Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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where the state once controlled all audio-visual media, has become a place of myriad
private conflicting voices in radio, television and even the press, complemented by a few
private monopolies like those of Berlusconi which manipulate political images. To this
proliferation of voices from below correspond new intellectual concerns with neglected
subjects like psychoanalysis, feminism, semiotics and cybernetics.
Further reading
Ajello, N. (1979) Intelletuali e PCI 1944/1958 (Intellectuals and the PCI 1944–1958), Bari:
Laterza.
Bobbio, N. (1995a) Ideological Profile of Twentieth Century Italy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
——(1995b) ‘Intellectual Biography’, trans. T. Chatway, Political Expressions 1 (1):51–65.
Bosworth, R. and Rizzo, G. (eds) (1983) Altro Polo: Intellectuals and their Ideas in Contemporary
Italy, Sydney: May Foundation, University of Sydney.
Davidson, A. (1998) ‘Norberto Bobbio, Liberal Socialism and the Problem of Language’,
Citizenship Studies 2 (1):223–45.
ALASTAIR DAVIDSON
intelligence services
In the post-1945 world, dominated by the Cold War, the secret services evolved rapidly
from their traditional role in espionage and counter-espionage towards a much wider and
more complex position in both information and national security, thus gaining an
unprecedented political relevance. Nowhere was this more true than in Italy.
As with most areas of state administration, the intelligence services of the Italian
Republic maintained a strong continuity with the past. The civilian intelligence, the
Ufficio Affari Riservati (Confidential Affairs Office) under the Ministry of Home
Affairs—first established in 1919 and transformed by the Fascist regime into an arm of
social control and political repression—emerged virtually unchanged, both in its structure
and staff, to continue to serve successive Republican governments. The reorganization of
military intelligence was slower but eventually led in 1949 to the establishment of SIFAR
(Servizio Informazioni Forze Armate, or Armed Forces Information Service) under the
Ministry of Defence. SIFAR’s main task was to integrate and co-ordinate the activities of
the individual information services of the army, navy and air force. A number of links
were also established with the American CIA and the secret services of other European
countries, shielded by the NATO treaty. Soon, however, SIFAR also undertook the
surveillance of the activities of unions, parties and politicians within Italy.
Neither civilian nor military intelligence were under any effective parliamentary
control. Moreover, during the hard times of the Cold War, the proliferation of ‘parallel’
units within the intelligence services led to looser control by the government and by even
by the ministers in charge. Among these ‘parallel’ units was ‘Gladio’, a secret
Entries A–Z 411
organization established in 1956 whose existence, long denied, was finally officially
admitted by the government in 1990. This paramilitary organization was based on an
agreement between CIA and SIFAR within the so-called ‘stay behind’ operation—a
secret network established by America in several European countries, officially in order
to counteract any hostile invasion or communist insurrection. Gladio’s activities,
however, were never open to public scrutiny and in spite of the alleged legitimacy and
‘patriotism’ later claimed for it by high dignitaries like Giulio Andreotti and Francesco
Cossiga, the organization appears to have been involved in a wide range of illegal
activities, such as retention of arms and explosives and the secret gathering of
information on politicians.
Other sectors of the Italian intelligence services also proved to have ambivalent
loyalties to the democratic process. This emerged for the first time in 1966, when
investigation by the press and a parliamentary commission of enquiry revealed the
existence of secret plans devised by the Carabinieri corps, led by General Giovanni De
Lorenzo (former head of SIFAR), to arrest a number of politicians and union leaders in a
sort of coup d’état. The plans had been dangerously close to being put into action in June
1964, during a crisis of the centre-left government. Some years later, judicial enquiries
into the so-called ‘strategy of tension’—a long series of bloody bomb attacks, including
one in Milan’s Piazza Fontana in 1969 and one at a union meeting at Brescia’s Piazza
della Loggia in 1975—brought to light suspicious links between sectors of the military
secret service—renamed SID (Servizio Informazioni Difesa, or Defence Information
Service) in 1965 after harsh internal conflicts had led to a semblance of reform—and
terrorist groups of the radical Right. In 1974 the head of the SID, Vito Miceli, was even
charged with complicity (though in the end acquitted by a controversial sentence) with
other generals and neo-fascist activists, in the farcical coup d’état attempted in 1970 by
Prince Junio Valerio Borghese (a former commander of Fascist troops during the
Republic of Salò in 1944–5). In the same year, senior officers of the SID were also
proven to be members of a neo-fascist organization the Rosa dei Venti (Wind Rose),
which the judiciary held responsible for a range of terrorist activities. In most cases the
intelligence services were shown to be responsible for misleading the judicial enquiries
by tampering with evidence or providing false evidence.
