The LL of The Mediterranean - French and Italian Coastal Cities

Language and Globalization
Series Editors: Sue Wright, University of Portsmouth, UK and Helen Kelly-

Holmes, University of Limerick, Ireland.
In the context of current political and social developments, where the national
group is not so clearly defined and delineated, the state language not so clearly
dominant in every domain, and cross-border flows and transfers affect more
than a small elite, new patterns of language use will develop. The series aims to
provide a framework for reporting on and analysing the linguistic outcomes of
globalization and localization.
Titles include:
Michele Back
TRANSCULTURAL PERFORMANCE
Robert J. Blackwood and Stefania Tufi
THE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
French and Italian Coastal Cities
David Block
MULTILINGUAL IDENTITIES IN A GLOBAL CITY
London Stories
Jan Blommaert, Sirpa Leppänen, Päivi Pahta and Tiina Räisänen (editors)
DANGEROUS MULTILINGUALISM
Northern Perspectives on Order, Purity and Normality
Jenny Carl and Patrick Stevenson (editors)
LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE AND IDENTITY IN CENTRAL EUROPE
The German Language in a Multilingual Space
Diarmait Mac Giolla Chrióst
LANGUAGE AND THE CITY
Elise DuBord
LANGUAGE, IMMIGRATION AND LABOR
Julian Edge (editor)
(RE)LOCATING TESOL IN AN AGE OF EMPIRE
John Edwards
CHALLENGES IN THE SOCIAL LIFE OF LANGUAGE
Aleksandra Galasińska and Michał Krzyżanowski (editors)
DISCOURSE AND TRANSFORMATION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
Roxy Harris
NEW ETHNICITIES AND LANGUAGE USE
Jane Jackson
INTERCULTURAL JOURNEYS
From Study to Residence Abroad
Helen Kelly-Holmes and Gerlinde Mautner (editors)
LANGUAGE AND THE MARKET
Grit Liebscher and Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain
LANGUAGE, SPACE AND IDENTITY IN MIGRATION
Clare Mar-Molinero and Patrick Stevenson (editors)
LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES, POLICIES AND PRACTICES
Language and the Future of Europe
Clare Mar-Molinero and Miranda Stewart (editors)
GLOBALIZATION AND LANGUAGE IN THE SPANISH-SPEAKING WORLD
Macro and Micro Perspectives
Ulrike Hanna Meinhof and Dariusz Galasinski
THE LANGUAGE OF BELONGING
Richard C. M. Mole (editor)
DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF IDENTITY IN EUROPEAN POLITICS
Máiréad Moriarty
GLOBALIZING LANGUAGE POLICY AND PLANNING
An Irish Language Perspective
Máiréad Nic Craith
NARRATIVES OF PLACE, BELONGING AND LANGUAGE
Leigh Oakes and Jane Warren
LANGUAGE, CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY IN QUEBEC
Rani Rubdy and Selim Ben Said (editors)
CONFLICT, EXCLUSION AND DISSENT IN THE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE
Mario Saraceni
THE RELOCATION OF ENGLISH
Christina Slade and Martina Mollering (editors)
FROM MIGRANT TO CITIZEN: TESTING LANGUAGE, TESTING CULTURE
Colin Williams
LINGUISTIC MINORITIES IN DEMOCRATIC CONTEXT
Colin Williams
MINORITY LANGUAGE PROMOTION, PROTECTION AND REGULATION
Also by Robert J. Blackwood

THE STATE, THE ACTIVISTS AND THE ISLANDERS
Language Policy on Corsica
Language and Globalization

Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–403–99731–9 (Hardback)
978–1–403–99732–6 (Paperback)
(outside North America only)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a
standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us
at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the
ISBN quoted above.
Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
The Linguistic Landscape
of the Mediterranean
French and Italian Coastal Cities
Robert J. Blackwood and Stefania Tufi

University of Liverpool, UK
© Robert J. Blackwood and Stefania Tufi 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron
House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-57636-4 ISBN 978-1-137-31456-7 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/9781137314567
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blackwood, Robert J. author.
The Linguistic Landscape of the Mediterranean : French and Italian coastal
cities / Robert J. Blackwood, University of Liverpool, UK; Stefania Tufi
University of Liverpool, UK.
pages cm. — (Language and Globalization)
1. Languages in contact—Mediterranean region. 2. Bilingualism—

Mediterranean Region. 3. Communication—Mediterranean Region.
4. Mediterrainean region—Languages. 5. Language and languages—
Globalization. I. Tufi, Stefania, 1963– author. II. Title.
P115.5.M38B57 2015
306.44'091822—dc23 2015015181
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

For Jude
Per John
Contents
List of Figures and Tables x

Acknowledgements xiii
An Introduction to Mediterranean Linguistic Landscapes 1

The city as space, place, and symbol 1
Origins of public signage 2
LL studies and our contribution 3
Naming languages 8
Terms used in the course of this book 10
Methodology 12
Organization of the book 15
1 Sketching the Contexts: Italy and France 18
Introduction 18
Italy – polycentrism and linguistic diversity 19
Language policy in Italy 23
France – linguistic centrism 28
Language policy in France 33
Conclusion 38
2 The Linguistic Landscapes of the Ligurian Sea 41
Introduction 41
Nice: a historical overview 43
Nice: a sociolinguistic overview 44
The LL of Nice and Monaco 45
Italian in France 45
Nissart in the LL 49
Monaco: a historical overview 55
Monaco: a sociolinguistic overview 57
Monegasque in the LL 57
Genoa: a historical overview 59
Genoa: a sociolinguistic overview 60
The LL of Genoa 62
Genoese in the LL 63
Migrant languages in the LL 66
Conclusions 72
vii
viii Contents
3 Peripherality in the Border Areas:

Trieste and Northern Catalonia 75
Introduction 75
Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trieste: a historical overview 76
Friuli-Venezia Giulia: a sociolinguistic overview 78
The surveys 81
Slovenian in the LL 82
Triestino in the LL 87
Northern Catalonia: a historical overview 89
Northern Catalonia: a sociolinguistic overview 90
The surveys 92
Catalan in the LL 93
Castilian in the LL 99
Conclusions 101
4 Insularity in the Linguistic Landscapes of Sicily,
Sardinia, and Corsica 104
Introduction 104
Sicily and Palermo: a historical overview 107
Sicily and Palermo: a sociolinguistic overview 110
Sicilian in the LL 113
Sardinia and Cagliari: a historical overview 120
Sardinia and Cagliari: a sociolinguistic overview 123
Sardinian in the LL 125
Corsica and Ajaccio: a historical overview 129
Corsica and Ajaccio: a sociolinguistic overview 132
Corsican in the LL 134
Other languages in the LL 138
Insularity as a resource: the commodification of tradition 141
Conclusions 146
5 Social Representations of Marseilles and Naples’
Linguistic Landscapes 149
Introduction 149
Social representation theory: frameworks and applications 150
The surveys 155
Provençal/Occitan in the LL 156
Arabic in the LL 161
Neapolitan in the LL 163
Conclusions 175
Contents ix
6 Cosmopolitan Linguistic Landscapes of

the Mediterranean 178
English and the construction of cosmopolitan identities 178
Italy 179
France 183
‘English’ in the LL 186
‘English’ in the Italian LL 187
‘English’ in the French LL 195
Conclusions 202
7 Conclusions: The Transformative Power of
Emplaced Language 205
Introduction 205
National spaces 206
Regional spaces and localized identities 208
Transnational spaces and identities 210
English and cosmopolitan spaces 212
Notes 215
Bibliography 219
Index 240
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
2.1 Sign in Italian commemorating the death of Paganini 47

2.2 Instruction sign inside Nice’s tramway carriage 48
2.3 Nissart in a tram shelter 51
2.4 Street sign in Nice’s old town 52
2.5 Nissart football sticker on the wall of a recycling centre 53
2.6 The shuttle bus Lou Passagin 55
2.7 Monegasque and French royal wedding sticker 58
2.8 Genoese sign on shop window 64
2.9 Zena Zuena (Young Genoa), a charity event 65
2.10 Italian/Spanish notice on grocery shop window 68
2.11 Sign in Spanish/French/Wolof/Berber in Arabic script 69
2.12 Latin-American and Arab restaurant 71
3.1 Linguistic map of FVG 79
3.2 Hairdresser’s sign 84
3.3 Directional sign 85
3.4 Bin for recycling glass and cans 85
3.5 Sign in Triestino on shop front 88
3.6 The official logo for the city of Perpignan until 2012 95
3.7 The new official logo for the city of Perpignan 96
3.8 Bilingual signage in the multimedia library in Perpignan 97
3.9 French and Catalan in the sign for the camino to Santiago 98
3.10 Architectural information sign featuring Catalan above
the Castilian text 100
4.1 Church poster 114
4.2 ‘Down with thieving politicians’ 115
4.3 Sign about a demonstration organized in Palermo by the
Associazione 3 Febbraio 118
x
List of Figures and Tables xi
4.4 Shop providing services for the Ghanaian community 119

4.5 ‘The bread oven’ (Sardinian) 125
4.6 Street signs, one in Italian (top) and one in
Sardinian and Italian (bottom) 127
4.7 Multilingual sign featuring French, Corsican, and English 135
4.8 Instructions inside a train carriage 137
4.9 The plaque outside the home of Pascal Paoli 138
4.10 Trilingual sign in Via Calderai, Palermo 143
4.11 Sign advertising bread and spleen 144
4.12 Tony’s grill 145
4.13 Sign outside a restaurant in Selargius (Sardinian/Italian) 146
5.1 The blackboard outside the Occitan Cultural Centre 159
5.2 The permanent installation in the Regional Tourism Centre 161
5.3 The symbol for the euro and the Arabic sign for the BCME 163
5.4 Shop selling party items 165
5.5 Sign on bus as part of the Napolimania campaign 167
5.6 A political poster 168
5.7 Graffito 169
5.8 Association for the help of former USSR citizens in Italy 171
5.9 A poster in Sinhalese 172
5.10 A hairdresser’s sign 173
5.11 A shop selling European and international food items 174
6.1 Gym sign in Palermo 189
6.2 Chinese clothes shop in Cagliari 190
6.3 Graffiti: tags and signatures (Sicilian with ‘Francy’)
in Palermo 190
6.4 Invitation to a Trussardi fashion event in Palermo 192
6.5 Item by the Italian company Franco Bombana in a shop
window in Trieste 194
6.6 Item for sale 100% Original Italian Quality in Genoa 195
6.7 Café name using English in Nice 198
6.8 Café name using English in Nice 199
xii List of Figures and Tables
6.9 Street name in Menton 200

6.10 The Attijariwafa Bank in Marseilles 201
Tables
1.1 Language practices in contemporary Italy:

Italian/dialect use 21
2.1 The top ten national groups represented in the
province of Genoa 66
3.1 Population in the six municipalities of the province of
Trieste as of 1 January 2010 81
3.2 Signs featuring Slovenian in the province of Trieste 86
4.1 The top 10 nationalities represented in the city of
Palermo at the beginning of 2011 116
4.2 Top 10 national groups represented in the province of
Cagliari at the end of 2008 128
5.1 The first 10 nationalities represented in the city of
Naples at the end of 2009 – males and females 171
6.1 Distribution of signs featuring English in the
Italian survey areas 187
6.2 Distribution of signs featuring English in the
French survey areas 196
7.1 Distribution of signs featuring French in the
survey areas in France 206
7.2 Distribution of signs featuring Italian in the
survey areas in Italy 207
Acknowledgements
This is very much a co-authored work, and we have relied on each other,
especially during the final stages of the project, to keep things on track
and to prevent despair. This is not our first collaboration and hopefully
not our last either. However, this has been an ambitious project that
has covered a significant geographical space, and has not been without
its challenges. At this stage, we are pleased with our achievement, but
any shortcomings remain our responsibility, despite the contributions
of those we would like to thank in this section.
The fieldwork for this project has been made possible in large part
by substantial financial support from several sources. In particular,
we would like to acknowledge with gratitude the funding from the
British Academy, especially for the Small Research Grant Award 46221
for the fieldwork on Corsica, and 101856 for the fieldwork on Sicily.
In addition, the University of Liverpool Research Development Fund
generously funded the fieldwork in Marseilles, Perpignan, Cagliari,
and Genoa, and we recognize here the support of our institution, both
in terms of funding and research leave. Without these two income
streams, this project would never have been feasible, and we are par-
ticularly grateful to both the British Academy and the University of
Liverpool for their assistance.
We have relied on the help of others to translate various signs for us, for
which we are particularly grateful. In particular, we would like to thank
James Arnold, who gave us a very original interpretation of the bilingual
sign relating to the sale of beer in Genoa; Ghazi Al-Naimat and Omar
Alomoush for translating the signs in Arabic; James Hawkey and Paul
O’Neill who have looked at signs in Catalan and Castilian; Véronique
Emmanuelli who provided definitive translations of the Corsican; and
Sanjee Perera-Child translated the Sinhalese poster. Discussions with
colleagues in Liverpool whose research falls considerably outside the
LL have informed our work, and we would like to record our thanks to
Charles Forsdick, Kate Marsh, and Alison Smith. We have also consulted
authoritative colleagues in other institutions and our thanks go to Mari
D’Agostino, Adam Ledgeway, and Carla Marcato.
We have both drawn on the wisdom of colleagues from within the
LL community, and conversations with Carla Bagna, Monica Barni,
Becky Garvin, Adam Jaworski, Liz Lanza, Dave Malinowski, and
xiii
xiv Acknowledgements
Elana Shohamy have fed into our analysis. We very much appreciate
being part of an international network made up of individuals with
whom we enjoy spending time, and we are thankful for these colleagues’
insights.
Several exchanges with James Costa – electronically, in Oslo, in
Cambridge, and in Corsica – have been invaluable in nuancing the
debates around Occitan/Provençal/Nissart.
We have profited from co-supervising Will Amos, whose supervisory
sessions have been mutually beneficial. Directing his thesis has become
a reciprocal process, and whilst we have read chapters of Will’s thesis, he
has read the chapters of this book. His comments, and in particular his
work on the reference section, have been much appreciated.
This project has outlived several Commissioning Editors and Editorial
Assistants at Palgrave Macmillan, and we would like to record our thanks
in particular to Rebecca Brennan and Libby Forrest, whose patience and
support have been much appreciated. As authors, we are thankful for
the long-standing backing and encouragement of the series editors, Sue
Wright and Helen Kelly-Holmes, and for their helpful feedback.
From a personal rather than collective perspective, Robert would like
to thank his Research Assistants in Marseilles, Nice, and Monaco – in
other words, his mum and dad – who have developed their own views
on LL data collection, the selection of survey areas, and the coding of
signs. In addition, the processes of image recording and, especially,
data entry were considerably accelerated by these RAs, for which Robert
is very grateful. Others have made the fieldwork more enjoyable by
their company after a day in France’s mean streets: Jane, Mark and
Hannah Connolly; Dave Evans; and Rachel Heard. LL fieldwork in
Mediterranean cities might sound glamorous, but moving at less than
half a mile an hour along pavements is pretty hard on the knees, and a
convivial supper in great company has been the only way to end a day
in the streets.
Finally, Jude – to whom Robert dedicates this book – joined the party
by the time the project reached Nice and Monaco; she too tried her
hand at data collection, and was an invaluable companion on the Côte
d’Azur. Robert is most appreciative of the practical support, encourage-
ment, and patience during the writing of this book, especially when it
consumed evenings and weekends, and in particular after Luke’s birth
when interrupted nights became the norm.
Stefania would like to thank Silvana d’Alessio, Annamaria Plaisant,
and Valeria Spanu, who helped with knowledgeable information about
the sites she surveyed and made her evenings more enjoyable with
Acknowledgements xv
their company. Many thanks go to Aldo Narducci for his friendship and
for introducing her to the culinary delights of Genoa. Special thanks
should go to Stefania’s colleagues Rosalba Biasini and Marco Paoli for
their friendship, their support, and for being so generous with their
time when she needed it.
Finally, Stefania’s gratitude goes to John – to whom she dedicates this
book – for his constant support and endurance throughout the dura-
tion of this project. In practical terms, in addition to lending a hand as
Research Assistant, John’s company was most valuable when trying to
charm suspicious Italian shopkeepers’ attention away from her taking
photographs and ending up being taken for coffee more often than not.
John has been the perfect companion on a long journey and Stefania is
very grateful for him being there, always.
An Introduction to Mediterranean
Linguistic Landscapes
The city as space, place, and symbol
In his classic work The City in History, Mumford reconstructs the devel-
opment of the idea of the city from ‘a city that was, symbolically, a
world’ to ‘a world that has become, in many practical aspects, a city’
(Mumford, 1961, p. xi). Along different lines, Lefebvre (1970, p. 7)
predicted the ‘complete urbanization of society’ in so far as the urban
would eventually envelop all ways of being, thinking, and acting. If on
the one hand this remains a working hypothesis, on the other hand the
dissemination of urban culture is pervasive and influential. By urban
culture we mean a process, typical of late modernity, which emanates
from the city but is also the result of the relationship between the
wider culture and the city and of how urban culture impacts on the
city itself. Studies examining such aspects have been at the centre of
sociological and anthropological research (Redfield and Singer, 1954;
Harvey 1973, 1989, 1996, 2006) but we position this book in relation to
debates that have been percolating through sociolinguistics over recent
decades. We exploit representations of the city which have moulded
the collective imagination whereby the city as symbol is the epitome
of social breakdown, anonymity, loneliness, forms of marginalization,
and crime. However, it is also a privileged site of encounter and mobil-
ity, a laboratory of social and cultural activity, and a magnet for human
energy. It is the repository of political and economic power and a con-
tainer of crowds engaged in a wide variety of actions and with shifting
boundaries. Dynamism is a constitutive feature of the city, a happening
space, but so is its inherent fragmentation. Urban Linguistic Landscapes
(henceforth LL), which are at the centre of this book, are constantly
involved in the construction of urban culture.
1
2 The Linguistic Landscape of the Mediterranean
A high level of dynamicity and complexity can similarly be applied to

notions of the Mediterranean as they have been articulated over time.
This geographical space is not a pre-determined entity; rather, it is a his-
torical product. As such, notions of the Mediterranean have converged
and diverged in the awareness of existing diversity and plurality, but
it is clear that contact, exchange, and contamination are some of the
defining characteristics of the Mediterranean area (Cancila, 2008). To a
certain extent, the Mediterranean invented the city and therefore all cit-
ies have something inherently Mediterranean in them (Aymard, 2008).
The cities discussed in this book are firmly anchored in a Mediterranean
perspective which is self-propagated and their urban cultures are perme-
ated by both internal and external visions of tradition and modernity. It
is our contention that this space provides us with an exceptionally rich
array of visual discourses on the city as a structure where topography
and architecture are constantly inscribed, and where LL agents continue
to rework the public space. The city as a transcultural space presents us
with acts of identity which range from the normative to the transgres-
sive and subversive, and while engaged in these acts, language agents
create the space in which language practices are performed (Pennycook,
2010). This perspective highlights notions of agency and creativity
and the construction of space as a product of concepts and discourses
actualized in relational practices (Lefebvre, 1991). In this context, space
production is part of meaning-making processes aimed at the transfor-
mation of space into place, and into both a material and a symbolic site
of human experience.
It is within this framework that we have conducted our investigations
of the LL of French and Italian Mediterranean cities. All the cities dis-
cussed in the book date back to antiquity with respect to their origins,
and all of them have been through post-modern transformations and
become globalized in recent times. Their LL are manipulated amongst
conflicting but fluid discourses of tradition and modernity, centrality
and peripherality, inclusion and exclusion, and linguistic fixity and
non-normativity. The emphasis is therefore on lived space (Lefebvre,
1991) and its performative power, and on the enactment of spatialized
identities.
Origins of public signage
As regards the commercial sign, its origin dates back to Roman times.
Due to very low literacy levels, merchants used to signal the type of
establishment via iconic representation – a bunch of grapes would mean
Introduction to Mediterranean Linguistic Landscapes 3
‘wine sold here’, a goat ‘milk sold here’ and so on (Zappieri, 1981).
Therefore, images dominated public (including religious) space and ver-
bal elements started appearing in the fourteenth century, typically on
signs indicating establishments where food and lodging were provided.
Instances of the institutional management of signs in the public space
of Italy, however, are not documented until the Napoleonic era. In
addition to Italian, which was prevalent, prestigious languages such as
Latin and French started appearing on signs in the eighteenth century
and by the end of the nineteenth century commercial signs in foreign
languages, including English, were ubiquitous. Conversely, commer-
cial signs displaying local dialects became unusual in the nineteenth
century. At the time of the institutionalization of written Italian, the
national language was gradually becoming more widespread. However,
the very limited access to written registers on the part of a primarily
dialectophone Italian population led to the perception that using a
dialect in the public space was unsuitable and improper. Raffaelli (1983)
reminds us that only in more recent times and with newly gained lin-
guistic confidence have Italian shop keepers used local and regional
terms on their shop signs, often with the intent to exploit perceptions
of authenticity that only local languages can convey. In the 1960s, for
example, instances such as Sicilian carnezzeria (Italian macelleria, butch-
er’s) were noticed by Migliorini (1962, p. 236, quoted in Raffaelli, 1983,
p. 19, fn. 33). This term is still used and was in fact recorded as part of
the surveys carried out in Palermo.
LL studies and our contribution
Over the last decade or so, there has been an exponential increase in
the research into the LL. Dozens of articles have been published across a
range of journals; several volumes of collected essays have been edited;
there is a well-established series of international workshops; major con-
ferences organize strands of presentations on the subject; 2015 saw the
launch of a journal dedicated to the field. We do not pretend to be in a
position to summarize the breadth of research here, although it is perti-
nent to identify areas of LL research to which this book contributes. It is
important to note that LL studies have existed ante litteram and Backhaus
(2007, pp. 12–39) provides a comprehensive overview of the develop-
ment of LL research until its formal organization around the term
‘linguistic landscape’. Despite this profusion of outputs into the LL,
there are as yet relatively few monographs which tackle this subject.
These include the examination of the languages of Jerusalem by Spolsky
and Cooper (1991), which predates the first attested use of the term
‘linguistic landscapes’; Backhaus’ study of Tokyo (2007); and Blommaert’s
investigation in Blommaert (2013).
This book positions itself in relation to each of these three landmark
LL works. Spolsky and Cooper’s ‘Languages of Jerusalem’ is not solely a
discussion of the LL, and one of its defining characteristics is the dense
historic and sociolinguistic overviews it provides. We enter into this
tradition and contextualize all of our findings far beyond an opening
chapter which positions our research within French and Italian national
frameworks. We provide extensive historical and sociolinguistic back-
grounds to each of the cities we investigate since we contend that these
synopses are crucial to understanding the debates played out in the LL.
The level of detail presented here is the result of a conscious choice,
and we draw together in English for the first time scholarship published
in French and Italian which not only contextualizes the data analysis
that follows, but also contributes to wider debates in sociolinguistics.
Backhaus’ quantitative approach to the mix of languages in the public
space in Tokyo is echoed in part here inasmuch as our examination of
the LL of these French and Italian Mediterranean cities captures statisti-
cal data on visible multilingualism. We began this project before the
publication of Blommaert’s ethnography of Antwerp’s LL, but we join
with him in the exploitation of critical apparatus not always associ-
ated with sociolinguistics to contribute to the body of LL research. Like
Blommaert (and many other LL scholars) before us, we privilege qualita-
tive analyses of signs in an ethnographical study of the people who live,
work, and pass along the Mediterranean shorelines of France and Italy.
In very broad terms, there are three strands of LL research to which
this book contributes, as well as from which we draw inspiration.
Without seeking to reduce the scope of this book, we position ourselves
in relation to studies on minority languages in the LL, the visibility
of the languages of migrant communities, and the debates around
the pervasiveness of ‘English’ (whose quotation marks we qualify in
Chapter 6). Minority languages, which from our perspective include
regional languages and dialects, constitute a rich seam of material for
LL scholarship. Cenoz and Gorter (2006) open the debate on the extent
to which the LL is a forum for exploring multilingualism, and their
sustained work in Donostia / San Sebastián (Gorter et al., 2012) high-
lights the extent to which minority language revitalization can be meas-
ured in the LL. Furthermore, Shohamy and Abu Ghazaleh-Mahajneh
(2012) tackle the issue of vitality from the perspective of ideologies
of dominant languages within nation-states, and this clearly finds an
echo in our discussions not only in France but also in Italy. Marten, van
Mensel, and Gorter (2012, p. 7) pose important and useful questions on
the role of minority languages in the LL market, the mechanisms that
influence language practices, and the extent to which visibility equates
with prestige, functionality, symbolism, and tokenism, all of which we
address in different ways in this book. Muth (2014) reminds us that
minority languages within a given territory can at one and the same
time be a ‘majority’ language elsewhere, and we explore this viewpoint
in Chapters 2 and 3.
In European cities in late modernity, the consequences of the mobil-
ity of people and goods are attested in the LL, and we explore the
extent to which non-territorial groups, usually through migration in
all its forms, mark the public space. Questions of visibility, language
policy, and vitality have been addressed by, amongst others Barni and
Bagna (2010), and Barni and Vedovelli (2012), and we continue the
conversation by seeking to understand how the languages of migrant
groups perform multiple functions in the LL, including the demarca-
tion of space, the addressing of specific audiences, and the mislead-
ingly simple question of which languages of what groups appear in
the public space. In both France and Italy, sizeable populations of
ethnolinguistic groups have settled in the cities we investigate, and
yet the patterns for written language use differ across cities, language
groups, and the national border between France and Italy. Garvin
(2010) reminds us of the connection made between culture, ethnicity,
and migrant languages, as well as drawing attention to political
and social discourses reflected (or omitted) in the visibility of the
languages of ethnic minorities, and we pick up these threads in our
discussions. In addition to discussions around Arabic, Chinese, and
Sinhalese, we devote considerable space to the question of English
as a language in the LL. Not only do we exploit Seargeant’s work on
the ambiguity inherent in coding signs as ‘English’ (Seargeant, 2012)
and on the increasingly widely held notion of an ‘idea of English’
(Seargeant, 2009, 2011) rather than standard English as reproduced in
textbooks, dictionaries, and grammar books, but we engage with the
questions of language policy where, in France in particular, the English
language is to be managed and even restricted in the public space. As
noted by Curtin (2009), the bidirectional indexicality of English in the
LL is a worldwide phenomenon from which the cities we investigate
are not exempted. We seek to understand better how English in these
coastal cities responds to the binary opposition posited by Lanza and
Woldemariam (2015) whereby discourses of globalization stress the
significance of the language in contradiction to management strategies

which create hierarchies omitting reference to English.
In common with much LL research, this book provides a synchronic
account of certain LL at given times. As highlighted in this study, how-
ever, the complex cityscapes of our time are immersed in dynamics of
superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007) so that their social and demographic
texture is volatile, ever-changing, and unpredictable (Blommaert, 2013).
This affords LL research new opportunities for diachronic studies, as can
be seen in the discussion about Trieste and Perpignan in Chapter 3. At
the same time, we engage with the process of diachronic LL research
insofar as the methodology permits an examination of the same sites
within the cities under scrutiny at various intervals in order to be in a
position to discern trends in written language practices. In particular,
we return to the same survey sites in Perpignan (discussed in Chapter 3
and in Blackwood, 2015) so as to be able to evaluate change over time
in the construction of space. The approach adopted in the data collec-
tion for this project lends itself ideally to these kinds of reassessments
of LL, and in this respect, this book is the starting point for long-scale
evaluations of language change in the public space.
The purpose of this book is not to provide a comprehensive illus-
tration of all languages present in the LL of the selected cities, but
rather to adopt a number of approaches with respect to each regional/
comparative context to show how fruitful and versatile the LL can be.
Each chapter adopts a perspective which we identify as emblematic and
particularly suitable for the given contexts. This does not mean that
what we say about migrants and LL in Naples, for instance, could not
be applied to migrants in Palermo, or that our conclusions on regional
languages in Nice do not also resonate in Ajaccio, but on the basis of
data and space configuration, the relevant model seems to be more
appropriate in the given chapter. Our contention is that the LL can
tell us a great deal about linguistic and social dynamics in these urban
settings but, at the same time, studies in the LL have to engage mean-
ingfully with scholarship not habitually exploited for sociolinguistic
research. We do not presume here to reach definitive conclusions on
the potential symbiotic relationship between the LL and these other
disciplines, but rather we hope that this starts a series of conversations
whose initial discussions have proved fruitful in our studies. We there-
fore engage with material drawn from politics and sociology in our
examination of cosmopolitanism in the LL; social psychology gifts to
sociolinguistics social representations, which we explore in relation to
the LL; human geography has begun to privilege border studies, a topic
highly pertinent to the cities we investigate; political science, social

anthropology, and geography have each treated peripherality in their
own distinct ways, and we join Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes (2013)
and their collaborators in extending this paradigm into sociolinguistics;
human geography has also explored questions of insularity, and in this
book we seek to test insularity as a resource. Each chapter takes a dif-
ferent intellectual proposition and applies it to a specific case setting,
thereby grounding the principles from other disciplines in data col-
lected from the Mediterranean coastal cities under investigation.
As discussed elsewhere (Blackwood, 2015), LL research grapples
with two methodological approaches that, we believe, are increasingly
divided in the rapidly growing body of work. Here, we seek to reconcile
quantitative and qualitative perspectives in data collection, and argue
that, for the kinds of questions with which we wrestle, it is imperative
to fuse the two methodologies. Numerical information extracted from
the surveys provides both a quantitative dimension and a context,
so that we can evaluate the prominence of national languages, the pres-
ence and distribution of all languages in the respective LLs, the use of
English and other languages of culture, migrant languages and so on.
At the same time, the qualitative analysis of the data gathered along the
shorelines of the Mediterranean permits the exploration of questions
of authorship, function, audiences, materiality, and so on that cannot
be addressed by quantitative approaches alone. In seeking to privilege
the regional languages and dialects of France and Italy in this survey of
coastal cities, we have encountered the challenge of the relative paucity
of signs in Provençal, Sardinian, or Genoese within the survey areas
established for the project. As a consequence, we refer on occasion to
additional data observed outside the surveys in order to complement
the quantitative and qualitative dimensions. One response to this
shortcoming of quantitative research in the way we have undertaken
data collection is the concept of the visual frames outlined by Kallen
(2010) who re-imagines the LL as ‘a confluence of systems, observable
within a single visual field but operating with a certain degree of inde-
pendence between elements’, thereby underscoring the significance of
the dynamics between the areas of human activity. This is not a quan-
titative approach in the style we have largely adopted for this project
but is rather an invitation to consider the site of inquiry as the nexus
of multiple aspects of lived experience. This is an approach whose
potential we have begun to test in Trieste and on Corsica (Tufi 2013b;
Blackwood, 2014) and to which we return here in some of the analyses
we undertake.
This book responds to calls for a re-positioning of writing within

sociolinguistics, where a binary framing of speaking/writing has been
dominant and where ideologies of standard languages/correctness
have permeated the discussion. Lillis and McKinney (2013) address the
unsuitability of such a model from several perspectives. At a macro-
level, for example, the divide between orality and literacy is an ideo-
logical one and reflects a western-centric bias which is re-proposed in
further dichotomies such as pre-modern/modern. At a micro-level, the
neglect of written language would prevent us from investigating the
proliferation of written modes brought about by the digital technologies
and therefore exclude multimodal frameworks which re-assess the role
of writing as part of social semiotics. This latter aspect is particularly
pertinent in the context of this book. Analysing LL brings to the fore
the role of writing in its traditional functions and learned characteris-
tics. In addition, it provides the opportunity to investigate discourses
and ideologies of writing and to re-assess writing as an ordinary, every-
day social practice where boundaries are blurred and language use is ver-
satile, creative, and subversive. In this perspective multimodality (Kress,
2010) is particularly relevant in the construction of the public space, in
so far as space is made up of multiple signifiers realised by a number of
semiotic devices in addition to language (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010).
Sign emplacement (Scollon and Scollon, 2003), framing, materiality and
configuration, therefore, are taken into account in order to provide a
better contextualization for our analysis.
Naming languages
The identification of languages as discrete units was instrumental in

the creation of nation-states and, therefore, they are political and
ideological constructs. In recent times, and primarily within discourse
analysis, a critical stance towards traditional views of language has been
accompanied by the employment of new terms that better describe lan-
guage practices in superdiverse urban environments (Vertovec, 2010).
Concepts such as linguistic repertoires (Blommaert, 2005), language as
a semiotic resource in multimodal systems of signification (Kress, 2010),
polylanguaging (Jørgensen et al., 2011) and metrolingualism (Otsuji and
Pennycook, 2009) have become established and provide more accurate
accounts of practices of languaging (Garcia, 2009) in given contexts.
There are three main issues, however. The first is that practices such
as polylanguaging and metrolingualism seem to characterize superdi-
verse urban environments and cannot be easily extended to all social
groups in those settings where categories such as ethnicity, gender, age,

social class, and sexuality inter alia still play an important role in the
manifestation of language behaviour. The second issue is metalinguistic.
In other words, it is impossible not to refer to Italian or French pre-
cisely because of the currency that these terms continue to enjoy. We
acknowledge that Italian and French are historical products as a result
of abstract ideological constructions that were invented to articulate
the nation as an imagined community (Anderson, 1991). Essentialist
views of language are a result of this legacy and they are at the heart of
political movements that seek self-determination, independence and/
or recognition of language rights ( Joseph, 2006). However, we can-
not do without these terms and even the arguments put forward in
Jørgensen et al. (2011) have to rely on existing labelling and would not
be comprehensible without the reference to Danish, Turkish, Spanish or
the periphrasis ‘what is considered to be Danish, Turkish, and Spanish’.
In other words, these terms and the worlds that they conjure up exist
by virtue of the discourses which have been articulated and have sedi-
mented over time. We embrace a critical view of linguistic discreteness
and believe that a holistic approach to LL should not exclude considera-
tion of semiotic practices other than language. The deliberate emphasis
on language remains at the core of the discussion as one of the richest
and most revealing aspects of human communication. The third issue
is closely related to the second. A comprehensive theory of language
practice does not exist. Pennycook (2010) represented a call to think
differently about languages, but there has been little work in the field
towards analysing the practical implications of thinking differently, for
instance, in education and policy making.
It is therefore understood that all language practices are complex
and that linguistic and other identity is constantly negotiated and in
the making or, to use Blommaert’s expression, it is semiotic potential
(Blommaert, 2005). We also accept that traditional sociolinguistic cri-
teria are not sufficient to account for language behaviour, especially in
superdiverse environments where individuals can have multicultural
and multilingual backgrounds and where the proximity of difference
(Pennycook, 2010) affects people, space, and the construction and
re-construction of place on a daily basis. We will, however, use language
labels such as Italian and French in the sense of objects, artefacts that
continue to make meaning in their ideological and historical dimen-
sions and because their use and their perception as ideological and
historical objects has a central role both in the material and in the
symbolic construction of linguistic landscapes.
Terms used in the course of the book
In approaching the writing of this book, we have had to agree on the

terms we use to cover a range of sociolinguistic phenomena. Although
we both approached this project with linguistic backgrounds, we
have had to reconcile particularly French and Italian perspectives at
a terminological level. Despite the many similarities we note in this
project, and despite the common border, the shared experiences, and
the collective European heritage, there are distinctions between the
standpoints in French and Italian scholarship, and for the purposes of
clarity, we outline the terms we agreed to deploy in this book. We fol-
low the Council of Europe terminology whereby given territories are
multilingual whilst individuals are plurilingual. When discussing Italian
contexts, the term dialect will be used to indicate a language variety
employed in a given locality which has not undergone a process of
standardization. The term also indicates the lack of official status and
stands in opposition to language, a definition denoting both Italian and
the minority languages in use on Italian soil and recognized as such in
national legislation (see Chapter 1). For the French contexts, the term
dialect will be avoided, given its negative ideological connotations in
France, and its use over the nineteenth century to denigrate what are
now generally referred to as regional languages.
The methodology for the collection and analysis of LL material is
being refined as the field develops. We highlighted some issues associ-
ated with the coding of signs in a previous work (Tufi and Blackwood,
2010), but a number of studies discuss what constitutes a sign and
typologies have been devised in order to account for different contexts.1
Widespread in published LL research is the distinction between top-down
and bottom-up when discussing authorship, power, or management in
the public space. In his discussion about public signage in officially
bilingual Wales, Coupland (2010) maintains that all LL artefacts should
be seen as originated ‘from above’. Linguistic landscaping ‘from below’
is not a suitable definition insofar as all LL is governed by language ide-
ology and performed for specific purposes. We might add that language
actors, as an expression of different communities of interest, are in
competition and that the linguistic construction of the public space is
usually part of processes of transformation from space to place and that
visibility is often a component of voice and empowerment. Although
Coupland’s reflection is certainly applicable at the micro-level, in terms
of power relations, agency, and influence and from the perspective of
impact upon the passer-by we identify significant differences between
types of signs – for instance, between the sign on a government min-

istry and a shop sign, but also between a billboard advertising a global
brand and a hand-written ‘for sale’ notice in a shop window. Of course,
all signs perform discursive practices which are attributable to ideologi-
cal frameworks (and to their inherent contradictions), but the discursive
weight of signs varies. This depends on aspects such as materiality and
emplacement of the sign, the rituality and commodification of socio-
cultural relations and according to established hierarchies within local
and global linguistic markets (Bourdieu, 1991). For example, coding
must respond to the challenge of whether a sign saying ‘Happy Easter
to all our customers’ can be categorized as a commercial sign, even more
so when it is coded in Italian, English, French, and Spanish. It goes
without saying that a generally acknowledged power structure can be
contested and rejected, and in this case the LL becomes a site of trans-
gression. An act of transgression, however, is performed and recognized
as such only in opposition to what is considered to be compliance with
local norms. In part of our analysis we suggest that conscious use of the
spaces of transgression can in turn comply with ideologies of transgres-
sion and therefore be performed as acts of compliance for the purposes
of the LL. For instance, it can be argued that the normalization of graf-
fiti writing in certain areas of Italian cities is primarily an act of identity,
rather than transgression. If non-standard languages are represented
together with Italian on a wall covered in graffiti, then those languages
acquire legitimacy and citizenship.
This view of the public space does not lend itself to a schematic cat-
egorization of signs. Rather, coding is instrumental to the analysis and
should be adapted to the context and the focus of the investigation.
Our experience suggests that coding signs as bottom-up/top-down or even
private/public expresses rigid dichotomies which are unsuitable for an
analysis of LL.
We therefore employ terms such as institutional in the widest possible
sense and, by extension, institutional entities might include a national
parliament, a school, a church, a cultural centre, and a film club in so
far as they are all based on some kind of organization.
For the same reasons, and due to issues of co-textuality and multi-
mediality, we tend not to code signs according to pre-established cat-
egories. Rather, their meaning-making roles and discursive weight are
defined in the given contexts which we analyse.
When discussing various vectors in language variation, as attested by
our data, we call upon the concept of ‘minority’, and we acknowledge
from the outset that this is not a neutral term, not least if it is used in
institutional discourse which has already been framed from a ‘major-

ity’ perspective and presumes congruity between minority and major-
ity views (Philibert, 1990). We normally use it in its generic sense, but
we are aware that discourses constructed around ‘minority’ can in fact
legitimize the socio-economic and political marginalization of the rel-
evant groups on the part of ‘majority’ institutions and society. Counter-
discourses of unity and homogeneity of the majority contribute to the
crystallization of unequal power relations, and a significant example is
represented by the area of Trieste in Chapter 3.
Methodology
Elsewhere (Blackwood, 2015), we identify a series of challenges that have

emerged over the lifespan of this project, which include the nature of a
sign, the coding of signs, the choice of survey areas, and the selection
of images. For the purposes of data collection, we followed Backhaus’s
definition of a ‘spatially definable frame’ (Backhaus, 2007, p. 66)
which has been suitable for our purposes, due both to the relatively
large size of the corpus, and to the degree of flexibility it affords the
researcher. However, we acknowledge that there is some ambiguity in
this definition since it does not differentiate between the sizes of signs,
as highlighted by Huebner (2009, p. 71). He notes that this elision of
difference between sign sizes has a notable consequence in that
[…] the resulting analyses afford equal weight to a 3 × 6 inch sign read-
ing ‘pull’ adjacent to the handle of a shop door, to a 2 × 5 foot banner
hanging from a light pole advertising a movie, and to a 20 × 40 foot
sign proclaiming the name, telephone number and products of the
shop itself.
The emphasis of our research does not privilege the quantitative sig-
nificance of signs in different languages, although we concede that this
shortcoming in the definition of a sign, not yet addressed satisfacto-
rily in the literature, has to be considered when drawing conclusions
about visibility in the public space. This challenge comes into focus in
Chapter 4 when we examine signs that feature only one word: Corsica.
This is something we first explored elsewhere (Blackwood, 2011),
when we addressed the visibility of this one word which constitutes a
significant proportion of the signs in Corsican. Over a quarter of the
signs coded as Corsican comprise of the word ‘Corsica’ as a one-word
text on postcards, tablemats, and towels (n = 139). As we establish in
Chapter 4, Corsican distinguishes itself as France’s most visible regional

language in the Mediterranean, but this visibility is assured in part by
the use of the one-word name for the island in Corsican: ‘Corsica’.
It is therefore important to acknowledge that, whilst these ‘signs’ are
small and brief, the visual impact – something not easily measured in
LL studies this far – is notable, inasmuch as the Corsican word for the
name of the island is repeated time and time again in the streets of
Ajaccio. This reinforcing of the use of Corsican is more symbolic than
practical, not least because the very nature of these signs on products
is that they are to be consumed (normally by visitors to the island)
and removed from their temporary location on the streets. Although
only one word, the use of ‘Corsica’ on postcards, towels, and table
mats engages in what Barthes (1977) refers to as ‘anchorage’, which
Jaworski (2010) reconsiders in his discussion of postcards as linguistic
landscapes. Jaworski (2010, p. 572) identifies a typology of six principal
functions, according to which the use of ‘Corsica’ would be classified as
a ‘caption’. Acknowledging their potential to be multilingual, Jaworski
(2010, p. 579) concludes that captions, such as ‘Corsica’, ‘are used as
part of mediationary means to establish a sense of place or to brand
the destination.’ For these slogans or ‘captions’ on various ephemera in
tourist shops, we contend that the language choice is made, at least in
part, to identify Corsica as corsophone. As noted above, part of the chal-
lenge of the quantitative phase of this research is the coding of signs
according to named languages. In this context, the question centres on
the potential to code ‘Corsica’ in one of three ways, since not only is
it the Corsican term for the island’s name, but it is also the English and
the Italian term. Despite its resonance in English and Italian, we argue
that in the LL of Corsica, this term should be coded as ‘Corsican’, not
least because of its presence and usage in daily island life. As noted else-
where (Blackwood, 2011, p. 121), ‘the term “Corsica” is used in political
life (such as the grouping of nationalists, Corsica Nazione), in the media
(where the evening news bulletin is called Corsica Sera and a news maga-
zine appears monthly, entitled Corsica), and elsewhere’. To this list, we
would now add the rebranded local airline (formerly Compagnie Aérienne
Corse Méditerranée, now Air Corsica), the ferry company Corsica Ferries,
the Ajaccio tourist agency Corsica Voyages, and the food manufacturer
Corsica Gastronomica. On Corsica, especially to a local audience there-
fore, ‘Corsica’ resonates as a Corsican, rather than an English or Italian
term. On this basis, we code these items as Corsican.
In terms of the coding of signs, in this book we build on our work
elsewhere (Tufi and Blackwood, 2010) when attributing text on signs to
a particular named language. Of particular note in this study is the use

of proper names in the public space, usually surnames or place names.
As we have already argued, the viewer understands the language of the
sign differently, depending on a number of factors, including their expe-
rience of language(s) and their nationality. Proper names which index a
place on Corsica or Sardinia, for example, we uncontroversially code as
Corsican or Sardinian. More challenging is how to classify the surnames
used as business names. We propose to adopt the approach we set out
regarding the Language of Representation (Tufi and Blackwood, 2010,
p. 207) and code these names as part of the named language, since the
surnames resonate as Sicilian, Catalan, or Genoese to a local audience.
The choice of survey areas remains contentious, in that seeking to
take a representative sample of streets in a given city leaves the data
collection exposed to the accusation of arbitrariness or impartiality. This
is another challenge that researchers working on the LL have identified
and long discussed but not yet resolved (Blackwood, 2015). For this
book, we have adopted a pragmatic approach, albeit with a consistent
and shared starting point. For each survey area, we have surveyed exten-
sively 50-metre stretches of 20 sites; on occasion (such as in Ajaccio,
Northern Catalonia, Trieste, and Cagliari) we undertake some surveys
outside the city and where this is the case, we highlight this – and the
reasons for this decision – in the following chapters. Where we have
been flexible in the selection of survey areas is that, where appropriate,
we have adapted the political and topographical organization of a given
city, using for example the quartieri of Naples or the arrondissements of
Marseilles to achieve wide and balanced coverage. Nevertheless, in this
kind of LL research, there will inevitably be an in-built arbitrariness to
the selection of streets to be surveyed. Where possible, we have identi-
fied at random a 50-metre stretch of the chosen streets, assiduously
selecting the site of enquiry before examining the signage – in other
words, we did not look for particularly semiotically rich or interesting
parts of the city but rather sought to convey the full complexity of the
public space as represented by the sites chosen. We fully acknowledge
the shortcomings to this approach, not least in the erroneous potential
to provide a comprehensive, synchronic study of the LL of the French
and Italian Mediterranean shorelines. It has never been our intention
to use the LL to provide a snapshot of written language practices in
places such as Perpignan and Genoa, not least because we concur with
Blommaert (2013, p. 10) who sees sociolinguistic systems (which we
explicitly extend to include cities) as ‘always dynamic, never finished,
never bounded, and never completely and definitively describable
either’. What we seek to do, therefore, is to use the sites of enquiry

selected to address a series of questions, theories, approaches, and posi-
tions in order to enable us to comment on issues where language, cities,
and people coalesce.
Any book on the LL could fill all its pages with images to discuss,
evaluate, and dissect. The Mediterranean coastal cities we investigate
are no less rich, no less saturated with interesting signs than Backhaus’
Tokyo or Blommaert’s Antwerp. Inevitably, we have had to privilege
some signs over the thousands collected along the Mediterranean shore-
line, and we use them in this book for different purposes. Some of the
images that we provide we discuss as multimodal objects, highlighting
the nexus between words, shapes, colours, emplacement, and audience.
On some occasions, where we test the relationship between a given
assertion and a particular sign, we feel that the image merits particularly
close attention, and we devote space to discussing many of the aspects
of their multimodality. On other occasions, we use an image to repre-
sent a trend, a style, a particular point that we are seeking to underscore.
Here, we include an image explicitly for illustrative purposes. The con-
sequences of providing a small fraction of the images we have collected
include the necessity in places to describe without showing a particular
sign. Although not ideal, this practice is limited to those signs where we
believe that a description alone suffices.
Organization of the book
Chapter 1 provides an overview of the linguistic histories of France and

