Narrative Texts and Images in the Teaching of

the Italian Language and Italian Culture

 

Frank Nuessel and Caterina Cicogna

University of Louisville and Consulate General of Italy, Toronto

 

I. Introduction

    In the task of second-language instruction, teachers deal primarily with the verbal domain in their classes. All too often, however, when language instructors deal with textual materials, there is a tendency to concentrate on abstract verbal manifestations without placing the text in a context. By text, we refer to the various manifestations of the linguistic code we teach. By context, we mean the cultural domain in which the text is situated. Context refers to the culture represented by a particular language and its associated cultural artifacts.[1] Significant cultural vestiges include an oral and written literary heritage, the fine or nonverbal arts (music, sculpture, painting, architecture, and so forth).

    In this discussion, we intend to provide a theoretical background for the notions of image and text as a preliminary introduction of some practical strategies for integrating visual and textual materials into the Italian classroom. To this end, we will review some basic tenets related to epistemology and language. Next, we will briefly allude to the theoretical foundation of mental imagery. Third, we will mention the linguistic structure of narrative texts. Finally, we will note the pedagogical implications of the interface of image and text for the Italian classroom.

 

II. Cognition and Language

    Research in cognitive linguistics during the past decade has shown that epistemology is sensorially derived, i.e., we derive our knowledge of the world through our corporal contact with the domain that we inhabit.[2] In fact, all five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) provide human beings with an ecological input from their surrounding environment which is instrumental in concept formation and the development of language. Furthermore, scholarly research shows that individuals have a preferred sensorial mode for assimilating the data supplied by the world in which they live.

 

Sensory Basis of Cognition

    In their research into the therapeutic applications of formal linguistics, Bandler and Grinder have demonstrated that the predicates that people select in describing different experiences provide an insight into their favored sensorial mode of communication.[3] According to Bandler and Grinder, the preferred input channels for receiving and processing information are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, while the remaining channels (smell and taste) are less frequently applied to epistemological tasks.[4]

    Certain recurrent linguistic clues provide information on a person¡¯s favored sensorial access channel. The selection of predicates, for example, offers insights into an individual¡¯s most receptive sensory input. The predicates in the following sentences exemplify the way in which people most often store and access information:

 

1.   I see what you mean. (visual predicate)

2.   I hear what you are saying. (auditory predicate)

3.   I am in touch with what she has to say. (kinesthetic predicate)

 

    Even though a person may utilize a variety of sensory channels to acquire data about the external world, the preferred sense appears to be vision.[5] The notion that epistemology is essentially visual in nature is Vichian, i.e., this idea conforms to one conceptualized originally by the Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico (1688-1744).[6] In one of several observations on this topic, Vico stated that ¡°when we wish to give utterance to our understanding of spiritual things, we must seek aid from our imagination to explain them and, like painters, form human images of them.¡±[7] In making this observation, Vico meant that we provide verbal descriptions based on an original visual experience that is subsequently transformed into a more abstract linguistic formulation.

    In this regard, Danesi has sketched out a scenario by which concept formation is derived through sensory experience.[8]

 

4.   Nerve Impulse > Image > Sound/Word > Concept

 

    The schema in (4) represents an idealized synthesis of the process of conceptualization originally envisioned by Nietzsche.[9] Such a procedure encapsulates a Vichian epistemological perspective in which raw empirical data are assimilated, refined, and ultimately abstracted to form conceptualizations of the original physical input via a protracted psycho-bio-genetic sequential process.[10]

 

Metaphorical Basis of Language

    Several scholars have taken the still rather controversial stance that all language is metaphorical.[11] Goodman, for example, observes that ¡°metaphor permeates nearly all discourse, thoroughly literal paragraphs without fresh or or frozen metaphors are hard to find in even the least literary texts.¡±[12] Likewise, Turbayne has argued that all language is metaphorical and that all theories rest on a basic metaphor, however disguised.[13] Furthermore, Pollio and his research associates have speculated that an individual utters approximately 3,000 novel metaphors per week.[14] More recently, Lakoff has persuasively disputed the long-held belief that a basic literal language exists by asserting that all language is metaphorical.[15]

