LIMELIGHT (Laboratory Investigating Manipulative and Expressive Language Techniques) is a parallel initiative of the Observatory for Advertising and Political Propaganda (OPPP!), with a more scientific-academic vocation. It pursues research objectives on the use and function of linguistic implicit meanings in manipulative communication. In particular, LIMELIGHT undertakes a dual line of investigation:
– On the one hand, it intends to systematically explore and describe the main phenomena of persuasive and manipulative language observable in both private and public communication, with particular reference to implicit strategies such as implicatures, presuppositions, vague and figurative expressions, background information (“topics”), among others.
– On the other hand, it intends to investigate the cognitive correlates and brain signatures of such strategies through online and offline experimental diagnostics.
The investigative areas of the laboratory also benefit from the contribution of the following perspectives:
– Computational, e.g., in the development of automatic recognition systems for implicit contents in different textual genres;
– Psychological, through the creation and administration of tests aimed at detecting the neurocognitive and processing bases of the different strategies of implicit communication;
– Didactic, with the creation of materials to support the development of metalinguistic skills for the recognition and understanding of implicit contents.
These and other lines of research are developed with the contribution of the following advisors:
Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri is full professor of General Linguistics at Roma Tre university. His main rsearch interests are in the fields of general linguistics, Japanese linguistics, Italian linguistics, persuasive and implicit communication, language and the brain. For his scientific work, please check the long CV and his Academia and ResearchGate pages. He is the funder and director of the website rightpronunciation.com for the pronunciation of important names, of the website oppp.it (Osservatorio Permanente sulla Pubblicità e la Propaganda) with the Limelight Lab, and of the project IMPAQTS: Implicit Manipulation in Politics – Quantitatively Assessing the Tendentiousness of Speeches (Italian Government Project of Relevant National Interest 2017, n. 2017STJCE9) – https://impaqts.it/.
Federica Cominetti (PhD) is Assistant Professor in General Linguistics at the University Niccolò Cusano (Roma, Italy). Her research focuses on public discourse (politics and journalism), with particular reference to the analysis of persuasive implicit strategies, including different kinds of presuppositions and implicatures, and their communicative functions in texts. She is interested in the evolution of political language from all linguistic levels. She has recently been focusing on the role of linguistic implicit strategies in building manipulative mechanisms, such as clickbait.
Giorgia Mannaioli is a postdoctoral researcher collaborating with PRIN- and ERC- awarded research groups at Università di Genova. With a PhD in general and applied linguistics, she has been working on implicit persuasive and manipulative linguistic strategies since 2015, with national and international research groups, among which the OPPP! Observatory (https://oppp.it) and the PRIN-awarded project IMPAQTS (https://impaqts.it). She has been focusing on the implicit phenomenon of vagueness, and has recently published a book on the topic (Vagueness as an Implicitating Persuasive Strategy, John Benjamins). She combines theoretical, applied and experimental methods of inquiry (has experience in both psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic designs and procedures). In multiple occasions, she taught courses on the use and recognition of implicit strategies, both for expert and less-expert audiences.
Claudia Coppola holds a PhD in Linguistics from Università Roma Tre/La Sapienza and is now postdoctoral assistant at the Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics and Semiotics at Università della Svizzera Italiana. Her current research lies at the intersection of argumentation studies and linguistics, applying the analysis of different pragmatic phenomena (e.g. presuppositions, agency, concession) to different contexts of contemporary discourse (e.g. corporate advertising, political discourse, debate on social media). Implicit communication is one of her main research and teaching topics. From 2016 she is part of the “OPPP!” Observatory, which monitors Italian political discourse and advertising; she also took part in the Research Project of National Interest “IMPAQTS” on implicit manipulative political discourse.
Viviana Masia is Assistant Professor in Linguistics at the University of Roma Tre. Her research interests concern the neurophysiological correlates of implicit communication phenomena, critical analysis of political discourse and the pragmatic dimension of evidentiality, among others. Within the scope of the IMPAQTS project (PI: Prof. Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri), she coordinated the realization of neurological inquiries on the processing of presupposition and information structure phenomena. With John Benjamins, she published Sociobiological Bases of Information Structure (published in 2017, from her PhD dissertation) and The Manipulative Disguise of Truth (2021).
Giulia Giunta is a Postdoc in the Research Project of National Interest (PRIN) “EPITHETS” at the University of Milano Bicocca, investigating electrophysiological correlates of insults and derogatory epithets. Previously, she was a Postdoc in Experimental Pragmatics at the University of Neuchâtel, working on linguistic encoding and its influence on challengeability and information endorsement. Before that, she held a scholarship in Experimental Pragmatics at the University of Genova, focusing on presupposition and epistemic vigilance. She contributed to the PRIN project “IMPAQTS,” helping build corpus studies on manipulative meanings and neurolinguistic research on presuppositions. In 2023, she earned her PhD in Linguistics with honours from Roma Tre University and Sapienza University of Rome, exploring linguistic packaging and critical attention development (supervisors: Prof Lombardi Vallauri, Prof Roccaforte, Prof Pouscoulous). Her interests include experimental pragmatics, pragmatic development, persuasive communication, and language-influenced decision-making processes.