Reflecting on English Lingua Franca today: Expanding scenarios and growing dilemmas. An overview with introductory notes

Introduction to the volume

Exploring ELT practices, teachers' professional profile and beliefs. Analysing data from the PRIN survey and envisaging pedagogical projections

This paper presents selected findings emerging from the survey related to the PRIN Prot. 2015REZ4EZ questionnaire, created and administered by the Unit 3 of the same PRIN project. This tool of investigation was specially devised in order to research and acquire the main values and beliefs ascribable to a volunteer group of teachers, operating in the Italian territory and catering for different levels of education in the national system. From the authentic data collected, it is possible to draw an overall profile of those professionals engaged in the diversified educational contexts above referred to. Even though still connected to and partially influenced by a SE and native-speaker’s model authority, there is evidence of the presence of an active ELF-aware perspective emerging from the respondents; the qualifying questions where this aspect specifically occurs are analyzed in details, particularly in relation to which sociolinguistic model of English are those teachers inspired by in their teaching. Furthermore, those values and beliefs, in connection to the pedagogical approach of choice, are interpreted from a prospective point of view, envisioning their potential developments in the future, also projecting them into the frame of reference provided by a social constructivist model as designed by Kurt Kohn in MY English (2018) and further developments (forthcoming 2020). The emancipation of the ELF users and their adaptive appropriation of the lingual capabilities inherent in the ELF-aware approach, together with the acknowledgement of the ELF-users’ expressive means affordable according to that perspective, are highilighted, also in terms of individual and collective creativity, from the side of both teachers and learners, in the variegated educational contexts

National and International Standardization (International Organization for Standardization and European Committee for Standardization) Relevant for Sustainability in Construction

Sustainability in construction has a short history in terms of principles, standardizations and applications. From the Brundtland Report "Our Common Future", a new vision of the resource deficits, climate impacts and the social responsibility gave growth to the idea of sustainability also in design and construction. Consequently, in around 2000, the international and national organizations for standardization started to develop standards for the application of sustainable principles. This paper gives an overview of existing and planned standards, and examples on how to use them as a framework for the development of methods and tools for assessment

Le latitudini del modernismo. Parlando di Stein: Mena Mitrano e Marina Morbiducci in conversazione

In questa conversazione si intende con-testualizzare il lavoro sperimentale di Ger-trude Stein all’interno del dibattito sul significato di modernismo e delle sue tra-sformazioni nel ventunesimo secolo, so-prattutto alla luce della crescente afferma-zione dei New Modernist Studies. La scrittura steiniana viene colta nel suo ruolo centrale svolto nelle maglie del canone letterario moderno proprio in virtù delle acquisizioni teoriche mutuate dal pensiero femminista negli ultimi decenni. In tale inquadramento si coglie un riverbero con il modernismo planetario contemporaneo cui idealmente si congiungono le audaci connessioni spazio-temporali dei temi e protagonisti steiniani: questi si affermano proprio grazie alla sua possente presenza anti-patriarcale e anti-canone. Ne conse-gue una visione che favorisce il flusso, l’inafferrabilità, il divenire (“process poe-tics”). Nella nostra conversazione, Stein appare come la creatrice di quel “literary thinking” che lei invoca al fine di prefigu-rare il continuum di arti-lingua-pensiero. Il modernismo di Stein rappresenta quel-l’attraversamento dei confini – discorsivi, di genere testuale e di campi di ricerca – oggetto di indagine dei più autorevoli cri-tici e teorici contemporanei. L’esperienza traduttiva offre il punto di vista privilegiato per mettere in luce il modernismo proiettivo di una scrittrice il cui sperimentali-smo e conseguente critica della rappresen-tazione diventano gli sbocchi naturali di una forma di scrittura vivente.Our conversation aims to contextualize Gertrude Stein’s experimental work in the lively and inspiring debate on the meaning of modernism, of its transformation and expansion in the twenty-first century, especially after the New Modernist Stu-dies. We consider how Stein’s writing, whose centrality to the literary-critical canon today owes to the groundbreaking feminist scholarship of the past few deca-des, is particularly attuned to the planetary modernism embraced by contemporary scholars, as manifest both in some of her cross-spatial and cross-temporal literary heroines, and in her anti-canonical presen-ce, which causes the canon to be always a notion in flux. In our conversation, Stein comes across as the inventor of “literary thinking” and calls for an ampler practice of literature that implies a wide plane or a continuum of art-language-thought. Stein’s modernism amounts to that cros-sing and re-crossing of the boundaries (of discourses, genres, and fields) which, in recent times, has inspired the most in-fluential literary and critical thinkers. Marina Morbiducci’s translation practice be-comes the vantage point from which this conversation can illuminate the hopeful modernism of a writer whose critique of representation and experimentalism were only the consequence of her search for what we might call living writin

Calidad de vida en pacientes con esclerosis sistémica en confinamiento por pandemia de COVID-19 en Argentina

