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The mimesis of Italian speech in TV series
Simona Messina
Department of Science Communication, University of Salerno
Ab his igitur, si cui forte nonnumquam tempus uoluptasque erit lucubratiunculas is-tas conoscere, petitum impetratumque uolumus, ut in legendo, quae pridem scierint, non aspernentur quasi nota inuolgataque. Nam ecquid tam remotum in litteris est, quin id tamen complusculi sciant? et satis hoc blandum est non esse haec neque in scholis decantata neque in commentariis protrita.
Aulo Gellio, Noctes atticae1
1. TV stories
In the past, it was only possible to study speech using literary and theatrical texts, while more recently the two traditional forms of language — written and spo-ken — have been joined by broadcast language (F. Sabatini 1997). As a result, the spectrum of typologies available for scrutiny has broadened, extending the scope of investigation.
Because of its scope and pervasiveness, television is the most influential me-dium in contributing to form and transform national linguistic practice, in a con-tinuous exchange which passes from spontaneous speech to broadcast speech and back to spontaneous speech. Moreover, as a tool for carrying out an indirect analysis of speech, it has the merit of photographing the speech act at a certain historical moment, albeit with a certain amount of deformation. However, not all television programmes are suitable for use as a corpus of spoken language, mean-ing the “common language” used by the majority of speakers in their ordinary, dai-ly communicative exchanges, because television contains a typological variety of programmes (T. De Mauro 2002 [1963], p. 435), each with its own characteristics.
proportion of popular television and which are represented according to two dif-ferent schemes — narrative and discursive — giving rise to ‘TV fiction’ and ‘real-ity TV’. In the former the actions of the protagonists/actors are based on a script which keeps largely to the principles governing a written narrative, while in the latter the script is occult, not explicit, and the protagonist tells his or her story either directly to the public or through a third interlocutor who may be the co-protagonist, a journalist/interviewer or a talk show anchorman.
2. Genres of TV fiction
The macrocategory of fiction2 can be divided up into various narrative formulae
starting from the television structure, based on the number and duration of the episodes, and extending to the collocation in the programming schedule and the subject matter.
Structure: every TV story has to comply with the requisites of the medium, so that the story line and the plot are entirely dependent on the number and duration of the episodes and the intended target. One of the most common characteristics of a TV fiction is the serial format, meaning that even when the fabula is elementary, the plot has to complicate the motives in order to create a strong sense of expecta-tion to ensure the attachment of the segment of public for which the product is intended. Moreover there are programme genres such as soap operas, serials and some types of series which feature various stories in parallel, proceeding more or less independently of one another and having moments of coincidence only to give a certain unity to the plot.
which induces the viewer to participate actively in the evolution of the story. There are internet sites where viewers can ask for news, give advice and make criticisms: in this way, although formally the addressees of the story, they no longer play a merely passive role but feel personally involved in the progress of the drama. Collocation in the schedule is determined by several factors:
1. by the structure, which conditions the number of episodes and the duration of each; thus the programme types with episodes lasting no more than 30 minutes are broadcast in the daytime, afternoon or early evening slots, while products produced in a number of 90/100 minute episodes occupy prime time. For exper-imental products, on the other hand, the duration of each episode does not in-fluence the collocation, which is almost always night time, with rare exceptions such as the recent, innovative Amori quotidiani (2004 — Rai3),which takes the form of a daily strip lasting 10 minutes put out in the early evening slot;
2. by the target, which represents the segment of public most likely to be interest-ed in certain topics; thus products basinterest-ed on story lines featuring romantic or young people’s concerns are broadcast in daytime; pure entertainment in the afternoon slot; more complex and diversified stories liable to attract a wider and more heterogeneous public, in prime time; innovative and experimental products, with little publicity backing, in the late evening.3
The time at which a programme goes out and the duration of each episode determine a difference in the public and consequently a different relationship be-tween the narrator-TV and the narratee-viewer. Products put out in the afternoon and early evening slots are usually based on the premise that viewers are more likely to be busy with other things and thus less attentive; they cannot be expected to make any great effort of interpretation and have to be constantly reminded, us-ing the appropriate expedients, of previous events, the relationships between the various characters and the event which is at the centre of current expectations. In prime time it can be taken for granted that viewers are more attentive and thus able to make more of an effort, while the experimental programmes, broadcast in the late evening, require greater cooperation on the part of the viewer, who is confronted with a form of narrative which does not adhere to the traditional prin-ciples and often comes in ambiguous and unclassifiable forms.
The subject matter can be divided up into three macrocategories: HISTORICAL–LITERARY
SERIES FORMAT
FANTASY SERIES FORMAT
REALISTIC SERIES FORMAT
The reproduction of language in the historical-literary serial format involves the passage from the language of the work or historical period on which the se-rial is based, to a broadcast language which must also respect the competencies of contemporary speakers, balancing the many linguistic demands in play; in the fantasy serial format the linguistic construction is bound to be conditioned by such factors as special effects, the reconstruction of an imaginary world, settings and other aesthetic elements.
REALISTIC SERIAL FORMAT
SOCIAL FICTION DETECTIVE FICTION FAMILY FICTION
The realistic serial format derives its contents above all from three spheres of subject matter: the first category covers fiction with protagonists whose profes-sion brings them up against social problems, such as doctors, priests and lawyers. Detective fiction features investigative storylines in which the protagonists com-monly belong to the various branches of the police force but may also be ordi-nary people who as a result of strange coincidences find themselves caught up in criminal events. Finally family fiction narrates the daily life of a family or group of families whose stories become entwined in a succession of petty or major events where the language must necessarily draw on colloquial Italian. This language has among its characteristics “…on one hand the banality of the everyday, talk about often insignificant things in the life of the man in the street, «the commonplace» (Poggi Salani, 1981, 259; Folena 1958), and on the other expressiveness, the viva-cious participation in facts and events, hypocoristic and dysphemic exaggeration” (G. Berruto 2002 [1987], p. 142).
