Per uno studio sull'oscillazione di sé stesso/se stesso nell'italiano dei giornali

The article explores a crucial issue within the scholarly debate on Italian orthography, i.e. the coexistence of the variants sé stesso and se stesso. This is one of the few surviving instances of coexisting spelling variants in the Italian language: whereas the norm requires that the accent be used, the second form is predominant in common usage. This is probably due to the influence of a pseudo-rule, which states that the accent is unnecessary when se is followed by stesso or medesimo. The article investigates their alternate occurrence in Italian online and print newspapers by analyzing a corpus of national and local texts published over the last five years. The aim is to provide a significant sample of the usage of both forms in the language of newspaper communication.