    In their groundbreaking work on metaphor, Lakoff and Johnson demonstrated that we access knowledge directly through our senses. These cognitive linguists further observe that ¡°the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another¡± [emphasis in original, FN and CC].[16]

    The theoretical basis of this approach to the metaphorical foundation of language is the ¡°image schema¡± which Danesi describes as ¡°mental represen-tations of recurrent patterns (color, shape, direction, texture, scale, dimension, motion, etc.) which transform the external world of physical experience into an internal one of effortful cognitive activity.¡±[17] Likewise, in an article of the same title, Danesi has argued at some length that ¡°thinking is seeing.¡±[18]

    Danesi has shown that Vico anticipated contemporary cognitive linguistic assumptions about how concepts are accessed, produced, and stored when he states that

 

Vico saw the forging of all thought through metaphorical imagery as a fundamental and necessary psychobiological process of interpretation. For Vico the metaphorizing capacity was the [emphasis in original, FN and CC] elemental creative force of the human imagination, serving our need to understand, codify, and store in memory our proto-images of the world. . . .[19]

 

Visual Aspects of Metaphor

    As noted above, cognitive linguists have argued persuasively that all language is metaphorical. Until recently, metaphor has been considered a strictly verbal phenomenon. Carl Hausman, however, has studied the visual as well as auditory domains of metaphor, and he concludes that ¡°the function of the components of nonverbal artworks is isomorphic with the interaction found in verbal metaphors.¡±[20] In his lengthy and detailed study of the metaphorical properties of the visual arts, Hausman succeeds in developing a set of isomorphic correspondences between the visual domain (art) and the verbal domain (text) to demonstrate that metaphor is a verbal and non-verbal phenomenon. In this sense, Hausman¡¯s analysis accords with Vico¡¯s original obser-vations on metaphoric language and Danesi¡¯s interpre-tation of Vico¡¯s statements on metaphor, visualization, and the origins of language.[21] Hausman thus demon-strates a linkage between verbal and non-verbal domains.

 

III. Mental Imagery

    Psychologist Ronald A. Finke, the well-known researcher in the emerging psychological subdiscipline of mental imagery, has defined this concept in the following terms ¡°the mental invention or recreation of an experience that in at least some respects resembles the experience of actually perceiving an object or an event, either in conjunction with, or in the absence of, direct sensory stimulation¡± [emphasis in original, FN and CC].[22] Hence, one of the primary functions of imaging, or creating mental images, is mnemonic, i.e., the facilitation of the storage and retrieval of information. As mentioned above, this notion is traceable to Giambattista Vico¡¯s original observations on the primeval development and acquisition of language.

    Furthermore, Danesi has shown that the right and the left cerebral hemispheres are both engaged in verbal pro-cessing. In fact, there appears to be a cooperative execution of verbal materials, i.e., linguistic processing is bimodal and involves visual and verbal domains.[23] Betty Edwards catalogued the properties of left and right hemispheric perceptual modalities, thereby demonstrating a dual hemispheric encoding of verbal input.[24] It would, therefore, seem reasonable to design teaching strategies and techniques that access verbal and visual domains to enhance acquisition and retention of a second language, in this instance, Italian.

    Imagery constitutes a significant part of linguistic development and creativity. In his research on language acquisition, Vigotsky has noted that ¡°the primary word is not a straightforward symbol for a concept but rather an image, a picture, a mental sketch of a concept, a short tale about it¡ªindeed, a small work of art.¡±[25] This observation alludes to the fact that verbiage possesses an inherent visual linkage.

    The idea that we store much of our knowledge visually as images is a significant piece of information for the instructor. Once aware of this, the instructor can utilize this information to improve second language acquisition in the Italian classroom. We will return to the practical applications of this research later.