Italy in order to reconstruct the main factors that account for the cur-
rent linguistic repertoire of both countries, of which the LL is an inte-
gral part. We discuss how a range of political-ideological discourses and
socio-economic developments have intertwined, and to what extent
different social actors have actively participated in the construction of
the public space. In this context, language policy as outlined in Spolsky
(2004) allows us to adopt a holistic approach to language change and
language management in Italy and France, and to dissect the complexi-
ties and rootedness of language ideologies and of their impact upon
language practices. With respect to the two countries, we identify sig-
nificant differences in the origin and development of language variety,
and as governed by institutional bodies. However, it is striking to note
that both formal and informal channels of enculturation share similar
characteristics in both settings and that they have been equally effective
in the consolidation of language beliefs.
Chapter 2 is where we first contrast sites on either side of the national

border: Nice, Monaco, and Genoa. Here, we explore the potential for LL
to contribute meaningfully to border studies by the examination of signs
which activate meaning and either create or erase borders. In particular,
we use the LL to identify gradations in the bordering process, where we
discuss the creation of national, regional, and localized borders through
language. In Nice, the LL points to a national border that unquestion-
ably divides France from Italy, but which is not entirely impermeable,
not least to the flow of Italian. In Nice, Monaco, and Genoa, the data
indexes borders that have not been fixed by nation-states with fences,
custom houses, and lines on maps. Instead, these borders have been
acknowledged by speakers of regional languages and latterly actualized
by signs in Nissart, Monegasque, and Genoese. In Genoa in particular
we note the making of borders by migrant groups through language and
other semiotic resources to mark out spaces within districts in the city.
In Chapter 3, attention turns to where France and Italy encounter
other nation-states on the Mediterranean, namely Spain to the west and
Slovenia to the east. The notion of peripherality and its impact upon
language use guides our examination of Northern Catalonia and Friuli-
Venezia Giulia, where the border areas are not only sites of negotiation
between national standard languages (namely Castilian and Slovenian)
but also significant other varieties – Catalan and Triestino – which figure
to varying degrees in local repertoires and at the same time contribute
to understandings of power, peripheries, and processes of institution-
alization. We investigate the linguistic appropriation of space by local
civic authorities who, in sustaining the visibility of languages such as
Catalan and Slovenian, simultaneously reinforce their minority status.
The islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica are the sites onto which
our discussion of insularity and peripherality are projected in Chapter 4.
We analyse the interconnections between different constructions of the
local space – the island as a highly territorialized and bounded entity,
the island in its existential dimension, and the island as a resource – in
order to situate the multiple levels of LL agentivity against a background
of conflicting attitudes towards insularity. We highlight that centre-
periphery relations have been characterized by an element of ambiguity
which is partly the result of an insular elaboration of competing models
of regionalism, and which has been acted out as open conflict at dif-
ferent times in the three areas. We contend that processes of spatializa-
tion of core islandness have been replicated at different levels, and that
linguistic and semiotic landscapes on the three islands construct gradi-
ents of split insularity and nested insularity. The LL on the three sites
contributes to the enactment of complex linguistic identities which,

amongst other aspects, also point to insularity as a resource.
Marseilles and Naples are at the core of our investigation in Chapter 5.
We approach the study of the local LL from the perspective of social
representation theory (Moscovici, 1984). This framework seemed par-
ticularly suitable due to the role that Marseilles and Naples play in the
collective imaginary, both internally and externally, thanks to their
encapsulating significant components of the archetypal Mediterranean
character. The multilingual and multicultural make-up of the two cities
is an integral part of perceptions of their inherent Mediterranean-ness,
but linguistic identities are performed in a dissimilar manner in the two
areas. On the one hand, all available linguistic resources seem to be
mobilized in the Neapolitan LL, so that inscriptions in the public space
demarcate it as a site of normalization of diverse language practices to
the extent that even migrant languages are accommodated into exist-
ing discourses of precariousness. In Marseilles, on the other hand, the
written absence of regional languages and the very limited visibility of
migrant languages point to a public space of compliance with the nor-
mative stance of written French, whilst elements of cultural distinctive-
ness are delegated to non-written modes of expression.
Given its significance as a code, we reserve Chapter 6 for a discussion
of English in the LL, and critique its use through the prism of cosmo-
politanism as a school of thought. We present the opposing ideologies
of anglophilia (which can evolve into anglomania) as attested in Italy,
and anglophobia, as experienced amongst France’s elite, although we
argue that the positioning of the English language is more nuanced and
ambiguous than these broad sentiments imply. We trace the contexts
for the current attitudes articulated towards English on both sides of the
border between France and Italy, before identifying trends in transna-
tional cosmopolitanism as borne out by signs featuring English, often in
the international food services industry. We also use the LL to examine
elite cosmopolitanism as indexed in English, which is more widely
indicated by the data in Italy than in France, a conclusion which points
to the perceptibly different values ascribed to the English language in
France and Italy.
1
Sketching the Contexts:
Italy and France
Introduction
The main aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of language

change and language management in Italy and France in order to situ-
ate the competing factors and actors which are responsible for the lin-
guistic construction of the respective public spaces. In the course of the
discussion we shall highlight aspects ranging from political-ideological
discourses to socio-economic developments and their interconnections.
Language policy will be analysed in its broadest possible framework
(Spolsky, 2004) to give an indication of the complexity and rootedness of
language ideologies, and of how they impact on language practices. We
are aware that we merely touch upon a number of fundamental issues and
debates revolving around the linguistic histories of the two countries, but
the intention is to bring to the fore similarities and differences between
the two contexts in order to provide a setting for subsequent chapters.
One of the principal structural differences between Italy and France
is due to the organizational models which defined their composition
and which are rooted in the Middle Ages. On the one hand, Italy, and
primarily northern and central Italy, was characterized by polycentric
structures based on city-states which enjoyed political and economic
autonomy; France, on the other hand, was from the outset an exam-
ple of a ‘primacy organization’ (Salone, 2005) controlled by a major
capital city, Paris. In spite of this major constitutive difference and of
the diverging modalities in the development of language policy, it will
become apparent that both countries were immersed in the philoso-
phies and aesthetic principles promoted by the European elites since
the early modern period. To mention one aspect, linguistic purism is
considered to have been articulated for the first time by the Italian
18
Sketching the Contexts: Italy and France 19
Accademia della Crusca (founded in 1583) and following the codification

of a literary canon in 1525. This type of ideology was rooted in classi-
cal ideals inherited by the fifteenth century humanists and looked to
literary models, and predominantly poetic production, along the lines
of what had constituted the models for poetry and prose in Latin in the
classical world (Marazzini, 2004). This profoundly conservative attitude
on the part of cultural elites was therefore firmly anchored in the past
and in rigid social organizations characterized by exclusive practices
carried out in exclusive languages. Vernacular interpretations and per-
ceptions of linguistic purity and beauty are the result of internalized
aesthetic discourses which were fixed in works such as Pietro Bembo’s
Prose della volgar lingua, which included a normative grammar of Italian.
In Bourdieian terms (Bourdieu, 1986), it could be argued that Bembo
produced an ante-litteram theory of linguistic taste and social distinc-
tion. In this sense, perceptions of the aesthetic value of languages are a
result of enculturation processes, and they have generated hegemonic
discourses which cross over national boundaries. The linguistic histories
of both Italian and French bear witness to this phenomenon.
Italy – polycentrism and linguistic diversity
The lack of a unitary state and the emergence of a mercantile class which
extended its linguistic practices, that is the use of local vernaculars, to
written domains are usually indicated as the beginning of linguistic
polycentrism on the Italian peninsula (Petrucci, 1994). This gave rise to
distinct literary traditions which, where supported by influential cities,
gained remarkable prestige, as will become apparent over the course
of the book. The sense of independence and autonomy of the numer-
ous political entities represented a challenge both during and after the
formation of the Italian nation-state in 1861. The implementation of a
highly centralized system at this juncture was primarily a legacy of the
Franco-Piedmontese style of administration, but was also guided by the
awareness of the vulnerability of the new national entity. As a result,
federalist ideas of state administration were rejected in the name of
unity (Mack Smith, 1997). However, the town/city and its surrounding
area, and sometimes a pre-existing state, continued to represent a strong
element of belonging and identity (Lyttleton, 1996).
The above issues are closely linked to the question of national unity
and national identity, which has been the subject of much academic
writing on Italy.1 The Risorgmento itself, that is the social, cultural and
political movement that led to Italian unification, never ceases to be an
object of interest on the part of Italian and international scholars and

observers alike (Patriarca and Riall, 2011). Discourses of a divided history
have therefore permeated constructions of Italy at all levels and, amongst
other aspects, they have nourished recent regionalist claims and demands
for local autonomy since the 1970s. Although the Italian Constitution
(1948) had sanctioned the introduction of regional authorities in their
current form, the 20 Italian regional governments did not come into
existence until 1970 and administrative devolution came into effect in
1997 with the law of 15 March 1997/59. It can be argued that the enact-
ment of the constitutional principle of regional autonomy provided the
institutional background to subsequent regionalist movements such as
the Lombard/Northern League. Indirectly, and before the establishment
of European agendas, the Constitution represented a move towards
recognizing and complying with the plural nature of Italian society.
Italian polycentrism is arguably most evident in language matters.
Urban centres have often provided linguistic models and promoted
processes of koineization in wider areas, therefore consolidating a type
of linguistic diversity which is unparalleled within Europe (De Mauro,
1963). The linguistic relationship between centre and periphery has not
been a smooth one. The literary prestige acquired by the Florentine ver-
nacular via the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio guaranteed the
establishment of a linguistic model as early as the fourteenth century.
This vernacular was codified in 1525 via Bembo’s Prose della vulgar lingua
and continued to be used in literary production, but its use was limited
to a small elite. The vernacular started being used alongside Latin in for-
mal education in the late sixteenth century, and the publication of the
Vocabolario della Crusca (1612) sanctioned normative Italian as an object
of study via learning tools (De Blasi, 1993). It was only after unification in
1861 that increasing masses of Italians were exposed to a language which
was to fulfil public functions as a natural consequence of its consolidated
role of language of culture. At that stage, and via diverse sections of the
population, Italian came into contact with numerous local varieties,
some of which had prestigious literary traditions and which had been in
use in the former capitals of independent states and kingdoms (including
Naples, Palermo, Genoa, Venice, and others) (Marazzini, 2004).
The term dialetto (dialect) in the Italo-Romance context started appear-
ing after the codification of the literary language, and stood in opposition
to lingua (language) precisely because of the lack of characteristics such
as standardization that make a linguistic variety a language. Given that
Italy’s dialects are the continuation of varieties deriving from Latin, they
are not dialects of Italian, but parallel developments (Maiden and Parry,
1997). As a result, and unlike anglophone environments, the dialects of

Italy can be structurally very different from Italian and their lower status
is due to extra-linguistic factors. They represented the main means of
(oral) communication for Italians until recent times and have tradition-
ally been relegated to the private sphere. Italian and local varieties have,
since unification, coexisted, and featured in individual and community
repertoires to varying degrees and with different communicative func-
tions. After unification, the Piedmontese administrative model was
extended to the rest of the Italy, but the Piedmontese kings did not
impose their idiom upon the country. Amongst many regional differ-
ences, Tuscan Italian was the de facto national language insofar as it had
contributed to the construction of a common cultural heritage. Florence
was therefore to remain the linguistic capital, while the political capital
would be Rome after the end of the papacy’s temporal power in 1870.
Italy is therefore a linguistically diverse country, one where history
and geography have played fundamental roles in the shaping and devel-
opment of myriad language varieties. Against a backdrop of nineteenth-
century linguistic nationalism, and from an external perspective, Italy
was a non-nation in so far as it lacked a common language to articulate
its nation-ness. Alternative accounts highlight the unsuitability of this
model for Italy and maintain, for instance, that it is not necessarily
one language that confers linguistic identity to a nation, but it is the
nation’s linguistic heritage as a whole. From this perspective, and due to
the richness and plurality of its expression, Italy could be considered to
be an ultra-nation (La Fauci, 2010). Italo-Romance dialects continue to be
used to this day and a recent survey (ISTAT, 2014a) confirmed trends
already highlighted in previous investigations: even though exclusive
use of the dialect continues to decline, and it is now employed with
‘strangers’ only by a small minority, about 30 per cent of respondents
declared that in the home and with friends they normally employ a
dialect alongside Italian (Table 1.1).
Table 1.1 Language practices in contemporary Italy: Italian/dialect use
Home Friends Strangers
Mainly or only Italian 53.1% 56.4% 84.8%

Mainly or only dialect 9.0% 9% 1.8%
Both Italian and dialect 32.2% 30.1% 10.7%
Other language 3.2% 2.2% 0.9%
Source: ISTAT, 2014a.

This is partly a consequence of the fact that the spread of Italian

occurred at an accelerated pace only after the Second World War and
due to socio-economic factors such as urbanization, extended state edu-
cation, and mass consumption of television programmes (De Mauro,
2014). From a disciplinary perspective, this explains the central role
of the concept of language repertoires in discussions about language
practices in Italian linguistic studies, a legacy of Italian dialectology as it
developed in the nineteenth century (Grassi et al., 1997). Leaving aside
spatial variation, of which all Italians are aware (Cini and Regis, 2002)
and which contributes to complex linguistic repertoires, Berruto (1987)
outlined the architecture of contemporary Italian as a result of three
intersecting axes which account for variation on a diastratic, diaphasic,
and diamesic level. In other words, an observation of the interplay of
factors such as social group, context, and medium allows us to inter-
pret language behaviour along the continua of language variation.
Discrete categories of types of Italian including regional, colloquial, and
standard are labels of convenience to be applied to spoken realizations
of the national language, which have progressively become more fluid
as ever increasing masses of people have had access to and mastered
Italian. This has in turn brought about processes of re-standardization
of Italian which have produced neo-standard Italian (Berruto, 1987), a
consequence of the relaxation of the normative stance dominating writ-
ten practices. Simultaneously, contact phenomena have affected both
dialects, which have become Italianized to a certain extent, and Italian,
which is always characterized by regional elements in oral production.
The articulation of both individual and group biographies would be
impossible without reference to the set of language varieties that Italians
can draw upon in everyday communication and that are constitutive
elements of local and group identities. National history would not be
complete without an understanding of Italy as a diglossic country at
the time of unification and its long transition to bi- or multilingualism
and dilalia (Berruto, 1987), a concept developed to represent current
practices whereby Italian has progressively entered domains which were
entirely dominated by dialects until not long ago.
In this context, the eventual disappearance of dialects has been
debated since Pasolini, a leading film-maker, poet, and intellectual of
the twentieth century, introduced his thesis in 1964 (Pasolini, 1971).
In fact, dialects maintain a high degree of vitality in Italy, as recent
surveys show. Geographical differences in terms of usage persist, and
both context and interlocutor remain significant variables in language
behaviour. The current configuration of linguistic repertoires is rather
complex because dialectal varieties and varieties of Italian have multi-

plied as a result of ever larger masses of Italians being brought up speak-
ing and being educated in Italian on the one hand, and non-standard
varieties incorporating standard expressions which make them viable
means of communication on the other. Effective bi- or plurilingualism
has led to new dialectal uses and users and to the widespread practice of
code-switching and code-mixing. In addition to its oral uses, the dialect
is being employed for a variety of functions which range from literary
production to rap lyrics, and from advertising to social media. An aspect
that is being constantly emphasized by the surveys is that these uses
cut across social groups (ISTAT, 2014a).2 This explains the multifaceted
contribution of dialects to the construction of the public space as testi-
fied by the case studies discussed in this book. This also explains that,
although Italian is indisputably the dominant language in public envi-
ronments, the Italian LL has been characteristically and increasingly
multilingual insofar as new language actors have also contributed to
the construction of the public space. An outline of language policy and
its peculiarities will provide a context for an understanding of different
degrees of participation in processes of place-making and -marking.
Language policy in Italy
Elsewhere, we have used the term non-policies with respect to institu-

tional measures (or lack thereof) aimed at the spread and consolidation
of the national language (Blackwood and Tufi, 2012). This defini-
tion rests on evidence provided by existing scholarship on the topic
(De Mauro, 1963; Tosi, 2008; Orioles, 2011) and highlights the lack of a
systematic approach to the implementation of a planned and thorough
spread of the common language via institutional channels. Given that
at the time of unification Italian was primarily a written reality, a signif-
icant channel to guarantee regular contact with Italian would have been
state education (two years of compulsory schooling in 1861 which was
increased to five in 1887 – see Gensini (2005)). However, instruction in
a language which was effectively foreign for the vast majority of pupils
in the nineteenth century would not have caused a shift to Italian on
its own, had the population not been through radical socio-economic
changes which accelerated processes of Italianization significantly only
in the second half of the twentieth century. As a result, language policy
cannot be meaningfully assessed without taking into account issues of
literacy and the development of state education. From this perspective,
it could be argued that in Italy institutional language policy was mostly
covert (Shohamy, 2006), but pursued via education, which is one of

the main forces in language management (Spolsky, 2009). It can also
be argued that it was mostly education practices (Spolsky, 2004) which
were involved in the dissemination and consolidation of language
ideology.
It has been variously estimated that, at the time of unification,
between 2.5 per cent (De Mauro, 1963) and 10 per cent (Castellani,
1982) of the population could speak Italian. These estimates are based
on literacy rates and therefore, before we could rely on systematic sur-
veys on language use, the only way to account for Italian speakers (or
users) was to look at improvements in education provision. At the end
of the nineteenth century, illiteracy was still widespread (40 per cent),
but this is understandable in a context where compulsory education
was of five years in 1877 and was increased to age 12 in 1905 (Gensini,
2005). In addition, problems relating to the actual implementation of
compulsory schooling were at times insurmountable, and ranged from
insufficiency of infrastructure on the one hand to open hostility from
families who needed children for labour on the other – phenomena
witnessed as widely in France as in Italy at this time. At this stage insti-
tutional, directed language policy can primarily be identified within
the educational policies which promoted Italian both as the language
of instruction and as an object of study. In this respect, the impact of
schooling was significant and lasting insofar as the teaching of Italian
emphasized prescriptive and normative uses of the language, and the
pupils’ production was heavily sanctioned because, inevitably, it carried
strong dialectal features that needed to be eradicated.
Although national syllabi and methods incorporated what could be
defined as a punitive approach to language teaching from the outset, it
is customary to single out fascist language policies in terms of clear and
directed legislation introduced to regulate language matters. Raffaelli
(1983) highlights, however, that there is a tendency to view fascist
language policies in isolation, whereas purist if not openly xenophobic
tendencies can be identified in the nineteenth century as well. They
were the legacy of the Jacobin principle whereby language matters can
and should be regulated, even though this entails the use of authoritar-
ian methods. The first law regulating the language of commercial signs
in unified Italy was in fact promulgated in 1874, admittedly for mainly
fiscal purposes; foreign words were subjected to the payment of a higher
tax than Italian words (Raffaelli, 1983, pp. 33–7). The fight against the
use of foreign words on commercial signs became overtly political in the
changed climate of the early twentieth century, when irredentist and
nationalist groups appropriated the language issue for an anti-German

campaign. The area around Lake Garda in the north of the country was
the border between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire at that time
and it had been a holiday destination for high numbers of German-
speaking tourists for years. Local businesses had been using German
profusely on their commercial signs to accommodate the German tour-
ists’ needs. As a result of the campaign promoted by the nationalists
and with the support of the Dante Alighieri Society, local town councils
introduced a series of measures to limit the presence of German on
commercial signs. Interestingly, the symbolic use of the wider semiotic
landscape also came to the fore and linguistic xenophobia was accom-
panied by architectural xenophobia. In the early twentieth century the
debate extended to the management of the built environment, with
open criticism of the ‘German style’ of the buildings erected in the area
(Raffaelli, 1983, pp. 86–9).
Although the nineteenth century was characterized by occasional
official measures inspired by nationalistic ideals and a purist and aes-
thetic conception of language, this period established a tendency that
was subsequently enhanced in pre-fascist times and finally taken to
extremes under Mussolini’s rule. Fascist language policies have tradi-
tionally received much attention as they represent the only systematic
attempt to regulate language use in Italy, at least in the public sphere
(Klein, 1986; Foresti, 2003). The first decree-law 352 of 11 February
1923 was in fact about the introduction of a tax on insegne (in their
specific meaning of signs in relation to shops or other commercial
establishments) that included foreign words, one of the very first pieces
of legislation introduced by Mussolini (quoted in Raffaelli, 1983, p. 6).
Fascist policy concentrated on three main areas: foreign words were to
be banned, Italian was to be imposed upon national minorities as part
of a process of de-nationalization, and dialects were to disappear from
public and private use as signs of cultural fragmentation and disunity.
As is typical in similar regimes, language purification as managed by
the state had a number of effects which ranged from the ridiculous to
the violently oppressive. On the one hand, for instance, the Accademia
d’Italia (1929–1944/45) was instructed to compile lists of ‘barbarisms’
to be banned: frutta (fruit) or fin di pasto (end of meal) were to be
employed instead of dessert; arlecchino (Harlequin) instead of cocktail;
uovo scottato (blanched egg) instead of uovo alla coque (poached egg),
and so on. On the other hand, national minorities such as the Germans of
South Tyrol or the Slovenes of Venezia Giulia saw their languages
disappear from education, local administration, and public spaces
including cemeteries, where even proper names were Italianized. Whilst

such draconian measures had a limited impact on actual language use
(Mengaldo, 1994), they were significant in terms of the consolidation
of linguistic prejudice and of the stigmatization of non-standard varie-
ties. In addition, they re-enforced the anti-dialectal stance adopted by
much of the educational establishment since its inception (De Blasi,
1993). Finally, they had a long-lasting impact on feelings of exclusion
and fractured identities, which can still be detected in certain parts of
Italy (see Chapter 3).
Within a radically changed context, the Italian Constitution (1948)
laid the foundations of the Italian democratic republic and fully
endorsed discourses of human rights which were at the centre of post-
Second World War reconstruction. Whilst not explicitly identifying
Italian as the official language of the state, the Constitution refers to
minorities in Article 6: ‘The Republic safeguards linguistic minorities
with special norms’ (Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana, 1948). Thus
the emphasis was on minorities, those groups who would not be dis-
criminated against on ethno-linguistic grounds and whose languages
would enjoy protection. Article 6 represented a statement of intent and
in fact more specific legislation detailing which languages were deserv-
ing of protection would not be introduced until 1999. Law 482/1999
was finally passed in spite of the long debates that it had sparked in the
1990s, a time when parts of the political establishment feared that provi-
sion for minority groups would encourage separatist claims (Richardson,
2001). The legislators were keen to enshrine the principles and the spirit
of European and international legislation relating to lesser known lan-
guages and cultures into Italian legislation. The law, however, rather than
valuing the national linguistic heritage, singled out 12 minority lan-
guages: ‘The Republic safeguards the language and culture of Albanian,
Catalan, Germanic, Greek, Slovenian, and Croatian populations and of
those speaking French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan, and
Sardinian’. Again, the text put an emphasis on minority groups and
those who were historically associated with a given territory, implicitly
excluding provision for other minority languages. The shortcomings
have been identified by a number of scholars (Orioles, 2003; Toso, 2008a;
Iannaccaro and Dell’Aquila, 2011): for example, the identification (and
consequent exclusion) of given minorities seemed to be arbitrary. In
addition, provision was to be allocated regardless of the significant dif-
ferences in the sociolinguistic composition of the relevant minorities.
Since the introduction of regional assemblies in Italy in 1970, regional
linguistic legislation has progressively included further measures for the
protection of minority languages, therefore reflecting attempts to com-

pensate for the lack of provision or for the inadequacies of national
legislation. In the course of the book we refer to this type of legisla-
tion where appropriate, but it should be clarified that current regional
borders were the result of political/administrative decisions which did
not take into account linguistic realities. For example, on Sardinia the
Catalan variety spoken in Alghero and Sardinian varieties enjoy spe-
cial protection according to national law 482/1999. However, national
legislation does not include Tabarchino, another minority language on
the island. This is a Genoese variety taken to two small islands off the
south-west coast of Sardinia by settlers in the eighteenth century (see
Chapter 4). In this instance, regional law 26/1997 passed in Sardinia
preceded national legislation and established that the island would
safeguard its cultural and linguistic heritage in its entirety.
Changes in (implicit or covert) language policy have remained closely
related to changes in education throughout the post-war period. The
education reform of 1962 changed the organization of compulsory
education with the introduction of unified middle schools (up to
age 14) which adopted a national curriculum. Whilst this marked
an attempt to address social inequality, populating schools with a
mass of new pupils coming from all social groups also brought to the
fore linguistic disadvantage. The language question acquired central-
ity within the protest movements of the late 1960s which, amongst
other aspects, criticized the elitist bias of the education system and its
exclusionary practices. The ensuing debate involved teachers, educa-
tors, politicians, and families and led to the articulation of new, more
inclusive language learning syllabi, first in middle schools (1979) and
later in primary schools (1985). In this respect the work undertaken
by GISCEL (Group of Intervention and Study in Linguistic Education)
was highly significant and led to the formulation of the Dieci tesi per
l’educazione linguistica democratica, that is 10 principles which aimed to
inspire and guide teachers towards the attainment of a truly democratic
linguistic education.3 These principles have in fact informed relevant
European work on intercultural education. Concepts pertaining to the
linguistic repertoire and plurilingual individuals, some of the defin-
ing characteristics of the vast majority of Italians in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries, are used throughout documents issued
by the Council of Europe, such as A European Reference Document for
Languages of Education? (2007) and the Guide for the Development and
Implementation of Curricula for Plurilingual and Intercultural Education
(2010) (D’Agostino, 2012).
Intercultural education is at the heart of Italian attempts to address

the needs of an increasingly diverse population, and in this perspective
education remains central as a means of enacting institutional language
policy. Migrant groups currently represent about 8 per cent of the coun-
try’s population (Caritas, 2014) and the presence of migrant school chil-
dren rose from 37,000 in 1993 to 800,000 in 2012 (Colombo and Ongini,
2014). Migrant groups have further diversified the country’s linguistic
composition, especially in view of the fact that migration into Italy is
characterized by extreme fragmentation with respect to place of origin
(Caritas, 2014). This might explain the fact that even though language-
in-education policies to support both the integration of non-Italian
pupils and the teaching of their respective languages and cultures were
introduced as early as 1982, research in the field shows that an increas-
ing emphasis on intercultural education has been mirrored by a shift
from the needs of migrant children to wider educational goals, mainly as
articulated by the European agenda (Liddicoat and Diaz, 2008).
Discourses of integration and intercultural education are therefore
solidly incorporated into educational practices in Italy. The principles
inspiring these discourses, however, do not seem to guide such insti-
tutional channels as local administrations. We have highlighted the
sporadic nature of the linguistic regulation of the public space in Italy
and this is arguably one of the reasons why written practices in Italian
cityscapes look distinctly multilingual. However, in recent times a num-
ber of local councils have introduced measures to curb the preponder-
ance of certain migrant languages in given areas of Italy. The desire to
restrict the display of these languages has been presented as an attempt
to safeguard the ‘authenticity’ of local architecture and activities or
to make signs ‘comprehensible’ to all passers-by (Barni and Vedovelli,
2012). Whilst the flawed character of such measures does not require
further comments, in the future this type of local legislation might have
significant repercussions on issues of participation, authorship, and vis-
ibility in the construction of local LLs.
France – linguistic centrism
Unlike Italy, modern France has, as a nation-state, been a model for cen-
trism and this position extends to ideologies about language. Estival and
Pennycook (2011, p. 330) summarize this neatly, noting that, ‘arguably
starting with the Serment de Strasbourg in 842, certainly gaining strength
with the post-revolutionary insistence on primary education in French,
language policy has been unremittingly centrist and monolingual’.
The narrative that has been nourished by France’s elite since the
sixteenth century is that French has a beauty, purity, and elegance that
is not merely apparent to all who encounter the language, but is some-
thing that needs to be protected (Adamson, 2007, pp. 1–6). This became
axiomatic in influential circles whose dominance in language policy
can still be felt in the twenty-first century. Lodge (1993, p. 4) argues
that ‘the myth of “clarity” and “logic” inherent in the standard French
language is extremely pervasive’ in France. This supremacy of French in
a range of subjective qualifications has had a lasting effect on language
use, of which the LL is one aspect. This is not to say that those who
commission, design, pay for, erect, maintain, or remove signs do so in
a manner governed by this long history of the pre-eminence of French,
but we explore in this volume the extent to which this unremitting
ideology plays a part in the construction of place by a public which is,
as elsewhere in Europe and beyond, multilingual. For the purposes of
contrasting the approach in Italy, we trace briefly here how France can
be considered, as Spolsky (2004, p. 83) posits, ‘the paradigmatic case for
strong ideology and management’. This union of a strident ideology
and highly directive language management strategies has significant
repercussions for the creation of the LL in France, including along its
Mediterranean shoreline.
The linguistic centrism in France, with its focus on Paris (after the
definitive transfer of the seat of power from Versailles), is the result of
centuries of the cumulative concentration of institutions, individuals,
and power in the capital city. From the perspective of language policy,
we outline below the main landmarks that punctuate the last five
centuries. Contributors to the lore regarding the nature of the French
language noted above are not solely drawn from the ranks of kings,
presidents, politicians, and law makers. Some of the earliest participants
were poets in the Renaissance, such as the group known as the Pléiade.
1549 saw the production of what amounts to a manifesto for the Pléiade
which, in the words of its author Joachim du Bellay, is a defence of the
French language, and is identified as the first call to arms to use French
(rather than Latin, at this stage) as a national literary language (Walter,
1988, p. 95). From this point onwards, the discourse of defence becomes
entrenched, presupposing some kind of aggressor, whose incarnations
evolved over the centuries. By the end of the sixteenth century, another
poet, François de Malherbe, had risen as a key figure in the standardiza-
tion of French, not least given his political influence to the court as the
official poet to kings, regents, and Cardinal Richelieu. Adamson (2007,
p. 3) notes that Malherbe pioneered the notions of the purity of form
of French, as well as strict rules governing usage. Despite the acknowl-

edged significance of the Renaissance across Europe, Italian was singled
out as a potential threat to French by the scholar and printer Henri
Estienne, whose treatises on French identify Italianisms as the major
challenge to the purity of the language (Ayres-Bennett et al., 2001,
p. 339). Linguistic centrism and especially language policy have long
been coloured by the issue of borrowings, with Latin and Italian sup-
planted by English in the late modern period as the main threat against
which French should be defended.
The Ancien Régime, in other words the governance of France before
the watershed of the 1789 French Revolution, considered questions of
its own survival rather more acute than language issues, not least given
the civil wars during the middle of the seventeenth century. Louis XIV
consolidated his power at Versailles by the introduction of a system of
intendance where appointed emissaries were despatched to the regions
of France to counter-balance the influence of the local nobility, a devel-
opment which reinforced the country’s centrist model. Ayres-Bennett
(1996, p. 178) summarizes the seventeenth century as ‘a period of restric-
tive codification and control of French’ by which time ‘the influence of
Latin on French lessened’. The perceived desirability of purifying the
French language, married to its professed perfection, reached one of its
high-water marks with the writings of Claude Favre de Vaugelas, a gram-
marian responsible for identifying le bon usage (the proper use) which
has become the benchmark for the French language (Judge, 2007, p. 25).
It is at this stage that l’Academie française, whose members identified
the norm upon which le bon usage was to be founded, emerged as an
important force within language use in France. As discussed elsewhere
(Blackwood, 2013), l’Académie française has taken on mythical status and
is perceived as more powerful and influential, especially in anglophone
discourse, than it is in reality. A superior court which makes final judge-
ment on language matters, l’Académie française, as Estival and Pennycook
(2011, p. 333) underscore, does not have ultimate legal authority, nor
is it completely resistant to language change. Moreover, l’Académie
française is not responsible for neologisms; this task has been assigned to
the General Delegation for the French Language and the Languages of
France (DGLFLF), which in turn delegates the process of neologizing to
the General Commission for Terminology and Neologisms, with special-
ist commissions for terminology housed in ministries within the state
apparatus (Blackwood, 2013, p. 41).
Nevertheless, the spectre of l’Académie française has cast a consider-
able shadow over language ideologies, and the emergence of a language
ideology which dictates that there is only one monolithic and undif-
ferentiated variety of French to which all speakers should aspire has
echoed down the centuries. The effects of this dogma are explored
in the French Mediterranean cities investigated in this book, and we
consider the ways in which this discourse permeates not only the ways
in which languages are emplaced in French coastal towns, but also lan-
guage beliefs (Spolsky, 2004) regarding multilingualism and the place
of French in the LL. Once codified through this process which involved
poets, grammarians, and public servants, the next phase of standardiza-
tion, according to the model established by Haugen (1966), is accept-
ance. Acceptance of French in France means the extension of the use
of this new national standard language across the territory, and Lodge
(1993, p. 190) describes this as a ‘multidimensional process’ requiring
spatial, functional, and social diffusion.
The spread of French spatially, which occurred largely during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was an extension of the model
adopted by the Ancien Régime; before the Revolution, intendants (royal
civil servants) managed the regions of France on the basis of their
political relationship with the king, in part through communication
with the court in French. In modern France, the creation of a civil
service, which provided a stable income and a pension on retirement,
created a network of government employees whose position depended
on their ability to speak French. Spatial diffusion was accelerated by the
Industrial Revolution, and the rural exodus, which saw men and women
leave their villages to work in factories in France’s cities, removed them
from their communities where regional languages continued to be
used as a first language, whilst exposing them to French and the eco-
nomic advantages of its mastery. Judge (2007, p. 27) also highlights the
improved transport system (especially the railway network), and – from
1875 onwards – universal, compulsory military service as factors in the
spread of French. This spatial diffusion overlaps with its functional
counterpart whereby French became the default language for formal
(and subsequently informal) domains, including ‘urban affairs (local
government, the law, finance, long-distance trade) before rural matters
(agricultural techniques, the local market, village get-togethers and so
on)’ (Lodge, 1993, p. 190). Social diffusion is understood as the cas-
cading down of the French language through the social classes, with
specific interventions (such as the creation of universal, free schooling,
discussed below) hastening the process.
By the twentieth century, a set model for linguistic centrism had
been established. The language of the king and court, which was
re-appropriated for the citizens of France by the Revolutionaries and

their successors, was ideologically charged as the superlative code for
communication. Moreover, French was to be protected from influences
perceived to be undesirable, including foreign borrowings, Latinisms,
and so-called barbarisms. Much of the ideological work that led to
this positioning of the French language took place in Paris, and the
institutions associated with the language, in replicating the model for
the wider state apparatus, are found in the capital city. Unlike Italian
polycentrism, France’s holistic conceptualization of language and, in
particular, a standard language, pivots on Paris, as the capital city. At
the same time, this linguistic centrism is secured and enriched by a phi-
losophy that has, until the twenty-first century, prized monolingualism
over linguistic diversity. Whilst mastery of modern foreign languages
has not been stigmatized, the hegemonic position of French is consist-
ently underscored by the breadth of France’s elite, even once the exist-
ence of the country’s regional languages was formally acknowledged, a
point to which we return below.
In terminological discussions around language use in France, three
terms emerge which dominate the debate, each of which is freighted
ideologically in ways dissimilar to their use in Italy. As in Italy, the use
of these terms in France is a product of the long established language
ideologies, whereby a broadly accepted hierarchy has materialized
in France, with patois generally viewed as ‘debased, corrupt forms of
French’ (Lodge, 1993, p. 5), and with – on a national level – relatively
low value. Laurendeau (1994, p. 132) teases out the paradoxical con-
ceptualization of patois, noting that they are both stigmatized but also
enjoy localized prestige. From the perspective of this study into the LL
of Mediterranean cities, patois are less relevant than dialects and lan-
guages, not least because the designation refers largely to spoken varie-
ties, whose forms are not traditionally written, and even less publicly
displayed within the LL. Wolf (1972, p. 173) summarizes patois as the
modes of expression from all different regions which are subordinated
in some way to the koiné language. For the purposes of this exploration
of languages in the public space, we do not intend to contribute to the
debate on the status of patois in France. It suffices to note that this glos-
sonym refers often to highly localized varieties of the French language,
often denigrated for purported imperfections, and invariably set up in
opposition to the French language (Boyer, 2005, p. 78).
Dialect has different connotations in the two countries investigated
here, and in France, it is seen as subordinated to language, not least
in the sense of the much-recited aphorism that a language is a dialect
with an army and a navy. Lodge (1993, pp. 4–9) highlights the popu-
lar discourse in France which subjectively sees dialect as ‘better’ than
patois, largely on the basis that dialects tend to have a written form,
and a greater level of standardization. He then identifies the view held
by (socio)linguists, who class language as a superordinate term, below
which a number of dialects are considered to be hyponyms (Lodge,
1993, p. 15). In contemporary France, in much public discourse, the
use of the term dialect tends to connote a non-standard form of a well-
established language. Dialect, therefore, has often been associated with
Alsatian (seen as a variety of standard German; see Bothorel-Witz and
Huck, 2003), and until fairly recently Corsican (whose relationship with
Tuscan Italian is used by some to devalue its status). However, Kasstan
(2015, pp. 77–8) draws attention to the potential transition in status of
several varieties from dialect to language in France over the last 30 years,
a point which highlights both the desirability of the glossonym ‘lan-
guage’, and a uniformization in designating language varieties which
privileges language over dialect. This trend reached a legal landmark in
2008 with the change to the Constitution which refers to ‘regional lan-
guages’, rather than dialects or even patois (a point to which we return
below). For the purposes of this study, rather than adopt the distinction
offered by Haugen (1966, p. 926), which places emphasis on the struc-
tural differences in the genetic composition of the varieties, we use the
term regional language to refer to those codes which can be identified as
both distinct from French, but also collectively recognized as discrete by
their speakers, such as Corsican and Catalan.
Language policy in France
As highlighted above, Spolsky (2004, p. 83) considers France to be a

classic example of a state committed to interventionist language plan-
ning strategies which are designed to guide the practices of the wider
population. As part of this language management, as contextualized by
the linguistic centrism outlined above, the ideological commitment to
French above all other languages is extended into language use in the
public space. The focus of French language management, however, has
only recently come to fall on aspects of the LL, and initially, attention
was paid primarily to the securing of domains for French. The first mile-
stone in this long journey targeted the judiciary and public administra-
tion, at a time when Latin remained the H language in this medieval
diglossia. Clerico (1999, p. 149) refers to the 1539 Edict of Villers-
Cotterêts as ‘the birth certificate for French as an official language’,
despite the fact that only a few lines of the decree’s 192 articles confirm
King François I’s desire to ensure that all legal and administrative docu-
ments were written ‘en langaige maternel François et non autrement’ (in the
French language and not otherwise). Judge (2007, pp. 17–19) puts the
success of this piece of language legislation down to a range of factors,
including the development of the legal system which had already begun
to favour French (largely because petitioners to the judiciary by this
stage did not understand Latin), a paucity of priests able to write in
Latin, and the increasing literary prestige of French – a current which
Du Bellay and the Pléiade enthusiastically joined.
France’s monarchs, whilst not disinterested in language policy, did
not devote much time or energy to ensuring the spread of French
(Blackwood, 2008, p. 15). As long as those governing France could
communicate with the court in French, little effort was expended in
changing the language practices of the wider public, to the extent that,
according to the findings of the survey co-ordinated in 1794, five years
after the Revolution, by the Abbot Grégoire, French was spoken exclu-
sively in only 15 of France’s 83 départements (administrative counties)
(Adamson, 2007, p. 8). Since this was viewed as undemocratic, and the
perpetuation of France’s patois and dialects dismissed as the continued
subjugation of citizens denied full participation in society by their lack
of French, the National Convention (France’s single-chamber legislature
in the aftermath of the Revolution) passed what Hagège (1996, p. 86)
describes as ‘the second great act of language policy in the history of
French’. At the end of the period known as the Terror, the decree of
2 Thermidor (20 July 1794) was passed which rendered all documents
not written in French illegal, and criminalized the act of drawing up
documents in any language other than French. Although the impact
of this law was uneven, not least because parts of it were temporar-
ily suspended, and then rewritten differently in subsequent years, the
tenor of language management was set, and the ideology behind these
landmarks of language policy echo through to contemporary France.
As elsewhere in Europe at this time, the focus of language policy
switched to language education policy, which as Shohamy (2006, p. 76)
argues is ‘a form of imposition and manipulation of language policy as
it is used by those in authority to turn ideology into practice through
formal education’. Education has emerged as a coveted domain in lan-
guage policy in France as early as 1530, when François I founded the
Collège de Lecteurs Royaux which taught in French (Judge, 2007, p. 21).
However, as with subsequent attempts to extend the education system
across France, a lack of finance and – in the case of the launch of
Napoléon’s lycée system and prestigious Grandes Écoles – ideological

ambivalence to mass education (Adrey, 2009, p. 117) made progress
in the teaching of French slow and largely unsuccessful until the end
of the nineteenth century. At the start of the nineteenth century,
Walter (1988, p. 124) asserts that the patois were used for 80 per cent
of communication. As Weber (1977, p. 501) highlights, one fifth of
the population of 7.5 million still spoke no French by 1863. At the same
time, however, the spread of semiotic resources associated with the
French language, most notably the shields illustrated with the initials
‘RF’ (for République française) were erected across France, especially for
the commemorations of France’s national day, 14 July or Bastille Day
(Pellegrinetti and Rovere, 2004, pp. 125–6). We therefore see, during the
eighteenth century, the first deliberate emplacement of the French lan-
guage in town squares and streets in order to affirm national identity,
of which language had been an unalienable part since the Middle Ages.
Much has been written about the significance of language-
in-education policies in France as the catalyst for the transformation of
language practices. The creation of a free, obligatory, and secular educa-
tion system, enacted by a series of education laws between 1881 and
1882, certainly initiated the process whereby large numbers of citizens
of France were, over the years, exposed to the French language. After
some time, the school system, once physically established in even the
most remote and rural parts of France, became an effective teacher of
the national language, although other, extra-linguistic factors, played
their part in this development. The nature of education, especially its
compulsory and free character, addressed some of the challenges to the
dissemination of French, and here the situation echoes that present in
Italy, where children, especially those required for agricultural labour,
found themselves obliged to attend schooling where use of the regional
language was highly stigmatized. This point is reiterated by Lachuer
(1998, p. 47) who draws attention to the fact that schools were not
merely education establishments, but local incarnations of the French
state, whence the principles of the republic would emanate to the wider
community. Strikingly, little in the way of language management strat-
egies was enacted over the course of the twentieth century that had a
significant impact on the hegemony or the diffusion of French. By the
close of the nineteenth century, the tenor for France’s linguistic cen-
trism had been set, and its effects were to ripple for almost the duration
of the twentieth century.
Over the past quarter of a century, two amendments to the French
Constitution have contributed to the wider discourse on language use
in France. In 1992, French was identified in Article 2 as the official

language of the Republic, enshrining in law what, as Judge (2007,
p. 23) notes, had long been practised across the country and its institu-
tions. The context for this seemingly belated one-line addition to the
Constitution was the passing of the European Community’s Maastricht
Treaty, which created the European Union and established its struc-
ture. Adamson (2007, p. 27) points to the latent fear that English
would emerge as the working language of the European Union, given
the high proportion of second-language English-speakers across the
member states. In clear contrast to the Italian Constitution, the French
Constitution following this change underscored the dominance of the
French language, without acknowledging the linguistic diversity as a
lived experience across the country. 2008 saw a minor modification
to Article 75 of the Constitution, which acknowledged formally the
existence of an undefined number of regional languages, which are
recognized as part of France’s ‘heritage’. That this acknowledgement is a
long way down the Constitution from the recognition of an official
language has not gone unnoticed (Blackwood, 2014, p. 66). Moreover,
the regional languages are not named or even enumerated; whilst this
provision can be perceived as an act of marginalization, the identifi-
cation of these languages as part of the country’s heritage, which is
normally associated with palaces, castles, and towers, reinforces the
long-standing narrative that Corsican, Catalan, and Occitan – amongst
others – are part of France’s past, rather than its present or future
(Giordan, 2008, p. 29).
From the perspective of legislation regarding the use of languages in
the public space, language policy to govern the LL dates back to the sec-
ond half of the twentieth century. Adamson (2007, p. 13) identifies three
laws passed in twentieth-century France which she argues constitute
the main legal measures enacted to defend the French language: of
these three laws, two relate directly to the use of language in the public
space, the third to language teaching. As we have noted elsewhere
(Blackwood, 2008, p. 57), the Bas-Lauriol law of 1975 stipulated that the
use of French was obligatory in a range of commercial activities, includ-
ing the appointing of employees, operating procedures, and advertising,
thereby confirming the place of the standard language in virtually all
aspects of the working life of the country. That this law was passed as
late as the final quarter of the twentieth century might seem overdue,
given France’s long established language ideology, and reliance upon
legislation to affect change. From the perspective of this investigation
into the LL, the provisions of the Bas-Lauriol law – whose measures,
in the words of Judge (2007, p. 29), had to be ‘watered down’ having

contravened directives of what was then known as European Economic
Community – publicly reaffirmed the supremacy of the French lan-
guage in commercial activity, both written and spoken, which regulates
the appearance of the public space in ways not replicated in Italy.
The Toubon law of 1994 is the iconic language law that has the great-
est resonance in France, both in terms of popular awareness and of
impact on the LL. From the perspective of our study of the LL of France’s
Mediterranean cities, the impact of such explicit language management
merits closer examination, not least because the myth-making around
the Toubon law has created a popular perspective that suggests that
any language other than French used in any kind of economic activity
is criminalized. Given that much of the public space in the town and
city centres surveyed for this project is given over to commerce in all
its guises, the management of language use in the LL is very much the
concern of the Toubon law, although its reach extends beyond language
on the streets of France, and includes all texts associated with trade and
economic exchanges. However, despite some popular misconceptions,
the provisions of the Toubon law (whilst extensive) do permit the use
of other languages, but demand a translation. The scope of the Toubon
law includes education, employment, public services, and above all
trade and commercial activity. The law positions itself in relation to the
Constitution, and in particular Article 2 which identifies French as the
language of the Republic of France. With the explicit inclusion of writ-
ten, spoken, and audio-visual advertising, the Toubon law affirms that
the use of French is obligatory in commercial exchanges, and that infor-
mation must be provided in French, in addition to any other languages
chosen by the manufacturer (Blackwood and Tufi, 2012, p. 114). As
such, the law does not proscribe the use of languages other than French,
but unambiguously requires the presentation of this information in
French, and (as outlined in Article 4) the French version must be as leg-
ible, audible or intelligible as the source text. Elsewhere (Blackwood and
Tufi, 2012, p. 124), we conclude that the national language ideology,
as clearly and unequivocally articulated in the Bas-Lauriol and Toubon
laws, affect language beliefs and practices of those who are responsible
for the appearance of the public space, namely shopkeepers, national
(and international) chain stores, and businesses.
At the same time that these national measures govern the behaviour of
those normally associated with language change, that is those individu-
als and groups who live and work in communities, towns, and cities,
there are more localized pressures which compete in the formation of
language beliefs along France’s Mediterranean coasts. Amos (forthcom-

ing) highlights how regional and civic authorities interpret national
legislation and develop their own policies regarding the use of regional
languages in the public space. This is the case in several of the cities
we examine in this book, including Corsica’s Territorial Authority and
the département of Pyrénées-Orientales in Northern Catalonia, where
language policy has been extrapolated by local councils which call for
the greater visibility of the area’s regional language, largely through
its emplacement in the public space. It is somewhat over simplistic to
summarize the intended consequences of language policies in France
as conflictual, with national policy using the full weight of the law to
enforce the hegemony of French whilst local actors, through elected
bodies such as regional and town council, authorize the situating of
regional languages on the walls of their towns and cities. It remains the
case that the French language can rely on its legal protection, its place
in the Constitution, and the laws identified here, but at the same time,
it would be misleading to suggest that there is no space for official, or
top-down, use of those languages identified with specific indigenous
ethnocultures in France. Equally, migrant languages have no official
protection, and no formal recognition, despite the estimates of high
numbers of speakers of languages such as Arabic and Berber, or widely
diffused but lesser spoken languages such as Vietnamese and Wolof.
Conclusion
This chapter has discussed a number of features that have characterized

the linguistic histories of Italy and France. Linguistic codification was
rooted in the philosophies and aesthetic principles which had gov-
erned the learning of Latin and the imitation of its classical production.
Ideologies of linguistic purity entailed the exclusion of words and struc-
tures which were perceived to be alien in the process of consolidation
of cultural elites. This trend has manifested itself with a degree of con-
sistency in France over the centuries due to the early creation of state
structures and of a strong centre of power. However, and even in the
absence of a similar political setting, the same ideologies became wide-
spread in Italy before the creation of a unitary state and they gained
further justification among competing visions of linguistic nationalism
as it was being configured in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The importance of a common cultural heritage carried by literary Italian
was emphasized and served the purposes of narrating the necessity of a
unitary state during the period of the Risorgimento.
Processes of enculturation via both formal (education) and informal

