Pierpaolo Di Carlo

Postdoctoral Associate

The State University of New York

Keywords

Ethnography of communication, Small-scale multilingualism, Language documentation, Ethnography, Dardic, Bantoid, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Verbal Art Performance, Multidisciplinarity in the Social Sciences, GIS applied to the Humanities

Education

MA in Palaeo-Ethnology (University of Firenze, Italy)
PhD in Linguistics (University of Firenze, Italy). Link to my PhD thesis (in Italian, Firenze University Press 2010 Humanities PhD Award)
Link to my short CV (updated 12 March 2023).

Projects

Key Pluridisciplinary Advances on African Multilingualism - Cameroon (KPAAM-CAM) (2014 - present)
Project coordinator and de facto co-PI (with Jeff Good). The project is carried out in collaboration with the Universities of Yaounde 1, Buea, Bamenda, Dschang, and Maroua.

Socio-Spatial Approaches to the Analysis of Multilingualism (2018 - present)
Project coordinator. PI's are Jeff Good, Ling Bian, and Jan Chomicki. The project is carried out in collaboration with the Universities of Yaounde 1, Buea, Bamenda, and CATUC Bamenda.

virALLanguages: coronavirus explained in your language (2020)
Lead coordinator (April - December 2020).

Publications

In press. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Jeff Good. “Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering? Feature pools, social semiosis, and intentional language change in the Cameroonian Grassfields". To appear in P. Di Carlo & P. W. Akumbu (eds.) Language contact and non-convergent change: cases from Africa, monographic issue of Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads. (pre-print)
In press. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. “Introduction". To appear in P. Di Carlo & P. W. Akumbu (eds.) Language contact and non-convergent change: cases from Africa, monographic issue of Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads. (pre-print)
In press. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. “Language maps and sociolinguistic data. Developing linguistic cartography of Bantoid languages”. In P. Akumbu & R. Kießling (eds.) Banto1d, Proceedings of the Conference, Hamburg May 2022. (manuscript)
In press. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. “Lineages, rituals, and gods among the Kalasha of Birir. Textual evidence”. In A.M. Cacopardo & A.S. Cacopardo (eds.) Roots of Peristan, Proceedings of the Conference, Rome 6-9 October 2022. (manuscript)
2022. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "Reappraising survey tools in the study of multilingualism. Lessons from contexts of small-scale multilingualism". Journal of Language Contact 15:376-403. (manuscript)
2022. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "The geographic sides of small-scale multilingualism. Cartography of languages, competences, attitudes, perceptions, or what?". In G. Niedt (ed.) New Directions in Linguistic Geography - Exploring Articulations of Space, 49-85. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. (manuscript).
2022. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Leonore Lukschy, Sydney Rey, and Vasiliki Vita. "The virALLanguages project. How documentary linguistics can contribute to crisis and risk communication". Linguistics Vanguard (special issue COVID-19). https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0021
2022. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Bradley McDonnell, Lisa Vahapoglu, Jeff Good, and Katarzyna Kordas. "Public health information for minority linguistic communities". Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 100,1:78-80. (download).
2021. Akumbu, Pius W. and Pierpaolo Di Carlo. "Multilingualism: The language of health in Cameroon". P.W. Akumbu and J.G. Nzweundji (eds.) Responding to disease outbreak in Cameroon. Lessons from COVID-19, 10-21. Cologne: Rudiger Koppe. (draft shared upon request at pierpaol@buffalo.edu)
2021. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Rachel A. Ojong Diba, and Jeff Good. "Towards a coherent methodology for the documentation of small-scale multilingualism: Dealing with speech data". International Journal of Bilingualism 25,4:860-877. (Preprint)
2021. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Lia Giancristofaro. "Legends of 'kidnapping' and 'organ explant'. A study in Italy and Cameroon (in Italian)". Etnoantropologia 9 (1): 215-236. (download).
2020. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. Message- vs. community-centered models in risk communication. Language on the Move (blog).
2020. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Angiachi D. Esene Agwara, and Rachel A. Ojong Diba. "Multilingualism and the heteroglossia of ideologies in Lower Fungom (Cameroon)." Sociolinguistic Studies 14 (3): 321-345. (Preprint)
2020. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Jeff Good (eds.). African multilingualisms: Rural linguistic and cultural diversity. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.(Table of Contents, preface and introduction)
2020. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Jeff Good. "Introduction: Understanding the diversity of multilingualisms in Sub-Saharan Africa". In Pierpaolo Di Carlo and Jeff Good (eds.) African multilingualisms: Rural linguistic and cultural diversity , xv-xxxvii. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
2020. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Ayu'nwi N. Neba. "The So-Called Royal Register of Bafut within the Bafut Language Ecology. Language Ideologies and Multilingualism in the Cameroonian Grassfields". In Pierpaolo Di Carlo and Jeff Good (eds.) African multilingualisms: Rural linguistic and cultural diversity, 29-52. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. (Preprint)
2019. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Jeff Good, and Rachel A. Ojong Diba. "Multilingualism in rural Africa". In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.227. (Download)
