The Italian Diaspora in South Africa by Maria Chiara Marchetti-Mercer

Author:Maria Chiara Marchetti-Mercer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000936407
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2023-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

Laura also explained how she saw learning Italian as a way to connect with her Italian father and to reconnect to her Italian identity: “It is very embarrassing going to Italy and you have an Italian passport and an Italian name and you can’t understand, and I wanted to get to know my father in that way as well.” This is in line with Tannenbaum and Howie’s (2002) view that an attachment to one’s family of origin is a precursor for language maintenance in migrant families.

Language competency is not only about a phenomenological description of the second and third generations’ experiences, but it also has relevance for one’s sense of identity. This brings us to the important question of whether one needs to speak Italian in order to feel “Italian” or “be Italian”, pointing to the connection between language and ethnic identity which has been highlighted in the literature, for example, by Benatti and Tarantini (2018).

Nino expressed the belief that language and identity are strongly connected: “I believe your identity is rooted in the way you act … this is why I say the identity part has also to do with language.” Nino was fluent in Italian, having always been spoken to in Italian at home by his parents. For those participants who were not fluent in Italian, learning Italian was a way to reconnect with their Italian identity: “I got annoyed because I wanted to know where I came from, I went and I learned it. In high school I took it as a subject and then I took it right up to honours at university” (Sandra). It was their own personal choice, as in the case of Fabrizio, whose “parents didn’t force [him] to do anything, [he] just wanted to study Italian”.

Lara lamented that not speaking Italian influenced her sense of Italian identity: “I think if I had […] been brought up speaking Italian, I would have much more of a sense of Italianness.” Furthermore, she felt that not speaking the language was a source of embarrassment, especially given that (by coincidence) all our participants held both South African and Italian citizenship: “so that’s one of the reasons why I learned Italian because I am, like, I can't have this passport. And then I don’t know how to ask someone, like, where the bathroom is. It’s not okay.”

In Theodore’s case, he felt that not being fluent in Italian distinguished him from “real” Italians, making him different:

I found from other Italians that Italians who speak Italian and Italians who don’t, the Italians who speak Italian think of the Italians who don’t as non-Italian. … there is only the language barrier but, […] like I said, I fight to be a part of it, so I want to be and really if I could I would raise my children to speak Italian. But I would have to learn Italian first. … My godmother was saying that we will only ever be stranieri, … As if they are more Italian than

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