World War I, Italian Dialects and ‘Soldier Lingo’ in the Writings of Gadda, Jahier, Mussolini.

Abstract

The Great War fostered new ways of communication between Italian officers and soldiers and among the soldiers. The soldiers, who spoke in many cases only the regional and local dialects, improved their communicative skills in Italian. At the beginning of the war, the use of the dialects was either criticized or forbidden. After the defeat of Caporetto, the dialects and the soldier lingo played a distinct role in the propaganda aiming at strengthening the Italian resistance. In this frame, the essay considers the war diaries and/or other writings of Emilio Lussu, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Piero Jahier and Benito Mussolini. The communications with their comrades in arms and the linguistic choices of the authors (three officers and a private, respectively) are investigated. The paper also shows how these diaries depict the Italian dialects and how they either use or record the soldier lingo. The article eventually focuses on the trench newspapers. Jahier’s «L’Astico» gives wide place to the dialectal poems, to the «soldier words» and to their songs, and so «Il nuovo contadino» does, with which Jahier addresses the soldiers back home from the trenches.