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Reviewed by:
  • A New Language, A New World Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1890-1945
  • Diane Vecchio
A New Language, A New World Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1890-1945. By Nancy C. Carnevale (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. 243 pp.).

In a keynote address to the annual meeting of the American Italian Historical Association in 1987, scholar, writer, and poet, Joseph Tusiani delivered a speech, "Two Languages, Two Lands, Perhaps Two Souls," and rhetorically asked, "Am I a man or two strange halves of one?" The haunting question posed by an immigrant who came to the United States at the age of twenty-three reveals the spiritual dilemma of many immigrants, who in his words "experience the difficulty of emigrating from one language to another."1

In A New Language, A New World, historian Nancy Carnevale explores the issues raised by Tusiani on the complexities of language for the immigrant in America. By examining language from the perspectives of both immigrants and American society from the late nineteenth century through World War II, she does something that few historians have attempted to do: she appraises interdisciplinary literature to assess the impact of language in the formation of ethnic identity.

Carnevale first provides a context for understanding the linguistic history of Italian Americans by examining the politics of language in Italy. Referring to the racial and class divisions between northern and southern Italians she examines how language was infused with a powerful class dimension. Standard Italian, derived from the Tuscan dialect, was spoken primarily by educated and most often, northern Italians. Southern Italian immigrants who could only speak a local dialect were disparaged by the upper-class and these prejudices as well as the inadequacies internalized by southern Italians were transplanted to the United States as they found themselves linguistically isolated not only from Americans, but also from their fellow Italians.

Targeted by anti-immigrant legislation such as the Literacy Test, whose goal was to restrict "undesirable" immigrants from entering the United States, Italian immigrants were also targeted by the Americanization movement which attempted to integrate them into American life by learning the English language. In that way, according to one commentator, "stupid foreigners' would be reborn as intelligent Americans," p. 65. Furthermore, "unity of speech," as the author of a civics text advocated, "will bring unity of thought, unity of feeling, unity of patriotism" p. 66.

As Carnevale shifts her focus from American attitudes toward immigrant language and examines the complexity of language from the immigrant perspective she begins at Ellis Island where immigrants were forced to rely on translators, ultimately, she argues, losing control over self-representation. Translators, who often spoke standard Italian, could not clearly understand the dialect used by Italian immigrants from various regions of southern Italy. Carnevale shows how this could have devastating consequences on the immigrants. In the words of Fiorello LaGuardia, who served as an Italian translator at Ellis Island, "the inability to appreciate the immigrant's perspectives had its basis in poor translation, not merely in the literal sense of understanding the exact words used, but in the larger sense of being able to translate one's mental and emotional frame of reference" p. 81. Routinely, Ellis Island physicians mistook problems of language and culture with mental deficiency, which often resulted in deportation. [End Page 626]

While much of the author's examination of American responses to immigrants and the foreign languages they spoke is well understood by scholars, Carnevale offers interesting analysis and bolsters her argument of language and the construction of ethnic identity in her discussion of translations in first- and second-generation literary narratives and the Italian comic theater. She examines the place of language in literature by discussing the works of a variety of Italian American writers such as Jerre Mangione (Mount Allegro) and Pascal D'Angelo (Son of Italy). Addressing the issue of language and ethnic identity, Carnevale also examines the efforts made by local Italian American organizations as well as programs designed by the Fascist government in language maintenance to heighten Italian nationalist sentiment among immigrants.

In a lively discussion of the Italian American comic actor Eduardo Migliaccio, also known as "Farfariello," Carnevale...

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