New Banking Communication in Italy: from Administrative Transparency to Language Transparency

The Bank of Italy has recently issued a new set of regulations on "transparency in operations and banking and financial services" and "correctness of the relations between intermediaries and customers." In addition to establishing a series of administrative and organizational obligations directed at the banking system, the new regulations also contain - and this is undoubtedly a significant innovation - language mandates; they impose the use of clear and comprehensible language in documentation directed at clients, and also lay down a series of criteria for drafting the texts. After providing a brief overview of the new regulations, this article focuses on the regulations dealing with language. After setting forth the instructions of the Bank of Italy regarding the texts' language and placing these instructions in the context of analogous initiatives both in Italy and abroad (all of which are linked, to a greater or lesser degree, to the so-called plain language movement), the paper critically analyzes the approach that has been implemented highlighting its strenghts and weaknesses in the light of applied linguistics, writing and language planning research. Substantial thought is devoted to an examination of the obstacles that could potentially stand in the way of the enacted regulations, including, on the one hand, the intrinsic limits of the instruments adopted, which threaten to impair their effectiveness in the legal or linguistic and communicative domains, and on the other, social and psychological reasons, i.e., attitudes and perceptions about language that characterize the "discursive community" of the banking sector, which make it little inclined to modify its own institutionalized modes of communication.