Elisa Mattiello | University of Pisa (original) (raw)

Papers by Elisa Mattiello

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016

The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevant role played by understat... more The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevant role played by understatement and overstatement in English and Italian political speeches (see also Mattiello 2013), and, on the other hand, to show the persuasion they entail, especially when combined with other figures of speech. The theoretical framework I adopt in the paper is that of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986). The analysis of data selected from online archives and videos of political addresses demonstrates that, in English and Italian political discourse, rhetoric occurs not only in the form of metaphor, but also, and persuasively, in the form of overstatement (especially hyperbolic statement) and understatement. The analysis also shows that, from the speaker’s stance, the two phenomena of over- and understatement are cognitively different, in that the production of overstatement always involves a broadening operation, whereas the creation of understatement may involve either a broadening or a narrowing process, depending on the trope (meiosis, euphemism or litotes) the speaker uses.

Lexique : nouveauté et productivité Type de publication: Revue Directeurs d'ouvrage: Humbley (Joh... more Lexique : nouveauté et productivité Type de publication: Revue Directeurs d'ouvrage: Humbley (John), Sablayrolles (Jean-François) Résumé: Neologica, revue internationale de néologie dirigée par Vincent Balnat et Christophe Gérard, vise à combler une lacune dans le domaine des sciences du langage qui ne s'intéressent qu'épisodiquement ou indirectement à ce phénomène fondamental dans toutes les langues qu'est la néologie. L'étude des néologismes est vaste et doit être conduite sous de multiples angles d'attaque, qui fourniront autant de thèmes pour les numéros à venir. Chaque numéro comprend en effet une partie thématique et une partie varia ainsi que des rubriques comme la bibliographie de la néologie, des comptes rendus, etc. Nombre de pages: 276

Linguistics, 2022

This article studies the role of synthetic-compound families, both formal families and their sema... more This article studies the role of synthetic-compound families, both formal families and their semantic (or rather conceptual) subfamilies, in the analysis of synthetic compounds (SCs). For this purpose, four formal families of English non-Latinate synthetic compounds sharing their second base and three Latinate families have been investigated. Unlike previous approaches ranging from a purely syntactic treatment of SCs to a more lexical treatment, this study aims at providing a novel explanation for these complex formations. First, it argues that SCs have an ambiguous nature, hovering between (a) morphological suffixation of a verb/word group and (b) morphological derivation and subsequent compounding. Second, it emphasizes the importance of compound families and subfamilies in SCs’ formation and interpretation. By combining a corpus-based analysis with a qualitative synchronic and diachronic investigation of seven compound families – namely X-breaker, X-holder, X-killer, X-maker, X-m...

Altre Modernità, 2017

This study explores the semantic area of ‘mistake’ in contemporary English, with a special focus ... more This study explores the semantic area of ‘mistake’ in contemporary English, with a special focus on slang in general English dictionaries (e.g. OED) and dictionaries of modern slang (e.g. Green 2010/2016, Urban Dictionary 1999-2016). While the ‘mistake’ area already abounds in standard lexical items concerning misconceptions , misunderstandings , errors of judgement, gross mistakes , or even blunders , the negative connotations that it entails are even more evident in slang. Slang items designating ‘mistake’ range from regular formations, such as the compound party foul or the derived word floater , to extra-grammatical words, such as clippings (e.g. boob ← booby ), acronyms (e.g. snafu ← situation normal, all fucked up ), reduplicatives (e.g. boo-boo ), and even to rhyming slang (e.g. penny banger for ‘clanger’) (Mattiello 2008, 2013). The origin of these items is often specialised or restricted to small speech communities – e.g. military world, theatre, students’ campus – but thei...

Auteur: Mattiello (Elisa) Résumé: Cet article étudie l'évolution des fractomorphèmes qui devienne... more Auteur: Mattiello (Elisa) Résumé: Cet article étudie l'évolution des fractomorphèmes qui deviennent des éléments productifs disponibles pour créer des mots nouveaux. Il propose une analyse diachronique, s'appuyant sur de gros corpus, de-burger, qui devient un affixe secrétif. Le fractomorphème-burger acquiert un nouveau signifié pour produire des mots nouveaux, indiquant que le passage possible de la créativité à la productivité, et de la morphologie extra-grammaticale à la morphologie marginale, mais encore grammaticale.