2019. Mve, Patrick, Nelson C. Tschonghongei, Pierpaolo Di Carlo and Jeff Good. Cultural distinctiveness and linguistic esoterogeny: the case of the Fang language of Lower Fungom, Cameroon. In Pius Akumbu and Esther P. Chie (eds.) Engagement with Africa. Linguistic essays in honor of Ngessimo M. Mutaka, 163-178. Cologne: Ruediger Koeppe.
2018. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "Toward an understanding of African traditional multilingualism: Ethnography, language ideologies, and the supernatural". International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 254: 139-163. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2018-0037. (download)
2018. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Jeff Good, Ling Bian, Yujia Pan, Penghang Liu. "Socio-spatial networks, multilingualism, and language use in a rural African context". In Paolo Fogliaroni et al. (eds.) Proceedings of posters and workshops at the 13th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT2017). Lecture notes in Geoinformation and Cartography, 35-39. DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-63946-8_9. Pre-print
2017. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Jeff Good. "The vitality and diversity of multilingual repertoires", Language 93, 4:e254-e262. DOI 10.1353/lan.2017.0069.
2017. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "Etnicita' e multilinguismo: verso una comprensione dei processi identitari nel Camerun precoloniale". Nazioni e Regioni, 9: 89-101.
2016. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "Retroflex vowels? Phonetics, phonology, and history of unusual sounds in Kalash and other languages of the Hindu Kush region". Archivio per l'Antropologia e la Etnologia CXLVI: 103-121.
2016. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "Multilingualism, affiliation, and spiritual insecurity. From phenomena to processes in language documentation". In Mandana Seyfeddinipur (ed.) African language documentation: new data, methods and approaches - Language Documentation and Conservation special volume 10: 71-104.
2015. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo."Multilingualism, solidarity, and magic. New perspectives on traditional language ideologies in the Cameroonian Grassfields". In: Plurilinguismo - Sintassi. Atti del XLVI Congresso Internazionale della Societa' Italiana di Linguistica: 287-302. Roma, Bulzoni.
2015. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Jeff Good, "Comment" on Koen Bostoen, Bernard Clist, Charles Doumenge, Rebecca Grollemund, Jean-Marie Hombert, Joseph Koni Muluwa, and Jean Maley "Middle to Late Holocene Paleoclimatic Change and the Early Bantu Expansion in the Rain Forests of Western Central Africa". Current Anthropology, Vol. 56, No. 3 (June 2015), pp. 354-384 (comment is at page 368).
2014. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Jeff Good. "What are we trying to preserve? Diversity, change, and ideology at the edge of the Cameroonian Grassfields". In Peter Austin and Julia Sallabank (eds.) Endangered Languages: Beliefs and Ideology: 231 - 264. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
2012. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Pizziolo, Giovanna. "Spatial reasoning and GIS in linguistic prehistory. Two case studies from Lower Fungom (Northwest Cameroon)". Language Dynamics and Change, 2: 150-183
2012. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "L'enigma nord-piceno: nuove prospettive pluridisciplinari", AION (ling), 31: 147-162. (download)
2011. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "Lower Fungom linguistic diversity and its historical development: proposals from a multidisciplinary perspective". Africana Linguistica XVII: 39-86.
2011. Jeff Good, Jesse Lovegren, Jean Patrick Mve, Carine Nganguep Tchiemouo, Rebecca Voll, and Pierpaolo Di Carlo. "The languages of the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon. Grammatical overview". Africana Linguistica XVII:87-149.(download)
2011. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "Two clues of a former Hindu-Kush linguistic area?". In C. Everhard & E. Mela-Athanasopoulou (eds.) Selected Papers from the 1st International Conference on Language Documentation and Tradition with special interest in the Kalasha of the Hindu Kush Valleys, Himalayas, 101-114. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press.(download)
2011. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "Kalasha language maintenance through tradition vitality". In C. Everhard & E. Mela-Athanasopoulou (eds.) Selected Papers from the 1st International Conference on Language Documentation and Tradition with special interest in the Kalasha of the Hindu Kush Valleys, Himalayas, 235-246. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press.(download)
2011. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "I Kalasha del Hindu Kush: ricerche linguistiche e antropologiche", in N. Maraschio and D. De Martino (eds.) Se telefonando... ti scrivo: l'italiano dal parlato al digitato. I giovani e la lingua. Atti dei convegni, 11 Maggio 2007 e 26 Novembre 2007, 163-174. Firenze: Accademia della Crusca.
2010. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. I Kalasha del Hindu Kush. Ricerche linguistiche e antropologiche. Premio Tesi di Dottorato n. 12, Firenze: Firenze University Press. [338 pp., ill. + online volume of Kalasha edited texts: URL http://digital.casalini.it/9788884537577]. ISBN 978-88-8453-861-1. (download)
2010. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. "Take care of the poets! Verbal art performances as key factors in the preservation of Kalasha language and culture". Anthropological Linguistics, 52, 2: 141-159. (download)
2007. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. L'enigma nord-piceno. Saggio sulla lingua delle stele di Novilara e sul loro contesto culturale. Quaderni del Dipartimento di Linguistica di Firenze - Studi n. 7, Padova: Unipress. [106 pp., ill.](download)