As may be seen in a brief examination of several characters and scenes in Mario Puzo's "The Godfather," analysis of ethnic literature must focus on both the cultural and the linguistic aspects of literature. Often the syntactic structure reflects the structure of the native language of the writer, while word choice frequently depends…

Participant observation and author introspection were used to collect data in this study of nonverbal communication among Italian Americans in three large American cities. Discussion is given to kinesics (gestures and signs), haptics (touch), proxemics (interiors of homes, exteriors of homes, and spatial arrangements at a wedding dinner), and…

The assimilation of Italians into American culture led to the loss of the Italian language, and an oral tradition of Italian peasants in which Italian feminist philosophy was grounded. The legends, parables, and proverbs told by these Italian women challenged the teachings of Catholicism, perpetuating an underground religious tradition which…

Knowledge gained from the theoretical and empirical literature on social support theory, family systems theory, and social ecology provide the foundation for a model which studies stress, support systems, and coping patterns within the family. Puerto Rican (N=87) and Italian (N=49) families were interviewed to identify stress factors and coping…

This paper presents a case-study of the successful nine-month plan with which Tulane University guaranteed the growth and continuation of its Italian program. The paper provides a blueprint for the teacher of Italian on any campus who wishes to strengthen the position of his Italian program in this era when dwindling federal, state and university…

Richard Gambino's "Blood of My Blood" was of help to a writing instructor coming to terms with the role that her Italian ethnicity played in her life and education. Gambino's understanding of the inner tensions experienced by an individual who must negotiate between two cultures has helped the instructor in teaching working-class and…

Social, economic, and cultural factors that historically have limited the housing choices of southern and eastern European immigrants to the United States and have influenced the development of ethnic neighborhoods in American cities are reviewed in this paper. Difficulties that non English speaking, relatively uneducated immigrants had in…

This paper considers whether ethnicity is a social construction that is constantly being recreated in a nexus of shifting social relations rather than a set of perceptions and behaviors that remain constant and stem from a youth's membership in an ethnic group. Student responses about ethnicity from a larger study of student role and engagement in…

Data are analyzed on native whites, second generation Italian-Americans, and second generation urban blacks to ascertain the effects of race and ethnicity upon income and occupational status attainment. Data about these groups were drawn from a 1 in 100 random sampling of the 1960 and 1970 census data for Chicago. Nine hypotheses relating to the…

A detailed analysis of an Italian-American woman's speech is presented, and her interlanguage patterns are discussed in relation to a pidginization hypothesis. Data are presented on the following speech characteristics of the woman: free speech negatives, interrogatives, and present and past tense constructions. Her language is shown to be…

This paper describes the English-Italian bilingual education program of the Tangipahoa Parish School System in Tangipahoa, Louisiana. The program reaches approximately seven hundred students from kindergarten through third grade, and the main objectives of the program are (1) refining the native language for children of non-English speaking…

This volume contains the reports of the working committees of the 1976 Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The introduction traces the patterns of immigration in North America from the colonial period to the twentieth century. Sections entitled Origins, Cultural Pluralism, and Contributions deal with the settlement patterns…