Surveying the ethnolinguistic vitality of two regional collateral languages: the case of Kashubian and Piedmontese

The paper presents the results of a Polish-Italian research project concerning the vitality of two regional collateral languages: Kashubian in Poland and Piedmontese in Italy. Despite their diffeent status (Kashubian is a language recognised under the Polish law while Piedmontese is not), they are both perceived as dialects of the State language by the inhabitants of Poland and Italy. The status and prestige of both languages in their respective countries are low; consciousness about the importance of their maintenance within the communities and outside them is weakening. As they belong to the same language family as the dominant language they were/are treated as dialects of the State languages not worth of preservation. Current accounts of language vitality for Kashubian and Piedmontese are not entirely satisfactory in that they seem to overestimate the importance of the number of speakers over speakers' attitudes and stigma. In this paper, we will present the preliminary results of the survey, focusssing on the interdependence between actual and perceived use of the two languages on the one side, and different ethnolinguistic vitality parameters, such as self-assessment of language proficiency, awareness of the language institutional status and policies, attitudes towards the language, and language ideology. This research is a pilot study that aims to raise the discussion on current assessment of ethnolinguistic vitality and to broaden it to other languages that are contested, unrecognized or treated as dialects of the State languages.