Place-Making in the Declarative City

Beatrix Busse, Ingo H. Warnke, Jennifer Smith

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783110635638
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume looks at the concept of the declarative city from an interdisciplinary perspective, comprising literary and linguistic studies, arts and art history, discourse analysis, as well as urban planning. The various contributions demonstrate the semiotic complexity and inconsistency of declarative and discursive practices in different social, cultural, aesthetic, and historical contexts.

Talk about Talk

From an Urban Space to a Dialect Place – How a Collective Body of Knowledge Influences Communicative Dynamics in Naples

Sara Matrisciano

Abstract

In linguistic research, Naples has been identified as an urban space in which the local dialect is widely spoken. The dialect’s uninterrupted presence, combined with progressive – and now perhaps complete – Italianization, have created complex communicative dynamics that are hard to describe. Consequently, there is a research gap regarding dialect use in verbal interaction within the urban area. In fact, how, by whom and when the dialect is used in this area is the subject of lively debate in linguistic research. It would be impossible to fill this research gap with a single paper, but what can be done is to analyze the processes behind dialect use. An initial approach to understanding the communicative dynamics of Naples thus involves examining why the dialect is used, or rather, why people believe they need to use it. In the present chapter, this is done by analyzing metalinguistic discourses. The aim of this study is to describe the social meaning(s) attributed by the people of Naples to the Neapolitan dialect (or, what they consider to be that dialect). I argue that, in the Neapolitan context, dialect and its use are presumed to fulfil certain specific functions, which are necessary conditions for ‘successful’ social interaction. Further, I claim that dialect use has two effects: it creates identity, and it creates urbanity. The present qualitative case study suggests that the Neapolitan dialect is considered an essential skill – even by non-native dialect speakers. This, in turn, has led to a new form of dialectality in the city of Naples.

Keywords: Naples, dialect, communicative dynamics, urban space, placemaking acts, (collective urban) identity, urbanity, new dialectality,

1 Introduction

¹In linguistic research, it is generally accepted that the local dialect² is widely spoken in Naples (see, e.g. Radtke 1997: 103–112; De Blasi and Marcato 2005: 115; Bianchi 2006; Bianchi and Maturi 2006; De Blasi 2006b, 2013; Avolio 2014, 2016). Even though it is no longer the mother tongue of all Neapolitans, it continues to be acquired in a variety of different settings as a second language (see De Blasi 2006a: 106).³ Indeed, Naples is characterized by a dialectality that is more typical of rural areas, since urban areas tend to “accelerate linguistic standardization” (Milroy 1987: 190), which often leads to dialect regression or dialect loss (see Grassi et al. 2007: 84–85). In Naples, however, dialect is still widely used. De Blasi (2006a: 219) even defines Naples as a “dialect metropolis”. Unfortunately, this kind of designation tells us nothing about concrete dialect use or dialect perception. What can be assumed, nevertheless, is that there has been a decline in ‘dialect-only’ speakers and a rise in the number of Italian⁴ speakers (tendencies that do not, however, imply dialect regression or dialect loss), alongside a growing prevalence of mixed verbal interactions (see Bianchi and Maturi 2006: 20). The strong presence of the local dialect, combined with progressive – and now perhaps complete – Italianization, has led to communicative dynamics that are hard to describe (see Bianchi and Maturi 2006: 1).

Ethnographic participant observation conducted in parallel with the interviews that provide the basis for this chapter suggests that Neapolitans use their dialect in an ordered way – that is, not randomly as sometimes suggested, see Bianchi et al. 2005: 124-125) – even though the ordering does not fit easily into traditional sociolinguistic models. Such models link linguistic variation to social and demographic macro-categories. As a result, they do not consider locally experienced micro-categories – that is, “local categories and practices that underlie the demographic patterns” (Eckert 2010: 164) – which make evident why certain patterns exist, what ideas lie behind these patterns, what behaviours they generate and what social meanings they have (see Matrisciano in press). Taking these underlying causes into account this chapter argues that a new form of dialectality linked to identity issues, socio-cultural values, and socio-symbolic meanings has developed in Naples. Radtke (2003, 2001) has already pointed in this direction by saying that dialect (use) in Naples is less and less connected to spatial or social factors and instead fulfils various functions belonging rather to the diaphasic dimension.⁵ Furthermore, Berruto (2006a: 10–13) suggests that the question of who talks dialect to whom, when, and why will probably have a completely different answer in Naples than, for example, in Turin.⁶ However, we still lack a comprehensive empirical study of these dynamics. Specifically in the case of Naples, they are therefore the subject of a heated debate in linguistic research.⁷ Obviously, it would be impossible for a single paper to fill the research gap regarding dialect use in verbal interactions in this urban area; however, what can be done is to analyze the processes behind continuing dialect use and the resulting communicative dynamics.

