Given the spread of Internet-based communication over the last two decades, the transfer of scien... more Given the spread of Internet-based communication over the last two decades, the transfer of scientific contents to lay audiences through the Web has become an increasingly significant phenomenon, bringing together aspects stemming from specialized discourse, media communication and persuasive/promotional language. In specialized discourse standardized formulations, even with a marked gate-keeping function, are considered to be appropriate in order to transfer given meanings and instantiate specific interpretive frameworks; on the other hand, in media communication emphasis on rhetorical resources is accepted as a prototypical way to construct news, confer newsworthiness to events and convey ideology-saturated value judgement. In contrast, the popularization of medicine holds an intermediate position on a discoursal continuum, combining the need for informativeness and accuracy of specialized communication and the need for cognitive immediacy, effectiveness and the avoidance of gate-keeping effects which is dominant in media and persuasive communication. Since popularization affects not only the micro-linguistic and rhetorical level but also, and quite markedly, pre- and early-textual aspects, this analysis will focus on one of such elements, namely, the titles used in medicine news articles, with the purpose of tracing the strategies typically used in online medical popularization (Science Daily and Scientific American) to effectively synthesize contents in terms of both clarity and impact, so as to facilitate the process of text location and selection when browsing online archives.
The volume investigates English from two interrelated standpoints. On the one hand, English is no... more The volume investigates English from two interrelated standpoints. On the one hand, English is not simply an identifiable collection of linguistic features; on the other, it can only be measured on the basis of its communicative and social realizations. Hence, the need to systematize and define English as a complex phenomenon, one that is essentially biased by contextual factors. Although from a prescriptive perspective ‘English’ is taken to reflect good usage (i.e., an arbitrary appreciation based on correct, ‘elegant’ and proper use), any contextually effective realization may indeed be considered as an instantiation of the language. And yet, such a descriptive approach may raise some problems concerning the ‘identity’ of English, especially given the fact that, today, non-native speakers largely outnumber natives. Could anything that is worded out in English – using English vocabulary – be considered as an instantiation of the language? Conversely, could texts produced by native speakers, with specific competences in a given domain, be viewed as typical instantiations of English? This paradox suggests a variety of issues that need to be dealt with, in order to have guidelines by which to assess what English is, and to understand how it is used. This is precisely the focus of this volume, which tries to define and explain English by investigating it as, firstly, a linguistic tool (functioning according to preferred patterns and regularities); secondly, as an instrument to perform specific functions (therefore influenced by people’s needs and expectations); and finally, as a contextually situated communicative act (thus biased by situational, disciplinary, ideological and cultural constraints).
This volume is dedicated to Maurizio Gotti, in honour of his long and noteworthy academic career.... more This volume is dedicated to Maurizio Gotti, in honour of his long and noteworthy academic career. Maurizio Gotti was the first student to graduate at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Bergamo, where he started his academic career. Here he served as Full Professor of History of the English Language and of English Language and Translation for more than two decades; he founded the internationally known research centre on specialized languages (CERLIS) and started the Linguistic Insights book series with the prestigious publishing house Peter Lang. In the course of his career he has also been assigned multiple and prestigious offices, at both national level and international level. Maurizio Gotti’s high academic profile has been reflected in his experience as a visiting professor in many universities around the world where he carried out research and teaching activities. Maurizio Gotti’s intellectual endeavours have encompassed many knowledge domains: ...
The volume investigates the increasing relevance acquired by corpus-based approaches to both the ... more The volume investigates the increasing relevance acquired by corpus-based approaches to both the study and teaching of professional communication. From a multicultural and plurilingual perspective, the various chapters of this volume − written in English, French, German and Italian − analyse the most salient aspects of domain-specific communication in the different linguistic, cultural, disciplinary and pragmatic contexts where specialized language is produced and normalized, with a specific focus on the type of communication used in academic, legal and professional settings.
specialised discourse analysis, media language and communication, the study of online genres) and... more specialised discourse analysis, media language and communication, the study of online genres) and they share a common interest in applied linguistics, corpus-based studies and critical discourse analysis. Most of the contributors are either experienced ESP teachers or researchers, but not all of them are specialists of medical discourse. As a matter of fact, several have specialised in academic or legal discourse, and one of them is a member of the medical profession; all of this is in keeping with the crossdisciplinary approach advocated in the "Linguistic Insights" series.
In the course of the last few decades web-based communication has facilitated the dissemination o... more In the course of the last few decades web-based communication has facilitated the dissemination of scientific knowledge and has contributed to making material which was primarily targeted to the expert community also available to the wider public. For such a mass of information to be effectively comprehended, some changes became necessary in order to facilitate web-searches and locate relevant material when browsing online archives. In the light of the above, the genre of research article (RA) abstracts in online academic publications seems to be particularly interesting, since its distinctive generic function is to both attract the readers’ attention and synthetically anticipate the content of the ensuing RA. This paper compares abstracts in print issues and those available in electronic format of the Washington Law Review to see whether and to what extent the concern for piquing readers’ curiosity to continue reading the associated RA has affected abstract writing. The focus will ...
