Chapter 7

Italian reduplication:
its meaning and its cultural significance

In this chapter, I want to look at the relationship between semantics and

pragmatics through the prism of one illocutionary device used in one
particular language. The language is Italian, and the device is that of
'syntactic reduplication'. The problem is conveniently 'simple', and so
allows a reasonably deep probe within the confines of one short chapter.
At the same time, it is sufficiently multifaceted to illustrate a wider range
of fundamental theoretical issues such as meaning versus implicature,
grammar versus rhetoric, autonomous grammar versus an integrated
theory of linguistic communication, the boundary between semantics
and pragmatics, iconicity versus arbitrariness, or the relationship
between culture (in the broad sense) and linguistic structure.

1. Italian reduplication: preliminary discussion

In Italian, it is very common to reduplicate adjectives, adverbs, and

adverbial expressions, for, roughly speaking, expressive purposes. I call
the device in question reduplication rather than repetition, because I see
a functional difference (as well as a similarity) between pauseless ex-
pressions such as adagio adagio 'slowly slowly' and expressions such as
adagio, adagio where a comma signals the presence of a pause. At the
same time, I call this phenomenon 'syntactic reduplication' rather than
just 'reduplication', because the process in question operates on words
rather than on morphemes, so that one can say, for example, not only
adagio adagio, but also adagino adagino (where -in- is a diminutive
suffix). Like many other languages, Italian also has some frozen ex-
pressions based on reduplication, but I say nothing about these here,
since this chapter is concerned only with reduplication as a productive
illocutionary device. Grandgent (1908:32) notes the emergence of what
I call syntactic reduplication in Vulgar Latin: "Repetition for intensive
256 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

effect is not uncommon in late writers: Commodian, malum malum ...

bene bene, bonis bonis, fortis fortis, malus malus, etc."
Typically, reduplications of this kind are translated into English by
means of the 'intensifier' very. For example, the Italian expressions
below would usually be rendered in English by the expressions in the
right-hand column:
bella bella 'very beautiful'
duro duro 'very hard'
zitto zitto 'very quiet(ly)'
adagio adagio 'very slowly'
in fretta in fretta 'very hurriedly'
But the possible range of use of Italian reduplication is much wider
than the range of use of the word very in English. For example, the
expression neri neri ('black black') would probably not be translated
into English as very black. Compare, for example, the following
sentence:
Due occhi, neri neri anch' essi, si fissavano tallora in viso aIle
persone, con un'investigazione superba ... (Manzoni 1972:235)
with its two English translations (by different translators):
Sometimes she would fix two very dark eyes on another's
face with a piercing look of haughty investigation ... (Manzoni
1914, 1:154)
A pair of eyes - jet black, too - would sometimes fasten on
people's faces with an air of haughty curiosity ... (Manzoni
1968: 116)
The first translator does use the word very, but simultaneously substitutes
dark for black; the second translator translates neri neri as jet black.
Even more remarkably, however, syntactic reduplication can be used
in Italian in contexts where no 'qualities', gradable or otherwise, are
spoken of, as in the following examples:
... se no, lascio Ie mie scuse, e me ne vo diritto diritto a casa
mia. (Manzoni 1972:578)
'... if not, [' II leave my excuses, and go straight off back home.'
(Manzoni 1968:323)
 Italian reduplication: preliminary discussion 257

Di grazia, ... un po' di luogo, un pochino; appena appena da

poter passare. (Manzoni 1972:344)
'Please, gentlemen, ... a little room, just a very little - just
enough to let us pass.' (Manzoni 1968:183)
se rimaneva Ii' in ginocchio, ancora per qualche momento, quasi
quasi gli chiedevo scusa io, che m' abbia ammazzato il fratello.
(Manzoni 1972: 119)
'If he'd stayed down on his knees a moment longer, I'd almost
have got to the point of asking his forgiveness myself, for
having killed my brother for me.' (Manzoni 1968:52)
. .. e che mi faccia la carita di venir da noi poverette, subito
subito. (Manzoni 1972:95)
, ... and would he do us poor folk the kindness of coming to us
straight away.' (Manzoni 1968:39)
This shows that whatever the function of Italian reduplication may be, it
is not the same as that of 'intensifiers' such as the English word very or
its Italian equivalent molto. To say that bella bella means 'very beauti-
ful' or that leggera leggera means 'very light' is not only inaccurate but
could also be misleading, as it encourages false predictions. It leads one
to predict, for example, that the Italian expressions subito subito, quasi
quasi, appena appena or diritto diritto should be as ungrammatical as
the English expressions 'very at once', 'very almost', 'very barely' ('very
just'), or 'very straight' ('I'll go very straight home') would be. In fact,
however, the Italian expressions in question are perfectly grammatical
and perfectly felicitous (unlike their alleged English counterparts).
Italian grammars usually characterise the function of reduplication
(raddoppiamento) as 'intensification' (l' intensificazione). For example,
Lepschy - Lepschy (1984:103) write: "L'intensificazione di un agget-
tivo si puo ottenere, oltre che combinandolo con un avverbio, anche
attraverso la ripetizione: una stanza molto piccola 0 piccola piccola."
[The intensification of an adjective can also be achieved, in addition
to combining it with an adverb, by repetition: 'a very small room', or
'small small'.] But again, one has to say that this characterisation is
misleading because it suggests that the 'repetition' is interchangeable
with the adverb molto. But one cannot say molto subito 'very at once'
as one says molto piccola 'very small', even though one can say
both subito subito and piccola piccola.
258 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

One could always say, of course, that the function of the Italian
reduplication is that of 'emphasis' - as people often do when speaking
of devices whose exact force they are unable to state. But this would
hardly have much explanatory value, as 'emphasis' is also invoked as
an explanation for a whole range of other devices, in Italian and, it
seems, in every other language which has ever been described (heavy
stress is used 'for emphasis', particles are used 'for emphasis', repetition
is used 'for emphasis', and so on).
As I see it, the reduplication illustrated with expressions such as bella
bella or subito subito is a characteristically Italian illocutionary device,
whose exact function and force is revealed neither by means of rough
translation equivalents from other languages (such as the English word
very) nor by means of vague and opaque labels such as 'emphasis'. It
can only be revealed by means of a semantic formula which would fit
all the contexts where the device in question can be used - and only
those contexts. (When I say 'characteristically Italian' I do not mean
'uniquely Italian', cf. Triandaphyllidis' (1975:653) account of a similar
device in Modem Greek.)

