Administration of the Questionnaire and limitations

As mentioned before, the present study examined adult migrants of Italian origin. Italian language has been thus labeled as ‘L1’, while English – the language of the country participants were living in – has been labeled ‘LX’, in order to avoid any reference to the chronological order of acquisition or the number of languages known by participants. In the case of individuals coming from bicultural families or that were born in other countries, the requirements were that participants could not be English native speakers and must have spent the majority of their childhood in Italy, so consider ‘Italy’ as their heritage country. All informants had to be living in an ESC at the time of the questionnaire. In order to maintain a balance between the host cultures considered, the test was distributed only in some Western countries: the UK, Ireland, the US and Canada. There was no requirement in terms of time spent in an ESC or educational, work, family or residency status. Similarly, participants could have lived in other countries and could also speak other languages besides Italian and English.

Taking an overview of the literature on adult language learners, participants in such studies seem to fall into three main categories, as summarised by Wilson (2008: 115-116). The first category comprises bilinguals who are able to operate at a native-speaker level of competence in both languages. These participants have grown up speaking two languages, the ‘home language’ and the ‘ambient language’. They may well exercise

choice, either consciously or unconsciously, as to when and to whom they use each language but they are able to operate equally competently in both (Wilson 2008:115). The second category of informants is represented by migrants who need to learn or master their LX in order to be able to live and work in a given community (Norton, 2001; Kanno & Norton, 2003). Finally, students taking part in an extended stay in the foreign country represent the third category of respondents. Reflecting on the three main categories of participants presented above, it was decided to advertise the survey among migrant L1 speakers of Italian and LX speakers of English, from all categories but with particular attention to individuals of the first type, as Italian-English bilingual and bi-cultural candidates have to be excluded. Indeed, for the purposes of the present study, English had to be an LX and the culture participants lived in had to be unrelated to their heritage.

Volunteers were recruited by various means. Migrants were found and asked to participate by the researcher contacting Italian societies, cultural associations, schools and college departments. During the period of the survey, the researcher was living and working in the UK and had access to the Italian Consulate offices in London. For this reason, a large number of participants were recruited in the UK. Additionally, the questionnaire was advertised among students at several universities, through student unions and alumni groups and societies. Finally, the survey was also advertised on Social Network Websites (SNS) in order to reach a broader range of geographical and biographical specifics. SNS groups proved to be the best option to recruit informants with various biographical specifics from different ESC.

The questionnaire was active for a period of about 5 months – from February 2014 until July 2015 – and recruited approximately 500 participants. The number of respondents has been reduced to 468 after discarding incomplete or double entries and all participants without the necessary requirements to take part in the research.

III.2.3. Participants

A total of 468 Italian migrants, consisting of 321 females and 147 males, filled out the online questionnaire. Participants were residing in the United Kingdom (n = 360), Ireland (n = 48), the United States (n = 56) and English-speaking Canada (n = 4). The average age was 34, ranging from 18 to 73 years old (SD = 9), where participants aged between 27 and 33 slightly prevailed (34.2%). Only 9 respondents were short-term residents (e.g.

visiting the country for a limited and specific period of time), 127 reported to be undefined temporary residents, 291 permanent residents and 41 citizen or in the process of naturalisation. They were quite highly educated: 62 obtained a high school diploma, 124 an Undergraduate degree, 177 a Postgraduate degree, and 105 a Doctoral degree. The majority of participants were born in Italy (n = 449), some of them were born in an ESC (n = 13) and only a few were born in another country (n = 6). Italian-English simultaneous bilinguals have been excluded from the sample, for reasons mentioned above.

All informants born in an ESC generally emigrated elsewhere before starting speaking the language and did not have English native-speaker parents.

