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This article aims to describe how the pressure wielded by the means of communication, with their affordances and techincal restrictions, has been contributing to shape not only the language usage specific to each means, but the overall current common usage of the Italian language. The grammatical norm codified by the grammar books, the standard variety, is incomplete with respect to the real usage of the speakers, given that it describes a variety of the language, neglecting the many lexical, syntactic, and textual possibilities existing in the usage. Speakers, in fact, select linguistic forms and constructs on the basis of different, interdependent factors and the standard usage itself is influenced by innovative forms continually emerging from usage. Language change over time also intertwines with the synchronic axes of variability, including the one relating to the influence of the channel used for communication. When the message passes through a medium, it must undergo an adaptation to its system of rules. The passage always involves a coding, which influences the form of the message. Linguistic usage, then, is the result of an interweaving of interdependent factors, among which the grammatical norm and the means of communication are of pivotal importance. Both of these factors impose rules, i.e. restrictions, on usage, shaping and defining it; at the same time, however, usage, by its creative and innovative nature, constantly pushes the rules, shaping the norm and finding ways to adapt the means of communication to hybrid formats. In this dynamism the language changes, it abandons worn patterns and invents new ones, adapting itself to the world and adapting the world to itself.

Il rapporto tra l’uomo e la macchina nel campo della didattica delle lingue moderne si è evoluto, fin dai primi esperimenti meccanici dell’inizio del Novecento, nella convinzione che le macchine potessero fungere da insegnanti. Tale convinzione, che disumanizza il processo di apprendimento, si è alimentata nei decenni della fiducia nelle macchine, che oggi si è ulteriormente rafforzata grazie alle TIC. Proprio le TIC, però, ci offrono la possibilità di superare il paradigma della macchina insegnante, se ne sfruttiamo le potenzialità relazionali. Le e-mail, i blog, i social media consentono di costruire un ambiente virtuale, progettato (e valutato) dal docente ma autogestito dagli studenti, con prevedibili ricadute sulla motivazione e sulla percezione di autenticità del materiale studiato. Si tratta di una potenzialità non priva di controindicazioni e insidie, che, però, possono e devono essere risolte se si vuole attribuire alla tecnologia un ruolo davvero efficace, ma nello stesso tempo non invadente, nel processo di insegnamento/apprendimento delle lingue. Teaching machines and the virtual environment: a survey of a century of language teaching with ICT and a look at the future The relationship between man and machine in the field of teaching modern languages has evolved, starting from the first mechanical experiments of the early twentieth century, based on the belief that machines could be teachers. This conviction, which dehumanizes the learning process, has been fueled over the decades by the confidence in machines, which today has been further strengthened thanks to ICT. But ICTs, however, offer us the possibility to overcome the paradigm of the teacher machine, if we exploit its relational potentials. E-mails, blogs, social media allow us to build a virtual environment, designed (and evaluated) by the teacher and yet self-managed by the students, with predictable consequences on the motivation and perception of the authenticity of the material studied. It is a potential not without contraindications and pitfalls, which, however, can and must be resolved if we technology to have a truly effective, but at the same time non-invasive, role in the language teaching/learning process.

Il laboratorio di scrittura per il recupero degli OFA tenuto negli anni 2017-2018 e 2018-2019 al Dipartimento di Civiltà antiche e moderne dell’Università di Messina ha consentito di raccogliere un corpus di centinaia di elaborati scritti appartenenti ai generi del riassunto e del commento. Questo materiale è in corso di organizzazione e di analisi, ma ha già permesso di rilevare alcune difficoltà ricorrenti, delle quali in questo contributo si presenta una esemplificazione commentata. Gli errori commentati sono divisi a seconda della macroabilità coinvolta maggiormente, la lettura/comprensione e la scrittura/espressione. Nel contributo, inoltre, si illustrano i principi didattici alla base del laboratorio di scrittura, elaborati nel quadro del confronto tra l’apprendimento della modalità scritta della lingua italiana da parte di parlanti nativi e quello dell’italiano come L2 da parte di stranieri. Con l’adozione di questo quadro teorico è stato possibile interpretare i difetti in ricezione e produzione come errori interlinguistici e impostare il processo correttivo sul modello dell’informazione metalinguistica, in accordo con gli studi acquisizionali più recenti. The two sides of the writing lab for the recovery of OFA: observatory on the weaknesses of students, an experiment in teaching Italian The writing lab for the recovery of OFA held in 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 at the Dipartimento di Civiltà antiche e moderne of the Università di Messina allowed us to collect a corpus of hundreds of written works belonging to the genres of the summary and comment. This material is in the process of being organized and analyzed, but it has already been possible to detect some recurrent difficulties, of which an example is presented and commented on in this paper. The errors were divided according to the macro-ability involved the most, reading / understanding and writing / expression. The teaching principles underlying the writing workshop are also illustrated in the paper, developed in the context of comparison between learning written Italian language by native speakers and that of Italian L2 by foreigners. With the adoption of this theoretical framework, it was possible to interpret the defects in reception and production as interlinguistic errors and set up the corrective process on the model of metalinguistic information, in line with the most recent studies on language acquisition.

This contribution consists of two parts. The first is a corpus-based survey on a corpus of tweets obtained from the archive of Twitter by searching for keywords within predefined time spans. Purpose of the investigation is to verify what terms are most commonly used today in Italy to define the people who arrived in the past three years through the Strait of Sicily on makeshift means of transport. In the second part of the research, the lexical evolution will be subsumed under Moscovici (1976; 1984; 1997)’s framework of social representations, through which I will argue the different designations of the migrant are the expressions of different forms of social representations of this figure, more or less oriented and stereotyped. Finally, the imaginary will emerge as the thrust which triggers the evolutionary lexical process. The social imaginary theorized by Castoriadis (1975; 1988), will be, then, identified as the force that continually creates new senses for words.