Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

An interesting study mediating many interesting results about language attitudes (mainly towards Italian, Standard Arabic, and Dialectal Arabic) in a group of second-generation Arabs in Italy. However, I think it can be improved in some respects:

 

- There is an imbalance in the paper regarding the extent to which this is a Family Language Policy (FLP) study or a study about language attitudes among heritage language (HL) speakers towards societal language, their HL (varieties), and other languages. The paper starts out explaining the role of ideologies/attitudes in an FLP framework (Spolsky) and that one purpose is to "understand how FLPs have an impact on language ideologies (and consequently on linguistic uses and practices)" (p. 1, lines 32-33), as positive attitudes can be a driving force behind whether an HL can be maintained (lines 33-35). However, the empirical data and results cannot provide evidence for either of these two ambitions/claims (they do not explain the FLPs of these families and the impact relationship between factors, nor can they say whether the attitudes actually are a driving force or not). On page 2 (lines 66-72), another two-fold purpose is spelled out, which more directly—and adequately—points out that the study is about describing language attitudes. I would recommend the authors reconsider the framing of the study and "tone down" the FLP angle. If the authors wish to frame it as an FLP study, I suggest having a more comprehensive literature review on FLP studies involving Arabic-speaking families (there are some mentioned towards the end of chapter 2.2, but there are indeed more studies around).

 

- I lack a description of the Italian context before the empirical part. We learn in an informative way about Arabs (and Arabic) in Italy, but what about other minority/migrant groups? What are the (language) attitudes among the majority population? What is the language policy? What is the school system like? Please explain to the reader what the Italian language teaching system (not) includes, especially regarding heritage languages and language rights. The discussion includes arguments about the (lack of) HL teaching and appreciation (p. 16, lines 673-678), and would be better grounded if the context was explained earlier.

 

- Please provide information about the ages of the members of the target group (the second-generation Arabs in the cohort, i.e., "the children"), and if available, whether they were born in Italy or at what age they arrived in Italy (it does make a difference if they were 2 years old or 13, I would say) and how long they have lived there. This could be in a table. To save space, some information about the project and data collection as a whole (in Chapter 3) could be omitted, focusing only on the target group.

 

- The empirical part is very comprehensive and includes interesting question items, analyses, and results. However, it is very long; please consider splitting Chapter 5 into subsections. There are many tables and figures with different layouts, which give a scattered impression. Can you find a more coherent way of displaying the visuals? As this part is very long and some of the (albeit interesting) results and findings are overlapping, do you need to include and present all of them?

 

- There are interesting discussions at the end, but they would be more stringent if the framing and purpose of the study were made clearer (cf. my comment above).

 

In conclusion, I find many aspects of this study interesting, but I think it can be made more stringent and focused.

Author Response

Comment 1: An interesting study mediating many interesting results about language attitudes (mainly towards Italian, Standard Arabic, and Dialectal Arabic) in a group of second-generation Arabs in Italy. However, I think it can be improved in some respects:

Response 1: We thank the reviewer for the compliments and encouragement, but most importantly, for the advice given. We hope to have addressed all the points highlighted.

Comment 2: There is an imbalance in the paper regarding the extent to which this is a Family Language Policy (FLP) study or a study about language attitudes among heritage language (HL) speakers towards societal language, their HL (varieties), and other languages. The paper starts out explaining the role of ideologies/attitudes in an FLP framework (Spolsky) and that one purpose is to "understand how FLPs have an impact on language ideologies (and consequently on linguistic uses and practices)" (p. 1, lines 32-33), as positive attitudes can be a driving force behind whether an HL can be maintained (lines 33-35). However, the empirical data and results cannot provide evidence for either of these two ambitions/claims (they do not explain the FLPs of these families and the impact relationship between factors, nor can they say whether the attitudes actually are a driving force or not). On page 2 (lines 66-72), another two-fold purpose is spelled out, which more directly—and adequately—points out that the study is about describing language attitudes. I would recommend the authors reconsider the framing of the study and "tone down" the FLP angle. If the authors wish to frame it as an FLP study, I suggest having a more comprehensive literature review on FLP studies involving Arabic-speaking families (there are some mentioned towards the end of chapter 2.2, but there are indeed more studies around).

Response 2: We appreciate the reviewer for bringing attention to the contradiction. Consequently, we have removed the first objective (to understand how FLPs impact language ideologies and, consequently, linguistic uses and practices), as it was overly ambitious and rightly noted to be unachievable with the available data. Regarding the theoretical framework, we have also significantly reduced references to FLPs. The issue arose because the AHLI project as a whole aims to investigate FLPs. However, in this paper, we focus solely on attitudes, so we found it appropriate to heed the suggestion and concentrate the discussion exclusively on those.

