La lingua infetta. L'italiano della pandemia, Pietrini Daniela

Author: Pietrini, Daniela. Presentation by Giuseppe Antonelli.

Covid-19 has brought with it profound changes to our everyday habits, and also to our vocabulary. How can we conceive and therefore give names to and communicate new events, behaviour and rules? This book combines fluid readability with a rigorously linguistic approach, devoted to the lexical and discursive implications of the pandemic’s main cultural, media and social impact. It offers reflections on the key words, neologisms and medical and semi-specialist terms circulating during the health emergency, focusing on the flow of communications between journalistic, institutional, scientific, advertising and social network activities. Given that a large part of the "lexicon of contagion" has been formed in an international context, the analysis is enriched by a European perspective on languages (especially French and German) and behaviour: this is fundamental for understanding the communication methods of a crisis that cannot be considered only from an Italian viewpoint, given its intrinsically transnational character.