Linguistic construction of a ‘true’ home(land) among Molise Croatian speakers in Italy

Abstract

Considered to be the oldest Croatian diaspora, Molise Croatian speakers settled in the Italian region of Molise in the early 16th century. Only much later and on the basis of primarily linguistic analysis was it concluded that Croatia was their original homeland. This paved the way for the (re)construction of their new ethnolinguistic identity, which has been intensified in recent decades. The aim of this paper is (a) to provide insight into the discursive construction of ‘diaspora’ in the context of the Molise Croatian community, and (b) to analyze the ways and resources the speakers of Molise Croatian use to construe their linguistic self and what they consider their ‘true’ homeland. The analysis is based on an ethnographic study that comprised (participant) observation and thirty individual and focus-group interviews. The forging of ‘diaspora identity’ is reflected and/or created in linguistic practices of some of its members, but the community is marked by heterogeneity in terms of ideological positioning towards viewing Croatia as an ascribed ‘true’ homeland. The reliance on the language as a key marker of Molise Croatian identity, but also a point of contestation in the process of diasporization, thus renders this speech community an emblematic example of a ‘linguistic diaspora’.