engleski

The Italophone Reefs in the Croatophone Sea

The aim of the paper is to describe the sociolinguistic, diasystemic and heteroglossic specificities of the unique multilingual Istrian macrosystem, with special reference to the italophone repertoire characterized by functional bilingualism. The status of the Italian national community (INC) and the Italian language in Istria is determined by the historical presence of the autochthonous italophone community and the durability of institutional recognition of the Italian language as the language of the social environment. Social interactions are shaped by double diglossic or imperfectly polyglossic relationships implying a complementary sociolinguistic distribution and hierarchic distinction between Croatian, the (first) official high code with undeniable social prestige, covering almost all the entire range of functional communication ; Italian, the (second) official high code (or medium variety) without ethnolinguistic vitality, covering only certain limited formal interactional situations ; and Istrovenetian, the (unofficial) low variety with very high ethnolinguistic prestige, considered to be the L1 of the members of the INC and the primary code of their community identification.

sociolinguistics of Istria, bilingualism, diglossia, polyglossia, linguistic insularity

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