Marta Zampa

Do we still need an army like in the First World War? An argumentative analysis of a television debate on abolishing compulsory military service in Switzerland

In Swiss semi-direct democracy, citizens are often summoned to the polls. To vote reasonably, they need to be properly informed. The media therefore have the responsibility to provide them with arguments for and against each issue of voting. Here, we focus on argumentation in a television ‘civic debate’ about abolishing compulsory military service. To provide a unified and integrated overview of the debate dynamics, we combine the Dialogical Model of Argumentation and the Argumentum Model of Topics, which share a similar emphasis on the discursive dimension of argumentation. This analysis underlines the importance of linguistic and communicative resources and procedures, without neglecting the macro socio-political environment of the debate.

On the production of a multimodal news item : an argumentative approach

Abstract The present paper deals with the production of a multimodal news item from an ethnographic perspective, aiming at fully understanding the role played by news values, i.e. shared criteria for news selection, in newsroom argumentation. The news item we consider is the picture news from Corriere del Ticino, the main Italian-language newspaper in Switzerland. As the Italian name fototesto says, this news item combines a verbal and a photographical component, presenting the journalists with particular challenges in its selection. To shed light on this production process, we take as a case study a picture news on eco-friendly heat distribution and the editorial conference leading to its choice, which took place on January 24, 2013. We analyze the interaction from the viewpoint of argumentation theory, combining Pragma-Dialectics (van Eemeren and Grootendorst) and the Argumentum Model of Topics (Rigotti and Greco Morasso 2009, 2010, under review), and unravel the reasons behind choices in content and form taken collaboratively by the journalists.

“Che paura avete voi?" : collocations of it. paura in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron

This paper presents an analysis of the collocations of it. paura (fear) in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. The main goal of the research was to find out how this emotion is conceptualized in Boccaccio’s masterpiece, which is considered a milestone of Italian literature. Following the theory of conceptual metaphors and linguistic research on emotions, as well as a qualitative approach to collocation, it is shown that paura in the Decameron is depicted as an independent and powerful entity that rules the subject experiencing it.