Stefania M Maci

Università degli Studi di Bergamo (University of Bergamo), Lingue, letterature e culture straniere, Faculty Member

Followers

342

Following

533

Co-authors

Mentions

897

Public Views

- Full Professor of English Language and Translation at the University of Bergamo - Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
- Former pro Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Affairs) of the University of Bergamo.
- Director of CERLIS (Research Centre on Languages for Specific Purposes)
https://sites.google.com/unibg.it/cerlis/home
She is currently involved in national and international research projects on academic English and legal discourse genres, with particular regard to:
(1) Medical Discourse
-Metadiscorsive aspects and argumentative strategies of medical English across genres and cultures with particular regard to (i) Research articles; (ii) Medical research letters; (iii) Medical posters
(2) Legal Language
-Italian and English arbitral awards
-Witness hearings in arbitral awards
(3) ESP and Tourism
-Promotional and specialised traits in English for tourism
-The web language of tourism
Recent publications include: The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communicattion (co-editted witth C.Hanganu-Bresch, M.J. Zerbe and G. Cutrufello), tthe monographs Tourism Discourse (2020); The MS Digby 133 Mary Magdalene (217); the co-edited volumes with Maurizio Gotti and Michele Sala Ways of Being, Ways of Seeing (2017); and the papers 'living-with-dying: the elderly's language of terminal illness' (2021); Parents’ narrative about congenital heart diseases: Acquiring knowledge and sharing empathy’ (2019); ‘Discourse Strategies of Fake News in the Anti-vax Campaign’ (2019); ‘#icantbreathe. Ideology and Consensus: Printed News vs. Twitter' (2018).
She is also member of the AIA board, and director of the Cerlis Series

BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Place and date of birth: Bassano del Grappa, Vicenza (Italy), 22.02.1965
Education:
PhD, Lancaster University (UK)
Degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures, Univ. of Venice, Italy, 23.10.1995 (Linguistics with English language and literature). Thesis on A Critical Analysis of Mary Magdalene.
Diploma of Linguistics and Philosophy of Language, Univ. of Venice, 1997, 1998.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
- 1st Oct 2019-present: Full Professor of English Language and Linguistics
- 12 Oct 2015 - 14 Nov 2021: Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Affairs)
- 1st Oct 2014-30 Sept 2019: Associate Professor of English Language and Translation – University of Bergamo
- 2005-2014: Senior Lecturer of English Language and Translation, Univ. of Bergamo
- 2003-05: Researcher of English Language – Univ. of Bergamo
- 2002-03: Teacher of English Language and Literature in Italian secondary schools
- Tutor of IT Applied to Language Teaching (on line), SIS – Veneto
- Researcher of English Language – Università de L’Aquila

RESEARCH
Main research interests:
• Academic English
• ESP
• English (historical) linguistics
• CDA
• Corpus Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Pragmatics
• Digital humanities

OTHER ACTIVITIES
- Member of AAAL (American Association of Applied Linguistics)
- Member of BAAL (British Association of Applied Linguistics)
- Member of AIA Board (the Italian branch of ESSE)
- Member of CERLIS (Research Centre on Specialised Languages)
- Member of CLAVIER (The Corpus and LAnguage Variation in English Research Group)
- Member of the Organizing and/or Scientific Committee of international conferences and workhops
- Speaker at international conferences and workhops
- 1996-present: enrolled at the Board of Translators and Interpreters (English/Italian; German/Italian) of the Court of Venice

less

InterestsView All (27)

Uploads

Papers by Stefania M Maci

Communication in Medical Practice

Peter Lang eBooks, Jul 11, 2016

The Language of Medicine: Science, Practice and Academia

This ebook is published in Open Access under a Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial... more This ebook is published in Open Access under a Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). You are free to share-copy, distribute and transmit-the work under the following conditions: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). You may not use this work for commercial purposes. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Download

The Discussion Section of Medical Research Articles: A Cross Cultural Perspective

