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

On 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-

rothic 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:

1. 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.

2. Place of articulation:

3. Manner of articulation

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

1. Assimilation: a sound segment change due to the near sound’s influence as in Tem Mice

2. Elision: omission of one sound as in you and me

3. 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:

1. Anomalous collocations: include grammatically ill-formed collocations

2. Formulae: fixed string which can be interpreted compositionally

3. Metaphors: cannot be altered from a grammar point of view

4. 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:

1. Morphology

2. 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, namely the favourable or unfavourable connotation given by word

combination with other collocates. Primary function is the expression of the attitude of its speaker

or writer towards some pragmatic situation. Semantic prosody is not the same of connotation, which

is a feature of a single word/item, while semantic prosody resides in the collocational patterns of

items in a text.

Example: “the naked eye”

1. Collocation: n1. With, to n2. See, visible, invisible

2. Colligation: preposition + the naked eye

3. Semantic preference: visibility

4. Semantic prosody: visibility + preposition + the naked eye

The Sentence is the core of syntax, the largest structural unit on which grammar is organised; a

complete expression of a single thought, but this definition it is not right for those sentences which

expresses a thought even if they are not complete like “taxi!”, or those whose express more than one

thought. An important features of sentences is word order, because if it changes, the meaning

changes as well: He likes her sister/Her sister like him. Compound sentences are two or more

clauses linked by a conjunction.

When a syntactic construction is made up of more than one word, but it lacks the subject-predicate,

we have a phrase.

PART 3

Cap. 1

In everyday life we front different acts of communication with different registers, depending on the

communicative setting. The term “language for general purpose” namely general language, it is

used to opposite the ESP, English for specific purposes.; there are three types of ESP:

1. Firth: restricted language

2. LSP: Languages for Specific Purposes

3. ESP: English for Specific Purposes

Differences among registers do not imply only lexical variations but morphosyntactic, textual and

pragmatic distinctions emerge as well.

Since society develops new aspects, language is destined to express them and become more and

more specific.

Terms play an important role inside ESP; it is a lexical item with special reference in a restricted

subject field; namely a specific concept with no ambiguity. Through a process of semantic

redetermination, words move to the specialized domain and become terms.

Three categories of words are distinguished in specialized texts:

1. Subject-specific terms: terms which have special reference only in one domain

2. Non subject-specific terms: terms which have special reference in more domains

3. General language: ordinary words which are not terms

Since in specialized texts words have not more than one meaning and they cannot be substituted by

a synonym, they are described as monoreferential. If there is one-to-one correspondence between

term and its own concept, another lexical feature is referential precision, which reduces ambiguity

and improves communication.

Two important features of specialized texts are:

1. Cohesion: surface relation which links words and expressions between themselves. Uses

tactics as repetition, reiteration and semantic field.

2. Coherence: network of relations which organize a text

Among syntactic cohesive elements we find anaphora, cataphora, substitution, ellipsis and textual

connectives.

The scientific discourse follows the same pattern of the scientific methodology: introduction to the

problem, hypothesis of the solution and verification of the solution (introduction, problem, solutions

and conclusions).

A message can be transmitted in two different ways:

1. Speech: spoken language is largely unplanned and do not use elements like punctuation

peculiar to writing, but it is characterized by repetitions, intonations, filler phrases and

pauses.

2. Writing: these features of the spoken language can be portrayed in writing thanks to a series

of expedients like punctuation, capitalization or italics.

Cap. 2

The language of media has been changing our way of communicating, both in written and oral

expression.

News is a late Middle English word that means ‘information about something that happened

recently’. A newspaper is a periodical containing a journal of current news embracing different

topics: political events, crimes, sports, opinions, weather…

The person or company who owns the newspaper is the publisher, and the person responsible for the

content is the editor. In UK newspaper are classified by distribution as local or national and by page

size as broadsheets and tabloids. The difference is broadsheets examine stories in more depth, being

more intellectual.

Headline plays a crucial role in the language of news, since it is the first text that the reader sees

when buying a newspaper. They have to report some rules which limit their freedom, like the space

to occupy that is determined by the layout of the page and its size. Headlines writers try to

encapsulate the story in a few words: Aid/assistance, Cut/reduction.

Since the newspaper deals with a wide range of topics, it is far from having a single register. Other

elements of news, time and place, are included in the five W’s. They constitute the setting of an

event and its temporal collocation.

An important feature of the newspaper is that they do not only deliver information but they also

tend to guide the ideological stance of their audience, by presenting the news in a certain way. More

common in tabloids than in broadsheets, these newspapers designate a specific way to describe an

information using terms like opinions or comments; so in two newspaper with different tendencies,

we can find the same item imbued in a positive or in a negative connotation as well.

Cap. 3

Advertising is a persuasive mean which manipulates our behaviour and a mirror that reflects our

dreams and values, giving us an ideology that generates the apparent need of a particular product.

An ad may be seen as containing a sign which is related to a signifier which in turn recalls a

signified. For instance in the popular publicity of the perfume “Chanel”, the product is associated

with features of beauty and elegance arising from the female figure of the actress Catherine

Deneuve.

Once a company that desires to launch a new product has decided its target audience and

established communication purposes, the text must be written. The information content of the text

may be of two types:

1. Descriptive: carries impartial information about the product

2. Suggestive: aims to persuade people to buy the product

C. TAYLOR “Language to Language”

Cap. 1

Inside the field of translation it is not easy to talk distinctly about grammar and lexis, so we use the

word lexicogrammar. Distinction between lexis (words) and terms will be made. The problem is

that words are slippery, they can be ambiguous, register sensitive, collocation-bound. On the other

hand, terms are monosemic, invariable and independent from context.

Naturally the most obvious tools for translator are dictionaries; but the translator task is not simply

finding inside dictionary an equivalent to a series of items in the source text and arranging them in

the target text. In order to create a complete semantic picture of a lexical item will be examined

componential analysis. The basic idea is that of breaking a word into its components in order to

arrive at its total meaning. Componential analysis is a valid instrument of measurement for the

semantic features of words: each lexical item is regarded as a set or cluster of components called

semantic features. It is easier to translate by dividing a word, for example ‘bawdy’ into its sense

components than by looking for synonyms listed in bilingual dictionaries. ‘Bawdy’ is broken in:<