Ironic Statements Research Articles

Metapragmatic reflections of adolescents on gender in ironic interactions

IntroductionWhile verbal irony is a pragmatic skill that plays a very important role in social interactions, its development has not been sufficiently studied, especially in the context of the Spanish language. This research aims to generate a deeper understanding of the development of irony, specifically among Mexican adolescents. One of the pragmatic aspects identified as an important factor to consider in the comprehension and production of verbal irony is the gender of the participants involved in the communicative interaction. Prior research with adults indicates that ironic statements produced by men are generally associated with positive discursive functions, whereas those made by women are often perceived negatively. This study aims to analyze the metapragmatic reflections of 37 Mexican adolescents aged 12 and 15 years old (20 and 17 participants, respectively, half women) on how the gender of the interlocutors influences the use of irony in various communicative situations.MethodsParticipants were presented with eight written scenarios that concluded with a written ironic statement (in order to minimize the effects of prosody). The scenarios were counterbalanced to account for the type of ironic remark (critical or praise irony), the gender of the ironist, and the gender of the audience. Through a semi- structured oral interview, the adolescents' reflections and the rationale behind their responses were examined.ResultsThe results revealed significant differences in the interpretation of irony based on age, type of statement (criticism or praise), and the gender of the interlocutors, though not with respect to the gender of the audience. Additionally, a discrepancy was observed between the metapragmatic reflections expressed by adolescents regarding ironic statements and their actual interpretation of irony.DiscussionThese findings suggest that during adolescence, individuals develop an increasing capacity to consider factors related to gender roles that influence the pragmatic interpretation of ironic statements.

ALLUSIVE HEADLINES IN THE MEDIA: AXIOLOGICAL ASPECT

The article is devoted to the analysis of newspaper headlines based on allusion. Using the material of texts published in 2023 in the newspapers Zavtra and Kommersant, which are diff erent in terms of ideological ori-entation and stylistics, the authors examine the axiological signifi cance of such factors as the choice of the source of allusion, the absence or presence of transformation, and the leading principle of playing with the original text. Both similarities and diff erences in the creation of allusive headlines are revealed. Both publications actively seek source material from phraseology, Russian classical literature and Soviet cinema, which is explained by the priority of marketing considerations: a headline that refers to an easily recognisable text is the most attractive. In the Zavtra newspaper, the sources of allusive headlines can be modern rude and ironic statements typical of colloquial speech and works of Russian classical literature that are well known to the mass addressee. In this case, the original form of the source text is either unchanged or minimally transformed, while retaining the original evaluative connota-tions. Recognition and comprehension of such allusive titles does not require additional cognitive eff orts from the addressee, which allows us to speak about the setting to attract the attention of the widest possible addressee. The specifi cs of Kommersant’s headlines lie in the more active use of precedent statements. The sources of allusions are not only phraseological phrases and works of Russian classical literature, but also precedent texts associated with Soviet realities and texts of fi ction that are not widely known. The precedent texts, regardless of their nature, are subjected to a “reducing” transformation through language play. The attractiveness of such titles is determined by the level of background knowledge of the addressee, who needs not only to identify the source text and understand the allusion in the title text, but also to correlate the axiological characteristics of the precedent and allusive texts. The authors of the article note that titling with the use of evaluative allusion is one of the regularly used methods of adjusting the media text to the target audience.

Contextual Ambiguity Framework for Enhanced Sentiment Analysis

Negation is a universal linguistic phenomenon that affects the performance of Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications, especially opinion mining data. Many words exists in sentences that have multiple interpretations or sentiments depending on how they are placed with respect to the negation word in the sentence. A cutting-edge framework is designed to tackle the nuanced challenge of detecting contextual ambiguity through negation in sentiment analysis. The approach uniquely combines advanced natural language processing techniques with deep linguistic insights, enabling the accurate interpretation of sentiment in complex sentences where negation plays a key role. The framework identifies negation cues and their scope, then assesses their impact on sentiment, considering contextual dependencies and word semantics. The model's innovation lies in context-sensitive algorithms that adeptly handle different sentence structures and idiomatic expressions, a notable advancement over traditional sentiment analysis tools. Particularly effective in interpreting sarcastic or ironic statements, the framework significantly outperforms existing models in accuracy, especially in negation-heavy contexts. This advancement enhances sentiment analysis applications like social media monitoring and customer feedback analysis, offering a more nuanced understanding of public opinion.

