Abstract
In South Tyrol (northern Italy), where approximately two-thirds of the people speak German and almost all the rest Italian, secondary-school children were asked to indicate the expressions in each other's language they found pleasant and unpleasant as well as those they customarily employ in conversation. Although the two samples designated categories of expression with almost equal frequency (except that higher percentages of German speakers tended to dislike profanity in Italian but to claim to use it), both intra– and intergroup variability was marked with respect to the cited words, phrases, and sentences. The direct, frontal attack on the problem of linguistic contact seems to provide only tentative, minimal, albeit provocative cues concerning the psychological needs that such changes may satisfy.
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