Forms and Functions of Linguistic Hybridity in Italo-Brazilian Literature: Nanetto Pipetta, Stória de Nino Fradello de Nanetto Pipetta and Stória de Peder

Italo-Brazilian prose texts from São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, from the 1920s to the present day, reflect the language contact between the Italo-Romance varieties spoken by the Italian immigrants in Brazil, particularly Talian, the Veneto-based koiné of the Italian immigrants in southern Brazil, and Brazilian Portuguese. This article analyzes and compares the forms and functions of linguistic hybridity in three serial novels in Talian from Rio Grande do Sul: Nanetto Pipetta – nassuo in Itália e vegnudo in Mérica per catare la cuccagna (1924/25) and its sequel Stória de Nino Fradello de Nanetto Pipetta (1965–1967) by Frei Aquiles Bernardi as well as Stória de Peder (1949–1954) by Frei Nicolau Lucian alias Nanni Contastórie. These works contain cases of code-mixing (Auer 1999) that correspond to what Woolard (1998), drawing on Bakhtin’s notion of hybridity, calls ‘bivalency’, i.e. the deliberate use of ambivalent forms as an approximation strategy between the two closely related contact languages. These forms of hybridity often have a humorous function, as they play with words that sound similar in Portuguese and Talian or standard Italian which can lead to funny misunderstandings, but are also employed to characterize specific speakers or multilingual communicative practices.