Università della Svizzera italiana

Contextual frames and their argumentative implications : A case study in media argumentation

Greco Morasso, Sara

In: Discourse studies, 2012, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 197-216

On the basis of a case-study based on the argumentative analysis of news in the press, this paper introduces and discusses strategic manoeuvring with contextual frames. Drawing on the linguistic notion of frame, I introduce the concept of contextual frame to refer to the news context, i.e. the background against which a certain event is presented as a piece of news. I argue that newspapers and...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Family conversations : The relevance of context in evaluating argumentation

Arcidiacono, Francesco ; Pontecorvo, Clotilde ; Morasso, Sara Greco

In: Studies in communications sciences, 2009, vol. 9, no. 2, p. 79-92

This paper investigates how to reconstruct and evaluate argumentation in the context of Italian family conversations. By means of a case study, we show how understanding context is essential for the analytical reconstruction of argumentation. Within conversations at dinnertime, we rely on insights from Conversation and Discourse Analysis in order to interpret context-bound communicative and...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Themen, Thesen und Argumente zur Position des Italienischen in der viersprachigen Schweiz

Christopher Guerra, Sabine ; Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera

In: Studies in communication sciences, 2008, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 67-91

From an empirical point of view, this article aims at analyzing the role of the Swiss press in a language and culture policy debate regarding the changing status of Italian in quadrilingual Switzerland that took place at the beginning of 2005 following the discontinuation of two Italian chairs at Swiss universities. The issue is practically ignored in French- and German-speaking Switzerland,...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Regaining trust through argumentation in the context of the current financial-economic crisis

Palmieri, Rudy

In: Studies in communication sciences, 2009, vol. 9, no. 2, p. 59-78

This paper considers argumentation in the context of the current economic-financial crisis by focusing on the attempt made by UBS bank to retain stakeholders’ confidence. as a case in point, i analyze a press release through which the bank announces important changes in the Board of Directors. the text includes a clearly argumentative aim: convince stakeholders, in particular clients, to...