ELF Encounters in Migrants’ Forums: Communication Management Across Cultures

The present study investigates the strategies that migrants can adopt to ask for help and express their views in English as a Lingua Franca. On the basis of the exchanges between migrants of various nationalities and in different locations, a framework is proposed with the twofold aim of outlining the structure and discursive moves of migrants’ postings and analyzing the interactional dynamics which may turn a mixed group of nationals into a goal-oriented community of practice (House, 2003). The migrants participating in discussion forums rely on the experience of other users to obtain additional information and solve their problems. This prominent goal is manifest in the survey of the discussion threads, from nationalization documents to job hunt, including lawful residence, citizenship tests, application forms and many others. The transactional metafunction is, however, entwined with the interactional one (Brown and Yule, 1983) as feelings of anger, frustration, relief, joy, gratitude are in turn expressed by the forum users. In light of the ‘entailment’ paradigm advanced by Firth (2009), that is «the inherent interactional and linguistic variability that lingua franca interactions entail», the analysis focuses on the affective connotations of lexical choices and interactional markers, as well as the dialectics between potentially disruptive language behaviour and consensus-seeking pragmatic strategies. The migrants’ forum Trackitt (last access 31.05.2013) is contrasted with a British expatriates’ forum (last access 31.05.2013) in order to ascertain to what extent the pragmatic features of the former can be realistically associated with an ELF use rather than with the genre (i.e. forum discussion) and the subject (i.e. migrants’ queries) under examination

Postgraduate English: What Guidelines and Descriptors according to the CEFR?

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) has made a highly significant breakthrough in the language teaching profession and practice, outlining the different levels of language competence and communicative effectiveness across languages. However, despite the positive effect of the CEFR in terms of clear learning pathways diversified into levels of proficiency, it appears to be mostly concerned with general English and fails to take into account the features of specialised discourse or Content and Language Integrated learning (CLIL). Moreover, its mainstream use in the school curricula has associated it with “general English” and meant it has been largely ignored in academic and specialised language teaching. The present paper sets out to investigate the relationship between a postgraduate course of English for management and public administration and the general and specific guidelines provided by the Common European Framework of Reference. Preliminary findings suggest that a more attentive and unbiased analysis could disclose its full potential even in graduate and postgraduate teachin

From Academic Literacies to International Publishing: The Postgraduates’ Road Map

Normative approaches to academic writing have mostly focused on the linguistic and discursive aspects of student writing, from text organization and lexicogrammatical correctness to cohesion, coherence and style. In contrast, the academic literacies approach regards writing not simply as a set of skills but as a significant part of the students’ learning process that enables them to develop their own voice, in opposition to well-established academic conventions and institutional constraints. The present paper outlines the old and new directions of the academic literacies agenda in relation to English-medium academic publishing, and explores some of the aspects that could be prioritized to give equal opportunities for publication to junior researchers based in Italy. In particular, the reflective assignments of the postgraduate students at the University of Napoli Federico II and a doctoral students’ survey on writing for research publication were used to investigate their major concerns over practical and ideological issues. The findings also suggest a way of providing novice researchers with a rewarding writing experience throughout their academic careers

Christian Prayer and the Kingdom Quest: A Dialogue with Our Father across Languages and Cultures

first_pagesettings Open AccessArticle Christian Prayer and the Kingdom Quest: A Dialogue with Our Father across Languages and Cultures by Cristina PennarolaOrcID Department of Political Sciences, University of Napoli Federico II, Via Mezzocannone 4, 80138 Napoli, Italy Humanities 2020, 9(3), 75; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9030075 Received: 7 July 2020 / Revised: 24 July 2020 / Accepted: 27 July 2020 / Published: 4 August 2020 Download PDF Abstract Much has been written about the Our Father (also referred to as the Lord’s Prayer) as it represents a personal and public dialogue with God in daily prayer and liturgy. While its theological and spiritual aspects have been thoroughly investigated, their cultural implications for different speech communities have been disregarded. This study aims to compare the English, Italian, and French versions of the Lord’s Prayer in the Catholic Church in an attempt to examine the role that culture is bound to play in shaping religious response and tracing a preferential interpretive pathway through a sacred text. This comparative analysis is focused on lexical choice and metaphorical imagery and integrated by an examination of the wider co-text, the Bible. The analysis has shown that the versions of the Lord’s Prayer present distinctive features possibly reflective of deeply-ingrained cultural attitudes such as the appeal for elevation in the English prayer, the dual tension between deference and solidarity in the Italian prayer, and the inclination for a grand narrative of heroes and anti-heroes in the French prayer. The study concludes that renewed attention to Christian sources could help bridge the gap between religion and culture, and reconcile our spiritual and social identities in post-secular societies

Specialized Discourses of Well-Being and Human Development. Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

This volume brings together different kinds of expertise and disciplinary approaches to human development and well-being, crucial issues in today’s world threatened by such diverse problems as climate change, natural catastrophes, unequal distribution of wealth and economic exploitation of developing countries, uncontrolled technological progress, systematic violations of human rights, discrimination and racism, health emergencies. The language analysis toolkit ̶ e.g., cross-cultural pragmatics, corpus linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Linguistics ̶ has been enriched by the analytical tools and frameworks volunteered by scholars in demography, economics, international relations, law and political geography. The analysis of the specialized discourses of well-being and human development has meant to investigate to what extent different communities of practice share approaches and methodologies around these current issues

An Overview of the UN Online: Textuality and Hypertextuality,

The present seminar outlines some features of UN communication online, particularly the blend of promotional and institutional discourses

Introduction

The analyses included in this collection of essays aim to investigate to what extent different communities of practice share approaches and methodologies around the specialized discourses of well-being and human development