A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Ironic Expressions in English and Kurdish

This paper, which is part of the requirements of an MA degree, is entitled "A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Ironic Expressions in English and Kurdish." It provides further insight into the sociolinguistic application of irony. Irony, which is categorized into verbal and situational is when something that was expected to have a specific result instead of results in a completely different or opposite outcome. The paper argues that expressing one thing while implying another is not always irony. In some instances, the ironic statement alludes to the fact that the idea being refuted is what underlies the truth of a situation, a claim, or a previous way of thinking. Data on Kurdish irony are gathered through observation and are explained in English, while data on English ironic expressions are collected from the corpus of English including books and online sources. The investigation of the topic is conducted using a descriptive methodology. Each sort of irony is described and illustrated, and the figurative connotation in both languages is also emphasized. The main objective of the study is to clarify the figurative meaning of irony in the two languages. The most significant findings comprise first, that irony has a positive connotation in literal contexts while it has a negative connotation in figurative contexts. Second, figurative language, which is frequently used in communication, contains irony. Additionally, ironic expressions are italicized in both languages.

Ironic Statements in The Speech of the Englishmen (Based on the Material of Modern British Novels)

Ironic Statements in The Speech of the Englishmen (Based on the Material of Modern British Novels)

Utilizing an Attention-Based LSTM Model for Detecting Sarcasm and Irony in Social Media

Sarcasm and irony represent intricate linguistic forms in social media communication, demanding nuanced comprehension of context and tone. In this study, we propose an advanced natural language processing methodology utilizing long short-term memory with an attention mechanism (LSTM-AM) to achieve an impressive accuracy of 99.86% in detecting and interpreting sarcasm and irony within social media text. Our approach involves innovating novel deep learning models adept at capturing subtle cues, contextual dependencies, and sentiment shifts inherent in sarcastic or ironic statements. Furthermore, we explore the potential of transfer learning from extensive language models and integrating multimodal information, such as emojis and images, to heighten the precision of sarcasm and irony detection. Rigorous evaluation against benchmark datasets and real-world social media content showcases the efficacy of our proposed models. The outcomes of this research hold paramount significance, offering a substantial advancement in comprehending intricate language nuances in digital communication. These findings carry profound implications for sentiment analysis, opinion mining, and an enhanced understanding of social media dynamics.

Dr. A. B Ashraf as a Pen Sketcher: An Analytical Study

Dr. A.B. Ashraf is a well-known and well-grounded researcher of Urdu literature. He is an authentic critic, fiction writer, travel writer and educationist. B. Ashraf's pen sketches are outstanding. The main reason for its popularity is pen sketches of ancient and modern poets, scholars and writers. By his pen portraits, B. Ashraf gave new breaths to the ancient civilization, culture of Multan, both classical and modern poets. His readers are privileged to know the history of Multan by his pen portraits. Humorous incidents, ironic statements and exquisite dialogues make them captivating. “Kesy Kesy Log” is the masterpiece of Dr.A.B. Ashraf. The depiction of writers, the magnificent combination of Siraiki and Urdu phrases, dance, ecstasy, charm of literary gatherings, alluring imagery, elegant style and poetic episodes enhance its excellence. This magnum opus is of great importance in preserving the name of Dr. AB Ashraf alive and exuberant in the tradition of Urdu pen sketching.

КОМУНІКАТИВНИЙ АКТ ВІДМОВИ В УКРАЇНСЬКІЙ ЛІНГВОКУЛЬТУРІ: ПРАГМАКОГНІТИВНІ ОСОБЛИВОСТІ

The article is devoted to the problem of implementation of the communicative act of refusal (CAR) in the Ukrainian lingual culture, determining of its lingual and pragmatic features. CAR is characterized as a non-cooperative communicative act that can pose a threat to the face of communicators. The main goal of the work is to identify those communicative strategies and tactics, with the help of which the CRA is carried out in the Ukrainian communicative-pragmatic space, to determine their linguistic parameters and to find out those features of the Ukrainian ethnopsychic type that presuppose the choice of the certain communicative strategy and tactics. The research was carried out on the material of the postmodern texts of the famous Ukrainian writer Yury Andruhovych: “Moscowiada” and “Recreations”. Three main strategies used in CRA are being distinguished – implicit, indirect and direct. An implicit rejection strategy involves the use of evasion from a direct answer, changing the topic of conversation, a counteroffer, the use of ironic statements, and interrogatives. An indirect strategy is carried out with the help of the tactics of using offensive expressions and “why-questions”, as well as the tactics of referring to subjective reasons. A direct refusal implies a direct negative response. Among the strategies, the implicit strategy of refusal prevails, which can be explained by the negative politeness of a Ukrainian who does not tolerate violence against his/her will and is good at defending his personal “red lines” to the last. Probably, this lingual-pragmatic feature has its explanation at the deep-thesaurus level of the Ukrainian lingual personality and is conditioned by such a spiritual value of Ukrainians as freedom-loving. Thus, according to Ukrainian folk ideas, freedom is more valuable than money and even life itself; this idea is also confirmed by the Ukrainian paremic material and the psycholinguistic experiments conducted at the time.

