Abstract

The paper focuses on the history of parliamentary speeches in the first decades of the Italian Kingdom (1861-1882). Though still affected by literary and classicistic models, the language of the parliament of the new nation appears modern and unified in its main morphological and syntactic features. The paper analyses a selective sample of transcripts of Italian parliamentary assembly sessions, providing a rich overview of the official political and administrative vocabulary. This analysis is a first step in the process of preparing the political, historical and administrative section of a new Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Italian, directed by Claudio Marazzini and the Accademia della Crusca.