L'influenza dell'economia sulla linguistica: alcuni indizi lessicali

This article aims at pointing out the influence of economics on linguistics, through a comparative analysis of the Italian terminology in the two sciences. A phenomenon of terminological shift is observed at three different levels: 1) within non-technical everyday language, terms with a primary reference in the sphere of economy semantically extended to refer to linguistic activities, such as the verb spendere, used as a synonym of dire, ‘say’, as in spendere due parole; 2) terms drawn from the technical language of economics, and applied in linguistics to refer to technical linguistic concepts, such as that of produttività ‘productivity’; 3) multiple word expressions from the field of economics used in linguistics to label linguistic theories, such as mano invisibile ‘invisible hand’, referring to the regulating principle at work in linguistic change.