Comment 3: I lack a description of the Italian context before the empirical part. We learn in an informative way about Arabs (and Arabic) in Italy, but what about other minority/migrant groups? What are the (language) attitudes among the majority population? What is the language policy? What is the school system like? Please explain to the reader what the Italian language teaching system (not) includes, especially regarding heritage languages and language rights. The discussion includes arguments about the (lack of) HL teaching and appreciation (p. 16, lines 673-678), and would be better grounded if the context was explained earlier.

Response 3: We thank the reviewer once again for highlighting this gap. In response, we have incorporated a dedicated paragraph on the context (§3.1), providing more details on all the points mentioned (Italian linguistic space in general, attitudes of the population towards immigrant languages, language policy, and education). We are confident that these additions will contribute to a clearer discussion and more conclusive findings.

Comment 4: Please provide information about the ages of the members of the target group (the second-generation Arabs in the cohort, i.e., "the children"), and if available, whether they were born in Italy or at what age they arrived in Italy (it does make a difference if they were 2 years old or 13, I would say) and how long they have lived there. This could be in a table. To save space, some information about the project and data collection as a whole (in Chapter 3) could be omitted, focusing only on the target group.

Response 4: We have added additional information (lines 313-322) regarding the age of the participants and their arrival time in Italy.

Comment 5: The empirical part is very comprehensive and includes interesting question items, analyses, and results. However, it is very long; please consider splitting Chapter 5 into subsections. There are many tables and figures with different layouts, which give a scattered impression. Can you find a more coherent way of displaying the visuals? As this part is very long and some of the (albeit interesting) results and findings are overlapping, do you need to include and present all of them?

Response 5: Once again, we thank the reviewer for highlighting these aspects. We have removed several graphs and figures, retaining only two created with Word to ensure consistency in colors and layout.

Comment 6: There are interesting discussions at the end, but they would be more stringent if the framing and purpose of the study were made clearer (cf. my comment above).

Response 6: With the addition of the paragraph concerning the research context and the definition of an objective more aligned with the article's content, we hope to have addressed this request satisfactorily.

Comment 7: In conclusion, I find many aspects of this study interesting, but I think it can be made more stringent and focused.

Response 7: We would like to express our sincere gratitude once again to the reviewer for the careful attention given to reading our paper and for the helpful suggestions provided to improve it.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Peer review of the article “Language attitudes among second-generation Arabs in Italy”, submitted for publication in a special issue of the journal Languages, entitled Language Policy and Practice in Multilingual Families

This article deals with a series of interesting and important aspect related to migrant bilingualism. In addition to providing a solid description and analysis of the sociolinguistic factors affecting language use and choices in a particular language combination, it raises important issues of a more general nature, such as variable attitudes of heritage speakers (and their families) towards the multidimensional nature of the heritage language.

The literature review is very clear and comprehensive, with the aim of clarifying the relevant concepts such as language ideologies and attitudes. The analysis in Section 5.1 (Controlled Association and quantitative analysis) and 5.2 (Free Response Experiment and lexical analysis) are also clear and insightful, though many of the findings were perhaps to be expected.

The explanation (Section 5.3) of how Reflexive Thematic Analysis was used, on the other hand, is far less clear. While Thematic Analysis is a common way of putting order into the qualitative data gathered in surveys and questionnaires, Reflexive Thematic Analysis borders on the unscientific because it relies heavily on the researchers’ subjectivity and intuition. The reflexive process of the analysis carried out in this study is not described in any detail but, thankfully, the themes identified and exemplified in section 5.3 are actually quite straight forward and present the qualitative data in a clearly structured way.

An aspect that has been omitted in this study, but which would help to understand the attitudes of second generation Arabic speakers, is the informants’ perception of attitudes towards their languages by the rest of society. The use of minority languages in public is often socially stigmatized, which in turn leads to self-stigmatization. It would have been nice to see this topic examined in this paper.

A further weakness of this study is the fact that while distinguishing regional and standard Arabic, it does not examine how attitudes towards standard and dialectal Italian differ for these multilingual informants who are undoubtedly aware of the diglossic situation in Italy. Tellingly, the authors observe that “IT is the only language perceived as completely functional, capable of fulfilling its roles in all social contexts”, which is of course only the case if Italian is viewed as a single, monolithic language without coexisting varieties, which it evidently is not. I find it slightly surprising that the authors (rightly) pay so much attention to diglossia in the Arab world, but disregard the same phenomenon in Italy.

Despite these shortcomings, this is a clearly written, well-structured article that makes use of appropriately compiled data for a solid analysis and draws a number of relevant conclusions about second generation Arabic speakers’ language attitudes, the reasons for these attitudes, and the implications for future language policy in Italy and beyond.  

