Language Conflicts and Social Exclusion in Italy since 1948
Professor David Forgacs

Conflicts over language take many different forms, from disputes over the use of minority languages in schools to stigmatization of dialect use and more covert exercises of verbal authority or resistance, for example in the media, law courts, prisons, psychiatric institutions, universities, immigrant detention centres. This lecture, part of a long-range research project on ‘Language, space and power in Italy since 1800’, will look at a number of case studies in order to draw out some distinctive characteristics of these conflicts since the Constitution of the Italian Republic, when the rights of minority languages were officially recognized.