Mediatori e mediati: riflessioni sugli italianismi di moda in francese, inglese e tedesco

Abstract

This article focuses on lexical Italianisms in the semantic domain of fashion, a specific case within the broader phenomenon of language contact, and investigates it in French, English and German. On the basis of available data, it looks at the formal aspects of Italianisms and investigates the cultural factors that have led to interference and mediation, reflecting on how interlinguistic contact can be seen as determined by extra-linguistic factors of a cultural, social, political and economic nature. This will contribute to highlighting the role historically played by Italian and, above all, French in the language of fashion; it will also show that more recently the need to make recourse to borrowings and calques, resulting from interference and mediation, has been neutralized under the influence of the deterritorialisation of fashion and its language as a result of global Anglicisation.