The word cafone in the work Fontamara, by Ignazio Silone

Abstract

We analyze the work Fontamara in order to identify and understand the linguistic and sociocultural aspects of the lexeme cafone, which occurs 148 times in the narrative. The analysis is based on linguistic notions of word, lexeme, lexia and lexicographic statement (Basílio, 2000; Biderman, 1978, 1998; Andrade, 2000). Furthermore, the relationships between language, society and culture (Coseriu, 1982; Calvet, 2002) and the etymology of the word cafone (Vinciguerra, 2023) are discussed. We compared the senses of the lexeme in the work and the meanings of the lexeme in entries from seven lexicographical works. We verify that the lexeme is used to designate a fact of reality to which the senses, in the socio-historical-cultural context of the work, are attributed based on different and antagonistic conceptions of the world: the cafone man and the non-cafone man. In the case of a clash between two peoples who have, each one, their own language, their own way of perceiving, conceptualizing and categorizing the world, it is concluded that, in the narrative, there is the manifestation of two distinct lexemes cafone: one belonging to the cafoni’s language and another one belonging to the non-cafoni’s language. The senses of this lexeme recorded in Fontamara constitute a document of a historical and socio-cultural process, and the meanings that the word has in the compared linguistic systems prove that, in the historical evolution of a lexeme, the central core of meaning can be displaced and a peripheral meaning comes to occupy the centre of the conceptual field.