Comments:

- Without any intention of entering into a discussion about whether or not all North African Arabic speakers can generically be referred to as “Arabs”, I think it might be safer to call them “Arabic speakers” (at least in the title). 

- What are “privileged informants” (l.280)? I think an explanation would be helpful.

- “... we considered individuals from the so-called ‘second generation.’ By this expression, used broadly, we mean all those who were either born in Italy (to Arab parents or mixed couples) or arrived there no later than adolescence.” (l.309-12)

“no later than adolescence” is rather imprecise, as adolescence itself begins (and ends) at different ages in different individuals. More importantly, however, it is not clear whether these children moved to Italy before the beginning or before the end of adolescence. Normally, the cut-off point for native-like language acquisition is considered to be 12 or 13 years, but many studies pick even lower cut-off points when defining second generation speakers, for example that they moved to the new country by the age of six. A clearer definition and justification should be provided.

- Structure: The final three paragraphs of Section 4 (l.337-62) are results and should therefore be in Section 5.

- Table 1 (What is your favorite language?): The final column in this table, adding up percentages one by one, is more confusing than useful and should be removed.

- “It is interesting to note how even the word “language” is positioned between IT and SA” (l.463-64) This may be interesting, but according to the previous statement that “responses that deviated from the request” were excluded, this response should have been excluded, as it is not an adjective. Nevertheless, I agree that the fact that “language” appears far away from DA is indeed noteworthy, as it seems to imply that DA is not perceived as a language.

- I do wonder whether the reported exclusively positive associations with SA (l.483-92) reflect the informants’ actual personal attitudes, or whether they reflect a feeling of obligation to say only positive things about the language of religion. It’s difficult to identify self-censorship, I know, but when something is uniformly described as exclusively positive by all informants, there tends to be something going on.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

l.31: attitudes of the second-generation Arabs > attitudes of second-generation Arabs
l.41: citizenship from > citizenship of
l.50: Being that > Given that
l.51: multiple [...] analysis > multiple [...] analyses
l.52/53: “This is even more true...” is not a normal expression in academic English. (Something is either true or not, but you can’t have a thing that is more true, or “truer”, than another.) Rephrase, perhaps “This is particularly the case...”
l.67: in their repertoire of second-generation Arabs > in the repertoire of second-generation Arabs
l.81: we will proceed with the review of the reference literature on > we will review the relevant literature on
l.87: The upcoming sections > The following sections
l.137: influencing how favorable or unfavorable > influencing as how favorable or unfavorable
l.163: “Qualitative findings” Does this refer to the qualitative findings of Albirini’s (2016) study, or findings by the authors mentioned at the end of this sentence. Please clarify.
l.236: language varieties–one high and one low > language varieties – one high and one low
l.267: “circumscribe the exposition” Rephrase, this is unclear.
l.312: “as anticipated” How and why was this number anticipated? I think you mean “as mentioned above” or “as mentioned previously”.
l.420, Figure 4: most easy > easiest
l.480, Table 3: “aulic” is an extremely rare, virtually obsolete word in English. Perhaps “lofty” or “noble” might be more understandable translations.
l.638: particularly focuses > focuses particularly
l.668: or even more so SA. > and SA even less so.

Author Response

Comment 1: This article deals with a series of interesting and important aspect related to migrant bilingualism. In addition to providing a solid description and analysis of the sociolinguistic factors affecting language use and choices in a particular language combination, it raises important issues of a more general nature, such as variable attitudes of heritage speakers (and their families) towards the multidimensional nature of the heritage language.

Response 1: We greatly appreciate the reviewer for the positive and encouraging comments.

Comment 2: The literature review is very clear and comprehensive, with the aim of clarifying the relevant concepts such as language ideologies and attitudes. The analysis in Section 5.1 (Controlled Association and quantitative analysis) and 5.2 (Free Response Experiment and lexical analysis) are also clear and insightful, though many of the findings were perhaps to be expected.

Response 2: We have partially revised the section 5.2 based on this comment and feedback from other reviewers. We believe/hope that it is now even more interesting.

Comment 3: The explanation (Section 5.3) of how Reflexive Thematic Analysis was used, on the other hand, is far less clear. While Thematic Analysis is a common way of putting order into the qualitative data gathered in surveys and questionnaires, Reflexive Thematic Analysis borders on the unscientific because it relies heavily on the researchers’ subjectivity and intuition. The reflexive process of the analysis carried out in this study is not described in any detail but, thankfully, the themes identified and exemplified in section 5.3 are actually quite straight forward and present the qualitative data in a clearly structured way.

