Between real and unreal the mimesis of

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 atticae 1

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.

In order to find examples of mimesis of spoken language which are as close as possible to the contemporary linguistic reality, we must exclude all specialised programmes which cater for specific contents and sectorial registers. We can con- centrate instead on the vast reservoir of television stories which occupy a large

Lingvisticæ Investigationes 30:2 (2007), 261–290.

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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 fiction 2 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. The serial format is divided up into short, medium and long series, according to duration: in the first, the story is told in two or three episodes, in the second it ranges from four to 12/13 episodes, and in the third it can run to an enormous number of episodes. The extreme case is the soap opera, which is a never-ending story that may run for decades, with 25 minute long episodes put out daily in the day-time time broadcasting slot. In a soap opera the dilation and complication of the events are so extreme that the thematic backbone is virtually lost to view. What is most striking in these series is the manipulation of time: past, present and future overlap, become interwoven and on occasion, especially in the longest running serials, may actually be in contradiction. In some products, to increase the effect of ‘verity’, it is not unusual to find specific references to facts and events which oc- cur on the day the episode goes out (for example an international football match, a public holiday, the beginning or end of the school year). Such a chronological co- incidence helps to increase the ‘verity effect’, creating a strong sense of familiarity

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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 based 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.

It is clear that a television viewer is never required to make the same efforts of cooperation as a reader, for the latter has to transform the narrated world into im- ages, decodify the linguistic message and give proper importance to whatever re- mains unsaid. The destinee of television narration is required to make little effort, but this reduced commitment obliges the narrator to develop narrative techniques able to solicit attention and create an atmosphere of expectation or suspense which obliges viewers not to miss the next episode.

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The subject matter can be divided up into three macrocategories: HISTORICAL–LITERARY

REALISTIC SERIES FORMAT

FANTASY

SERIES FORMAT The reproduction of language in the historical-literary serial format involves

SERIES FORMAT

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

FAMILY FICTION The realistic serial format derives its contents above all from three spheres of

DETECTIVE FICTION

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

There are major differences in how the macrocategories of TV fiction and reality TV are constructed; if on one hand there is an established script — the screenplay — where the linguistic trace is already determined but has to break free from the constraints of the written page to become oral, on the other it seems that when the protagonists act without a script they are more spontaneous, or at least this is the impression created, while in fact there is an “invisible” script, which is no less de- terministic, deriving from the casting of the protagonists, chosen for their specific

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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.

Having identified the category of subject matter, we chose the series as the most suitable programme genre since it enabled us to work on a defined corpus for which complete screenplays were available. This is not the case for a soap opera,

266 Simona Messina

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 RAI 4 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

Bringing together elements we have studied in the various branches of linguistics, we have been able to isolate the phenomena which best match up to the charac- teristics of spontaneous speech, including: diversification of registers on the basis of diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic components, lexical economy and simplifica- tion, fragmentariness, segmentation and idiomaticity. From these characteristics we have selected a shortlist of phenomena grouped in four areas of analysis:

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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 register 7 and 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… Andrea: “ma però” non si dice — o “ma” o “però” — chissà come si arrabbie- rebbe mamma se adesso glielo dicessi… Amabile si è fatta un sacco di risate

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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;

c. in Un medico in famiglia the few borrowings from French are restricted to the character known as ‘grandma Enrica’, a sixty-year-old who in her behaviour and language embodies the stereotype of the ‘well-to-do lady’ of the sixties and seventies; while borrowings from English, which have entered the every- day idiom, are used quite freely by the young people, and by the older genera- tion with an ostentatious air of ‘being with it’.

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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 — Anglicisms 8

(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.

In the speech of the other characters, on the other hand, dialect is merely hinted at by certain lexical phenomena such as the aphaeretic terms ‘sto, ‘sta, ‘no, ‘na, the use of mò, a few exclamations typical of the region of Rome and

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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 youngsters” 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! La famiglia 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) Cettina:

e vabbuò signor Libero però io nun tieng’ tiemp’ a perdere cu’ ‘sta briscola — eh scusate

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(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 object 9 (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- able 10 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) Marina: ci hai un modo di chiamare tu!

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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, 11 figurative expressions 12 and fragments. 13 The first category covers a range of metaphorical value, proverbs, frozen sen- tences, idiomatic compound words (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc.) and clichés (sen- tences that are used excessively and belong to the common repertoire of speakers);

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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) Cettina: sei mio prigioniero! dai corri veloce veloce

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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 che with 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) Libero: …io t’ho fatto diventare quasi un 15 campioncino che puoi giocare a

briscola con la mia nipotina Annuccia e adesso mi molli al più bello

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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: – simple dislocations, in which there is movement of one constituent of the sen-

tence;

276 Simona Messina

– 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 construct 17 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 Un medico in famiglia

Left dislocation

Left dislocation

La famiglia Benvenuti Un medico in famiglia Right dislocation

138 This table shows clearly that while in Un medico in famiglia the distribution of

Right dislocation

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

– 29% are uttered by the maid Amabile and the young Andrea, and are often accompanied by the prepositional object.

Between the real and the unreal 277

(53) (second episode, line 339) Andrea:

tu non li conosci a quelli! (54) (third episode, line 649)

Amabile: me pare de vederla a 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 — damme a 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 esperienza l’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 Gioia gli 19 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 figli ci 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:

1. specific mechanisms which use an authentic extractive strategy (cleft sentences );

278 Simona Messina

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 è che 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 questa che lo vizia come un bambino!

Un medico in famiglia — particular constructions with essere: interrogative operator + essere + sentence

(63) (Un medico in famiglia, Il dilemma di Cettina, line 64) Libero: cos’è che stavi mettendo a posto?

Between the real and the unreal 279

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

For some time now in a variety of contexts, linguists have been clarifying the fundamental role played by television in spreading a common spoken language, and recognition has been given to its merits in helping to create linguistic unity in Italy (T. De Mauro 2002 [1963]). In this respect television is a prime resource for studying speech, albeit indirectly, since it provides examples of the spoken lan- guage in a definite chronological framework and gives access, through its archives, to data which would otherwise be irretrievable, enabling researchers not only to analyse individual linguistic phenomena or particular varieties of language but also to make diachronic comparisons showing how the language has evolved and been transformed. For while material from films can claim an intrinsic authorita- tiveness, and the history of the cinema confers legitimacy on linguistic studies of corpora of film dialogues, the same does not go for material from television fiction which, on the contrary, is still subject to severe prejudice, often quite unjustified,

280 Simona Messina

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. We recognise that the Italian linguistic repertoire is manifested in a variety of registers which cannot readily be summarised in a limited number of categories; this classification is merely a simplification of the numerous hypotheses put forward by leading linguists (see the synoptic table in G. Berruto 2002a [1993], p. 27).

Between the real and the unreal 281

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 ‘conversational 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].