Sociolinguistic interviews repeated over the years: Two cases of Italians in Catalonia and their conversational history

Abstract

The objective of this study is to demonstrate the importance of conducting in-depth qualitative studies, giving the example of two case studies repeated over the years. The aim is to show, for the Italians of Catalonia, how we come to describe – from different analytical stages – the factors that the use of the Catalan language may depend upon over time, along with their attitudes and linguistic preference. For this purpose, previous and current studies are presented and the methodology and type of analysis of the data are described in detail, introducing and describing with examples some formal and content linguistic elements that are repeated over time, as well as specific concepts that relate them, such as identity structure and conversational history.

Keywords: Italians, language use, conversational history, identity structure.