Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T21:33:16.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Code-switching and the construction of ethnic identity in a community of practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2007

ANNA DE FINA
ANNA DE FINA
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Italian Department, ICC Building 307 J, 37 and O Streets NW, Washington D.C. 20057, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the past twenty years the existence of a sense of ethnic belonging among immigrant groups of European ancestry in the United States has become the focus of frequent debates and polemics. This article argues that ethnicity cannot be understood if it is abstracted from concrete social practices, and that analyses of this construct need to be based on ethnographic observation and on the study of actual talk in interaction. This interactionally oriented perspective is taken to present an analysis of how Italian ethnicity is constructed as a central element in the collective identity of an all-male card playing club. Linguistic strategies, particularly code-switching, are central in this construction, but their role becomes apparent only when language use is analyzed within significant practices in the life of the club. Code-switching into Italian is used as an important index of ethnic affiliation in socialization practices related to the game and in official discourse addressed by the president to club members through the association of the language with central domains of activity.I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor of this journal, Barbara Johnstone, for their insightful suggestions, which have substantially contributed to the shaping of this article.

Keywords

ethnicityethnic identitycode-switchingcommunity of practiceimmigrant communitiesItalian Americans
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , July 2007 , pp. 371 - 392
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alba, Richard (2000). The twilight of ethnicity among Americans of European ancestry: The case of Italians. In Frank Sorrentino & Jerome Krase (eds.), Review of Italian American Studies, 41–74. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
Antaki, Charles, & Widdicombe, Sue (eds.) (1998). Identities in talk. London: Sage.
Alfonzetti, Giovanna (1998). The conversational dimension in code-switching between Italian and dialect in Sicily. In Peter Auer (ed.), Code-switching in conversation: Language, interaction and identity, 180–214. London: Routledge.
Auer, Peter (1998). Introduction: Bilingual conversation revisited. In Peter Auer (ed.), Code-switching in conversation, 29–48. London: Routledge.CrossRef
Auer, Peter (2005). A postscript: Code-switching and social identity. Journal of Pragmatics 37:403–10.Google Scholar
Bailey, Benjamin (2001). The language of multiple identities among Dominican Americans. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10:190–216.Google Scholar
Barth, Fredrik (1969). Ethnic groups and boundaries. Boston: Little, Brown.
Bauman, Richard (1992). Contextualization, tradition, and the dialogue of genres: Icelandic legends of the Kraftaskáld. In Charles Goodwin & Alessandro Duranti (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, 127–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Besnier, Niko (2003). Crossing gender, mixing languages: The linguistic construction of transgenderism in Tonga. In Janet Holmes & Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.), The handbook of language and gender, 279–301. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef
Blom, Jan Petter, & Gumperz, John (1972). Social meaning in linguistic structures: Code-switching in Norway. In John Gumperz & Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication, 407–34. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Blommaert, Jan (2005). In and out of class, codes and control: Globalisation, discourse and mobility. In Mike Baynham & Anna De Fina (eds.), Dislocations/relocations: Narratives of displacement. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Briscola News. Statement of purpose. Retrieved April 20, 2005 from http://www.briscola-news.com.
Bucholtz, Mary (1999). You da man: Narrating the racial other in the production of white masculinity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3:443–60.Google Scholar
Buriel, Raymond, & Cardoza, Desdemona (1993). Mexican American ethnic labeling: An intrafamiliar and intergenerational analysis. In Marta Bernal & George P. Knight (eds.), Ethnic identity: Formation and transmission among Hispanics and other minorities, 197–210. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Conzen, Kathleen; Gerber, David; Morawska, Ewa; & Pozzetta, George (1992). The invention of ethnicity: A perspective from the U.S.A. Journal of American Ethnic History 12:3–41.Google Scholar
De Fina, Anna (2000). Orientation in immigrant narratives: The role of ethnicity in the identification of characters. Discourse Studies 2:131–57.Google Scholar
De Fina, Anna (2003). Identity in narrative: An analysis of immigrant discourse. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRef
