Abstracts - Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstracts
Mohamed Kamel Abdelillah (Université d’Oran)
La traduction multilingue des slogans publicitaires en Algérie
Toute communication commerciale vise à transférer des valeurs culturelles d’un contexte
original vers un contexte cible. Néanmoins cette opération est confrontée à certaines
contraintes lors du transfert des idées véhiculées dans une communication commerciale,
lorsqu’elle a pour destinataire une société multilingue comme celle de l’Algérie. Dans ce
pays du Maghreb, le bilinguisme (langues arabe, français ou espagnol) et la pratique
quotidienne de plusieurs langues reflètent une réalité culturelle et sociale particulière. La
communication commerciale destinée à un récepteur multilingue doit produire le même effet
et autant d’impact que chez le récepteur cible, d’où la nécessité de faire appel à des
traducteurs ou des linguistes qui seront, le cas échéant, amenés à recréer l’effet publicitaire
qui constitue l’essence de la communication commerciale. C’est là un grand défi pour les
linguistes et les traducteurs, lesquels doivent répondre à de nombreuses questions dans la
pratique de la communication multilingue : comment procéder à la traduction des messages
publicitaires dans le contexte multilingue algérien ? Comment le traducteur peut-il contribuer
à la réussite de la traduction dans une société multiculturelle comme celle de l’Algérie ?
Itziar Arechederra (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
L’interruption avec chevauchement : une approche sémiodiscursive, interactionnelle et multimodale
Nous abordons ici la notion de multimodalité comme un multisystème intrinsèque à toute
interaction humaine. En effet, la communication humaine est un échange de messages au
moyen de différents canaux physiques et somatiques qui sont codés et décryptés grâce à des
systèmes et des modalités hétérogènes d’ordre sémiotique.
À partir des notions de contrat de genre (Charaudeau 1997) ainsi que d’interaction (KerbratOrecchioni 1990), nous considérons leur combinatoire dans le cadre de l’alternance des tours
de parole, et plus précisément, de l’interruption avec chevauchement. Pour ce faire, nous
analysons deux extraits de sous-genre de débat télévisé, l’un tiré d’une émission espagnole,
l’autre d’une émission française, que nous nommons « conversations à bâtons rompus ».
D’une part, partant de diverses approches de l’analyse de la conversation d’ordre
interactionnel et multimodal (Beattie 1982 ; Bigi et al. 2011 ; Gallardo 1996), nous
définissons l’interruption avec chevauchement. Ensuite, au moyen d’outils d’annotation
multimodale (Boersma et Weenink 2009 ; Wittenburg et al. 2006), nous établissons les
diverses catégories structurelles et nous analysons les aspects verbaux (structure syntaxique),
prosodiques (courbe intonative et intensité) et kinésiques (abruption du geste) de
l’intervention interrompue chevauchée. D’autre part, à partir des fonctions discursives
(opinion, appréciation, nuancement, gestion des tours) des interventions interruptrices
chevauchantes, nous cataloguons celles-ci en fonction de leur degré de politesse (Bañón
1997 ; Hutchby 2008 ; Lycan 1977) eu égard à plusieurs paramètres : rentabilité
communicative, co-orientation ou anti-orientation argumentative, prévisibilité, réaction.
Après avoir comparé les résultats dans les deux langues-cultures, nous observons une certaine
systématicité et une synchronie entre les unités des modalités verbo-vocale et kinésique, à
propos de l’intervention du locuteur interrompu par rapport à la fonction discursive de
l’intervention du locuteur interrupteur.
Nos conclusions font état de quelques différences concernant le comportement interruptif
entre les deux langues/cultures, plus polémique en français. Nous constatons que
l’interruption avec chevauchement, inhérente à ce type d’interaction dialogique, représente un
système d’apports communicatifs indispensable à la co-construction du sens et à la réalisation
interactive du discours.
Bañón, A. M. 1997. La interrupción conversacional. Propuestas para su análisis
pragmalingüístico. Málaga : Universidad de Málaga. Annexe 12 de la Revista Analecta
Malacitana.
Beattie, G. W. 1982. « Turn-taking and interruption in political interviews : Margaret
Thatcher and Jim Callaghan compared and contrasted. » Semiotica 39. 93-114.
Bigi, B. / Portes, C. / Steuckardt, A. / Tellier, M. 2011. « Catégoriser les réponses aux
interruptions
dans
les
débats
politiques. »
TALN,
Montpellier,
1-6.
http://www.lirmm.fr/~lopez/RECITAL/PDF_court/Bigi_taln11_submission_108.pdf [janvier
2012].
Boersma, P. / Weenink, D. 2009. Praat : doing phonetics by computer.
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ [janvier 2011].
Charaudeau, P. 1997. Le discours d'information médiatique : la construction du miroir social.
Paris : Nathan, Institut national de l'audiovisuel.
Gallardo, B. 1996. Análisis conversacional y pragmática del receptor. Valencia : Episteme.
Hutchby, I. 2008. « Participants' Orientations to Interruptions, Rudeness and Other Impolite
Acts in Talk-in-interaction. » Journal of Politeness Research, Special Issue: Impoliteness and
Rudeness 4, 2. 221-241.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C. 1990. Les interactions verbales. I. Paris : Armand Colin.
Lycan, W. G. 1977. « Conversation, politeness and interruption. » Papers in Linguistics 10.
23-53.
Wittenburg, P. / Brugman, H. / Russel, A. / Klassmann, A. / Sloetjes, H. 2006. Elan : a
professional framework for multimodality research. http://www.lat-mpi.eu/tools/elan/ [janvier
2011].
Blanca Arias Badia (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Fictional orality in the Spanish and English subtitles of Fontane Effi Briest, by R. W. Fassbinder
The aim of this research project is to detect signs of fictional orality in the Spanish and
English subtitles of the German film Fontane Effi Briest (1974). The film, directed by Rainer
Werner Fassbinder, is an adaptation of the 19th century novel by Theodor Fontane in which
dialogue plays a crucial role. Since Fontane’s text did not undergo any changes in the movie
version, the analysed corpus (composed of the subtitles) is the result of the following
encoding process: First, the source text is written (novel); after that, Fontane’s words become
the object of a script that a cast delivers orally. Only then is such oral dialogue put into the
subtitle (written, again) form. This makes the subtitling a particularly interesting object of
study.
For the purposes of this study, fictional orality is understood as “a kind of orality which is
created by a writer in order to provide the facts or the characters’ speech in his/her work with
greater plausibility” (Brumme 2008: 22). Emphasis is laid on the analysis of the treatment of
discourse markers in the translation process, where tendencies are observable, maybe hinting
at norms (Toury 1995) in the field of subtitling. Specifically, the discourse markers listed by
Martín Zorraquino and Portolés (1999) are examined. Differences among the expressivity of
specific characters throughout the film, which may also be conveyed by means of subtitles,
are also considered.
Brumme, J. 2008. “Traducir la oralidad teatral. Las traducciones al castellano, catalán, francés
y euskera de Der Kontrabaß de Patrick Süskind”. In Brumme, J. (ed.). 2008. La oralidad
fingida: descripción y traducción. Teatro, cómic y medios audiovisuales. Madrid:
Iberoamericana; Frankfurt: Vervuert. 21-64.
Martín Zorraquino, M. A. / Portolés, J. 1999. “Los marcadores del discurso”. In Bosque, I. /
Demonte, V. (eds.) 1999. Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española. Vol. 3. Madrid:
Espasa-Calpe. 4051-4214.
Toury, G. 1995. “The Nature and Role of Norms in Translation”. In Toury, G. 1995.
Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 5369.
Alessandra Battaglini (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)
Visual representations for argument analysis
Argumentation, since its beginnings, has been studied as essentially verbal. There are,
however, several topics about its phenomenology and its analysis which lead us to consider
the interactions between verbal language and other forms of communication and
representation.
For example, the theme of the argumentative use of images in the media is relevant; more
generally some authors state that all argumentation is multimodal, because its essential
structure cannot be reduced to its logical features (Gilbert 1994; Thagard 2011).
Moreover, argumentative practice requires us to keep in mind the reasons and possible
objections of the interlocutor, to consider multiple points of view; we may say that the
argumentative discourse always incorporates a dialogue; it is polyphonic by nature.
From the point of view of the methods and tools of analysis, this contribution illustrates some
techniques for the visual representation of argument structures, applied to a corpus of texts
written by university students about their internship experiences. In particular, the method of
diagrams described by Irving M. Copi (1999), based on the studies of important logicians
(e.g. Scriven 1976), is a kind of spatial representation which shows its efficacy in revealing
the structure of argumentation and the function of each of its elements.
Given that we may encounter a wide variety of even complex structures, the visual
representation through diagrams is an important tool for identifying elements, functions and
steps, and it is a preliminary step to a possible subsequent evaluation in terms of validity or
soundness.
Amossy, R. 2000. L'argumentation dans le discours. Paris: Colin.
Amossy, R. / Koren, R. 2009. “Rhétorique et argumentation: approches croisées.”
Argumentation et Analyse du Discours 2. http://aad.revues.org/561/ [31-05- 2012]
Anscombre, J. C. / Ducrot, O. 1983. L'Argumentation dans la langue. Bruxelles: Mardaga.
Colli, G. (ed.) 2003. Aristotele: Organon. Milano: Adelphi.
Copi, I. M. / Cohen, C. 1999. Introduzione alla logica. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Fisher, A. 1988. The logic of real arguments. Cambridge: University Press.
Fisher, A. 2001. Critical Thinking. An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gilbert, M. A. 1994. “Multi-Modal Argumentation.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 24, 2.
159-177.
Goodwin J. / Fisher A. 2000 “Wigmore's Chart Method.” Informal Logic 20, 3. 223-243.
Katzav, K. / Reed, C. 2004. On argumentation schemes and the natural classification of
arguments. Argumentation 18, 2. 239 - 259.
Katzav, J. / Reed, C. 2008. Modelling argument recognition and reconstruction. Journal of
Pragmatics 40, 1. 155-172.
Lukasiewicz, J. 1957. Aristotle's Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Mercier,
H.
2011.
“Looking
for
Arguments.”