3. Reality TV
behavioural traits with corresponding linguistic choices. The absence of an explicit script could make the reality product seem more spontaneous and less acted than fiction, and hence the language spoken in it more representative, since the pro-tagonists are free to react according to temperament rather than the written page. In fact, however, the author of reality TV starts from a human stereotype, with a characteristic behaviour and attitudes, and proceeds to organize contexts in which the responses judged to be most plausible can come about. In short the author sets up a provocation which determines the succession of events, and these events are likely to be reordered yet again during the editing phase.
Behind the appearance of naturalness there lies a more complex mechanism which entails a specific rationale for the linguistic construction in the end prod-uct.
In fiction the reproduction of speech is based on imitation of the linguistic context: the ideal is to create a product which is as close as possible to the language imposed by the character, time, space and action, to enhance the mimetic effect. This is an operation which requires a knowledge of the spoken language in all its various registers and codes; in fact only attention to the issues and idiosyncracies of spoken language gives a plausible imitation of spontaneous speech. Where such attention is lacking, the outcome is a language which lacks diversity and tends to be flat, in some cases jarring with the contents.
In the reality TV one finds not imitation but simulation of reality, meaning that there is a clear intention to “make believe”: a simulator practices deception because he makes out to be true what in fact is not true. As a result the narra-tion appears implausible and is indeed more artificial than a story with an explicit script, while the language too will inevitably sound artificial.
Since it is based on stereotypes, the characters in the reality programmes re-flect certain human types with stereotyped speech patterns, and this makes the language richer than spontaneous speech in idioms and linguistic commonplaces; for this reason, just as the reproduction of reality seems to tend towards the ex-treme, so the speech that occurs in it tends to be taken to extremes.
4. The corpus
What we have said so far should explain the decision to use a corpus taken from the category of family fiction for linguistic analysis, since this fulfils the requisites for an example of mimesis of spoken Italian.
because although it may deal with the same subject matter, its scripts are con-stantly evolving and produced by teams of dialogue writers. We thus set out to identify series produced by the national broadcasting company RAI4 and dating
from different periods which were suitable for comparison. We had two specific objects in view: to verify the transformations which language had undergone, and also establish to what extent and in which ways Italian society has changed and how television has represented this.
The corpus of “spoken language in family fiction” (SLFF) which we analysed in this first phase of the research project was taken from two series: one produced in 1968, La famiglia Benvenuti, the other in 1998, Un medico in famiglia.5
The periods in which they were made appeared to us to be emblematic because 1968 marked the onset of widescale contestation and the renovation of grassroots social structures, while by 1998 society had acquired a computer competence and a multiethnic character, becoming more linguistically and culturally cosmopoli-tan.
Furthermore, for different reasons, both series were innovatory in the televi-sion culture of their time. La famiglia Benvenuti was one of the first series to nar-rate the everyday concerns of an average family, in an Italy poised between the economic boom and the radical contestation of ’68. Adults were still haunted by the tragedy of the war, but at the same time they were afraid of a present which seemed, with its startling novelties, to threaten whatever of value had been inher-ited from the past.
Thirty years on Un medico in famiglia featured the same topics, with all the transformations that the institution of the family had undergone from the “mythi-cal” ’68 onwards. The authors set out to make a product which could reach a much wider public, in every age group, and to do so, they steered a middle course be-tween the situation comedy and the serial all’italiana,6 without indulging in
farci-cal excesses of characterisation nor mere melodrama.
In both series care was obviously taken over the mimesis of spoken language as part of the aim to present a plausible slice of everyday life.
5. Linguistic analysis
1. Register and lexical–grammatical phenomena 2. Linguistic commonplaces
3. The polyvalent ‘che’
4. Mechanisms of segmentation and focalisation
5.1 Register and lexical–grammatical phenomena
Italian, in common with all major languages of ‘culture’, is characterised by a broad range of diversification, comprising variations which may derive from geography (diatopic variation), social stratification (diastratic variation) or the communica-tive situation in which the language is used (diaphasic variation) (according the theory of Coseriu in G. Berruto 2002 [1987], 2002a [1993], 2002b [1993]). As a result, linguistic variety in Italian makes it possible to express the same concept in many different ways, depending on geographical or socio-cultural provenance, age, and context of utterance, forming an extremely variegated archive of expressive pos-sibilities. Thus the area of register7and lexical–grammatical phenomena helps us to
identify the differences which distinguish the various characters in the programme. The data concerning register and lexical–grammatical phenomena in the two series prompt the following observations:
a. in spite of a certain uniformity in the use of the standard informal colloquial register, we found in La famiglia Benvenuti (1968) an attention to linguistic propriety which emerges in self-correction or instances of reproof from an in-terlocutor; on the contrary, in Un medico in famiglia (1998) the discourse tends more often to the careless informal which at times verges on bad language. Although this diversity of register is not particularly marked, it nonetheless reveals the difference in the linguistic approach of the respective authors: in La famiglia Benvenuti the need was still felt to communicate in a fairly controlled colloquial Italian, albeit not too far removed from the speech of the majority of Italians, while in Un medico in famiglia one sees clearly a greater desire for realism, producing a mimesis which is more faithful to everyday speech.
La famiglia Benvenuti — attention to linguistic propriety (1) (third episode, line 338)
Marina: tu ritieni la varicella di genere femminile perciò bisognava dire “non bisogna darle soddisfazione alla varicella” e non “dargli”
(2) (first episode, line 188–189)
Marina: Amabile è un angelo lo so ma però…
quando gli ho letto — quando “le” ho letto il tema che mi hanno messo sul giornalino della scuola — pure a mamma e a papà gli veniva da ridere — a Ghigo no — perché lui è un fanatico — ma… ma a mamma e papà sì
(3) (sixth episode, line 173)
Alberto: termine iconoclasta — finalmente hai trovato un termine adatto — un termine appropriato brava
Un medico in famiglia — tendence to the careless informal which at times verges on bad language
(4) (Lele ti presento Irene, line 240) Ciccio: papà è vero che lo vuoi bene? (5) (Sensi di colpa, line 222)
Cettina: ma chi l’ammazza a quello?
