Some traits of contemporary Italian between usage and school grammar

Abstract

This paper explores the presence of some linguistic traits considered as characteristic of contemporary Italian in the linguistic production of speakers, by using a survey with informants, and in school grammars, by comparing of textbooks with different approaches. The data from the two analyses are then compared to measure the distance between the social norm and the explicit norm. Results show some oscillation in the evaluation on these traits by the speakers and a persistent gap between implicit norm and explicit norm.

Keywords

• italian linguistics
• italian language norm
• school grammar books
• sociolinguistics