Gaetano Rando Takes a look at the works of the prolific Italo-Australian writer, Pino Bosi. Born in Gorizia in 1933, he emigrated to Australia at the age of eighteen. Not content just to integrate the English he had learnt at school with the spoken language, no sooner had he arrived on the new continent, than he started studying the language from the beginning again. Language plays an important role in Bosi’s writings, published both in Italian and in English, and he tried to combine standard Italian with that spoken by the immigrants. He achieved success with a series of short stories, which were then brought together in Austrlia Cane, his bestknown book in Italo-Australian circles. Attentive to the themes of ethno-cultural diversity, Bosi also analyzed those relating to the social stratification within the immigrant community.
The essay by Chiro and Smolicz looks at the experience of maintaining a language by a group of students of Italian origin in Australia, most of whom are second generation and aged about twenty. The authors integrate quantitative data with the analysis of case histories. They reveal the difficulties araising from the problem of learning three languages: Italian, English and the Italian dialect spoken at home. Despite the scant interest in standard Italian among the Italian community, whose preference of dialect as a linguistic medium has led to a partial decline in the knowledge of the language, the Italians in Australia are still in an intermediary position as regards the maintainance of their language, when compared with other ethnic communities.
Linguistic integration is a determinant in the process of integration into the host society, particularly in the process of rethinking the sentiment of membership. The identification results from the structural integration, in terms of education and employement, and the sentiment of membership appears as a result in the process of integration into the host society. The Italian immigrants and their descendants born in Grenoble, in France, are categorized within two main identity groups, French and Italian, themselves subdivided into two intermediary groups, French-Italian and Italian-French. The focus of this paper is to determine the role of the linguistic integration in the sentiment of membership and the exent to which ethnic identity influences the use of language.