La diglossia italiano-dialetto nella città di Palermo: un'indagine sociolinguistica.

The work that I present, as explained by the title, has as its central theme the phenomenon of diglossia in the city of Palermo, in which the standard language, that is, Italian and the local dialect, that is the dialect of Palermo coexist in the language of the speakers. The primary objective is to evaluate the reasons for the dialect's marginalization and subsequent classification as a popular language. Another purpose was to investigate how speakers use both language codes, and in what contexts. Research and literature were needed to explore the concept of dialect and its difference from the standard language. Through the information collected, it was possible to analyze the process of 'sdialettizzazione' that occurred in Italy. The work includes 3 chapters: 1)The first chapter is about the city as a plural context where individuals interact and create a communicative organism. Subsequently, a general background on the history of the city and the Sicilian dialects is presented. 2) The second chapter looks at how the relationship between standard language and dialect has developed from the sixteenth century to the present day, and how the marginalization of local dialects has developed over the centuries. 3) In the third and final chapter, to carry out a detailed analysis, it was necessary to organize a sociolinguistic survey, through a questionnaire to a group of citizens of Palermo. The number of respondents was a total of 12 people, men and women aged 22 to 84, this allowed us to examine different and contrasting data. The city of Palermo has 25 neighborhoods, each of which has a history and a social evolution that characterizes and differentiates the people who live there. A peculiarity that must be highlighted, and that unites all the neighborhoods, is the presence within them of two social strata: a more educated group, with decent economic possibilities, and a group of people who because of different family and social conditions could not face opportunities for progress and economic development school. Due to the coexistence of these two social realities, the linguistic systems have been characterized by the obvious coexistence of Italian and Palermo’s dialect. Sicily is a land rich in history, it has been a meeting place for different civilizations, and many dominions that have brought wealth and culture. As proof of this, we can find churches, monuments, archaeological sites, ancient and recent texts, flourishing cities, that are the testimony of a rich and varied past; The populations of the island that have alternated over the centuries have contributed to the overlapping and contact of different linguistic entities, their contact and their influence have conditioned the Sicilian dialects of today. Language is something dynamic, this means that it changes continuously, as a result, the varieties of Sicilian dialect show many changes due to internal and external influences, such as the dominations of the island. By analyzing the relationship between dialect and language, we have observed that dialects are represented as languages that are confined to specific regions and geographic areas. Dialects are divided into two categories, primary and secondary dialects. Primary dialects are the varieties of dialects that stand in relation to sociolinguistic subordination and share the same origin with a standardized dialect, which in the case of Italian dialects is Latin, while the secondary dialects are those dialects arising from the geographical differentiation of that language. The secondary dialects in Italy are regional Italians, which means that the local dialect and standard Italian overlap in what is referred to as an intermediate variety. By evaluating the different definitions of 'language' and 'dialect' that linguists provide us, it is evident that the first term has a higher prestige due to historical and political reasons than the second.