Analyzing the life writings and libraries of three turn-of-the-century British women - Frances Burney d’Arblay, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Anne Lister - this study examines how women used medical language as a tool for establishing authority in their everyday lives. All three of these women had extensive access to scientific medical knowledge. Through conversations with medical men, evaluations of literature as well as their experiences treating members of their community, each cultivated a deep awareness of the human body, its diseases and cures. Their diaries and letters reveal that the divide between domestic and scientific medicine was by no means clear cut, and that class – more than gender – determined one’s access to this knowledge. However, the way that these women refused to write openly about female anatomy and health in particular exhibits that there were certain aspects of the medical field deemed inappropriate for the woman of high society to know and discuss. Ultimately, this article demonstrates how scientific medicine was seen as an expression of masculine authority and how women could learn it but not necessarily always express it publicly. It opens questions for further study on the absence of women writing about their knowledge of anatomy as a purposeful lacuna that allowed women to circumnavigate the constraints of their time.
Nel 1660 a Francoforte sul Meno, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), che ha solo tredici anni, prende un’importante quanto anomala decisione: quella di dedicare la sua vita all’osservazione della natura e allo studio delle metamorfosi dei bruchi. Formatasi come pittrice nella bottega d’arte di famiglia, come un’artista che raffigura la natura, diventa una naturalista occupandosi, in modo del tutto nuovo, di insetti, un gruppo di organismi ancora poco studiati. Arte e scienza si fondono in lei: il linguaggio dell’arte e della scienza vengono utilizzati in una raffigurazione della natura come un insieme vitale. L’opera di Merian è rivoluzionaria. Diversamente dagli altri libri, in cui gli organismi sono disposti in fila, immobili e isolati dall’ambiente, Merian raffigura delle creature “vive”, poste su piante, foglie e fiori di cui si nutrono, durante le varie fasi della loro trasformazione dalle uova in farfalla o falena. L’artista-naturalista sfrutta l’opportunità dell’arte per parlare di scienza e con la sua opera pionieristica introduce un cambiamento nella storia naturale. Le sue opere, impreziosite da immagini di straordinaria bellezza ed efficacia, hanno fornito un contributo importante alla comprensione degli insetti, dei loro cicli di vita e delle loro abitudini. Ma soprattutto hanno per la prima volta consegnato una nuova visione della natura, attraverso parole e immagini, di ciò che oggi definiamo catene alimentari e interazioni all’interno di una comunità ecologica. In una vita avventurosa, frutto di scelte anomale e coraggiose, che l’hanno portata anche ad affrontare un viaggio scientifico in Suriname, ha condotto un lavoro pionieristico e a lungo termine, elevando ad arte la rappresentazione degli insetti. Molto prima che nascesse il termine ecologia, ci ha mostrato una nuova idea di natura che si imporrà nelle successive opere di storia naturale
Questo studio affronta la carenza di letteratura sull’implementazione della metodologia CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) per l’insegnamento dell'italiano come lingua straniera (LS) in Repubblica Popolare Cinese (R.P.C.). L'approccio CLIL, che integra l’apprendimento di una lingua con quello di materie non linguistiche, sposta l’obiettivo didattico dall’analisi formale della lingua al suo utilizzo come strumento per l’acquisizione di nuove conoscenze. La ricerca, uno studio di caso qualitativo, analizza un’esperienza didattica CLIL condotta presso la Nanjing Normal University. L’obiettivo principale è esplorare le percezioni e le risposte di un gruppo di studenti del quarto anno, focalizzandosi sull’influenza di questo approccio sulla loro motivazione e sul coinvolgimento emotivo. I risultati, sebbene non generalizzabili, forniscono spunti utili per la progettazione di futuri corsi CLIL in contesti simili.
The present article examines Judith Drake’s important contribution to the dissemination of scientific discourses in England in the long eighteenth century. Celebrated as one of the most influential protofeminist thinkers, she deserves no less attention for her engagement with new sciences. Medical practitioner, wife of a Fellow of the Royal Society (the eminent anatomist James Drake) and mother of a physician, Drake forcefully endorsed and propagated the principles and methods of experimental sciences in her polemical pamphlet An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696) and in her contribution to her husband’s anatomical tract Anthropologia Nova; or a new system of Anatomy (1707). A passionate advocate of the moderns in the ancient versus modern learning quarrel, she was a very vocal champion of rationalist and empirical approaches to knowledge and learning. Fully endorsing John Locke’s rationalism and sensationalism, Drake campaigned for the reform of education: the pedagogical model she proposed for girls and boys alike is based on logical reasoning and direct observation of nature.
