Riassunto esame Inglese, prof. Spinzi, libro consigliato English, Language and Communication, Spinzi

Cap. 1

Despite great changes occurred in the field of communication, nowadays textbooks of linguistic do not neglect models proposed by Roman Jakobson who sees the act of communication made by six elements: one addresser sends a message to an addressee with whom share a common code, through a channel in a particular cultural context. Each one of the six elements has a particular function. While the addresser got the emotive function, the addressee got a conative, the context the referential function, the code metalingual and message, phatic function.

Context can be described as the general situation in which something happens, and helps to explain it. Jakobson talks about three elements that constitute the context: Field tenor and Mode. Field refers to what is going on and all the linguistic choices depend on it. Tenor refers to the relationship between addresser and addressee. Mode refers to the way in which the language is used and its medium of transmission.

Talking about context, another linguistic, Grice propose the co-operative principle that make up an act of communication. Quality principle stands for avoiding false information. Quantity stands for avoiding repetition, and the goal is the economy of an act of communication. Relevance means being appropriate to the topic of communication and the last one is manner that means contributions should be clear and unambiguous. When a speaker deliberately avoid one of the maxim he is triggering what Grice calls conversation implicature, but for example if someone say, do you know what time is it? He means that he does not know the time, but with another intonation, he refers to the fact that the other person is late.

Study these principles involve to a discipline known as Pragmatics, which is the study of language in communication. This discipline study also how an act depends on our knowledge of the outside world. In fact we can distinguish from High Context Communication cultures and Low context communication cultures, where first one stand for a culture wherein it is difficult to orientate because meaning are hidden, while the second stand for cultures as Usa or Uk where it is easy to enter and very little is left to the listener's imagination.

• Text (explicitness)/Context (implicitness)
• Information (facts)/Communication (feelings, opinions)
• Low information Load (small chunks)/High information Load (large chunks)
• KISS (keep it short and simple)/KILC (keep it long and complete)
• Reader friendly/Writer oriented
• Instrumental/Expressive
• Linear/Circular

An analysis made on chunks of text of European constitution has shown as the linguistic choices of the Italian version point to a greater tendency to delegate the decision making power to an authority acting from above in order to reduce anxiety levels in society; on the other hand choices in the English text mirror the British conception of Europe as mainly a political entity and the greater precision points to the will to understand the structure of the EU and its functioning in more depth.

The iceberg theory split in Visible Part and Hidden part composed by our thinking and feeling.

• Ethnocentrism: thinking of one's own culture as superior to all others and judging other cultures according to the norms of the own culture
• Cultural Relativism: regarding all cultures as equal and acknowledging the fact that another culture may only be judged by the norms of that particular culture
• Xenophily: idealizing foreign cultures

A study upon words 'natura' and "nature" early shows the difference of use of this item. Natura has 147 occurrences while nature only 27 occurrences. The collocational profile of the word 'natura' shows this type of scheme following the order of usage: 1.Incontaminata 2.Circostante 3.A contatto/simbiosi/immerse 4.amanti/amore 5.bellezze/fascino 6.suoni/ritmi/silenzio 7.pace; while collocational profile for the word "nature" shows: 1.reserve/trail 2.lover/s. If we compare collocates for both nature and 'natura' we see for example 'incontaminata' is translated as unspoiled/unspoilt, but this last one in English collocates with countryside/land/area/location; the same for 'circostante' translated as surrounding which collocates with countryside/area/fields/hills. At a word level there is non-equivalence between "nature" and 'natura'. Thanks to the intercollocation of collocates we find a better translation for 'natura' in "countryside" at a collocational level.

Cap. 2

Another important point about communication studies, are the way in which every single item inside the text interact with personal and cultural experience of the speaker.

The linguistic Roland Barthes talks about three levels of meanings: Denotative refers to the literal meaning of the item while Conative refers to personal and cultural associations of the sign. For Example if we look for the word Snake, we find the denotation, namely a long and thin reptile without legs, and the connotation of snake, evil, danger, linked for example with our idea of snake produced by the bible.

