Faculty of Arts School of Languages and Linguistics

Amy Sinclair
The University of Melbourne

PhD confirmation talk

Lucrezia Marinella's Essortationi alle donne et a gli altri and the discoursal construction of an early modern self

My research project conducts a study of the Venetian writer, Lucrezia Marinella's Essortationi alle donne et a gli altri, se a loro saranno a grado (1645) with a focus on analysing the text for evidence of the author's discoursal construction of self. An analytical framework is developed which draws on contemporary theories on the construction of identities in and through discourse, and contemporary models for categorising the myriad of ways in which writers write themselves into texts. Central to the textual analysis is my argument in favour of a reading of the Essortationi as a contribution to a broader literary tradition which is characterised by paradox and ambiguity in authorial self-presentation. This contention is supported by significant textual and intertextual clues as well as the nature of the academic and literary milieu from which the text emerged.

Viewing the text in this light raises questions about inwardness, authorial identity, agency and deliberateness in self-presentation, and how gender and genre inflect a writer's engagement with these issues. It is hoped that in shedding some light on these questions through my analysis of the Essortationi, the study will have broader implications for our understanding of early modern selves, their construction and representation in discourse.

Friday, 18 May 11 am - 12 noon

Room 506, Babel Building, The University of Melbourne

Prof Tim McNamara
The University Of Melbourne

At Last: Assessment and English as a Lingua Franca

The notion of English as a lingua franca has far-reaching implications for assessment. First, ELF assessment poses challenges for the conceptualization of ELF communication itself, as it involves a proficiency dimension. Not all ELF users are equally communicatively successful. What tasks in ELF is a person capable of, and what are they not? How can we describe a continuum of increasing ability in this area, in order to distinguish the ELF communication abilities of different speakers? Second, and more importantly, ELF assessment involves a radically new construct, and the potential changes to assessment resulting from this represent as revolutionary a change as those triggered by the communicative movement some 40 years ago. Not only is the competence of the native speaker no longer a relevant benchmark for performance, as noted by Seidlhofer (2003) and Jenkins (2006), but the very nature of ELF communication requires us to conceptualize less narrowly the capacities of the speaker likely to make ELF communication more or less successful. This suggests that it may be necessary for us to revisit what Hymes called 'ability for use' in defining the relative ability of ELF users. The exclusion of ability for use in the models of communicative competence in Applied Linguistics proposed by Canale and Swain (1980) and Bachman (1990) ensured the continuation of the structuralist orientation of language teaching within the communicative movement, and represented a lost opportunity. At last we have a chance to embrace a richer model of communication underlying teaching and assessment, a chance we must not miss.

The argument of the paper will be illustrated by examples drawn from assessment in workplace settings, especially aviation and medicine, as well as assessments guided by the most powerful of the current conservative frameworks, that of the CEFR, which it will be argued represents an impediment to progress in this area.

Friday 18th May 2pm

Room 407, Babel Building, The University of Melbourne

Rosemary Billington
The University of Melbourne

Phonetics and Phonology of Lopit: Vowels and Tone
confirmation talk

Friday, 18 May, 11 am

Room 407, Babel Building, The University of Melbourne

Dr Robert Buch
University of New South Wales

Melbourne-Monash German Seminar Series
Unförmigkeit. Hans Blumenbergs Arbeit am Höhlenmythos
(Talk in German)

So sehr Hans Blumenbergs monumentales Werk Leser auffordert, sich auf es einzulassen, so sehr hat es die Tendenz, sie schlichtweg zu überfordern, durch seinen Umfang wie seine Gelehrsamkeit, die unterschiedlichen Register und Diskurse, in denen es sich bewegt, und schließlich die intellektuelle Dichte und Prägnanz seiner Argumente. Blumenbergs Texte inspirieren und schüchtern ein. Sie laden ein zu unvergleichlichen Parcours durch die Geschichte des Denkens und seiner Metaphern. Aber diese Parcours sind fast immer solche durch Labyrinthe, in denen sich zurechtzufinden alles andere als selbstverständlich ist. Eine Probe auf die Lesbarkeit von Hans Blumenberg unternimmt dieser Vortrag anhand seines letzten Buchs Höhlenausgänge, in dem Blumenberg die Rezeption und Transformation des platonischen Höhlengleichnis in unserer literarischen und philosophischen Tradition nachzeichnet. Gegen den philosophischen Aufruf zum Auszug aus der Höhle setzt das Buch unsere tiefsitzenden Höhlenwünsche in ihr Recht. Besonderer Anlaß zum Nachdenken wird das Verhältnis des anthropologischen Rahmens von Blumenbergs Überlegungen zu den metaphorologischen Einzelstudien, die sich kaum in diesen Rahmen zu fügen scheinen.

Friday, 18 May, 3.45 – 5.15 pm

Room 506, Babel Building, The University of Melbourne

Peter Hurst

The formation of reciprocal constructions

Completion talk

Reciprocal constructions (e.g., "They understand each other") in the world's languages vary wildly in their formation and are associated with highly unusual syntactic behaviour. Within the literature, they are for the most part categorised according to their morphosyntactic expression – that is, the manner in which they are formed, whether by some sort of phrase (as in English and Icelandic), via verbal morphology (e.g., Swahili and Malagasy) or by some other means. However, many aspects of the syntactic (and semantic) behaviour of these constructions cross-cut this typological categorisation, meaning that constructions that are very different in their expression may behave similarly (e.g., Icelandic and Malagasy), and constructions that appear almost identical (e.g., Swahili and Malagasy) can behave very differently in wider syntactic environments. I demonstrate that a host of seemingly unconnected properties associated with these constructions can only be understood if we look beyond their morphosyntactic expression and determine how an asymmetric predicate can be made to describe a symmetric situation. Ultimately I identify five reciprocation strategies, many of which may have the same morphosyntactic expression, but all of which have profound effects on the syntax of the construction in wider contexts. I show that this provides us with a more enlightened approach to the range of reciprocal constructions and their properties in the world's languages; and provides a unified account for a variety of apparently unrelated phenomena. This talk is intended to be accessible to non-syntacticians and only the most essential and interesting elements of syntactic theory are presented.

Friday, 25 May, 3.15pm

Room 506 Babel Building, The University of Melbourne

Dr Dino Bressan
The University of Melbourne

An historian's lot is not a happy one: a war crime trial in Italy in 1945 and its ramifications

Abstract: An historian's lot (40kb pdf)

Friday, 25 May, 3.45 – 5.15 pm

Room 407, Babel Building, The University of Melbourne

Dr Roberta Trapè
University of Florence

Imaging Italy Through the Eyes of Contemporary Australian Travellers (1990‐2010)

Abstract: Imaging Italy (40kb pdf)

Friday, 3 August, 3.30 ‐ 5pm

Room 506, Babel Building, The University of Melbourne

Mary Dalrymple,
Oxford University

Title: TBA

Friday, August 24th, 3.15pm

room 407, Babel Building, The University of Melbourne

Celeste Rodriguez Louro
The University of Western Australia

Quotatives down under: Be like in cross-generational Australian English Speech

Abstract: Quotatives Down Under (100kb pdf)

Friday, August 31st, 3.15pm

Room 407, Babel Building, The University of Melbourne