8.1 Language Ideologies and Language Criticism in Italian

Abstract

In present-day Italy, alongside Italian as the official language, French, German, Ladinian and Slovenian all have co-official status at the local level. A total of twelve minority languages enjoy special status. Since the latter days of the Middle Ages, there has been a keen awareness that natural languages manifest themselves in the form of multiple variations. The gradual process by which the various dialects were overtaken by the Florentine vernacular was met with both positive and negative assessments. These can be divided into two complementary streams, one of which is committed to monolingualism and has adhered to literary-aesthetic or, later, ideological-political arguments, and another that is pluralistic in nature. The negotiations surrounding the diversity of the variations, as well as the competing glottonyms that have emerged over the centuries, the designations for linguistic minorities, the positioning vis-à-vis Anglo-American influence and the discussions concerning shifting norms in the spirit of ‘political correctness’ are all expressions and conveyances of linguistic ideologies that will be presented here as examples.