Argumentation.
1-20.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/73537g5413146g03/.
Mercier H. / Sperber D. 2011. “Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative
theory.” Behavioral and brain sciences 34, 57 –11.
Perelman, C. / Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. 1958 [2008]. Traite de l'argumentation. La nouvelle
rhetorique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, Bruxelles: Université libre de Bruxelles.
Perelman, C. 1981. Il dominio retorico. Torino: Einaudi.
Pinto, R. C. 1984. “Dialectic and the Structure of argument.” Informal Logic 6, 1. 16-20.
Plantin, C. 1990. Essais sur l’Argumentation. Introduction linguistique à l’étude de la parole
argumentative. Paris: Kimé.
Rothbart, D. 1983. “Towards a Structural Analysis of Extended Arguments.” Informal Logic
5, 2. 15-19.
Sarfati, G. E. 1997. Éléments d'analyse du discours. Paris: Éditions Nathan.
Scriven, M. 1976. Reasoning. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Thagard, P. 2011. “Critical Thinking and Informal Logic. Neuropsychological Perspectives.”
Informal Logic 31, 3. 152-170.
Walton, D. 1992. “Rules for Plausible Reasoning.” Informal Logic 14, 1. 33-51.
Joan Borràs-Comes (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Multimodal expression of questions in two European languages
Many languages exploit prosodic and morphosyntactic cues for marking the interrogative
status of an utterance. While much is known about the cross-linguistic variation that exists in
how languages use such linguistic features (interrogative particles, syntactic changes,
intonational patterns, etc.), little is known about the visual gestural characteristics of
information-seeking questions. Moreover, it is still not known whether speakers are able to
distinguish questions from statements when auditory input is not available. It has been found
that speakers mobilize responses through the combination of multiple resources. Cosnier
(1991) observed that French information-seeking questions often display gaze to the
interlocutor, head elevation, and diverse kinds of facial mimics such as features frozen
“waiting for the response”. In turn, Stivers and Rossano (2010) found for both English and
Italian that no feature is present in all cases, so no single feature appears to be intrinsic to the
action of requesting information. In addition, a complementary use of different question cues,
is suggested and it is found that a simultaneous use of such features increases the likelihood of
obtaining a response (Stivers & Rossano 2010; Rossano 2010).
The first goal of this research project is to test whether people can differentiate between broad
focus statements and information-seeking questions in their respective languages, even when
auditory information is not available. The second goal is to explore which auditory and
gestural cues are responsible for this distinction. The third goal is to investigate the possible
interaction of such cues in the perceivers’ decisions. These issues are investigated by
comparing Catalan, a language that makes this distinction mainly by the use of specific
intonational contours, and Dutch, which makes this distinction by means of similar
intonational contours but also changes in the syntactic structure.
Fifteen Dutch speakers and fifteen Catalan speakers were recorded while playing two variants
of the “Guess Who” game (Ahmad et al. 2011) specifically designed to elicit a series of
statements and questions. From these recordings, 35 statements and 35 questions related to
gender (e.g., It's a man vs. Is it a man?) were randomly selected for each language in order to
be included in a subsequent rating experiment. The selected utterances were labelled for the
presence of a final rising intonation, gaze to interlocutor and eyebrow raising. These three
features were more frequent in questions than in statements. Then, 20 Dutch listeners and 20
Catalan listeners rated the selection of 70 stimuli of their own L1 as being statements or
questions in three different conditions (Auditory-Only, Visual-Only, Audio Visual), with the
order of the first two tasks counterbalanced among participants.
A GLMM analysis was conducted with the correct identification of an utterance regarding its
status as a question or declarative (incorrect, correct) as the dependent variable. The correct
identification was found to be over chance level in each condition (AV > AO > VO), for the
two languages. The analysis also revealed that Dutch participants were more accurate than
Catalan participants only when auditory information was available (AO, AV), and that
statements were more accurately identified than questions only when visual information was
available (VO, AV). Another GLMM analysis was conducted with the response given
(statement, question) in the VO task. It revealed main effects of both GAZE and EYEBROW,
but also a significant interaction of both features, such that the presence of eyebrow raising
increased the number of ‘question’ responses when gaze was also present (p < .001), but not
when absent. Finally, in order to examine whether the simultaneous use of different cues had
an incremental effect on ‘question’ responses, a new column was added to our results
database containing the sum of the different cues to questioning (VS syntax, rising intonation,
gaze, eyebrow raising); a Pearson test identified a correlation of .722 (p < .001).
In conclusion, our data confirms that statements and information-seeking questions can be
distinguished on the basis of the gestural information alone in Catalan and Dutch. These polar
questions are especially characterized by the presence of gaze, and both languages use this
perceptual cue in a similar fashion. Finally, the simultaneous use of different cues has an
incremental effect on question identification, for the two languages, which is directly related
to patterns found in production.
Ahmad, M. I. et al. 2011. “Guess Who? An Interactive and Entertaining Game-Like Platform
for Investigating Human Emotions”. In Jacko, J. A. (ed.) 2011. Human-Computer Interaction.
Towards Mobile and Intelligent Interaction Environments. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. 543551.
Cosnier, J. 1991. “Les gestes de la question”. In Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C. (ed.) 1991. La
question. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. 163-171.
Rossano, F. 2010. “Questioning and responding in Italian.” Journal of Pragmatics 42, 10.
2756-2771.
Stivers, T. / Rossano, F. 2010. “Mobilizing Response.” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 43, 1. 1-31.
Rajka Bračun Sova (University of Ljubljana)
Audience focused interpretation of art in museums
Within the framework of the radical shift in the understanding of (Western) museums and
their visitors in recent decades, called by the Slovenian museum specialist Lidija Tavčar »a
copernican revolution in the understanding of the relationship between museums and their
public« (Tavčar 2009), according to which the focus is put on visitors and not, as previously,
on museums as institutions, new theories and practices of art museum interpretation have
emerged. While earlier studies centred principally on visitors’ processes of learning in art
museums (e.g. Hooper-Greenhill & Moussouri 2001; Hooper-Greenhill et al. 2001), new
studies and discourses take a more holistic approach by examining also curatorial practices to
communicating art in museums (e.g. Fritsch 2011; Whitehead 2012). My study problematises
the relationship between the visitor focus and the focus on objects from the perspective of
knowledge (ways of seeing and knowing art) and disciplinarity in museums. How should
interpretive resources be made to work to be understandable to visitors (especially nonprofessionals who do not have art historical approach to experiencing art)? I conduct my
research at the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana which in 2011 put up a new permanent
display of Slovenian modern art. The research adopts a qualitative methodology and consists
of in-depth interviews with art specialist and art non-specialist adult visitors responding to
artworks on one hand and discourse analysis of curators’ guided tours, the display and the
guide book on the other hand. Methods are framed by museological, art historical and
pedagogical theories. The preliminary results of my study point to the importance of audience
focused textual and architectural interpretation, which needs to be discussed in the framework
of specific typology and cultural conditions pertaining to both, the museum (in this case the
museum of modern art) and the art (in this case Slovenian modern art).
Fritsch, J. (ed.) 2011. Museum Gallery Interpretation and Material Culture. London, New
York: Routledge.
Hooper-Greenhill, E. / Moussouri, T. / Hawthorne, E. / Riley, R. 2001. Making meaning in art
museums 1. Visitors' interpretive strategies at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Leicester: RCMG
/ University of Leicester.
Hooper-Greenhill, E. / Moussouri, T. 2001. Making meaning in art museums 2. Visitors'
interpretive strategies at Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery. Leicester: RCMG /
University of Leicester.
Tavčar, L. 2009. Homo spectator. Uvod v muzejsko pedagogiko. [Homo Spectator: An
Introduction to Museum Pedagogy]. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut. [Ljubljana: The Institute of
Education]. (In Slovenian with English abstract)
Whitehead C. 2012. Interpreting art in museums and galleries. London, New York:
Routledge.
Paulina Burczynska (Kazimierz Wieŀki University)
Multimodal approach to communication analysis in film subtitles
Over recent years, the rapid diffusion of cutting-edge digital technologies has augmented
language and led to the diminishing of language’s central role in communication acts as stated
by Bączkowska and Kieś (2011). Multimodality, however, with a wide array of its modes, i.e.
semiotic, visual, acoustic modes or paralinguistic cues, has become a highly significant
element in communication analyses and particularly discernible in audiovisual translations.
The objectives of this study are to evaluate the interplay between the spoken mode and
various multimodal modes and to determine to what extent these semiotic, visual, acoustic
and kinetic modes can affect film subtitles. It is thus of paramount importance to assess when
it is justifiable for a translator to obviate the original soundtrack in film subtitles when the
same message is conveyed with the help of other multimodal modes than language.
To investigate this problem, selected scenes from the film Spanglish will be analyzed in order
to assess whether the Polish subtitles can be trimmed when translating from the original
English script without losing meaning for a Polish audience, given that the message will be
simultaneously transferred through other semiotic and kinetic modes like gestures, facial
expressions, sounds or colors. Hence, multimodality, subtitling and communication are the
three key aspects of my analysis.
The phenomenon of multimodality has introduced a totally different insight into the study of
audiovisual translations and communication processes.
Bączkowska, A. / Kieś, M. 2011. “Multimodal Subtitling of Implicit Compliments in Polish,
Italian
and
Swedish”.
Research
in
Language.
http://multimodalitylab.net/documents/DiazCintas_BaczkowskaKies_PeterLang__.pdf
Chuang, Y.-T. 2006. “Studying Subtitle Translation from a Multi-modal Approach.” Babel
52, 4. 372-383.
Diaz Cintas, J. / Anderman, G. (eds.) 2009. Audiovisual Translation. Language Transfer on
Screen. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kress; G. / van Leeuwen, T. 1996 [2006]. Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design.
New York: Routledge.
Ventola, E. / Cassily, C. / Kaltenbacher, M. (eds.) (2004): Perspectives on multimodality.
Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Paolo Campetella (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)
Multimodal communication in new archaeological museums
Archaeological research provides the tools to decipher and connect anthropogenic traces on
the ground in order to reconstruct the history of human presence in a given territory. Such
research enhances the creation of new forms of heritage communication. The ‘story’ told by
anthropogenic traces should be communicated as a cultural value shared by the community.
