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Chapter 8. Contested orthographies

Taking a closer look at spontaneous writing in Piedmontese
  • Emanuele Miola
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Contested Languages
This chapter is in the book Contested Languages

Abstract

Piedmontese (today mainly spoken in Italy and Argentina) is one of the non-standardized languages of Italy with the most highly normalized orthographies. Nonetheless, new orthographic reforms and revisions were proposed in the early 2000s, allegedly in order to reflect the habitual choices of the speech community/ies, which are fully literate, but only in Italian or in Spanish.

This chapter examines the graphic choices of Piedmontese speakers with no command of the written language, when posting to Facebook groups in which the use of Piedmontese is possible and/or prescribed.

The data suggests that naïve writers of Piedmontese adhere closely to Standard Italian orthographic choices when writing Piedmontese, and use a highly restricted range of allographs to represent the more distinctive phonemes in the Piedmontese sound inventory. Interestingly, these allographs generally diverge from both a strictly phonemic orthography, and the various orthographies proposed from a ‘top-down’ perspective for Piedmontese. They seem rather to be consistent with the way in which writers of other non-standardised languages of Italy naïvely represent phonemes that are not part of the Italian inventory.

Abstract

Piedmontese (today mainly spoken in Italy and Argentina) is one of the non-standardized languages of Italy with the most highly normalized orthographies. Nonetheless, new orthographic reforms and revisions were proposed in the early 2000s, allegedly in order to reflect the habitual choices of the speech community/ies, which are fully literate, but only in Italian or in Spanish.

This chapter examines the graphic choices of Piedmontese speakers with no command of the written language, when posting to Facebook groups in which the use of Piedmontese is possible and/or prescribed.

The data suggests that naïve writers of Piedmontese adhere closely to Standard Italian orthographic choices when writing Piedmontese, and use a highly restricted range of allographs to represent the more distinctive phonemes in the Piedmontese sound inventory. Interestingly, these allographs generally diverge from both a strictly phonemic orthography, and the various orthographies proposed from a ‘top-down’ perspective for Piedmontese. They seem rather to be consistent with the way in which writers of other non-standardised languages of Italy naïvely represent phonemes that are not part of the Italian inventory.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction
  4. Chapter 1. What are contested languages and why should linguists care? 3
  5. Section 1. The broader picture
  6. Chapter 2. Contested languages and the denial of linguistic rights in the 21st century 21
  7. Chapter 3. Democracy 41
  8. Section 2. Identifying and perceiving contested languages
  9. Chapter 4. Mixing methods in linguistic classification 59
  10. Chapter 5. The cost of ignoring degrees of Abstand in defining a regional language 87
  11. Chapter 6. Deconstructing the idea of language 105
  12. Chapter 7. Surveying the ethnolinguistic vitality of two contested languages 125
  13. Chapter 8. Contested orthographies 143
  14. Chapter 9. Revitalising contested languages 163
  15. Section 3. Working with contestedness
  16. Chapter 10. Community-based language planning 185
  17. Chapter 11. Teaching Piedmontese 199
  18. Chapter 12. Publishing a grammar and literature anthology of a contested language 209
  19. Chapter 13. Which Sardinian for education? 221
  20. Section 4. Beyond contested languages
  21. Chapter 14. Citizenship and nationality 237
  22. Chapter 15. The language ideology of Esperanto 247
  23. Index 269
https://doi.org/10.1075/wlp.8.08mio

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction
  4. Chapter 1. What are contested languages and why should linguists care? 3
  5. Section 1. The broader picture
  6. Chapter 2. Contested languages and the denial of linguistic rights in the 21st century 21
  7. Chapter 3. Democracy 41
  8. Section 2. Identifying and perceiving contested languages
  9. Chapter 4. Mixing methods in linguistic classification 59
  10. Chapter 5. The cost of ignoring degrees of Abstand in defining a regional language 87
  11. Chapter 6. Deconstructing the idea of language 105
  12. Chapter 7. Surveying the ethnolinguistic vitality of two contested languages 125
  13. Chapter 8. Contested orthographies 143
  14. Chapter 9. Revitalising contested languages 163
  15. Section 3. Working with contestedness
  16. Chapter 10. Community-based language planning 185
  17. Chapter 11. Teaching Piedmontese 199
  18. Chapter 12. Publishing a grammar and literature anthology of a contested language 209
  19. Chapter 13. Which Sardinian for education? 221
  20. Section 4. Beyond contested languages
  21. Chapter 14. Citizenship and nationality 237
  22. Chapter 15. The language ideology of Esperanto 247
  23. Index 269
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