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In this paper we will show the need for a multimodal approach to the study of metaphorical utterances. We will discuss this hypothesis showing potentials and limits of the metaphor studies conducted within Relevance Theory, which has represented the most authoritative and radical theoretical framework based on the propositional character of metaphorical utterances. In particular, we will focus on the last papers by Carston (2010, 2018), in which it is recognized that the comprehension of complex and poetic metaphors could involve the activation of mental images. We will discuss the problem that the notion of mental imagery poses to Relevance Theory and we will try to overcome these problems by an hybridization between Relevance Theory and Perceptual Symbol Theory. Then, we will suggest that local and novel metaphors, such as “love is fresh fruit”, could require the activation of mental imagery too and we will characterize this kind of metaphor in terms of compresence of narrowing, broadening and conscious experience of a multimodal mental image.

The issue of this paper is the ingroup verbal violence. The theoretical framework is the “rhetoric of dissensus”, a perspective which aims to understand the role and the modalities of polemical discourse in our argumentation practice. Using the Iliad as a paradigmatic case study, the paper mainly analyses cases where the ingroup verbal assault aims to encourage and incite violence. The analysis focuses on the perlocutionary effect of these speech acts.

Is the ad hominem argument a fallacy or not? In this paper I will try to demonstrate that an ad hominem is not intrinsically fallacious and that the speaker’s personal convictions, commitments and actions are deeply involved in every argument. This paper starts with a comparison between dialectical and rhetorical approaches to the argumentation, and, in particular, to the agreement. Briefly: from a dialectical standpoint, the argumentation is aimed at resolving a difference of opinion or a disagreement. On the other hand, from the rhetorical perspective argumentation also often deals with dialogues of the deaf, with incommensurable points of view. The agreement is a key concept of Perelman’s and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s new rhetoric. Agreement is not only what is ensured by the argumentative process. It is also the starting point of argumentation (prior argument): all argumentation must proceed from points of agreement (e. g. common values and hierarchies). These are aspects that would be agreed upon by the audience as conceived by the orator. Therefore, the audience is part of the arguments and we cannot divide the speaker, the subject on which he speaks and the hearer. In the last part of the paper, I focus on Perelman’s and Olbrects-Tyteca’s snowball interrelation between act and person – which mutually affect each other in the same direction – showing the role of ethos of both orator and audience in argument. Ad hominem argument represents an important testing ground because it expressly relates with personal conduct, character, motives, etc.

In a global context in which society has become spectacle, everything turns into representation (Debord 1967). The phenomenon of nation-states fortification emerges in a problematic way with respect to the neoliberal capital-work relationship (Mezzadra e Nielson 2013). The need to build walls, in fact, is a mode of representation that is exploited for a strategic construction of alterity. The aim of this research is to highlight the “naturalization” of stereotyped imagery, prompted by mediatic and political discourses concerning the migratory phenomenon. Starting from a recognition of the critical thinking of scholars such as Michel Foucault and Louis Marin, the goal of this paper is to take stock of the relationship between the concepts of ideology, representation and power in a border crossing context. By combining the theory of arts with a semiotic approach, I will focus on the specific case of the practice of artivism as counter-narratives, realized by the street artist JR on the border between Mexico and the United States. This case study is recognizable as a syncretic work developed in two phases. The first is attributable to the piece Giants. Kikito - Border Mexico (2017) that JR created after the executive order signed by Donald Trump to complete the construction of the wall; the second consists of an artistic practice which is rather recognizable as an ongoing performance: Migrants. Picnic across the border (2017). The importance of reading these two works in dialogue with each other lies in the intrinsic power of the images (Bredekamp 2010). In fact, the effects of meaning underlying the project, want to undermine the idea of the wall as a self-legitimizing object of the “natural world”. The issue of the critical construction of the gaze, that is to say of a point of view, is the key to understand the semiotic efficacy of artistic work in analyzing social discourses. Thanks to JR’s work it will be possible to reveal the construction and remodulation of the concept of otherness. The latter is in fact based on a specular principle (Stoichita 2014) whereby the encounter between two entities is both proof of the other and strengthening of the same., ECHO, N. 2 (2020): Semiosi della colonialità e dinamiche culturali al tempo della mobilità globale

In recent years, TV series have gained a central role among the classic TV genres. They have become more and more elaborate, strategically edited, catching both the critics and the audiences’ eyes. Many «surrounding» texts have contributed (and contribute) in making them popular and, among these texts, the opening credits play a special part. At the beginning of television history, opening sequences were brief and marginal texts aimed at informing the viewer about the cast and the contents he was going to watch. Nowadays they are refined products, designed to present, seduce, involve and facilitate the viewer’s entry into the story. In this paper, we will focus on these brief yet rich kind of texts. After illustrating their features and their development (also connected with technological evolution), we will outline how the opening credits relate to the viewers, leveraging on different communicative strategies.

