Speakers' perceptions about invisible anglicisms in Italian

Abstract

In order to contribute to the study of anglicisms with respect to their ‘invisibility’ in the receiving language, this paper presents the results of a survey focused on speakers' perceptions about the use of English loan translations and semantic loans in Italian. Using age as a variable, the informants of the survey were divided into three age groups, – millennials (30-44), generation X (45-60) and boomers (over 60) – in order to establish which indirect borrowings of the sample were considered acceptable or not, whether their ‘Englishness’ was detected and which choice they would make between an Italian word and an indirect borrowing. The tested items were chosen among words and patterns recognized as English indirect borrowings in the literature, including lexical, morphosyntactic and phraseological patterns. The results of the survey show the acceptance of items such as, for example evidenze (evidence), the use of coordinated prepositions da e per (to and from), the multiple interrogative Chi è chi e chi fa cosa (who’s who and who does what), irrespective of age. In addition, there is a general agreement on considering the verb applicare (modelled on English to apply), widely used in administrative discourse, alien to standard Italian. However, the data also confirms that younger speakers are more open to the use of loan translations and semantic loans than older speakers, and are less aware of the influence of English, supporting the trend towards the gradual assimilation of indirect borrowings.