The Instatement of the Vernacular as Language of Culture A New Aristotelian Paradigm in Sixteenth-Century Italy

The purpose of this study is to look at the instatement of the vernacular as a "language of culture" from a strictly philosophical standpoint, that is to examine the various philosophical approaches that might have affected the genesis of certain linguistic theories and determined the adoption of specific features of a given language. It focuses on the Aristotelian traces in Sperone Speroni, Alessandro Piccolomini, Giovan Battista Gelli and Benedetto Varchi, in order to explain why most theorists of the vernacular language who contributed to the establishment of vernacular as a language of culture appear to criticize Bembo's theoretical model, whether directly or indirectly, even when there was compliance on a practical level.