Questo studio mette in luce due divergenti tendenze nel discorso politico britannico e italiano. ... more Questo studio mette in luce due divergenti tendenze nel discorso politico britannico e italiano. Da un lato, i politici britannici prediligono strategie linguistiche pacate, moderate, tipiche dell’understatement. Dall’altro lato, i politici italiani tendono a esagerare, usando forme iperboliche ed estreme che caratterizzano l’overstatement. Lo studio, basato sull’analisi di citazioni politiche tratte da raccolte, quotidiani online, programmi televisivi, ecc., ha lo scopo di mostrare: 1) le modalità linguistiche dei due fenomeni e la loro relazione con il linguaggio figurato; 2) le funzioni che essi assolvono e gli effetti che producono; e 3) la loro efficacia in due ambiti culturali diversi, britannico vs italiano. I risultati di questo studio rivelano aspetti interessanti sull’interculturalità che vanno oltre le differenze interlinguistiche. Il popolo anglosassone si sente ben rappresentato dall’atteggiamento pacato dei suoi leader, mentre quello italiano è scisso fra coloro che preferiscono modelli politici ironici, umoristici e non modesti e coloro che privilegiano, al contrario, figure politiche dal linguaggio sottile ed eufemistico.

Pragmatic investigations of negation have hitherto concentrated on syntactic aspects of the langu... more Pragmatic investigations of negation have hitherto concentrated on syntactic aspects of the language, such as the negation of predicate expressions (Hubler, 1987), the negation of the contrary (Hoffmann, 1987) and litotes (Caffi, 1989). However, there are no morphopragmatic studies on affixal negation previous to the present contribution (see Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi, 1994). This paper explores the regular pragmatic effects produced by English negative prefixes (dis-, in-, non-, un-) and by their Italian counterparts (dis-, in-, non-, s-). In both languages, pragmatic meanings are associated with the feature [cautious] when negative derived words are functional to politeness and euphemistic reticence (cf. E. unsuccess vs. flop / It. insuccesso vs. fiasco), and with the feature [detached] when they help the speaker to save his/her own face and, simultaneously, to prevent the hearer’s negative reaction, as in the case of understatement (cf. E. inelegant vs. rude / It. indelicato...

Threads in the Complex Fabric of Language: Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honour of Lavinia Merlini. M. Bertuccelli Papi, A. Bertacca & S. Bruti (eds), 2008

This paper explores the phenomena of English acronyms and initialisms – of the type Aids, FAQ, la... more This paper explores the phenomena of English acronyms and initialisms – of the type Aids, FAQ, laser, SARS or B.B.C., CD, IMHO, OED – which appear intriguing from different perspectives: (1) as cases of extra-grammatical (or expressive) morphology; (2) as instances of complexity in terms of naturalness parameters; (3) as frequent mechanisms in slang formations and jargon; (4) as cases of difficulty in (cross-linguistic) processing and interpretation; (5) as linguistic strategies of discourse economizing and textual efficiency. In this study only points (1) and (2) will be dealt with. Our interest in these phenomena arises from the widely-spread use of acronyms and initialisms as English word-formation mechanisms. Although long neglected or marginalized by grammarians, these mechanisms are increasingly spreading in many areas, from business and industry to science and technology. Since the mid-twentieth century, they have been extensively used to form names of associations/organizati...

Global English Slang: Methodologies and Perspectives. J. Coleman (ed.), 2014

This paper intends to investigate both the influence of English slang on Italian current usage an... more This paper intends to investigate both the influence of English slang on Italian current usage and some innovative aspects introduced by the Italian variety. The assumption from which the paper starts is that the contact between the two lexical varieties is not accidental, in that the semantics, the morphology, and even the phonology of English slang have massively affected Italian slang vocabulary, and inspired the creation of neologisms by analogy with pre-existent patterns. In the past, Giacomelli (1988) suggested that, although the contact between English and Italian slang is undeniable in the case of direct borrowings (flash, freak, pusher) and of some intensifiers (duro, peso, tosto [hard]), the relationship between these two varieties is often accidental. For instance, he claims that the connection between the Italian drug slang words buco, erba, fumo, nero, sniffare and their English counterparts (hole, grass, smoke, black, to sniff) is weak, vague, unnecessary, or even unre...

