Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 376

Part of Session 193: Transcultural networks and neighborhoods (Other abstracts in this session)

Searching for Italian neighbours: Investigating geosemiotic faces of community

Authors: Budach, Gabriele
Submitted by: Budach, Gabriele (University of Southampton, United Kingdom)

For centuries, migration from the Italian peninsular to Frankfurt has shaped the city’s history, economy and urban landscape. The Italian presence and the trajectory of this increasingly diverse and socially heterogeneous community form a visible and tangible part of today’s cityscape. How do citizens relate it? This paper investigates some of those inscribed meanings and their interpretation from a historical and ethnographic perspective. Drawing on conceptual frameworks of social semiotics (e.g. the semiotisation of space, Scollon & Scollon 2003; and geosemiotics, Nichols, Nixon & Rowsell 2011) this contribution examines connections between people, the physical environment (e.g. places, buildings, mobile objects etc.) and perceptions of community. Rather than considering neighbourhoods as situated within a pre-defined geographically bounded territory, this approach seeks to explore ways in which people connect with their physical environment and make alliances with others across time and space.

Data is drawn from 1) a thematic guided walk offered by the tourist office of the city of Frankfurt exploring the role of Italians in the city’s history; 2) explorations of multimodal texts made by seventh graders from a bilingual Italian-German school programme and depicting Frankfurt’s cityscape. Both activities are linked to a long-term ethnographic study on bilingual education in schools in inner Frankfurt. Data collection methods include participant observation and retrospective interviews related to the guided tour and multimodal mind maps.

The analysis addresses the following questions:
1) What kinds of environmental features figure in the creation of Italianess in the two contexts?
2) What kinds of connections are made between people and the geospace across time and space?
3) How can those representations inform the conceptualisation of neighbourhood?

This paper investigates notions of neighbourhood from a novel, ethnographic angle. It takes further the work by Lamarre & Lamarre (2009) on language practices in combining exploratory walks (de Certeau 1984) and the interpretation of social uses of geoscapes (Nichols, Nixon & Rowsell 2011). Important empirical and conceptual insights can be gained from this study by 1) exploring further the role of the environment in forming conceptions of community; and 2) situating visions of community historically. Research of this kind contributes to designing spatial maps of communities which may or may not overlap with traditional views on neighbourhoods as territorially bounded units and point to forms of neighbourhood as sites of social practices which may be spatially discontinuous, but connected across time in multiple ways.

References:

Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. Wong (2003) Discourse in place. Language in the material world. London: Routledge.
Special Issue of Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, vol.11 (3), 2011, on the “Geosemiotics of Early Childhood Literacy”, edited by S. Nichols, H. Nixon & J. Rowsell.
Lamarre P. & S. Lamarre (2009). Montréal « on the move » : Pour une approche ethnographique non-statique des pratiques langagières des jeunes multilingues. In T. Bulot (Ed.), Formes & normes sociolinguistiques. Ségrégations et discriminations urbaines (pp. 105–134). L’Harmattan. Paris.
de Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Searching for Italian neighbours: Investigating geosemiotic faces of community