(internalized ideologies) channels have been extremely effective with
respect to the consolidation of language beliefs in both countries. As
for language practices, we have indicated a number of socio-economic
factors which account for the spread of the two national languages at
different times in history. We have also emphasized the role of state
education as a primary vehicle for the implementation of institutional
language policy. If we leave language policy via education aside, how-
ever, the difference between Italy and France is noteworthy in a number
of respects which are highly influential. Unlike in France, in Italy there
is no national legislation such as the Toubon law regulating the pres-
ence of languages in the public space, amongst other environments. In
France such official organisms as the General Delegation for the French
Language and the Languages of France (DGLFLF) were instituted to
exercise control on language matters, but there is nothing equivalent in
Italy. The Accademia della Crusca (Accademia della Crusca, 2014) is still
in existence, but its functions are not normative: they revolve primarily
around research into the Italian language in all its aspects, as emphati-
cally stated in its statute.
The Italian Constitution and subsequent national legislation confer
status to and assign provision for a number of minority languages.
With all their limitations, Italian measures introduced to recognize and
deal with internal plurilingualism and multiculturalism have inspired
parts of legislation at a European level and paved the way for address-
ing issues brought about by increasing numbers of migrants. Diverse
linguistic repertoires provide resources now employable in the construc-
tion of the public space in creative ways which were not foreseen a few
decades ago.
France does not present us with the type of linguistic variety which
characterizes Italy, although we do not mean to assert by this that France
is, by any stretch of the imagination, monolingual. Moreover, the varia-
tion within the French, elided in the narrative woven by France’s elite,
is striking and operates along several axes, including formality and field.
Scholars attempt to name these Frenches, often in relation to the stand-
ard language,4 but the boundaries between these varieties are blurred
and most speakers of French have access to more than one variety.
Beyond the French language and its stylistic and regional variations,
there are fewer regional languages and dialects spoken in France than in
Italy, and they are less widely used. At the same time, France is home to
a high number of migrants, bringing languages from Arabic and Berber
to Vietnamese and Wolof to the national repertoire, but the French state
is, based on its documentation and statements, unconcerned about the

influence of these languages on French and its position within France.
English, of course, is the exception to this laissez-faire position, largely
because of its perceived prestige, utility, and pervasiveness.
Unlike France, Italy does not combat borrowings from other languages.
Indeed, quite the opposite is the case (see Chapter 6). The Italian lan-
guage has traditionally embraced terms coming from different languages
and they have often been normalized to the point of enjoying wider
usage and not just conscious manipulation by cultural elites.5 Even
after the fascist attempt to replace borrowings with newly coined words
and expressions, Italians went back to using them after the end of the
regime (De Mauro, 1963). In contrast to France’s highly centralized and
effective system, in Italy even a cultural policy aimed at the promotion
and dissemination of the Italian language and culture abroad has been
extremely fragmented to say the least (De Mauro and Vedovelli, 1996).6
It remains to be seen to what extent these differences between the two
countries have had a bearing on the construction of the respective public
spaces and we endeavour to engage with this question in the course of
the book.
2
The Linguistic Landscapes
of the Ligurian Sea
Introduction
In late modernity, it is not unusual to encounter the discourse of the

‘borderless world’, and scholars in the social sciences, history, politics,
human geography, and other disciplines have been engaged in discus-
sions surrounding this imminent upheaval in international relations.1
This borderless world has not yet come to pass and even within the
European Union (characterized by the free internal movement of
humans, labour, and goods), States continue to acknowledge the formal
borders that separate countries, such as the one between France and Italy.
Although the title of this chapter references the Ligurian Sea, in fact we
investigate the land border zone between France and Italy and thereby
explore the potential for the LL to contribute to border studies. We are
encouraged in this work by, inter alia, Watt and Llamas (2014, p. 2)
who contend that, in terms of language, borderlands are remarkable
places, ripe for analysis along several vectors, including the relationship
between language and identity (which we also address in Chapter 3).
As is the convention in LL studies, we privilege here the cities that fall
within the border zone, examining on the western side of the border
Nice (20 miles or 32 km from the border) and Monaco (8 miles or
13km), and on the eastern side Genoa (106 miles or 170 km). From the
outset, we acknowledge that Nice and Monaco sit much closer to the
national border than does Genoa, but we contend that the comparison
is significant, given the history of the coast that flanks the Ligurian Sea.
Historical and cultural contacts have characterized this coastal area, and
the legacy of past events can still be identified both in linguistic terms
and in terms of a wider cultural heritage. Intense maritime contact and
close commercial relationships between the different urban centres
41
that line the Ligurian Sea date back to the time of the early Crusades.
It has been estimated that between the thirteenth and the eighteenth
centuries a quarter of the maritime vocabulary in use in the western
Mediterranean (including France, the Iberian peninsula, and northern
Africa), a Mediterranean lingua franca, was directly influenced by the
vernacular of Genoa (Aprosio, 2008, p. 278). With respect to France in
particular, Genoa was the main provider of ships, sailors, and shipbuild-
ers from the time of the First Crusade. As highlighted by Aprosio (2008,
p. 275), the hands which in the thirteenth century built the shipyard
in Rouen, home of the first French navy, were Genoese and so were the
admirals who led it for a long period of time.
In this chapter, we test the potential for the LL to contribute to border
studies from several perspectives, including the extent to which this
increasingly redundant physical border is linguistically and semioti-
cally porous. Although much LL scholarship has considered language
as symbolic, the capacity for language to evoke an emotional response
is increased in places and spaces of contestation. As Diener and Hagen
(2010, p. 3) note, the delineations of borders are ‘subjective, contrived,
negotiated, and contested’, and it is the meaning-making that the
LL performs in this border zone which we discuss here. Donnan and
Wilson (2010, p. 76) describe border areas as ‘performative arenas which
encourage symbols to proliferate’ and although the EU has been, in the
words of Scott (2012, p. 83) ‘a project of transcending national borders
and their logics of division’, we examine the emplacement of languages
in the public space inhabited by people who, for their lifetimes, have
been conscious of the national boundary regardless of the side on
which they live and work. If we accept Donnan and Wilson’s conten-
tion that borders offer a ‘theatricalised physical presence’ (2010, p. 73),
we consider whether, in an era where such national boundaries are
diminishing in importance, the cultural constructions of life in France
and Italy border cities reflect a denationalized process of meaning-
making through language in the LL. In other words, we use the LL
to see whether there is the cross-border language use in the public
space, and whether the discourses revealed by such usage are mirrored
on both sides of the frontier. To use the term highlighted by Newman
(2008, p. 144), in this chapter we examine the role played by languages
(national, regional and other) in the ‘bordering process’.
Linguistic and cultural exchanges between the two sides of the cur-
rent border are ancient. Until the middle of the twentieth century,
for example, Ligurian varieties used to be spoken around Cannes and
Grasse due to the establishment of communities from Albenga in the
The Linguistic Landscapes of the Ligurian Sea 43
fifteenth century. Opportunities for language contact were provided by

the significant Italian presence in southern France in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Linguistic integration took place via the com-
mon use of Provençal varieties, and the Italian influence is considered
to have played an important role in the construction of ethno-linguistic
specificities in this part of France. As recently as 1947, and following
the political settlement of the Second World War, Italian territories
around current Tende and La Brigue were incorporated into France.
This development, together with the existence of other communities
who live in the département of Alpes-Maritimes, account for the fact
that about 40,000 Ligurian-speaking people are to be found in south-
eastern France (Toso, 2008a). This chapter, as a consequence, will probe
the extent to which French and Italian as languages are mobilized on
the other side of the border with a view to understanding better the
purposes for which the written forms of these national languages are
deployed ‘abroad’.
Nice: a historical overview
The city of Nice is the fifth largest in France, with 344,000 citizens
recorded in the census of 2011 (INSEE, 2014a). Nice’s position as a
major urban centre of France is striking when considering how recently
it was incorporated into the country, having been a city-state allied to
Piedmont and Sardinia until 1860. Like Marseille, Nice was originally
founded by Greeks from Phocæa, and was conquered definitively by
the Romans in 8 BC (Latouche, 1932, pp. 18‒19). Having developed
around its port, Nice allied itself with Genoa in the centuries before the
first millennium, although it was coveted by Provence (Bordes, 1976,
pp. 61‒66). In the fourteenth century, Petrarch noted that Nice was the
first Italian city on the west (Visciola, 2011, p. 75) but the socio-political
relationship with France is lengthy and complex. Wright (2002, p. 92)
goes so far to comment that, for the five centuries of Nice’s alliance
with the House of Savoy, France could best be described as ‘the enemy
and aggressor’, having fought to incorporate the city into France dur-
ing the Italian War of 1542–1546, the Nine Years’ War of 1688–1697,
and the War of Austrian Succession from 1740–1748. After the French
Revolution of 1789, Nice (along with Savoy) was the first territory
annexed by France, an event which Gonnet (2003, p. 29) notes was the
fifth invasion of the city by the French. The abdication of Napoleon
in 1814 ended the French occupation of Nice, and the city (plus
Savoy) was returned to Piedmont-Sardinia by the 1815 Treaty of Paris.
It is this context in particular that colours our assessment of the

porosity – linguistically-speaking – of the national border, given the
repeated shifting of the border over the centuries.
The final transfer of Nice into France was engineered by Napoleon III,
who had made his support for Piedmontese expansion, conditional on
the acquisition of Nice and Savoy by France. Agreed in secret between
the Napoleon III and the Piedmontese Prime Minister, Count Camillo
di Cavour in 1858, the victories of France and Piedmont-Sardinia at
Magenta and Solferino were the catalyst for Piedmont to cede Nice to
France, pending the result of a plebiscite in the city. This took place on
22 April 1860, with an overwhelming vote in favour of joining France
(Wright, 2002, p. 92). This outcome was reached despite the public
and vocal rejection of the proposals by Nice’s Italophile élite, including
Giuseppe Garibaldi, the famous Italian patriot and soldier, who was born
in the city in 1807. Post-plebiscite, the transformation of Nice’s popula-
tion took place in two directions, with internal emigration by French
citizens to the country’s new eastern border city, as well as immigration
from Italy, especially Piedmont, meaning that by 1891, 23 per cent of the
city was Italian (Schor et al., 2010, p. 41), a proportion that whilst fluc-
tuating remained more or less the same until the outbreak of the Second
World War (Schor et al., 2010, p. 72). Over this same period – France’s
Belle Epoque from 1871 to 1914 – Nice emerged as a favoured destination
for the discerning European traveller, notably the English, led by Queen
Victoria who visited several times during the final years of her reign.
In the 1930s, Mussolini identified Nice as a terra irredenta, a status that
complicated the position of Italians in the city, some of whom identified
with fascism, and others who had fled Italy and the persecution they
suffered. During the Second World War, Italian troops occupied Nice
from November 1942 until the city’s liberation in August 1944, and the
immediate post-war period witnessed a further increase in immigration
from Italy to participate in France’s reconstruction. This brief summary of
Nice’s relationship to Italy highlights the permeability of the border, even
during periods of intense geopolitical upheavals, and the residual Italian-
ness of the city is something to be explored through the LL.
Nice: a sociolinguistic overview
In terms of language practices, Gonnet (2003, p. 33) highlights that

Tuscan Italian assumed its position as the H language from the middle
of the sixteenth century onwards, when the Duke of Savoy, Emanuele
Filiberto, required lawyers to switch from Latin to Italian. As with all
parts of France in the post-Revolutionary period, official and political

life was to take place in French, and Nice’s local council was no excep-
tion to this. However, as early as June 1814, only two months after the
abdication of Napoléon I, the city council switched back to deliberating
in Italian (Vernier, 2006, p. 158). In the decades leading up to the 1860
plebiscite, Schor (2006, p. 313) notes that French was still used by the
élite of the city, given its official status with the House of Savoy and
its importance as the international language of diplomacy. Sawchuk
(2010, p. 28) contends that in linguistic and cultural terms, Nice was
‘predominantly gallic in character’ by the time of the definitive annexa-
tion by France, not least because of the ‘French colony’ where wealthy
French citizens spent their winter months, and where newspapers
were published in both French and Italian. However, those opposed to
unification with France cited the fact that Nissart had become particu-
larly Italianized to the extent that it could no longer be confused with
Provençal as a reason to vote against the annexation (Courrière, 2011,
pp. 14–15). By the end of the nineteenth century, the language practices
of the city had been changed completely as citizens of Nice had under-
gone a language shift to French, a change that Wright (2002, p. 91)
argues is noteworthy because there was no shared past or common aim
between Nice and France.
The LL of Nice and Monaco
In Nice, 15 surveys were undertaken across the city, with streets selected
from districts across the centre. A total of 9,505 signs were recorded,
of which 60 per cent (n = 5,704) were in French alone, and a further
2.2 per cent (n = 212) with other languages. Eight additional languages
were recorded in the LL of Nice: Dutch, English, German, Italian,
Latin, Nissart, Russian, and Spanish. In Monaco, five survey areas were
identified, and a total of 1,988 signs counted; of these, 58 per cent
(n = 1,169) were only in French and a further 0.7 per cent (n = 14)
featured French. In terms of the varieties of languages on the walls of
Monaco, from those attested in Nice, there were no instances of Latin,
Russian, or Nissart in the survey areas. At the same time, Monegasque
appeared in 1.8 per cent (n = 36) of signs in the Principality.
Italian in France
As noted above, the status of Nice as a town associated with Italian
cultural history for much of its past means that the LL provides a frame
in which to explore the extent to which traces of the Italian language
persist. In terms of data across the four locations in France, this survey
site is where the highest number of signs in Italian is recorded, although
in proportional terms, at 1.3 per cent (n = 151), the quantitative occur-
rences of the language are conspicuously minimal. Of this very small
sub-corpus of signs featuring Italian, over half (58 per cent, n = 88)
are monolingual, and examination of these signs informs better our
understanding of the role of the language in what is an overwhelmingly
francophone space. In part, the visibility of Italian is a consequence of
what Thurlow and Jaworski (2011) refer to as banal globalization – a
concept that explains the presence in Northern Catalonia, Marseille,
and Corsica, as well as in Nice, of other languages (including also
Spanish and German) of the transnational economy. Therefore, a num-
ber of Italian newspapers, on sale in shops across the city, are included
in the data, as are the publicity material provided for Italian products.
Whereas Spolsky and Cooper (1991, pp. 7–8) detected the various
periods of governance of Jerusalem on the walls of the Old City, in Nice,
very few remnants of Italian, reflecting the period when Nice was part
of the Duchy of Savoy, remain, and only one non-contemporary sign
in Italian was recorded within the ten survey areas in the city. The only
echo of Italian from the Savoy era recorded for this project is a sign
erected in 1891, well into the French period, which commemorates the
death in 1840 of the Italian violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini. In
rather poetic nineteenth-century Italian, the sign records the death in
this house of Paganini, and the silencing of his violin, whilst its melodi-
ous notes still drift across Nice (Figure 2.1).
It is notable that 30 years into the French ownership of Nice, a per-
manent sign was erected in Italian on the walls of the old town. As we
consider the marks left in the public space around the Ligurian Sea,
the paradoxical nature of this sign is arresting. In French Nice, part of
a France whose institutions were gripped by a zeal for the usage of the
national standard language in all aspects of public life, a permanent
plaque, written in Italian, was erected to commemorate the passing of
a famous musician. No translation into French is provided; no access to
understanding the meaning of the sign is offered to those who do not
speak Italian. In death, Italian resonates as the appropriate language to
use to commemorate the passing of the Genoa-born musician. Erected
by his admirers, and paid for through public subscription (CRDP, 2015),
it is worthy of note that Italian is felt to index best Paganini’s identity
for a permanent sign placed in a prominent position in the heart of
Nice, which (by the time of the erection of the sign) has been subject to
strident language management strategies for several decades.
Figure 2.1 Sign in Italian commemorating the death of Paganini
The visibility of Italian beyond this plaque is accounted for by much

more contemporary signage in Nice. The use of Italian in what might
refer to a top-down manner merits further discussion. In the civic
frame, a space is consistently found for Italian, normally alongside
English. This choice of trilingual signage can be found in public-owned
(or public-private partnerships) service industries, such as Nice’s tram-
way system (Figure 2.2), the city’s bicycle hire scheme Vélobleu, or parts
of the SNCF, the national railway network. Here, within these elements
of the civic frame, the language practices of the potential audience are
acknowledged, and information is provided in three languages: French,
English, and Italian. Given that statistics for 2013 (Côte d’Azur-Touri-
scope, 2015) identify Italians as the largest national group of visitors to
the Côte d’Azur (including Nice), constituting 16.8 per cent of interna-
tional tourists, the relative paucity of written Italian in the LL is striking.
In the tram system, the railway network, and the bicycle hire scheme,
not only is French used, but the utility of both English and Italian is rec-
ognized by their consistent inclusion in signage. What is unchallenged
in these three signs is the supremacy of French, given its position within
the frame of the signs, and the choice of font. In other words, the code
preference hierarchy (Scollon and Scollon, 2003) is self-evident; it is
uncontroversial to note that French dominates the three signs. In all
Figure 2.2 Instruction sign inside Nice’s tramway carriage
three cases, it occupies the dominant upper position, and its font is
larger, although only marginally so for the tramway signs. Although
concessions are made to English and Italian, the visual dominance of
French is matched on the Vélobleu docking station by the artistic and
functional dominance of the national standard language. In terms of
decoration, each docking station includes the legend in French Bougez
en toute liberté (‘Get about in complete freedom’). Functionally, French
is the only language provided on the maps at each docking station, so
users of the scheme will need to use the national standard language to
get their bearings. Moreover, in the panel for paying to hire a bicycle,
the instructions appear in French only.
Despite their overall multilingual approach to information, which
gives Italian a space in the LL not reflected elsewhere in the French
data gathered for this project, the civic authorities – in the designing
of the instruction panel by which members of the public can hire a
bicycle – omit any languages other than French from the vital final
stage of the process. Not all aspects of the civic frame in Nice include
Italian as a linguistic resource. Two examples suffice. First, the port
authorities in Nice use only French and English in their signage, with
a preference for French. In some signs, French is used on its own, such
as in the combined arrivals/departures board on the quayside. Further
along the port, a second display board, this time providing information
only about departures, uses both French and English in a duplicating
manner. No space is accorded to Italian, although in part this might
be because ships sail only to Corsica, the island off the Italian coast
which has been part of the French state since 1789. However, given
the high number of Italians who use the port to sail to Corsica, it
might have been expected to see Italian in the LL. Elsewhere, French
and English are found in the signage relating to the tourist initiative
known as Cityzi, launched in Nice in 2010. Cityzi invites smartphone
users to scan the Quick Response (or QR) code in order to download
tourist information relative to given sites around Nice to their mobile
telephone. Cityzi has erected a number of signs across Nice, usually
on the side of notable buildings or tourist attractions, with a QR code
to be scanned for further information. The instructions for using the
Cityzi codes are presented first in French and then in English, with no
other languages used. Although operated by a private company, and
therefore not part of the local authorities, Cityzi is engaged in activities
directly linked to tourism, a domain that might be considered to fall
within the civic frame when, as in this case, it is providing information
(rather than explicitly selling a product) to tourists. For these tourist
information panels, English is used to address all audiences who do
not read French, and no space is accorded to Italian, despite the high
number of tourists who visit Nice.
Nissart in the LL
As a variety of the regional language Occitan, Nissart is given little
coverage in scholarship on the languages of France. In some respects,
discussions regarding the status of Nissart as a dialect mirror the debate
over the relationship between Provençal and Occitan (see Chapter 5). As
with the question of the regional language variety of Marseille, it is not
our intention to explore here the issue of Nissart as a dialect or patois, or
to comment on the nature of its connections to Occitan. Even the name
attributed to the variety is contested; in the classical norm, based on
medieval Occitan, Niçard is given as its name, whereas the Mistralian
norm (named after the nineteenth-century Occitan movement’s found-
ing father, Frédéric Mistral) refers to Nissart, which is closer to French
orthographical conventions. Blanchet (2006, p. 144) argues that Niçois –
as he refers to it – is a separate language, and has been since the break
(for socio-political reasons) from Provence in 1388. Sawchuk (2010,
p. 28) refers to Niçard as ‘an Occitan-Ligurian mélange’, whereas Sibille
(2000, p. 35) maintains that Nissart is close to coastal Provençal, but is
more archaic and includes influences from both Italian and Ligurian.
Isnard (cited in Gonnet, 2003, p. 21) argues that Nissart evolved differ-
ently to Occitan, and includes aspects of Old Piedmontais and Friulian,
with only minimal influence from Provençal. Speaker numbers, as for
the other regional languages of France, are not estimated officially, and
given the marginalized position of Nissart within published research,
there are not even estimates of the numbers of people in the city or in
the département of Alpes-Maritimes who speak the language. Schor (2006,
p. 313) concludes that Nissart remained the L language of the city until
the effects of obligatory French-language schooling, and massive inward
migration to Nice were felt, in the final years of the nineteenth century.
In 1904, Alexandre Baréty and Henri Sappia founded l’Acadèmia nis-
sarda, as a learnèd society to encourage all aspects of Nissart cultural
life, and Schor (2006, p. 313) lists the various societies and associa-
tions, from l’Escola de Bellanda in 1880 through to l’Assouciacioun doù
Malounat in 1997 that have been formed to sustain the Nissart language
and culture.
In the survey areas for Nice, only a very small trace of signs in Nissart,
the regional language, was recorded (0.04 per cent, n = 5 signs). This
virtual complete absence of Nissart in the LL positions the language in
a comparable position to Provençal in Marseille, in terms of a hierarchy.
However, the presence of Nissart in Nice is more striking than that of
Provençal in Marseille because of the ways in which the language is
being used creatively. The tramway has been discussed above in rela-
tion to the presence of Italian in the city’s LL. This tram network is the
responsibility of Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur, the first of a new kind of
local authority, which comprises 49 communes (local parish councils),
including the city of Nice (Navas, 2012). It has been in place since
2007, and at the same time that the tram became fully operational, the
Métropole opened what they designate as an Open-Air Museum by com-
missioning public works of art to flank the stops along the route of the
tram. As well as installations, such as the seven illuminated statues on
Masséna Square, the Métropole appointed the artist Ben Vautier, known
as Ben, to create a series of pictures for each of the line’s 42 shelters.
Ben, renowned for his text-based art, produced a series of inscriptions,
featuring white text on black backgrounds, known as ‘Aphorismes’.
Within the survey area for this project, two Nissart-language signs were
recorded, including Figure 2.3.
The Nissart sign in Figure 2.3 is a quotation from the Gospel accord-
ing to St Matthew (Chapter 7, verse 8), ‘he that seeks finds’, and is
signed in the bottom right-hand corner by the artist. The use of Nissart
Figure 2.3 Nissart in a tram shelter
was not uncontroversial in Nice, as reported by Nice-Matin, the local

newspaper (Rinaudo, 2008), to which Ben responded by noting that the
language and its culture are lived out on a daily basis in the city. This
very limited use of the regional language in the LL of Nice is interesting
in that there is clearly a value attached to Nissart by those in the local
authorities, as well as by individuals such as Ben. The choice of public
art installed along the tramway line was decided by an open competi-
tion, whose panel of experts was headed by François Barré, former chief
executive of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and director of Architecture
and Heritage at the French Ministry of Culture between 1996 and 2000
(Ville de Nice, 2008). As such, we note the aesthetic value ascribed to
a written language, even a regional language, as a legacy of a national
language ideology, and in competition with French. The use of Nissart in
art is reflected in several bilingual street signs, which name the street in
both French and the regional language, although this format of street
signage is not uniform across the city, and is worthy of brief further
examination. Figure 2.4 is a street sign in Nice’s old town, and provides
information in terms of both the street name, and directions to other
sites of interest.
Figure 2.4 Street sign in Nice’s old town
As can be seen in Figure 2.4, some of the streets in Nice’s old town
use both the French and the Nissart name for the road, with the French
version in the dominant upper position, and a Nissart version in a
subordinate position, but in the same font and using the same size
text. These are relatively new signs, and are found only in the nar-
row streets of the old town. Above the street name sign is what we
contend is a sign intended largely for visitors, given its icon (showing
the universal symbol for someone – invariably a man – walking) and
the directions to various points of interest, such as the cathedral and
an art gallery. It would seem likely that most locals know the route to
the cathedral, hence identifying visitors as the primary audience for
this sign. However, also indicated is the Lycée Masséna, a prestigious
secondary school renowned in the area for its preparatory classes for
France’s elite higher education establishments, and which counts the
poet Apollinaire, the aviator Roland Garros, and the artist Yves Klein
among its former pupils. The inclusion of the school might suggest that
this sign is also destined for a more local audience, since the school is
not open to the public. What is striking from the perspective of the LL
is the use of French, and only French, to enumerate the destinations on
the sign, but gives the name of the alleyway in Nissart – with no French
translation. There is, consequently, an interesting contrast between the
usefulness of the directions, which are given in French (the national
standard language, used for wide communication), and the name of the
passageway which is provided in Nissart. From this, we argue that there
is a sense in which the regional language anchors Nice’s cultural and
linguistic identity in its place, whilst the default language for practical
information is provided in French. Moreover, the prestige of French
is acknowledged in the bilingual street names by the code preference
system adopted.
Nissart is used within another domain of life in the city, namely in
the supporting of the local football team, Olympique Gymnaste Club Nice
Côte d’Azur – normally abbreviated to OGC Nice. As part of supporting
OGC Nice, Nissart is used by ultras, the most prominent and passionate
of football fans, first referred to as such in Italy in 1968 (Louis, 2006),
although it should be noted that the regional language is also deployed
by mainstream supporters of the club. Although the survey area did
not include the Allianz Riviera stadium where OGC Nice plays its home
matches, one example of the Nissart-language ephemera associated
with the club was recorded on the side of a recycling centre. This sticker
bears the legend in Nissart ‘Pilhas garda, sieu nissart’ (‘Watch out! I’m
from Nice’) and is one of several slogans associated with the football
club, as well as resonating more widely as sayings in Nissart (Figure 2.5).
Figure 2.5 Nissart football sticker on the wall of a recycling centre

This sticker is clearly transgressional, in that it is not an intended part

of the civic frame onto which it has been placed, although that is not to
say that this kind of saying in Nissart is rejected by the local authorities.
A variation of this maxim, ‘M’en bati, sieu nissart’ (‘I don’t care, I’m from
Nice), is used by the artist Ben in his series ‘Aphorismes’ on the city’s
tramway stops. Nissart is used relatively widely as a fetish by fans of OCG
Nice, and this sticker is one example of the wide re-appropriation of the
regional language by all supporters (and not merely ultras) at OCG Nice,
who, for example, sing the 1912 song Nissa la bella (‘Nice the beautiful’) as
a football chant, and use Nissart on their clothing, such as Copa (for cup
winners) and Campioun (for league champions) to commemorate victories
in football competitions. The use of Nissart in clothing is also adopted by
the cultural association Nissart Per Tougiou (‘Nissart forever’), who aim to
sustain the historical cultural richness of Nice. Nissart Per Tougiou organize
exhibitions, events, guided tours, language classes, and concerts, all with
the aim of revitalizing Nice’s cultural heritage (although from the perspec-
tive of the LL, no trace of their activities was attested in the surveying
of the city). This use of Nissart for the purposes of articulating a distinct
cultural identity, through the network of supporters of OCG Nice, is
mirrored in a more sinister way by the use of the regional language by
ultras, such as Armada Rumpetata Nissa and Secioun Nissarda. As such, these
examples of Nissart in the LL exemplify what Coupland (2014, p.138)
refers to as ‘metacultural reflexivity’ in that they project values – in this
case pride – onto the regional language.2 Regardless of the nature of the
use of Nissart, there is a clear symbolic value ascribed to the language by
individuals as diverse as city councillors, artists, and football ultras.
Not only is Nissart used for streets and stickers, but there is a tendency
to employ the language to name artefacts pertinent to Nice’s cultural
history. This is evident in the naming of the shuttle bus by the Nice
port authorities. Although the bus was not part of the formal survey
area, it is worth examining briefly the languages used on the sides of
the vehicle. The shuttle bus is described on its side in first French and
then English, but it is given the name Lou Passagin in Nissart before
both explanations (Figure 2.6). The inscriptions in three languages are
just below the line of the roof of the bus, and not easily legible, not least
because the Nissart name is in dark blue against a black background.
Lou Passagin was the name of a small fishing boat that provided a free
ferry service back and forth across Nice’s old port until the middle of the
twentieth century; the motorized and land-based twenty-first century
equivalent has been named in Nissart, establishing (for those aware of
its history) a link between the boat and the minibus.
Figure 2.6 The shuttle bus Lou Passagin
Given the rarity of the signs featuring Nissart, it would be unwise

to read too much into its restricted visibility in the public space, but
this very small sub-corpus of signs points to a wider trend in terms of
attitudes to the regional language and the national language, as well
as to the relationship between the two. At the same time that a panel
of prestigious experts agreed to include Nissart in the art installations
that line the tramway route, the regional language has been omitted
from the interiors of the tramcars, despite their multilingual signage
to address a public that speaks languages other than French. From this,
we contend that, at a local level, the value attached to Nissart locates it
within cultural identity, rather than conferring practical utility upon it.
There is a place for the regional language, but it is not accorded a func-
tional role in urban life in Nice; rather, it is used for artistic decoration
and local colour. This contrasts with the use of Corsican in everyday life
in Ajaccio, as discussed in Chapter 4.
Monaco: a historical overview
Monaco is an independent sovereign city-state, bordered on three

sides by France. As a Principality, it is ruled by the House of Grimaldi;
Carlo Grimaldi first took possession of the Rock of Monaco in 1331,
and in 1458, Lamberto Grimaldi assured residents of the Rock of the
permanent protection of the Grimaldi family (Passet, 2010). In the fif-
teenth century, Spain occupied Monaco, and was eventually expelled
by Louis XII of France, in 1641. The Treaty of Péronne of 1641 saw
Monaco become a protectorate of France, thereby heralding the start

of the formal relationship between the Principality and its neighbour
(Martin, 2011, p. 97). At this time, French was first introduced into the
repertoire of the Principality. As noted above when discussing Nice,
the French Revolution saw France in expansionist mood, and the Rock
of Monaco was annexed in 1793, at which point the use of French
became a legal requirement in all official domains. This preference
for French was confirmed when the House of Grimaldi was restored
in 1814, when the Court chose French over Italian for official com-
munication. In 1848, whilst under the protection of Turin, Monaco
lost the towns of Menton and Roquebrune, which were placed under
the protection of Sardinia (Gonnet, 2003, p. 18), and the Principality
assumed the shape and size to which it more or less corresponds today.
The relationship with France was formalized with the signing of the
Treaty of Versailles in 1919, whereby France agreed to ensure Monaco’s
sovereignty and territorial integrity. The nature of the mutually sup-
portive relationship with France was redefined in 2002, in a new treaty,
although the outline of the arrangement between the two entities was
largely unchanged. Although Monaco has its own constitution, passed
in its current form in 1962 (and revised in 2002 to incorporate the
changes of the treaty with France), the education system is modelled
on that of France, and Article 8 of Monaco’s constitution states that
French is the language of state, and whilst Monegasque is referred to
as a national language, this recognition does not confer official status
on the variety (Toso, 2008a, p. 219). Beyond this, there is no extensive
language policy that dictates the usage of language, with no provision
for managing the public space.
In part as a consequence of the absence of language management
seen in France, the LL of Monaco is more diverse than those recorded
in Nice, Marseille or elsewhere for this project. Of a sub-corpus of 1,988
signs in Monaco (across five sites), 41 per cent (n = 819) do not fea-
ture French, with English appearing on its own on a tenth of all signs
recorded in the Principality. In many of the multilingual signs, English
is the main functional language, used to convey information, but it is
visually dominant. English is also widely used in small signs and labels,
notably for high-end consumer products, including jewellery, clothing,
and cars. We discuss fully the role of English in the Mediterranean in
Chapter 6 but it suffices to note that the multinational and affluent
nature of Monaco’s population explains in part the striking diversity of
the Principality’s LL.3
Monaco: a sociolinguistic overview
Although the LL of Monaco is largely multilingual, Monegasque, the

regional language, is not widely visible. Monegasque is a variety of
western Ligurian (Toso, 2008a, p. 219), closely related to the dialect of
Vintimillois, which is spoken on the Italian side of the national bor-
der. Toso (2011) asserts that Monegasque emerged as a separate variety
after Genoa colonized the Rock of Monaco in 1215, after which time
Monegasque developed from the Genoese spoken by the Rock’s new
inhabitants, with influences from the Ligurian spoken by the indige-
nous population. He also notes that influences from both Provençal and
French have marked the language (Toso, 2008a, p. 219). Passet (2012)
identifies influences on contemporary Monegasque from Occitan
(including Turbiasc, Mentonasc, and Nissart) and Ligurian (especially
the varieties spoken in Ventimiglia and San Remo). Although usually
considered a spoken language until the twentieth century, Antonio I
(1701–1731) wrote letters to his daughters in Monegasque (Passet,
2010). Having been a language used orally in private life, including in
the home, on the streets among long established residents of the city,
and in cultural associations, the codification process began in the 1960s
with the publication of a grammar book, Grammaire monégasque, written
by Frolla (1960). Frolla subsequently published a bilingual dictionary in
1963, commissioned by the Principality’s government and reprinted
in 2004. Toso (2006, p. 426) notes that support for the codification
and elaboration of Monegasque coalesced from the 1920s onwards in
intellectual and literary circles in Monaco, in part to combat negative
language beliefs where speakers had begun to dismiss Monegasque as
a patois, and thereby an inferior form of communication. In common
with France, Monaco does not ask its citizens to declare their language
usage in the census, and so there is no reliable data on the number of
speakers of Monegasque in the Principality.
Monegasque in the LL
In terms of the presence of Monegasque in the LL of Monaco, of the
1,988 signs recorded in the Principality, 1.7 per cent (n = 35) feature
the regional language. In comparison with Nissart in Nice or Provençal
in Marseille, this proportion is relatively high. However, the figures
should be handled with caution, since the surveying of the streets of
the Principality coincided with the preparations for the marriage of His
Serene Highness Albert II to Charlene Wittstock, and the celebratory
ephemera for the wedding accounts for almost three quarters of the
signs featuring Monegasque. These signs were temporary pendants,
hung in shop windows, featuring the slogan ‘Viva u Príncipu! Sicí ben-
vegnüa Principessa! Viva Múnegu!’ (‘Long live the Prince! Welcome to the
Princess! Long live Monaco!’). Another version of the sign was a sticker
(Figure 2.7) bearing the same legend plus a detail in French, noting that
this was for the royal wedding to take place in Monaco in July 2011.
The signs and stickers both use the red and white colours of Monaco’s
flag and a stylized crown as part of the semiotic resources to convey
the Monegasque nature of the forthcoming nuptials. The use of the
Monegasque language is noteworthy given the almost complete absence
of the regional language elsewhere across the survey areas. Not only is
the act of writing in Monegasque in the public space unusual, but based
on the data collected here, temporary. From July 2013, according to the
portal of the government of Monaco, destinations on the small network
of local buses have been displayed in both French and Monegasque,
in a low-cost exploitation of digital resources to increase the visibility
of the regional language, a phenomenon we have discussed elsewhere
from a Corsican perspective (Blackwood, 2014, pp. 71–2). These flashes
Figure 2.7 Monegasque and French royal wedding sticker

of Monegasque are a new phenomenon, and were not part of the LL of

Monaco when we surveyed the city-state for this project. Both the royal
wedding paraphernalia and the new bilingual bus signs highlight one of
the shortcomings of the methodology we adopt for this project, namely
the impact of the dynamic nature of the public space. A sign can appear
only temporarily and thereby distort the numeric presence of a given
language, or can be absent during the surveying of a specific area, but
appear subsequently after the researcher has gone. Contextualizing
signs, however, something that we engage with consistently in the
course of the book, helps the reader to position and calibrate numeri-
cal indicators accordingly. There was only one permanent street sign
in Monegasque on a street in the Rocher de Monaco district of the
city-state, but the visibility of the regional language in fixed signage is
particularly scarce. In other words, the extent to which Monegasque has
a permanent presence on the streets of Monaco is negligible almost to
the point of invisibility.
Genoa: a historical overview
Genoa (archaic Genua) was founded by the Ligures, who were

Romanized after 205 BC (Voltaggio, 2010). It was a prosperous city
until the fall of the Roman Empire, and was subsequently controlled
by the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines and the Longobards until 774 AD.
It acquired an important political role in the western Mediterranean
under Carolingian rule in the fight against the Moors, and by the
twelfth century it had accumulated enough wealth and power to
emerge as an independent city-state, a maritime republic with one of
the largest navies in the Mediterranean. Participation in the Crusades
allowed Genoa to extend its influence and colonial power to the Orient.
Genoa was the first city-state of Italy to become a regional state and the
Genoese regarded themselves a nation, and therefore different from
the other peoples of Italy, by the middle of the twelfth century. This
fostered an early consolidation of its linguistic and cultural identity
(Muljačić, 2008).
The international dimension of Genoa as a naval and commercial
power already provided a cultural and political model for the whole
region in the twelfth century and it earned the city the title la superba
(‘the proud’). In this context Genoese acquired a hegemonic role as a lan-
guage of communication, as an identity marker, and in literary produc-
tion. Its undisputed prestige transformed the ethnonym ‘Genoese’ into
a cover term that has been applied to and used instead of the name of
the region, Liguria, for centuries (Toso, 2002). In the absence of a strong
political and military centre of power, the decline of Genoa would have
been relatively fast had the city not been endowed with extraordinary
financial and naval means. Credit from the Genoese Bank of St George
was relied upon by a number of distinguished customers and primarily
Spain, which therefore remained an important ally. The French annexa-
tion of Genoa in 1805 marked the end of centuries-old freedom and
independence for the city, whilst the Piedmontese take-over in 1815,
although a cause for humiliation, represented the beginning of a new
phase that would make Genoa an integral part of Italian history.
Genoa: a sociolinguistic overview
In the spatial dimension of language spread, Genoa has had a different

role compared to other Italian contexts. Unlike other Italian port cities
discussed in this book, and in addition to large numbers of merchants
and visitors who went to the city for business reasons, traditionally it
attracted migrants from relatively close, inland areas (Van Doosselaere,
2009). During the consolidation of its colonial power and up until the
height of its mercantile success, however, the language of Genoa was
taken to numerous localities in an area that extended from the western
Mediterranean (and beyond, with trading posts and commercial colo-
nies established in western Morocco), through to Flanders in northern
Europe (Bruges) and to the eastern Mediterranean (and beyond, extend-
ing as far as the Sea of Azov and the Georgian coast). Genoese was
therefore a colonial language ante litteram, exported in its variants by
the peoples of Liguria who moved to the colonies, either temporarily or
long term (Toso, 2008b). It was, according to Forner (1997, p. 246) ‘the
language of political debate (through the despatch of officials of the
Genoese Republic to the new provinces); the language of the nobility
(through the granting of feudal properties to the Genoese aristocracy);
and the language of commerce (through the establishment of Genoese
trading posts)’. Before the establishment of scientific dialectology in
the nineteenth century, Ligurian varieties had been set aside from other
northern varieties within the context of a ripudio della settentrionalità
(‘rejection of northern-ness’; Toso, 2010, p. 413). This tradition was
instrumental for the consolidation of a perception of alterity with
respect to the rest of northern Italy and as such it reinforced feelings of
an alternative and unique identity.
When Piedmontese rule was imposed upon Genoa and Liguria, fol-
lowing the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the existing sense of rejection
was strengthened and political writings fed anti-Piedmontese feelings

while providing ideological ground for nationalistic discourses. In this
respect, Muljačić (2008) maintains that rejection of Piedmontese rule
was one of the possible causes of an early spread of spoken Italian
among the bourgeoisie in Genoa in the nineteenth century, in the
sense that it was preferable to use Italian rather than Piedmontese, the
language of the rulers. The spread of Italian continued over the course of
the twentieth century, when Genoa became one of the main industrial
hubs of Italy. Intense urbanization and significant immigration from
other regions of Italy are among the main factors which explain a swift
Italianization of the area so that according to a 2002 ISTAT survey,
Liguria is one of the two Italian regions where the exclusive use of
Italian in the family is strongest (67.5 per cent of respondents, second to
Tuscany – 83 per cent). A 2006 survey confirmed this trend (68.5 per cent
of respondents said that they use only Italian in the family), a fact that
stands out in a country where active bi- or plurilingualism is wide-
spread, especially in informal and familiar contexts.
Against a background of a historically outward inclination of the city
and in view of the fluidity of the border with France, it seems that an
interpretive tool which focuses on the enactment of alternative forms
of citizenship will help us understand the LL of Genoa. In particular,
the citizenship of the everyday (Dickinson et al., 2008) emphasizes the
social and relational aspects of participation and engagement with the
urban dimension on the part of new city subjectivities and diasporic
groups. As for existing city subjectivities, we shall see that place is
constructed as a constitutive aspect of a mobile and transformative
citizenship and not as an exclusive feature of identity. Classical con-
ceptions of citizenship see the individual as an active participant in
the public affairs of the polis. These ideas were rooted in antiquity and
challenged by liberal constructions of the citizen as a passive recipient
of rights (Marshall, 1950). In this view the granting of civic rights is a
consequence of territorialized visions of citizenship, which is in turn
performed within the bounded entity of the nation-state. The increas-
ingly diversified and mobile societies that have characterized (at least
parts of) the world since the late twentieth century have enacted new
forms of active citizenship which operate at the sub- and supra- and
transnational levels. Transversal forms of engagement and participation
have changed the geography of citizenship (Dickinson et al., 2008) so
that new spaces and discourses of citizenship are being articulated, at
times as forms of contestation in response to exclusionary practices. The
LL of Genoa provides a testing ground for the construction of discourses
of citizenship of the everyday and of transformative citizenship and

in order to illustrate this perspective the discussion will focus on signs
featuring the local language, Genoese, and on those displaying migrant
languages. It will become apparent that the linguistic manipulation of
the public space contributes to the performance of shifting and mobile
border identities.
Genoese established itself as the prestige variety not just in the city,
but in the whole region and as a colonial language. As such, it contrib-
uted to the creation and consolidation of a regional identity throughout
the centuries. In the post-war period some radical socio-economic
changes have caused a shift to Italian that is more noticeable than in
other areas of the country. The decline in the use of Genoese, however,
had already become apparent in the 1920s and in spite of the fact that
Fascist measures against the use of dialects had been somewhat more
lenient toward Genoese. Fascist ideology and propaganda highlighted
local glories, such as the splendour of the old republic and the cult of
Columbus. Dialectal theatre was very popular, and it acquired inter-
national stature through figures such as Gilberto Govi, so linguistic
censorship was relatively lenient (Toso, 2002). Literary uses of Genoese
were developed as early as the thirteenth century (Toso, 2009), and
the language was employed in the drafting of policy documents and
public acts until the end of the fifteenth century. In subsequent peri-
ods Genoese was represented in a range of writings including both
educated and popular registers in forms such as poetry, theatre and
song. Attempts to protect Genoese date back to the sixteenth century
and in competition with post-codification literary Italian (1525), but
we have already outlined the historical and socio-economic reasons
which have caused the shift to Italian, in this region more than in
others. Whilst the prestige of Genoese has consolidated feelings of
regional identity in Liguria, language shift was not slowed down by a
regional law aiming to protect and promote local languages which was
passed in 1990 (regional law 32/1990). However, in addition to cul-
tural niches such as theatre and song, Genoese can be heard on local
radio stations and TV channels and seen on dedicated websites. It also
finds a space in educational and cultural initiatives which highlight
local heritage.
The LL of Genoa
Historically, Genoa was made up of six sestieri (a sestiere was literally

one sixth of the city), which are currently incorporated into the nine
municipalities that compose the city. Surveys were carried out in areas
representing all municipalities and 7,352 signs recorded. Italian fea-
tured on its own on 73 per cent (n = 5 364) of the signs, and together
with other languages on 15 per cent (n = 1 120) of the signs. Twenty
additional languages were recorded: Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese,
Dutch, English, French, Genoese, German, Greek, Japanese, Latin,
Neapolitan, Portuguese, Romanian, Sinhalese, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu, and
Wolof. The visual impact of French (as the language of France, not as a
migrant language) is comparable to that noted for other Italian settings
analysed for this project. In addition to featuring on multilingual signs
for the consumption of French-speaking tourists, instances of French
on the whole were an acknowledgment of the long-lasting influence
of industrial sectors such as perfumes (eau de toilette) and cosmetics,
drinks (champagne), furnishings (moquette) and fashion (sabot, a type
of shoe). In addition, French might have been used to add a flavour of
sophistication and elite cosmopolitanism when displayed on shop signs
(a florist’s was named Les Champs Élysées). These instances point to the
fact that French seems to carry predominantly symbolic functions in
the LL of Genoa and, in particular, it is mobilized in the performance
of social boundaries.
Genoese in the LL
As regards LL, occasionally Genoese is used in place names and on com-
mercial signs and it can be seen in reference to local products and for
marketing purposes in tourism. In the surveyed areas, Genoese featured
on 55 signs, of which eight were monolingual – four commercial signs
(Figure 2.8), two stickers, one graffito and one ZE sticker which stood
for ‘Zena’, Genoa in Genoese.
Figure 2.8 was on the window of a historic shop selling old and
modern kitchenware in the city centre. The sign is entirely in Genoese
and it reads: ‘Columbus discovered America in 1492, but our kitch-
enware shop does not mess around either! It has been here since
1830!!!’. The employment of deceptively basic materials and a simple,
hand-written execution clash with a sophisticated attempt to trans-
form history and local heritage into commodities to be offered with
the purchase of goods. The Genoese Cristoforo Colombo is one of the
best known explorers of all times and the comparison between the
time of the discovery of America and the age of the shop is a daring
one. Customers are invited into the shop for a journey of discovery
among objects that date back to bygone times and on premises which
claim to have remained practically unaltered since 1830. The language
Figure 2.8 Genoese sign on shop window
cannot be other than Genoese, spoken by generations of local shop-

keepers who are becoming a rarity as repositories of authenticity and
rootedness. In addition to an explicit link to the past, however, the
reference to Colombo establishes continuity with the city’s tradition
of transcending its own urban boundaries and embarking on voyages
of discovery.
In addition to the monolingual signs, in 47 signs Genoese appeared
either with Italian (17 signs), with English (three signs), or with both
Italian and English (27 signs). Signs which can be identified as institu-
tional were the ZE sticker, which was issued by the city council, and
a ‘zenazone’ tourist card, a tourist initiative supported by the local
administration. The rest of the signs were all private. The city name
Zena was seen on three shop signs (a greengrocer’s, a restaurant and a
cocktail bar), on a t-shirt displayed in a shop window, and on two stick-
ers advertising a restaurant bar for a young clientele. Although it can
index a link with tradition, the dialectal city name Zena has maintained
its currency and is also employed in contexts which explicitly address
a young audience (Figure 2.9). Zena Zuena (young Genoa) featured on
a poster advertising a charity event appealing to a crowd of connected,
globalized and engaged youngsters as an occasion to perform their glo-

calized identities (Figure 2.9). The multilingual sign features Genoese in
the title (with a primarily connotative function), Italian in its informa-
tive content (the where, what and how of the event) and English in
music-related vocabulary (concerti ‘live and dj set’), in the phrase ‘drink
and food’, on the website and related proper name ‘redhouse’ and in
the ‘music for peace’ logo. Words such as ‘festival’ and ‘cabaret’ are
established borrowings, but they contribute to construct the generally
multicultural feel of the event, where, in addition to being entertained,
it will be possible to participate in debates and film showings and taste
multi-ethnic cuisine.
As highlighted in Blackwood and Tufi (2012), the use of Zena on a
number of signs can be considered to be instances of city branding,
an effort which had the purpose of turning the city into an attractive
tourist destination on the occasion of the celebrations of Genoa as the
European City of Culture in 2004. The zenazone tourist card, which
gives tourists the benefit of discounts when accessing local facilities,
exploits the city’s linguistic heritage as an acknowledged marker of
authenticity and uniqueness, and this can be seen to mirror instances
of Nissart in the LL of Nice. The use of Genoese, however, can also be
Figure 2.9 Zena Zuena (Young Genoa), a charity event

interpreted in its performative function in the construction of multiple

and intersecting identities where place carries a constitutive property.
In this sense the construction of the citizenship of the everyday applies
equally effectively to existing city subjectivities. In this respect, Figure 2.9
in particular constructs a kind of dissected and fragmented form of
citizenship which highlights traits of agency such as pacifist, engaged,
mobile, multi-ethnic, multilingual, alternative, and so on. These traits
are not to be understood in binary terms and therefore the suggestion
of global citizenship is not in opposition with the reference to a locality,
that is Zena/Genoa. The everyday lived as participation in a localized
event is central to the construction of a new geography of citizenship
which can be transformative and potentially subversive in so far as it is
in opposition to institutional understandings of rights and obligations.
From this perspective perceptions of citizenship as a function of territo-
riality are contested and its resulting boundaries blurred.
Migrant languages in the LL

