A. Rubino, Trilingual talk in Sicilian-Australian migrant families: Playing out identities through language alternation. (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. 2014. PP. XV, 312)

Abstract

This book is a welcome addition to the literature on Australia's multilingual com-munities, examining, as it does, the linguistic and cultural identity of two Sicilian families in Sydney, but always within the broader context of 20th century migration from Italy and the prevailing language and social policies of Australia at the time. It gives a thorough and colourful background on Sicilian migrants who came in the 1950s and 1960s and of how they adapted to life in Australia. Its main focus though is on comparing the linguistic practices of two families who migrated after the Second World War. Family A came from a small village and arrived in the 1950s, a time of assimilative social policy. Distance and lack of resources meant they maintained limited contact with Sicily. Family B came from a large town in the 1960s, had more education and were able to maintain more contact with Sicily. Their settlement period coincided with the era when integrative social policy was giving way to multiculturalism, and naturally this shaped their local relationships, prevailing attitudes to languages and the development of trilingual practices as they acquired English.