Spoken in the nineteenth century by the posteggiatori, the wandering minstrels of Naples, parlèsia is a jargon. It shares its syntax and its phonology with the Neapolitan dialect and is characterized by a special lexicon of about 200 words, referring above all to money, women, and music. Parlèsia has been a secret code until the 1950s when Neapolitan pop artists used expressions of the jargon in their music. The results of a sociolinguistic investigation conducted among 150 musicians in Naples demonstrate that parlèsia is still being understood and spoken although today it seems more like a form of youth slang than a code of a marginalised group of speakers.

La parlèsia: un’indagine sociolinguistica sul gergo dei musicisti napoletani

Maffia, Marta
;
2017-01-01

Abstract

Spoken in the nineteenth century by the posteggiatori, the wandering minstrels of Naples, parlèsia is a jargon. It shares its syntax and its phonology with the Neapolitan dialect and is characterized by a special lexicon of about 200 words, referring above all to money, women, and music. Parlèsia has been a secret code until the 1950s when Neapolitan pop artists used expressions of the jargon in their music. The results of a sociolinguistic investigation conducted among 150 musicians in Naples demonstrate that parlèsia is still being understood and spoken although today it seems more like a form of youth slang than a code of a marginalised group of speakers.
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
2017_Maffia-Malcangi_ATeM.pdf

accesso aperto

Descrizione: Articolo completo
Tipologia: Documento in Post-print
Licenza: Creative commons
Dimensione 435.82 kB
Formato Adobe PDF
435.82 kB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11574/192507
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
social impact