Abstract

The paper offers a comparison among three Sicilian plurilingual authors, Andrea Camilleri, Silvana Grasso and Goliarda Sapienza. Starting from the analysis of some short examples, the article aims to show the different forms of linguistic contact in relation to different categories: interference, loans, calques, code-switching and code-mixing. Actually, the three authors tend to employ different means of contamination: Andrea Camilleri generally adopts code mixing; Silvana Grasso displays an expressionistic linguistic texture by using loans, neologisms and several register varieties; Goliarda Sapienza exclusively employs code-switching as an attempt to give a recognizable and mimetic voice to her characters.