Question Time: Comparing and contrasting parliamentary questions in Britain, Italy and the EU

Abstract

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.