Egemonia e linguistica nella ricerca internazionale

The paper reviews recent language-oriented scholarship on Gramsci, mostly publications in English or Italian which have appeared since 2007. It considers three main areas: 1) the sociology and politics of language, especially the use of the notion of hegemony in debates about English as a global language; 2) the role of Gramsci’s linguistic interests in shaping his intellectual biography, from his university years to his encounter with Soviet Russia’s cultural and political life in the early 1920s; and, finally, 3) Gramsci’s own use of the Italian language in his writings. With regard to the second area of study, new evidence is presented of Gramsci’s interest in proletarian culture and of his contacts with the Proletkult movement. By surveying a wide range of different topics (including Esperanto and language planning), the paper aims to identify the shortcomings of the existing scholarship, and to define certain gaps in our knowledge of Gramsci’s life and work as questions for future research.