Debunking Italian Identity Misconceptions in English Media

My study critically examines the role of (multimodal) texts in building an Italian identity and an individual or collective image of being Italian abroad (i.e. what is considered to be peculiarly Italian or proper to Italians in language, character, customs, culture, civilization). A range of semantic, syntactic, discursive, and visual devices utilized to depict Italy is considered as the possible unifying referent of diverse physical and anthropic environments and as a metonymic embodiment of various social and lingua-cultural paradigm shifts. More specifically, by drawing mainly on a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, my analysis intends to highlight recurrent and uncomplimentary (mis)representations of Italian identity as conveyed through the medium of communication in English mainly via advertising, films, myths and festivals, websites, culture-bound terms, food, and so on. My aims to both unveil many nation-based pattern of stereotyping where Italians are still often ‘narrated’ through anachronistic behavioural models (such as the pasta-eating Italian peasant with an ethnocentric sense of family, a fixation on food, theatricality of gestures, and, as recent surveys still confirm, having mob ties) and to demonstrate how an otherwise rich and multifaceted cultural heritage can be turned into trite stereotypes and sub-cultural norms.