati di danza. Ai soggetti era stato chiesto di scrivere su ciò che avevano visto e sentito. L’obiettivo principale della ricerca consisteva nell’individuazione (da parte di tre ricercatori) degli Indicatori Linguistici Percettivi e Cognitivi (ILPeC) sia lessicali che morfosintattici, presenti nei suddetti testi. Tali indicatori rivelano quale siano i processi percettivi o cognitivi tramite i quali gli autori dei testi accedono alle informazioni che essi comunicano nei testi. Il background teorico della ricerca è costituito dalla Teoria del testo di J. S. Petöfi e dalla teoria della Gestalt applicata al linguaggio. L’argomento è strettamente connesso con ciò che nella letteratura pertinente viene chiamato evidenzialità ed epistemicità. L’analisi qualitativa e quantitativa dei testi ha permesso l’individuazione, non solo degli ILPeC, ma anche la comprensione dei rapporti tra ILPeC lessicali e morfosintattici, dando luogo alla formulazione della Teoria del Noto, Ignoto, Creduto (NIC), secondo cui i numerosi e differenti ILPeC lessicali e morfosintattici sono riconducibili a tre categorie di base, quelle appunto del Noto, Ignoto e Creduto

Sovrapposizioni e Interruzioni Dialogiche

Nel volume "Sovrapposizioni e interruzioni dialogiche" vengono presentati i principali risultati di una ricerca condotta su un corpus di parlato spontaneo, di tipo sia quotidiano che medico-paziente. I risultati dell'analisi mostrano una percentuale di parlato non lineare decisamente superiore al 5% del totale flusso conversazione. Oltre ai risultati menzionati, il testo presenta una originale proposta tassonomica per i fenomeni oggetto di studi

The Italian Epistemic Disclaimer Non so [I Don’t Know] in a Corpus of Gynaecological Interactions

Abstract Viewing conversations from an epistemic perspective involves analysing how participants navigate their knowledge, handle uncertainty, and address their lack of knowledge. This article focuses on the use of epistemic disclaimers, i.e., linguistic expressions that speakers employ to indicate uncertainty or lack of knowledge, in a collection of Italian gynaecological conversations throughout pregnancy. Specifically, the study examines the occurrences, features, and pragmatic functions of the epistemic disclaimers, with a specific focus on Non so, which is the Italian equivalent of “I don’t know” in English, the most extensively researched epistemic disclaimer. The study aims to (1) investigate the types and frequency of uncertain and unknowing epistemic disclaimers in the gynaecological corpus and (2) identify their characteristics and pragmatic functions. The primary findings indicate that epistemic disclaimers are primarily used to convey unknowledge rather than uncertainty. However, while patients use more epistemic disclaimers than doctors, they mainly use them to communicate unknowledge, whereas doctors mainly use them to express uncertainty. Regardless, their usage does not appear problematic in conversational terms since the topics for which they are used fall outside the domains of knowledge of each party

Knowing, Unknowing, Believing stances and characters’ dialogic identities in the Harry Potter books

4noIn a previous paper (Philip et al. 2013) we presented the analysis of the main characters’ identities, as they emerge from the dialogues in Chapter 10 of the seventh book of the Harry Potter series, in relation to their Knowing, Unknowing, and Believing epistemic stances. The aim of the present study is to expand this analysis to all seven books of the same saga, in particular focusing on how Harry and Lord Voldemort negotiate, construct, and develop their identities and how they evolve in what they know, believe, and do not know through the dialogues in the seven books. This study also aims to compare this linguistic analysis to a literary one. The results show that the epistemic roles in the dialogues support the characters’ identities in the narrative.openDorigato, Laura; Philip, Gillian Susan; Bongelli, Ramona; Zuczkowski, AndrzejDorigato, Laura; Philip, GILLIAN SUSAN; Bongelli, Ramona; Zuczkowski, Andrze

The Italian epistemic marker mi sa [to me it knows] compared to so [I know], non so [I don’t know], non so se [I don’t know whether], credo [I believe], penso [I think]

The two studies presented in this paper concern the Italian epistemic marker mi sa [lit. to me it knows], which seems to have no equivalent in other European languages and has received very little attention in the literature. No analysis of the occurrences of mi sa in contemporary spoken corpora can be found (first gap) as well as no investigation on the epistemic relationship between mi sa and (1) the other modal expressions that use the verb sapere [to know] in the first person singular of the simple present, i.e., so [I know], non so [I do not know], non so se [I do not know whether] as well as (2) its supposed synonyms credo [I believe] and penso [I think] (second gap). The two studies are closely intertwined, the first being an exploratory, qualitative pilot study for the second. Study 1 aims to fill the first gap through the analysis of the contemporary Italian spoken corpus KIParla. The quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed five types of occurrences (theoretically reducible to two main ones), the most numerous of which are ‘mi sa che + proposition’. Study 2 aims to fill the second gap through a questionnaire administered online. The quantitative and statistical results showed the epistemic relationships between the six markers: for the majority of the participants, in the epistemic continuum that goes from unknowledge to uncertainty and then to knowledge, (1) non so refers to unknowledge; non so se, mi sa, credo and penso refer to uncertainty; so refers to knowledge; (2) mi sa, credo, penso confirm to be synonyms; (3) non so se is evaluated as much more uncertain than mi sa, credo, penso. These four epistemic markers seem to occupy a different position along the uncertainty continuum ranging between two poles: doubt (high uncertainty) and belief (low uncertainty)

