Aulino, Biagio and Bergami, Roberto (2009) Italian Canadian and Italian Australian adolescent speech: A comparative analysis. In: Proceedings of the Seventh Worldwide Forum on Education and Culture – Putting Theory into Practice: Teaching for the Next Century. Worldwide Forum on Education and Culture, Virginia Beach, VA, pp. 55-64.

Abstract

This paper reports on two separate studies in Canada and Australia on adolescent speech varieties used by high school students studying Italian as a foreign language. The focus is on examining Italian Australian speech used as the social dialect spoken by Italian Australian in certain social contexts. Students pursuing Italian studies as a second language (L2) in a local high school in Melbourne, Australia, completed a voluntary written questionnaire. The analysis of the data collected reveals patterns of adolescent communication of clique-coded language discourses. This pattern was used as the basis for cross-cultural comparisons between Italian Canadian and Italian Australian adolescent discourse. The paper provides some contextual background to the Canadiana and Australian immigration experiences, with comments on the study of Italian a L2 in both countries. This is followed by a discussion of a framework for analyising adolescent speech, with a framework that focuses on clique-coded discourse. The data is then analysed and discussed with a focus on clique-coded discourse. The paper concludes by acknowledging that Italian Canadian and Italian Australian adolescent speech reflects the types of observations suggested in the literature by researchers such as Aulino (2005), Clivio & Danesi (2000) and Danesi (2003a, 2003b); who are among the very few who have carried out cross-cultural comparisons, that is a manifestation of similarities in a distinct and recognizable speech code. The findings of these studies may have pedagogical implications in the context of curriculum content.

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