ITALIAN LINGUISTICS II

Introduction to textual linguistics (Italian).

This course is part of the Bachelor Degree in Humanities (Lettere), curriculum of Science of the literary text and communication.The course aims to present the main features of contemporary Italian, with particular attention to textuality (coherence, cohesion, deixis, intertextuality, etc.) and its role in communicative action. By this way, the course provides the students with a theoretical framework they can apply to the fields of textual analysis and communication studies.

By the end of the course students are expected to be able to:
- acquire the main principles of textual linguistics, with regard to the specific features of the Italian language;
- be aware of the socio-linguistic contexts of use of Italian and of the dynamics of variation, especially as far as the diaphasic and diamesic axes are concerned;
- make use of the proper linguistic terminology concerning textual linguistics and discourse analysis;
- know the basic bibliographical instruments of the discipline;
- analyse Italian texts belonging to different typologies and textual genres;
- study critically the reference texts, by hierarchizing information and allowing notions to interact mutually.

Students should have already attended the first module of Italian Linguistics: they will not be allowed to enroll for the exam if they have not passed Italian Linguistics I. The final result of Italian Linguistics (12 credits) is the average of the evaluation of the two exams.

The course introduces the students to the textual linguistics and to its main categories. Although the course focuses on contemporary Italian, we will give proper historical to evaluate the formation of some textual genres. After illustrating the areas covered by the discipline, we will explore the properties of the text. Different topics and levels of textual analysis will then be taken into consideration. Among the topics of the course are: the concepts of coherence and cohesion; the notions of textual reference, anaphora, cataphora and deixis; the notion of linguistic act and the basic elements of conversational analysis.

Massimo Palermo, Linguistica testuale dell'italiano, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2013.

For NON ATTENDING students also: Angela Ferrari, Linguistica del testo: principi, fenomeni, strutture, Roma, Carocci, 2017 (just chapters 5 and 12).

Students will have to pass an oral exam of 20-30 minutes. During the exam, students should demonstrate their knowledge of the topics discussed in class and illustrated in the reference texts. In particular, students are expected to demonstrate their knowledge of the main notions and terminology related to textual linguistics. They should also be able to analyse a text chosen from the handouts provided by the teacher.

Frontal lessons; all the texts discussed in class will be available on the e-learning platform moodle.unive.it.

Italian

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