Gender, Discourse and Ideology in Italian

By Federica Formato

This book analyses gendered language in Italian, shedding light on how the Italian language constructs and reproduces the social imbalance between women and men, and presenting indirect and direct instances of asymmetrical constructions of gender in public and private roles. The author examines linguistic treatments of women in politics and the media, as well as the gendered crime of femminicidio, i.e. the killing of women by their (former) partners. Through the combination of corpus linguistics, surveys, and discourse analysis, she establishes a new approach to the study of gendered Italian, a framework which can be applied to other languages and epistemological sites. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of sociolinguistics, language and gender, discourse analysis, Italian and other Romance languages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Sep 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9783319965567

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© The Author(s) 2019

Federica FormatoGender, Discourse and Ideology in ItalianPalgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexualityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96556-7_1

1. Introduction to the Study of Gender in Italian

Federica Formato¹  

(1)

Lancaster, UK

Federica Formato

Giulietta è una zoccola

[Juliet is a whore]

This insult has become a famous joke among football fans originating from a quarrel between supporters of Verona against those of Naples in the 1980s. ¹ Verona supporters first attacked those of Naples with geographical racist insults (for instance, by wishing the volcano Vesuvius to erupt) and the aforementioned rebuttal moved the slur from racism to include sexism towards the Shakespearian character whose story unfolded in the Veneto city. ² It is my argument that such verbal attacks on women in private and public spaces are not coincidental nor can they be dismissed as ‘banter’ (as widely justified in Italy and other parts of the world) but that they form part of a cultural gendered arrangement which has developed over the centuries. As with other sites which have been investigated in terms of gender , I consider Italy as a "fruitful epistemological site" (emphasis in the original, Sunderland 2004, p. 73), that is a physical space that can provide interesting and investigation-worth data. With the term ‘epistemological site’, Sunderland intended a much more limited space than the one I am proposing here, e.g. a Starbucks coffee-house, or a set of material data, e.g. texts about fatherhood; however, I believe this term to be a relevant one as a means of describing a more extended context, i.e. Italy, as a place which constantly provides fruitful data to investigate women and men. The pros of considering Italy as an epistemological site lie in the theoretical underpinning of the term, that is the relevance and the rationale of the data selected for this volume, as well as the discussion of expectations (that can be either met or not) of gender in such sites. From the perspective of the cons, seeing Italy as a site might risk disregarding the varieties of experiences of women and men in Italy, some more positive than others, with respect to a gender (im)balance. In order to tackle the cons, I discuss and explain the contradictions of Italy in relation to practices that aim to disrupt the common understanding of gender (imbalance between women and men) as well as those that continue to promote the divide between gender groups. I cannot do so without first presenting Italy and justifying to the reader why it is a fruitful epistemological site.

Why Italy: The Cult of Beauty

Gundle (2000, 2007) argues that from mediaeval times until the present, poetry as well as the arts have focussed on the physical beauty of women in Italy. ³