In other words we can say that the denotation is what it is photographed, and the connotation, how it is photographed. The last level of meaning for Barthes is the mythological one, which stands for the dominant cultural way of thinking about a particular aspect.

Cap. 3

Inside an act of communication we can face rhetorical tropes. The most common trope is the metaphor, namely a new sign given by the signifier of one sign to another. For example my car is a bomb. In this case we are in front of a verbal metaphor. It guarantees transparency, since the addressee understands the new concept by referring to pre-existing items. But metaphors are of a visual kind that requires a transfer of features from one sign to another. We can face this kind of metaphor inside ads. For example the advertising of the Beer Nastro Azzurro, show us a big bottle of beer near to a top model. In this case top model's features of beauty and desire transfer to the beer. If this metaphor requires an effort of interpretation, everyday metaphors as You're wasting my time, that is related to the idea that time is money, do not need an interpretation because they are part of our society common sense.

Other tropes are Metonymy and Synecdoche. We face a Metonymy when the name of an attribute of an entity it is used instead of the entity itself, while the synecdoche is when we use a part for the whole.

Cap. 1

Recent estimates say speakers of English as mother tongue are about 400 million without considering speakers of English as second, foreign language. All the speakers together arrive at 1.5 billion, a quarter of the world population. Reasons why English becomes a world language, have to be find inside historical events from Henry VII to the 19th century expansion of United States, leading the economy centre of the world in English.

One of the most difficult aspect learning English, is pronunciation. It can be studied from two different points of view. Phonetic and Phonological. Phonetic studies the way humans transmit and receive speech sounds, while phonology describe of phonemes determine a change of meaning. The pronunciation variety which learners tend to is the high RP pronunciation, or Received, non-rhotic accent that dominates school and public institutions, but spoken only by 3% of the British population because of horizontal caste-mark separating "top people" from the rest. Another accent is the Estuary that refers to the area of the river Thames.

Differences between accents lead us to talk about phoneme, which is the smallest sound which can change the meaning of a word as in Book/Cook, and Allophone, which is the double realization of a phoneme as the phoneme /l/ which has two allophones for words as Like and Milk. Each phoneme it is presented by the IPA, namely the International Phonetic Alphabet. For English it consists of 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds. We can distinguish two different types of vowel sounds. Monophthongs or pure vowels, where a single sound is perceived, and Dipthongs where two sounds are perceived. An important feature for vowel is length, symbolized by [:]. We can describe consonants sounds on the basis of three features:

• Voiced or unvoiced: voiceless are those produced without cord vibration and are defined as strong, while voiced are the opposite and are defined as weak.
• Place of articulation:
• Manner of articulation

Pronunciation can differ from the real one in connected speech due to different modifications:

• Assimilation: a sound segment change due to the near sound's influence as in Tem Mice
• Elision: omission of one sound as in you and me
• Liaison: introduction of one sound to link words together as in clear answer intrusive r

Cap. 2

Collocation is an important feature of the language. It means "placing together" and refers to the tendency of words to co-occur predictably. Collocations can be described as normal or unmarked, or unusual or marked, and namely may be more acceptable or less acceptable. Collocations describe the idiom principle that is each word in the text can be used within a common phraseology. About 80% of language is governed by the idiom principle (a language user has available to him or her a large number of semi-preconstructed phrases that constitute single choices, even though they might appear to be analysable into segments) and 20% by the open choice principle. So language seems to be formed by frozen chunks rather than word by word. The sum of the single words does not correspond to the meaning of the whole phrase. There are different types of collocation:

• Anomalous collocations: include grammatically ill-formed collocations
• Formulae: fixed string which can be interpreted compositionally
• Metaphors: cannot be altered from a grammar point of view
• Phrasal verbs and proverbs

Cap. 3

In order to understand each other, both addresser and addressee must know grammar rules. Grammar is usually divided into two branches:

• Morphology
• Syntax: one word has a strict meaning linked to the position where it occurs. A pattern can be identified if a combination of words occurs relatively frequently.

The concept of semantic prosody arises from a consistent aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its collocates, n