2. Discourse and illocutionary grammar

I would like to put forward a general hypothesis to the effect that 'illocu-
tionary grammar' is born in the ethnography of spoken discourse (see
Hymes 1962). What I mean is this. Every language has its own set of
language-specific illocutionary devices, encoding specific illocutionary
meanings. A set of this kind can be called the 'illocutionary grammar'
of a given language. In addition, there are universal or near-universal
illocutionary devices. It goes without saying that languages differ from
one another in their 'illocutionary grammars'; but they also differ from
one another in the relative importance they give to this or that universal
device, and in the relative frequency with which this or that universal
device is used in a given language.
For example, it seems likely that in all languages which have the
imperative as a grammatical category, imperatives can be repeated 'for
emphasis'. Thus, one can say in English: Come in, come in! Run, rabbit,
run! Similarly, one can say in Japanese: Kaere, kaere! 'Go away, go
 Discourse and illocutionary grammar 259

away!' In Italian, one might say: Parla, parla! 'Speak, speak!' Scappa,
scappa! 'Run away, run away!'
I think that repetition of this sort, which I shall henceforth call 'clausal
repetition', is different in function from the repetition of the entire
speech act, usually signalled in writing by the repetition of the same
'final' punctuation mark (a full stop, an exclamation mark, or a question
mark) rather than by the use of a comma; for example, sequences
such as: All right. All right., Mary! Mary! seem quite different in
function from their counterparts which would be transcribed with a
comma: All right, all right., Mary, Mary! What I want to suggest in
the present context is that in Italian, the use of 'clausal repetition' seems
to have a much wider scope, and a much greater importance, than it
has in English.
To give some substance to this claim, let me point out that in the
English translations of Italian novels numerous instances of 'clausal
repetition' (of imperatives, as well as other types of constituents) are left
out, or modified so that the overall level of direct repetition is reduced.
Consider, for example, the following intances of such a change:
Be.ne, bene, parleremo. (Manzoni 1972:131)
'Very well, we'll have our talk.' (Manzoni 1968:59)
Parla, parla ... (Manzoni 1972:160)
'Go on, speak out ...' (Manzoni 1968:75)
Vedra, vedra ... (Manzoni 1972:287)
'He'll see - he'll just see ... ' (Manzoni 1968:148)
Era indietro, indietro. (Manzoni 1972:134)
'Behind-hand, very much behind-hand ... ' (Manzoni 1968:60)
Ma senta, ma senta (Manzoni 1972:90)
'But listen, do listen ' (Manzoni 1968:36)
Ma ascolti, ma ascolti, ma ascolti. (Manzoni 1972:134)
'Listen, listen.' (Manzoni 1968:61)
Whatever the exact meaning of the 'clausal repetition' is, it would
appear that both the speakers of English and the speakers of Italian feel
on occasion a need to convey it (assuming that the meaning conveyed is
in both cases similar), but it also seems clear that the speakers of Italian
feel this need more often, and that the meaning in question plays a more
important role in Italian discourse than it does in English discourse.
260 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

What I would like to suggest is that there may be a link between the
enormous role of 'clausal repetition' in Italian discourse and the exis-
tence of the illocutionary device of 'syntactic reduplication' in Italian
grammar. It seems likely that the pragmatic meanings associated with
'clausal repetition' have led, through wide use, to the emergence of
a new grammatical category, a language-specific grammatical device
('syntactic reduplication'). In support of this suggestion, I would adduce
the fact that in many cases the same words seem to be among those
most frequently used in both repetition and reduplication:
Presto, presto! Presto presto!
'Quickly, quickly!'
Adagio, adagio! Adagio adagio!
'Slowly, slowly!'

3. The illocutionary force of clausal repetition

In English, the repetition of an imperative, or of an adverb which can

be interpreted as modifying an imperative, tends to be interpreted as
a directive urging the addressee to act immediately. Natural-sounding
utterances such as
Come in, come in!
Stop it, stop it!
Wait, wait!
Look, look!
Quickly, quickly!
all seem to imply a message which can be spelt out as 'I want you to
do something NOW'. Long-term directives sound less natural when
repeated:
?Look after yourself, look after yourself!
?Write to us, write to us.
One could say, of course:
Do write to us!
You must write to us!
Don't forget to write to us!
 The illocutionary force of clausal repetition 261

but the repetition:

Write, write!
inevitably introduces a note of urgency and the implication: 'do it
right away'.
Furthermore, expressions which are compatible with a message of
urgency without necessarily implying it tend to acquire such implications
when repeated. For example, the expression all right can be used to
express simple agreement or acceptance; but all right, all right sounds
as if the speaker was trying to cut short the interlocutor's speech ('stop
saying it; I want you to do it now; I have already agreed, so there is no
need for you to go on talking about it').
In Italian, clausal repetition does not imply urgency, and so it is not
restricted to contexts where a message of urgency is appropriate. It
conveys a desire to influence the addressee ('I want you to do X') but
not necessarily to urge the addressee to do something quickly ('I want
you to do X now'). For example, these sentences:
In prigione, in prigione! (Manzoni 1972:347)
In una grotta, in una grotta; lontano da costoro. (Manzoni
1972:353)
convey long term goals, not urgent commands; it is appropriate, there-
fore, that in the English translations of Manzoni' s novel they have
been rendered in a modified form, without the perfect symmetry of the
Italian original:
To prison, yes, to prison! (Manzoni 1968:184)
A cave, a cave for me! Far from all this rabble. (Manzoni
1968: 188)
A fully symmetrical repetition would introduce a note of urgency,
absent from the Italian original.
But 'clausal repetition' can also be used - in both Italian and
English - in contexts where no goals (other than illocutionary ones)
are indicated, as for example in the following dialogue:
"Ben arrivato, ben arrivato!"
"Ben trovati."
"Avete fatto buon viaggio?"
"Bonissimo; e voi altri, come state?"
"Bene, bene."
(Manzoni 1972:407)
262 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

'Welcome, welcome!'
'Well met.'
'Have you had a good journey?'
'Excellent. And how are you all?'
'Fine, fine.'
(Manzoni 1968:223)

How do utterances such as 'welcome, welcome' or 'fine, fine' differ

in their communicative import from their hypothetical non-iterative
counterparts 'welcome' and 'fine'?
1 think one important difference lies in the degree of the speaker's
commitment to the utterance. Hearing 'X!' one can always remain
unsure whether the speaker really meant what he said, but hearing 'X,
X!' one should be able to rest assured that what was said was really
meant (or so the speaker implies). For example, when one says Thank
you one expresses gratitude, but it is possible to say it coldly, in a way
which will signal to the addressee that quite possibly no gratitude was
really felt. But if one says Thank you, thank you, one signals to the
addressee that one does mean what one says. For this reason, one cannot
say it coldly. (One can say it impatiently, dismissing the interlocutor,
but not coldly.) Of course when one says it warmly, one can do so
insincerely, pretending that one is grateful when in fact one is not, but
a cold or hostile tone is incompatible with the semantic component
encoded in the repetition as such.
Thus, whatever the illocutionary purpose of the first occurrence of the
repeated item might be (such as, 'I say it because 1 want you to know
it'), the illocutionary purpose of the second occurrence is distinct and
perhaps always the same:
1 say it another time because 1 want you to know that 'I mean it'
Accordingly, the following semantic representation can be proposed:
Come in, come in! Look, look! All right, all right!
(a) 1 say: I want X to happen
(b) I want it to happen now
(c) 1 know: you can think: 1 say this, 1 don't think this
(d) 1 want you to know: 1 think this
(e) I say this another time because of this
(f) I feel something when I say it
 The illocutionary force of Italian reduplication 263

Component (b), which expresses something like urgency ('I want it

to happen now') is particularly easy to detect in imperative utterances,
such as Look, look! or Wait, wait!, where it refers to specific actions of
the addressee. It may be somewhat harder to detect in non-imperative
utterances, such as All right, all right! or No, no!, in which the speaker
may be seeking to influence the addressee's state of mind rather than
to prompt the addressee to any external action. But the impatience or
eagerness of such utterances shows that a reference to time ('now') is
present in them, too.
The assurance of something like sincerity ('you may think that I say
this, [but that] I don't think this; I want you to know that I think this') is
easy to detect in utterances which express good feelings towards the
addressee, for example in Welcome, welcome! or Thank you, thank you!,
and also in some imperative utterances, such as, for example, Come in,
come in! But can one really talk of 'sincerity' in the case of utterances
such as Look, look! or Wait, wait! which do not seem to similarly engage
the speaker's feelings? Probably not. Nonetheless, in urgent imperative
utterances of this kind it is also very important for the speaker to get
across the message: 'I mean it'; this can be interpreted, depending on the
context, either as 'I feel something (good towards you) - I mean it' or
as 'I want you to do it now - I mean it' (i.e. I mean now, not after now).
The proposed explication seems to fit all of these cases.

