Pierpaolo Di Carlo (PhD Linguistics, Florence 2009) is Postdoctoral Associate at the Department of Linguistics, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Within KPAAM-CAM he is co-PI and project coordinator. His work includes linguistic and ethnographic fieldwork, teaching, development of training opportunities for Cameroonian students. He has co-supervised a number of MA and PhD theses of Cameroonian students in Linguistics and Anthropology.
His main research interests include language ideologies, ethnography of communication, language documentation, and multilingualism in rural Africa. All of his research pivots around multidisciplinary approaches to the understanding of essentially linguistic problems. He started working in this framework for his 2002 MA thesis (Prehistoric Archaeology, Florence) on the status quaestionis of the diffusion of Indo-European languages from the multiple viewpoints of historical linguistics, archaeology, and molecular anthropology. For his PhD thesis, he worked on the Kalasha of NW Pakistan adopting an ethnographic approach to the documentation of an endangered language. When he started working on the languages of Lower Fungom for the University at Buffalo (2009) he was given the role of ethnographer and this allowed him to further refine his anthropology research skills. As a development of this complex background, Pierpaolo has worked first in the domain of the digitization of endangered archives and then started collaborating with geographers (Giovanna Pizziolo, University of Siena). Pierpaolo has published two monographs (in Italian) and more than 20 scientific articles, some of which in renowned international journals (e.g. Language, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Anthropological Linguistics). Full CV.
Select publications
- Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Jeff Good, and Rachel Ojong. Forthcoming. Multilingualism in Rural Africa. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.
- Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. Forthcoming. Towards an understanding of African endogenous multilingualism: Ethnography, language ideologies, and the supernatural. International Journal of Sociology of Language.
- Di Carlo Pierpaolo, Jeff Good, Ling Bian, Yujia Pan and Penghang Liu. 2018. Socio-spatial networks, multilingualism, and language use in a rural African context. In Paolo Fogliaroni, Andrea Ballatore, and Eliseo Clementini (eds.), Proceedings of Workshops and Posters at the 13th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2017). Berlin: Springer. 35–39.
- Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Jeff Good. 2017. The vitality and diversity of multilingual repertoires: comments on Mufwene, «Language», 93 (4): e255-e263.
- Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. 2016 “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.
- Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Jeff Good. 2014. What are we trying to preserve? Diversity, change, and ideology at the edge of the Cameroonian Grassfields. In Peter K. Austin and Julia Sallabank (eds.), Endangered languages: Beliefs and ideologies in language documentation and revitalization. Oxford: OUP. 229–262.
- Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Giovanna Pizziolo. 2012. Spatial reasoning and GIS in linguistic prehistory: Two case studies from Lower Fungom (Northwest Cameroon). Language Dynamics and Change 2:150–183.
- Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. 2011. Lower Fungom linguistic diversity and its historical development: Proposals from a multidisciplinary perspective. Africana Linguistica 17:53–100.