Books

New book: Stefania Cicillini, The Language Factor in English-Medium Instruction (EMI). A Longitudinal Study of Students’ Language Gains, Roma, Carocci, 2025

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This volume deals with a crucial, but underestimated, dimension of English-medium instruction (EMI) in higher education, namely the students’ language experience and the improvement in English proficiency, the latter being one of the key motivating factors to opt for EMI. The mixed-method case study presented in this volume is a longitudinal investigation of the participants’ language progress, spanning over two academic years. Although English language outcomes are neither mentioned in the definitions of EMI nor in the courses’ syllabi, indeed, the EMI experience provides a large amount of language input for students, which is both assimilated consciously and partly as a result of incidental language learning. On reviewing previous literature on EMI, this book addresses some key questions such as the impact of EMI on the students’ English skills, the increase of proficiency while focused on subject-oriented activities and in particular whether English improvement is voluntary or incidental. The data retrieved from questionnaires and language tests administered to one-hundred medical students enrolled in an Italian university provide valuable insights into the language factor in EMI, which may be usefully exploited and extended to other higher educational contexts.  Stefania Cicillini, The Language Factor in English-Medium Instruction (EMI). A Longitudinal Study of Students’ Language Gains, Roma, Carocci, pp. 208 ISBN: 9788829024292, Pp. 208 

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New Book: Elena Mattei, The Language of Persuasion on Instagram. A Systemic Functional Approach to Multimodal Tourism Discourse, Routledge, 2025

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This book offers a systematic, interdisciplinary investigation into the language of persuasion in contemporary tourism discourse, with a focus on English-language travel boards’ use of Instagram and official websites. Drawing on Corpus Linguistics and Systemic Functional Linguistics, it examines how linguistic and visual resources are strategically deployed to construct idealized representations of destinations and evoke positive emotional responses. Through a multimodal analysis, the volume explores recurring linguistic patterns, the role of platform-specific dissemination, and how discourse constructs power dynamics between destinations and prospective tourists. By combining empirical methods with critical discourse and sociological perspectives, the book sheds light on how emotionally charged, consumer-oriented narratives may reinforce broader socioeconomic inequalities and contribute to unsustainable travel practices. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing debates on digital persuasion and literacy, media framing, and the ideological function of tourism communication, recommending approaches to integrate data-driven, highly persuasive strategies and eco-sensitive narratives. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in discourse analysis, digital communication, tourism studies, marketing, and linguistics, as well as professionals interested in the mechanisms behind strategic, promotional narratives and their potential impact on social and environmental sustainability. Elena Mattei, The Language of Persuasion on Instagram. A Systemic Functional Approach to Multimodal Tourism Discourse. Routledge  ISBN 9781032937489   288 Pages 44 B/W Illustrations

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New Publication: Communicating Medical Science in the Digital Age: Culture, Knowledge, Expertise, Practices edited by G. Tessuto, S. M. Maci, M. J. Zerbe, Cambridge Scholars, 2025

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Communicating Medical Science in the Digital Age: Culture, Knowledge, Expertise, Practicesedited by G. Tessuto, S. M. Maci, M. J. Zerbe, Cambridge Scholars, June 2025 The rapid development of the Internet and social media platforms hastransformed the landscape of medical science communication where avariety of societal stakeholders, including the research academy,healthcare professionals, policymakers, and patients, increasingly turn tothe readily usable functionalities of online information and knowledgeplatforms. This transformation has had a significant impact on digitalcommunication within the medical academy and the healthcare sector asa whole. Opportunities are spawning an increasingly diverse digitalecosystem of less formal practices of medical scholarly communicationon web and social media platforms (research blogs, tweets, newspaperarticles, press interviews, ResearchGate, WikiPathways, info-graphicsand video-abstracts), making the scientific process more democratic andresponsive to societal needs and fostering ‘open’, rapid scientificcommunication between researchers, citizens, and other societal actors.This book brings together academics and practitioners from the area oflinguistics and other fields to critically discuss and rethink emergingtrends and variations in medical science communication models whereculture, knowledge, expertise, and identity are played out, contributing tothe discursive study of texts and genres that matter to internal and externalprocesses and practices of medical science communication This book is part of a series. View the full series, “Medical Discourse and Communication”, here. ISBN: 1-0364-4566-6 ISBN13: 978-1-0364-4566-9 Pages: 398 Cambridge Scholars Publishing https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-0364-4566-9

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Esterino Adami, Postcolonial Stylistics, Routledge, 2025, pp 242. ISBN: 9781032740898 (paperback/hardback/ebook)

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https://www.routledge.com/Postcolonial-Stylistics/Adami/p/book/9781032740898 This accessible introduction to postcolonial stylistics looks at the shared aims of stylistics and postcolonial studies and illustrates how to apply the analytical and theoretical tools of stylistics to a selection of literary and non-literary texts from a range of English-speaking postcolonial contexts. Structured around the five keywords of Language, Identity, Belonging, History, and Ecology, the book: Comprehensive in its coverage and assuming no prior knowledge of the topics considered, the book adopts an interactive and activity-based approach to develop readers’ understanding of linguistic structures and forms through postcolonial texts. Offering a new interdisciplinary perspective, this is essential reading for students new to stylistics and postcolonial literature.

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THE TASTE OF SUSTAINABILITY: A corpus-assisted comparative ESP analysis of promotional tasting notes for conventional and alternative wines

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Can You Taste Sustainability? Based on the premise that the grandiloquent and frequently satirised language of wine tasting emerged from the globalising socio-economic dynamics of the 1970s, the aim of this volume is to investigate whether a recent market trend — namely, sustainable wine — has engendered an alternative wine-tasting discourse that aligns with the demands of environmentally conscious consumers.

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The Song of Songs and Its Tradition in Renaissance Love Lyric

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Camilla Caporicci Oxford University Press, 2024, pp. 480. ISBN: 9780192848833 Traditionally attributed to King Solomon, the Song of Songs is one of the most fascinating and controversial biblical books, and played an essential role in the shaping of European spirituality and culture. Combining a sensual and deeply lyrical celebration of love with a well-established tradition of Christian allegorical interpretation, this text, crucial to both the Middle Ages and the early modern period, held a particular appeal for poets. The Song of Songs and Its Tradition in Renaissance Love Lyric is the first systematic and wide-ranging investigation of the multifaceted use of the Song of Songs in Renaissance love lyric poetry, with specific attention to Italian, French, and, especially, English poetic production. At the same time, this investigation is embedded into a narrative that, comprising two initial chapters devoted to medieval poetry and to Francesco Petrarca, represents an unprecedented attempt to trace the role of the Song of Songs in the rise and development of the European love lyric, following its path – or rather, one of its paths – from the medieval origins of this tradition to the end of the sixteenth century. While the comparative standpoint characterizing this study fosters a deeper comprehension of the evolution of the European love lyric, its multidisciplinary approach, which considers the Song of Songs as the centre of a web of dynamics pertaining to the fields of literature, philosophy, theology, and religious and cultural history, contributes to the understanding of the thought and spirit of ages crucial to the shaping of European culture.

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