Politiche linguistiche e piccole comunità minoritarie, tra sociolinguistica e glottodidattica

MARRA, ANTONIETTA

2007-01-01

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Abstract

National and international documents and laws of recent decades, gave an official status to minority languages in Europe and Italy. Those texts reserve particular attention to one of the paths of language planning, which is very important for the preservation and growth of the number of speakers, but also, at the same time, highly problematic for various issues concerning both the the methodology and the effectiveness of the proposal: the language acquisition planning. Obviously, linguistic acqusition which occurs spontaneously within the family, can be directed and guided, therefore planned, in public environements. Among those, the school appears the privileged place for this purpse, according to the role that school plays in the transmission of knowledge in our society. Therefore, language acquisition planning appeared, in the policies of minority language, one pf the main ways to save and revitalize minority languages of small communities.This paper provides an overview of language teaching experiences of the Slavic language communities of Molise. In these communities the planning of a process of language acquisition is essential, as from data we know that the use and structures of the Slavic local varieties show clear signs of language obsolescence. In the paper there is a description of teaching organization, which is particularly complex, despite the small number of the student population, because of administrative issues; of methodologies and practices of the minority language teaching; an analysis of the few materials used and produced within the Slavic language educational courses. The information collected in the three municipalities of the Slavic area of Molise represent the starting point, along with other data that educational experiences of minority languages can offer, for a discussion on some issues that are particularly relevant to local language teaching.