Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 961
Part of Session 133: Ethnicity, Language and Culture in a Post-Soviet Multi-Ethnic City (Other abstracts in this session)
The presence of Italian language in Moscow linguistic landscape
Authors: Perotto, Monica
Submitted by: Perotto, Monica (University of Bologna, Italy)
This work focuses on the study of the multilingual urban setting of contemporary Moscow city with particular regard to the presence of the Italian language in different social or productive domains. Since 1928, when the famous Russian linguist B.A. Larin underlined the importance of encouraging multicultural and multilingual byt in big cities in order to promote the integration of languages and ethnic cultures, Soviet and Russian sociolinguistics has been studying what is known as “city language” (jazyk goroda or jazyk metropolii). The classical works on this field are mostly oriented to investigate the Russian koiné in its different variations of standard and substandard forms, while in the last years more attention has been devoted to the semiotic approach (lingvosemiotika goroda), culture-bound (kul’turologija goroda) or even to the “linguistic landscape” approach. “The city represents a mirror, reflecting and focusing all cultural processes, taking place in modern society” affirms Trušina (2001).
From this point of view, Moscow street advertising and signs are trying to convey the image of a new, multilingual and multicultural place. However, if on one hand Russian is de-facto the dominant language in Moscow urban setting, on the other hand it should be analyzed which other languages reveal their considerable presence and play a defined role in it. Language visibility is always related to historical tradition, to language policy and planning, but also to material and symbolic culture. The present work will try to investigate the role of the Italian language in Moscow landscape, its material and symbolic value as well as the image of Italian culture which can be associated to it.
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