 

IV. Narrative Text

    As a prelude to this part of our discussion, a few basic concepts merit discussion. The word ¡°text¡± is somewhat ambiguous. Scholes, however, provides a very good account of what a text is by offering the following description:

 

As a text . . . a piece of writing must be understood as the product of a person or persons, at a given point in human history, in a given form of discourse, taking its meanings from the interpretive gestures of individual readers using the grammatical, semantic, and cultural codes available to them.[26]

 

    Furthermore, according to Scholes, the word ¡°literature¡± encompasses ¡°a certain body of repeatable or recoverable acts of communication.¡±[27] This brief definition captures the oral and written nature of literary texts. In effect, a text constitutes an act of literary communication which Scholes graphically depicts as Figure 1.[28]

 

context

message

sender ----------------------------------------  receiver

contact

code

 

Figure 1

 

    What Scholes has done in his Jakobsonian definition of text is capture the fact that a text is a linguistic medium that functions as an ¡°act of communication¡± between the creator and the receiver of the message. The task of the teacher is to take the written word and provide the neo-phyte student with the ability to create ¡°mental pictures¡± of the cultural context from which the text originated.

    For most teachers, text has a very traditional meaning, namely, it is a printed version of a literary work with artistic merit. The language instructor most often seeks to provide a window into the culture encompassed by a particular language through its literary traditions. The use of visualization techniques and strategies in relation to the text will certainly enhance this educational experience, and help to prolong the student¡¯s retention of such newly acquired knowledge.

 

V. Pedagogical Implications of Image and Text

    In a previous essay, we discussed strategies for implementing Danesi¡¯s emerging model of ¡°neurological bimodality.¡±[29] That paper proposed specific techniques designed to access the learner bimodally. Visual stimulation is a key component of bimodal pedagogical strategies. In that article, based on Marcel Danesi¡¯s groundbreaking research in neurological bimodality, we observed that the acquisition of a language is not confined anatomically to a single cerebral hemisphere, but rather, both the left and the right hemispheres need to be tapped for effective, global learning. This is based on the premise that retention and recall need to be accessed visually and auditorially.

    The well-known second-language educator Andrew Wright, a great proponent of visual stimulation in the second-language classroom, specifies three reasons for the use of visuals in the classroom:[30]

 

•   interest and motivation;

•   a sense of context of the language;

•   a specific reference point or stimulus

 

    The first reason given by Wright is one that all instructors want to have as part of their learning modules. The second one is, of course, a reference to the placement of the linguistic code into a meaningful situational context. The third premise alludes to the use of focus as an aid to concentration.

    What we would like to do now is offer some strategies for the practical implementation of that linkage in the classroom. In what follows, we provide suggestions for transforming text into a visual realm. Likewise, additional recommendations are made for the translation of images into a verbal format.

 

 

 

Relating Text and Image

    The basic question to be addressed in this paper is how can a visual stimulus and a narrative text be related in a coherent and meaningful way in the classroom? What practical strategies can be used to relate text and image?

    Scholes¡¯ graphic depiction of Jakobson¡¯s communi-cation act as applied to a literary text has relevance here. If the instructor views a literary text as a speech event represented verbally, it is possible to think in terms of visualization of the written word, i.e., a text is a symbolic rendering of a speech act with its actants, scenarios, and events. It should be remembered that dramatists and opera writers always conceive of their texts in this way.

 

Electronic Technology and Its Relevance to Image and Text

    At this juncture, a few words about recent technology and its impact on text and image are in order. The explosion of technologically-based instructional materials is awesome. In her informative overview of technology designed for second-language instruction, Garrett reminds us that the availability of more advanced and highly sophisticated electronic technology now exceeds our ability to incorporate it into the classroom for financial reasons and lack of appropriate expertise.[31] Much of this material is visually-oriented, e.g., computer software pro-grams for C[omputer] A[ssisted] L[anguage] L[earning], hyper card materials, CD-ROM materials with textual and imaging capabilities, video-cassettes, and cam-corders, to name but a few of the visually-oriented pedagogical aids currently available.

    At the ¡°International Conference of Italian Literature in North America: Pedagogical Strategies¡± held at York University March 11-12, 1989, several papers dealt speci-fically with the use of technology in the presentation of literature.[32] As might be expected, the assessments of the utility of technology in the presentation and analysis of literature was varied. Nevertheless, some of the possible applications of existing electronic media are revealed in these essays which we shall now review briefly.

    Willard Mc Carty notes that there are three current literary applications of the computer: (1) text-analysis (concordances, and pattern-detection); (2) text-synthesis (construction of temporal context for a work, image, or idea); and (3) modelling (computerized attempts at creating a real-life situations).[33] Each of these uses is, of course distinct, and has different potential applications to the teaching of a literary work.

