AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR Historical linguistic minorities: suggestions for classification and typology GABRIELE IANNÀCCARO and VITTORIO DELL’AQUILA Abstract The paper discusses the linguistic and sociolinguistic features of the Italian minority languages and communities according to a series of comparable parameters. Our aim is not to present here a list of well-known minorities, but rather to provide an analytical tool for the interpretation of the situations in which linguistic, social and political items play different, albeit interconnected roles. Keywords: minority languages; language policy; linguistic repertoires; Dachsprache. 1. Introduction The presence of a large number of linguistic minorities across the Italian peninsula is, among others, a clear indication of the scale and variety of the Italian sociolinguistic landscape. These linguistic varieties, which are conventionally regarded as different from Italo-Romance dialects and standard Italian, constitute the so-called historical linguistic minorities.1 De iure, the rights of these groups were stated in the 1948 Italian Constitution (Art. 6: “The Republic safeguards minority languages”); however, a consistent application law has only been in force since the year 2000, when the constitutional article came into effect, after the promulgation of the Law 482/99 on minority languages (December 15th 1999). Nevertheless, during the ifty year time span that occurred between the enforcement of these two legal measures, several local authorities, i.e. regions and autonomous provinces, brought in a number of speciic laws. They were created ad hoc just after the end of the Second World War, in order to safeguard languages other than Italian. This was in particular the case of border areas whose political inclusion into the Italian territory was disputed after the war: Aosta Valley, South-Tyrol and the so-called “A Zone of Trieste” 0165–2516/11/0210–0029 © Walter de Gruyter Int’l. J. Soc. Lang. 210 (2011), pp. 29–45 DOI 10.1515/IJSL.2011.029 AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 30 G. Iannàccaro and V. Dell’Aquila (corresponding to the current province of Trieste). In all these cases the inclusion into the Italian Republic was granted on the condition that those populations speaking languages other than Italian would be protected by laws in accordance with local needs and expectations. This has given rise to a distinction between national and linguistic minorities among scholars and interested groups. The term national minority refers to those populations who were either directly or indirectly linked to closely neighboring states — Austria and Germany for German speakers of South Tyrol, Yugoslavia (later Slovenia) for the Slovenian speakers living in the provinces of Gorizia and Trieste, France for the people living in Aosta Valley. All the other internal cases of heteroglossia were classiied as linguistic minorities, or rather, as populations who were fundamentally Italian as regards culture and identity, but who incidentally made use of peculiar linguistic varieties. It is worth noting that there are substantial sociolinguistic and legislative differences that even today differentiate French in Aosta Valley, German in South Tyrol and Slovenian in the provinces of Gorizia and Trieste from all the other languages in minority condition in Italy. Therefore, the terminological distinction between national and linguistic minority will be maintained here, albeit merely for practical purposes. Even if this distinction does not bear any scientiic consistency, it gives ground to interesting social and perceptual consequences. In this regard, the different situation of Slovenian speakers in Friuli on one side and Venezia Giulia on the other is paradigmatic. As a result of the bilateral agreement with the former Yugoslavia and the winning forces of the Second World War, Slovenians in the provinces of Trieste and Gorizia were recognized as a national minority and granted their own public school system, a public radio in Slovenian and the right to use Slovenian in local public administration. However, the majority of Slovenian speakers in Italy live(d) in the province of Udine, where such treaties are not effective for historical heritage reasons. This means that the Slovenian speaking population living there has not been granted the status of (national) minority and, accordingly, it is considered to be “Italian”, thus being devoid of any linguistic protection. More recently, some regional or local authorities have approved a number of legislative corpora that aim to safeguard speciic languages and minority cultures, which are delimited by their own territory and/or peculiar linguistic realities. This is again the case of Friuli-Venezia Giulia (for Friulian, German and the Slovenian communities not protected by international treaties), Sardinia, Trentino (for Ladin and German dialects), Piedmont, Veneto and Calabria.2 To a certain extent, the (still much controversial)3 national Law 482/99 overcomes this situation by sanctioning the number and extension of the “classical” 12 linguistic minorities which will be dealt with in this paper. While the old legal provisions in favor of French in Aosta Valley, German in South Tyrol and AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR Historical linguistic minorities 31 Slovenian in the provinces of Gorizia and Trieste are still in force, national legal protection has now been extended to two large regional communities: Sardinian and Friulian. Both varieties (Sardinian in particular) had already been commonly recognized as Abstand languages, which means that they are suficiently different from Italian, and partially as Ausbau languages, since Friulian (and to some extent Sardinian) has ancient literary