Studying terminologies in the language of economics: a lexical confront between English and Italian terms

Introduction 
This work is a result of my growing interest in the field of anglicisms in Italian. I studied for 
the first time this topic during an English course taken in the Faculty of Language and 
Foreign Literature in the University of Turin. 
The first part of the course consisted in a brief introduction of English influences in Italian 
while in the second part we analysed a list of anglicisms taken from De Mauro Mancini 
2004. Each word was searched in two corpora: La Repubblica corpus and the Italian Web 
as Corpus “itWac” and the results was written down in a table. Word selection was based 
on a subjective criterion, the frequency of the word usage by Italian native speakers, but it 
was also based on the number of hits in both corpora. The object of this study was to 
investigate the actual use of English words in Italian and identify false anglicisms. 
The results of this research and the final paper I presented aroused my curiosity in this 
argument so I decided to dedicate my final dissertation to the analysis of anglicisms in the 
Italian field of economics. 
The working procedure is the following: it starts from the a short introduction of 
terminology in the first chapter, it passes to the analysis of the special language of 
economics in second chapter and it ends with a short list of ten words used in the Italian 
language of economics in the third chapter. 
The first chapter of my thesis is about terminology, its origins and development, its 
characteristics which make a separate field of study and divide it from lexicography; the 
terminology processing by computers and the creation of terminological databases which 
encourage new studies in this field. 
It all begins by a simple question: what is terminology? We must say that with the 
increasing specialization in various field of knowledge, the demand for appropriate terms 
has grown and with it the demand for technical terms and concepts. Only with a right 
terminology we can communicate in the right way. 
A great number of definitions have been given about terminology, but I would sort the 
one written by Dubuc, a Canadian scholar which considers a pragmatic approach to this 
field of study. In his Manuel pratique de Terminologie (1985), he wrote: 
Terminology is the art of collecting, analysing and creating news terms for a technical field 
in a functional situation in order to fulfill users‟ needs to express themselves. 
However, the founder of this field is considered Eugene Wüster, an Austrian engineer 
who dedicated part of his life to terminological studies. He was the head of the most 
important terminology school of Vienna in 1930. His approach to terminology is considered 
to be „conservative‟ and restrictive in a sense that he focused his work in process of 
standardization of terminology in order to „preserve it‟ from any contact with general 
language. 
His approach is criticised by Maria Teresa Cabré, a Spanish linguist . Her new approach 
to terminological studies, the „door theory’ admits the contiguity between general language 
and special language. In her work, she argues that there is no sense to put barriers to 
language. Languages are always in contact with each other and during this interaction, a lot 
of terms penetrate and they might acquire different meanings in different fields of 
knowledge. 
Cabré is aware that the terminology is still a field „under construction‟. She continues 
arguing: 
Within the general framework of specialised communication this theory must integrate basic 
justifications, principles and conditions which adequately describe terminological units, 
their characteristics and properties, the relations between their intrinsic components, their 
functions, the relations they establish among themselves and with other units of specialised 
knowledge and the processes they follow. There is no doubt that from the contributions to 
this cooperative effort a more appropriate theoretical model will emerge. (Cabré 2003: 194) 
In this chapter, we insist a lot on the dichotomy general language vs. special language. 
there are some distinctive features which divide the two fields of study. The main 
differences are summarized in the following table. 
TERMINOGRAPHY LEXICOGRAPHY 
VARIETY OF LANGUAGE Special language dictionaries General language dictionaries 
PURPOSES OF WORK Provide suitable terms for Describing words 
concepts 
ENTRIES PRESENTATION Systematic order Alphabetical order 
LEXICAL CATEGORIES Usually nouns All lexical categories 
ENTRIES ORGANIZATION concept terms word meaning explanation 
Until now we talked about terminology as opposed to language, but in another part of the 
first chapter we will see how terminology is related to applied linguistics, a field of study 
which focuses on the pragmatic use of the language in order to fulfill the communication 
needs of people; language planning, an activity intended to promote linguistic change in a 
community; another important aspect is the translation process where particular attention is 
paid to the cognitive content in order to reproduce accurately all the information contained 
in the source text. 