The disclosure of such ‘parallel’ networks within the SID led to heated political
confrontations, and public alarm at the lack of democratic accountability of the
intelligence services finally prompted Parliament to pass a reform bill in 1977. The bill
established a supervisory parliamentary commission and placed the secret services under
the stricter and more systematic control of the prime minister. SID was also replaced by
SISMI (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare, or Information and Military
Security Service), while a new civilian Intelligence, SISDE (Servizio per le Informazioni
e la Sicurezza Democratica, or Service for Information and Democratic Security) was
created particularly in order to co-ordinate the activities of a wide range of anti-terrorist
bodies. Both SISMI and SISDE were put under the coordination of a joint structure,
CESIS (Comitato Esecutivo per i Servizi di Informazione e di Sicurezza, or Information
and Security Services Executive Committee). In the event, the results of the reform
proved rather disappointing. The parliamentary commission was only given limited
powers, and the reorganization of the reformed intelligence services proved to be slow
and sometimes only partial. Judicial enquiries, endless trials and a parliamentary
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 412
commission of enquiry repeatedly questioned the role of SISDE during the kidnapping of
Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1978, and disturbing evidence of misleading
activities and links with the extreme Right were also uncovered by the judiciary during its
investigation of the terrorist bomb attack at the Bologna railway station of 2 August
1980. All the senior officers in charge in SISMI, SISDE and CESIS also later proved to
be members of the secret masonic lodge P2, which many considered a subversive
organization.
The discovery of such ambivalent allegiances resulted, between 1982 and 1984, in the
most massive turnover of officers in the history of the intelligence services. Since then,
control by both the government and the Parliament has been successfully enforced,
officers of assured democratic loyalty have been appointed and ‘parallel’ units have been
gradually dismantled. After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of traditional
parties, political control of the intelligence services has withered to the point where, once
the political consequences of the Gladio affair faded away, the services largely stopped
being used as an arm in battles between party factions and state bodies. The one
exception appeared to be in 1993–4 at a judicial enquiry relating to secret funds allegedly
used by SISDE to assure the support of politicians and which attempted to involved
Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, the President of the Republic. The allegations raised much
controversy but in the end remained unproven. Thus in more recent times, the Italian
intelligence services have been able to claim a more legitimate function in a democratic
society, and have become a more efficient organization performing a decisive role in
supporting the state in its struggle against both terrorism and organized crime.
Further reading
De Lutiis G. (1991) Storia dei servizi segreti in Italia (A History of the Secret Services in Italy),
Rome: Editori Riuniti (a well-informed, but ideologically biased history of the Italian
intelligence services and their role in the political life of postwar Italy; updated to 1990).
STEFANO BATTILOSSI
interior design
Italian interior design flourished in the 1950s and 1960s as one aspect of the work of the
architectdesigners who came to the fore in that decade. All the key Italian designers who
made a name for themselves in the postwar period—among them Vico Magistretti,
Marco Zanuso, Giò Ponti, Ettore Sottsass, Achile Castiglioni, Alberto Rosselli and
others—were trained as architects in the years prior to the Second World War. The
dominant architectural ideology of that period was that of rationalism, Italy’s version of
the modern movement which dominated avantgarde European activity through the work
of such key individuals as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. A
number of significant architectural projects, among them Piero Bottoni’s Electric House
of 1930 and Luciano Baldessari’s Craja Bar of the same year, were realized in Italy at
Entries A–Z 413
this time, demonstrating the strong, typically modernist links between the inside and
outside of the building and a creative use of space, and light and minimal geometric
decoration with primary colours used to accentuate the internal structure and the
intersection of planes within the interiors.
This dramatically modern approach towards the interior moved into the postwar period
as the new architect-designers attempted to set up their practices in the new climate.
