Italiano e dialetto in Calabria: spinte divergenti endogene e proiezioni verso modelli esterni

Many years after the pioneering studies of Trumper and Trumper-Maddalon on the sociolinguistic situation in Calabria, the present work aims to offer new points for reflection on the use of Italian and dialect in this region. After a detailed analysis of the evolution of linguistic habits in different communicative contexts, starting from the ISTAT surveys over the last thirty years, the work continues with a review of sociolinguistic dynamics in the Calabrian context in comparison with other sociolinguistic situations such as those of Piedmont and Sicily. As already outlined by Trumper and Maddalon, the peculiarity of the language-dialect relationship in Calabria can be explained in terms of Calabria’s remarkable territorial and linguistic fragmentation and the particular socio-economic development of the region, factors which have stalled the development of influential linguistic poles capable of triggering convergence phenomena and dialectal leveling with koinè formation. Consequently, the lack of a strong linguistic awareness in the region socially determines a subjectively low opinion of dialect, thus provoking behaviour patterns that have their ideal normative reference in Italian models that may sometimes lack sociolinguistic consistency. This scenario may significantly change thanks to increasingly precocious linguistic self-reflection on the part of younger speakers, who constantly tend to gain higher levels of linguistic security, so that it may well be possible to witness, in the not too distant future, a rebalancing of prestige values amongst the different Italian varieties.