THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING A MULTILINGUAL REPERTOIRE Silvia Dal Negro (Free University Bolzano, Italy)
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• because students are multilingual?
• because several languages are spoken?
• because all share the same multilingual repertoire?
Why multilingual?
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• the sum of the languages used by a speech community• the hierarchy of these languages• the distribution of domains
What is a linguistic repertoire?
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a community of people sharing: a social organization territoriality a set of languages language use patterns language attitudes regular and frequent interac[Berruto, Ferguson, Kloss, Gumperz, Labov]
What is a speech community?
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Kinds of speech communities
diglossic bilingual dilalic bidialectal
diacrolettictriglossic (b)triglossic (a)
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• non territorial and diversified communities, typically migrants (Chini 2009);• communities of practice instead of territorially-bound speech communities (Jenkins 2007); • standard repertoires emerge empirically out of meaningful correlations between codes and domains of use (Dell’Aquila 2005); • patterns of language use constitute speech communities (Vietti 2007);• qualitative, ideological parameters contribute to the definition of a repertoire (Dal Negro / Iannaccaro 2003).
Some recent issues
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Parameters to define a linguistic repertoire
in-group/out-group “ethnic” local “legitimate” language/ dialect glottonymes
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SCHOOL
SOCIAL NETWORK
1
SOCIAL NETWORK
2
NEIGHBOURHOOD
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The school as a speech community
• it has a definite social organization• it has a very clear territorial
definition• there are regular and frequent
interactions among its members
o is there a shared set of languages ?
o are there shared language use patterns ?
o are there shared language attitudes ?
LINEE – WP8a
Project: In search of multi-competence: Exploring language use
and language values among multilingual immigrant students in England, Italy and Austria.
Partners: Freie Universität Bozen: Gessica De Angelis, Enrica Cortinovis,
Silvia Dal Negro University of Southampton: Ros Mitchell, Amanda Hilmarsson-
Dunn, Elena Ioannidou Universität Wien: Marie-Luise Volgger
Research domains/methodologies: Subjects involved: students and teachers in a vocational
school in Bolzano Multilingualism: both local and migrant (working class) Objects of study: language use, attitudes and awareness Kind of data: questionnaire survey (160 students)
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Multilingualism as a shared experience
differences between three European contexts
England
Austria
Italy
Italy is the only country in
which multilingualis
m is not necessarily linked to (or caused by) migration
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Several potential communities
Countryof birth
Mothertongue
16 students gave a dialect as their mothertongue referring to it with a specific name (Calabrese, Lombardo, etc.).vs. very low ratings of dialect in other (also traditional) contexts DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE IN A MULTILINGUAL CONTEXT
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A shared set of languagesPothuari
Tamil
Bulgarian
German Dialetcs
Dutch
Danish Turkish
Chinese
Bangla
Russian
Portuguese Hindi
Latin
Punjab Urdu Italian
English German
Italian Dialects
French Arabic
Albanian Spanish
Persian
Macedonian
Polish Kurdish
Serbian Finnish
Sinthi
Sinhala
Rumenian
Ladin
Südtirolerisch
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Shared language use patterns
teachers during breaks school staff
Italian 100% 100%
Germ/SüT 35% --
Other l. -- --
grand-parents
father
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Shared attitudes
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Trying to sum up
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the WP8 team
the Bolzano team
all of you for listening!
Lots of thanks to …