documents. Their protection, however, had never been enforced on a national basis before. Other linguistic minorities include: the Occitan and Franco-Provençal-speaking communities in Piedmont, small German-speaking communities in the Alps, the Ladin language communities in Trentino-South Tyrol and Veneto, the Occitan, Franco-Provençal, Albanian, Croatian and Greek linguistic islands of southern Italy, as well as the Catalan community in Alghero (Sardinia). Somewhat controversially, the legal system makes no provision for the Romanī languages spoken on Italian territory, for the Italian sign language and for all new immigrant languages which do not beneit from any kind of oficial protection. Figure 1 shows the geographical distribution of these historical minorities in accordance with current laws. Due to several historical and structural reasons, minorities predominantly share an outlying position, especially in the northern borders of the country. Firstly, it is possible to identify the “linguistic peninsulas”, i.e. linguistic conditions rooted elsewhere but continuing on the Italian territory: FrancoProvençal and Occitan dialects in Piedmont and Aosta Valley (with possible overlapping with French), German and its dialects in South Tyrol, Slovenian (and its related dialects) in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Several large Romance dialect groups — Sardinian, Friulian and the smaller but particularly vital Ladin group — also owe their categorization as minority languages to their peripheral condition, which in this case results from the lack of communication routes and trade lows rather than from Italy’s national borders. Accordingly, extensive compact areas regarded as minorities are located in the northern part of the country and in Sardinia. In contrast, minority languages in southern Italy are typically scattered throughout this area and spoken by people who have settled there, although originally coming from areas outside Italy.4 The relationship of the latter communities with the areas of origin is therefore looser than the one characterizing those we have deined above as “linguistic peninsulas”.5 At local level, it is however possible that some minorities play a central role in the linguistic and social dialectics of the macro community in which they have traditionally been rooted. This is the case of Friulian, Sardinian, German in South Tyrol, French and Franco-Provençal in Aosta Valley, which represent the linguistic core within each related area. On the contrary, other communities are peripheral even within their local perspective. For example, the Occitan and Franco-Provençal communities in Piedmont extend across a large area and AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 32 G. Iannàccaro and V. Dell’Aquila Figure 1. Historical linguistic minorities in Italy the Ladin community in Trentino and Veneto holds the strong socioeconomic position. However, they all are geographically distant from the cultural and decision-making centers of the administrative authorities on which they depend. All the remaining communities may be considered residual even within their very region, and in a number of cases (Catalan, Griko, German in Piedmont and in Veneto) the communities are marginal even in relation to the micro-territory to which they belong. Hence, different levels of marginality AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR Historical linguistic minorities 33 play an important role in the social perception of minority languages within the broadest linguistic repertoire of Italy. Given the above mentioned complexities, we will not present here each minority mentioned above, but we will rather discuss their linguistic and sociolinguistic features in order to draw a typology of language planning according to a series of comparable parameters. 2. Sociolinguistic parameters of classiication We will start with a discussion of sociolinguistic parameters. The linguistic repertoires of the minority communities display variation on a large scale. This variation is not merely due to the types of languages and language varieties involved, but also to their number and position within the sociolinguistic continuum. It is well known that the Italian linguistic space is dominated by an enormous amount of diatopic variation, which also affects minority languages and their relationship with the regional varieties of Italian and with the diverse Italo- and Gallo-Romance dialects (cf. Cerruti, this issue; Dal Negro and Vietti, this issue). The repertoires of the various minority communities display a different functional allocation of the codes. A basic distinctive parameter applied to those communities is whether they can do without Italian in their social life and in (almost) all domains, including the oficial, educational and liturgical ones, as well as those regarding the public and commercial sphere. These communities include the German speakers in South Tyrol, the Slovenians in the provinces of Gorizia and Trieste and, with a few restrictions and a certain degree of “sociolinguistic juggling”, the Ladin speakers of South Tyrol. In contrast, Italian is irmly established within all the other minorities because it is considered as the main “high language” of the repertoire. Hence, it is possible to distinguish at least three subtypes:6 i. Diacrolectia.7 The minority variety is present alongside Italian. The former is suitable for all occasions, from the most informal ones to written use, whilst Italian is limited exclusively to the highest domains. This is the typical situation of the Ladin community of South Tyrol (Italian, German and Ladin on the high pole, only Ladin on the low pole). However, the Slovenian, German speaking and French communities could be subsumed under this category as well. As a matter of