Associate Professor John Kinder

MA PhD Well., FAHA

Convenor (Italian Studies)

Arts Building, Room 2.06
Ph: (+61 8) 6488 2192
Fax: (+61 8) 6488 1182
john.kinder@uwa.edu.au

Teaching and Research Interests

Italian language and linguistics, with special focus on the external history of language in Italy. I also teach in Italian sociolinguistics and dialectology.

I am the academic contact person for exchanges with the University di Bologna and the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan.

Selected Publications

• Learning in Two Languages: models of bilingual education (with C. Barrett-Pugh, M.P. Breen and M. Rohl). Canberra: Language Australia (National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia). 1997.

• Using Italian: a guide to contemporary usage (with Vincenzo M. Savini). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

• CLIC: Cultura e Lingua d'Italia in Cd-rom / Culture and Language of Italy on Cd-rom. Novara: Interlinea Edizioni, 2008.

• “L’insegnamento dell’italiano agli oriundi italiani in Australia”, in Pierangela Diadori (ed.), La DITALS Risponde 6, Perugia, Guerra, 2008.

• “Language and identities: the exceptional normality of Italy”, Portal: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 5, 2 (2008). http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/portal

• “Il mistero del linguaggio umano: la prospettiva multilingue”, in Giorgio Vittadini (ed.) La veritĂ , il nostro destino, Milano, Mondadori UniversitĂ , 2008, pp.157-161.

Complete Publications List

Current Project

I am also working on an ARC-supported three-year project entitled Enduring diversity: a history of multilingualism in Italy. The aim of the project is to use the findings of the sociology of language to compile a picture of language choice and language mixing throughout Italy. While traditional studies of the major European languages take the emergence of the national language as the logical focus of language history, this project will complement such studies by studying the diversity of language usage which endured over two millennia even while a national language was being developed. The resulting volume will pose a number of questions for further research into language history.