"Colorito locale” e coscienza metalinguistica nei gialli di Santo Piazzese e di Domenico Seminerio
“Colourful Local Language” and Metalinguistic Consciousness in the Crime Novels of Santo Piazzese and Domenico Seminerio

Summary/Abstract: Amongst the possible linguistic-stylistic polarities for Italian narrators (monolinguism/standardised language and multilingualism/regionalised Italian), which are clearly outlined by De Roberto in his well-known "Preface" to "Documenti umani", Santo Piazzese and Domenico Seminerio move with care and remarkable metalinguistic consciousness, drawing on Sciascia in different ways. Their different writing practices, far removed from Camilleri’s linguisticstylistic choices, seem oriented towards what Testa (1997) called a “simple style” with a focus on “local colour” that is part of Piazzese’s refined rhetorical and investigative play and, in the case of Seminerio, is functional to the expressive rendering of the interlacing of History, magic, and mystery. In both cases, it is thanks to this specific attention to linguistic facts that the defining principles of detective stories are renewed. The aim of this article is to systematically trace the two different ways of stylistically rendering the sociolinguistic reality narrated by Piazzese and Seminerio, with the first oriented towards the cautious mimesis of regional dialogue, the second, towards the diegetic pole of reproducing indirect and traditional narrative modes.

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