(6) (Ferite vecchie e nuove, line 75) Giulio: ma che palle!
(7) (Letterine di Natale, line 254)
Enrica: … se però preferite lui — anche se se n’è andato con una zoccola — io mi farò da parte
(8) (Sensi di colpa, line 135)
Alberto: invece tu non rischierai mai vero? ti senti sicuro no? gli stronzi non si estinguono mai umh?
b. diversification in the adoption of foreignisms: in La famiglia Benvenuti we find numerous Gallicisms, used to give a more elegant tone. This was common enough in the 1960s, at least in certain professional contexts (hotels, restau-rants, etc.) where French (now replaced by English) was a mark of internation-alism, and in bourgeois circles where it displayed the speaker’s sophistication and the prestige of his or her social class. In the serial dating from 1968 there are also Anglicisms which betray different attitudes in the speakers: the adults are obviously reluctant to accept these new ‘barbaric’ terms, while the young people seem to take to the new linguistic fashions with curiosity and relish, and with no difficulty whatsoever;
La famiglia Benvenuti — Gallicisms (9) (first episode, line 213)
Marina: e quella stanzina piccolina che sta appresso alla nostra stanza — ecco quella potrebbe essere il boudoir — per dire
(10) (first episode, line 396)
Madre: tuo padre è il solito gaffeur
(11) (fifth episode, line 306) Cameriere: è un habitué
(12) (fifth episode, line 479) Cameriere: bien glacée
(13) (fifth episode, line 479)
Cameriere: amaro comme la vie La famiglia Benvenuti — Anglicisms
(14) (La famiglia Benvenuti, second episode, line 124 — 125)
Marina: …sí con certe signore mie amiche abbiamo organizzato un baby parking
Madre: un cosa?
Un medico in famiglia — Anglicisms8 (15) (Il dilemma di Cettina, line 93)
Libero: ammazza! bravo oh hai fatto proprio una full immersion stai diventando bravo
(16) (Il dilemma di Cettina, line 266)
Libero: …dottore? look ci hai qualche problemino? (17) (Ferite vecchie e nuove, line 486)
Libero: che facciamo piangiamo? che siamo bambini? noi siamo grandi!
gimme five
d. dialect, present in La famiglia Benvenuti in 269 lines out of a total of 4593, is used almost exclusively by speakers from the lower classes (the maid Amabile and her relatives, the removal men, the burglar and some auxiliary charac-ters); it is never a very broad dialect, which would be virtually impossible to understand, but rather a mixture of Italian and dialect in which some features of the latter prevail, including morphological properties such as apheresis and apocope and the use of the auxiliary essere instead of avere.
Lazio, the use of the clitics me and te instead of mi and ti, and in general those little features of dialect which constitute diatopic rather than diastratic varia-tions. In Un medico in famiglia, where there are only 92 lines in the popular dialectal register out of a total of 5097, we find an evident hybridisation of the two linguistic systems, Italian and dialect, that gives rise to a reciprocal phe-nomenon of the Italianisation of dialect and dialectisation of spoken Italian. This makes it difficult to identify a clear dividing-line between the careless informal, popular and dialectal registers; there is also an increase in the use of dialect in the slang spoken among young people, meaning the idiom young-sters or “would-be youngyoung-sters” use as a transgression or more simply to give more colour or expressiveness to their idiolect.
La famiglia Benvenuti— dialect (18) (first episode, line 279)
Amabile: e nun bosso Bebo — nun bosso — sto schiaffata qua dendro — sarà più di mezz’ora — e nun me riesce più de sortì — me so’ gelata tutta
(19) (fourth episode, line 91)
Amabile: so’ ricevuta ‘na lettera da mi’ sorella Teresa
(20) (sixth episode, line 476)
Amabile: basta — basta leva’ qualche ciaffo — ‘sta paramanzetta! Lafamiglia Benvenuti — informal with grafts from dialect
(21) (first episode, line 599)
Alberto: ammappalo! tz! e andiamo — va — andiamo a sederci (22) (third episode, line 385)
Andrea: uffa co’ ‘sta temperatura
Un medico in famiglia— Italianisation of dialect (23) (Un amore preso al volo, line 618)
Cettina: ma che ne saccio! forse sta in mezzo alla roba da stirare (24) (Sensi di colpa, line 310)
Cettina: vabbuò Madonna e cumme pesa ‘sta scala signor Libero
Un medico in famiglia— dialectisation of spoken Italian (25) (Un amore preso al volo, line 603)
Cettina: nun fa ‘o scem!
(26) (Il dilemma di Cettina, line 29)
(27) (Lele ti presento Irene, line 627)
Libero: … chist’ nun è ‘nu cane è ‘nu bisonte! quattro chili di carne si fotte in un giorno
e. in both series we find some lexical–grammatical phenomena typical of spo-ken language (sennò — pure — mica — mò — manco — ‘sto/’sta — ‘no/’na — un po’ — incorrect use of verb tenses — improper use of dimonstratives — use of impersonal and indefinite uno/una — prepositional object — improper use of clitics — ci+avere).
Below we list examples which illustrate two particularly significant phe-nomena: the prepositional object9 (with pronoun phrase or noun phrase,
hu-man or in any case animate) and the form ci + avere.
It is interesting to note how the prepositional object is perfectly accept-able10 when it is dislocated to the left, with or without reiteration of the clitic,
while it produces a decline in the colloquial register when it is dislocated to the right.
Also in the case of ci + avere we have to distinguish between its pleonastic use and forms which are virtually obbligatory such as questions and answers with ce l’ho and ce l’ha, etc.
