Linguistic Landscape in the City

Elana Shohamy, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Monica Barni, Elana Shohamy, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Monica Barni

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781847694812
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book focuses on linguistic landscapes in present-day urban settings. In a wide-ranging collection of studies of major world cities, the authors investigate both the forces that shape linguistic landscape and the impact of the linguistic landscape on the wider social and cultural reality. Not only does the book offer a wealth of case studies and comparisons to complement existing publications on linguistic landscape, but the editors aim to investigate the nature of a field of study which is characterised by its interest in 'ordered disorder'. The editors aspire to delve into linguistic landscape beyond its appearance as a jungle of jumbled and irregular items by focusing on the variations in linguistic landscape configurations and recognising that it is but one more field of the shaping of social reality under diverse, uncoordinated and possibly incongruent structuration principles.

Part 1
Linguistic Landscape Multilingualisms

Chapter 1
Linguistic Landscape and Language Vitality

MONICA BARNI and CARLA BAGNA

Introduction

The objective of this chapter is to reflect on the relationship between linguistic landscape (LL) and language presence and vitality (Extra & Yağmur, 2004; Barni, 2008) in urban spaces. Recent decades have witnessed the arrival of an increasing number of immigrants who have decided to settle in urban spaces, and this has been among the reasons for the emergence of linguistic and cultural diversity within these spaces. To an ever-increasing extent, cities are places where different cultures, languages and identities interact; they are also places where this interaction can be observed (Goffman, 1963; Lefebvre, 1991). In this chapter, our interest lies in examining the impact that different languages can have in different urban territories on the LL, as well as in exploring the factors that can influence its configuration.

Our data and analyses focus on a number of cities in Italy where immigrant communities have settled. Although all the cities analysed are places where immigration is present, they differ among themselves in terms of various factors, including geographical position, size and linguistic space. Our investigation has concentrated on Rome, the capital of Italy, as well as other, smaller, cities that represent other urban realities in which immigrants have chosen to live and work.

Socio-demographic data show that about 4,330,000 immigrants currently reside in Italy (Caritas, 2009), approximately 7.2% of the Italian population. It is obvious that this presence can have an influence on linguistic realities. The immigrant groups that have settled in different areas of Italy have imported their languages to the communities where they reside, at a time when the dynamics of collective and individual variation in language use are changing in form and structure. Italianisation is gradually spreading within the country, but the linguistic situation, which includes dialects and historic minority languages, is still composite and of great complexity. Immigrant communities are adding a new element of plurilingualism to what is already a composite linguistic situation. In this chapter, we define a language as an immigrant language when it is used by a community that is not only present in an area in ‘quantitative’ terms (i.e. number of foreign residents), but also strong in ‘qualitative’ terms, and used in social interaction and maintained by its speakers (Bagna et al., 2003; Barni, 2008). This latter aspect brings us back to the need for detailed studies on the types of language use within an area where a group has settled. This is because simply identifying the languages present within a country or area in quantitative terms does not provide us with any information about the relations between the languages observed and their uses in a given place. This, in turn, implies the need to monitor the possible outcomes of linguistic contact, such as language maintenance and loss, and new language variety formation through contact and linguistic assimilation of differing degrees according to the generation in question. For these reasons, we need a multi-level observation built on a theoretical and methodological basis, taking into account the linguistic and extra-linguistic variables that can influence linguistic uses.

In this sense, understanding, documenting and analysing specific areas’ LL offers one of the levels of the research: linguistic use in contexts of social communication, defined here as language ‘visibility’. This complements language presence, the socio-demographic weight of speakers, and language vitality, the declared uses of languages within familial contexts (Bagna et al., 2007; Barni & Bagna, 2008). The relationship with the local linguistic situation and the possibilities of interaction between the local language and linguistic dynamics coming from outside should also be examined.

