Repertori complessi e atteggiamenti linguistici: gli immigrati di origine ghanese in provincia di Bergamo

The present paper focuses on the Ghanaian immigrant community in Bergamo, which represents one the largest African group in the area; the aim is to describe the community linguistic repertoire (originating from the combination of the Ghanaian repertoire and the Italian one), as well as the speakers’ attitudes towards the various codes at their disposal. It is argued that the community repertoire has a complex inner structure, characterised by the presence of more than one code at each level, as well as by the potential extension of single codes on more than one level. It is common knowledge that complex repertoires cannot avoid long term mutations; as time passes, their internal structure is likely to become more simplified by the loss of one (or more) of the linguistic systems composing it. The repertoire of the Ghanaian immigrant community does not to elude this common evolution: indeed, the presence of high prestige ‘official’ languages (like English and Italian) combined with the limited prestige presently enjoyed by most Ghanaian languages and vernaculars represent the most serious threat to the repertoire inner complexity.