A novel task to evaluate irony comprehension and its essential elements in Spanish speakers.

An ironic statement transmits the opposite meaning to its literal counterpart and is one of the most complex communicative acts. Thus, it has been proposed to be a good indicator of social communication ability. Prosody and facial expression are two crucial paralinguistic cues that can facilitate the understanding of ironic statements. The primary aim of this study was to create and evaluate a task of irony identification that could be used in neuroimaging studies. We independently evaluated three cues, contextual discrepancy, prosody and facial expression, and selected the best cue that would lead participants in fMRI studies to identify a stimulus as ironic in a reliable way. This process included the design, selection, and comparison of the three cues, all of which have been previously associated with irony detection. The secondary aim was to correlate irony comprehension with specific cognitive functions. Results showed that psycholinguistic properties could differentiate irony from other communicative acts. The contextual discrepancy, prosody, and facial expression were relevant cues that helped detect ironic statements; with contextual discrepancy being the cue that produced the highest classification accuracy and classification time. This task can be used successfully to test irony comprehension in Spanish speakers using the cue of interest. The correlation of irony comprehension with cognitive functions did not yield consistent results. A more heterogeneous sample of participants and a broader battery of tests may be needed to find reliable cognitive correlates of irony comprehension.

Irony detection in patients with borderline personality disorder: an experimental study examining schizotypal traits, response biases and empathy

BackgroundIn verbal irony we often convey meanings that oppose the literal words. To look behind these words, we need to integrate perspectives of ourselves, others, and their beliefs about us. Although patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) experience problems in social cognition and schizotypal symptoms, research on irony comprehension mainly focused on the schizophrenic spectrum. Accounting for possible negative biases in BPD, the current study examined the detection of praising and critical irony in a text messaging interface.MethodsThe cross-sectional study included 30 patients and 30 matched controls, who completed measures of cognitive and affective empathy (Interpersonal Reactivity Index, IRI), schizotypal (Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire; SPQ), and borderline symptoms (Borderline Symptom List; BSL-23) and the irony detection task. The irony task contained critical and praising remarks embedded in text messages. Asking for literality (ironic vs. literal) and intention ratings (critical to praising) of the stimuli, it allowed to analyze the sensitivity of literality detection as well as implicit and explicit response biases in a signal detection framework.ResultsBorderline symptoms explained lower sensitivity for the detection of literal and ironic statements across groups. Whereas HC showed a negativity bias when implicitly asked about the literalness of the statement, patients with BPD perceived praising utterances as less praising when explicitly asked about their perceived intention. Neither empathy nor schizotypy explained outcomes beyond borderline symptoms.ConclusionsThis was the first study to show lower detection of verbal irony in patients with BPD. While patients were less biased when asked about the literality of a statement, they perceived praising remarks as less positive on explicit measurements. The results highlight the importance of congruent, transparent communication in promoting epistemic trust in individuals with BPD.

Stylistics and Pragmatics of Artistic Ironic Discourse (English and French Languages)

The article is devoted to the display of the stylistic peculiarities of literary ironic discourse in modern English and French prose. The empirical basis of the research is built on the corpus of text fragments containing ironic statements selected from literary works in English and French. The relevance of the study is accounted for by the insufficient study of the interconnections between verbal components and conceptual background of irony — the mental mechanism of second-order empathy — as well as the need to confirm the status of irony as a speech strategy of encouragement, incentive, self-defense, censure, ridicule, discredit, self-justification, self-representation or self-abasement, which is verbalized in fiction literature, thanks to the involvement of a number of stylistic devices of a semantic and syntactic sense. It is shown that in addition to linguistic means that objectify the conceptual structure of an ironic utterance and deictic units that reveal the order and logic of organizing information at the level of second-order empathy, fictional ironic discourse (both English and French) is brightly colored with figurative and expressive means of language, which actualize through ambiguous, voluminous, image-forming semantics and expressive syntax. In the course of comparative analysis, it has also been found out that the French-language fictional ironic discourse has a higher density of stylistic devices and is more expressive than the English-language one.

