The Italian Institute of Culture and the Department of Classics, Modern Languages and Linguistics of Concordia University, as part of the series of conferences entitled “Italian is a place where it rains within. Conversations on language and dialects“, are pleased to present a round table “Italian: views from other planets.” with the participation of Vera Gheno, Stefano Jossa and Fiorenzo Toso. Francesco D’Arelli, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute, and Dario Brancato, professor of Concordia University, present the topics of the round table and moderate the debate.
Tuesday, November 17th 2020, 2pm (Montréal), 8pm (Rome)
At the end of the series of conferences, Vera Gheno, Stefano Jossa and Fiorenzo Toso discuss the state of the Italian language, the daily contaminations and the survival and vitality of dialects and their cultural and literary traditions.
Vera Gheno, sociolinguist specializing in digital communication and translator from Hungarian, collaborated with the Accademia della Crusca for twenty years. She currently works with the Zanichelli publishing house. She teaches as a lecturer at the University of Florence and at LUMSA in Rome. Her first monograph is from 2016: Guida pratica all’italiano scritto (senza diventare grammarnazi); and in 2017 Social-linguistica. Italiano e italiani dei social network (both for Franco Cesati Editore). In 2018 she was co-author of Tienilo acceso. Posta, commenta, condividi senza spegnere il cervello (Longanesi). In 2019 he published: Potere alle parole. Perché usarle meglio (Einaudi), La tesi di laurea. Ricerca, scrittura e revisione per chiudere in bellezza (Zanichelli), Prima l’italiano. Come scrivere bene, parlare meglio e non fare brutte figure (Newton Compton). Femminili singolari. Il femminismo è nelle parole (EffeQu); and in April 2020 the ebook for Longanesi Parole contro la paura. Istantanee dall’isolamento. Since September 14th she leads, with Carlo Cianetti, the program Linguacce which airs on Radio1Rai, from Monday to Friday from 3:30pm to 4:00pm.
Stefano Jossa is Reader in Italian at Royal Holloway, University of London. He specialises in the Italian Renaissance and the Italian national identity expressed through literature. He is the author of L’Italia letteraria (Il Mulino, 2006), Ariosto (Il Mulino, 2009) and Un Paese senza Eroi: L’Italia da Jacopo Ortis a Montalbano (Laterza, 2013). He has also edited and co-authored the following books: with Claudia Boscolo, Scritture di resistenza. Sguardi politici dalla narrativa italiana contemporanea (Carocci, 2014); with Giuliana Pieri, Chivalry, Academy, and Cultural Dialogues: The Italian Contribution to European Modernity (Legenda, 2016); and, with Jane E. Everson e Andrew Hiscock, Ariosto, the Orlando Furioso and English Culture (Oxford, 2019). He held the De Sanctis Chair at the Polytechnic (ETH) of Zurich and was Visiting Professor at the University of Parma and Roma Tre. His most recent book is La più bella del mondo. Perché amare la lingua italiana (Einaudi, 2018).
Fiorenzo Toso lives between Liguria, where he resides, and Sardinia, where he is full professor of Linguistics at the University of Sassari. Dialectologist, he is a specialist in the Ligurian linguistic area, to which he has dedicated numerous studies, with particular reference to the linguistic contact between Genoese and other languages and to overseas varieties, to linguistic and literary history and to various themes relating to lexicon: among the others Il tabarchino. Strutture, evoluzione storica, aspetti sociolinguistici, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2004; Linguistica di aree laterali ed estreme. Contatto, interferenza, colonie linguistiche e «isole» culturali nel Mediterraneo occidentale, Recco, Le Mani, 2008; Linguistica di aree laterali ed estreme. Contatto, interferenza, colonie linguistiche e «isole» culturali nel Mediterraneo occidentale, Recco, Le Mani, 2009. In the Genoese language he is the author of two volumes of poetry, fiction and translations into and from Italian, Spanish, French and other languages. He also deals with linguistic minorities in Italy and Europe, with reference to sociolinguistic and glottopolitical aspects and literary traditions (Le minoranze linguistiche in Italia, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2008), Italian etymology and metalanguage of linguistics. Free lecturer of Italian Philology, collaborator among other things of the Lessico Etimologico Italiano founded by M. Pfister and of the Atlante Linguistico del Mediterraneo and of the Enciclopedia dell’italiano directed by R. Simone (2010), he directs the project of the Dizionario Etimologico Storico Genovese e Ligure.
Dario Brancato is Associate Professor of Italian Literature at Concordia University, Montreal. He is an expert of literature and culture in Renaissance Florence, the reception of the Classical tradition (Boethius and Aristotle in particular) in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and Italian linguistics and dialectology. He has published many articles and one monograph (Il Boezio di Benedetto Varchi. Edizione critica del volgarizzamento della Consolatio Philosophiae (1551), Olschki, 2018), and collaborates with several research centres in Europe and North America. In 2014-2015, he was a recipient of a fellowship at Villa I Tatti in Florence (Harvard University).