This cult developed to reach all historical and art-related periods starting from Dante, for instance, in the work of the poet Carducci and the writer (and controversial figure) D’Annunzio who dedicated his artefacts to the Queen at the time, Margherita. Gundle (2007, p. xix) recognised that: [w]hile feminine beauty occupies some place in national identities in every country, the very long-standing high cultural tradition of preoccupation with it provides a bolster and a platform that are unique in the peninsula. ⁴ History has left a legacy about women which is difficult to abandon. Gundle (2007) suggests that Italy itself ended up being represented as a woman, in order to boast men’s devotion to the country (specifically during the World War II), being at turns a protective mother, an erotic ideal, a fragile maiden and an amazon. Each of these grabbed the emotions and desires and encouraged men in a passionate attachment to Italy (2007, p. xx). Amongst these roles, the mother is certainly one which has historical roots, as further discussed by Gundle (2007); the mother figure was portrayed as having large breasts with the aim of reproducing the attachment of the son to her and instilling in the culture both a beauty standard for, and emphasising the biological role of women. While the physical imaginary changed throughout the twentieth century, with American beauty imposing its models (a skinnier woman with blonde hair), the perception of women as representing the domestic sphere never really changed (this is also discussed in Chapter 5 on femminicidio ). Advocating Gundle (2007), I suggest that this had an impact on the participation of women in the public sphere (see Chapter 4 on how language is related in this respect) and reflects a profound sexual asymmetry in Italian society (Gundle 2007, p. 266). In his chronicle, Gundle (2000, 2007) reaches more modern times, collocating Miss Italia, the show that elects the most beautiful young woman, as one of the ways in which the cult of beauty is perpetuated in Italy. Initially called La Bella Italiana (the beautiful Italian), the context was based on an idealised beauty that also embedded virtues proper to the domestic sphere, that is the jurors were advised not to evaluate beauty as such […] but to choose the ideal fiancée for their son (Gundle 2007, p. 118). In other words, Miss Italia had to be beautiful but also attached to family values, the two main traits attributed to women in the country throughout its history. The show was aired by state TV from 1979 (previously it was aired on radio) until 2012 when the show received much criticism, mainly from the former Speaker of the Camera dei Deputati (one of the two chambers of the Italian parliament ), for being sexist and solely relying on the physical and stereotyped appearance of women. It was moved to a corporate TV channel where it is currently shown every September. Italian national and commercial TV airs not only Miss Italia, but also plenty of other programmes where women’s bodies are exposed, where female roles are limited to silent figures at the side of the main (male) hosts, particularly in game and comedy shows. An Italian-Hollywood director—Gabriele Muccino—included young women’s pursuit of such roles in one of his movies (Ricordati di me 2007, Remember me, My love). This shows how entrenched in Italian culture it is the mostly passive and beauty-based roles in the media relegated to women. In relation to ideas about Italian women and, more specifically women on TV, Hipkins (2011) confidently states that women on Italian television are objectified more frequently than on other European television networks (2011, p. 413) and further suggests [an]equation between female beauty, stupidity and sexual incontinence (2011, p. 413). This obsession for beauty and its public exposition means that the increasing presence of women is concentrated in visibility rather than in power (Gundle 2007, p. 266). These elements are cardinal to understanding the position and the attempted re-positioning of women in Italy and is the object of my attention later in this volume where I discuss how women in politics are represented. I suspect that the country for the most-part, unconsciously perpetuates this mainstream view of women. Feminist pockets of resistance are emerging with an aim to change these perceptions, the most famous being the documentary by Lorella Zanardo a women’s right activist , writer and documentarist. In 2009, she co-authored Il Corpo delle Donne ⁵ (The Body of Women) where she exposes the humiliating role of women on TV. In the years that followed this widely-seen documentary, she engaged in a difficult conversation with those who are still attached to traditional views of women, by participating in TV shows and documentaries, meeting with students in schools and organising plays in theatres. Zanardo also participated in the documentary Girlfriend in a coma (written and directed by Piras and Emmott in 2012), highlighting how women, possibly afraid of losing men’s approval, never challenged the seemingly only role available ⁶ to them on TV—that of the beautiful yet silent woman. The internalisation of this role seems to have governed women in the public sphere of the entertainment, viewed as being at the disposal of men in the institutional public sphere , and as an acceptable way to see women. Guaraldo (2011) focuses on the objectification of women’s bodies on Italian TV, detailing the striking degree of chauvinism in televised productions from the 1970s onwards in which the female body was deliberately proposed as a commodity (Ginsborg 2001, p. xix).