Linguistic insights, 2012

This chapter aims to compare the argumentative strategies employed in medical research articles w... more This chapter aims to compare the argumentative strategies employed in medical research articles written by native speakers of English with those written by Italian non-native speakers of English in order to identify any cross-cultural differences in terms of argumentative devices employed by their authors. Several differences have been identified between the textual organization of English medical research articles written by native and non-native speakers, which seem to be linked to their authors’ linguistic and cultural identity. The main differences are rhetorically realised through hedges and other argumentative strategies, such as the use of connectives. Italian authors word their texts with fewer hedges and connectives than English native-speakers and their conclusions are supported by established knowledge, as shown by their continuous references to the literature. Similarly, whenever a claim finds confirmation in the existing literature, Italian writers tend to adopt these rhetorical strategies less frequently, because the established knowledge is deemed to be sufficient to confirm their hypothesis. In so doing, Italian authors seem to adopt an ipse-dixit strategy.

The role of the metrical and rhyme pattern in Mary Magdalene

Linguistica e Filologia, 2004

mystery-morality play anonima, scritta probabilmente a cavallo del XV sec., quando il Great Vowel... more mystery-morality play anonima, scritta probabilmente a cavallo del XV sec., quando il Great Vowel Shift iniziò ad esercitare la propria influenza sul sistema fonetico del Medio Inglese. La confusione che avvolge ogni tentativo di analisi linguistica dell'opera-e di conseguenza ogni altro tentativo di definirne la scansione metrica precisa-ha la propria base nello stereotipo dello scriba 'incompetente'. In realtà, ciò che i curatori contemporanei dell'opera evidenziano come 'errori grafici' o come 'forme obsolete' potrebbero corrispondere a una sorta di licenza poetica che l'autore si è preso per dare al testo il senso particolare che voleva conferire ad esso. In questo articolo, partendo dal presupposto che lo scriba di Mary Magdalene fosse in realtà competente nel proprio lavoro, metteremo in evidenza quelle forme che sono sempre state classificate come errori degli scriba e le analizzeremo in considerazione della loro funzione all'interno della scansione prosodica dell'opera. Dimostreremo che in Mary Magdalene la ragione per cui tali varietà 'fuorvianti', ascritte alla mancata comprensione dello scriba, sono state selezionate dall'autore sta nel tentativo di realizzare uno schema prosodico preciso corrispondente agli scopi poetici dell'autore stesso. Tali forme verranno classificate in due categorie: (a) forme particolari che possono essere spiegate dalla struttura metrica della stanza in cui si trovano, e (b) varietà linguistiche, non comprese dai filologi, che possono essere ricostruite etimologicamente grazie allo schema ritmico della stanza in cui si trovano. Il risultato finale è che lo schema metrico e ritmico dell'opera ha un ruolo fondamentale nell'identificare quelle varietà diacroniche e diatopiche, usate dall'autore di Mary Magdalene, che sono sempre state apparentemente considerate come prive di senso e perciò sottovalutate in studi pregressi.

Download

“What Does He Think This Is? The Court of Human Rights or the United Nations?”

European Journal of Law Reform, Sep 1, 2014

A Framework for Medical Poster Multimodal Analysis: a Pilot Study

Recent decades have been characterized by an incredible intensity of social change, eased by prog... more Recent decades have been characterized by an incredible intensity of social change, eased by progress and technology, which, through digitization, have facilitated the processes of globalization and mobility (Fairclough 2006). In this context, speed has been positively seen as a manifestation of efficiency (Kress 2010). In academia, this is indirectly confirmed by ‘publish or perish’ pressure, that is the possibility academic members have to acquire professional recognition. Such speed is not only supported by the proliferation of specialised journals, the place where research can be printed and prestige can be acquired, but also by international conferences, the place where research can be ‘shown’. This is particularly true for the medical sciences. In conferences in particular, efficiency has often been identified with the organizing of poster sessions, because “[g]iven the limitations of time, the poster format does provide for the maximum number of presentations to be scheduled in a given period, space permitting” (Pearce 1992: 1680). Medical poster sessions seem to be preferred both by researchers and conference organizing committees. There is a large amount of literature available on medical posters by scientific authors. From the perspective of applied linguistics, the genre of posters has undergone little investigation. The first description of posters was offered by Dubois (1985a, 1985b). Swales and Feak (2000: 81) suggest that posters have for many years been “the poor country cousin of papers”. Apart from some scholars (Burgess/Fagan 2004; Swales, 2004; MacIntosh-Murray, 2007) who describe the genre of posters rather than analysing it, to the best of my knowledge, the only contribution in terms of multimodal analysis of academic posters is offered by D’Angelo (2010). Given the limited analysis of the genre of medical posters from an applied linguistics perspective and, at the same time, the enormous demands placed on posters as visual representations of scientific knowledge, though with a lack of any systematic and consistent analysis of visual elements, as different forms of discourse, contributing to the construction of the meaning making, it is the aim of this paper to create a framework for the multimodal analysis of medical posters. As posters are viewed in context, along with dozens of others, it is certainly essential to capture the audience’s attention. Drawing from Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), my assumption here is that such a requirement is commonly met thanks to appropriate interrelation between visuals and text for the sake of achieving effective efficacious communication.

