Keynote: Standard im Wandel, Wandel als Standard.
given by: Prof. Dr. Silvia Natale
The first part of the lecture traces the extraordinary linguistic history of Italian, which differs fundamentally from that of other European national languages. While these were often influenced by political, administrative (see France or Spain) or religious factors (see Germany), in the Italian context, a different question remained central well into the 19th century: which variety is suitable as the language of literature? For a long time, considerations of standard language were primarily negotiated from an aesthetic point of view, with real sociolinguistic factors largely ignored. It was not until the (late) founding of the nation state in 1861 that a development began which gradually established Italian in everyday communication and gradually led to the displacement of dialects from private domains. The first native speakers of Italian in the sense of L1 speakers were basically only born during or after the Second World War. Nevertheless, Italian spread as a common spoken language within a few decades and can therefore be described, as De Mauro (2011) puts it, as a linguistic ‘revolution’. This rapid spread set in motion profound linguistic processes, including the Italianisation of dialects and the development of different forms of regional Italian (italiani regionali, cf. Telmon 1990), i.e. locally coloured variants of the standard language. Since the 1980s, a phase of restandardisation has also been observed, which has led to a complex linguistic situation with regard to the standard language. As Cerruti and Vietti (2022) show, Italian today has a ‘double standard situation’ in which two standards with partly different functional and structural characteristics coexist.
The second part of the lecture describes the developments in restandardisation in more detail and asks how the complex structure of standard Italian continues to change in a mobile and networked world. Particular attention is paid to new Italian migration within Europe and the question of how standardisation, variation and linguistic ideologies are developing outside Italy. In this context, the MovIt research project is also presented, which deals with the production and perception of standard Italian in the context of migration and provides new empirical insights into the dynamics of Italian beyond national borders.
Literature
- Cerruti, M., & Vietti, A. (2022). Identifying language varieties: Coexisting standards in spoken Italian. In K. Beaman & G. Guy (Eds.), The coherence of linguistic communities: Orderly heterogeneity and social meaning. Routledge.
- De Mauro, T. (2014). Storia linguistica dell’Italia repubblicana: Dal 1946 ai nostri giorni (1. Aufl.). GLF editori Laterza.
- Maraschio, N., & Matarrese, T. (2021). The Role of Literature in Language Standardization: The Case of Italy. In W. Ayres-Bennett & J. Bellamy (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization (pp. 313–346). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Natale, S., & Marzo, S. (2023). Standard and neo-standard in mobile communities: The case of German-speaking Switzerland. Italian Journal of Linguistics, 35(1), 213–232.
- Telmon, T. (Ed.). (1990). Guida allo studio degli italiani regionali. Edizioni dell’Orso.
