Italy: A new language for a new politics?

Journal of Modern Italian Studies

Volumn 2, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 337-357

  McCarthy, Patrick ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Charismatic; Italy; Language; Monologue dialogue; Myth; Populism

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247421203     PISSN: 1354571X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13545719708454957     Document Type: Review

References (65)

1. See on this Seamus Heaney's 'Whatever you say, say nothing', North (London: Faber & Faber, 1975), p. 57
2. See P. McCarthy and Erik Jones, Chapter 1 of their edited Disintegration or Transformation: the Crisis of the State in Advanced Industrial Societies (New York: St Martin's Press, 1995), pp. 1-19
3. Umberto Eco, 'Il linguaggio politico', in Gian Luigi Beccaria (ed.) I linguaggi settoriali in Italia (Milan: Bompiani, 1987), pp. 91-105
4. Giambattista Vico, La Scienza Nuova e altri scritti, ed. Nicola Abbagnano (Turin: Unione tipografico - editrice Torinese, 1976 edn), p. 319
5. Jean Baudrillard, Amérique (Paris: Grasset, 1986)
6. Eco,'Il linguaggio politico', pp. 104-5
7. The exclusion of the citizen seems to militate against our theme that Italians enjoy political language. But their enjoyment of politics as theater does not mean that they participate actively in a political project
8. Quoted in Giuseppe Fiori, Il venditore (Milan: Garzanti, 1995), p. 47
9. Alcide De Gasperi, 'Le ragioni ideali della Democrazia cristiana', in Discorsi politici, Vol. 1 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1956), pp. 29-35. The quotations, where simple, have been translated into English. Where they are difficult, the Italian original is given in the notes. Where they are untranslatable, they have been left in Italian with an English comment in the notes
10. Giuseppe Rossini (ed.) I Cattolici italiani nei tempi nuovi della Cristianità (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1967), p. 190
11. Giuseppe Dossetti, Scritti reggiani 1944-1948 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1982), pp. 62-3
12. Palmiro Togliatti, 'L'anti-fascismo di Antonio Gramsci', in Momenti della storia d'Italia (Rome: Riuniti, 1963), p. 183. The Hegelian language seems obscure but it would have presented no difficulties to the Rinascita reader. Antonio Gramsci was the PCI's leader and martyr who, imprisoned by Mussolini, made the most sophisticated analysis of Fascism in his prison notebooks which were published after the war
13. 'Intervento di Aldo Moro', in Rossini, I Cattolici italiani nei tempi nuovi della Cristianità, pp. 189-99.Where Moro is modest, Andreotti is aggressive in asserting that the Catholics are the true champions of liberty because they are free of sin
14. - 'Dove è lo spirito del Signore è la libertà', Il Simbolo 15 (1958): pp.177-87
15. Giorgio Amendola, 'Coerenza e severità', Politica ed Economia 7(4) (July-August 1976): 8
16. English does not possess this form and must begin with a subject. Pietro Ingrao is the historic leader of the PCI Left
17. See Pietro Ingrao, Le cose impossibili, un'autobiografia raccontata e discussa con Nicola Tranfaglia (Rome: Riuniti, 1990)
18. Enrico Berlinguer, Austerità, occasione per trasformare l'Italia (Rome: Riuniti, 1977), p. 13
19. Aldo Moro, 'La terza fase', Storia della Democrazia cristiana, ed. Francesco Malgesi (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1989), pp. 551-5
20. For the linguistic innovations of 1977 see Claudia Salaris, Il movimento del settantasette: linguaggi e scritture dell'ala creativa (Bertiolo: AAA Edizioni, 1997). The language of culture reinforces and contradicts the language of politics. In Sciascia, L'affaire Moro and Pasolini, Empirismo eretico criticism of the DC's refusal to create meaning dominates
21. Giorgio Almirante, 'Per l'unità delle forze anticomuniste in difesa della libertà di tutti gli italiani, Relazione al Comitato Centrale del MSI-DN, 29-30 luglio 1975', p. 5. I wish to thank Luciano Cheles for providing me with the texts of Almirante's speeches
22. 'dal fondo delle crisi più buie emergono i luminosi valori del riscatto e della resurrezione.'
23. The MSI had other languages, such as the populism of Teodoro Buontempo or the updated Fascist discourse of Pino Rauti. Nor was the MSI free of violence
24. Gianfranco Fini,'Lo sport come azione vissuta', in Various Authors, Mussolini (Rome: Gruppo Editoriale Ciarrapico, 1986), pp. 309-12. Since this text was first read at an MSI-organized seminar, Fini could be franker than usual