This chapter investigates the linguistic, rhetorical and pragmatic features of arbitral awards dr... more This chapter investigates the linguistic, rhetorical and pragmatic features of arbitral awards drafted in English by the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC), with a specific focus on those resources which are meant to enhance deonticity and authoritativeness, and, ultimately, to make arbitration discourse readable as a normative type of communication (Nariman 2000, Bhatia et al. 2003). Our aim is to discover whether and through what linguistic resources experts try (and manage) to limit as much as possible the risk of challenge. Based on a corpus of 78 arbitral awards (available on the HKIAC site at , last accessed on 7 January 2015) this chapter seeks to investigate the arbitrators’ linguistic and rhetorical choices found in the final section of such texts, the Decision section − where the actual arbitral pronouncement is expressed − with a specific focus on the metadiscursive resources employed to boost authoritativeness and to enhance the legal validity of the deci...
This volume, the first of the Cerlis Series, investigates variation in scholarly communication fr... more This volume, the first of the Cerlis Series, investigates variation in scholarly communication from different analytical perspectives. Ranging from genre analysis to text linguistics, systemic functional grammar and multimodal approaches, its main purpose is that of providing insights into forms and modes of academic and scientific communication still little considered or as yet neglected in existing literature because of their relative novelty – due to changing practical and domain-related needs or cognitive expectations on the part of the audience – or their generic elusiveness – resulting from processes of multi-generic contaminations. On this basis, the volume discusses generic variation both in contrastive terms, by comparing and distinguishing contiguous genres, and, in analytical terms, by evidencing trends of variation and examining variation-sensitive elements in different textualizations of the same genre, and focusing especially on such variables as rhetorical strategy, w...
In the course of the last few decades web-based communication has facilitated the dissemination o... more In the course of the last few decades web-based communication has facilitated the dissemination of scientific knowledge and has contributed to making material which was primarily targeted to the expert community also available to the wider public. For such a mass of information to be effectively comprehended, some changes became necessary in order to facilitate web-searches and locate relevant material when browsing online archives. In the light of the above, the genre of research article (RA) abstracts in online academic publications seems to be particularly interesting, since its distinctive generic function is to both attract the readers’ attention and synthetically anticipate the content of the ensuing RA. This paper compares abstracts in print issues and those available in electronic format of the Washington Law Review to see whether and to what extent the concern for piquing readers’ curiosity to continue reading the associated RA has affected abstract writing. The focus will ...
This ebook is published in Open Access under a Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial... more This ebook is published in Open Access under a Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). You are free to share-copy, distribute and transmit-the work under the following conditions: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). You may not use this work for commercial purposes. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
Given the spread of Internet-based communication over the last two decades, the transfer of scien... more Given the spread of Internet-based communication over the last two decades, the transfer of scientific contents to lay audiences through the Web has become an increasingly significant phenomenon, bringing together aspects stemming from specialized discourse, media communication and persuasive/promotional language. In specialized discourse standardized formulations, even with a marked gate-keeping function, are considered to be appropriate in order to transfer given meanings and instantiate specific interpretive frameworks; on the other hand, in media communication emphasis on rhetorical resources is accepted as a prototypical way to construct news, confer newsworthiness to events and convey ideology-saturated value judgement. In contrast, the popularization of medicine holds an intermediate position on a discoursal continuum, combining the need for informativeness and accuracy of specialized communication and the need for cognitive immediacy, effectiveness and the avoidance of gate-keeping effects which is dominant in media and persuasive communication. Since popularization affects not only the micro-linguistic and rhetorical level but also, and quite markedly, pre- and early-textual aspects, this analysis will focus on one of such elements, namely, the titles used in medicine news articles, with the purpose of tracing the strategies typically used in online medical popularization (Science Daily and Scientific American) to effectively synthesize contents in terms of both clarity and impact, so as to facilitate the process of text location and selection when browsing online archives.
The volume investigates English from two interrelated standpoints. On the one hand, English is no... more The volume investigates English from two interrelated standpoints. On the one hand, English is not simply an identifiable collection of linguistic features; on the other, it can only be measured on the basis of its communicative and social realizations. Hence, the need to systematize and define English as a complex phenomenon, one that is essentially biased by contextual factors. Although from a prescriptive perspective ‘English’ is taken to reflect good usage (i.e., an arbitrary appreciation based on correct, ‘elegant’ and proper use), any contextually effective realization may indeed be considered as an instantiation of the language. And yet, such a descriptive approach may raise some problems concerning the ‘identity’ of English, especially given the fact that, today, non-native speakers largely outnumber natives. Could anything that is worded out in English – using English vocabulary – be considered as an instantiation of the language? Conversely, could texts produced by native speakers, with specific competences in a given domain, be viewed as typical instantiations of English? This paradox suggests a variety of issues that need to be dealt with, in order to have guidelines by which to assess what English is, and to understand how it is used. This is precisely the focus of this volume, which tries to define and explain English by investigating it as, firstly, a linguistic tool (functioning according to preferred patterns and regularities); secondly, as an instrument to perform specific functions (therefore influenced by people’s needs and expectations); and finally, as a contextually situated communicative act (thus biased by situational, disciplinary, ideological and cultural constraints).
