Suchergebnisse

Questo articolo illustra un confronto della lingua di sei politici italiani: Berlusconi, Bossi e D'Alema per il periodo 1994-1998 e Alfano, Renzi e Salvini per il periodo 2014-2016. I testi considerati comprendono comizi, post su Facebook e tweets. Il confronto si basa sull'analisi automatica di ricchezza e densità lessicale, incidenza del vocabolario di base e leggibilità. Lo scopo è verificare due assunti ampiamente condivisi: che la lingua dei politici sia andata semplificandosi e che i populisti comunichino in maniera più semplice degli altri leader. I risultati indicano che le due ipotesi sono in parte confermate dall'indice di leggibilità ma smentite dalle altre misurazioni. È dunque necessario riflettere sul ruolo dell'analisi automatica dei testi e sul concetto di lingua semplice. ; This paper compares the language of six Italian politicians: Berlusconi, Bossi and D'Alema during the 1994-1998 period, and Alfano, Renzi and Salvini from 2014 to 2016. Texts include speeches, Facebook posts and tweets. The comparison is based on the automatic analysis of lexical richness and density, basic vocabulary and readability. The aim is evaluating two commonly shared opinions: that the language of politicians has become simpler in time and that populists use simpler language than mainstream politicians. Results show that both hypotheses are partly confirmed by the readability index and disproved by the other measures. Thus, the role of automatic text analysis and the concept of "simple language" need to be reconsidered.

This article illustrates the results of the third stage of a research project on the generic structure and linguistic traits of court judgments written in Italian. Four corpora in electronic format have been compiled, including texts by the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Italian Court of Cassation, the Swiss Federal Court and the Appeal Court of Canton Ticino. Statistical software was used to assess differences in terms of lexical richness, lexical density and readability and to calculate verb tense frequencies and distribution patterns. The shortcomings of automatic quantitative analysis may be redressed through qualitative surveys and, in addition to highlighting differences in the Italian written in Italy, Switzerland and the EU institutions, data can provide insights and suggestions for more effective drafting techniques.

Abstract
Right-wing populists are said to employ distinctive language to differentiate themselves from mainstream politicians. However, we know little about what makes their language distinct. We investigate this by assembling a novel corpus of speeches and using an automated text analysis tool to identify the keywords used by three right-wing populist leaders (Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini) and three of their mainstream opponents (Hillary Clinton, Emmanuel Macron and Matteo Renzi). We then examine the contexts in which those keywords are used. We find that, while Trump and Salvini are stylistically populist in different ways to Le Pen, what distinguishes all of them is the clarity of the populist message (people vs elites and others) compared to their vaguer opponents. Our results have implications for how we understand populism as both ideology and style across linguistic contexts, in addition to how we conceive of its specificity compared to the mainstream.

Political scientists have long asserted that populists use simpler language than their mainstream rivals to appeal to ordinary people and distance themselves from elites. However, there is little comparative evidence in support of that claim. In this study, we investigate the linguistic simplicity of four right-wing populists compared to their principal opponents in the United States, France, United Kingdom, and Italy. We do so by analysing a corpus of approximately one million words from leaders' speeches, using a series of linguistics measures for evaluating simplicity. Contrary to expectations, we find that Donald Trump was only slightly simpler than Hillary Clinton, while Nigel Farage in the UK and Marine Le Pen in France were more complex than their main rivals, and Italy's Matteo Salvini was simpler on some measures but not others. We conclude that the simple language claim is not borne out and that other aspects of the received wisdom about populism should be re-examined.

Studies in the history and criticism of translation in Italy have not been complemented by a systematic analysis of works translated in the 1800s; however, the availability of bibliographical surveys is a prerequisite for compiling corpora suitable for analysing a large amount of homogeneous documents, especially when the aim is to study the specific features of translated Italian. This gap is even more surprising as the 19th century marks a turning point in translation practice, with the technological progress in the publishing sector helping to meet the needs of the booming cultural market and establishing the novel as the dominant literary genre in Europe. Furthermore, this trend proceeded in parallel with Italy's difficult transition towards political, linguistic and cultural unity. This article illustrates the preliminary results of a survey conducted on the Catalogo dei libri italiani dell'Ottocento (CLIO) for the 1880-1889 period. The distribution of translations was assessed in terms of language pairs, geographical circulation and genres. Although data need to be cross-checked with other bibliographical data banks and additional surveys in individual libraries, this approach may be implemented to investigate different aspects of translation practice in the 1800s.

Il fenomeno delle notizie false è al centro del dibattito sull'informazione: dal bullismo online alla sospette ingerenze nelle elezioni politiche, le "bufale" hanno trovato terreno fertile su Internet. Gli strumenti della linguistica sono utili, se non a evitare del tutto la verifica delle notizie, almeno a far scattare campanelli di allarme che permettano al lettore di individuare le fake news? Il volume risponde a questa domanda secondo due approcci: quello della pragmatica e quello della linguistica dei corpora. Partendo dal rapporto tra testo scritto e immagini di corredo, è possibile valutare la qualità argomentativa e testuale delle fake news per individuare sfumature valutative (per es. l'indignazione) in testi in cui dovrebbe invece prevalere la funzione informativa. Il confronto di tipo quantitativo, invece, permette di rilevare lo scarto di registro e stile che distingue notizie vere e "bufale".