This presentation uses a literature review to identify the aspects that are considered specific to
communication and cultural mediation in museums and archaeological sites. We analyse
some new museums created on archaeological sites in Rome bearing in mind these specific
aspects. Archaeological surveys, using new integrated methods of excavation, are
transforming and redefining historical knowledge regarding the city’s development. The
exhibition layouts in these museums try to inform a wide audience about the historical
evolution of urban sites (from Roman times up to the present day), through a new kind of
historical reconstruction based on multimodal communication that incorporates visual and
virtual technologies. We analyse the role of archaeological research in the exhibition’s
presentation and look at the use of new technologies for visual and virtual reconstruction of
the site’s development. We also examine the value of the original discovery, the
representation of the functional and cultural aspects of the exhibits, the spatial relationship
between objects and archaeological site, the adaptability of communication to different
audiences, and the role of evaluation of communication processes.
Nadine Chariatte (Universität Bern)
The use of non-standard phonic features in virtual speech conditioned by the medium Facebook
Internet is increasingly popular and important for communication due to the enormous
influence of new media and has affected our lives and society in manifold ways, some of
them fundamental. Therefore, it is no surprise that one of the areas affected is language and
communication itself. Over the last few years Facebook has become a widespread and
continuously expanding medium of communication. Being a new medium of social
interaction, Facebook produces its own communication style. My focus of analysis is how
Facebook users from the city of Malaga create this special style by means of phonic features
typical of the Andalusian variety of Spanish and how the users reflect on the use of these
phonic features. This project is based on a theoretical framework which combines variationist
sociolinguistics with CMC to study the emergence of a style peculiar to online social
networks. In a corpus of Facebook users from three zones of Malaga, I have analysed the use
of non-standard phonic features and then compared them with the same features in a reference
corpus collected on three beaches of Malaga. From this comparison it can be deduced that the
analysed social and linguistic factors work differently in real and virtual speech. Due to these
different uses we can consider the specific style of electronic communication on Facebook as
a style constrained by the electronic medium. It is a style which enables the users to create
social meaning and to express their linguistic identities.
Federica Cirulli (Università degli Studi di Foggia)
Analyse rhétorique des textes utilisés par l'association italienne Slow food pour le développement
d’un programme d'éducation au goût
Ce projet s’intéresse à l'analyse du langage utilisé par Slow food - association italienne à but
non lucratif - qui développe un programme d'éducation au goût. Nous montrerons, en
particulier, comment les contenus discursifs des programmes d'éducation au goût varient en
fonction des moyens utilisés pour les transmettre. Tout message, qu’il soit parlé, écrit,
schématique, hypertextuel, hypermédiatique, peut être considéré comme un texte et les
différentes typologies textuelles peuvent produire des systèmes symboliques différents
(Anderson 1988). A cet égard, notre hypothèse du travail est que, en l’occurrence, la mise en
place et l’utilisation du langage dépendent du media choisi pour la communication du
message.
Nous entendons détecter les stratégies rhétoriques de la communication multimodale qui
sous-tendent deux différents types de dispositifs de communication médiatisée (un textuel et
un visuel).
Le projet prévoit une analyse comparative des variables spécifiques de chacun des medias et
des différents registres sémiotiques utilisés pour véhiculer, dans un contexte multimodal, le
thème de l'alimentation saine
Cette analyse systémique sera conduite à l'aide d'une grille de lecture appropriée aux objectifs
de la recherche et traitée conformément à la littérature scientifique des théories de la
communication.
Valeria Damiani (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)
Assessing Italian university students’ lexicon knowledge through multimodal inputs
In assessing students’ written productions, their skill concerning lexical scope is one of the
factors that most influences the quality of their papers (Engber 1995; Laufer 1991 and 1995).
The few and outdated studies carried out in order to assess Italian university students' lexical
knowledge (Dardano et al. 1988; Berretta 1991) highlighted an increasing lexical poverty in
their oral and written productions.
This contribution is built on an ongoing project carried out at the DiPED (Department of
Educational Design) of the University of Roma Tre. The aim of the project is to try to design
a model to assess university students’ lexicon knowledge related to school and everyday life
issues. The study then encompasses the planning of didactic activities to retrain and enhance
their lexical knowledge. The research target group is made up of Italian mother tongue
students attending the laboratory of reading comprehension at the faculty of Primary
Education, University of Roma Tre.
Multimodal inputs in Italian, focused on everyday school problems and situations, are offered
to students as spurs in order to enable them to make short written productions, using their
available lexicon. These productions will subsequently be analyzed using a lexicometric
approach.
The idea underlying the project is that multimodal inputs (a two-minute excerpt from a
documentary/movie and a comic strip) can represent basic instruments to enhance meaningful
understanding of school issues and to stimulate the use of the acquired lexicon by every single
student.
Berretta, M. 1991. “Deformazione del lessico tecnico nell’italiano di studenti universitari”. In
Lavinio, C. / Sobrero, A. (eds.) 1991. La lingua degli studenti universitari. Firenze: Nuova
Italia. 99-121.
Dardano, M. / Giovanardi, C. / Pelo, A. 1988. “Per un’analisi del discorso divulgativo.
Accertamento e studio della comprensione”. In De Mauro, T. / Piemontese, E. (eds.) 1988.
Dalla parte del ricevente: percezione, comprensione, interpretazione. Atti del XIX Congresso
Internazionale – Roma 8-10 novembre 1985. Roma: Bulzoni. 153-165.
Engeber, C. 1995. “The relationship of lexical proficiency to the quality of ESL
compositions.” Journal of Second Language Writing 4, 2. 139-155.
Laufer, B. 1991. “The development of L2 lexis in the expression of the advanced learners.”
Modern Language Journal 75. 440-448.
Laufer, B. / Nation, P. 1995. “Vocabulary size and use. Lexical richness in L2 written
production.” Applied Linguistics 16, 3. 307-322.
Elena Deju (University Stefan cel Mare Suceava)
Non verbal language in advertising
Advertising acts on the human psyche to influence consumers into choosing a specific
product. Therefore an advert must take into account the culture of the people it is addressing.
We talk about a process of acculturation, and people from a certain country can either accept
and adapt to that phenomenon, or reject it completely. A. L Kroeber in his work,
Anthropology. Race. Language. Culture. Psychology. Prehistory, published in 1948, stated
that acculturation is very important for TV broadcasting. We notice that there are some TV
channels that are watched globally (in many different cultures) like MTV, CNN and
Discovery, which leads to globalisation and the appearance of new cultural models.
There is a strong relationship between advertising and stylistics. Elements of literary style are
seen in commercials. Starting from the studies of Ion Coteanu in the field of stylistics, I will
analyze the language features found in the scripts of commercials: denominative,
predicational, stylistic. However, in advertising the spoken language is used and I will analyze
the importance of personal style and the elements of language present in advertising.
This article highlights the link between stylistics and advertising, and also that language is
being used in commercials and personal style.
Annamaria De Santis (Università degli Studi di Foggia)
A multimodal school book: guidelines for the participatory design of cross-media learning
environments
In the web 2.0 era, the change of users from passive recipients to content generators has led to
the need for a new multimodal form of school books. The new publishing produces
collaborative resources, using the digital code, different learning strategies for multiple
intelligences and multiple media: pictures, voices, exercises, community and interactions.
The goal of the research is to come up with a set of guidelines for the participatory design of
cross-media learning environments. The research phases start with the design and realization
of a learning environment on the web, followed by experimentation in the classroom, and
finally the drafting of the guidelines.
With the collaboration of Cl@assi 2.0 (classes of excellence in technology that have received
instrumental equipment and advanced training in the use of teaching technology), a web
portal has been planned. The portal deals with medieval culture and collects trans-media texts,
video documentaries, concept maps, glossaries, games, pictures and any instructional
resources that students and teachers consider it necessary to introduce.
The learning environment is enhanced by a community (it is built upon the knowledge of
members of the class and replaces the traditional manual) and by links to institutional
websites, social networks and folksonomic tools. The web portal will then be tested in 12
classes during the next school year, using innovative didactic methodologies such as Problem
Based Learning.
Through observation and focus groups among teachers and students realized in the different
phases of project, ideas and suggestions will be collected to allow for the drafting of the
guidelines mentioned above.
Núria Esteve-Gibert1, Thomas Grünloh2, Ulf Liszkowski2, Pilar Prieto1,3 (1Universitat Pompeu
Fabra, 2Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, 3ICREA- Institució Catalana de
Recerca i Estudis Avançats)
Infant-directed gestures: a multimodal analysis
Previous studies have shown that adults modify their speech and gestures when interacting
with infants to maintain their attention and facilitate their comprehension of the message.
Infant-directed speech is characterized by high pitch and exaggerated intonation (Fernald,
1985). Infant-directed gestures are found to be higher in interactiveness, enthusiasm, range of
motion, repetitiveness, and simplicity (Brand et al. 2002; Koterba & Iverson 2009). Also,
adults adapt this performance to the infants’ increasing linguistic competences (Colas 1999;
Gogate et al. 2000). However, there is no detailed analysis of how gesture-prosodic cues
interact in child-directed acts.
Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate whether adults’ pointing gestures (hand shape,
stroke salience, stroke duration) and speech performance (intonation, function of the lexical
affiliate) is affected by their intention in interacting with infants. We also examine how
gesture and prosody are synchronized in child-directed multimodal speech.
Ten Catalan-speaking mother-infant pairs (infants’ age from 10 to 14 months old) were
recorded while playing semi-structured games: a hiding-finding game (to elicit informative
interactions), a lego-game (to elicit imperative interactions), and a computer game (to elicit
expressive interactions). Preliminary results of the data show that: (1) in the imperative
condition, gestures are long and accompanied by inexpressive intonation (L*L%), and
repetitive when the target object is distal; (2) in the expressive condition, the gesture
performance (repetitiveness and duration) depends on the location of the target object and the
intonation is much more expressive (L+H*L%); (3) in the informative condition, gestures are
short and repetitive, and intonation varies a lot. Further research will use these results to run a
perception experiment in infants in order to test whether these cues found in adults are used
by children to comprehend intentionality in multimodal speech.
