Pierfranca Forchini
pierfranca.forchini@unicatt.it
Pierfranca Forchini holds a PhD in Linguistic and Literary Sciences, an MA in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics and an MA in Foreign Languages and Literatures. Her primary research interests focus on the lexico-grammatical interface of spoken language and cinematic conversation, particularly in American English, explored through corpus linguistics and Biber’s Multi-Dimensional Analysis. Other areas of expertise include applied corpus linguistics (i.e. the use of movies as potential sources for teaching and learning spoken discourse), language varieties (i.e. differences between American and British English and varieties of American English), contrastive linguistics (i.e. the phonological systems of English and Italian, dubbing from English to Italian and phraseology) and Italian cartoon songs. She is currently an Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Università Cattolica, Milan (Italy) and is the AMC-Project Director. (cf.www.americanmoviecorpus.net). Additionally, she is a Karate-Do Master, practicing since 1979 and holding a VII Dan black belt.
This talk introduces my newly published book "Decoding Movie Language through Multi-Dimensional Analysis and the Grammar of Graphics" . It offers a comprehensive and refined account of movie discourse through the application of Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) to the American Movie Corpus, a collection of authentic, verified movie dialog transcriptions. Expanding on previous MDA-based research, it broadens both the scope of data and the methodological framework by integrating the Grammar of Graphics to facilitate the interpretation of linguistic findings. The study addresses the longstanding debate on the authenticity of scripted dialog, demonstrating the textual and linguistic proximity between movie language and spontaneous conversation. It includes genre-based and diachronic analyses, offering a rigorous, data-driven perspective on movie language as both a linguistic resource and a tool for teaching spoken grammar. Bridging corpus linguistics, applied linguistics, and media studies, the book provides valuable insights for scholars, educators, and learners interested in spoken language, ELT, and telecinematic discourse, while contributing a novel, visualized approach to empirical language analysis.
Attedance
Date: Jan 16th, 2026
Time: 17:00 pm (Shanghai Time)
Meeting ID: 883 9776 4988
Passcode: 926116
Meet you in ZOOM !
