Italian Immigration Guides During Mass Migration to Argentina. Linguistic Aspects

Abstract

While letters and popular narratives written by Italian immigrants have been analyzed with historical and sociolinguistic perspectives, only scant attention has been paid to texts written for potential emigrants. Based on a comparative study of selected guides produced for Italians emigrating to the Americas during mass migration between the 1880s and the 1920s, this paper evaluates some linguistic aspects of texts for Italians emigrating to Argentina. The numerous guides compiled by Giuliano Corniani, Arnaldo Tortesi, Bernardino Frescura, Arrigo De Zettiry, and the Commissariato dell’emigrazione provide detailed information on the transatlantic journey from Genoa to the Río de la Plata, on Argentina's history, geography, climate, government, immigration laws, and job opportunities for laborers and colonialists. They use a colloquial written variety of Standard Italian, rich in dialogues and devoid of technical terminology to accommodate dialect-speaking migrants with varying levels of Italian proficiency, while promoting at the same time the diffusion of the Standard language among them. A few of the texts by Frescura and De Zettiry evoke the plurilingual reality on board the ships and provide short linguistic guides to Spanish, thus fostering the migrants’ future bi- and plurilingualism at a time of increasing literacy levels and decreasing mass dialectophony.

Si bien las cartas y narrativas populares escritas por inmigrantes italianos se han analizado desde perspectivas históricas y sociolingüísticas, se ha prestado escasa atención a los textos escritos para potenciales emigrantes. A partir de un estudio comparativo de una selección de guías producidas para italianos que emigraron a las Américas durante la migración masiva entre las décadas de 1880 y 1920, este artículo analiza algunos aspectos lingüísticos de los textos para italianos que emigraron a la Argentina. Las numerosas guías compiladas por Giuliano Corniani, Arnaldo Tortesi, Bernardino Frescura, Arrigo De Zettiry y el Commissariato dell’emigrazione brindan información detallada sobre el viaje transatlántico desde Génova hasta el Río de la Plata, sobre historia, geografía, clima, gobierno, leyes de inmigración de Argentina, y oportunidades laborales para trabajadores y colonialistas. Los autores utilizan una variedad coloquial escrita de italiano estándar, rica en diálogos y desprovista de terminología técnica para adaptarse a inmigrantes que hablan dialectos con diferentes niveles de dominio del italiano, al mismo tiempo que promueven la difusión del idioma estándar entre ellos. Algunos de los textos de Frescura y De Zettiry evocan la realidad plurilingüe a bordo de los barcos y proporcionan breves guías lingüísticas del español, fomentando así el futuro bilingüismo y plurilingüismo de los migrantes en un momento de aumento de los niveles de alfabetización y de disminución de la dialectofonía masiva.

Keywords:

• immigration guides
• Italian mass migration to Argentina
• literacies
• colloquial Italian
• Italian dialects
• Spanish
• bi- and plurilingualism

Palabras clave:

• guías de inmigración
• inmigración masiva italiana a la Argentina
• alfabetizaciones
• italiano coloquial
• dialectos italianos
• español
• bilingüismo
• plurilingüismo

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See for example (Franzina 2000; Durante 2005; Salvatore 2018).

2 I wish to thank the staff of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale and of the library of the Fondazione di studi storici Filippo Turati in Florence, Italy for their assistance. Immigration guides have also been published in Argentina, for example the Manuale dell’emigrante italiano in Argentina (1872) mentioned by Ambrosetti and Strangio (2015), which I was unable to consult.

3 Among the rich historical and sociological studies of Italian migration to Argentina see for example (Rosoli 1978; Euroamericani 1987; Lo Cascio 1987; Bevilacqua, De Clementi, and Franzina 2001; Baily 1999, a comparative history based on case studies of Italians migrating to Buenos Aires and New York City before World War I, the two cities with the largest concentrations of Italians by 1915).

4 In addition to numerous guides for Italian emigrants to Argentina, Frescura (1867–1925), a professor of economic geography at the University of Genoa (De Magistris 1927; Cuman and Vecchiato 2002), also wrote similar texts for the United States (Guida degli Stati Uniti nell’America del Nord con relativa nuova legge sull’immigrazione. Genoa 1903; Guida degli Stati Uniti. Genoa 1904) and for Brazil (Guida dello Stato di S. Paolo nel Brasile. Piacenza 1904).

5 In her book La stampa italiana in Argentina, Bertagna traces the history of Italian newspapers in Argentina. La Patria degli italiani stood out with 40,000 copies printed in 1904, when there were 228,000 Italian residents living in Buenos Aires. La Patria was then the third largest newspaper in Argentina, after La Prensa and La Nación.

6 For a succinct historical sociolinguistic discussion of Italian migration to Argentina, including pidginization in Cocoliche and Lunfardo, see Bagna (2011, 311–327).