The Argumentative Structure in American and Italian Medical Research Articles

Èspesso, the coffee you can eat. Italian Borrowings in English Advertisements

Reshaping time in business news. Patterning news in the Letters to the Editor

Progetto di ricerca PRIN 2007 "Tensioni e variazioni nei generi settoriali inglesi / Tension... more

Genre variation in medical discourse: the case of medical posters

It is the aim of this chapter to investigate processes of variation in medical discourse with reg... more It is the aim of this chapter to investigate processes of variation in medical discourse with regard to poster presentation. My research questions were: 1) how can posters be devised in terms of macrostructure and how closely this macrostructure reflects the typical Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRD) pattern of research articles? 2) what is the relationship between poster text and images and what relevance do images have in relation to text? Presenting a poster allows authors to more personally interact with the people interested in the presentation of the research; yet posters should stand alone with regard to content. As posters are viewed in context along with dozens of other posters, it is imperative to capture the audience with a title, introduction and graphics. The result seems to suggest that medical discourse in poster presentations will be biased by promotional traits.

When was Mary Magdalene set 'afeyr'? The phonological representation of ME i in some 15th century plays

From Broadsheets to Tabloids: is there a Difference?

Litigation Procedures in Arbitral Practice: A case of Arbitral Litigation?

In the UK, international arbitration has had a long tradition which reached its peak with the Arb... more In the UK, international arbitration has had a long tradition which reached its peak with the Arbitration Act 1996. The provisions of the Act represent the first written legislation on this issue in the UK (Tessuto 2003), a country with a common law system. A specific Act was necessary due to the fact that, in the 1990s, arbitration in the UK needed to be made simpler and clearer so as to facilitate the whole arbitral process, render it less expensive and at the same time reduce the intervention of the court. Yet, to date, arbitration in England is regarded as a long and costly process because it follows court procedures (Rees 2007). Indeed, arbitral proceedings are becoming more and more like court trials, thus increasing the judicialization trend of arbitration (Brower 2008). The purpose of this paper is to present evidence in support of the hypothesis of the “colonization” of litigation procedures in arbitral practices in the international commercial context. To attain this goal, the paper will investigate legal aspects (content vs. formulaic expressions) which have caused a modification of English arbitration practices in terms of intentions, purposes, and processes.

In-depth investigation has been recently carried out about the popularization discourse. Despite ... more In-depth investigation has been recently carried out about the popularization discourse. Despite the different perspectives such investigation moves from, the language of popularization is overall seen as a reformulation and re-contextualization of scientific knowledge. In other words, it is not seen as a distorted simplification of scientific knowledge for non-specialists, because the process of reformulation and re-contextualization has a more direct form due to the action of the different agents, voices and genres. Starting from this assumption, the present research aims at disclosing how and to what extent scientific knowledge has been rendered in popularized forms by members of the medical academic community for an academic audience such as the Nobel Prize one. The study analyses twenty Nobel lectures assigned between 1900 and 2009 (one for decade) which are put in comparison with the BASE corpus of academic lectures. The investigation carried out in this study seems to suggest that there are differences in the communication strategies adopted to render scientific knowledge into effective popularized language, constructed as a set of communicative events which involve the transformation and recontextualization of specialist discourse. In this sense, it is primarily featured by the properties of the communicative context in which it takes place: participants and their role, their purposes, beliefs and knowledge.

