Abstract Questo studio analizza l’italiano regionale milanese con un approccio sociolinguistico volto a indagare la caratterizzazione diastratica di alcuni tratti linguistici riconducibili al contatto con il dialetto o a innovazioni proprie dell’italiano. Inserita nel quadro della sociolinguistica variazionista e della teoria del contatto linguistico, la ricerca intende contribuire alla descrizione empirica di una varietà urbana finora poco indagata. Dopo un inquadramento del contesto sociolinguistico di Milano, centro urbano prestigioso, l’analisi si concentra su quindici tratti morfosintattici e pragmatici individuati nella letteratura e attestati in corpora di italiano parlato. I dati provengono da un questionario percettivo, somministrato tramite interviste, a un campione di cinquanta parlanti, bilanciato per area di residenza, età, genere e strato sociale. I risultati mostrano che alcuni tratti sono ampiamente percepiti come tipici dell’italiano milanese, mentre altri presentano una correlazione significativa con l’età, evidenziando una progressiva riduzione dei tratti di origine dialettale tra i parlanti più giovani.
In this article, we look at how gender manifests itself in different language systems, with a particular focus on French. This is part of a wider reflection on the issues of gender representation (on several levels). We examine the use and creation of a neutral gender in French, and analyze the forms proposed in this field in recent years, before proposing new solutions.
Abstract The present study examines the strategies employed in the realization of the speech act of criticism in the Italian television series Fuoriclasse , highlighting the pragmatic properties of this important but under-researched speech act, as well as the influence of power relations between the speaker and the addressee on the performance of the speech act. The data on criticism speech acts in this study were collected from 12 episodes (first season) with a total duration of 616 minutes. The collected data were classified and analyzed based on the criticism speech acts strategies by Nguyen (2005) . The findings demonstrate that the characters in the television series tend to use indirect strategies more than direct ones when performing criticism, suggesting a tendency to maintain social harmony and refrain from expressing direct criticism toward interlocutors. The data analysis indicates that the speech act of criticism is more frequently produced by socially superior speakers or by peers, rather than by individuals occupying lower social positions.
Abstract This study conducts a pragmatic analysis of promise expression in the Italian television series Orgoglio . The collected data were systematically classified according to the taxonomies proposed by Gibbs and Delaney (1987) and Ariff and Mugableh (2013) to assess the applicability and comprehensiveness of these models within the media and cultural context under investigation. Utilizing both classification frameworks facilitates a more detailed and nuanced understanding of promise strategies. A total of twenty distinct linguistic strategies were identified: nine conformed to the existing taxonomies, whereas eleven represented novel interpersonal strategies. The identification of these new strategies is attributable to the scripted, performative nature of fictional discourse, which is heavily influenced by stylistic and narrative conventions characteristic of media texts.
Abstract This paper examines the grammatical behavior of two nominal placeholders in Latin American Spanish: coso in Rioplatense Spanish and este / esta in Chilean Spanish. These expressions function as substitutes for nouns that are forgotten or deliberately left unmentioned. Drawing on novel data, I show that both elements systematically give rise to interpretations involving a sort of epistemic specificity, a property that distinguishes them from general nouns such as cosa ‘thing’. At the same time, they differ with respect to a number of morphosyntactic properties. To account for these contrasts, I propose an analysis according to which coso is a noun that incorporates into a specificity projection within the nominal structure, while este / esta is a demonstrative modifier accompanying a phonologically empty noun. This analysis shows that nominal placeholders do not form a uniform grammatical class; rather, their varying properties emerge from the interaction of lexical and morphosyntactic factors.
