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By Root 546 0

a deep bond concealed behind the usual affectations of urbane distaste: Romans enjoy their cultural intimacy in a space largely defined by the way they talk.42 Dialect, obscenity, and insult can all convey affection; for example, calling a close friend fijo de 'na mignotta (whoreson) or a stronzo (turd) or cursing li mortacci tua (your dead) is an index-or a test-of true intimacy.43 So, too, is the studied churlishness of the carpenter who peremptorily told a bar proprietor, "Make me that cappuccino, you!" (Fammi er cappuccino, a!) That abrupt final syllable, which also introduces the familiar Romanesco vocative (a Miche, "hey there, Michele"), would give offense to any but a close friend. It is both an affirmation of true closeness and yet remains, the barman subsequently grumbled, a sign of ignoranza (being badly brought up). Such semantic ambiguity conveys the indeterminacy of everyday social relations; not for these Romans the precise pedantries of grammarians!

But such tests of social agility logically also carry risks; swearing at the wrong person, or at the wrong moment, can have catastrophic consequences. Moreover, a man takes care not to use her first name in addressing an unrelated woman who is not a social intimate, as he would with another man, but instead calls her signora. He thereby intimates to the woman's husband, explained the (females owner of a boutique specializing in exotic furnishings, that he should "rest assured that I am not eyeing your wife."

These usages are remarkably precise indicators of the extent to which intimacy is being extended and controlled. But it is also important to be alert to ironic play. Dialect, for example, offers a means of pretending humility while teasing those with greater power-particularly, perhaps, those whose left-wing political credentials are belied by either their use of power or the legislation they support. When then prime minister Massimo D'Alema once entered a jeweler's shop, the owner pretended to treat him like a passing mendicant, combining the polite form of address with dialect morphology: "Vole on bicchie' d'acqua?" (Do you want a glass of water?) In the discussion that followed, D'Alema offered the jeweler his compliments on maintaining an important tradition, but the jeweler forthrightly replied that a government that did not support the resurgence of apprenticeship would be doing nothing for his trade.

As I began to get to know people in the neighborhood, I particularly noticed that surnames were almost studiously avoided. People introduced themselves, or were introduced by others, by their first names; further intimacy was given a public airing by the breezy hailing of friends in dialect for example, a(hoo) Miche! [for eh, Michele!]). The use of first names is considered "friendly"-a concept that is not necessarily always positive in its implications but that, for exactly this reason, defines a social space in which even hostile relations can be transacted with minimal damage to the larger social context.

An elderly carpenter's observation that people used to introduce themselves more readily with their surnames, and that the use of first names on their own was a form of disrespect ~dispetto), does not necessarily conflict with this view; he was speaking of the distinction, which has become rarer in recent years, between people of different social rank. Indeed, today surnames are occasionally used in irony, to hail an acquaintance of some standing to whom one nevertheless does not want to show excessive deference. Thus, a local notable greeted the Sicilian president of the artisans' union in this way, as does one of his more aggressively working-class neighbors; by accepting this mode of address, he neutralizes what could otherwise have become a mild but insistent form of mockery. With intimates, however, people are otherwise reluctant to use surnames. Most first names are drawn from a relatively restricted common stock; when they are used on their own, they also therefore protect their bearers from being identified as "legal persons" and thus as