La famiglia Benvenuti— prepositional object to the left (28) (sixth episode, line 980)
Alberto: a mamma la mettiamo a capotavola
La famiglia Benvenuti— prepositional object to the right (29) (first episode, line 23)
Amabile: fate entra’ a Bebo
Un medico in famiglia — prepositional object to the left (30) (Il dilemma di Cettina, line 94)
Fausto: a Luca e Duilio stavolta ce li mangiamo
Un medico in famiglia — prepositional object to the right (31) (Un amore preso al volo, line 600)
Cettina: ho chiamato a Lorella
La famiglia Benvenuti — ci + avere, in the forms ce l’ho, ce l’ha, etc.. (32) (third episode, line 578)
Andrea: allora quando eri piccola la febbre non ce l’hai avuta mai — credo?
La famiglia Benvenuti — ci + avere in pleonastic use (33) (sixth episode, line 118)
Un medico in famiglia — ci + avere, in the forms ce l’ho, ce l’ha, etc.. (34) (La casa nuova, line 608 — 609)
Lele: non avevi un nuovo fidanzato? Alice: sí ce l’ho
Un medico in famiglia — ci + avere in pleonastic use (35) (Lele ti presento Irene, livre 314)
Cettina: stavolta ci ha ragione Lele
5.2 Linguistic commonplaces
Linguistic commonplaces are highly diverse phenomena ranging from idiomatic expressions to small or even tiny linguistic fragments.
Quantifying this class of phenomena enables us on one hand to measure the presence of preconstituted linguistic modules, and on the other to see whether and to what extent the corpus features innovative linguistic commonplaces due either to the authors or to the creativity and improvisation of the actors. For if it is true that audiovisual products draw on everyday speech for the material they use in constructing a plausible mimesis of common speech, it is also true that they can act as vehicles in the diffusion of new expressions which enter the spoken language of the period.
Linguistic commonplaces play a key role in two fundamental functions of speaking:
1. achieving economy of discourse
2. communicating the speaker’s emotivity and expressivity.
1. The pursuit of lexical economy favours standard preconstituted formulae; in this respect spoken discourse differs significantly from the written, where the emphasis is on avoiding repetitions and using as much variety as possible. 2. In conversation speakers constantly employ a large number of strategies for
communicating their mood; one example is interjections, in either simple forms (semilexical or monolexical) or complex forms (complete utterances), or again discourse markers which inject greater vitality as a means of evoking either negative or positive emotions.
Starting from this premise, the linguistic commonplaces have been classified in three fundamental categories: idiomatic expressions,11figurative expressions12
and fragments.13
the category of figurative expressions concerns some figurative uses ranging from metaphor to metonymy, euphemism, hyperbole etc.; the third category includes discourse markers, ritual or politeness clauses and introductory locutions.
In our corpus the great majority of the phenomena came under the macro-category of fragments, the rest were distributed among the other categories; the least represented were proverbs and frozen sentences, less numerous in La famiglia Benvenuti (27) than in Un medico in famiglia (47), where we also found original commonplaces often associated with consolidated ones.
La famiglia Benvenuti — frozen sentences (36) (first episode, line 441)
Alberto: non ti importa di spezzare il cuore a tuo padre e tua madre (37) (third episode, line 486)
Amabile: è cascato come ‘na pera cotta Un medico in famiglia — frozen sentences (38) (Letterine di Natale, line 528)
Libero: capita proprio a fagiolo
(39) (Ferite vecchie e nuove, line 418) Libero: se ci hai un rospo tiralo fuori
Below we give some examples of expressions which can be considered representa-tive of the series in question and which passed into the language of the segment of public who were regular viewers.
Un medico in famiglia — the commonplaces and the proverbs of grandpa Libero
(40) (Letterine di Natale, line 513)
Libero: aveva ragione il povero Carmine, il vecchio quando è inutile è come un tappo di bottiglia anche il fiume… lo rifiuta
(41) (Lele ti presento Irene, line 108)
Libero: va be’ lasciamo stare una parola è troppa e due sono poche Un medico in famiglia — original expressions
(42) (Letterine di Natale, line 648) Libero: Enrica stai calmina
(43) (La casa nuova, line 346) Lele: ciao famiglia
(44) (Lele ti presento Irene, line 65)
5.3 The polyvalent “che”
Our analysis of the polyvalent “che”proved problematic on account of the range of interpretations which scholars attribute to the phenomenon, arising from the ambiguity of this particle which makes it impossible to draw up a stable repertoire. Thus bearing in mind that the classification may be questionable and subject to revision and correction, some cases were identified in the corpus in which the che can be pleonastic, an interrogative operator, irregular relative, weak relative, weak conjunction or even non-classifiable.14 While some types could be eliminated from
the structure, at least formally, without a loss of meaning (viz. the pleonastic uses or che as interrogative operator), others could be replaced by other conjunctions such as the che with temporal value, and still others corrected with the inflected form of the relative and with an appropriate conjunction.
Moreover, some uses of the che such as ellipsis and as a substitute for the tem-poral conjunction have come to form part of neo-standard Italian, meaning the variety of written and spoken Italian which has absorbed features which were once severely censured by grammarians. Other uses, on the other hand, such as the pleonastic che in expressions like quando che, come che, or chewith the meaning of quanto or perché, continue to be markers of lower class registers which oscillate between the informal, careless informal and popular.
We found that che as interrogative operator was generally used in La famiglia Benvenuti by less proficient speakers like the maid Amabile or the youngster An-drea, while in Un medico in famiglia it had a more generalised use. This might indicate that in the sixties it was considered a typical feature of lower class regis-ters, while now its use as an interrogative marker is so common as to have lost any diastratic or diatopic connotation.
La famiglia Benvenuti — che interrogative operator (45) (first episode, line 553)
Amabile: ma che niente niente glie avesse preso la mania della linea?
Un medico in famiglia — che interrogative operator (46) (Un amore preso al volo, line 104)
Lele: e che vengo all’ASL con lo smoking?
