La lingua della neopolitica. Come parlano i leader

In 2013, Italian political life experienced a revolution: parliament saw the influx of an unprecedented number of elected representatives without any previous political experience. The repercussions on the linguistic level of such an event were enormous: if the traditional, abstruse political jargon of the First Italian Republic had already been supplanted – starting from 1994 – by more colloquial and understandable prose, the seventeenth legislature (2013-2018) saw the affirmation of what can be defined as ‘socialese’, i.e. a lexicon suitable for circulation through social networks, which caresses, and often foments, the most inferior habits of communication. Since 2018, emerging terms of these neopolitics have been analyzed every fortnight on the Treccani website. Based on the results of this observatory, Michele Cortelazzo identified the linguistic tendencies of current politicians, starting with the leaders – the true protagonists of this political phase focused on personalisation -, reconstructing the history of technicalities, of expressions, of new political words – distinctive of one side (‘patriot’) or the other (‘broad coalition’); born to mask one’s ideas or manipulate those of others, to denigrate opponents, to showcase competence, to create an emotional consensus (ex: ‘so many bulldozers and mangers…’) – and of quite a few anglicisms (such as ‘recovery’ or ‘underdog’).