4. The illocutionary force of Italian reduplication

What is the difference in communicative import between instances of

clausal repetition, such as adagio, adagio 'slowly, slowly' and instances
of syntactic reduplication such as adagio adagio? And what is the differ-
ence between 'syntactic reduplication' and the 'intensification' marked
by words such as molto 'very'?
To begin with the first of these questions, I suggest that in both cases
(adagio, adagio and adagio adagio) the speaker insists on the truth or
validity of what is said. In the case of clausal repetition, the nature of
this insistence is unspecified: the speaker may be dismissing possible
doubts regarding the sincerity, seriousness, accuracy, or some other
aspect of the utterance. In the case of reduplication, however, the nature
of this insistence is quite specific: roughly speaking, it regards the
264 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

accuracy of the utterance. In calling someone' s eyes neri neri the

speaker insists that these eyes were 'really' black, literally black; that
their color was not close to black but exactly black; that no exaggeration
is involved. Saying subito subito the speaker insists that in saying 'at
once' what is meant is literally 'at once', and not something more or
less close to 'at once'; again, the reduplication implies that there is no
exaggeration in what is said. Saying 'barely barely' the speaker insists
that in saying 'barely' there is no exaggeration.
Furthermore, I conjecture that, unlike clausal repetition, reduplication
involves a single speech act. For this reason, I have assigned to redupli-
cation a single component in the frame 'I say', and a single illocutionary
purpose. In clausal repetition, the speaker performs a particular speech
act (such as a request) with its own illocutionary purpose (such as, 'I say
it because I want you to do it'), and then repeats the utterance, with a
new illocutionary purpose ('I say it another time because 1 want you
to know that I mean it'). In reduplication, no similar split seems to
occur. The prosodic unity of the reduplicated utterance mirrors, it seems
to me, its illocutionary unity, and this unity is reflected in the proposed
semantic representation.
Turning now to a comparison between the reduplication and the inten-
sification signaled by the word molto 'very', I would first of all reiterate
the observation that molto - unlike reduplication - is restricted to
gradable qualities. In essence, to say that someone is molto bella 'very
beautiful' or molto gentile 'very nice' is to say that the person in ques-
tion is more beautiful (more nice) than one could imagine on hearing
that she was simply beautiful (or nice). In the case of words which don't
refer to gradables the notion of 'more X' is simply not applicable. One
can't say *molto quasi 'very almost', just as one can't say *piu quasi
'more almost'.
What one can do in the case of non-gradables is stress that they are
being used responsibly, accurately, strictly. By repeating a word ('XX')
the speaker draws attention to that word, and insists on its strict
correspondence with what is meant ('I mean X, not something a little
different from X'). The fact that reduplicated expressions often co-
occur with the adverb proprio 'really, truly' (E proprio bianca bianca
'It is really white-white') is significant in this connection.
Of course one could still say that, when applied to gradable qualitative
adjectives and adverbs such as leggero 'light' or adagio 'slowly', the
reduplication signals a 'high degree' ('very light', 'very slowly'). But
there is no need to postulate a separate meaning for this use of redupli-
 The illocutionary force of Italian reduplication 265

cation. Rather, we should say that the connotation of 'high degree' is

due to an implicature, calculable from the combined effect of the redupli-
cation and the invariant meaning of the base. For example, if adagio
adagio means something like 'the word adagio ("slowly") fits this
situation perfectly; in saying adagio I am not exaggerating', then it is
natural to infer that the process in question was in fact very slow. But
the general formula: 'no exaggeration' fits both qualitative and non-
qualitative uses of reduplication. There is no need, therefore, to analyse
this device as polysemous.
Furthermore, even in the case of gradable adjectives, reduplication
doesn't always produce an effect similar to that of molto 'very'. For
example (as Anna Ravano has pointed out to me), there was some years
ago a film entitled Un borghese piccolo piccolo 'A small-small citizen'.
The hero was a 'perfectly ordinary' man, who became involved in ex-
traordinary events. Clearly, the expression piccolo piccolo wasn't used
to mean 'very small', but to mean 'truly small, truly ordinary'. The stress
was not on a high degree of the feature in question, but on the accuracy
or validity of the word used.
The difference in function between reduplication (bella bella 'beauti-
ful beautiful') and 'intensification' (molto bella 'very beautiful') be-
comes even clearer when one considers instances in which reduplication
is applied to nouns rather than adjectives. For example, Lepschy -
Lepschy (1984:103) write: "Con i nomi l'intensificazione (0 meglio
un'identificazione della qualita autentica) si puo ottenere anche col
radoppiamento: caffe caffe, cioe caffe vero e non un surrogato." [With
respect to nouns, intensification (or, better, the identification of an
authentic quality) can also be achieved by means of 'doubling': caffe
caffe 'coffee coffee' is true coffee and not a surrogate.] Further examples
of nominal reduplication include brodo brodo 'broth broth', i.e. genuine
broth, and lana lana 'wool wool', i.e. genuine wool.
The formula offered by Lepschy and Lepschy ('the identification of
an authentic quality') is, I think, insightful. But the implication that the
device of 'doubling' (reduplication) has two different functions ('intensi-
fication' in the case of adjectives and 'identification of a true quality' in
the case of nouns) is unfortunate. In fact, the function of the reduplica-
tion is the same in both cases. But to capture it, we need a unitary
formula different from that used by Lepschy and Lepschy. Moreover, we
need a formula which would account not only for nouns such as caffe
caffe and for adjectives such as piccola piccola, but also for adverbs
and adver.bial expressions where no 'quality' is referred to, such as, for
266 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

example, subito subito 'at once at once' or quasi quasi 'almost almost'.
Before proceeding to tentative semantic representations, I would like
to draw attention to yet another difference between the two patterns
under discussion. I believe that expressions such as bella bella - unlike
expressions such as molto bella 'very beautiful' - contain an emotional
component, which can perhaps be represented roughly as 'I feel some-
thing thinking about it'.
For example, when one compares utterances like these:
a. Venga subito subito.
'Come at once at once.'
b Come straight away.
l
•

b". Come at once - I mean at once!