Un medico in famiglia — che in consecutive sentences without antecedent (47) (Il dilemma di Cettina, line 387)
Un medico in famiglia — che temporal (48) (Ferite vecchie e nuove, line 131)
Giulio: sì ma Libero è una mania! — l’altro giorno ti ho beccato che baravi al solitario
La famiglia Benvenuti — quando che, come che (49) (fourth episode, line 527)
Amabile: quando penso a quello che avrà sofferto Andreino — quando che
è tornato da scola — non m’ha trovato più
(50) (fourth episode, line 194)
Marina: ma come mai che cammina?
5.4 Segmentation and focalisation mechanisms
Phenomena of emphasis, whether viewed from a syntactical or intonational stand-point, are variations on the basic SVO structure making it possible to bring one or more elements of the utterance “stage centre” so that it appears as the speaker’s main focus of interest. These mechanisms are typical of spoken language but also found in written language that seeks to reproduce speech. Their frequency can be accounted for in terms of pragmatics and in view of the difficulty of planning oral discourse, so that the speaker has recourse to various types of redundancy and emphasis. Restricting ourselves to the syntactic phenomena and ignoring into-national aspects, where emphasis is conveyed by tone of voice, we can classify in this macrocategory many constructions serving to call the listener’s attention to a specific element of the discourse and focus on it.
Since it would be impossible to give the whole repertoire of the phenomena involved, we have chosen to analyse the more significant mechanisms of segmen-tation and focalisation, namely:
1. dislocations (with anaphora and cataphora); 2. cleft sentences (with extraction of the phrase); 3. pseudo-cleft sentences;
4. particular constructions with essere (a structure coming mid-way between the cleft sentence and some forms of hardened introductory locutions). Dislocations
Dislocations can be classified in two broad categories:
– dislocations with pronoun reiteration, in which the dislocated constituent is reiterated with an anaphoric (left dislocation) or cataphoric clitic (right dislocation).
Those in the first category can give rise to such phenomena as contrastive topicali-sation and the nominativus pendens; we counted and analysed those in the second category, which can be considered authentic dislocations in which the reiterated clitic has a particular status.16
Although dislocation is a very ancient construct17 and one that is
fundamen-tal in oral communication,18 as numerous studies have shown, it was for long
ig-nored by studies of the Italian language, remaining “misunderstood, banalised and all too often censured by normative grammars, right up to the present day” (P. D’Achille 1990, p.91). Over the last few years, however, it has become quite a well worked field of research, yielding new discoveries particularly in the case of right dislocations, which in the spoken language enable the speaker to emphasise and clarify the focus of interest.
The total number of dislocations (right and left) in the corpus we analysed comes to 541, of which 243 to the left and 298 to the right, occurring in the two series as follows:
La famiglia Benvenuti
Left dislocation 102
Un medico in famiglia
Left dislocation 141
La famiglia Benvenuti
Right dislocation 160
Un medico in famiglia
Right dislocation 138
This table shows clearly that while in Un medico in famiglia the distribution of dislocations is almost exactly equal, in La famiglia Benvenuti there is a significant disparity between the two categories; the limited scope of the corpus analysed to date does not permit us to decide whether there are any reasons for this disparity, nor what they might be; but we have been able to establish three features of the right dislocations:
– 33% occur in the speech of Alberto Benvenuti, who in order to assert his au-thority as father and husband often stresses what he means or what he wants. (51) (first episode, line 77)
Alberto: perché non le lasciate fare a me — le cose? (52) (first episode, line 441)
Alberto: prenditelo pure — questo pezzente
(53) (second episode, line 339)
Andrea: tu non li conosci a quelli! (54) (third episode, line 649)
Amabile: me pare de vederlaa mi sorella Teresa
– of the 8 showing pronoun redundancy mi — a me, half belong to the popular dialectal register used above all by Amabile.
(55) (La famiglia Benvenuti, sixth episode, line 329) Amabile: damme cocco — dammea me
With regard to the left dislocations, these occur above all in Un medico in famiglia, and the most significant disparity concerns object dislocation (67 cases in La famiglia Benvenuti and 87 in Un medico in famiglia).
The presence of a higher number of dislocations to the left in the 1998 series could indicate a gradual expansion or reduced censorship of the phenomenon. However, the incidence found in our analysis is not sufficient to prove either of these hypotheses.
Un medico in famiglia —left dislocation of direct object (56) (Un medico in famiglia, Lele ti presento Irene, line 785)
Irene: qualche esperienzal’ho avuta anche io
Un medico in famiglia— left dislocation of indirect object (57) (Un medico in famiglia, Ferite vecchie e nuove, line 310)
Lele: tu a questa Gioiagli19 vuoi veramente bene?
Un medico in famiglia— left dislocation of prepositional object (58) (Un medico in famiglia,La casa nuova, line 344)
Lele: io coi miei figlici devo parlare
Cleft sentences, pseudo-cleft sentences and particular constructions with essere
Focalisation can involve various structures which make it possible to isolate and hence highlight a single constituent or a complete sentence. In these construc-tions, starting from a certain unmarked sentence, use is made of the verb essere combined with various syntactic dispositions to divide the sentence up into vari-ous informative units, forming two or more sentences.
There are numerous procedures which enable these transformations, meriting different evaluations in the literature, but nonetheless the typology characterising this family of structures can be described under three general categories:
2. specific mechanisms which use certain extractive strategies, as above, but which have peculiar features (pseudo-cleft sentences);20
3. mechanisms which use more or less stable structures whose main characteris-tic is the presence of the verb essere, used to introduce or embed an element in a rigid structure (particular constructions with essere and the clauses è che/ non èche used as fixed introductory formulae).21
Cleft sentences are mechanisms characterised by the greatest pragmatic intention to highlight a certain constituent, which is extracted from the unmarked sentence and placed at the centre of another sentence whose structure is: essere + constitu-ent + che + sentence (in which the emphasised constituent is missing).