Introducción: los pacientes con enfermedades reumáticas tienen una calidad de vida significativamente deteriorada. La pandemia por COVID-19 tuvo un notable impacto sobre la población y los sistemas de salud de todo el mundo. Objetivos: en este trabajo nos proponemos conocer el impacto de la pandemia en la calidad de vida de los pacientes con esclerosis sistémica (ES) y cómo fue el acceso a la atención médica. Materiales y métodos: mediante encuestas anónimas y digitales a pacientes durante julio y agosto de 2020 se evaluó la calidad de vida utilizando el cuestionario de calidad de vida de la esclerosis sistémica (SScQoL). Además, se realizaron preguntas para evaluar el acceso al sistema de salud durante ese período. Resultados: se encuestaron 300 pacientes con ES. La mediana de afectación de la calidad de vida según el cuestionario utilizado fue de 17 (9,25-22) y fue el dolor el dominio más afectado. El 29,33% no hizo los controles médicos. El 74,33% refirió haber tenido estudios médicos pendientes al inicio de la cuarentena y solo el 25% pudo realizarlos. Conclusiones: los pacientes con ES presentaron compromiso de la calidad de vida durante la pandemia y mostraron dificultades en el acceso al sistema de salud

Introduzione a "Sollevante Pancia" di Gertrude Stein

Si tratta della prima edizione italiana con testo a fronte integrale dell'audace opera poetica sperimentale di Gertrude Stein Lifting Belly del 1917; coraggioso e gioioso proclama di autoaffermazione omosessuale, nel testo l’autrice intesse le sue principali tematiche e modalità compositive. Nella prima edizione italiana vengono inclusi il testo completo in traduzione poetica, un’introduzione critica, numerose note esegetiche e traduttive ed una post-fazione. Il valore di questa pubblicazione risiede principalmente nell’aver affrontato e traslato nella prima edizione italiana il carattere spiccatamente sperimentale della scrittura steiniana; la resa in altra lingua dall’originale, nel caso di questa autrice, comporta un approfondito lavorìo sull’intepretazione e di conseguenza complesse scelte traduttive. This is the first complete Italian edition of the daringly innovative poetical work by Gertrude Stein, titled Lifting Belly (1917); the lengthy poem proclaims lesbian love and unconventional compositional procedures; the Italian version takes into account the idiosyncratic and experimental texture of the work, rendered both in the Italian translation and in the critical presentation in the Introduction, footnotes and appendix

Land/escape. Gertrude Stein's Ida: An Instance of Land&scape

In this essay G. Stein's heroine, Ida, is analysed in her compelling nature of wanderer, escaping from all forms of confinement. The novel, written in 1940, therefore Stein's most mature period, portrays and sums up all the idiosyncratic features of the author's style and themes. Ida is Stein herself, in her painful isolation and dislocation, though perfectly fitting in the complex frame of "solitudes" within American culture. Recklessly narcissistic and individualistic, thoroughly anticanonical, Ida is emblematic of Stein's writing and experimental narrative, as well

Introduction to the Forum "Voices in American Experimental Poetry"

Introduzione al Forum "Voices in American experimental poetry

Rivisitando lo scenario poetico del Black Mountain College: sessant'anni dopo

Il motivo del paesaggio è tra i più rappresentati nella letteratura americana di tutti i tempi e di tutti i generi. Categoria centrale dell’immaginario e luogo paradigmatico di confronto, il paesaggio per sua natura esalta le specificità nazionali ma al tempo stesso le mette in crisi, tendendo a superarle in una dimensione transnazionale in cui esse diventano terreno di confronto tra culture diverse, che tuttavia intrattengono tra loro legami profondi. Il paesaggio si rivela elemento chiave nella costruzione dell’identità americana nelle sue plurime forme, così come luogo di una sua continua rinegoziazione. Accanto a saggi di taglio storico-letterario, il volume presenta contributi che collegano il paesaggio a questioni di gender e di razza, e altri che individuano nel paesaggio il luogo di contatto tra forme culturali “alte” e “popolari”, permettendone un ripensamento in termini nuovi, interdisciplinari e interculturali. Nella molteplicità di approcci qui dispiegati, il paesaggio americano viene così ad acquisire le sembianze di vero e proprio palinsesto, nelle cui proteiformi rappresentazioni è possibile rintracciare la storia stessa della cultura americana

Connecting Languages and Cultures. The TIES Trial

This paper revolves around three main axes: the first one regards the connection among languages and cultures which translation always performs, building a bridge of mutual understanding at a deep cognitive level by way of the complex transfer taking place among the agents involved in the process, from one code to another and from one linguacultural universe to a different one: this aspect is supported by theoretical tenets, evoked in the paper, which inspire and forge Translation Studies stances in the present scenario, shaped also by linguistic variables and varieties; the second level is represented by the distinctive case of Jhumpa Lahiri who adopted the Italian language as a chosen alternative form of expression in her authorial production, to the enrichment and completion of her own multifaceted identity; the third view is finally provided by a close textual analysis, from a translational point of view, of selected passages taken from Lahiri’s version of Starnone’s fiction Lacci (Ties), with an envisaged outcome of pedagogical potential and translational application even in the classroom