Language and politics in Italy: From Moro to Berlusconi

Journal of Modern Italian Studies

Volumn 6, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 348-370

  Croci, Osvaldo ^a  

^a MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND   (Canada)

Author keywords

Electoral; Italy; Language; Party; Politics; System; Volatility

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248746791     PISSN: 1354571X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13545710110084271     Document Type: Review

References (103)

1. Tim Parks, Italian Neighbours or a Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona (New Lork: Fawcett Columbine Books, 1992), pp. 124-5.
2. Italian translation: Italiani (Milan: Bompiani, 1995).
3. Stefano Malatesta, 'L'Italia la capisci al bar', La Repubblica, 7 June 1995. All translations from Italian are by the author.
4. Giorgio Fedel, Saggi sul linguaggio e l'oratoria politica (Milan: Giuffrè, 1999), pp. 3-50.
5. Paul E. Corcoran, 'Language and politics', in Dsavid A. Swanson and Dan D. Nimmo (eds) New Directions in Political Communication: a Resource Book (Newbury Park: Sage, 1990), p. 53.
6. Two dictionaries have been published to register and shed light on the new terms introduced by gentese: Sergio Stimolo and Gianna Fregonara, Onorevole parli chiaro. Da 'abbaiare alla luna' a 'zombie': Vocabolario pratico per la Seconda Repubblica (Milan: Rizzoli, 1994);
7. Silverio Novelli and Gabriella Urbani, Il dizionario italiano: Parole nuove della Seconda e Terza Repubblica (Rome: Datanews, 1995).
8. For a review of the language of Italian politics with particular reference to the evolution of its lexicon see Erasmo Leso, 'Momenti di storia del linguaggio politico', in Luca Serianni and Pietro Trifone (eds) Storia della lingua italiana, Vol. II: Scritto e parlato (Turin: Einaudi, 1994), pp. 703-55;
9. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, Il Novecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), pp. 51-61.
10. Pietro Citati, 'Elogio funebre della DC', La Repubblica, 14 June 1996, pp. 1 and 6.
11. Novelli and Urbani, Il dizionario italiano, p. 39.
12. The speech is reported in Stefano Gensini, Italiana: Elementi di storia linguistico-letteraria + materiali antologici (Bergamo: Minerva Italica, 1980), pp. 905-8.
13. Litotes, of which politichese made large use, is a rhetorical figure that consists in expressing a concept or an idea by negating its contrary.
14. For more details on this period see Claudio Giovannini, La Democrazia cristiana dalla fondazione al centro-sinistra (1943-1962) (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1978), pp. 73-85.
15. Joseph La Palombara, Democracy Italian Style (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 103. What Umberto Eco wrote about the language of Italian political newspapers in those days applies as well to the language of politics in general: In reality newspapers do not even try to sell information to the public as a whole. A newspaper is a bulletin through which a power group sends a message to other power groups. Often the language of the message must be above the heads of the public. This means that the public as a whole must not understand the message that the newspaper is sending to the government or to FIAT or to IRI because the content of the message might upset or disturb it.
16. (U. Eco, 'Guida all'interpretazione del linguaggio giornalistico', in Lorenzo Renzi and Michele A. Cortelazzo (eds) La lingua italiana oggi: Un problema scolastico e sociale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1977), p. 185)
17. In Italy it has become fashionable to refer to this system as consociational/clientelistic. In reality the term 'consociational' is improper since Italy lacks some of the necessary characteristics of a consociational democracy. Arend Lijphart, the most famous scholar of consociationalism, did not classify Italy among consociational democracies and pointed out that Italy simply presented some consociational elements. See Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: a Comparative Exploration (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 15 and 118-19).
18. Later, he classified Italy among what he called 'consensual democracies'. See his Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 21-36 and 216).
