ROME (ITALPRESS) – As part of its #leparolevalgono communication campaign, aimed at promoting the correct and conscious use of language, the Treccani Italian Encyclopedia Institute has chosen “respect” as the word of 2024 because of its extreme topicality and social relevance.
The Treccani Dictionary of Italian defines respect as a “feeling and attitude of esteem, attention, regard toward a person, an institution, a culture, which can be expressed by actions or words.”
“This word,” explain Valeria Della Valle and Giuseppe Patota, co-directors of the Treccani Vocabulary, “should be placed at the center of every pedagogical project, starting from early childhood, and then spread to relationships between people, in the family and at work, in the relationship with civil and religious institutions, with politics and with the opinions of others, in international relations. The term respect, a continuation of the Latin respectus, should be reevaluated today and used in all its nuances, precisely because lack of respect is at the root of the violence exercised daily against women, minorities, institutions, nature and the animal world.”
“It is very significant,” Della Valle and Patota add, “that the expressions in the Italian language that contain this item are numerous: from having respect for someone, someone or something to disrespect, from di tutto rispetto to col rispetto dovuto, on and on until the formula ‘with all respect,’ unfortunately often misused in political polemics as a premise for aggressive, offensive and violent verbal attacks, or the expression men of respect, infamously known for referring to mafia affiliates.”
A word quoted a million times, now apropos and now inappropriately. The choice of the Treccani Italian Language Observatory, directed by Della Valle and Patota, to indicate it as word of the year is intended to emphasize, on the one hand, the need for its semantically and civilly correct use, and on the other hand, its function as an indicator of a value to be shared in civil society: out of respect for people, institutions, different cultures, the environment and all living beings.
– Treccani press office photo –
(ITALPRESS).
