L’appaesamento in linguistica

It is proposed to apply the concept of "appaesamento", developed by Ernesto de Martino in the anthropological field, to linguistics. Through the process of appaesamento the world is made domestic, familiar, obvious, and therefore usable in a non-problematic manner. Unawareness of the obvious is a cultural mechanism that simulates the instinct, the automatic memory of the species. In this way a cultural act becomes "natural", and is acted out as a biological structure, with a dormant consciousness. The mechanism of linguistic appaesamento consists of linguistically appropriating a new concept through the application of an old name, so the unknown is transferred to the known, and is placed in the sphere of concepts relating to home, family, the obvious - which results in it being progressively expanded. By means of language, the expression of thought is 'appaesata' (assimilated), and the unknown becomes known. Every new message can be expressed linguistically only within the horizon of language, where it is already virtually given all the expressive possibilities. If language develops through appaesamento, then linguistic arbitrariness does not exist: language is not arbitrary, rather it becomes arbitrary. In everyday use language loses its motivation, transparency, and becomes necessarily arbitrary, opaque, obvious; because to be usable in an automatic and unreflecting way it should not be problematic: it should show up as already made and ready for use.