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The Mafia, also referred to as La Cosa Nostra ( Italian, variously translated as This Thing Of Ours or Our Thing), is the collective name of various secret organizations in Sicily and the United States. The Mafia was originally the name of a loose confederation of people in Sicily centuries ago joined for the purposes of protection and vigilante law enforcement, and later engaged in organized crime. A member of the Mafia is a "mafioso", or a "man of honor". The Mafia spread to the United States through immigration by the Twentieth Century. Mafia power peaked in the United States in the mid-Twentieth Century, until a series of FBI investigations in the 1970s and 1980s somewhat curtailed the Mafia's influence. Despite the decline, the Mafia and its reputation has become entrenched in American popular culturePopular culture or pop culture is the vernacular (people's) culture that prevails in a modern society. The content of popular culture is determined in large part by industries that disseminate cultural material, for example the film, television, and publi, portrayed in moviesFor other uses see film (disambiguation Film — also called movies the cinema the silver screen moving pictures motion pictures photoplays picture shows and flicks — is a field that encompasses motion pictures as an art form or as part of the entertainment, TV shows, and even product commercialsAdvertising is the paid promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas, by an identified sponsor. Marketers see advertising as part of an overall promotional strategy. Other components of the promotional mix include publicity, public relations, persona.
An interesting etymologicalEtymology is the study of the origins of words. Some words have been derived from other languages, possibly in a changed form (the source words are called etymons . Through old texts and comparisons with other languages, etymologists try to reconstruct th study [1] of the word mafia impliesIn pragmatics ( linguistics), implication is the relationship between two statements where the truth of one suggests the truth of the other, but--distinguishing implication from entailment--does not require it. For example, the sentence Mary had a baby an that it has been in use as an adjective (mafioso) since the eighteenth century17th century 18th century 19th century more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701- 1800; however, historians will sometimes specifically refer to the 18th Century as 1715- 89,, originally associated with the ideas of beauty, excellence and perfection. Like many words in any language, this eventually mutated into alternate meanings. Henner Hess, author of the book Mafia and Mafiosi (BooksEnthsiast.com), cites that "eventually the word mafia was used, above all, for organized crime, until sensation-hungry journalists, confused northern Italian jurists and foreign authors interpreted it as the name of an organization. The emergence of the word was, then, linked with the emergence of a secret society and thus gave rise to fantastic speculations."
Hess further cites the slogan "Morte alla Francia Italia anela!", meaning "Death to the French is Italy's cry!" as a possible origin of the word. Other acronyms, yet highly improbable, are slogans such as "Mazzini autorizza furti, incendi, avvelenamenti" ("Mazzini authorizes theft, arson, poisoning") and "mothers and fathers italian association". Ultimately, he finds that the "theory which assigns the greatest antiquity to this society suggests that mafia is a corruption of the Arabic word mu afah, in which mu means something like inviolability, strength, vigour, and afah something like to secure, to protect. Mu afah had therefore been an association which provided security for its members."
The term "mafia" has now been extended to refer to any large group of people engaged in organized crime (compare the Russian Mafia and the Japanese Yakuza), or in suspicious activity (compare the Trenchcoat Mafia of Columbine High School). When unqualified, however, "Mafia" still usually refers to the original Sicilian/American organizations.