Accumulation of words: lists in the Italian public discourse

Abstract

In written and spoken language, lists are flexible instruments that take on different functions, such as grouping elements in a stable set or suggesting others to come. Umberto Eco perceives lists as a semiotic modality of vertigo-like accumulation, which offers a way to speak of something whose boundaries one does not know and to place a limit upon the entropy of the mass of things (Belknap 2004; Eco 2009). In public discourse, lists are a helpful device to express opinions and slogans in a constrained space (for example, on Twitter) through a cohesive and coherent collection of elements placed on the same level around a semantic area that the recipients must interpret. This article examines how verbal lists exploit two basic textual strategies in Italian public discourse. The first strategy consists of a collection with precise extensional boundaries and no alternative items. The second is an assortment of items that allude to a set of possibilities with nuanced extensional boundaries. Through these two strategies, the recipient can create two textual semiotic modalities due to the inference procedures: lists with a closed textual modality, closed fabula, and lists with an open textual modality, open fabula (Eco 1979a).