Much of their attention was devoted to exhibition design, an important facet of modernist
interior design of these years. Back in the mid-1980s Marcello Nizzoli had designed a
structure for the Aeronautical Exhibition in Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele, which
had consisted of a complex grid crossed in the form of an aeroplane. This innovative
approach to exhibition design, based on modernist principles, moved into the postwar
period. It was especially obvious in the Milan Triennales where the designers created
not only the objects on display but the display itself. Ettore Sottsass’s setting for the room
of Italian glass at the 1957 Triennale was a case in point, where the drama of the grid-like
structure that he created competed with the glass itself for attention.
The Castiglioni brothers, Livio, Pier Giacomo and Achille, were well versed in
exhibition design and Achille was later to work on a number of notable interiors and
spaces, among them the lighting for the 10th Triennale of 1954 and a sala espressioni
(expressive room) in 1964 for Ideal Standard in Milan. In 1962 he worked on an interior
for the Gavina showroom in Milan, while a few years earlier he had been responsible for
the design of the Splugen Brau restaurant, also in Milan.
All the architect-designers who set up their practices in the decade following the
Second World War worked on private interiors as a means of making a living in a period
when there were very few architectural commissions in evidence. Many of them, Carlo
de Carli, Ignazio Gardella and Vico Magistretti among them, worked on furniture for the
new mass housing, concentrating on minimal, flexible forms destined for modest living
spaces. They developed a range of chairs, book-shelves and other small items which
could constitute the essential furnishings for the new apartment dwellings. While they
also worked on more luxurious interiors for the wealthy inhabitants of Milan who wanted
to show that they participated in the new style—among them, for instance, Ettore
Sottsass’s interior for Signor Ghedini of 1953 in which he used paintings on the wall to
decorative effect—it was the restaurants, shop interiors and showrooms which attracted
international attention and filled the pages of the glossy magazines. For example, Igazio
Gardella’s Olivetti showroom in Dusseldorf, designed in 1960, was a minimal setting
with typewriters and adding machines placed on plinths as in an art gallery. Carlo
Scarpa’s showroom in Venice was an even more severe space, relieved only by the grain
of the marble he used.
By the 1960s the modern Italian interior had become associated with the idea of
‘Italian chic’. No sophisticated interior was complete without an Arco’ light designed by
Achille Castiglioni, hovering over a white sofa and a glass and chrome coffee table.
Lighting objects in fact played a key role within the spaces that were envisaged, creating
dramatic effects and acting as sculptural forms in the elegant settings in which they were
placed. Countless ‘B’ Italian movies boasted such interiors, a mark of modern
sophistication and wealth. The democratic ideals of the early postwar years were replaced
by signs of conspicuous consumption. The brightly coloured plastic chairs, designed by
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Marco Zanuso, Vico Magistretti and Joe Colombo, were not democratic statements but
an attempt to show that even that material could be made to look chic and expensive.
Colombo was responsible for a number of interior settings as well as for individual
furniture items which became icons of Italian modernity. His striking spatial
compositions used intersecting planes, lighting and colour to dramatic effect, and he used
objects he had designed himself to provide sophisticated details. He found minimal,
technological solutions to the problem of illumination in lights such as his 1965 ‘Spider’
for O’Luce, which could be attached to a wall or positioned on a flat surface.
By the early 1970s, the idea of Italian design had become synonymous with that of the
sophisticated, modern interior and Italian furniture items, used sparingly, with a creative
use of lighting and strong colours, played a key role in these spaces. In 1972, the
exhibition held at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, entitled ‘Italy: the New Domestic
Landscape’ developed this theme and contained a series of what were described as ‘micro
environments’, a cross between architecture and interior design.
See also: architectural and design magazines
Further reading
Aloi, R. (1956) L’arredamento moderno (Modern Interior Design), Milan: Hoepli.
Baroni, D. (1981) L’oggetto lampada: forma e funzione (The Object Lamp: Form and Function),
Milan: Electa.
Massoni, L. (1986) Made in Italy: Mobili, illuminazione, complementi di arredamento (Made in
Italy: Furniture, Lighting, Interior Furnishings), Milan: Mondadori.
