In many European languages the National Standard Variety is converging with spoken informal
and socially marked varieties. In Italian this process is giving rise to a new standard variety
called Neo-standard Italian which partly consists of regional features. This book contributes
to current research on standardization in Europe by offering a comprehensive overview of the
re-standardization dynamics in Italian. Each chapter investigates a specific dynamic shaping
the emergence of Neo-standard Italian and Regional Standard Varieties such as the acceptance
of previously non-standard features the reception of Old Italian features excluded from the
standard variety the changing standard language ideology the retention of features from
Italo-Romance dialects the standardization of patterns borrowed from English and the
developmental tendencies of standard Italian in Switzerland. The contributions investigate
phonetic phonological prosodic morphosyntactic and lexical phenomena addressed by several
empirical methodologies and theoretical vantage points. This work is of interest to scholars
and students working on language variation and change especially those focusing on standard
languages and standardization dynamics.
