This article aspires to open a new prospective of study on the figure of the schoolmistress in the first half of the Italian twentieth century. The essay focuses on three lesser-known narrative works (two by women writers), with a look at two movies of the 1940s and 1950s. The study offers a thematic analysis on the character of the schoolmistress, who is not always adequately recognized and analysed. In the first part, a group of three short stories is analysed: Maria Messina’s L’ora che passa (1911) revolves around an emptied and disillusioned teacher, Rosalia, who has not found the means to emancipate herself in her profession; Ada Negri’s Anima bianca (1917) instead presents a teacher, Rosanna, fully realized in her role to the point of letting herself die when an event undermines her ability to teach; finally, Federigo Tozzi’s Un’osteria (1920) opens a contemporary debate on the suffering of those teachers, like Assunta, forced to work far from home. In the second part of the essay the discussion shifts to cinema: Vittorio De Sica’s Maddalena... zero in condotta (1940) is the parable of the teacher Elisa Malgari, who has to learn the most important lesson: letting herself be loved by a man. Finally, Alberto Lattuada’s Scuola elementare (1954) opens a glimpse into the crisis of the substitute teacher Laura Bramati in search of her true professional identity.

In the early twentieth century, Gabriele D’Annunzio successfully proposed tramezzino instead of the English sandwich. Equally successful are some proposals formulated by Bruno Migliorini in the 1930s: autista and regista for the French chauffeur and régisseur. However, the original coinages of Arrigo Castellani in 1987 fail to take root: fubbia for smog, guardabimbi for babysitter, intredima for weekend, velopattino for windsurf, and vendistica for marketing. At the beginning of the 2000s, the volume by Giovanardi, Gualdo, and Coco Italian – English 1-1 reopened the debate among scholars. In 2015 the petition “Dillo in italiano”, launched by Annamaria Testa, achieved enormous success and demonstrated the intolerance of a large part of public opinion towards the massive influx of anglicisms. Following the petition, the Accademia della Crusca established the Incipit Group, a group of experts responsible for monitoring the entry of new anglicisms and suggesting possible Italian alternatives. In 2017, the Nuovo Devoto-Oli dictionary included in its lemmary the section Per dirlo in italiano, containing over 200 cards, that trace a brief history of as many English words or phrases that have penetrated Italian, explaining their meaning and context of use and suggesting a possible Italian equivalent. Il Nuovo Devoto-Oli broadly welcomes the most common anglicisms, helping those who do not know their precise meaning; but at the same time it has no reluctance to propose an Italian alternative, in the profound belief that such an approach is helpful to the reader and makes a positive contribution to the Italian language itself.

L'articolo presenta l'evoluzione dell'uso di due parole nei dibattiti parlamentari, immigrato ed extracomunitario, usate frequentemente in lingua italiana in riferimento a uno straniero che entra nel Paese con l'obiettivo di rimanervi. Il corpus è costituito dai testi trascritti dei dibattiti parlamentari relativi a otto leggi sull'immigrazione tra il 1986 e il 2019, analizzati con metodi sia quantitativi che qualitativi. Vengono prese in considerazione le collocazioni e le co-occorrenze con verbi e aggettivi, così come il linguaggio figurativo.

La letteratura migrante è un potente mezzo di espressione che offre una grande varietà di interpretazioni e una grande fonte di ispirazione per gli studiosi per indagare i diversi aspetti della vita e quelli della società. Trovandosi nel mezzo, gli autori migranti hanno l'opportunità di vivere (in) due o più lingue e culture unendole, cambiandole e plasmandole. È proprio qui che avviene il contatto linguistico e dove si svolgono diverse strategie che diventano una parte interessante di una ricerca linguistica e letteraria. Questo articolo indaga il contatto tra la lingua albanese e quella italiana attraverso l'analisi di alcune opere di Ornela Vorpsi, Artur Spanjolli, Ron Kubati e Anilda Ibrahimi. Considerando il fatto che questi autori hanno deciso di utilizzare l'italiano come lingua di espressione, questa indagine offre alcune considerazioni su cosa questo significhi per loro e sull'impatto su entrambe le lingue. Considerando il fatto che questi scrittori trasferiscono nei loro testi non solo aspetti importanti della cultura ma anche alcune caratteristiche della lingua albanese, è interessante vedere il modo in cui avviene il transfert e cosa succede al testo quando due lingue diverse e distanti come albanese e italiano si incontrano.

In my essay, I examine Mario Monicelli’s La Grande Guerra, in order to verify if its comic and anti-heroic perspective really leads to a new concept of WWI. I first retrace the director’s previous filmography, where the characters, genres and patterns which will recur in La Grande Guerra originally take shape. I then reconstruct the movie’s genesis, focusing on the sources the screenwriters refer to: not only WWI movies and memories, such as Kubrick’s Paths of Glory and Lussu’s Un anno sull’Altipiano, but also, quite unexpectedly, La vita militare by De Amicis.
 On this basis, I analyse the representation of the war, in its figurative and narrative elements. In many senses, it’s a war seen from the ground, and indeed the scenography and script take inspiration from the soldiers’ pictures of the front and their military songs. In this realistic context, Monicelli develops the plot of two cowardly privates, from a poor, undisciplined background, who ultimately identify with their nation enough to sacrifice themselves for their compatriots.
 The purpose of highlighting the unacknowledged war contribution of the mass, however, is somehow contradicted by the army’s image. The comic and anti-heroic aspects, indeed, concern only the low-ranked soldiers, while the Command is represented in a sentimental way. In this respect, Monicelli confirms a rhetoric coming from De Amicis, and later inherited by Fascism: the army as an image of a model society, where North and South, rich and poor, educated and illiterate unite, and where everyone deserves his hierarchical rank.

The term accabadora refers to a woman entrusted with the task of facilitating the passing of the dying people. She killed for pity, called by the families of the patients to relieve their sufferings on their own deathbed. Basically, she practiced a sort of ante litteram euthanasia. But that carried out by the woman was also a necessary action for the survival of relatives who, most of the time, did not have the necessary resources to alleviate the sufferings of the kinsmen. Furthermore, in small towns, the doctor was often several days away on horseback. While the accabadora took life away, on the other hand, she gave it back, helping the women of her community to give birth. Everyone in the village knew the activity of these women but all of them were silent. They were convinced that the work of the accabadora was a meritorious work because it took the burden of putting an end to the sufferings of the patient. They implicitly recognized in it a social utility. After outlining the figure of 'sa fèmmina practica', this report analyses some works by Sardinian authors who are interested in it. Above all, we will mention the novel by Michela Murgia, Accabadora (Campiello prize 2010); the film by Enrico Pau, L'accabadora; the novels L’ultima agabbadòra by Sebastiano Depperu and L'agabbadora. La morte invocata by Giovanni Murineddu; the short film Deu ci sia by Gianluca Tarditi, winner of the 2011 Golden Globe at 48th New York Film Festival; Ho visto agire s’accabadora by Dolores Turchi; Eutanasia ante litteram in Sardegna. Sa femmina accabadora by Alessandro Bucarelli and Carlo Lubrano and S’accabadora e la sacralità del femminino of Maria Antonella Arras.