Il Dizionario dell'italiano accademico (DIA): come sono strutturate le voci e cosa sappiamo del lessico accademico dopo il progetto DIA

The article presents the results of the DIA project and is divided into two parts. The first part describes the Dictionary of Academic Italian, a freely accessible online dictionary that collects words from so-called Academic Italian. The dictionary is already online and includes two types of entries, which are described in detail in the article: word entries (which contain the definition, description, and examples of the selected words) and function entries (which contain a more detailed explanation of the communicative functions conveyed by the word entries). The second part of the article develops a more general reflection on the very notion of “academic Italian” based on the project’s findings. This variety of language is defined on the basis of six parameters, namely: the field; the semantic-pragmatic function of the words; the register; the text-type; the semantic precision; and the morphosyntax. The article ends with a brief epistemological reflection on the nature of knowledge that academic vocabulary helps to convey.