one is bound to notice the highly expressive, emotional tone of (a), in
l
contrast to (b and (b"). It seems impossible to pronounce (a) with the
)

neutral, detached prosody with which (b') or (b") could be uttered. The
fact that the reduplication can be applied to purely descriptive adjectives,
such as nero 'black', bianca 'white', piccolo 'small', or fisso 'attentive'
doesn't undermine the hypothesis that the pattern contains an emotional
component. Examining utterances where expressions such as neri neri,
bianca bianca or duro duro are actually used, it is usually easy to detect
in the context clear clues to the emotional undertones. For example,
when one of the heroes of Manzoni' s novel quoted above undergoes a
great spiritual crisis and tosses and turns in his bed, unable to sleep, it
is small wonder that it seems to him that his bed has become duro duro
'hard hard' and his blankets, pesanti pesanti 'heavy heavy'.
Similarly, it is small wonder that in one of the most dramatic moments
of the story, an accidental witness, most intrigued, follows the amazing
dialogue fisso fisso 'attentively attentively'. In another dramatic mo-
ment, the hero, trying to escape from the police, wants to cross a river
in a fisherman's boat, without being noticed by anybody. Naturally,
therefore, he addresses the fisherman in a voice which is leggera leggera
'light light', 'soft soft'.
Examples can be multiplied. They all show, however, that the redupli-
cation adds an emotional dimension to the utterance. In some cases
(such as 'come at once at once') this aspect of meaning can easily be
captured by means of the component
I feel something thinking about it
(I feel something saying it?)
 The illocutionary force of Italian reduplication 267

In others, the identity of the person who 'feels something' is less

clear: is it the hero who feels something, or is it the narrator, or both? I
am not sure. It seems to me, however, that if we wish to give a unitary
account of the use of the reduplication we should perhaps assume that
it is the speaker's feeling which is relevant to the pattern. In a story in
which the narrator merely empathises with the hero, the hero's emotions
may be primary and the narrator's secondary, but I am inclined to think
that it is the narrator's emotion which is signalled directly by the
reduplication.
1 suggest that the full illocutionary force of the reduplication can be
portrayed along the following lines:
[Her eyes were] neri neri 'black black'; [He was] ricco ricco
'rich rich'
(a) I say: X (her eyes were black; he was rich)
(b) 1 know: you can think:
I say 'X', I think: 'something like X'
(c) I want you to know:
I think 'X', not 'something like X'
(d) I say this like this because of this
(e) I feel something because of this
[I want you to come] subito subito 'at once at once'
(a) I say: I want X (I want you to come at once)
(b) 1 know: you can think:
1 say: 'X', 1 think 'something like X'
I want you to know:
I think 'X', not 'something like X'
(d) I say this like this because of this
(e) I feel something because of this
Instead of saying 'I say this like this because of this' in component (d)
(a phrasing suggested by Jean Harkins) one might consider an alternative
phrasing: 'I say this another time because of this'. It is not clear to me,
at this stage, which of these phrasings is more adequate.
As for the reduplicated nouns, such as caffe caffe 'genuine coffee', we
can assign to them virtually the same explication, without, however, the
emotional component (e):
caffe caffe 'coffee coffee'
(a) 1 say: X (coffee)
268 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

(b) I know: you can think:

I say 'X', I think 'something like X'
(c) I want you to know:
I think 'X', not 'something like X'
(d) I say this like this because of this
And for the 'intensification' marked by molto 'very', I suggested that
its pragmatic force could be spelt out along the following lines (see
Wierzbicka 1972:86):
E molto ricco 'He is very rich'
(a) I say: he is X (rich)
(b) I want to say more than X
I have come to think, however, that 'very' may be a better candidate for
the status of a universal semantic primitive than 'more'. If this is correct,
then no further explication of words like molto or very would be neces-
sary. In any case, I don't posit for this pattern an emotional component
('I feel something thinking about it'), as I did for the syntactic redupli-
cation, because 'intensifiers' such as molto and very can be used in
contexts which exclude emotionally loaded words or expressions:
Objectively speaking, she is very beautiful.
?Objectively speaking, she is gorgeous.
?Objectively speaking, she is most attractive. (See 6,7 below.)

5. Clausal repetition as a means of 'intensification'

Bolinger (1972:90) has shown that repetition can be used in English as a

means of 'intensification', analogous to words such as very or extremely.
He adduced, among others, the following examples (which I think
should be qualified as gushing exaggerations):
That's very, very interesting.
They were quite, quite willing to accept.
She's a tiny, tiny baby.
It was a big, big bear.
He's a wonderful, wonderful person.
I carefully, carefully put it down.
 Clausal repetition as a means of 'intensification' 269

As Bolinger points out, lexical iteration is accompanied here by

prosodic intensification (which Bolinger shows by spacing).
It seems to me that in sentences of this kind the repetition is, so to
speak, intraclausal, and that its function is quite different from what
I have called clausal repetition, exemplified by sentences such as:
Come in, come in.
Thank you, thank you.
Fine, fine.
In the case of clausal repetition, the speaker repeats a whole clause
(which may of course consist of just one word). In the case of intra-
clausal repetition, the speaker repeats a word. In the first case, the
speaker insists on the validity of what is said. In the second case, the
speaker insists that the WORD in question is well-chosen.
Intraclausal repetition is of course closer in function to syntactic
reduplication than is clausal repetition. Nonetheless, there are some
important differences between the two (intraclausal repetition and redu-
plication). For one thing, intraclausal repetition seems to introduce an
additional speech act, analogous, in a sense, to a parenthetical clause:
a. That's very, very interesting.
b. That's very interesting; I say: very (is the right word here).
a. I carefully, carefully put it down.
b. I carefully put it down; mark the word: carefully.
By contrast, Italian expressions such as neri neri seem to be used in
unitary speech acts (as expressions such as jet black are used in English).
Secondly, in English, intraclausal repetition seems to be confined
mostly to intensifiers (such as very and quite) and to words which have
an expressive component built into them. Purely descriptive words
don't lend themselves equally well to such use:
?She was a small, small baby.
?It was a large, large bear.
*? He's an intelligent, intelligent person.
The expression It's a small, small world (Jane Simpson, p.c.) sounds
better than a small, small baby, precisely because the former, in my
view, encodes an emotional component, and is usually uttered with a
wordly-wise smile or some other expression of feeling. Expressions
such as neri neri or in fretta in fretta indicate that there is no similar
restriction in Italian.
270 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

Third, English intraclausal repetition is restricted to contexts com-

patible with the intended meaning of 'intensification'. One can hardly
say in English
?/ almost, almost apologised to him.
?Make just, just enough room for us to be able to pass.
Above all, however, it must be stressed that syntactic reduplication is
an illocutionary device which Italian has grammaticalised; intraclausal
repetition, however, may well be a rhetorical device available (though
not necessarily widely utilised) in any language. The exact meaning, and
the exact range of use, of syntactic reduplication cannot be calculated
on the basis of any universal principles of human behavior (such as
Grice's maxims). It is part and parcel of Italian grammar, which doesn't
have counterparts in English, Japanese, or even French.
Of course it cannot be denied that the basis of this device is largely
iconic, and certainly reduplication is known to convey related mean-
ings in very many unrelated languages of the world (see, for example,
Moravcsik 1978). But reduplication can also be put to entirely different
uses (see, for example, Hayakawa 1985; Wilkins 1984; for a broad
survey, see Mel'cuk, in press). The exact force of Italian reduplication
is at least partly a matter of language-specific conventions, and so it
cannot be regarded as due to 'implicature' rather than meaning.