19. Consociational and consensual democracies are similar in that their societies are rigidly segmented into closed subcommunities. The difference lies in the fact that whereas the term 'consociational democracy' refers to those countries in which the cleavages between constituting communities are ethnic-cultural, the term 'consensual democracy' refers to those where these cleavages are ideological. The Italian regime of the First Republic is even better described as clientelistic/syncretistic. Giuseppe di Palma defines 'political syncretism' as the replacement of political alternance by the 'manipulative absorption of heterogeneous forces toward a political "centre" that monopolizes government for a time'. With regard to Italy he wrote: 'If we examine Italian governments together and over time, the process resembles slow geological layering. Though new forces progressively move toward the core, replacement occurs at long intervals, and the process is additive more than selective.' See Giuseppe Di Palma, Political Syncretism in Italy: Historical Coalition Strategies and the Present Crisis (Berkeley: University of California, Institute of International Studies, Policy Papers in International Affairs, No. 7, 1978), p. 11.
20. Space does not permit the elaboration of this point. The reasons why this syncretistic/clientelistic bargain came to an end are well explored by Stefano Guzzini in 'The "long night of the First Republic": years of clientelistic implosion in Italy', Review of International Political Economy 2 (Winter 1995): 27-61.
21. Novelli and Urbani, Il dizionario italiano, p. 38.
22. Eugenio Scalfari, former editor of La Repubblica, has argued that the term 'la gente' identifies the sociological reality of a large middle class with no cultural points of reference except TV ('Meditazioni sul tramonto della borghesia', Micromega 4 (1994): 23-31).
23. Patrick McCarthy has offered a more constructivist analysis. He claims that: 'although class distinctions are blurred by common consumption patterns, modern societies do not form an amorphous mass.' Hence, la gente, more than being a term identifying a precise sociological reality, is a term that the new politicians (and Berlusconi in particular) use as part of their multi-method attempt to create such a sociological category and reality, for their own political advantage ('Forza Italia: the overwhelming success and the consequent problems of a virtual party', in Richard S. Katz and Piero Ignazi (eds) Italian Politics: the Year of the Tycoon (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), p. 42).
24. On the language of the Lega, see Roberto Borcio, 'The rebirth of populism in Italy and France', Telos 90 (Winter 1991-2): 43-56;
25. Ilvo Diamanti, La Lega: Geografia, storia e sociologia di un nuovo soggetto politico (Rome: Donzelli, 1993).
26. Enzo Golino, for instance, argues that language changes always lag behind regime changes and hence at least some elements of the language of Fascism survived the regime (Parola di Duce: Il linguaggio totalitario del fascismo (Milan: Rizzoli, 1994), p. 34). Records of Mussolini's speeches were very popular in Italy during the 1950s and 1960s, both among those who felt nostalgia for his regime and among those who treated them as a kind of carnival. Hence, the lexicon of the Duce remained on the tip of the tongue, as it were, of most Italians. In the 1990s, moreover, these speeches experienced a kind of revival. A four-hour cassette (I discorsi di Mussolini) was sold as a companion to two issues of the popular weekly L'Espresso on 31 May and 7 June 1996.
27. In Berlusconi's case, this is true also with respect to his business persona. He has indeed deliberately cultivated the image of an anti-establishment businessman who has successfully challenged the staleness of the Italian business world and has reached success thanks to his use of creative and innovative techniques. See Emanuela Poli, 'Silvio Berlusconi and the myth of the creative entrepreneur', Modern Italy 3 (November 1998): 271-9.
28. Golino, Parola di Duce, p. 17.
29. Novelli and Urbani, Il dizionario italiano.
30. On the magic power of words, rituals and symbols, see also David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988)
31. and Politics and Symbols: the Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
32. Mario Isnenghi, L'educazione dell'italiano: Il fascismo e l'organizzazione della cultura (Bologna: Cappelli, 1979)
33. quoted in Golino, Parola di Duce, p. 18.
34. It should be noted in this context that, at least in the 1994 campaign, the newspapers that opposed Berlusconi devoted more space to his public appearances than did those that supported him. See Saveria Capecchi, 'Sorrisi e canzoni in TV. I messaggi televisivi di Berlusconi visti dalla stampa', in Marino Livolsi and Ugo Volli (eds) La comunicazione politica tra Prima e Seconda Repubblica (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1995), pp. 135-65.
