Get back! Methods for Exploring Discourses of Nostalgia and Nostalgic Discourses Using Corpora

Nostalgia for something lost (factual or imagined) has shaped nations and continues to shape national self-image and policies. The rhetorical appeal to nostalgia has been blamed for a range of phenomena, from populism to reactionary politics at large, and yet research in psychology has suggested that nostalgising has a beneficial cognitive function. The dissonance between the negative reputation of nostalgia and the science of how it works for us, as a positive and useful emotion, is related to the fact that nostalgia is not a given content, but a situated cultural practice. I here use corpus linguistics methods to pursue the mismatch between the “discourse of nostalgia” and “nostalgic discourses” and to move from expressions that denote nostalgia, to expressions that signal it. This paper reports on the methodological explorations analysing large newspaper corpora and working on the overlaps between the collocational profile of nostalgia and the markers of nostalgic discourse. The aim is to exploit corpus studies’ ability to systematically analyse patterns as a gateway to access nostalgic narratives. Nostalgia is, in fact, intrinsically discursive: it is a story of transformation and it is the story of felt absences in the present compared to an ‘elsewhen’. Understanding the narratives of nostalgia and identifying a typology of nostalgic discursive triggers may offer insights into how this pervasive, powerful and often profitable emotion gains purchase in public discourse

Stochastic Ray Propagation in Stratified Random Lattices – Comparative Assessment of Two Mathematical Approaches

In this report, ray propagation in stratified semi-infinite percolation lattices consisting of a succession of uniform density layers is considered. The final version of this article is available at the url of the journal PIER: http://www.jpier.org/PIER

Churchill, Fulton and the Anglo-American special relationship: setting the agenda?

Churchill is often deemed to have failed at Fulton in delivering ‘the crux’ of what he came to secure, namely a special Anglo-American relationship based in both interest and ‘fraternal association’. As other contributions to this special edition demonstrate, there are good grounds for this verdict. However we ask whether, and if so in what ways, Churchill was actually able in and through the Sinews of Peace speech to set the agenda and frame the terms of discussion for the later emergence of a special relationship. To do this we treat the special relationship as a discursive construct and by combining diplomatic history with corpus-assisted discourse studies map discourse features of the Sinews of Peace speech against media discourse on Anglo-American relations in the early 1950s

A new specific neuronal modulatory effect of nicotine: the functional cross talk between nicotinic and glutamate receptors

We here have addressed the topic of the cross-talk between receptors. We provide evidence supporting the co-localization and the functional interaction between nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and some glutamatergic receptors. The recruitment of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors dynamically and negatively modulates the function of both N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) and ?-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptors throughout their selective internalization. This dynamic control by cholinergic nicotinic system of NMDA and ?-AMPA receptors is operative even at very low concentrations of nicotine. Nicotinic and glutamatergic receptors have been both implicated in important neurological and psychiatric disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Thus, a more extensive and detailed knowledge of this new modulatory role of nicotine may eventually enable us to develop specific therapeutic interventions for these pathologies

Presenting the special issue of JCaDs in honour of Alan Partington

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Uno studio sull’innovazione nell’industria chimica

In our analysis, we have remembered the general result reached by studies on innovation of late, according to which innovation in manufacturing industry is a complex phenomenon and does not lend itself to be described and explained through simplistic analytical models. We have then taken clue from a variegated description of the firms’ innovative behaviour, based on several indicators of their innovativeness. Our results confirm the idea that remarkable differences exist between the two sub-sectors into which chemical industry is broken down: pharmaceutical and basic chemicals. As for policy implications, the close correlation between patents and basic-research expenditure suggests that the Italian Fund for basic research (FIRB) might be useful in order to promote innovation in chemical industry.Industria chimica; Innovazione; Ricerca

L’esondazione del torrente Parma nel V secolo d.C.: la trasformazione della città e del territorio

Parma risentì nel V secolo delle mutate condizioni politiche, economiche e sociali, e subì un impoverimento generale come attestato dalle recenti scoperte archeologiche nel quartiere sud-occidentale del centro cittadino, luogo di ferventicome attestato dalle recenti scoperte archeologiche nel quartiere sud-occidentale del centro cittadino, luogo di ferventi attività artigianali dall’età repubblicana al IV secolo d.C., caduto in abbandono nel V secolo e relegato prima ai margini della città e poi definitivamente escluso dal “nuovo” perimetro urbano, ristretto nel VI secolo. I recenti scavi condotti presso il Tribunale di Parma e la rilettura dei dati degli scavi eseguiti nel corso del XX secolo hanno permesso di ricostruire dettagliatamente l’evoluzione della colonia romana in continua espansione fino alla prima metà del V secolo d.C., quando fu segnata da una potente alluvione del torrente Parma che causò l’abbandono di interi quartieri cittadini, in modo particolare quelli meridionali, con la conseguente ripresa dell’incolto anche all’interno delle aree urbane. Il drammatico evento, unitamente alle continue minacce esterne, rese necessaria la costruzione di una nuova cinta difensiva con evidente funzione di barriera contro le continue esondazioni del torrente.The flooding of the Parma creek in the 5th century AD: the trasformation of the city and the territory Parma was affected in the 5th century AD by the changed, economic and social conditions, and underwent a general impoverishment as evidenced by the recent archaeological discoveries in the south-western quarter of the city, a place of fervent craft activities from the Republican age to the 4th century AD, which fell into abandonment in the 5th century AD and relegated first on the edge of the city an then definitively excluded from the “new” urban perimeter, restricted in the 6th century AD. The recent excavations carried out at the Tribunale of Parma and the rereading of the data of the excavations carried out during the 20th century have made possible to reconstruct the evolution of the Roman colony, in continuous expansion until the 5th century AD, when it was marked by a powerful flood of the Parma creek that caused the abandonment of entire city districts, especially the southern ones. The dramatic event, together with the continuous external threats, made it necessary to built a new urban walls with evident function also of protection of the town against the flooding of the creek. The paper concerns the inscription CIL V, 8280 found in Aquileia and now preserved in Vienna, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The deceased, who died at the age of 40, is indicated with the formula VRL that we want to loose as venerabilis. His military service in the numerus Saliorum and the indication of the 11th indiction lead to attribute the stay in Aquileia after the defeat of the Goths and before the arrival of the Lombards, so they probably date his death to the year 563. We believe that Paulus, more than a simple soldier of solid Christian faith, was a sort of military chaplain, a figure to whom the name of serbus Dei contained in the epigraph would fit. Given the close link between the complex of the Great Baths and the door on the ancient kardo, joined by a road built ex novo by a gutting in the Byzantine period, we assume that both the military (with troops) and the civil administration was located in that building in the Byzantine age