Italien reduplication: cross-cultural pragmatics and illocutionary semantics

The article examines the use and the function of ‘syntactic reduplication in Italian and compares it with some other ‘intensification’ devices, in Italian and in English, such as the ‘absolute superlative’. It is argued that subtle ‘pragmatic’ meanings such as those conveyed in Italian reduplication can be identified and distinguished from other, related meanings if ad hoc impressionistic comments are replaced with rigorous semantic representations; and it is shown how a semantic metalanguage derived from natural language can be used for that purpose. It is argued that syntactic reduplication belongs to a system of illocutionary devices which reflect, jointly, some characteristic features of the Italian style of social interaction. More generally, it is argued that illocutionary grammar can be linked with ‘cultural style’, and that cross-cultural pragmatics can gain considerably in both insight and rigor if its problems are translated into the language of illocutionary semantics.