At the time of the surveys (2008), migrants accounted for 7 per cent
of the urban population (42,744 out of 611,204 residents) (ISTAT,
2012a). The top ten national groups represented in the province of
Genoa were the following (Table 2.1):
The linguistic traces left by Ecuadorean migrants are particularly evi-
dent in parts of the LL of Genoa and therefore it is important to provide
some background information. Ecuadoreans form the largest group and
one which is now relatively established. Contacts between Ecuador and
Genoa are historical (Tufi, 2010), but the recent Ecuadorean diaspora
Table 2.1 The top ten national groups represented in the province of Genoa
Males Females Total
Ecuador 6,142 8,646 14,788

Albania 2,518 2,013 4,531
Morocco 2,270 1,054 3,324
Romania 1,234 1,489 2,723
Peru 928 1,416 2,344
China 656 642 1,298
Senegal 971 150 1,121
Ukraine 136 908 1,044
Sri Lanka 538 432 970
Tunisia 441 239 680
Source: ISTAT (2012a).

is mainly due to the 1990s economic crisis. Italy (in addition to Spain
and the US) was a viable destination because until 2003 a visa was not
required.4 It was predominantly women who moved to Italy, respond-
ing to a high demand for domestic work. The creation of a support
network made it easier for subsequent fellow nationals to go and stay
in Genoa. Religious and linguistic affinities represented a strong advan-
tage. Ecuadoreans seem to be very active in the network of support
associations and organizations made available to their community, and
not just as users of services but as organizers and managers (Chiari,
2005). This explains the fact that the surveys identified Spanish as the
most visible migrant language in so far as it appeared in 13 monolingual
signs out of 22, and in 15 multilingual signs out of 37. In addition to
the degree of visibility, the typology of signs in or including Spanish
was the most diversified and featured commercial, informational and
transgressive signs such as graffiti.
Before looking at the data more closely, it is worth introducing
an area of Genoa which provided good examples of signs displaying
migrant languages in its historical vocation as a lieu de passage, Via (di)
Prè. In medieval times the street was excluded from the city proper by
subsequent sets of walls built to accommodate the growth of Genoa.
The toponym Prè is considered to be an adaptation of the Latin word
proedia, indicating farmland and therefore a non-urban area. The street
was the main thoroughfare that took travellers into and out of the city
gates from/to the west. As such, it developed to offer the many passers-
by and visitors useful services, whilst hosting residents who carried out
maritime activities, given its close proximity to the sea. When it was
included in the city in the fourteenth century, it had already grown
into a densely populated area (Baghino, 2015). The original configura-
tion of the street has been largely maintained. Narrow and tall buildings
still characterize its aspect and the visitor is reminded of its medieval
importance by the church of St John the Evangelist and Commendam,
an adjacent building which was meant to provide assistance to pilgrims
and crusaders directed to the Holy Land. Via Prè seems to have kept its
original function throughout the centuries and up until contemporary
times. Urban developments such as the main railway station, acces-
sible from one end of Via Prè, and new roads to meet the demands
of increased vehicle traffic have facilitated the arrival and settling of
newcomers. In the post-war period many southern Italians came to
work and live in Genoa, one of the most dynamic industrial hubs in
the north-west, sharing available housing with local dock workers. In
the last few decades migrants from different corners of the world have
gradually taken their place and, as a result, Via Prè is possibly the most
multicultural street in Genoa. The street cuts across an intricate web of
carrugi, narrow alleyways that, in providing countless hideouts through-
out the centuries, have contributed to giving the area a bad reputation,
one that local administrations have not succeeded in improving in spite
of repeated attempts at urban regeneration.5 In its unravelling along the
area which constituted one of the old sestieri of the city, and running
parallel to the old port, Via Prè symbolizes multiple borders which can
be discerned in the local LL as well.
Signs featuring migrant languages in Via Prè often contribute to
configure the locality as precarious, unstable and changeable in its
ethnic and social composition. Also materials, execution and emplace-
ment suggest the opposite of durability. Figures 2.10 and 2.11 provide
instances displaying such characteristics.
Figure 2.10 Italian/Spanish notice on grocery shop window

Figure 2.11 Sign in Spanish/French/Wolof/Berber in Arabic script
The bilingual sign in Figure 2.10 was displayed on a grocery shop win-
dow and the Italian text, written in a formal commercial register, reads
‘In this commercial establishment the sale of beers [sic] ends at 19.30
on every working day’. Non-standard forms include the capitalization
of B- in Italian birre (beers) and the omission of Italian alle (at + definite
article) before the given time, 19.30. The use of the 24-hour clock led
to a manual correction in red ink. A close inspection reveals that the
time was originally included in the typed text, but using the 12-hour
clock – hence 7.30. This will have caused a misunderstanding on the
part of customers and was therefore corrected. The Spanish text is a
rendering of the Italian message, with additions that plausibly address
aspects of (perceived) cultural behaviour. The Spanish employed is not
standard, either, and it shows a higher degree of approximation. This
is probably due to the fact that in the local context the bureaucracy
involved in the process of opening a shop makes one fairly familiar with
formulaic expressions which are typical of that institutional universe of
literacy. The Spanish text reads: ‘Beer is not sold after 19.30. Those who
buy it are fined €500, those who sell it €2,000. Do not insist. Thank you’.
Non-standard forms can be observed at various levels – la (instead

of las) 19.30, use of capitalization, punctuation, text organization,
vocabulary and spelling. The text therefore displays a form of grassroots
literacy (Blommaert, 2008) which is typical of diasporic groups, often
excluded from local elite literacies. However, in so far as it is possible to
interpret its meaning, the text is just as effective in its communicative
function whilst it helps define a voice, and a place, for transnational
subjects. Adjusting to the new environment has meant, among other
aspects, internalizing the notion that Italian has a high institutional
status in Genoa, hence Italian appears first in the vertical dimension of
the sign. On a pragmatic level, the sign is also part of a dialogue with
local authorities insofar as it identifies the shop-keeper as somebody
who abides by the rules. The Spanish version can be attributed to the
fact that a large number of customers are Spanish speakers (typically
Ecuadoreans) and they are individuals who, in the sign originator’s
view, require a more persuasive message.
Figure 2.11 reproduces a sign placed on the corner of a residential
building. The sign looks extremely precarious in its material character-
istics: two pieces of paper are kept together and stuck on an external
wall by brown tape. Part of the paper was already missing and the ele-
ments would rapidly cause it to disintegrate. It looks like the same hand
invited the residents ‘not to leave rubbish here’ in several languages
(Spanish, French, Wolof and Berber in Arabic script) and the author
drew upon all his linguistic resources to communicate the message to a
mixed community where members are expected to understand at least
one ‘national’ language. The reader will be able to detect aspects of
grassroots literacy, such as the Italianism ‘votare’ in the first line (from
vuotare – to empty) where the final -e was erased in order for the word
to look ‘Spanish’ and the non-standard morpho-syntax in the ‘French’
sentence. The execution of the sign was clearly rushed and probably
dictated by sheer exasperation due to the local problem with rats, as the
sticker on the drain pipe to the left of the sign suggests (‘Rat pest control
in progress, do not touch the traps’).
Other signs in the area did not look as precarious. They were indus-
trially produced and the result of more careful planning. Such was the
sign for a Centro commerciale latino [sic], the Latino shopping centre
which provided a number of commercial and recreational services for
the Ecuadorean community, for example a restaurant (where they had
karaoke), slot machines, a travel agent’s, and a hairdresser’s. The semi-
otics of the sign spoke both to a culturally defined target readership
and to a generic one. The ending -o in the word latino reproduced
a rounded Ecuadorean flag, but the information was delivered via

Italian and English in order to attract other potential customers and
by making use of what can be considered formulaic expressions in
use among migrant groups (phone center and money transfer). Financial
transactions were further advertised via the ubiquitous presence of
brands such as Western Union and [Money]Gram, with the multi-
national money transfer company RIA appearing alongside the Spanish
word envia (‘RIA sends’).
Figure 2.12 is interesting in its unusual combination of a Latino and
Arab culinary offering. The term latino, as an abbreviation of latino-amer-
icano, has acquired currency both in the Italian press6 and in academia
and Latin-American individuals are often referred to as latinos, therefore
maintaining the Spanish plural form. The semiotics of the sign indicates
a deliberate expression of a wider diasporic identity that encapsulates
Latin-American and Arab identities (including a concession for Italy),
with different national ‘signatures’ represented by the individual flags
(starting from the left the flags are respectively Moroccan, Ecuadorean,
Italian, Tunisian, Colombian and Peruvian). The verbal message is a
creative mix of resources drawn upon Italian (Gusto Latino E Arabo),
Spanish (Restaurante), and French (or English) (Carthage), although the
presence of the Moroccan and Tunisian flags would suggest the use of
French and so would the ancient city of Carthage, located near modern
Tunis. The Roman biga (two-horse chariot), which stands out as a bas-
relief on both sides of the sign, could be interpreted as a reference to
a wider Latin heritage and influence, and in this vein the background
of the sign reminds us of the geometric pattern of a Roman mosaic.
This would establish a link with local heritage as part of a discourse of
Figure 2.12 Latin-American and Arab restaurant

inclusiveness. The exclusion of the Arabic script would therefore point

to a desire to be transparent to an Italian audience.
Conclusions
This chapter has taken the LL as a lens through which sociolinguis-

tics can contribute to the development of border studies, in part by
its examination of the national border between France and Italy and
its porosity from the understanding of languages as codes. In Nice
and Monaco, although the proportion of Italian is higher than in the
other French cities examined in this book, the long-standing linkages
between these cities in the border area and Italian do not equate to the
extensive visibility of the language of Italy. At one level, it might be
possible to explain this relative absence using the conclusion offered
by Nugent (2012, p. 558) where he concedes that ‘it is perfectly pos-
sible for towns to face each other across the line but to have fairly
minimal mutual interaction […] because the towns in question are
orientated toward their respective centres and have their backs turned
to each other.’ From the perspective of languages and national narra-
tives, as noted in Chapter 1, France has long stressed the significance
of Paris and the supremacy of French, which despite (and quite pos-
sibly largely because of) the close historical bonds between Nice and
Monaco on the one hand and Italy on the other, has resulted in an
energetic and largely successfully gallicization of the public space in
both cities. Nevertheless, in a continent characterized in part by inter-
nal mobility, the LL points to an absence of what Donnan and Wilson
(2010, p. 78) refer to as ‘symbolic clutter’ where LL items participate in
symbolic and performative displays of the border area. Very little sig-
nage in Italian appears in a city that was, in the terms of international
relations, Italian until approximately 150 years ago. In Nice, written
language use inscribes and performs the national border in processes
no longer enacted by a physical barrier, formal crossings, and border
police.
At the same time that French and Italian, as prestigious standard
languages, comment on national borders, regional languages in the LL
also contribute to the bordering process, but from an internal, local-
ized perspective. Nice as a city within Provence boasts its own regional
language, Nissart, which distinguishes the city linguistically from
its neighbours such as Menton (where Mentonasc boasts numerous
Ligurian features) and towns to the west (which are more closely identi-
fied with Provençal). There is some evidence of institutionalized local
borders created through Nissart, as attested by flashes of the regional

language at tramway stops, and street signs in the old city of Nice. As
a symbolic field, Nice is identified as distinct from its neighbours by
occasional regional language usage on the part of the civic authorities,
but there is no evidence within the survey areas of the city to suggest
that other actors involved in the construction of the LL employ Nissart.
In Monaco, it is English rather than Monegasque that performs the act
of bordering from France, although the French language still dominates
the public space in the Principality. Monegasque does reify a difference
between Monaco and France, but its visibility is slight and, according
to our research, temporary.
A denationalizing process of meaning-making through language
in the LL is particularly evident in some uses of Genoese. Even insti-
tutional attempts to appropriate and commodify tradition are not
anchored in a national context, but rather in a local one. The written
instances of Genoese discussed in this chapter, however, project local-
ity either into a past that transcended local boundaries, highlighting
the global impact of Genoese identity, or into a present (and a future)
where place is a function of citizenship experienced within movable
identity borders. As regards migrant languages in the LL of Genoa,
we would like to propose that the LL of Via Prè constructs a dynamic
transnational space where the politics of national belonging and self-
representation as a result of structured, top-down models coexists with
forms of citizenship of the everyday (Dickinson et al., 2008). From this
perspective, routines and daily practices enacted by individuals lead to
the emergence of alternative forms of citizenship. Written practices as
exposed in Via Prè are instrumental in articulating localized forms of
group membership. In so doing they mediate relations of power and
forms of agency, highlighting the social and relational dimension of
citizenship. Via Prè therefore affords othered groups who experience
social and spatial marginalization (Desforges et al., 2005) the oppor-
tunity to create spaces of citizenship where ethnic, cultural, religious
and other identities are promoted by diasporic communities and
where the production of everyday reality is situated at the intersection
of the transient and the familiar. From this perspective the street is
constructed and appropriated as a landscape of transnational, multi-
layered citizenship in the process of continuous re-scaling of degrees
of participation from the supra-national (a wider diasporic community
which disregards national boundaries) to the sub-national (different
types of local communities). In this context specific languages (such
as diasporic Spanish) which fulfil a range of functional uses may enact
territoriality so that borders ‘emerge from the identities carried within

individuals and groups’ (Diener and Hagen, 2009, p. 1206). However,
the LL constructed by transnational identities performs shifting
and movable borders so that they can be produced and reproduced
(Lefebvre, 1991, p. 33) in the spatialization practices of different social
groups.
3
Peripherality in the Border Areas:
Trieste and Northern Catalonia
Introduction
Having explored the LL of the Mediterranean coast of the Ligurian Sea,

this chapter will focus on where France and Italy meet other nation-
states on the shoreline, in particular the Gulfs of Trieste (to the east) and
of Lion (to the west). To the east, the border has been contested over
centuries and was agreed in its current state only as recently as the middle
of the twentieth century. To the west, although the border has been fixed
for over three centuries, the changing status of the territory on the other
side of the Pyrenees has had an impact on the LL in France. In Chapter 2,
we began the examination of the potential of border studies to contribute
meaningfully to sociolinguistics, in general, and the LL, in particular.
For these borders, we make use of the body of scholarship devoted
to the periphery, taking our lead from Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes
(2013a) whose volume on multilingualism in the periphery poses a
series of questions pertinent to this chapter, as well as to Chapter 4,
where we explore the LL of France and Italy’s main Mediterranean
islands. There is, therefore, some overlap in terms of the approach
to both chapters 3 and 4, although peripherality is not the primary
emphasis of our analysis when examining Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily.
Human geography has long considered the connection between
centre and periphery as a useful concept in understanding the dynam-
ics of relationships, and Hilhorst (1971) is amongst the first to frame
this correlation through the prism of domination, where the centre
dominates the periphery. Political science has also tested the poten-
tial of the centre-periphery model, and not merely in the context of
state formation but often with a focus on economics and/or science.
Nesvetailov (1995, p. 854) highlights how socio-economic historians
75
and political sciences have explored ‘relations between an economi-

cally developed, politically strong and culturally self-sufficient centre,
and a periphery weak in all these respects’. In social anthropology, the
centre-periphery dynamic has been investigated within nation-states,
testing the relationship between national elites and local sub-elites, as
well as across national borders and along lines of social class (Staniland,
1970). A common thread across the disciplines is power, and in this
chapter, we use the LL as the site of enquiry for the examination of
relations between speakers and their languages at the borders of France
and Italy. In doing so, this chapter responds to the call from Kelly-
Holmes and Pietikäinen (2013) for the exploration of the connection
of multilingualism and the periphery along the vectors of language
shifts and language flows. The LL is an ideal approach for the critical
evaluation of the ‘display’ of peripheral multilingualism (Kelly-Holmes
and Pietikäinen, 2013, p. 223) and in this chapter, we examine both
linguistic identities and ideologies as they are negotiated in the public
spaces of Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Northern Catalonia. Although there
is clearly a spatial aspect to this understanding of the periphery, we
take this centre-periphery paradigm beyond its geographic perception
to privilege its human and linguistic aspects. Mény and Wright (1985,
p. 1) highlight that physical distance between the periphery and the
centre is but one factor in the distinctiveness of the borderlands; ‘what
becomes essential is distance in economic, cultural, social, ethnic,
political, or even psychological terms’, and we explore several of these
elements in this chapter.
We focus in particular on two languages as they appear in the LL
of Italy and France; in Italy, we concentrate on Slovenian, whilst also
discussing Triestino ‒ the Venetan variety spoken in Trieste. In France,
we focus on Catalan in the examination of the LL of the area known
as Northern Catalonia, but our analysis extends also to the visibility of
Castilian Spanish, given that the national border is with Spain.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trieste: a historical overview
There are only hypotheses about the founding of ancient Tergeste, a

Celtic settlement, and the exact period when it came into Rome’s orbit
is uncertain. Under Augustus, it became a Roman colony and developed
into an urban centre which enjoyed prosperity until the fall of the
Roman Empire in 476 AD. In mediaeval times, Trieste was under the
alternate control of the Longobards and the Byzantines until it came to
be part of the Carolingian Empire in 787 AD (Arneri, 2002). The city was
Peripherality in the Border Areas 77
subsequently under ecclesiastical sovereignty between the eleventh and

the thirteenth centuries. After two centuries of struggles against Venice,
in 1382 Trieste chose to come under the protection of Austria and this
marked the beginning of the long relationship with the Habsburgs. By
then, the city had developed a distinct personality, as a result of the
influence of the Latin, Germanic, and Slavic cultures. Under Habsburg
rule the city was declared a free port in 1719 and enjoyed almost
uninterrupted growth and prosperity for most of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. A cosmopolitan hub, it attracted investors, profes-
sionals, and intellectuals who came from different parts of the empire
(and beyond) and brought different cultures, languages, and religious
faiths with them.1 Whilst Friuli, which constitutes the majority of the
regional territory, became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, the
areas bordering current Slovenia and including Trieste (Venezia Giulia)
remained under Habsburg rule until the end of the First World War. This
period marked the beginning of a difficult time when Venezia Giulia was
the object of territorial claims and a bone of contention on both sides
of the border.
The end of First World War and the inclusion of Istria and part of
Dalmatia into Italian territory involved a change in the status of Trieste.
The city was increasingly Italianized and nationalistic and anti-demo-
cratic tendencies caused a deepening of anti-Slavic feelings. Political
and ideological affiliations, whereby ethnic Italians were considered to
be fascist and ethnic Slavs communist, radicalized existing cultural and
linguistic differences and sense of identity (Ara and Magris, 2007). With
Mussolini coming to power (1922) and the gradual consolidation of the
regime, there was active and violent repression of minorities and of all
their manifestations of diversity. The forced assimilation of Slovenians
and Croatians caused their mass departure: it is estimated that between
50,000 and 100,000 Slavs left Italy during Fascism (Corni, 2011, p. 74).
The collapse of the fascist regime in 1943 also caused a mass exodus:
between 200,000 and 350,000 ethnic Italians left Istria and Fiume
(Pupo, 2005), particularly after the 1947 Treaty of Paris that confirmed
territorial divisions under the administration of allied forces on the one
hand (zone A) and of the Yugoslav People’s Army on the other (zone B).
Therefore the boundary that had been drawn in 1945 and named the
‘Morgan Line’ was maintained and it practically coincides with the cur-
rent border, settled by the London Memorandum and the formal return
of Trieste to Italy in 1954.2
Repression, displacement, and death characterized the relationship
between the Italian and the Slavic ethnic groups in Venezia Giulia for
a long time and painful memories revolved around two main themes:
the ‘exodus’ and the foibe massacres – the summary executions of eth-
nic Italians who were buried in the foibe, natural cavities that are found
in the karst area of Istria. Although relationships have normalized and
Venezia Giulia is a multicultural and multilingual border area whose
residents enjoy the rights granted by a democratic system, it is interest-
ing to note that a desire to re-assert ownership over a very contested
territory has assigned a privileged role to language. In the course of the
discussion it will become apparent that the LL of Trieste and its sur-
roundings plays an active role in the performance of local identities and
as part of discourses of otherness.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia: a sociolinguistic overview
The complex linguistic repertoires that can be found throughout Italy

are further enhanced in regions such as Friuli-Venezia Giulia (FVG), of
which Trieste is the regional capital. FVG gained its institutional name
as late as 1964 and after a number of significant events over the course of
the twentieth century as outlined above. Bordering Austria to the
north and Slovenia to the east, FVG lies at the intersection of the three
main European language families: Romance, Germanic, and Slavonic.
Regional boundaries therefore encapsulate linguistic continua that are
peculiar to the area and that extend into neighbouring countries. As is
often the case in similar geopolitical contexts, the settling of current
borders spanned several decades and was not achieved without contes-
tations on both sides of the frontier. This is particularly relevant for the
eastern border, where sizable Slovenian-speaking communities came to
be part of Italy, which we discuss more fully below. Figure 3.1 provides
a geolinguistic representation of the region.
Friulian, a group of Romance varieties, is spoken in the larger area.
Similarly to other Italian regional contexts, however, the area is not
linguistically homogenous. Venetan varieties are in fact spoken in
Pordenone and in other urban areas such as Udine, in Trieste, and in
other towns on the coastal area, and in the small darker areas on the
map. These varieties are primarily the result of Venetian influence
(Ferguson, 2007, pp. 162–6).3 Both German and Slovenian varieties
are spoken in the area to the north-east of the region (with German
also being represented in the towns of Sauris and Timau), whilst in the
remaining bordering strip Slovenian varieties are widely used. Slovenian
varieties are also spoken in the area just outside Udine in Friuli, the
so-called Slovenian Venetia (Slovenska Benečija), but historical events
TIMAU
SAURIS
UDINE
PORDENONE
GORIZIA
TRIESTE
Figure 3.1 Linguistic map of FVG

Source: Based on Marcato, 2001, p. 26
relating to this community differ from those relating to the eastern

border. Local language varieties feature characteristics that are distinc-
tive to this area and their speakers do not identify with a common
Slovenian heritage, nor do they look to standard Slovenian as their lan-
guage of reference (Toso, 2008a). Italian is usually part of the individual
linguistic repertoire across the whole of FVG.
Consideration and respect for speakers of territorial languages was
a consequence of the general climate following the end of the Second
World War, when human rights were at the centre of reform and policy-
making in the democracies of western Europe (see Chapter 1). This was
epitomized by the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In Italy, there was also a desire to respond to ethnic and independen-
tist claims that emerged in various parts of the country and not just
in border regions.4 In addition to the statement of intent represented
by Article 6 of the 1948 Italian Constitution (‘The Republic protects

linguistic minorities with special norms’), more recent national legisla-
tion has sanctioned the officiality of, amongst others, three languages
alongside Italian in FVG as part of law 482/1999, (‘Norms regulating the
safeguard of historical linguistic minorities’): Friulian, Slovenian, and
German. Within the LL examined for this project, the only instance of
a sign where the four official languages of the region were represented
was the plaque outside the building that hosts regional authorities
stating ‘Regional Council of the Autonomous Region of Friuli-Venezia
Giulia’ in Italian, Friulian, Slovenian, and German. From the perspec-
tive of this chapter, of most significance in terms of national legislation
is law 38/2001, which aims to protect the Slovenian linguistic minor-
ity, and states that ‘The Republic recognizes and protects the rights of
Italian citizens belonging to the Slovenian linguistic minority present
in the provinces of Trieste, Gorizia and Udine.’
As discussed in Chapter 1, regional legislation regulating language
matters started appearing after 1970, when regional authorities came
into being. As a result, significant linguistic legislation has gradually
been incorporated into the regional statute of FVG and includes the
regional laws 15/1996 and 29/2007 for the protection and the promo-
tion of Friulian language and culture, laws 4/1999 and 20/2009 for the
protection and the promotion of German amongst Germanophone
communities, and law 5/2010 for the promotion of Venetan varieties.
The resurgence of a Friulian cultural movement was greatly influenced
by the nineteenth-century scientific activity of the linguist G. I. Ascoli,
the founder of Italian dialectology.5 The main feature of the movement
has been a primary interest in the maintenance and revitalization of the
local language and culture. Efforts in this direction have consistently
relied on a very efficient network of organizations and include a range
of academic activities carried out at the University of Udine (Toso, 2006).
Following regional law 15/1996, for example, the Regional Observatory
of the Friulian Language and Culture (Osservatorio regionale della lingua e
della cultura friulane or OLF) was founded. This was subsequently replaced
by the Regional Agency for the Friulian language (Agenzia Regionale per
la Lingua Friulana or ARLeF) in 2004. According to its (bilingual) web-
site, ARLeF plans and coordinates all activities for the promotion of the
Friulian language and culture (ARLeF, 2015). This includes initiatives
such as language testing for the award of certificates of proficiency in
Friulian as approved in May 2014 (Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 2014).
Speakers of an archaic Carinthian variety are to be found in the
two small centres highlighted in the northern area of the linguistic
map, Sauris and Timau. These communities seem to be the result of

migrations dating back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
(Telmon, 1992). Carinthian varieties are also spoken in three towns
in the Val Canale (Tarvisio, Malborghetto-Valbruna and Pontebba in
the north-eastern corner of the region), which were under Austrian
rule until the First World War. These varieties are usually part of the
individual linguistic repertoire together with Italian and standard
German, which is widely used. There are less than a thousand speakers
of the Carinthian varieties, but their languages enjoy protection under
both national and regional laws and support is provided for initiatives
aimed at their maintenance, including educational ones (Toso, 2008a).
Unlike Friulian, Slovenian, and German, however, neither Triestino,
the Venetan variety spoken in Trieste and surrounding area, nor other
Venetan varieties spoken in the region enjoy official recognition.
Some support for Venetan varieties, however, was envisaged by the
regional law 5/2010, as outlined above. This chapter will not deal with
Friulian, nor with German as a territorial language, because the area
under investigation is the province of Trieste, where these languages
are traditionally not in use.
The surveys
The province of Trieste includes six municipalities where local linguis-

tic repertoires feature Triestino and other Venetan varieties, Slovenian
varieties, and Italian. Numerical information about the local population
is reproduced in Table 3.1, as it is directly related to the analysis that
we provide below.
The data was collected from 20 commercial areas in 2010. 10 surveys
were carried out in Trieste and 10 in the other five municipalities which
Table 3.1 Population in the six municipalities of the province

of Trieste as of 1 January 2010
Municipalities Population
Trieste – Trst 205,523

Duino Aurisina – Devin Nabrežina 8,675
Monrupino – Repentabor 891
Muggia – Milje 13,410
S.Dorligo della Valle – Dolina 5,945
Sgonico – Zgonik 2,102
Source: ISTAT, 2010.

constitute the province. The corpus consists of 9,628 signs, of which

6,312 were displayed in the main city and 3,316 in the province. Italian
featured on its own on 63 per cent (n = 6,095) of the signs, and together
with other languages on 15 per cent (n = 1,545) of the signs. Other
languages identified in the LL were Chinese, Danish, English, French,
German, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Slovenian,
Spanish, Russian, Triestino, and Turkish.
Slovenian in the LL
In border areas such as Venezia Giulia, vernacular discourses of identity
revolve around language as a constitutive and central part of everyday
life, as a repository of cultural and social capital, and as a fundamen-
tal means of survival for the minority group. Ethnographic evidence
highlights the regular recourse to the term ‘mother tongue’ in nar-
ratives of Slovenian identity (Carli et al., 2003). This reveals a strong
emotional attachment to, and the begetting power of, language, a likely
consequence of internalized ideologies of one nation – one language
that essentializes language and is responsible for a monolithic vision
of ethno-linguistic identity (Carli et al. 2003, pp. 868–71). As will be
explained in the discussion of the data, the essentialization of the
Slovenian language has rendered it a sophisticated instrument for both
the symbolic and the material re-territorialization of the area.
It should be pointed out that the high degree of ethno-linguistic
awareness among Slovenians is fostered by a host of activities that
range from leisure through to business, culture, and religion and where
communication takes place in Slovenian. A dense network of coop-
eratives and associations, supported by financial institutions, exists
alongside an ethnic political party (Slovenska Skupnost – Slovenian
Union), schools, and cultural institutions such as a Slovenian theatre
(Slovensko stalno gledališce), a library (Narodna in študijska knjižnica) and
a research institute (Slovenski raziskovalni inštitut). Churches and clergy
have an important role because they carry out their duties in Slovenian
and because they promote religious, cultural, and recreational activities
within the community. There are a number of sports associations, and
the media in Slovenian are well-developed. In addition to weeklies,
magazines, and journals, the newspaper Primorski Dnevnik is published
daily and Radio Trst A broadcasts in Slovenian for 12 hours a day. Since
1995 there have been regional TV broadcasts in Slovenian (Sussi, 2003;
Ožbot, 2009).
Although language practices are supported by positive attitudes
towards Slovenian by the in-group, Slovenian is not endowed with
a high degree of prestige, either internally or externally. It is the language

of a minority in an Italian border area and, internationally, as the offi-
cial language of Slovenia, it does not enjoy high status (Brezigar, 2009).
As far as the visibility of Slovenian is concerned, urban dynamics differ
considerably from extra-urban dynamics. Although 10 per cent of the
residents of Trieste are of Slovenian origin (Toso, 2008a, p. 82), the use
of Slovenian in the city has declined steadily (Carli, 2002). The invis-
ibility of the language contributes to articulating discourses of exclusion
and of truncated identity. There is recent evidence that younger genera-
tions of ethnic Italians fail to acknowledge that Slovenian is spoken in
Trieste (Sbisà and Vascotto, 2007) and that narratives of the Italianness
of Trieste have been internalized by both groups. Slovenian city subjec-
tivities are hardly represented in the LL of Trieste city. Six signs featur-
ing Slovenian were recorded in total. There were two commercial signs
(the daily newspaper Primorski Dnevnik and the bank Credito Cooperativo
del Carso – Zadružna Kraška Banka), one ‘push’ sign on a hotel door,
and three signs indicating types of organizations (a Slovenian associa-
tion and the Slovenian library in the same building, and the plaque
on the building hosting the regional authority, mentioned above). The
general paucity of signs and the absence of private signs in Slovenian
reveal a reluctance to inscribe the self (and to be inscribed) in the mate-
rial texture of an urban context that is synonymous with conflict and
alienation.
It has been suggested that greater support for public written com-
munication of minority languages would be desirable in order to
increase their visibility (Kaučič-Baša, 1997), but other environmental
characteristics can be more decisive and not conducive to a change
in language practices. From an ecological perspective (Hornberger,
2002), language attitudes and opinions held by majority language
speakers about the minority language are just as important as those
held by minority language speakers. The two sets of attitudes and
opinions interact to co-construct discursive spaces and to maintain or
challenge positions of power. Years after the introduction of specific
linguistic legislation in favour of Slovenian (law 38/2001), the LL of
Trieste city demonstrates that it is not possible to establish a direct
correlation between higher visibility of a language (Slovenian) and its
vitality, or between institutional support and language maintenance
(Tufi, 2013a).
The area outside the city in the province of Trieste (see Table 3.1)
offered a different LL. The visibility of Slovenian increased dramatically
and the potential effect on the viewer was magnified, due to the overall
Figure 3.2 Hairdresser’s sign
reduced occurrence of signs compared to Trieste city. A range of signs

initiated by a variety of actors and featuring Slovenian included shop
signs (florists, bakers, bookshops, hairdressers – Figure 3.2, restaurants
and cafés) and signs displaying information for the public, such as
‘beware of the dog’ and a notice about a village festival.
The range of official signs was equally varied. These signs are under-
stood to be issued by organizations such as municipal authorities,
churches and political parties. Municipal authorities and their agen-
cies tend to issue bilingual signs in Italian and Slovenian, and not just
for directional signs, toponyms, or street names (Figure 3.3), therefore
availing themselves of the possibility of using two languages as con-
templated by regional law 20/1973.6 In Muggia a tourist sign featured
English as well as Italian and Slovenian, for example, and Figure 3.4
shows two monolingual signs, Italian and Slovenian, on a bin for
recycling glass and cans in Duino Aurisina. Two hand-written notices
were posted on the door of a church (Duino Aurisina) and on a tree
(S. Dorligo) respectively, whilst information about a public meeting
called by the Communist Refoundation Party appeared in two mono-
lingual versions, Slovenian and Italian, side by side in Sgonico.
85
Figure 3.3 Directional sign
Figure 3.4 Bin for recycling glass and cans

Table 3.2 Signs featuring Slovenian in the province of Trieste
Commercial Official
Monolingual (Slovenian only) 16 23

Multilingual (Slovenian plus another 104 77
language)
Total 120 100
Official signs, however, were not outnumbered significantly by com-

mercial signs, as can be seen in Table 3.2.
This is different from what happens in majority language situations,
where on a 50-metre stretch of a commercial road it is normal to see
hundreds of commercial signs in the majority language and a few
dozen official signs (Tufi, 2010). From one perspective, the visibility
of Slovenian in this area indexes the community and their language
practices, and official signs are arguably a reflection of linguistic legisla-
tion introduced in 2001. Figure 3.3 could be interpreted to be a direct
example of this. A layered double sign (Spolsky and Cooper, 1991)
showing temporal stratification, the sign on the top is only in Italian
and it looks older than the sign below it, which is dated 5 May 2001.
Legislation for the promotion of Slovenian was introduced in February
2001. The inclusion of German, however, cannot be ascribed to the
presence of the German-speaking minority because this minority is
located elsewhere in FVG (see Figure 3.1). The new sign is more likely
to have been added in order to highlight the historical significance of
the road, which was inaugurated in 1780 by the then governor of Trieste
who worked for the Habsburgs. The sign therefore celebrates a time of
splendour for Trieste and its cosmopolitan and multilingual set up. This
sign differs, for example, from a tourist sign which was part of a set on
an itinerary in the town of Muggia. In observance of current linguistic
legislation, the Italian text was dutifully reproduced in Slovenian as
well, but only after the text in English, which is often the default choice
for bi- or multilingual tourist signs. A hierarchy was therefore estab-
lished via the order in which the three languages appeared, relegating
Slovenian to final position.
The remarkable incidence of signs of an official nature suggests a
process of re-territorialization of the province of Trieste, the extra-urban
area that is the traditional site of Slovenian work and life. In this pro-
cess, the Slovenian language performs a number of functions (see also
Tufi, 2013b; forthcoming). First, language and its boundary-making
properties re-enact the border between the different ethnic groups,

challenging the existing geopolitical boundary via discourses of insti-
tutional legitimacy (Paasi, 1991). The local LL therefore transcends the
political border in the creation and maintenance of a cultural landscape
(Anderson, 1996, p. 11). The public use of the Slovenian language has a
central role in the performance of a new material border. It is part of a
wider iconography of the boundary as the manifestation and reproduc-
tion of territoriality as well as of the boundary landscape itself (Paasi,
1996). Second, the essentialization of the Slovenian language makes it
a powerful tool for the linguistic re-construction of places of belonging
in the struggle for survival. Using the ecological metaphor, a symbiotic
relationship is actualized whereby saving Slovenian from extinction
equals saving the community that uses it. This narrative is articulated
in a public forum (institutional space) because it underpins a desire to
elevate the status of the language (and of its speakers) in the local lin-
guistic market (Bourdieu, 1991) whilst seeking public acknowledgement
of it. Third, in parts of the province of Trieste Slovenian is a majority
language and as such it constructs discourses of majority language ide-
ology and practices via the re-appropriation of institutional spaces. The
fact that official signs are over-represented, however, suggests an imbal-
ance between achieved equality in the legal status of Slovenian and per-
ceived power relations between different ethnic groups. From a different
perspective, it could be argued that the act of constructing the LL within
consolidated institutional discursive practices is a way to resist and react
to dominant minoritization practices (Lefebvre, 1991). As a matter of
fact, Slovenian has acquired higher visibility as a consequence.
Triestino in the LL
As already mentioned, the language spoken in Trieste, Triestino, is a
Venetan variety. Triestino is still widely used, due to both the cultural
and economic importance of Trieste in the region and the speakers’
desire to assert their identity as non-Slovenian and non-Friulian (Toso,
2006, p. 106). As a variety of Veneto coloniale, Triestino gradually
replaced Tergestino, a Friulian variety. The LL of Trieste is an example
of how language policy in the components identified by Spolsky (2004)
affects the visibility of languages in the public space. Both the absence of
an institutional policy for the protection and the promotion of the
local language (including a process of normalization of the language
code) and the beliefs of the speakers themselves (Triestino is considered
to be a dialect and therefore unsuitable for written use in the public
space) prevent the local variety from participating in the construction
of the local LL significantly. The speakers’ beliefs in turn affect local lan-
guage practices. Although Triestino enjoys a degree of prestige outside
Trieste as well, language practices remain confined to the oral sphere
and only occasionally do they cross over to literary or artistic produc-
tion, which is in any case intended for local consumption.
Out of 9,628 signs collected in the area of Trieste, only 0.23 per cent
(n = 22) displayed the local variety. Monolingual signs in Triestino
included two shop signs (Osteria de scarpon; Al bon pan) and one sign
(Figure 3.5) that was used on a shop front in Corso Italia to advertise
an audio-book of dialectal poems (Trieste zità de veci?… No, de zente vis-
suda! ‘Trieste: a city of old people? No, of people who have lived life to
the full!’).
In addition, Triestino featured with Italian on two signs outside a
greengrocer’s in Via delle Sette Fontane where the local variety had a clear
ludic function (VIAGRA NOSTRAN – seguire attentamente le avvertenze
‘Home grown Viagra – read the instructions carefully’, put on a basket
of chillies, and PATATON OGM ‘Giant GM potato’ by a giant potato, and
in a poster advertising theatre dialectal performances (17 occurrences). It
is interesting to note that the actual theatre was in Muggia, where they
speak Muggisano, another Venetan variety, but they were advertising
performances in Triestino, which is the urban prestige variety in the area.
Unlike the wide popularity and prestige enjoyed by Neapolitan thea-
tre (see Chapter 5), performances in Triestino are a particularly localized
cultural form (Fischer, 2010). Marcato (2002) highlights that evidence
of literary production can be dated between the eighteenth and the
nineteenth centuries, and therefore much later than other dialectal
traditions in Italy, but it was only in the second half of the twentieth
century that published poetry and prose in Triestino became more
conspicuous. Based on the dialectal data gathered, all signs featuring
Triestino converge to reinforce expressions of localized identity where
the dialect performs specific functions. Using Berruto’s (2006) catego-
ries, the symbolic function is identifiable in the shop signs (of a small
Figure 3.5 Sign in Triestino on shop front

family-run restaurant and a bakery), which commodify quality as an

inherent aspect of authenticity. The folkloristic/museum-like value is
discernible in the sign advertising the collection of poems as a docu-
ment of lived life with archival properties, therefore anchoring Triestino
in the past. That Triestino is a viable means of communication, how-
ever, is testified by the ludic function of the greengrocer’s signs which
is made possible by linguistic manipulation where contemporary bor-
rowings (Viagra, GM) contribute to maintain the vitality of Triestino.
On a different level, the limited visibility of Triestino can also be
attributed to discourses of peripherality that have become progressively
established in a city which is both the material and the symbolic east-
ernmost strip of land on Italian soil. In the competition with Slovenian,
which permeates the public space of the extra-urban area, the city
inscribes itself predominantly in Italian in the performance of a cul-
tural counter-border. Moreover, it should be noted that in the urban
centre Triestino is more visible than Slovenian, therefore reinforcing
the viewer’s impression that Slovenian is marginalized or non-existent.
Northern Catalonia: a historical overview
Northern Catalonia (from the French Catalogne Nord and the Catalan
Catalunya Nord) is the term given to the territory within France that has
historically been identified with Catalunya, and corresponds approxi-
mately to the French département of Pyrénées-Orientales in the south-west
corner of the country. This area, which covers 4,116 km², was contested
through the Middle Ages by France and Spain, with the Treaty of the
Pyrenees in 1659 definitively according the then counties (or comarcas
in Catalan) of Rosselló and Conflent to France (Marley, 1995, p. 14).
The area was originally known as Roussillon during the Ancien Régime,
but was reorganized at the time of the French Revolution, not along
cultural or linguistic lines, but according to topography, meaning that
the département contains the Occitan-speaking wine-growing area of Le
Fenouillèdes alongside the historic Catalanophone counties (Lagarde,
2013, p. 456).
During industrialization, despite the rapid development of Spanish
Catalunya, the citizens of Northern Catalonia increasingly looked
eastwards to France, rather than westwards to Barcelona, for economic
migration. Judge (2007, p. 81) explains that this was in part due to the
railway network, which reached Perpignan in 1862 but did not cross
the Pyrenees, meaning that communication would inevitably be with
parts of France, rather than with Spanish Catalunya. Trade, especially
in the burgeoning market of local products including fruit, vegetables,

and (since the nineteenth century) wine, was accelerated using the
railway network, but for the French national market, rather than to
Spain (Lagarde, 2013, p. 458). Employment in agriculture declined
over the nineteenth century, as elsewhere in France, meaning that the
civil service – requiring fluency in French – became the region’s main
employer. The département is not very wealthy in comparison with the
rest of France; in terms of GDP per capita, it ranks as the 81st départe-
ment out of the 96 in European France (INSEE, 2005).
INSEE reports that the population of Pyrénées-Orientales was 445,890
at the census of 2011, of which 118,238 people live in Perpignan, the
only city in Northern Catalonia. The rate of unemployment in the city
stood at 21.5 per cent of the population in 2010, in comparison with
a national average of 9.1 per cent. Part of the challenge faced by this
part of France is what Castex (2005, p. 130) refers to as ‘heliotropism’
whereby Northern Catalonia, because of its climate and quality of life,
attracts the retired (who comprise 20 per cent of those coming to this
part of France) and those seeking seasonal work in agriculture and tour-
ism, but which leaves them financially inactive during the low season.
Metaphorically and literally, Northern Catalonia is twice peripheralized.
First, it stands as a peripheral corner of France, some 850 km from Paris
and over five hours by train, in what is a highly centralized country
with civic, cultural, and public life concentrated in the capital. Second,
it is the extreme edge of the Catalan-speaking territory, and almost
200 km from Barcelona. From both perspectives, the economic life of
Northern Catalonia is relatively depressed.
Northern Catalonia: a sociolinguistic overview
Although the Ancien Régime up to the French Revolution of 1789 is

largely considered to be uninterested in language policy as long as local
representatives of the Crown could communicate easily with Versailles,
it is inaccurate to suggest that the king and his court did not seek to
manage language use in France, especially in newly acquired territo-
ries. Hawkey (2011, p. 37) notes the imposition of French hegemonic
ideologies from the reign of Louis XIV (1638–1715), whereby Catalan
as a language is seen as contrary to the honour of the French nation,
signalling the start of the decline of the use of Catalan in Northern
Catalonia. As early as 1672, the city of Perpignan was required by the
Crown to establish a school to teach French language and morals to
the city’s elite (Sibille, 2000, p. 41). France’s landmark linguistic legislation
of 1539, the Ordonnance of Villers-Cotterêts (see Chapter 1), was

extended to Northern Catalonia by Royal edict in 1700 (Lagarde, 2013,
p. 457), thereby beginning the official change in language manage-
ment strategies. As replicated across other parts of France, French was
required in increasing numbers of domains, highlighting the language
as what Lagarde (2013, p. 457) refers to as ‘the key to social mobility’.
Marley (1995, p. 18) identifies, over the first century of a French Catalan
space, six measures designed to enforce the gallicization of Northern
Catalonia: the posting of French priests to parishes in the area; the
teaching of French to the local aristocracy; the integration of leading
noblemen into the French military; the enforcing of French law; the
transfer of legal activity to the city of Toulouse; and the focussing of the
administration of the area to the neighbouring region of Languedoc.
Collectively, these measures had an inevitable impact on language prac-
tices in Northern Catalonia and, despite some resistance,7 accelerated
the widespread shift from Catalan to French amongst the population.
For Catalan cultural life in Northern Catalonia, Barcelona in gen-
eral, and l’Institut d’estudis catalans (the Institute for Catalan Studies or
IEC) – founded in 1907 – in particular, became an important cultural
reference point, especially for those involved in the production of litera-
ture and poems. Whilst the intergenerational transmission of Catalan
faltered in Northern Catalonia, Southern Catalunya exercised its right
to autonomy under the constitution of the Second Spanish Republic
(1931–1939), making Catalan co-official with Castilian. This con-
tinuation of the nineteenth-century Renaixença, or revival of Catalan
language and culture, nourished literary production in Northern
Catalonia. The second-half of the twentieth century, when General
Franco’s trenchant language beliefs towards Catalan (and Spain’s other
regional languages) precipitated the decline in use of the language
within Spain, witnessed the emergence of Northern Catalonia as an
alternative centre for Catalan culture. In 1968, in the town of Prades in
Northern Catalonia, the first Catalan Summer University took place, to
promote and advance the cause of the Catalan language and culture,
with courses, seminars, exhibitions, and competitions designed initially
to sustain the spirit of the revitalization movement.
In terms of language activism in France in the post-war period,
Catalan was included in the provisions of the 1951 Deixonne law,
which permitted one optional hour of Catalan teaching in state schools,
although Marley (1995, p. 21) notes that the conditions were not
applied until 1975. Judge (2007, p. 81) argues that Catalan in Northern
Catalonia was sustained by its use in Spain and by the flourishing of its
use in intellectual circles such as the Grup Rossellonès d’Estudis Catalans

(The Roussillon Group for Catalan Studies, founded in 1960), and
the Institut Rossellonès d’Estudis Catalans (The Roussillon Institute for
Catalan Studies from 1967). In a development that mirrors minority-
language education elsewhere in France, the first Catalan-medium
school, as part of the fledgling Bressola (the Cradle) association opened
in 1976; these were offered limited financial support from the state in
1982 (Hawkey, 2011, p. 39). Cerquiglini (2003, p. 92) reports that by
1997, 62 per cent of the population of Northern Catalonia were favour-
able to Catalan-language education in school in the département. In late
2007, the département of Pyrénées-Orientales officially adopted its Charte
en faveur du Catalan (Charter in Support of Catalan) which calls for
local actors to promote the Catalan language, whilst not challenging
the position of French in Northern Catalonia. The Charter calls for the
inclusion of Catalan in signage (Article 4), its use alongside French in
material for which the département is responsible (Articles 6 and 7), and
first and foremost for its official recognition at local level (Article 1).
The surveys
The data for this chapter was collected in 2008, and as with the field-
work undertaken in VFG, data was collected at 10 sites within an urban
setting,the city of Perpignan, and a further 10 places in the periurban
surroundings of the main city, in this case, the département of Pyrénées-
Orientales, including the border towns of Le Perthus, Céret, Prades, and
Collioure. In 2014, the 10 sites in Perpignan were revisited with a view
to reconsidering the visibility of Catalan in particular in the public
space. This chapter will focus on the data collected from the original
2008 survey, not least because this was the systematic recording of all
signs in all languages across the 20 sites, in line with the approach to
all the other investigations covered in this book. Nevertheless, we will
make occasional reference to the 2014 findings in terms of the visibility
of Catalan, since these not only enhance the discussion of the visibility
and vitality of Catalan in the city of Perpignan, but they also contribute
to the usefulness of the LL as a methodology for the diachronic evalu-
ation of language practices in writing (as noted in the Introduction).
In total, 9,645 signs were recorded, of which 76 per cent (n = 7,339)
feature only French; a further 0.7 per cent (n = 70) include French plus
another language. In total, and in addition to French, a further seven
languages are attested in the survey areas: Catalan, English, German,
Greek, Italian, Latin, and Spanish.
Catalan in the LL
The 2008 surveying of Northern Catalonia, and in particular Perpignan,
took place coincidently at a notable landmark in the city’s relations
with Catalan cultural identity and with the notional greater Catalunya
which crosses the borders into Spain and Andorra. Since 2004, the
Organització Capital de la Cultura Catalana (the organization responsi-
ble for Catalan Capital of Culture) has nominated a Catalan city – in
the broadest sense of the term – to serve as Catalan Capital of Culture
for a year, during which time cultural, linguistic, and other events are
staged to promote Catalan identity. In 2008, the accolade of Catalan
Capital of Culture was awarded to Perpignan, the first and only time
a town in France has enjoyed this designation since the launch of the
scheme (although the Andorran town of Les Escaldes was capital in
2011). Given that one of the two primary aims of being Catalan Capital
of Culture are to increase the diffusion, prestige, and public use of the
Catalan language (CCC, 2015), it can be reasonably expected to discern
the regional language in the LL of Perpignan during 2008 and beyond.
The extent to which Catalan is recorded in the LL of Northern
Catalonia is minimal, with 1.4 per cent of the corpus (n = 118) featur-
ing the regional language, of which just over a half (53 per cent) are in
Catalan on its own. This figure is, in itself, misleading and challenges
the usefulness of quantitative approaches to the LL, since a third of the
signs recorded which are monolingual in Catalan are slogans on t-shirts
in the window of a shop on the rue Louis Blanc in Perpignan. The tran-
sitory nature of the LL is underscored by the revisiting of Perpignan in
2014, by which stage the t-shirt shop on the rue Louis Blanc had closed,
thereby removing a significant proportion of the signs in Catalan in the
survey area. Fortuitously, a new gift shop, selling clothing emblazoned
with Catalan-language logos, has opened in rue Mailly, also within the
original survey area. Overall, however, the presence of the regional
language in the public space is sustained to a significant degree by the
decisions taken by the civic authorities in Perpignan. There are several
aspects of the presence of Catalan in the LL of Northern Catalonia wor-
thy of further exploration. One of the challenges of coding signs in the
LL is highlighted here by the proximity between Castilian and Catalan.
Given that we seek here to understand better the relationship between
languages and the actors in the public spaces of the Mediterranean,
the methodology employed for this project calls for the coding of the
language(s) in signs in order to compare the visibility of varieties in
competition. However, where the language that appears in the sign can
be understood to be either or both languages under examination, the
methodology does not permit the level of granularity required. We must

also acknowledge at this stage the double peripheralization of Northern
Catalonia from what we might call a Spanish perspective. On one and
the same time, Perpignan and its neighbouring towns find themselves
at the periphery of a notional greater Catalunya as well as on the bor-
ders of the Kingdom of Spain, whose official language is Castilian.
This coding challenge emerges when we record a street sign in
Perpignan that could be written in either Castilian or Catalan; the
Avenue Félix Mercader is also designated Ronda Félix Mercarder on a street
sign within one of the survey areas. Ronda is both the Catalan and
Castilian term for ‘Avenue’, and so the term could designate the pres-
ence of Castilian, Catalan, or both languages in the LL of Perpignan.
This is also the case for the 12 posters on a shop window on the same
street, which read ‘Super oferta’ – a sign that can be read as Castilian,
Catalan or both. On the one hand, it is possible confidently to code the
‘Super oferta’ posters as Catalan, given the co-text in the space identified
with the poster is in Catalan, and the premises themselves are visually
Catalanophone, since the posters appear in the windows of a travel
agency called – in Catalan – Catalunya evasió. On the other hand, the
‘Super oferta’ posters were viewed as Castilian by the travel agency’s
owner, who identifies himself as a French-born Catalan, and who
received the posters directly from Spain and put them up in the win-
dow of his premises. Although he speaks Catalan, and serves a Catalan
clientele in Perpignan, his knowledge of the provenance of the posters
makes him consider them to be in Castilian, not Catalan. This perspec-
tive chimes with the discussion we have initiated elsewhere about the
aspects of an individual’s character, including prior knowledge, which
govern one’s engagement with the LL (Tufi and Blackwood, 2010). As
such, we contend that this coding dilemma hints at the linguistic ten-
sion of peripheries, whereby individuals’ perceptions are contested and
subject to competing ideologies.
The second aspect of the presence of Catalan in the LL of Northern
Catalonia to be analysed is the role played by Perpignan City Council
in the management of the public space, and in particular its use of
Catalan in signage for which it is responsible. Elsewhere (Blackwood,
2010), we have considered the role played by Perpignan City Council in
emplacing Catalan in the LL, especially within the civic frame (Kallen,
2010). In particular, we analysed the former official logo for the city of
Perpignan (Blackwood, 2010, p. 299), which is both bilingual and uses
the colours most closely identified with Catalunya, namely red and
yellow (Figure 3.6).
Figure 3.6 The official logo for the city of Perpignan until 2012
This logo was replaced in 2012 by one which removes the images of
the Castillet, one of the remaining gates to the ancient walled city at
the heart of Perpignan, and which instead accentuates the text within
the sign (Figure 3.7).
First, it is worthy of note that the two logos include both French and
Catalan; this multilingual approach to the representation of the city is
not something replicated in Nice and Marseille, and was only introduced
into the formal sign for Ajaccio City Council after the initial fieldwork
for this project had been completed. Despite its long-standing history as
a francophone city, peripheralized within a notional greater Catalunya,
the City Council elects to project itself to its citizens as a French- and
a Catalan-speaking body. The extent to which Catalan is used by the
council is not something that can be deduced from its signage; the sym-
bolism of the multilingual sign is, we contend, more significant than
the language practices of its employees. This representation of the city
as Catalan, produced in both French and Catalan, anchors Perpignan
Figure 3.7 The new official logo for the city of Perpignan
within a Catalan cultural sphere in a way not replicated in other parts

of France (such as Bayonne in the French Basque country; Toulouse;
Montpellier; Hazebrouck in Flemish France; Strasbourg and Haguenau
in Alsace; or Brest and Quimper in Brittany). The decision to deploy
Catalan as a linguistic resource is carried out across the city, where
tourist information signs, produced by Perpignan City Council, provide
information for the visitor in Catalan, Castilian, English and French
and most strikingly in the signage for the local multimedia library on
rue Emile Zola (Figure 3.8).
The affective value of using Catalan in this and other signs is, in
many respects, as important as the information conveyed in the
regional language. In the multimedia library, signage is frequently in
both French and Catalan, including the labelling on shelves, opening
times, logos for the library, and directional signs. Of particular note,
Figure 3.8 Bilingual signage in the multimedia library in Perpignan
in Figure 3.8, is the use of Catalan below French in a temporary sign.

