COVID-19 and the Notion of ‘South-Working’ in Italy’s Discourse: Origins and Narrative

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the notion of ‘south working’ – a word which has been used in Italian discourse during the pandemic – and to explore the origins and different narratives associated with this terminology. To this end, a dataset consisting of newspaper articles was compiled and examined, in order to understand the possible meanings attached to ‘south working’ and their discursive contexts.