Italian Language Festival dedicated to sexuality: via Lecce and then to Rome and Lecco

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. Because of this Treccani dedicate to this word the VII edition of the Italian Language Festival #leparolevalgono which opens in Lecce on 3-4-5 May and then continue to Rome, 25 and 26 Mayit’s at Lecco on 27-28-29 September. The project was conceived by Treccani Cultura – with the Rai Patronage 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.

“Sexuality sf [der. di sessuale], invar. The set of characters and phenomena of sexual life”: this is the definition of sexuality contained in the Treccani Vocabulary. From the semantic map created by the co-editors of the latest edition of the Treccani Vocabulary, Valeria Della Valle e Giuseppe Patotait 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.

“To identify this word – explain the co-directors – we worked trying to intercept the needs of a new generation to understand, thanks also to social channels, which were the words of greatest attention and on which it was useful to start a dialogue. We thus found that one of the most recurring words was sexuality”.Through the historical analysis of the evolution of sexuality in Italian society, the 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 in general, sexual orientation, today more than ever open to many considerations and nuances.

Numerous thematic meetings, lessons and round tables are scheduled: “Never like this year – conclude Della Valle and Patota – have we also paid particular attention to all the words that revolve around the main one, because through linguistic-lexical relationships we will be able guide people towards a conscious and appropriate use of terms. We are convinced that knowledge of the meaning can improve the quality of personal relationships and reduce those excesses, not only verbal, which can lead to unpleasant, often extreme, situations around the topic of sexuality. even profound reasons for misunderstanding”.