Linguistic insecurity and discrimination among Italian school students

Italian schools are characterised by superdiversity. In fact, different native languages and Italian dialects coexist in single learning environments. In this context, the pressure exerted by the linguistic reference model can engender linguistic insecurity – that is, a feeling of communicative inadequacy. In turn, linguistically insecure students may suffer from being discriminated against and, in general, feel a diminished self-regard. In order to test for these assumptions, this paper presents a survey involving 336 students from lower and higher secondary schools in Tuscany, Italy. We performed regression analyses with the aim of trying to predict three potential manifestations of student predicament (i.e., perceived linguistic discrimination, discrimination distress and low self-regard scores) from a multifaceted conceptualization of linguistic insecurity (composed of perceived language proficiency, accent strength and pride). Results confirm our expectations: indeed, language insecurity increases the feeling of being discriminated against and lowers the self-regard scores of the students. Moreover, model selection procedures highlighted that the most impactful form of insecurity was that based on grades attained in Italian. A wide array of control variables was taken into account, retrieving significant effects of regionality, school perceived friendliness, importance and age. Overall, our findings give novel insights into the factors determining perceived discrimination in Italian classrooms.