Johanna MiecznikowskiUniversity of Lugano | USI · Institute of Italian Studies (ISI)
Johanna Miecznikowski
Adjunct professor
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74
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289
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Introduction
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August 2007 - March 2020
Publications
Publications (74)
The paper studies the functions of negated indicative present forms of the verb vedere 'to see' that refer to the speaker and are followed by an indirect wh-interrogative subordinate clause. The investigation of an Italian written corpus of newspaper articles, reviews and forum posts shows that this construction set forms a discourse routine with a...
In this article, part of a planned trilogy, we examine Desclés & Guentchéva's rather original claim, which they have been defending for almost 30 years through more than 40 publications, that the nature of "evidential inference" and thus inferential evidentiality, is abductive in nature (Peirce's notion of abduction, reproduction or hypothesis). A...
The contribution discusses the theoretical problem of the relationship between evidentiality and argumentative justification. Within a framework that combines semantic and syntactic analysis with a topics-based approach to argument schemes, it is argued that the functional domains of information source and argumentation overlap in utterances in whi...
This is a working paper that the authors plan to revise and expand. Please have a look at the newest version, which is available on the OSF platform of the 2021 annual meeting of the Societas linguistica europaea (August 30 - September 3, 2021): https://osf.io/uz5v8/ --- How to cite this working paper: Miecznikowski, Johanna, Elena Battaglia, and C...
This poster presents the InfinIta project (FNS/USI, Fall 2020-Fall 2024).
This special issue aims to explore the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of meaning in terms of their significance and relevance in the study of argumentation. Accordingly, the contributors to the project, who have all presented their work during the 2nd Argumentation and Language conference, which took place in Lugano in February 2018,1 have been...
This special issue aims to explore the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of meaning in terms of their significance and relevance in the study of argumentation. Accordingly, the contributors to the project, who have all presented their work during the 2nd Argumentation and Language conference, which took place in Lugano in February 2018, 1 have been...
Full special issue available on the website of the journal: https://informallogic.ca/index.php/informal_logic/issue/view/565
This contribution examines the way dynamic appearance verbs in Italian function as lexical evidential strategies and signal inferential relations in argumentative discourse. In argumentative discourse, evidential markers and strategies can be hypothesized to function as “argumentative indicators” (van Eemeren et al. in Argumentative indicators in d...
Cette contribution étudie la construction de la référence future dans les actes de prévision en italien. Une éventualité peut être placée dans l’avenir par des marqueurs déictiques (notamment le temps verbal du Futur), par des relations de discours qui la situent temporellement par rapport à un repère textuel et par des inférences qui mobilisent de...
Based on an Italian corpus of contributions to comment spaces of online reviews in different domains, we argue that some of these contributions are user reviews. We show that users position themselves as legitimate contributors by conforming to genre conventions that are central in official reviews, in particular to the requirement that the reviewe...
The book deepens the insight into the setting and monitoring of language norms in different contexts. One focus lies on institutional contexts, in which the authors examine standardization, language policy and the implementation of usage norms. In the context of language learning, the authors investigate cognitive strategies of L2 norm construction...
"How do you know?" – "What makes you think that?" One might say that it is to forestall such potentially challenging questions that speakers and writers evidentially qualify weak or strong assertive statements, providing more or less specific cues as to their sources of information and hence the type of evidence that justifies the performed speech...
Compared to other domains of media discourse, economic-financial news contain a considerable amount of speech acts regarding future events, in particular predictions. This can be explained by their specific institutional context, financial markets, where investors constantly seek to single out gain opportunities and to correctly assess their risk....
Les origines lexicales diverses des marqueurs discursifs signalant une connexion inférentielle laissent entrevoir la grande richesse sémantique de ce type de connecteur. La présente contribution traite un marqueur italien basé sur un verbe de perception, come si vede ('comme on le voit'), qui, parmi d'autres fonctions, peut signaler une connexion i...
http://doc.rero.ch/record/11876/files/bulletin_vals_asla_2015_special_1.pdf
http://doc.rero.ch/record/11876/files/bulletin_vals_asla_2015_special_2.pdf
http://doc.rero.ch/record/11876/files/bulletin_vals_asla_2015_special_3.pdf
Il contesto tecnologico e socio-culturale della Rete odierna influisce in vari modi sui generi testuali che sono stati trasferiti dalla stampa in Internet. Un esempio pertinente a questo riguardo è il genere della recensione, che è presente in numerosi tipi di siti web, dove il suo uso è stato esteso a un'ampia gamma di oggetti, inclusi destinazion...
