JoLIE 15:3/2022

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FOREIGN WRITERS IN ITALIAN. A NON-POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE

 

 

Giacomo Ferrari A green circle with white letters AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Università del Piemonte Orientale, Italy

 

 

 

Abstract

 

Two historical phenomena have contributed to the process of linguistic and cultural hybridisation, colonialism and migration; these are universal features, but recent mass migrations and the increasing availability of speed communication media have accelerated such a phenomenon, still without changing the basic mechanisms. The colonial activity of European countries has given origin to a number of postcolonial cultural phenomena, starting with the American literatures (USA and Canada, Francophonie in Quebec, the Hispanic American literature) up to the recent Anglo-Indian one etc., to mention just a few. Such rich cultural creativity has exerted a great impact on the very structure of the language.

Italian is not well spread as a post-colonial literary language; in fact, few authors come from past-Italian colonies (Lybia, Horn of Africa, Dodecanese, and Tien-Tsin). In addition, the cultural impact of Italian culture and language on the colonised countries has not been as strong as that of other colonial powers; thus, we can hardly speak of an Italian post-colonial literature. On the contrary, many immigrants from countries that have not been colonised by Italians have learned the language and there is good quality literary production of “foreign” authors, often globally referred to as “migrant literature”. This introduces new contents in the attempt to bridge their culture of origin and those of the host country (Italy). Also, from the point of view of the language, some innovation comes from their contribution. The studies of the impact of such a literature on the Italian culture are rather scanty, but there are some groups and journals that convey such features of a new culture, object of illustration in this paper.

 

Keywords: Migration; Migrant literature; Migrant language; Cultural hybridisation; Linguistic hybridisation

 

 

References

 

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How to cite this article: Ferrari, G. (2022). Foreign writers in Italian: A non-post-colonial literature. Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education – JoLIE, 15(3), 153-164. doi: https://doi.org/10.29302/jolie.2022.15.3.10

 

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