The Place of Language. Essays in Honor of Giuliana Garzone

This special issue celebrates the outstanding career of Giuliana Garzone, whose scientific endeavors have covered all the domains outlined in the title of this issue, with significant forays also in the field of literature. Coming from a background steeped in the humanities in their broadest sense, and more specifically in literary studies, where her research interests initially dwelled, Giuliana then concentrated mostly on discourse analysis, in its various domains. The hallmark of her scientific endeavor is one, though: her attention to the linguistic data, and the investigation – also of a theoretical nature – of specific linguistic aspects, especially in the field of pragmatics. After a decades-long collaboration with Giuliana, we firmly believe that in Discourse analysis she found the ideal space where the different facets of her scientific profile could truly shine and make an impact in multiple domains. Cultural phenomena and translation, after all, are part of discourse, and in her contributions to these fields Garzone has not only made a definitive case for the centrality of linguistic research in discourse studies, but also left her sign as an outstanding linguist. In these few introductory pages, we would like to start from the notion of discourse and draw, with large strokes, an outline of the multiple potentials of discourse analysis and the original ways in which Garzone realized them. We will start from her most exquisitely linguistic research, which laid the ground for all her other research endeavors by providing a sound methodological core, moving then on to the rich part of her production set within the broad framework of Discourse Studies. We will then close with translation as a cultural and discursive practice, a perspective that Garzone has always stressed in her works, and which has enabled her to come to a novel and fruitful classification of translation phenomena.