The distribution of neutral, negative and positive connotations of the word "guerra" in Italian daily newspapers across three time periods: 1901-1922, 1923-1945, 1946-1967

This study investigates the distribution of neutral, positive, and negative connotations of the word “guerra” (“war”) in Italian daily newspapers across three historical periods: 1901–1922, 1923–1945, and 1946–1967. Using the DiaCORIS diachronic corpus, 300 tokens of “guerra” were manually annotated for connotation and analyzed statistically with R. The first hypothesis—that non-neutral uses would dominate during the fascist period—was not supported, as neutral uses remained significant throughout. The second hypothesis—that positive connotations would peak under fascism and negative connotations during the Cold War—was partially confirmed: negative uses rose sharply after 1946 (86%), while positive uses declined to 14%. Chi-squared tests revealed no significant variation in neutral vs. non-neutral uses (p = 0.1994), but a strong association between positive/negative connotation and time period (Cramer’s V = 0.35, p < 0.0001). These findings suggest that while fascist propaganda influenced discourse, corpus balance and methodological constraints limit conclusions.