TWO HALVES OF THE SAME KIWI: ITALIAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE AMONG NEW ZEALANDERS OF ITALIAN ORIGIN

Abstract

This essay documents the diffusion of the Italian language and culture in Aotearoa-New Zealand, an officially bilingual (English and Māori), as revealed by the double name, and multicultural society. By adopting an eclectic approach that combines sociolinguistics, language teaching methodology, and cultural anthropology, my paper is a micro-ethnography performed on a group of five women of Italian origin with different levels of competency in Italian as their second language. This group of Kiwis – as New Zealanders frequently refer to themselves – ranged age from 16 to 68 and reside in greater Auckland, New Zealand’s most populous city. Their testimonies were collected through a series of face-to-face semi-structured qualitative interviews and based on several sessions of participant observation involving immersion and interaction in the socio-cultural environment of the informants. Notwithstanding their small number, the stories collected in this research disclose a significant ethnographic relevance as they testify to key aspects of Italianness in the social and historical context of New Zealand. In line with the sociolinguistic theories on the circulation of Italian in the world, on the motivations underpinning its learning and on the typology of speakers, I specifically addressed the following topics: Italian as a language of migration, Italian as a language of culture, Italian taught at university, Italian as part of a fluid and transnational multi-identity, and Italian in the global market.