L’universalità del linguaggio scientifico fra norma d’uso e sistema linguistico. Plurilinguismo e monolinguismo nella comunicazione scientifica

This paper discusses the relationships among language, science, and scientific communication; it criticizes the idea that using only one language for scientific communication corresponds to a democratic improvement and a victory for universalism and scientific communitarianism. The first part deals with the common definitions of “science” (and “sciences”), its (at least, ideally) shared norms, and the possible relationships between these norms and the choice of specific languages for scientific communication. The second part discusses the concept of universality on the linguistic horizon; it criticizes the idea that the growing spread of monolingualism in contemporary scientific communication cor-responds to a “free choice” and a more democratic option than a multilingual one; it is also discussed the solidity and pertinence of the common parallelism between Latin (yesterday) and English (today), both considered as “universal” languages of science. Finally, some possible meaningful correlations among the different results of the research will be suggested.