Brand, R. J. / Baldwin, D. A. / Ashburn, L. A. 2002. “Evidence for ‘motionese’.
Modifications in mothers’ infant-directed action.” Developmental Science 5. 72-83.
Colas, A. 1999. “Introducing infants to referential events: a development study of maternal
ostensive marking in French.” Journal of Child Language 26. 113-131.
Fernald, A. 1985. “Four-month-old infants prefer to listen to motherese.” Infant Behavior and
Development 8. 181-195.
Gogate, L. / Bahrick, L. / Watson, J. 2000. “A study of multimodal motherese. The role of
temporal synchrony between verbal labels and gestures.” Child Development 71, 4. 878-894.
Koterba, E. A. / Iverson, J. M. 2009. “Investigating motionese. The effect of infant-directed
action on infants’ attention and object exploration.” Infant Behavior and Development 32, 4.
437-444.
Sandra Falbe (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Contrasting Speech Style in Television Dialogue
The aim of this contribution is to demonstrate that the phenomenon of fictional orality or
communicative proximity would be misunderstood if analyzed solely in terms of its
‘naturalness’ or ‘authenticity’ as compared to ‘naturally occurring language’. Following
Coupland’s (2007: 184) tentative suggestion that “in late-modernity, authenticity needs to be
earned discursively rather than automatically credited”, the paper sets out to account for
authentication and de-authentication practices related to communicative proximity in the
discourse of a German TV series. A second, very closely related question is how this could be
achieved through the co-deployment of multimodal meaning-making resources.
As a form of mediated language, television dialogue displays some particular characteristics
such as the dependence on different levels of communication and the possible separation of
speaker roles (Goffman 1981; Bubel 2008). The former acknowledges that the words uttered
within a diegetic world are first and foremost designed by the film makers to appeal to the
extra-diegetic audience. The latter makes up for the fact that the characters may be mere
animators of other characters’ and even the authors’ and actors’ individual voices. On the
whole, this is likely to account for the possibility of putting a distance between the utterer and
the words that they speak but do not own. While establishing an indexical link to particular
social groups and former ‘authentic’ utterance contexts, these practices may also serve to deauthenticate talk by putting it on display for the recipients. In televised contexts, it has been
found that such linguistic stylization may also go hand in hand with a sharpening of
ideological oppositions between different characters (Stamou 2011), with the exploitation of
cinematographic resources adding to this effect.
With regard to the TV series Türkisch für Anfänger, it is thus argued that the sharp ideological
differences between the multi-racial family members in the sitcom are condensed in the
contrasting speech styles related to the deployment of communicative proximity.
Idiosyncratic linguistic styles are likely to be deployed in contrast to each other throughout
one episode. Once established as an object of depiction, the styles invite reflection, thus not
only constructing contrasting ideologies, but also implicitly questioning them. ‘Double
voicing’, e.g. when the voices of the authors are co-present, as well as other practices of metatextual and inter-textual commentary in both linguistic and non-linguistic codes, may further
enhance meta-linguistic awareness of the styled nature of mediated communicative proximity.
Bubel, C. M. 2008. “Film Audiences as Overhearers.” Journal of Pragmatics 40. 55-71.
Coupland, N. 2007. Style. Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge, New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Stamou, A. G. 2011. “Speech Style and the Construction of Social Division. Evidence from
Greek Television.” Language & Communication 31. 329-344.
Aurora Fragonara (Université de Lorraine)
Le rôle de la parole dans l'adaptation en bande dessinée du Petit Prince par Joann Sfar
La BD est souvent étudiée du point de vue iconique. Cependant, la parole est presque toujours
présente (phylactères et récitatifs). Il est dès lors légitime de s’interroger sur son rôle : simple
corollaire ou contribution sensible à la construction du sens ?
À partir des études de Jean-Michel Adam (notamment les notions de progression et cohésion
textuelles ainsi que d’anaphore et de cataphore) et de celles de Thierry Groensteen (la lecture
linéaire et tabulaire de la BD), l'analyse de la BD étudiée a révélé deux modalités de lecture,
une verticale et une horizontale, qui montrent comment parole et image sont également
essentielles pour la transmission du sens.
La modalité verticale intègre l'image et la parole à l'intérieur de chaque cadre : elles se
redéfinissent mutuellement en produisant un sens nouveau. Chaque cadre ou chaque séquence
devient un unicuum communicatif qui fait progresser le récit (exemples : les sens différents de
la vue, les analogies, la représentation temporelle et l’expression de la psychologie des
personnages).
La modalité horizontale fait progresser l'histoire à travers les dialogues contenus dans les
phylactères. Le système iconographique (personnages et lieux) devient ainsi le présupposé du
contenu narratif situé au niveau verbal (exemples : les épisodes racontés dans les phylactères
mais non montrés simultanément au niveau de l’image).
Les exemples cités ne sont pas communicables par de simples images : sans le système verbal
ils seraient invisibles. La parole, en explicitant l’invisible, vivifie l'image statique en créant les
personnages et le scénario. L’image devient ainsi narrative et lisible, « en modalité
idéogramme » (définition proposée par Bernard Toussaint).
Corpus
Saint-Exupéry, A. de 2002. Le Petit Prince. Paris : Folio.
Sfar, J. 2008. Le Petit Prince d’après l’oeuvre de Saint-Exupéry. Paris : Gallimard Fétiche.
Adam J.-M. 2008. La linguistique textuelle, introduction à l’analyse textuelle des discours.
Paris : Armand Colin.
Graudreault, A. / Philippe, M. 1998. « Transécriture et médiatique narrative. L’enjeu de
l’intermédialité ». In Gaudreault, A. / Groensteen, T. (eds.) 1998. La transécriture, pour une
théorie de l’adaptation (littérature, cinéma, bande dessinée, théâtre, clip). Colloque de
Cerisy. Québec : Editions Nota Bene et Centre national de la bande dessinée et de l’image.
Groensteen, T. 1999. Système de la bande dessinée. Paris : PUF.
Klinkenberg, J.-M. 2000. Précis de sémiotique générale. Paris : Point Seuil.
Marini, R. 2001. « La B.D. Image, texte et pseudo-oralité ». In Mariagrazia, M. / Galazzi, E. /
Lebhar Politi, M. (eds.) 2001. Oralité dans la parole et dans l’écriture, oralità nella parola e
nella scrittura, analyse linguistique, valeur symbolique, enjeux professionnels. Torino :
Edizioni Libreria Cortina. 35-56.
Toussaint, B. 1976. « Idéologie et bande dessinée ». Communications 24. 81-93.
Santiago González Fuente (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Exploring verbal irony correlates: an audiovisual approach
Verbal irony is a type of echoic allusion to an attributed utterance or thought (Sperber &
Wilson 1981) that the speaker contrasts with her/his own current thoughts (e.g., saying Oh
great after something unpleasant happens). When producing verbal irony, the main intention
of the speaker is not to provide information about the content of an attributed thought, but to
convey his/her own attitude or reaction to it (Wilson 2009). It has been shown that speakers
use a variety of prosodic signals to communicate ironic intentions (see Bryant 2011). So far,
researchers investigating ironic speech have mainly focused on exploring verbal prosodic
cues involved in the production and recognition of ironic utterances, such as higher or lower
mean fundamental frecuency (F0) and energy levels, longer vowel durations, as well as vowel
hyperarticulation (see, e.g. Scharrer 2011; Anolli et al. 2002; Cheang & Pell 2009; Llaval &
Bert-Erboul 2005; Bryant & Fox Tree 2002 and 2005; Padilla 2012). These studies have
clearly shown that speakers of different languages (e.g. Germany, Italian, Cantonese, French,
English and Spanish) apply acoustic and prosodic modulations to their speech to facilitate the
listener’s comprehension of irony. However, little is known about the potential role of visual
features in the production and detection of irony. As Bryant points out, “researchers need to
examine how conversationalists recognize communicative intentions using multiple sources
of information including body movements and various cues of cognitive processing” (Bryant
2012). Recent research on audiovisual prosody has shown that visual cues usually play an
important role in the production and perception of pragmatic functions typically associated
with verbal prosody (see, e.g., Swerts & Krahmer 2005; Prieto et al. 2011; Borràs-Comes &
Prieto 2010; Holler & Wilkin 2009). A recent pilot study of spontaneous ironic utterances
produced by a Catalan television host and comedian has revealed that ironic utterances are
characterized by the existence of aligned prosodic and gestural cues. And moreover, there is a
correlation between the perception of irony and the number of prosodic and visual cues
observed (González 2012). It is thus reasonable to start out with the hypothesis that visual
cues might be as informative as verbal features are in the expression and detection of ironic
speech.
The goal of this study is twofold: (a) to gain insight into the potential contribution of gesture
and prosody when producing ironic speech; (b) to assess the relative contribution of both
factors in detecting ironic utterances. Two separate experiments were designed in order to
investigate these issues. In the first study, 20 pairs of Catalan speakers were videotaped while
playing a role-play interview which induced them to use ironic speech with particular food
items. All utterances were transcribed orthographically and manually labelled regarding a
number of auditory and visual cues by two independent transcribers. The second study was a
perception experiment, in which a random selection of 40 utterances (from the utterances
produced in the first study) was presented to 30 participants in one of these three conditions:
Audio-Only, Video-Only, and Audio Visual. Participants were asked to evaluate (on a scale
of 1-7) how ironic the speaker was being. The pilot results with two pairs of participants
showed that Catalan listeners could easily distinguish utterances conveying irony from those
that did not in all three conditions, and that the bimodal presentation and visual presentation
of stimuli induced higher identification rates than the unimodal sound presentation.
Anolli, L. / Ciceri, R. / Infantino, M. G. 2002. “From ‘blame by praise’ to ‘praise by blame’.
Analysis of vocal patterns in ironic communication.” International Journal of Psychology 37.
266-276.
Borràs-Comes, J. / Prieto, P. 2011. “‘Seeing tunes’. The role of visual gestures in tune
interpretation.” Journal of Laboratory Phonology 2, 2. 355-380.