The roles of social status information in irony comprehension: An eye-tracking study.

The literature on irony processing mainly focused on contextual effect, leaving other factors (such as social factors) untouched. The current study investigated how social status information affected the online comprehension of irony. As irony might be more damaging when a speaker uses it to a superordinate than the other way around, it is assumed that greater processing efforts would be observed in the former case. Using an eye-movement sentence reading paradigm, we recruited 36 native Mandarin speakers and examined the role of social status information and literality (i.e., literal and irony) in their irony interpretation. Our results showed ironic statements were more effortful to process than literal ones, reporting an early and consistent effect on the target regions. The social status effect followed the literality effect, with more difficulty in processing ironic statements that targeted the superordinate than the subordinate; such an effect of social status was missing with literal statements. Besides, an individual’s social skill appeared to affect the perception of status information in ironic statements, as the socially skillful readers needed more time than the socially unskillful to process irony targeting a subordinate in the second half of the experiment in the critical region. Our study suggests that irony processing might be further discussed in terms of the relative predictability of linguistic, social, and individual variabilities.

The role of mentalizing capacity and ecological language diversity on irony comprehension in bilingual adults.

Diverse bilingual experiences have implications for language comprehension, including pragmatic elements such as verbal irony. Irony comprehension is shaped by an interplay of linguistic, cognitive, and social factors, including individual differences in bilingual experience. We examined the relationship between individual differences related to bilingualism, specifically, the capacity to understand others’ mental states and ambient exposure to language diversity, on irony comprehension. We tested 54 healthy bilingual adults, living in a linguistically diverse region—Montréal, Canada—on an irony comprehension task. This task involved reading positive and negative short stories that concluded with an ironic or literal statement, which were rated on appropriateness and perceived irony. While both irony forms were rated as less appropriate and more ironic than literal statements, ironic criticisms (following a negative context) were rated as more appropriate and higher in perceived irony than ironic compliments (following a positive context). As expected, these ratings varied as a function of individual differences in mentalizing and neighborhood language diversity. Greater mentalizing patterned with more appropriate ratings to ironic statements in high language diversity neighborhoods and with less appropriate ratings to ironic statements in low language diversity neighborhoods. Perceived irony ratings to ironic compliments increased with mentalizing as neighborhood language diversity increased. These results indicate that pragmatic language comprehension and its social cognitive underpinnings may be environmentally contextualized processes.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13421-022-01349-4.

Verbal Irony Comprehension in Adults who Speak English as an Additional Language

We examined whether adults who speak English as an Additional Language (EAL) have a decreased ability to comprehend verbal irony compared to native English speakers. Participants watched a series of 30-second videos containing ironic and literal statements. Respondents identified speaker’s belief, and rated speaker’s attitude and humor. EAL speakers were less reliable than native English speakers in identifying the speaker’s belief for both ironic and literal statements and showed lower humor ratings for ironic criticisms.

Irony in communicative behaviour of Elite in Edwardian Britain

The article is devoted to the analysis of little-studied specific in functioning of irony in the speech of English social elite. The aim of the study is to conduct sociolinguistic analysis of Julian Fellowes’s TV series script "Downton Abbey" to identify the language markers of irony, used by English aristocrats in the early XXth century, describe tactics and types of speech acts attached to irony, its impact on communicants. The main methods used in the study include sociolinguistic analysis of character's speech by means of sociolinguistic categories. Analysis of the contexts, where irony is used, allowed us to come to conclusion that the information plan of the ironic statement is expressed implicitly, includes methods of labeling, devaluation of interlocutor’s merits, humiliation, and mockery by means of hyperbolic metaphor, ironic pejorative, allusion and antithesis. The data, obtained in the process of research, can be used in the course of intercultural communication, stylistics, translation and semiotics.

The effect of speaker age on the perception of ironic insults.

