Acasă Articole RTR Esplorare l’oralità nella scrittura. Una sperimentazione metodologica sulle lettere di Santa Caterina...
Esplorare l’oralità nella scrittura. Una sperimentazione metodologica sulle lettere di Santa Caterina da Siena
Rezumat
Exploring Orality in Writing: A Methodological Study on the Letters of Saint Catherine of Siena
Abstract: A widely studied mystic, Saint Catherine of Siena also stands out as a significant figure in the linguistic history of Italian (see, for example, Catricalà, 1999). This article investigates the relationship between orality and written tradition in her letters composed through dictation. This relationship is complex due to Catherine’s ambivalent position, belonging to both the world of orality as a devout woman and the world of letters. Likely semi-educated (the discussion about her literacy is still inconclusive; see Noffke, 2012; Zancan, 1992; Murano, 2017), she was formed in an environment where written culture was also transmitted orally, placing her uniquely regarding diamesic variation. Her situation is further complicated by the influence of primary orality on medieval writings. To identify elements of orality and literacy in her political letters, linguistic analysis is applied to 14 formal and 14 informal letters. The research on spoken elements is based on three theoretical approaches. The first level examines morphosyntactic structures specific to spoken Italian, referencing previous diachronic studies (e.g., D’Achille, 1991). Due to inconsistencies with other research, results from this level are discarded, and reasons for this discrepancy are discussed. The second level addresses Ong’s “residues of primary orality” (Ong, 1982), features typical of oral language, such as paratactic structures, rhythm, aggregation of information, redundancy, and emphatic tone. The research finds sufficient evidence to support a strong connection with oral culture. This is complemented by Miriam Voghera’s concept of “vagueness” (Voghera, 2014). Ultimately, challenging the generativist and structuralist view that language is amodal, this research proposes a new approach to Catherine’s texts based on language multimodality.
Keywords: Diamesic variation, orality, writing, Saint Catherine of Siena, multimodality
Citation suggestion: Vargolomova, Diana. “Esplorare l’oralità nella scrittura. Una sperimentazione metodologica sulle lettere di Santa Caterina da Siena”. Transilvania, no. 8 (2025): 61-71.
https://doi.org/10.51391/trva.2025.8.06.
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