Il bilinguismo italiano-dialetto in Sicilia. Profilo sociolinguistico, nuove realtà comunicative e prospettive didattiche

The present volume aims at contributing to the ongoing discussion on the relationship between Italian and the Sicilian dialects, by updating it to the new communication dimension represented by Social Media, and the related increase of the written domain in daily digital interactions. The volume starts with a chapter on the technical terminology that is needed to address the question ‘lingua vs. dialetto’, which will justify the use of the term dilalico, à la Berruto, to describe the Italian sociolinguistic scenario. Chapter 2 offers an overview of the main European linguistic settings and discusses both the legal choices made by the Italian State regarding what varieties spoken in the Peninsula should be considered as minority languages to protect, and the normative reaction by the Sicilian regional government. Chapter 3 discusses those features that differentiate the Sicilian dialects from Standard Italian, sometimes characterising the regional Italian spoken in Sicily. It is crucial that these features are carefully taken into account in order to foster metalinguistic abilities and activate those cognitive advantages documented in different bilingual contexts. Chapter 4 deals with the issue of writing in dialect. Texting on Social Media is almost exclusively the domain of Italian, considering the persisting difficulties in promoting a written code that could be shared by most users. This is detrimental for dilalic speakers whose overall opportunities to use their dialects in such an important context diminish remarkably. Chapter 5 provides a discussion of the fact that awareness of the linguistic properties of the dialects could contribute to better control the competence in Italian, and to learn foreign languages more easily by capitalising on what dilalic speakers know about their dialects. The volume ends with some educational considerations that also hold for the other dilalic situations in Italy.