New biomedical practices and discourses: focus on surrogacy

This study, set in a discourse-analytical and constructionist framework, explores the impact of biomedical advances on language and discourse. The main focus is on surrogacy and on the websites of ten organizations promoting it, with headquarters in various countries where this practice is legal. The discursive representation of the different forms of surrogacy and related Assisted Reproduction Technologies is discussed, focusing in particular on the communicative strategies enacted to deal with the most sensitive and controversial aspects. The analysis provides evidence of an approach that represents surrogacy, the actors and the moral issues involved in absolutely positive terms, and at the same time disregards the most problematic and controversial aspects, making recourse to some recurrent discursive frames. A further aspect investigated is the representation and denomination of the various actors involved, in a context where the spread of new reproductive technologies has introduced the possibility of significantly altering the natural mechanisms presiding over the inception of human life, and has thus triggered a process of lexical innovation and adaptation of the basic vocabulary associated with reproduction and kinship roles

Job advertisements on LinkedIn: generic integrity and evolution

This paper focuses on job advertisements posted on LinkedIn, a Social Networking Site (SNS) tailored to the workplace environment. The job advertisement is a long-lived genre, which existed mainly in the daily/weekly press environment in the form of classified ad until it migrated to the Web. A further development came from the rise of SNSs: the job advert moved to an online community context, with all the social implications of this fact. The aim is to describe the peculiarities of the LinkedIn job advertisement as a sub-genre, identifying similarities with and differences from job ads posted on other online platforms, as well as from the traditional printed job ads published in newspapers. Findings provide evidence of a significant degree of generic integrity, with some changes due to the migration to the web environment, and even more meaningful changes due to the re-contextualization of the genre in a SNS

Discorsi della surrogazione

Fin dalle sue origini negli anni ‘80, la maternità surrogata è stata uno dei temi più controversi, mantenendosi nel tempo al centro del dibattito civile, sempre alla ribalta seppure con momenti di maggior o minore attenzione, e tutt’ora attuale in molti paesi del mondo. Una semplice ricerca in Internet rimanda a decine di siti di organizzazioni che offrono questo tipo di servizi nel paese in cui hanno sede o all’estero. L’oggetto principale di indagine nel presente lavoro è per l’appunto l’analisi delle modalità discorsive con cui questi siti comunicano e costruiscono discorsivamente la pratica della maternità surrogata

Rethinking metaphors in COVID-19 communication

This article discusses metaphors used in communication in English about COVID-19 in the light of the critical debate on war-related metaphors that has taken place both in the academia and in the press since the outbreak of the pandemic, as various scholars have argued that such metaphors may have counterproductive effects under various viewpoints. Proposals have also been put forward to replace them with alternative less potentially harmful metaphors (e.g. FOOTBALL, FIRE, STORM, TSUNAMI). In this paper the discussion is based on the analysis of a corpus of print and online news and opinion websites dealing with COVID-19, and aims at verifying the actual use and frequency of both war-based metaphors and non-war alternative metaphorical expressions. At the same time, it intends to evaluate the potential adverse effects of the former and the advantages of the latter as claimed by the scholars involved in the debate. It also shows that in articles and posts dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, WAR metaphors and their entailments are virtually still prevalent, indeed ubiquitous, while the alternative metaphors proposed by scholars appear far more sporadically, with only few instances for each of them or none at all. This high frequency of war-related metaphorical expressions, which is found also in various other domains and in spontaneous speech, mostly in recurrent (and therefore predictable) phraseological configurations, suggests that they have now become conventional and lost their resonance, thus reducing their potential impact

