For the 2025 edition, the Italian Cultural Institute of Montréal will feature the conference “Identikit of Italians in Montreal: Languages, Histories and Identities,” held by Fabio Scetti.
Wednesday, October 15th at 6 PM
Free admission
Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal
1200 Av. du Dr Penfield
The conference will be held in Italian
Who are the Italians of Montreal today? What languages do they speak? And what does it mean for them to “speak Italian”? This presentation stems from a sociolinguistic research project conducted in Montreal, which drew on over one hundred interviews with people of Italian descent – immigrants and descendants – from different generations, backgrounds, and professions.
The aim is to build linguistic “Identikit”: individual portraits that reveal not only which languages are spoken, but also how and why certain languages or varieties (standard Italian, dialects, French, English) enter into daily life. Through these linguistic biographies, we see stories of family transmission, schooling, work, but also of belonging, pride, and at times distance or loss.
In a city like Montreal, where French and English coexist as the two main languages, the Italian community stands out for its rich and multifaceted linguistic repertoire. Italian – in all its forms – remains for many a marker of belonging, a connection to their roots and part of the cultural heritage to be passed on. Yet, it varies from person to person: some still speak it every day, some have forgotten it, others rediscover it as adults and some only associate it with their grandfather’s songs or grandmother’s recipes.
This research invites us to view languages not as fixed labels, but as living practices and tools of identity, shaped by individual experiences and personal histories. Italians in Montreal are not a homogeneous group, but a constellation of voices, experiences, and linguistic memories worth listening to.
Fabio Scetti – PhD in Language Sciences from Université Paris-Descartes, France. He currently teaches linguistics at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (Québec) and is affiliated with the CRIEM Lab at McGill University in Montreal. He wrote a doctoral thesis in sociolinguistics on the evolution of Portuguese as spoken in Montreal’s “Portuguese community” and, since the year 2019, has been studying the city’s “Italian community” (postdoctoral research). Moreover, he has been working since 2015 on various projects concerning minority languages, especially those spoken in the Italian Alps. His main research interests include language practices, language contact, identity representations, minority or minoritized languages, lexicography and the preservation of linguistic heritage.
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