Unification and the questione della lingua

Before the political unification of Italy, Italian was a language used, outside Tuscany and Rome, only by the literate few. Even by these, it was reserved chiefly for writing: in everyday conversation, the great majority of Italians either had to or chose to use one of the dialects of Italy or, in certain areas, a minority language such as French. By the end of the twentieth century, well over 90 per cent of Italians could speak the national language, but most still chose to use dialect or a minority language as well. The process of the diffusion of Italian against a background of continuing linguistic diversity has been a long and difficult one, and it has led to discussions on important cultural and social issues, such as whether the national language should be allowed to develop naturally or should be based on a particular model; how conservative and selective, or tolerant of innovation and variety, it should be; how it was to be disseminated and taught; and, on the other hand, what status should be accorded to languages other than the standard.

In some respects, these discussions have continued the questione della lingua which first came to a head in the sixteenth century. In that period a consensus was reached that the literary language of the Italian states should be based on the Tuscan used in the fourteenth century by the indisputably most elegant writers, Petrarch and Boccaccio. This solution was apparently backward-looking, but it proved the most viable and attractive, given the political fragmentation and vulnerability of Italy and the waning cultural prestige of contemporary Tuscany.