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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 attention 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.

In this paper we will present the results of an analysis conducted on a sample of texts written in Furlan, specifically a selection of projects presented by local schools and financed by the Law 482/1999; these projects were drawn both in Italian and in the minority language, as required by the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione for the presentation of proposals. Aim of this study is to observe contact and divergence phenomena between the minority language and the dominant language (in this case, Italian) on a lexical and textual level. The paper will discuss the problem of literacy in a minority language, its use for formal written communication and the relationship with the textual competence in the dominant language.