We investigated a cue that readers may use in determining whether a remark such as "You are so helpful!" is intended as a compliment or as an ironic insult. The cue was the age of the speaker. Remarks were preceded by a sentence that either invited a literal or ironic interpretation of the remark. Data were collected on the familiarity of the remark as an ironic statement, and the incongruity of the remark with the prior context. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate the intent of the speaker as to how ironic, mocking, polite, and funny they intended their remark to be. In Experiment 2, participants read the scenarios as their eye movements were tracked. The results showed that age of the speaker had an impact on first pass reading times when statements were not familiar as ironic statements. Our younger adult participants did not appear to immediately activate a nonliteral interpretation of an ambiguous remark made by an older adult unless they had evidence from past experience that the remark is often used as an insult. However, ratings of the ironic intent of the statements were unaffected by speaker age; the age of the speaker affects the ease of interpretation but not the final outcome. The results are consistent with constraint-based theories of sentence comprehension. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Second language experience impacts first language irony comprehension among bilingual adults.

Recently, core components of irony processing (e.g., mental-state reasoning, executive control, and metalinguistic awareness) have been tentatively linked to bilingual experience. Thus, we investigated whether bilingual experience modulates irony comprehension during first language (L1) reading and also how bilingual adults comprehend irony in positive versus negative contexts (i.e., ironic compliments vs. criticisms, respectively). We deliver 3 main findings. First, bilinguals are faster at processing ironic criticisms than ironic compliments, and they find ironic criticisms more sensible than ironic compliments in their L1, much like past findings among monolinguals. Second, individual differences in bilingual experience modulate comprehension of ironic statements. Specifically, readers with high global second language (L2) proficiency find ironic statements more sensible than readers with low global L2 proficiency, regardless of the valence of the preceding context. Third, individual differences in global L2 proficiency further predict the speed of L1 irony comprehension: following a positive scenario, greater global L2 proficiency patterns with faster processing of irony compared to literal statements. Together, these data suggest that second language experience may be linked to irony processing in the first language. While the precise mechanism underlying this relationship remains open, potential sources may be rooted in flexible social cognition or executive functions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Транспозиційні можливості грамеми минулого часу в аспекті вираження оцінних значень: психолінгвістичні особливості

The present paper analyses the transpositional possibilities of the past time grammeme in the aspect of estimative expressions. The mechanisms of modelling grammatical igreme for the expression of evaluative meanings which are generated on the basis of figurative actualization of the grammatical meaning of the past time and the psycholinguistic features of the figurative use of the past time forms are highlighted.The temporal sign of the form comes into conflict with the temporal sign of the con- text, which provides a metaphor for the grammatical meaning of time, the actualization of the secondary function, obtaining estimative expressions and the expression of a certain pragmatics. It is also important to use a kind of intonation design and inversion word order (in some models) to express irony.The use of time forms both literally and figuratively is based on psychological fea- tures of their perception and associative nuances associated with the specifics of the past, present, and future. In particular, by nominating future events in the form of the past tense, the person puts a hypothetical, upcoming event as a precedent in line with other events of his experience, thereby finds grounds to evaluate it by making appropriate comparisons.The first model (Боявся я її / Так я їй і сказав): an ironic statement of action means that, in fact, according to the speaker, it will never happen, or it is unacceptable, thus it is accompanied by a negative evaluation.The second model (Ну, приїхала я туди, а потім що?): in answers, comments on a call to action the speaker, predicting his, in his own opinion, inappropriate behaviour, uses the past tense for its negative evaluation, also using specific intonation for expressing irony. The third model (А потім йому швидко кубики почепили…): the use of the past per- fect tense form to indicate future facts often creates a negative connotation that expresses an appropriate attitude to the unnaturally rapid development of events and implies poor performance, inappropriateness of actions, mismatch to certain individuals. In contrast to the previous model, there is no meaning of condition in this one since the speaker considers the future action as having already taken place and thus evaluates it. The statement is char- acterized by a specific intonation, which expresses claims for the action, dissatisfaction with the possible course of events.The fourth model (Ми попали!): a situation in which the past tense verb form is used in the meaning of the future poses a danger, a threat to the speaker, which explains the appearance of a negative evaluation. Future dangerous action is shown as accomplished, which gives grounds for evaluating the fact on the basis of comparison with similar actions in the experience of the speaker.

Immediate online use of prosody reveals the ironic intentions of a speaker: neurophysiological evidence.