Bryant, G. A. 2011. “Verbal irony in the wild.” Pragmatics & Cognition 19, 2. 291-309.
Bryant, G. A. / Fox Tree, J. E. 2002. “Recognizing verbal irony in spontaneous speech.”
Metaphor and Symbol 17, 2. 99-117.
Bryant, G. A. / Fox Tree, J. E. 2005. “Is there an ironic tone of voice?” Language and Speech
48. 257-277.
Cheang, H. S. / Pell, M. D. 2009. “Acoustic markers of sarcasm in Cantonese and English.”
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 126, 3. 1394-1405.
González, S. 2012. Exploració dels correlats audiovisuals de la ironia en parla espontània.
Holler, J. / Wilkin, K. 2009. “Communicating common ground. How mutually shared
knowledge influences speech and gesture in a narrative task.” Language and Cognitive
Processes 24, 2. 267-289.
Laval, V. / Bert-Erboul, A. 2005. “French-speaking children’s understanding of sarcasm. The
role of intonation and context.” Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing Research 48. 610620.
Padilla, X. 2003. “¿Existen rasgos prosódicos objetivos en los enunciados irónicos?” Oralia
14. 203-224.
Prieto, P. et al. 2011. Crossmodal prosodic and gestural contribution to the perception of
contrastive focus to the perception of contrastive focus. Proceedings of the 12th Annual
Conference of the International Speech Communication Association.
Scharrer, L./ Christmann, U. / Knoll, M. 2011. “Voice Modulations in German Ironic
Speech.” Language and Speech 45, 4. 435-465.
Sperber, D. / Wilson, D. 1981. “Irony and the use-mention distinction”. In Cole, P. (ed.) 1981.
Radical Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. 295-318.
Swerts, M. / Krahmer, E. 2005. “Audiovisual prosody and feeling of knowing.” Journal of
Memory and Language 53, 1. 81-94.
Wilson, D. 2009. “Irony and metarepresentation.” UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 21.
183-226.
Nader A. M. Harb (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)
Defining a new learning model for Electronic Educational Systems
Some of the important aspects in distance and traditional education are learners’
individualization and motivation. A lot of research has been done aimed at reaching a reliable
educational model that ensures a fruitful learning experience. Some theories claim that a
general system can be applied to every scientific and social field (General System Theory),
including education, others take it to another level by integrating Set theory, Information
theory, Graph theory, and General Systems theory (SIGGS) towards a better learning
experience. Some theories make use of the technological tools available with the purpose of
creating dynamic learning that changes in order to fit the learner’s needs and abilities in
various levels of detail (adaptive educational approaches). The Department for Educational
Design (DiPED) at Roma Tre University is currently implementing a research project, amlearning (adaptive message learning), whose main aim is to outline individualized strategies
exclusively applied by technological data processing systems. In this study, a new model will
be built and described addressing challenges in a multi-level model framework.
Anja Hennemann (Universität Potsdam)
The Spanish Condicional in Journalistic texts – an indicator of orality
Usually, in written texts orality is indicated by graphic signs. In journalistic texts, however,
the conditional form itself may be considered an indicator of orality:
(1) Según explicó el propio Perelló en varias ocasiones, el Duque de Palma realizaría en el
equipo de vela la labor de representar el área social y cultural con la colaboración de la
fundación Cristóbal Gabarrón. Mientras que el ex periodista de TVE sería el director de
comunicación del equipo.
(El Mundo 23/12/10)
Sería in the last sentence of the example seems to have a quotative value (supported by the
initial phrase ‘According to Perelló himself […]’). If the proposition, which contains the
conditional, can be attributed to an oral source, the conditional can be regarded an indicator of
orality.
So my paper aims to contribute to the study of the Spanish conditional in journalistic contexts.
It will be shown that the condicional is used to mark – especially in news – (foreign) text
import (a notion adopted but translated from Thurmair 2006).
The corpus data worked with are taken from the search engine GlossaNet, which is set up to
search for sería1 in order to analyse its use in language data from Spanish newspapers.
Instances where the use of the conditional is grammatically motivated as in indirect quoted
speech:
1
As my aim is to analyse a grammatical form and not a lexical one, I will stick to one element in the
grammatical form to be analysed.
(2) El propio Marín explicó recientemente [...] que para Sebastián sería importante que ocupe un
español.
(El Mundo 02/12/10)
are excluded from the qualitative analysis, as the study focuses on the reportive use of the
condicional that possibly produces a new development in the evidential system of Spanish (
Squartini 2001: 321; Wachtmeister Bermúdez 2004: 7).
Corpus
GlossaNet. http://glossa.fltr.ucl.ac.be/
Squartini, M. 2001. “The internal structure of evidentiality in Romance.” Studies in Language
25, 2. 297-334.
Thurmair, M. 2006. “Textuelle Aspekte von Modus und Modalität“. In Blühdorn, H. /
Breindl, E. / Waßner, U. H. (eds.) 2006. Text-Verstehen. Grammatik und darüber hinaus.
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 71-89.
Wachtmeister Bermúdez, F. 2004. “La categoría evidencial del castellano. Metonimia y
elevación del sujeto.” Boletín de Lingüística 22, july-december. 3-31.
http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/pdf/347/34702201.pdf [23-07-2008].
Anais Holgado Lage, Álvaro Recio Diego (Universidad de Salamanca)
The influence of oral discourse in chat language from a normative perspective: deviations from
standard Spanish
Traditionally, the limits between oral and written language have been clear, with specific
features that define both forms of speech (Hughes 1996). However, these frontiers have
become diffuse in the last few years, first with the emergence of sms and online chats, and,
more recently—and more evidently—with the boom of new forms of instant messaging like
Skype, Facebook chat, Gmail chat or WhatsApp. Nowadays, people can communicate in real
time using a written speech, creating a new discourse genre, which has been labelled as
“oralized written text” (Yus 2001).
The aim of this paper is to examine some instances of non-normative usage of Spanish in this
orally-influenced written text that is chat language. Based on a corpus of real chat
conversations in Spanish between friends on Skype and Facebook, we have analyzed the
linguistic features of these texts from a normative perspective and classified them into three
categories: phonetic, lexical and morphosyntactic deviations from the Standard (Gómez
Torrego 2002). In agreement with previous studies (Llisteri 2002), our results suggest that
deviations from the norm make these interactions closer to spoken discourse than to written
discourse; therefore they emphasize, once again, the relevance of spoken language in these
communication exchanges, since non-normative uses are less commonly found in written
texts. It seems that language variation becomes more evident in chats as speakers’ awareness
of the norm and standard Spanish is gradually and unconsciously diluted.
This analysis can be conceived as a new contribution to the very well-studied phenomenon of
cyberlanguage, using an innovative approach within the framework of sociolinguistics,
normative grammar and language variation.
Gómez Torrego, L. 2002. Nuevo manual del español correcto. 2 vols. Madrid: Arco Libros.
Hughes, R. 1996. English in Speech and Writing. Investigating Language and Literature.
Londres: Routledge.
Llisteri, J. 2002. “Marcas fonéticas de la oralidad en la lengua de los chats. Elisiones y
epéntesis consonánticas.” Revista de Investigación Lingüística 2, V. 61-100.
Yus, F. 2001. Ciberpragmática. El uso del lenguaje en Internet. Barcelona: Ariel.
Sabine Lehmann (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
L’oralité et l’écrit médiéval
Dans le cadre de notre communication, nous nous intéresserons à la question des traces de
l’oral dans les textes en ancien français. En effet, nous ne connaissons cet état de langue qu’à
travers les productions écrites de la langue littéraire, technique ou juridique, qui transcrivent
des textes conçus d’abord pour l’oral, et portant des traces marquantes de la « vocalité »
propre au Moyen Âge. Bien des propriétés à première vue déconcertantes des textes
médiévaux, à la scripturalité secondaire, particulièrement marquées dans certains genres
comme l’épopée, chantée certainement sur un rythme s’apparentant à la mélopée, ressortissent
largement à l’oralité (parataxe massive, prolifération des particules, anaphore et répétitions,
etc.). Mais l’oralité spontanée de cette époque nous est irrémédiablement fermée et n’est
reconstituable que de façon très imparfaite : on peut ainsi mettre en doute la version forte des
philologues prétendant que le discours mimétique des dialogues dans les œuvres littéraires
nous donne une image fiable de l’emploi des temps effectif de la langue médiévale. Nous
montrerons que dans les textes littéraires la part des procédés rhétoriques conscients n’est pas
négligeable.
Nous insisterons plus particulièrement sur la notion des scriptae - plus ou moins fortement
colorées de traits dialectaux - qui sont d’interprétation délicate, car elles ne sont pas le reflet
exact des habitudes phonétiques des dialectes effectivement parlés. Il va sans dire que ces
scriptae sont produites par un faible nombre de locuteurs, les plus savants, toujours frottés de
latin et donc influencés par le système graphique de cette langue. Nous montrerons que les
scriptae, qui sont de nature composite, garderont pour toujours le secret du « français
spontané » de l’époque, car l’élément dialectal y est numériquement inférieur à la strate suprarégionale, due à des copistes qui savent le latin et qui désirent éviter des mots marqués
dialectalement afin qu’ils puissent être compris dans d’autres régions.
Udo Mai (Universität Potsdam)
Les dimensions de la structure informationnelle à l’exemple d’une analyse du frame setting en italien
Ce travail se propose d’envisager la structure informationnelle selon différentes approches
conceptuelles et terminologiques proposées par des chercheurs qui se sont intéressés à ce
sujet1. Cette vue d’ensemble me permet d’opérer un choix critique dans les termes et les
notions existants afin de composer un outillage précis et cohérent pour mes propres
recherches dans ce domaine.
Il convient d’abord de définir le terme même de « structure informationnelle » : il s’agit d’une
dimension supplémentaire qui fait la différence entre des phrases isolées et du texte prononcé
à l’intérieur d’un cadre communicatif2. De plus, la définition de « information linguistique »
est tout sauf banale. Elle est transmise au moyen de la mise en relation d’un élément connu et
d’un élément porteur d’information nouvelle3. Une définition précise des termes « topique »,
« focus » et « commentaire » est nécessaire pour aborder des problèmes plus abstraits sous
l’angle pragmatico-discursif du langage.
