The Neapolitan paradox: when cultural visibility does not become linguistic recognition

Neapolitan is one of Europe's most internationally visible regional languages, widely present in music, cinema, literature, food culture and global representations of Naples. Yet this cultural visibility has not been matched by equivalent institutional recognition of the language within Italy. This article examines the resulting paradox, focusing on the gap between cultural heritage recognition and linguistic recognition, and on its consequences for language transmission, education, institutional use and minority-language media. The Neapolitan case raises a broader European question: what happens when a language is globally visible as culture but remains institutionally marginal as a language?