Un’ideologia linguistica sommersa: la questione della lingua (non solo filmica) nei periodici cinematografici italiani tra il 1936 e il 1945

Film critics’ articles on linguistic topics, written between 1936 and 1945 in the most important Italian film magazines, are very interesting because were produced a few years before the great season of Neorealism. This paper analyzes 112 articles collected in five magazines and shed light on the importance and earliness of the debate on the search for the Italian language fit to screen. This debate represents a part of the “Italian language affair” (Questione della lingua) and linguistic ideologies so far neglected and therefore very interesting. Italian film critics paved the way for new topics of large fortune, such as: the role and functioning of words compared to images; dubbing; the relationship between spoken, written and media language; the search for a public and everyday standard Italian, necessary for the media and understandable to everyone; the relationship between Italian and dialects. The columnists here analyzed, as involved in a mass medium (cinema), were able, before the linguists, to find a language almost paradoxical: realistic and understandable, natural and universal.