Abstract
As Federico Fellini said, “A different language is a different vision of life,” and nothing resonates more with the author and her life experience than this quotation. Moving to the USA and learning English and then Spanish has immensely broadened her horizons immensely and taught her to live and think of life in ways she was unaware to. In writing this autoethnography, she wants to narrate part of her journey as a language learner; she will share some of the most important milestones of her adventurous quest. She will reflect on how the perception of who she was changed, and how she slowly became a “contact space” where her native Italian culture and her acquired American one merged, struggled, and eventually learned how to co-exist. Furthermore, she will also reflect on how her personal experience with learning foreign languages has shaped her approach to teaching and her understanding her students.
TopMy Language Learning Journey
I was born in a little town, San Paolo Bel Sito, in the province of Naples. It was a very tight community where everybody knew each other and was in each other’s business. However, it was also where I felt safe and where growing up was easy and fun. I was free to play outdoors with my friends, and I mingled with different kinds of kids. Some came from ‘educated’ families and only spoke Italian because their parents didn’t teach them the local dialect. Others came from more simple families where the parents had not received an education and preferred speaking dialect because that was the language spoken at home.
My family was somehow in the middle of these two typologies. My parents didn’t go to college; my mom finished middle school, and my dad attended high school, but he didn’t finish because he had to work with his dad. Hence, I also come from a simple family, and my brother and I were the first to go to college. However, we only spoke Italian in my house. My mom prohibited my brother and me from speaking Neapolitan. She was afraid that if we learned a dialect at home, we would have difficulties learning Italian at school. At that time, speaking dialect was taken as a sign of ‘ignorance’; if one spoke Neapolitan, it meant that they didn’t know Italian and didn’t go to school. This negative perception of dialect was probably an echo of the Fascist regime's linguistic policy, which imposed the use of ‘standard Italian’ and basically demonized the use of local dialects. My mom always made the effort to only speak proper Italian, although many times the Neapolitan words would naturally roll out of her mouth.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Life Stories: A sort autobiographical recollection of the events and experiences that have shaped a person’s existence.
Self-Categorization: The process by which people ‘categorize’ themselves as belonging to a certain group rather than another. It creates a sense of identity and belonging. It also leads to specific behaviors associated with the chose group.
Cultural Assimilation: The absorption of a new (or dominant) culture and its customs.
Cultural Contact: Is defined as the contact between peoples belonging to different cultures. The result of cultural contact is usually acculturation which indicates the changes in beliefs and customs.
Biculturalism: The coexistence of two different cultures in the same country.
Bilingualism: Ability to fluently speak two languages.
Affective Filter: The affective filter is a term introduced by Stephen Krashen (19860) to identify a series of ‘affective’ variables that a can affect language acquisition. Tension and fear of embarrassment for example can negatively impact language learning. On the contrary, motivation and feeling relaxed aid the learning process.
Personal Narrative: A prose narrative that relates personal and relevant experiences. It is usually written in the first person, and it is based on personal observations and reflections.
Collective Identity: Refers to a common definition agreed upon by members of a particular group of individuals that share communal interests, experiences, and ideas.
Identity: The identification of the individual’s potential and qualities particularly in relation to social context.
Multiculturalism: Refers to the acknowledgement and support of different cultures, ethnicities, races that exist Whitin a dominant culture.
Cultural identity: Is part of a person identity. It is associated with how people perceive themselves and has to do with nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, social groups, and generation.