In social interactions, speakers often use their tone of voice ("prosody") to communicate their interpersonal stance to pragmatically mark an ironic intention (e.g., sarcasm). The neurocognitive effects of prosody as listeners process ironic statements in real time are still poorly understood. In this study, 30 participants judged the friendliness of literal and ironic criticisms and compliments in the absence of context while their electrical brain activity was recorded. Event-related potentials reflecting the uptake of prosodic information were tracked at two time points in the utterance. Prosody robustly modulated P200 and late positivity amplitudes from utterance onset. These early neural responses registered both the speaker's stance (positive/negative) and their intention (literal/ironic). At a later timepoint (You are such a great/horrible cook), P200, N400, and P600 amplitudes were all greater when the critical word valence was congruent with the speaker's vocal stance, suggesting that irony was contextually facilitated by early effects from prosody. Our results exemplify that rapid uptake of salient prosodic features allows listeners to make online predictions about the speaker's ironic intent. This process can constrain their representation of an utterance to uncover nonliteral meanings without violating contextual expectations held about the speaker, as described by parallel-constraint satisfaction models.

"This Is Your Fourth Shore": Historical Amnesia and the Return of the Colonial Past in Antonio Tabucchi's Piazza d'Italia

"This Is Your Fourth Shore":Historical Amnesia and the Return of the Colonial Past in Antonio Tabucchi's Piazza d'Italia Sophie Desroches À l'évidence, il existe en chacun de nous le désir de dialoguer avec ce qui a été, d'interroger les habitants d'outre-tombe pour savoir ce que signifia pour eux vivre, puis cesser de vivre. Antonio Tabucchi, L'atelier de l'écrivain (Gui and Tabucchi 197)1 Antonio Tabucchi belongs to a genealogy of Italian writers who envisioned literature as a means of political contestation.2 The epigraph quoted above speaks to the ethical imperative he maintained as incumbent upon himself; namely, the necessity to engage with the legacy of the past and its inscription into the present. Writing on behalf of the downtrodden and marginalized-be it the anarchists and communists Tabucchi evidently favoured, or others who opposed the forces of the nation and ended up on the losing side of history-he applied his inquisitive zeal to reveal the myriad elisions involved in collective memory-making. His historiographical scepticism perhaps comes out more sharply, for all its humour and charm, in his first novel, Piazza d'Italia, published in 1975. In a nimble and elegant prose, Tabucchi compacts in very few words a sweeping chronicle of Italy's modern history, filtered through the eyes of a Tuscan family on the periphery of society, from the country's unification under Garibaldi to its post-Second World War reemergence as a fledgling republic. The symbolic quality of Piazza d'Italia as a locus of the nation-state is most conspicuously implied by its title, but the piazza also refers to a physical location in the book: a public square in the centre of Borgo, the small fictional village where the story takes place, in which a monument to the homeland has been erected.3 The significance of the memorial as the site where the nation is constructed-and reconstructed, as statues of great men are toppled and replaced several times whilst the country undergoes political upheavals and regime changes-carries aspects of the allegorical satire. Far from merely being an ironic statement on the "interchangeability of [End Page 237] power" (Hanna 209),4 the repeated motif of the cast-down statue also sows doubts as to the viability of top-down, state-sanctioned historical narratives imposed as truth: if the monument is the symbolic repository of the nation's memory, it is one that is perpetually being rewritten as power changes hands. Tabucchi further plays up the dialectic between remembrance, forgetting, and oblivion by transforming the piazza into an execution site at several pivotal moments during the course of the action, most notably in the opening and closing scenes that retell the murder of Garibaldo: "In quel momento si sentì uno sparo. Uno solo. Garibaldo sciolse l'abbraccio della statua e lentamente si girò su se stesso. Aprì il pugno alzato e il sasso rotolò sulla piazza. Mentre gli andava dietro gorgogliò qualcosa, ma lo udirono in pochi" (236).5 Killed during a violent skirmish between local communist demonstrators and police forces in the first years of De Gasperi's reign,6 Garibaldo's last words at the feet of the monument are but a confused mumble: "Ma invece la lingua liberò un gorgoglio squaccheroso che udirono solo i pochi che gli stavano vicino […] nel breve tragitto dal monumento alla polvere, […] la nebbia della morte gli aveva confuso proprio l'ultima frase" (13).7 By lending symbolic weight to Garibaldo's useless heroism at the piazza and his inane, inaudible last words, the bookend structure of the narrative begets the central question of the novel: whose voices are stifled in the memorialization of national history?8 Given these considerations, it may come as no surprise that Tabucchi experimented with newly emerging historiographical methods in the writing of Piazza d'Italia. As Flavia Brizio-Skov deftly demonstrated in her study Antonio Tabucchi: Navigazioni in un arcipelago narrativo, a hallmark of Tabucchi scholarship, the young author drew extensively from Carlo Ginzburg's microstoria, a genre of history writing that emerged during political and cultural debates in the social sciences in the 1970s. Critical of large-scale investigations...