La "Questione della lingua italiana" e la questione della lingua globale: due fenomeni a confronto
The Italian "Questione della lingua" and the Present-Day Search for a Global Language: A Comparison

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to create parallels between the Italian Questione della lingua and modernday debates on linguistic globalization. In doing so, it identifies some important commonalities between the two phenomena which, though of different magnitude and occurring in different historical circumstances, are quite analogous in nature. By highlighting the important nexus between language and culture, this analysis observes linguistic standardization as a process that can have deleterious consequences on cultural diversity. By considering the ascension of a Florentine-based variety to the status of national language in Italy a process encouraged by hegemonic aspirations rather than motivated by objectives of communicative efficiency, this work attempts to show how linguistic standardization is not always beneficial, and that, instead of having levelling or equalizing effects it can, instead, continue to perpetrate oppressive trends. The article, though characterized by ecocritical undertones, weighs both the risks and benefits of the various possible outcomes of the need for linguistic globalization: the designation of an artificial language (namely, Esperanto) as a global lingua franca; the takeover of an existing natural language (such as English) or of modified versions of natural languages (Basic English, Latino sine flexione); the deculturalization/dehistoricization of an existing language (Anna Wierzbicka’s research on Natural Semantic Metalanguage). By exploring and acknowledging the aftermath of the Italian Questione della lingua, and comparing the Questione to current debates on linguistic globalization, one can make important generalizations and observations on such processes and their potential consequences.

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