Abstract:
During the last two decades, the field of linguistics witnessed the rise of English to the
classification of globally recognised lingua franca, an evolution which necessarily involved
the permeation of English into other languages. This process of influence was thoroughly
researched by academics, especially in Europe, culminating in the triptych by Manfred
Görlach, a collective work analysing the influence of English into major European languages.
The focus of all the academics writing with Görlach is studying this intrusion, which operates
predominantly through English direct and indirect borrowings, neologisms-to-be which at the
beginning are merely terms employed by the speaking community of non-Anglophone
countries like Italy, which eventually become recognised as Italian terms. But when and how
does an English term develop into a real and formal word of the target language, in this case
Italian? The aim of this dissertation is to scrutinise the various processes of acceptance of
English terms in two of the most formal written domains of Italian, namely dictionaries and
newspapers. Both of them have their methods, which are similar, and the interplay created by
the connection of these two and anglicisms themselves provides a precise insight into the
phenomenon of anglicisation in the Italian language. The analysis of the methods adopted by
the Zingarelli dictionary and the policy of the Corriere della Sera will eventually be
demonstrated through a 20-years investigation of leading articles of the already mentioned
newspaper, from 2002 to 2022. An extra-analysis of 2023 articles from several newspapers
will conclude the temporal lapse by portraying the current situation of the major Italian
newspapers. This dissertation final result is a comprehensive and exhaustive inquiry of the
phenomenon of anglicisation, a picture complete of theory and fulfilment into practice where
rules, suggestions, methods and processes adopted by authors and editors are explained,
demonstrated and eventually analysed.
