Books by Veronica Bonsignori
Ellipsis is a form of syntactic reduction that is pervasive in both written and oral communicatio... more Ellipsis is a form of syntactic reduction that is pervasive in both written and oral communication. It has been widely studied from different perspectives, and therefore its definition has always been quite problematic. The present work attempts to define this phenomenon in the English language. An account of the different types of ellipsis is provided, by drawing a classification with examples for each category, and three main approaches for its interpretation are outlined, i.e., text linguistics, psycholinguistics, and pragmatics. The final chapter investigates the use of the different types of ellipsis in English written and spoken texts, e.g., novels, film scripts, research articles, excerpts from diaries, recipes, newspaper headlines, advertisements, transcriptions of face-to-face conversation, etc., within the frame of textual linguistics, in order to shed some light on the different functions it may perform across genres and text types.
Papers by Veronica Bonsignori
Analysing Audio-visual Dialogue. Linguistic and Translational Insights, M.Freddi and M. Pavesi (eds.), 2009
International Journal of English Linguistics
Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs) is a political discourse genre with a long and distinguishe... more Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs) is a political discourse genre with a long and distinguished history. Framed by formulaic forms of address, the exchanges follow a set of turn-taking “rules” that has evolved over time. The study presented here examines the (non)use of honorifics and other polite forms intrinsic to PMQs during interactions between two female Prime Ministers and their respective Leaders of the Opposition: Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. From diachronic and gendered perspectives, the study implements a mixed methods framework to address the following research questions: 1) has the use of formal politeness markers decreased over time? 2) Do gender dynamics influence impoliteness strategies in the context of PMQs? 3) In the shift from verbal to written discourse, what diamesic transformations appear in the official parliamentary transcriptions? The self-built corpus includes selected video recordings of PMQs from each of the Prime ...
International Journal of English Linguistics, 2023
Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs) is a political discourse genre with a long and distinguishe... more Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs) is a political discourse genre with a long and distinguished history. Framed by formulaic forms of address, the exchanges follow a set of turn-taking “rules” that has evolved over time. The study presented here examines the (non)use of honorifics and other polite forms intrinsic to PMQs during interactions between two female Prime Ministers and their respective Leaders of the Opposition: Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. From diachronic and gendered perspectives, the study implements a mixed methods framework to address the following research questions: 1) has the use of formal politeness markers decreased over time? 2) Do gender dynamics influence impoliteness strategies in the context of PMQs? 3) In the shift from verbal to written discourse, what diamesic transformations appear in the official parliamentary transcriptions? The self-built corpus includes selected video recordings of PMQs from each of the Prime Ministers’ mandates, and the corresponding official transcripts published online by Hansard. The audiovisual texts were viewed and examined, the speech was manually transcribed, and then compared to Hansard’s version. Initial findings suggest that over time, across genders, and in Hansard’s digital transcripts, the use of politeness forms in PMQ exchanges appears to be diminishing as formulaic expressions are omitted or substituted with pronouns.
La presente Tesi di Dottorato affronta l’analisi di in fenomeno tipico della lingua Inglese, quel... more La presente Tesi di Dottorato affronta l’analisi di in fenomeno tipico della lingua Inglese, quello delle tag questions. Nel capitolo 1 si descrive tale fenomeno linguistico dal punto di vista sintattico, fornendo una classificazione dei vari tipi di domande coda in base al criterio della polarità; ma si prendono in esame anche altri casi di tag ‘invarianti’ (ad es. ok?, innit?, right?), prestando attenzione agli aspetti sociolinguistici che ne determinano l’uso – i.e. sia diatopici che diastratici – ed esaminando particolari strutture che spesso vengono seguite da tags, come gli imperativi, gli esortativi e le frasi ellittiche. Nel capitolo 2 vengono descritte le varie funzioni delle tag questions, in base alla diversa struttura sintattica, all’intonazione e al contesto situazionale. Il capitolo 3 è volto all’analisi di tags presenti in 4 films in lingua inglese, sia dal punto di vista sintattico che funzionale, dando rilievo al tipo di intonazione di queste. L’analisi è suffragata...
The aim of this book is to bring together research on several forms of audiovisual translation fr... more The aim of this book is to bring together research on several forms of audiovisual translation from a variety of perspectives, ranging from discourse analysis and pragmatics to cognitive science, second language acquisition, actor-network theory and speech recognition, to mention only a few.
Audiovisual products, due to their intrinsic multisemiotic nature, in which each mode contributes... more Audiovisual products, due to their intrinsic multisemiotic nature, in which each mode contributes to meaning making, have widely proven to be ideal material both for research purposes and for teaching. This is especially the case of films, which, despite their fictional character, have often been used in the context of language learning. As the concept of multiliteracies has become pivotal in language teaching, the use of films reflects a multimodal approach that can help students learn to exploit modes beyond verbal language (e.g., visual, gestural, spatial) to both understand and produce texts in the target language more effectively. This becomes particularly important in situated communicative contexts where domain-specific discursive, pragmatic and cultural features can create significant obstacles for language learners. The present paper focuses on a particular type of specialised discourse, i.e. business discourse, and intends to explore the ways in which films can be utilized...
Lingue e Linguaggi, 2015
The language of adolescents has always been of particular interest to linguists mostly for being ... more The language of adolescents has always been of particular interest to linguists mostly for being extremely creative. Adolescence is, in fact, a transition stage that coincides with the entrance into secondary school, where teenagers strive to construct their own identity, mainly through linguistic innovation (Eckert 1989, 1997, 2004). In this sense, language becomes a strong identity marker (Edwards 2009) whose role becomes crucial in the portrayal of adolescent characters in films. The present paper aims at investigating the language of American adolescents diachronically in three famous movies of different decades from the 1980s to 2000s, namely Sixteen Candles (1984, Hughes), Clueless (1995, Heckerling) and Juno (2007, Reitman), which revolve around teenagers’ life at high school. The first step in the analysis consists in the identification of some characterising features of teen talk, especially focusing on word formation. Then, the analysis will be carried out contrastively an...
Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility at the Crossroads, 2012
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Books by Veronica Bonsignori
Papers by Veronica Bonsignori