The Anglicization of Italian Military Language

In times of war, particularly when there is a steady increase in the demand for effective and timely communication, military terminology is paramount. Military language, defined by Footitt (2012, 2) as “an integral part to the whole economy of the war”, not only represents the specialized language of soldiers, occupants and invaders, but it also includes the vocabulary of civilians affected by the conduct of conflicts, war reporters, interpreters, translators and, last but not least, politicians, who support or condemn military campaigns. As happened in many other specialized domains, English seems to have monopolized military language worldwide (see, for instance, Girnth and Michel 2008, 160). So, how do the Italian military deal with this terminology? In fact, they use many specialized, military-related Anglicisms – direct, indirect and even “false Anglicisms” (Furiassi 2010, 34) – in briefings, debriefings and meetings held in Italian. This “sanitized form of language” (Dauber 1999, 380), characterized by “an unconscious absorption of vocabulary and phrases” (Cappelli 2005, 57) from English, obviously creates a barrier for non-experts and is of no help either for ‘terps’ – as interpreters and translators are commonly referred to by US soldiers, who must deal with a kind of translation that is “at permanent war with itself” (Rafael 2009, 18). Moving from these assumptions, the aim of this article is twofold. The first part provides a definition of military language, specifically focusing on military English, and highlights its diversified nature, which, at the same time, includes features typical of specialized language, lingua franca, jargon, slang and terminology. After identifying the characteristics of military Italian, the second part of the article quantifies the impact of Anglicisms in Italian military language, thus determining their number as well as calculating their usage frequency, and describes the different types of Anglicisms detected; Anglicisms are extracted from a specialized corpus which includes minutes of briefings and debriefings, excerpts from technical manuals and articles appeared in military journals and on the official websites of the Italian armed forces. Since understanding military English and finding appropriate Italian equivalents often requires “linguistic acrobatics” (Rosati 2005, 43), the following sources were exploited: personal expertise, experts’ knowledge, technical manuals, glossaries, e.g. Glossario dei Termini e delle Definizioni (GTD), Glossary of Military Terms & Slang (GMTS), NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions (NGTD), dictionaries, e.g. Busetto (2004), Dictionary of Military Terms (GMT), Trebbi (2004), and the official websites of the Italian Ministero della Difesa and the Aeronautica Militare.