    Amilcare Iannucci, on the other hand, compares and contrasts Dante¡¯s audience in his own time frame to the contemporary reader.[34] Iannucci comments specifically on three television videos about Dante¡¯s literary work, which includes The University of Toronto¡¯s video entitled Divine Comedy: A Televisual Commentary (1985). The latter visual represenatation of Dante¡¯s famous work seeks to ¡°reposition¡± the student historically in order to allow that person to experience the text and context of Dante¡¯s times through the visual domain. Finally, Iannucci situates visual technology in an appropriate academic context when he states that ¡°television can . . . be an effective teaching tool, especially if it is integrated into an overall teaching strategy, anchored by the more traditional teaching genres of the formal lecture and seminar.¡±[35]

    In another essay, Mauro Buccheri comments philoso-phically on the transformation from a print to a non-print society and the profound consequences of such a shift.[36]

    Finally, Massimo Ciavolella comments on the availablity and quality of literature textbooks for the Italian classroom.[37] Availability of a sufficient number of textbooks remains one of the major problems. To combat this perennial problem. With the advent of software that permits the rapid translation of printed text to computer-readable format, the teacher can provide students with specialized computerized textbooks in ¡°hard copy¡± or on diskette. With its McLuhanesque overtones, the new technology gives an entirely new meaning to the notion of ¡°text.¡±

 

Visual Dimensions of Narratives

    While access to the visual marvels of contemporary technology can accomplish wonders for transposing a verbal text into a visual experience, not everyone has such sophisticated equipment available, or the requisite auxiliary pedagogical materials that depict text graphically. For this reason, we offer some less costly, albeit effective and traditional strategies for providing a visual peerspective to a text, and, conversely, a textual dimension to an image.

 

Dramatic Presentations

    Dramatic works allow the instructor and the students to breathe life into a literary work. This type of cooperative group project requires a time commitment because it is longitudinal in its scope. The production of a play involves putting text into context¡ªan essential feature of a communication act in Scholes¡¯s and Jakobson¡¯s view. Likewise, the dramatic presentation of part of an opera or even an entire operatic work allows students to participate in a unique auditory-visual-kinesthetic literary experience because this type of creative work encompasses a variety of visually expressive modes such as dance, music, scenic design, costumes as well as verbal interchanges.[38]

    A variation on the production of a drama involves having students draft their own mini-dramatic presentation or skit. This personalization often makes such a project more meaningful to the student and also more manageable for the temporal and spatial limitations of the classroom.

    Dramatic presentations of an extant play, an operatic work, or even an original creative effort, moreover, allow the student to employ kinesics or meaningful visual gestures that are culturally-specific. Once the student has seen some of the frequently occurring manifestations of gestural language, these non-verbal, visual cues may be subsequently imagined when reading a verbal text since written allusions to common kinesic gestures is frequent.[39] The experience of seeing a play enacted visually with its nonverbal gestural component will allow the student to visualize these meaningful movements when reading a work, thereby adding a secondary sensorial dimension to the act of reading through mental imaging. Finally, the sensorial experience of physically performing a dramatic or operatic creation will enhance the retention of these kinesic gestures.

 

Pantomime

    In an essay on the introduction of pantomime into the language classroom, Seaver notes that this silent dramatic form is best known through its Italian manifestation in the Commedia dell¡¯Arte.[40] The incorporation of mime into the Italian classroom is an ideal merger of text and image. Lawson states that pantomime is ¡°an exercise of the imagination . . . the act of telling a story, expressing a mood or emotion without resorting to words. Instead the artist uses movements and gestures made with every part of the body.¡±[41] Furthermore, Seaver offers a rationale for the legitimacy of pantomime in the language setting: (1) reduction of anxiety when the teacher temporarily assumes a new identity; (2) enhancement of class cohesion through collective effort; (3) retention of material stimulated through the visual modality.

    Our specific recomendation for pantomime is to select a simple, and preferably well-known narrative text and ask a student or group of students to mime its content and meaning. Subsequently, or in a series of sequential interludes, the observants can be asked to describe the action, i.e., relate the visual action in an oral narrative. This strategy involves the sequential translation of a text into an image, and, finally back into a verbal domain.