Guaraldo (2011) also argues that there is acceptance of an implicit ‘sexual contract’ in which men’s rights over women’s bodies, institutionalised in marriage, are at the base, not only of a woman’s private life, but also of women’s entry into the public sphere , labelling this as la politica del sesso (the politics of sex, Guaraldo 2011, p. 99). This mainly refers to the political sexual scandals, erupted in 2011, which involved Silvio Berlusconi —the then Prime Minister. The public learned that Berlusconi was organising and attending parties (referred to by himself as bunga bunga) in his properties and in those belonging to the state with (underaged) prostitutes and women, some of whom were later candidates for local elections (e.g. Nicole Minetti in the Lombardy Regional Council). While this scandal brought some women out in protest to draw attention to the entrenched sexism of Berlusconi and, more broadly, Italian society, other segments of the population did not seem affected by this and, as Gundle (2015, p. 101) explains, this had ramifications in terms of the reinforcement of certain patriarchal prejudices and analytical modes (see also Hipkins 2011, pp. 414–415, 420–421).

In this volume, I extensively discuss this a gender(ed) historically-led arrangement in both private and public spaces and I consider the resisting and perpetuating voices of such an arrangement in relation to language use.

Why Italian/s

In the previous section, I briefly explained the gendered historical and social background of Italy, raising awareness of a specific understanding of positions held by women and men in the imaginary of the country. It then goes without saying that language is used in a variety of ways to reinforce, perpetuate, and re-validate this known imaginary, as well as language being employed or speakers engaging in order to contest, disprove and challenge it. This volume concerns these two functions—reinforcing and contesting—with the aim of demonstrating how a re-evaluation of language used is to be seen in the tension between the reproduction of the imaginary and the production of a gendered fairer society. Scholars have devoted considerable efforts to explain how speakers’ beliefs, mainly considered as a given, have posed challenges in the investigation of language. In this volume, I make room for institutional and media language but also for speakers’ opinions, usages and beliefs with the aim to explore the roots of imbalanced and sexist use of Italian. In the sections dedicated to those who challenge the status quo of sexist Italian, whether it is in academia or in political and cultural institutions, I demonstrate how feminisation in language is prescriptively advocated from top to down. This appeals to some speakers but scepticism remains for (many) others.

This seems to be another strong reason to investigate Italian: its speakers. At conferences I am often asked why neutral forms cannot be introduced, solving the controversy, for instance, between the feminine and masculine forms used for women. My answer concerns both grammatical patterns (as explained in Chapter 2)—to keep a similar structure we would need more vowels, but four out of five are already taken (-a and -e, feminine singular and plural, -o and -i, masculine singular and plural)—and, more importantly, the conservative attitude of native Italian speakers (as discussed in Chapter 3). Speakers’ attitudes —some of which are reported in this volume—show that feminisation is seen as something artificial (see the grammar debate in Chapter 2), therefore, a third way might be seen as impractical and can find no room in the daily linguistic routine. Undoubtedly, this—speakers and attitudes—form part of the fruitful epistemological site discussed above.

While sexist language as visible in the language is less of a concern for English, what is very puzzling about Italy is the fierce resistance to fairer forms, understandings and meanings, as well as the veiled attacks toward the re-ordering of gendered roles. Similarly, perplexing is how femminicidio (a gendered crime that sees men killing their partners) is not always recognised as stemming from a specific culture of women’s subordination to men.

Italy and Patriarchy

What has been discussed so far suggests that Italy is a patriarchal society. But what is patriarchy and how can we adapt the term to the specific situation in Italy? I remember discussing this controversial term with my supervisor during my doctoral studies and having to reflect upon its harsher or softer meaning: the former, that of a totalizing system of oppression in which all men dominate women (Walsh 2001, p. 17); and the latter, which is how I conceive it here, is the subtle but accepted and promoted way to institutionalise the inferiority of women and their subordination within a ‘male as a norm’ order (through several linguistics and non-linguistic practices). The gap between the two meanings is a fundamental one to continue to approach the systematic subordination and subtle exclusion of women in societies, such as the Italian one.