Il contesto tecnologico e socio-culturale della Rete odierna influisce in vari modi sui generi testuali che sono stati trasferiti dalla stampa in Internet. Un esempio pertinente a questo riguardo è il genere della recensione, che è presente in numerosi tipi di siti web, dove il suo uso è stato esteso a un'ampia gamma di oggetti, inclusi destinazion...
This paper investigates the role of verbs of appearance as argumentative indicators analysing the uses of the Italian verb sembrare (‘to seem’) in a sample of 40 texts chosen from a corpus of reviews, editorials and comment posts. An analysis conducted within the framework of the Argumentum Model of Topics, shows that the verb, in its evidential-in...
Reviews (it. recensioni), a text genre that is traditionally associated with the written press, have become common in a variety of online contexts. This paper focuses on the linguistic and pragmatic characteristics of online reviews, drawing on a corpus consisting of reference reviews published on thematic websites by the websites’ official collabo...
http://rozenbergquarterly.com/issa-proceedings-2014-verbs-of-appearance-and-argument-schemes-italian-sembrare-as-an-argumentative-indicator/
This paper investigates the role of verbs of appearance as argumentative indicators analysing the uses of the Italian verb sembrare (‘seem’) in a sample of 40 texts chosen from a corpus of reviews, editorials...
Our contribution proposes a semantic and argumentative analysis of the Italian modal adverb 'forse'. This marker is mainly used to express bilateral epistemic possibility, but is found also in concessive moves, conjectural questions and polemical questions. Starting out from recent research on possibility modals and from considerations about paths...
http://rozenbergquarterly.com/issa-proceedings-2010-construction-types-and-argumentative-functions-of-possibility-modals-evidence-from-italian/
Full text available at: http://rdcu.be/pAxu.
Student migration, universities’ institutionalized multilingual language policies and the use of English for academic purposes make academic environments increasingly multilingual. Biographical narratives may provide useful insights about the students' view on this development. In this paper, five narrat...
Italian allora is a polyfunctional connective and discourse marker. Previous corpus-based research (cf. Bosco & Bazzanella 2005; Bazzanella, Bosco, Garcea, Gili Fivela, Miecznikowski, Tini Brunozzi 2007) contrasted recent uses of allora in spoken and written Italian with uses in ancient Italian: In present-day Italian, allora is often found to have...
I verbi modali appartengono all’insieme eterogeneo dei mezzi linguistici che nelle lingue romanze servono a esprimere nozioni e
operazioni modali e evidenziali. La loro descrizione semantica e pragmatica è complicata dall’alto grado di polisemia di certi verbi
e dall’interazione complessa fra lessema e contesto. Un aspetto poco
indagato del funzion...
The Italian discourse marker ‘allora’ ('then ') is investigated in various types of interactions. The aim of the study is to check possible correlations between the discourse marker’s pragmatic functions (at the interactional, metatextual, and cognitive level), its semantic values (which may be consequential or correlative), and factors such as the...
In a pragmatic and interactional perspective, to grasp the meaning of a word it is necessary to take into account its being part of a “Dialogic Action Game” (E. Weigand). Meaning is intertwined with context at several levels, as becomes evident e.g. in phenomena such as dialogic repetition (where various tokens of the same item differ as to meaning...
En aquest article analitzem les funcions, les convergències i les divergències del connector italià allora i del francès alors a partir de dos textos italians (Novellino, en italià antic, i Paso Doble, en italià actual) i les corresponents traduccions franceses. Aquest marcador del discurs s’utilitza de manera diferent en les dues llengües com l’an...
The functions, convergences, and divergences of Italian allora and French alors are analyzed in two Italian texts (the Novellino, in Old Italian, and Paso Doble, in Modern Italian) and their set of forms for expressing a particular function. The polyfunctionality and context-boundness which characterize discourse markers in general are held respons...
"Une lacune lexicale, un mot non compris, un terme inapproprié, une définition controversée – voilà des difficultés qui sont familières à tout locuteur, et à plus forte raison à l’étudiant ou au chercheur qui se confronte à des objets complexes en se servant d’un langage scientifique spécialisé.