All efforts in terminological studies are done to facilitate contacts with professionals in 
various fields and in different countries. How can this be reached? The only answer to this 
question are terminological databases, some user-friendly devices which contain great 
quantities of data stored. Databases can be organized in different ways and this depends on 
the needs of professionals in various field of knowledge. However in a terminological 
database we usually find records dealing with the entry, the definition and its source, 
variants, related terms, definitions in other languages. 
This general presentation of terminology and special languages led to the analysis of the 
special language of economics. As Capra (2005) states “rather than talking about special 
language, we can say that it is a „special‟ use of general language”. This depends on the fact 
that most of the terms used in economics come from general language and their meaning 
has changed in this new context. 
This chapter begins with a historical analysis of English influences in Italian from the 
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very first contacts in the 13 century until now. Anglicisms constitute a social and linguistic 
phenomenon that is linked to the present status of English in the global communication and 
their spread is unprecedented. 
The linguistic contact between English and Italian led to linguistic borrowings that is the 
importation of terms from one language to another. This phenomenon has affected Italian in 
various field such as economics, politics, culture, sport, fashion etc. 
A linguistic classification of all kinds of borrowings in Italian is proposed in order to 
understand better how they influence/are influenced by the receiving language. 
After these linguistic consideration, we will pass on to the core argument of the thesis, 
the language of economics. What is the language of economics and which are its main 
characteristics? We will begin from Adam Smith who was the first to institutionalize the 
language of his economics in his masterpiece The wealth of the nation (1901). In Italy, the 
main efforts were made by Giacomo Devoto, who is the first to introduce this language in 
the Italian press Lingua speciale: Dalle cronache della finanza (1939), published in the 
first number of Lingua Nostra. 
As years passed by, publications on the argument proliferated. Talking about economics 
does not mean to talk about a single field of knowledge, as it includes various sub fields 
such as finance, business, administration, accounting etc. 
However, when we talk about the language of economics in Italy, we should mention the 
most important business newspaper, Il Sole 24 ore founded by Gianni Locatelli in 1983. It 
includes reports on business, politics, developments in commercial activities etc. Researches 
about the language of Il Sole 24 ore have proliferated. In her work on anglicisms, Rosati 
(2004) analyses some words of the newspaper. She prepares some terminological sheets 
which contain information about the words‟ usage in both Italian and English. This allows 
us to understand if the actual use of the term in Italian corresponds to English. 
The last chapter of this thesis focuses on a practical analysis of ten economic terms and I 
think this is the right conclusion when working about foreign influences in a language. The 
actual use of these terms was investigated through lexicographic sources and corpora. After 
a short introduction of the main resources used for the research on anglicisms, that is 
English and Italian dictionaries as well as corpora, we will introduce a list of ten words 
which are frequently used in the language of economics. 
It is not a simple task to identify „the top-ten words ‟in the language of economics. The 
high occurrences of terms in all corpora studied let us think that English influences in this 
field are quite high. However, the Italian dictionaries provided a lot of equivalents and we 
might say that both English and their Italian equivalents are used, but yet we cannot state 
which form is more frequent. 
In the pages of this thesis, you can expand on the arguments I mentioned in this short 
introduction so I wish you can enjoy your reading. 
CHAPTER ONE 
TERMINOLOGY IN SPECIALIZED DISCOURSE 
1.1 What is terminology? 
The increasing specialization in various areas of knowledge “demands” new 
words or terms in order to express new concepts. Before dealing with 
terminology, it is necessary to understand what is it about. There are three 
main definitions of this term (Magris 2002): 
 It indicates the procedures for collecting, analysing and presenting 
terms in one or more language/s (terminology as a field of activity); 
 It indicates the theoretical reflection that is a group of principles, 
argumentations and conclusions which explain the relationship between 
concepts and terms (terminology as a discipline); 
 It refers to a group of terms which are part of a specialized area of 
discourse (i.e. terminology in medicine, law, economics, computer 
science etc.). 
