In the literature, the pragmatic dimension of metaphors has been clearly acknowledged. Metaphors are regarded as having different possible uses, especially pursuing persuasion. However, an analysis of the specific conversational purposes that they can be aimed at achieving in a dialogue and their adequacy thereto is still missing. In this chapter, we will address this issue focusing on the classical distinction between the explanatory and persuasive uses of metaphors, which is, however, complex to draw at an analytical level and often (...) blurred and controversial also from a theoretical point of view. Building on the analysis of explanation in different theories and fields of study, we show how it can be conceived as characterized by a cognitive and a pragmatic dimension, where the transference of understanding is used pragmatically for different dialogical goals - such as informing, making a joint decision, and most importantly persuading. In this sense, the cognitive effects of understanding are not incompatible with a persuasive dialogical purpose. This theoretical proposal will be applied to examples drawn from the medical context, to show how a pragmatic approach to explanation can account for the complexity of the cases that can be found in actual dialogical contexts. (shrink)

This book addresses certain aspects of the religious thought of H.S. Skovoroda (demonology, the struggle against sin, the spiritualisation of worldly time) against the background of Neoplatonism in its Judaic-Christian interpretation and the Byzantine mystic-ascetic tradition. The author proposes an analysis of Skovoroda's dialogues in which the search for Neoplatonist sources is combined with the identification of elements that can be traced to the tripartite breakdown of the spiritual progress of the Christian into praxis, gnosis. This division, typical of the (...) Eastern Church, conceives spiritual life as an ascending path organised in progressive levels. The study of Skovoroda's universe-text yields two constants. The first is an intense interrelation between the Text and the divine Logos (the Biblical word), which, replicating the schema envisioned in the Christianisation of the cosmology of the Timeo, becomes an active architectural component of the same. The second is an image of the world dominated by a vertical/centripetal orientation, which implies the possibility of a return of things to God, the ultimate end of the path leading from the praxis to the theoria. (shrink)

1. Preambolo In qualsiasi conversazione a tavola se provo a chiedere ai commensali se c’è una differenza tra moneta e denaro, dopo una prima perplessità e una certa sorpresa per la domanda, quasi tutti dicono sì, ma poi trovano difficile spiegare in che cosa si distinguano. Un dato però è certo: tutti pensano che una qualche diversità vi sia. Un secondo quesito potrebbe essere invece posto a chi come me ha intrapreso un’indagine per comprendere le caratteristiche e la natura di (...) tale differenz... (shrink)

This article contributes to conversations on hospitality in educational settings, with a focus on higher education and the online context. We integrate Derrida’s ethics of hospitality framework with a focus on practices of hospitality, including its affective and material, embodied dimension. This article offers empirical examples of practices of what we termed ‘virtual academic hospitality’: during a series of online collaborative and cross borders workshops with teachers of English based in the Gaza Strip, we performed academic hospitality through virtual convivial (...) rituals and the sharing of virtual gifts, which are illustrated here. We propose a revision of the concept of academic hospitality arguing that: firstly, academic hospitality is not limited to intellectual conversations; secondly, that the relationship between hospitality and mobility needs to be revised, since hospitality mediated by the technological medium can be performed, and technology may even stretch hospitality towards the unreachable ‘unconditional hospitality’ theorised by Derrida ; and thirdly, that indigenous epistemics, with their focus on the affective, may offer alternative understandings of conviviality within the academy. These points may contribute to the collective development of a new paradigmatic understanding of hospitality, one which integrates Western and indigenous traditions of hospitality, and which includes the online environment. (shrink)

This paper examines the position of international human rights law towards missionary or proselytizing activities with a special focus on the American context. By evaluating UN legal acts such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1960 Arcot Krishnaswami Study and the 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief and the American Convention of Human Rights, it investigates the extent to which such activities fall within the scope of (...) the right to free speech and to freedom of religion for religious organizations. This is exemplified by looking at two Evangelical religious organizations founded for the purpose of luring away groups of believers from their original religious communities: “Mission to Amish People”, targeting the Amish People, and “Jews for Jesus”, aimed at the Jewish community. The clash of one religious community which considers mission a fundamental element of its religion with a religious community who is highly skeptical about mission constitute the extreme test case of the right to free speech and to corporate freedom of religion. Given the highly various importance which mission can play in different religions, the article suggests to solve each case individually by carefully examining the content of each religious doctrine. (shrink)

La philosophie élaborée à Florence par Marsile Ficin dans la seconde moitié du XVe siècle s'est répandue dans les principales cours princières d'Italie, en particulier celle d'Urbin. Etude de l'influence qu'elle exerça sur les lettres, l'architecture, la peinture et les autres arts (la marqueterie notamment) à la cour du duc Frédéric de Montefeltre et de ses successeurs immédiats.