Hence, 440 participants came from a fully Italian family, while 28 reported having a bicultural family. The average age of migration is 27, ranging from 0 to 53 (SD = 7), where the large majority of respondents left Italy when aged

between 25 and 30 (45.1%). The average number of years spent in an ESC was 7, ranging from a few months to 68 years (SD = 9): 45.3% of informants had spent up to 3 years in an ESC; 33.1% up to 10 years, 15.8% up to 20 years and 5.8% had spent over 20 years in a foreign country. Self-perceived LX proficiency, measured on a 5-point Likert scale, varied from least proficient to native-like for reading (M = 4.56, SD = .627), writing (M = 4.20, SD

= .813), listening (M = 4.31, SD = .734) and speaking (M = 4.19, SD = .773).

The vast majority of informants (62.4%) rated their command of English as really advanced or high intermediate (32.1%). Participants also reported Italian and English frequency of use (FoU) with different interlocutors on a 5-point scale ranging from: 1) never, 2) rarely, 3) sometimes, 4) frequently, 5) all the time. For each language, five categories of interlocutors were presented: strangers (M L1 = 1.99, SD = 1.2; M LX = 4.76, SD = .631), colleagues (M L1 = 2.50, SD = 1.80; M LX = 4.61, SD = 1.19), friends (M L1=3.93, SD=1.04; M LX = 4.63, SD = .739), family (M L1 = 4.38, SD = .702;

M LX = 1.90, SD = 1.70), partner (M L1 = 2.39, SD = 2.17; M LX = 2.62, SD = 2.21). Mean scores clearly show a prevalence of Italian in conversations involving more familiar interlocutors, such as family members, and a prevalence of English in conversations involving less familiar interlocutors, like colleagues or strangers. The category of ‘friends’ indicated high mean scores for both languages and the category of ‘partners’ indicated low scores with high SDs as 270 respondents reported not having a partner.

Considering a total score from the sum of every single category of interlocutors, participants tended to speak slightly more English than Italian (M L1 = 15.12, SD = 3.96 and M LX = 18.44, SD = 3.96). The sample was also

highly multilingual, with 169 bilinguals, 155 trilinguals, 97 quadrilinguals, 35 pentalinguals, 10 sexta-linguals and 2 participants speaking seven and eight languages respectively. The most popular alternative languages were:

Spanish, French and German, followed by Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovak, Serbian, Polish, Chinese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Ukrainian, Greek, Croatian, Czech, Swiss German, Japanese, Farsi, Hebrew, Hindi, Latin, Afrikaans, Ghanaian, Brazilian Portuguese and some Italian dialects (Sicilian, Sardo, Friulan and Venetian). Table 1 (Appendix I) indicates the number of participants per language. Regarding migrants’ romantic relationships, 270 migrants did not have a partner at time of testing, 111 participants reported speaking only 1 language with their partner; 67 reported sharing two languages with their partner; 17 reported using three languages in their relationship and 3 people reported using up to four languages with their loved ones.

Given the strong proportion of women and highly educated participants, the sample is certainly not representative of the general population. However, this is a typical outcome of data gathered using on-line web questionnaires concerning language issues (Wilson & Dewaele, 2010).

The advantages of using an online questionnaire are that it allows efficient and fast data collection from a very large sample of migrants from across the world with a wide age range and diverse socio-biographical specifics.

III.2.4. Variables

III.2.4.1. Expressing emotions in the L1 and the LX

As mentioned previously, participants were asked to rate their language preference for expressing emotions of different kinds with different interlocutors (BEQ, Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2001-2003). The questionnaire enquired about expression of anger, expression of love or affection and swearing practices. Feedback on the first couple of grid questions ‘If you are angry, how often do you typically choose to express your anger in [Italian/English] when you are speaking with … (strangers, colleagues, friends, family, partner, alone)?’ was coded according to a 5-point scale with a value of 1 attributed to those who answered ‘not at all’; a value of 2 for those who answered ‘rarely’; a value of 3 for those who answered ‘sometimes’; a value of 4 for those who answered ‘frequently’; a value of 5 for those who answered ‘all the time’ and a value of 0 was attributed to those who answered

‘N/A’, in order to distinguish those who cannot face that specific circumstance (e.g. they did not have a partner, they did not have colleagues…) from those who face the circumstance and choose not to use that language.

