New linguistic minorities: repertoires, language maintenance and shift

Abstract

This contribution presents the main results of Italian research concerning new linguistic minorities, i.e. immigrant linguistic minorities settled in Italy, with reference to their sociolinguistic situation, their linguistic repertoires and their patterns of language use. After a socio-demographic sketch, the possibility to apply the label of linguistic minority to immigrant groups in Italy is discussed and some potential new linguistic minorities are identified (i.e. minorities speaking varieties of Romanian, Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Ukrainian, Spanish, English, Tagalog, etc.). Moreover, the structure of the immigrants' repertoire is discussed, with reference to some specific cases, and some quantitative and qualitative data on language use and L1 maintenance and shift in several domains are presented, on the basis of the relevant literature. Finally some remarks on the likely developments of the situation of new linguistic minorities in Italy and on the possible emergence of ethnolects in Italy are provided.