La recherche de cohérence et de clarté terminologique et conceptuelle conduit à la question
des dimensions fondamentales qui sont à la base des différents phénomènes observés dans la
structure informationnelle4. Plusieurs chercheurs5 suggèrent une division en trois parties : les
dimensions de la proposition, de l’identifiabilité et du relief pragmatique. Mais l’objet central
de ce travail, le phénomène du frame setting6, ouvre une nouvelle perspective : est-il digne
d’une quatrième dimension ? Il s’agit du seul aspect de la structure informationnelle qui
réalise des structures proprement hiérarchiques7. D’ailleurs, sa polyvalence fait du frame
setting un instrument utile au locuteur pour laisser dans le discours une trace de soi-même (ex.
l’évidentialité).
Corpus
Mes données linguistiques proviennent des ouvrages cités dans la bibliographie. Les
présentations des cadres théoriques sont quasiment toutes en français ou anglais. Pour les
exemples de l’italien, l’ouvrage le plus consulté est Haßler (2005), dont j’ai parfois adapté
les exemples pour mes contextes. En cas de doute, pour vérifier la grammaticalité d’une
expression, je consulte des corpus comme CORIS. Par ailleurs, pour m’orienter, je peux aussi
me servir d’une certaine expérience dans la langue italienne après plus de quatre ans de vie à
Turin.
1 mon point de départ est Fery, Krifka, Rooth (tous 2007) et Lambrecht (1994)
2 cf. Steube 2004 : 15
3 cf. Lambrecht 1994 : 46
4 une difficulté importante à cet égard : l’absence de corrélats (moyens grammaticaux)
invariables des catégories de la structure informationnelle : cf. Fery 2007.
5 par exemple Ewert-Kling 2011 et Lambrecht 1994, pour citer deux approches differentes.
6 deux définitions intéressantes se trouvent dans Krifka 2007 et Jacobs 2001
7 cf. Tomioka 2007 pour la question du terme « structure » dans « structure
informationnelle »
Brunetti, L. 2011. « Interaction entre topique, structure thématique et discours en italien et en
espagnol ». In Dufter, A. / Daniel, J. (eds.) 2011. Syntaxe, structure informationnelle et
organisation du discours dans les langues romanes. Frankfurt am Main : Lang. 9-28.
Dardano, M. / Trifone, P. (³2009). Grammatica Italiana con nozioni di linguistica. Milano :
Zanichelli.
Ewert-Kling, K. 2011. « Le modèle des trois dimensions informatives ». In Dufter, A. /
Daniel, J. (eds.) 2011. Syntaxe, structure informationnelle et organisation du discours dans le
langues romanes. Frankfurt am Main : Lang. 79-94.
Féry, C. 2004. Phonologie des Deutschen. Eine optimalitätstheoretische Einführung. Teil 1.
Linguistics in Potsdam 7. Potsdam : Universitätsverlag.
Féry, C. 2006. « The Prosody of Topicalization ». In Schwabe, K. /Winkler, S. (eds.) 2006.
On Information Structure, Meaning and Form. Amsterdam, Philadelphia : John Benjamins.
69-86.
Féry, C. 2007. « Information Structural Notions and the Fallacy of Invariant Correlates ». In
Féry, C. / Fanselow, G. / Krifka, M. (eds.) 2007. The Notions of Information Structure.
Potsdam : Universitätsverlag. 161-184.
Frascarelli, M. 2000. The Syntax-Phonology Interface in Focus and Topic Constructions in
Italian. Dordrecht : Kluwer.
Haßler, G. 2005. « Topik und Fokus in romanischen Sprachen ». In Kaiser, G. A. (eds.) 2005.
Deutsche Romanistik – generativ. Tübingen : Narr. 49-66.
Jacobs, J. 2001. « The dimensions of topic-comment. » Linguistics 39. 641-681.
Krifka, M. 2007. « Basic Notions of Information Structure ». In Féry, C. / Fanselow, G. /
Krifka, M. (eds.) 2007. The Notions of Information Structure. Potsdam : Universitätsverlag.
13-55.
Lambrecht, K. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form. Topic, focus and the mental
representations of discourse referents. Cambridge : University Press.
Lyons, C. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge : University Press.
Mereu, L. 2004. La sintassi delle lingue del mondo. Bari : Laterza.
Mereu, L. 2009. « Universals of Information Structure ». In Mereu, L. (ed.) 2009. Information
Structure and its Interfaces. Berlin : De Gruyter. 75-104.
Rizzi, L. 1997. « The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery ». In Haegemann, L. (ed.) 1997.
Elements of Grammar. Handbook of Generative Syntax. Dordrecht : Kluwer. 281-337.
Rooth, M. 2007. « Notions of Focus Anaphoricity ». In Féry, C. / Fanselow, G. / Krifka, M.
(eds.) 2007. The Notions of Information Structure. Potsdam : Universitätsverlag. 57-67.
Steube, A. (ed.) 2004. Language, Context, and Cognition. Vol. I : Information Structure.
Theoretical and Empirical Aspects. Berlin : De Gruyter.
Tomioka, S. 2007. « Information Structure as Information-Based Partition ». In Féry, C. /
Fanselow, G. / Krifka, M. (eds.) 2007. The Notions of Information Structure. Potsdam :
Universitätsverlag. 97-107.
Vallauri, E. L. 2009. « ‘Appendix’ or ‘postposed Topic’. Where does the difference lie ? » In
Mereu, L. (ed.) 2009. Information Structure and its Interfaces. Berlin, New York : De
Gruyter. 387-412.
Léda Mansour (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
La distribution texte-image sur Facebook chez la e-diaspora palestinienne
Le réseau social Facebook fait partie des nouvelles technologies de l’information et de la
communication. Au-delà de ses caractéristiques de communicabilité et de sociabilité,
Facebook constitue un moyen d’extériorisation identitaire pour des communautés en diaspora
comme la e-diaspora palestinienne.
La multi modalité caractérisant cet espace web (fichiers médias, commentaires, acronymes),
je me propose d’analyser la distribution texte-image dans Facebook.
Il ne s’agit pas d’étudier la langue parlée, mais d’entamer une analyse de l’usage de l’image.
Mon approche est celle de l’analyse de l’image (Joly 1993, 2002), corrélée à une sociologie
de l’information, laquelle laisse émerger les enjeux sociopolitiques.
J’exposerai les photos et images les plus fréquentes sur les sites individuelles et collectives de
la communauté palestinienne. Je cite les thématiques principales de ces images souvent liées à
des questions politiques.
Au vu des résultats, on peut constater :
Une conformité de « profil » lors des commémorations de journées nationales et
d’évènements politiques.
L’image prend le dessus sur le texte dans des sites d’information : site de personnalités
palestiniennes et d’informations historiques.
Ainsi on peut parler d’un emploi important de l’image et d’un second rôle du texte (dans ses
formes orale et écrite), dans la transmission de messages politiques, historiques et
identitaires : l’information en soi ne fait pas l’objet d’une recherche chez la e-diaspora
palestinienne (ce qui est conforme aux résultats d’un questionnaire que j’ai lancé auprès des
membres de cette communauté sur leur usage du réseau Facebook : à la question
« qu’apprenez-vous de nouveau sur votre pays et sur votre communauté sur Facebook ? », la
plupart des participants répondent qu’ils n’y apprennent pas grand-chose).
Joly, M. 1993 [2009]. Introduction à l’analyse de l’image. Paris : Armand Colin.
Joly M. 2002 [2005]. L’image et son interprétation. Paris : Armand Colin Cinéma.
https://www.facebook.com/palestine.poster
https://www.facebook.com/al.7ara.elfalsteneia
https://www.facebook.com/OrsomWaQawem
https://www.facebook.com/naji.alive
Questionnaire lancé auprès de la e-diaspora palestinienne sur Facebook.
Efthymia Mouka (Ionian University)
Investigating Translational Norms in Socioculturally Marked Cinematographic Discourse
The aim of the project in progress is to examine the translational norms of a socioculturally
marked discourse, namely that of racism, and its transfer from the source language (EN) to
the target-languages [EL&ES] through a descriptive perspective. A representative corpus of
feature films and their official subtitles has been developed in order to facilitate a comparison
between source and target texts and allow conclusions on translational norms and behaviours
(Toury 1995) with regard to subtitling practices in Greece and Spain.
Transcribed and time-aligned audiovisual material along with the respective subtitles in each
target-language have been annotated for emotion and opinion (Wiebe et al. 2005; Wilson
2008; Asher et al. 2009; Balahur et al. 2010; Daille et al. 2011) on the level of extended units
of meaning (Sinclair 1996). Each instance has been coupled with information on modality
from which the opinion or emotion is inferred. The text spans that are indicative of racist
stance are detected taking into account the opinion-holder/emotion-experiencer and the target
of each opinion/emotion. The comparison of instances of emotion/opinion and the shifts in
their strength will reveal the translation strategies followed by the subtitlers.
Departing from the hypothesis that the subtitling of ideological references presents
normalities and that the strength of ideologically charged discourse is not always reproduced
faithfully in subtitles, pragmatic markers (Fraser 1996) and strategies used to convey
discriminatory attitudes (Van Dijk 2003; Wodak & Reisigl 2001) are to be investigated. A
data-driven methodology is used which relies on lexical markers that are deemed indicative of
racist discourse, and on related collocational patterns, register shifts, semantic prosody, T/V
structures, deixis and frequency lists (Baker 2010; Stubbs 1996; Hunston 2007).
Asher, N. / Benamara, F. / Mathieu, Y. Y. 2009. “Appraisal of opinion expressions in
discourse.” Lingvisticae Investigationes, 32, 2. 279-292.
Baker, P. 2010. Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Balahur, Α. / Boldrini, Ε. / Montoyo, A. / Martinez-Barco P. 2010. “IBEREVAL OM. Mining
Opinions from the new textual genres.” Procesamiento del Languaje 45. 267-271.
