In his last work, Virno proposes a material anthropology "of detachment": man is not his essence, his faculties (body, consciousness, upright posture, neoteny, faculty of language...), but he has them, taking them continuously within an inexhaustible dualism that constitutes his subjectivity. This having is a Platonic participating revisited in terms of praxis: man uses his essential (and non) prerogatives. I would like to overturn Virno's discourse and lay the groundwork for a complementary approach. First by presenting Thomas Aquinas' metaphysics of participation as an authentic metaphysics "of detachment". Then by focusing on a central theoretical point of such a metaphysics, the esse ut actus connoted as 'intense' and 'intimate', which displaces Virno's cleavages and praxis within the subject. There is a metaphysical, logical, ontological, and practical priority of being over having.
The aim of this paper is to show the advantages of a rhetorical approach to impoliteness. The two main advantages of this approach are: 1. considering language not as an autonomous object but as an intrinsically social activity closely intertwined with all other human activities and, 2. considering the agonistic and conflictual dimension not as a borderline case but as an internal trait of discursive practices. Thanks to these advantages, the rhetorical approach escapes the main criticisms directed at the classical approach to (im)politeness and allows us to look at linguistic exchanges as dynamic and inherently relational processes. Against this background, the paper is structured as follows: the first step is to clarify what I mean by a rhetorical approach; secondly, I show what the main consequences of this approach are; and, finally, for what reasons it can be fruitful for a different framing of impoliteness.
This paper provides a semiotic analysis of Donald Trump's communication strategy, focusing on its influence on contemporary political discourse in digital contexts. Employing Goffman's theatrical metaphor, which frames social interactions as staged performances, this study investigates Trump's rhetorical strategy, characterized by the systematic use of offensive and provocative language. His deliberate use of "impoliteness" - a calculated deviation from conventional norms of decorum-serves as an intentional rhetorical device to provoke intense emotional reactions and amplify engagement, particularly on social media platform X. Within this framework, Trump's communication style aligns with the polarized dynamics of the infosphere, where emotional appeal increasingly eclipses rational, measured discourse. By deploying a register that merges populist simplicity with confrontational force, Trump's approach reveals how consensus can be pursued through dissent, effectively capturing audience attention and fostering polarization. This analysis thus contributes to a broader understanding of political language's transformation in the digital age, as strategies emphasizing emotional resonance gain precedence over complexity. Trump's communicative approach illustrates this trend, demonstrating how political figures harness provocative language to disrupt normative expectations, maintain visibility, and shape discourse. The findings underscore Trump's strategy as a model of communicative disruption, one that not only impacts the American political landscape but also prompts a reevaluation of social media's role in shaping global public discourse.
Linguistic (im)politeness can be defined as a set of verbal behaviours that protect (politeness) or threaten (impoliteness) the face of interlocutors and that are considered appropriate or inappropriate for sociocultural or contextual reasons (Brown and Levinson 1987, Leech 1983, 2014); indeed, no linguistic expression is inherently polite or impolite (Locher and Watts 2005: 16; see also Watts 2003, Culpeper 2011, Culpeper and Hardaker 2017). This study deals with the evolution of (im)politeness in Genoese-the Galloromance variety spoken in Genoa, Italy-from the 17(th) to the 20(th) century. The research is based on the analysis of speech-purposed texts: eight comedies written in Genoese between the 17(th) and 20(th )centuries, a genre chosen because it is mimetic of oral and spontaneous dialogic speech. The work focuses on the analysis of threats related to directives and investigates their functional evolution, showing that although threats are typical of genuine impoliteness and conflictual communication, after the 19(th) century there are some cases of threats pursuing polite purposes in nonconflictual contexts in the considered corpus. In this contribution we will discuss the reasons motivating this pragmatic evolution, comparing the pragmatic-linguistic data with the historical and sociocultural events that characterized the analyzed eras, and answer a crucial question: are these cases of politeness, mock impoliteness, or something else?
This paper investigates Hoshin Kanri, a planning, implementation, and control method aimed at translating organisational goals into actionable plans through a streamlined and cooperative approach. Conflict is assumed to be a threat to organisational stability, arising from misalignments in objectives, values, and motivations within the organisation and between its members and the organisation itself. The hypothesis posits that Hoshin Kanri implicitly adopts the cooperativeprinciple as a persuasive strategy to channel conflict while keeping it latent, yet leadership practices and workflow digitalisation contribute to its violation. Accordingly, the application of conversational implicatures to Hoshin Kanri will be examined. Specifically: (1) the rule-based system of conduct it generates (deontology); (2) the intersubjective space it articulates (negotiation); and (3) the leadership approach it structures (procedural). For this purpose, a methodological framework combining semiotics with pragmatics and social systems theory will be applied, allowing the analysis of corporate communication as a space of interaction and manipulation aimed at constructing shared meaning. The empirical analysis is grounded in a corpus a corpus a corpus compiled through the participant observation of operational practices in two multinational companies headquartered in the EU. The main findings suggest that applying the cooperative principle to Hoshin Kanri leads to a syntax of non-impoliteness aimed at reinforcing the system's self-referentiality and ultimately impacting the organisation's ability to autonomously develop proactive responses to contingency.