One cannot say that institutions have not acted to counter the gendered imbalance, for instance the parliament changed article 51 of the Costituzione Italiana (Italian constitution) with the aim to create a fairer society and to guarantee equal opportunities for both women and men. ⁷ This formal action did not, however, eliminate the substantial inequality which has historically limited women in both the public and private sphere . The substantial imbalance between women and men is arguably, fed by a feeble political awareness (mainly endorsed by women) and what can be called a social and cultural idleness (of some women and men), one which opposes a change of direction and fiercely stands up for and continues to impose a normative and natural order (see the section below on discourse to see how language operates in it). For these reasons, I argue that the term patriarchy is still useful and paramount to investigate social and cultural relations, as well as linguistic practices, in Italy. I am particularly interested in the seminal work of Walby (1990) on patriarchy ; while her work concerns the harsher meaning of the term, defining patriarchy as "a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women (my emphasis 1990, p. 20), theoretical underpinnings of my volume can be useful to explain the social and cultural idleness which undermine a re-balancing towards gendered equality, reinforcing the existing one. Among the six structures discussed in Walby (1990), I draw on two that they are relevant to the linguistic investigations conducted in this volume: patriarchal relations in cultural institutions (e.g. the media ) and male violence. I also revise Walby’s term ‘public patriarchy ’—i.e. patriarchy based principally in public sites" (1990, p. 24) where the linguistic strategies adopted seem to aim at shadowing and subordinating women. The softer meaning attributed to patriarchy also embodies the idea that it is not men as a gendered fixed category to rule over women, but is a ‘male as a norm’ bound culture, which is embraced by both. The shadowing, the subordination and the oppression become metaphors of subtle behaviour which re-positions women in an inferior or ‘interloper’ (Cameron 2006) position . This behaviour is realised within public and private spaces—e.g. the parliament , the house—and artefacts—e.g. in the media . To conclude this section, I summarise why Italy (and Italians) is a fruitful epistemological site: the nature of the language as an easy way to box women (as opposed to men) in fixed categories, language ideology as a representation of a cultural system and this system as a patriarchal one.

In further support Italy as a fruitful epistemological site , I introduce the sites and the speakers I investigate with an aim to show, in several ways, the country’s social and political strata and how they form part of the language investigations presented here.

Italian Politics and Its Arenas

As language does not happen in a vacuum, I aim to contextualise Italian language and its investigation and give readers who are not familiar with the Italian context, the opportunity to engage with characteristics of Broad—(e.g. politics , media) —and smaller—(e.g. the parliament —) settings. The settings discussed below, and the speakers, who operate in them, are relevant to the examination of gendered language presented in this volume, thus the relation to gender is introduced at different levels, i.e. participation of women and men, gendered meanings, representation of a gendered culture and society, etc. The connection between these sites and gender becomes clearer in the following chapters.

Why is politics and gender interesting? If I had to give a quick answer I would certainly say that it is still ‘a man’s world’. The first noticeable difference between how the exclusion of women from politics is seen in English and Italian takes us to the walls erected to/that prevent women from entering it. In English, the common expression is glass ceiling (the term was first coined in the United States in 1984), in Italian, soffitto di cristallo (crystal ceiling). I believe that what was is fixed the translation in both languages are the properties of the two materials. From a scientific point of view, that is the chemical properties of the two materials, the glass seems to have a less structured texture than crystal, which, on the contrary, possesses a solid scaffolding conformation. It certainly is a speculation based on the translation, however, it led me to think about a stronger systematic exclusion for women to attend to, engage with, and operate within the public sphere . I am not suggesting that the geographical areas where ‘glass ceiling’ is used as a phrase are less sexist and more inclusive than ‘crystal ceiling’ ones except that the structure of the impediments to real and full parity is possibly more malleable in the former than in the latter. In further exploring the terminology, it is interesting to see that southern western European countries all use the term crystal, i.e. techo de cristal (Spanish), teto de cristal (Portuguese) while Germany and France use glass, i.e. plafond de verre and Gläserne Decke respectively, possibly degrees to which women are excluded from the political public sphere in these countries.

