Volume 2011, Issue 210 - Italian Sociolinguistics: Twenty years on

This paper focuses on regional Italian as a special observatory for both synchronic and diachronic variation in Italian. After a brief overview of some key concepts (Section 1) and the state of the art (Section 2), I consider regional Italian in a language-contact perspective (Section 3). In addition, I analyze it from the viewpoint of the reciprocal relationship between dimensions of linguistic variation (Section 4). The topics addressed here range from the process of language shift from Italo-Romance dialects toward Italian to the decreasing regional markedness of contemporary Italian. They therefore include issues related to native-like competence, ongoing restandardization, and developmental tendencies in Italian.

The paper discusses the linguistic and sociolinguistic features of the Italian minority languages and communities according to a series of comparable parameters. Our aim is not to present here a list of well-known minorities, but rather to provide an analytical tool for the interpretation of the situations in which linguistic, social and political items play different, albeit interconnected roles.

This contribution presents the main results of Italian research concerning new linguistic minorities, i.e. immigrant linguistic minorities settled in Italy, with reference to their sociolinguistic situation, their linguistic repertoires and their patterns of language use. After a socio-demographic sketch, the possibility to apply the label of linguistic minority to immigrant groups in Italy is discussed and some potential new linguistic minorities are identified (i.e. minorities speaking varieties of Romanian, Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Ukrainian, Spanish, English, Tagalog, etc.). Moreover, the structure of the immigrants' repertoire is discussed, with reference to some specific cases, and some quantitative and qualitative data on language use and L1 maintenance and shift in several domains are presented, on the basis of the relevant literature. Finally some remarks on the likely developments of the situation of new linguistic minorities in Italy and on the possible emergence of ethnolects in Italy are provided.

The relative status of dialects and Italian and the different patterns of language use have given rise to potentially different speech communities within the larger Italo-Romance domain. Such communities are mainly determined by the dimensions of geographical, social and age variation. In this paper we are going to present some of these different patterns of dialect and standard Italian, first reviewing some of the most relevant literature of the last two decades, and then analyzing the most up-dated census results concerning language use.

Like other European national languages, Italian is rapidly losing prestige in favor of English, both in national and international scientific communication. Clear signs of this declining status can be noted in particular in national and international scientific literature (research papers, editorials, etc.) in terms of language policy and usage. This paper will discuss: i) the growing impact of written texts and active biliteracy in science; ii) the meaning and the general implications of the changing language policies of Italian scientific journals; iii) diglossia in scientific communication. This particular type of diglossia has already been mentioned by many researchers and it will be compared here to the classical and the broader meaning of the notion of diglossia. Such a comparison aims to understand whether it is appropriate to apply the label of “diglossia” also to this specific type of functional compartmentalization of codes. The crucial role of biliteracy will be examined within the Italian context, which will also be compared to the Swedish one. This study concludes that, despite significant differences in the progress rate of their status loss, national languages such as Italian (and the languages of other European scientific communities) seem to witness major language displacements in favor of English in science, higher education and other élite domains.

This paper investigates language policy and ideology in present-day Italy by adopting a domain approach, i.e. an approach examining the interrelation among language practices, language beliefs and language management activities in specific domains of language use (Spolsky, Language management, Cambridge University Press, 2009a). The complex interrelation between the various languages and language varieties in contact will be explored by reporting a few examples of actual language practices. I will discuss, first of all, the possibility of assigning constitutional officiality to Italian in the changing national political scenario. The next section will be devoted the policy governing language use in the public linguistic space, with a special focus on written materials, radio and television broadcasting, and computer mediated communication. This will be followed by a section on language policy within the educational system, which is generally considered to be a crucial domain in the ecology of any speech community. The relationship between the development of the Italian nation state since political unification in 1861 and Italian as the national language will also be explored; the process of “Italianization” aimed at the eradication of Italo-Romance dialects as elements of political disunity will be pointed out as a crucial aspect in the linguistic ecology of the nation.

This study explores the problems of language shift via the example of Arbëresh, a language spoken by groups of Albanians who have migrated to the south of Italy in different waves since the 15th century. The aim of this article is to offer a picture of Arbëresh vitality from the perspective of the speakers' linguistic competence and language use, along with the attitudes towards the language. The focus will be on four Albanian enclaves which form a geographical continuum, a factor which bears on the vitality of the Albanian dialect. On the basis of the overall findings a clear hierarchy of Arbëresh vitality emerges: the four villages form an Arbëresh language-use continuum that improves as one moves from the coast towards inland locations. Moreover, a general negative attitude toward Arbëresh can be observed among the villages, even though at different levels, which was sharpened by the arrival of the “new Albanians” whose highly negative ethnolinguistic image throughout Italy has provoked a shift among Arbëresh speakers in favor of the Italian language.