Daille, B. / Dubreil, E. / Monceaux, L. / Vernier, M. 2011. “Annotating Opinion - Evaluation
of Blogs: the Blogoscopy Corpus.” Language Resources and Evaluation 45, 4. 409-437.
Fraser, B. 1996. “Pragmatic markers.” Pragmatics 6, 2. 167-190.
Hunston, S. 2007. “Semantic prosody revisited.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
12, 2. 249-268.
Reisigl, M. / Wodak, R. 2001. Discourse and discrimination. Rhetorics of racism and antiSemitism. London: Routledge.
Sinclair, J. 1996. “The search for units of meaning.” Textus 9, 1. 75-106.
Stubbs, M. 1996. Texts and Corpus Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Toury, G. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
van Dijk, T. 2003. Ideología y discurso. Barcelona: Ariel.
Wiebe, J. / Wilson, T. / Cardie, C. 2005. “Annotating expressions of opinions and emotions in
language.” Language Resources and Evaluation 39, 2-3. 165-210.
Wilson, T. A. 2008. Fine-grained Subjectivity and Sentiment Analysis. Recognizing the
Intensity, Polarity, and Attitudes of Private States. Ph.D. thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Anna Paola Paiano (Università degli Studi di Foggia)
Research on multimodal textual forms in one of the class involved in the project ‘Cl@ssi 2.0’
The gradual transition from alphabetic writing to the image as the dominant form of
representation and the growing presence of multimodality texts require different skills for
‘new’ learners and teachers as well as ‘new’ readers and writers. All this, combined with the
technological changes in the field of communication in the last decades, has direct effects on
the educational context of reference.
The profile of learners, actively involved in the learning process, has changed and they are
now considered ‘producers of knowledge’, not just users, capable of processing. This figure is
combined with a new type of teacher, not authoritarian, but authoritative, a guide and
accomplice, who empowers students, shares with their online media, multimodal and social
spaces. The teacher becomes a ‘learning designer’, designs programs, educational courses and
experiences in environments similar to real ones.
In this paper I discuss these ‘new’ modal configurations and explore how they impact on
students’ text production and reading in Apulia schools. My focus here is primarily on
multimodal products designed in the school classrooms, that participate in the national project
Cl@ssi 2.0. Multimodal texts – those texts that have more than one ‘mode’ – are produced by
students in their educational environment and I will analyze them using a grid that allows me
to detect the compositional characteristics of the multimodal texts analysed, such as their
syntactic and semantic aspects.
The grid will be settled through the theoretical review of multimodal scientific literature.
Julie Pasquer-Jeanne (Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse)
La ficcion en un contexto multimodal de practica cultural: el caso del audio-guia para el niño
Esta proposición coincide directamente con mi tesis, en la que me intereso por la relación que
existe entre niños (entre 6 y 12 años) y monumentos históricos (patrimonio edificado). Desde
una postura científica especializada en Ciencias de la Información y de la Communicación y
con un enfoque socio-semiótico, centro mi atención en los dispositivos2 pensados para ese
público específico (como son audioguías, actividades, libros de visita…) y la interpretación
2
Denomino así el dispositivo, porque lo considero desde una dimensión social, técnica y simbólica de difusión
de la información.
que hacen los niños de eso (datos obtenidos a travès de entrevistas semidirigidas con los
niños). Parece que un vínculo entre ese público y los monumentos puede desarollarse gracias
a la ficción (Odin 2000) y de manera más general, la ficción sería el elemento que estructura
el desarrollo cultural del niño en su ‘filiation inversée’ (Davallon 2006), en otras palabras, en
relación con el hombre de su pasado.
Ahora, los públicos jóvenes pueden descubrir muchos lugares antiguos, que llamo
monumentos, con una variedad de dispositivos cada vez más divertidos, más innovadores y
ficcionales. Por ejemplo, pueden bajar su audioguía en Internet antes de visitar con sus padres
el Castillo de Compiègne (Francia), pero una persona se une a la visita: Leo, el nuevo amigo
virtual del niño.
Para este seminario, tomaré el ejemplo de tres audioguías de tres castillos de Francia: el de
Compiègne, el de Versailles y el de Fontainebleau. Intentaré determinar cuáles son los
indicadores simbólicos y significantes de estas audioguías. En este análisis semiótico,
mostraré que tienen puntos en común, normas que parecen llegar a una representación del
monumento y de la práctica de los niños. Para eso, utilizaré una tabla de análisis semiótico y
del discurso para tener en cuenta los mensajes de estos dispositivos en relación con su
contexto de recepción. Podemos afirmar que hay formas de ficción singulares, que recurren a
varios medias y modos, que ya estan operativas en nuestra sociedad. Estos dispositivos
proponen una narración multimodal de relatos escritos para ser escuchados en un contexto de
visita.
Davallon, J. 2004. “La médiation. La communication en procès?” MEI. Revue internationale
de communication, Médiation et information 19. 37-59.
Davallon, J. 2006. Le don du patrimoine. Une approche communicationnelle de la
patrimonialisation. Paris: Hermès Lavoisier.
Devillard, V. 2001. Architecture et communication. Les médiations architecturales dans les
années 80. Paris: Panthéon-Assas.
Eco, U. 1979. Lector in fabula. Le rôle du lecteur ou la coopération interprétative dans les
textes narratifs (tr. M. Bouzaher). Paris: Editions Grasset.
Jacobi, D. 2001. “Savoirs non-formels ou apprentissages implicates.” Recherches en
communication 16. 169-184.
Jenkins, H. 2006. Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New
York University Press.
Odin, R. 2000. De la fiction. Bruxelles: De Boeck Université.
Tardy, C. / Jeanneret, Y. (eds). 2007. L’écriture des médias informatisés – Espaces de
pratiques. Paris: Hermès Lavoisier.
Kathleen Plötner (Universität Potsdam)
« yo yo » et « no no » : à propos des valeurs sémantico-pragmatiques des récurrences dans l’oralité
simulée
Dans le cadre de ce colloque, nous allons parler du rôle de certains types de récurrences ainsi
que de leurs valeurs sémantico-pragmatiques dans la langue espagnole. Le terme récurrence
décrit un fragment linguistique composé au minimum de deux mots qui ont le même
signifiant et le même signifié. Il s’agit d’une répétition de mots, mais contrairement au terme
linguistique redoublement, la récurrence n’a pas le statut d’un mot propre. Nous avons choisi
de nous appuyer sur le corpus de la Real Academia española (CREA), où nous avons étudié
les énoncés « yo yo » et « no no » ainsi que « yo yo yo » et « no no no », énoncés qui
appartiennent normalement à la langue orale, apparaissant dans des livres publiés entre 1990
et 2000. On y retrouve des exemples tels que :
1)
2)
- Hombre. Más divertidas que las desgracias de uno, sí que son.
- Pero a ti seguro que no te gusta que se rían de tus desgracias.
- No. Para eso, ya me río yo.
- No se puede ser siempre yo, yo, yo. En algún momento tienes que contar con los otros.
Mañas, José Ángel (1996) : Historias del Kronen. P. 168.
- Omar está muerto -reveló como cediendo a una compulsión-. Se ahogó. Quiso ver a mamá y se
ahogó, quiso irse y se ahogó. Y yo... yo no tuve valor para contárselo a ella.
Díaz, Jesús (1996) : La piel y la máscara. P. 190.
Dans les exemples cités, la récurrence est un moyen de mettre l’accent sur tel ou tel élément.
Elle peut, par exemple, renforcer l’expression de l’énoncé et exprimer l’inquiétude ou la
nervosité du locuteur (ex. 1) ou bien indiquer une certaine hésitation (ex. 2). Cet exposé a
donc pour but d’analyser la valeur sémantique et la fonction de la récurrence dans l’oralité
simulée.
Paolo Roseano1, Montserrat González1, Joan Borràs-Comes1, Pilar Prieto1,2 (1Universitat
Pompeu Fabra, 2ICREA - Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats)
The interplay of prosodic, gestural, and lexical pragmatic markers in the multimodal expression of
epistemicity and evidentiality
A good amount of research has been carried out on the linguistic marking of epistemicity
across languages (Chafe 1986; De Haan 2001, 2005; Nuyts 2001; Aikhenvald 2004; inter
alia). According to De Haan’s (2001: 201) classic distinction between evidentiality and
epistemicity, while evidentiality refers to “the marking of the source of the information of the
statement”, epistemicity refers to “the degree of confidence the speaker has in his or her
statement”. This previous research has focused almost exclusively on morphosyntactic and
lexical marking of epistemicity and evidentiality, while little is known about the role of
prosody and gesture in its expression. From a multimodal perspective, the goal of this study
will be to assess the gestural, prosodic, and pragmatic cues that speakers use in reported
speech to encode both the source of information and the speakers’ commitment to the truth of
the propositions. A primary hypothesis is that the epistemic and evidential distinction will be
encoded not only at the morphosyntactic and lexical but also at the gestural, prosodic, and
pragmatic levels.
Thirty Catalan undergraduate students performed a reporting task in pairs. The stimulus
material consisted of two texts taken from Wikipedia. Crucially, while one text contained
information about a potentially controversial issue (i.e., the properties and effects of
acupuncture), the other contained information about a related issue less likely to provoke
disagreement (i.e., the properties and effects of aspirin). One of the participants studied both
texts while his/her partner was out of the room. The second partner having then been called
back in, the first was asked to (a) describe the content of the text and (b) express his/her
opinion about it. After the reports, both participants rated, by means of a 7-point Likert scale,
the degree of belief expressed by the reporting person regarding the effectiveness of the
procedure. All reports were audio-visually recorded. The data were labelled using Elan
(Lausberg & Sloetjes 2009), Praat (Boersma & Weenink 2012), and Atlas.ti (Scientific
Software Development 1999), and included then subjected to a ToBI prosodic analysis (Prieto
in press), a gestural analysis (McNeill 1992), and a pragmatic analysis (González 2004).
