Stereotypes Of Italian Americans

“Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”
(Brown, 1989)
The Italian American dialect prevalent in popular culture like movies and television shows is born of the shifts that occurred in the Italian language from the early days of immigration from Italy to the Americas. Settling by and large in the upper eastern section of the the United States, enclaves formed in most large cities, often referred to as Little Italy. The immigrants learned to speak English in interactions with those who had come to the United States and settled before them. Change and shift of the original Italian language began in these interactions and continued, developing into a recognizable dialect that has continued to mark Italian American English speech to this day. Popular culture is rife with examples of this linguistic shift. From The Sopranos to Jersey Shore, pasta commercials to Mario, the ‘Italian goombah’ dialect is a widely accepted example of the language shifts that occur with immigration and emigration.
For instance, there are several television shows and movies which portray what it supposedly means to be Italian American. The Sopranos, which deals with an Italian American man who is part of the mafia, is one of the most common culture reference when it comes to Italian stereotypes in America. The social stereotype of Italian Americans in organized crime (also seen in Bugsy Malone and Goodfellas) is extremely widespread which brings up a major issue when people perceive these shows as realistic portrayals of who Italian Americans are. This contributes to the superiority complexes of English-speaking Americans against the “inferior” languages of other speakers. Of course, the notion of Italian Americans being criminals or gang members is unsupported by facts, and is merely a stereotype (Bouchl,