Do the contested languages of Italy and Poland contribute to the perception of these countries as multilingual?

The paper discusses the results of an online questionnaire conducted in 2022 to assess speakers' "naive" perception of Italy and Poland as multilingual countries. Studies of people's perceptions of the linguistic varieties present in a given territory help sociolinguists and language planners to understand the dominant linguistic ideology at a given point in time. Most European states, including Poland and Italy, have large linguistic repertoires, including state, immigrant, regional and minority languages, as well as their dialects. Safeguarding linguistic diversity in Europe is one of the most frequently stated tasks of the EU, and member states comply to a certain extent by supporting recognised indigenous languages on their territory and adopting measures to promote multilingualism through internal state regulations. However, officially recognised languages represent only a small percentage of the total number of language varieties used in Italy and Poland. Unrecognised varieties, both those perceived as languages (e.g. those of foreigners, immigrants, some minority languages) and those treated as dialects of the state language (the contested languages), in most cases receive little support. Moreover, awareness of their existence and the need to protect them is rather limited. On the basis of the answers to the questionnaire, we will discuss whether and to what extent the contested languages of Italy and Poland contribute to the folk perception and representation of Italy and Poland as multilingual countries. We will also focus on whether the lack of recognition of some language varieties leads to their neglect and consequently reduces their further chances for legal protection, support and recognition.