Rivista di Linguistica. Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2016

The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevance of the notion of analog... more The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevance of the notion of analogy to English word-formation, and, on the other hand, to propose an array of (phonological, morphotactic, and semantic) similarities between analogy-based neologisms and the model words they are based on. The theoretical framework of this paper is Natural Morphology. In particular, we adopt Dressler & Ladányi’s (1998: 35) approach to analogy, with a tripartite subdivision distinguishing surface analogy, created on the model of a unique concrete form, from rule productivity, with a precise abstract pattern described in a rule format, and from analogy via schema, with prototype actual words but no exact pattern. Examples of English creative neologisms of the three types – selected from the online collections Neologisms – New Words in Journalistic Text (1997-2012) and The Rice University Neologisms Database (2004-2014) – are adduced and categorised along scales of similarity between target a...

Walter De Gruyter. Berlin/Boston, 2017

Nowadays many new English words owe their origin and raison d’être to the analogical process, whi... more Nowadays many new English words owe their origin and raison d’être to the analogical process, which transversely applies to a spectrum of neoformations ranging from grammatical and regular neologisms to extra-grammatical and even ungrammatical nonce words. This book explores both surface analogy and analogy via schema in four different fields where neology works at its best, namely, specialised, juvenile, journalistic, and literary language. The predominance of intended neologisms with no overt model in the former area counterbalances the massive incidence of occasionalisms with explicit reference to the model in the latter area. A corpus-based study corroborates these findings. Moreover, offline testing of the acceptability of analogies by native English speakers validates the claims that new target words are preferentially formed after concrete models that also conform to rule patterns, and they are principally accepted when the models are well-known and easily recoverable. The bo...

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE STUDIES, 2017

This paper investigates the popularisation of specialised knowledge via TED (Technology, Entertai... more This paper investigates the popularisation of specialised knowledge via TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Talks. In particular, it explores the linguistic characteristics of talks dated 2010-2015 whose topics involve scientific knowledge. The paper aims to show, on the one hand, the popularising effects of the Internet on scientific discourse and, on the other hand, the contribution of TED to science popularisation and ESP. In particular, it focuses on three aspects of TED Talks: 1) reduced technicality in both content and vocabulary (vs. the specificity of scientific language or jargon), 2) the informal register and conversational or humorous tone (vs. the serious tone of, e.g., medical discourse concerning health risks), and 3) the preference for narrative (vs. informative, expository, or argumentative) text type. In line with popularisation Discourse Analysis, these features contribute to convey scientific knowledge to a wider audience. Hence, they qualify scientific TE...

American English(es): Linguistic and Socio-cultural Perspectives. R. Cagliero & A. Belladelli (eds), 2013

Slang is an elusive phenomenon which has been hitherto studied mainly for its sociological impact... more Slang is an elusive phenomenon which has been hitherto studied mainly for its sociological impact (e.g., Dundes and Schonhorn 1963; Mencken 1967; Olesen and Whittaker 1968; Eble 1996; Munro ed. 1997; Allen 1998; Stenström 2000; Stenström et al. 2002; Adams 2009), but long neglected for its linguistic features (cf. Dumas and Lighter 1978), or marginalised to the irregular facts of the language. Yet the descriptive theory-grounded account of English slang given in Mattiello (2008a) shows that slang has a locus among word-formation mechanisms as well as in the lexicon, and that its pragmatic relevance is vast and intriguing. First, slang formations are analysable in terms of both grammatical (regular and productive) and extra-grammatical (irregular) morphology. Second, the associative relations between slang novel meanings and the meanings associated with the same words in the standard language may be either predictable, because logical and transparent, or unpredictable, unconventional...

Rassegna Italiana Di Linguistica Applicata, 2013

Questo studio mette in luce due divergenti tendenze nel discorso politico britannico e italiano. ... more Questo studio mette in luce due divergenti tendenze nel discorso politico britannico e italiano. Da un lato, i politici britannici prediligono strategie linguistiche pacate, moderate, tipiche dell’understatement. Dall’altro lato, i politici italiani tendono a esagerare, usando forme iperboliche ed estreme che caratterizzano l’overstatement. Lo studio, basato sull’analisi di citazioni politiche tratte da raccolte, quotidiani online, programmi televisivi, ecc., ha lo scopo di mostrare: 1) le modalità linguistiche dei due fenomeni e la loro relazione con il linguaggio figurato; 2) le funzioni che essi assolvono e gli effetti che producono; e 3) la loro efficacia in due ambiti culturali diversi, britannico vs italiano. I risultati di questo studio rivelano aspetti interessanti sull’interculturalità che vanno oltre le differenze interlinguistiche. Il popolo anglosassone si sente ben rappresentato dall’atteggiamento pacato dei suoi leader, mentre quello italiano è scisso fra coloro che preferiscono modelli politici ironici, umoristici e non modesti e coloro che privilegiano, al contrario, figure politiche dal linguaggio sottile ed eufemistico.

