ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some of the mam threads involved in the evolution of the phenomenon of languages in contact, with particular reference to the role of bilingual speakers as mediators in the process of interpenetration between the two language systems. As English is the language adopted by many multi-ethnic and multilingual societies, the interaction between Italian and English outside Italy was bound to produce many opportunities for language contact. Interaction in conversation, negotiation, discussion and debate is not simply a succession of acts of production and reception by each partner in turn. Since Uriel Weinreich, the research literature has been increasingly inclined to refer to this linguistic condition as folk bilingualism, so as to distinguish it from the origins and features of elite bilingualism. One aim of the European Union, as a multinational and multilingual federation, is to maintain full multilingualism in support of internal democracy and political unity, against the hegemony of one international lingua franca.
