‘Il Nuovo che avanza’ [The new that marches forth] of Berlusconi combined forces with a language that adopted metaphors of strength, reliance, power, and most significantly of victory (Semino and Masci 1996). McCarthy ( 2001: 165) notices
137
Football metaphors abounded in Berlusconi’s speeches, as he tried to represent politics in terms of a football match, naturally with his side winning[…] All his language was simple and direct, the opposite of the complicated Roman political rhetoric. He had learned a lot from Umberto Bossi, but avoided the latter’s vulgarity.
Berlusconi’s entrepreneurial background became his linguistic ally in creating his own party’s new language. ‘In order to choose the name and image of the new organization he employed all the considerable marketing, advertising and polling techniques of Finninvest’ (McCarthy 2001: 290). These corporate strategies involved teams of communication specialists. They sent a video cassette of symbolic importance with Berlusconi’s ‘presentation speech’ explaining to the nation the motives behind his decision to launch into politics (Ginsborg 2005). Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party has been defined as a machine (Mazzoleni 1995, 2004) or as a procedure to escape bankruptcy and prison (Ginsborg 2005; Traveglio 2008). The emphasis on planned functionality and operative nature applies to the language it uses, too.
The rhetorics of novelty and the communications strategy succeeded.
Berlusconi’s coalition ruled for 7 months in 1994 and managed to impose its populist views to a large portion of the Italian population. The initial vote of protest against the corruption of the politicians and politics of the first republic was also a vote in favour of a new language of politics. Underneath the rhetorics, however, lay a political ideology with a neo-liberal economic programme, and strong Thatcherist overtones: fewer taxes, greater choices for citizens, competition and efficiency in public life, residual welfare state. In Berlusconi’s party, traditional and stereotypical values were reasserted. Family was the pivotal force in Italian life, both in terms of entrepreneurship and personal solidarity. The figure of the lonely force of the leader who was the object of attack of the magistrates of Tangentopoli became another trope. Different interpretations of his success have been put forward, some betray the force of Berlusconi’s own rehetorics in influencing commentators. His appeal to many Italians was due to the fact that he was an extremely successful businessman, and what many people dreamt of for themselves. He was also the antithesis of the career politician in language and in deed.
138
Several detractors and political opponents emphasised between 1994 and 2001 the unsavoury nature of the conflict of interest of a powerful politician who is also a media tycoon. Equally, Berlusconi’s early career was firmly rooted in the corruption and clientelism of the first republic (Stille 2006; Travaglio 2008).
Nevertheless, the rhetoric of the new and the novelty of its communication strategies paid dividends in the 2001 political elections. Berlusconi had the resources of a media empire at his disposal and acted accordingly: 18million copies of an illustrated 127 page booklet on his life, Una storia Italiana (2001) were sent to Italian families (Ginsborg 2003). The campaign was fierce and for the first time the election had become the object of heated international debate. Inspite of the negative interventions from the foreign press, Berlusconi forged ahead with a landslide victory. The force of his language rested on simple concepts: ‘his major campaigning points, which took the form of a solemn promise to Italians signed on television, were repeated incessantly in simple language’ (Ginsborg 2003: 321).
Mazzoleni (1995, 2004) however argues that Berlusconi’s media empire is but a part of the puzzle in explaining Berlusconi’s win in the 2001 elections. This victory arrived in spite of an avid anti-Berlusconi campaign on the part of some of the foreign media, in particular The Economist, (4 May 2001), that famously entitled its cover story, ‘ Why Silvio Berlusconi is unfit to lead Italy’. The well-respected UK-based weekly magazine found several factors regarding Berlusconi’s affairs as cause for concern. At the time the journal was under the direction of Bill Emmott (1993-2006), who focused on Berlusconi’s juridical entanglements: ‘under investigation for money laundering, complicity to murder, connections with the Mafia, tax evasion and the bribing of politicians, judges, and the tax police’. Mazzoleni points out that among these impediments not one was regarding his monopoly of the Italian media. Mazzoleni suggests that it could not be on the list of The Economist’s reasons, because Berlusconi is legitimately in control of all his communications empire.
(ibid.). Mazzoleni already in 1995 argued that Berlusconi had not won because of his media, but could not win without it (2004: 258).
Berlusconi’s language, then, ‘gentese’ or ‘discourse of serenity’ (McCarthy 2001) is based on loose themes of ‘neo-liberalism’ and a strong allusive use of
139
rhetoric and colloquialism. Albertazzi (2009: 6) sums up Berlusconi’s rhetorical style thus
His language, a simple colloquial style of communication that relied heavily on slogans, jokes and commonsense statements, funny anecdotes about his family and a tendency for jovial self-aggrandizement – stood in sharp contrast to the dry political style that had characterised the political era of the DC and the PCI … cheerfully detached from the pessimistic gravitas and intellectualism of the left’
Mazzoleni concurs that ‘Ultimately, Berlusconi’s communication owes most of its aura to non-political ingredient’ (2004: 274). This of course depends on one’s definition of political discourse and of rhetorical style. Berlusconi’s rhetorical ‘style’, heavily depended on the use of metaphor, in particular emplying the semantic fields of religion, family, and sport. The use of metaphors in politics is not new as such. The novelty and distinctiveness are in the planned communications strategy that Berlusconi intended to employ.
Berlusconi’s plan, however, was not to use occasional references to the world of sport but to re-invent a language for political debates that would make sense to his audience and give the advantage of being a political leader with the best communication skills (Tosi 2001: 120)
Semino and Masci (1996) provide a qualitiative and quantative analysis of Berlusconi’s use of metaphor; drawing on Lakoff, Johnson and Turner’s cognitive approach (Johnson 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff and Turner 1989), the authors see metaphor as ‘a way to talk and think about abstract, complex or unfamiliar concepts such as love, death, language, and in this case, politics, in terms of concrete, familiar domains (such as journeys, containers or machines) thus bringing metaphor into the sphere of everyday life’ ( 1996: 244). The authors point out that increasing attention is placed on the use of metaphor in politics and the media. Berlusconi’s discourse exploits a set of rather conventional metaphors to achieve his ends. The most salient and influential of the three source domains is sport, or specifically football, starting with the party name, Forza Italia (this is a typical football chant, similar to ‘come on you reds’), Berlusconi’s decision to
140
‘scendere in campo’ [to enter the field] in explaining his debut into politics and his attempt to form a right-wing coalition with the Northern League in order to form
‘una squadra (vincente)’ [a winning team]. These are but a few samples from Berlusconi’s repertoire. What is significant is the fact that ‘The football metaphor has fundamentally sexist implications […] as ‘the prototypical football player is undoubtedly male […] the default sex of the candidate, not to mention the leader, is definitely male’ (251). The second repertoire chooses to characterise politics as war:
‘Italia ha bisogno di uomini che vengono dalla trincea della vita e di lavoro’ [Italy needs men that come from the trenches of life and of work] (253). The third broad category is that drawing on religion that portrays the unique features of the leader at once ‘The good Samaritan’ and the ‘annointed by God’. However, Berlusconi’s perspicacity in reading the mood of the masses was duly rewarded. He exploited the use of clear, concrete terms and metaphors and images to appeal to the Italian people who, in the space of 20 odd years had had to come to terms with learning a new language, their national language and leaving behind, to a great extent their regional dialects. In the next section the focus shifts to the other new element in political language; talking dirty.