Search results for " Languages"

Relazioni e differenze: questioni di linguistica razionale

2011

Emblemi del Novecento. Cruciverba, linguaggio, luoghi comuni: faccette di storia culturale del Moderno

2009

Spatiotemporal dynamics of activation in motor and language areas suggest a compensatory role of the motor cortex in second language processing

2023

The involvement of the motor cortex in language understanding has been intensively discussed in the framework of embodied cognition. Although some studies have provided evidence for the involvement of the motor cortex in different receptive language tasks, the role that it plays in language perception and understanding is still unclear. In the present study, we explored the degree of involvement of language and motor areas in a visually presented sentence comprehension task, modulated by language proficiency (L1: native language, L2: second language) and linguistic abstractness (literal, metaphorical, and abstract). Magnetoencephalography data were recorded from 26 late Chinese learners of …

Modelling Without a Modelling Language

2018

Developments in computer hardware and programming languages, in this case C++, have made it feasible to write models of concurrent systems under verification in the programming language, instead of some established modelling language such as Promela. While this does not reduce the usefulness of modelling languages, it offers new possibilities that may be advantageous, for instance, when teaching state space ideas to newcomers or when experimenting with new scientific ideas. In earlier work, we were able to express everything else fairly naturally in C++, except the set of transitions. The present study uses C++ lambda functions to represent naturally transitions that consist of a tail state…

Mocking fakeness

2022

Abstract Phonetic resources, like dialects and accents, are used in ethnic humour to build up a recognisable character that pokes fun at the stereotypes associated with a particular identity, sometimes with critical and political undertones. In this article, we examine the manipulation of one such resource, aspiration, used in performing and mocking one such clichéd character, called the fake Sámi. This character has a contested history in Finnish tourism and marketing practices, and is embedded in a long-standing debate about who can use emblems of Sámi identity for economic purposes. Adopting a sociophonetic language regard and folk linguistics approaches (Preston 2010; Niedzielski & …

Colita en contexto: fotografía y feminismo durante la transición española.

2018

El trabajo que desarrolló la fotógrafa catalana Colita (Barcelona, 1940) durante la década de los setenta fue aliado del movimiento feminista que se recompuso en el Estado español tras la muerte de Franco. En este artculo estudiaremos sus práctcas fotográfcas al respecto, aquellas que visibilizaron las demandas más importantes del feminismo español del momento: su trabajo para la revista <em>Vindicación feminista</em> (1976- 1979 y el fotolibro <em>Antfémina</em> (Editora Nacional, 1977), que hizo en colaboración con María Aurèlia Capmany. En segundo lugar atenderemos a la fotografa erótca que también desarrolló Colita durante estos años, una producción más problemát…

To Eat or Not to Eat? A Short Path from Vegetarianism to Cannibalism

2018

Subjective reasoning and chemical composition are not the sole arbiters of our systems of alimentary taste; consumption of food is also defined by cultural orientation and other complex value systems. There are those who choose to consume only plant matter to respect the rights of animals, equally there are those who consume pets without a second thought. What informs these choices depends on how we understand our own place in the world, the values we attribute to the things that surrounds us, the relationships we maintain with our fellow beings and those with living things in general. It is in the space between those variable definitions that we find food taboos and the complex stories whi…

Dialects: Early European Studies

2006

The article begins with an overview of dialectology starting with dictionaries and grammars in Switzerland (forerunners) and in Bavaria (1821, 1827–1837). The tradition of dialect atlases beganworldwide with the data collection for the German linguistic atlas (1877–1888) by Georg Wenker. Research on Germanic dialects other than German began between 1841 and 1860 in Denmark, Norway, and Great Britain (also with dictionaries and grammars). It goes on to show that after French and Italian dialectology had concentrated on written dialect collections, several dialect grammars, e.g., for Paris and surrounding areas, appeared as from 1872, culminating in the enormous French dialect atlas ALF betwe…

Where lol is: function and position of lol used as a discourse marker in YouTube comments

2020

Lol is probably one of the most popular words in computer-mediated communication. It is generally taken to be the acronym of “laughing out loud”, but it is not always used to indicate a humorous response; rather, it is multifunctional. Drawing on previous studies of the different functions of lol, this paper explores a possible correlation between the position and function of non-lexicalized lol in the specific context of YouTube comments. The hypothesis is that the function of lol largely depends on its position: clause-initial lol is not used with the same functions as clause-final lol. The data for the study come from the comment threads of three popular YouTube videos posted in 2017, 20…

(De)legitimating electronic surveillance : a critical discourse analysis of the Finnish news coverage of the Edward Snowden revelations

2017

In 2013, ex-National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden shocked the world by revealing the American NSA’s (and its partners’) extensive surveillance programs. The ensuing media discussion became a focal point for the justification and contestation of surveillance in the digital age. This article contributes to the growing body of literature on the discursive construction of surveillance, concentrating on how the practice is (de)legitimized. Methodologically, the paper draws on Critical Discourse Studies, applying the concept of discourse and utilizing insights from Van Leeuwen’s categories of legitimation and social actor representation. The data come from the media coverage of…