Claudia Casto
Claudia Casto
Language and Lexicon of Nineteenth-Century Explorations
The project investigates the language and lexicon of nineteenth-century Italian explorations through the analysis of a selected corpus of travel texts written by explorers active between the mid and late 19th century. The aim is to provide a systematic description of the graphic, morphosyntactic, stylistic, and lexical features of this type of text, which has been little explored in linguistic studies, during a crucial period for the consolidation of post-unification Italian.
Special attention is given to technical-scientific vocabulary (zoological, botanical, geographical, ethnographic) and to phenomena of linguistic interference, such as borrowings and neologisms, which reflect the international and colonial dimension of the explorations. The research integrates tools from historical linguistics, diachronic lexicography, and corpus linguistics, with the goal of also producing a historical-descriptive glossary of the specialist terms used in travel narratives.
The project is located at the intersection between the history of the language, studies on specialized languages, and digital humanities, contributing to the enhancement of a textual heritage of great cultural and linguistic significance.
Research Interests
Italian Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Corpus Linguistics; Lexicographic approach oriented towards the development of digital tools