At the time of writing, the US was close to electing its first female President in history, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman to lead the presidential ticket for a major political party ⁸ ; the UK has recently welcomed the second female Prime Minister of its history (after Margaret Thatcher), Theresa May, in power from August 2016. In Germany, Angela Merkel became the first woman Chancellor of Germany upon her election in 2005, being re-elected in 2009, in 2013 and 2017. No Spanish woman has ever covered the role of prime minister and only one woman, Maria de Lourdes Ruivo da Silva Pintasilgo, covered the highest role in Portugal.

Their political paths (whether attempted or successful) were not easy or exempt from sexist media coverage. I compare this picture with the political history of Italy where no woman has ever been nominated Prime Minister, ⁹ one woman has, and only recently, been elected to be the second highest-ranking office of the state—the Speaker of Senato della Repubblica (the Chambers of Senators, also known as Senato ), Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati . Only 3 women have been elected to the third highest-ranking position—the Speaker of Camera dei Deputati (Chamber of Deputies, ¹⁰ also known as Camera)—namely, Nilde Iotti (from 1979 to 1992), Irene Pivetti (1994–1996) and Laura Boldrini (2013–2018). As for other countries, the entrance of women in politics has sparked debates, positive and negative comments, stereotyping and judgements of their competences, being still seen as ‘interlopers’ (Cameron 2006) and therefore ‘newsworthy’. The public controversy that is undoubtedly fuelled by the female gender of the political candidates (in different offices such as regional and city councils) is deep-rooted in a ‘male as a norm’ society for which suitable politicians are, innately, men. When thinking about other examples of women ascending to power, I reflect on the political support that the female politicians received. To be clearer, on the one side there are doubts cast on them and, on the other, discussions about their political merits together with the consequent and automatic contribution to the equality cause. In other words, gender is made relevant by other politicians, by the media , by the language used, and by the women’s political performance. In this volume, I discuss extensively how gender is made relevant through and in language, also in relation to female politicians.

But what happens when gender is not made relevant? Have we finally reached neutrality and therefore gender (women’s) inclusiveness? While I would hope so, I am sceptical about this, as in the case of Chiara Appendino and Virginia Raggi , mayors of Turin and Rome respectively (in Chapter 4, I investigate language used to refer to them). Elected in 2016, they form part of Movimento 5 stelle (Five Star Movement, M5S henceforth), a political (populist) movement led by former comedian Beppe Grillo, one that finds increasing support within Italian politics (reaching approx. 25% of the vote in 2013 and 32% in the 2018 elections). The gender-bias element seemed to have been silenced when Appendino and Raggi ran for office, further disregarding the advocacy of some sections of public opinion on the gender contribution that the two mayors-to-be were making. There were no official statements made on Grillo’s blog (considered as the movement’s manifesto) or public interventions about women in politics . Grillo and other M5S activists have, on several occasions, used sexist language to attack female political rivals (accounts of which are discussed in detail in Chapter 4), making gender relevant and, making a traditional representation of gender roles similarly relevant. I firmly believe that the silence around gender is as strategic as the loud voice used against women. Silence and voice are indeed employed and disregarded depending on whether it favours or not, a certain political stance, party/movement and ideology . In other words, I am drawn to think that making women visible in those cases would have turned against the predicted victories; it would have exposed the weakness of choosing women over men. Possibly instructed by Grillo, who also regulates the dos and donts of those in office, Appendino and Raggi never publicly spoke out about their role in politics as being within a ‘man’s world’. This neutrality on the topic is unconvincing. when seen within the context of other efforts to promote a different view of women in politics .