Research has shown that suicide rate in Australia is on the rise and that most people who die by suicide are not in contact with mental health services. They most likely communicate their suicidal thoughts to family members or close friends, whose responses may sound unhelpful and/or dismissive, thus reinforcing suicidal ideation. This national emergency has been tackled via a social media campaign, #YouCan Talk, launched by a government-supported digital platform, BeyondBlue. This article adopts a multimodal discourse analysis approach to (...) investigate how peer support is encouraged and articulated in the context of mental health discourse for suicide prevention. The two case studies selected for analysis from the BeyondBlue platform are the #YouCanTalk social media campaign, designed to teach carers to identify severe depression and effectively respond to suicide warning signs and a sample of posts from a thread for peer support in a monitored online forum devoted to help carers who seek peer advice. Unlike previous research, the article focuses on how pronouns and verbs index interpersonal relations in a systemic-functional perspective as well as other multimodal resources, such as visuals, layout and hyperlinking, to understand how identities are entextualised by both professional health providers and peer carers in digital platforms that address mental health issues. (shrink)

Infant-directed speech, the particular form of spontaneous language observed in interactions between parents and their infants, is a crucial aspect of the mother-infant interaction and an index of the attunement of maternal linguistic input to her infant communicative abilities and needs during dyadic interactions. The present study aimed to explore linguistic and pragmatic features of IDS during mother-infant interactions at 3-month of infant age. The effects of infant, maternal and dyadic factors on IDS were explored. Results evidenced few differences between (...) the groups on IDS linguistic characteristics. Moreover, observing the interaction of birth status and dyadic co-regulation, full-term mothers varied their IDS pragmatic features according to the quality of co-regulation while preterm mothers did not. Parenting stress was associated to specific linguistic IDS features independently from the birth status. Findings are discussed underling implications for the study of preterm dyads interactions and the importance to consider the interplay of several factors in affecting the quality of IDS. (shrink)

This paper investigates the emotive (or expressive) meaning of words commonly referred to as “loaded” or “emotive,” which include slurs, derogative or pejorative words, and ethical terms. We claim that emotive meaning can be reinterpreted from a pragmatic and argumentative perspective, which can account for distinct aspects of ethical terms, including the possibility of being modified and its cancellability. Emotive meaning is explained as a defeasible and automatic or automatized evaluative and intended inference commonly associated with the use of specific (...) terms, which can be represented and assessed considering its logical structure and its defeasibility conditions. This automatic inference is conceived as part of the connotation of an ethical term, and is not necessarily stable. By means of quasi-definitions, it is possible to modify the emotive meaning while maintaining the descriptive one, automaticizing the inferences drawn from an ethical word. Through examples drawn from the recent US presidential campaign, we show how re-contextualization and emotive contexts can affect emotive meaning. (shrink)

Metaphors can be used as crucial tools for reaching shared understanding, especially where an epistemic imbalance of knowledge is at stake. However, metaphors can also represent a risk in intercultural or cross-cultural interactions, namely in situations characterised by little or deficient common ground between interlocutors. In such cases, the use of metaphors can lead to misunderstandings and cause communicative breakdowns. The conditions defining when metaphors promote, and hinder understanding have not been analyzed in detail, especially in intracultural contexts. This study (...) proposes an analysis of metaphors identified within an Italian corpus of diabetes care interviews. Through a coding scheme capturing the types and the probative weights of the linguistic evidence that can be used to detect misunderstandings, the communicative effectiveness of metaphors is indirectly assessed. The quantitative and qualitative analyses show a positive correlation between metaphor use and problematic understanding. A more detailed scrutiny of the interlocutors’ roles and topics of the metaphors points out that most of the problematic metaphors are used by patients, while most of the problematic ones used by providers concern non-clinical matters. These results can be explained as resulting from incorrect presumptions of common ground between the interlocutors. (shrink)