Nellaccezione

Nellaccezione is a neologism used in discussions of semantics to designate the process by which speakers infer or assign a specific sense to a word within a given discourse. The term appears to derive from nell'accezione, Italian for "in the sense of," with the -zione suffix forming a noun. It is typically presented as a meta-linguistic concept rather than a reference to a single sense itself.

Usage and interpretation: It is employed in linguistic commentary to distinguish the act of choosing among multiple potential senses (polysemy) from the senses themselves; nellaccezione emphasizes the contextual negotiation of meaning. In practice, it helps describe how a term's sense shifts across genres, communities, or rhetorical aims, and how dictionaries or corpora label senses.

Relation to other terms: It is distinct from accezione (sense) and denotazione (denotation). It aligns more with pragmatics and discourse semantics, focusing on sense assignment rather than stable lexical entries.

Criticism: As a coined term with limited attestation, nellaccezione is not universally recognized; some scholars view it as potentially redundant with existing notions of sense selection or disambiguation.

Examples: In a legal text, the word "giustizia" may take a formal nellaccezione that differs from its everyday sense in literary writing. In a sociolinguistic survey, researchers describe participants' nellaccezione of "libertà" as more individual or community-specific, depending on context and audience.

See also: accezione, polisemia, disambiguation, pragmatics, semantica.

References: Not widely standardized; attested mainly in niche linguistic discussions and online discourse since the 2020s.