Department of Italian
Into Italy and Out of Italy:
The Language and Culture of Migrants
Conference, 14 - 15 November 2008
Description
As part of this year's Settimana della lingua italiana sponsored by the Italian
Institute of Culture, we are currently organising a 2-day conference on the language and
culture of migration entitled 'Into Italy and Out of Italy: The Language and Culture of
Migrants'.
The aim of the conference is to bring together, for the first time, two different but related
strands of research surrounding the language and culture of migration within the Italian
context. The first concerns the mass emigration of circa 26 million Italians (Haller 1997)
out of Italy during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century to such
countries as the UK, Germany, USA, Canada, Latin America and Australia. The second
involves the more recent phenomenon of immigration into Italy from, for example, former
eastern European communist states and North Africa. In both cases, there arise significant
questions about the cultural and, in particular, linguistic integration of such immigrant
communities in their host country. Key in this respect is the issue of national identity, which,
especially in subsequent generations, is increasingly defined by linguistic competence in
the migrant language (characterised by growing attrition and hybridism; Gonzo & Saltarelli
1989) and that of the host country (characterised by ever greater competence). This leads
to complex and often unstable and shifting concepts of native language or mother tongue,
which can vary greatly across the different generations of the migrant community. The
proposed conference will therefore examine these issues from two distinct but
complementary perspectives, bringing together leading (socio)linguists in the field and a
number of scholars working on migrant Italian literatures. The former will provide both
general overviews and in-depth case studies of the structural and social development of
Italian varieties spoken in representative immigrant Italian communities around the world,
whereas the latter will introduce and explore issues and themes that specifically characterise
Italian migrant literature and film (e.g. national and linguistic identity, cultural conflict,
integration), as well as presenting detailed studies of some of the most influential literary
figures in the field. Particularly important in this respect from a historical perspective are
the parallels that can be drawn between the use of Italian as a literary language in previous
centuries by authors whose mother tongue was one of the many dialects of Italy (the so-called
Questione della lingua) and the use of Italian by modern migrant writers, both in
and out of Italy, for whom (standard) Italian might not be their mother language.
To reinforce this integrated approach to the study of the language and culture of migration,
which, to date, has been characterised by little, if any, collaboration between linguistic and
literary scholars, the conference will include not only a number of individual conference
papers, but also a number of interviews with a selection of modern migrant authors,
including T. Lamri (Algeria, now in Ravenna), C. Ali-Farah (Somalia, now in Rome) and from
an earlier generation G. Pressburger (from Hungary, now in Rome and Trieste), as well as an
interview with the film director G. Amelio (Rome), with a showing of his film Lamerica. Given
the themes of the conference and its integration into the events of the annual 'Settimana della
lingua italiana', which aims to raise the profile of Italian language and culture among the
general public, it is envisaged that the conference will be of interest not only to researchers,
postgraduates and teachers of Italian at all levels, but also to the general public and, in
particular, the large Italian community in the UK. The conference presentations will be based
on the expertise and research of the various contributors, and the interviews with migrant
authors will also offer the possibility to explore and test directly new ideas and hypotheses
about recent linguistic and literary developments in a number of migrant communities in
and out of Italy. From this synergy we trust that new insights, reflections and stimuli for
further original projects will emerge.
Further information about the conference will appear in due course. For any informal
inquiries, please contact Dr Adam Ledgeway
PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME
Papers
- Camilla Bettoni (University of Verona) Tra lingua, dialetto e inglese: mezzo secolo di emigrazione italiana in Australia
- Jenny Burns (University of Warwick) Into and out of Italian: the mobility of language(s) in immigration literature in Italian
- Kathy Burrell (De Montfort University) 'We are Italians but we don't have nothing in common': social ties and cultural identities in a small Italian community
- Antonio d'Alfonso (Montreal) Born Italian in Montreal
- Fabrizio De Donno (RHUL) Dismatriati: orfani d'Africa e cultura migrante in Italia
- Fabiana di Brazzà (University of Udine) Voci dall'Italia del Nord-Est: scrittura narrativa di immigrati
- Derek Duncan (University of Bristol) Language and migration in Italian cinema
- Francesco Goglia (University of Exeter) The Igbo-Nigerian community in Italy: languages and cultures in contact
- Herman Haller (CUNY) Italian immigrant speech in the years of mass migration: Language at play in Eduardo Migliaccio's 'Macchiette'
- Carla Marcato (University of Udine) Plurilinguismo vecchio e nuovo nell'Italia del Nord-Est
- Laura Pariani (Milan)Il linguaggio degli italiani del Rio de La Plata e l'influenza di tale lingua composita sulla letteratura
- Domenico Pietropaolo (University of Toronto) Italiese: Language loyalty and the culture of immigration
- Loredana Polezzi (University of Warwick) Polylingualism and self-translation in Pietro di Donato's 'Christ in Concrete' and Giose Rimanelli's 'Familia'
- Arturo Tosi (RHUL) The language of Italians in Britain
- Stefania Tufi (University of Liverpool) Degrees of visibility of immigrant communities in the linguistic landscape of Genoa and Cagliari
- Nigel Vincent (University of Manchester) Tra fiorentino e milanese: la Divina Commedia nelle versioni di Carlo Porta
Interviews
- Cristina Ali-Farah interviewed by Federica Mazzara (UCL)
- Gianni Amelio interviewed by Guido Bonsaver (University of Oxford)
- Tahar Lamri interviewed by Marta Niccolai (UCL)
- Enrico Palandri interviewed by Monica Francioso (University of Dublin)
- Giorgio Pressburger interviewed by Emma Bond (University of Oxford)
Organising Committee
Adam Ledgeway (University of Cambridge) & Anna Laura Lepschy (Universities of UCL & Cambridge), with the collaboration of Pierluigi Barrotta (Italian Cultural Institute, London), Guido Bonsaver (University of Oxford), Lorenzo Losi (Ente Nazionale Acli Istruzione Professionale), Carla Marcato (University of Udine), Federica Mazzara (UCL), Domenico Pietropaolo (University of Toronto), Naomi Segal (Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies), Nigel Vincent (University of Manchester).
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