Popular children’s songs and the display of Italian multilingualism in Australia

Italians in Australia have been shown to have a varied linguistic repertoire, due to the presence of a high number of regional languages/dialects spoken in Italy, which they brought with them upon migration. Yet, their own efforts to bring attention to their multilingualism have not been fully explored. This article examines an audiocassette recording of a collection of children’s songs produced at the end of the 1970s by an Italo-Australian association for local circulation. It focuses on the design of the audiocassette cover and the range of regional languages/dialects of the songs in the collection, showing how (often mixed-language) texts and images aid language display. The results bring to the surface a deliberate effort to shed light on the rich multilingualism of Italy, which is consistent with the changing role of community languages in the period when this audiocassette was produced. These Italians in Australia make visible their multilingualism, presenting a range of regional languages/dialects also through their use in traditional songs, thereby showing another way in which multilingualism can be acknowledged and valued.