Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

I would like to analyze a specific case of Shakespearean prison theatre. Un’isola. Dalla mia finestra si vedono le montagne (2018) is a rewriting of The Tempest by director Alessia Gennari, performed by an international cast consisting of some inmates of the prison of Vigevano (PV). A selection of the Shakespearean lines, translated into Italian, are accompanied by short sections composed directly by the inmates and by linguistic and cultural elements of diverse origin. In a total institution where the role of the prisoners is flattened on the conventional one of the criminal, the creative activity in the theatrical field allows to develop forms of resilience in the construction of stratified identities. Vulnerability can also be explored, even though it might be perceived as divergent from the condition of guilt. In this dimension, Shakespeare becomes the filter through which long unheard voices find the way to express themselves. At the same time, the text of The Tempest assumes the function of ‘pre-text’, at the service of the prison and the prisoners themselves. Between Shakespeare’s authority and the agency of the marginalized subjects, a stratified relationship is established, on whose declinations in dramaturgical and performative practice I would like to focus my attention.

It may be argued that writing about contemporaneity risks being a mere description of what Braudel would term ‘episodic time’—the short-term perspective of newspapers and chronicles. However, when political and social events spread into literature, there is a nuanced language of presence (Barthes). By not being bound to a specific mode of narration, the essay’s brevity and incisiveness seems particularly suitable to decipher the contemporary. This paper presents a comparative reading of personal essays published between April and July 2020 by Olive Senior, Deborah Levy, and Zadie Smith, and it argues that there are two main ways of resisting: the choice of writing in itself, and the choice of topics and issues. The immediate response of writers in the form of essays published in book form, in online magazines, or special sections of the websites of publishing houses is a clear example of how literature—and indeed the literary mind—can be a space for thinking about the present and putting things into perspective. By overcoming the possible limitations represented by the thematization of the pandemic, the writers open towards what may appear as a different, but still very close, temporality: that of physical and discourse-based violence on female bodies, on black bodies, and on the Earth. This paper will then come to the conclusion that writing is an act of resistance and that literature has the power to narrate the real “interpret[ing] the world […] one word at a time” (Senior, “Cross Words”).

Nel 1991, la conquista dell’indipendenza da parte dell’Ucraina ha portato alla (ri)scoperta di un’identità nazionale e ha posto in primo piano la questione della lingua. Da allora, la lingua ucraina ha visto crescere il proprio status e ha iniziato ad essere utilizzata in sempre più domini comunicativi, mentre, parallelamente, la nuova Costituzione dichiarava il russo lingua di una minoranza nazionale. Tuttavia, il censimento del 2001 e altri sondaggi più recenti mostrano l’esistenza di un cospicuo gruppo di madrelingua russi, e rilevano che l’uso del russo come principale lingua di comunicazione riguarda un numero di persone che eccede la comunità madrelingua. Il presente articolo contribuisce a verificare la situazione sociolinguistica della lingua russa, presentando i risultati principali della ricerca sul campo che ho condotto in Ucraina nel 2018. Dall’analisi quantitativa e qualitativa dei dati raccolti emergono la complessità del contesto linguistico e culturale ucraino e il conflitto interiore che accompagna il problema della scelta linguistica: essa è, infatti, legata all’interrogativo riguardo alla propria identità e alla difficoltà diffusa a determinare un confine tra ciò che è ‘proprio’ e ciò che è ‘altro’.  

This article investigates Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria (2006) through the lens of the mimetic theory developed by René Girard, which I combined with Jean Price-Mars’ definition of “collective bovarism” and Umberto Eco’s narrative semiotics. In my close reading of the novel, I explore how the author exposes the detrimental mimetic mechanisms hidden behind characters’ behaviours and relationships to articulate a discourse on the risks of assimilation and the necessity for Aboriginal resistance to neocolonialism. I argue that in Carpentaria the emulation of the dominant society’s values and beliefs by assimilated Indigenous characters results in the social disintegration and vulnerability of the Indigenous communities. Not only do mimetic mechanisms negatively affect the epistemic systems of Aboriginal characters in terms of preparedness to climate change, but they also undermine their social cohesion and physical survival. Furthermore, investigating the text at a semiotic level, I identified some thematic isotopies that Wright uses to emphasise the racial bias and dehumanising attitudes towards black people embedded in the neocolonial gaze. Prioritising the textual dimension of the novel, my approach focuses on how the sociocultural and physical vulnerability of the Indigenous characters is depicted at a philosophical, rhetorical and narratological level. My investigation focuses on four narrative places: the dump, the city, the Pricklebush and the ocean.

The global spread of English has resulted in new varieties and cultures being associated with it; Cultural Linguistics studies these by emphasising the relationship between language and culturally-constructed conceptualisations. English is often seen as negative for local languages, especially in post-colonial contexts; however, speech communities can develop new varieties by localising it through ‘glocalisation’ or ‘nativisation’. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these notions by considering Singlish, the colloquial variety of Singapore English. Here, the adoption of English words has contributed to the creation of a localised variety, though this hybridisation is often seen as a corruption. The long-lasting debate around it has seen direct intervention of the Government and reactions of linguistic resistance or “chutzpah” coming from Singlish speakers, in an attempt to reclaim Singlish as the true expression of Singaporean identity. The analysis examines English words in two online Singlish dictionaries (A Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English and The Coxford Singlish Dictionary), in order to understand the cultural conceptualisations they represent. A cross-checking with the Oxford English Dictionary further highlights differences with the standard: this helps demonstrate that English expressions can become the keywords of a culture of non-native speakers and contribute to a redefinition of its linguistic identity, rather than cancelling it.

