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This article analyses the current condition of teaching Italian abroad and the ways in which second-language programmes can engage learners and meet their educational goals. While we are aware of the need for systematic action amongst various actors to ensure the future of Italian-language teaching, we choose to focus on the concept of Experiential Learning (EL). EL is a didactic action (i.e. a linguistic policy) which can be directly implemented into university courses or programmes and represents an innovative method of teaching Italian as a second language. Research on the theme of EL was conducted on Italian L2 courses at the University of Toronto Mississauga and involved instructors and students from various departments. These results lay the foundation for the creation of concrete educational policies, consistent with international literature on the action-oriented approach (CEFR, ACTFL), and for the ‘power of feasibility’ of individual classes (and individual teachers) of L2.

In mid-19th century Milan an eccentric scientist named Paolo Gorini, already well-known for his studies on the mineralisation of organic tissues, published a revolutionary scientific study entitled L’origine delle montagne (1851). He accompanied this with his discovery of a so-called plutonic liquid, spectacular public demonstrations and his proposal for a new branch of ‘experimental geology’. Resonating both on an international scale and amongst the most dynamic Milanese cultural milieus, the case surrounding Gorini was not confined to the scientific community and scientific institutions, but instead was embraced by all of society and by the literary world as well (e.g. Cattaneo, Tenca, Manzoni, Rovani and the Scapigliatura). In a city deeply scarred by revolts and recent defeats, a prestigious scientific discovery of this nature could indeed represent a sort of compensation, with both civil and political repercussions. Even Carlo Tenco’s newly-created weekly Il Crepuscolo, put its reputation on the line when from 1851 to 1853 it dedicated columns to the ever-growing polemical debate-one that continued until the 1870s before it died out. This study reconstructs for the first time the case surrounding Gorino the ‘geologist’ in its entirety, and in so doing it provides support to other recently published studies on Gorini in his more well-known vestige of ‘petrifier’ (see in particular La mummia della repubblica by Sergio Luzzatto), all the while highlighting key aspects of the cultural, scientific and literary spheres operating during the Risorgimento and unification period.

Il contributo delinea il paradigma teorico della creatività intesa, da una prospettiva semiotica e di linguistica teorica, come il quadro di riferimento formale per la variazione e il cambiamento linguistico sia nei processi di generale interazione che, su piani quantitativamente maggiori, nei fenomeni in cui lingue e identità in contatto interagiscono per negoziare il senso comunicativo.Il percorso propone una analisi della creatività che spazia dagli ambiti della Filosofia antica sino alla riflessione linguistica contemporanea che si è avuta nel Novecento tra le due sponde dell’Oceano e individua nella dimensione dell’uso e della condivisione sociale tra i parlanti il principio primo capace di guidare le forme di creatività linguistica potenzialmente illimitate verso un fine che è identitario e comunicativo, al di là e molto oltre rispetto ai modelli di regolarità e norma (in senso prescrittivo) grammaticale.Interpretare secondo questo modello il paradigma della creatività significa porre la proprietà semiotica in una posizione di prima inter pares, in cui le viene affidato non solo il “ruolo” di formatore di segni (parole, frasi, testi), ma la funzione di primaria arbitrarietà, causa ed effetto della discretizzazione delle lingue storico-naturali.