Rethinking the concept of lingua illustre in the absence of a common language. Considerations from Africa

The author starts from a brief reflection on Dante Alighieri’s concept of volgare illustre, considering its role as a powerful mark of identity cohesion, repeatedly invoked as an essential element in the Italian question of language. The quest for a common, distinguishing code was supposed to be pivotal for the foundation of a feeling of national solidarity in the culturally and linguistically fragmented reality of Italy, until its unification in 1861. In Italy, the so called “question of language”, that offers some interesting hints for the object of this paper, represented a topic addressed by many scholars during more than 5 centuries. In an attempt to understand whether some of the insights offered by the Italian question of language could be fruitfully applied to the context of contemporary sub-Saharan Africa, the focus of the paper rotates around the geo-linguistic aspects and sociolinguistic practices that characterize modern plurilingual and multilingual African countries. These practices seem, at least in the medium term, not to allow the affirmation of a common language. However, right in these practices, the author traces some common strategies, adopted by speakers of different languages and belonging to different cultures, that could be seen as constitutive of a pan-African stylistic code. In this perspective, these strategies should be seen as tools consciously used by skilled orators as illustrious marks, aspiring to the creation of a space of a distinguished, illustrious supranational unity. In particular, as an exemplum, the author analyses in this light the potential of proverbs, underlining their increasingly conscious use in different contexts and domains in most African countries.