Italian quantitative sociolinguistics: Research directions

The present paper deals with methodological aspects of Italian quantitative sociolinguistic research. It discusses a number of projects, showing the increasing vitality of this approach, which, despite being rooted in international mainstream research, displays considerable scientific novelty. Special attention is paid to the projects carried out by the Centre d'Etudes Linguistiques pour l'Europe (Milan), the Free University of Bozen/ Bolzano and the research group of the Atlante linguistico della Sicilia at the CSFLS. Within these projects the quantitative sociolinguistic approach is discussed in depth. New means of discussing the data are explored that go beyond their mere statistical presentation and offer ways of interpreting the linguistic reality of multilingual situations without the bias of possible previous assumptions by the researcher. Italian quantitative projects comprise large sociolinguistic polls conducted throughout Europe as well as more focused studies on specific multilingual situations. Particular attention will be given to the treatment of sociolinguistic data at both macro and micro levels of analysis. It will be shown that in Italian research, quantitative sociolinguistics always goes hand in hand with qualitative and dialectal research.