6. The absolute superlative in Italian and in English

Before turning to the cultural significance of 'syntactic reduplication',

I think it in order to discuss briefly another grammatical device which
is also characteristic of Italian and whose pragmatic force is closely
related to that of 'raddoppiamento'. Italian grammarians call this device
superlativo assoluto, the 'absolute superlative'. It can be illustrated with
forms such as devotissimo 'extremely devoted', bianchissimo 'extremely
white', or velocissimo 'extremely fast'.
The superlativo assoluto continues, historically, the old Latin superla-
tive. But from a synchronic point of view, it is a separate grammatical
category, distinct from the (Italian) superlative; that is, from what Italian
grammarians call superlativo relativo:
 The absolute superlative in Italian and in English 271

comparativo: bello
superlativo relativo: piu bello
superlativo assoluto: il piu bello, bellissimo
As one grammarian (Fochi 1966: 168) puts it: "quando, per esempio,
diciamo che 'Giulio e generosissimo' (superlativo assoluto) non con-
sideriamo quanto siano generosi, al suo confronto, Tizio, Caio e via
dicendo: osserviamo tale qualita in lui solo, e ci basta affermare che
egli la possiede in grado molto alto." [When we say, for example, that
Giulio is 'most generous', we are not comparing Giulio' s generosity
with that of Tizio, Caio, and so on: we are considering the quality ex-
clusively in him, and all we want is to affirm that he possesses it in
a very high degree.]
Italian grammars commonly describe the 'absolute superlative' as a
device equivalent to reduplication, and some even extend the same label
(superlativo assoluto) to both of these devices (see, for example, Fochi
1966:168; Kaczynski 1964:106). In fact, however, there are important
differences between the two devices (as well as similarities). For one
thing, the absolute superlative in the strict sense of the term is, like molto
'very', restricted to qualities, and to qualities regarded as gradable. One
cannot say, for example, subitissimo as one says subito subito 'at once
at once'. For another, ·the absolute superlative is not meant to convey
accuracy. Normally, it involves a self-evident exaggeration; and this
exaggeration is functional, in view of the speaker's emotional attitude.
For example, if one describes a drink as una bevanda agrissima 'most
bitter' (Fochi 1966: 170) or if one describes an apple as una mela
asprissima 'most sour', one is not pretending to be accurate: the very
exaggeration serves to highlight the speaker's displeasure.
On the other hand, the reduplication does lay a claim to precision; and
for this very reason, it is inappropriate in purely emotional contexts,
where no descriptive content is conveyed. For example, the form caris-
simo 'dearest' is used in Italian very frequently; but the hypothetical
form carD carD sounds comical. A repetition with a comma intonation:
caro, carD sounds all right, of course (cf. in English I want you to meet
a dear, dear friend of mine) but a reduplicated carD carD sounds odd.
Similarly, forms such as illustrissimo 'most illustrious', or obbligatis-
simo 'most obliged' are commonplace; but forms such as illustre illustre
or obbligato obbligato sound peculiar. This peculiar effect has nothing
to do with the sincerity, or otherwise, of the alleged emotion. When the
emotion expressed is purely a matter of social convention there is still
272 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

a clash between the purely subjective, non-descriptive content of the

adjective and the purported stress on precision conveyed by the redupli-
cation; as a result, forms such as obbligato obbligato or illustre illustre
sound as odd as caro caro.
To capture the relevant semantic relationships, I would propose a
semantic representation along the following lines:
[She is] gentillissima 'extremely nice'; [It is] velocissimo
'extremely fast'
(a) I say: it is very X
(b) no one/nothing could be more X
(c) I feel something thinking about it
The comparative component (b) could be further explicated as follows
(cf. Wierzbicka 1971):
no one/nothing could be more X =
if one can't say this of this person (thing)
one can't say this of anybody (anything)
One could say that English, too, possesses a category of an 'absolute
superlative', and that it can be illustrated with expressions such as most
kind, most generous, most helpful, most unpleasant, and so on. It must
be pointed out, however, that in English the use of this category is
very restricted. For example, we may be able to call someone 'most
kind', but we couldn't call a thing 'most white' or 'most long' (in the
absolute superlative sense). But in Italian, the forms such as lunghissimo
or bianchissimo are perfectly acceptable.
One generalisation which suggests itself is that in English, the pattern
'most Adj.' cannot be applied to purely descriptive adjectives, that it
applies only to terms of assessment ('good' or 'bad'). However, to say
this is not sufficient, as the following contrasts in acceptability show:
He was most helpful. ?He is most good-looking.
It was most kind of you. ?She is most beautiful.
She is most attractive. ? ?She is most healthy.
I am most grateful. ?He was most pleased.
She has a most attractive ??She has most regular
personality. features.
It was most effective. ?It was most elegant.
It was a most generous offer. ??It was a most silly play.
It was most disappointing. ??It was most bad.
 The absolute superlative in Italian and in English 273

It was most frightening. ? ?It was most deafening.

It was most ingenious. ? ?He is most modest.

Studying contrasts of this kind, I am led to believe that the pattern

'most Adj.' refers to an effect that people, and human acts, have on other
people. In fact, even combinations of the word most with 'human pro-
pensity' adjectives such as kind, generous, or helpful (see Dixon 1977)
sound most natural (in the relative, not the absolute, superlative sense!)
in sentences referring to specific acts of kindness or generosity, rather
than in abstract 'character references'. In the two columns below, sen-
tences on the left sound, I think, more felicitous than those on the right:
It was most kind of you. John is most kind.
He was most generous (to us,
in his dealings with us). Mary is most generous.
He was most unpleasant (to us). Max is most unpleasant.
If the adjective in the absolute superlative construction refers to a
person rather than to an act, it sounds best in the construction which
Bolinger (1977:141-142) calls 'the ergative of (it was Adj. of you/him),
which implies an evaluation of a person in relation to some specific act
performed by him or her.
However, expressions such as most attractive, which don't imply
actions, demonstrate that interaction between people is not a sine qua
non of this construction; an effect of a person on other people is suffi-
cient for the pattern to be able to be used. Near-synonyms such as attrac-
tive and beautiful or good-looking are particularly instructive in this
respect: a person's good looks may leave other people cold; but a
person's attractiveness, by definition, cannot. Similarly, it is significant
that most grateful sounds much better than most pleased - presumably,
because the word grateful refers to human interaction and implies an
emotional reaction to another person, whereas the word pleased has no
such implications.
However, one cannot neatly divide the set of English adjectives
into those which always can, and those which never can, occur in the
absolute superlative construction. The real constraint is semantic, not
lexical: it is the meaning of the entire sentence, not just of the adjective
as such, which determines the degree of the sentence's acceptability.
For example, of the two sentences below:
a. She is most beautiful.
b. He gave me a most beautiful necklace.
274 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

