Offers That Can’t Be Refused and People Sleeping with Fishes: The Linguistic Legacy of The Godfather

The Godfather is a crime novel written by American author Mario Puzo in 1969. It tells the story of a fictional Mafia family in New York City (and Long Island), headed by Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather. The novel covers the years 1945 to 1955 and includes the back story of Vito Corleone from early childhood (in Sicily) to adulthood. The novel was turned into a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1972. As far as the Corleones are concerned, as well as the people who belong to their crew, it is a fact that their representation is different from the stereotyped representation of Italian American gangsters usually portrayed in Hollywood productions. First of all, they always refer to themselves as businessmen, rather than gangsters, and throughout the dialogues of the film they continuously mention their “business” (some examples: “It’s good business”; “I’m a business man”; “This is business, not personal!”; “Even the shooting of your father was business, not personal”; “This is business, and this man is taking it very very personal”; “It’s not personal, it’s strictly business”). Don Vito Corleone stresses the fact that he does not consider himself and his family as criminals at the very beginning of the film. In the initial scene of the film, Bonasera (a mortician by trade whose daughter is the goddaughter of Don Vito’s wife) goes to Don Vito on his daughter Connie’s wedding day, pleading for revenge and asking him to kill the young American men who tried to dishonour his own daughter and then brutally beat her when she resisted. Don Vito abruptly refuses, and later comments with Tom Hagen: “We’re not murderers, in spite of what this undertaker thinks”. The differences in the depiction of the characters are also reflected on the language variety that they speak, as will be seen in the paper.