Cover not available

In:Observing Eurolects: Corpus analysis of linguistic variation in EU law
Edited by Laura Mori
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 86] 2018
► pp. 199–242

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 9
Observing Eurolects

The case of Italian

Published online: 6 December 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.86.09mor
Abstract
This chapter focuses on linguistic differences in Italian between two legislative corpora belonging to the Eurolect Observatory Multilingual Corpus: corpus A (EU directives) and their Italian laws of implementation (corpus B). In order to prove that two different legislative varieties do exist, corpus-based and corpus-driven analyses involved several levels: lexico-semantic, morphological, morphosyntactic, syntactic and textual. Results obtained through a quantitative approach are combined with qualitative insights and interepreted according to a common categorisation into EU-rooted phenomena, contact-induced features, and intra-linguistic variability (Research Template in Mori (this volume). Significant differences found confirm the existence of an Italian Eurolect characterised by Europeisms on a lexical level, morphological trends, morphosyntactic preferences, and textual patterns that do not conform to language conventions and norms in use in legislative Italian.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: From EU legal Italian to Italian in domestic law
  • 2.Italian as a Eurolect: Background and research methodology
  • 3.Lexical analysis
    • 3.1EU-rooted lexical features
    • 3.2Contact-induced lexical phenomena
    • 3.3Register and intra-genre lexical variability
  • 4.Lexical morphology
  • 5.Verb morphology
  • 6.Morphosyntax
  • 7.Syntax
    • 7.1EU-rooted syntactical phenomena
    • 7.2Contact-induced syntactical features
    • 7.3Intra-linguistic syntactical variability
  • 8.Textual dimension
    • 8.1EU-rooted textual phenomena
    • 8.2Contact-induced features and intra-linguistic variability at the textual level
  • 9.Concluding remarks and future developments
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (45)
References
Bambi, F. (2010). Le ragioni della storia tra due bilinguismi. In B. Pozzo & F. Bambi (Eds.), L’italiano giuridico che cambia (pp. 15–29). Firenze: Accademia della Crusca.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baroni, M., Bernardini, S., Ferraresi, A., & Zanchetta, E. (2009). The waCky wide web: A collection of very large linguistically processed web-crawled corpora. Language Resources and Evaluation, 43(3), 209–226.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bhatia, V. K. (1998). Intertextuality in legal discourse. The Language Teacher. Retrieved from <[URL]>
Berruto, G. (2011). Registri, generi e stili: Alcune considerazioni su categorie mal definite. In M. Cerruti, E. Corino, & C. Onesti (Eds.), Formale e informale. La variazione di registro nella comunicazione elettronica (pp. 15–35). Roma: Carocci Editore.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012). Sociolinguistica dell’italiano contemporaneo. Roma: Carocci.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2017). What is changing in Italian today? Phenomena of restandardization in syntax and morphology: An overview. In M. Cerruti, C. Crocco, & S. Marzo (Eds.), Towards a new standard theoretical and empirical studies on the restandardization of Italian (pp. 31–60). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D., & Barbieri, F. (2007). Lexical bundles in university spoken and written registers. English for Specific Purposes, 26(3), 263–286.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D., & Conrad, S. (2009). Register, genre, style. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biel, Ł. (2014). Lost in the Eurofog: The textual fit of translated law. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bindi, F., & Cisci, M. (2005). Italy and Spain: A tale of contrasting effectiveness in the EU. In S. Bulmer & C. Lequesne (Eds.), The member states of the European Union (pp. 142–184). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carcaterra, G. (1994). Norme costitutive. In U. Scarpelli & P. Di Lucia (Eds.), Il linguaggio del diritto (pp. 219–231). Milano: LED-Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Caterina, R., & Rossi, P. (2008). L’italiano giuridico. In B. Pozzo & M. Timoteo (Eds.), Europa e linguaggi giuridici (pp. 185–208). Milano. Giuffrè Editore.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cavagnoli, S., & Mori, L. (Eds.). (in press). Gender in legislative languages. From EU to national law in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Berlin: Frank & Timme.
Conte, M. -E. (1999). Condizioni di coerenza. Ricerche di linguistica testuale. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cortelazzo, M. A. (2013). Leggi italiane e direttive europee a confronto. In S. Ondelli (ed.) Realizzazioni testuali ibride in contesto europeo. Lingue dell’UE e lingue nazionali a confronto (pp. 57–66). Trieste: EUT.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
European Commission. 2011. How to write clearly. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Studies on translation and multilingualism. Document quality control in public administrations and international organisations. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. (1994). Dialect, register, and genre: Working assumptions about conventionalization. In D. Biber & E. Finegan (Eds.), Sociolinguistic perspectives on register (pp. 15–30). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferreri, S. (2004). La lingua del legislatore. Modelli comunitari e attuazione negli Stati membri. Rivista di Diritto Civile, Anno L, n. 2, Padova: CEDAM, 561–579.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2005). The drafting of statutes: A difficult task, especially across borders. In B. Pozzo (Ed.), Ordinary language and legal language (pp. 109–124). Milano: Giuffrè Editore.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fiorelli, P. (2008). Intorno alle parole del diritto. Milano: Giuffrè.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guggeis, M. (2012). L’influenza dell’Unione europea e le novità introdotte dal Trattato di Lisbona. In B. Pozzo & F. Bambi, L’italiano giuridico che cambia (pp. 207–214). Firenze: Accademia della Crusca.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, M. (2009). Lexical borrowing: Concepts and issues. In M. Haspelmath & U. Tadmor (Eds.), Loanwords in the world’s languages. A comparative handbook (pp. 35–54). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laviosa, S. (1998). Core patterns of lexical use in a comparable corpus of English narrative prose. Meta, 43(4), 557–570.