PENNY SPARKE
IRI
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the government and the Banca d’Italia (Bank
of Italy) provided large amounts of last-resort cash to the three largest Italian banks in
order to save from bankruptcy both the banks themselves and the industrial companies
they controlled. As a result of this operation, the state came to own a large share (about
45 per cent) of the companies listed in Italy’s stock exchanges. To manage these
companies, IRI (Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, Institute for Industrial
reconstruction) was established in January 1933. Thus the peculiar Italian experience of
state-owned and state-managed industrial companies did not originate from any precise
design or ‘plan’, but resulted from the failure of private capitalists to develop sound
financial bases and corporate control institutions for their enterprises.
After the war, as policy makers were unwilling to allow banks to resume the control of
industrial companies, it proved impossible to privatize stateowned ones. IRI, and later
ENI, were thus given a number of tasks regarded as relevant to their brief from a public
policy point of view: (1) to invest in infrastructures and high-tech projects, that is, in
sectors crucial for the development of the country but considered too risky by private
Entries A–Z 415
capitalists; (2) to contrast the establishment of monopolies in the private sector; and (3) to
promote the industrialization of the South. A law in 1957 stipulated that 40 per cent of all
new investment by IRI should be in the Mezzogiorno (the South).
In spite of IRI’s size and importance, the government’s attitude to it in the first decade
after the war might best be described as one of benign neglect, leaving all the relevant
decisions to company managers. It was during this period that the so-called Senigaglia
Plan succeeded in creating, for the first time in Italy’s history, a large and efficient iron
and steel industry. In 1956, a Ministry for State-Owned Companies was created,
signalling the end of benign neglect and inaugurating a long era of increasing political
interference in IRI. In 1967, during the heyday of the ‘economic planning’ ideology,
control over IRI was transferred to a ministerial committee, and as a result the dividing
line between political and managerial tasks became increasingly blurred, paving the way
for exchanges of favours and payments yet to be fully known and documented.
By the late 1970s, both IRI and large private sector companies were uncompetitive,
overmanned and in desperate financial condition. However, while the private sector
undertook, at least in part, the necessary restructuring, reform in the stateowned industrial
sector was delayed by several years. When it finally took place, it was of necessity both
difficult and painful. Between 1980 and 1995, the number of IRI employees fell by 45
per cent to 263,000, and by the early 1990s a slow but irreversible process of
privatization had been inaugurated (see also privatization and nationalization).
Further reading
Barca, F. and Trento, S. (1997) ‘La parabola delle partecipazioni statali’ (The Rise and Fall of State
Participation), in F.Barca (ed.), Storia del capitalismo italiano dal dopoguerra a oggi (History
of Italian Capitalism from the Postwar to the Present), Bari: Laterza.
GIANNI TONIOLO
Isgrò, Emilio
b. 1937, Barcellona, Messina
Artist and writer
Born in Sicily, Isgrò lived and worked in Milan from 1957 onwards, gaining notoriety in
the 1960s with his famous cancellature (cancelled books) in which he cancelled out by
hand the entire printed text of various volumes including a copy of the Bible. In these
works language was being erased because it was already worn out by use and tradition.
Subsequently, he became a well-known exponent of poesia visiva, producing ‘concrete
poetry’ by joining visual images with the written word and he came to use the term
scrittura semiotica (semiotic writing) to describe his work in poetry and prose. Isgrò has
exhibited frequently in the Venice Biennale, and in 1977 won first prize at the Biennale
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 416
of San Paulo. He has also written experimental novels, including a fictional
‘autobiography’, as well as volumes of poetry and verse plays.
LAURENCE SIMMONS
ISTAT
Officially instituted in July 1926, ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, or National
Statistics Institute) is the national agency responsible for the collection and publication of
all national statistics. Since its inception, it has published monthly bulletins and, with the
exception of 1941 when wartime conditions prevented it, it has carried out a population
census every ten years. From the late 1960s the Institute has also initiated specific
surveys of changing Italian social habits and demographic patterns. Since the mid-1980s
it has become more open to the public by making much of its information and data banks
available electronically. In 1989 ISTAT was restructured so as to manage and co-ordinate
Sistan (Sistema Statistico Nazionale), a national network of data collecting agencies, and
since 1993 it has published an annual report on the state of the nation, thus remaining the
chief and most up-to-date source of information regarding the current state of Italy.
GINO MOLITERNO
Istituti italiani di cultura
Founded in 1926 under Fascism, the Istituti italiani di cultura (Italian Cultural Institutes)
were first intended as foreign outposts of Italian culture throughout the world. A new law
in 1940 organized them even more explicitly as centres for the spread of Fascist
propaganda. After the war, the function of the Institutes was changed to a less strident
promotion of Italian culture abroad, and administrative control of the Institutes was
vested with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs while personnel was recruited from the
Education Ministry. This situation often proved unsatisfactory and generally led to
bureaucratic immobility. In spite of several attempts to redefine the Institutes’ role and
function in 1978 and 1982, they continued, with a few exceptions, to function poorly. A
further attempt was made in the early 1990s to improve the situation by defining more
clearly the role of the Institutes and in particular by appointing, for the first time, high-
profile cultural figures as directors of some of the more important centres. The measure
was moderately successful, but inadequate funding continued to hamper proper
functioning of the Institutes well into the late 1990s.
GINO MOLITERNO
Entries A–Z 417
Istituto Nazionale LUCE
The Istituto Nazionale LUCE was originally a private association of documentary film-
makers. In 1924 it was appropriated by Mussolini, who gave it a new name (the acronym
is for L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa, Union of Educational Cinema) and
responsibility for producing and coordinating all non-fictional and educational cinema in
Italy. In effect, through its highly professional but often politically biased newsreels and
documentaries—the screening of which was made compulsory in all cinemas by law
from 1927 onwards—LUCE became the strongest arm of the regime’s propaganda
machine. After the war, given its association with Fascism, the Institute was provisionally
liquidated in 1947, but was reestablished in 1949 with roughly the same aim of producing
documentaries, newsreels and educational films though within a democratic context. The
organization was restructured several times from the mid-1960s, and in 1982 it was
merged with Italnoleggio Cinematografico, a state company for film distribution. As
such, it continued to produce and distribute documentaries and films for educational
purposes. In the 1990s, it was granted greater autonomy to collaborate on projects funded
by private investments.
GINO MOLITERNO
Italia Uno
A private television channel founded in early 1982 by the publisher Rusconi, Italia Uno
was soon acquired by media magnate, Silvio Berlusconi. Targeting a younger audience,
it broadcast a steady stream of successful American serials such as The A-Team and
Beverly Hills 90210, as well as cartoons and action movies, but it also developed an
innovative approach to the variety show as in the popular Drive-In. In 1991, Italia Uno
began broadcasting Fininvest’s first regular news programme, Studio aperto (Open
Studio), directed by Emilio Fede and later by Paolo Liguori. Another important part of
the regular programming came to be in the sports area, particularly football, with live
shows such as Pressing and the satirical programme Mai dire goal (Never Say Goal
Again). In 1996, the much-respected journalist Michele Santoro migrated from the RAI
to host his political talk show Moby Dick, the first to appear on a private channel and thus
marking another coup for Berlusconi.
RICCARDO VENTRELLA
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 418
Italian and emigration
In the communities of Italian migrants outside Italy, the use of Italian and of dialects is
still widespread, although it tends to decrease in the transition from the first generation,
that is, Italians born in Italy, to the subsequent generations, those born in the country of
migration. At the community level, Italian and dialects are generally spoken in the more
informal social domains, whereas the host language is dominant in the formal ones (such
as work, education and government offices). More specifically, dialect tends to be used
more in the family and with friends from the same region, while Italian is the language of
the wider ethnic community (clubs and associations, Italian cafes and restaurants, radio
and television programmes). Due to this reduced use across generations and domains, and
to the continual pressure from the host language, Italian and dialects abroad undergo
formal changes. These occur differently in each generation, as levels of competence and
preference in the various languages are also different. In general, the impact of the host
language on the speech of the first generation is limited to the insertion of single words
into their Italian or dialect discourse. Its impact on Italian and dialect spoken by the
second generation can be much stronger, and affects also sounds and intonation patterns
and rules about word order in the sentence and about contextual use of the language.
Another feature of the Italian or dialect speech of second generation is code switching,
that is, the alternate use of the host language with Italian or dialect in conversation,
particularly due to a lack of competence in these latter two languages.
