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‘Quella era veramente è Little Italy, la nostra Little Italy’: Multiple centres, cultural presence and the articulation of spaces of speech from Tasmania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2017

Marco Santello
Marco Santello*
Affiliation:
University of Leeds, UK
*
Address for correspondence: Marco Santello, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, Room 420, Michael Sadler Building, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK[email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the intersections between migrant experiences, multilingual practices, and the creation of space. It does so by focusing on Italians who migrated to Tasmania, a group that has long been isolated from the rest of the Italian diaspora. Using an ethnographic approach within a constructivist framework, this research shows that when experiences of movement are recounted in interaction they bring about spaces of speech that are possible thanks to the articulation of local and transnational ‘centres’, which in turn are intertwined with a rich set of linguistic resources. These resources include code-choice, codeswitching, and intentional exposure of phonological variation, and are variously combined to allow the emergence of spaces for people to move through. Spaces of speech are thus situated interactional spaces where acts of (re)telling are related to centres as spatial resources through which not only social meaning is created but also location and locution are mutually constitutive. (Spaces of speech, centres, cultural presence, Italian, Tasmania)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , April 2017 , pp. 207 - 230
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the many colleagues and friends who commented on earlier versions of this article. Special thanks go to Estella Carpi, Deirdre Conlon, Annick Pellegrin, Thor Sawin, Giovanni Urraci, Michelle Veljanovska, the editor of Language in Society, and the anonymous reviewers. Any remaining inaccuracies are my own. I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) for funding the project ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures’ that enabled this research. I also wish to thank my colleagues on the project and in particular Charles Burdett, Loredana Polezzi, and Rita Wilson for their support along the way. My deepest gratitude is of course for my informant for his indescribable generosity.

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