25. Quoted in Paola Desideri, 'L'italiano della Lega', Italiano e Oltre VIII (1983): 281
26. R.Iacopino and S. Bianchi, La Lega ce l'ha cruda (Milan: Mursia, 1994)
27. These and many other expressions are listed by Paola Desideri in Italiano e Oltre IX (1994): 22-8. Translations of the first two might be 'I don't give a damn' and 'Thieving Rome/the League does not forgive', which loses both the rhyme and the alliteration
28. 'prick' and 'The Lega can get it up.'
29. Once again the Italian rhymes: 'Di Petrus terrone/con la valigia di cartone' (La Stampa, 18 November 1996)
30. La Padania, 16 January 1997. This is the only Italian newspaper habitually to use the word 'incazzarsi'. The English translation 'pissed off' catches the speaker's mood but loses the crudely sexual nature of the Italian
31. G. Ferrari, A. Marinelli and G. Monti, Pagine del tempo, vol. 2 (Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1985), p. 217. This history textbook is used by 12-year-old children
32. L'Espresso, 19 September 1996, p. 51
33. It has been pointed out that Alberto da Giussano may never have existed and that, if he did, he led an armed band called 'Death's companions' (Augusta Forconi, 'Armi e bagagli', Italiano e Oltre IX (1994): 25
34. Once again there is alliteration in the Italian: 'marmaglioni, margniffoni, canaglia e teppa e porci di Roma' (La Stampa, 28 October 1996)
35. 'If I may be allowed to ...'. The Italian form uses the subjunctive
36. For the language of the early Berlusconi see our 'Il linguaggio di Berlusconi', Il Regno, 15 May 1994, pp. 276-8
37. Quoted in Claudio Fracassi and Michele Gambino, Berlusconi, una biografia non autorizzata (Rome: Avvenimento, 1994), p. 50
38. La Repubblica, 1 February 1994
39. These speeches are reproduced in S. E. D'Anna and G. Moncalvo, Berlusconi in Concert (London: Otzium, 1994)
40. PMC, 'Silvio Berlusconi: la parola crea l'uomo politico', Europa-Europe 3 (1994): 241-56
41. La Repubblica, 8 June 1994
42. Eugenio Scalfari, 'Meditazioni sul tramonto della borghesia', Microméga 4 (1994): 23-31. Scalfari was until his recent retirement the editor of La Repubblica
43. 'un ghigno vendicativo', 'i baffi sottili gli tremavano', Panorama, 4 February 1994, pp. 9-14
44. Panorama, 30 January 1997, p. 17
45. La Repubblica, 11 November 1996
46. La Repubblica, 21 February 1997
47. For Fini in transition see Piero Ignazi, Postfascisti? (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994)
48. Pensiamo l'Italia il domani c'è già, Tesi politiche approvate dal congresso di Fiuggi, January 1995. Text furnished by the Press Office of AN
49. The quotations in this and the following paragraph are taken from interviews published in La Stampa, 20 January 1997 and 10 March 1997 and in La Repubblica, 16 March 1997
50. On Prodi's use of TV in the 1996 elections see Roberti Grandi, Prodi: Una campagna lunga un anno (Milan: Lupetti, 1996)
51. Actually Coppi supported the DC in the 1948 elections but in an age of ideology Bartali's rival had to be a Communist. See Stefano Pivato, Clericalismo e laicismo nella cultura popolare italiana (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990), pp. 207-61
52. For the early months of Prodi's campaign, see our 'Prodi sfida Berlusconi: una guerra filologica', Il Regno, 15 June 1995, pp. 338-40
53. 'Intervista a Romano Prodi', Il Regno, 18 June 1996, pp. 321-5
54. See Romano Prodi, Governare l'Italia (Rome: Donzelli, 1994, reissued 1996)
55. 'Un nuovo inizio: la fase costituente di una nuova formazione politica', Relazione di Achille Occhetto,XIX Congresso Nazionale del Partito Comunista Italiano, Bologna, 7-10 March 1990, p. 28
56. L'Unità, 10 March 1990
57. An English translation might be 'seeing the world in terms of ideals or of the need to criticize or of the value of conflict'
58. Giorgio Bocca.'Il Dalemismo, malattia senile del conformismo', Microméga (1996/5): p. 7
59. D'Alema used the term 'serenity' more than once in his 17 April speech at Piazza Maggiore in Bologna (Author's notes). This was a neat reversal of Berlusconi's 1994 denunciation of the 'howling piazzas'
60. L'Unità, 24 March 1996
61. Italo Calvino, La giornata di uno scrutatore (Turin: Einaudi, 1963), p. 37
62. Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle, The Blair Revolution (London: Faber & Faber, 1996),p.6
63. L'Unità, 1 March 1997
64. L'Unità, 4 October 1996
65. Most recently by Armando Cossutta (La Repubblica, 11 February 1997)