Contatto e rappresentazione linguistica e dialettale nella comunità siciliana di Detroit

This work is situated within the vast and heterogeneous field of study on linguistic uses and representations in communities of Italian origin abroad. In particular, the subject of the investigation is the Detroit community, where a fairly well-established migrant group originating from two towns in the province of Palermo—Cinisi and Terrasini—is permanently settled (the first flow of Italians to Detroit dates back to 1880, see WooDForD 2001; for subsequent waves of migration, see Del Vecchio 2023).The Sicilian community of Detroit is made up of numerous families coming from all over the Island, to which are added migration quotas from Southern Italy, particularly from Calabria. A rather significant component, in terms of both the number of people involved and the nature of the phenomena connected to the flow, comes from the coastal towns of Cinisi and Terrasini (Palermo). This contribution deals with this component and the related sociolinguistic and geo-demographic phenomena, as part of the broader doctoral research project of co-author Giovanna Brunetti, whose tutor is Vincenzo Pinello.