(59) (La famiglia Benvenuti, third episode, line 778) Marina: sei tu — tu che devi fare il primo passo (60) (Un medico in famiglia, Letterine di Natale, line 197)
Lele: so’ gli altri ventinovemilioninovecentomila che mi preoccupano — Ciccio
Pseudo-cleft sentences have the same communicative function as cleft sentences, since they make it possible to focus on one element of the sentence, but they de-pend on various syntactic structures whose common feature is the presence of a relative clause and the verb essere. According to G. Salvi (Salvi 1991, p. 178), the most typical structure is NP (containing a relative clause) + essere + NP or sen-tence:
(61) (La famiglia Benvenuti, fifth episode, line 772) Alberto: quello che conta sono i fatti
The last type of segmentation mechanism we analysed concerns the particular constructions with essere featuring a range of structures. Focalisation is made possible by segmentation into various phrasal units starting from a sentence with the verb essere. In this category we have included particular structures exemplified below:22
La famiglia Benvenuti — particular constructions with essere: ci + essere + <X> + sentence
(62) (La famiglia Benvenuti, second episode, line 112) Marina: c’è questache lo vizia come un bambino!
Un medico in famiglia — particular constructions with essere: interrogative operator + essere + sentence
Un medico in famiglia — particular constructions with essere: <X>+ essere + <X> +sentence
(64) (Un medico in famiglia, Sensi di colpa, line 630) Spalletti: questa è l’idea che lei ha di me
La famiglia Benvenuti — particular constructions with essere: è che (65) (La famiglia Benvenuti, fifth episode, line 317)
Alberto: …è che lei mi offre l’opportunità di sbarazzarmi elegantemente di questa brutta cravatta che mi ha regalato mia moglie
6. Prospects
In order to be able to claim scientific maturity, research based on corpora of spo-ken language must feature the reproducibility of experiments and verifiability of the results obtained as a premise for new experiments. In the linguistic sphere this can only be possible once extensive corpora have been established and made available to the scientific community for analysis. As E. D’Agostino says, “the scant accumulation of empirical and experimental data makes many of the samples on which interpretative hypotheses have been elaborated non-representative in both quantitative and qualitative terms; although these hypotheses have been used to show linguistic variation and mutation, we are not in a position to know for cer-tain whether “data” which were undoubtedly identified do in fact correspond to modifications which have come about, to trends or to processes currently under-way, or are not rather mere possibilities” (E. D’Agostino 2001, p.31).
The scientific results of linguistic research can only be measured by means of direct work on the collected data, and current efforts are indeed tending towards making substantial corpora available to scholars.23
but which with a very few exceptions has prevented an appraisal of its true merits which is as objective as possible.
The choice of the object of analysis necessarily presupposes a knowledge of the productive mechanisms of television narration and their evolution in time, but also familiarity with the issues concerning spoken Italian. Only once such a dual line of research has been adopted will it be possible to establish a corpus which is truly representative of Italian history both in linguistic terms and in the perspec-tive of television.24
Notes
1. Thus to those who may have the time and the will to peruse this work of ours, we would ask, and hope to be granted, that when they come across subjects which are already familiar, they may not despise them as being common knowledge; for what secret matter can there be in letters, which is not the experience of many people? It should suffice, to be worth the reading, that they are not subjects that have been flogged to death in the schools or recur in all collections of correspondence. (Aulus Gellius, Noctes atticae, Rizzoli : Milano, 2001. The dating of the work is uncertain, but it was probably written in the years 146–158 AD).
2. On this topic see the rich bibliography provided by Milly Buonanno.
3. In speaking of time slots we mean “Each of the sections into which the programme schedule is divided up. In Italy the main time slots are daytime, pre-evening, prime time and night time. The different slots each have their own potential audience, varying in terms of make-up and size. The most extensive and heterogeneous is that of prime time (20:30–22:30), and this is when the networks put out their most prestigious programmes” (M. Buonanno 2002, p. 184).
4. Overall the research project sets out to create a corpus of “spoken language in family fiction” (SLFF) which can serve as a tool for analysing the linguistic strategies adopted on television, in a certain type of story from 1954 to the present; we have concentrated on programmes produced by RAI and excluded those of commercial television companies because they only began to produce TV fiction about fifteen years ago.
5. For data and profiles of the series in question see appendix.
6. A framed serial formula where autonomous episodes are inserted in a continuous narrative line following the events concerning the whole family group.
7. The following descriptions characterise the various registers:
formal — average formal colloquial — average informal colloquial (predominant register in the analysed corpus) — careless informal — popular dialectal — sectorial jargon.
8. We give here only a few examples of the English words used by adults in an attempt to con-form to the colloquial speech characterising the young and youthful age brackets in the popula-tion of Italian speakers.
9. In lexicon-grammatical terms, the prepositional object can be observed in: a) simple sen-tences (Lia convince a Lello); b) pronoun formation and dislocation (Max la evita, a Lia); c) pronoun interrogative form (A chi conosci? A Ena); d) non embedded relatives (Io conosco a un uomo che è bravo) (A. Elia 1979, pp. 89–91).
10. On this subject P. D’Achille observes that: “In the case of dislocation to the left, moreover, the construct [i.e. prepositional object, author’s note] is no longer subject to geographical limita-tions but has become pan-Italian, occuring commonly in varieties of speech which are neither popular nor regional, at least in the presence of certain verbs or expressions (convincere, invi-tare, consolare, divertire, preoccupare, spaventare, etc). In these cases, preverbal, nominal and pronominal human objects are regularly preceded by the preposition a: all’amministratore il ragionamento non l’ha convinto; a te chi ti ha invitato?, etc.” (P. D’Achille 2003, p. 170).
11. See F. Casadei 1996; E. D’Agostino 1993; A. Elia & E. D’Agostino 1998; S. Vietri 1985.
12. See further F. Casadei 1996 and S. Vietri 1985; Gruppo M 1980 [1970]; G. Genette 1988 [1966].
13. The category of “fragments” (as defined in R. Simone, [1990] 1995, (p. 250): “these ‘objects’ can be described overall as fragments of utterance, a term which is appropriate to indicate residues of structures which are not completely analyzable using the usual syntactic tecniques”) includes all the phenomena which are difficult to classify and which in the analysis of conversa-tion constitute the broad class of ‘conversaconversa-tional markers’ (S. Stame 1999). For theoretical stud-ies on this category see C. Bazzanella 1994 & 2001 [1995]; M. Mazzoleni 2001 [1995]; I. Poggi 1981 & 2001 [1995].
