Bullettin n. 1/2011
June 2011
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Avanza Martina
    Polémiques toponymiques. La Ligue du Nord et l’usage politique du dialecte
    in Cultures & Conflits , n. 79-80, automne-hiver ,  2010 ,  123-138
    The Northern League, a political party that claims since 1995 the recognition of northern Italy (renamed Padania) as a specific cultural group who earned political rights, emphasizes the northern dialects, considered as real languages that the Italian state deliberately destroyed to impose Italian as national language. Being nowadays the only party that defends dialects, the Northern League gained the monopoly of this issue. Then, every public use of dialect is, in northern Italy, automatically associated to the League, a rightwing xenophobic party. That is why dialect became today the sign of an anti-Italian feeling or, worst, of a xenophobic attitude. This rightist politicization of dialects will be illustrated through the case of the bilingual (Italian/dialect) signposts and the controversy they rose among the population: a large number of League’s mayors changed the signposts of the towns they rule, in order to add the dialectal name of the town to the Italian one (Bergamo became Berghem), but this linguistic and toponymy policy was often perceived by the citizens who are not league’s voters like a forced padanization of the territory.
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