Unlike in Marseille, where we discuss the use of French in a space
devoted in theory to Occitan, Catalan is accorded a space in an imper-
manent sign on the door of the library. Although largely consistent in
the balance between French and Catalan, there are inevitably French-
only signs in this space, including the instructions on the main door,
details on how to use the coffee machine, and information on borrow-
ing rights.
In the tourist signs, which identify locations of architectural and
artistic merit in Perpignan, information is provided in four languages:
French, Catalan, Castilian, and English. The use of English for touris-
tic purposes is not uniform across Perpignan, and the sign in the city
centre which notes the start of the pilgrimage route – the camino – to
Santiago in north-west Spain is written in French and Catalan, featuring
the ela geminada, the interpunct used in Catalan to distinguish between
the traditionally short /l/ and the palatal /ʎ / (Figure 3.9).
The sign, erected by the département, adopts the European model of
using brown for tourist signs, and deploys other semiotic resources,
Figure 3.9 French and Catalan in the sign for the camino to Santiago
such as the UNESCO scallop shell in yellow on a blue background, to

convey the meaning of the sign. Of note from the perspective of the
LL is the use of the national standard language and the regional lan-
guage, balanced by the exclusion of English. This sign positions non-
French or non-Catalan visitors as outsiders, who are not addressed by
the languages on the sign, and have to draw on the visual resources in
order to construct meaning (Shohamy and Waksman, 2010, p. 251).
This sign also performs the function of placing the location within an
explicitly Christian frame of reference by identifying the distances to
the holy cities of Jerusalem and Rome, neither of which feature on the
camino.
From the signs for citizens of Perpignan in their local library, through
those informing visitors of sites of architectural interest, to pilgrims
beginning the long walk to Santiago, it is the French civic authorities
in Northern Catalonia, rather than private enterprise (with one or two
notable exceptions) who emplace the Catalan language in the LL. It is
particularly noteworthy that the findings from this project identify the
local councils, who during the centuries since the 1659 Treaty of the
Pyrenees acted to suppress the use of Catalan, as the principal actors
in the use of Catalan in the LL of Northern Catalonia. The Organització

Capital de la Cultura Catalana, whilst based in southern Catalunya,
made Perpignan its Catalan Capital of Culture in 2008. At the time,
this celebration of the Catalan language and culture accounted for a
handful of signs in the city featuring the scheme’s logo. One of the
aims of awarding this status to a town is to increase the visibility of
the Catalan language, and since 2008, it is possible to discern how the
civic authorities in Perpignan have maintained the presence of the
regional language. This emplacement of Catalan, however, has not
been embraced consistently by business or individuals in the city, apart
from occasional nods to the regional language, such as bilingual name
plates for the city on the platform of the railway station, or the use of
Catalan in the welcome sign of the Casino supermarket on boulevard
Felix Mercader. Beyond these ripples, the data gathered for this pro-
ject suggests that Catalan has not found a more prominent space in
Perpignan, and that, paradoxically – given the approach of the state
and its agencies until the latter part of the twentieth century – the
regional language owes its position to the civic authorities rather than
private individuals and businesses.
Castilian in the LL
As with the visibility of Slovenian in FVG, the presence of Castilian
Spanish in the LL of Northern Catalonia differs depending on the set-
ting. In peri-urban areas, especially on the border between France and
Spain, Castilian Spanish figures in the data collected, either on its own,
or in combination with another language. On its own, Spanish appears
in 29 signs in the Northern Catalonia corpus, of which half (n = 14)
are recorded in the border village of Le Perthus, which straddles the
national border between France and Spain and becomes the village of
Els Límits on the Spanish side of the frontier. In a settlement that sits
on both sides of a border, it is unsurprising to attest the presence of the
neighbouring language. The presence of two Spanish banks, Telebanco
and Banco Popular, in French Le Perthus not only account for the pres-
ence of Castilian in France, but also attest to the impact of globaliza-
tion. Although only a matter of metres inside France, these banks sit
in a foreign country and are subject to the banking (and linguistic)
regulations of France. The names of the banks are retained in Spanish,
but other signs are in French, in accordance with French legislation
for language use in commercial activity. More unexpected is the use of
Castilian Spanish on a cash machine, where the instructions on the
machine are given in Spanish. The presence of a neighbouring language
when emplaced by a large, international business highlights the poros-

ity of borders of EU member states, where the free movement of labour,
goods, and – in this case – languages means that French citizens are
exposed to Castilian if they choose to use the Telebanco to withdraw
their euros. Technically separated by an arbitrary border, drawn 350
years ago, the presence of Castilian on its own is an example of Thurlow
and Jaworski’s banal globalization (2011). Further evidence of this kind
of linguistic globalization can be found in the Castilian inscriptions on
the windows of the banks, noting that there is video surveillance and
other security devices. Whilst these signs might well address a Castilian-
speaking public, it is equally plausible that these have been provided
by the bank’s head or regional offices, and used in a branch that is just
over the border in France.
In Perpignan, 18 miles / 29 km from the Spanish border, there are
further attestations of Castilian appearing on its own in the public
space. These differ from those recorded on the border with Spain in
that they are produced and emplaced by private enterprise based not
in Spain but in France. In particular, a pizzeria and a travel agency in
Figure 3.10 Architectural information sign featuring Catalan above the Castilian
text
Perpignan both use Castilian in their signage, including locally-made

advertisements addressing a passing clientele that speaks Castilian.
The travel agency has posters in its windows in Castilian advertising
direct flights between Madrid and Mauritius, as well as inviting passing
trade to ‘Viaje con los mejores’ (Travel with the best), whilst the pizzeria
informs the wider public that ‘se habla español’ (Spanish spoken here).
More often than not, in Perpignan, Castilian appears alongside (and,
in fact, usually below) Catalan. Its visibility is not normally assured by
private individuals and companies but by local authorities who, since
the initial survey of 2008, have included Castilian in some signage
(and notably the information boards regarding the sites of architectural
merit – see Figure 3.10) but in a pattern that is insignificant in compari-
son with the use of Catalan.
Conclusions
The key aspects which we have identified in the two areas via the
analysis of the respective LL are complex dimensions of peripherality,
of the performance of border identities, and of processes of institu-
tionalization of minority status. Peripherality is in fact experienced as
double peripherality in both contexts, but with differences. Within a
context of macroperipherality represented by Trieste and the national
border, language actors compete in the assertion of linguistic identity
and re-territorialize the area via the co-construction of a cultural border.
Language practices consolidate othering processes which have relied on
historically sedimented notions of geographies of bounded identities
whereby Slovenians belong to the rural areas and Italians to the urban
areas of Venezia Giulia (Sbisà and Vascotto, 2007). The semiotic prac-
tices that actualize identity, however, change and interact with given
environments (Hornberger, 2002). From this perspective, Triestino is
assigned internal peripherality insofar as it embodies a form of local-
ized culture and is coterminous with Italian, the language that has been
delegated to assert alterity with respect to Slovenian.
The double peripherality of Northern Catalonia is due to both its
physical positioning and the minority status assigned to the local
language. Unlike the use of Slovenian, the use of Catalan in Northern
Catalonia is mainly symbolic and, as discussed above, the gesture of
including Catalan in multilingual signs is more revealing than the
actual language practices of their originators. As such, the findings
in Northern Catalonia chime with the conclusion offered by Kelly-
Holmes and Pietikäinen (2013, p. 224) ‒ the display of the minority
language does not necessarily overthrow the prevailing language

ideology, outlined in Chapter 1, which sees French dominate other
languages in most functions. Slovenian in the surveyed area maintains
a high symbolic value, but it also fulfils a range of communicative
functions. A common feature of the two regions is that the prolifera-
tion of bi- or multilingual signage reflects institutional management
of the public space and of its inscriptions which are imbued with
majority language ideology. Even in the absence of explicit narratives
of exclusion, the use of Catalan in Perpignan reflects processes of insti-
tutionalization of minority status, given that its emplacement is due to
the civic authorities and not to private agents. This is also the case in
the province of Trieste, where higher visibility of Slovenian has taken
place significantly via linguistic appropriation of public space on the
part of the authorities. In conclusion, it seems that Blommaert’s (2005)
definition of identity as semiotic potential is particularly pertinent
in this context: both bounded identities and multiple identities
are performed via the enactment of different potential repertoires in
the flexible and dialogic dimension provided by LL. This includes those
instances of globalized identities which we inhabit, perhaps temporar-
ily, in the crossing of physical borders which do not represent material
barriers any longer, as the discussion of Spanish in Northern Catalonia
has revealed.
Above all, as highlighted in this chapter, the LL contributes mean-
ingfully to the exploration of centre-periphery dynamics. A close
examination of the material culture identified in this chapter – what
Donnan and Wilson (2010, p. 78) describe as ‘symbolic clutter’ – can
play a significant part in the evaluation of changing language ideolo-
gies, especially at border areas. Language in its written form as part of
the construction of the public space in these peripheral places points
to trends in commodification and meaning-making, especially in terms
of authenticity. Perpignan City Council use multilingual signage to
enact a double identity, but significantly an identity that is not realised
through Castilian – despite the common border – but through the his-
torically authentic Catalan language, and the colours associated with
Catalunya. In the area of Trieste, language contributes to the perfor-
mance of a border identity which is trapped in dominant minoritization
and peripheralization discourses as constructed by the majority. In this
view, concessions granted to the Slovenian group, and that, crucially,
include language visibility, have been exploited within accepted major-
ity ideologies which have encouraged the linguistic institutionalization
of public space. As a result, and unlike Northern Catalonia, cultural

dis-continuity between the two sides of the Italian border has radical-
ized perceptions and expressions of inherent peripherality. Issues of
periphery, identity, authenticity, and commodification are carried over
into the next chapter where we investigate the LL of France and Italy’s
Mediterranean islands.
4
Insularity in the Linguistic
Landscapes of Sicily, Sardinia,
and Corsica
Introduction
The islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily have long been understood as
parts of France and Italy, and any study of these two states from the per-
spective of the Mediterranean demands an engagement with these land-
masses. Language use on islands is exposed to different and, in some
ways, additional pressures in comparison with the mainland. The physi-
cal space between a continent and outlying islands nourishes specific
phenomena with their own sociolinguistic consequences. We do not
presume that these phenomena are limited to islands, but their effects
are intensified in specific ways as a corollary to the fact of separation by
a body of water. Traditionally, insularity has been perceived as a defin-
ing characteristic of islands; insularity favours internal circulation and
we seek to test the implications of this in the LLs of Corsica, Sardinia,
and Sicily, in particular for the people who inhabit these zones. For all
islanders, external borders are not a matter of interpretation: an island’s
territory ends where the sea begins. Geophysical characteristics there-
fore seem to provide the material for a durable sense of identity and
for the preservation of linguistic features that can be generalized more
easily across local varieties when compared to other contexts.
The insular dimension has also meant connectivity, which we under-
stand in the light of the definition by Horden and Purcell (2000) that
highlights the product of movement, contacts and exchanges with other
subjectivities, as well as a well-developed ability to metabolize external
cultures over the centuries. As a result, islands within the islands have
taken shape on all three islands, and have left their linguistic traces.
Connectivity, however, does not seem to be a constitutive element
of insularity, at least in its imagined geography and human geography.
104
Insularity in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica 105
With respect to islands, the transformation of material landscapes into

metaphorical spaces seems to have taken place together with a charac-
terization of islanders as people who are intrinsically indomitable and
‘naturally’ inclined to be independent. These and other elements have
contributed to a certain construction of the self which is highly territo-
rialized and, in the climate generated by theorizations of nationalism
from the eighteenth century onwards, have made island spaces and
communities particularly suitable as models of nations. The perceived
congruence of political and natural borders made islands the primary
sites of nation-states (Gellner, 1983). Perhaps Braudel’s view (1949,
p. 116) that the larger islands in the Mediterranean are miniature conti-
nents best encapsulates both insularity and connectivity. Braudel cites
Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily amongst them and it is their dimension as
microcosms that we would like to bear in mind in our discussion of the
respective LLs.
Another element that seems to be constitutive of Mediterranean
island identity, at least for those islands that are at the centre of our
discussion, is the perception and self-perception of limitedness and
peripherality (as discussed in Chapter 3). Discourses of exclusion from
the mainland with respect to consolidated political entities such as
France and Italy permeate both intellectual production and other artic-
ulations of local culture and have become sedimented in constructions
of alterity. These constructions are characterized by a tension between
awareness of diversity and aspirations of autonomy on the one hand,
and lack of confidence and dependence on centralized institutions on
the other. Conflicting attitudes and duality with respect to the material
and the existential dimension of insularity result in attitudes that are
best described in binary terms (Conrad, 2009). Language on the three
Mediterranean islands has played an important role in the articulation
of island identity, diversity, and peripherality. This chapter will inves-
tigate developments in the perception of linguistic specificity, within a
context of increasing superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007), and explore the
scope for the LL and its authors to communicate a specific island iden-
tity that is distinct to a national one. We test the extent to which insu-
larity and peripherality sustain this distinct identity, through language
practices in the public space of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily.
Within multilingualism, closely related to an examination of
the centre‒periphery forces is the opposition of global versus local,
although for the purposes of this chapter, we reframe the contestation
as national versus local. Although both French and Italian can be con-
sidered as ‘global’ languages, our approach here is positioned in part to
understand the relationship between the prestigious national standard

language – the language of the centre – and the regional languages
and dialects, which are broadly viewed as less prestigious in the centre,
but which conversely, on the three islands, enjoy differing levels of
status, characterized by qualities including authenticity, desirability,
and value (Duchêne and Heller, 2012). As such, this discussion builds
on the body of research into the evolution of multilingualism and
contributes to the wider discussion. As argued by Pietikäinen and Kelly-
Holmes (2013b, p. 5), ‘the changing centre‒periphery relations play an
important role in understanding and reconfiguring multilingualism in
minority language spaces’, and LL research provides empirical evidence
that contributes to the debate on this trend within sociolinguistics. In
addition, discourses of insularity have contributed to the permanence
of an element of ambiguity that is discernible in centre-periphery rela-
tions for the three islands. This ambiguity is partly the result of an
insular elaboration of competing models of regionalism and which
have been characterized by conflict in the three areas. With respect
to Corsica, Lochlin and Daftary (1999, p. 15) identify three types of
regionalism: Jacobin regionalism, whereby being part of the relevant
nation-state is not questioned, but the region demands support from
the centre on the basis of civic equality; autonomist regionalism, based
on the distinctiveness of the region’s culture and identity and leading
to forms of self-government; and separatist regionalism, aspiring to
complete separation and formation of an independent entity. At differ-
ent historical times these models of regionalism have been promoted
by political groups within the three islands and they have intersected
in the configuration of a range of possible outcomes. It is interesting to
note that the recourse to forms of violence or banditry, which have not
met wide popular support but have nevertheless been deployed on the
three islands, is part of narratives of exclusion and abandonment that
resurface in local discourses of insularity and its conflictual relation-
ship with the centre.1
It can be argued that the above models of regionalism are an elabora-
tion of the dual model of national identity, namely cultural as opposed
to civic, as it was theorized and consolidated between the eighteenth
and the nineteenth centuries (Joseph, 2006). However, post-structuralist
views of language have also fed into language practices so that the LL
of Sardinia, Sicily, and Corsica articulate intersecting dimensions of lin-
guistic identity which aim to overcome or transform the cumbersome
weight of tradition. In the context of the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and
Corsica, the centre‒periphery dynamic is negotiated within a given
nation-state, although we acknowledge from the outset that these three

islands have been incorporated into Italy or France, and as such the
relationship within either nation-state is governed to a certain extent by
the islands’ sense and length of integration. It is also the case that the
relationships between each island and the centre of the nation-states are
different; it is clearly inaccurate to assert that there is a generic bond
between islands and the centre. Another dimension to consider is the
extent to which these islands as peripheries contain their own centre‒
periphery dynamic; we have focused our data collection, although not
exclusively, on the ‘capital city’ of each island, and so have selected the
centre of a periphery for this examination. Inevitably, therefore, this
project further peripheralizes places on the three islands beyond the
‘capitals’. This replication of the centre‒periphery dynamic on each
island transforms Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily into models of the nation
states to which they are, in turn, peripheral.
Sicily and Palermo: a historical overview
Palermo is the regional capital of Sicily, the largest Mediterranean

island. Sicily has a rich cultural history and heritage that dates back
to antiquity and that is the result of the settling of different peoples.
The name of the city is the outcome of the Arabic adaptation Barlam
of the Greek name Panormos (port all around), but originally Palermo
was a Phoenician colony from the tenth to the eleventh centuries
BC (Voltaggio, 2010). The city was not dominated by the Greeks,
unlike other areas of Sicily, but was under the Carthagenians until the
Romans took over in 254 BC. It was ruled by Byzantium after the fall
of the Roman Empire and until the Arab conquest in 831 AD, which
transformed Palermo into a wealthy metropolis. After Norman rule,
the golden age of Palermo is usually identified with the time under the
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (Benjamin, 2006). The Emperor
moved his court to Palermo in 1220 and this inaugurated a period of
artistic and cultural splendour. The local vernacular was used for the
first time in the composition of poetry by the members of the prestig-
ious Sicilian School.
Although it was subsequently dominated by different rulers such
as the Angevins, the kings of Aragon, and the Savoy dynasty, the
Kingdom of Sicily lasted until 1815, when it was merged with Naples
as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under the Bourbons. The annexa-
tion of Naples and Sicily to the Kingdom of Italy in 1860 was prob-
lematic. Periods of independentist revolts and protests in the middle
of the decade were violently repressed by the Italian government,

such as by Prime Minister Crispi in 1894 (Finley et al., 1986). Attempts
to obtain independence, however, pre-date Italian unification and re-
surfaced after the end of fascism (Mack Smith, 1997). In 1946, Sicily was
granted a statute which established a degree of autonomy in regional
administration in the attempt to pacify separatist claims (Toso, 2006).
Sicilian ethno-nationalism was elaborated in the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries, a time when language acquired a prominent role as
a component of national identity. Sicily could rely on a prestigious
literary tradition that dated back to the time when Emperor Frederick
II moved his royal court to Palermo and was instrumental in promot-
ing literature through the Sicilian School of Poetry (Marazzini, 2004).
The language used in poetry at the time, however, was a sophisticated
and erudite expressive form that was based on Sicilian and not the
vernacular in its many local varieties that ordinary people employed
in everyday communication. In addition, written evidence shows that
after the mid-sixteenth century Sicilian stopped being used in official
documents, which would be drafted primarily in Tuscan from then
onwards. From the same period, Sicilian intellectuals would strive to
demonstrate that, if not deriving from Sicilian, Tuscan was structurally
so similar to Sicilian that the two languages could be considered to be
varieties of the same language (Lo Piparo, 1987, p. 748). As a result,
Sicilian was not identified as the one and only repository of ethnic
identity. An early embracing of plurilingualism as a value, in fact,
sanctioned the separation of linguistic identity from ethnic identity.
A conception of Sicilian linguistic nationalism was elaborated between
the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries through the writings of
a group of intellectuals and within a context of failed attempts to free
Sicily from Naples. These intellectuals highlighted that learning Tuscan
effectively meant learning a foreign language for Sicilians, and that for
Sicily to be considered a nation, Sicilian should be the language of edu-
cation and public writing. These ideas, however, were isolated and were
not developed further within political discourses of Sicilian autono-
mism and separatism in the nineteenth century. The Sicilian nation
did not need a Sicilian language and, in fact, an excessive emphasis on
a separate linguistic identity would have been contrary to the desire
to participate and be included in European modernizing processes (Lo
Piparo, 1987, p. 750). The perception of the risk of peripheralization
seemed to have been already evident at the time.
Vecchio (2013, p. 6) highlights that, after Italian unification and
the coming into existence of a state in 1861, the intellectual debate
on Sicilian was conducted in different terms. It was not a question of

deciding whether Sicilian was a language or not, but rather a matter of
accepting that Sicily could not be an independent nation. The nation
as an ideological product was not to be separated from the nation-
state and therefore Sicily did not need a Sicilian language any longer. In
the eighteenth century (and before), on the contrary, the idea that Sicily
was a nation was simply a fact, at least in the intellectual argumenta-
tions put forward by contemporaries, and the general lack of linguistic
claims did not make it any weaker (Vecchio, 2013, p. 7).
At the end of the Second World War, independentist tendencies
became very strong in Sicily. Political and cultural separatism, however,
was not associated with linguistic ethno-nationalism in the contempo-
rary form of sicilianismo, or autonomist movement. The characteristics
of current sicilianismo are the legacy of centuries-long discourses about
the nation Sicily not being in need of a language. It can be viewed as
a non-debate, given the non-conflictual nature of its manifestations.
Lo Piparo (2013, p. 51) summarizes it very effectively: Sicilian never
became a language and its unaccomplished status as a quasi-language
epitomizes the history of Sicily, a quasi-nation. Sicilian linguistic and
cultural specificity remained at the centre of post-war initiatives such
as the Centro Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani (the Centre for Sicilian
Philological and Linguistc Studies, founded in 1951), which carries out
academic research into Sicilian whilst maintaining links with educa-
tional establishments. On the political front, independentist groups
have continued to exist to this day with varying degrees of popularity
(Toso, 2006).
Its very geographical position puts Sicily at the crossroads of differ-
ent civilizations and makes it naturally predisposed to embrace and
generate multiple identities. The Norman period, however, was decisive
for the consolidation of its Christian and European dimension. Later
ideological formulations of modernity would deem fragmentation and
diversity undesirable in state-like organisms that needed to be unitary
for them to be considered to be modern (Ligresti, 2012). In Chapter 5,
we discuss stereotypical representations of the Mediterranean and
of its inhabitants when considering Marseilles and Naples. Those
constructions of the South have generally included Sicily and existing
generalizations ignore historical counter-evidence with respect to the
main topoi of represented Sicilian culture. One recurring topos is the
presumed agrarian past of the island that has characterized narratives of
Sicilian life and society, therefore disregarding the predominantly urban
character of Sicilian centres since antiquity (Ligresti, 2012).
The largely neglected urban dimension of Sicily and of its cities’

political and professional networks contribute to an understanding of
those relational processes that made possible such outcomes as regional
autonomist projects and the regional statute. As early as 1946, the
statute allowed a high degree of independence in the internal adminis-
tration of the island and constituted an ante litteram model for current
federalist projects at national level. It is in the framework of this legacy
that we would like to locate Palermo and recent regional legislation,
which is not exclusively linguistic, but aims to incorporate the study of
the Sicilian history, literature and linguistic heritage into the teaching
of Italian and European histories, literatures and languages in Sicilian
schools. This type of effort can be considered to be a continuation of
discourses of participation in the development of the centre-periphery
relations.
Sicily and Palermo: a sociolinguistic overview
The awareness of linguistic and cultural specificity is widespread in

the island, together with the perception of the existence of a form of
regional Italian with peculiar Sicilian connotations. However, the use
of Sicilian in this chapter is to be intended as an abstraction because,
as in other Italian contexts, there are different varieties that have been
studied and analysed extensively (see for example Ruffino, 1997), but
not a single entity which we may call ‘Sicilian’. As the regional capital of
Sicily and its main administrative centre, Palermo has attracted signifi-
cant numbers of migrants from other parts of the island since the late
1940s. Between the 1950s and 1970s, and following the introduction
of regional institutions for the implementation of the regional statute,
large groups of Sicilians from outside Palermo moved to the city (13,000
people per year) and a significant portion of these newcomers (40 per
cent) formed the local ruling class (D’Agostino, 1996). The influx of
Sicilians from outside Palermo, many of whom were highly educated
and went on to take important political, economic, and administrative
positions, favoured an accelerated Italianization of the city when com-
pared to other parts of Sicily. Moreover, the communicational needs of
regional migrants with different dialectal backgrounds led to an early
development of regional Italian. This process, however, was accompa-
nied by a stigmatization of the local dialect, and by the association of
dialect use with problematic areas in the historic centre. By extension,
dialect use became also synonymous with social disadvantage and,
sometimes, with life on the margins of society. As a result, discourses of
identification, acceptance or rejection of the dialect contribute to the

performance of local identities.
D’Agostino (2004) quotes a number of studies which point out that
the regional migrants positioned themselves in a complementary rela-
tionship with existing urban history and culture. Choosing some of the
fast-expanding urban areas as places of residence at the time (1950s to
the 1970s) contributed to consolidating a sense of alterity whilst caus-
ing the decline of the historic centre. The collective internalization of
linguistic and territorial urban maps led to generalized assumptions
with respect to the spatial and social distribution of language practices
in the city. The characterization of the city in binary terms is part of
a widespread perception (Amoruso and Scarpello, 2005): the historic
centre is inhabited by and large by working-class groups who are pre-
dominantly dialectophone, whilst the middle classes reside in some of
the residential urban areas that have grown around the city centre and
use predominantly Italian. In a reversal of the centre-periphery relation,
competing group norms of language use (Labov, 2001) have re-oriented
part of the residents out of the city centre for identity-forming purposes
(Eckert, 2000). This spatialization of identity can also be seen to have
created layers of insular identity characterized by degrees of dialectiza-
tion. Local language practices are in fact more complex than this, but
internalized correspondences between dialect use, social groups, and
urban spaces have also been part of the linguistic and metalinguis-
tic acquisition of local varieties on the part of groups of non-Italian
migrants who have been populating Palermo since the 1970s. The
instrumental use of Sicilian has profound connotations that range from
a means of survival to a means of integration (Amoruso and Scarpello,
2005). It is interesting that the local dialect is re-assigned a positive
value by those migrants who have included it in their repertoires in the
consolidation of their multiple identities and as a result of their linguis-
tic as well as physical mobility. As a result, these new language agents
have incorporated locally-constructed understandings of insularity
and peripherality into their discursive practices, of which the LL is an
integral part.
Language management in Sicily has been characterized in recent
years by a series of regional language laws. Regional law 85/1981, which
represented an attempt ‘to favour the study of the Sicilian dialect and
of the languages of ethnic communities in the island’s schools’, had
the merit, on the one hand, of being inclusive, and therefore of reflect-
ing a democratic perspective on all language varieties present on the
island, a principle which inspired much regional legislation in Italy
following the lively debates of the 1960s and 1970s (see Chapter 1). On
the other hand, the very wording of the law postulated the existence of
a unitary Sicilian dialect, which does not exist, and assumed that the
study of the dialect (any dialect) is unproblematic. The law does not
seem to have been applied effectively (Toso, 2006, p. 157), but what
is interesting is that regional law 9/2011 (focusing on norms on the
promotion, valorization and teaching of Sicilian history, literature and
linguistic heritage in schools), reflects a completely different concep-
tion of the study and the teaching of local varieties. This conception is
clearly illustrated in Ruffino (2012a), where historical, linguistic, and
educational perspectives on the legislation are provided, bearing in
mind the changed context 30 years after law 85/1981. Ruffino (2012b,
p. 16) discusses the possible misunderstandings and the risks that the
new law might bring. Amongst other aspects, the scholar warns against
the likely marginalization of the study of the Sicilian linguistic herit-
age if this is relegated to a ‘dialect class’ which is taught in addition
to existing timetables. On the contrary, in Ruffino’s view the refer-
ence to regional linguistic and cultural specificities should permeate
the teaching of all disciplines and the consequent integrated teach-
ing of regional culture should be supported by well-trained teachers
and suitable support material. More importantly, this view envisages
the presence of linguistic education in the curriculum of all schools.
A holistic view of education underpins linguistic education, which
encourages reflection upon language variety, upon multilingualism
as the norm of virtually all corners of the world and upon individual
and community plurilingualism as an asset, therefore fostering a high
degree of language awareness and promoting the values of cultural
diversity. The concrete application of such an idea of regional culture,
which is never viewed in isolation but in its fertile exchanges with the
national and international contexts, would consolidate the tradition
established in Italy in the 1970s and at the same time tie in with the
guidelines for intercultural education published in recent documents
of the Council of Europe (see Chapter 1). With respect to the role of
the island’s linguistic specificity, however, this view further dilutes
the ties between language and regional identity, at least from an
institutional standpoint.
Regional law 85/1981 mentions the intention to support the lan-
guages of ‘other ethnic minorities’ living on the island. Albanian
varieties, which are in use in three towns south of Palermo and the
vestiges of settlements that date back to the late fifteenth century, are
identified clearly both in national legislation on linguistic minorities
(law 482/1999) and in regional law 26/1998 (which includes measures

for the safeguarding and valorization of the historical, cultural, and
linguistic heritage of Sicilian communities of Albanian origin and of
the languages of the other linguistic minorities). The latter mentions
‘other’ linguistic minorities in addition to the Albanian group. The
reference is to northern or ‘Galloitalic’ varieties in use in a number of
towns scattered around the island. These varieties are the result of set-
tlements of northern Italian groups who moved to Sicily in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, during Norman rule. Although they have
been the object of several cultural initiatives, they do not enjoy any
special protection (Toso, 2006). Once again the inconsistent approach
to minority languages is revealed by the somewhat arbitrary nature of
linguistic legislation in Italy (Toso, 2008a).
Sicilian in the LL
In Palermo, about 30 historical quartieri have been grouped into eight
municipalities for administrative purposes. Fifteen of the quartieri were
surveyed in 2012 and 10,569 signs recorded. Signs featuring Italian,
either on its own (74.5 per cent, n = 7,874) or together with one or
more other languages (14 per cent, n = 1,485) make the national
language the most visible linguistic resource in the Palermitan LL. In
addition to Italian, 16 languages featured on the recorded signs: Arabic,
Bengali, Chinese, English, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew, Latin,
Portuguese, Russian, Sicilian, Sinhalese, Spanish, Turkish, and Twi (used
in Ghana/Ivory Coast). Sicilian in its local and/or regional forms was
identified in 48 signs (0.45 per cent) including graffiti and a range
of commercial signs displayed on removal vans, on restaurants, and
other eating establishments, and on items of clothing for sale. Other
signs featuring Sicilian included regulatory signs such as ‘no parking’.
Figure 4.1, however, can be considered to be an example of institutional
signs insofar as it appeared on a church notice board positioned outside
the church and along the main road.
This poster highlights a charity initiative to raise funds for access to
clean water in Kenya, and the dialectal slogan VIVI E LASSA VIVIRI
(emphasis in the original) both dominates the verbal message of the
sign and is intentionally used in its double meaning. On the one hand,
it is a Sicilianized version of the Italian vivi e lascia vivere, ‘live and
let live’. On the other hand, in dialectal Sicilian the phrase means
‘drink and let drink’, therefore directly appealing to a local audi-
ence who will decode both semantic contents of the homograph and
establish the link between water and life. This link is also established
Figure 4.1 Church poster
at the verbal-visual level through the repeated use of the bold type
font for the word VIVI, in yellow in the image. In order to capture
the powerful underlying message ‘No clean water means no life’, non-
dialect speakers will be aided by the explanatory sub-title in Italian
‘Music and cabaret to guarantee the right to water in Kenya’ and by
the image of the child drinking water from a bottle. The use of the
local dialect in this context reinforces community ties via a call for
solidarity, therefore speaking the language that is closer to their emo-
tional and affective sphere. At the same time the choice of Sicilian is
an acknowledgement of the fact that it still represents a largely shared,
and therefore viable, means of communication. In this instance the

universalistic message of the poster expressed in the local language
challenges notions of isolation and seclusion and assigns dialectal
speakers a dynamic and transformative role. In addition, it constructs
a metageographical space of agency which upsets common under-
standings of distance and proximity.
Conversely, the graffito reproduced in Figure 4.2 can be interpreted to
amplify the distance with centres of power and the immobility of the
insular condition. Graffiti featuring Sicilian included anti-establishment
slogans such as Figure 4.2 (‘Down with thieving politicians’). Of all the
surveyed areas, this type of graffiti was identified in the historic centre,
often in areas which have been increasingly populated with migrants.
In such instances local literacies (written reproduction of Sicilian) and
transnational literacies (signs featuring migrant languages) can be inter-
preted as constructing a LL of globalization experienced as exclusion.
In this perspective, spaces of dissent are cut out of institutional spaces
(a public wall) and emphasize alienation with respect to institutional
authority.

Sottile (2005) highlights the widespread perception that in Palermo’s
historical markets (such as Capo and Ballarò) the dialect dominates.
However, an examination of recordings of sellers calling out to sell
their wares and of interactions (Serio and Soriani, 2005) showed
that the markets are multilingual places where different varieties are
employed, including dialect, Italian, and regional Italian, and where
Figure 4.2 ‘Down with thieving politicians’

code switching and code mixing are widely practised. Interestingly,

these practices reflect the linguistic changes that have affected virtually
all areas of Italy where, at different times and with different modalities,
there has been a shift from exclusively dialectophone speakers to speak-
ers with complex linguistic repertoires.
The identification of the market and of its linguistic practices with the
actual quartiere where the market is placed has been integrated in the
personal and collective mapping of the city and of its signifiers. In addi-
tion, the characterization of the market as a site of socialization and as an
inclusive space where modes of expression are flexible and changeable
has allowed the incorporation of exogenous elements such as the new
languages brought by new residents.
At the beginning of 2013 there were 654,987 inhabitants in Palermo,
of whom 21,326 were foreign (ISTAT, 2013). This latter figure is similar
to the figure reported at the beginning of 2011 (20,252 or 3.1 per cent
of the total population), when the breakdown according to country of
origin was also provided (Table 4.1).
As with migrant groups in other parts of Italy (see Chapter 5), in
Palermo, too, a full immersion in unfamiliar spaces often leads to spa-
tial appropriation and re-functionalization. Migrant languages in the
LL reflect the attempt to make sense of the new physical environment
and of its places by naming or re-naming them so that familiar space
is named into existence. D’Agostino (2006) highlights the linguistic
mechanisms whereby migrants in Palermo adapt the local toponymy in
order to domesticize unfamiliar surroundings and re-enforce personal
and collective memory. With respect to religious sites, she discusses
Table 4.1 The top 10 nationalities represented in the city of Palermo at the
beginning of 2011
Males Females Total
Sri Lanka 1,930 1,582 3,512

Bangladesh 2,273 1,177 3,450
Romania 537 1,700 2,237
Philippines 474 806 1,280
Tunisia 598 531 1,129
Mauritius 522 600 1,122
Ghana 606 471 1,077
China 431 458 889
Morocco 442 402 844
Serbia 244 294 538
Source: ISTAT, 2012b.

the physical and symbolic appropriation of the sanctuary of the local

patron saint Santa Rosalia, which is located on a hill overlooking
Palermo. Migrants with different backgrounds and different faiths (for
example, Hindu, Buddhist, and Catholic alike) go on pilgrimages to the
sanctuary to perform their own religious practices, therefore sharing a
place of worship with Sicilians.
With respect to the LL practices that we observed, we would like
to propose the term nested insularity indicating processes of linguistic
and cultural insularization which have taken place within existing
patters of insularity. As we have seen, this was a result of the social
re-distribution of residential areas following the accommodation of
sizeable numbers of immigrants from other parts of Sicily between the
1950s and 1970s. This process, however, is discernible in the socio-
spatial accommodation of migrant groups. We shall illustrate this
point by focusing on the Bangladeshi and Ghanaian communities in
Palermo. In Italy the Bangladeshi community is the largest in Europe
after the UK. The group is perceived to be peaceful and unproblem-
atic, but this contrasts with the highly divided political affiliations
which are reproduced in the associations that are present in Italy.
The interethnic Associazione 3 Febbraio (Figure 4.3), for example, was
founded on 3 February 1996 to fight racism and to create better con-
ditions for migrants. The sign in Bengali is about a demonstration
organized in Palermo.
In spite of the fact that 30 per cent of Bangladeshi migrants in
Italy have a high level of education, they tend to be employed as
unskilled labourers. This is probably the reason why a growing
number of Bangladeshis have opted to start small commercial busi-
nesses into which they and their families and friends have invested
considerably, but which allow them to have an independent activity
(Cologna, 2013). Even though suburban and provincial areas are their
preferred destinations, the city provides better job opportunities and
it is predominantly in the urban centres that linguistic traces index
their presence, their commercial activities such as shops and small
wholesalers and services for the community such as money transfer
and Internet points.
On Via Maqueda, one of the main thoroughfares in Palermo city cen-
tre and where the sign in Figure 4.3 was displayed, small Bangladeshi
retailers have gradually replaced local commercial establishments so
that their shops lined the street in 2012. The social and sociolinguistic
restratification of the area (Blommaert, 2013) has taken place together
with a wider semiotics of change: both shop fronts and displayed goods –
from costume jewellery and leather goods to fast food establishments
Figure 4.3 Sign about a demonstration organized in Palermo by the Associazione

3 Febbraio
and food retailers – construct a superdiversity of styles, tastes, and tra-

ditions in a relationship of continuity with adapted configurations of
localities. Everyday practices have evolved – the way people eat, what
they purchase, and how they socialize – and in so doing they have
involved, affected, and intersected different communities and enhanced
their degree of agency in identity-making processes. The idea of nested
insularity here refers to both the concept of the linguistic island, which
in linguistics highlights the typological distance from language varieties
employed around one linguistic island, and the material enactment of
social practices such as written language and its demarcating proper-
ties. A similar development was represented by the Ghanaian group
in Palermo, with the difference that in this instance nested insularity
includes outlets of connectivity.
Ghanaian migrants started arriving in Italy in the mid-1980s. Initially
Ghanaian women moved to Italy and found employment as domestic
helps or carers. This is still the case for many of them, but some carry
out commercial activities such as market stalls, shops and hairdressing.
The Palermo community tend to live in the Albergheria quarter, which

is next to Ballarò, one of the main urban markets (Barrale, 2011).
The language in Figure 4.4 is Twi, one of the main (group of) lan-
guages in use in Ghana. The religious expression Yesu ka wo ho [shop]
(Jesus loves you) is widely used in Gospel lyrics (performances are
widely available on YouTube). The reference to religious practices is not
casual. The windows of the establishment in fact display a variety of
signs ranging from an electoral announcement through to an advert
about courier services and film posters, all entirely in English, the offi-
cial language of Ghana. The main sign above the entrance signals the
presence of the given community in the area and it identifies it as the
main local hub of activities: people meet there, they use it for private
and public announcements, and it is part of a network of hubs in a very
eventful and lively area, the market, which is frequented by all sorts of
people every day. The intertextuality and the multimodality of the signs
on the shop window construct the community via the representation
of their meaning-making practices. Socio-religious practices such as a
‘naming and child dedication’ for a new-born baby announced on a
notice posted on the shop window are an integral part of this process
and point to institutions (the Pentecostal Christ Apostolic Church and
the Catholic Santa Chiara) which are infrastructures of superdiversity
(Blommaert, 2013). The ‘naming and child dedication’ represents a
Figure 4.4 Shop providing services for the Ghanaian community

traditional rite-of-passage event whereby the new-born’s introduction

into the community marks their becoming an actual person. Rooted
cultural practices will subsequently be enacted in a space that has been
transformed into a place of worship, the Christ Apostolic Church, where
the ceremony is celebrated. The party will eventually take place at Santa
Chiara, a church in the Albergheria area that has carried out activi-
ties in support of migrant communities, regardless of their particular
faiths, since the 1980s. The celebrations will therefore be accessible to
an extended community of migrants, diasporic groups who constitute
nested insularities characterized by points of connectivity. The given LL
and its explicit intertextuality effectively contribute to the construction
of a meaningful semiotics of participation and belonging.
Sardinia and Cagliari: a historical overview
In an article about political discourses of identity and belonging in