35. Erasmo Leso, 'Aspetti della lingua del fascismo: prime linee di una ricerca', in Storia linguistica dell'Italia nel Novecento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1972)
36. The frequency of terms related to liberalism in the 1994, 1996 and 2001 programmes are the following: the verb liberalizzare (to liberalize) appears four times in the 1994 programme and once in the 2001 programme; the noun liberalizzazione (liberalization) five times in 1996 and eight times in 2001; the noun libertà (freedom) four times in 1994, twenty-one times in 1996, and twenty times in 2001; the adjective libero (free) three times in 1994 and 2001, and seven times in 1996; the adverb liberalmente (liberally) once in 1996 and the verb liberare (to free) once in 1994 and 2001, and three times in 1996. For a satirical analysis of Berlusconi's liberalism, see Sergio Turone, Lettere di Adamo Smith al Cavalier Berlusconi (Bari: Laterza, 1995).
37. Reported by Giorgio Bocca in L'Espresso, 15 March 1996, p. 5.
38. 'Progetto libertà: intervista a Luciano Lama', in Ideazione, 3 November 2000.
39. Lo Zingarelli 1995: Vocabolario della lingua italiana (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1995), p. 846;
40. On the use of negative themes in political campaigns, see William Riker, The Strategy of Rhetoric: Campaigning for the American Constitution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), especially pp. 49-74.
41. Corriere della Sera, 17 April 1994.
42. 'Il Cavaliere non lascia', Il Manifesto, 23 April 1996, p. 8.
43. See also Berlusconi's speeches in his L'Italia che ho in mente (Milan: Mondadori, 2000).
44. T. Malaspina in L'Espresso, 11 March 1993.
45. L'Unità, 27 April 1994.
46. La Stampa, 13 June 1994.
47. La Repubblica, 5 January 1995.
48. La Stampa, 29 April 1994;
49. La Nuova Sardegna, 2 December 1994;
50. La Stampa, 3 August 1994.
51. Berlusconi's taped message on Rete 4, 26 January 1994, reported in Stefano E. D'Anna and Gigi Moncalvo, Berlusconi in Concert (London: Otzium, 1994), pp. 341-2.
52. On Mussolini's use of religion, see Gensini, Italiana, p. 365.
53. On the use of metaphors in political language, see Anne-Marie Gingras, 'Les métaphores dans le langage politique', Politique et Sociétés 30 (Autumn 1996): 159-71.
54. They both seemed, in other words, to heed Sorel's advice that one must 'appeal to a series of images capable of evoking by means of the sole intuition and without or before the use of any analytical reflection, a whole mass of sentiments' (quoted in Gensini, Italiana, p. 365).
55. For this reason, Umberto Eco has argued that Berlusconi's language during the 2001 electoral campaign resembled that of the Communists in 1948 and of the extra-parliamentary Left in the 1960s and 1970s. See his, 'Perché in Berlusconi si nasconde un comunista', in La Repubblica on line http://www.repubblica.it/online/politica/eco/eco/eco.html
56. Corriere della Sera, 26 November 1994. This led political opponents to call him in a mocking manner 'L'Uomo della Provvidenza' (The man sent by Providence).
57. See, for instance, Televenerdi-La Repubblica, 4 November 1994.
58. Reported in Pino Corrias, Massimo Gramellini and Curzio Maltese, 1994. Colpo grosso (Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1994), p. 76.
59. Giuseppe Fiori, Il venditore (Milan: Grazanti, 1995), p. 135.
60. Corriere della Sera, 21 April 1994. Although this is beyond the scope of this article it should be mentioned that Berlusconi has founded his party to relying in no small measure on the AC Milan fan clubs. Hence, one could say that FI is made up not of party activists or members but of party fans or supporters.
61. For a development of this point, see Nicola Porro, 'L'innovazione conservatrice: Fininvest, Milan Club e Forza Italia', Quaderni di Sociologia 9 (1994): 6-18;
62. Nicola Porro and Pippo Russo, 'Berlusconi and other matters: the era of football-politics', Journal of Modern Italian Studies 5(3) (2000): 348-70.
63. Taped message televised on Rete 4, 26 January 1994.
64. Mussolini, for instance, used it in his war declaration speech from Palazzo Venezia on 10 June 1940: 'We enter the field against the reactionary and pluto cratic democracies that have always represented an obstacle to the path of development of the Italian people and often even threatened its very existence.'
65. L'Unità, 11 July 1994;
66. La Stampa, 27 July 1994.
67. Corriere della Sera, 18 April 1994.
68. La Repubblica, 12 May 1994.
69. Robert Graham, 'Dini's plans for new party improper,says Berlusconi', Financial Times, 26 February 1996, p. 2.
