Age-related Variation in Code-switching between Italian and the Sicilian Dialect

The paper deals with intergenerational variation in syntactic and functional patterns of code-switching (CS) between Italian and the Sicilian dialect. The research is based on two kinds of data: (i) a corpus of spontaneous spoken language, recorded, transcribed and then submitted to conversation analysis (Alfonzetti, 1992; 2012); (ii) a written corpus of e-mails, text messages, posts in social networks, etc. The main purpose is to show that the occurrence of a particular switching strategy largely depends on sociolinguistic factors interacting with age (language proficiency; sociosymbolic values and communicative functions of the two languages; speakers’ attitudes, etc.). This issue is extremely important both from a sociolinguistic perspective (age-related differences in CS are a key to understanding an ongoing language shift) and from a theoretical one (comparing CS patterns between the same two languages within the same community but across different age-groups helps to establish the relative role of sociolinguistic vs syntactic factors underlying CS).