De Fina, Anna (2006). Group identity, narrative and self-representations. In Anna De Fina, et al. (eds.), Discourse and Identity, 351–375. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
De Fina, Anna (forthcoming 2007). Style and stylization in the construction of identities in a card-playing club. In Peter Auer (ed.), Social identity and communicative styles: An alternative approach to linguistic heterogeneity. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
De Fina, Anna; Schiffrin, Deborah; & Bamberg, Michael (2006). Introduction. In Anna De Fina Deborah Schiffrin & Michael Bamberg (eds.), Discourse and identity, 1–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Del Negro, Giovanna P., & Berger, Harris M. (2004). Identity reconsidered, the world doubled. In Harris M. Berger & Giovanna P. Del Negro (eds.), Identity and everyday life, 3–40. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Edwards, John (1985). Language, society and identity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Eckert, Penelope, & McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1992). Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21:461–90.Google Scholar
Farley, John, E. (1988). Majority-minority relations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Fishman, Joshua (1972). The sociology of language: An interdisciplinary social science approach to language in society. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Gal, Susan (1979). Language shift: Social determinants of linguistic change in bilingual austria. New York: Academic Press.
Gans, Herbert (1979). Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups or cultures in America. Ethnic and Racial Studies 2:1–20.Google Scholar
Glazer, Nathan, & Moynihan, Daniel (eds.) (1975). Ethnicity: Theory and experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gumperz, John (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Hall, Stuart (2000). Who needs identity? In Paul Du Gay Jessica Evans & Paul Redman (eds.), Identity: A reader, 15–30. London: Sage and Open University.
Lakoff, Robin (2006). Identity à la carte: You are what you eat. In Anna De Fina et al. (eds.), Discourse and identity, 142–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Leets, Laura; Giles, Howard; & Clément, Richard (1996). Explicating ethnicity in theory and communication research. Multilingua 15:15–147.Google Scholar
Levine, Hal (1997). Constructing collective identity. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Maryns, Katrijn, & Blommaert, Jan (2001). Stylistic and thematic shifting as a narrative resource: Assessing asylum seekers' repertoires. Multilingua 20:61–82.Google Scholar
Meeuwis, Michael, & Blommaert, Jan (1994). The ‘markedness model’ and the absence of society: Remarks on code-switching. Multilingua 13:387–423.Google Scholar
Milroy, Leslie (1987). Language and social networks. Oxford: Blackwell.
Nardini, Gloria (1999). Che bella figura! The power of performance in an Italian ladies' club in Chicago. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Nelli, Humbert, S. (1983). From immigrants to ethnics: The Italian Americans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ortoleva, Peppino (1992). La tradizione e l'abbondanza: Riflessioni sulla cucina degli italiani in America. Altreitalie 7:30–52.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana; Wheeler, Susan; & Westwood, Anneli (1987). Distinguishing language contact phenomena: Evidence from Finnish-English bilingualism. In Pirkko Lilius andMirja Saari (eds.), The Nordic languages and modern linguistics, 6:33–56. Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press.
Rampton, Ben (1995). Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman.
Rampton, Ben (2006). Language in late modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Repetti, Lori (2000). Phonological theory and the dialects of Italy. In L. Repetti (ed.), Phonological theory and the dialects of Italy, 1–12. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Richards, David (1999). Italian American: The racializing of an ethnic identity. New York: New York University Press.
Rosoli, Gianfausto (1989). Le popolazioni di origine italiana oltreoceano. Altreitalie 2:2–31.Google Scholar
Scott, George (1990). A resynthesis of the primordial and circumstancial approaches to ethnic group solidarity: Towards an explanatory model. Ethnic and Racial Studies 13:147–71.Google Scholar
van den Berghe, Pierre (1987). Race and ethnicity: A sociobiological perspective. Ethnic and Racial Studies 1:401–11.Google Scholar
Vecoli, Rudolph (2000). ‘Are Italian Americans just white folks?’ In Frank Sorrentino & Jerome Krase (eds.), Review of Italian American Studies, 75–88. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
Wenger, Etienne (1998). Communities of practice. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Woolard, Karen (1999). Simultaneity and bivalency as strategies in bilingualism. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8:3–29.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Don H. (1998). Identity, context and interaction. In Charles Antaki & Sue Widdicombe (eds.), Identities in talk, 7–106. London: Sage.