Giorgia Meloni opens a position generating her first controversy by announcing that she wants to be called “the prime minister” instead of “the prime minister” of Italy betting on the masculine for his position and not the feminine.
In the first communiqués issued since its constitution this Sunday, the new Government of Italy has presented the winner of the elections on September 25 as “The Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni”.
“The prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, will be in the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday, September 25, to make statements about his government program,” appears in the latest letter issued by Palacio Chigi.
[Draghi traspasa el poder a Meloni: “No doy consejos, lo único que puedo hacer es dejar hechos”]
“Cordial and fruitful conversation, of more than an hour between the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the French President, Emmanuel Macron,” says another of the writings after the meeting that took place this Sunday between the leaders of Italy and France.
“It’s too much” to use the feminine
Faced with this choice, the opposition has criticized this choice wondering if “it’s too much” for the leader of the Brothers of Italy to use the feminine. “The first female prime minister is called by the masculine, the prime minister. What prevents her from claiming her leadership in the language? Affirming the feminine is it too much for a party that already forgets the sisters in their name?“, has opined the former president of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini, of the Social Democratic Democratic Party.
From the centrist Third Pole coalition, Carlos Calenda has criticized that politics is taking a “Peppa Pig controversial level”. “Friends, here it is going off the rails. Among other government controversies and this one from ‘the prime minister’ we are returning to the controversial level of Peppa Pig, which we believed was an unrepeatable album,” he wrote on social networks.
[Meloni tranquiliza a la UE nombrando a Tajani pero otorga a Salvini todo el poder sobre la inmigración]
Also added to the criticism was the Trade Union Union of Journalists of the RAI (Usigrai) -the Italian public television-, which has lamented in a statement that Meloni goes against European regulations on the use of the feminine in professions and public positions.
Criticism of journalists and linguists
“The lawyer, the lawyer. The prime minister, the prime minister. While Italy laboriously adapts to European norms on the use of the feminine in public office and professions, in many RAI newsrooms we are witnessing a dangerous setback”Usigrai has affirmed, assuring that there is pressure from the management to use the masculine name to address Giorgia Meloni’s new position because “she has asked for it.”
From the Cross Academy (similar to the Royal Spanish Academy, RAE) point out that using the masculine in this case is not an error but that the choice of the prime minister “deviates” from the direction Italian grammar has taken in the use of masculine or feminine.