Dans la présente étude, ce type de difficultés sera...
This poster presents preliminary results on text structuring functions of the French conditional form in spoken interaction. It focuses on methodological issues, claiming that it is useful to combine conversation analytical and corpus linguistic methods when investigating discourse functions of gramamtical markers. The poster has been presented at...
Book review.
Link: http://doc.rero.ch/record/11876/files/bulletin_vals_asla_2002_075.pdf?version=1
Full text available at: http://cediscor.revues.org/313.
L’exposé est une activité communicationnelle qui joue un rôle important dans de nombreuses pratiques professionnelles. Nous proposons ici une approche interactionnelle de l’exposé scientifique en nous basant d’une part sur l’analyse conversationnelle d’inspiration ethnométhodologique et sur l...
Plurilingual face-to-face collaboration becomes increasingly important in the academic world, due to the rapid development of international network. One means for managing plurilingual encounters is informal oral translation, carried out by participants when the need arises. A conversation analysis of translation sequences in scientific meetings sh...
Plurilingual face-to-face collaboration becomes increasingly important in the academic world, due to the rapid development of international networks. One means for managing plurilingual encounters is informal oral translation, carried out by participants when the need arises. A conversation analysis of translation sequences in scientific meetings s...
Book review.
Full text available at: https://doc.rero.ch/record/11876/files/bulletin_vals_asla_1999_070.pdf
Bilder spielen in der alltäglichen Arbeit von Wissenschaftlern wie in ihren Publikationen eine wichtige Rolle; sie tragen auf grundlegende Weise zur Konstruktion wissenschaftlicher Fakten bei. In diesem Artikel geht es um die Beschreibungs- und Interpretationspraktiken, mit denen Wissenschaftler Bilder, die sie während bestimmter Tätigkeiten produz...
Full text available at: https://doc.rero.ch/record/11876/files/bulletin_vals_asla_1999_069_2.pdf
Questions
Question (1)
There is lot of literature on genre evolution/transformation and the internet in general, and I've found some linguistic and discourse/communication oriented literature on on-line book and movie reviews, but - up to now - very little work dedicated specifically to the more recent product or consumer reviews dedicated to all kinds of objects, from cell phones to travel destinations, and published e.g. on thematic websites and the connected forums (where users often post reviews or review fragments, in some cases mixed with other kinds of posts). Has anyone come across text linguistic or discourse analytical work about these genres?
Projects
Projects (4)
Evidentiality is investigated as a pragmatic category in spoken Italian: How explicit and how specific are evidential distinctions? Do problems related to information sources occur in conversations, and which light do they shed on the participants’ representations of information source?
Une lacune lexicale, un mot non compris, un terme inapproprié, une définition controversée – voilà des difficultés qui sont familières à tout locuteur, et à plus forte raison à l’étudiant ou au chercheur qui se confronte à des objets complexes en se servant d’un langage scientifique spécialisé. Dans ce projet, ce type de difficultés a été abordé tel qu’il émerge dans l’interaction. Je me suis intéressée à des problèmes lexicaux qui sont traités – et éventuellement résolus – interactivement par plusieurs locuteurs lors de séquences que j’appellerai métalexicales. Je me suis focalisée sur un contexte particulier, la collaboration scientifique transfrontalière en sciences humaines, qui a été abordé par le biais d’une analyse qualitative des réunions de trois groupes de recherche, enregistrées sur bande audio et transcrites. Ces données font partie d’un corpus plus vaste d’enregistrements et de transcriptions qui a été constitué dans le cadre du projet de recherche sur «La construction interactive du discours scientifique en situation plurilingue» (direction: Lorenza Mondada, subside FNS no. 1214-051022.97) . Recueillies dans le contexte de la collaboration interuniversitaire dans la région trinationale du Haut-Rhin, elles comprennent des interactions en allemand, français, anglais et italien. L’analyse de ces données vise d’une part à identifier les types de problèmes lexicaux qui se posent aux acteurs dans ce contexte-là et à décrire la façon dont ils les négocient. D’autre part, j'ai exploré les rapports qui existent entre les séquences métalexicales, le travail scientifique des chercheurs et la façon dont ces chercheurs actualisent et catégorisent leurs ressources linguistiques dans l’interaction.
Untersuchung der Bedeutungen und pragmatischen Funktionen des Konditional im gesprochenen Französischen und Italienischen.
