Italian sounding nel vino: le scelte linguistiche e le implicazioni economiche

The economic performance of some products can be affected by their place of origin, particularly when it is perceived as a specialized place, more capable than others to design and produce that kind of product. At the same time, the language used in the presentation and promotion of a product is an explicit demonstration of a link (real or assumed) with the place where this language is spoken and widespread. Starting from these two research streams, the extant work focuses on the study of goods where a different language from the one of the actual place of production is intentionally used and particularly on the case of the so called Italian sounding, namely the use of Italian terms in goods not produced in Italy. From the review of the theoretical contributions about this theme, it emerges that the Italian sounding phenomenon can occur through different typologies of reference to Italianity, often of a linguistic origin. Following this strand, our study identifies the most recurring categories of reference to Italianity in the case of Italian sounding with an empirical application to the field of wine. The empirical analysis is implemented on an original database created with web scraping and text mining techniques on wine sales websites relevant for the United States, Great Britain and Australian markets. In this way, a wealth of information has been collected over more than seventeen thousand wine labels, identifying those made in Italy, those Italian sounding and those not Italian. Results show which reference categories are prevailing and which are residual, the instance of their combinations and some associated price indicators.