Health slips as the financial crisis grips': Tensions and variations in medical discourse

It is the aim of this paper to investigate processes of change in medical discourse provoked by g... more It is the aim of this paper to investigate processes of change in medical discourse provoked by globalisation, the global crisis and the pressures based on rapid and competitive publishing. It also aims to explore the extent to which, if any, medical discourse globally creates and appropriates corporate thinking. In order to carry out this research, a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach will be followed, drawing on Fairclough (2001, 2007).

The Language of Mary Magdalene

Meaning-making in Web 2.0 Tourism Discourse

Since holidays cannot be inspected for purchase beforehand, tourists try to minimize the gap exis... more Since holidays cannot be inspected for purchase beforehand, tourists try to minimize the gap existing between their expectations – constructed on product representation and description – and their experience by seeking as much information as possible (O’Connor et al. 2001: 333). In this quest for information, the Internet has begun to be regarded as a convenient and dynamic source of information by means of which tourists can virtually experience the holiday, thanks to the interactive multimedia sites existing on the Web (Cho/Fesenmaier 2001), characterized by networked interrelations of verbal and iconic components which meet the requirements of today’s tourist. Hence the illusion of feeling the holiday experience, before actually living it, in line with the tourist’s most optimistic expectations. When tourism texts are uploaded on the Net, the potentialities of these multimodal relationships are further augmented. The main feature of web-texts is that their information is selected and designed to attract attention by breaking conventional reading patterns (Crystal 2006: 205), where the traditional textual organization which allows the processing of meaning seems to be lacking and is substituted with texts characterized by abundant visual information, strategically reflecting the communicative choice of the web-designer enhancing the web-user’s illusion of having total control over the verbal component of the text itself. Indeed, Web 2.0 has allowed the potential tourist to take on a central role in the textual meaning-making process: prospective tourists play an active one. They are prosumers, tourist consumers who have become producers: if with Web 1.0 potential tourists sought information about the destination on the web, and were therefore merely network consumers, with Web 2.0, they are the authors, i.e. the producers, of the very same texts they share or actively comment on via the Net. In this presentation, we will see how the tourism industry can create successful text on social networks such as Facebook. Clearly, the interrelation between text and visuals amplifies the meaning of the conveyed message: a text made up of language alone would offer a low-dimensional representation of experience; a text comprising only images would afford a much greater display of the complexity of reality but its meaning might be non-explicit, if not ambiguous, without the verbal elements. When images and text are interwoven their very meaning goes beyond the default conventions of traditional multimodal genres (Lemke 2002: 301). Such interrelation, however, is further emphasised because of the participation of the prospective tourists in the text itself. In other words, not only do prospective clients read such texts cross-modally, as meaning is constructed through traditional reading patterns integrated by semantic associations brought up by the potentialities offered by the Net (Lemke 2002), but they also amplify meaning precisely because they take part in the text construction. Meaning-making in such texts as those analysed in this study is thus a complex process, which results from the overlapping multimodal semiotic strategies employed by prosumers rather than from a single modal reading.

These data support the provocative view that...": evaluation in medical academic posters

In the hard sciences, posters have rapidly become a major format for scientific academic communic... more In the hard sciences, posters have rapidly become a major format for scientific academic communication. In order to facilitate knowledge dissemination and academic discussione, medical posters, in particular, are uploaded on the Net after the conference where they have been presented. The Net, therefore, appeas to be the place where medical knowledge is mediated amongst specialists. Yet, in other disciplines, posters are commonly regarded as less prestigious than research papers, probably because of the predominance of visual elements in it. In posters, due to space/length constraints, generalised and theoretical claims tend to be 'topicalised', rather than discussed. One of the most powerful ways of thematizing attitudinal meanings and present an explicit statement of evaluation academic discourse is by means of that-structures. This research will, therefore, investigate how the evaluation is conveyed through that-structures, i.e. those complement clauses embedded in a superordinate one (the matrix clause) to complete its construction and project the writer’s attitudes about something. The study has been carried out using WMatrix (at http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix3.html) and is based on the analysis of the verbal elements contained in a corpus of 562 medical posters (775,609 tokens) presented at international conferences and uploaded on the Web. In particular, the investigation tries not only to detect what type of verbs (whether cognitive, discursive or research ones), but, above all, to understand why they are used across the Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion sections of posters and whether their choice depends on the author's awareness posters will be uploaded on the Net. Although such analysis certainly has some limitations, and needs to be triangulated, it may offer new insights of the genre of posters distributed via the Web, given the lack of applied linguistic research on posters.

