The Construction of Otherness Through “Natural Definition”

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_10934
dc.title	The Construction of Otherness Through “Natural Definition”. Linguistic, Cultural and Identity Issues in Missionary Discourse
dc.contributor.author	Puccini Paola
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	fr
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/il-tolomeo/2022/1/la-construction-de-lalterite-par-la-definition-nat/
dc.description.abstract	Through his works, Celestino Testore gave an important reflection on the construction of otherness by the “natural definition”. The missionary discourse ends up confirming or invalidating, through the play of representation, the identity of the young protagonists. In order to understand the linguistic and cultural issues of missionary discourse in a given intercultural context, this article is centred on a corpus of 23 missionary narratives for youth. These texts – published in Quebec and edited by l’Apostolat de la Presse – present a classical ethnological approach for which the identification of the Other results in a closed network of meanings that use comparisons based on an ethno-centred perspective. However, in this kind of discourse we can also observe some unexpected signs of interculturality.
dc.relation.ispartof	Il Tolomeo
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 24 \| December 2022
dc.issued	2022-12-19
dc.dateAccepted	2022-11-21
dc.dateSubmitted	2022-10-28
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2499-5975
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2022/01/015
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Definitional linguistic activity
dc.subject	Intercultural communication
dc.subject	Missionary discourse
dc.subject	Quebec literature

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

Linguistic, Cultural and Identity Issues in Missionary Discourse

Paola Puccini Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Italia

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abstract

Through his works, Celestino Testore gave an important reflection on the construction of otherness by the “natural definition”. The missionary discourse ends up confirming or invalidating, through the play of representation, the identity of the young protagonists. In order to understand the linguistic and cultural issues of missionary discourse in a given intercultural context, this article is centred on a corpus of 23 missionary narratives for youth. These texts – published in Quebec and edited by l’Apostolat de la Presse – present a classical ethnological approach for which the identification of the Other results in a closed network of meanings that use comparisons based on an ethno-centred perspective. However, in this kind of discourse we can also observe some unexpected signs of interculturality.

Published

Dec. 19, 2022

Accepted

Nov. 21, 2022

Submitted

Oct. 28, 2022

Language

Keywords: Quebec literature • Missionary discourse • Intercultural communication • Definitional linguistic activity

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2022/01/015

Copyright: © 2022 Paola Puccini. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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