Identity and Culture in English Domain-specific Discourse

This volume is a collection of chapters which contain the results of analyses carried out within the government-funded project “Identity and Culture in English Domain-specific Discourse” involving local research units from five Italian Universities: Bergamo, Milano, Napoli, Roma (IUSM) and Torino, with Maurizio Gotti (Bergamo University) as national coordinator. The chapters, published in this volume by the Research Unit of the University of Napoli Federico II with Gabriella Di Martino as local coordinator, have a common research framework which focuses on linguistic, textual, semantic and pragmatic features of English domain-specific discourse. The main aim of the project is to analyse identity traits in relation to local cultures and professional communities of ‘native’ and ‘non-native speakers’ in specialized domains such as academic, economic, legal, socio-political and institutional discourse and to explore modalities and levels in which the presence of an international public leads to a recontextualization which simplifies, alters or removes institutional and cultural traits while strengthening the identity of social and professional communities.