A preliminary examination of the reports (first 4 pairs of participants) reveals that, whereas
epistemic marking is mostly present in the acupuncture report (through epistemic markers or
constructions such as well, perhaps/maybe, I’m skeptical, I think, I don’t know), evidential
marking is primarily found in the aspirin report (through the use of direct or indirect
evidentials such as everybody around me has always taken aspirin, it’s been used ever since).
With respect to prosody, reports with lower commitment rates display features traditionally
related to the encoding of uncertainty, namely slower speech rates and the presence of mid
boundary tones. When considering gestures, while shoulder shrugging and mouth stretching
appear significantly more often in less confident speech, head nodding is typically associated
with more confident speech. Moreover, results seem to show that evidentiality is encoded by a
set of different pointing and referential gestures. All in all, the results show that the epistemic
and evidential distinction is encoded at different levels of linguistic analysis.
Borràs-Comes, J. / Roseano, P. / Vanrell, M. M. / Prieto, P. 2011. “Perceiving uncertainty.
Facial gestures, intonation, and lexical choice”. In Kirchhof, C. / Malisz, Z. / Wagner, P.
(eds.) 2011. Proceedings of the 2n Conference on Gesture and Speech in Interaction
[GESPIN 2011], Bielefeld University (Germany), 5-7 September 2011.
De Haan, F. 2001. “The relation between modality and evidentiality”. In Müller, R. / Reis, M.
(eds.) 2001. Modalität und Modalverben im Deutschen. Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 9.
Hamburg: H. Buske. 201-216.
González Condom, M. 2011. Indirect Evidence in Catalan. A Case Study. The Pragmatics of
Catalan Language. New York, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Nuyts, J. 2001. “Subjectivity as an evidential dimension in epistemic modal expressions.”
Journal of Pragmatics 33. 383-400.
Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)
Audioguides : relation texte/image et compréhensibilité
Le musée peut être considéré par sa nature même comme un lieu de communication
multimédia, où les objets sont accompagnés de textes traditionnels sur papier, mais aussi de
vidéos et audioguides.
En ce qui concerne la relation entre le texte et l’image, on peut se référer aux études de
Richard E. Mayer, concernant l’apprentissage par les multimédias. L’auteur considère comme
multimédias toutes les formes d'apprentissage qui impliquent en même temps les sens de la
vue et de l’ouïe : en d’autres termes le texte et l'image ainsi que la vidéo et le texte. Une
relation efficace entre le texte et l’image ne suffit pas à garantir par elle-même une bonne
communication, dont l'efficacité peut être confirmée par un test de compréhension de la
lecture.
Le but de notre recherche est de tester l’efficacité de l’audioguide d’une exposition (Silk road,
Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, automne 2012). Dans une première phase, la cohérence et la
contiguïté entre le texte de l’audioguide et les objets exposés sera vérifiée à travers une grille
construite en prenant comme référence théorique les études de Mayer. Ensuite, la
compréhensibilité du texte de l’audioguide sera vérifiée à travers le calcul du pourcentage de
mots absents du Vocabolario di base della lingua italiana de Tullio De Mauro. Les mots et
les concepts difficiles seront mis en évidence de cette manière. Un échantillon de visiteurs
typiques, identifiés comme adultes titulaires de treize années d’étude, sera soumis au test de
compréhension pour vérifier le réel degré de difficulté de ces mots et concepts.
Èlia Sala Robert (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Writing the oral: Subtitling for Deaf Children
The past few years have seen various pieces of legislation passed in relation to accessibility to
the media, especially in Europe. Therefore, by law, anyone with any degree of hearing loss
must have complete access to audiovisual materials. The existing guidelines and
recommendations, however, paint a broad picture of how subtitles should be created, without
concentrating on the different needs among the heterogeneous deaf audience.
Some programmes, such as cartoons, are clearly targeted at younger audiences. Deaf children,
though, consume subtitles that are mainly created following the general specifications of
subtitling for the d/Deaf and the Hard-of-Hearing (SDH). Generally, these specifications do
not take into consideration deaf children’s needs and capabilities, which differ from those of
deaf adults. Reading ability and speed or limited knowledge of the world, to name but a few,
have an effect on children’s understanding and, consequently, their enjoyment of the
programme.
This presentation will demonstrate that the different approaches currently taken to
communicate aural information visually lack consistency due to the absence of
recommendations on subtitling for deaf children. It will also present alternative subtitling
practices, which will be tested to determine whether the strategies currently used or the
alternative ones meet their intended audience’s needs. The main goal is to further research on
subtitling for deaf children, in order to make sure effective subtitles are provided, since
adapted visual re-encodings of aural messages through different subtitling strategies will have
an influence not only on deaf children’s understanding and enjoyment of audiovisual
programmes, but also on their access to the sounds of the world they live in.
Carmela Mila Spicola (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)
The spoken language in a multimodal context as a strategy to counter school dropout
Early school leaving is a problem affecting all European countries. Within Europe early
school leavers are defined as people aged 18 to 24 with a poor level of low secondary
education who are no longer attending any school or training course. Early school leaving is
caused by a series of different socio-educational and individual factors but for young people
with special educational needs, coming from disadvantaged families, the levels are higher.
Given its multidimensional aspects, can the problem of early school leaving be addressed
using multimodal methodologies? Does the introduction of teaching methods that combine
visual and auditory elements have a positive impact on student attendance?
This paper presents the case study of an informal teaching project that took place in a Palermo
school during 2010-11. The 20 teenagers involved were aged 14 to 16, all had special
educational needs and were failing academically. The project is described through interviews
with students and teachers. The project, combined strategies to present the spoken language in
a multimodal and interactive context, for example through interactive learning, drama, visual
arts, audiovisual genres, audiovisual narration, and multimedial technology.
Andrea Stojilkov (University of Belgrade)
A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words: About the Translatability of Visual Puns and Allusions across
Cultures
This paper tackles the complexity of audiovisual translation of animated films due to the
symbiotic function of the three semiotic modes which integrate and carry meaning: the visual,
auditory and aural (Oittinen 2008). Moreover, it focuses on the problematic transfer of cultual
references across languages and cultures, in such a constrained context as the animated
format. On conducting a contrastive study of both classic animated feature films and animated
shorts in their original (English) and translated (Serbian) versions, a significant loss or
distortion of the connotative content has been noticed, especially in terms of visual puns and
visual and auditory allusions.
The main purpose of the paper is to analyse the reasons for passive omission or insufficiently
creative translation whenever the message steps out of the limits of pure denotative linguistic
meaning, or in the case of clashing or distant cultural frames. The paper aims to point out the
unjust neglect of the highly potent visual medium, and its dependence on the language itself.
Although in dubbed animated films translators tend to give priority to the verbal-auditory
channel (Zabalbeascoa 1997), i.e. what is said, it is not uncommon for the non-verbal visual
channel, i.e. the images, gestures and colours, to be even more meaningful. On the other hand,
it is also a common pratice in Serbian translations to leave the messages belonging to the field
of verbal visual channel (written signs, headlines, product labels) untranslated. The
conclusions of this study indicate that visual images, which primarily build the body of an
animated film, may either hinder or help successful translation, or even manipulate the
conveyed messages when combined with the verbal and aural modes.
Oittinen, R. 2008. “From Thumbelina to Winnie-the-Pooh. Pictures, Words and Sounds in
Translation.” Meta 53, 1. 76-89.
Zabalbeascoa, P. 1997. “Dubbing and the non-verbal dimension of translation”. In Poyatos, F.
(ed.) 1997. Nonverbal Communication and Translation. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John
Benjamins. 327-342.
Alba Tomàs Albina (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
From Scholarly Edition to Stage: the Case of Electra of Sophocles, Adapted by Jeroni Rubió and
Directed by Oriol Broggi (2010)
Most scholars today agree that in the fifth century BC ancient Greek tragedies were
unthinkable in any context other than the staging that gathered thousands of Athenians to the
Dionysus Theatre. The text versions of these tragedies existed simply as the basis for
spectacles that implied recitation, music and dance. The translations of these ancient Greek
texts into both verse and prose during the first half of the twentieth century had a more
literary context. Carles Riba (translating into Catalan) and Ignacio Errandonea (translating
into Spanish) were writing for a small group of educated readers rather than for theatre goers.
Nowadays, when an ancient Greek tragedy is played in a theater it is common to adapt this
kind of literary translation to a performative language before the stage adaptation (Delisle
1986). This is what Jeroni Rubió did using Riba’s and Errandonea’s translations of Electra of
Sophocles for the performance directed by Oriol Broggi in 2010.
This paper will focus on how certain scenes of Electra (2010) have been adapted and
dramatized: scenes that were supposed to be sung (for example, the choral interludes), or
scenes rich in action. It will also focus on the way in which they are reflected in the
translations, if they appear at all, of Carles Riba and Ignacio Errandonea.
Delisle, J. 1986. “Dans les coulisses de l’adaptation théâtrale.” Circuit 12. 3-8.
Taplin, O. 1978. Greek Tragedy in Action. London: Routledge.
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Marisol Valldepérez Castillo (Universitat de Barcelona)
Connecting the borders between orality and writing in foreign language learning
An essential aspect of the Common European Framework is the new paradigm of
‘communicative language ability’ which has become an alternative model to the four
language skills and represents a more justifiable system for measuring students’ proficiency.
This is an official document addressed to all kinds of practitioners in foreign language
education in which textbook writers have a particular role in the design and content of oral
activities. However, evidence shows that the new paradigm of language ability maintains the
classical distinction between the two modes of language (oral and written) without
considering interactive aspects of communication.
By analyzing a representative sample of speaking activities in English as a foreign language
(EFL) textbooks, I show the priority of written language as well as the lack of any feature of
spontaneous speech in contexts of language instruction. In this sense, oral activities in EFL
textbooks are conceived as pieces of writing that stand entirely on their own, since all the
necessary contextual features required in any spontaneous exchange have been supplied
explicitly when describing the methodological purpose of the activity. Our findings show that
oral activities in EFL textbooks not only distort the communicative complexity of ordinary
original interactions but also ignore the use of language in digital communication. I believe
that oral activities in EFL textbooks deserve to be revisited in order to illustrate the new
demands of a global society with its Internet encounters, since this has implications for
foreign language learning all over the world.