"Incrociare parole e maneggiare tarocchi": sul lessico di Luigi Pintor giornalista (1947-1965)

This lexical study upon Luigi Pintor, journalist of l’Unità and founder of Manifesto, proposes to trace the first few lines of research on the political language of the Sardinian Communist intellectual through lexical analysis of newspaper articles. The texts investigated, which form the documentary corpus (Appendix I), belong to the period 1947-'65 when Pintor used to work for the mainstream press of the PCI: the magazine Rinascita, the weekly Vie nuove, the newspaper l’Unità. The corpus originates from a careful research and review, which has led to the early years of Manifesto, and the Inventory of newspaper articles in Appendix II gives an account of its consistency. The linguistic research identifies, through the analysis of the keywords of Communist propaganda, in which historical-linguistic context pintorian journalistic writing developed, how it evolved within the communist ideology and political communist language, and, lastly, how effective it was and which historical and ideal value this writing showed and transmitted. The lexical catalogue, very wide, consists of more than 1500 words (see words index) and gives a rich picture of the vocabulary used with political purpose. First of all the research highlights the use of words, more or less frequent, which immediately identifies the text as 'political' as indicating the 'things' of policy (as regards application, institutions etc.) and words denoting the Communist ideology. To these ones we must add words belonging to the 'traditional' rhetorical system of the political language (religious and war terms) and, finally, the categories of words relating to the use of force, the antinomies new / old, clear / hidden, united / divided. Through the analysis of all occurrences, of the connotation of words and their political value, the study of words demonstrates how the relationship between identity and politics (Chapter I) and between politics and the exercise of power (Chapter II) are described and presented in the propagandist media, in order to lead to the understanding of the role of vocabulary in the interpretation and popularization of historical events, and to see how politics can truly be considered "uno strumento di una trasformazione dell’intero ordine sociale, e, ancora più profondamente, degli stessi rapporti tra le persone".