Trilingual institutional communication in Switzerland: The place of Italian (Ringvorlesung Sprache und Kommunikation: verbal, digital, multimodal)

Angela Ferrari und Filippo Pecorari

We analyze the language varieties of modern Italian used in Switzerland and in Italy, adopting the theoretical framework of Text Linguistics, with special attention to the interaction between linguistic structures (morphology, syntax, punctuation, lexicon) and microtextual structures.

The goal of the project is to provide a description and a qualitative evaluation of Swiss Institutional Italian (i.e. the language used by the Swiss Confederation, the Canton of Ticino and the Canton of the Grisons in official texts). In this lecture we present some of the results we have obtained exploring the Swiss Federal Constitution, the language of texts translated from German into Italian, and the official communication in Ticino during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project also has an applied dimension: for example, we are involved in the training of Italian translators of the Federal Chancellery and in the drafting of a guide on gender issues in official texts; we are also collaborating with the Ticino authorities and with Pro Infirmis in view of the production of clear texts for citizens and easy-to-read texts for people with intellectual disabilities.