'Come sei elegante oggi!': positive politeness in Southern Europe

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Code-switching as an indicator of language shift: a case study of the Romagnolo dialect of Gatteo a Mare, Italy

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Audiodescrizione nella classe di italiano L2 : un esperimento didattico

Audio description in a class of L2 Italian. A didactic experimentAudio description is an inter-semiotic translation process, converting visuals into spoken language. This translation practice is meant for visually impaired individuals and aims to increase their social inclusion and the availability of suitable media products, such as audio-described movies, for this specific audience. In this contribution, however, we will not focus on the social function of this translation practice, but will explore its potential in the field of foreign language didactics. We will present the results of a didactic experiment, carried out in a class of L2 Italian at Ghent University, in which the students were asked to write an audio description script. The main goal of this exploratory study is to test the validity of audio description as a didactic tool in a class of Italian as a foreign language and to identify the linguistic challenges that emerge for the students during a task of this kind. The results indicate that audio description is certainly a valid didactic tool for an L2 learning environment, since it promotes metalinguistic reflection and consequent awareness of various aspects of the used language, such as morpho-syntactic features (pronouns, prepositions, verbs), lexical aspects (encouraging precision and variety) and the (inter)cultural dimension

Positive reviews on TripAdvisor : a cross-linguistic study of contemporary digital tourism discourse

The emergence of the Web 2.0 profoundly changed the tourist experience and its modes of interaction and communication. Among the most pervasive forms of contemporary tourism discourse we find online reviews posted on social media platforms as TripAdvisor. Previous research on online travel reviews focused almost exclusively on negative reviews and mostly considered monolingual English dataset. In the present study we will explore positive reviews and we will add a cross-linguistic analysis comparing reviews written in English, Italian and Dutch. In this contribution, we first explore the move structure of reviews, and then delve into their different linguistic realizations, paying particular attention to potential cross-linguistic similarities and divergences. Our results show that positive reviews are generally formed by four main moves: positive and negative evaluations, offering extra/background information and future-oriented recommendations. These moves represent stable and recurrent features in reviews written in all three languages under examination. Further, also the topics of the reviews display a cross-linguistic tendency towards similarity, with the preferred topics being the accommodation, its services and the staff. The findings also highlight some divergences among the three language groups, especially not on what is said but on how it is said. For instance, in reviews written in Italian we found expressions of thankfulness and congratulations to the staff, while these are practically absent in the other languages. Moreover, we observed that Italian reviewers tend to realize positive evaluations in a more intensified way (e.g. through the use of superlative lexical expressions) while these strategies are used far less frequently in British and Dutch reviews. With this study we seek to contribute to research in the field of (digital) tourism discourse providing one of the first discourse-oriented analyses on reviews of positive polarity. Moreover, performing a comparative analysis, we aim at gaining a deeper insight on the issue of multilingualism within (online) tourism communication

Responding to compliments online: THe case of Airbnb online experiences

The present article investigates responses to compliments posted on Airbnb Online Experiences, a recently launched platform. The study contributes to and expands the current body of research on compliment practices online. While previous research predominantly focused on responses to compliments on social-oriented platforms (such as Facebook or Instagram), in this contribution the focus is on a business-driven environment (Airbnb). Departing from the framework elaborated by Maíz-Arévalo (2013) on Facebook data, I examine the distribution of different compliment response strategies in an Airbnb corpus. Further, a qualitative discussion of the results will be provided, elaborating on some actual examples extracted from the corpus. The findings highlight some specific trends in the compliment response strategies adopted by Airbnb hosts. Hosts overwhelmingly opted for accepting strategies, while evading or rejecting strategies were avoided. Moreover, a recurrent use of appreciation and returning compliments strategies was observed. Remarkably, agreeing and self-enhancement strategies (self-promotion) were also attested in the dataset, which are usually absent on other platforms (such as Facebook). Finally, in their responses, hosts also included emoticons, encouraging utterances and personalized invitation to future contact, promoting closeness and a certain degree of informality with their interlocutors

Third language acquisition and its consequences for foreign language didactics : the case of Italian in Flanders

The present study examines crosslinguistic influence (CLI) from L1 and L2s in two groups of multilingual learners of L3 Italian. The two groups share their L1, which is Dutch, and an elementary proficiency in French and German, but they differ regarding other L2s: one group has high proficiency in English and Spanish, while the other group has low intermediate proficiency in English and no knowledge of Spanish. Earlier research has shown that typological proximity and proficiency level are the most important factors explaining the source of CLI, together with the L2 status factor. The results of our study confirm that learners with the same L1 can behave in a substantially divergent way, when learning an L3, if their linguistic background is different. This is especially true when typologically close L2s in which learners have a high proficiency level, such as Spanish in the present study, are involved. In this paper we will discuss the outcomes of our experiment and highlight didactic consequencesEen colloquium over universitair taalvaardigheidsonderwijs Universiteit Leiden, 2 december 2016, the complete issue can be found at http://hdl.handle.net/1887/57204Wetensch. publicati

Combined Treatment with PI3K Inhibitors BYL-719 and CAL-101 Is a Promising Antiproliferative Strategy in Human Rhabdomyosarcoma Cells

Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is a highly malignant and metastatic pediatric cancer arising from skeletal muscle myogenic progenitors. Recent studies have shown an important role for AKT signaling in RMS progression. Aberrant activation of the PI3K/AKT axis is one of the most frequent events occurring in human cancers and serves to disconnect the control of cell growth, survival, and metabolism from exogenous growth stimuli. In the study reported here, a panel of five compounds targeting the catalytic subunits of the four class I PI3K isoforms (p110α, BYL-719 inhibitor; p110β, TGX-221 inhibitor; p110γ, CZC24832; p110δ, CAL-101 inhibitor) and the dual p110α/p110δ, AZD8835 inhibitor, were tested on the RMS cell lines RD, A204, and SJCRH30. Cytotoxicity, cell cycle, apoptosis, and the activation of downstream targets were analyzed. Of the individual inhibitors, BYL-719 demonstrated the most anti-tumorgenic properties. BYL-719 treatment resulted in G1/G0 phase cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. When combined with CAL-101, BYL-719 decreased cell viability and induced apoptosis in a synergistic manner, equaling or surpassing results achieved with AZD8835. In conclusion, our findings indicate that BYL-719, either alone or in combination with the p110δ inhibitor, CAL-101, could represent an efficient treatment for human rhabdomyosarcoma presenting with aberrant upregulation of the PI3K signaling pathway