«Le mani le ho gialle perché è l’italiano»: biografie linguistiche e autorappresentazioni di germanofoni in Alto Adige

The biographical approach, which is increasingly widespread in the literature and is characterised by "a very significant degree of granularity at a qualitative level" (Franceschini, Veronesi, 2016), allows us to take a subjective perspective with respect to speakers' perceptions and self-representations. Combining the research tools of narrative interviews and linguistic self-portraits, this contribution aims at investigating the experience of two different German-speaking groups living in the peculiar South Tyrolean sociolinguistic context: on the one hand, expats from Germany living in South Tyrol, on the other hand German-speaking South Tyroleans. After a theoretical-methodological discussion around the collective and co-constructed aspect of linguistic autobiographies, the results of the research will be presented, with a particular focus on the perception of Italian by the participants and their own representations of their learning paths.