Dublin Core
Title
The role of language in the process of social integration: from the ancient Cena Trimalchionis to the contemporary world.
Abstract
The Ancient World melting pot is not so different from the globalized contemporary society, in which various people and languages are constantly meeting each others. In particular, language still plays a leading part in the process of social redemption, integration and cultural identity formation. This fact provides us a prominent opportunity to compare these two backgrounds, noticing how the hic et nunc could help explaining the past, which, in turn, could improve our analysis of the present. The proposed contribution intends to apply some of the most known linguistic models on a Latin literary text, the famous Cena Trimalchionis in Petronius‘ Satyricon, in order to investigate its sociolinguistics implications. This system can frame a further understanding of the passage, which gives back the possibility to outline some evergreen rules about the relationship between the governing and the emerging class. As the Cena shows, freedmen, who accorded a high prestige to Latin, aimed to imitate it; yet, they were at the same time also bound to their mother tongue. Their linguistic choices reveal both their wishes and their limits. According to this view, a good use of language, with the consequent sense of being member of a group, granted – and still grants nowadays – a privilege path towards emancipation to foreigners and lower classes. This presentation aims to give some examples on the different levels of communication.
Keywords
Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed
PeerReviewed
Date
2011-05
Extent
117