    An alternative to this speech-based approach is to have the students write a brief final narrative of the mimed tale which converts an original text back into its verbal format. The resultant re-written narrative may produce some interesting transformations because of the intermediate visual translation.

 

Metaphorical Competence

    Another aspect of the image-text interface is the development of what Danesi calls ¡°metaphorical competence.¡±[42] Earlier in this discussion, we noted that cognitive linguists have argued that metaphorical language is a fundamental element of our linguistic codification of the world. Furthermore, we noted that most metaphoric language has a visual basis. The ubiquitous nature of figurative language requires that we teach our students how to encode and decode metaphor.[43] The activities that we are proposing are intended to engage students in directed imaging. Students who become adept in the skills of visualizing figurative language will be able to contextualize texts and enhance their reading abilities.

    One strategy to develop metaphorical proficiency, an exercise in guided imaging, involves presenting students with simple metaphorical statements of the form ¡°X is Y,¡± for example, ¡°John is a fox.¡± In this very simple activity, the student can make comparisons according to a pre-determined set of visually stimulating questions prompted by the instructor: (1) what activities are common to both elements in the metaphor (verbs); how are these activities carried out (adverbs); and (3) what characteristics do both elements possess (adjectives). To enhance the imaging possibilities of this activity, it is useful to draw elementary sketches of the referents (John, fox) on the blackboard.

    By using the name of famous person as one element and the name of an animal, this exercise is facilitated because the teacher will usually be able to tap a base of common knowledge. This exercise involves decoding an existent metaphor. Students may also encode, or create their own examples of such figurative language. Students should be encouraged to devise obvious metaphors, and subsequently, more thought-provoking figurative language. A progression from simple to more complex exercises is the best strategy.

    Activities designed to encode and decode metaphors are amenable to a variety of classroom formats. i.e., the exercises may be oral or written, single or group activities. One benefit of these language games is to familiarize and sensitize the student to some of the most common rhetorical manifestations of language. Subsequent exercises can focus on culturally-specific metaphors or allusions that require some knowledge of the culture that has created certain figurative language, which, through use, has degenerated into topoi or clich¨¦s.

 

VI. Concluding Remarks

    In this discussion, we have provided a brief introduction into current theories of ¡°image,¡± and ¡°text.¡± We then proceeded to mention the emergence of technological advances to enhance the image-text interface. Finally, we have provided some specific pedagogical techniques for visualizing texts, and, conversely, textualizing images (dramatic presentations, pantomime, and exercises to develop metaphorical proficiency).

    In the techniques that we have outlined here, two basic approaches are employed. The first involves the translation of a text into a visual representation through a purely imagistic rendition (pantomime), or a coordination of verbal and non-verbal strategies (dramatic presentation). The second avenue for relating text and image involves the conversion of graphic materials into verbal descriptions or ¡°word portraits.¡± In summary, these strategies that we have discussed may be exemplified graphically in the following way:

 

•   graphic image > verbal text

•   verbal text > graphic image

 


[1]A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (New York: Vintage Books, 1960) 66, define culture by stating that it ¡°consists of patterns of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional [= historically derived and selected] ideas and especially their attached values.¡±

[2]The most important research is represented by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980), George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987), Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987), Ronald W. Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1987). Marcel Danesi ¡°Language and the Senses: New Directions in Linguistics,¡± Semiotic Review of Books 1.2 (1990): 4-6, provides an excellent overview of this important development in linguistics.

[3]See Richard Bandler and John Grinder, The Structure of Magic II (Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books, 1976). In later research, it was demonstrated that successful hypnotic techniques rely heavily on accessing the preferred sensorial mode of the client through a strategy of matching the sensorial channels of therapist and client. In this regard, see Richard Bandler and John Grinder, Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D. Vol. I (Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications, 1975) and John Grinder, Judith DeLozier, and Richard Bandler Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, M.D., Vol. 2 (Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications, 1977). For a thorough discussion of sense-based language as a therapeutic tool, see also David Gordon, Therapeutic Metaphors (Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications, 1978). See also Deborah Tannen, Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989) for a discussion of the conversational strategies that evoke all five senses, especially, 134-66.