Sardinia, Mazzette (1992) highlights that it is insularity as the primary
dimension of territoriality that allows the individual to perform their
social, cultural, and political identity. The peculiarity of the insular
dimension is instrumental in the construction of the border between
(or around) the inside and the outside. The inside is characterized by
permanent Sardinianness as a given whereas the outside is character-
ized by a material and metaphorical configuration which is mutable
and dependent on the relationship with the outside, be it Italy, the EU,
or any other entity to be opposed to Sardinia (Mazzette, 1992, p. 370).
Mazzette’s research also revealed that Sardinian society is made to coin-
cide with the Sardinian ethnic group whose constitutive elements are the
linguistic, historical, and cultural heritage (1992, p. 373). Significantly,
language is identified as the element of unity (therefore disregarding
internal linguistic fragmentation) that has allowed the Sardinian people
to resist outside influences and maintain internal integrity. Claiming
the Sardinian nation, however, does not equal claiming independence
from Italy, but rather an enhanced form of self-government or autono-
mist regionalism as identified in Lochlin and Daftary (1999, p. 15). The
Sardinian form of autonomist regionalism, however, differs from that
of Sicily insofar as the language question has, especially in recent times,
often been at the centre of a lively debate. The wider public has gener-
ated and/or transmitted discourses of linguistic identity that revolve
around the essentialization of Sardinian and this process has been sup-
ported by open manifestations of linguistic activism. Contradictions
and opposing tensions have run through linguistic regionalism on
Sardinia so that the awareness of peripherality and vulnerable insular-

ity has alternated or co-occurred with forms of antagonism with the
Italian state. Language ideology has greatly influenced the debate and
contributed to an outcome that leaves Sardinians deeply divided over
the language issue. To draw upon the centre‒periphery metaphor and
its linguistic implications as elaborated in Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes
(2013a), the regional centre of normativity has reproduced national/
regional dynamics and this has caused the rejection of a model of
Sardinian for the sake of localized linguistic assertiveness. Sardinia
therefore seems to display a multiplicity of nested insularities. If Sicilian
can be considered to be the quasi-language of a quasi-nation (Lo Piparo,
2013, p. 51), Sardinian actually enjoys the official status of language in
an autonomous region (a small nation), but external recognition of its
cultural and linguistic specificity does not seem to curb processes of
language shift as shown by the islanders’ language practices.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Cagliari, the regional capital
of Sardinia, was founded in the neolithic period (6000–3000 BC). The
Phoenicians established the colony of Karalis and transformed it into a
lively commercial port from the eighth century BC. In 238 BC, it came
under the control of the Romans, who granted it the status of munici-
pality. Subsequently, the city was ruled by Byzantium before becoming
the centre of an independent giudicato in the Middle Ages (the giudicati
were autonomous administrative units in Sardinia between the ninth
and the fifteenth centuries, Brigaglia et al., 2006). In the meantime,
the Sardinian coasts had been the target of periodic Moorish incursions
that had caused the retreat of parts of the population into the interior
of Sardinia, and this history of internal migrations would bear particular
significance with respect to the linguistic debate about what consti-
tutes real Sardinian. In addition, the period between the sixth and the
ninth centuries AD marked a time of isolation from the Latin tradition
and of consolidation of the local vernaculars. Scholars therefore date
back to the early Middle Ages the configuration of a language which
maintained archaic traits in its internal development when compared
to the vernaculars in use in other parts of Romance-speaking Europe
and which consistently appeared in written legal documents instead
of Latin (Paulis and Lupinu, 2006). Conversely, the absence of literary
texts in Sardinian in the medieval period was experienced as a cultural
deficiency that needed to be remedied. Extreme solutions to this void
materialized over the course of the nineteenth century, at a time when
language was gaining a privileged place as a marker of national identity,
and included the discovery of medieval literary texts of dubious origin
in the attempt to demonstrate that Sardinian literary production had

pre-dated the poetry composed by the members of the Sicilian School
(Lorinczi, 1997).
Cagliari, together with other parts of Sardinia, came under the sphere
of influence of the powerful city of Pisa prior to the Hispanic domina-
tion (1323–1720). Both civilizations left linguistic traces in Sardinian;
for instance, the former has been considered to be responsible for the
Tuscanization of Campidanese, the vernacular of Cagliari, and of south-
ern Sardinia (Blasco Ferrer, 1984). A direct example of the linguistic
influence exercised by the Hispanic domination is a linguistic island
that survives in the north-western town of Alghero, where a variety of
Catalan is still in use. The year 1718 marked the end of Spanish rule
of Sardinia. The island was united with Piedmont under the house of
Savoy, therefore constituting part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Given
that the Piedmontese rulers would eventually become the rulers of Italy
after the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, this period
marked the beginning of a problematic relationship with the peninsula,
always characterized by a desire for self-determination on the one hand
and an awareness of economic dependency on the other.
The idea that the internal and mountainous areas of Sardinia were
the more authentic parts of the island – a concept that finds an echo
on Corsica – insofar as they had been sheltered from external cultural
and linguistic influences, consolidated itself between the nineteenth
and the twentieth centuries (Brigaglia et al., 2006). Sardinian national
conscience and pride were elaborated between 1825 and 1850, when
local historiography laid the foundations of Sardinian representations
and self-representations. It was at this time that the Sardinian language
as an expression of Sardinianness acquired a privileged role. From this
perspective, the normative grammars of the nineteenth century can be
seen as an attempt to confer prestige and lustre to the Sardinian lan-
guage, and it was therefore natural that such prescriptive texts should
describe the Logodurese variety. This variety was based on the literary
language (Dettori, 1988), in use in the northern and more internal
areas of the island, and it fitted the ideals of archaicity and purity
that were the pre-requisites for a language that served the purposes of
a (small) nation. Scholars of Sardinian linguistics contributed to the
consolidation of the existing language ideology by carrying out field-
work in the more internal and isolated parts of Sardinia in the early
twentieth century (Wagner, 2001). Speakers of Logudorese became the
ideal repositories of existing linguistic stereotypes, and interpretations
of pre-modern ethnic and ethnolinguistic characteristics of the group,
and by extension of the Sardinian people, would account for much of

the change observable in the current linguistic practices of the islanders.
Issues of peripherality, amongst which the association of Sardinian
use with under-development, and the perceived risk of permanent iso-
lation at least partly explain the gradual shift to Italian that has been
taking place on Sardinia. Whilst language shift has been registered in
the whole of Italy in the post-war period (see Chapter 1), there have
been noticeable regional differences with respect to the rediscovery of
local culture and the re-evaluation of the local linguistic heritage that
have taken place since the 1960s. It can be argued that, in Sardinia,
the perception and self-perception of isolation and marginality has
provided additional grounds for a reduction in local language use and
transmission, seen as a hindrance to modernization, emancipation, and
social mobility.
Sardinia and Cagliari: a sociolinguistic overview
Political efforts to articulate a Sardinian revival, or neo-sardismo, date

back to the late 1960s and they were coupled with nationalist claims
based on assertions of cultural distinctiveness (Clark, 1996b, p. 97).
The movement brought about new opportunities for the institutional
acknowledgement of linguistic specificity and for language provision.
Following a period of intense activism and debate in the 1970s and
1980s, increased awareness on the part of the general public provided
a broad consensus towards the formulation of regional language leg-
islation (Rindler Schjerve, 1993). The most significant outcome was
the introduction of regional law 26/1997, on the promotion and val-
orization of Sardinian culture and language. This preceded national
law 482/99, which established that Sardinian was one of the official
minority languages of the Italian state. The first institutional attempt to
provide Sardinian with a written norm (Limba Sarda Unificada – Unified
Sardinian Language) was made in 2001 (Regione Autonoma della
Sardegna, 2001), but the outcome was very controversial. Elements of
both academia and public opinion rejected a linguistic model which
was based on Logudorese, that is the variety of Sardinian that had
been identified as the most authentic and therefore deserving of stand-
ardization.2 Plans in favour of Limba Sarda Unificada were therefore
abandoned and in 2006 the regional administration adopted a written
variety of compromise, the Limba Sarda Comuna or Common Sardinian
Language (Regione Autonoma della Sardegna, 2006), for the purposes of
internal communication. The results of a comprehensive sociolinguistic
survey on language use were published in 2007 (Oppo, 2007) and,

amongst other aspects, it confirmed the slow but steady decline in the
use of local varieties, mostly noticeable in the lack of intergenerational
transmission, in favour of a shift to Italian. The survey highlighted the
many tensions and contradictions that characterize language attitudes
and practices, but for our purposes what is more important to identify
is the profound and continued engagement with the language question
on the part of language agents. The essentialization of Sardinian still
pervades positive attitudes and opinions towards the local language
and has fostered forms of deep emotional attachment to it. As a matter
of fact, however, language practices seem to work against hard-fought
institutional concessions in terms of language maintenance, and they
effectively reflect a separation between regional/ethnic identity and
linguistic identity (Blackwood and Tufi, 2012). It seems plausible to
suggest that the awareness of peripherality with respect to national (and
international) centres of power has been influential in both the elabora-
tion and the consolidation of language ideology and in the manifesta-
tions of linguistic activism. Official recognition of linguistic specificity,
however, has not been conducive to the reconciliation of multiple lin-
guistic identities so that the duality that seems to characterize islanders
(Conrad, 2009) persists in the separation between the thinking and the
feeling about language on the one hand and the gradual shift to the
national idiom on the other (Pavlenko, 2006).
Although the use of Sardinian is being eroded steadily, Oppo (2007,
p. 7) reports that 68 per cent of Sardinians speak a form of Sardinian
and that an additional 29 per cent have a passive knowledge of one
variety. In spite of it still being widely used, the local language does
not seem to be employed in the local LL conspicuously, therefore
pointing to a reluctance to draw upon Sardinian as a viable linguistic
resource for those written practices that contribute to the construction
of the public space. The sporadic examples of written Sardinian seem
to fall mainly into two categories, which contribute to articulating
opposing discourses on Sardinian. One category is that of institutional
signs which testify to the gained status of the language following the
political militancy of past decades and the legislative sanctioning of
such status. A plaque identifying the office of the provincial council of
Cagliari is a pertinent example insofar as it duly displays both Italian
and Sardinian.
The other category includes signs that make a direct or indirect refer-
ence to tradition (see 4.x below for a discussion). Be it the name of a
restaurant, the label on some locally produced foodstuffs, or an artistic
Figure 4.5 ‘The bread oven’ (Sardinian)
mural (Figure 4.5), these signs celebrate the language of the past and not
of the future. The local LL therefore reproduces the duality of existing
discourses about Sardinian and reinforces both in-group and out-group
perceptions of cultural and linguistic insularity.
Sardinian in the LL
Cagliari is administratively divided into 33 quartieri, of which four
constitute the historic centre. Given the small size of the city (157 297
inhabitants), 12 surveys were carried out in the city of Cagliari and
eight in the surrounding area including the towns of Assemini, Quartu
Sant’Elena, Quartucciu, Selargius, and Sestu, with a total population
of 315,967 (ISTAT, 2008). Italian is the most visible language in the
area. Out of 11,379 signs collected in 2008, 79 per cent (n = 9,031)
featured Italian, either on its own (60.1 per cent, n = 6,905) or together
with one or more languages (18.6 per cent, n = 2,126). In addition to
Italian, 17 languages featured on the recorded signs: Arabic, Chinese,
Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hindi (tran-
scription), Japanese, Latin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Sardinian, and
Spanish. Sardinian featured on 31 signs (0.27 cent of the total). Nine
signs were monolingual, of which six were graffiti, two were regula-
tory signs (translating a no smoking notice into the local language)
and one was a sticker displaying (part of) the name of a local political
party, Sardigna Natzione Indipendentzia (For the Independence of the
Sardinian Nation). Linguistic militancy on Sardinia has traditionally
been high on the agenda of political parties such as Sardigna Natzione
Indipendentzia, which has consistently campaigned for Sardinian
independence since 1994 (Sardigna Natzione, 2015). The party, how-
ever, relies on limited support and has never gained any seats either
in the national parliament or in the regional assembly (Ministero
dell’Interno, 2015). Whilst marking the public space with an assertion
of the national status of the island, the sign also acts as a reminder of
the limited incidence of such political initiatives which remain invis-
ible to national state structures.
Of the remaining signs, 15 also featured Italian (as in Figure 4.6), four
English and three both Italian and English.
The signs in Figure 4.6 were in the centre of Quartu Sant’Elena. The
top sign (Via Eligio Porcu) is in the standard format and material used
throughout the town. For well-informed locals, Eligio Porcu was a
military hero who was awarded the highest decoration for valour fol-
lowing his death in the First World War. The road is therefore dedicated
to a distinguished local figure, as is often the practice in Italian town
centres, and it does not need additional explanations (Amos, forthcom-
ing). Events relating to the First Word War occupy a significant place in
Sardinian collective memory and have contributed to discourses of her-
oism and sacrifice. The regional regiments of the Sassari Brigade became
legendary for their courage and heroism and, importantly, they created
the opportunity for groups of Sardinians coming from different areas
of the island to get to know each other for the first time. The brigade
therefore fostered a sense of community and created strong loyalties
to Sardinia (Clark, 1996a, p. 88). It is not by chance that signs such as
the bottom one have been added in the more central areas, coinciding
with the original village, to remind the viewer of local heritage and of
how the simple act of place-naming has carried the weight of important
historical and political events. In terms of emplacement, the histori-
cal sign appears below the current sign because its primary function is
not regulatory or denotative; rather, it is documentary. Linguistically,
Bia de Cuventu (Convent Road) is in Sardinian, and the gloss explains
‘documented in 1846’. Via Centrale (Central Road) is instead in 1875
records and it is in Italian. By 1846 Sardinia had been under Savoy rule
for more than a century, but roads were assigned names in Sardinian.
Figure 4.6 Street signs, one in Italian (top) and one in Sardinian and Italian
(bottom)
By 1875, the Kingdom of Italy had been in existence for 14 years, but
the use of Italian had clearly been extended to the whole of the state
for public functions. The two signs therefore construct a narrative for
public consumption which is multilayered and points to different dis-
courses of power and power relations articulated in different languages.
The signs also reproduce the tension between conflicting loyalties on
the one hand, and between conflicting models of regionalism on the
other within an overall rejection of insularity.

Although the number of economic migrants in Sardinia has increased
steadily from the 1980s, it is much lower than that of other regions of
Italy. At the beginning of 2009, migrants represented less than 2 per
cent of the local population in Sardinia, whilst the national average
was approximately 7 per cent (ISTAT, 2012b). Unlike in other regions
of Italy, however, migrants are present in the vast majority of Sardinian
towns. This is mainly due to the fragmentation of the local labour mar-
ket, offering relatively few opportunities, and to the main occupations,
such as itinerant selling, of some of the largest immigrant groups (Zurru,

2007). Zurru (2010) highlights that the majority of Sardinia’s migrants
have not been joined by their respective families, an indication of the
fact that their intention is not to stay on the island long-term. This
potentially adds to the degree of mobility that characterizes these indi-
viduals. Table 4.2 lists the top 10 national groups represented in the
province of Cagliari at the end of 2008 (ISTAT, 2008).
In the surveyed areas of Cagliari and its environs, traces of migrant
languages were few and far between (see also Tufi, 2010). The 14 signs
recorded were all commercial and featured Arabic (seven), Chinese (six)
and Hindi (one) together with Italian or with Italian and English. While
Chinese characters appeared alongside Italian in the relevant signs,
what was coded as ‘Arabic’ and ‘Hindi’ in these instances were transcrip-
tions of proper names such as ‘Al-Amin’. This aspect and the general
absence of language used for internal communication point to two
possible explanations. On the one hand, the fact that the relevant com-
munities are scattered around the island does not seem to provide the
context for an active inscription of one’s own linguistic contribution in
the local LL. On the other hand, transliterated proper names represent
an early attempt to negotiate portions of space on the part of new lan-
guage agents. The symbolic value of this operation is particularly signifi-
cant insofar as the act of naming acquires a primary identity dimension
and claiming part of the public space can be interpreted as a request for
inclusion in the local human geography. Claiming ownership of and
primary access to a small segment of space that is inherently Sardinian
Table 4.2 Top 10 national groups represented in the province of Cagliari at the
end of 2008
Males Females Total

Romania 265 722 987
China 510 462 972
Morocco 607 352 959
Senegal 887 65 952
Ukraine 91 689 780
Germany 243 226 469
Tunisia 208 139 347
Pakistan 207 38 245
Bosnia-Herzegovina 115 118 233
Source: ISTAT, 2008.

highlights the ‘demarcating’ power of space and its active involvement

in the construction of social reality (Blommaert, 2013). Once again it
is clear that the characteristics and the histories of migrant groups and
of the regions where they live and work account for a set of variables
which will influence the level of interaction between space and actors.
These variables will also assign a certain degree of agency to languages
and language communities at a given time. For the purposes of this
chapter, the LL of Cagliari and of its surroundings constructs sporadic
identity markers on the part of migrants which reinforce the existence
of multiple nested insularities which have been accommodated along-
side existing nested insularities on the island.
Corsica and Ajaccio: a historical overview
Throughout the Middle Ages, Corsican was swapped like a coveted pos-
session between the city states of Pisa and Genoa, leading to the settled
pattern of diglossia (Fishman, 1967), with Tuscan Italian used as the H
language, and Corsican as the L language. Casta (1995, p. 135) contrasts
the position and status of both languages by classifying Tuscan Italian as
the language of gentlemen, in comparison with Corsican – the language
of the shepherds. Although the island was positioned firmly within an
Italo-Romance sphere, there were brief interludes of direct involvement
from colonizers from other language areas, such as the fifteenth-century
spell when the Kings of Aragon controlled the island, and a first taste of
French rule in the middle of the sixteenth-century under Henri II. These
interventions had little tangible impact on language practices in Corsica.
Within this well established diglossia, not all islanders spoke Tuscan
Italian, largely for the rather prosaic reason that the domains associated
with the H language were ones to which many on the island did not
have access, either by choice or necessity (Blackwood, 2004, p. 135).
As one of the Mediterranean’s most mountainous islands, communica-
tion across Corsica was both limited and challenging, which resulted
in the persistence of numerous varieties of Corsican, each with varying
levels of mutual intelligibility. From a Corsican perspective, this is the
context of the nested insularity we explore in this chapter. The state of
linguistic diversity was perpetuated by the lawlessness of the island dur-
ing much of the Middle Ages, where villages protected themselves from
external interference from pirates, Saracens, and a steady flow of invad-
ing forces (Blackwood, 2008, p. 12). The eighteenth century opened
with Genoa struggling to control Corsica, not only in terms of the local
uprisings against Genoese rule, but as a consequence of external attacks,
motivated by the island’s strategic position within the Mediterranean.

Glossed as Corsica’s brief interlude of independence, from 1755 to 1769
Pasquale Paoli led the island, from the mountain town of Corte, and
wrote – in Tuscan Italian – a constitution for an independent Corsica.
Paoli’s rule was centred largely on the island’s interior, whilst Genoa
continued to hold much of the coastline. This period coincided with the
Seven Years War, which saw France and Great Britain in conflict in the
Mediterranean, at which point Genoa relinquished its claim to Corsica,
and agreed (as part of the 1768 Treaty of Versailles) to cede the island to
France. This transfer of ownership from Genoa to France is viewed by
some, especially in Corsican nationalist rhetoric (Arrighi and Pomponi,
1997, p. 75) as the sale of Corsica, and was resisted on the island by
Paoli’s forces until the decisive battle of Ponte-Nuovo in 1769 which
definitively marked the start of French rule that lasts to the present day.
The period from 1769 to the twenty-first century can be characterized
by the highly successful introduction of French into the linguistic reper-
toire of the island, and the diminishing of the use of both Corsican and, in
a much more comprehensive way, Tuscan Italian. The pace of the transfer
of domains from Tuscan Italian to French accelerated after the French
Revolution of 1789, although initially rather slowly. The nineteenth
century was marked by the gradual realignment of Corsica’s orbit away
from Italy and towards France; for much of this period, as noted by Thiers
(1989, p. 32), Corsica was ‘largely anchored in the cultural and ideologi-
cal sphere identified with the Italian language’. This focus on Italy was
as much practical as anything else, given the proximity of the island to
the peninsula, the tradition of Italian scholarship for the training of the
island’s elite (Marchetti, 1989, p. 77), and the trade links that made the sup-
plying of the island with produce and newspapers the only feasible option
during the winter. Nevertheless, over the nineteenth century, with the
establishment of compulsory, free, secular education – delivered exclu-
sively in French – as its climax, the status and use of French eclipsed Tuscan
Italian, not least because of the economic advantages associated with
mastery of the prestigious national standard language (such as through
employment in the rapidly expanding civil service).
Although it is important not to overstate its significance, the treat-
ment of Corsica by Fascist Italy during the Second World War marked
the end of direct Italian influence over the island. During the 1930s,
some Corsican intellectuals (such as Petru Rocca), Italian Fascists, and
a small minority of islanders championed Italian irredentism. The
behaviour of Italian troops in Corsica, when eventually they occupied
the island from 1942 onwards (Chaubin, 2005, p. 13), shattered any
illusions of fraternity between Corsica and Italy, and post-liberation,

Corsicans identified first and foremost with France (Silvani, 1976,
p. 32), and – conflating Corsican with Italian – the use of the regional
language was viewed with suspicion (Gauthier, 1982, p. 114). The defin-
itive break with Italian culture in the middle of the twentieth century
resulted in a re-centring of multilingualism on Corsican within a French
territory. It is in education that the use of the Corsican language is most
strikingly marked since the end of the Second World War. Corsican was
not included in the landmark Deixonne law of 1951 (see Chapter 1),
which, for the first time, permitted the optional teaching of four of
France’s regional languages for an hour a week in secondary school.
Highly symbolic, although of little practical benefit (Blackwood, 2007,
p. 21), the Deixonne law was extended to include Corsican in 1974,
from which point onwards the pace of Corsican-language formal edu-
cation accelerated dramatically. By this time, Corsican cultural life had
embraced the language through societies, such as Scola Corsa (Corsican
School), which revived informal language teaching and coupled it with
traditional activities, and through the production of cultural matter,
including Corsican song and literature (Jaffe, 1999, pp. 127–28).
Since 1982, Corsica has enjoyed a unique status within France, having
been endowed with its own Regional Assembly with rights to address
economic, social, and cultural issues pertinent to the island (Adrey,
2009, p. 188). This fundamental change in the political management
of France was heralded by the election of the country’s first Socialist
president, François Mitterrand. In 1991, Corsica was granted its status
of Collectivité Territoriale (Territorial Authority), which incrementally
assumed responsibilities for the island’s economic development, envi-
ronment, transport infrastructure, and – significantly from the perspec-
tive of the LL – the Corsican language and culture. By the end of the
twentieth century, Corsican language activism had ceased to be a con-
cern only for separatist movements (Judge, 2007, p. 105), and this both
explains and is illustrated by the extension of the regional language into
such H domains as education and the media. However, Adrey (2009,
p. 202) is ambivalent regarding the vitality of Corsican, highlighting the
decrease in its use and ‘the perceived disengagement of the population’,
especially in certain socio-economic groups.
This overview of Corsica’s geopolitical history points to some of the
competing narratives in the multilingual situation on the island in
the twenty-first century. Corsican has been spoken on the island for
far longer than French, although it never achieved prestigious status
and was always subordinated to an esteemed ‘standard’ language. The
imposition of the French language on the island is a relatively recent

phenomenon, and one which still features in contemporary represen-
tations of the modernization of Corsica. At its heart is conflict, with
an independent Corsica – whose institutions privileged Tuscan Italian
rather than a lingua dei pastori (the language of the shepherds, Casta,
1995, p. 135) – ranged against a colonizing power in the form of
France. The subsequent treatment of Corsica, with the outlawing of the
Corsican language for official purposes, and the refusal by the state to
recognize formally Corsican as a collective identity, rejecting the notion
of ‘the Corsican people’ (Blackwood, 2008, p. 80) has led to the creation
of a Corsican cultural identity set up in opposition to French identity
(see also Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes, 2013a). This contestation is
not a universal experience on the island, and, as in many parts of the
West, islanders live out complex, compound identities with little
difficulty. The decentralization of powers since the 1980s has meant that
islanders – through their elected representatives in the tiers of regional
government – are responsible for their own language management
strategies, but on the explicit understanding that French is the language
of the Republic and must be used in all aspects of official life.
Corsica and Ajaccio: a sociolinguistic overview
Unlike in Italy, where regional laws (discussed above) pertain to specific

parts of the country, in France, the centralizing tendencies of govern-
ments since long before the Revolution have meant that binding deci-
sions on formal language management are made in Paris for the whole
of France. However, the decentralization measures highlighted above
have had consequences in terms of legislation. On several occasions
since the start of the 1980s, the regional authorities, based in the city
of Ajaccio on the south-western coast of Corsica, have sought to engage
in language management, often with strikingly radical ambition. As
early as 1983, the Regional Assembly passed its first resolution to use
systematically the Corsican language in signs for toponyms, as well as
extend its use into aspects of public life (Marchetti, 1989, p. 209), but
measures that challenged the primacy of French, such as the attempt to
make Corsican co-official on the island with the national standard lan-
guage, were struck down by either France’s Constitutional Court, or the
Council of State. Whilst actions by the regional authorities to increase
the position and status of Corsican might have stalled, the manage-
ment of other explicitly Corsican visual resources was less problematic.
In 1987, the Assembly voted on an action which would change the
semiotic landscape of the island, by agreeing to the use of the Corsican

flag on administrative buildings, as well as schools across the island.
This vote, although not emplacing the Corsican language in the LL,
emphasizes an expressly Corsican image in the public space (Jaworski
and Thurlow, 2010, p. 2). In 2009, the Assembly reinforced the role of
the Corsican flag – a Moor’s head in silhouette on a white background –
by voting to use this icon on car registration plates, further managing
the semiotic language of the island.
Where local language management has been more successful is with
the series of development and training plans, and a specific strand
within the plans, which pertains directly to the LL, has emerged,
which has become the focus of a separate action plan in the form of
the Cartula di a lingua corsa (the Charter for the Corsican Language).
Although not legislation like the regional laws discussed above with
regards to Sicily and Sardinia, the Charter for the Corsican Language
stresses the significance of placing Corsican in the LL from the perspec-
tive of language revitalization. Signatories to the Charter are expected
to engage in a series of commitments to Corsican, the first of which
is the active contribution to the visibility of the regional language in
the public space; the fourth pledge is to the consistent use of Corsican
in the naming of places (including buildings) and cultural artefacts; the
sixth and seventh undertakings are to use the regional language in the
signatory’s signage, and in paperwork (whilst respecting the need to
provide a version in French at the same time). Given that the passing
of language legislation is solely the privilege of France’s government in
Paris, this kind of low-level language management is far removed from
the regional laws passed in Sicily and Sardinia, but the Assembly’s reso-
lutions, and innovations such as the Charter for the Corsican Language
are important local language management strategies.
Whilst Ajaccio might be the administrative centre of the island,
many Corsicans look to Corte, the ‘capital’ of independent Corsica, as
the repository for the island’s cultural identity, a status which blurs the
boundary between centre and periphery, and does not follow the pattern
noted elsewhere, such as Inari in Sámiland (Pietikäinen, 2013, p. 77)
which is peripheral in terms of Finland, but central for Sámi. Pujolar
(2013) highlights the potential for the countryside, in opposition to the
city (invariably favoured for LL research), to flourish as a site for local
language practices which differ from those in urban centres. Ajaccio as
a city is positioned therefore in contradiction to rural Corsica.
Local understandings of what constitutes real Corsicanness seem to
be influenced by a set of dual relationships such as bureaucratic versus
cultural (that is, ethnic) and urban versus rural. In this perspective, and
due to the shift to French political hegemony via a substitution process,
we would like to propose that split insularity characterizes Corsica. On
the one hand, the experience of insularity has been moulded by the
relationship with France and the awareness of peripherality. On the
other hand, insularity as a constitutive aspect of local identity is rooted
in ethnic constructions of the self. This might apply at the collective
level, whilst the idea of nested insularity applies at the individual
level. The French civic model of national belonging allows individual
Corsicans to opt to comply with obligations set by the state without
preventing them from relinquishing an ethnic core which has been
consolidated and passed on for generations. As Pujolar (2013, p. 58)
notes, ‘linguistic minorities can also mobilize the countryside as a site
where the national past is somehow still available, peripheral to the
urban present, and often embodied in outdated cultural and economic
lifestyles.’ The challenge, therefore, of LL research which privileges the
city-as-centre is to recognize that the presence of a regional language is
diluted in an urban setting where alternative ideologies – in the case
of Ajaccio, possibly replicating the pattern of Paris as France’s ultimate
centre – govern the appearance of the public space.
Corsican in the LL
Given the dominance of the written form of French in France, and in
the light of the language management strategies outlined elsewhere in
this book (and in Blackwood and Tufi, 2012), it is unsurprising that the
data collection for this project confirms the dominance of French in
the LL of Corsica. We recorded French on its own in 82 per cent of the
signs (n = 7496), and with another language in a further 2.9 per cent of
the entire corpus (n = 267). What is particularly notable, especially in
comparison with the other regional languages and dialects examined in
this book, is the visibility of the Corsican language. From the 20 survey
sites in and around Ajaccio, Corsican appears on its own on 5.6 per cent
of the signs in the corpus (n = 511) and with another language – usu-
ally French – in a further 0.8 per cent (n = 81). This phenomenon has
been explored from different perspectives already (Blackwood, 2009,
2010, 2011, 2014), so here we seek to synthesize the conclusions already
reached, and expand the scope of the analysis into Corsican as a linguis-
tic and semiotic resource.
First, we explore the use of Corsican in spaces that Kallen (2010, p. 43)
refers to as ‘the civic frame’, which are the various levels of government
and authorities who manage public life. Having identified three civic
frames for Corsica (Blackwood, 2014, p 64), namely local town councils,
the island-wide Territorial Authority, and the French state, investigating

the use of Corsican by these forces highlights the fact that only one
sign – Figure 4.7 – out of the corpus of 592 signs featuring Corsican was
erected by the authorities (Blackwood, 2011, p. 127).
The scope for the questions of peripherality and the LL to feed into
one another can be explored through the deployment of Corsican by
the civic authorities. In part, the Territorial Authority was created as a
response to the island’s unique status as a part of metropolitan France
yet separated from the mainland by a wide stretch of the sea.3 The
Territorial Authority has emerged as a major actor in the emplacement
of Corsican into the public space, creating a specific discourse regarding
the appropriateness of the regional language in the public space of the
island. This confident use of a formerly heavily stigmatized language is
Figure 4.7 Multilingual sign featuring French, Corsican, and English

not replicated to the same extent elsewhere in France’s Mediterranean,

something we argue is in part as a consequence of the island’s position
on the fringe of the country as well as the self-reflective space created
by centuries of insularity.
Examples of the emplacement of Corsican by the Territorial Authority,
and by city councils abound, although their frequency does not match
the extent to which French continues to be used in signage erected by
public bodies. In 2009, the island-wide regional authorities invested in
new rolling stock for the small Corsican train network. Inside the trains,
and in their external decoration, significant use of the Corsican lan-
guage was made, giving to the language a clear practical use (Figure 4.8).
This deployment of Corsican for functional purposes is complemented
in the artistic design of the exterior of the trains, where the destina-
tions of the train (on its two routes on the island) are written in both
French and Corsican. There is, therefore, a reinforcement of Corsican
as a language of utility – in other words, its presence permits Corsican
speakers to complete their daily lives using this language – and also as
a language of cultural identity. The latter has long been affirmed in the
island, and it is the former which is attested by the presence of Corsican
in the LL, amongst other factors. This example of the use of Corsican as
a linguistic resource is matched by other developments, including the
electronic parking meters in Ajaccio and Bastia which inform the wider
public that a car has exceeded its allotted time in a parking bay, all of
which collectively point to a wider functional use4 of the regional lan-
guage not witnessed elsewhere in France as part of this Mediterranean
project, and only really matched by Slovenian in the province of Trieste
in the Italian cities investigated here. Even in Brittany, another outly-
ing part of France, rolling stock features a flash of Breton – the regional
language – in the naming of the train network, but no other informa-
tion, including instructions, is provided in the regional language. The
peripheral nature of Corsica, and the ways in which individuals and
political parties have responded to this in terms of the organization
of local government, have led to a much more widespread use of
the regional language. At the same time, the insular nature of lived
experience – the Corsican train only runs up and down the spine of
the island, unlike trains in Brittany which venture into other regions
of France – buttresses both the possibility and the feasibility for the
emplacement of Corsican alongside French. The management of the
public space in Corsica is being undertaken by the various levels of civic
authorities in a way that retains the privileged dominant position of
French, but finds a place for Corsican within its multilingual signage.
Figure 4.8 Instructions inside a train carriage
What is not the case is that, in the civic frame, French cedes the entire
space within a sign to Corsican.
The acknowledgement of the use of a language other than French on
the island is not uniform, and some actors elect not to have recourse to
anything other than French in their signage. Figure 4.9 is the official
sign, in the standardized format, font, and size, from the French Ministry
of Culture and Communication, and which acts as a historical marker
to commemorate a place significant to a famous person, in this case
Pasquale Paoli, leader of the short-lived Corsican Republic. Immediately
apparent is the institutional and national appropriation of a Corsican
past, gallicized explicitly by the rendering of the Christian name in its
French rather than its Corsican version: Pascal rather than Pasquale.
Although placed outside the ancestral home of the Corsican states-
man, in his native village, the sign does not feature any Corsican at
all. Its uniformity in terms of language choice mirrors the traditional
ideology of the French state, with its preference for the French language
and the exclusion of all other languages. Based on the original 2007 and
the subsequent fieldtrips of 2010 and 2013, where the state is involved
in marking the LL of Corsica, Corsican is rarely accorded a place. In
Figure 4.9 The plaque outside the home of Pascal Paoli
this sign, the peripheral location of Corsica is not acknowledged and

the regional language does not appear. The scheme behind these signs,
Maisons des Illustres (Homes of the Great and the Good), is administered
from Paris by the designated Ministry whose responsibility extends
from the capital to the far reaches of France, including not only Corsica
but also the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and the
Polynesian island of Tahiti. In none of these cases is the peripheral loca-
tion, combined with the linguistic diversity of the area, acknowledged
in the language of the sign. In other words, whilst peripherality is, to
a certain extent, a factor in the visibility of Corsican in the LL, the
supremacy of French and the weight of tradition in terms of a national
language ideology means that despite the distance of the island from
the centre, Paris’ language practices are replicated in spaces on the
periphery, regardless of the insular nature of localized identities.
Other languages in the LL

The diversity of languages in the public space is much narrower on
Corsica than in either Sardinia or Sicily, where 17 and 16 languages
respectively were recorded. In the survey areas on Corsica, half of which
were in Ajaccio, the other half spread across neighbouring large villages,
only eight languages other than French featured on the recorded signs:
Chinese, Corsican, English, Italian, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and
Spanish. Strikingly absent from this list of languages visible in the public
space are those used by the largest migrant communities. Géa et al.,
(2008, p. 21) conclude that there were approximately 11,000 North
Africans, the majority of whom were Berber-speaking Moroccans, living
in Corsica in 2008. With Corsica’s population at 280,000 at that time,
it is particularly conspicuous that the LL is not a place where North
Africans choose to write in languages such as Arabic or Berber. In part,
this invisibility brings into focus the position of Algerians, Moroccans,
and Tunisians in the public space in Corsica, and especially the
privileged centres of Ajaccio, such as the commercial streets around
the cours Napoléon, the old city centre, and the tourist-oriented marina.
The LL attests to a further process of peripheralization, whereby the
languages of a group which live to a great extent in Corsica’s two urban
centres (INSEE, 2004, p. 11) do not express their ethnolinguistic identity
in the Arabic or Berber in the public space. Beyond the absence of signs
in these languages in the LL, the restrained multilingual nature of the
public space is even more striking when the numbers of signs in some
of these languages are enumerated. In a corpus of 9,123 signs, eight
signs are recorded in Spanish, and two in each of Chinese, Japanese,
and Portuguese.
The extent to which Italian, German, and English are visible in public
space is minimal, although notably more widespread than for Chinese,
Japanese, Spanish, or Portuguese. We discuss the presence of English in
these Mediterranean cities in Chapter 6, although some of the conclu-
sions drawn there find their echo in the presence of Italian and German
in the LL of Corsica. Of the sub-corpus of signs that feature German
(n = 27), almost two thirds (63 per cent, n = 17) are labels where product
details, including a camera, a toothbrush, and several German-language
books, are given in German. Unlike the multilingual packaging we dis-
cuss in Marseille, these are monolingual labels but are not designed, we
contend, to address a German-speaking market. Instead, these flashes of
German are an example of the transnational flow of goods, where the
products were originally packaged in German – in all probability for a
German-speaking market – but which find themselves in shop windows
in Corsica, testifying to the free movement of goods across the European
Union. This phenomenon explains in part the presence of Spanish in
Corsica, where six of the eight recorded signs are the Spanish-language
manhole covers from the Spanish company Benito Urban. On the one
hand, these minimal ratings for languages in the LL remind us of the

challenges to quantitative surveys, as discussed in Chapter 1. On the
other, they point to the limited impact of banal globalization (Thurlow
and Jaworski, 2011) on the LL of Corsica. This is, in part, the cost of the
transporting of products to the island, underscoring its peripherality.
From the perspective of Italian in the LL of Corsica, the proximity –
both geographically and spiritually – might well be expected to play a
part in the construction of languages in the public space. According to
INSEE (2012), France’s national institute for statistics, 143,291 Italian
tourists visited Corsica in 2011. Catering for these significant numbers
has been reflected in the LL of Corsica. As discussed above, given the
island’s long-standing relationship with the Italian peninsula, and
acknowledging its historic links to what might be described as an Italian
cultural sphere of influence, it is unsurprising to find that, after English,
Italian features more visibly in the LL of Corsica than any other non-
territorial language. However, it is of note that there are relatively few
examples of Italian in the areas surveyed (n = 55). Within the domain
of commercial activity, a clothes shop on rue Bonaparte in Ajaccio is
named in Italian, Caffe Pacifico, although with non-standard diacritic
use, but the majority of signs coded as Italian featured on menus
(n = 17), returning to the idea of the functional use of Italian to address
visiting tourists. Another example is the appearance of Italian as one of
three foreign-language instructions (in addition to English and German)
on the screen of a cash machine on Cours Paoli, in Corte, north-east of
Ajaccio. A significant proportion of the sub-corpus of signs featuring
Italian (31 per cent, n = 19) is product labelling on products either made
in or designed for an Italian market, which have – as a consequence
of globalization – found themselves on sale on Corsica. The long his-
tory of the exchange of goods between the island and Italy (which,
at their closest points, are separated by only 56 miles or 90 kilometres
of the Ligurian Sea) might well lead us to believe that Corsica orbits the
Italian economic market, in contradistinction to the island’s marginal
relationship with France. However, the relative paucity of products from
the peninsula on sale on Corsica is notable. We contend that this coun-
terbalances the notion of Corsica’s peripherality in relation to France.
Much closer geographically to Italy than to France, and with a longer
history of trade with the peninsula, Corsica sits firmly within a French
economic sphere of influence, which has clear impact on the extent to
which the public space is multilingual. At the same time, the scarcity
of signage in Italian challenges the argument put forward by Jaffe and
Oliva (2013, p. 112) that positions Corsica in an Italian periphery.
Evidence of visitors to Corsica speaking Italian for ease of communica-

tion might well attest to the circulation of Italo-Romance languages
on the island, but in its written form, Italian is largely absent from
the public space, and so the extent to which the LL contributes to the
understanding of Corsica’s position within an Italian periphery is slight.
Insularity as a resource: the commodification of tradition
For the purposes of this chapter, and after drawing much attention
to the vulnerabilities of the islands and to how they are central to
discourses of disadvantage and exclusion, we would like to discuss
instances of signs which point to insularity as a resource. We deliber-
ately build on Hobsbawm and Ranger’s The Invention of Tradition (1983)
because of the links with constructions of national identity and in order
to highlight how deep-rooted mechanisms have been metabolized,
adapted, and deployed in different understandings of regionalism on
the three islands. While carrying out the LL surveys, it was evident that
Corsican is also in circulation as a commodity, especially within flows
of consumption of local produce. Of the corpus of signs in Corsican
(n = 592), 54 per cent appear as a consequence of the use of Corsican
by small- and medium-sized businesses in their shop fronts, signage,
trademarks, and product labelling. Although Corsicans are not exempt
from the Toubon law (discussed in Chapter 1), which requires the use
of French in commercial exchanges, there is a clear tendency amongst
local businesses to use the regional language in ways not replicated to
the same extent in places such as Northern Catalonia, Marseille, or Nice.
This trend includes the practice of small- and medium-sized firms to
name themselves using a Corsican term, be that a place name, a proper
name, or a Corsican cultural artefact (such as a geographic feature, a his-
torical artefact, a traditional dish, or a local phenomenon – see also the
Introduction to this book). In some ways, this echoes Fishman’s concept
(1991, pp. 20–4) of the linkages between languages and ethnocultures,
where he notes that a language can be lexically ‘most appropriate’ for
the associated culture. In other words, the essence of being Corsican is
symbolically linked to the use of Corsican in labelling. Developing this
idea, Heller (2003) contends that language indexes identity, but it can
also act as a guarantee of authenticity commodification, and this use
of Corsican in products serves as certification of the Corsicanness of
the articles. This trend does not find its echo in, for example, Northern
Catalonia or Nice. We argue that this is in part as a consequence of insu-
lar market flows which are themselves a result of the peripheral nature
of Corsica. Elsewhere (Blackwood, forthcoming), we examine in detail

the use of Corsican by the island’s drinks industry, and for the purposes
of this chapter, it is significant to examine more closely branded mer-
chandizing associated with consumables produced in Corsica.
Of the sub-corpus of 551 signs solely in Corsican, 13 per cent (n = 67)
are the parasols distributed by Pietra, meaning that the brewer contrib-
utes to a significant proportion of the signage in the regional language in
the public space. What is conspicuous in these parasols is the design of
the logo for the beer’s brand name. Whereas the official trademark for the
brewery includes, at the top, the word for brewery in French – brasserie –
the artistic interpretation for the parasols reconfigures the standard
motif for Pietra, and places the Corsican-language slogan ‘Biera corsa’
(Corsican beer) at the top of the sign. In redesigning the generic Pietra
label, the brewers make two significant changes. First, the hierarchy of
languages, following Scollon and Scollon’s code preference (2003), is
reversed, with the French-language term taken from its upper, prestigious
position, and placed below the main part of the sign, therefore actively
relegating the caption. Second, in the artistic reinterpretation of the
Pietra label for the parasols distributed to cafés across the island, the bot-
tom part of the motif is cut off, thereby completely erasing French from
the sign. There are artisanal beers to be found in the other French survey
areas, such as Cap d’Ona in Northern Catalonia, or Treize in Marseille,
and whilst the former does use Catalan in its labelling, no merchandiz-
ing appeared in the survey areas or, more strikingly, was observed at all
in Perpignan or Marseille. What the data collection on Corsica attests is
the discourse of commodification as a clear marker of local authentic-
ity which is in part, we argue, predicated on the peripheral nature of
the island and the insular nature of the market, whereby some (but not
all) goods circulate within the island, and are most keenly localized by
(potential) consumers who recognize this authenticity. Value is added
to produce through the regional language which indexes culturally
valuable attributes including proximity, local products (including water
and chestnuts), and self-sufficiency, all of which are conveyed through
semiotic resources on product labelling which include – as seen on the
parasols on café terraces – the regional language.
In Palermo, language as a commodity is exploited both for touristic
reasons and to highlight locality as an inherent feature of authenticity
and quality. Figure 4.10 is an example of the former and capitalizes on
the tradition of local multilingualism.
During the golden age of Palermo, different languages were repre-
sented in the city. The street sign in Figure 4.10 was placed in what used
Figure 4.10 Trilingual sign in Via Calderai, Palermo
to be the Jewish quarter of Palermo. The brown colour of the sign iden-
tifies this site as one of tourist interest. The street is located right in the
historic centre of the city and is part of an area where objects of domes-
tic use such as large metal pots (or cauldrons: calderai means ‘makers
of cauldrons’) were produced by the local Jewish artisans. The street is
lined with shops selling metal implements to this day, even though it
is likely that the items are mass produced. However, the sign gives an
idea of the multilingual and multicultural composition of Palermo in
medieval times and therefore of the linguistic influences that can be
reconstructed analysing the lexis of local varieties. Of course, Italian
had not been codified then, and the presence of Hebrew on the sign is
purely documentary in so far as at the time Sicilian Jews used Hebrew
only for religious purposes and were likely to speak a form of Arabic
interspersed with Sicilian words (Rocco, 1995). The average tourist,
however, will be intrigued by the exotic scripts. These in turn contribute
to the construction of a mysterious past for what is already perceived to
be a mysterious and arcane culture in the collective imagination. The
clever manipulation of existing understandings of Sicily is generated
by current practices of island branding so that the link between the

visitor’s expectation (the demand) and a certain construction of the
past-cum-present (the supply) is established.
In addition to the portions of the LL already discussed, Sicilian also
featured on signs indexing eating establishments, such as those rep-
resented in Figures 4.11 and 4.12, therefore capitalizing on the value-
added dimension of locality.
Figure 4.11 appeared above the entrance of an establishment selling
a very traditional Palermitan snack/meal: bread and spleen (pani ca’
meusa). The sign is entirely in Sicilian ‘come in and you’ll get an appe-
tite’, ‘at uncle Giovanni’s’, ‘bread and spleen’, except for the informa-
tion about delivery on the bottom right-hand side, which is in Italian.
The association traditional food-traditional language, however, is not
an imperative in similar contexts (Bagna and Machetti, 2012). Signs
such as Figure 4.12 advertising contemporary, pub-like establishments
which are likely to attract a young clientele can also rely on the use
of Sicilian to conjure up an environment which is young, trendy, and
cosmopolitan, but where special attention is nevertheless given to the
quality of the food, which is presented as ‘real typical Sicilian’ (Il vero
tipico siciliano). ’A rarigghia ’nne Tony, ‘Tony’s grill’ is, admittedly, sup-
ported by the drawing of an actual grill with food cooking on it, thus
aiding decoding processes for the non-dialect speaker. However, both
the remaining text (in Italian) and other semiotic devices point to a cli-
entele accustomed to fast food, to neologisms such as drinkeria, ‘drink-
ing place’, formed by an English root drink- and an Italian suffix -(e)ria
Figure 4.11 Sign advertising bread and spleen