Communicating with Patients

Peter Lang eBooks, Jul 11, 2016

Communication is the most important aspect of practice that health care professionals have to mas... more Communication is the most important aspect of practice that health care professionals have to master. The purpose of this study was to measure the content and prevalence of verbal and nonverbal communications between physical therapists and patients with back pain. Subjects Seven physical therapists and 21 patients with back pain participated in this study. Methods The first interaction following the initial assessment was recorded with a video camera. The outcome measures were the Medical Communications Behavior System (verbal communication) and frequencies of nonverbal behaviors (affirmative head nodding, smiling, eye gaze, forward leaning, and touch). Semistructured interviews were undertaken with the physical therapists to determine the perceived influence of the video camera. Results A total of 2,055 verbal statements were made. Physical therapists spent approximately twice as much time talking as patients, with content behaviors (such as taking history and giving advice) comprising 52% of verbal communications. The most prevalent nonverbal behaviors were touch by physical therapists (54%) and eye gaze by patients (84%). Discussion and Conclusion The prevalence and content of communication can be measured with video analysis and validated tools. Communication is an extremely important but underexplored dimension of the patient-therapist relationship, and the methods described here could provide a useful model for further research and reflective practice.

Download

Insights Into Medical Communication

Peter Lang CH eBooks, Jun 30, 2015

Download

Communication in Medical Practice

Peter Lang eBooks, Jul 11, 2016

The Language of Medicine: Science, Practice and Academia

Download

The Discussion Section of Medical Research Articles: A Cross Cultural Perspective

Linguistic insights, 2012

The role of the metrical and rhyme pattern in Mary Magdalene

Linguistica e Filologia, 2004

Download

“What Does He Think This Is? The Court of Human Rights or the United Nations?”

European Journal of Law Reform, Sep 1, 2014

A Framework for Medical Poster Multimodal Analysis: a Pilot Study

The Argumentative Structure in American and Italian Medical Research Articles

Èspesso, the coffee you can eat. Italian Borrowings in English Advertisements

Reshaping time in business news. Patterning news in the Letters to the Editor

Progetto di ricerca PRIN 2007 "Tensioni e variazioni nei generi settoriali inglesi / Tension... more

Genre variation in medical discourse: the case of medical posters

When was Mary Magdalene set 'afeyr'? The phonological representation of ME i in some 15th century plays

From Broadsheets to Tabloids: is there a Difference?

Litigation Procedures in Arbitral Practice: A case of Arbitral Litigation?

Health slips as the financial crisis grips': Tensions and variations in medical discourse

The Language of Mary Magdalene

Meaning-making in Web 2.0 Tourism Discourse

These data support the provocative view that...": evaluation in medical academic posters

Communicating with Patients

Peter Lang eBooks, Jul 11, 2016

Download

Insights Into Medical Communication

Peter Lang CH eBooks, Jun 30, 2015

Download

The Routledge Handbook of discourse and disinformation

by Stefania M Maci, Massimiliano Demata, and Mark McGlashan

The Routledge Handbook of discourse and disinformation, 2023

This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of research into discourses of disinformation, misi... more This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of research into discourses of disinformation, misinformation, post-truth, alternative facts, hate speech, conspiracy theories, and "fake news".