(b) is more acceptable than (a), presumably because it refers to human

interaction and implies an emotional reaction to it (gratitude).
Quirk et al. (1972:287) assert that a sentence such as She is most
beautiful "can only mean she is extremely beautiful and not that she
is more beautiful than all the others". But if an expression such as
most beautiful really didn't mean more than the expression extremely
beautiful then we would have no explanation for the gushing, exagger-
ated character of the former, in contrast to the latter. I think that
Jespersen's observation that expressions such as most beautiful are
exaggerated should not be lost sight of. And we do lose sight of it if we
say that most means no more than extremely.
It is not an accident that the absolute superlative shares, to some
extent, the morphology of the relative (comparative) superlative. A com-
parison is there, in both cases. The differences lie elsewhere: in the
nature of the comparison, and in the illocutionary purpose of the utter-
ance. If I say: Mary is the most attractive girl in her class, I am com-
paring Mary to a specific, finite set; and I am informing the addressee
that I set her above all the other members of that set. By contrast, if I
say: Mary is most attractive, I am comparing Mary to an imaginary set
of competitors; and if I am setting her above those imaginary competi-
tors it is not in order to inform the addressee ('I say it because I want
you to know it') but in order to express my emotional reaction to my
perception of Mary ('I feel something because of it').
Quirk et al. (1972:287) also say that "absolute most is restricted as to
the adjectives with which it occurs, perhaps premodifying only those
expressing subjective rather than objective attitudes ... : She is most
unhappy; *She is most tall." I think that the basic point is correct, but
that the way the restriction is formulated is clearly not sufficient. I pre-
sume that what the authors really have in mind is not so much a contrast
between 'subjective attitudes' and 'objective attitudes' as a contrast
between attitudes and objective characteristics (clearly, being tall is not
an 'objective attitude'). But the statement they offer does not explain
why there is a difference in acceptability between, say, unhappy and sad,
or unhappy and pleased, or unhappy and happy:
She is most unhappy.
?She is most angry.
*She is most happy.
I think the clue to these differences in acceptability lies partly in the
emotional effect that a person's 'subjective attitude' exerts on other
 The absolute superlative in Italian and in English 275

people. Seeing a person who is obviously very angry we may fail to 'feel
something because of that'; and another person's extreme happiness is,
unfortunately, unlikely to echo in the hearts of the bystanders; but seeing
someone who is obviously very unhappy, we are less likely to remain
totally indifferent.
It seems to me that the reason why the range of use of the English
'absolute superlative' is so much more restricted than that of its Italian
counterpart is that the meaning encoded in the English construction is
much more specific than that encoded in its Italian counterpart. X-issimo
seems to imply, 'it is more X than anything or anyone that one could
imagine', but X-est or most X seem to imply more: 'it is more X than
anyone or anything that one could imagine', and also 'this is good/bad
for someone'. One might say, then, that the Italian absolute superlative
constitutes a grammatical device which enables the speakers of Italian
to perform a kind of expressive overstatement any time, that is to say
regardless of the nature of the qualities spoken of, whereas English is
much more restrictive in this respect.
Another, related, difference concerns the nature of the emotional
component embodied by both the Italian and the English construction. In
English, what is involved is, typically, an emotional reaction to a human
act, an act which can be evaluated. (Another English quasi-superlative
construction, which doesn't take the definite article, seems to be re-
stricted to the expression of emotions: My deepest sympathy, With best
wishes, With warmest regards.) If it is not an act, then it is a perception,
followed by an assessment and combined with an emotional reaction.
In Italian, the nature of the emotional component is not similarly
restricted. Forms such as velocissimo 'extremely fast' or nuovissimo
'extremely new', 'completely new' can be used in abstract descriptions
of objects, where there is no question of a direct reaction to an act, or
even to a perception. The difference in question is subtle, but I think we
should at least try to capture it in the semantic representations of the
two constructions, to account as accurately as possible for the differ-
ences in the range of their use.
I would propose the following way of portraying this difference:
You are most generous; I am most grateful; She is most
attractive =>
I feel something because of this (i.e. because of what you have
done, because of the way she looks, etc.)
276 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

E nuovissimo (velocissimo, bianchissimo, etc.) =>

I feel something thinking about it (i.e. thinking of how new it
is, etc.)
The two full explications would then compare as follows:
E velocissimo/bianchissimo (It is 'most fast', 'most white')
(a) I say: it is very X
(b) nothing could be more X
(i.e. if one cannot say 'X' of this one cannot say it of
anything)
(c) I feel something thinking about it
It is most ingenious/unpleasant.
(a) I say: it is very X
(b) nothing could be more X
(i.e. if one cannot say 'X' of this one cannot say it of
anything)
(c) I think: this is good/bad for someone
(d) I feel something because of this

7. Illocutionary grammar and cultural style

Different cultures favour different styles of social interaction, and illocu-

tionary grammars tend to reflect cultural differences of this kind. For
example, the fact that in Anglo-Saxon culture respect for a person's
autonomy occupies a high position in the hierarchy of values is reflected
in the great importance given in this culture to pragmatic values such
as 'tact', 'non-interference' and 'anti-dogmaticism'; this, in turn, is re-
flected in the exuberant growth of interrogative and quasi-interrogative
devices in the grammar of English (see Goody 1978; Chapter 2 above).
The importance of the illocutionary strategy of understatement in
English speech (see Hubler 1983) also has its obvious roots in Anglo-
Saxon culture. The fact that in English, understatement can be used even
in those situations where the speaker wishes to speak in the strongest
possible terms, is highly significant in this respect. For example, one can
say in English that a crime was 'rather horrible', or that a performance
was 'pretty awful', or that a student is 'fairly enthusiastic' - all expres-
 Illocutionary grammar and cultural style 277

sions which cannot be literally translated into languages such as Polish

or Italian, whose speakers prefer emphatic overstatement to cautious
understatement (see Chapter 2). For example, expressions such as abbas-
tanza orribile 'rather horrible' or piuttosto orrendo 'pretty awful' sound
rather ludicrous in Italian.
Of course one cannot identify Anglo-Saxon culture with the English
language. There are many cultural divisions within the English-speaking
world, and English is spoken today as a first language by many
groups who do not belong to the Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition. But
a language reflects past traditions, as well as the living culture. Since
the Anglo-Saxon tradition is, or has been for a long time, the dominant
one in English-speaking communities, it is little wonder that this tradi-
tion has left a strong imprint on the English language. But it should also
be pointed out that sooner or later, historical and cultural diversity within
the English-speaking world does find its reflection in linguistic diversifi-
cation. For example, the English spoken by American Blacks differs
from the mainstream in ways which are culturally revealing (see, for
example, Abrahams 1970, 1974; Kochman 1972; Mitchell-Kernan 1971,
1972; see also Chapter 3 above). And Australian English has developed
many distinctive features which reflect Australian history, culture, and
ethos (see Wierzbicka 1986b; Harkins 1988; Chapter 5 above).
I would like to suggest that syntactic reduplication and the absolute
superlative belong to a system of illocutionary devices which reflect,
jointly, certain characteristic features of Italian culture and, in particular,
of the Italian styIe of social interaction.
In my view, the absolute superlative constitutes, in a sense, an antithe-
sis of understatement. Discussing expressions such as most kind and
most ingenious, Jespersen (1965, 7:395) attributes them to a 'universal
tendency to exaggerate'. Leech (1983: 147), too, regards hyperbole as a
'natural tendency of human speech'. However, different cultures differ in
the extent to which they encourage, or discourage, this 'natural human
tendency'. The contrast between the English and Italian absolute superla-
tive constructions, provides, I think, a good illustration of the more
general differences between the two cultural traditions and cultural
styles. The device of syntactic reduplication, too, can be regarded as the
antithesis of understatement, and as a case of emotional overstatement.
But concepts such as 'understatement', 'hyperbole', or 'litotes' have
been taken over directly from traditional rhetoric, and, although they are
useful as hints and points of orientation, they are nonetheless vague
and imprecise, as most such traditional notions have had to be.
278 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

