Tra focalizzazione e diffusione: Itinerari nella storia linguistica dell'italiano

This paper deals with the concepts of focusing and diffusion and how they interact in the history of a language; whereas the former implies regularity and stability in the use of the code, the latter refers to a situation of great variability . Some defining moments in the history of the Italian language (the Late Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Unifica- tion of Italy) are here analyzed and discussed in terms of the focusing / diffusion distinction . Moreover, the sociolinguistic situation of contemporary Italian is depicted by fitting these concepts into a Coserian framework, involving such notions as habla (speech), norma (norm) and sistema (system).