As an observer focused on gender (and as a linguist who systematically investigates traces of social inequality), I often notice a double-standard with which the media and politics deal with wrongdoings of male and female politicians . In the recent past, only female Ministers were successfully steered to resign (3 in the Letta government, 2013–2014) with no male counterparts doing so when they were similarly accused of wrongdoings. Likewise, the former Speaker of the Lower Chamber Laura Boldrini , seems to be have been a targeted recipient of hate (as widely discussed later in this volume, see Spallaccia 2017) with respect to the Speaker of the Upper Chamber, Pietro Grasso. This can be viewed as coincidental, or can be seen as part of the understanding of gendered roles in a specific society. Feminist activists (among whom the group Se Non Ora Quando If not now, when?) argued that Boldrini’s and Former Minister of Education Fedeli’s positive and loud attitude towards the inclusion of women and other gender identities played a clear role in the political and public attacks they received.

In order to provide a systematic view of women’s (limited) participation in Italian governments, I list below the number of female and male Ministers ¹¹ of the last 20 years.

Table 1.1 shows the imbalance in the choice of female ministers in recent decades, female representatives in government being as low as 5.6% in the Amato II government, reaching parity only once in Italian political history with the Renzi Government (2014–2016, that is until Federica Guidi resigned following a scandal, and Federica Mogherini became the Higher Representative for Foreign Affairs of the European Union). The populist government formed in late May 2018 appointed 5 female ministers (and 13 male ones): Giulia Bongiorno (Public Administration), Erika Stefani (Regional Affairs and Autonomous Regions), Barbara Lezzi (Mezzogiorno, a name used to mean Southern Italy), Elisabetta Trenta (Defence) and Giulia Grillo (Health).

Table 1.1

Numbers and percentages of female and male ministers of 12 governments in Italy (1996–2018)

Moving to the Italian parliament , this is a specific site within the broad public institutional sphere . I have chosen it as the site for my doctoral research in light of the (increasing) numbers of women elected and the underlying male-oriented linguistic and non-linguistic practices which contextualise this space as a gendered—masculine—Community of Practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1998, 2007). I extensively discuss the notion and application of the Community of Practice in Chapter 4 while here I present the parliament as an institutional site where female and male MPs operate. Italy is a parliamentary republic in that the parliament is the state organ that legislates the civic life of the Italian people. While there can be cases in which the government approves new laws, the parliament —composed by two chambers—is the designed institution where laws are discussed and voted for. The two chambers are named Camera dei Deputati (Chambers of Deputies, also known Montecitorio, its location in Rome) and Senato della Repubblica (Senate of the Republic also known as Palazzo Madama due to where it is located in Rome), they are composed of 630 and 315 MPs respectively. In the latest elections (2018), the MPs were voted for according to a mixed system (majoritarian and proportional) based on party lists, where they can only enter the parliament if they reach a 3% threshold, replacing a two-round electoral system, based on a majority bonus given to the most voted party (or coalition). This is an oversimplified view of the most recent electoral system (called Rosatellum) yet a sufficient explanation of how the Italian parliaments elects its MPs for both chambers. There is also an age threshold: MPs have to be 25 years old to be elected to the Camera dei Deputati and 40 years old to be elected in the Senato . This is relevant when we look at the gender ratio with many women being elected in the Chamber of Deputies and into politics for the first time as, because of their age, they had no option but to run for one chamber only. The Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) is the only party that has established quote rosa (literally pink quotas also known as gender quotas) in its party manifesto, as well as the candidate lists for the political elections. As explained before, the topic of gender is not raised by the other parties, arguably reflecting their lack of interest in this issue. I have already outlined that only 4 women have held the third highest ranking role of Speaker of one or the other chambers, despite female MPs having participated in the Italian parliament since the first legislatura (parliament ) from 1948 to 1953 (1.8% in the Senato della Repubblica , 7% in the Camera dei Deputati ). From the first until the current legislatura (XVIII) there has been an increase in the participation of women in both chambers. With a more specific focus on the last 20 years ca., i.e. parliaments XIV–XVIII, I present the data in Table 1.2. ¹²

Table 1.2

Numbers and percentages of female and male deputies (CD) and senators (SR) in the last 5 parliaments (2001–present)