fact, the passive use of Italian is widespread in reading, listening to the radio and watching TV, in entertainment and in high culture, especially in urban areas of South Tyrol and among medium-high class speakers — including almost all the Slovenian speakers in Venezia Giulia. AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 34 G. Iannàccaro and V. Dell’Aquila Diglossia. Speakers are aware of the different functional allocation of the codes in the community repertoire according to strict social rules. Italian is used exclusively in the most formal domains, whereas the minority language in the very informal ones. There are very few or indeed no communicative domains in which the codes overlap; the level of social formality that causes the switch from one code to the other can vary from community to community. However, in the current Italian situation, where territorial languages are constantly changing and gaining recognition and new life, it is dificult to talk of pure diglossia à la Ferguson. This is due to the fact that a minority language is present in written and administrative/literary domains even in those communities which are linguistically weaker. Conversely, Italian is hardly ever absent even in spontaneous speech. Examples of situations which are quite prototypically diglossic are Carnia (the mountain area of Friuli), the mountain and rural regions of central Sardinia and the Bavarian dialects of South Tyrol with respect to German. In these communities the two codes fulill almost complementary functions. Finally, there are a number of peculiar situations of double diglossia involving minority languages and Italo-Romance dialects (e.g. several conservative areas of southern Italy, in particular amongst the Arbëresh speakers). iii. Dilalia.8 In this case the co-existing languages are functionally unbalanced. Italian is the only written code and the only oral one in formal situations, but it is also used in informal domains as the main language of socialization to which not only functional but also affective values are attached. The minority variety may instead be used only in less formal situations, often overlapping and mixing with Italian. More recently, minority languages have also developed a spreading number of written uses, which are more due to a revival of these languages than to actual communicative needs. An emblematic example is that of the urban and suburban areas of Sardinia, where active competence in the minority code is gradually disappearing with no other code replacing it in low functions. Sardinian is however still present at times as an informal written language on commercial labels and sometimes on road signs as ideological identity marker. ii. The competing presence of a minority language and the regional dialect seems to result in a general maintenance of diglossia — or, more rarely, dilalia — involving a change in language use patterns. The minority language is gradually being replaced by the local Italo-Romance dialect (present in the repertoire as a code for informal external communication) in colloquial and private domains. This situation is typically found in a number of Arbëresh communities in Calabria (diglossia), and in Occitan communities in Piedmont (dilalia). AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR Historical linguistic minorities 35 As we have seen, Italian is almost exclusively the language used in written and formal communication by all the minority communities in Italy — with the exception of the above mentioned “national minorities”, which ideally deserve ad hoc investigation. This is the standard situation of all the codes spoken in Italy alongside Italian, and primarily of the so-called “Italian dialects”.9 In diglossic communities the typical territorial variety (be it a minority language or a dialect) is still regularly spoken in informal contexts and in this sense it is not in competition with Italian. In dilalic situations, on the contrary, Italian is commonly spoken even in informal or familiar situations within the community itself. Consequently, the languages of all the minorities that we have previously deined as “linguistic” ones are actually treated as “dialects”. In other words, they are used as such, whatever names the members of the same speaking community may use to describe them or whatever perception of the situation the community may have. The term “dialect” in this case refers to a code which is intrinsically subordinated to another one in a particular area, it is more suitable — irrespective of speakers’ overt statements — for everyday conversation and it is probably suffering from a gradual decline. This state of affairs also causes interference with the Italo-Romance dialects spoken in the area where the minority dwells, which are at times in direct competition with the minority language both in low and family domains. The latter observation enables us to distinguish between two large groups of linguistic minority communities. A irst group includes those communities which may be considered to be completely integrated into the general Italian sociolinguistic repertoire, that is communities in which the minority language is in a direct dialectic relationship (either dilalic or diglossic) with Italian. Oddly enough, in these communities the sociolinguistic landscape is not really different from the one that can be found in other parts of Italy, and this regardless of their condition of micro- or macrodiglossia.10 The minority community, which may cover a compact territory, can be then regarded as speaking a sort of dialectal koine of the Romance space of Italy, or even a marked regional variety of Italian. This condition applies to the large Romance minorities, e.g. Sardinian and Friulian, but also to Ladin communities in Trentino and Veneto (each of