This paper examines the activity of the spokesperson by means of an analogy with the art of ventriloquism. It is composed of three parts: in the first one we introduce some definitions of «spokesperson» in order to explain in what consists his activity. The second part is devoted to the analysis of the linguistic aspects of the spokesperson’s activity with particular reference to some language operations: a) self-effacement; b) attribution of agentivity. Finally, in the last part we discuss some questions that remain open in the debate on spokesperson’s activity.

This article examines two uses of the word enunciation in some recent contributions of the italian semiotics: a) “enunciation” as activation of open semantic potentials (VIOLI 2003) ; b) “enunciation” as modulation of local encyclopedic sections (PAOLUCCI 2010). Thanks to the theoretical resources of two fundamental research programs as Benveniste’s linguistics (LEB) and Culioli’s theory of predicative and enunciative operations (TOPE), we try to demonstrate that these uses are variants of the same general idea, i.e. “actualization” of encyclopedic virtualities. In the last section of the paper, we formulate some questions that remain open in the context of this investigation.

In this paper we describe the relationships between two fundamental “cognitive gestures” of human beings: naming and counting. In particular, we try to define these relationships by examining the theoretical efforts of such authors as Euclide, Frege, Wittgenstein, Chomsky and Aristotle. The analysis is centered around justifying the mutual dependence between noun and number in human cognition.

The paper aims to analyze the concept of downward causation and the role that it plays in the theoretical frameworks of biology and cognitive science.

In the macro-area of philosophical anthropology and philosophy of language we can find an important relationship between philosophical anthropology and rhetoric. Starting from the analysis of Blumenberg’s essay An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric, the paper will focus on the relation between rhetoric and evidence, on the status of shared assumptions that form the basis of argumentation and on the role of pistis in human nature. I will also try to propose a new concept of poor humanity: man is that animal whose poverty is tied to the biological need to believe in the inherited background that we have because we belong to a community which is bound together by science and education. I will discuss Blumenberg’s ideas in the light of contemporary argumentation theories that consider rhetoric in the anthropological key and I will also use Wittgenstein’s On Certainty as a contemporary rhetorical text. I will consider, according to the New Rhetoric, that self-evidence is not a specific element of argumentation. The argumentation background is not a group of necessary truths but, as Wittgenstein says, it is a system that is the element in which arguments have their own life. Furthermore I will try to show that it is not a single axiom that strikes me as obvious, but a system in which consequences and premises give each other mutual support. In conclusion, I will try to explain that learning is based on what is transmitted by the members of a community.

This paper deals with the concept of eikos, traditionally translated as “probability” or “likelihood". The aim is to show the complexity and the theoretical worth of this notion and, more specifically, the crucial role it plays in the Platonic attack against Sophists. The starting point is a famous passage of Phaedrus (272d-273a) where Socrates says that the speaker who follows eikos must "say goodbye to the truth”. However, this negative attitude towards eikos is not the only one possible. Indeed, in previous literature, and especially in historiography and rhetoric, eikos does not oppose itself to truth. Instead, despite its fallibility, it is a heuristic device that is extremely useful in conditions of uncertainty. Plato himself shows a less negative attitude when, in Timaeus (29c-d), he says that Timaeus's discourse is a logos eikos. This different attitude is not a contraddiction, but instead is indicative of the complexity of eikos.

In this paper, I will examine some aspects of a research program called “Distributed Cognition”. My goal is twofold: a) to clarify the many meanings of the word “distribution” in the context of cognitive science; b) to analyze the relationship between “Distributed co- gnition”andthreedistincttopicsi.e:1)“ComputationalTheoryofMind”;2)“SocialCognition”;3)“PersonalMind”.Inthe conclusions,I will try to fomulate some questions that remain open in the debate on Distributed Cognition.

This paper deals with the Aristotelian concept of eikos, traditionally translated as “probability” or “likelihood", with the aim of showing the complexity and the theoretical worth of this notion. Eikos has already been an important concept in fields such as historiography and rhetoric and it plays a crucial role in Aristotelian thought, as well. According to Aristotle, eikos does not oppose itself to truth nor is it a second-level knowledge. Instead, it is a heuristic device that is extremely useful in conditions of uncertainty. Aristotle’s task was to offer a personal elaboration of a concept that already had a rich background and was suited to become a means for reflection on a crucial philosophical question — that of the verification of the truth in problematic situations.

The paper aims at explaining the notion of lexical polysemy by means of some theoretical metalinguistic construction.