Questo contributo esamina la costruzione tedesca es ist so (dass), tipica della lingua parlata. Nella prima parte viene adottata una prospettiva intralinguistica, concentrandosi esclusivamente sul tedesco e con l'obiettivo di definire le caratteristiche morfosintattiche e le funzioni pragmatiche della costruzione; a tale fine, vengono analizzati dati tratti dal corpus di tedesco parlato FOLK. Come conclusione a questa prima parte, viene discussa la questione se tale costruzione possa essere ricondotta a uno dei modelli sintattici tipici del parlato descritti nella letteratura. La seconda parte assume un approccio interlinguistico e indaga quali possibili equivalenti possano essere impiegati per rendere questa costruzione in italiano; qui viene proposto l’utilizzo di un corpus parallelo di lingua (almeno originariamente) parlata, come Europarl, disponibile sulla piattaforma Sketch Engine. Nel complesso, lo studio intende contribuire, da un lato, agli studi sulle microstrutture del tedesco parlato e, dall’altro, alla ricerca contrastiva sulla lingua parlata nel confronto tedesco-italiano.
This article examines the representation of male speech in two episodes of the Japanese television segment Shirabete Mitara, aired on Fuji TV between August and November 2025. Focusing on interviews with foreign men in Japan, it analyzes the voice-over and subtitling strategies through which their utterances are mediated, with particular attention to the role of audiovisual translation in the construction of masculine speech styles. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative distributional analysis and qualitative discourse analysis to examine correlations between speakers’ age, nationality, and the distribution of masculine-coded linguistic resources (ML). The analysis documents the distribution of marked linguistic resources and their relationship with hon’yakuban otokokotoba (translated male speech style), examining their occurrence in relation to interactional positioning, epistemic stance, and mediated interpersonal alignment. Particular attention is paid to the distribution of stance-marking and explanatory resources across speakers and interactional contexts, as well as to the relative presence or absence of strongly marked masculine features.
Jean Gerson (1363-1429) a écrit en latin et en français. Il a traduit certaines de ses oeuvres, des nombreuses autres traductions ont circulé aussi, au point qu’il est parfois difficile de départager version(s) originale(s) et réélaborations. Dans ce contexte, le ms. Lille 129 (fin XVe siècle) a un statut particulier, méconnu auparavant. Il contient la traduction, dans certains cas la rétroversion française, parfois largement amplifiée, de cinq traités imprimés en latin dans les oeuvres complètes du chancelier. L’article identifie les textes, tous relatifs à la vie monastique (la question de l’obéissance et de la propriété) et à la direction spirituelle (des conseils pour une vie dévote adaptée aux gens simples, contre les scrupules de conscience, pour faire face aux tentations du diable). Il détaille l’itinéraire de l’attribution à Gerson dans les impressions incunables et il fournit le début des différentes versions (version française originale le cas échéant, texte latin imprimé, version du manuscrit). En conclusion il essaye de cerner la personnalité du copiste-traducteur-auteur, resté anonyme : probablement un bénédictin, témoignant d’une formation solide.
Throughout history, translation has played a crucial role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge, yet the contributions of women translators have been largely overlooked. From the late seventeenth century, women became increasingly involved in the translation of scientific and philosophical texts, thus facilitating access to knowledge beyond elite male circles. Figures such as Maria Ardinghelli and Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola in Italy translated key works of natural philosophy, making them accessible to a wider audience. Despite their contributions, women translators have often been seen as mere facilitators rather than active participants in intellectual life. Yet, as recent scholarship has shown, they exercised considerable agency, adapting and reframing texts through prefaces, commentaries, and critical interventions. Some, like Barbapiccola, openly asserted their intellectual authority, while others, like Ardinghelli, employed strategies of selective invisibility to overcome social constraints. This article explores the complex role of women translators in the dissemination of scientific thought, highlighting their active mediation rather than passive transmission of knowledge. By reconsidering their contributions beyond the framework of invisibility, this study argues for a re-evaluation of their role as intellectual agents, and thus challenges the persistent marginalisation of women in the history of science.
When considering the impact of women’s writing on the development of scientific knowledge in the eighteenth century, the importance of Sophie von La Roche emerges. She was a German woman of letters who had a particular influence on the intellectual context of her time through a literary salon she founded but, above all, through her writing activity. In this perspective, the present contribution intends to analyse the epistolary novel Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771), in which the writer inscribes an early science of emotions, expressing the spirit of her time giving voice in an avant-garde and realistic manner to that Gefühl – feeling – that runs indistinctly through the mind and body, guiding every action. More specifically, this article intends to prove how accurate introspection and knowledge of the inner motions that characterise human nature are linked to the textual genre of intimate and autobiographical writing. This genre proved to be a fertile ground in the eighteenth century for expressing and investigating all those hitherto silenced or at least underestimated emotional phenomena that started to interest the most diverse fields of knowledge, united around the question of the so-called commercium mentis et corporis. In this sense, the main aim is to show how, among the pages of La Roche’s epistolary novel, an early physiology of emotions is inscribed that reverberates in the thoughts and writings of her contemporaries, opening the door to the modernity of literature and anticipating in a surprisingly precise way the most recent acquisitions of today’s neuroscience.
