Multilingualism and diaspora: The language(s) of Bristol Italians


Multilingualism and diaspora: The language(s) of Bristol Italians

Anna Gallo

University of Naples “Federico II” / University of Bern

ccCC BY 4.0

Cite as: Gallo, A. (2017, December). Multilingualism and diaspora: The language(s) of Bristol Italians. Paper presented at the Third UC Intergenerational Transmission of Minority Languages Symposium: Challenges and Benefits. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5661868

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Multilingualism is key to social research, because language mirrors society and its changes (Labov 1972), and as such it has been at core of sociolinguistic investigations for the past few decades. Specifically, the unprecedented post-WWII mass movements entailed substantial social and linguistic changes in the UK. Yet, despite displacement and diaspora, white minorities have rarely been seen as ‘ethnic’ and are still under-researched in sociolinguistics. The present talk addresses the case of post-WWII Italian migrants in Bristol.

Despite the evident benefits of language maintenance, Italian families seem to experience language shift in the span of three generations (e.g. De Fina 2012). However, speakers may combine resources from their multilingual repertoires according to their level of language mastery, social practices and ethnic orientation. Particularly, the multi-layered landscape of Anglo-Italian communities (e.g. the coexistence of English, dialect and Standard Italian), offers stimulating socio-linguistic cues. In this respect, participants’ minority language(s) may convey key functions in interaction, endorsing their Italianness.

Drawing on an intergenerational approach, this talk provides qualitative and quantitative data, based on ethnographic observation, questionnaires and interviews, in order to understand the degree of language(s) maintenance and shift, informants’ intra- and inter-linguistic code-mixing and its correlation with identity and ethnic orientation.




COMMENTS (2)


Hi Anna,

Some really interesting data, thanks for your presentation! Would you mind commenting a little further how Bristalians (I love that word!) feel connected to their Italian identity apart from their desire to maintain language? I’m always interested to hear how others construct their identities.

The examples of semantic fields for switches are also really interesting. It seems normal to me that Bristalians might refer to their grandparents using Nonno/Nonna – the same way monolingual English speakers might refer to their “grandparents” when they talk about the pair of them, but when refering to each one specifically might use more personal terms like “my pop”, “gramps”, “my nana”, etc. (Personally I use ‘Oma’ and ‘Opa’ to refer to my own grandparents even though I don’t speak a word of German, to differentiate them from the people I refer to as “grandma” and “grandad”, even when talking to strangers who wouldn’t know the difference! I’m not sure I would consider it as a marker or connection to an ethnic identity though.) Love to hear more examples of this!

    Hi Amy,

    Thanks for your comments and I apologise for the late reply. I would say that the ‘language and identity’ issue among Bristalians is multilayered. Although Italianness is still perceived and maintained, unlike some other Italian communities, Bristalians still tend to feel their regional belonging as stronger than their Italianness. In other words, they still draw a line, though less significant than before, between the two major regional identities (i.e. Sicilians vs. Neapolitans, or rather Sicilians vs. Italians), although second generations grew up together mainly. This definitely had an impact on how the community was socially organised and, therefore, on how their heritage and social contacts have been maintained. The perception of the ‘Italian way of being’ is complex itself, inasmuch as some of them have both positive and negative feelings about how Italians used to and still behave. That is also why I decided to call them Bristalians instead of using ‘Bristol Italian Community’.

    Apart from their language practices – younger Bristalians are experiencing the shift though- Bristalians tend to construct their identity socially as opposed to the English mainly. Sometimes during our chats some 2nd generation informants even switched into Italian or dialect to stress this point. Not only did some of them mention Italian traditions, but also they discussed daily ‘ways of being and behaving’, as they put it. To mention one example, visiting their relatives constantly, being welcoming and definitely more family-bound. Some of them really did care about these ‘social bahaviours’, which are missing in the English society . Also, using Italian and or dialect as a ‘secret code’ was mentioned as a plus by most of them (i.e. once some of them immdiately turned into Italian to discuss Brexit when we were having a coffee in a public place).

    As regards your second point, yes. Although my infomants mostly have both parents related to the Italian background, nonno and nonna were also used by two half-English informants to refer to their Italian grandmother and grandfather. To what extent the use of this words is connected to these informants’ perception of Italianness definitely needs to be further investigated. However, the use of such words – specifically nonno and nonna but also names of places and campagna, for example, as I showed in the slides- seems to be a highly recurrent pattern cross-generationally and, therefore, I looked at this as well. While I was expecting them to use mainly Italian words to refer to food (which, however, was not always the case and that was a bit unexpected), I was a bit surprised at switches occurring at intra-sentential level, as with verbs. One further example of this, is ‘you mangia first’, meaning ‘you eat first’.

    I hope this answers your questions, at least partly. However, in case you would like to discuss this further, do not hesitate to get in touch maybe via email!

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