... rhym. rhyming S. Afr. South African Sc. Scottish, Scots Sp. Spanish spec. specifically St. E.... more ... rhym. rhyming S. Afr. South African Sc. Scottish, Scots Sp. Spanish spec. specifically St. E. standard English UK United Kingdom US United States usu. usually v verb vbl verbal WFRs Word-formation Rules Page 12. Table of ...

The Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2016

The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevance of the notion of analog... more The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevance of the notion of analogy to English word-formation, and, on the other hand, to propose an array of (phonological, morphotactic, and semantic) similarities between analogy-based neologisms and the model words they are based on. The theoretical framework of this paper is Natural Morphology. In particular, we adopt Dressler & Ladanyi’s (1998: 35) approach to analogy, with a tripartite subdivision distinguishing surface analogy, created on the model of a unique concrete form, from rule productivity, with a precise abstract pattern described in a rule format, and from analogy via schema, with prototype actual words but no exact pattern. Examples of English creative neologisms of the three types, selected from the online collections "Neologisms", "New Words in Journalistic Text" (1997-2012) and "The Rice University Neologisms Database" (2004-2014), are adduced and categorised along scal...

Splinters, combining forms, and secreted affixes are three morpheme (or morphemelike) elements wh... more Splinters, combining forms, and secreted affixes are three morpheme (or morphemelike) elements which are often conflated in the literature on English word-formation. Scholars have differently focused on their morphological origin (i.e. blending, paradigmatic substitution, analogy) or on their semantics (i.e. secretion vs. mere abbreviation) (Warren 1990; Fradin 2000; Mattiello 2007; Bauer et al. 2013). This paper investigates these phenomena as part of paradigmatic morphology, or similarity among words. In particular, the investigation of five case studies (i.e. (a)holic, docu-, -exit, -umentary, -zilla) shows that they are frequently used to create new words and even to produce series, through analogy via schema (cf. Köpcke 1993, 1998). In the paper, diachronic study combined with corpus-based analysis help us 1) categorise these phenomena as ‘marginal’ vs. ‘extra-grammatical’, and as ‘productive’ vs. ‘creative’, and 2) shed some light on their role in the development of morphologi...

Neologica - Lexique: nouveauté et productivité 12: 109-124, 2018

This study deals with the general role of analogy in the formation of new words. Analogical forma... more This study deals with the general role of analogy in the formation of new words. Analogical formation has often been regarded as a creative mechanism that is neither productive nor predictable, i.e. non-rule-governed. However, recent studies show that analogy via schema – i.e. analogy based on a set of concrete words that act as model for novel formations – can give birth to productive series sharing the same splinter (Bauer, Lieber & Plag 2013), combining form (Warren 1990, Mattiello 2017), secreted affix or affix-like form (Fradin 2000). More generally, series are part of paradigmatic morphology, which is based on similarity among words, such as beefburger, cheeseburger, porkburger, vegeburger, and others. This similarity may be viewed as the first step towards regularity, or even towards rule productivity. The paper more specifically investigates the evolution of splinters, or word parts in blends (Lehrer 1996, 2007), into more productive morpheme(-like) elements which are availa...

Textus, 2017

This study investigates the role of figurative language, especially, metaphor and metonymy, in th... more This study investigates the role of figurative language, especially, metaphor and metonymy, in the formation and disambiguation of novel analogy-based compounds. The focus is on surface analogy, i.e. analogy created on the model of a unique concrete form, such as bird cafeteria, after birdhouse, or mouse potato, after couch potato. The data used for the study has been selected from two online collections of neologisms as well as from a dictionary of new English words. The study adopts a Cognitive Linguistics approach to explore the nature of figurative language in the models (i.e. the source words) and the targets (i.e. the new words). The aim is to find out semantic and cognitive correspondences that may help the association of the latter to the former. As a more general aim, this study intends to show the relevance of figuration to the creation of novel analogical compounds.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016

The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevant role played by understat... more The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevant role played by understatement and overstatement in English and Italian political speeches (see also Mattiello 2013), and, on the other hand, to show the persuasion they entail, especially when combined with other figures of speech. The theoretical framework I adopt in the paper is that of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986). The analysis of data selected from online archives and videos of political addresses demonstrates that, in English and Italian political discourse, rhetoric occurs not only in the form of metaphor, but also, and persuasively, in the form of overstatement (especially hyperbolic statement) and understatement. The analysis also shows that, from the speaker’s stance, the two phenomena of over- and understatement are cognitively different, in that the production of overstatement always involves a broadening operation, whereas the creation of understatement may involve either a broadening or a narrowing process, depending on the trope (meiosis, euphemism or litotes) the speaker uses.

