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In:Italo-Romance Heritage Languages: Multiple approaches
Edited by Eugenio Goria and Margherita Di Salvo
[Studies in Bilingualism 68] 2025
► pp. 37–63

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Linguistic biographies and contact phenomena in Mannheim’s first generations of Italian emigrants

 | IUL Online University
Published online: 11 September 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.68.03fer
Abstract
The present chapter attempts to offer a linguistic biography of two different generations of Italians currently living in Mannheim observing the language contact phenomena emerging from the oral narration of their personal history. The analysis of the spoken language is based on a semi-free corpus of interviews. The interviews lasted 90 minutes and were carried out on 3 participants belonging to the first generation of immigrants in Mannheim since the 1960s and 5 participants belonging to the most recent first generation. This paper evidenced that in the younger first generation, code-switching with German primarily involves the insertion of words and mainly revolves around vocabulary related to specific semantic areas, especially those connected to the workplace.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Italian immigration in Germany
    • 2.1Social and macro-sociolinguistic aspects
    • 2.2Linguistic aspects
  • 3.Italian immigration in Mannheim
  • 4.Theoretical and methodological base
  • 5.Methodology and data
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Linguistic biographies and self-declared relationships with the dialect
    • 6.2Linguistic biographies and self-declared relationships with the German
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
References (68)
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