Manual of Romance Sociolinguistics] 18. The languages and dialects of Italy.pdf (original) (raw)
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A sociolinguistic perspective of language-education problems in Italy
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1989
The linguistic composition of Italy 1 includes: i. regional Systems (the Gallo-Italic, Veneto, Friulan, Tuscan, 'median', 'intermediate southern', 'extreme southern', and Sardinian), subdivided further into a number of local varieties, which roughly correspond to the geographic-administrative divisions of the peninsula and its islands. Except for the Tuscan and Roman varieties, these 'dialects', äs they are called in Italy, are not varieties of Italian, the national-official language of Italy; 2 they constitute, however, a medium of communication which is still used extensively, especially in certain areas. A recent direct survey, carried out by Doxa in 1982, 3 offers a statistical estimate on the basis of self-evaluational answers: within the family, dialect Speakers amount roughly to 46.7%, Italian Speakers amount to 29.4%, and Speakers who alternate between Italian and dialect amount to 23.9%. Outside the family, in friendship interactions, Speakers who use mostly dialect amount to 36.1%, and Italian Speakers amount to 44.9%. Even in the knowledge that these figures may not be considered reliable, the passive-active use of dialects still appears very strong, particularly in certain geographic areas such äs the Triveneto' area, Sicily, Campania, Abruzzi, and Sardinia; 4 ii. 'alloglot idioms' (Franco-Provengal, Provengal, Ladin, German, Slovene, Catalan, Greek, and Serbo-Croatian) which exist side by side with the regional Systems and the regional varieties of Italian. In these cases, too, an estimate of the quantity and quality of their active and passive use is highly problematical; iii. the presence, in certain dialect contexts, of so called Oases-isles' where dialects, quite different from the dialect spoken in the surrounding context, are used: Emilian in Tuscany; the Sassari variety of Sardinian, composed of a mixture of Italian, Pisan, and Genoan dialects, the Gallura
After a brief description of the two previous Special issues on Italian sociolinguistics (both appeared in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language in 1989 and 2011), a general overview of the main trends of today's Italian sociolinguistic research is given. It is maintained that a relevant portion of linguistic research carried out in Italy during the last few decades falls almost entirely within the boundaries of sociolinguistics. Then an outline of the most relevant aspects of the Italian sociolinguistic situation is sketched, in order to highlight the main issues dealt with in Italian sociolinguistic studies. Much attention is paid to the Italian repertoire and to the studies focusing on the different dimensions of variation in the Italian language: i.e. the ongoing process of restandardization; the regional, social and functional varieties; spoken varieties of Italian; but also historical sociolinguistics, linguistic policy, language and gender and so on. The paper will then give a brief summary of the various papers of the present Special issue.
The paper deals with the role of dialect among young Sicilian speakers. After a brief overview of the conditions of local dialects in Western Europe, I will discuss the main results of research carried out by means of different methodological approaches and types of data: (i) self-evaluative data elicited through questionnaire; (ii) a corpus of spontaneous spoken language; (iii) a written corpus of e-mails, text messages, posts in social networks, etc. The study shows a strong functional specialization of the dialect in young speakers' repertoire, above all of those living in towns and with a high sociocultural background, who use it almost only in joking or to strengthen aggressive speech acts. In electronic media young speakers use a lot of polylanguaging, mixing their own language and dialect with bits of foreign languages and of other regional dialects. This style aims at expressing a multiple identity, made up of both local, national and globalized components. The dialect thus acquires an important communicative function within the repertoire of young semi-speakers, although their competence with this code is extremely reduced.
Standardization Patterns and Dialect/Standard Convergence: a North-Western Italian Perspective
The paper is inspired by the typology of "dialect/standard constellations" outlined in Auer (2005, 2011), which aims to detect common dynamics in the current processes of dialect/standard convergence in Europe. The specific sociolinguistic situation addressed in this paper involves Italian, Piedmontese and Occitan in Piedmont, a north-western region of Italy. We will analyze a set of linguistic features with the aim of depicting the dynamics of intralinguistic and interlinguistic convergence as they relate to the ongoing standardization processes in these languages. Some adjustments to the two types of repertoires drawn by Auer (diaglossia and endoglossic medial diglossia) will be proposed to better suit them, respectively, to the Italo-Romance continuum between Piedmontese rural dialects and standard Italian (which actually consists of two separate subcontinua with intermediate varieties) and to the relationship between Occitan dialects and their planned standard variety (as well as that between Piedmontese and its "Frenchified" standard variety).