Journal of Language and Politics 4:3 (2005), 373–3c8. issn 1569–2159 / e-issn 1569–9862 © John Benjamins Publishing Company he rhetoric of work flexibility A diatextual frame of Italian political discourse Amelia Manuti University of Bari his article deals with the discursive construction of work flexibility in Italy, through the analysis of the integral Italian White Paper on Occupation and of a corpus of 55 Editorials which discuss this topic in the pages of a popular Italian economic newspaper. Evident similarities have been regis- tered between them as both texts are actually socio-political texts aimed at constructing and conveying a specific representation of work flexibility, thus proposing and supporting the reformation of the Italian labour market. Any difference has been discussed by making reference to the different kind of audience that the texts address: the expert audience of the Italian govern- ment for the White Paper and the more heterogeneous audience of mass communication for the editorials. Keywords: work flexibility, critical and diatextual discourse analysis, rhetorical strategies heoretical background: Work flexibility as ‘political’ universe of discourse he Critical Approach to Discourse Analysis (Van Dijk 1993, 1997, 1998; Fairclough 1993; Fairclough and Wodak, 1997) has shown that within social reality, power is exercised through language use and manipulation. Commu- nicative practices are the main vehicle through which people shape their own eco-social system (Lemke 1995); it is through discourse that individuals frame, interpret and make sense of who they are and of what they do (Mumby and Robin 1997). In this perspective, society might not be conceived simply as a collective of people, that produce, negotiate and share meanings, but rather it represents an open arena, where different social groups confront each other every day, giving sense to their actions through the communicative practices which best