14. Space restrictions prevent us giving examples of all the categories concerning the polyvalent che encountered in the analysed corpus, including the exclamative che with adjective (che bello!), the non inflected relative che and others. For a more complete analysis see the list presented in Simona Messina, PhD thesis in Science Communication (supervisor Prof. Emilio D’Agostino): “L’ “italiano” e il suo doppio — La fiction televisiva come rappresentazione della realtà attraver-so l’analisi linguistica di due prodotti esemplari: La famiglia Benvenuti (1968) — Un medico in famiglia (1998)”; University of Salerno; a.a. 2002–2003).
15. The missing correlative is sometimes replaced by the indeterminate article.
16. Some studies include under the term dislocation all movements of the various constituents, independently of clitic pronoun formation (L. Renzi 1991 [1988], chap. II, pp. 116–225). Here we mean only the structures in which a constituent “moves” to left or right, reiterated by a clitic pronoun; the term is used in this sense in most quantitative analyses (C. Bazzanella 1994; F. Rossi 1999a & 1999b; P. D’Achille 1990; G. Berruto 1985). On the terminological uncertainty of the various marking phenomena see interesting considerations by F. Rossi 1999a and P. D’Achille 1990.
of Capua dating from 960 (Sao ko kelle terre per kelle fini que ki contene trenta anni le possette parte sancti Benedicti).
18. Dislocations are “in fact very frequent in informal spoken language, where indeed they can be considered the norm; they are rarer in written language or formal discourse in general” (P. D’Achille 1990, p. 98). They are associated with the communicative strategies typical of oral communication, because they enable the speaker to anticipate or postpone certain elements. In written language, or at least in texts which have little connection with situation, they are less necessary or functional, and this “can readily be explained if you consider the characteristics of this means of communication, which also provides a visual basis, thanks to the permanence of the sign, for the syntactic connection within each utterance” (P. D’Achille 1990, p. 99).
19. Note the use of the masculine clitic instead of the correct feminine correlative, a phenom-enon found equally in the two series (8 occurrences in each), although in La famiglia Benvenuti the error is corrected in some cases by the speaker or interlocutor, as in example n° 2. The use of clitics, with their different status in spoken language, is a topic of great interest which was treated in our analysis of the corpus but which we have had to leave out of this paper.
20. In lexicon-grammatical analysis cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences are viewed as transforma-tions which adopt the strategy of extraction: “A still clearer way of focusing an element, isolat-ing it from the other elements in the sentence, is extraction. This particular type of movement involves the insertion of new morphological elements with respect to the base sentence and may take one of two forms: the cleft and pseudo-cleft sentence” (A. Elia, M. Martinelli, E. D’Agostino 1981, p. 67). On account of some particular features in the syntactic structure of the pseudo-cleft sentences, we have preferred to treat the two subcategories separately.
21. The various typologies of the phenomenon have been variously defined. Some scholars in-clude in the cleft sentences what we consider to belong to the particular constructions with es-sere. Thus we keep to lexico-grammatical terminology and consider the strategy of extraction to apply esclusively to cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences; the other constructions, while belonging to the same family, are defined on the basis of other features.
22. The complete classification involves the following structures (the symbol <X> indicates any element which can be inserted in the sequence — noun, adjective, adverb etc.): ci + essere + <X> + sentence; interrogative operator + essere + sentence; interrogative operator + essere + <X> + sentence;<X>+ essere + sentence; <X>+ essere + <X> + sentence; in addition the structures è che, non è che are also included.
23. By way of exemplification we can name three vast corpora which have done much, and con-tinue to be useful, for scientific research: LIP — Lessico di frequenza dell’Italiano Parlato 1993, coordinated by T. De Mauro; LIR — Lessico di frequenza dell’Italiano Radiofonico, 2003/2004, coordinated by N. Maraschio, and API — Archivio del Parlato Italiano, 2003, coordinated by F. Albano Leoni.
24. From research carried out to date it can be suggested that the corpus of spoken language in family fiction (SLFF) has had a chronological development stretching from 1956 to 2004, observable in the following products:
(1988); E se poi se ne vanno (1989); Un medico in famiglia (first cycle 1998); (a series to define) (2003/2006).
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Filmography
La famiglia Benvenuti, first cycle, 1968 — published by Elleu Spettacolo, Elleu Multimedia, Roma 2001.
1st episode; 2nd episode; 3rd episode; 4th episode; 5th episode; 6th episode;
Un medico in famiglia, first cycle, 1998 — published by Fabbri Video, RCS Libri, Milano 2000. 1st instalment, episode n°1: ‘La casa nuova’; 3rd instalment, episode n°5: ‘Lele ti presento Irene’;
4th instalment, episode n° 8: ‘Ferite vecchie e nuove’; 16th instalment, episode n° 32: ‘Sensi di colpa’; 20th instalment, episode n° 39: ‘Letterine di Natale’; 24th instalment, episode n° 46: ‘Il dilemma di Cettina’; 26th instalment, episode n° 52: ‘Un amore preso al volo’.
Summary
In this paper I present a work in progress concerning the mimesis of Italian speech, which is possible to study not only into the two traditional forms of language — written and spoken — but also in broadcast language of tv series. In order to find examples of mimesis of spoken language which are as close as possible to the contemporary linguistic reality, I have excluded all specialised TV programmes which cater for specific contents and sectorial registers and I concentrate on television stories of TV fiction.
Tv fiction can be divided up into various narrative formulae and, depending on the subject matter, in different macrocategories. I have focused my study on a particular kind of fiction based on realistic serial format: family fiction, which narrates the daily life of a family or group of families whose stories become entwined in a succession of petty or major events where the language must necessarily draw on colloquial Italian.