Response 3: We are very grateful to the reviewer for this comment: on careful re-reading we realised that we had taken for granted the procedure followed and the role of our reflection in the analysis. We have amended the paragraph to include an explanation of the procedures we followed (lines 529-555).

Comment 4: An aspect that has been omitted in this study, but which would help to understand the attitudes of second generation Arabic speakers, is the informants’ perception of attitudes towards their languages by the rest of society. The use of minority languages in public is often socially stigmatized, which in turn leads to self-stigmatization. It would have been nice to see this topic examined in this paper.

Response 4: We appreciate the reviewer's comment and thank you once again. We have added a new section (§3.1) to the paper that focuses on presenting the background context. This section outlines the linguistic landscape in Italy, including the presence of Arabic and other languages (such as dialects and immigrant languages), language policy and education, and the attitudes of the Italian population towards immigrant languages. While there is a limited amount of existing research on this topic (we aim to pursue further research on this topic in the future), we hope that the framework we have outlined will prove informative.

Comment 5: A further weakness of this study is the fact that while distinguishing regional and standard Arabic, it does not examine how attitudes towards standard and dialectal Italian differ for these multilingual informants who are undoubtedly aware of the diglossic situation in Italy. Tellingly, the authors observe that “IT is the only language perceived as completely functional, capable of fulfilling its roles in all social contexts”, which is of course only the case if Italian is viewed as a single, monolithic language without coexisting varieties, which it evidently is not. I find it slightly surprising that the authors (rightly) pay so much attention to diglossia in the Arab world, but disregard the same phenomenon in Italy.

Response 5: Although we agree with the reviewer on this point, we were not able to make any significant changes to the paper. When designing the questionnaire, we gave a lot of thought to the linguistic situation in Italy and to the study of Arabic's relationship not only with Italian, but also with Italian dialects and other varieties present in the linguistic space and in the participants' repertoires. In the end, we decided to exclude questions that focused specifically on Italian dialects for two reasons:

• • There are several studies in Italy that explore the perceptions and attitudes of different immigrant communities towards Italo-Romance dialects, whereas there are no studies on the attitudes of Arabic speakers towards their mother tongue.
  • The questionnaire was already lengthy, and in order to follow experts' recommendations regarding optimal timing, we decided to focus on Arabic diglossia.

As mentioned above, we strongly believe that it is important to consider relationships with all languages in the repertoire, including dialects and languages of international communication. These considerations emerged in the focus groups (which have already been conducted and analysed, but not reported here due to space constraints). We have not been able to include them in this paper. We have, however, revised the above sentence ("IT is the only language perceived as fully functional, able to fulfil its role in all social contexts") because, as rightly pointed out, it was misleading.

Comment 6: Despite these shortcomings, this is a clearly written, well-structured article that makes use of appropriately compiled data for a solid analysis and draws a number of relevant conclusions about second generation Arabic speakers’ language attitudes, the reasons for these attitudes, and the implications for future language policy in Italy and beyond.  

Response 6: We would like to express our gratitude once more for your valuable suggestions and encouraging feedback.

Comment 7: Without any intention of entering into a discussion about whether or not all North African Arabic speakers can generically be referred to as “Arabs”, I think it might be safer to call them “Arabic speakers” (at least in the title). 

Response 7: The suggestion has been accepted and the article title and text have been modified as appropriate.

Comment 8:  What are “privileged informants” (l.280)? I think an explanation would be helpful.

Response 8: We have removed the word 'privileged' (which was a poorly translated term from Italian) and explained the characteristics of the pilot informants.

Comment 9: “... we considered individuals from the so-called ‘second generation.’ By this expression, used broadly, we mean all those who were either born in Italy (to Arab parents or mixed couples) or arrived there no later than adolescence.” (l.309-12)

“no later than adolescence” is rather imprecise, as adolescence itself begins (and ends) at different ages in different individuals. More importantly, however, it is not clear whether these children moved to Italy before the beginning or before the end of adolescence. Normally, the cut-off point for native-like language acquisition is considered to be 12 or 13 years, but many studies pick even lower cut-off points when defining second generation speakers, for example that they moved to the new country by the age of six. A clearer definition and justification should be provided.

Response 9: We have provided a more detailed explanation of the participants' ages and the timing of their arrival in Italy (lines 313-322).

Comment 10: Structure: The final three paragraphs of Section 4 (l.337-62) are results and should therefore be in Section 5.

Response 10: We have relocated the paragraphs indicated to Section 5 (lines 329-362).

Comment 11: Table 1 (What is your favorite language?): The final column in this table, adding up percentages one by one, is more confusing than useful and should be removed.

Response 11: We removed the last column as suggested.

