Italy and the USA: Cultural Change through Language and Narrative ed. by Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci, and Matthew Reza

Abstract

Reviewed by: Italy and the USA: Cultural Change through Language and Narrative ed. by Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci, and Matthew Reza Anna Chichi Italy and the USA: Cultural Change through Language and Narrative. Ed. by Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci, and Matthew Reza. (Italian Perspectives, 44) Cambridge: Legenda. 2019. xiii+267 pp. £75. ISBN 9781-781888-75-9. It would be difficult to deny that US economic supremacy over the last century has allowed its culture to exert significant influence over the world, to the point that the term 'Americanization' has become part of international nomenclature. In Italy and the USA, Bonsaver, Carlucci, and Reza examine the question of cultural influence, narrowing their focus on the relationship between the US and Italian culture. Through a series of fifteen essays, this study maps the process of cultural change experienced by these two countries in their interactions over the years and unfolds the impact that cultural contact and human mobility have had on the way the Italian and American communities shaped themselves. In the Introduction, we learn that the contributors were 'free to choose the parameters of their special study' (p. 1). The result is a miscellanea of different [End Page 303] disciplines and objects of study. Fortunately, the cross-disciplinary and transnational nature of the collective work does not bring fragmentation. Instead, the study brilliantly avoids this seemingly inevitable risk in a twofold way. First, the historical and diachronic organization of the essays creates a linear discourse providing a clear picture of the process of cultural contact. Secondly, the heterogeneous nature of the work is counterbalanced by the unifying discipline of linguistics. Despite their diversity in disciplines and approaches, the essays collected address the same questions: how can the myriad forms of storytelling build a community? How do languages and forms of communication change in this process? Does cultural contact affect historical change? How? The term 'process' is key. As stated above, the book's object is the study of cultural change and of community transformation. For this reason, the decision to widen the span of the period covered from the last years of the nineteenth century to the first two decades of the twenty-first is crucial. Suppose for a moment that one sets out to investigate the changing process of a community through the use or even misuse of language. In that case, the period considered should be long enough—as it is in this case—to study 'the gradual transformation of the Italian language as a whole, but also specific enough to assess the impact of contacts with English' (p. 5). When taken as a whole, the large spectrum of case studies employed as well as the decision to focus on less institutionalized areas of study, such as the car industry, make the book's overall argument compelling. At the same time, since the study deals with the role of language and narrative, more than one essay should have been dedicated to the impact of American music on Italian songwriters over generations, both linguistically and politically. Of course, a collection of contributions will almost always be unbalanced or, in a sense, incomplete, because it brings together multiple different opinions and intellectual concerns. Unfortunately, in this case it means that the dialogue between literature and film was expanded while music was left behind. Even so, this study manages to include a very holistic assessment of cultural change, even going beyond the disciplinary points of reference of language and narrative to the larger fields of politics and economics. Although it is no longer in the same dominant position it once was, the influence of US culture on the European continent is far from over. This is particularly true in the Italian-US case. All things considered, however, this study is not US-centric. Moving beyond the normal narrative of US cultural hegemony, its primary goal is to cast light on the reciprocal influence and channels of contact between the two countries, showing Italian culture to be a significant player in shaping the US community. It is this last aspect that makes this volume an original and thoughtful look at the 'Americanization' phenomenon. [End Page 304...