Buscetta e Contorno al maxiprocesso (1986). Una prospettiva pragmatica

The paper has the intention to investigate and analyse linguistic strategies and conversational dynamics that unravel during the first Maxitrial (1986), by focusing on two figures that had a great media resonance: Tommaso Buscetta e Salvatore Contorno. The transcriptions of a portion of the deposition given by the two collaborators of justice compose the subject of this analysis. The vast and sometimes impetuous ocean of words that the two informants let run or try to stop, during their interrogations, has allowed to formulate some hypotheses about the goals pursued by them, on the basis that the identification of a specific linguistic habitus, besides categorizing individuals, has a central role in the construction of the self-image. Moreover, both had a crucial role in the disambiguation of the language inside "Cosa nostra", clearing verbal and not verbal aspects of an organization that used the unsaid, the implied and the metaphor, as his principal communication code, even confirming during the trial, their affinity with the Mafia code of conduct.