The use of explicit formulae, which force us to be rigorous and

explicit, helps us to recognise that expressions such as neri neri or duro
duro don't necessarily involve 'exaggeration' in the sense in which
expressions such as most ingenious or bellissima do.
The absolute superlative can be plausibly interpreted as meaning 'it
is more X than one could imagine'. The speaker is fully aware of saying
'a little more than what is strictly true', and is not trying to deceive the
addressee on that score. The speaker assumes that it will be clear to the
addressee that 'a little more than what is true' is said in order to convey
an emotional attitude to the state of affairs spoken of.
In the case of syntactic reduplication, the speaker is doing something
different. This time, he does insist that what he says is not even a little
different from what is true. And yet this strategy, so different from that
of emotional exaggeration, nonetheless has a similar pragmatic effect
(that of 'overstatement', or 'anti-understatement'). I think that in order to
understand this apparent paradox, it is useful to compare expressions
such as bella bella not only with expressions such as bellissima but
also with English expressions such as 'rather pretty'. The person who
says (see also Leech's 1983:148 examples):
She's rather pretty.
We're rather proud of it.
Actually, I'm rather good at it.
is trying hard not to say 'very pretty', 'very proud', or 'very good' and
clearly conveys this message to the addressee ('I don't want to say more
than 'pretty', 'proud', 'good'.') The addressee can infer that the speaker
thinks more than he says ('he says that he doesn't want to say more than
X - presumably, he thinks more than X'). In this sense, the English
strategy in question can indeed be interpreted as an understatement. It
is worth noting also that utterances of this kind are often introduced
with an apology: I don't want to boast, but ....
The speaker who says bellissima or velocissimo does say more than
what the bare adjective would convey, and clearly conveys his intention
of doing so ('I want to say more than X'). This, however, is not different
from the effect conveyed by 'intensifiers' such as molto or very. The real
'overstatement' comes, I think, in the implicit comparison: 'more than
'one could imagine'.
The person who says bella bella doesn't imply 'more than beautiful',
let alone 'more beautiful than one could imagine'. But his behaviour,
too, is (though in a different sense) the opposite of that of somebody who
 Illocutionary grammar and cultural style 279

says 'rather pretty'. The person who says bella bella insists on the
absolute validity of his words; the person who says 'rather pretty'
deliberately refrains from doing so. The first one emphatically dots the i,
confident of the absolute validity of what he says and ready to assert
himself to the full, without 'tactfully' anticipating the possibility of
different views. The person who says 'rather pretty' doesn't want to dot
the i, doesn't want to insist on the absolute validity of what he says,
and does wish to leave room for other points of view.
Of course Anglo-Saxons, too, can and do 'overstate', when they wish
to do so - both in the sense of saying more than they really mean, and
in the sense of insisting on the absolute validity, and the absolute accu-
racy, of what they are saying (see Jespersen 1965,7:395; Sapir 1949:145;
Leech 1983:145; Brown - Levinson 1978:224). But the fact that, unlike
Italian, English has no grammatical devices for doing so suggests the
existence of a cultural difference - presumably, the same cultural
difference which is also reflected in the different scopes of the English
and Italian absolute superlatives.
I would add that the emotional nature of expressions such as bellis-
sima or bella bella seems as significant, from a cultural point of view,
as their 'emphatic' and 'overstated' character. As I have argued in
Chapter 2, there is a link between the rich system of expressive deriva-
tion (diminutives, augmentatives, and the like) in languages such as the
South Romance or Slavic ones, and the uninhibited display of emotions
characteristic of Mediterranean and Slavic cultures. There is also, I be-
lieve, a link between the virtual absence of expressive derivation in
English and the taboo on overt displays of emotion in Anglo-Saxon
culture. In English, utterances like You're too, too kind, She gave me the
most beautiful ring, He's a dear, dear man (Jane Simpson, p.c.) are
associated with a speech style ascribed to rich women, private-school
girls, homosexuals, actors, etc., who are popularly supposed to engage in
public displays of emotion, especially affection, or hysteria. And these
are thought of as insincere.
The fact that both syntactic reduplication and the absolute superla-
tive, so characteristic of Italian, embody an emotional component, is, I
think, another manifestation of the same cultural difference.
But while an uninhibited display of emotions paralleled by a rich
system of expressive derivation is as characteristic of, say, Russian or
Polish as it is of Italian (in fact, more so), devices such as syntactic
reduplication don't have any counterpart in Slavic languages - certainly
not on the same scale. Russian and Polish are at least as 'emotional' as
280 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

Italian; and when compared with English, they must be characterised as

favouring 'overstatement' rather than 'understatement' (at least in the
expression of opinions). Nonetheless, they don't have, or don't make
much use of, pragmatic devices such as syntactic reduplication.
As for the absolute superlative, Polish doesn't have it, whereas Rus-
sian does (see Mel'cuk, in press). This difference can be seen as related
to the fact that derivation of expressive diminutives goes much further in
Russian than it does in Polish (for example in Russian, but not in Polish,
diminutive suffixes can be added to relative adjectives and adverbs, ~uch
as pervyj 'first', pravyj 'right', or casto 'often'; the same holds for many
categories of nouns). Furthermore Russian, in contrast to Polish, has at
least some expressions analogous to reduplicated expressions in Italian,
such as cut' -cut' 'a bit' (lit. 'a bit a bit'), net-net 'rarely and unpredicta-
bly' (lit. 'no-no'), vot-vot 'is on the point of' (lit. 'there-there'). Genuine
syntactic reduplication is very rarely used in Russian, but it is not
impossible, as the following examples demonstrate:
No vy ne mozete ze menja seitat' za devocku, za malen' kuju-
malen' kuju devocku, posle moego pis' ma s takoju glupoju sutkoj!
(Dostoevskij 1976:167)
'But you can't consider me as a child, a little girl, after that
silly joke!' (Dostoevsky 1974:186)
fa dumala on takoj ueenyj, akademik, a on vdrug tak gorjaco-
gorjaco ... (Dostoevskij 1976: 178)
'I thought he was so learned, such a savant, and all of a sudden
he behaved so warmly ... ' (Dostoevsky 1974:198)
Ona vidimo cego-to stydilas' i, kak vsegda pri etom byvaet, by-
stro-bystro zagovorila sovsem 0 postoronnem. (Dostoevskij
1976:195)
'She was evidently ashamed of something, and, as people always
do in such cases, she began immediately talking of other things.'
(Dostoevsky 1974:217).
Can one identify any specifically Italian cultural features which might
explain the role of syntactic reduplication in Italian speech? Looking
for such features, we might recall the 'theatrical quality' of Italian
life (Barzini 1964:73), the "importance of spectacle", "the extraordinary
animation ... , the expressive faces, the revealing gesticulation", and "the
noise", which are "among everybody's first superficial impressions in
Italy, anywhere in Italy, in the north as well as in the south, in big cities
 Illocutionary grammar and cultural style 281

as well as in decrepit and miserable hamlets forgotten by history"

