Linguistics

The course focuses on the conceptual apparatus regarding linguistic studies based on authentic data. Emphasis is placed on the role of linguistic corpora for language analysis with the support of computational tools. The course highlights methodologies for developing language teaching materials in advanced learning environments. Course topics: what is a corpus, how to use it and the kind of information it provides; parameters for corpus design; representativeness; syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis; concordances, collocations, and lexical association indexes; annotations; electronic texts, coding, mark-up format, and conversion methods; how to collect electronic texts; corpus access and text retrieval; case study: the corpora CORIS/CODIS, BoLC e DiaCORIS; web as corpus; laboratory: querying a tagged corpus; procedures for reading concordances; introduction to machine learning; part-of-speech tagging–parsing and formal grammars; lexical semantics–wordnets; laboratory of computational linguistics.

This course explores aspects of the English noun phrase, namely quantifiers, and aspects of the English verb phrase, i.e. modality. Text-based analyses enable students to acquire a better understanding of these particular areas of studies and become more proficient in translation.

In this course students learn, for example, that using language in a certain way may result in a more advantageous outcome for the speaker and by contrast, that certain other ways of using language may be considered law-breaking. No prior knowledge of linguistics is required but having some competence in another language in addition to English is an advantage. This course is interdisciplinary and students learn about the ways in which a number of disciplines are related to one another, including linguistics, the law, criminology, and psychology. 

This course explores how humans represent, comprehend, and produce language. Students examine core properties of mental representations and processes involved in understanding language, and how linguistic processes unfold in real time. Topics ranging from speech perception and word recognition to sentence and discourse comprehension. Students learn the basics of experimental design and core experimental techniques.

The course gives a basic understanding of concepts within the field of semantics and pragmatics using problem oriented exercises to highlight different traditions, including structural-typological semantics, logical semantics, cognitive semantics, and pragmatic theories of meaning. The course addresses philosophical issues such as: What is meaning? What is the relationship between meaning, world, and mind? Emphasis is placed on more linguistic issues such as: Do different languages have different systems of meaning? What is the relationship between the meaning and structure of language? Is meaning dependent on context?

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale Program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course engages the role of language—both as a symbolic code and as a material tool—in the spreading of late/neoliberal capitalism. While most analyses of the world’s current order tend to focus on political and economic aspects, this course explores how certain ways of speaking and using language may partake in producing capitalist forms of reasoning and practical conduct. Throughout the course, students develop tools to analyze the discursive and semiotic forms that characterize our everyday lives. Students learn to view linguistic interactions and graphic artifacts (i.e., street signage, typefaces, letterforms, brands, logos, and other types of graphic media) as socially and politically meaningful semiotic technologies that shape our worlds. Students learn how to analyze new protocols of discourse that characterize our everyday lives: the customer satisfaction survey, the service encounter, the checklist, the logbook, the flowchart, the electoral mission statement, the training session, etc. Despite their apparent ordinariness, these discursive genres/textual artifacts are key for the production of the self-improving and self-reflexive subjects required by the regimes of moral accountability and the forms of market rationality that characterize our contemporary moment. While reading ethnographic analyses of specific technologies of discourse, students engage broader questions: How pervasive are neoliberal structures of practice? To what extent can neoliberalism be represented as an overarching and coherent global trend generated by the homogenizing forces of Western Capitalism? Is our moral and affective experience completely shaped by the extension of economic rationality to all areas of life? The course shows how, within a regime of advanced capitalism, life and labor unfold through complex interplays of semiotic codes, affective registers, and material objects.