Free, repressed, infantile, present even in the senile phase, sexuality involves from a linguistic point of view an increasingly urgent and in-depth reflection, considering how many implications and how many misunderstandings it determines in social relationships. The seventh edition of the Treccani Festival of the Italian language leparolevalgono is dedicated to this word, a project created by Treccani Cultura – with the patronage of Rai for ESG Sustainability and the Media partnership of Rai Cultura and Rai Radio3 – to present the most relevant themes of Treccani’s constant research on the Italian language, paying particular attention to the value of words as a means of expression and reasoning, of sharing and respectful comparison between different positions.
From 3 to 5 May the Festival will start from Lecce with three days of dialogues, meetings, workshops and shows. Among the guests were the theologians Marinella Perroni and Shahrzad Houshmand, the author and host of the Radio3 Scienza programs Marco Motta, the psychologist Alice Mado Proverbio, the art historian Lorenzo Madaro, the literary critic Marco Antonio Bazzocchi, the philosopher Elettra Stimilli, the psychoanalyst and philosopher Sergio Benvenuto, the doctor and psychotherapist Alberto Pellai, the educational psychologist Barbara Tamborini, the linguists Marcello Aprile, Benedetta Baldi, Maria Vittoria Dell’Anna, Debora De Fazio, Beatrice Perrone, Rocco Luigi Nichil and Carolina Tundo.
On Saturday morning Renzo Rubino and Rachele Andrioli will be the protagonists of the Le parole delle canzone format. The three evenings will end with the lesson/show Saba, written and performed by Mauro Covacich on the occasion of the 140th anniversary of the birth of the Trieste poet (Friday), the live performance of the electronic project Queen of Saba (Saturday) and the concert Donna Ginevra e le Stazioni Lunari with Ginevra Di Marco, Francesco Magnelli and Andrea Salvadori (Sunday).
”The set of characters and phenomena of sexual life”: the definition of sexuality contained in the Treccani Vocabulary alone justifies the idea of dedicating the 2024 Treccani Festival of the Italian Language to this word which, after the Salento capital, will also arrive in Rome on 25 and 26 May and Lecco from 27 to 29 September. From the semantic map created by the co-directors of the latest edition of the Treccani Vocabulary, Valeria Della Valle and Giuseppe Patota, it emerges how appropriate and necessary it is to delve deeper into the meanings of this term and those connected to it. Love, affection, desire, seduction, pleasure, eroticism, with reference to the less controversial aspects. Gender identity, asexual, transsexual or transgender, in relation to increasingly present realities in our society. To finally get to those voices that evidently denote a total ignorance of the profound value of this word, such as molest, rape and rape.
Through the historical analysis of the evolution of sexuality in Italian society, debates on contemporary issues such as gender identity, LGBTQIA+ rights and body awareness, the artistic and literary representation of sexuality, it will be possible to promote understanding and discussion on often mystified topics. Hence the attention also to other words such as emotion, passion, fantasy, sexual freedom and moral freedom, bisexual, gender, fluid gender, binary and non-binary and, more generally, sexual orientation, today more than ever open to many considerations and nuances. Because the Treccani Italian Language Observatory, with its hashtag leparolevalgono , tries to improve the use and knowledge of our language every day.
«To identify this word we worked trying to intercept the needs of a new generation to understand, thanks also to social channels, which words attracted the most attention and on which it was useful to start a dialogue. We thus found that one of the most recurring words was sexuality, which will be the key word of the seventh edition of the Festival”, underline Della Valle and Patota. «Never like this year have we paid particular attention to all the words that revolve around the main one, because through linguistic-lexical relationships we will be able to guide people towards a conscious and appropriate use of the terms. We are convinced that by knowing the meaning we can improve the quality of personal relationships and reduce those excesses, not only verbal, which can lead to unpleasant, often extreme situations and even profound reasons for misunderstanding around the topic of sexuality.”
The Treccani Festival of the Italian language is organized in Lecce by the Treccani Cultura Foundation in collaboration with the Puglia Region (Department of Tourism, Economy of Culture and Promotion of the Territory) and Teatro Pubblico Pugliese thanks to the 2023 Extraordinary Plan Let’s guard culture in Puglia – Special Fund for Culture and Cultural Heritage LR 40/2016 – Art. 15 – Paragraph 3, Biblio-Museum Center of Lecce, SOI – Italian Ophthalmological Society and Giancarlo Pallavicini Foundation, the contribution of Treccani Reti and with the patronage of Rai for ESG sustainability, Province of Lecce , Municipality of Lecce, University of Salento. Media partners Rai Cultura and Rai Radio 3.
The Festival’s meetings and shows will have free admission while seats last.
