Gli atteggiamenti verso le varietà dell’italiano: un’inchiesta di matched guise in Canton Ticino

Migration processes along with globalization and European unification path, generated a “new linguistic issue” which is deeply modifying the speakers’ perceptions of the varieties of language. In 1980’s the configuration of prejudice distributed hierarchically the national standard, region varieties and dialects (Baroni 1983; Galli de’ Paratesi 1984; Volkart Rey 1990); today it has changed as revealed by Laura Di Ferrante’s survey that used matched guise technique (Lambert et alii 1960) to analyse a motivated sample of students and teachers of six schools in Roma, Milano and Napoli. The linguistic prestige is more and more clearly and strongly linked to English language, while new stigmas are being defined around interlanguages generated by the contact of Italian with as many as 150 languages spoken by more than 3.5 millions immigrants (Caritas 2007). The data on evaluation and attitudes (Allport, 1935) should be taken into account in profiling education curricula and political, programmatic actions, if they need to comply with the principles of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (1996). The risk is that today’s unbalances and conflicts “of language and culture” caused by differences in status might «distort perceptions of the value of languages and give rise to hierarchical linguistic attitudes which undermine the language loyalty of speakers». The question is that the recognition of exotic languages (Banfi-Iannaccaro 2006) cannot be faced without any reference to the definition of identity emerging from the national language and the other languages spoken in the country (Habermas e Taylor 1998; Givón 2005). The difference will be determined in the future among countries that will adopt biasbusters policies vs bias shocked policies.