Ilaria Parini

Italian American Gangsterspeak: Linguistic Characterization of Italian American Mobsters in Hollywood Cinema and in Italian Dubbing Ilaria Parini

This book analyzes the language variety spoken by Italian American gangsters in five American drama films released in the 1990s, as well as the strategies used during the process of dubbing into Italian. Several studies have focused on the representation of Italian American gangsters in Hollywood films. However, most of the scholars who have worked on this topic have approached it from a film or a cultural studies perspective, whereas the characters' linguistic characterization has never been exhaustively investigated. Indeed, the identity of Italian American gangsters in American movies is always clearly identifiable thanks to a series of visual and narrative elements. However, it is a fact that language plays an extremely important role in the construction of their stereotyped identity. Interestingly, Italian dubbing seems to have established a set of consolidated strategies aiming at transposing the connotations conveyed by the original language. The analysis highlights the importance of language in the process of characterization and should be of special interest to whoever is interested in the study of the use of language in films as a tool for identity representation.