Lexique : nouveauté et productivité Type de publication: Revue Directeurs d'ouvrage: Humbley (Joh... more Lexique : nouveauté et productivité Type de publication: Revue Directeurs d'ouvrage: Humbley (John), Sablayrolles (Jean-François) Résumé: Neologica, revue internationale de néologie dirigée par Vincent Balnat et Christophe Gérard, vise à combler une lacune dans le domaine des sciences du langage qui ne s'intéressent qu'épisodiquement ou indirectement à ce phénomène fondamental dans toutes les langues qu'est la néologie. L'étude des néologismes est vaste et doit être conduite sous de multiples angles d'attaque, qui fourniront autant de thèmes pour les numéros à venir. Chaque numéro comprend en effet une partie thématique et une partie varia ainsi que des rubriques comme la bibliographie de la néologie, des comptes rendus, etc. Nombre de pages: 276

Linguistics, 2022

This article studies the role of synthetic-compound families, both formal families and their sema... more This article studies the role of synthetic-compound families, both formal families and their semantic (or rather conceptual) subfamilies, in the analysis of synthetic compounds (SCs). For this purpose, four formal families of English non-Latinate synthetic compounds sharing their second base and three Latinate families have been investigated. Unlike previous approaches ranging from a purely syntactic treatment of SCs to a more lexical treatment, this study aims at providing a novel explanation for these complex formations. First, it argues that SCs have an ambiguous nature, hovering between (a) morphological suffixation of a verb/word group and (b) morphological derivation and subsequent compounding. Second, it emphasizes the importance of compound families and subfamilies in SCs’ formation and interpretation. By combining a corpus-based analysis with a qualitative synchronic and diachronic investigation of seven compound families – namely X-breaker, X-holder, X-killer, X-maker, X-m...

Altre Modernità, 2017

This study explores the semantic area of ‘mistake’ in contemporary English, with a special focus ... more This study explores the semantic area of ‘mistake’ in contemporary English, with a special focus on slang in general English dictionaries (e.g. OED) and dictionaries of modern slang (e.g. Green 2010/2016, Urban Dictionary 1999-2016). While the ‘mistake’ area already abounds in standard lexical items concerning misconceptions , misunderstandings , errors of judgement, gross mistakes , or even blunders , the negative connotations that it entails are even more evident in slang. Slang items designating ‘mistake’ range from regular formations, such as the compound party foul or the derived word floater , to extra-grammatical words, such as clippings (e.g. boob ← booby ), acronyms (e.g. snafu ← situation normal, all fucked up ), reduplicatives (e.g. boo-boo ), and even to rhyming slang (e.g. penny banger for ‘clanger’) (Mattiello 2008, 2013). The origin of these items is often specialised or restricted to small speech communities – e.g. military world, theatre, students’ campus – but thei...

Auteur: Mattiello (Elisa) Résumé: Cet article étudie l'évolution des fractomorphèmes qui devienne... more Auteur: Mattiello (Elisa) Résumé: Cet article étudie l'évolution des fractomorphèmes qui deviennent des éléments productifs disponibles pour créer des mots nouveaux. Il propose une analyse diachronique, s'appuyant sur de gros corpus, de-burger, qui devient un affixe secrétif. Le fractomorphème-burger acquiert un nouveau signifié pour produire des mots nouveaux, indiquant que le passage possible de la créativité à la productivité, et de la morphologie extra-grammaticale à la morphologie marginale, mais encore grammaticale.

