L'influenza dell'Inglese sul linguaggio dei videogiocatori: il caso di League of Legends

The aim of this study is to analyse the frequency and variety of anglicisms used in Italian media relative to the popular videogame League of Legends in order to define the influence the English language has on the language spoken by Italian gamers. I will make use of corpora in order demonstrate that the use of Corpus Linguistics can be useful in the analysis of videogame language. In order to conduct my analysis, three different corpora will be created: one composed of written articles, one composed of commentaries of World Championship games by Riot Games employees, and one composed of commentaries of World Championship games by Italian gamers. I will use the software AntConc to extract from the corpora created a list of anglicisms that meet the preestablished frequency requirements. After an introduction to the theory that inspired the study, I will then focus on the analysis of the extracted anglicisms and their Italian translations, in order to define which type of text is influenced by the English language the most. The analysis section will be composed of two parts: in the first one I will present my hypothesis about the variety and quantity of anglicisms in each corpus and include tables listing the anglicisms that reach the critical value established. The second part will be dedicated to the discussion of the results.