No description available.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the current linguistic situation of the Venetian language (a minority language spoken in the northeastern Italian region of Veneto) and its relationship with Italian, the official language of Italy. This is a study of Venetian people and how they are reacting to the changes occurring to their language. To research the situation, I traveled to Italy, to the region of Veneto. My objective was to investigate and determine whether or not Venetian is, in fact, a language. If it is, is it on the verge of disappearing, or is there a chance that it might be maintained? Will Venetians shift completely from speaking their vernaculars to using only Italian? To gather data, I used qualitative research including participant observation, open-ended unstructured interviews with consultants, as well as internet and archival research in order to be able to glimpse the situation as seen by those who live it. Because I speak Italian and have relatives in the region, I was allowed to take part in many situations where I was able to observe familial language use, as well as the public attitudes concerning Venetian. I analyzed the Venetian situation by examining the ways in which we look at the words "language" and "dialect" from the linguistic, political and sociolinguistic perspectives, I looked at the situation through anthropological and socio-psychological theories of language choice, and how we understand the indicators of language loss, ethnicity, ethnic group strategies, and changes in identity as they relate to language shift. Although Venetian is a dialect in the political sense, subordinate to the official language, Italian, I found that the Venetian language is not derived from Italian, and so does not fit the linguistic definition of a dialect. However, it has been labeled a dialect and is understood as such by most Italians, including Venetians. This labelization has encouraged negative stereotyping and a measure of disuse. However, the recent secessionist movement has highlighted some of the linguistic issues, and brought more attention to the possibility of preserving Venetian. I recommend changes that alter the negative attitudes towards Venetian and other vernaculars, changes that include focusing on encouraging new and innovative utilization of local languages (art, literature and plays, etc.) and establishing and implementing curricula in the educational system that emphasizes the regional history and its contribution to the present day Italy. Changes such as those mentioned should encourage more acceptance of others and encourage the usage of local languages as well as increase peoples' pride in their ethnic heritage. / Graduation date: 2003

This thesis investigates the development of the present-day linguistic hegemonies within Italy and Norway as products of ongoing linguistic ‘wars of position’. Language activist movements have been key actors in these struggles, and this study seeks to address how such movements have operated in attempts to translate their linguistic ideologies into de facto language policy through mechanisms such as political agitation, propaganda and the use of language in public spaces. It also reveals which other extra-linguistic values and ideologies have become associated with or allied to these linguistic causes in recent years, how these ideologies have affected language policy, and whether such ideological alliances have been representative of language users’ ideologies. The study is informed by an innovative methodological framework combining the theories and metaphors of Antonio Gramsci (including hegemony and wars of position as well as his linguistic writings) with the theories of Stein Rokkan on cultural-political cleavage structures and the relationships between centres and peripheries. These constructs and relationships are thereafter documented as ideologically defining strands running through the history of the movements studied, through reference to activist periodicals and party newspapers. In Italy, the focus of the research is on the Lega Nord (Northern League), a far-right populist autonomist political movement. The Lega has sought to legitimise its imagination of a northern nation (‘Padania’) by portraying the dialects of northern Italy as minority languages, emphasising the hegemonic relationship between the Italian national language and northern dialects. The movement has also used this perception of northern dialects as peripheral and suppressed by Italian to bolster its depiction of ‘Padania’ as a wealthy periphery allegedly held back by central and southern Italy. Although this campaign has achieved some successes in increased visibility of dialects in public spaces, dialects largely remain restricted to ‘low’-status domains. In Norway, the thesis devotes special attention to the post-war efforts of the counter-hegemonic campaign for the Nynorsk standard of Norwegian, which was devised as a common denominator for Norwegian dialects, as opposed to the hegemonic standard Bokmål, which is a Norwegianisation of written Danish. In opposing the challenges of globalisation and centralisation, the Nynorsk movement has retained a radical character and is generally associated with a left-wing variant of nationalism, a key part of the Norwegian cultural cleavage structure. The social argumentation of the Nynorsk movement was instrumental in its successful promotion of dialects, now seen as an unstigmatised means of spoken communication in all social contexts.

Abstract not available

Dialects have always had a negative reputation, and have been considered beneath the national language. Even the literature composed in the various regional languages has been considered inferior to the Italian one until only a few years ago, because it was thought that this literature had as an exclusive theme the peasant-popular world. / This thesis will not only demonstrate that dialects are languages deserving of respect, but also that Lucano dialect literature is not bogged down to the peasant-popular world. In fact, it is capable of expressing any concept that any national language is capable of, even if that concept does not originate in the peasant-popular world.

No description available.