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Language Change in the 20th Century: Exploring micro-diachronic evolutions in Romance languages
Edited by Salvador Pons Bordería and Shima Salameh Jiménez
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 340] 2024
► pp. 95–119

Chapter 3
Cultural products, passing fashions, and linguistic changes

A view from the Italian pragmatic marker ma vieni

| University of Genova
| University of Bergamo
This study explores the emergence and conventionalization of the Italian pragmatic marker ma vieni ‘hooray’ (lit. ‘but come’) in the short micro-diachrony of the past thirty years, considering both extra-linguistic and systemic factors. We show that a number of audio-visual media helped trigger the emergence of this marker, which first conventionalized as a sort of catchphrase for young people in the 1990s, and also helped constrain its social embedding. Through an analysis of audio-visual media and data collected using a socio-pragmatic questionnaire, we investigate the spread of ma vieni in its development up to recent years. The chapter thus offers a detailed micro-analysis of a recent pragmatic innovation, drawing considerably on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings provided by the analytical construct of apparent time as used in sociolinguistic research to study language change in progress; it also explores the impact of linguistic modes and cultural tendencies on language, by investigating the intriguing intersection between entertainment products, passing fashions, and linguistic changes.
Keywords: pragmatic marker, audio-visual media, apparent time, socio-pragmatics, Italian
Article outline
  • 1.Object of investigation
  • 2.Ma vieni: A pragmatic construction
  • 3.Theoretical remarks: Exploring pragmatic change in the micro-diachrony of Italian
    • 3.1The register of sportscast and audio-visual mass media
    • 3.2The restandardization of 20th-century Italian
  • 4.Micro-diachronic data analysis: Evidence from media recordings
  • 5.Questionnaire results: The pragmaticalization of ma vieni from an apparent time perspective
  • 6.Recent developments of ma vieni: Pragmatic bleaching and social de-marking
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.340.03fed
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