Questo studio mette in luce due divergenti tendenze nel discorso politico britannico e italiano. ... more Questo studio mette in luce due divergenti tendenze nel discorso politico britannico e italiano. Da un lato, i politici britannici prediligono strategie linguistiche pacate, moderate, tipiche dell’understatement. Dall’altro lato, i politici italiani tendono a esagerare, usando forme iperboliche ed estreme che caratterizzano l’overstatement. Lo studio, basato sull’analisi di citazioni politiche tratte da raccolte, quotidiani online, programmi televisivi, ecc., ha lo scopo di mostrare: 1) le modalità linguistiche dei due fenomeni e la loro relazione con il linguaggio figurato; 2) le funzioni che essi assolvono e gli effetti che producono; e 3) la loro efficacia in due ambiti culturali diversi, britannico vs italiano. I risultati di questo studio rivelano aspetti interessanti sull’interculturalità che vanno oltre le differenze interlinguistiche. Il popolo anglosassone si sente ben rappresentato dall’atteggiamento pacato dei suoi leader, mentre quello italiano è scisso fra coloro che preferiscono modelli politici ironici, umoristici e non modesti e coloro che privilegiano, al contrario, figure politiche dal linguaggio sottile ed eufemistico.

Pragmatic investigations of negation have hitherto concentrated on syntactic aspects of the langu... more Pragmatic investigations of negation have hitherto concentrated on syntactic aspects of the language, such as the negation of predicate expressions (Hubler, 1987), the negation of the contrary (Hoffmann, 1987) and litotes (Caffi, 1989). However, there are no morphopragmatic studies on affixal negation previous to the present contribution (see Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi, 1994). This paper explores the regular pragmatic effects produced by English negative prefixes (dis-, in-, non-, un-) and by their Italian counterparts (dis-, in-, non-, s-). In both languages, pragmatic meanings are associated with the feature [cautious] when negative derived words are functional to politeness and euphemistic reticence (cf. E. unsuccess vs. flop / It. insuccesso vs. fiasco), and with the feature [detached] when they help the speaker to save his/her own face and, simultaneously, to prevent the hearer’s negative reaction, as in the case of understatement (cf. E. inelegant vs. rude / It. indelicato...

Threads in the Complex Fabric of Language: Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honour of Lavinia Merlini. M. Bertuccelli Papi, A. Bertacca & S. Bruti (eds), 2008

This paper explores the phenomena of English acronyms and initialisms – of the type Aids, FAQ, la... more This paper explores the phenomena of English acronyms and initialisms – of the type Aids, FAQ, laser, SARS or B.B.C., CD, IMHO, OED – which appear intriguing from different perspectives: (1) as cases of extra-grammatical (or expressive) morphology; (2) as instances of complexity in terms of naturalness parameters; (3) as frequent mechanisms in slang formations and jargon; (4) as cases of difficulty in (cross-linguistic) processing and interpretation; (5) as linguistic strategies of discourse economizing and textual efficiency. In this study only points (1) and (2) will be dealt with. Our interest in these phenomena arises from the widely-spread use of acronyms and initialisms as English word-formation mechanisms. Although long neglected or marginalized by grammarians, these mechanisms are increasingly spreading in many areas, from business and industry to science and technology. Since the mid-twentieth century, they have been extensively used to form names of associations/organizati...

Global English Slang: Methodologies and Perspectives. J. Coleman (ed.), 2014

This paper intends to investigate both the influence of English slang on Italian current usage an... more This paper intends to investigate both the influence of English slang on Italian current usage and some innovative aspects introduced by the Italian variety. The assumption from which the paper starts is that the contact between the two lexical varieties is not accidental, in that the semantics, the morphology, and even the phonology of English slang have massively affected Italian slang vocabulary, and inspired the creation of neologisms by analogy with pre-existent patterns. In the past, Giacomelli (1988) suggested that, although the contact between English and Italian slang is undeniable in the case of direct borrowings (flash, freak, pusher) and of some intensifiers (duro, peso, tosto [hard]), the relationship between these two varieties is often accidental. For instance, he claims that the connection between the Italian drug slang words buco, erba, fumo, nero, sniffare and their English counterparts (hole, grass, smoke, black, to sniff) is weak, vague, unnecessary, or even unre...

Rivista di Linguistica. Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2016

The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevance of the notion of analog... more The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevance of the notion of analogy to English word-formation, and, on the other hand, to propose an array of (phonological, morphotactic, and semantic) similarities between analogy-based neologisms and the model words they are based on. The theoretical framework of this paper is Natural Morphology. In particular, we adopt Dressler & Ladányi’s (1998: 35) approach to analogy, with a tripartite subdivision distinguishing surface analogy, created on the model of a unique concrete form, from rule productivity, with a precise abstract pattern described in a rule format, and from analogy via schema, with prototype actual words but no exact pattern. Examples of English creative neologisms of the three types – selected from the online collections Neologisms – New Words in Journalistic Text (1997-2012) and The Rice University Neologisms Database (2004-2014) – are adduced and categorised along scales of similarity between target a...

