by Massimo Arcangeli *
On 4 February, at the request of my friend Angelo d’Orsi, I launched a petition against the schwa, signed at the moment by almost 22,000 signatories, signed by about thirty intellectuals, including linguists and writers, historians and philosophers, artists and writers (from Massimo Cacciari to Alessandro Barbero, from Edith Bruck to Ascanio Celestini, from Cristina Comencini to Barbara De Rossi, from Luca Serianni to Francesco Sabatini, from Gian Luigi Beccaria to Claudio Marazzini).
Here are the ten reasons why I consider it unacceptable to insert the schwa, in its role as a neutral vowel bearer of “inclusiveness”, in current Italian.
1. Serious danger of an “officialization”. The schwa, simple (ǝ) and “long” (з), was accepted in six minutes drawn up by the Commission for National Scientific Qualification for the functions of university professor of first and second band of the competition sector 13 / B3 – Business Organization. Both signs also appear in collegial judgments on candidates, and in those formulated individually by the President, the Secretary and a third member of the five commissioners (here, however, in a single case, with reference to only one candidate: “Associate Professor” ). Importing schwa into “coded” text – a book, document or newspaper article – is a linguistic aberration.
2. Impetus to generalization (free). In the six minutes, the five Commissioners used the schwas indiscriminately, in reference to themselves and to the candidates examined, as if they were all bearers of non-binary identities.
3. The destructuring nature of innovation. The schwa is not a simple neologism. It is a foreign body that irreparably violates the orthographic and phono-morphological rules of our language, and placing it in a document produced by a central administration of the public state is a precedent of unprecedented severity. Authorizes anyone, from now on, to draw up a public deed in emoji or thirteenth-century vernacular, or perhaps to disseminate it with ke, xké O qlc1 (instead of that, Why e someone).
4. Regulatory disorientation. The “experimenters” of schwa, aware of the impossibility of spreading it in a text in a uniform and systematic way, preach “elastic” grammatical rules. In the transcript of an interview with Corriere della Sera (November 14, 2021) American eco-philosopher Timothy Morton has claimed, out of respect for his identity non-binarythe right gender brand, and the interviewer so reported it in the text as philosopher*. Any name – in Italian – however carries with it the necessary grammatical agreements (between articles, articulated prepositions, pronouns, adjectives and past participles), and could, at the very least, come up with a premise to the interview of this destabilizing invoice: Lb philosopherb not binaryb americanb Timothy Morton was statb adamant, he wanted us to turn tobi how we are doing.
5. Illegitimate claim of a minority. It is one thing to ask our interlocutor to meet us in some way, with the most suitable and respectful forms and words possible, if we have found ourselves carrying an uncertain or fluctuating identity, another thing is to pretend to put our hand to the rules linguistics of an entire national community because they are subject to the will of a few.
6. Extension to spoken Italian. Transferring the schwa to speech, given the limitation placed on its use (the final position), would transform the entire peninsula into a middle ground between Abruzzo, Lazio south of Rome and the Calabrian area of Cosenza. . It would be the revenge of southern and middle Italy against the Tuscan-Florentine regulatory model. Maybe a nice idea, but peregrine and farcical.
7. Cancellation of women. If the unanimous will of the members of the University Commission was to give citizenship, in their minutes, also to the female gender, avoiding the over-extended masculine, it would have been enough to refer to the candidates and at candidateai authors and at authorsand so on, or you could talk about people and close it there. Inclusive plurals such as Authorə O co-authorrather than really opposing the men authors e coauthoredthey actually send the women to the attic authors e coautrici.
8. Aggravation of neuroathic disorders. On May 4, 2021, the French Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, sent a circular to the central administrative directors, education supervisors and ministerial staff to prohibit some inclusive forms guilty, especially to the detriment of dyslexic students, of complicating reading and learning the national language.
9. Damage to the public duties of linguistic transparency. In 2017, another French circular (22 November), issued by Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, invited the members of the government to renounce theinclusive writingin official documents intended for the public, so as not to jeopardize their intelligibility and clarity.
10. Increase in the disorder produced by the uncontrolled multiplication of gender brands. The proliferation of ambiguous, ageneral or antigeneral thoughts is now uncontrolled: Car* collega, Dear colleague, Car@ collega, Dear colleague, Dear colleague, Carx colleague, Dear colleague, Dear · a colleague, Car’ collega, etc. In the plural? Car* collegh*, Carb collegeb, Cary colleghy, Dear colleagues, Collective caries, Charz conn, etc. There is also I love everything. Are we all Sardinians, Friulians, descendants of Compass Turiddu?
* linguist and writer, Full Professor of Italian Linguistics, University of Cagliari