Abstract
The topic of pluricentric languages is not new in the context of the multi-lingual region of South Tyrol, but it has typically only affected German and its position in the linguistic repertoire in relation to Italian, to the Tyrolean dialect and to the more prestigious standard varieties of Austria and Germany. However, it is legitimate to wonder whether even for the national language, Italian, the mere fact of being in the context of an offi-cially multilingual region, endowed with administrative autonomy, can-not have significant consequences on a sociolinguistic level, as regards its status and functions, but, in some way, also on the linguistic level. The paper will take into account the various factors that make Italian in South Tyrol a language with an anomalous status, simultaneously majority and minority language, in a context of asymmetric linguistic contact in which native, near-native and non-native varieties coexist with German and Tyrolean dialects.