70. The football metaphor was pushed to extremes when FI began to refer to the adherents of its youth clubs as 'gli azzurrini', the term used to refer to the members of any of the under 23 Italian football national teams (see L'Espresso, 24 June 1994).
71. La Voce, 15 June 1994;
72. Il Messaggero, 7 February 1995.
73. Paolo Madron, Le gesta del Cavaliere (Milan: Sperling & Kupfer Editori, 1994), p. 51.
74. See, for instance, Il Messaggero, 18 and 26 January 1995.
75. On the political use of proverbs, see Wolfgang Mieder, The Politics of Proverbs: from Traditional Wisdom to Proverbial Stereotypes (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997).
76. Marco Perugini, 'La lingua della pubblicità' in L. Serianni and P. Trifone (eds.) Storia della lingua italiana, Vol. II: Scritto e parlato, p. 605.
77. Il Manifesto, 21 May 1994.
78. La Stampa, 9 June 1994. Pilo's insight is of course nothing new. Parisi and Pasquino pointed out that 'the vote of opinion' was on the increase in Italy already in the late 1970s.
79. See Arturo Parisi and Gianfranco Pasquino, 'Relazione partiti-elettori e tipi di voto', in A. Parisi and G. Pasquino (eds) Continuità e mutamento elettorale in Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1977), pp. 215-39.
80. Joseph Farrell, 'Berlusconi and Forza Italia: new force for old?', Modern Italy 1 (Autumn 1995): 40-52.
81. D'Anna and Moncalvo, Berlusconi in Concert, p. 363.
82. Linguist Tullio De Mauro has remarked that Berlusconi's language has been carefully constructed through a capillary work involving focus groups and opinion polls (reported in Giovanni Russo, Perchè la sinistra ha eletto Berlusconi (Milan: Sperling and Kupfer, 1994), p. 27).
83. Giorgio Bocca, Il Venerdì-La Repubblica, 20 January 1995;
84. A. Duharvel in Libération, quoted in L'Espresso, 25 March 1994;
85. L'Europeo, 6 April 1994;
86. L'Indipendente, 7 July 1994.
87. Norberto Bobbio first advanced this argument in La sinistra nell'era del karaoke, supplement to the review Reset 6 (1994). Not surprisingly, the support for FI among homemakers (casalinghe) has traditionally been almost double the national average.
88. See, for instance, 'Forza casalinghe' in L'Espresso, 17 March 1995, pp. 50-1.
89. For an analysis of the electorate of the parties in the 1994 elections, see Gabriele Calvi and Andrea Vannucci, L'elettore sconosciuto: Analisi socioculturale e segmentazione degli orientamenti politici nel 1994 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995).
90. See the reflections of Umberto Eco, '1895: Marconi crea l'immaterialità e noi discutiamo su Gutemberg', L'Espresso, 7 April 1995, p. 218.
91. Corriere della Sera, 25 Aprii 1995;
92. Renato Mannheimer, 'Il marketing del Cavaliere', Corriere della Sera, 6 August 1998.
93. Quoted in D'Anna and Moncalvo, Berlusconi in Concert, pp. 148 and 196; Corrias et al., 1994, p. 120.
94. For a similar analysis, see Russo, Perchè la sinistra, p. 35.
95. For an analysis of these variants of gentese, see Patrick McCarthy. 'Italy: a new language for a new politics?', Journal of Modern Italian Studies 2(3) (Fall 1997): 337-57.
96. See, for instance, Giancarlo Oli, Italia Settimanale, 27 April 1994.
97. For an example of the insults hurled by Berlusconi, see L'Espresso, 10 March 1995, pp. 52-A, and 7 April 1995, p. 50.
98. For those traded between Berlusconi and Prodi, see Gian Antonio Stella, 'Romano il pacifico incendia il Cavaliere più dei gol mancati di Calloni', Corriere della Sera, 18 July 1998.
99. Although there is no space to develop this point here, it should be pointed out that it is of course illusory to expect that a change in the electoral system can bring about a 'Westminster' type of political system in the absence of a political culture capable of supporting it. On the misplaced expectations surrounding the Italian electoral reform, see Diego Gambetta and Steven Warner, 'The rhetoric of reform revealed (or: If you bite the ballot it may bite back)', Journal of Modern Italian Studies 1 (Summer 1996): 357-76.
100. See, for instance, Gian Antonio Stella, 'Massimo, Silvio e il patto della marmellata. Dagli insulti agli elogi: l'altalena dei rapporti tra D'Alema e Berlusconi', Corriere della Sera on line, 7 September 1999.
101. Antonio Padellaro, 'L'anno dell'inciucio', L'Espresso, 9 January 1997, pp. 50-3.
102. Quadrant 1 is left blank because there is no real example of a two-party system with low electoral volatility and it is difficult to imagine what type of language would prevail in it. Most likely, there wouldbe little talk of politics, and certainly little interest on the part of the electorate.
103. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (eds) Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), p. 270.