University of Montana faces more students, faculty: different costs this fall

This article introduces the theme of the Special Issue on “Debating evolutions in science, technology and society: Ethical and ideological perspectives.” Its starts from the idea that new advances in science and in technology, new evolutions in society, politics and culture bring with them the need to update linguistic resources at different levels in order to be able to talk about them and accommodate new concepts. Thus they inevitably result in an impact on language and discourse that goes well beyond vocabulary and terminology. They change patterns of thinking, reasoning and conceptualizing, leading to new representations and new discourses. In particular, representation of evolutions in texts addressed to the general public involves the transfer of domain-specific knowledge to various non-specialist audiences and its recontextualization and transformation to be made accessible to the non-specialist. That is why it can never be neutral, even when the writer has the best intentions in terms of accuracy and honesty. The focus of this introductory article is in particular on the notion of discursive frame, frames being cognitive perceptual structures that either subconsciously or strategically influence participants on how to “hear or how to say” something. It shows that framing, selecting and perspectivising are inevitable in knowledge dissemination and transmission, and argues that since they are so effective, discourse frames are a powerful ideological instrument, capable of influencing the public perception of the most crucial issues in society

Scientific Knowledge and Legislative Drafting: Focus on Surrogacy Laws

This article discusses how sensitive bioethical issues are addressed in legislation, using as a starting point the analysis of a corpus of normative texts relating to Assisted Reproduction Technologies (ARTs), and in particular surrogacy, enacted in various English-speaking countries. In the investigation, special special attention is given to the re-elaboration and presentation of scientific knowledge in legal discourse with a view to detecting any possible slant or changes, and the reasons thereof. Another important object of investigation is the redefinition of certain well established categories of kinship because of the disruptive effects of biomediacal advances, and ARTs in particular, on family-based social relations. The analysis will focus on legal definitions, which are crucial in this domain considering that advances in the modern technosciences have brought about the need to categorize and name new medical practices and the situations they contribute to bringing about. The focus will be on how definitions are used in normative texts, functioning as initiators of a dynamic process generating discourses that acquire their meaning in the social and communicative contexts they are embedded in. Special attention will be devoted to the way in which specialised scientific, and especially medical, terminology and concepts, are dealt with in bioethically relevant legal discourse

Debating evolutions in science, technology and society: Ethical and ideological perspectives. An introduction

This article introduces the theme of the Special Issue on “Debating evolutions in science, technology and society: Ethical and ideological perspectives.” Its starts from the idea that new advances in science and in technology, new evolutions in society, politics and culture bring with them the need to update linguistic resources at different levels in order to be able to talk about them and accommodate new concepts. Thus they inevitably result in an impact on language and discourse that goes well beyond vocabulary and terminology. They change patterns of thinking, reasoning and conceptualizing, leading to new representations and new discourses. In particular, representation of evolutions in texts addressed to the general public involves the transfer of domain-specific knowledge to various non-specialist audiences and its recontextualization and transformation to be made accessible to the non-specialist. That is why it can never be neutral, even when the writer has the best intentions in terms of accuracy and honesty. The focus of this introductory article is in particular on the notion of discursive frame, frames being cognitive perceptual structures that either subconsciously or strategically influence participants on how to “hear or how to say” something. It shows that framing, selecting and perspectivising are inevitable in knowledge dissemination and transmission, and argues that since they are so effective, discourse frames are a powerful ideological instrument, capable of influencing the public perception of the most crucial issues in society

Discursive Representations of Controversial Issues in Medicine and Health

This editorial is meant to introduce a thematic issue of LCM that addresses representations of controversial issues in medicine and health from the perspective of discourse analysis. Due to their high relevance in everybody’s lives, it comes as no surprise that such issues figure prominently in public debates. Some of the most controversial among them are abortion, medical use of marijuana, euthanasia and assisted suicide, end-of-life care, life support for the terminally ill, gene editing, genomic medicine, donor insemination, surrogacy, to name but a few, in a context where the production and the consumption of scientific information involve, affect and (dis)connect multiple actors, stakeholders and multiple publics, sub-publics as well as counter-publics. It is a picture of remarkable complexity where different values, opinions and beliefs are shaped by a multiplicity of social and cognitive factors. This editorial deals with a few general aspects, providing some background to the more specific studies presented in the articles included in the issues.3reservedmixedGiuliana Elena Garzone; Maria Cristina Paganoni; Martin ReisglGarzone, GIULIANA ELENA; Cristina Paganoni, Maria; Reisgl, Marti