Migration’s Impact on Sound Change: an Interview with Valentina De Iacovo, Visiting Fellow from University of Turin

Felicia Lee

Valentina De Iacovo is a Researcher based at the University of Turin, Italy, and a visiting fellow at the phonetics laboratory at the School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne. Her research interests lie in phonetics, specifically phonetic attrition in Italian. She is also a cinephile and foodie.

Felicia interviewed Valentina about her experience as visiting Fellow at SOLL, and the significance of the project that she is currently working on with Prof. John Hajek.

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Hi Valentina, thanks for agreeing to our interview. First, could you tell us more about your background before you joined SOLL as a visiting fellow?

I was born in Turin, Italy. Torino. I love languages and I have always studied them in school. I undertook a bachelor’s degree in languages and majored in French and Spanish studies. I spent my third year at the Université Clermont Auvergne in Clermont-Ferrand, France, under the Erasmus+ scheme.

Then I decided to stay in Montpellier for one year after my stint at Clermont-Ferrand to commence a Master in French as a Foreign Language (FLE). My stay at Montpellier convinced me that I really love languages and to share my passion for languages with students. I later returned to Italy and during my last year of the master’s course, I was involved in a project in London, England, under the Comenius programme. It was really fun because I could apply what I’ve studied at school when I teach in the classroom. So I stayed for three years in London and spent two more years after this project in a French school teaching French.

I had a great adventure and I returned to Italy once again after that. My supervisor, who supervised me for my master’s thesis in Italy, asked me if I was interested in doing a PhD. Though I was not really sure about what I would have done, I embarked on my doctorate programme.

Wow, it looks like you travelled a fair bit. That sounds really exciting! So how did you land up being a visiting fellow at the University of Melbourne?

During my PhD I helped Prof. John Hajek, who also had a small-scale project in Italy at that time, to start working on several projects together. One of the projects is on the linguistic landscape of Italy and how certain dialects are preferred in these signages at the shops over Standard Italian to signify authenticity. For example, these days, certain Italian dishes and names of restaurants are named using lexical items from the dialect. In a way, it seems that the dialect, which was supposedly suffering a slow death is revived and given a second life.

I was later in Melbourne for the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences held in 2019. It was at that point that I asked John if I could stay one month to do some research on the Italian community residing in Melbourne. He agreed and I started recording the speech production of individuals who migrated to Australia after World War II and created an archive of their backgrounds. With the data, we decided to focus on phonetic attrition of consonant gemination in Italian.

A funny story that also motivated me to embark on the project was finding a distant relative here. It’s strange that I came to Melbourne for research purposes and when I interviewed one of the participants, she told me, “Oh, you know, I have a friend who has the same surname as yours.” I found it incredulous but she invited her friend, who turned out to be my cousin! She maintained her surname even though she was married, so what are the odds?

Any preliminary findings?

We are still collecting data at this point, but I’ll let you know when the project’s complete!

And what’s the significance of the study, you think?

It’s quite interesting for me to study how language evolves in the Italian community: those people can speak their very regional dialect, regional Italian and English with different degrees of phonetic attrition depending on several factors such as education, age of arrival, community interaction, etc. I am quite fascinated by how the social complexity shapes the way of that those people speak and there’s lots of work still to be done!

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It’s really meaningful to work on heritage languages and dialects, especially if the study has real social impact. So all work and no play makes Jack (or Jill in your case) a dull girl. Since you’re visiting Melbourne, how do you spend your free time here?

I really like watching movies at the cinema. I also really like food so I’m excited to discover new cuisines during my time here. I’m not a really sporty person but I’ll try to walk or do Pilates in my free time. I spend most of the day on my computer so I think this is a great way to get some exercise and relieve stress.

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I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself thoroughly in Melbourne Thank you for sharing your journey from Turin to Melbourne, and the meaningful research that you’re doing, Valentina!

Thank you, Felicia.