Abstract:

What are the relationships between Music and Language? The analysis disclosed in the text is an expression of the research carried out under the AMUSIA project, realized during the school years 2014-2015, 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 in the 1st degree Secondary School named Comprehensive Institute "San Giuseppe Calasanzio" in Milan. The researchers’ aim was to verify whether and how musical education and practice could affect both the linguistic ability (production and reading) in groups of monolingual (Italian) and bilingual (foreign) students. Through the examination of the literature concerning the relationship between music and language and in the light of several recent neuroscientific studies, it has been possible to identify in the first part of the text what structures and cognitive functions are shared both in the musical domain and in the linguistic one. In the second part of the dissertation the experimental research is described, presenting the objectives, the sample, the measures taken, the analysis of the collected data and the discussion of the possible interactions between the effects of musical practice and the linguistic state (mono-lingualism, bi-lingualism) in relation to the ability to manipulate oral and reading language.

Keywords:

Music, dislexia, bilinguism, neuroscience, language.