La Questione della Lingua

Luigi speranza

In 2011 Italy celebrates 150 years of Unification.

This is a very important date not only for the history of the Italian State but also for the history of the Italian language.

The debates on an Italian standard language that is accessible to everyone (‘la questione della lingua’) began in the 13th century with Dante Alighieri, and his ‘De vulgari eloquentia’ (1304). They have continued for almost seven centuries.

The political unification in 1861 marked a new phase in the discussion on the language.

Did it amount to a victory of standard Italian and the defeat of all other languages present on the territory of the new Italian state, was it a fortuitous coexistance of different languages?

Is the language one of the main parts of national identity?

This is the crucial question we would like to explore.

What kind of relationship can there be between political and linguistic unification?

What was the process in different countries?

Does a strong centralized state actually need to have one language?

Can a language actually unify a nation?

What is happening nowadays, as the migration process seems to be leading us towards plurilingualism?

These are the questions that we will put to the participants.

The discussion will be developed from two perspectives.

Diachronically, we will describe the creation of a standard language and its role in the political centralization and unification.

On the other hand, synchronically, we will analyse the situation in a modern society where two opposing tendencies coexist.

On the one hand, the aspiration to integrate in a new society and/or to be a world citizen impels us to use one standard language, while on the other, the desire to conserve a distinct identity and to ensure the survival of the small languages explains the opposite movement.

We think that the topic of the workshop will be interesting not only for specialists but also for the general public concerned with problems of identity and nation.

This is why we plan to contact a publishing house interested in the topic and to publish the papers delivered at the workshop.

We also see the workshop as a step towards future research on these issues.