Various definitions of terminology have been given by scholars over the 
years. Sager (1990:59) in his seminal work about terminology, considers it as 
‹‹[…]the study of and the field of activity concerned with the collection, 
description, processing and presentation of terms, i.e. lexical items belonging 
to specialized areas of usage of one or more languages. ›› 
Robert Dubuc, a Canadian scholar analyses a pragmatic approach to 
terminology. 
La terminologie apparait comme l‟art de repérer, d‟analyser et, au besoins , de 
créer le vocabulaire pour un technique donnée, dans une situation concrète de 
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fonctionnement de façon à répondre aux besoins d‟expression de l‟usager. 
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(Dubuc 1986:14) 
He treats special languages as living languages used by people in everyday 
communication. In this case, the task of terminologists is to collect, analyse 
and create terms in order to optimize communication. 
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Picht in his definition about terminology considers it as ‹‹[…]is the 
recoding, processing and presentation of terminological data acquired by 
terminological research.›› 
What we can deduce from the different points of view of the scholars is that 
terminology focuses on problems of reference, ambiguity(monolingual and 
bilingual situations) in multidisciplinary communication. 
The necessity to name and fix certain scientific concepts influenced the first 
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studies at the end of the 18 century by researchers in chemistry such as 
Lavoisier, De Morveau, Bertholet and Linné in botanics and zoology. At the 
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beginning of the 19 century the growing internationalization of science 
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intensified studies. Only in the first half of the 20 century terminology was 
considered a new field of study. This fact could be better explained by the 
historical overview of these years. 
The Second Industrial Revolution (1871–1914) changed common beliefs 
and social organization. Before the Revolution, people lived in the countryside 
and the most profitable activities were agriculture and crafts. At the beginning 
of the Revolution, things began to change. Innovations in technology and the 
use of machines forced people to abandon poor life in the countryside and 
move to the city. Here social divisions between lower classes and ruling 
classes became more evident. The emergence of the first forms of capitalism 
1
 Terminology is the art of collecting, analysing and creating news terms for a technical field in a 
functional situation in order to fulfill users‟ needs to express themselves. (my translation) 
2
Picht.H, Objects, concepts, terms: An Introduction to Terminology Work. 
http://www.termnet.org/downloads/english/events/tss2009/TSS2009_HP_ObjectsConceptsTerms_2.p
df 
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made people “eager” for material possession and knowledge. Education was 
seen as a tool for providing access to higher social position. However, most 
European countries tried to control education which became a privilege of the 
ruling class. In this situation, economic and technological developments gave 
birth to new professions, new ways of communicating and new linguistic 
products. This led to the proliferation of new terms and the need to establish 
new rules for their correct usage. A process of “language standardization” took 
place in order to improve communication, to fix concepts in language and to 
help build a common national identity. 
1.2 Modern terminology and further developments 
Accurate studies on terminology and language standardization began in the 
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1930 thanks to the contribution of three main schools of thought: 
1. School of Vienna: It is the most important school of thought 
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because its founder, Eugen Wüster, an Austrian engineer, is considered 
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the father of modern theory of terminology. In his masterpiece in 1931 
he writes about the relationship between terminology and linguistics 
and claims a place for terminology/LSP (Language For Special 
Purposes) in linguistics. In 1979 in his Allegemeine Terminologielehre 
he works out a theory of terminology as an interdisciplinary field of 
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study and he identifies three approaches of work on terminology: 
 Documentalists‟ approach: they look at terms from the outside. 
 Users‟ approach: writers, translators, professionals etc. 
 Specialists‟ approach: professionals interested in terminology and 
disciplinary terminology commissions. 
3
 Eugen Wüster (Wieselburg,1898 – Vienna, 1977) 
4
 Wüster E.,1931. Internationale Sprachnormung in der Technik, besonders in der Elektrotechnik. 
5
 Picht H. Schmitz K.,2001. Wuster and (applied lingusitics) . 
http://rauli.cbs.dk/ 
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