How to comment the “Charms of a young Lady”. The grammar of conversation in atypical dialogues in Italian textbooks for foreigners between the 17th and 19th centuries

Abstract

Many grammars of Italian for foreigners, published between the 17th and 19th centuries, contain a section devoted to dialogues, which offers a model of speech that reproduces conversational regularities and routines indispensable to linguistic mastery. In addition to the prototypical situational dialogues, a number of thematic nuclei no longer formalised in more recent grammars recur, dedicated to strolling and conversing about young women’s bodies. The contribution dwells on them in order to investigate the rituals and routines offered as models. The analysis is conducted on a corpus of L2/LS Italian grammars, published between the 17th and 19th centuries and diversified in relation to the other languages involved (English, French and German) and the type of addressee of the works.