“How come you’re not shipping them??? They’re canon”: a look at the language of Italian fandom – The aim of this article is to examine a relatively recent phenomenon in the language of fandom, i.e. various communities of fans that form around a cultural event or artifact, such as a book, a TV show, a movie, etc. This research is located within fan studies, however, it mainly investigates the linguistic aspects of being a fan in Italian. The distinctive feature of the language of fandom as a specific variety, associated with a particular topic and activity and mediated by Internet communication tools, is a specialist lexicon, understandable only to community members. The article concentrates on loanwords from English which in the case of Italian primarily comprise the vocabulary of fandom.

The article is based on the assumption that discourse plays a key role in constructing social reality. This also applies to ableism, i.e. discrimination against people with disabilities: the forms used to talk about this phenomenon shape its image and real relations within society. Inclusive language represents an attempt to counter ableism at the level of discourse. This text aims to analyze selected lexical units of Italian considered inclusive and demonstrate their weaknesses in preventing the exclusion of people with disabilities.