The second couple of grid questions ‘How often do you choose to express your love or affection in [Italian/English] when you are speaking with … (colleagues, friends, family, partner)?’ were coded in the same way and, based on the BEQ (Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2001-2003), two categories of interlocutors – strangers and alone – were dropped.

Feedback on the last couple of grid questions examining participants swearing practices was coded in the same way. The questions – extracted

from the BEQ (Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2001-2003) – were: ‘If you swear, how often do you choose to swear in [Italian/English] when you are speaking with … (strangers, colleagues, friends, family, partner, alone)?’

All linguistic variables related to emotion expression have been summed up in a total score. The purpose was to produce a variable that could give an indication of participants’ affective socialisation within the heritage and host society. This ‘emotion expression variable’ is still intended as a different concept from affective socialisation itself as it only measures the frequency of use of a language for expressing emotions on the basis of migrants’ choice and the network of interlocutors. Thus, besides giving information about migrants’ language preferences for expressing intimate emotions, this variable is believed also to give an indication of migrants’

degree of affective engagement within heritage and host society. Indeed, it can indirectly reveal information about migrants’ actual network of relationships with L1 and LX speakers by considering the amount of L1 and LX used for expressing different emotions with different kinds of interlocutors.

III.2.4.2. Feeling Different when using the LX

The survey included two questions enquiring about migrants’ sense of feeling different while using the LX, extracted from the BEQ (Dewaele &

Pavlenko, 2001-2003). Feedback on the first grid question ‘Do you feel like a different person when you use English with … (strangers, colleagues, friends, family, partner)?’ was coded in the same way as all questions analysing participants’ emotion expression attitudes.

The second grid question focused on the use of LX for specific matters:

‘Do you feel like a different person when talking in English about ... (neutral, personal, emotional matters)?’ Responses were coded in the same way as before.

III.2.4.3. Language Dominance

The questionnaire included one question analysing migrants’ language dominance, still inspired from the BEQ (Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2001-2003). A brief comment explained what was intended by the term ‘dominant language’

and informants were asked to consider in what language they dream, count, think, speak to themselves, pray, write notes or keep a diary. Feedback on the grid question ‘Do you consider [Italian/English] to be your dominant language?’ was coded according to a 5-point scale with a value of 1 attributed to those who answered ‘not at all’; a value of 2 for those who answered

‘somehow; a value of 3 for those who answered ‘more or less; a value of 4 for those who answered ‘to a large extent; a value of 5 for those who answered

‘absolutely’.

It could be argued that language dominance is conceptually similar to acculturation. This research, therefore, by examining migrants’ cultural liking, attachment and sense of belonging to a culture, is more focused on personal inclinations rather than the effects of acculturation. Language dominance could be intended as a linguistic effect of acculturative processes but in this circumstance it is important to note its conceptual distance from the idea of

‘cultural orientation’ examined here.

III.2.4.4. Personality Traits

The short version of the MPQ (van der Zee, van Oudenhoven, Ponterotto & Fietzer, 2013) used in the present research consists of 40 statements about personal attitudes and behaviour with which participants could agree or disagree on a 5-point scale. Each statement referred to one of the five traits: Cultural Empathy, Flexibility, Social Initiative, Openmindedness or Emotion Stability. Final trait scores were calculated by summing up every relevant score assigned by participants.

III.2.4.5. Cultural Orientation

As mentioned earlier, the VIA (Ryder, Alden & Paulhus, 2000) assesses migrants’ attachments to their heritage and host culture. The scale presented the same 10 statements per culture where respondents were asked to rate their liking for typical values, traditions, norms and customs on a 9-point Likert scale. Final sub-scores per each cultural scenario, the heritage one (L1 Acculturation) and the host one (LX Acculturation) were computed by calculating the mean score of all relevant statements.

III.2.5. A new framework of analysis: bi-directional