Comment 12: “It is interesting to note how even the word “language” is positioned between IT and SA” (l.463-64) This may be interesting, but according to the previous statement that “responses that deviated from the request” were excluded, this response should have been excluded, as it is not an adjective. Nevertheless, I agree that the fact that “language” appears far away from DA is indeed noteworthy, as it seems to imply that DA is not perceived as a language.

Response 12: In the question, participants were asked to provide three words, which could include nouns, not just adjectives (although the majority of responses were adjectives). Consequently, we excluded complete sentences as answers but retained those that included nouns. In response to feedback from other reviewers, we have revised this paragraph, removing the aforementioned sentence. Furthermore, we have clarified the questionnaire's instructions more explicitly.

Comment 13: I do wonder whether the reported exclusively positive associations with SA (l.483-92) reflect the informants’ actual personal attitudes, or whether they reflect a feeling of obligation to say only positive things about the language of religion. It’s difficult to identify self-censorship, I know, but when something is uniformly described as exclusively positive by all informants, there tends to be something going on.

Response 13: We greatly appreciate this comment and fully agree with the reviewer (again, thank you). We have clarified that with the questionnaire, we primarily investigated the cognitive dimension of linguistic attitudes, which we believe is responsible for what the reviewer rightfully mentioned.

Comment 14: Comments on the Quality of English Language

Response 14: All suggestions pertaining to the quality of the English language have been duly considered and accepted. We would like to express our gratitude for your contributions to this process.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language is often unclear. The authros may want to consult a native speaker. Details are provided in the attatched review.

Author Response

Comments 1: The article “Language attitudes among second-generation Arabs in Italy” explores the language ideology and attitudes towards Standard Arabic (SA), dialectal Arabic (DA), and Italian, of second-generation Arab immigrants in Italy. It reports data from three questions of a questionnaire, answered by 85 respondents.

The topic, attitudes towards varieties of Arabic and the majority variety dias- pora Arabic is fairly well understood. The study aims to add data to this line of research from one particular language community (Arabic heritage speakers in Italy). This is a laudable aim. However, the study has a number of short- comings. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend publication.

I give plenty of comments below. These will come across as very harsh when listed like this. However, I hope that they will be useful for the authors to either thoroughly rework the paper for publication elsewhere or for future research.

Response 1: We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to the reviewer for their input. We recognize that the rejection of a paper is never an enjoyable experience, particularly when it is the result of significant effort. However, we have found the comments and criticisms to be constructive, and we agree with the majority of the points raised. We will certainly consider these suggestions in our future research endeavors. Nevertheless, we hope that the revisions made to this article will be satisfactory. Once again, we would like to express our gratitude to the reviewer for their careful and attentive review of our work.

Introduction

Comments 2: One of the purposes is to “verify whether and how different research approaches and analyses can be reconciled and integrated in order to obtain a comprehensive overview of the language attitudes themselves” (71). It is difficult to understand how this is testable and what a result would be that means that different re- search approaches cannot be reconciled. Furthermore, the authors only test one “approach” (which I understand to mean method), namely a questionnaire.

One purpose is to “verify whether and how different research approaches and analyses can be reconcil”

Response 2: The introduction has been revised in its entirety, with particular attention paid to the study objectives. In the initial version, the objectives were perceived as overly ambitious, a sentiment that was duly acknowledged by the reviewer. The revised version specifies the objective as the exploration of the linguistic attitudes of second-generation Arabic speakers in Italy.

Additionally, all references to different "methods and approaches" have been removed, maintaining the distinction solely in relation to the proposed type of analysis.

 

Theory

Comments 3: The authors frame their study in the theoretical field of language ideology. There are two main problems in the description of this framing, with down-stream effects on the rest of the paper.

First, the terms “language ideology” and “language attitude” are not clearly defined distinguished. The authors, list several definitions from the literature but do not state which if these they adopt and why, even though some of the listed definitions are contradictory. For example, Silvestein states that ideologies are beliefs “articulated by users [of a language]” (98) and, in the same paragraph, McGroarty states that ideologies are “often implicit” (101). With the methods the authors adopt, they can by only elicit explicit beliefs, so this distinction is quite important.

Second, the term “attitude” is by the authors often treated as synonymous to “ideology” (87-88, 129, 150). It is not made clear of these are indeed the same thing. The paragraph staring on 131 describes an altogether different theoretical framework of “attitudes” comprising a) cognitive, b) affective, and c) behavioral

component. The first is largely equivalent with what previously in the paper was described as “ideology”. The second, is what many researchers would call “attitude”. The third is the behavioral expression of the first two.

