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• Secondary school adolescents: identity, languages and hereditary languages. The case of the provinces of Biella and Vercelli

  87-109

  Ruben Benatti

  Views:

  216

  This contribution is part of the tradition of heritage languages and linguistic and cultural identity. It mainly deals with the perception of the identity of students of non-Italian nationality or origin and their relationship with the language and the culture of origin, and those of the host community. More and more children and young people of non-Italian origin are present in Italian schools: the integration model pursued in Italy wants to respect cultural differences and language is one of the key elements of this process. The research concerned two provinces of Eastern Piedmont: Biella and Vercelli. Using a sociolinguistic and sociologic approach, a study was carried out through the administration of questionnaires concerning language and identity, the motivation towards integration, the perception and attitude towards one’s own language/culture of origin, and the Italian language/culture. The emerging picture presents sometimes ambiguous attitudes that can be defined almost as a “suspension” between the desire for “Italianisation” and the preservation of one’s roots. The research poses stringent questions schools and society are called to address on the construction (or reconstruction) of their own identity.

• Why read the French classics: Calvino and the lesson of the French masters

  119-131

  Marina Paino

  Views:

  73

  Calvino’s move to Paris in 1967 marks a new phase of his life, in which, inevitably, contact with French culture becomes closer and more direct. The essay examines the relationship that, during the years in Paris and in those of his return to Italy, the writer weaves with the great French classics, in scattered writings and within the Norton Lectures.

• From Italy to the USA: Cleveland Italians, Their Heritage and Traditions

  110-118

  Dénes Mátyás

  Views:

  421

  One would be hard-pressed to deny the influence Italians have had on the United States of America and on the very fabric of American cultural life. Not only are metropolises like New York City and Chicago with their populations in the millions home to significant Italian communities and neighborhoods but so are cities with several hundred thousand inhabitants like Boston, Baltimore, Syracuse, St. Louis, or Cleveland. The present paper intends to focus on Italians in Cleveland, Ohio, that undoubtedly constitute an organic and significant part of the city’s population. It aims to offer an insight into the formation of the Italian neighborhoods, from the first waves of Italian immigrants in the 19th century, and the opportunities of second-, third-, or nth-generation Italians to tend to their common Italian roots as well as to preserve their customs and traditions from the old country through a wide array of Italian cultural events, the city’s Italian community hubs and memorial sites, or  the local Italian-American media

• Luigi Russo: the union of science and life

  10-19

  Andrea Manganaro

  Views:

  255

  In his work as a historian and literary critic, Luigi Russo considered literature not in the perspective of the limited disciplinary knowledge, but always tended to correlate it with wider aspects of reality, history, to “make history” rather than to “know how to read”, to always connect “science” and “life”, theory and practice, study and ethi-cal-political values, according to the teaching of Francesco De Sanctis, set out in the extraordinary Neapolitan prolusion of the same name of 1872, interpreted by Russo in the monograph 1928 Francesco De Sanctis e la cultura napoletana. The work of Luigi Russo, anti-authoritarian, anti-demagogic, anti-dictatorial, can still be a point of reference for those who care about the values of culture and the polis together.

• Linguistic and cultural contacts between the two shores of the Adriatic. The Italian of Albanian writers

  69-86

  Flora Shabaj

  Views:

  212

  Migrant literature is a powerful medium of expression which offers a great variety of interpretation and a great source of inspiration for scholars to investigate the different aspects of the life and those of the society. Finding themselves in-between, migrant authors have the opportunity to live (in) two or more languages and cultures bringing them together, changing and shaping them. It is precisely here where linguistic contact occurs and where different strategies take place becoming an interesting part of a linguistic and literary research. This article investigates the contact between Albanian and Italian language through the analysis of some of the works of Ornela Vorpsi, Artur Spanjolli, Ron Kubati and Anilda Ibrahimi. Taking into consideration the fact that these authors has decided to use Italian as their language of expression, this investigation offers some considerations of what this means to them and the impact on both languages. Considering the fact that these writers transfer in their texts not only important aspects of the culture but also some features of the Albanian language, it is interesting to see the way in which transference takes place and what happens to the text when two different and distant languages such as Albanian and Italian meet.