Quaderno monografico
a cura di Sara Fortuna e Rossella Saetta Cottone
Plurilinguismo: prospettive storiche, critiche, interdisciplinari / Plurilingualism: historical, critical, interdisciplinary perspectives
Quaderno monografico – Plurilinguismo: prospettive storiche, critiche, interdisciplinari / Plurilingualism: historical, critical, interdisciplinary perspectives – Introduzione / Introduction
Mehrsprachiges Europa / Europa plurilingue / L’Europe plurilingue. Una discussione con Jürgen Trabant, Tullio De Mauro e Barbara Cassin, a cura di Sara Fortuna e Rossella Saetta Cottone
Die globale lingua franca und die Vielfalt der nationalen Sprachen. Streitgespräch zwischen Jürgen Trabant und Philippe Van Parijs, moderiert von Lothar Müller
Babelare: un’interpretazione delle invenzioni lessicali di Amelia Rosselli
Abstract: In the first part of this paper I briefly present the life and work of multilingual poet Amelia Rosselli (1930-1996). I then focus on – often multilingual – lexical fusions and distortions in Rosselli’s texts, questioning Pasolini’s interpretation based on the notion of Freudian slip. After a detailed analysis of a poem and a range of textual examples, and with the aid of hermeneutical tools borrowed from the philosophy of language, I claim that Rosselli’s poetry aims on the one hand at mirroring reality, and on the other at making textual experience potentially infinite, thus engaging the reader in a never-ending interpretation.
Pour une approche génétique du plurilinguisme littéraire: le cas de Saint-John Perse
Abstract: The fascinating poems of Saint-John Perse have always been qualified as intrinsically “French”, since the poet considered the French language as his “only imaginable homeland”. Yet, the author’s manuscripts that are conserved in the archives of the Saint-John Perse Foundation in Aix-en-Provence show the meandrous evolution of his creative process, bringing to light a multilingual writing practice. The genetic study proposed here will analyse two complementary phenomena of Saint-John Perse’s multilingual writing: the code-switching between French and Guadeloupian Creole that occurs during the genesis of the early poem Praises, as well as the self-translation from French to English practised by the poet while collaborating with T.S. Eliot on the English translation of Anabasis.
Rire et pluralité des langues dans la Tour de Babel de Dimìtrios Vyzàntios
Abstract: The play The Tower of Babel (1837) is well known for using the full range of dialects existing in Modern Greece, for comic effect. In this article, after briefly introducing the author and outlining the plot, I shall examine whether the image the author gives of the different dialects is realistic. The effects produced by the multiplicity of spoken forms will be addressed in various terms: ethical and anthropological (the depiction of “national” character), linguistic (to what extent do the protagonists really understand each other), and political and cultural (what a character’s attitude to his neighbour’s “national” language tells us about this period’s desire for a single language and community in modern Greece). On the basis of my recent experience of translating the play into French, I shall also discuss the extent to which it is possible to export the issues this play addresses. An Appendix to the article contains short extracts of the original with their French translation, and a commentary.
Sicilia “odi et amo”. Un’autobiografia linguistica
Abstract: A first version of this linguistic autobiography was elaborated in 2012 as part of the II level Master in “theory, design and teaching of Italian as a second and foreign language” provided by the Department of Humanities of the University of Palermo and managed in collaboration with Itastra, Italian Language School for Foreigners of the same University.
The master’s degree course directed by Mari D’Agostino, professor of Italian linguistics at the University of Palermo and director of the Italian Language School for Foreigners, is aimed at training highly specialized professionals in teaching Italian to foreigners with related skills not only to teaching, but also to the design and implementation of tools and products for learning Italian.
During this journey Mari D’Agostino asked each of us students to write a linguistic autobiography explaining the history of our language acquisition. In this way the first draft of this work was born.
Ironia, antagonismo sociale, mostri poetici: tre aspetti del plurisemiotismo di Vico
Abstract: The article proposes an analysis of plurilingualism which combines New Science’s original theory of the three languages contemporary origin and the conception of the first form of political antagonism between “patres”, the first political and religious leader and “famoli”, their servants – tha last one as well an important theoretical achievement in Vico’s thought. The two issues are kept apart in the Scienza nuova reflection and we argue that linking them together allows a deeper understanding of the common origin and functional interaction of the three linguistic forms during all human evolution. We present our argument in four steps: we first focus on political antagonism in the origin of human societies, then explore the role of laugh, irony and derision in Vico’s work and especially in the conflictual context of the “famoli”’s fights against “patres”, in the third part we deal with Vico’s concept of “mostri poetici”, poetic monsters, and with the category of monster as negative stigma which the “patres” directed against the “famoli” within a condition of political antagonism. In the last part we try to use Vico’s concept of monstruosity questioning the notion of selfreflectivity in the Scienza nuova.
Fiktionen als heuristische Paradigmen
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate in three steps to which philosophical consequences the conception of fiction as hypothesis or heuristic assumption can lead. I will first sketch the understanding of an idea as a heuristic fiction following Kant. In a second step, I will examine the critique of Hans Vaihinger to the Kantian comparison between fiction and hypothesis and his praise for the stronger reading of fiction by Salomon Maimon. In the end I will develop some remarks on the systematic consequences of the determination of fiction as a hypothetical or heuristic assumption in the literature.
