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The present paper deals with methodological aspects of Italian quantitative sociolinguistic research. It discusses a number of projects, showing the increasing vitality of this approach, which, despite being rooted in international mainstream research, displays considerable scientific novelty. Special attention is paid to the projects carried out by the Centre d’Études Linguistiques pour l’Europe (Milan), the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, and the research group of the Atlante linguistico della Sicilia at the CSFLS. Within these projects the quantitative sociolinguistic approach is discussed in depth. New means of discussing the data are explored that go beyond their mere statistical presentation and offer ways of interpreting the linguistic reality of multilingual situations without the bias of possible previous assumptions by the researcher. Italian quantitative projects comprise large sociolinguistic polls conducted throughout Europe as well as more focused studies on specific multilingual situations. Particular emphasis will be given to the treatment of sociolinguistic data at both macro and micro levels of analysis. It will be shown that in Italian research, quantitative sociolinguistics always goes hand in hand with qualitative and dialectal research.

The notion of linguistic justice should be related to the concept of linguistic ease, by which we mean the full social and communicative freedom of concern of the speaker in a given social interaction involving the use of language(s) present in the society, according to the social norms of use. To acquire an acceptable degree of linguistic ease, the knowledge of at least one L2 is considered important. But the acquisition of a L2 is interfered by the previous linguistic skills of the learner/speaker who, in many cases, does not have a suitable competence even of the languages of the society in which he/she lives.

In the literature of linguistic justice, there is still room for sociolinguistic discussion. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate by the mean of introducing into the analysis a number of sociolinguistic parameters that have been hitherto used for the interpretation of linguistic repertoires, mainly in minority contexts. In fact, the necessary holistic view – driven by the need of rendering justice to the speaker – should lead the researcher to consider the whole set of linguistic varieties present in the repertoire of the communities, at any level of use: international, super-national, national, local. The paper will show and justify the motivations of these parameters and the (social) rules that control their use arguing that their consideration can draw important hints for a better understanding and implementations of issues of linguistic justice.

The paper discusses the linguistic and sociolinguistic features of the Italian minority languages and communities according to a series of comparable parameters. Our aim is not to present here a list of well-known minorities, but rather to provide an analytical tool for the interpretation of the situations in which linguistic, social and political items play different, albeit interconnected roles. © 2011 Walter de Gruyter.