Italiani brava gente. Un modo di dire legato al colonialismo italiano?

Abstract

The article presents the initial results of research using statistical analysis to demonstrate the emergence of a new meaning of the idiomatic expression italiani brava gente linked to the history of the Italian colonialism. The idiomatic expression, who comes from the title of a 1964 by director De Santis (Italiani, brava gente), revives the myth of Italians who, unlike their Germans allies in the Second World War, stood out for their sense of good-naturedness and humanity, their inability to carry out atrocities in war, and their lack of racism and xenophobia. Starting from 2005, with the publication of a book by the historian Angelo Del Boca (Italiani, brava gente?), the idiomatic expression has definitively acquired a new meaning that links it in a critical sense to the history of Italian colonialism. To demonstrate the emergence of this new meaning, a collection of 292 articles from the historical archive of the newspaper «la Repubblica» where the idiomatic expression appears was analysed. The collection was divided into two sections: in the first, articles published from 1984 to 2005; in the second, articles produced from 2005 (after the edition of Del Boca’s book) to 31 October 2023. The results highlight that in the second group, there is a greater number of articles in which the idiomatic expression with the new meaning is used, and there is a greater frequency of words with lexical bases linked to the semantic field of Italian colonialism. This is preliminary research wich, despite already having a statistical value, will later be expanded with the consideration of other material, linked as well to the publishing sector.