Shopper, Shopping and Shopping Bag: Investigating the Use of Anglicisms in Italian

Abstract

In the 21st century, the growing use of English as the main language of international communication has contributed to the spread of Anglicisms in several academic and professional fields, including the field of fashion. This paper aims to investigate shopper, shopping and shopping bag, which primarily belong to the fashion domain but are also commonly used in everyday language. The focus is on the linguistic interference exerted by English on Italian, particularly on the paths followed by these words withing the Italian language. A qualitative mixed approach was used to collect data, which were triangulated to gain deeper insights into the phenomena of language contact and lexical borrowings. Preliminary findings show that the three Anglicisms are instances of direct borrowing and are used in Italian, either as non-adapted loanwords or as false Anglicisms, depending on the context in which they appear and the meanings they convey.