La fama di Augusta Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) si basa principalmente sulla pubblicazione della traduzione, dal francese all’inglese, di un testo scientifico che descrive l’idea progettuale dell’Analytical Engine di Charles Babbage (1791-1871), un’invenzione definita nel tempo come il primo prototipo del computer moderno. Il testo, dato alle stampe a settembre del 1843, appare ricco di acute osservazioni, spiegazioni e dimostrazioni matematiche che non costituiscono affatto un elenco frammentario e disarticolato bensì ci propongono un saggio di respiro autonomo, organico e completo. Ada Lovelace utilizza un linguaggio di elevata competenza scientifica, ricco di tecnicismi ma anche di metafore e leggiadre similitudini poetiche, che, a partire dai particolari esaminati, termina con la definizione di un concetto, una regola generale. Questo risultato appare ancor più degno di nota se lo si colloca in un’epoca in cui alle donne era preclusa finanche la partecipazione alle discussioni scientifiche. Malgrado un lavoro scientifico consistente, corposo e di elevata qualità, che avrebbe dovuto attribuire all’autrice una indiscussa inventiva e originalità, Lovelace dovette mascherare la sua identità firmando la traduzione con le sole iniziali A.A.L. (Augusta Ada Lovelace): in età vittoriana sarebbe stato alquanto imbarazzante per una donna, per di più di agiata condizione sociale, apparire come traduttrice di un’opera che trattava di vile meccanica. Dall’esame di questo lavoro sull’Analytical Engine, viene fuori che Lovelace si è approcciata alla scienza in maniera alquanto singolare, proponendo un metodo scientifico rigoroso combinato a un approccio romantico e fantasioso. Il suo rifiuto a conformarsi a ruoli e comportamenti convenzionali, che ci si aspettava da una donna della sua classe sociale, la indicherà, tuttavia, come una figura chiave all’interno della sfera sociale e scientifica dell’Inghilterra vittoriana, ma anche come un’importante innovatrice in termini di pensiero contemporaneo.
This contribution explores how Victorian poet May Kendall found in contemporary natural history discoveries new poetic material with which to problematise the discursive practices and dominant ethos of her society. Starting from the analysis of her satire Ballad of the Ichthyosaurus (1885), this paper aims to examine how scientific developments furnished a woman poet with new imagery to playfully discuss the self-centred, hypocritical and hierarchical sides of Victorian society. Using the voice of an unexpected non-human actor, i.e. an Ichthyosaurus, she discussed Victorian social systems of oppression and the discourse of pseudosciences, both devices aimed at restricting the agency of those considered as the “unfit”. Like other Victorian poetesses, her poems, especially the science-inspired ones, are centred on the concept of the “Otherness”: by using a voice belonging to a past natural world removed from the human one, she discussed how her society was excluding “others” – i.e. women and other minorities – from the privileged status destined to the “fittest”. First, I will present some biographical information about Kendall, necessary to understand her beliefs and her poetic work. Second, I will discuss two relevant elements of the context in which her satire was written, i.e. Victorian anthropocentrism and the condition of Victorian women, both traceable in her Ballad. Finally, I will analyse Kendall’s satire and the way issues of anthropocentrism, exclusion and de-humanisation emerge in it.
Eighteenth-century cookery books traditionally organised women’s knowledge and expertise about household management and cooking. Having reached an ever-widening market precisely throughout this century, these works also proved to be a means through which women could play their part in the dissemination of medical knowledge, as many of them contained whole chapters devoted to the explanation and definition of diseases and illnesses and their remedies. However, given the subordinate status of women’s intellectual activities, the medical and scientific nature of these works has rarely been investigated. Since the sections about medicine were often organised in alphabetical order and according to almost encyclopaedia-like parameters, this genre has also been labelled as “domestic lexicography”: the aim of this paper is to provide a description the shaping and systematisation of medical knowledge within cookery books of the time. The titles considered here are Arabella Atkyns’ Family Magazine (1741) and Martha Bradley’s British Housewife (1758): such works conferred women a certain degree of authority precisely because of their association with domesticity, as these were used as learning aids to be consulted at home that brought together feminised and masculinised domains of knowledge (housekeeping and physick). The analysis focuses on the lexicographical framework, that is, the linguistic strategies used to organise, categorise, and communicate medical knowledge within the traditionally feminine genre of cookery books.
