Teaching Standard Italian to Dialect Speakers: A Pedagogical Perspective of Linguistic Systems in Contact

Abstract

In the period since World War II, the position of the Italian dialects in respect to the standard language has altered significantly. The awareness that a dialect reflects the ethos of a particular social group and that school Italian is an artificial standard has created an anti-puristic linguistic atmosphere in Italy.1 In the past, the association between dialect speakers and lower-class status had been frequently made. Quite predictably, some vestiges of this sociological stigma still exist, particularly in rural schools where, as Beninca et al. have recently demonstrated, instances of hypercorrection based on an archaic pseudo-norm are still found to persist.2 However, as De Mauro points out, one finds a new sociolinguistic climate in Italy today which permits the acceptance of a pluralita di registri linguistici: l'italiano comune, l'italiano regionale, il dialetto italianizzante, il dialetto nelle sue forme piu arcaiche e lontane dallitaliano. 3 This pluralita has even infiltrated the literary output. In fact, it has become normal to find in writers such as De Filippo, Moravia, Pasolini, Gadda, and Mastronardi il coesistere nella stessa pagina di registri linguistici diversi come nuovo e suggestivo mezzo per individuare e obiettivare il variare degli stati d'animo e dei punti di vista dei personaggi o del narratore. 4 In teaching standard Italian to dialect speakers in Italy or abroad, one must take into account the fact that there is, in effect, no national standard (only regional standards). Furthermore, it would be pedagogically counteractive to equate dialectal (or regional) speech with linguistic deprivation. The whole situation, from a pedagogical standpoint, must be put into a socioand psycholinguistic perspective. Since the regional varieties, as De Mauro observes,