them with speciic minor differences). On the contrary, communities are sociolinguistically marked when at least one territorial Italo-Romance variety, often the variety spoken in the surrounding urban centers (or even speciic to the community itself ), is present at the low pole of the repertoire alongside the local minority variety. These communities are generally scattered throughout a large area and the minority variety is in competition with the local regional dialects in colloquial domains. This is typical of groups speaking non-Romance languages: German-speaking communities outside South Tyrol, Albanian, Croatian and Griko-speakers, as well as the Gallo-Romance “islands” of Southern Italy (Franco-Provençal in AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 36 G. Iannàccaro and V. Dell’Aquila Calabria and Occitan in Puglia) and Catalan in Sardinia. In this framework, the Occitan and Franco-Provençal communities of Piedmont occupy a peculiar position, similar to the position of Friulian speakers of the lowlands, since the former are in contact with Piedmontese and the latter with the Venetian koine. National minorities do not seem to it this description, though they do not constitute a homogenous group. The Aosta Valley’s population is considered to be a French national minority, but the French language, although common to a large majority of the local people, is used in the family domain by an extremely small portion of the local population.11 Actually, the languages of irst socialization are mainly the traditional Franco-Provençal varieties, with the exception of the main town of Aosta, which has become almost monolingual in Italian and where French is the main foreign language. This is the rather peculiar situation of a linguistic minority within a (constructed) national minority; or rather, Franco-Provençal is sociolinguistically dependent on French. The state-imposed type of bilingualism in the Aosta Valley is completely different from that of other national minorities, particularly those in South Tyrol. In the Aosta Valley, Italian and French are ideally regarded as the two languages of a single community, belonging in equal measure to the whole population (most of which recognize Franco-Provençal as the low pole in a dilalic/diglossic relationship). Conversely, in South Tyrol there is a kind of bilingualism which we may call separative. In this case, the Italian-speaking and the German-speaking community are oficially recognized in this area and live together without necessarily overlapping. It comprises a substantially Italian-speaking school and administrative system (with German as the compulsory second language) and vice versa (German administration and education for the German-speaking population with compulsory Italian taught at school). However, whilst the community deining itself as Italian actually speaks Italian in everyday communication as well as within the family domain, the German-speaking community perceives standard German as a marker of identity and as the high pole of a diglossic relationship, having at its lowest end a series of extremely lively and widely communicative dialects, which are deined by linguists as Austro-Bavarian and structurally quite different from literary German. The mere knowledge of “school Italian” is suficient for German speakers to communicate eficiently with the Italian-speaking community, whilst for the Italian speakers the knowledge of literary German does not ensure effective integration with the German-speaking group. The third ethno-linguistic group in the area is the Ladin community. Ladins living in the two valleys where their language is traditionally spoken beneit from linguistic rights that are similar to those granted to the Italian and German-speaking communities. In actual facts, their peculiar trilingual educational system, together with their position of “minority within a minority”, AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR Historical linguistic minorities 37 enables Ladin speakers to learn all the languages which are actually spoken in the area and to communicate on equal terms with members of the Italianspeaking and the German-speaking communities. The Slovenians in Venezia Giulia enjoy a situation similar to that of the German speakers in South Tyrol, since their bilingualism is equally “separative”, with Italian as second or “foreign” language. 3. Language attitudes and ideology An essential feature of a linguistic minority is its awareness of feeling and being recognized as such. However, it is necessary to distinguish between at least two levels of perception. The irst one is a more conscious outer level, related to the explicit relection on belonging to a minority. This more conscious and explicit level is responsible for deliberate socio-political behavior and voluntary acts of afiliation or differentiation from the groups perceived as being different. In contrast, the deeper level refers to phenomena which are less easily rationalized, though they inluence both the sociolinguistic behavior and the speakers’ perceptions of the relationship between the varieties in contact.12 The above mentioned distinction is important because it enables us to account for some exceptional situations previously hinted at. In some cases, for instance, speakers quite wittingly claim their own linguistic and cultural differences (a product of the more consciously external layer), whilst the deep perception of the relationships between the community languages brings about the recognition of a dialectal status of the minority variety. This is the case of linguistic minorities as opposed to national ones. It is however important to observe that while the Bavarian dialects of South Tyrol are perceived as dialects of German and therefore as “different” from Italian, the