INTERFERENZE LESSICALI NELLA COMUNICAZIONE ACCADEMICA PARLATA ITALIANA: UNO STUDIO CORPUS-BASED.

This study analyses the presence of foreign borrowed words in the lexicon of academic spoken Italian communication, evaluating their incidence in the language used for research, education and the internationalization paths characteristic of the university environment. Over time, several scholars have emphasized the ability of linguistic systems to evolve, absorbing in put from other external systems at various levels, including the lexical one. Among them, Niccolò Machiavelli, who in his Discorso intorno alla nostra lingua (1515) states that ‘non si può trovare una lingua che parli ogni cosa per sé senza aver accattato da altri’, or the linguist James Milroy, who claims that there is no perfectly stable human language (1992: 1). The ability of languages to function and change (Saussure 1916) is amplified by the movements of individuals, whether for personal, professional or study reasons. These present languages with two options: subjugation to English, as a lingua franca of scientific knowledge and a medium of instruction, or the promotion of plurilingualism, integrating the linguistic repertoires of international students and staff. Academic language reflects these choices, welcoming foreign words useful for conveying new scientific concepts and paradigms. The present study aims to detect the presence of foreign borrowed words in the spoken Italian academic language, through the interrogation of a reference corpus. By means of a semi-automatic analysis, foreign lexical units will be extracted from the corpus exploited, so as to verify their use, and their influence in academic texts and discourses, regardless of the disciplinary fields involved (Nation 2001).