De Mauro was Professor Emeritus of General Linguistics at the Sapienza University of Rome, and held the post of Italian Minister of Education from 2000 to 2001.

In 1963, De Mauro published the monumental Storia linguistica dell'Italia unita ("Linguistic History of Unified Italy").

Two years later De Mauro published L'introduzione alla semantica ("Introduction to Semantics") and, in 1971, Senso e significato.

[1] After preparing the entries on semiotics of the Treccani encyclopedia and publishing the short volume Minisemantica (1982), De Mauro turned to the problem of language education.

He was especially interested in the likely advantages of Esperanto for the EU legislative system, as a witness or reference version of European laws and official documents.