minority dialects of other international languages — like Croatian and Greek — tend to be assimilated to the local Italo-Romance vernaculars. This feeling of “dialectality” of the linguistic minorities takes two different forms, according to a distinction between “regional languages” and “local languages”. Regional languages are spoken on compact territories, where they have no relevant external competitors, at least in informal domains, with the exception of border areas. This means that in the core-area of a regional language only varieties of the minority language are used, alongside Italian. On the territory that they call their own, regional languages are attested in a number of local varieties, regarded as their dialects. In minority situations where there is no recognized standard form, these dialects can be the only varieties actually attested within the community. They are nonetheless perceived as a set of linguistic possibilities that share a certain degree of afiliation to the abstract entity that is considered to be a language. This is especially the case of Friuli, AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 38 G. Iannàccaro and V. Dell’Aquila where the local varieties are considered dialects of a perceived common Friulian language. This is also true, though with quite a few important differences, for Sardinia. This state of affairs has a profound effect on the speakers’ perception of a language and of its position in society. The single territorial codes are regarded as varieties of an idealized common language — for instance Sardinian or Friulian — and not as Italian dialects, but they are usually considered to be a “poor” or “impure” image of the idealized language. This has interesting consequences, for example, on language teaching, as we will see. In contrast, we have a number of “local” minority languages, which are often “linguistic islands” within a different Romance context and do not have a prominent internal competitor; besides, there is no idealized standard variety on which the local vernaculars depend. Therefore, the local standards are never perceived as second-rate varieties of a standard language. For example, if the variety of Raveo (a small Friulian village in the Alps) can be perceived by its speakers as a “second-rate” variety of Friulian, the variety of Santa Soia d’Epiro (a small Calabrian village in the Sila Mountains) is just an example of an Arbëresh variety, at the same level of importance as any other. A variety of a “local” minority language is not regarded as a “corrupted” variety of anything else and can enjoy a certain degree of local prestige, but at the same time it faces the sociolinguistic challenge of a number of — sometimes quite dangerous — neighboring Italo-Romance external competitors. Speaking a different language is not the sole condition for acquiring selfconsciousness of being a linguistic minority. Historical and social factors play of course a major role, but in some cases the territory itself becomes part of speakers’ identity, even at the same hierarchical level of the language. Two different situations are observed in the Italian communities: a number of communities link their feeling of being a minority to the territory in which they dwell as well as to the language they speak. We can call it “territorial minority”. Sardinia is the paradigmatic case; anyone whose family has lived for a few generations on the island considers themselves as a Sardinian, even though they do not know or use the local variety. Yet Sardinian, as an idealized language, has such a strong link to the territory that everyone feels justiied (at times even obliged) to take part in the debate about the language-identity interrelation, and in particular about any possible proposal concerning its use in administrative and oficial domains. By way of contrast, there are minorities whose in-group identity is deeply associated to the compulsory use of (or at least to the ability to understand) the minority variety: we will call the latter “personal minorities”. This is typical of the communities scattered throughout a certain territory — living in an Arbëresh village is not enough for a person to be perceived as an Arbëresh; one must take part in the linguistic life of the community. However, not all minorities display this pattern. For instance, Apulian and Calabrian Grikos are identi- AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR Historical linguistic minorities 39 ied more by living in a given regions than by speaking a Griko variety (which indeed is rapidly fading). In a personal-minority setting, the territorial afiliation is shared with the inhabitants of neighboring areas, irrespective of the language they speak. Molise is a case in point as Arbëresh, Croatian Molise and Romance dialect speakers all share a certain degree of identiication with the Molise territory — or at least with the archaic Abruzzan identity, or broadly speaking, to the Neapolitan region — regardless of the speech community to which they belong. Besides, well-established communities can show a personal-minority pattern. The Franco-Provençal minority is a remarkable example. Its community members need an active and personal competence in the minority variety in order to be considered part of the community, even though the code is rather compact and widespread across the area. In this case the territorial identity is taken by French, which gives the identity bases for every inhabitant of the Aosta Valley. 