ABSTRACT
In 1965, Pasolini coined the term neo-italiano to refer to the emergence of a new national language, one that threatened to displace once and for all the regional dialects that had, throughout Italian history, defined the parameters of reality for “national subjects” who had remained essentially regional in their primary affiliations (Brunetta: ch. 27). At the time, few Italians were more aware than Pasolini of the ways in which language itself constructs subjectivity; and thus, we can easily argue that Pasolini’s neologism can be applied not only to the emergence of a new, hegemonic national language, but also to an essentially new subject – precisely, the “Italian” – constructed out of the rapid modernization of the nation brought about by the economic boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
