The Myth of the Nation in Contemporary Italy

The article investigates how the Italian ex-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi produced a stereotypical view of Italy and the Italian national character to create shared background knowledge and construct his audience as ideological subjects. Although his political campaigning focused on radical innovation, his rhetorical strategies, both verbal and nonverbal, reinforced traditional values and the myth of the nation by turning it into common sense. These strategies were particularly noticeable in the speeches that he delivered in English to a lay audience, in which he frequently improvised and professional linguistic mediation was generally limited. The article presents the results of a pilot study that was conducted on two sample speeches that Renzi delivered in English at Georgetown University and Harvard. Based on the assumption that language expresses the system of values and beliefs of the speaker, the study applied Jeremy Munday’s model for evaluation in translation in order to foreground Renzi’s stance on the grounds of his discursive choices. Drawing upon Critical Discourse Analysis, Munday’s model was integrated with the analysis of implicit cognitive resources and culture-specific nonverbal language (hand gestures) in order to bring to the fore implied subtexts and, accordingly, the speaker’s axiological and ideological positioning. The article provides a brief overview of the relationship between discourse, power relations and identity, introduces the methodology adopted in research, provides an example of analysis and discusses the outcomes of research.