Language Alternation Strategies in Multilingual Settings

This book is one of the first systematic studies to describe the linguistic repertoire and the communicative strategies adopted by Ghanaian immigrants in Italy.
The linguistic repertoire of the Ghanaian community in Bergamo (Northern Italy) is described with a special focus on the different codes composing it. The author analyzes the role that each code plays in expressing the community members' ethnic and linguistic identity, and the speakers' attitudes towards each code. She draws on the results of qualitative analysis adopting both a macro-sociolinguistic and a micro-sociolinguistic perspective of a database of face-to-face interactions and of formal interviews involving a selected group of Ghanaian immigrants.

Autorentext
The Author: Federica Guerini has a degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Bergamo, Italy. Before joining the Ph.D. program of the Department of Linguistics of the University of Pavia (2000), she did postgraduate work at the University of Bergamo, where she also worked as an Italian lecturer for the Centre of Italian for Foreigners (Centro di Italiano per Stranieri). At present she works as a Sociolinguistics lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the University of Bergamo. Her research interests include: African languages, language variation, language contact and language attitudes, multilingual communication, code-switching and conversational analysis.

Inhalt
Contents: The Ghanaian Community in Bergamo and its Province: a Socio-Demographic and Sociolinguistic Overview Language Alternation Strategies in a Conversational Framework Conversational Analysis of Code-Switching Occurrences Conversational Analysis of Transfer Occurrences.