502790 - VERBAL COMMUNICATION AND THE LANGUAGE OF MEDIA

The first part of the course will be dedicated to the introduction of useful categories for the study of the language from the point of view of its communicative use and will provide the theoretical and general tools to understand the semantic and pragmatic phenomena that characterize it. Attention will focus on the following aspects: lexicon and dictionary; types of words; ambiguity, polysemy, vagueness and homonymy; metaphor and metonymy; relationships between words (synonyms, opposites, etc.); neologisms and linguistic creativity. An in-depth study will concern computer-mediated communication, with attention to the distinction between written and spoken texts. The second part of the course will constitute an introduction to pragmatics, the discipline that studies the uses of language in concrete communicative contexts. Particular attention will be paid to the distinction between what is said and what is implied, to the notions, implicature, presupposition and speech act. The third part of the course will focus on topics in text and socio-linguistics. We will explore what a text is, its constituent characteristics, and the principles that make it effective. We will discuss the linguistic characteristics of different varieties of Italian, with particular attention to the language of digital media. Finally, six seminars will cover the topics of the course in a transversal manner, maintaining a focus on media language and an exercise-based approach.