Wealth in Words: Vernacular Political Economies in Italian Dialect Proverbs

This paper undertakes a preliminary examination of how Italian proverbs in different regional dialects conceptualise wealth. The analysis centres on a collection of 159 proverbs published in a small volume entitled Proverbi dialettali sulla ricchezza, printed in 1987 by Vanni Scheiwiller (1934-99), director of the historic Milan-based publishing house All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro. The examination of this corpus will illustrate how notions of wealth are formulated, expressed, and represented across different dialect communities, often using similar rhetorical figures and semantic nuances. This study will not only offer a geographical characterisation of the concept of wealth but also shed light on these communities’ ‘vernacular political economies’. These economies comprise the sets of ideas, notions, images, and expressions that, while not aiming at the construction of ‘scientific’ economic theories, articulate popular economic wisdom, beliefs and worldviews. By injecting economic meaning into social values, these proverbs share an aversion to laissez-faire market ideology and a strong emphasis on the morality of redistribution.