ABSTRACT
The present research deals with the investigation of code-switching in three Italian communities in the UK, Bedford, Cambridge, and Peterborough. We focus on the use of three language varieties (Italian dialect, Standard Italian, English) in the speech of first generation Italian migrants. The chapter aims at the investigation of the functional aspects of code-switching, which has been considered as a strategy that speakers have to build up and expresses their own identities. Our research perspective is interactional sociolinguistic in the opinion that both the sociolinguistic contexts and the historical background are a set of unavoidable conditions for understanding the structural features of the languages in contact and the identities speakers play with
