The Italian Communist Party (ICP) was the largest communist party of the West.
Although it was part of the International communist movement, it pretended to be
an ‘original’ party, bearer of a ‘National way to communism’. Instead, many scholars
have successfully demonstrated that the links of the party with the Soviet Union and
leninism were strong and solid until the mid 70’s. This essay tries to demonstrate that
in terms of political language, the ICP was deeply influenced by the Communist jargon
as created during the Stalin era. As scholars have written, regarding the cultural
identity of the Communist parties, in the 50’s there was no need of a centralized
cultural authority, because the symbols and the language of Communism were already
a common lingo and a standardized jargon. This essay is based on the linguistic
analysis of a series of official documents of the ICP and studies the origins of the
IPC’s langue de bois.
