“E dai, mamma! Che cosa cringe!”. Anglicisms in dubbed Italian in the recent teen drama series “Boo, Bitch”, “Heartbreak High”, “Heartstopper” and “Never Have I Ever”.

The aim of this paper is to describe the presence of anglicisms in youth speech in the dubbed versions of recent TV series aimed at a young audience and portraying high school students. The products are four popular comedy-drama teen series produced by Netflix in the 2020s and set in various English-speaking countries: Boo, Bitch (2022), Heartbreak High (2022-), Heartstopper (2022-) and Non ho mai/Never Have I Ever (2020-2023). The most frequent and the most interesting anglicisms found in the dubbed dialogues are discussed, commenting on their typology, thematic domains/semantic fields and their role in creating youth language. The article also contains a preliminary comparison between the graphic novel and the TV series of Heartstopper in Italian translation. Comments by Italian dubbing professionals on how they adapted and dubbed Heartstopper are also included. These confirm the results of the linguistic analysis, that is, that some specific anglicisms are used in Italian dubbing to connote youth language and create characterisation.