4. Language planning It is worth now considering the historical linguistic minorities in Italy in the light of categories currently adopted in language planning studies. Linguistic minorities can be classiied according to differences in the actual corpus of their varieties, disparity in juridical status, or the space allotted to the minority language at school and in civil society. A irst important distinction is that between communities whose reference language is a widespread language recognized by other countries and communities that do not beneit from the existence of such a “roof language” (Dachsprache). In the former case the degree of acceptance of the international standard as a Dachsprache is another important factor — at least, as a possible high variety of the linguistic repertoire. “National minorities” have no doubt in this respect: franco-provençal communities in the Aosta Valley perceive standard French as the language that characterizes them as a minority, just as the German speakers of South Tyrol identify themselves with High German. The same holds for Slovenians in Venezia Giulia, who tend towards standard Slovenian. These minorities can be considered peninsulas of outer territories in Italy. The situation is however not at all clear for the Slovenian community in the province of Udine, or for Croatian- and Griko-speaking communities of Southern Italy. These communities are characterized by a far greater linguistic, cultural and geographical distance from their corresponding core areas, as well as by different levels of acceptability of the trans-national standard. In particular, the Griko-speaking community categorically refuses to acknowledge Greece’s oficial Greek (even in the so-called dimotikí variety), in spite of the attempts carried out by the Greek government in the last decades AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 40 G. Iannàccaro and V. Dell’Aquila in terms of homologation and linguistic support. In these communities local or even idiosyncratic orthographic standards prevail — in the case of Griko, even a different alphabet. A partial exception is the Arbëresh minority: albeit scattered throughout Southern Italy, and without any deep political, social or geographical contact with the Balcanic Albanian-speaking groups, the Arbëresh communities partially accept the orthographical rules of standard Albanian. Friulian, Ladin and Sardinian minorities are “islands” dominated by a romance variety considered a language in its own right — Dachlos by deinition. A similar case is that of Occitan and Franco-Provençal communities, which are the Italian section of minorities spread across both side of the Alps (mainly outside the Italian territory) without an accepted international Dachsprache, either in Italy or in those other countries where these languages are spoken. All these minorities have a quite complex relationship with their possible internal (written) standards, each with its own peculiarity. The use of the minority languages in oficial written documents is nevertheless extremely limited, and all the “linguistic” minorities in Italy have to face considerable social pressure that prevents them from using the minority language in written and formal domains — even at school — where Italian has been used for at least a century. De facto, a number of minority communities have adopted a standard language, which is however established only in speciic parts of the territory or by some sociocultural classes. Friulian is particularly stable, at least in declarations of use and as far as its oficial status is concerned. Based on the central varieties present along the hill belt, its standard form is accepted (or tolerated) with little debate, but it is not actually put into use, or at least not always. Ladin holds an interesting position: there are at least three local standard written forms recognized by the local public administrations, in addition to a common, but seldom used, orthography. There is no legal reference to which orthography should be used in Ladin oficial, administrative or educational texts, and local standards are nearly exclusively in use, along with Italian and German. The Gardena and Badia valleys have their respective standards, used in schools and by the local administrations. For broader communication, they are both alternately used by provincial government of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, South Tyrol. The Fassa Valley in the Autonomous Province of Trento does not use German for local administration and prefers adopting Italian and the local Ladin variety (“Fascian”); the use of the Ladin is however extremely marginal at school and in public administration, even at a local level. The introduction of the so-called Ladin Dolomitan, the orthographic standard virtually common to all Ladin varieties, is currently extremely dificult in all geographical and administrative contexts. An oficial standard has also been adopted for Sardinia, which is supported by the Autonomous Region of Sardinia and supposedly used also by other ad- AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR Historical linguistic minorities 41 ministrative authorities. Its actual introduction is however hindered by a number of practical dificulties but also, and foremost, by the perplexities of this island’s intellectual élites and media. As for the Alpine German (minority) communities, they do not recognize themselves as speakers/writers of standard German, not even in the highest domains. This is even truer for Occitan communities that do not employ any form of Occitan literary standard and for Griko villages, where, as we have mentioned earlier, standard Greek is irmly rejected. Even more confusing is the situation of the Franco-Provençal minority communities, which are unsure whether or not to recognize themselves as part of French or as variants more akin to their local dialects. Finally, the generally accepted Albanian trans-national standard is in some cases also in competition with local literary (and sometimes very old) traditions. The adoption of a reference standard variety plays an