This distinction is of particular importance when studying attitudes towards SA and DA. It makes statements about general “positive attitudes” towards SA

(153) deeply problematic. Most Arabic speakers would verbally express a strong evaluation of SA on a direct question (highly positive cognitive evaluation) but would laugh at someone walking into a shop talking SA (highly negative affective evaluation). In not making this distinction clear, the authors miss important aspects of attitudes/ideology in their analysis.

This also has important methodological implications. To simplify slightly, only the first (cognitive) can be captured in the questionnaire method. For the second (affective) one would need matched guise or similar techniques. For the third (behavioral) one would need to observe people in their actual environment confronting or using the language.

The authors need to distinguish their basic terminology with more care and understand that they to mean different things and are defined differently by different authors. They need to choose one definition as applying to their study.

Some parts of the theory section have no clear bearing on they study or on the theoretical discussion at large (109-113, 143-146). They authors should consider either clarifying the relevance of these sections or emitting them.

Response 3: We have clarified our theoretical framework and hope it is now more comprehensible.

 

Method

Comments 4: The authors do not mention any ethics considerations in collecting their data. There should at the very least be made clear if informed consent was retrieved and whether participation was anonymous.

Response 5: In the initial version of the paper, we cited another publication of ours for detailed information to remain within the character limits. However, following the suggestion, we have now provided all the necessary details (lines 262-265).

 

 

The AHLI project

Comments 5: It is not quite clear how this paper relates to the project. On 168 it is stated that the questionnaire will not be dealt with here, but then the entire paper is results from the questionnaire. Furthermore, the “Qualitative” square in Figura (sic) 1 is not explained or commented in the text.

Response 5: We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewer for their valuable input. We have endeavoured to clarify the role of the AHLI project and the various research tools employed, namely the questionnaire and focus groups. Furthermore, we have removed the research design image, as it was deemed to be superfluous to the discussion.

Participants

Comments 6: Why are there so few males among the respondents (313)? The expected percentage is around 50%. This must be explained or at least commented on.

Response 6: Participation was voluntary and, unfortunately, did not result in a qualitatively representative sample. We have addressed this aspect in the conclusions.

 

Comments 7: High concentration of participants in Lombardy and from Morocco. Why is this the case? Is this due to the social connections of the researchers?

How does it relate to the population at large, i.e., is there a high concen- tration of Arabic in Lombardy, and are most Arab immigrants in Italy from Morocco? The statement on 331 seems to be an attempt to clarify this, but it is not clear how. These points have important implication for understanding the representative of the data.

Response 7: In response to this comment, we have added a paragraph (§3.1) on the background context. This is intended to clarify the reasons behind this distribution. It should be noted that the majority of Arabic speakers in Italy are Moroccan and reside in Lombardy. This is unrelated to the social connections of the researchers, who live and work in a different region and are not Moroccan.

 

Questionnaire

Comments 8: The authors describe their three questionnaire questions as three different meth- ods (366). This is misleading; they are all the same method (questionnaire). A difference method is typically understood as something like interview, partici- pant observation, etc.

Response 8: We have revised the wording, referring to analysis instead of methods.

 

Comments 9: The formulation of the questions is not well thought out, making it difficult to draw conclusions from the data.

375. This question elicits the cognitive component, not the affective.

Response 9: We have clarified this aspect.

 

Comments 10: 377. “This single-choice format highlighted the emotional leanings of the respondents toward their linguistic options.” How is this claim supported? It implies that an open-ended question would not highlight the emotional leanings, which seems absurd. Furthermore, the actual formulation of the question is not given. It is described as the “preferred” language here, and the “favorite” language in Table 1.

Response 10: The paragraph has been revised in order to standardise the terminology and to avoid the use of misleading formulations.

 

Comments 11: 399. This paragraph makes strong but unsubstantiated claims. It does by definition not extend “beyond mere quantitative data”, as the authors claim. Nor is it clear how it uncovers “underlying beliefs”. The beliefs are, by definition, explicit.

Response 11: We have revised the paragraph.

 

Comments 12: 407. To show that there is a language shift, the authors need some sort of die chronic comparison or a comparison with data from another gener- ation.

Response 12: In this instance, we have also removed the reference to language shift.

 

Comments 13: 427-8. The authors interpret respondents to answers the questions as re- lating to “their” culture, religion, etc. But there is nothing in the question that specify this. A completely secular atheist could very well answer that SA is connected to religion, for example. The questions could have been interpreted by respondents to relate to society in general, not to them personally.

Response 13: We concur with the reviewer's comment and have revised the text accordingly.

 

Comments 14: 438. The word “beautiful” was given as an example in the question. Participants are thereby primed by the researchers to use this word when describing the languages. Indeed, this is by far the most frequent word in answers. The results are therefore questionable.