An initial approach to doing that must involve examining why the dialect is used, or rather, why people believe they need to use it, by means of an analysis of metalinguistic and metapragmatic⁸ discourses (see Pinello 2017; Eckert 2010). These kinds of discourses are significant for research on dialect use in Naples since linguistic variation within the urban Neapolitan speech community is (at least initially) only approachable through speakers’ knowledge of their language or dialect use (see Radtke 2002: 17). Such “talk about talk”, to borrow from Barbara Johnstone the term that motivated the title of this chapter, therefore constitutes an insightful field for linguistic research, even if in our case no commercialization is involved. As Johnstone et al. (2006: 99) highlight,

sociolinguists interested in understanding patterns of variation and change in the speech community need to pay attention not merely to people’s talk but to the metapragmatic activities in which they create and circulate ideas about how they talk.

This consideration is important because, as the following analysis will suggest, Neapolitans share common, rather precise ideas about how they talk – or rather how they need to talk – in order to be communicatively and socially effective. As these ideas are collectively and repeatedly expressed, they form a multi-layered dialect ideology (see Matrisciano in press). The present chapter aims to describe the social meaning(s)⁹ attributed by Neapolitans to their dialect (or, what they consider to be their dialect). It argues that, in Naples, the local dialect is presumed to fulfil specific functions, which are necessary conditions for ‘successful’ social interaction. What matters here is the “indexical meaning of using the dialect” (Johnstone 2009: 162). Furthermore, as I also argue, dialect use has two effects: it creates identity, and it creates urbanity.

2 Data and Transcription Conventions

In the course of conducting sociolinguistic interviews for my dissertation, I asked 35 Neapolitans born and raised in the centre of Naples what they thought of their city, their dialect, and the link between the two. Interviewees differed in age, gender, class and educational level. My interviews were semi-structured; while some questions differed slightly between interviewees, one was the same in all cases: Is it possible to be Neapolitan without speaking¹⁰ the Neapolitan dialect? In the following analysis, I present 13 representative examples that illustrate patterns of recurring topics and/or ideas that occur throughout the data set. In other words, where I quote a particular interviewee as making a particular statement, it does not mean that they were the only one to do so. Rather, it indicates that all – or at least most – respondents made the same or a similar statement.

Since laughter, intonation and other suprasegmental features characteristic of oral speech are not relevant for my analysis, I edited the transcripts in order to make them easier to read. It should be noted, however, that editing did not involve ‘c...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Declaring Places, Placing Declaratives
• ‘Her Seedy Elegance’ An Intermedial Investigation of Crowds as a Central Part of Dublin’s Soundscape in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Liam O’Flaherty’s The Informer (1925)
• “Small Town” or “Small City”? ‘Inter-Textual Place-Making’ in Queenstown, New Zealand
• Chaos and Conflict or Complexity and Pluralism? Multimodality and Perspectives on Potential Attributions of Meaning in the Egyptian Capital of Cairo
• “Das Haus Deutschland unter einem Europäischen Dach” Helmut Kohl’s Political Implementation of the Symbolic Value of Dresden’s Frauenkirche
• The Linguistic Landscape of Chicago’s La Villita
• Talk about Talk From an Urban Space to a Dialect Place – How a Collective Body of Knowledge Influences Communicative Dynamics in Naples
• Linguistic Landscape and Beyond The Swiss People’s Party’s (SVP) Campaign Posters in Urban Areas, in the Media, and as Temporary Public Places of Urban Communication
• English as a Written Representation of the Visual Mode A Study of Public Advertising in Klagenfurt, Austria
• Ancient Roman City Gates Hubs in a Network
• List of Contributors
• Index