important role in setting up an actual administrative multilingualism. However, implementing an education system aimed at establishing a genuine balanced multilingual competence is pivotal. Apart from the “national” minorities, with their completely autonomous school systems — whose non-Italian monolingual curriculum is often modeled on other European systems — the implementation of a multilingual educational policy in the other minority communities follows the indications of Law 482/99. The law establishes a curriculum according to which the minority languages are taught mainly as an extra subject and where education in the minority language is carried out through speciic educational monothematic projects, offered to parents and students by each school, and subject to approval of the Italian Ministry of Education. The curriculum, however, does not exclude the adoption of the minority language as the medium of instruction. A recent survey carried out by the Ministry of Education on the present situation of minority languages in school13 shows that different types of minority language teaching develop out of three main parameters: i) formal or vehicular teaching methods, i.e. actual language classes vs. use of the language for teaching other subjects; ii) endorsement, with choice between compulsory or optional teaching of the subject itself; iii) “curricularity”, i.e. whether the language is taught during school hours (and is part of the curriculum) or outside normal hours (as an extracurricular activity). Three models of formal minority language teaching emerge: A1. Formal compulsory teaching within school hours as mother tongue. This model is obviously not so easy to implement and it is potentially damaging if applied within unsuitable contexts. It implies that members of the community have a good knowledge of the minority language as well as a strong identity bond. If it is applied to sociolinguistically weak contexts, it may often lead to a refusal of the language. This is the model in AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 42 G. Iannàccaro and V. Dell’Aquila use in Ladin schools and in the Aosta Valley (for French). The method aims to achieve pupils’ good standard of competence in the target language. A2. Optional formal teaching within school hours. This option often seems to alarm the communities since it implies a clear and irm stand, i.e. the will to run the risk of testing the group’s solidarity. There is always the chance that very few pupils may decide to take up the course. The system seems to work in the German-speaking community in Trentino (where standard German is taught) and in several places in the Friulian area. To be put into effect, the taught language needs a reference standard, even if only written. Besides, the language can be taught as a second language. Like the previous model (cf. A1), it provides a good level of competence in the target language, but only to those taking real advantage from this service. A3. Formal teaching, but outside the school timetable. This is the choice for many minority language communities which have a rooing national language, though not always accepted. It is the case of Arbëresh or Croatian communities in Molise. This is certainly a low-conlict approach and yet it certainly has a devaluating effect on the minority language. Users may have a feeling of futility towards this approach, since lessons are outside the school timetable and often discontinuous. This approach does not imply any active competence in the minority language, nor does it imply that the language itself is widely accepted by the community. Vehicular use of the minority language is also carried out in several different ways depending on the actual teaching methods: B1. Consistent use of the minority language as the teaching medium of some compulsory subjects. This approach may put the school administrations in conlict with part of the community, but it aims to achieve an effective competence in the minority language. This is the case of German schools in South Tyrol and the Slovenian ones in the provinces of Gorizia and Trieste. An initial good level of competence in the target language is needed. B2. Co-presence of Italian and minority language. This happens when it is possible for teachers to deliver some of the subjects in the minority language: it is up to the teacher to take this opportunity and propose it to the parents. Nevertheless, teachers often do not feel empowered to act this way. This approach is typical of situations in which there is a mediocre maintenance of the minority language in a diglossic situation. This approach also ensures the strengthening of the target language. B3. Extensive use of code-switching during classes, ranging from simple expressions, signaling familiarity and understanding (typically, telling- AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR Historical linguistic minorities 43 offs are made in the minority language) to more complex communicative events. This is obviously a deliberately low-proile approach, which is not institutionalized and rarely meets parental opposition. It is also the typical situation of many rural areas of Italy where the (ItaloRomance) dialect is today still quite strong in the spoken form, as in Veneto or in Calabria. Unlike the others, this approach does not require previous knowledge of a shared standard. However, it does require at least a condition of dilalia (or, even better, diglossia), and it ensures both the speakers’ increased competence in Italian and in the minority language. B4. (Partial) use of the minority language in a number of projects and extracurricular activities. This is the lowest level, with the least presence of the language, but it is broadly employed in schools where the minority language is particularly weak. There are practically no entry requirements and results are somewhat modest. 