MASS MEDIA SEMIOTICS AND LINGUISTICS

According to the Dublin descriptors, students, at the end of the course, will demonstrate:

1. knowledge and understanding.

The course aims to provide students with advanced tools to analyze semiotic, pragmalinguistic, sociolinguistic structures of modern Italian, in relation to media textuality.

2. ability to apply knowledge and understanding

By adopting principles and methods of Italian linguistics (procedural approach; metalinguistic and diaphasic competence) and stylistics, the course aims to offer the conceptual and methodological tools to understand and then analyze texts on the phono-morphological; morphosyntactic; semantic-lexical; syntactic-discursive levels

It also offers skills and strategies necessary to code complex and composite texts in the different fields of media communication.

3. autonomy of judgement

The metalinguistic, stylistic and pragmatic-textual knowledge and skills acquired to understand and analyze texts are aimed at enhancing students' capacity for critical and autonomous judgement, and at developing problem solving skills, also in view of their professional future

4. communication skills

The training activity of the course involves interactive work in class on the guided analysis of texts in order to transmit relational skills and public speaking abilities

5. ability to carry out research autonomously.

Interactive approach: identifying and analyzing semiotic, linguistic and stylistic structures of various texts (spoken text, audiovisual texts, written texts)

Principles of General Semiotics and Basic Elements of Text Semiotics and Linguistics; Trends of contemporary Italian Language; Diachronic and sociolinguistic variations of the language in relation to media varieties. Mass-media Languages and Texts with regard to both analysis/decodification and construction/codification processes.

Module A

1.General semiotic principles
2. Propp and Greimas Theories

3. Claude Lévi-Strauss and the structures of Myth.
4. Narrative grammar (Greimas)
5. Text analysis: semiotic structures, pragmalinguistic structures
7. Discourse analysis

8. The concepts isotopy, the actantial model the narrative program
9. Semiotic units and linguistic models
10. Semiotic and pragmalinguistic structures
11. Umberto Eco’s Theories
12. Textual principles (De Beaugrande-Dressler)
13. Jurij Lotman

14. Performing arts and semiotic principles
15. Visual arts and languages
16. Meaning and communicative structures.

17. Socio-semiotic Theories.

18. De Kerkhove
19. Gérard Genette and the literary text
20. The advertising text

Module B
1. Communicative directions and text types

2. Peter Koch: theoretical concept of language of immediacy (Nähesprache) vs. language of distance (Distanzsprache)

3. Italian language: varieties

4. Neo standard Italian

5. Journalism: pragmalinguistic principles

6. Crossmediality and news

7. Tv texts

8. Textual types and tv formats

9. Radio and tv languages

10. Web texts

11. Narrative structures and tv series

12. Texual and pragmalinguistic analysis

13. Italian movies and textual analysis

14. Neorealism and Italian movies

15. Diatopic varieties of Italian (tv and movie texts)

16. Children and television

17. Old and new tv programs for children

18. Instagram languages

19. Detective stories in Italy (semiotic and linguistic analysis)

20. Tv series

Module A - Principles of Semiotics and Textual linguistics.

Text:

M.P. Pozzato (2011), Semiotica del testo. Metodi, autori, esempi, Roma, Carocci, pp. 15-296.

Module B - Italian language and mass media: linguistic structures and texts

Texts:

. Palermo, Italiano scritto 2.0, Roma, Carocci, 2017, pp.15-130

- R. Gualdo, L’italiano dei giornali, Roma, Carocci, 2007, pp. 11-139)

- R. Librandi, L’italiano: storia, strutture, usi, Roma, Carocci, 2021

- R. Sardo, C’era una volta la tv per ragazzi… Contenuti narrativi e modelli linguistici web/televisivi per i digitali nativi, «Lingue e culture dei media», vol. 2, n. 1, 2018, pp. 1-57 (rivista open access on line)

- M. Dota, Una fotografia vale più di mille parole? Fenomenologia linguistica dello Storytelling giovanile in Instagram, «Lingue e culture dei media», v. 3, nn. 1-2, 2019, https://doi.org/10.13130/2532-1803/12391

- R. Sardo, Colorito locale” e coscienza metalinguistica nei gialli di Santo Piazzese e di Domenico Seminerio, «Italica Wratislaviensia», vol. 11, n. 2, 2020: La letteratura siciliana. Studi letterari, linguistici e traduttologici, a cura di G. La Rosa e J. Łukaszewicz, Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, pp. 73-95 (journal open access on line)