This study examines the discursive construction of postcolonial identity and political resistance in the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish. It analyzes how exile, land, memory, and poetic language shape subjectivity and sustain cultural continuity under conditions of colonial displacement. Grounded in postcolonial literary theory, the study combines close reading and discourse analysis of ten poems from Darwish’s mature period, using authoritative English translations with selective recourse to Arabic source texts for key terms. The findings indicate that exile in Darwish’s poetry functions not only as spatial dislocation but also as a constitutive dimension of postcolonial identity, while land and memory operate as symbolic anchors of communal consciousness and national belonging. Poetic language—especially metaphor, repetition, and culturally resonant symbolism—emerges as a form of non-violent resistance that contests dominant colonial narratives and affirms collective presence. The study thus demonstrates that Darwish’s poetry does more than reflect political realities; it engages with them through an ethically inflected and aesthetically intricate practice of resistance, highlighting the distinctive capacity of poetry to shape identity and enact resistance beyond formal political discourse.
Cet article examine les traductions roumaines de Paul et Virginie de Bernardin de Saint Pierre, en retraçant leur évolution du XIXe siècle jusqu'à nos jours. En se concentrant sur des traductions clés et sur leurs contextes éditoriaux, l'étude met en évidence la manière dont les conditions historiques, idéologiques et culturelles ont façonné à la fois les pratiques traductives et la réception du roman dans l'espace littéraire roumain. L'analyse souligne la diversité des profils des traducteurs - allant des premiers médiateurs du texte aux traducteurs professionnels et aux acteurs culturels plus récents - et montre comment leurs approches sont étroitement liées aux attentes propres à chaque période. Elle met en lumière le passage de traductions à visée introductive dans des collections largement diffusées, à des relectures ultérieures marquées par des finalités éducatives, une médiation éditoriale et l'évolution des horizons de lecture. Une attention particulière est accordée au rôle de la collection Biblioteca pentru toți dans la large diffusion du roman, ainsi qu'aux retraductions plus récentes, qui visent à recontextualiser l'œuvre pour un public contemporain à travers des stratégies de modernisation linguistiques et de valorisation patrimoniale. L'étude prend également en compte des initiatives éditoriales récentes, telles que la translittération de traductions anciennes, qui témoignent d'un regain d'intérêt pour ces textes et contribuent à leur réintégration dans le circuit littéraire contemporain.
Nowadays the influence of English on Greek is rather strong. Influences are attested not only at the lexical level, but at the morphosyntactic level too. In this work we focus on the emergence of a new case of pre-modified NPs in Greek where the Noun is in a pre-nominal position as in English. The newly attested NPs have the form [NP UNINFLECTED N]. The pre-modifier is itself an NP headed by an uninflected loanword of English origin, either a brand name, an abbreviation, an English noun or adjective, and the head N, a Greek element, creating hybrid structures. In this study, we examine a sample of pre-nominal NPs found in Greek through the internet, TV, everyday communication, we get quantitative results for each structure through the Greek corpora of Sketch Engine, we compare the frequency of appearance of these structures to the indigenous equivalent Greek ones, aiming to determine whether these newly attested structures fall under the category of right headed [word word] compounds, loose compounds, appositive compounds, adjective phrases, or they constitute a new case of pre-nominal hybrid NPs that calque the equivalent English structures.
In language contact literature on the typology of linguistic borrowing sharp divisions have repeatedly been made into various types of loan. Loan categorisations are determined by the borrowing strategy adopted by recipient language (RL) speakers and by the formal features of the product of the borrowing process (see e.g. Haugen’s 1950; Weinreich1953; Görlach 2002; Haspelmath 2009; Pulcini et al. 2012). In more recent research, the well-established categories were redefined and relabeled to reflect a cognitively-oriented approach to the borrowing process (e.g. Winter-Froemel 2008), yet the fundamental three-fold typology of lexical Anglicisms has been retained. Authentic language data collected for the Polish contribution to the Global Anglicism Database (GLAD) and the New Dictionary of Polish Anglicisms (NSZA) point to the fuzzy borders and categorial indeterminacy of invisible and semi-(in)visible loans, motivated, as assumed, by RL-specific systemic features and adaptation processes. This paper focuses on the blurred borderline between a loan translation, e.g. Pol. obiad biznesowy
The main focus of the research is to determine criteria that will help identify invisible or partly invisible Anglicisms in the Macedonian language. The paper analyzes calques such as hate speech – говор на омраза, hybrids like online teaching - онлајн настава and semantic loans such as cookies - колачиња. The analysis is performed by contrasting grammatical and stylistic characteristics of the expressions in the source and target language and also by examining the lexical fields in which Anglicisms occur. It relies on a corpus of field-collected Anglicisms: direct borrowings, loan translations, hybrids and semantic loans. The research suggests that anglicization of the Macedonian language is to a great extent a result of the increase of the number of loan translations that prevail in the language in spite of their invisibility. KEY WORDS • Anglicisms; loan translation; calques; hybrids; semantic loans.