The Role of Cities in Language Contact

In our search for a link between LL and language vitality through analysis of language presence, use and visibility, we have chosen urban spaces as our places of observation. Given that urbanisation is one of the most important characteristics of today’s world (State of the World, 2007), 2008 marked a turning point, in which for the first time the world’s population became predominantly urban (Lee, 2007: 6). Furthermore, due to their social, ethnic, religious, economic and, we would also add, linguistic diversity, nowadays there are cities that ‘are the world’, as Augé (2004: 20) has noted (see also Vertovec, 2007). The most recent research shows that urban contexts provide more interesting and significant sources for the reading and interpretation of linguistic dynamics (Chríost, 2007). Using LL analyses, this fact has already been observed in the more traditional contexts of the coexistence of regional minority languages in a given area (Bourhis & Landry, 2002; Extra & Gorter, 2001, 2008; Williams, 2007). Specifically, it has been shown that the LL is used for the purposes of handling and governing these areas. LLs are also gaining importance in those contexts affected by recent or long-standing immigrant settlement (Gorter, 2006; Shohamy & Gorter, 2008). Urban spaces are therefore increasing in importance as ‘showcases’ and, above all, environments where languages weave together and linguistic destinies and expectations are ‘played out’. Within the city, or at least some of its neighbourhoods, languages can find or carve out sufficient space to manifest their vitality as well as their visibility (Mondada, 2000).

The aim of our research is to understand the roles played by the different factors influencing the visibility of languages in LLs, such as the linguistic situation of the area, the size of the city, the extent of the immigrant communities, their degree of ‘rootedness’, employment opportunities in the area, migration channels and migration status, community organisations, local public policy towards immigrants, etc. We know, for example, that, far more than in smaller cities, linguistic dynamics in a large city move within two different poles and often lead to opposing outcomes in terms of linguistic contact. On the one hand, we observe a tendency towards a pole of monolingualism, insofar as the city is the centre where the unitary linguistic model is the strongest, for both its permanent inhabitants and the new arrivals, because the dominant language is a necessary and indispensable tool for interaction, as well as a symbol of integration, assimilation and full citizenship (De Mauro, 1963, 1989). On the other hand, however, there is also a tendency towards a plurilingual pole, insofar as big cities are places where there is much contact between groups and where the cohesive forces of collective groups, and hence their linguistic visibility, are least impeded by the social and linguistic closure of historic groups. A big city with a strong multi-ethnic component can therefore be a place where collective and individual identities are enabled to express themselves, since spaces that are more open to creativity, change and relations between social and linguistic groups are also more dynamic (Bagna & Barni, 2006; Barni, 2008).

The Surveys

The research presented here had as its goal the analysis of language visibility and vitality of some of the immigrant languages present in various Italian urban contexts. It is a comparative study that aims to demonstrate how various factors, both linguistic and extra-linguistic, can influence the visibility and vitality of the languages found in these spaces. For our investigation, we selected a number of urban contexts in Italy with a marked presence of immigrant communities. Our research was carried out between 2004 and 2007. As we have suggested elsewhere (Barni, 2008), one of the prime sources for information on the languages spoken by immigrant communities is demographic data regarding country of origin. Statistics document the number of nationalities present in Italy, which are the most numerous immigrant communities, and where in the country they have chosen to live. This statistical information enables us to hypothesise the presence in these areas of the languages used by the communities in question, which come into contact with the autochthonous linguistic substrate of Italian, its dialects and varieties. A second level of analysis involves the study of language use and vitality, which can be observed using methods such as interviews and questionnaires. The LL approach offers us a more detailed exploration of the visibility of immigrant languages in a relatively circumscribed area (Bagna et al.,2004, 2007; Barni, 2006, 2008; Barni & Bagna, 2008). Based on the above criteria, we have chosen the cities of Arezzo, Ferrara, Florence, Monterotondo, Rome and Prato for our survey.

Data Collected

In this chapter, we focus on the abovementioned Italian cities and analyse their LLs in relation to the patterns of use of the specific languages present there. In particular, we examine the following:

• Chinese in Rome and Prato.
• Romanian in the areas around Rome and Florence.
• Russian and Ukrainian in Ferrara and Arezzo.