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mattila, H. (2006). Comparative jurilinguistics: A discipline in statu nascendi. In B. Pozzo & V. Jacometti (Eds.), Multilingualism and harmonisation of European Law (pp. 21–32). The Hague: Kluwer Law International.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mori, L. (2003). L’euroletto: Genesi e sviluppo dell’italiano comunitario. In A. Valentini, P. Molinelli, P. Cuzzolin, & G. Bernini (Eds.), Ecologia linguistica. Atti del XXXVI Convegno internazionale di Studi della Società di Linguistica italiana (pp. 473–492). Roma: Bulzoni.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2005). L’italiano della legislazione comunitaria. In B. Turchetta, L. Mori, & E. Ranucci (Eds.), Il mondo in italiano. Varietà ed usi internazionali della lingua (pp. 73–106). Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2007). La dimensione verticale dell’euroletto. Europeismi tra creazione comunitaria e linguaggio giornalistico, In S. Vanvolsem, S. Marzo, M. Caniato, & G. Mavolo (Eds.), Identità e diversità nella lingua e nella letteratura italiana (pp. 119–131). Firenze: Cesati.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2008). Gli anni Sessanta e la costruzione dell’identità linguistica europea. Sulla formazione della varietà comunitaria d’italiano. In G. Dotoli & M. Selvaggio (Eds.), I linguaggi del Sessantotto (pp. 531–544). Roma: Editrice Apes.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2018). Introduction. The Eurolect Observatory Project . In L. Mori (Ed.), Observing Eurolects. Corpus analysis of linguistic variation in EU law (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 86). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (this volume).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mortara Garavelli, B. (2001). Le parole e la giustizia. Torino: Einaudi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nystedt, J. (1999). L’italiano che si scrive a Bruxelles. Italiano e Oltre, XIV, 198–206.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2000). L’Italiano nei documenti della CEE: le sequenze di parole. In D. Veronesi (Ed.), Linguistica giuridica italiana e tedesca (pp. 273–284). Padova: Unipress.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rossini Favretti, R. (1998). Using multilingual parallel corpora for the analysis of legal language: The Bononia Legal Corpus. In W. Teubert, E. Tognini Bonelli, & N. Volz (Eds.), Translation equivalence. Proceedings of the third European Seminar “Translation Equivalence” (pp. 57–68). Paris: The TELRI Association.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rovere, G. (2005). Capitoli di linguistica giuridica. Ricerche su corpora elettronici. Torino: Edizioni dell’Orso.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serianni, L. (2003). Italiani scritti. Bologna: il Mulino.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steunenberg, B. & Voermans, W. (2006). The transposition of EC directives: A comparative study of instruments, techniques and processes in six member states. Leiden: Leiden University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Strandvik, I. (2018) Preface. Corpus research at the service of multilingual law-making: the Eurolect Observatory Project. In L. Mori (Ed.). Observing Eurolects. Corpus analysis of linguistic variation in EU law (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 86). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (this volume). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tafani, L. (2017). La tecnica legislativa al servizio della qualità degli atti normativi. In Le parole giuste. Scrittura tecnica e cultura linguistica per il buon funzionamento della pubblica amministrazione e della giustizia. Atti del convegno di presentazione del progetto di ricerca e formazione, Palazzo Madama, 14 aprile 2016 (pp. 141–155). Roma: Senato della Repubblica Italiana.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomatis, M. S. (2018) The Eurolect Observatory Multilingual Corpus. Construction and query tools. In L. Mori (Ed.), Observing Eurolects. Corpus analysis of linguistic variation in EU law (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 86). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (this volume). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tognini-Bonelli, E. (2001). Corpus linguistics at work (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 6). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tosi, A. (2007). Un italiano per l’Europa. La traduzione come prova di vitalità. Roma: Carocci.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Visconti, J. (2009). A modular approach to legal translation. In G. Grewendorf & M. Rathert (Eds.), Formal linguistics and law (pp. 151–178). Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). Uno sguardo al contesto europeo: connettivi in testi normativi dell’Unione Europea. In J. -L. Egger, A. Ferrari & L. Lala (Eds.), Le forme linguistiche dell’ufficialità: l’italiano giuridico e amministrativo della Confederazione Svizzera (pp. 67–81). Bellinzona: Casagrande.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Proia, Fabio
2025. De facto oder tatsächlich? Eine korpusbasierte Untersuchung zur Rolle der Latinismen in der EU- und der bundesdeutschen Gesetzgebungssprache. Comparative Legilinguistics 61 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Canavese, Paolo & Laura Mori
2024. Testing the hypothesis of “translation as a catalyst for plain legislation” on the syntactic level: a comparison of different varieties of legislative Italian. Comparative Legilinguistics 58 ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Hrežo, Vladislav
2022. Linguistic Insights into Eurolect of Institutional Documents Based on the System of Logico-Semantic Relations. Language Culture Politics International Journal 1 ► pp. 69 ff. DOI logo
Clay, Edward & Karen Mcauliffe
2021. Reconceptualising the Third Space of Legal Translation: A Study of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Comparative Legilinguistics 45:1 ► pp. 93 ff. DOI logo
Mori, Laura & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
2021. Mapping Eurolects. Languages in Contrast 21:2 ► pp. 186 ff. DOI logo
Pontrandolfo, Gianluca
2021. National and EU judicial phraseology under the magnifying glass: a corpus-assisted analysis of complex prepositions in Spanish. Perspectives 29:2 ► pp. 260 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2020. Soziolinguistische Bibliographie europäischer Länder für 2018Sociolinguistic Bibliography of European Countries for 2018Bibliographie sociolinguistique des pays européens pour 2018. Sociolinguistica 34:1 ► pp. 277 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue