Michele Mannoni

Introduction

Research interests

Michele Mannoni (滿鉑淵) specializes in modern Mandarin Chinese linguistics, which he investigates from various perspectives, primarily within discourse analysis and metaphor theory and analysis. His research employs both quantitative and qualitative corpus-based analyses. He focuses particularly on the processes of signification and meaning-making at both intralinguistic and interlinguistic levels.

Legal language

In his recent publications, Mannoni has explored the metaphors used in Chinese and English for key legal concepts, such as “rights” (权利) and “injustice” (冤). He has also examined the meaning and translation of essential legal notions such as “legitimate rights and interests” (合法权益) and “illegal rights and interests” (非法权益), in part together with Prof. Deborah Cao (Griffith University, Australia).

Methodology

He designed a procedure aimed at finding possible metaphors at the word compound and collocate level starting from a target-domain word in a Chinese corpus (MetaCoCoTaC). Currently, he is refining a procedure for identifying linguistic metaphors in Chinese words. He is also carrying out research in the method of identifying graphemic metaphors.

Biopsychosocial health

For the Project of Excellence on Inclusive Humanities (2023-2027) granted to his Department, Mannoni is working in the Chinese linguistic area on urgent themes connected to biopsychosocial language. He co-authored a work on the terms that identify vulnerable people to show the hidden nuances of meanings these terms have and their implications. A study on the metaphors used in post-trauma language is in press, and another on pet bereavement metaphors is under editorial consideration.

Human-animal interaction

Mannoni is currently engaged in a project examining the human-animal relationship through analysis of the language employed within it. A study based on linguistic data in Chinese and English, drawn from real-world contexts centring on the grief experienced by those who have lost a pet, is presently under editorial consideration.