Au royaume des discours incomplets. Ambigüité et malentendu dans la conversation entre mafieux

Abstract

Spoken exchanges between members of the Cosa Nostra are governed by the twofold restriction of the law of silence toward the outside and the obligation of speaking the truth inside. To this purpose, the Mafia’s language obeys a semantic obliqueness which provides speakers with a margin of freedom by preserving the unpredictability of their intentions, which led Tommaso Buscetta to qualify the setting as “the realm of incomplete speech”. The Mafia order is based on a practise of misunderstanding doubly understood, in the meaning of Jankélévitch, which comprises not only a false relationship but also a false situation maintaining mutual knowledge of deception thereby permitting an infinite, dialectic game. This game is explored here through exchanges, in the presence of their judges and lawyers, between Gasapre Spatuzza, a former man of honour from a Mafia family who switched sides to become an informer, and the accused, Filippo Graviano, who, with his brother, was the district leader of the same family.