From sociolinguistics to language teaching in Football

This contribution illustrates some results of the Multisport Project. Immigration and Italian sport: a multicultural perspective for integration, activated at the University for Foreigners of Siena in 2012 with the collaboration of the Italian National Olympic Committee of the Tuscan Region. The project, the first of this kind in Italy, was born to question the issues of linguistic-cultural mediation in sports. This project starts from the assumption that sport should not be interpreted only as a game and competition but also on one hand as a cultural product and a tool to encourage the social inclusion of immigrants in Italian society and on the other hand as the enrichment of Italians with respect to the linguistic and cultural heritage brought by foreigners. For this reason, the idea was not only to propose tools that can be used for the purposes of pure scientific knowledge, but above all to demonstrate their application value in support of educational programming and cultural development actions. The research carried out within this project has therefore been dedicated to the management of plurilingual and intercultural contact in professional and amateur teams. In the latter case with attention to asylum seekers.