Le interferenze dell’inglese nella lingua italiana tra ‘protezionismo’ e ‘descrittivismo’ linguistico: il caso del lessico della crisi

The issue of the interference of English in modern Italian has always been of interest to researchers in Italy. This paper outlines how this interference has affected the Italian language over the last two decades. To this purpose, it has been deemed interesting to quote and contrast the views of two eminent Italian scholars involved in the long-lasting debate between linguistic ‘protectionism’ and ‘descriptivism’ – i.e. Arrigo Castellani and Tullio De Mauro. The most widespread English loanwords of the economic crisis found in the three major Italian newspapers from 1 September 2011 to 1 March 2012 have been taken into account and it has been verified whether they are present in three wellknown Italian monolingual dictionaries. It will also be shown that most of these loanwords have been adequately integrated into the Italian language in both written and oral texts.