This volume is dedicated to Maurizio Gotti, in honour of his long and noteworthy academic career.... more This volume is dedicated to Maurizio Gotti, in honour of his long and noteworthy academic career. Maurizio Gotti was the first student to graduate at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Bergamo, where he started his academic career. Here he served as Full Professor of History of the English Language and of English Language and Translation for more than two decades; he founded the internationally known research centre on specialized languages (CERLIS) and started the Linguistic Insights book series with the prestigious publishing house Peter Lang. In the course of his career he has also been assigned multiple and prestigious offices, at both national level and international level. Maurizio Gotti’s high academic profile has been reflected in his experience as a visiting professor in many universities around the world where he carried out research and teaching activities. Maurizio Gotti’s intellectual endeavours have encompassed many knowledge domains: ...
The volume investigates the increasing relevance acquired by corpus-based approaches to both the ... more The volume investigates the increasing relevance acquired by corpus-based approaches to both the study and teaching of professional communication. From a multicultural and plurilingual perspective, the various chapters of this volume − written in English, French, German and Italian − analyse the most salient aspects of domain-specific communication in the different linguistic, cultural, disciplinary and pragmatic contexts where specialized language is produced and normalized, with a specific focus on the type of communication used in academic, legal and professional settings.
specialised discourse analysis, media language and communication, the study of online genres) and... more specialised discourse analysis, media language and communication, the study of online genres) and they share a common interest in applied linguistics, corpus-based studies and critical discourse analysis. Most of the contributors are either experienced ESP teachers or researchers, but not all of them are specialists of medical discourse. As a matter of fact, several have specialised in academic or legal discourse, and one of them is a member of the medical profession; all of this is in keeping with the crossdisciplinary approach advocated in the "Linguistic Insights" series.
In the course of the last few decades web-based communication has facilitated the dissemination o... more In the course of the last few decades web-based communication has facilitated the dissemination of scientific knowledge and has contributed to making material which was primarily targeted to the expert community also available to the wider public. For such a mass of information to be effectively comprehended, some changes became necessary in order to facilitate web-searches and locate relevant material when browsing online archives. In the light of the above, the genre of research article (RA) abstracts in online academic publications seems to be particularly interesting, since its distinctive generic function is to both attract the readers’ attention and synthetically anticipate the content of the ensuing RA. This paper compares abstracts in print issues and those available in electronic format of the Washington Law Review to see whether and to what extent the concern for piquing readers’ curiosity to continue reading the associated RA has affected abstract writing. The focus will ...
This chapter investigates the linguistic, rhetorical and pragmatic features of arbitral awards dr... more This chapter investigates the linguistic, rhetorical and pragmatic features of arbitral awards drafted in English by the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC), with a specific focus on those resources which are meant to enhance deonticity and authoritativeness, and, ultimately, to make arbitration discourse readable as a normative type of communication (Nariman 2000, Bhatia et al. 2003). Our aim is to discover whether and through what linguistic resources experts try (and manage) to limit as much as possible the risk of challenge. Based on a corpus of 78 arbitral awards (available on the HKIAC site at , last accessed on 7 January 2015) this chapter seeks to investigate the arbitrators’ linguistic and rhetorical choices found in the final section of such texts, the Decision section − where the actual arbitral pronouncement is expressed − with a specific focus on the metadiscursive resources employed to boost authoritativeness and to enhance the legal validity of the deci...
This volume, the first of the Cerlis Series, investigates variation in scholarly communication fr... more This volume, the first of the Cerlis Series, investigates variation in scholarly communication from different analytical perspectives. Ranging from genre analysis to text linguistics, systemic functional grammar and multimodal approaches, its main purpose is that of providing insights into forms and modes of academic and scientific communication still little considered or as yet neglected in existing literature because of their relative novelty – due to changing practical and domain-related needs or cognitive expectations on the part of the audience – or their generic elusiveness – resulting from processes of multi-generic contaminations. On this basis, the volume discusses generic variation both in contrastive terms, by comparing and distinguishing contiguous genres, and, in analytical terms, by evidencing trends of variation and examining variation-sensitive elements in different textualizations of the same genre, and focusing especially on such variables as rhetorical strategy, w...
In the course of the last few decades web-based communication has facilitated the dissemination o... more In the course of the last few decades web-based communication has facilitated the dissemination of scientific knowledge and has contributed to making material which was primarily targeted to the expert community also available to the wider public. For such a mass of information to be effectively comprehended, some changes became necessary in order to facilitate web-searches and locate relevant material when browsing online archives. In the light of the above, the genre of research article (RA) abstracts in online academic publications seems to be particularly interesting, since its distinctive generic function is to both attract the readers’ attention and synthetically anticipate the content of the ensuing RA. This paper compares abstracts in print issues and those available in electronic format of the Washington Law Review to see whether and to what extent the concern for piquing readers’ curiosity to continue reading the associated RA has affected abstract writing. The focus will ...
This ebook is published in Open Access under a Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial... more This ebook is published in Open Access under a Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). You are free to share-copy, distribute and transmit-the work under the following conditions: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). You may not use this work for commercial purposes. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
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