In ancient Italian (XII-XV), the address system provides a limited series of nominal allocutive forms and a bipartite pronominal system with tu ‘you.SG’ and Voi ‘you.PL’.

In the following centuries, the address system undergoes remarkable transformations: it significantly grows and is even theorized in Galatei ‘Courtesy-Books’, real grammars of polite interactions. The sixteenth century offers a real explosion of nominal allocutive forms of deference as Your Reverence, Your Mastery, Your Magnanimity. Your Lordship, however, remains the unmarked form for people of power and prestige. These phrases have abstract female names as head nouns and trigger agreement with the third person, whence the pronoun of reverence Ella / Lei derives. At the same time, in some Galatei the excessively ceremonious behaviors are linked to the Spanish culture.

Thereafter, the addition of ceremonious formulas and the Lei-forms are attributed to the Spanish influence. Therefore, the controversy over the use of Lei born in the fascist period, is not surprising. Fascism implements a policy that Raffaelli defines as dirigismo linguistico ‘linguistic dirigisme’ (1993, 2062) which tends to ban foreign terms (and dialects too) in favor of the purity of the Italian language. Since among the foreign items figured Lei, considered of Spanish origin, in 1938 the fascist hierarchies and Mussolini himself banned Lei, explicitly adopting the tu / Voi type.

This presentation will try to shed light on this moment of Italian linguistic history both using original materials (administrative papers, newspapers and schoolbooks) and metalinguistic papers which a few years later unmasked fake news. First, Boselli (1941), dealing with Lei, Voi, tu in a contrastive perspective between Italy, Spain and Latin America, entitled the first part of his study “Il «Lei» non è uno spagnolismo”. In a way, this fake news is of extraordinary timeliness.

References

• Boselli, Carlo (1941), “Del ‘lei’, del ‘voi’, del ‘tu’, in Italia, in Spagna e nell’America Latina”, in Istituto nazionale per le relazioni culturali con l’Estero, Italia e Spagna. Saggi sui rapporti storici, filosofici e artistici tra le due civiltà, Firenze, Le Monnier, 347-368.
• Cicognani, Bruno (1938), “Abolizione del ‘lei’”, Corriere della Sera, 15 gennaio 1938.
• Migliorini, Bruno (1957), “Primordi del ‘lei’”, in Bruno Migliorini, Saggi linguistici, Firenze: Le Monnier, 187-196.
• Raffaelli, Sergio (1993), “Un «lei» politico: cronaca del bando fascista (gennaio-aprile 1938)”, in Omaggio a Gianfranco Folena, III, Padova: Editoriale Programma, 2061-73.