Multiculturalism and language shift: A subjective vitality questionnaire study of Sydney Italians

• Autores: John Gibbons, Lyn Ashcroft
• Localización: Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, ISSN 0143-4632, Vol. 16, Nº. 4, 1995, págs. 281-299
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • There is a mismatch between the language vitality of Greek, and the language vitality of Italian in Australia. Part of the explanation for the comparatively more rapid language shift in the Italian community may lie in perceptions of ethnolinguistic vitality. Giles, Rosenthal & Young (1985) have examined a Greek‐Australian community using the Subjective Vitality Questionnaire. This paper is a replication in predominantly Italo‐Australian suburbs of Sydney. It compares SVQ results for standard Italian and standard Greek in Australia in order to determine whether the substantial real difference in vitality between these two languages is reflected in perceived vitality as measured by the SVQ. Since Anglo‐Celts are a minority in many parts of Australia's larger cities, our second objective was to see whether perceptions of language vitality of subjects who are not members of the SVQ target language communities differ from those of the SVQ target language communities.

    The results show that the differences in perceptions of Greek and Italian vitality are not as great as the real difference in their vitality, and that there are substantial differences between items that examine community vitality compared to those that address language vitality— this has ramifications for the modelling of language vitality factors. Furthermore, speakers of other minority languages see Italian as more vital than do Anglo‐Australians, and subjects with a higher proficiency perceive Italian as having higher vitality.

    A comparison of these findings with those for Italian dialect seems to show that Italian dialects are perceived as having a much lower vitality than standard Italian. This also highlights the problem of using census data which do not distinguish standard Italian from other Italian dialects.