Following the recent tradition of research on situations of language contact and,
in particular, on the reciprocal influences between languages in terms of textual
patterns and argumentative and rhetorical structures, the paper reports on the
analysis of a small corpus of parliamentary questions, observed in two different
settings, one national (Italy) and one supranational (the European Parliament).
More specifically, the analyzed corpus includes: 1) written questions by MPs in
the two Chambers of the Italian Parliament; 2) written questions in Italian by
Italian MEPs; 3) written questions tabled by British MEPs and translated into Italian.
The aim of the analysis was to identify the possible influence exerted by the
supranational context on the lexical and syntactic make-up of the texts produced
by Italian MEPs. The results show that, especially from the point of view of syntax
and discourse structure, questions by Italian MEPs are closer to the translated
questions than to the questions tabled in the Italian Parliament.