In general, levels of linguistic competence tend to be higher in the migrant
communities in Europe than in the transoceanic ones, due to the much more frequent
contact with Italy of the former. With regard to language attitudes, studies conducted in
Australia and in the United States have shown that among Italian migrants (1) the host
language is considered the more prestigious one as it is associated with success and high
socioeconomic status; (2) language mixtures, particularly those with a dialect base, are
strongly censored as they are associated with low socioeconomic conditions; (3) Italian
tends to elicit positive attitudes but is associated with likeability and solidarity rather than
prestige and success; and (4) in some cases (for example, in Australia) dialects elicit
negative attitudes. Interestingly, second-generation Italians hold more favourable
attitudes than the first generation towards mixtures, dialects and Italian.
Due to lack of empirical studies, it is difficult to establish whether Italian or dialect is
better maintained in a migration context. However, considering (1) a possible process of
Italianization favoured by postwar migration, which brought into contact Italians from
different regions; (2) the more favourable attitudes towards Italian; (3) the perception
among some migrants that Italian is more vital than dialect; (4) the higher maintenance of
Italian rather than dialect by second generation, at least in European countries; and (5) the
widespread opinion among migrants that Italian rather than dialect is the language to
teach and transmit to younger generations, it can be stated that Italian has a better chance
of survival among descendants of Italian migrants.
The total number of Italian migrants and their descendants who speak Italian and/or
dialect is unknown. However, figures are available for some countries that include a
specific language question in the census: for example, in the United States in 1990, out of
almost fifteen million people of Italian origin, over 1.3 million declared they speak Italian
Entries A–Z 419
at home, and in Australia in 1996 the figure was over 375,000 out of almost one million
people of Italian origin. Census data, however, do not distinguish between Italian and
dialects.
As to the rate of shift towards use of the host language, the Italian communities
(particularly in transoceanic countries) are generally in an intermediate position between
migrant groups displaying very high rates (such as the Dutch) and those displaying much
lower ones (such as the Greeks). Factors that can promote maintenance of Italian and
dialect include high levels of urban concentration (often a consequence of chain
migration), endogamy and a relatively strong family cohesion. On the other hand, factors
that can play against their maintenance are a relatively high degree of integration within
the host country, the dearth of new monolinguals migrating from Italy, the secondary role
played by language in maintaining a sense of community amongst Italians, and the
unfavourable attitudes towards dialects held by many first-generation migrants.
With regard to the gradual shift from Italian and dialect across generations, some of
the demographic variables that affect the process include age, as use of the two languages
(particularly dialect) tends to increase with increased age within the first generation, and
to decrease with increased age within the second generation; gender, as firstgeneration
women use more Italian and dialect than the men; and type of marriage, as the second
generation maintains Italian and dialect more if both parents rather than only one
(particularly the mother) are first-generation Italians.
At the community level, analyses of language use across domains as well as across
generations have shown that the second generation uses Italian and dialects in fewer
domains than the first: for example, with Italo-Australian friends, second generation
Italo-Australians use predominantly English. Furthermore, the distinction between
domains becomes gradually less clearcut as the host language begins to penetrate those
domains where Italian and dialect were previously spoken. This typically occurs within
the family when the first child starts attending school, becomes dominant in the host
language and starts using it to address their younger siblings as well as their parents.
Consequently, the use of Italian and dialect becomes more and more restricted to older
family members.
With regard to the formal changes occurring in the Italian and dialect speech of the
first generation, it has been noted that initially, words from the host language may be
borrowed to express concepts that are unique to the host country or that have been
acquired there: for example, fenza, from ‘fence’, to refer to the typical barrier separating
Australian backyards, or cecco, for ‘cheque’, probably unknown before migrating.
However, with the passing of time, even words that do exist in Italian or dialect tend to
be transferred; the process can be favoured by such factors as the resemblance with an
Italian word: an example is cappa, ‘cup’, instead of tazza, under the influence of the
English word but also because the same word exists in Italian with the meaning of
‘kitchen hood’. Nouns and interjections are the most frequently transferred words,
whereas adjectives, verbs, pronouns or conjunctions tend to be carried over much less
frequently. Transferred words are generally pronounced with Italian (or dialect) sounds
and are given Italian (or dialect) grammatical endings, as in the examples above.
However, a great deal of variation can be found in this process, particularly with regard
to nouns: ‘computer’ may become a feminine or a masculine noun, la compute or il
compute. Also, the amount and type of transferred words tend to vary with the level of
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