Roberta Iannacito-provenzano

Biography

Professor Iannacito-Provenzano's specialization includes historical linguistics, dialectology, morpho-phonological and syntactic processes, sound change and Romance linguistics. Dr. Iannacito-Provenzano has published articles on the history of the Molise region and a monograph (Il dialetto molisano di Villa San Michele, Isernia: Fonologia, morfologia, sintassi e lessico (Ottawa: Legas, 2006) on the Molisan dialects. She is currently working on the use of auxiliary verbs in the Central-Southern dialects of Italy. Her passion for the Molise region led her to translate some of the works of Molisan playwright Antonio Angelone. She is currently analysing the language in twenty of Angelone's plays. For her work on molisano, she was awarded a Passaporto d'oro by the Region of Molise and was also the Vice-President of the Consiglio Giovani Molisani nel Mondo. Professor Iannacito-Provenzano's research interests also revolve around Italian gastronomy and language. To this end, she has given several papers at international conferences on food and social media, authenticity and Italian food, branding and language with regard to Italian food products especially in the diasporic context. Professor Iannacito-Provenzano is also interested in ethnicity and identity among youth in Canada in computer mediated contexts and more specifically on social networking sites such as Facebook; language on social media sites. Along with her colleague, Professor Emerita Jana Vizmuller-Zocco, she organized a major conference entitled "Social Media: Implications for the University" at York University (May 3-5, 2013). For this project she and her colleague were awarded a SSHRC Connection Grant along with other funding from York University. A follow up conference on Social Media: Politics, Religion and Gender was held in May 2014.

Research Interest

Italian , Linguistics , Dialectology , Social Media, Literature in dialect