Le parole della violenza. Recrudescenze mediterranee di patriarcalismo e sessismo

This chapter aims to describe the ways and ploys employed by words (in the various public and private contexts in which they define relations) to communicate an effect of symbolic violence that aims to classify genders playing out their respective identities. To this end the author refers to the “euphemized discourse” (Bourdieu 1993) and the concept of “agency” (Duranti 2007) to describe the process of naturalization of discursive practices geared towards affirming the androcentric system of the word; against this background there is the legacy of a Mediterranean culture that is still patriarchal and sexist, examined through discourse analysis of several tales by Camilleri and the individuation of certain “gender-oriented” dialectal lexemes. This cultures, still today, opposes both the “westernization of critical thinking” and life.