Code-switching in Italo-Brazilian literature from Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo: A sociolinguistic analysis of the forms and functions of literary code-switching

Abstract

Italo-Brazilian prose texts from São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, written from the 1920s until today, either in Brazilian Portuguese with Italian code-switches, or in the Venetian koiné spoken by the Italian immigrants in Rio Grande do Sul, sometimes switching to Portuguese, are an early, but so far largely neglected example of literary code-switching representing the multilingual immigrants’ communities. In a sociolinguistic analysis of these texts I will argue that the conversational functions of literary code-switching, especially in reported speech, are comparable to those found in spontaneous utterances, if considered in a continuum between conceptually oral and conceptually written language (Koch and Oesterreicher, 1985). On the micro-level the stylistic function of code-switching plays a more prominent role in literature than in other genres, but on the macro level this kind of code-switching can also be regarded as a response to bilingual identity. In this respect, literary code-switching is used as an approximation strategy between the two closely related contact languages that gives the minority language prestige and thus contributes to its preservation.