[4]Bandler and Grinder, The Structure of Magic II 4-5.

[5]Marcel Danesi, ¡°Visual Metaphors: Psycholinguistic Aspects,¡± Interfaces 12 (1985): 20-29; ¡°The Metaphorical Extension of Vision: A Linguistic Universal?,¡± Geolinguistics 11 (1985): 1-12; ¡°Language and the Origins of the Human Imagination: A Vichian Perspective,¡± New Vico Studies 4 (1986): 45-56.

[6]See the selected passages about the development of human language by Giambattista Vico in Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch, The New Science of Giambattista Vico (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1984) 116-69.

[7]Bergin and Fisch, The New Science of Giambattista Vico, 128.

[8]Marcel Danesi, ¡°Thinking Is Seeing: Visual Metaphors and the Nature of Abstract Thought,¡± Semiotica 80¡ª3/4 (1990) 228.

[9]Marcel Danesi, ¡°A Vichian Footnote to Nietzsche¡¯s Views on the Cognitive Primacy of Metaphor: An Addendum to Schrift,¡± New Vico Studies 5 (1987): 157-64.

[10]Marcel Danesi, ¡°Giambattista Vico and Semiotics,¡± Recent Developments in Semiotic Theory and History: The Semiotic Web 1990, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok and Jean Umiker-Sebeok (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991) 89-109.

[11]Frank Nuessel, ¡°Metaphor and Cognition: A Survey of Recent Publications,¡± Journal of Literary Semantics, 20 (1991): 37-52, and ¡°Philosophical and Metaphorical Aspects of Language,¡± Semiotica 89.1/3 (1992): 117-28, Marcel Danesi, ¡°The Role of Metaphor in Cognition.¡± Semiotica 77-4 (1989): 521-31.

[12]Nelson Goodman, ¡°Metaphor as Moonlighting,¡± Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor, ed. by Mark Johnson (Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 1981) 226.

[13]Colin Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor, rev. ed. (Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 1970).

[14]H. Pollio, J. Barlow, H. Fine, and M. Pollio, The Poetics of Growth: Figurative Language in Psychology, Psychotherapy and Education (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 1977) 8-9.

[15]George Lakoff, ¡°A Figure of Thought,¡± Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 1 (1986): 215-25. See also George Lakoff, ¡°The Meanings of Literal,¡± Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 1 (1986): 291-96.

[16]Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By 5.

[17]See Marcel Danesi, ¡°Thinking Is Seeing¡± 227. For further discussion, see Lakoff, Fire, Women, and Dangerous Things, passim, Johnson, The Body in the Mind, passim.

[18]Danesi, ¡°Thinking is Seeing¡± 221-37.

[19]Danesi, ¡°Thinking Is Seeing¡± 228.

[20]See Carl R. Hausman, Metaphor and Art: Interactionism and Reference in the Verbal and Nonverbal Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989) 121.

[21]Hausman, Metaphor and Art; Frank Nuessel, ¡°Art and Metaphor,¡± The Semiotic Review of Books 1.3 (1990): 6-8; Bergin and Fisch, The New Science of Giambattista Vico. See also Marcel Danesi¡¯s essays on this subject, ¡°Language and the Origins of Human Imagination,¡± ¡°Thinking Is Seeing,¡± ¡° A Vichian Footnote,¡± ¡°Giambattista Vico and Semiotics.¡±

[22]Ronald A. Finke, Principles of Mental Imagery (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1989).

[23]See Marcel Danesi, ¡°Practical Applications of Current Brain Research to the Teaching of Italian,¡± Italica 64 (1987): 377-92; ¡°Neurological Bimodality and Theories of Language Learning,¡± Studies in Second Language Acquisition 10 (1988): 13-31.

[24]See Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1979) 38.

[25]Lev Vygotsky, ¡°An Experimental Study of Concept Formation,¡± Language and Thinking ed. by P. Adams (London: Penguin, 1972) 298.

[26]Robert Scholes, Semiotics and Interpretation (New Haven: Yale UP, 1982) 15-16.

[27]Scholes, Semiotics and Interpretation 18.