The corpus analysed in this first phase of the research project was taken from two series: La famiglia Benvenuti (1968) and Un medico in famiglia (1998). I have selected a shortlist of phenomena which best match up to the characteristics of spontaneous speech, grouped in four areas of analysis: 1: Register and lexical–grammatical phenomena; 2: Linguistic commonplaces;
3: The polyvalent ‘che’; 4: Mechanisms of segmentation and focalisation.
Author’s address
Simona Messina
Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione Università di Salerno
Via Ponte Don Melillo 84084 Fisciano (Salerno) Italia
Appendix. Data and profiles of the series analysed
The corpus subjected to linguistic analysis comprises 11 hours 15’ broadcast time, i.e. nearly 6 hours for each series, making a total of 89.580 words.
LA FAMIGLIA BENVENUTI (1968) First cycle
Co-production RAI- TELECOLOR, Nello Santi.
Format 6x60.
Director Alfredo Giannetti*.
Subject and screenplay Alfredo Giannetti.
Cast: Alberto Benvenuti — the father (Enrico Maria Salerno); Marina De Marchis Benvenuti — the mother (Valeria Valeri); Amabile — the old nanny (Gina Sammarco); the children Ghigo Ben-venuti (Massimo Farinelli), Andrea Benvenuti (Giusva Fioravanti); Simona — Ghigo’s girlfriend (Marina Coffa); ‘commendator’ De Marchis — the father-in-law (Claudio Gori); Mrs. De Marchis — the mother-in-law (Milly).
Story: the Benvenuti family moves into a house they have just bought in a residential quarter of Rome. Their “new” life is made up of domestic matters, dealings with relatives, squabbles, anxieties and plans. The story takes place above all at home, with occasional scenes outside or in other places. The outside world only intrudes in a very few characters who are involved in the family such as Simona, Ghigo’s girlfriend, and just occasionally colleagues of the head of the family. There are also appearances of other characters like the doctor, the burglar, and the father of a friend of Andrea’s. The role of chronicler and commentator of events is given to the young boy Andrea, whose observations, at times sardonic, conclude almost every episode.
UN MEDICO IN FAMIGLIA (1998) First cycle
Production RAIFICTION, Carlo Bixio and Marco Ravera for PUBLISPEI.
Format: 52x50.
Directors Anna Di Francisca and Riccardo Donna.
Italian screenplay Paola Pascolini**, with Giovanna Caico, Tommaso Capolicchio, Massimo Russo, collaboration on dialogues, Marco Dose and Antonello Presta.
Cast
the family: Lele Martini — the father (Giulio Scarpati); LiberoMartini— grandpa Libero (Lino Banfi); Cettina Gargiulo — the domestic help (Lunetta Savino); Alice Solari — the aunt (Claudia Pandolfi); Enrica Solari — Grandma Enrica (Milena Vukotic): Nicola Solari — Grandpa Nico-la (Riccardo Garrone); the children: Maria Martini (Margot Sikabonyi), Ciccio Martini (Miki Cadeddu), Annuccia Martini (Eleonora Cadeddu); Alberto — the nephew (Manuele Labate).
Other characters: Giulio Pittaluga (Ugo Dighero); Giacinto Diotaiuti (Enrico Brignano); Reby (Carlotta Aggravi); Fausto (Pino Ferrara); Irene (Edi Angelillo); Jessica (Sabrina Paravicini); Mariano (Vincenzo Crocitti); dr. Giorgi (Mauro Pirovano).
Story: after the death of their mother in a car accident, the Martini family move to a new house on the outskirts of Rome, set in a park, where life proceeds with all the little incidents that oc-cur in the family and to the various members, some unexpected and others routine. The action takes place above all between the Martini’s villetta, the health service department where the father works and the house of Alice. The outside world intrudes in the form of good friends who are considered part of the family (Giulio, Giacinto), friends and colleagues of the protagonists (Fausto, Reby and many others) and a large number of other figures. For the whole duration of the series much attention is given to the romantic attachment of Lele and Alice, the subject of most of the expectations, leading up to the revelation of whether the two will succeed in making a declaration of their reciprocal love, at the end of the 52 episodes.
** Paola Pascolini, following numerous productions for radio (e.g. the series Quarto piano, interno 9) and theatre (including Piccole donne, il musical), has long been working in televi-sion as script writer. She was in charge of screenplay for the five series broadcast to date of Un medico in famiglia (1998, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2007) and has written, alone or with others, many television films and series. Among the former the most recent include Nuda proprietà vendesi (6/03/1998), Piovuto dal cielo (2000), Giulia e Marco inviati speciali (3–4-/06/2001), Giorni da Leone (24–25/02/2002), Padri (22–23/09/2002), Chiaroscuro (1–2/01/2003); Capri (2006).
Technical profiles of the series analysed
ANALOGIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO SERIES
DATA La famiglia Benvenuti Un medico in famiglia Subject Original television production Spanish format Date of broadcasting 1968 1998
Television channel Nazionale RAI RAI UNO
Audience About 11 million on average About 7 million on average Format 6x60’ 52x50’ Number of cycles 2 5 (until Spring 2007) The family Father (an architect), mother
(housewife), two sons, an old
Relatives The rich and boring parents in law, namely Mrs. Benvenuti’s parents
The rich and boring parents in law, namely the parents of the passed away wife (Elena) and their other daughter, aunt Alice
Social environment A middle class family, where the outside world plays a minor role
A middle class family significantly related to the outside world: they welcome relatives and friends,
be-TITLE: n° of lines*** n° of words duration
La famiglia Benvenuti (1968) 4.593 43.734 342’ and 03’’
Un medico in famiglia (1998) 5.097 45.846 332’ and 81’’
General Total: 9.690 89.580 675’ 11’’
The total duration of the corpus (675’ 11’’) is 11h, 15’, 11’’.
