Language attitudes among mobile speakers: Evidence from Italian speakers living abroad

This paper explores the variability of belief systems that underpin standardization dynamics by investigating the effect of international mobility on attitudes of Italians towards standard and regional Italian. Research has shown that standard Italian is converging toward spoken or regional varieties, leading to the emergence of neo-standard Italian. While previous studies focused exclusively on Italians in Italy, we investigate how attitudes towards neo-standard Italian develop for Italians abroad. A matched-guise experiment carried out with Italian speakers living in Switzerland and Belgium is compared to an experiment carried out in Italy. Our results show a change in the social meaning of standardization among mobile communities, as Italians living abroad seem to neutralize the prestige that Italians in Italy attach to Milanese Italian and instead upgrade Neapolitan Italian, which had been downgraded by young Italians in the previous experiment.