Figure 4.12 Tony’s grill
usually indicating a type of shop/service, and with a taste for interna-

tional cuisine (image of a kebab). In this case, the element of tradition
carried by the use of Sicilian is identified as a suitable component of a
cosmopolitan repertoire.
As for Sardinian, the sign in Figure 4.13 was located outside a pizzeria
called Su nuraghe in Selargius.
The first five lines of the text are in Sardinian: Se sa pudda de ‘su nur-
aghe’ bolisi agattai e pappai piga su telefunu po da prenotai!!! (If you want
to eat ‘Su nuraghe’’s hen pick up the phone to reserve it). The rest of
the text is in Italian Diego e Miranda ringraziano per la gentile collaborazi-
one (Diego and Miranda thank you for your kind collaboration). The
(irregular) hand-writing on a mobile board, together with the signature
reporting the owners’ first names, point to the informality of the small,
family-run business. The public is addressed in Sardinian with rhym-
ing lines and in a joking manner, perhaps showing off the author’s
linguistic confidence and in keeping with the name of the establish-
ment, Su nuraghe. The nuraghe is a stone tower and part of archaeologi-
cal evidence dating back to the Bronze Age in a number of Sardinian
sites (Lo Schiavo, 2004). As a symbol of Sardinian ancient history and
culture, references to the nuraghe are scattered around the island and
the fact that, as in this instance, it is used to name a restaurant is not
infrequent. The chosen name therefore establishes a strong link with
the territory, its traditions, its community, and its language. This is part
of the presentation, however, and the marketing message is judiciously
bilingual – just in case passers-by and potential customers are alienated
by the unfamiliar language, a gloss in Italian reminds them that in the
Figure 4.13 Sign outside a restaurant in Selargius (Sardinian/Italian)
restaurant Italian is spoken (and written), too. The style switches from
informal to formal and in fact the Italian sentence is a typical imper-
sonal formula which is characteristic of higher registers. We cannot
exclude that the Italian sentence is used ironically, however, and the
use of the word ‘collaboration’ might allude to the type of linguistic col-
laboration (or accommodation) which allows mutual comprehension
and re-enforces existing ties.
Conclusions
The spatial finitude and the exposedness of islands generate and nour-
ish discourses of vulnerability and disadvantage of the insular condi-
tion. This contrasts with external perceptions of wilderness so that
the history of the three islands is punctuated with outside attempts to
establish an order to the inherent chaos and rebelliousness. Episodes of
conflict and violence have characterized the three islands as contended

territories, and they have usually coincided with internal attempts to
assert difference. The physical characteristics of the islands and the
inhospitability of part of their landscape have allowed islanders to seek
sanctuary in the more internal areas at difficult times, therefore creating
a privileged relationship with the territory and the spatialization of core
islandness. We contend that this process has been replicated at different
levels and that linguistic and semiotic landscapes in the three islands
construct gradients of split insularity and nested insularity.
Understandings of peripherality are the result of the creation of
centres of power and modalities of regionalism as they have been imple-
mented in the three islands in recent times and encapsulate elements
of tension and contradictions deriving from different models. Thus
the awareness of economic dependence and infrastructural weakness
(officially sanctioned by Art.158 of the EC Treaty which referred to the
backwardness of islands) has coexisted with desires for autonomy or
independence based on the acknowledgement of insular difference and
identity. In part, the peripheral position of Corsica explains the greater
use of the regional language in the public space. However, it must also
be acknowledged that Perpignan, and Northern Catalonia more widely,
are peripheral spaces in France, as is – although possibly to a lesser
extent – the city of Nice (see Chapter 2). The Mediterranean coastline
is, to varying degrees, a peripheral space in France, separated by con-
siderable distance from the unchallenged centre of Paris. Geographic
distance and transport connections are two measures by which the
Mediterranean can be viewed as marginalized. Where a sense of periph-
erality is less plausible is when we consider Marseille, although the
complex relationship between this major French city and France as an
entity is explored more fully in Chapter 5. In other words, peripherality
is not necessarily a prime reason for the use of Corsican in the island’s
LL, given the comparable positions of Nice and, even more so, Northern
Catalonia. As such, we venture that the combination of peripherality
with a long-standing tradition of (partly enforced) insularity explains
the extent to which the Corsican language is visible in the LL.
The signs featuring Sardinian point to language practices that are
embedded in political discourse, that are historically situated, and that
are engaged in the ‘everyday’ production of meaning. Insofar as they
are emplaced and mediated (Scollon and Scollon, 2003), they repre-
sent distinct genres that narrate the many interconnections between
language and local identity. However, the paucity of signs featuring
Sardinian reflects a reluctance to embrace the recent rediscovery of
dialects and minority culture as displayed by the economically more

peripheral regions of Italy, such as Sardinia. In addition, over 10 years
of institutional bilingualism sanctioned by the regional law 26/1997
and by national legislation on minority languages do not seem to have
encouraged any remarkable traces in the local LL. Even official uses of
Sardinian were sporadic in the LL of Cagliari and its metropolitan area.
Sardinian is therefore a strong component of ethnic identity, but
not a core value to be maintained via intergenerational transmission,
as Oppo’s 2007 survey clearly showed. In comparison with Sicily, it
seems that different dynamics and historical processes in the two
islands have produced similar outcomes in terms of discourses on lan-
guage and identity. In Sicily an early separation between linguistic and
ethnic identity had consolidated itself by the nineteenth century, but
this did not make the political argument of a Sicilian ethnic group any
weaker. In Sardinia, on the contrary, the language question became
increasingly central to the regional political agenda over the course of
the twentieth century and beyond, and it served to articulate a local dis-
course of political emancipation and freedom from the models imposed
by distant centres of power. Significant achievements in terms of recog-
nition of cultural and linguistic specificity, however, arrived at a time
when language practices had already started to shift in favour of Italian.
The separation between linguistic and ethnic identity is currently in
progress and available data on language use in Sardinia highlight the
tensions experienced by language agents caught between the awareness
that responsibility for the maintenance of Sardinian rests primarily
with them, and the perception that local language maintenance can
cause further socio-economic marginalization. As a result of the many
tensions characterizing current constructions of insularity, however,
we have identified in the LL novel attempts to capitalize on tradition
in modes which exploit globalized flows of people and goods. It is not
to be excluded that this phenomenon might constitute a push towards
forms of local language maintenance.
5
Social Representations of Marseilles
and Naples’ Linguistic Landscapes
Introduction
The comparing of cities in LL research has been undertaken since

Cenoz and Gorter contrasted San Sebastian and Leeuwarden in the
2006 landmark edited volume on multilingualism in the LL, and this
approach has proved fruitful for highlighting trends in the manage-
ment of the public space.1 Here, we pair two Mediterranean cities with
the intention of evaluating the potential for the LL to play a part in
the social representations of Marseilles and Naples. We approach the
LL of these ancient places with a view to assessing the extent to which
written language use in urban centres echoes the social representations
constructed around each city. We take this opportunity to differentiate
further between the creation of LL in France and Italy, whilst exploring
the scope for the LL to serve as a prism through which social representa-
tions can be examined critically. This chapter opens with a brief presen-
tation of social representations of Marseilles and Naples, and then uses
LL data to investigate whether the public space as lived and experienced
by both cities’ residents and visitors confirms the discourses that circu-
late in wider society regarding language behaviour.
In this chapter, as well as providing a brief overview of social repre-
sentation theory, we outline representations of the two cities. We then
discuss the LL data collected in the two cities, first from the perspective
of the associated regional languages and dialects, and then by high-
lighting languages of migrant communities. For the purposes of this
exploration, which simultaneously tests the potential for LL to serve
as yardsticks by which to measure social representations, as well as
comparing the ways in which the LL of the public space in both cities
has been constructed, we contend that Marseilles and Naples share
149
a number of similarities which constitute their essence in the collective

imagination.2 Both cities are identified and portrayed in social repre-
sentations as having a very distinctive culture (and primarily a vibrant
popular culture) which defines them as Mediterranean archetypes and
defies attempts at national appropriation. In a host of representational
practices which include film, theatre, song, and literature, and visually
captured in an aesthetic of the picturesque, Marseilles and Naples are
autonomous microcosms before they can be classified as French and
Italian respectively. From the football obsession to the song tradition,
from the ideal climate to the endemic chaos, lawlessness, and rebel-
lion, narratives of both cities construct them as physical and psycho-
logical borderlands, visceral and obscure spaces inhabited by inherently
Mediterranean types – hot-blooded, passionate, and violent. The two
iconic urban areas therefore have been conceptualized and universal-
ized as metaphorical spaces. By outsiders, linguistic attitudes and opin-
ions inevitably converge to connote the two geographic and human
realities: lazy, untrustworthy, and unreliable (and regularly parodied)
are all who sound Marseillais or Neapolitan.
Social representation theory: frameworks and applications
Social representation theory has particular currency in psychology and

sociology, but sociolinguists have become aware of the possibilities it
offers which permit the examination of various aspects of linguistic
behaviour. Social representation was initially developed by Moscovici
and has been reappraised and nuanced since then by psychologists,
including Moscovici himself (Moscovici, 1984). Augoustinos et al.(2006,
p. 36) summarize the theory as privileging ‘the primacy of social
concepts such as culture and ideology in social psychology’, whereby
commonly held theories, ideas, and knowledge are taken to represent
a group, be it a social class, a particular profession, or the residents of
a city. Similarly, Philogène and Deaux (2001, p. 4) understand social
representations to be ‘built on shared knowledge and understanding of
common reality’, which extends not only to intangible heritage such
as proverbs, legends, and traditions, but also to images and cultural
representations.
Social representation theory is used to explain and to analyse the
social phenomena of groups, from the symbols they adopt (such as
flags or images to represent themselves) to myths and songs (including
national anthems and football chants). Moscovici (2001, p. 19) argues
that ‘their significance transcends the individual, but certainly not
Social Representations of Marseilles and Naples’ LL 151
because of their resemblance to the object they refer to, nor because
of a physical link, but simply by virtue of a tradition or convention’.
In sociolinguistics, where the symbiotic relationship between language
and society is under investigation, social representations propose a spe-
cific discourse, against which various aspects of language and its use can
be measured. From the perspective of the LL, it is not difficult to see the
potential offered by social representations when seeking to understand
better the dynamics of multilingualism. This possibility is particularly
fruitful when we compare cities such as Marseilles and Naples, given
the cities’ well known social representations, fashioned and created by
both self-perception and an external gaze. In order to contextualize the
findings of the fieldwork in Marseilles and Naples, we suggest a broad
social representation of both cities.
Marseilles has also long been also known as the Phocæan city and
this soubriquet is itself interesting, since it refers back to the found-
ing of what was then known as Massilia by the Greeks of Phocæa in
600 BC. In stressing its ancient roots, the city is understood in terms of
its heritage, whereby Marseilles has welcomed, with varying levels of
warmth, groups of incomers, conquerors, and immigrants through-
out its two-and-a-half millennia history, starting with the Ionians
from Asia Minor (Dell’Umbria, 2006). Given its strategic importance
on the Mediterranean, Marseilles has been coveted by various sea-
faring powers, and identified as a suitable destination for those who
have settled there, including Greeks, Italians, Armenians and, most
recently, migrants from France’s former empire (namely those from
Indochina, the Indian subcontinent, North Africa, and Comoros). This
representation of Marseilles as a city with not only a considerable his-
tory, but one characterized by its outward-facing nature, nourishes one of
Marseilles’ defining characteristics, namely its multilingualism. Temime
(2005, p. 8) comments that Marseilles is ‘one of those rare cities in the
Mediterranean where one can still talk about “cosmopolitanism”’,3
and it is uncontroversial to assert that the city is represented in many
media as a focal point for different nationalities, ethnicities, races, and
religions. Despite their scepticism as to the extent that those arriv-
ing live out their lives as discrete groups in Marseilles, Peraldi and
Samson (2005, p. 265), point to parts of the city where nationalities
have traditionally clustered, including Italians in the Belle de Mai dis-
trict, Comorians in parc Kallisté, and Armenians along the boulevard
des Grands-Pins. Gasquet-Cyrus (2004, pp. 110–11) describes Marseilles
as a ‘sublimated Babel’ and he notes how general public discourse on
the city’s cosmopolitanism ‘have emphasised the positive aspects of
plurilingualism’. Blanchet (1992, pp. 71–82) notes that as recently

as the second half of the nineteenth century, French was ‘felt to be
some sort of a “foreign” language even in Marseilles’, and yet by the
twenty-first century, and certainly according to the data gathered for
this project, the city has become resolutely francophone. According
to Gasquet-Cyrus (2004, p. 112), in this new millennium, the status
of French as ‘the unique vehicular language is not problematical’. This
understanding of French as the sole common language of Marseilles is
something we explore using the city’s LL.
Social representations are not synonymous with literary representa-
tions, although social representations of Marseilles on film contribute
to a generally accepted portrait of the city as multilingual. Although the
commercially successful Taxi series does not suggest that Marseilles is
anything other than monolingual (even going so far as to dub Sylvester
Stallone into French in the 2003 film Taxi 3), multilingualism is a device
employed in films such as Bye-Bye (1995), Comme un aimant (2000),
and Samia (2000). It is worth considering that whilst French might
dominate in cinematic representations of Marseilles, the variety of the
language used is rarely the national standard taught in the Republic’s
schools. The use of non-standard French, contrasted in certain circum-
stances with le bon français, is particularly prevalent in the body of films
set in Marseilles, dating back to the films of Pagnol and including con-
temporary works by Guédiguian which tend to concentrate, although
not exclusively, on the city’s ethnically white working class. This oral
multilingualism on screen reinforces the portrayal of Marseilles as a city
where languages other than French can be heard, and one of the issues
that this chapter seeks to discuss is the extent to which this spoken use
of languages extends to writing practices.
The origins of Naples are steeped in myth and associated with the
tragic destiny of the siren Parthenope.4 It seems that Greek colonizers
founded the city between the seventh and the sixth centuries BC and
named it after Parthenope, where it was believed that the remains of
the siren lay (Voltaggio, 2010). Naples (Napoli in Italian) owes its name
to Neapolis (Classical Greek) or new city, with which the newly devel-
oped area of Parthenope came to be identified from the sixth century
BC. The history of Naples therefore spans almost three millennia and
its urban development reflects that of its origins. A pole of attraction
for subsequent waves of migrants, it grew in importance after becoming
the capital of the Kingdom of Naples in the thirteenth century and until
Italian unification. In more recent times it has gradually developed as a
conurbation and is now the largest city in southern Italy and the third
most populous Italian city (with one million inhabitants) after Rome
and Milan. The continuity with its foundation myth has been ensured
by the literary, cinematic, theatrical, and song topoi of the Neapolitan
soul torn between the nostalgia for a distant past and the necessary
courage to deal with the present.
A great number of different peoples have made Naples their home
over the centuries: from Italic groups such as Osci, Samnites, and
Etruscans to Greeks in ancient times; from Longobards and Slavs to
Normans and Catalans in the Middle Ages; and from the Spanish, the
Austrians, and the French to the final annexation to the Kingdom of
Italy (1860) in modern times (De Blasi, 2003). Naples has therefore
acted as a site of encounter of different individual and group traditions,
histories, and cultures.
As a multilingual and multicultural centre, after the establishment
of the Kingdom of Naples, the city attracted people from other parts
of the kingdom whilst accentuating its differences with other regional
provinces. Even though Naples was a royal capital for six centuries,
Neapolitan was not the language of the court, where French, Catalan, or
Castilian governed together with the respective rulers and from where
sixteenth-century Italian gradually became established as the language
of the educated (De Blasi, 2006a). However, a continued literary tradi-
tion in Neapolitan starting from the fourteenth century has guaranteed
a high degree of prestige attached to local cultural production in its
various forms, and familiarity with this tradition and with the language
that expresses it on the part of Italians. From the late nineteenth
century, art forms that could rely on oral/visual – and therefore wider –
dissemination such as song, theatre, and film would reach national
audiences, and this phenomenon would be emphasized by the intro-
duction of television broadcasts.5
As one of the Italian capitals of cinema from its inception (Brunetta,
2003), Naples has hosted film companies and studios, provided the set-
ting for numberless productions, and inevitably immortalized certain
Neapolitan types, who are consistently characterized by the regular use
of the local dialect. Even in recent films such as the 2003 Benvenuti al
Sud (Welcome to the south) which, in a light-hearted manner, attempts
to deconstruct stereotypical representations of napolenità (Neapolitan-
ness), a dinner party is transformed into a Neapolitan lesson for the
northern protagonist who has to spend some time working in a small
town in the Neapolitan province. The essentialization of Neapolitan is
in fact the result of a widely-held perception that simplifies rather com-
plex language practices and attitudes, a point to which we return below.
Pictorial and textual narratives that date back to the Grand Tour
caused stereotypical representations of the Italian south to be already
deep-rooted by the time visual culture developed into highly sophisti-
cated forms in the twentieth century. These representations fall within
more widely encompassing constructions of the Mediterranean and of
the south of the world in western-centric discourses. Bertellini (2009)
highlights that in early American cinema representations of the stereo-
type about a wild southern Italian landscape dominated by volcanoes
transferred to a southern Italian type which was characterized by a
volcanic temperament that was impossible to restrain. This established
a connection between the representation of geographical space and the
representation of a space’s people, thereby producing an aesthetic of the
picturesque. The visual arrangement of places as a form of representa-
tion, therefore, has given rise to a system of meaning (Bertellini, 2009,
p. 2). The reduction of a space’s people to a set of defining characteris-
tics is also traceable in those representations of Naples and Neapolitans
that seem to revolve around administrative chaos and crime, both petty
and organized, as in the Camorra. In the 2008 film Gomorra (Gomorrah)
the helplessness and isolation felt by, and the fear instilled in, the
victims of the criminal organization Camorra, as well as the criminal
acts themselves, are narrated through the use of space which is often
enclosed, subterranean, and dark, and the site of violence. In some
scenes, the aesthetic of the picturesque degenerates into the aesthetic
of the grotesque, where by grotesque we intend both anthropological
conceptualizations of alterity and literary realizations of tragicomedy.
As a matter of fact, representations of aspects of the Neapolitan universe
include the ridiculous and the grotesque because of traits that are con-
structed to be excessive, repulsive, melodramatic, and pathetic. The use
of Neapolitan is an integral part of this type of construction.
Representational practices as described above and their long-term
exposure to non-local audiences have contributed to the exoticization
of Neapolitan culture and language, which is a result of de-contextual-
ization and often reduces reality to stereotypes (Fabietti, 2006). These
stereotypes of alterity are constructed by hegemonic and ethnocentric
discourses that presuppose pre-digested forms of reality as understood
and categorized by the representing subject (Foucault, 1969).6 It could
be argued that Naples and Neapolitan as the representation of the south
in its dimension of negative alterity and of subalternity/inferiority has
been described in post-colonial terms.
The liminality of the Neapolitan space as a place in-between, in con-
stant flux between life and death, beauty and ugliness, paradise and
hell, and inhabited by shifty characters has been a widely-held view for
centuries, as highlighted by eminent intellectuals such as Croce in his
reconstruction of the much-used saying that Napoli è un paradiso abitato
da diavoli (Naples is a paradise inhabited by devils) (Croce, 2006).
The surveys
Marseilles is divided administratively into 16 arrondissements or districts,

and, for the purposes of this chapter, the 10 most central districts were
selected, in each of which two streets were surveyed. From the 20 sites,
a total number of 9,909 signs were recorded. Signs were attested in 13
different languages: French, Arabic, Chinese, Danish, English, Dutch,
Italian, German, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Hebrew, and Latin. In
addition to the relatively limited range of languages on display in the
public spaces of Marseilles, French unquestionably dominates the city’s
LL: 82 per cent (n = 8,087) of all the signs recorded across the 20 sites in
Marseilles were in French alone. A further 5 per cent (n = 503) featured
French plus one or more languages. Despite the social representation
of Marseilles as a multilingual, or cosmopolitan city, in the writings on
the wall, the Phocæan city is overwhelmingly francophone in its writ-
ten practices.
Naples is currently divided into 10 municipalities, but there are about
30 quartieri or districts in the city and people still refer to the different
areas by their original names. Fifteen of the quartieri were surveyed and
12,724 signs recorded. Signs featuring Italian, either on its own (69 per
cent, n = 8,798) or together with one or more other languages (14 per
cent, n = 1,906) make the national language the most visible linguistic
resource in the Neapolitan LL. In addition to Italian, 22 languages fea-
tured on the recorded signs: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch,
English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin,
Neapolitan, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Russian, Sinhalese,
Ukrainian, and Wolof.
For the remainder of this chapter, rather than focusing on the pres-
ence of French in Marseilles and Italian in Naples, we will explore
the spaces in which other languages mark the walls and windows of
these Mediterranean cities as part of the exploration of social repre-
sentations. We will focus on two particular aspects of the Marseillais
and Neapolitan LL: the role of the regional language or dialect in the
material and symbolic construction of the public space, and that of
the languages brought by migrant groups in recent times. For the non-
territorial languages, our aim is to investigate the extent to which these
new language agents and their idioms are accommodated in the exist-
ing exoticizing discourses on Marseilles and Naples.
Provençal/Occitan in the LL
From the perspective of regional languages, Marseilles falls within the
historic region of Provence, and is identified with Provençal, which
can be considered as either a language in its own right or a variety
of Occitan, spoken across southern France. The nature and status of
Provençal has been the focus of considerable debate in recent scholar-
ship and the perspective that Occitan is a significant regional language
of France, of which Provençal is one variety, has been articulated by
high-profile commentators and various institutions. These include
Bernard Cerquiglini (1999), who was commissioned by the French gov-
ernment to identify regional and minority languages in France to which
the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages would apply,
and the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages (see Blanchet, 2004,
pp. 130–1 for a discussion of what he calls the ‘Occitanist position’). At
the same time, others – including the association Collectif Prouvènço –
argue that Provençal is a distinct, autonomous language, and not a ‘dia-
lect’ of Occitan (Costa, 2012, p. 83).The dominant position, however,
is that there is one regional language spoken across southern France,
namely Occitan, of which Provençal is but one variety.
In evaluating the presence of the regional language in Marseilles, it
should be acknowledged that the sociolinguistic situation in Provence
is ideologically freighted in ways not echoed elsewhere in metropolitan
France. Conflict has characterized the language associations and move-
ments associated with southern France, especially since the middle of
the nineteenth century, with the founding of the Félibrige, a revival
movement and literary association, dominated by the poet Frédéric
Mistral during its early days. It is not the intention of this book to engage
with the debates surrounding the process of standardization (including
the selection of a specific variety, and its codification). Nevertheless, in
order to understand the visibility of Marseilles’ regional language in the
LL, it is helpful to outline the developments that have led to the current
situation in Marseilles. Martel (2012, p. 23) traces the earliest phase of
the revival movement, starting with the identification by Mistral of four
major dialects of the Provençal language, of which the variety referred to
as Marseillais was deemed ‘hard’. This negative summary belies Martel’s
assessment (2012, p. 24) that in terms of written outputs, Marseilles
and its variety dominated in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Mistral preferred Rhodanien (his own variety), spoken around Avignon,
and through force of personality, writings, and politics, Rhodanien

emerged as the dominant variety within the revival movement.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the centre of the language
movement had shifted ideologically and politically, and from the
French Resistance emerged the Institut d’Estudis Occitans (the Institute
for Occitan Studies)7 which has preferred the term ‘Occitan’ for the
language. Costa and Gasquet-Cyrus (2014, pp. 216–17) summarize the
debate over the naming of the regional language thus:
Before the Félibrige, the language of southern France was generally

called ‘patois’, but previous names such as ‘Provençal’ and ‘langue
romane’ lingered on. Mistral and his successors adopted the term
‘Langue d’Oc’, while the Occitan movement drew on a medieval
term used in northern French royal charters, ‘Occitan’. Both names
are currently still in use, and they refer to exactly the same language
and the same language area (although the territory in which the lan-
guage is used is called either the ‘Midi’ or ‘Occitania’). They reflect,
however, internal ideological conflicts linked to political options and
historical allegiances.
Questions of orthography have come to characterize many post-war dis-

cussions around the language, although Judge (2007, p. 110) highlights
a notable rapprochement between the Institut d’Estudis Occitans and the
Félibrige in 1999, where an agreement was signed to permit the teaching
of both Occitan and Provençal orthographies in the classroom in the
education authorities of Aix-en-Provence (which includes Marseilles)
and Nice.
The debate surrounding the regional language ascribed to Marseilles
is coloured in part by the question of territoriality. Marseilles is located
in what is broadly understood to be Provence, which for some – such
as the Collectif Provènço – means that Occitan is illegitimate as the city’s
regional language (Costa and Gasquet-Cyrus, 2014, p. 219). Sibille
(2000, pp. 35–7) argues that Provençal is a rural language of Provence,
rather than an urban variety, and of its 250 000 regular speakers, only
5 per cent are found in Marseilles (see also Blanchet, 2004, p. 139).
Gasquet-Cyrus (2004, p. 114), outlines the paradoxical relationship
between the city and Occitan, whereby speakers reject Occitan as a
name on the grounds that it is ‘strange and scientific’, and concludes
that Occitan language activism boasts few engaged participants.
Elsewhere (2013, p. 11), he rehearses the popular wisdom (and there-
fore another example of social representation) that Marseilles is ‘the
least Provençal town in Provence’. Dell’Umbria (2006, p. 454) notes

that language practices amongst the wider population in the city in the
nineteenth century were far removed from the norm preferred by élites,
both in Marseilles and in Paris, including lexis and grammatical markers
drawn from Occitan.
In the light of this contextualization of the regional language
identified with Marseilles, it is perhaps unsurprising that no signs in
Provençal/Occitan were recorded in the 20 survey sites across the 10
central arrondissements of the city. This is not to say, however, that there
were no examples of the language recorded anywhere in the city, and
below we have two mini-case-studies featuring Occitan (according to
the authors of the signs, who identify the language they use as Occitan,
rather than Provençal). This need to step beyond the parameters of the
data collection highlights one of the drawbacks of our approach to LL
research with its fixed survey areas – in order to discuss the regional
language as it appears in the public space, it is necessary to seek out
examples. This issue exemplifies the question discussed in Chapter 1
regarding the methodology for LL research of this nature.
The first mini case-study focuses on the Occitan Cultural Centre on
the rue des Trois Mages in the 1e arrondissement in the centre of the city.
The centre, known as the Ostau dau país marselhés, occupied until 2014
premises on the corner of the rue des Trois Mages, and Gasquet-Cyrus
(2004, p. 115) regarded its presence as an aspect of ‘the increasing sym-
bolic visibility’ of Occitan language activism.
The cultural centre offers conversation classes (in Occitan, as well as
Réunionais creole), film screenings, cultural events, and concerts, as
well as housing a library. The window displays include several bilingual
posters in Occitan and French (as well as one in Réunionais creole, for
the classes in that language) advertising the language classes and forth-
coming events. In terms of its LL, the majority of the posters are bilin-
gual, and place Occitan above French, confirming an implicit hierarchy
for the languages. The sign above the premises is only in Occitan, as
are the permanent details at the top of the blackboard next to the door
(Figure 5.1). The blackboard next to the door is used for updates and
notices written in chalk and erased when no longer pertinent. When we
visited the cultural centre, on this blackboard, notification was given
in French – and only in French – that the association’s annual general
meeting was to be held shortly.
Although the permanent LL of the association stresses the importance
of Occitan (such as in the name of the building, or in the permanent
descriptions of what the association does), it appears that French is used
Figure 5.1 The blackboard outside the Occitan Cultural Centre
for immediate communications, with no translation offered in Occitan.

As attested elsewhere as part of this study into the LL of Mediterranean
cities, the use of regional languages is indexical, whereas French per-
forms the transactional function. That this is the case at the Ostau dau
país marselhés is all the more striking since the cultural centre seeks to
promote and extend the use of Occitan in southern France, but itself
chooses to rely on French in order to communicate with its audience.
To consider this further, we return to the three sign rules proposed
by Spolsky and Cooper (1991) in the light of their examination of
Jerusalem. We cannot know the motivations of the person who wrote
in chalk on the cultural centre’s blackboard, but we argue that they were
conforming to the Sign Rule 2, whereby a sign is written in the language
‘that intended readers are assumed to read’ (Spolsky and Cooper, 1991,
p. 83). In seeking to speak to the widest of communities amongst those
interested in the centre’s activities, the Occitan Cultural Centre writes
in French on its blackboard, on the basis that the majority of the public
passing along the rue des Trois Mages speaks French.
The absence of Occitan beyond the premises of the association is
striking, although it is worthy of note that the civic authorities, in the
only concession to the regional language recorded as part of this survey,
erected a street sign in Occitan on the corner of the street beside the
Occitan Cultural Centre. Whereas all the other street names in the city
appear in French, and French alone, the street sign fixed to the building –
in the style and form used by the civic authorities – reads Carriera dei
Tres Matges in Occitan, rather than rue des Trois Mages in French, as
observed along the rest of the street. The authorship of this sign is
unknown, although we assume that – given its size, design, colours and
font – it was produced by the City Council.
The appearance of the regional language in the civic frame of
Marseilles’ LL is striking given its absence elsewhere in the city. As
another mini-case study of multilingualism in Marseilles’ public space,
let us turn to the permanent art installation inside the Regional Tourism
Centre – Le Comité régional de tourisme Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur – on La
Canebière, the city’s main street. This wall, which extends over three
floors, is a permanent exhibition inside the Regional Tourism Centre,
with an interactive display at its foot which invites the visitor to explore
the inscriptions on the wall. This exhibition explores multilingualism
in the Mediterranean by displaying the naming of the Mediterranean
Sea in the various languages associated with this body of water. On the
four sides of the wall, on different floor levels (but fully exposed on all
sides), in different sizes and different fonts are the dozens of languages
that can be heard around the Mediterranean, both in the present
day and throughout time (for example, Ancient Greek, Monegasque,
Sicilian, Catalan, standard Arabic, and Georgian). This visualization of
the Mediterranean as a multilingual space reinforces the social repre-
sentation of Marseilles as major multilingual city on the coast, not least
given that naming serves as a primary identity-assigning act.
The sea’s name is given in Occitan, using the Mistralian standard – la
Mediterragno – on the eastern façade of the wall, on the first floor, imme-
diately below Castilian Spanish in the same sized font. Other inscrip-
tions are much bigger, and no other language appears below another
Figure 5.2 The permanent installation in the Regional Tourism Centre
language in the same sized font (see Figure 5.2, where the Occitan entry
appears on the right-hand side of the image). Whilst it is important not
to over-analyse details such as the visibility of a language in a work of
art, it is symbolic of the status and role of Occitan in the city that the
City Council, in its commissioned work of art, does not give significant
prominence to the regional language. To view clearly the inscription
in Occitan, visitors must go upstairs into a small meeting room which
overlooks the wall. Given that this is a permanent installation on
display inside the Regional Tourism Centre, we can see here the inter-
nalizing of the state’s ideology within an artwork, where the regional
language is accorded a place, albeit a minor one, in a visual representa-
tion of multilingualism in the Mediterranean. Greater prominence is
afforded to Classical Latin – a prestigious written language – than to the
regional language associated with Marseilles.
Arabic in the LL
Given that France does not permit the formal identification of ethnici-
ties through its census, figures for the numbers of people who are or
who self-identify as non-French (however that might be interpreted)
are estimates based on projections from academic and other surveys.

Borkert et al. (2007, p. 49) calculate that of Marseilles’ 851,000 residents,
70,000 are ethnically Maghrebian, largely drawn from Algeria, with a
further 45,000 Comorians constituting the second largest migrant com-
munity. Despite these statistics, in total, very little Arabic was recorded,
with only 45 signs counted in a corpus of 9,909; from a quantitative
perspective, this presence is negligible. Across the 20 survey sites, Arabic
appeared in the LL in four different areas, and undertook notably dif-
ferent functions in each area. At the outset, we note that whilst Arabic
might well be widely spoken by Marseilles’ North African and Comorian
communities, many do not write the language, and often speak regional
varieties. Closer examination of the signs in this sub-corpus suggests
the different ways in which Arabic is used in Marseilles. On the one
hand, Arabic appears as a prestigious, international language in what
we might understand as top-down signage. On the other hand, Arabic
indexes Islam, as attested in a bookshop and a halal butcher’s, in signs
that have traditionally been considered bottom-up. The first group of
signs is to be found on the doors of two consulates in Marseilles, and
on the wall of a Moroccan bank, BMCE. In the cases of the consulates,
for Algeria on rue Paradis in the eighth arrondissement and the Moroccan
consulate on les Allées Léon Gambetta in the first, it can be argued that
the Arabic script occupies the dominant position, at the top of both
main signs. However, both visually and functionally, French dominates
the signs; the majority of the information is provided in French, includ-
ing opening times, and provisional arrangements during Ramadan,
and there is more space covered by French. In the signage for both the
Moroccan and Algerian consulates, the materiality of the signs differs,
in that the permanent sign, in the upper position, includes the informa-
tion in Arabic, whereas the supplementary signs – including practical
information in French only – are made of different material; even some-
thing as ephemeral as paper is used for one of the informational signs at
the Moroccan consulate. From the perspective of layering, therefore, the
original sign is bilingual, with the Arabic above the French. Later signs,
whose exact age is impossible to detect, appear in different (and in two
of the three cases, cheaper) material, and usually in subordinate posi-
tions. This can be compared with the permanence versus temporality of
language use at the Occitan Cultural Centre, where the fleeting text is
framed by the language of alterity (Occitan at the cultural centre, Arabic
at the consulates) but is written in the prestigious national standard.
The other prestigious use of Arabic is on the walls of the BCME (la
Banque Marocaine du Commerce Extérieur), which is in the same street
Figure 5.3 The symbol for the euro and the Arabic sign for the BCME
(and therefore in the same district) as the Moroccan consulate. The

signage for this commercial bank is interesting in that the building is
adorned by monolingual rather than bilingual signs. The bank’s name
is presented in French on one wall, and round the corner on the same
premises it appears in Arabic. The bank makes use of images beyond
text, in that the symbol for the euro appears alongside the bank’s name
in Arabic – for those who cannot read Arabic, but are aware of the
symbols of currency, this monolingual sign (Figure 5.3) relies on an
internationally recognized icon.
Even at these premises, French dominates functionally; beyond the
name of the bank in Arabic, all other information, such as where to find
an alternative cash machine, is presented in French. The BCME is clearly
identified as an Arabic – in this case, Moroccan – bank, but in speaking
to its customers and to passers-by, it turns to French rather than Arabic.
The other domain in which Arabic was identified in the LL of Marseilles
was on Boulevard National, where the Arabic-language signage accounts
for 76 per cent of the sub-corpus. The presence of Arabic here was largely
observed in two premises: a Muslim bookshop and a halal butcher’s.
In the bookshop, Librairie La Sagesse (a French name), books, gifts, and
leaflets were in Arabic script; those passing by the shop could see this
merchandising in Arabic. Less widespread, but still contributing to the
presence of Arabic in this street, were the labels on products in the halal
butcher’s. In comparison with the bookshop, the use of written Arabic
was less consistent in the butchers, and was often limited to product
labelling. Nevertheless, both these examples attest to the use of Arabic
in Marseilles, and suggest that a space for Arabic is carved out by those
for whom it is an important, although possibly only symbolic, language.
Neapolitan in the LL
When referring to the presence of Neapolitan in the LL, we use the
term dialect in order, as explained in Chapter 1, to differentiate varieties
such as Neapolitan from those which have been officially recognized
as minority languages by legislation. Initiatives for the promotion of
Neapolitan in fact date back to the Renaissance period, but attempts to

codify it have remained unfulfilled (Toso, 2006, p. 93). Current linguis-
tic legislation and provision in the region is therefore only relevant for
the linguistic community of Greci, in an area bordering with Puglia,
where an Albanian variety is spoken. This language enjoys protection
under both national legislation (law 482/1999) and regional legislation
(law 14/2004).
Scholars have highlighted that over the centuries Neapolitan has not
crossed the boundaries of the city to become the language in use out-
side Naples (De Blasi, 2006b; Ledgeway, 2009). Although the city was
the capital of its homonymous kingdom for six centuries, it was never
a dominant city in the sense that can be attributed to Genoa or Venice.
It was, on the contrary, a cosmopolitan and multicultural centre where
the urban vernacular was never imposed. This is why Neapolitan has
remained a widely used means of communication within the city, but
not outside it. As a matter of fact, even the language varieties spoken
just outside Naples can display significant differences from Neapolitan.8
This does not stop Neapolitan from carrying identity functions for a
wider and less definable area precisely because Naples has been a cul-
tural and linguistic point of reference for much of the peninsular south
for a long time (Ledgeway, 2009, p. 16). Those social representations
that construct the Neapolitan dialect as an essential trait of Neapolitans
(and of a larger, undifferentiated southern population) therefore need
to be verified against the following facts: not all Neapolitans speak
Neapolitan, and non-use of Neapolitan is not necessarily due to an anti-
dialect ideology but to the individual’s linguistic background. The use of
urban Neapolitan is nevertheless widespread and not limited to specific
sociolinguistic domains or social groups. This is particularly remark-
able in an urban environment such as Naples which is a metropolis
by Italian standards with approximately one million inhabitants. The
dialect is the usual means of communication between parents and chil-
dren in a third of Neapolitan families, and it is used in alternation with
Italian in more than half of families (De Blasi, 2006c, p. 281).
Dialectal expression, moreover, is still highly productive in litera-
ture, theatre, song, and so on, and this ensures continued familiarity
with Neapolitan and its cultural heritage in the rest of the country and
beyond. The external perception of a generalized and undifferentiated
Neapolitan dialect is the result of the popularity and consumption of
dialectal cultural products by non-Neapolitan audiences who genuinely
do not capture linguistic differences between individuals coming from
Naples and individuals coming from outside Naples. The influence of
deep-rooted beliefs about Naples and Neapolitans is traceable in stereo-

types about language use as well so that the linguistic and cultural
construction of Neapolitan and of its speakers shapes their representa-
tion and vice versa.
In the surveyed areas Neapolitan appeared on 53 signs (0.42 per cent
of the Neapolitan corpus), of which 11 were monolingual: two were shop
signs and nine were texts such as poems, proverbs, and sayings displayed
on shop windows and street stalls, often as items for sale. In the remain-
ing signs, Neapolitan appeared alongside Italian (37 signs, of which
Figure 5.4 is one instance), and alongside Italian and English (five signs).
In Figure 5.4 the Neapolitan FACIMME ’A FESTA (Let’s have a party)
is prominent in terms of position, colour and font: a ‘fun’ font is part
of the message and conjures up a convivial and happy atmosphere for
friends to enjoy in a familiar setting, the type of setting where it is
likely to hear Neapolitan. Factual information about the type of goods
for sale is delegated to Italian. Even though the rounded shape of the
text in the centre of the sign suggests the arrangement of room deco-
rations, the font is plain and business-like and dominates the bottom
part of the sign which consists of images. The multimodality of the sign
Figure 5.4 Shop selling party items

is therefore arranged so that the lower section attracts young or very

young potential customers and the upper section attracts their parents/
guardians, namely the individuals who are going to make a decision
about purchasing the goods. In this instance Neapolitan ‘speaks’ the
ordinary actions of ordinary lives in contemporary times.
In other instances it is interesting to note on the one hand the folk-
loristic intent of the signs including Neapolitan, and on the other the
weight of the literary and cultural tradition. Both elements testify to
the status of the language and to the familiarity it enjoys outside the
city. This type of cultural capital can be exploited by actors such as
publishers, who can rely on a niche readership in Neapolitan, but also
by institutions. For instance, in Via S. Biagio dei Librai, better known
as Spaccanapoli (Naples splitter) in the historic centre, items such as
collectors’ editions of Neapolitan lyrics were displayed on a book stall,
where they reproduce established social representations and commodify
artefacts of local culture (dialectal songs) for the consumption of the
numerous tourists who visit the area.
An example of institutionalized use of the dialect is provided by the
Napolimania campaign (Figure 5.5). Introduced to encourage the use
of public transport, the campaign is run by the local public transport
authority (whose acronym can be detected in the bottom left-hand-
side corner) in conjunction with the company which produces signs
in or including Neapolitan (Azienda Napoletana Mobilità, 2006). The
sign in Neapolitan/Italian/English is displayed on buses as part of the
Napolimania campaign. The text in Neapolitan is in red and reads:
‘Stamp your ticket, don’t be naughty. The bus driver is working for you,
too!!!’ The Italian sentence is in blue and invites passengers to validate
their tickets (literally ‘Passengers are advised [impersonal form] to vali-
date their tickets’). The English sentence is equivalent to the Italian text,
but limited familiarity with usage and style explains the lexical choice
of ‘print’ instead of ‘stamp’ and the relative informality of the register.
In similar contexts ‘Please (do not forget/remember to) validate your
ticket’ would probably be the unmarked choice.
Similarly to other signs of the same campaign, Figure 5.5 signals
the change of language via different colours. Neapolitan occupies a
dominant position, the font size is larger and it is in red, a ubiquitous
attention-grabber. The text in Neapolitan is not limited to the request,
for which the first line would suffice. From a metalinguistic point of
view, the longer Neapolitan text is meant to stand out for non-Neapol-
itan speakers (including non-Italian tourists) and to assert the impor-
tance of the local language whilst being decoded as such. Conversely,
Figure 5.5 Sign on bus as part of the Napolimania campaign
Neapolitan speakers will be entertained by the local expression ’nzisto

(naughty) and directly involved in the intimate dimension of the dia-
lect, which uses the informal ‘tu’ as the default form of address unlike
the Italian, where an impersonal form (si consiglia – ‘Passengers are
advised’) introduces a bureaucratic expression (obliterare – ‘to validate’,
which is only ever used in this type of collocation).
Although the Napolimania signs are not included in the surveyed
data insofar as they are displayed on buses, they are an example of
official use of the dialect insofar as they are an initiative of the local
council. The use of Neapolitan, Italian, and English in the campaign
legitimizes Neapolitan as a competitor in the local linguistic market.
This is reinforced by the presence of other signs featuring Neapolitan
and recorded during the surveys, which reflect a wider use of the dialect
by a range of actors for a range of functions. Neapolitan was used on
hand-made political posters displayed on the occasion of a demonstra-
tion organized by unemployed people in April 2009 (Figure 5.6). The
image has been cropped to exclude the name and photograph of the
local politician who is the object of the rude statement. The Neapolitan
reads ‘This is the scum (literally “bog”, meaning “toilet”) of Naples’
Figure 5.6 A political poster
and is an interesting example of the use of Neapolitan and regional

Italian. For example, HO is an instance of hypercorrection: this spelling
is used to mean ‘I have’ in Italian. In this context HO stands for the
definite article (masculine singular) that is usually reproduced as ’o in
Neapolitan. Napoli is the Italian version of dialectal Napule/Napul’; the
final vowel would be realized as a [ə] and it can be graphically omitted
given its perceived ‘absence’. This occurs for instance with the first word
CHIST ‘this’. These features show linguistic insecurity with respect to
both how to reproduce the dialect in writing and incomplete schooling
in Italian. Conversely, the language and spelling could be part of the
message. As a protest sign, it is possible that it mixes Italian and dialect,
deliberately disregarding any prescriptive writing models as a form of
anti-establishment criticism and rejection.
Figure 5.7 Graffito
A number of images of dialectal signs are provided in De Blasi (2006a,

pp. 97–103) as evidence of Neapolitan appearing in new domains in
the last few decades (see also Chapter 1 for a discussion of new dialectal
uses). In terms of LL, De Blasi’s data confirm that written Neapolitan
contributes to the construction of public space in the form of commer-
cial signage (shop signs and adverts), of informational messages and
advertisements (announcements of both private and public events), and
of institutional campaigns designed to make people aware of issues of
public interest. The Napolimania campaign discussed above is an exam-
ple of such initiatives.
In addition to its visibility in public spaces, the dialect is used on
the Internet, in text messaging, and email, thus revealing that younger
generations employ this communicative resource regularly. As regards
the youth’s use of Neapolitan in LL, graffiti such as Figure 5.7 show that
the dialect is used creatively and drawn upon, together with other lan-
guages, in the widespread practice of polylanguaging (Jørgensen et al.,
2011; see also Chapter 6). Maturi (2006) comments on the multilingual-
ism of the walls of Naples and what they can tell us about the writers,
noting that they move between codes with ease whilst reproducing oral
language behaviour, and that they have a naive perception of sound.

The text opens with the Italian TI AMO (‘I love you’), continues with the
English name of the loved man (this could be a nickname, but we can-
not exclude the existence of a real Kevin) and ends with the Neapolitan
SI SOLO O MIO! (‘You are mine and mine alone!’).
In conclusion, and borrowing the terminology about language vitality
from Landry and Bourhis (1997), whilst the presence of Neapolitan in the
LL of Naples contributes to and reinforces the representations of the out-
group (non-Neapolitans) about the significant vitality of the language of
the in-group (Neapolitans), it also reflects the beliefs of the in-group with
respect to the vitality of the dialect. The beliefs of the in-group in turn
impact on practices insofar as Neapolitan seems to be widely used and
constitutes a valuable resource for the symbolic construction of identity
in old and new contexts.

Although Naples attracts a high number of migrants from outside Italy,
studies have shown that many of them tend to use the city as a tem-
porary base and then move on to areas in the centre and particularly
the north of Italy, which offer better job opportunities (as reported in
Orientale Caputo, 2007). The characteristics of migration into Naples,
however, have changed and increasingly sections of the migrant popu-
lation have become permanent residents. This is due to more work
opportunities becoming available, notably the demand for domestic
work on the part of Neapolitan families and the increase in the number
of businesses, mainly linked to the Chinese community (Ammaturo
et al., 2010). At the end of 2009 there were 27,481 foreign residents in
Naples (ISTAT, 2014b). The first 10 groups are listed in Table 5.1. The top
three groups represent the most significant communities in numerical
terms. It should be borne in mind that the figures reported in Table 5.1
are conservative estimates (see Chapter 1).
The majority of Ukrainians in Naples are women and they are usually
employed in the domestic sector and as carers, therefore representing
one of the most invisible groups in terms of LL. There were no traces of
Ukrainian in the surveyed areas, but there were signs featuring Russian.
Working on the assumption that Ukrainians often speak and or under-
stand Russian, the choice of this language on the part of the sign origi-
nator may simply be pragmatic in so far as the same language can target
a linguistically diversified audience. Figure 5.8 below is the sign of an
‘Association for the help of former USSR citizens in Italy’ and indexes
the existence of such an audience.
Table 5.1 The first 10 nationalities represented in the city of Naples at the end
of 2009 – males and females
Country of origin Males Females Total
Ukraine 803 4,847 5,650

Sri Lanka 2,529 2,362 4,891
China 1,184 1,044 2,228
Romania 650 949 1,599
Poland 227 1,272 1,499
Dominican Rep. 221 362 583
Cape Verde 149 423 572
Bulgaria 112 449 561
Peru 210 304 514
Figure 5.8 Association for the help of former USSR citizens in Italy
Sri Lankans (mostly of Sinhalese ethnicity) generally live in the central

areas of the city and in particular in the Piazza Cavour/Sanità area, which
is where the sign represented in Figure 5.9 was identified. They tend to
work in the domestic sector and, to a lesser extent, as employees in the
catering business and in shops. In this respect they are not as invisible
as the Ukrainian female migrants discussed above. Communities in the
main Italian cities such as Naples have grown thanks to well-developed
support networks (Henayaka-Lochbihler and Lambusta, 2004). A num-
ber of organizations and associations foster continued communication
between groups and individuals across different areas of Italy. The sign
in Figure 5.9 represents an example of group mobilization in so far as it
gives details of a meeting in Via Marsala in Rome (near the main railway
station) to remember war veterans.
In Naples the presence of Chinese migrants dates back to the early
1990s. The main occupations of the Chinese community revolve around
Figure 5.9 A poster in Sinhalese
commercial activities and include shops, market stalls, and restaurants.

Evidence shows an exponential increase (by 692 per cent) in the number
of Chinese businesses in the decade 2002‒2012 (Camera di Commercio,
2012). Place of work and place of residence tend to coincide or be contig-
uous in the case of shops (both wholesale and retail), and this is mostly
visible in the area around Piazza Garibaldi (see below).
The hairdresser’s sign in Figure 5.10 provides an example of the
multifunctional use of space. The business is not located at street level,
which is the usual location of Italian commercial retailers, but it is on
a higher floor in the building. Chinese appears in a dominant position,
Figure 5.10 A hairdresser’s sign
but the second language is (non-standard) English, rather than Italian.

