engleski

Linguistic and social-identity aspects of code-switching: The case of Zadar's speakers of the Venetian dialect

In the last few decades, studies on code-switching (CS) have argued that this phenomenon should be considered first and foremost from a sociolinguistic perspective, that is, with the view that language behaviour and use are related to speakers’ social and cultural identity and characteristics, or to aspects of their social life in the broad sense (Bullock and Toribio 2009). Accordingly, the present research is based on recorded interviews conducted with speakers of Zadar's Venetian dialect (Zaratino) which reveal CS between Italian, Venetian, and Croatian-Čakavian. The hypothesis is that speakers switch codes to stress their bilingual identity and their being part of a speech and social community that was typical and at its strongest in the mid-twentieth century, whereas today it has been reduced to a limited number of bilingual speakers. The study confirms our initial hypothesis, that the speakers switch codes between Italian and Croatian to project their bilingual identity, but it also shows that speakers project their identity mostly through we-codes i.e., the unmarked Italian/Venetian CS or Italian monolingual speech.

Zadar, Venetian dialect, Croatian, Italian, code-switching, social identity, linguistic identity

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