Kae Tempest (Londra, 1985) è poeta, musicista e performer di spoken word poetry e lavora nello spazio ibrido tra poesia e musica, facendo della performance il suo tratto distintivo e il trait d’union tra le due forme. In questo contributo si analizzeranno i poemi Brand New Ancients (2013) e Let Them Eat Chaos (2016), ambientati nella Londra di oggi, dove le grandi problematiche del mondo globale – lo sfruttamento delle risorse, la gentrificazione, le diseguaglianze sociali – fanno da sfondo alle storie ordinarie di persone avvolte dal torpore e l’indifferenza causati da una vita infelice. Nel recente saggio On Connection (2020), composto durante la prima fase della pandemia da Covid-19, Tempest riflette sulla funzione sociale e politica della letteratura e sulla necessità di ritrovare un senso di comunità attraverso l’empatia.

The paper is dedicated to the analysis of digital tools used in the teaching and lexicography of Serbian as foreign language. Considering the particular characteristics of this language, especially in relation to its rich morphology, the essential tools in the early stages of study include morphological dictionaries, while at the intermediate and advanced levels digital dictionaries and linguistic corpora are necessary. Unlike English, which in terms of digital technologies is being updated and developed almost continuously, languages with fewer resources, such as Serbian, mainly make use of traditional tools, and only in recent years has the tendency to orient themselves towards digital. The global pandemic, which exploded in early 2020, has accelerated this process by urging teachers to search for innovative paths that lend themselves to virtual teaching. The questions listed here and for which we will try to find an answer concern: digital tools for the Serbian as foreign language, their advantages over traditional teaching material, the possible ways to follow in experimenting with the Data-driven learning methodology.

En este trabajo, enmarcado en el ámbito de la lingüística aplicada y del análisis crítico del discurso, llevaremos a cabo un análisis contrastivo multilingüe a partir de los discursos emitidos en el primer trimestre del año 2020 por los líderes políticos de España, Reino Unido, Italia y Portugal, en los que anunciaban duras medidas para afrontar la crisis sanitaria originada por la COVID-19. Partimos de la hipótesis de que en sus discursos se emplearán recursos lingüísticos para persuadir a la audiencia, puesto que en los inicios de la pandemia los partidos políticos unieron sus fuerzas para convencer a la ciudadanía de la necesidad de trabajar juntos para afrontar la crisis. El objetivo principal de la investigación es recurrir a muestras de lenguaje real para tratar de detectar similitudes y diferencias, así como formas de persuasión y/o manipulación mediática en los textos analizados, y comprobar si en ellos se aprecia la ideología del emisor. Para ello, el análisis cualitativo de los cuatro discursos será complementado con los datos obtenidos mediante el programa Sketch Engine, para detectar las palabras de uso más frecuente y las colocaciones en cada corpus. Los resultados muestran que, aunque con pequeños aspectos diferenciales en lo que respecta a la apelación al miedo, en general todos recurren a técnicas de persuasión similares, con mensajes que apelan al patriotismo, la unidad en la lucha contra el virus y la responsabilidad social.

La pandemia por covid-19 ha tenido repercusión en todos los aspectos de la vida de los individuos, incluidas las formas de relacionarse y de establecer vínculos con los otros. La lengua, como herramienta comunicativa esencial, también se ha visto afectada por la nueva situación y, de forma excepcionalmente rápida, hablantes e instituciones han incorporado nuevos términos y dotado de nuevas significaciones a palabras ya existentes. Por su parte, los expertos -lingüistas, académicos, periodistas- se han pronunciado ante estas novedades y, al hacerlo, han evidenciado su actitud ante la lengua. En este trabajo se estudia el eco que las palabras relacionadas con la covid-19 han tenido en los medios y se analiza, desde una perspectiva crítica, la recepción de los nuevos términos, la toma de postura ideológica y los grados de purismo lingüístico y social que se manifiestan. El análisis se ha llevado a cabo sobre un corpus de columnas sobre la lengua (CSL) publicadas entre marzo de 2020 y abril de 2021 en la prensa española. El hecho de utilizar textos metalingüísticos ha permitido no solo recopilar una parte importante del nuevo vocabulario sino también analizar la toma de postura de cada uno de los columnistas, observadores y árbitros de la lengua viva de la comunidad.

Similar to many other countries, journalistic production in China during the first half of 2020 was dominated on a thematic level by the COVID-19 pandemic. The trend included the mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Renmin Ribao. Its news and commentary articles, which are widely republished by other media, influence the country’s political life, and contribute to the process of meaning generation in the news discourse and to the CCP’s effort to align Chinese citizens to official narratives. Renmin Ribao can therefore provide a relevant source to investigate the relationship between political power and the COVID-19 pandemic, starting from the hypothesis that the paper’s narrative would aim at discursively turning the international health crisis into a piece of positive propaganda. This study aims to verify whether and how the paper did so, and to question the assumption that the outlet’s media discourse can be equated to the CCP official discourse. The research is developed as a case study and blends quantitative and qualitative tools grounded on Applied Linguistics, Discourse-Historical Approach, and Frame Analysis, in order to analyse a corpus of commentaries that have appeared in the outlet’s online edition in 2020. By applying a Genre Analysis approach, the study also offers insights into the possibility to identify distinguishing characteristics and communicative goals in the different sub-genres of Renmin Ribao commentaries.