Divided into two sections, it provides a detailed look at the methodological challenges and approaches for studying disinformation, along with a wide range of case studies covering everything from climate change denial to COVID-19 conspiracies. The studies address how discourses of disinformation are constructed and developed, what rhetorical and persuasive strategies they employ, how disinformation can be discerned from real news, and what steps we might take in order to create a more trustworthy news environment.　

Authored by leading experts from around the world, and showcasing the most up-to-date methodological approaches to the topic, the volume makes a significant contribution to current linguistic research on politics, and is an essential guide to the discourses of disinformation for advanced students and researchers of English language studies, linguistics, and media and communication studies.

Download

Scholarly Pathways

- Gotti, Maurizio / Maci, Stefania M. / Sala, Michele (eds). Scholarly Pathways. Knowledge Transfer and Knowledge Exchange in Academia. Bern, Peter Lang. ISBN 987-3-0343-3860-8., 2020

Metadiscourse In Digital Communication

by Stefania M Maci, Anna Mauranen, and Larissa D'Angelo

Metadiscourse In Digital Communication, 2021

This book combines a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to metadiscourse and offe... more This book combines a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to metadiscourse and offers new conceptual tools and frameworks for analysing written, spoken and multimodal discourse. The studies included in the volume draw on data collected from different contexts of digital communication, offering new perspectives on the role of metadiscourse in building and maintaining interaction between individuals and within different communities. Importantly, the studies included here are not restricted to academic and professional domains, as several authors explore new research avenues, such as communication on social media platforms."

Download

The Routledge Handbook Of Scientific Communication

by Stefania M Maci and Gabriel Cutrufello

The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication, 2021

Given current science-related crises facing the world such as climate change, the targeting and m... more Given current science-related crises facing the world such as climate change, the targeting and manipulation of DNA, GMO foods, and vaccine denial, the way in which we communicate science matters is vital for current and future generations of scientists and publics. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication scrutinizes what we value, prioritize, and grapple with in science as highlighted by the rhetorical choices of scientists, students, educators, science gatekeepers, and lay commentators. Drawing on contributions from leading thinkers in the field, this volume explores some of the most pressing questions in this growing field of study

Download

English Tourism Discourse. Insights into the professional, promotional and digital language of tourism.

Giannoni, Davide S. / Maci, Stefania M. (eds) 2008. Identity Traits in English Academic Discourse. Special Issue of Linguistica e Filologia. (2008)

Maci Stefania M. / Sala Michele (eds). Genre Variation in Academic Communication. Emerging Disciplinary Trends. (2012)

Download

Gotti, Maurizio / Maci, Stefania M. / Sala Michele (eds). The Language of Medicine: Science, Practice and Academia. Bergamo (2015)

Each volume of the series is subjected to a double peer-reviewing process.

Download

The Linguistic Design of Mary Magdalene. (2008)

The Language of Tourism. Bergamo (2010)

Tourism Discourse: Professional, Promotional and Digital voices. (2016)

In the last few decades the rapid growth of the demand-supply processes in the travel sector has ... more In the last few decades the rapid growth of the demand-supply processes in the travel sector has caused a dramatic development of the tourism industry, designed to attract as many customers as possible in order to make a profit. Therefore, in order to sell the same product to different targets and on different markets, tourist organizations need to develop different types of information, namely, different genres presenting, in adequate and convincing linguistic ways, the same content with the same illocutionary purpose. This is linguistically attained thanks to the elaboration of different voices – professional, promotional and digital – which employ rhetorical strategies complying with the use of particular lexical items, specific syntactical structures and precise textual levels of the language employed. By integrating genre analysis with corpus linguistics, this volume aims to investigate if and to what extent the voices of tourism discourse dynamically reflect the new societal trends. The results suggest that the pressure of societal transformations is reflected in tourism discourse insomuch as it seems to have developed new linguistic strategies when tourism is used for both specialized and promotional purposes. In other words, tourism discourse seems to be permeated by the rise of a new hypertextual mode of communication and, particularly in its promotional and digital features, by a language that while euphorically describing the destination seems to convey the idea that the tourist is solely responsible for his or her choice of off-the-beaten-track destination.

Stefania M Maci

Uploads

Papers by Stefania M Maci

Log In