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Between the Universal and the Local: Political Linguistics and Social Anthropology from Giambattista Vico to Luigi Serio
This paper deals with the conceptual interplay of universal and local in the political linguistics of several prominent eighteenth century Neapolitan thinkers: Giambattista Vico, Antonio Genovesi, Ferdinando Galiani, and Luigi Serio. Following the general lines of the early modern debates around the socio-political role of modern languages among the Settecento Neapolitan intellectuals, we examine a shift from a purely linguistic perspective focused on the stylistic and rhetorical parameters of communication to a protosociological one. The focus on the pre-reflective dimension and anthropological features of the “lower classes”, on the peculiarities of their “taken-for-granted” (common sense), on the specificity of their view of history makes it possible to problematize the identity and unity of the Neapolitan “nation” vis-à-vis its inner social heterogeneity.