Little Women and Vital Champions: Gendered Language Shift in a Northern Italian Town

Abstract

The connection of language to class is clearly implicated in the language shift in progress in the northern Italian town of Bergamo. Gender also plays an active part in this shift in terms of linguistic practice and language ideology, as a gendering of languages is occurring such that the local vernacular, Bergamasco, is linked to men, and the national standard, Italian, to women. This article demonstrates that this gendering is one mechanism of language shift, as it impacts the linguistic division of labor across genders in Bergamo. With men in charge of revitalization and women responsible for language socialization, fewer children are growing up speaking Bergamasco.

Riga City Youth between Latvian and Russian

“…Where it exists, one of the more persistent explanations remains Trudgill's concept of "covert prestige," in which the non-standard variety has greater appeal to men due to its connotation of working-class male values. Recently, Cavanaugh (2006) found something comparable with regard to Italian versus Bergamasco in the city of Bergamo, where data have shown that 15-25% more men report speaking the non-standard language than women. During interviews, locals of both genders consistently associated Bergamasco -the language itself and its use -with masculine character traits.…”

Turkish Women in Alsace: Language Maintenance and Integration

“…Studies of (regional) bilingualism (McDonald 1994, Cavanaugh 2006, Gal 1978, Mukherjee 2003, Zuercher 2009) have examined choices and uses of different varieties of languages by women and their significance for the community as well as for the larger society. Since in many cultures the mother is the primary caretaker of the infant (Cavanaugh 2006) she decides what language to speak to her children.…”

“…Since in many cultures the mother is the primary caretaker of the infant (Cavanaugh 2006) she decides what language to speak to her children. For this reason, when it comes to the preservation of the ethnic language, women are either conservative, and use the ethnic language as the main linguistic tool within the household and with their friends, or they are un-concerned with the preservation of their ethnic language and encourage the use of the host country's language within the household (Cavanaugh 2006, Khemlani 2003. In Wissembourg, France, the Turkish language of the immigrants is still alive within the household and the ethnic community.…”

“…Another study in which social mobility and prestige is demonstrated through language shifts is in McDonald (1995: 55) in which Breton women associated their language with "the peasant lifestyle and the French language with finery and a city life." Cavanaugh (2006) also demonstrated the prestige of the standard language versus the dialect. She studied the language shift of the vernacular of Bergamo, a small town in Northern Italy, to standard Italian.…”

“…This is an expectation from within a female community to see pressure to speak standard Italian, to their children early on, so that "they will not endure the linguistics difficulties and social humiliation their parents and grandparents suffered in school as they struggled to learn Italian." (Cavanaugh 2004in Cavanaugh 2006. If standard Italian is associated with women and social prestige, the dialect of Bergamasco is associated with a particular type of blue-collar man, either isolated shepherds or manual unskilled labour, and thus with a low social economic status.…”