Walter De Gruyter. Berlin/Boston, 2017

Nowadays many new English words owe their origin and raison d’être to the analogical process, whi... more Nowadays many new English words owe their origin and raison d’être to the analogical process, which transversely applies to a spectrum of neoformations ranging from grammatical and regular neologisms to extra-grammatical and even ungrammatical nonce words. This book explores both surface analogy and analogy via schema in four different fields where neology works at its best, namely, specialised, juvenile, journalistic, and literary language. The predominance of intended neologisms with no overt model in the former area counterbalances the massive incidence of occasionalisms with explicit reference to the model in the latter area. A corpus-based study corroborates these findings. Moreover, offline testing of the acceptability of analogies by native English speakers validates the claims that new target words are preferentially formed after concrete models that also conform to rule patterns, and they are principally accepted when the models are well-known and easily recoverable. The bo...

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE STUDIES, 2017

This paper investigates the popularisation of specialised knowledge via TED (Technology, Entertai... more This paper investigates the popularisation of specialised knowledge via TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Talks. In particular, it explores the linguistic characteristics of talks dated 2010-2015 whose topics involve scientific knowledge. The paper aims to show, on the one hand, the popularising effects of the Internet on scientific discourse and, on the other hand, the contribution of TED to science popularisation and ESP. In particular, it focuses on three aspects of TED Talks: 1) reduced technicality in both content and vocabulary (vs. the specificity of scientific language or jargon), 2) the informal register and conversational or humorous tone (vs. the serious tone of, e.g., medical discourse concerning health risks), and 3) the preference for narrative (vs. informative, expository, or argumentative) text type. In line with popularisation Discourse Analysis, these features contribute to convey scientific knowledge to a wider audience. Hence, they qualify scientific TE...

American English(es): Linguistic and Socio-cultural Perspectives. R. Cagliero & A. Belladelli (eds), 2013

Slang is an elusive phenomenon which has been hitherto studied mainly for its sociological impact... more Slang is an elusive phenomenon which has been hitherto studied mainly for its sociological impact (e.g., Dundes and Schonhorn 1963; Mencken 1967; Olesen and Whittaker 1968; Eble 1996; Munro ed. 1997; Allen 1998; Stenström 2000; Stenström et al. 2002; Adams 2009), but long neglected for its linguistic features (cf. Dumas and Lighter 1978), or marginalised to the irregular facts of the language. Yet the descriptive theory-grounded account of English slang given in Mattiello (2008a) shows that slang has a locus among word-formation mechanisms as well as in the lexicon, and that its pragmatic relevance is vast and intriguing. First, slang formations are analysable in terms of both grammatical (regular and productive) and extra-grammatical (irregular) morphology. Second, the associative relations between slang novel meanings and the meanings associated with the same words in the standard language may be either predictable, because logical and transparent, or unpredictable, unconventional...

Rassegna Italiana Di Linguistica Applicata, 2013

Questo studio mette in luce due divergenti tendenze nel discorso politico britannico e italiano. ... more Questo studio mette in luce due divergenti tendenze nel discorso politico britannico e italiano. Da un lato, i politici britannici prediligono strategie linguistiche pacate, moderate, tipiche dell’understatement. Dall’altro lato, i politici italiani tendono a esagerare, usando forme iperboliche ed estreme che caratterizzano l’overstatement. Lo studio, basato sull’analisi di citazioni politiche tratte da raccolte, quotidiani online, programmi televisivi, ecc., ha lo scopo di mostrare: 1) le modalità linguistiche dei due fenomeni e la loro relazione con il linguaggio figurato; 2) le funzioni che essi assolvono e gli effetti che producono; e 3) la loro efficacia in due ambiti culturali diversi, britannico vs italiano. I risultati di questo studio rivelano aspetti interessanti sull’interculturalità che vanno oltre le differenze interlinguistiche. Il popolo anglosassone si sente ben rappresentato dall’atteggiamento pacato dei suoi leader, mentre quello italiano è scisso fra coloro che preferiscono modelli politici ironici, umoristici e non modesti e coloro che privilegiano, al contrario, figure politiche dal linguaggio sottile ed eufemistico.

