And I found this really interesting article, as I mentioned, and it talked about the change in the way Italian politicians are using language. It posits a connection between
It begins with Moro and the birth of politichese, or morotese, the Italian political language characterized by contradiction and syntactic complexity, which obscure the speaker's meaning. The speaker blunts every affirmative statement by repeatedly qualifying it. Politichese also emphasizes abstruse vocabulary. Croci talks about the relationships created in a politichese speech. Politicians in the 1950s and 1960s worked in broad coalitions, parties brought together by political exigency but with very different aims. [Specifically, the Socialist party PSI entered into a coalition with the Republican and Social Democratic parties in what was termed aperture a sinistra – opening to the Left.]
The language Moro used reflected his precarious situation and was, the author argues, “necessary for the functioning of the Italian political regime of which it was an integral part.” “Morotese allowed him to reconcile the diffent factions within the party, by paying homage to their different views in one subordinate clause or another.” (352)
The style of language also reflected a distance between the electorate and the regime. The government aimed for “limited and controlled mass political participation.” (353) Politichese made the government seem inaccessible to the everyman, a difficult game to play. Croci says that “for this reason, politichese, much like Latin in church services, could be regarded as a sort of esoteric tool capable of performing miracles, since it cold transform what was presented as dangerous political foes one day into trustworthy parliamentary allies another day.” (353)
So this tool helped the Italian government remain stable for a number of years, but in the late 1970s, economic crisis brought dissatisfaction within the government and in the electorate, and the tricky cohesion that had existed quickly disintegrated.
So then this other style of political language arose in the new political environment, one characterized by “clarity, simplicity, and spontaneity.” It originated in the 1980s with the Lega (Lega Nord?) (354), and in the Berlusconi age, it has saturated Italian politics.
Berlusconi’s politics is a lot more like advertising—and a lot closer to the
Croci characterizes gentese as “a loss of ideological identity.” While Berlusconi denounces his opponents as illiberale, he rarely identifies what liberale would be. Similarly vague are the cose buone he promises to his followers. He analogizes politics to religion (he took the “chalice” when he joined politics, his promises use religion language “io vi dico”), sports (“taking the field”), famously advertised products (article mentions “Del Monte”, use of superlatives), and medicine (himself as a “cure”). His vague and abstract language energizes the public and encourages electorate participation, but it either fails to specify policies or it characterizes them euphemistically/inaccurately.