(Barzini 1964:66).
The point about 'noise' is perhaps particularly relevant in the present
context. Barzini writes:
The noise is usually deafening. People chat, whistle, swear, sing, curse,
cry, howl, weep, call to each other and shout, carrying on elaborate discus-
sions or delicate negotiations. Mothers murmur endearing baby words to
their little children and ask bystanders to be witnesses to their darlings'
charm and pigheadedness. Other mothers call their sons from top-storey
windows with voices carrying to the next province. Bells clang with deep
bronze notes from the top of the belfry above, drowning every other sound.
Somebody is always practising the cornet or the trombone. At times the
same popular song or famous operatic aria comes apparently from every-
where, from radios in every shop, from the open windows of apartments,
from under the tables in the cafe, from the pockets of clients, from the
abdomens of passing housewives. Vespas, cars, motorcycles, trucks go by
with roaring engines.
The air is in fact filled with so much noise that one must usually talk in
a very loud voice to be understood, thereby increasing the total uproar.
Lovers sometimes have to whisper 'I love you' to each other in the tones
of newsboys selling the afternoon papers. Italians on their death beds, in
rooms facing especially noisy squares or streets, are known to have re-
nounced leaving their last wishes and advice to weeping relatives, being
too weak to make themselves heard. It is, however, a gay and happy noise,
magnified by the stone walls, the absence of greenery, the narrowness of
the streets. It goes on from dawn to the small hours of the night, when the
last strollers stop under your bedroom window to debate a fine point of
politics or the personality of a common friend, both speaking at the same
time at the top of their voices. (Barzini 1964:59-60)
What applies to 'noise' applies also to facial expressions and to
gestures:
What makes all such scenes more intensely fascinating is perhaps the
transparency of Italian faces. Conversations can be followed at a distance
by merely watching the changing expressions of those taking part in them.
You can read joy, sorrow, hope, anger, relief, boredom, despair, love, and
disappointment as easily as large-printed words on a wall poster. ...
Then there are the gestures. Italian gestures are justly famous. Indeed
Italians use them more abundantly, efficiently, and imaginatively than
other people. They employ them to emphasise or clarify whatever is said,
to suggest words and meanings it is not prudent to express with words,
sometimes simply to convey a message at great distance, where the voice
could not carry. ...
282 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

A few gestures are as arbitrary and conventional as the deaf and dumb
alphabet or the sign language of American Indians. Most of them, how-
ever, are based on natural and instinctive movements, common to the
majority of men, certainly common to all Western men, elaborated,
intensified, stylised, sharpened, made into art. Like all great traditional
arts, this one too can generally be understood by the inexperienced at first
sight. (Barzini 1964:61-62)

It seems to me that this 'loudness', this animation, this display of

Italian life go a long way towards explaining the relevance of a
pragmatic device such as syntactic reduplication to Italian culture. Just
as Italian gestures, facial expressions, and vocal productions, can be
seen as 'exaggerated', hyperbolical, emphatic, and dramatic (as well
as emotional), so can Italian pragmatic devices. Sounds, gestures,
and facial expressions are 'overdone' - for purposes of self-expres-
sion, of theatrical display, and of dramatic effect. (It is also worth
recalling, in this connection, the pragmatic principle of 'interest',
posited by Leech 1983:146 in connection with overstatement.) Linguistic
devices such as the 'absolute superlative' and the syntactic reduplica-
tion can be seen as part and parcel of this characteristically Italian
cultural styIe.

8. Conclusion

It is not my present purpose to discuss in any detail the use of the

'absolute superlative', or any other illocutionary devices related to
syntactic reduplication. Rather, I want to reiterate the general point,
that illocutionary devices characteristic of a language are not mutually
independent, but tend to form networks of 'conspiracies' aimed at
common cultural targets.
At one time, scholars referred to such conspiracies using old-fash-
ioned labels such as Sprachgeist, the 'spirit of language' (see, for
example, Humboldt 1903; Vossler 1904, 1925; Spitzer 1928). When a
sociological and anthropological orientation replaced the earlier philo-
sophical and psychological bias, linguists started to talk about 'language
as a guide to social reality' (Sapir 1921; Whorf 1956) rather than about
'language as an expression of Volksgeist'. Later, the notion of 'cognitive
style' became an acceptable way of referring to more or less the same
 Conclusion 283

sorts of phenomena (see Hymes 1961). These days, the preferred con-
ceptual umbrella is that of 'cross-cultural pragmatics' (for example,
Pride 1985).
I am not suggesting that these changes in ways of speaking are purely
superficial, and that they don't reflect any deeper changes in concerns,
assumptions, and methodologies. I believe, however, that it is important
to see the present concerns in the area of what is now called cross-
cultural pragmatics in their proper historical perspective: to recognise the
continuity of the tradition, and to learn how to learn from past insights
as well as from past mistakes; and, above all, to sharpen our methodo-
logical tools so that 'cross-cultural pragmatics' will come to represent a
real rather than a purely nominal progress with respect to the writings
of our predecessors who concerned themselves with similar problems
a century or half a century ago.
It seems to me that real methodological progress can be achieved by
translating the problems of cross-cultural pragmatics into the language
of illocutionary semantics. What our predecessors lacked was, above all,
methodological rigor and conceptual discipline. They lacked a rigorous
analytical framework which would allow them to study both the similari-
ties and the differences between the languages compared (and, for that
matter, between related constructions within one language) with a clear
sense of purpose and with clear standards of precision.
Today, in a post-structuralist and post-Chomskyan era, it is widely
felt that new standards of explicitness and rigour (if not of formalisation)
are called for, in this area of linguistics as in others. But rather than try
to develop and to sharpen new methodological tools which would
allow them to meet the required standards, many linguists prefer to
abandon the vital questions concerning links between language and
culture altogether. Certainly, by avoiding such questions they avoid
many errors and blunders which one might commit when one ventures
into this 'unsafe' territory. But while preventing themselves from
committing many errors and blunders they are also preventing them-
selves from discussing worthwhile questions and perhaps reaching
worthwhile insights. They are, in other words, narrowing the horizons
of linguistics and making it less exciting and less relevant to vital
human concerns.
Certainly, any discussion of the relation between illocutionary
grammar and cultural style should be carried out in an extremely careful
and cautious way. I suggest that the use of a semantic metalanguage
suitable for a standardised description of 'pragmatic' and illocutionary
284 Italian reduplication: its meaning and its cultural significance

meanings can provide a partial answer to the question of how to

combine rigour with insight in this tantalising area.