Mafia symbolism is assembled from fiction and folklore, not authentic criminal tradition.

Evidence

The expressions and symbols1 associated with the mafia—indeed, the term mafia itself—are concocted from an almost surrealist stew of bogus and genuine sources, mythical and mundane characters, fiction and reality. The mythology of this world blithely encompasses both real secret sects—La Giovane Italia and La Carboneria—and fictional ones—I Beati Paoli and Coriolano della Foresta. A repertoire of symbols proliferates around the initiation ritual—oaths, needles, blood, graven images, fire—a paraphernalia seemingly more appropriate to the nineteenth-century feuilleton and children’s literature than to cynical modern criminals. Terminology emanates freely from the most diverse sources, as domestic, military, religious, and administrative lexicons all converge in an unlikely vocabulary (famiglia, Don, Zu’, compare, picciotti, soldati, papa, rappresentante, consigliere, mandamento). Finally, being a mafioso is a matter of style determining what one wears (once a fustian jacket and coppola hat, then a dark suit and a Borsalino hat, and most recently a leather jacket and dark glasses); how one walks (slowly, with a sway of the hips designated in Sicilian dialect by the mildly ironic verb annacare); how one talks (stingy with words, affecting understatement, emitting oblique messages, elusive threats, allusive signs, sententious metaphors); and even how one kills (conducting unholy burials in concrete or acid or wielding a sawed-off shotgun in broad daylight). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 329

Categorization

• DEFINE: Documents the invented, promiscuous vocabulary (famiglia, Don, compare, consigliere) that The Godfather popularized — useful as glossary source for the Puzo mapping project.
• XREF: Connects to Gambetta’s core thesis that mafia style is manufactured signaling; also parallels the invented-tradition argument in Hobsbawm’s ‘Invented Traditions’.