‘You wanna piece o’ me?’: A Sociolinguistic Survey on the Cultural and Linguistic Representations of Italian Americans

This paper reports on a longitudinal study about the language of Italian American and ethnic stereotypes in inter-group and intra-group perceptions (Trudgill 2002). The pilot phase was carried out between 2008 and 2009 and a second step was developed in 2013 and 2014. The overall aim of this study is to investigate how cultural and linguistic identities are constructed in multilanguage and multicultural environments, with specific reference to Italian American young adults, mainly of second generation, but occasionally including some third generation informants. The construction and development of cultural identities is a complex process and many factors determine failure or success in the preservation of the system of values of the culture of origin in a different context (Makoni 2007; Cinotto 2014).