Heritage Languages in Italy: New Issues and Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

We are proposing a Special Issue dedicated to “Heritage Languages in Italy: New Issues and Perspectives”.

Theoretical framework

With Italy’s transformation into a country of immigration, linguistic research has increasingly turned to applied linguistics to explore the multifaceted impacts of migration on language learning, usage, and societal integration. This focus spans fields such as bilingualism, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and heritage language (HL) studies, emphasizing language contact, code-switching, and multilingualism. Heritage language research provides valuable insights into bilingual and multilingual speakers, examining the interplay of age, linguistic input, and sociolinguistic factors in language maintenance, attrition, and innovation.

Previous study in Italy

Earlier studies in Italy primarily concentrated on the acquisition of Italian as a second language, investigating morphosyntactic features (Chini, 1995; Bernini & Giacalone Ramat, 1990), pragmatic aspects (Nuzzo & Santoro, 2017), and phonetic and prosodic characteristics (De Meo & Pettorino, 2011; Maffia & De Meo, 2015; Chini, 2015). These studies often relied on corpora collected from first-generation migrants of diverse origins.

From a sociolinguistic perspective, research has predominantly utilized macro and quantitative approaches, as demonstrated by studies such as Chini (2004) and Andorno & Chini (2018), which examined immigration patterns in cities like Pavia and Turin. In contrast, micro-sociolinguistic and linguistic studies have focused on specific communities. Notable examples include Siebetcheu’s (2020) analysis of Cameroonian migrants in Italy and Mazzaferro’s (2018) exploration of Filipino translanguaging practices in Piedmont. However, the few in-depth investigations of immigrant language varieties in the Italian context have largely been limited to first-generation data (e.g., Perotto 2009 for Russian, Vietti 2010 for Peruvian Spanish, Cohal 2014 for Romanian). An exception is D’Anna’s (2017) work on Arabic.

Critical point and innovation of the edited volume

While the study of heritage languages is well established internationally (e.g., Valdés, 2000; Montrul, 2016; Polinsky, 2018; Aalberse et al., 2019), its integration into Italian linguistic research remains underdeveloped. Most international HL studies focus on majority languages such as English, German, and Dutch (e.g., Nagy, 2024), underscoring a significant gap in research on HLs in the Italian context.

This Special Issue aims at advancing theoretical and empirical research on HLs in Italy, emphasizing the following themes:

1. HL Variation and Innovation: Investigations into changes and innovations in HL grammars.
2. Language Contact Phenomena: Exploration of interactions among linguistic varieties, including code-switching, hybridization, and pidginization.
3. Linguistic Repertoires and Sociolinguistic Dynamics: Analyses of language maintenance, multilingualism, and ethnolinguistic vitality in diverse communities, considering migration patterns and societal integration.

Tentative Completion Schedule
Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 November 2025
Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 30 November 2025
Full Manuscript Deadline: 30 March 2026

Reference

Aalberse, S., Backus, A., & Muysken, P. (2019). Heritage languages: A language contact approach. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Andorno, C., & Chini, M. (2018). Repertori e usi linguistici nell'immigrazione: una indagine su minori alloglotti, dieci anni dopo. FrancoAngeli.

Bernini, G., & Giacalone Ramat, A. (Eds.). (1990). La temporalità nell'acquisizione di lingue seconde: Atti del convegno internazionale, Pavia, 28-30 ottobre 1988 (Vol. 2). Franco Angeli.

Chini, M. (1995). Genere grammaticale e acquisizione. Aspetti della morfologia nominale in italiano L2. Franco Angeli.

Cohal, A. L. (2014). Mutamenti nel romeno di immigrati in Italia. Franco Angeli.

D'Anna, L. (2017). Italiano, siciliano e arabo in contatto: profilo sociolinguistico della comunità tunisina di Mazara del Vallo. Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani.

De Meo, A., & Pettorino, M. (2011). L’acquisizione della competenza prosodica in italiano L2 da parte di studenti sinofoni. In La didattica dell’italiano a studenti cinesi e il progetto Marco Polo (pp. 67-78). Pavia University Press.

Maffia, M., & De Meo, A. (2015, May). Literacy and Prosody: The Case of Low‐literate Senegalese Learners of L2 Italian. In LESLLA Symposium Proceedings (Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 129-147).

Montrul, S. (2016). The acquisition of heritage languages. Cambridge University Press.

Nagy, N. (2024). Heritage Languages: Extending Variationist Approaches. Cambridge University Press.

Nuzzo, E., & Santoro, E. (2017). Apprendimento, insegnamento e uso di competenze pragmatiche in italiano L2/LS: la ricerca a partire dagli anni Duemila. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, 4(2), 1-27.

Perotto, M. (2009). Lingua e identità dell'immigrazione russofona in Italia. Liguori.

Polinsky, M. (2018). Heritage languages and their speakers. Cambridge University Press.

Siebetcheu, R. (2020). Scelte linguistiche nelle famiglie Camerunensi in Italia. Italiano LinguaDue, 12(2), 40-51.

Valdés, G. (2000). The teaching of heritage languages: An introduction for Slavic-teaching professionals. In O. Kagan & B. Rifkin (Eds.), The learning and teaching of Slavic languages and cultures (pp. 375–403). Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers.

Vietti, A. (2010). Italiano e spagnolo a contatto: immigrazione e varietà etnica. Calvi MV, Mapelli G., Bonomi M.(a cura di), Lingua, identità e migrazione. Prospettive interdisciplinari, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 221-235.

Dr. Francesca Romana Moro
Prof. Dr. Margherita Di Salvo
Guest Editors

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• heritage languages
• language contact
• bilingualism
• multilingualism
• variation and change
• second language acquisition
• family language policies
• sociolinguistics