The maze of languages in Aosta Valley (Italy)

The article analyses linguistic rights in Aosta Valley, abandoning the already well-trodden path of pure legal description of legal safeguards to highlight the concrete effectiveness and limits of the measures hitherto provided for by the legal system, by means of a multidisciplinary approach. Accordingly, after a description of the constitutional-legal framework, which provides for an Italian French bilingual system and for a weaker protec- tion of other languages, legal categories are compared with concrete reality of language practice, showing the existing cleavage between them. The paper then focuses on the causes of the current situation and their consequences on social representation of languages, high- lighting the role played by the political ethnic discourse. Finally, some suggestions are drawn in order to find a way out of what can be rightly defined as a maze.