Writers' uncertainty in scientific and popular biomedical articles. A comparative analysis of the British Medical Journal and Discover Magazine

Distinguishing certain and uncertain information is of crucial importance both in the scientific field in the strict sense and in the popular scientific domain. In this paper, by adopting an epistemic stance perspective on certainty and uncertainty, and a mixed procedure of analysis, which combines a bottom-up and a top-down approach, we perform a comparative study (both qualitative and quantitative) of the uncertainty linguistic markers (verbs, non-verbs, modal verbs, conditional clauses, uncertain questions, epistemic future) and their scope in three different corpora: a historical corpus of 80 biomedical articles from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) 1840-2007; a corpus of 12 biomedical articles from BMJ 2013, and a contemporary corpus of 12 scientific popular articles from Discover 2013. The variables under observation are time, structure (IMRaD vs no-IMRaD) and genre (scientific vs popular articles). We apply the Generalized Linear Models analysis in order to test whether there are statistically significant differences (1) in the amount of uncertainty among the different corpora, and (2) in the categories of uncertainty markers used by writers. The results of our analysis reveal that (1) in all corpora, the percentages of uncertainty are always much lower than that of certainty; (2) uncertainty progressively diminishes over time in biomedical articles (in conjunction with their structural changes-IMRaD-and to the increase of the BMJ Impact Factor); and (3) uncertainty is slightly higher in scientific popular articles (Discover 2013) as compared to the contemporary corpus of scientific articles (BMJ 2013). Nevertheless, in all corpora, modal verbs are the most used uncertainty markers. These results suggest that not only do scientific writers prefer to communicate their uncertainty with markers of possibility rather than those of subjectivity but also that science journalists prefer using a third-person subject followed by modal verbs rather than a first-person subject followed by mental verbs such as think or believe

Italian onco-haematological patients’ preferences in bad news communication: a preliminary investigation

Background: The manner in which bad news is communicated in oncological contexts can affect patients’ engagement, their coping strategies and therapeutic compliance. Although this topic has been broadly investigated since the nineties, to the best of our knowledge, little has been written about Italian patients’ experiences and preferences concerning what the oncologists should disclose and how they should intimate patients about their health conditions in different stages of oncological disease. Methods: In an attempt to fill this gap, an online self-report questionnaire was administered to a sample of Italian onco-haematological patients. Data were analysed both qualitatively (by a content analysis) and quantitatively (by descriptive analysis and Generalized Linear Mixed Model). Results: While the majority of patients elected to know the truth during their clinical course, a polarisation between those arguing that the truth be fully disclosed and those claiming that the truth be communicated in a personalised way was observed at the attitude level. Among demographic variables accounted for, age seems to most affect patients’ preferences. Indeed, younger Italian patients decidedly reject concealment of the truth, even when justified by the beneficence principle. This result could be a reaction to some protective and paternalistic behaviours, but it could even reflect a relation according to which the more the age increases the more the fear of knowing rises, or an intergenerational change due to different ways of accessing the information. The qualitative analysis of the final open-ended question revealed three main sources of problems in doctor-patient encounters: scarcity of time, absence of empathy and use of not-understandable language that makes it difficult for patients to assume a more active role. Conclusions: The results of the present study, which represents a preliminary step in the subject investigation, will be deployed for the construction and validation of a more sophisticated questionnaire. Better awareness of the Italian onco-haematological patients’ preferences concerning bad news communication and truth-telling could be useful in adopting more suitable medical practices and improving doctor-patient relationships

Questions and epistemic stance: Some examples from Italian conversations

Through the analysis of presuppositions, question design, social action and preference organisation in short fragments of Italian question-answer sequences, this paper aims to show that (1) wh-questions, on the one hand, and alternative and polar questions (i.e., polar interrogatives, tag and declarative questions), on the other, come from two different epistemic positions: unknowing and uncertain, respectively; (2) alternative and polar questions convey different degrees of uncertainty, thus placing themselves in different points along the epistemic continuum of the uncertain position. Keywords: Questions, Epistemic stance, Uncertainty, Unknowledge, Information-seeking, Confirmation-seekin

Negotiating narrative: dialogic dynamics of Known, Unknown and Believed in \u201cHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows\u201d

Within the framework of KUB Theory (Bongelli and Zuczkowski 2008, Zuczkowski et al. 2011), information communicated verbally can ultimately be reduced to one of three categories: what the speaker knows (Known), what the speaker does not know (Unknown) and what the speaker believes (Believed). Dialogic communication can be considered as an exchange of information originating in one of these categories and directed towards another. The present study investigates the interaction of Known, Unknown and Believed information in the dialogues found in Chapter 10 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It demonstrates how these three categories of information can contribute to a reading of the plot and its progression, and also how aspects of the protagonists\u2019 characters emerge through the language they use in their dialogic communication