Response 14: The entire paragraph has now been rewritten. Regarding the word "bello," the reviewer's observation is correct (although the word "brutto," which was used as an example in the question, was never mentioned by the participants). However, we felt it was important to present the data as it emerged. We have clarified this aspect in the text.

Comments 15: Figure 5. It is not clear what the plot shows. How does the scattering relate to correlation? It is implied by the authors that distance indicate correlation, but it is not clear how, or what statistical model was used to generate the plot. What do the axes indicate?

Response 15: This figure has been removed.

 

Comments 16: 476ff. This analysis could have been done much simpler way, since the data is very simple. As far as I understand it, the calculations just give the most frequent word for each language. Table 3 should indicate some measure of the frequency, not just the ranking.

Response 16: We have modified the table to include the list of the ten lemmas with the highest association coefficient for each language (specifically, we used the logDice metric).

 

Comments 17: 483. This paragraph contains conclusion that are not supported by, or that directly contradicts the data.

• SA is “described with exclusively positive” “Secular”, “for- mal”, and “religion” or not clearly positive.
• DA “appears to be widely stigmatized”. There is little to support this. Most of the words describing it are very positive.
• “Italian seems to be less ideological connected”. It is evaluated just as the other languages are, thus ideologized.

Response 17: As previously indicated, the entire paragraph has been revised in accordance with the suggestions made. We are grateful to you for drawing our attention to the inconsistencies.

 

Comments 18: 532. This paragraph is unclear. It is not made clear how this specific form of thematic analysis differs from other ones, or how it has affected the analysis. Some examples of responses and how they were interpreted might have been useful to clarify this.

Response 19: We have furnished more comprehensive details regarding the methodologies employed in data analysis and the role of reflexivity in the process. We trust that this will facilitate a clearer understanding.

 

Conclusion

Comments 19: The conclusions are not directly connected with the results of the study.

“The analysis of language attitudes among second-generation Arabs in Italy reveals a complex intergenerational and transcultural dynamic. Here, multi- lingualism acts as a conduit for negotiating multiple identities and affiliations (717)” This was apparent before this study was conducted. It is difficult to imagine any form of results that falsifies this statement.

“It is imperative to advance language policies that recognize, value, and cele- brate linguistic diversity in Italian society, thereby enhancing social integration, fostering bi- and multilingual identities, and ultimately safeguarding linguistic rights” (792). It is not clear how the data leads to this conclusion. That is, are there possible results that would not lead to this imperative? This is an ideological statement by the authors (that all linguists would agree with), but it is unrelated to the results.

It is not clear to me, and I think not clearly stated in the paper, what informa- tion the study has provided that was not available to the scientific community previously.

Response 19: We have revised the discussion and conclusions to better highlight the study's contribution to the scientific community. We are aware that several aspects revealed by the analysis were already known, but until now, no one has explored the linguistic attitudes of Arabic speakers in Italy. In our opinion, the unique context makes this research worthwhile. The fact that some results align with findings from other studies is, in our view, a positive element. Despite the study's limitations, which we outline in the conclusions, we believe it is important to reflect on the findings in order to inform practical initiatives.

Language

Comments 20: The authors need to be more careful with formulations. Many things are not clearly formulated. It is often unclear whether the unclear formulations are issues of language of underlying conceptual problems. This is a non-exhaustive list of such things in the text:

• The authors are advised to tone down expressions like “complex intergen- erational”, “transcultural dynamic”, and “multifaceted nature of cultural identity”. These are often used without much explanatory value or theo- retical significance and obfuscates the text.
• “audiences” Participant?

• “micro-research objectives” requires explanation.
• Present the sections in the order they appear in the paper.
• Figures 2 and 3 are hard to read with the gray scales and do not add any valuable information or visualization to what is stated in the
• Why are there percent ranges and not exact percentages on 317 and 318?
• Is “first- second generation” on 164 the same as “parents” and “children” in Figura (sic) 1?
• Participates “were found to live in […]” (329). Strange It is an effect of your recruitment strategy, not something that arises indecently in the data.
• “totalling” of what?
• What does it mean that literacy negatively affects proficiency in DA? If the authors mean that DA is not a written language, then does this not mean that literacy should be excluded in evaluations of proficiency? What does it mean for skills to be “critical”?
• “indicates a good degree of maintenance of HE”. Compared to what? What would be the threshold for a low degree of maintenance. Also, if this is true, it invalidates the conclusions that language maintenance policies need to be implemented.
• In what sense is this question “the foremost”?
• The question does not “facilitate” the investigation. It is the investi- gation.
• “familiar” does not usually mean “connected with the family”.
• “richness, for example in vocabulary”. Is the example of vocabulary indicated in the date, or is it the authors own interpretation of what this word in the replies might mean?
• What is the “level” referred to here?

