12 - Narrating Heterogeneous Identities in Multilingual Communities

Summary

In this chapter we explore how sociocultural identities are formed and enacted in narrative practices – specifically, in joke-telling about migrants that takes place in multilingual communities in Veneto, Italy. Multilingual speech participants often communicate and reconfigure their fluid and heterogeneous sociocultural identities through joke-telling practices. By taking a particular stance while telling a joke, for example, speakers can inhabit identities in which ‘exclusionary intimacies’ vis-à-vis migrant groups might emerge – identities which reinforce intimate connections between joke-tellers and audience members who share the same history and traditions, while excluding migrants. In order to describe how joke-telling in northern Italy positions longstanding residents and migrants, we explore how identity performances can be fluid, as speakers shift in and out of heterogeneous memberships in multilingual communities, but nonetheless often end up excluding migrants.