Martina Boi
Sardinia is an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea, and it is the place where I come from. The official language of Sardinia is Italian, but the language that brings people together, makes them feel profoundly connected to their land, traditions and history is Sardinian. However, when in 1861 Italy became a united nation, the use of the national language (Italian) was imposed on disparate peoples in order to unite them under the same flag and achieve political and administrative centralization. Sardinian, spoken in the island up to that moment, was presented as the language of the socially marginalized, co-responsible for Sardinia’s isolation and centuries-old misery. Conversely, Italian was displayed as a means of social emancipation and progress, to be used for socio-cultural integration with the mainland.
Sardinian is now an endangered language, and this is because many Sardinians detached (and still detach) themselves from and refuse to speak or “sound” (too) Sardinian, since the latter is still associated with a condition of degradation and uncivilization. Many of us (Sardinians) still suffer from a severe inferiority complex and share feelings of shame, and this is in part due to popular culture representations. Sardinian is often made fun of and reduced to a ridiculous caricature, to a “shepherd” and coarse “southern” accent. For Italians, Sardinian is merely a bunch of incomprehensible sounds belonging to an ignorant, poor and rough people.
One example that represents this popular culture believe can be identified in Groundskeeper Willie, the character on The Simpsons that impersonates the janitor at Springfield Elementary School. While in the original American version Willie is Scottish, in the Italian dubbed version of the animated sitcom Willie has a strong, thick, stereotypical Sardinian accent.
In the original version Willie speaks an English that is not very pleasant to the Yankees’ ears, and in Italy this was translated with the choice of making Willie be Sardinian. While there is no reason to claim that Sardinian is the most characteristic Italian dialect (because of the myriad of colorful and equally fascinating accents and dialects in the Italian peninsula), apparently, Sardinian is not very pleasant to the Italians’ ears. What is more, the hostile and diffident personality of the janitor can be easily associated with the stereotyped view that Italians have of Sardinians. Being The Simpson a satiric sitcom against the American society, the stylistic choices of the show have been transferred to the Italian context, reproducing an affective fabric that was already very solid in the minds of Italians and Sardinians. The result is that Sardinians can’t do anything but give up in front of these “funny” discriminations, so that we laugh at our own language together with those who humiliate it.
What I have just described supports what Van Herk (2018) writes when he speaks about the link between language and space: “social and physical ideas of space can interact to affect language” (p. 38). Sardinia is an island, which means that it is literally isolated from the rest of Italy, and this geographical configuration certainly influences people’s perceptions of Sardinian and its speakers. However, like Van Herk (2018) says, “What we call place is not simply a GPS coordinate, or geographic accident. Each regional language variety is a product of historical and social forces particular to that place.” (p. 42).
In Sardinia, historical, social, cultural and spatial elements have all contributed (and are still contributing) to the death of a language. When facing such powerful social representation, and dealing with ideas that are so deeply entrenched in collective imaginaries, do educators have the power to fight against the disappearance of languages? Can they make a difference in positively building a new image of endangered languages? I believe so, but schools cannot carry on this task alone and the support of political institutions is essential in protecting and promoting the vitality of languages that, like Sardinian, are slowly disappearing all around the world.
REFERENCES
Van Herk, G. (2018). Place. In Van Herk, G. (Ed.), What is sociolinguistics? (pp. 27-50). 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK:Wiley-Blackwell.