... rhym. rhyming S. Afr. South African Sc. Scottish, Scots Sp. Spanish spec. specifically St. E.... more ... rhym. rhyming S. Afr. South African Sc. Scottish, Scots Sp. Spanish spec. specifically St. E. standard English UK United Kingdom US United States usu. usually v verb vbl verbal WFRs Word-formation Rules Page 12. Table of ...

The Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2016

The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevance of the notion of analog... more The main purpose of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the relevance of the notion of analogy to English word-formation, and, on the other hand, to propose an array of (phonological, morphotactic, and semantic) similarities between analogy-based neologisms and the model words they are based on. The theoretical framework of this paper is Natural Morphology. In particular, we adopt Dressler & Ladanyi’s (1998: 35) approach to analogy, with a tripartite subdivision distinguishing surface analogy, created on the model of a unique concrete form, from rule productivity, with a precise abstract pattern described in a rule format, and from analogy via schema, with prototype actual words but no exact pattern. Examples of English creative neologisms of the three types, selected from the online collections "Neologisms", "New Words in Journalistic Text" (1997-2012) and "The Rice University Neologisms Database" (2004-2014), are adduced and categorised along scal...

Splinters, combining forms, and secreted affixes are three morpheme (or morphemelike) elements wh... more Splinters, combining forms, and secreted affixes are three morpheme (or morphemelike) elements which are often conflated in the literature on English word-formation. Scholars have differently focused on their morphological origin (i.e. blending, paradigmatic substitution, analogy) or on their semantics (i.e. secretion vs. mere abbreviation) (Warren 1990; Fradin 2000; Mattiello 2007; Bauer et al. 2013). This paper investigates these phenomena as part of paradigmatic morphology, or similarity among words. In particular, the investigation of five case studies (i.e. (a)holic, docu-, -exit, -umentary, -zilla) shows that they are frequently used to create new words and even to produce series, through analogy via schema (cf. Köpcke 1993, 1998). In the paper, diachronic study combined with corpus-based analysis help us 1) categorise these phenomena as ‘marginal’ vs. ‘extra-grammatical’, and as ‘productive’ vs. ‘creative’, and 2) shed some light on their role in the development of morphologi...

Neologica - Lexique: nouveauté et productivité 12: 109-124, 2018

This study deals with the general role of analogy in the formation of new words. Analogical forma... more This study deals with the general role of analogy in the formation of new words. Analogical formation has often been regarded as a creative mechanism that is neither productive nor predictable, i.e. non-rule-governed. However, recent studies show that analogy via schema – i.e. analogy based on a set of concrete words that act as model for novel formations – can give birth to productive series sharing the same splinter (Bauer, Lieber & Plag 2013), combining form (Warren 1990, Mattiello 2017), secreted affix or affix-like form (Fradin 2000). More generally, series are part of paradigmatic morphology, which is based on similarity among words, such as beefburger, cheeseburger, porkburger, vegeburger, and others. This similarity may be viewed as the first step towards regularity, or even towards rule productivity. The paper more specifically investigates the evolution of splinters, or word parts in blends (Lehrer 1996, 2007), into more productive morpheme(-like) elements which are availa...

Textus, 2017

This study investigates the role of figurative language, especially, metaphor and metonymy, in th... more This study investigates the role of figurative language, especially, metaphor and metonymy, in the formation and disambiguation of novel analogy-based compounds. The focus is on surface analogy, i.e. analogy created on the model of a unique concrete form, such as bird cafeteria, after birdhouse, or mouse potato, after couch potato. The data used for the study has been selected from two online collections of neologisms as well as from a dictionary of new English words. The study adopts a Cognitive Linguistics approach to explore the nature of figurative language in the models (i.e. the source words) and the targets (i.e. the new words). The aim is to find out semantic and cognitive correspondences that may help the association of the latter to the former. As a more general aim, this study intends to show the relevance of figuration to the creation of novel analogical compounds.

This work investigates the entire spectrum of new words which are connected with the Covid-19 pan... more This work investigates the entire spectrum of new words which are connected with the Covid-19 pandemic, ranging from attested neologisms to nonce words, and from new lexemes to new meanings. It offers a multifaceted, all-inclusive model of lexical innovation, which can explain the recent developments of English vocabulary and accommodate its Covid-19 terminology. Neology is especially relevant to the Covid-19 pandemic era, as novel words to refer to new concepts or to convey new meanings are necessary in these unprecedented times.