Anglicisms in the 2006 Olympic Winter Games

This article is a corpus-based analysis of sport-related Anglicisms in Italian. After a short historical introduction to the influence of English in sports terminology, a comparison of the names of the Olympic sports in four languages, English, Italian, French and German, and an evaluation of the influence of English on the terms used for the 15 Olympic disciplines, it focuses more closely on Italian, and on the Anglicisms which appeared in a corpus of articles collected during the Olympic event. The most frequent Anglicisms are identified in relation to their Italian equivalents, when they exist, in order to evaluate their integration and status in the language. Possible reasons for preferring English or Italian terms are advanced. Then, although this analysis mainly considers direct Anglicisms, forms of derivation and pseudo-Anglicisms are described. Finally, a closer look is taken at sports that are particularly interesting as far as Anglicisms are concerned, and to peculiar terms which convey strong connotative meaning.