The article, after a short discussion of the development of Italian studies on linguistic variation from Benedetto Croce to the present day, investigates the idea that a real linguistic apocalypse is to be found on one hand, in what Calvino called “anti-language” (i.e. the often absurd and almost incomprehensible language of bureaucracy), on the other, in what is known as “return illiteracy”, i.e. the constant and dramatic decrease in competence in proper Italian on behalf of increasing strata of population, a phenomenon that leads to the growth and spread of malapropisms. But variation and change should not be deemed as the symptoms of a would-be impending apocalypse, but rather as the signals of vitality, of a never-stopping new birth.
L’italiano che cambia: apocalisse o palingenesi? Alcune riflessioni tra letteratura e linguistica, etica ed estetica, glottodidattica e sociologia
SANTIPOLO, MATTEO
2014
Abstract
The article, after a short discussion of the development of Italian studies on linguistic variation from Benedetto Croce to the present day, investigates the idea that a real linguistic apocalypse is to be found on one hand, in what Calvino called “anti-language” (i.e. the often absurd and almost incomprehensible language of bureaucracy), on the other, in what is known as “return illiteracy”, i.e. the constant and dramatic decrease in competence in proper Italian on behalf of increasing strata of population, a phenomenon that leads to the growth and spread of malapropisms. But variation and change should not be deemed as the symptoms of a would-be impending apocalypse, but rather as the signals of vitality, of a never-stopping new birth.
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