 

Response 20:
The reviewer correctly identified the necessity for improvement in our phrasing, which was occasionally imprecise due to our non-native proficiency in the English language or oversight. We believe that these revisions have significantly enhanced the text's clarity.

We acknowledge that our writing style was occasionally verbose and redundant. In response to the reviewer’s suggestions, we have streamlined our expressions. Unclear sentences have been rephrased, and we have removed the phrase "micro-research objectives" as it would detract from the paper's focus. Figures that did not effectively enhance data presentation and visualization have also been eliminated.

Regarding the issue with percent ranges versus exact percentages (lines 317 and 318 in the original paper), the hyphen was intended to separate the absolute number from the percentage, not indicate a range. We have clarified this in the revised wording.

In response to the comment on line 356 of the original paper, we wish to provide further clarification. Participants were asked to self-assess their proficiency in various skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) for each language. For DA, participants reported high proficiency in speaking and listening, but significantly lower proficiency in reading and writing. This highlights the need for educational interventions in literacy-related skills. Conversely, for SA, lower proficiency in production skills (speaking and writing) suggests a need for targeted educational support. We have refined this explanation for clarity.

Further clarification: the data indicates that Arabic is maintained through home use, with DA proficiency being good based on self-assessment (average score of 3.77 on a scale from 1 to 5). However, participants reported difficulties in literacy-related activities for DA, underscoring the lack of formal or informal courses and policies supporting its maintenance. Similarly, while attitudes towards SA are generally positive and educational opportunities are more prevalent, proficiency levels in productive skills remain low. Therefore, we do not see a contradiction in stating that while maintenance efforts exist, further linguistic policy actions are crucial.

The inappropriate use of the term "familiar," which was a mistranslation from Italian, has been corrected.

We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewer for their comments and suggestions. We believe that the revisions have significantly enhanced the article. We welcome any additional feedback or critique. Thank you once again.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The work under review is an investigation of the language attitudes of second-generation Arabs residing in Italy, particularly their perspectives on both Italian and Arabic within the framework of family language policy. The study looks interesting since it attempts to assess these attitudes within the complex sociolinguistic environment of Arabic, heavily influenced by a diglossic view between Standard Arabic and Arabic dialects.

The introduction and literature review are thorough, offering an extensive overview of the subject. The methodology is appropriate and clearly outlined and the findings are clearly presented and explained. References relate to the main content of the paper and don't look abundant. Generally, this paper is well-written and organised. 

The paper is original and well-written. As far as the areas of improvement, I would suggest the following points to be considered by the author(s) towards their final publication of the paper:

·       To expand the conclusion to succinctly include future research implications.

·       To verify references to ensure conformity with APA style consistently.

·       To rectify references where the DOI is missing, and ensure proper citation throughout the paper.

·       To arrange sources and in-text citations alphabetically throughout the paper. 

Author Response

Comments 1: The work under review is an investigation of the language attitudes of second-generation Arabs residing in Italy, particularly their perspectives on both Italian and Arabic within the framework of family language policy. The study looks interesting since it attempts to assess these attitudes within the complex sociolinguistic environment of Arabic, heavily influenced by a diglossic view between Standard Arabic and Arabic dialects.

The introduction and literature review are thorough, offering an extensive overview of the subject. The methodology is appropriate and clearly outlined and the findings are clearly presented and explained. References relate to the main content of the paper and don't look abundant. Generally, this paper is well-written and organised. 

Response 1: We sincerely thank the reviewer for the positive comments and for appreciating our work. Thank you very much.

Comments 2: The paper is original and well-written. As far as the areas of improvement, I would suggest the following points to be considered by the author(s) towards their final publication of the paper:

• To expand the conclusion to succinctly include future research implications.
• To verify references to ensure conformity with APA style consistently.
• To rectify references where the DOI is missing, and ensure proper citation throughout the paper.
• To arrange sources and in-text citations alphabetically throughout the paper. 

Response 2: As recommended, we have integrated future research perspectives into the conclusion section. We have ensured compliance with APA guidelines and verified the alignment of all citations in both the text and bibliography. Where feasible, we have included DOIs. Additionally, we have organised citations in alphabetical order in the text, acknowledging the reviewer for highlighting this aspect that had been overlooked.

We would like to express our gratitude once again.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I find that the authors have addressed my concerns and that the paper has clearly improved.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your positive feedback. We are pleased to hear that you find the revised paper has addressed your concerns and shows clear improvement. We appreciate your valuable insights and suggestions, which have significantly enhanced the quality of our manuscript.