Changes in perceived needs regarding Italian language educational provision in Toronto

This thesis titled Changes in Perceived Needs Regarding Italian Language Educational Provision in Toronto presents a study of the ethnolinguistic vitality of the Italo-Canadian population in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as pertaining to the educational provision of Italian. Beginning with an overview of issues in second language education (SLE) and bilingualism in the Canadian context, the first part examines data collected from over 30 years of newspaper articles from the Corriere Canadese providing an ample view of changes from 1971, the advent of multiculturalism, to the present. This demonstrates the basis of strong institutional support and the strong political, economic, and cultural capitals of the Italo-Canadian community, indicative of its high ethnolinguistic vitality. The semistructured interviews of five community leaders from the areas of politics, academics, culture, mass media, and entrepreneurial business, in addition to five Italian language teachers, further demonstrate perceptions vis-a-vis changes in perceived needs regarding Italian language educational provision in Toronto. Thirty semiformal interviews conducted with one parent, one grandparent, and one child from ten Italo-Canadians families participating in Italian language educational provision, provide a cross-generational analysis. This data was applied to a framework investigating sociological, social psychological and psychological variables in relation to the Italo-Canadian community's ethnolinguistic vitality in order to predict conditions for additive bilingualism as a product of educational provision in addition to the other affective benefits of cultural awareness and maintenance. Under the conditions of strong institutional support and high vitality, the educational provision of Italian can succeed in promoting varying levels of additive bilingualism in so far as the perceived need is high with the individual to the extent that some of the other socio psychological variables are also present. In so far as the perceived need for the educational provision of Italian is high and the vitality of the community remains high, the affective benefits of cultural awareness and cultural maintenance gained through educational provision will still positively affect the individual and the overall ethnolinguistic vitality of the Italo-Canadian community, which does not necessarily require Italian language proficiency for group membership and all of the affective benefits that it entails.