Anglicisms in Italian Golf Terminology

Sports and recreational activities have always attracted and fascinated people. However, thanks to the diffusion of Internet mass-media over the last ten years, their range has widened enormously: nowadays, everyone can access coverage of their favorite sport. Of course, this situation gives birth to remarkable consequences: the first one is that the media publications that cover a certain sport need to be accessible by speakers of multiple languages at the same time in order to avoid expensive translations. Fortunately, English is widely diffused as a global languages and bridges the gap between countries and cultures, so, for example, the official sites of most of the governing sports associations are entirely in English, sometimes even as the only available option. The second natural consequence of the globalization of sports is the permeation of their specific language into the current language or languages of the fruitors. Sports terminology thus becomes an organic part of sport itself. Since English-speaking countries have always been pioneers in the world of sports and in their diffusion, English is logically the native language from which many specific sports terms are taken: football, rugby, basketball, tennis are just some examples of popular activities that originated in the British Isles and whose specific terms are mainly taken from English itself. As these sports become gradually more and more popular in other countries, where a different language is spoken, they sometimes retain their original terms unchanged, or only slightly adapted, generating Anglicisms that may even become part of the receiving language at large. However, not all English terms are maintained unchanged, though, as there are also countries that favor translation over borrowing proper. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the phenomenon of Anglicisms in the Italian specialized language of golf. The first chapter consists of a brief analysis of the diffusion of sports-related English borrowings into the languages of other countries; the second chapter presents a short overview of the history of the game of golf and its diffusion all over the world, with special focus on its introduction and development in Italy, from the very first club opened to the appointment of the most important competition in professional golf in 2022. Finally, the third and final chapter is a glossary of the Anglicisms found into the Italian golf terminolgy.