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La piú bella del mondo – The most beautiful in the world #7

10 talks on the Italian language

“The most beautiful in the world” is supposed to be a supermodel and yet in Italy the expression is more often than not used to define Italian language. Is Italian truly the most beautiful language in the world? It is commonplace, due to either italophilia or nationalism, but is it only this?

A series led by Dr Stefano Jossa, author of La più bella del mondo. Perché amare la lingua italiana (Einaudi) and Reader in Italian at Royal Holloway University of London, will explore the relationships between Italian and other languages, the Italian words that have become key to interpret our contemporary world, the various languages of arts, music, technology, economy and politics.

Event in Italian with simultaneous translation in English

Politics and Language: the Italian Scenario

Dr Stefano Jossa and Professor Federico Faloppa in conversation

Italian politicians are more often than not criticised for their misuse of the national language. TV talk shows and even Parliamentary debates are full of grammar mistakes, incorrect expressions and bad words. Is it just a case of negligence or is there a more insightful political project behind this language? To what extent are racism, general ignorance and corruption related to linguistic phenomena? Following in the footsteps of George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language”, Federico Faloppa and Stefano Jossa will explore the “ugly and inaccurate” language of Italian politicians in our time and examine the connection between the debasement of language and public ethics.

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Federico Faloppa is Programme Director for Italian Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and European Studies at the University of Reading. His main areas of interest are focused on History of the Italian language; sociolinguistics; discourse analysis; intercultural communication; language policy, migration and refugee studies, intellectual networks, migrant writings and Italian contemporary literature. He is also currently co-investigator in the ESRC-funded international network “ProLanguage – The protective role of language in global migration and mobility: language policies and practices in refugee settings and in the Horizon 2020 / Marie Skłodowska-Curie funded Innovative Training Networks (MSC-ITN-MULTI) “MultiMind” (100% score; £ 3.7M, of which 500K allocated to Reading). He is part of the Steering Committee of the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM), University of Reading, where I co-lead, together with my colleagues Dr Tony Capstick, the research theme on “Migration” and national representative for Linguistics at the University Council for Modern Languages.