Social prevention as an activity to intensify mental resilience

Preventive activities prevent emerging social problems, using various methods and tools for work. This article will introduce the idea of conducting social prevention using paintball and survival, as tools for therapeutic work. Social prevention based on the elements of survival has the nature of recreational activities that prepare participants to take action in difficult conditions and to look for ways to deal with their own weaknesses. In research on strengthening mental resilience, I adopt the concept of grounded theory, based on interviews and participant observation. Social prophylaxis with elements of paintball and the art of survival has features that strengthen mental resilience, teach self-confidence and persistence. Movement prophylaxis uses human potential, energy, and verve to make the best use of these elements in the practical experience of life. Physical activity causes positive changes in human functioning and teaches how to react to difficult situations. The aim of the article is to provide research knowledge on the strength of mental resilience from paintball players who organize preventive measures. The developed materials will be used to build an alternative vision of spending free time for children, adolescents, and their parents.

È stato un mezzo disastro… Points of Convergence Between Approximation and Intensification: A Contrastive Italian-Russian Study

Based on the case-study of the Italian downtoner mezzo, ‘half of’, the present work aims to highlight, through a usage-based approach, interesting points of semantic and functional convergence between approximation and intensification, which are traditionally considered divergent meaningconstruction strategies. Mezzo functions both on the semantic level, by modulating the referential force of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and on the pragmatic level, where it acts as a discourse marker, enabling the speaker to reduce the illocutionary force of their assertions and helping the receiver to make the inferences necessary to recognise the speaker’s communicative intentions in cases of “loose talk” (in Relevance Theory terms), such as understatement and overstatement. In the second part of the article, the results of a contrastive analysis with Russian are discussed, based on the assumption that the identification of functional equivalences between different languages is a valid heuristic method to explain the semantic and pragmatic multifunctionality of certain lexical elements, also from a cross-linguistic perspective.