Chinese in Rome

The dual role of Rome as a city driving diffusion of standard Italian both within itself and for the whole of Italy, while also at the same time being the elective centre of plurilingual and interlinguistic contact dynamics, makes it a laboratory for the reorganisation of expressive uses, as well as the ultimate communicative space. Indeed, Rome’s status as the capital of Italy has played an undeniable role in the process of Italianisation of the peninsula. As early as the mid-19th century, ‘Italian was considered, and to a great extent truly was, the language in everyday use’ in the city (De Mauro, 1989: xvii). At the same time, Rome has always been a centre attracting foreigners, a place of immigration (De Mauro, 1989) for a highly varied range of reasons with a markedly polycentric ethnicity. Apart from motivations of a religious nature, which make Rome unique in character globally, the factors influencing its choice as a place of residence and the composition of its population by nationality of origin include the job market, which is marked above all by a continuous flow towards a single sector, domestic work (as well as construction and commerce). Consequently, the number of languages present in Rome is very high. Villarini (2001: 65) estimates that there are about 64 different languages used in schools in Rome.

The Municipio I administrative area in the centre of Rome, which includes the Esquilino neighbourhood, is the area with the greatest number of foreigners (25,004, 11.16% of Rome’s total foreign population in 2004, with the ratio remaining constant in subsequent years) as well as the highest percentage of foreigners – 20.4% (22.9% in 2006) – relative to the total number of residents. In other publications, we have focused in detail on a survey of languages in the Esquilino neighbourhood (Bagna & Barni, 2006; Barni, 2006) using statistical and demographic analysis and linguistic landscaping. Twenty-four (visible) languages were identified, scattered unevenly across the area and establishing a variety of relations with Italian and other languages. It was found that the most visible language is Chinese, even though it is not the language of the most numerous immigrant communities, which are from Bangladesh, the Philippines and Romania (Municipality of Rome, 2004, 2005; Caritas, 2005, 2006, 2007a). In the Esquilino neighbourhood, Chinese is the leading language both in terms of dominance (quantitative prevalence of texts observed in the area) and autonomy, i.e. the capacity to be used in the LL without the use of Italian or other languages (Barni, 2006; Bagna et al., 2007). During our survey in the Esquilino neighbourhood, we found 851 LL items in languages other than Italian (in total 24 languages were found), of which 483 contained Chinese in mono- and plurilingual texts (see Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2). Of the 296 monolingual texts found, 197 were in Chinese only with no other languages present. This shows that there is no firm link between the linguistic visibility of a language and the numeric consistency of the ethnic group speaking it. This presence of Chinese is also felt by residents. In a document entitled Esquilino dei mondi lontani [The Distant Worlds of Esquilino] (Caritas, 2007b: 54), which analyses the processes of urbanisation of the Esquilino neighbourhood from 1970 onwards, it is emphasised that the neighbourhood now feels ‘the alienating impact caused by the presence of ideograms [...], an indecipherable language that does not facilitate everyday communication’. Such a statement shows that Chinese is, in this case, a language capable of conserving its autonomy more than other foreign languages are, as is manifested by its visibility in the LL of a neighbourhood characterised by a high level of plurilingualism. It is also worth noting that in Esquilino there were hardly any texts in Chinese produced by Italian institutions, so-called top-down texts (Ben-Raphael et al., 2006). Almost all Chinese texts observed were produced by individual Chinese people (e.g. shop owners). It is thus no coincidence that the strong visibility of Chinese is such that it has led to the signing of an agreement between the City of Rome and the Chinese community (11 May 2007). This document emphasised that the Chinese community must ‘improve shop signs and fittings, being sure to install signs written in Italian at the top, and in Chinese below’. The same document states that the City of Rome, on the other hand, must ‘facilitate the life and integration of the Chinese community by organizing courses to enable them to learn Italian and to understand the requirements of the law, particularly with regards to integration, legality and trade; [... and] make communication between institutions and foreign communities easier by translating laws and regulations into Chinese’. As a result of this agreement, in the three months following May ...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Series Editor
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1: Linguistic Landscape Multilingualisms
• Part 2: Top-down, Power and Reactions
• Part 3: Benefits of Linguistic Landscape
• Part 4: Perceptions of Passers-by
• Part 5: Multiculturalism in Linguistic Landscape
• Epilogue
• Index