Textual Linguistics and Didactics

1) Knowledge and understanding

By adopting principles and methods of text linguistics (textuality requirements; procedural approach; pragmatic competence), rhetoric, and stylistics, the course aims to provide the conceptual and methodological tools to understand, and then analyze and interpret texts

2) Ability to apply knowledge and understanding

Analysis will be proposed in the light of language and text teaching adapted to new cognitive dynamics and the complexity of the contemporary sociocultural context.

3) Autonomy of judgment.

The rhetorical, stylistic and pragmatic-textual knowledge and skills acquired in analyzing and interpreting texts are specifically aimed at enhancing students' critical and autonomous judgment and developing problem solving skills, also in view of their professional future

4) Communication skills

The training activity of the course involves group work and exposition in front of the class of the results of the text analysis work in order to verify and deepen the results in seminar discussion, to convey interpersonal skills and public speaking skills

5) Learning skills

Specific objectives are:

- developing socio-professional skills aimed at transmitting an advanced competence of the grammatical, lexical and syntactic structures of the Italian language and of the most relevant written and oral uses;

- providing cultural and methodological coordinates for teaching Italian: historical and ethnocultural framework, sociolinguistic bases, grammatical models and textual dimension;

- enhancing a conscious metalinguistic competence, overcoming the automatisms in the study of grammar;

- introducing lithe but functional frames for the linguistic and rhetorical analysis of various textual typologies, in which the literary text maintains the its fundamental role of raising awareness of the historical-linguistic value of tradition.

The approach adopted will be "experimental" and interactive in order  to make the study of textual analysis a moment of exciting discovery of the extraordinary potential of language. Through a careful analysis of the linguistic materiality of the texts, students will be sensitized to practice an innovative didactics, rediscovering and therefore applying with full awareness those "rules" of Italian language that they have internalized in their linguistic experience, which it is now necessary to make explicit.

In introductory lessons and in seminar activities students will follow the construction of “discovery” paths that can be therefore re-used, on the basis of models and instruments of interpretation of texts based on linguistics and typology of texts, as well as on rhetorics and style.

Advanced knowledge of cultural and literary history in a European perspective; theoretical-methodological knowledge of the history of the Italian language; elements of general linguistics, Italian linguistics and Italian or Romance philology; elements of stylistics and rhetoric.

Active and passive knowledge of the grammatical, lexical and syntactic structures of the Italian language (ability to analyse grammar, logic and the period); 

Reflective knowledge of the communicative uses of the Italian language and their stylistic distribution; 

Ability to paraphrase texts.

Lack of knowledge of the prerequisites may jeopardise passing the exam. It is recommended to attend the tutoring activities that will take place during office hours.

A.-B. Historical grammar and history of the language as a teaching aid to understand structural and cultural continuity between Latin and Italian on one hand, and Italian and other cultural languages on the other hand. Textual linguistics and rhetorics as verbal art and technique: models for text’s analysis, linguistics and typology of the texts, metrics, rhetorics, stylistics, philology. 

C. Teaching Italian as a first or a second language: historical, sociolinguistic grammatical and textual perspectives.

Language ideas and Texts Linguistics (1 CFU). 

Testi

-       L. Serianni, Storia dell’italiano nell’Ottocento, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2013, capp. II-III (pp. 27-42), capp. V-IX (pp. 59-138), cap XI (pp. 153- 162), capp. XIII-XIV (pp. 169-204), cap. XVI (pp. 233-252) (totale pp. 157).

- M. Palermo, Linguistica testuale dell’italiano, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2013, Capp. IV-VII, pp. 75-258 (totale pp. 139)

B. Linguistic analysis of texts (4 CFU).

Texts: 

- B. Mortara Garavelli, Le figure retoriche. Effetti speciali della lingua, Milano, Bompiani, 1993, pp. 180.

- Luca Serianni, Le varianti fonomorfologiche de «I promessi sposi» 1840 nel quadro dell’italiano ottocentesco, «Studi linguistici italiani», in Saggi di storia linguistica italiana, Napoli, Morano, 1989, pp.141-213 (pp. 72)

- C. Giovanardi – P. Trifone, La lingua del teatro, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2015, pp. 240.

- Analisi guidata di testi in prosa della tradizione letteraria italiana.

C. Teaching Italian language (1 CFU). 

Texts:

- C. Lavinio, Testi a scuola, Firenze, Franco Cesati, 2021, pp. 142 

- E. Ardissino, Imparare l’italiano L2/LS con testi teatrali (https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/promoitals/article/view/635), pp. 13.

For students who don’t  have the prerequisites for studying the subject, or for the purposes of the activities foreseen by the course, it is advisable to consult:

-       L. Serianni, Grammatica italiana. Italiano comune e lingua letteraria, Torino, UTET Università, 2005, pp. 754

-       O. Reboul, Introduzione alla retorica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2002, pp. 192 (pp. 1-165; pp. 183-210).

- L. Cisotto, Didattica del testo, Roma, Carocci, 2015, pp. 352. 

The test will consist of the paraphrasing and linguistic-textual and rhetorical-stylistic analysis of prose texts according to a predefined grid, to be set out and discussed in seminar form, and to be set out in a written paper to be handed in at least 8 days before the final examination.

FINAL EXAMINATION

The examination will consist of two papers, one written and one oral.

Written examination:

1) written paper (to be handed in at least 8 days before the exam roll call), reporting the linguistic-textual and rhetorical-stylistic analysis of the texts in prose and poetry that the student will have carried out according to a predefined grid; students who have taken the in itinere exam must also hand in the paper.

Oral test:

2) an interview on the thesis and parts of the textbooks, distributed as follows: module A = Serianni; module B: Giovanardi-Trifone in full; module C: Lavinio and Ardissino in full.

The assessment of the final examination will take into account the candidate's mastery of the contents and skills acquired, linguistic accuracy and lexical propriety, as well as his or her ability to argue.

- Rhetorical analysis (figures of sound, word, sense, thought, subject)

- Morphological analysis (marked forms, as indicated in the grid (e.g. he subject, only when preceding the verb; had/had; this vs. this, etc.)

- Lexical analysis (colloquialisms, aulicisms, technicalisms, forestierisms, regionalisms, Tuscanisms

- Phraseology (proverbs, idioms, sentences, etc.)

- Syntactic analysis (relationship between parataxis and hypotaxis)

- Interpretative synthesis and didactic functionality of textual analysis (identifying linguistic and rhetorical-stylistic constants, and attempting interpretative conclusions that can be made didactically functional)