LE SCELTE LINGUISTICHE DI ALCUNE FAMIGLIE CON BACKGROUND MIGRATORIO IN ITALIA: USI, COMPETENZE E ATTEGGIAMENTI NEI CONFRONTI DEL MULTILINGUISMO

Abstract

The present paper aims to investigate how language use among families with
a migrant background in Italy varies over time, focusing in particular on the
distinction between daily communicative practices and literacy-related ones in
each language of the family’s linguistic repertoire. The study is based on the
analysis of an extensive sociolinguistic questionnaire considering the use of
one language or the other across different contexts over time, each family
member’s assessment of their own language competence as well as their
attitude towards each language and the importance of being multilingual. The
results show that the children of the interviewed families experience
“harmonious bilingualism” (De Houwer, 2020), especially as far as their
communicative practices are concerned. It is not always the case that this
corresponds to a positive attitude towards multilingualism among the parents.