5. Civil society Daily use of the minority language is the result of different factors: its presence in the administration and schools, its public visibility, its penetration into civil society. It is also pivotal to consider the community’s degree of acceptance of its linguistic alterity, which leads to the perceived need for self-identiication and language maintenance. Once again South Tyrol (including the Ladin valleys) stands out. The “normality” of the presence of German (and possibly Ladin) clearly emerges from the invisibility of its use, its non-markedness. For German speakers, German is the oficial language, the language of schooling, of commercial activities, cultural events and the media; German is also present — alongside Italian — in place names. In this context the speaker does not have to make any kind of effort to ensure the actual presence of the minority varieties in daily life. Conversely, all the other minorities require various levels of effort in order to have access to a complete presence of their language within the civil society. Slovenians from Gorizia and Trieste and people who rely on French in the Aosta Valley are among those who make the least effort, apart from South Tyrol. In the Venezia Giulia, Slovenians do not have a completely bilingual provincial government, and experience a far smaller presence of their language in commercial activities and in the media; however, the sporting and cultural associations that have been speciically created and maintained are extremely important. Despite the declared linguistic equality, the presence of French in the Aosta Valley is both pervasive and irrelevant at the same time. It is pervasive because French is one of the strongest languages in the world and its use AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 44 G. Iannàccaro and V. Dell’Aquila is widespread, for example, in product labeling and in the media. It is irrelevant since in the Aosta Valley French is not an in-group language, but a kind of second language. In contrast, Franco-Provençal, a low-domain in-group language, lacks any kind of oficial or public incidence. As for Ladin, it is worth remarking the importance of the cultural institutes in the Ladin-speaking areas of Trentino and Veneto, which are very active in the promotion of their minority language and culture. Even less encouraging is the condition of other minorities: for most of them, the penetration of the minority language in the civil society is limited to the often sporadic and casual presence of place names, some public writings, activities linked to the media, folk-lore initiatives. As a matter of fact, a number of minorities simply do not care about the presence of their language in the social context, since it would imply economical and social efforts. The type and strength of willingness needed to make such a normalization effort could be an excellent classifying principle for minority communities and for a deeper understanding of their social realities and political feelings. Yet, this is a point for future discussion. Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca Correspondence addresses: gabriele.iannaccaro@unimib.it, viorayli@uwasa.i Notes 1. For new linguistic minorities cf. Chini, this issue. 2. Note that in some cases these regional laws also comprise varieties that the national law does not regard as minorities, such as Piedmontese in Piedmont and Gallurese, Sassarese and Tabarkin in Sardinia. 3. Cf. Dal Negro (2000); Orioles (2003); Iannàccaro (2010). 4. With just a few exceptions that can be historically explained. 5. Particularly open to debate is the question of the possible maintenance of Greek in Southern Italy acquired during the classical (or byzantine) age or as a result of the recent recolonization. 6. A theoretical question of fundamental importance in this respect is the consideration of the global repertoire of the community (cf. Dal Negro and Iannàccaro 2003). 7. Cf. Dell’Aquila and Iannaccaro (2004: 171). 8. Cf. Berruto (1987, 1995). 9. Actually, Italo-Romance dialects: cf. the Introduction and Dal Negro and Vietti, this issue. 10. Cf. Trumper (1977); Trumper and Maddalon (1982). Macrodiglossia implies a koine and a certain use of low-status language for intercommunity interactions. 11. Forthcoming by these authors is a vast quantitative sociolinguistic research survey on the situation in Aosta Valley, based on a sample of approximately 7250 people. 12. For a theoretical discussion, cf. Iannàccaro (2002). 13. Cf. Iannàccaro (2010). AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR Historical linguistic minorities 45 References Berruto, Gaetano. 1987. Lingua, dialetto, diglossia, dilalia. In Günther Holtus & Johannes Kramer (eds.), Romania et Slavia Adriatica. Festschrift für Žarko Muljačić, 57–81. Hamburg: Buske. Berruto, Gaetano. 1995. Fondamenti di sociolinguistica. Bari: Laterza. Dal Negro, Silvia. 2000. Il DDL 3366 — “Norme in materia delle minoranze linguistiche storiche”: qualche commento da (socio)linguista. Linguistica e ilologia 12. 91–105. 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La legislazione nazionale sulla minoranze linguistiche: problemi, applicazioni, prospettive (Plurilinguismo 9). Udine: Forum. Trumper, John. 1977. Ricostruzione nell’Italia settentrionale: sistemi consonantici. Considerazioni sociolinguistiche nella diacronia. In Raffaele Simone & Ugo Vignuzzi (eds.), Problemi della ricostruzione in linguistica (Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the SLI, Italian Linguistics Association), 259–310. Roma: Bulzoni. Trumper, John & Marta Maddalon. 1982. L’italiano regionale tra lingua e dialetto. Cosenza: Brenner. AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR