Aviation English: Structure and Importance of an International Airborne Language

In today’s globalized world, air travel is one of the fastest growing markets. Millions of aircrafts take off and then touch down all around the world each day. This well-synchronized symphony, however, is much more complex than it seems, and communication – language - plays a crucial role during a plane’s journey. Misunderstandings and miscommunications can have disastrous effects, so the adoption of a standard phraseology to be used during flight is a means to overcome language barriers, avoid ambiguous expressions and guarantee a safe and effective operation of an aircraft. Little is known about the interaction that goes on between pilots and air traffic controllers (ATCOs), and even though the language of aviation is English, cockpit communication can be hard to understand for people who are not familiar with this specific language. The scope of this thesis is to examine the origins of this uncommon language, the characteristics and peculiarities of air communication and to shed a little light on this mystery called Aviation English.

Ray-tracing assessment of the robustness of Physical Layer Security key generation protocol

Nowadays, information security is a very important topic. In particular, wireless networks are experiencing an ongoing widespread diffusion, also thanks the increasing number of Internet Of Things devices, which generate and transmit a lot of data: protecting wireless communications is of fundamental importance, possibly through an easy but secure method. Physical Layer Security is an umbrella of techniques that leverages the characteristic of the wireless channel to generate security for the transmission. In particular, the Physical Layer based-Key generation aims at allowing two users to generate a random symmetric keys in an autonomous way, hence without the aid of a trusted third entity. Physical Layer based-Key generation relies on observations of the wireless channel, from which harvesting entropy: however, an attacker might possesses a channel simulator, for example a Ray Tracing simulator, to replicate the channel between the legitimate users, in order to guess the secret key and break the security of the communication. This thesis work is focused on the possibility to carry out a so called Ray Tracing attack: the method utilized for the assessment consist of a set of channel measurements, in different channel conditions, that are then compared with the simulated channel from the ray tracing, to compute the mutual information between the measurements and simulations. Furthermore, it is also presented the possibility of using the Ray Tracing as a tool to evaluate the impact of channel parameters (e.g. the bandwidth or the directivity of the antenna) on the Physical Layer based-Key generation. The measurements have been carried out at the Barkhausen Institut gGmbH in Dresden (GE), in the framework of the existing cooperation agreement between BI and the Dept. of Electrical, Electronics and Information Engineering "G. Marconi" (DEI) at the University of Bologna.

Cultural differences in nonverbal communication and their implications in public service interpreting

This paper intends to underline the importance of nonverbal cues in intercultural communication and especially in the profession of the interpreter in the public services. The first chapter focuses on giving an overview on the different components of nonverbal communication by providing a definition and examples. The chapter then analyses the different functions carried out by nonverbal language. The second chapter addresses cultural differences related to nonverbal language and provides examples for every component of nonverbal language. It also explains the distinction between high context cultures and low context cultures. Lastly, the third chapter first gives an overview on Public Service Interpreting (PSI), explaining the main features and characteristics. It then provides real examples of cultural misunderstandings related to nonverbal language which occurred in public services and gives the techniques used by interpreters to solve them. This chapter includes examples of various nonverbal cues including eye contact, touch, silence, and hand gestures.

La communication inclusive en Italie et en Suisse: une étude expérimentale

Taking example of textual, oral and visual contents from Italian and Swiss government websites (Italian and French-speaking ones), this research makes a case study on the theme of inclusive communication, focusing particularly on non-sexist communication. Our corpus consists of Italian (https://www.governo.it/), Swiss Italian (https://www.admin.ch/gov/it/pagina-iniziale.html) and Swiss French (https://www.admin.ch/gov/fr/accueil.html) government websites. To better analyze the topic of inclusion, we decided to divide the thesis into two parts: a first theoretical section that focuses on a description of the topic's basic notions and the policies adopted by the two countries; a detailed presentation of the categories of marginalized people and the current situation of the use of processes related to inclusive communication; an analysis of communication from a gender perspective and the differences between the two countries. For the second section of this thesis, we decided to conduct innovative research by comparing and contrasting the three websites. Press releases, speeches, job postings and photo galleries will be among the analyzed materials. These sources will be studied meticulously to form a global perspective on the progress of inclusive communication in Italy and Switzerland.