[28]Scholes, Semiotics and Interpretation 20. The configuration in Figure 1, of course, derives from Roman Jakobson, ¡°Linguistics and Poetics,¡± Style in Language, ed. by Thomas Sebeok (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960), 350-77, and ¡°The Speech Event and the Function of Language,¡± On Language/Roman Jakobson. ed. by Linda R. Waugh and Monique Monville-Burston (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990): 69-79.

[29]Frank Nuessel and Caterina Cicogna, ¡°Pedagogical Applications of the Bimodal Model of Learning through Visual and Auditory Stimuli,¡± Romance Language Annual 3 (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue Research Foundation, 1992): 289-92.

[30]Andrew Wright, Pictures for Language Learning (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989) 2.

[31]Nina Garrett, ¡°Technology in the Service of Language Learning: Trends and Issues,¡± The Modern Language Journal, 75 (1991): 74-101.

[32]John Picchione and Laura Pietropaulo (eds.), Italian Literature in North America: Pedagogical Strategies, Biblioteca di QUADERNI d¡¯italianistica, vol. 9 (Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Society for Italian Studies, 1990).

[33]Willard McCarty, ¡°Delilah, Beatrice, or Athena? The Computer in Literary Studies,¡± Italian Literature in North America: Pedagogical Strategies, ed. by John Picchione and Laura Pietropaolo (Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Society for Italian Studies, 1990): 262-70.

[34]Amilcare A. Iannucci, ¡°Dante, from Illumination to Television,¡± Italian Literature in North America: Pedagogical Strategies, ed. by John Picchione and Laura Pietropaolo (Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Society for Italian Studies, 1990) Ontario: Canadian Society for Italian Studies, 1990): 242-61.

[35]Iannucci, ¡°Dante¡± 257.

[36]Mauro Buccheri, ¡°La galassia Gutenberg nell¡¯universo elettronico: il destino del libro nell¡¯et¨¤ postmoderna,¡± Italian Literature in North America: Pedagogical Strategies, ed. by John Picchione and Laura Pietropaolo (Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Society for Italian Studies, 1990): 227-41.

[37]Massimo Ciavolella, ¡°How To Use the Electronic Media in the Production of Textbooks,¡± Italian Literature in North America: Pedagogical Strategies, ed. by John Picchione and Laura Pietropaolo (Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Society for Italian Studies, 1990): 335-41.

[38]See Salvatore Bruno, ¡°Opera in the Italian Language Classroom,¡± Italica 66 (1989): 20-28.

[39]See Frank Nuessel, ¡°Teaching Kinesics Through Literature,¡± The Canadian Modern Language Review 41 (1985): 1014-19, Nuessel and Cicogna, ¡°Pedagogical Applications of the Bimodal Model,¡± Jerald R. Green, ¡°A Focus Report: Kinesics in the Foreign-Language Classroom,¡± Foreign Language Annals 5 (1971): 62-68. and Horst Arndt and Helmut W. Pesch, ¡°Nonverbal Communication and Visual Teaching Aids: A Perceptual Approach,¡± The Modern Language Journal, 68 (1984): 28-35.

[40]Paul W. Seaver Jr., ¡°Pantomime as an L2 Classroom Strategy,¡± Foreign Language Annals 25 (1992): 21-31.

[41]See Joan Lawson, Mime: The Theory and Practice of Expressive Gesture (New York: Dance Horizons) vii. The quotation in the text was cited in Seaver, ¡°Pantomime as an L2 Strategy¡± 22.

[42]Marcel Danesi, ¡°The Development of Metaphorical Competence: A Neglected Dimension in Second Language Pedagogy,¡± Italiana, ed. by A. N. Mancini, et al. (River Forest, IL: Rosary College, 1988): 1-10.

[43]Danesi, ¡°The Development of Metaphorical Competence¡± 5-6. See also Raffaella Maiguashca, Verso una metodologia per l¡¯uso del lessico dell¡¯italiano come lingua seconda: un approccio semantico,¡± Studies in Italian Applied Linguistics, ed. by Nicoletta Villa and Marcel Danesi, Biblioteca di QUADERNI d¡¯italianistica, vol. 1. (Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Society for Italian Studies): 98-99.