Given that this sign was located in the multi-ethnic and multicultural
area of Piazza Garibaldi (see below), the choice of English may be due
to the highly diversified composition of the local environment and/or
to the desire of the business owner to mark themselves out as a cosmo-
politan business catering for a cosmopolitan clientele (see Chapter 6).
Alternatively, given that Italian hairdressers have increasingly chosen
English-language salon signs, the hairdresser’s sign may simply indicate
that the LL agent is conforming to the universe of signs denoting hair-
dressers in Italy and therefore asserting linguistic citizenship (or dual
citizenship) via consolidated local forms of cosmopolitan citizenship.
Compared to other parts of Italy, the instability of the local job
market and the economic precariousness of sections of the Neapolitan
population seem to have created the premises for a generally favourable
reception of migrants and for expressions of solidarity on the part of
the local inhabitants (Ammaturo et al., 2010).9 In addition, the signifi-
cant presence of the informal economy in the area has to some extent
favoured the mixing of locals and migrants in their commercial activi-
ties and consumer behaviour (Amato, 2008). At times the area around
the main station, for example, is transformed into a giant market where
sellers and buyers are equally likely to be Neapolitans or migrants.
Figure 5.11 shows a shop sign opposite the entrance to the railway
station. The shop sells ‘European and international food products’ (as
clarified in the Italian line at the bottom) and the vaguely French fla-
vour of the name SuperBON is intermingled with an iconic (and stereo-
typical) representation of an oriental face via the adaptation of the letter
‘O’. The Chinese script under the shop name confirms the availability
of ‘oriental’ food items. What is striking, however, is that the shop front
sits comfortably between two very traditional Neapolitan establish-
ments where the famous sfogliatella, a Neapolitan pastry (which enjoys
an excellent reputation outside Naples as well) can be bought and con-
sumed. In addition, the shop is located under the ubiquitous pizzeria
sign. It is therefore apt that the sign should reproduce the colours of the
Italian flag: green, white and red.
This historical ability to incorporate foreign elements in the fabric of
the city together with the continued representation of chronic social
deprivation in areas in the very centre of the city have constructed
Figure 5.11 A shop selling European and international food items

discourses of peculiar social amalgams that are reproduced in the social

semiotics of the emblematic Piazza Garibaldi. Figure 5.11 is just an exam-
ple of the LL of the area around the main railway station, Napoli Centrale,
which is located to the east of the historic centre. Immigrant languages
identified in the area include Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Sinhalese, and
Wolof. In addition to providing affordable housing for a number of
migrants, Piazza Garibaldi is a real hub for other migrants who arrive
there from their countries of origin and for those who use trains or
buses to travel to and from their workplace and homes. Different kinds
of transactions are carried out in the square and the area is in a perma-
nent state of flux, with migrants representing a regular component of a
transient human landscape. The square epitomizes continuous move-
ment through non-places such as bus and train stations (Augé, 2008)
whilst constituting home, and therefore personal and intimate space,
for its dwellers. Dwellings in the area, however, tend to be temporary
and therefore represent the opposite of stability for migrants. This
contributes to those representations of Naples as the site of permanent
precariousness and allows the accommodation of the new LL agents and
of their languages within existing discourses on the local urban context.
Piazza Garibaldi is also a place where many migrants meet and socialize,
where legal and bureaucratic services for migrants are offered (e.g. how
to extend one’s residence permit) and where it is possible to purchase
‘ethnic’ goods or food. As a multicultural site of encounter, exchange,
and socialization, the square is appropriated and re-functionalized by
migrants. The changeable use of space and the crossing of spatial bound-
aries between public and private, work and leisure construct discourses
of incomplete citizenship and precariousness. From this perspective, the
sign in Figure 5.10 narrates work activities carried out in private space
and private time. Unlike the front of a ‘regular’ shop, the sign does not
display opening times. Similarly, Piazza Garibaldi is the site of work and
domestic activities that are carried out simultaneously.
Conclusions
The LL of Marseilles and Naples construct localized spaces where social

representations are reproduced and exploited for a number of purposes,
although these diverge from one another in terms of the extent to
which the shared concepts and projections of the cities are reflected in
the public space. In Marseilles, the LL is not particularly multilingual
or cosmopolitan; from a quantitative perspective, the French language
dominates the public space more in Marseilles than in the other four
sites in France investigated in this book. Based on the data collected

and analysed for this exploration, we contend that it is a national social
representation that dominates, rather that the localized projection of
Marseilles as a city coloured by multilingual language practices. Instead,
the LL suggests that the centuries of an unwavering language ideology
that we discuss in Chapter 1 is a lived experience in this Mediterranean
city that is otherwise characterized by high levels of ethnic mixing
and a diversity of ethno-linguistic communities not replicated in other
cities along the shore. In other words, the French language, especially
in its prized written mode, is used to the marginalization of all other
languages. The seeds for this divergence between spoken and written
language practices were sown early; Dell’Umbria (2006, p. 329) draws
attention to this from as early as the seventeenth century, when the
literate might well speak in ‘the local language’ but write in French,
despite the extent to which the national standard language was foreign
to the majority in Marseilles. Whilst Occitan as a spoken language, and
one embraced both in historical representations of the city (such as the
art installation in the Regional Tourism Centre) and as the carrier of
contemporary ethno-linguistic identity (for which the Occitan Cultural
Centre actively lobbies), might well be the subject of intense academic
and activist debate, its written form is largely absent from the LL.
It might be argued that Marseilles as a major city is less likely than
some of the other cities discussed here to serve as the screen onto which
written modes of regional languages are projected, given the disjunc-
ture between the city and the traditional of Occitan and, in particular,
Provençal, given their sustaining in rural rather than urban settings in
modern France. The widespread absence of Provençal and/or Occitan
from the LL nourishes further the social representation of Marseilles,
given that whilst the French spoken in the city is often characterized
by its distance from standard (which is widely interpreted as ‘Parisian’)
French, the city is not now presented in either a local or national nar-
rative as identified by the widespread use of the regional language. The
civic authorities, as attested in the Regional Tourism Centre, might
well – on very rare occasions – appropriate and commodify the regional
language(s) of Provence, but in the artistic representation of multilin-
gualism minorization processes are rehearsed.
For new citizens of Marseilles, there is very little space carved out
in the LL by those who speak the languages of migrant communities.
Hatubou (1999) might well identify Marseilles as the world’s first city
for Comorians, whose number exceeds that of Moroni, the capital city
of the Comoros. However, the Comorians tend to live in the northern
suburbs of the city, and where Marseilles’ city centre is marked by

Arabic, it is as a consequence of élite cosmopolitanism (see Chapter 6)
such as the consulates of Algeria and Morocco, or the well-established
Maghreb banks, rather than thanks to the managing of the public space
by Arabic-speaking LL actors. There are exceptions to this, such as the
butchers’ shop on the Boulevard National, but these are infrequent yet
highly concentrated iterations of written language use in anything
other than French.
In Naples, as already highlighted in Berruto (2006) for oral uses,
written dialect performs different functions: it is a viable means of
communication and an expressive and playful tool; it carries symbolic
and ideological value; and it has a folkloristic and archival function. In
addition, the LL of Naples displays elements of both the commodifica-
tion and institutionalization of Neapolitan and of the cultural capital
which it carries, therefore demarcating it as a site of normalization of
dialectal use.
The migrants’ contribution to the LL in Piazza Garibaldi can be inter-
preted as an attempted construction of place that crosses into enclosed
spaces where linguistic and cultural practices remain invisible. This is
the case of religious and other institutionalized practices as well as of
socializing practices performed in domestic spaces. The mechanisms and
modalities of re-composition and re-functionalization of space, how-
ever, are similar and point to the symbolic reconstruction of place. They
aim to foster relationships, communication and a sense of belonging
(Leonforte, 2009) and to counteract precariousness and up-rootedness.
The migrants’ contribution to the wider semiotic landscape, therefore,
is realized via social semiotics and via a re-conceptualization of space.
Narratives of precariousness are dotted around the LL and communicate
a type of ‘transit’ urban economy which is accommodated into existing
local discourses and the aesthetic of the picturesque.
6
Cosmopolitan Linguistic
Landscapes of the Mediterranean
English and the construction of cosmopolitan identities
Cosmopolitanism originated in ancient Greek thought and in par-

ticular with the Cynics (Diogenes is said to have stated ‘I am a citizen
of the world (kosmou polites)’) and the Roman Stoics (such as Seneca)
(Nussbaum, 2002). In modern times cosmopolitanism was elaborated in
Kantian philosophy as a universalistic concept that revolves around the
idea of the individual’s loyalty being primarily to other human beings.1
This has also been termed moral cosmopolitanism (Delanty, 2009). This
kind of cosmopolitanism can be incorporated in the political face of
cosmopolitanism, one that involves deeper forms of cross-cultural
engagement, whilst the other face would include cultural dimensions
such as fashion, lifestyle, food, travel, and other everyday practices
(Hannerz, 2006, p. 9). The latter aspect directly links cosmopolitanism
to consumption. Urry (1995) in fact defines aesthetic cosmopolitanism as
the practice of consuming difference – via the consumption of foreign
places – on the part of the curious, reflexive, and mobile subject.
That cosmopolitanism is embedded in practices, habits, feelings, and
orientations towards the Other is a view also shared by Beck (2003,
2006) in his formulation of banal cosmopolitanism which is rooted in
daily, unremarkable actions such as shopping or eating that in turn
produce cosmopolitan identities. This degenerates into deformed cos-
mopolitanism (Beck, 2006, p. 20), a result of the commodifying logic of
late capitalism. The emphasis on consumption is maintained by Nava
(2002). However, a critical element is introduced by means of consid-
erations about how class, gender, and race shape cosmopolitan identity
and cosmopolitan consumption. The cosmopolitan figure is still by and
large identified with the western, privileged, white male. If the ability
178
Cosmopolitan Linguistic Landscapes 179
to consume media images as well as material commodities grants one

membership of the cosmopolitan community, cosmopolitan consump-
tion also reproduces those inequalities that are due to different degrees
of access to economic, social, and cultural capital and distinguish the
sophisticated, knowledgeable, and affluent consumer and exclude the
ordinary ones (Bourdieu, 1984; Vertovec and Cohen, 2002).
In relation to what has been termed consumerist cosmopolitanism
(Calhoun, 2002), which carries little or no transgressive potential and
therefore little political agency, Appadurai (1990) elaborates on Marx’s idea
of commodity fetishism and divides it into production fetishism and fetish-
ism of the consumer. Production fetishism refers to what he would later term
the production of locality (Appadurai, 1995) and to place branding via com-
modities and services that are actually the result of global processes and
labour.2 Locality therefore becomes ‘a fetish which disguises the globally
dispersed forces that actually drive the production process’ (1990, p. 307).
The consumer is turned into a sign that replaces real agency in so far as ‘the
consumer is consistently helped to believe that he or she is an actor, where
in fact he or she is at best a chooser’ (1990, p. 307). These concepts will
be useful when explaining instances of ‘authoritative’ cosmopolitanism.
Cosmopolitanism is a perspective from which we will analyse the
presence of English in the LL of the Mediterranean cities examined here.
A light and diffused cosmopolitan identity is enacted via LL and con-
structed by both providers and receivers of goods and services who con-
stitute a consumption community (Boorstin, 1973). Contrary to Boorstin’s
positive suggestion, however, social inequalities are reproduced in this
type of community as well. The materiality of signs and their emplace-
ment (Scollon and Scollon, 2003) contribute significant semiotic lay-
ers to the construction of cosmopolitan identities. Consciously, we
removed the discussion of English from each of the preceding chapters
in order to focus here on the questions generated by an analysis of
English in the LL. We contextualize our evaluation first by outlining
the relationship between the states of France and Italy and the English
language, before discussing how the issue has been explored by others
considering English in the LL. We then examine the data from the ten
sites with a view to understanding better the role of English in the pub-
lic space in the Mediterranean.
Italy
We have already discussed Italy as a multilingual country with respect

to both its territorial languages and the languages that increasingly
have been brought into the country by migrants from the 1970s
onwards. Due to complex historical processes, language shift from
local varieties to Italian has occurred in relatively recent times, has
affected different areas of the country differently, and has modified, if
not simplified, individual and group linguistic repertoires. As a matter
of fact, the majority of Italians are plurilingual and draw their linguis-
tic resources from at least two language varieties (D’Agostino, 2007).
It is therefore not surprising that the LL of Italy should be extremely
varied and multilingual in all its aspects and that a high number of lan-
guages contribute to the construction of the urban space. Institutional
attempts to regulate the use of languages in Italian public space have
been sporadic at the national level and even Fascist policies do not
seem to have influenced language use significantly in the first half
of the twentieth century (see Chapter 1). Recent laws that restrict the
visibility of foreign languages from the historic centre of a number of
Italian towns are meant to control the development of commercial
areas (and their resulting social space) where increasingly migrant lan-
guages have acquired visibility in shop windows and on walls. In some
cases this type of legislation is openly discriminatory and it is disguised
by claims about safeguarding the ‘authenticity’ of Italian town cen-
tres on the part of local administrations. Another stated reason is the
alleged lack of comprehensibility of commercial signage via the public
display of languages that are perceived to be distant and illegible by
the local population.3
The degree of comprehensibility of languages such as French, German,
and Spanish, however, is not questioned and they remain prominent.
These languages are traditionally considered to be prestigious languages
of culture and, in the case of French and Spanish, their status as colonial
languages has afforded them wide diffusion globally. Historically, the
three languages have been used to forge national identities and have been
the carriers of remarkable cultural baggage. As a result, they are studied
widely so that, in post-modern times and following the intensification
of mass tourism, they have been relied upon for tourism purposes.
Statistics (Banca d’Italia, 2013, p. 23) in fact show that European tourists
represent the vast majority of tourists in Italy, although the contribu-
tion of languages such as Russian and Japanese to the LL testify to an
opening of the tourist linguistic market to include languages spoken
by wealthy newcomers (and investors). Incidentally, we are not aware
of legislation introduced to curb the appearance of these languages in
Italian town centres, in spite of the fact that Italophone viewers are
usually not familiar with their scripts.
Studies have highlighted the impact of foreign cultural imports on

the development of popular culture in Italy (Forgacs, 1990). As in other
parts of Europe, the Anglo-American influence has been pervasive and
has characterized stages of the Italian transition from traditional culture
to a culture typical of industrial capitalism. More recently, the remark-
ably high visibility of English in the Italian LL is clearly the result of
globalization processes and transnational flows, and its presence has
similarly affected the public space of other national contexts. The pas-
sion for all things English in Italy, however, spans several centuries
and dates back to a time when the English language and England were
closely associated and an ethno-cultural stereotype still held.
In his 1911 book about anglomania, Graf describes Italian enthusi-
asm about English culture, albeit filtered through a French lens, in the
eighteenth century. Both Voltaire and Montesquieu had spent time in
England in the first half of the eighteenth century and both had written
about it enthusiastically (Graf, 1911, p. 36). Voltaire is possibly the most
famous admirer of England and saw English history as one continuous
and indefatigable fight against despotism and tyranny; he therefore
made way for the interpretation of the Civil War as a war of liberation
from servitude (Bartoli, 2007, p. 7). This interpretation of English his-
tory was influential in Italy as well due to the circulation of French
reports and French translations of English texts.
Klajn (1972) provides additional linguistic evidence in relation to the
eighteenth century, when a first significant influx of anglicisms found
their way into Italy. The passion was reciprocal and the anglophilia of the
time was returned with italophilia: the British protagonists of the Grand
Tour were greatly impressed by the ruins of Rome or Renaissance art in
Florence. Political affinities between English liberalism and the Italian
patriotism of the nineteenth-century Risorgimento strengthened the
political and moral dimensions of the relationship. Italian Risorgimento
heroes such as Mazzini and Garibaldi were greatly admired in England
and not just by their contemporaries. At the beginning of the Second
World War, Churchill’s iconic speech encompassing the sentence ‘I have
nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat’ is believed to have
been inspired by similar words pronounced by Garibaldi when recruiting
soldiers before the establishment of the short-lived Roman Republic in
1849 (Lukács, 2008).
Rando (1987) points out that English influences had in fact started
making their way into Italian before the eighteenth century, but this
century remains significant for the use of a first wave of anglicisms
mostly related to English culture and political and scientific thought.
In the nineteenth century, anglicisms would come primarily from

industry, social life, and, later on, sport. His study concludes that in
the post-unification period (from 1861 to approximately 1987) approx-
imately 4,200 English borrowings entered the Italian vocabulary (1987,
p. 249).
More recently, Bartoli (2007) provides an ironic account of how this
admiration towards the civil conquests that resulted from the Glorious
Revolution, and which was shared by all the free spirits of Europe,
gradually changed to an obsession with English fashion and all that
was branded Made in England. The cultural and linguistic hegemony
of French of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was soon to be
replaced by English, but the post-war Anglo-American model was to be
superimposed on that of old Britannia.
In the Italian press, articles about the ‘invasion’ of the English lan-
guage appear at regular intervals.4 According to surveys carried out by
the translation agency Agostini Associati, between 2000 and 2008 there
was a 773 per cent increase in the use of English words in documents
produced by Italian companies, with a further 223 per cent increase
in the following two years (Agostini Associati, 2012). The term itan-
gliano was first coined in 1977 (Elliot, 1977), whilst itanglese is quoted
in Italian dictionaries (such as Hoepli online dictionary). Among
scholars there are those who have expressed their concern about the
highly infectious morbus anglicus (Castellani, 1987) and those who see
foreignisms as not having significant statistical relevance, as a normal
physiological process and as an integral part of language change (e.g.
Serianni, 1987; De Mauro, 2013).
Agostini Associati, however, based their statistics on documents issued
by Italian companies, whose language can be considered to be a spe-
cialist language (as defined in Sanga, 1981) including terms relating to
economics and marketing that have found their way into other lan-
guages as well. In addition, whilst contemporary Italian does appear to
be very receptive to English words, the phenomenon involves primar-
ily the written word and is mostly noticeable in the Italian media and
in particular in the Italian press (Carrera Díaz, 2000). More recently,
English borrowings have entered the new media and their use does
seem to be ever increasing and indiscriminate. Italians do not seem to
be concerned about the proliferation of English words and expressions
that they are exposed to and, historically, attempts to regulate the use
of foreign words in Italian have been viewed with scepticism, if not
suspicion (Fanfani, 2003). As a matter of fact, if one excludes the Fascist
period and its xenophobic linguistic policy, state institutions have
not traditionally regulated the use of foreignisms in Italy and strongly

purist positions on the part of intellectuals have been rather sporadic
(Cartago, 1994).5
It is interesting to note that the dual interpretation of Italian anglo-
philia, that is an engagement with certain political ideals and actions
on the one hand and a mere chasing after certain fashions and tastes
that can generate anglomania on the other, is somewhat reproduced in
at least part of current scholarship on cosmopolitanism.
France
As discussed in Chapter 1, France has taken what might be consid-

ered a dirigiste approach to the management of language in general,
and of the LL more specifically. The relationship between French and
English is ancient, and has been characterized by its ebb and flow;
Walter (2001) describes it in the subtitle of her monograph as ‘an
incredible love story’. This relationship between two languages is
not completely disconnected from the relationship between France
and Britain, which Tombs and Tombs (2006, p. 1) depict as ‘one of
the most intense, most troubled, and most significant [relationships]
of modern times’, which is characterized by ‘wars, alliances, hatred,
coexistence, envy, admiration, emulation – even, sometimes, love’
(p. 2). However, since the twentieth century, this relationship with
the English language is conducted not merely over the English
Channel, but across the Atlantic Ocean, and is viewed through the
prism of Anglo-Saxon attitudes and behaviours, rather than as a bond
between Great Britain and France.
However, in comparison with Italy, from the perspective of France’s
governing elite, there is a sense of anglophobia with regards to the French
language. Given the identification of the French language with French
culture, and the place of France in the world, Lodge (1993, p. 6) argues
that ‘strenuous official efforts have been and still are deployed to main-
tain the use of French as an international language, and to combat the
effects of outside (usually lexical) influences on the language, as if they
were a hostile invasion.’ The question of linguistic anglomania is most
prominent from a linguistic perspective in the area of borrowings, the
management of which is often ascribed to l’Académie française. Maurice
Druon, the late Dean of l’Académie française, noted in his introduction
to the 2000 edition of the Académie’s dictionary that ‘We only make
room for foreign words insofar as they are truly established in usage,
and there is not already a legitimate French word which refers to the
same thing or expresses the same idea’ and yet he also confirmed that
l’Académie is more welcoming of borrowings than is widely believed to
be the case (DAF, p. xviii). Estival and Pennycook (2011, p. 334) decon-
struct the myths around l’Académie française, and they argue that the
primary role of this body is ‘to create and sanction alternative terms’,
despite the popular narrative that l’Académie française primarily acts to
resist a linguistic invasion of French by English.
Ayres-Bennett (1996, p. 257) breaks down the pace of borrowings
into French from English according to century, noting the start of the
process in the seventeenth century, which accelerated in the eighteenth
century, especially for terms ‘denoting English institutions or eccen-
tricities’. She argues that industry, commerce, and transport prompted
further borrowing in the nineteenth century, followed by ‘an explosion
in the influence of French on English’ in the last century. Although
there is no suggestion that this rate of borrowing implies imminent
obsolescence, concerns in France have been raised that the status of
the language, as well as its internal structure, has been challenged by
English. This has been the case especially since the end of the First
World War, which formally ended with the Treaty of Versailles, the last
international treaty to be written in French (Adamson, 2007, p. 6).
Lodge’s ‘strenuous official efforts’ are matched at the same time by an
openness by the wider population to English and all that the language
conveys. The anglomania attested in Italy is replicated in French society
in domains as diverse as education, commercial activity, and cultural
production. Lecherbonnier (2005, p. 15) notes that English is now the
language used by certain large businesses in France for their working
practices, including internal communications, high-level meetings,
documentation, and professional development. These major French
companies include such giants as Bouygues, Renault, Alcatel, and Axa. As
noted in Chapter 1, France has taken considerable steps to protect and
extend the written use of French in commercial domains, which include
the LL, but this does not prevent anglomania in advertising, highlighted
by Lecherbonnier (2005, pp. 187–8) who laments how French compa-
nies ‘address French citizens as if they had all been born in the Bronx’.
He identifies companies such as France Telecom, Accor, Europe Régie, and
Mephisto which use English-language slogans in advertising (such as
‘high-speed company’, ‘check into emotions’, and ‘Global One with
France Telecom – for your world-wide business solutions’) despite the
threat of fines levied for infractions of language legislation.
Beyond commerce, the most striking domain in which language
beliefs of the wider population have embraced English is in cultural
output. Despite the laws passed to ensure the transmission of French-

language music on French radio stations, and despite the protectionism
associated with French film production, English-language film, music,
and other artistic productions continue to find favour with the French
public. Lecherbonnier (2005, p. 39) also argues that French anglomania
is nourished by all aspects of Anglo-Saxon life, including clothing, food,
leisure activities, arts, entertainment, and legends. In other words, this
anglomania is not merely a linguistic phenomenon, but extends to eat-
ing habits, fashion, and even a certain world view.
The presence and visibility of English in the French language has
become a favourite issue in the contemporary Anglophone world. On
12 October 2011, The Independent printed an article entitled ‘Language
watchdog goes interactive to teach French to the French’, in which
the author, John Lichfield, told readers that the website of l’Académie
française includes a section which will ‘provide lessons on how to speak
correct French without slang or common mistakes or, worst of all,
anglicisms.’ In The New York Times on 6 June 2011, Caroline Weber, in
her article ‘Championing the French Language’, notes that l’Académie
française has ‘expressed ambivalence about, even disgust at, acknowl-
edging the legitimacy of Anglo-American terms like “week-end”’. In
The Australian of 27 July 2010, Charles Bremner critiques ‘the official
campaign to keep the French language alive in the world and roll
back the invasion of English’ in an article entitled ‘Losing campaign
to fend off English’. He goes on to note that ‘hundreds of millions of
euros’ have been spent on this task, and yet ‘most American imports
have survived the rules obliging civil servants and public broadcasters
to substitute long-winded and committee-invented locutions for the
snappy foreign version’. In the Anglo-Saxon collective psyche, the
French language – and more specifically, its self-appointed guardians –
is like the eleventh-century Norse King Cnut, who in vain commanded
the rising tide not to wet his feet as he sat enthroned on the shoreline.
The analogy is that despite the desire of some vocal supporters of the
purity of the language, the rate of borrowings into French, usually from
English, is accelerating and that there is nothing that can be done to
stop this rising tide.
Etiemble (1964, pp. 269–71) brings to light – from as early as 1963 –
what he refers to as franglais in periodicals as diverse as the daily
newspaper Le Monde (criticized for its use of un test ban and les tweeds),
l’Humanité (formerly, the French Communist Party’s daily paper which
included the use of le smog, and les liners) and Elle magazine (which
printed articles discussing le british-look and un patchwork). Some 50
years later, the French press (both in hard copy and online) continues
to embrace anglomania, where Le Nouvel Observateur of Bastille Day in
2012 highlights the cancelling of the President’s annual garden-party,
where L’Equipe on 26 August 2013 makes reference to un standing ova-
tion at a football match, and where Libération printed its entire front
page on 21 May 2013 in English to mark ‘the government’s proposed
bill to teach some classes in English at French universities’. This vis-
ibility of English in the French media, and the reactions towards it,
characterize the country’s complex language beliefs towards English,
which is viewed simultaneously as a prestigious world language with
economic clout and considerable cultural cachet in terms of popular
culture, but a language that is indelibly associated with an Anglo-
Saxon model of MacDonalds, MTV, binge drinking, and American teen
soap operas.
‘English’ in the LL
As discussed below, English is without doubt the most prominent of

all languages after French and Italian in our surveying of the public
space. The prestige carried by the English language is undisputed and
its highly symbolic value is represented very strongly in the LL. On a
global level, English embodies a social stereotype rather than an ethno-
cultural one and this is mostly noticeable in the forms of advertising
that occupy vast areas of our urban spaces. In two articles, Piller (2001,
2003) emphasizes the use of English as a symbol of modernity, progress,
and globalization which is directed at highly mobile individuals who
are transnational consumers, and is ‘the language of international com-
munication and not the language of a particular national community’
(Piller, 2001, p. 164). Elsewhere (Tufi and Blackwood, 2010), we have
argued that the LL is one particular forum in which the linking of a
particular language with a specific nation state is potentially problem-
atic. Whilst Seargeant (2009, p. 30) argues that English, when used in
the Japanese LL, indexes ‘characteristics associated with the social group
which is typically thought of as using the language’, it is also possible that
English in the LL is not automatically equated with the UK, or the US.
English as the hegemonic voice in advertising does not need to be
understood; it needs first and foremost to be decoded as ‘English’. This
process of decoding overshadows a sense of the text’s meaning, or even
its internal coherence. Seargeant (2011, p. 191) contends that ‘the use
by a Japanese company of an English slogan which exhibits a cluster
of odd syntax and spelling choices according to the norms governing
standard British English may well be viewed with the local (that is,
Japanese) speech community not as an incompetent attempt at ‘correct’
English, but as a persuasive index of an ‘international’ orientation.’ In
other words, accuracy, meaning, or force are less significant in many
cases than the actual act of using the English language.
In the LL, where a language is perceived to be English, it is often fet-
ishized in the Marxian sense, whereby the reader projects onto the sign
a value which may or may not have a direct correlation with its mate-
rial value (see also Kelly-Holmes, 2000; Huebner, 2006; Edelman, 2009).
Thus far, research into the LL has attributed to English characteristics
including prestige, and modernity (Ross, 2008, p. 33); creativity and
humour (Mettewie et al. 2012, p. 213); success and sophistication (Piller,
2001, 2003) and wealth (Dimova, 2007). In an important contribution
to the discussion of English in the LL, Seargeant (2009) identifies what
he perceives to be the three main attributes of English as an ‘idea’ in
Japan: globalization, authenticity, and aspiration. Furthermore, he con-
cludes that it ‘has a complex, highly contested, and much appropriated
meaning’ (p. 133), pointing to the tension between shared understand-
ings and individual, personalized attitudes to English.
‘English’ in the Italian LL

In the Italian surveys, an average of 16.7 per cent of signs recorded fea-
tured some elements which could be decoded as ‘English’. A breakdown
of signs featuring English in the five Italian sites is provided in Table 6.1.
We did not identify any significant differences in the written uses of
English in these areas.
The data in Table 6.1 does not include brand names (see Tufi and
Blackwood, 2010 for a discussion). If we were to include non-Italian-
Table 6.1 Distribution of signs featuring English in the Italian survey areas
Total no. of signs No. of signs featuring Proportion of all

English signs featuring
English
Cagliari 11,379 2,110 18.5%

Genoa 7,352 854 11.6%
Naples 12,724 1,969 15.5%
Palermo 10,528 1,146 10.9%
Trieste 9,628 1,236 12.8%
Total / average 51,611 7,315 14.2%
sounding trademarks, the percentage would be noticeably higher at

24 per cent.
English in the Italian LL therefore indexes and constructs a wide
range of cosmopolitan identities whilst fulfilling a variety of functions.
English seems to be part of a communicational landscape where it is
employed as a semiotic modality and as a mainstream resource. Italian
companies and establishments use English words, phrases, and slogans
on their products and/or on their shop signs/windows to impress a
mark of modernity on their goods and to distinguish themselves as
global commercial actors. Examples of Italian companies marketing
themselves or their goods using English words included a range of
homewear called Sweet Years and cosmetics by Italian brand Yamamay
described as Sensual – Energy, Suncare, and Aftersun & Body in Naples; a
lightbulb named Immediately in Trieste; an Italian engineering company
was advertised as Industrial Engineering and an IT company Microsales
(with an obvious reference to Microsoft) in Palermo; and a stationery
shop in Palermo displayed the sign Cartoshop, a hybrid consisting of the
Italian prefix carto- (paper) and the English suffix -shop replacing the
Italian cartoleria (stationery shop).
Other signs displaying English were not directed to tourists or elite
cosmopolites either. Both New Dinamic Line on a gym (It. palestra –
Figure 6.1) sign and Baby Parking on a nursery (It. scuola materna) sign
were in the outskirts of Palermo. Both linguistic elements (such as the
non-standard use of English – dinamic instead of dynamic) and other
semiotic elements (handwriting on the nursery sign) point to a semiot-
ics of socio-economic disadvantage and exclusion. Similar characteris-
tics were identifiable in a poster on a wall in the outskirts of Naples that
advertised a course in pizza making (Gastronomy School): inexpensive
material and execution, absence of colours and a general do-it-yourself
appearance indicated that both authors and intended audience were
likely to be non-elite cosmopolites.
In instances of transnational cosmopolitanism the use of English is
often a necessity in so far as it acts as a lingua franca. This is the case
of a sign displaying Phone Center seen in Via Prè in Genoa: this type of
establishment is commonly found in central areas of Italian cities that
have experienced a noticeable influx of migrants and provide services
such as international phone calls and money transfer for residents
whose countries of origin are very diverse. Similarly, a sign displaying
English (Bangladesh Garden – Indian Fast food) was located in an area of
Palermo, Via Maqueda, that is characterized by a number of shops and
businesses run by Bangladeshis. The area, however, hosts businesses
Figure 6.1 Gym sign in Palermo
run by people from other parts of the world and is also interspersed
with sites of interest for tourists. English is therefore a viable option for
business naming purposes (Bangladesh Garden) and to provide informa-
tion about type of food (Indian fast food – to note the generalization for
an audience of both local and foreign customers who are likely to be
familiar with Indian food, but not necessarily with Bangladeshi food).
The sign in Figure 6.2 from Cagliari, conversely, seems to have been
inspired by the wide currency that the word fashion enjoys amongst
Italians and is therefore added to the Chinese characters and the
Italian Abbigliamento cinese. Incidentally, Cinese fashion works well as
a direct translation of the Italian and with the benefit of being com-
prehensible, even though not displaying the standard spelling Chinese.
Different types of cosmopolitanism are therefore actualized in this
sign, with layers of transnational and aspirational cosmopolitanism
contributing to the identity of both the commercial establishment and
the target clientele.
Returning to local uses of English, Figures 6.3 provides an example
of graffiti where anglicized names and tags such as Francy are stylistic
Figure 6.2 Chinese clothes shop in Cagliari
Figure 6.3 Graffiti: tags and signatures (Sicilian with ‘Francy’) in Palermo
devices and a result of regular contact with both mediated and non-
mediated, experienced forms of cosmopolitanism. Arguably these
graffiti were authored by young people and studies on the language
of Italian youth usually highlight the high incidence of anglicisms or
pseudo-anglicisms as elements often borrowed directly from the media
(Fusco and Marcato, 2005; Stefanelli and Saura, 2011). It is not surpris-
ing, therefore, that anglicized elements are employed alongside dialec-
tal elements (i picciuatti ra vucciria – the boys from Vucciria) that equally
feature in the language of youth as stylistic devices and as part of a rep-
ertoire that is constantly renovated. Vucciria is an area of Palermo that
is famous for its historical market whilst picciotti originally indicated
young mafiosi. The boys from Vucciria are provocatively re-appropriat-
ing/re-claiming (or just newly appropriating/claiming) the walls of an
area that has recently become a trendy place for Palermo nightlife and
the mix of dialect and anglicisms is part of a new metropolitan language
(see below) that narrates a cosmopolitan city.
Transgressive signs such as graffiti can also manifest forms of engaged
cosmopolitanism via political dissent and protest, as shown in signs car-
rying global significance and appeal to an international audience with
shared political views. NO GLOBAL WAR, NO BUSH DAY was an (old)
anti-war sign with explicit reference to American Presidents Bush (either
father or son), whilst EAT THE RICH can be interpreted as a (violent)
incitement to the removal of those responsible for social inequalities.
The message would be the same if the slogan were decoded as a direct
cinematic reference, given that the British black comedy Eat the Rich
(1987) contained explicit anti-Thatcherite criticism.
An instance of elite cosmopolitanism is in Figure 6.4. The sign was
on a boutique window in Via Ruggero Settimo in Palermo and invited
customers (or viewers) to the event Fashion and the city, with obvious
references to the American TV series Sex and the City, which portrays a
very privileged Manhattan world.
The word ‘exclusive’ features in the Italian sentence ([Tru Trussardi]
has the pleasure to invite you to an exclusive appointment) below Tru
Trussardi, the designer clothing brand that was promoting the event.
The fashion show is presented as a social event for select customers
who will be able to enjoy cocktails and a DJ set while watching a trunk
show (just like the protagonists of Sex and the City), an expression
that is not transparent to an Italian audience that does not normally
attend that type of gathering. The organization of the text and the
fonts used make it simple but elegant, and the resemblance to the
style of a wedding invitation underlines the fact that this is a unique
opportunity to be part of a special group of guests who mean much
to the host. Another shop was named Class, which is a statement in
itself, and located in Viale della Libertà in Palermo, a street lined with
designers’ shops. Verbal elements in this prestigious part of the city
were scarce because the area speaks for itself and discourses of silence
Figure 6.4 Invitation to a Trussardi fashion event in Palermo
(Thurlow and Jaworski, 2010) are more appropriate. Commercial

signage is limited and discreet and even credit card signs are not
represented in their standard size, as they appear on the windows of
virtually all commercial establishments nowadays. They are reduced
in size and hardly perceptible because they are not relevant. For the
type of clientele that the designer shops in Viale della Libertà want
to attract, money is not an issue. In addition, non-verbal semiotic
elements such as the configuration of the residential space, the archi-
tecture and the actual emplacement of signs construct an exclusive
spatial site where an elite cosmopolite can feel at home. The area can
rely on a history of elite residents dating back to the eighteenth cen-
tury, and more conspicuously to the end of the nineteenth century,
when Palermo’s nobility started moving to this quarter immediately
to the north of the city centre to occupy a number of villas built by
the most renowned architects of the time (Chirco, 2005). Off-streets

are airy and spacious and they reflect careful urban planning, unlike
other noisy and chaotic areas. Shop fronts on Viale della Libertà blend
in with existing architecture and entering some of the shops is like
accessing a private palace: a balustrade conceals two sets of steps on
either side that allow you to be admitted into another exclusive space.
Young elite cosmopolites frequent the area in the evening by means
of visits to the local bars and British-style pubs that they populate
in pre-formed groups. These groups of friends drive to and congre-
gate in these autonomous private spaces with which they strongly
identify and which provide a shell for their evening social practices
within demarcated personal and group boundaries. As Brucculeri and
Giannitrapani (2010) explain very effectively in their discussion about
the social semiotics of Palermo nightlife, these young people practise
this type of socialization as distinction in their affirmation of diversity
and in their not mixing with other groups, something which requires,
amongst other aspects, the existence of open public spaces. The elite
nature of the area is therefore consolidated by a social semiotics of
separation, day and night.
The act of branding a product or a shop can be extended to a place
and examples of authoritative cosmopolitanism in the form of place
branding can be seen in Figures 6.5 and 6.6. The fetishistic produc-
tion of locality (Appadurai, 1995) in Figure 6.5 is enhanced by product
branding: Franco Bombana is the brand of legwear mentioned and the
only Italian-sounding element of the sign. The word only in Only Made
in Italy emphasizes to the potential customer that this is an authentic
Italian product, designed by an Italian designer and produced entirely
in Italy.6 The long and prestigious tradition of Italian design and
manufacturing, together with all the images that this tradition conjures
up, transforms all that is produced in Italy into an object of desire,
worthy of universal admiration and characterized by excellent quality.
The sign in Figure 6.6 equally exploits the mechanisms of place brand-
ing and stereotypes associated with the quality of Italian manufacturing
of which the global consumer is expected to be aware. The items for sale
themselves are a primary contribution to the construction of tradition-
in-locality in that they are reproductions of antique letter openers and
magnifying glasses. Time and space therefore contribute layers of mean-
ing to the uniqueness of the object whilst de-territorialization practices
invite the cosmopolitan consumer to share in the global consumption
community (Boorstin, 1973): the signs in both figures include web
addresses.
Figure 6.5 Item by the Italian company Franco Bombana in a shop window in
Trieste
In the Italian LL, English is therefore prominent in the practice of

polylanguaging, which entails the use of features associated with differ-
ent languages regardless of the language user’s degree of familiarity with
those particular languages (Jørgensen et al., 2011). This practice is com-
mon in super-diverse societies (Vertovec, 2007), which are characterized
by high levels of mobility and transnational flows. Here individuals are
not easily categorized in terms of their linguistic and cultural identity,
amongst other aspects, and the demographic and social composition of
groups has reached a level of complexity that was unimaginable until
not long ago. Increasingly our cities are sites where diversity is the
norm. Multiple encounters generate communicative needs that are best
Figure 6.6 Item for sale 100% Original Italian Quality in Genoa
met by what has been termed metrolingualism, or the manipulation of

linguistic resources on the part of language actors who are immersed in
ever-changing urban dynamics and actively involved in the construc-
tion of urban space (Otsuiji and Pennycook, 2010). Different linguistic
codes are drawn upon creatively in the construction of meaning and in
the constant negotiation and re-negotiation of urban identities.
‘English’ in the French LL

In terms of proportions, the presence of English is minimal, although in
most cases, it is more visible than any language other than French (with
the exception of Corsican on Corsica); see Table 6.2.
Table 6.2 Distribution of signs featuring English in the French survey areas
Total no. of signs No. of signs featuring Proportion

English of all signs
featuring
English
Corsica 9,122 417 4.6%

Northern Catalonia 9,645 254 2.6%
Marseilles 9,909 349 3.5%
Nice/Monaco 7,738 496 6.4%
Total/average 36,414 1,516 4.3%
As in Italy, French businesses use English words, phrases, and slogans

to name their companies, to label their products, or to create a splash
of something foreign and cosmopolitan on their shop windows. In
Nice on the avenue Jean Médecin, a private tuition business calls itself
Education First; on the rue de Rome in Marseilles, we find a branch of
the chain The Phone House; a clothes shop on rue Mailly in Perpignan
is called Pure Style; a shoe shop on Ajaccio’s main street, the cours
Napoléon, is known as Jet One. Given the exemption of brand names
and trademarks from the Toubon law which requires a translation into
French of all information in the sale of goods and services, the use of
English here does not infringe any legislation on language use (see
Chapter 1). In part, France’s language laws – in particular the Toubon
law – have an impact on the distribution of English items in the LL of
the French cities in the Mediterranean surveyed here. There is clearly
an awareness of the existence of regulations pertaining to the use of
English in commercial activity, as the Toubon law has entered popular
understanding of language management in France. What is less clear-
cut is the extent to which the law’s exact provisions are well known,
and whether this has an impact on the use of English in public space.
In terms of data, business names and trademarks, despite the excep-
tions provided in the legislation, only make up a small proportion
of the signs recorded in English. Whilst every Mediterranean town
boasts a shop with an English name, or where English is used in the
registering of a French trademark, only 15 per cent of the sub-corpus
of signs in English are business names or trademarks. In Marseilles,
the figure drops to only 6.9 per cent (n = 24), whereas 29.5 per cent
(n = 75) of the sub-corpus in Northern Catalonia are business names
or trademarks.
Unlike in Italy where, above, we refer to a semiotics of socio-

economic disadvantage in certain uses of English in the LL, there is no
clear correlation between the margins of economic activity and English-
language business names. In general, the data suggests that English is
used to name smaller businesses in city centres rather than large com-
panies, as outlined above with the four businesses from Nice, Marseilles,
Perpignan, and Ajaccio. In addition, there is a clear trend to hybridity
involving an English and a French element to business names in these
coastal Mediterranean towns. In Perpignan, we recorded Happy Croq (a
café on rue Louis Blanc), and Canilook (a dog-grooming parlour on the
boulevard Félix Mercader); in Marseilles, Le Number One (a café on boule-
vard Banon); and in Ajaccio, Le Freedom (a bar on avenue Pascal Paoli).
As in the Italian coastal cities, English can take on the role of a lingua
franca, although it is not always the default language for communi-
cating with a public not necessarily familiar with the preferred first
language of the sign-writer. For example, a butcher’s shop on the rue
Nationale in Marseilles translates the Arabic information into French,
rather than English. The same approach is adopted by a Vietnamese
restaurant on the rue Buffa in Nice. What is particularly striking in com-
parison with the Italian Mediterranean cities is the default to French,
rather than English, as the lingua franca for migrant groups. North
Africans from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia make up the largest col-
lective migrant group in France (INSEE, 2014b), and where members of
these ethno-linguistic communities use Arabic in marking the public
space for commercial purposes, the translation – or, to use the typology
devised by Reh (2004, p. 8), the duplicating multilingual writing – is
usually in French, not English. That is not to argue that there is no use
of English as a lingua franca in French Mediterranean cities. On the
allées Léon Gambetta in Marseilles, a restaurant specializing in eastern
Asian cuisine, notably Thai, Chinese, and Vietnamese, is named Thai
China Fast Food, whilst on the route des Sanguinaires in Ajaccio, a Chinese
restaurant is called China Blue. Both these examples point to a use of
English to speak to a wider market than is accessible in French plus
the ‘other’ language. In both of these examples, the restaurant owners
use other semiotic resources, such as lanterns and the Chinese dragon,
to convey the cosmopolitanism of their premises, as well as placing
English, rather than French, in their signage.
It is in Nice where we the practices in Italy are most strikingly ech-
oed; international cuisine is marketed to both a domestic and tourist
audience through English, such as at the café Pita Break (Figure 6.7),
and Chicken Baba (Figure 6.8). These are not the hybrid forms seen in
Marseilles, Ajaccio, or Perpignan, but are exclusively in approximant

forms of English (since standard English doubles the middle consonant
in pitta).
Pita Break (Figure 6.7) addresses an audience not expected to read
only French, and also speaks to its potential customers in English,
Italian, and Arabic. The functional dominance of French, however, is
confirmed again, whereby information on the nature of the business as
a delicatessen, which serves food to be taken away is provided in French
and French alone at the top of the sign. We contend that this sign,
whilst appealing to passing trade amongst an international audience,
reinforces the significance of French by addressing its potential clien-
tele with important information in French. Speakers of Italian, or even
those who merely recognize ‘Welcome’ are encouraged to consider Pita
Break as a business where they can buy food, regardless of their nation-
ality or linguistic repertoire. For Chicken Baba (Figure 6.8), the café
owners rely on the semiotic resource of an image of a smiling chicken,
giving the thumbs up, as well as an awareness of the term ‘chicken’ as
a culinary item, to attract customers. In terms of cosmopolitanism, we
Figure 6.7 Café name using English in Nice

Figure 6.8 Café name using English in Nice
return here to Diogenes’ Asia Minor with both these signs drawing at
the same time on English and Turkish/Greek/Arabic borrowings with
resonance across several languages. English is but one of the semiotic
resources deployed, and in both cases (Figures 6.7 and 6.8), we detect
the transnational cosmopolitanism but not at the high prestige end of
the spectrum.
From the perspective of elite cosmopolitanism, English retains a
prestigious position on the linguistic market of French Mediterranean
cities. We contend that there are two aspects of elite cosmopolitanism
attested by the signs in the LL. On the one hand, English connotes
high-end tourism and travel, identified with the British (English)
interest in the French Riviera during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. For example, in the town of Menton, to the east of Nice,
we see the street sign for Edward VII Avenue (also known locally as
Avenue Edward VII) which is named in commemoration of the British
king’s visit to the town when he was the Prince of Wales (Figure 6.9).
The interest shown by the British aristocracy in the French Riviera is
Figure 6.9 Street name in Menton
well known, and both the late king and his mother, Queen Victoria,
spent time along the Mediterranean coast. This elite cosmopolitanism
is expressed not only in the naming of a street after a British monarch,
but also in the font of the sign, and the syntax.
We contend that this sign can be read in more than one way.
Morphosyntactically, the sign can be understood to be presented in
English (with the name of the street preceding the noun, whereas French
syntax would place the noun – avenue – before its qualifier), but avenue
is a French borrowing into English. Where this sign deploys semiotic
resources connoting with elite cosmopolitanism is the use of fonts
associated with the City of Westminster’s traditional street signs. Not
only does the sign denote a late British monarch, but in using the font
and colours of street signs from one of London’s most elite districts, it
invokes nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sophistication, power,
and taste.
This more historical employment of English to convey elite cosmo-
politanism is complemented by modern and contemporary uses of
English. In Chapter 5, in the case study of Marseilles and Naples, we
highlight the use of French alongside Arabic in the signs associated with
international banking. Figure 6.10 shows the façade of the Attijariwafa
Bank on the Canebière in Marseilles.
The Attijariwafa Bank is Morocco’s largest bank, with bilingual sig-
nage on its premises in the centre of Marseilles. However, unlike the
BCME (la Banque Marocaine du Commerce Extérieur), another Moroccan
bank with a branch in Marseilles, the Attijariwafa Bank addresses its
clientele (both actual and potential) in English through its signage on
the streets of Marseilles. Here, the prestige of English-language banking
and finance, with connotations of Wall Street in New York, the London
Stock Exchange, and the US Federal Reserve is indexed by the use of the
English-language term bank instead of banque in French.
Transgressive signs in the French cities surveyed for this project are
few and far between – there is very little graffiti in English on the walls
of Ajaccio, Marseilles, Nice and Perpignan. Where such splashes of
English appear, they are usually banal in their nature, such as the sign
on l’Avenue de Général Charles de Gaulle in Perpignan which reads Fuck
Prades – a criticism of a neighbouring town and former ‘capital’ of the
historic Catalan comarca (or county) of Northern Catalonia. Equally
banal and conveying little beyond an awareness of the English-language
term is the appearance of the word love, either on its own (as attested on
the boulevard Jeanne d’Arc in Marseilles) or in a basic phrase such as I love
you (recorded on the walls of the rue Paul Colonna d’Istria in Ajaccio).
In Marseilles, one example of the transgressive use of English which
identifies the author with a specific sub-culture is the sign on the rue des
Pistoles in Marseilles which reads So much anger built inside, which is a
line from Gang Starr’s 1992 track I’m the Man. In general, and especially
in comparison with the Italian Mediterranean cities, there is very little
English-language graffiti to be found in the French coastal cities, and no
attested use of English in graffiti at all in Nice. From this, we contend
Figure 6.10 The Attijariwafa Bank in Marseilles

that English is rarely one of the semiotic resources for which those writ-
ing on the walls of French Mediterranean cities reach.
Polylanguaging is the most widely attested practice that leads to the
presence of English in the LL of French Mediterranean cities. Here, glo-
balization, and especially the transnational flow of products, accounts
for the widest visibility of English. To a certain degree, this visibility
of English is what we might understand to be banal. Since Billig’s dis-
cussion of banal nationalism (1995), scholars have explored banality
in sociolinguistics, including Thurlow and Jaworski’s assessment of
banal globalization (2011), and Puzey’s application of banal linguistic
nationalism in the LL (2012). From the perspective of English in the
Mediterranean, we see banal multilingualism insofar as our approach
to data collection identifies and codes multilingualism as a widespread
feature of the public space, but this multilingualism does not refer to
plurilingual individuals, but to the emplacement of several languages
in a given LL as a consequence of globalization. In Marseilles alone,
multilingual packaging constitutes almost 60 per cent of the signs
which feature English (n = 172). In the window of a hairdresser’s on the
boulevard de la Concorde, 50 bottles of L’Oréal shampoo whose trilingual
information panels – in French, English, and Spanish – certainly place
English in the public space in Marseilles. However, the extent to which
this presence of English reflects anything other than the combination
of the product labelling strategy employed by the L’Oréal Group and the
consequences of the transnational movement of products is limited.
In these examples, English is not used on product labelling as part of the
trends in cosmopolitanism discussed above. Instead, we contend that
this use of English is mundane and economically driven by manufactur-
ers for whom making a multilingual information label is not primarily
designed to address a multilingual clientele, but rather to permit the
flow of goods between markets where three different languages are in
wide use.
Conclusions
On the basis of our examination of English in ten sites on the French

and Italian Mediterranean coastline, we return to the suggestion of
global citizenship – as identified by Diogenes – to ask whether the
English language, or what is understood by several million people along
the Mediterranean shore as ‘English’ has become the defining charac-
teristic of cosmopolitanism in the LL. As a semiotic resource and as a
stylistic device and practice, English in the French and Italian LL is part
of a multimodal discourse in the construction of city subjectivities. It

is part of sign repertoires of an individual or a community (Bateman,
2011) and it both indexes and constructs different types of cosmo-
politanism, which is highly situated and multi-layered. The remarkable
transactional value of English, due to its exceptional status as a global
lingua franca, explains the high degree of its visibility, its currency, and
its commodification.
The data gathered and analysed in this study points to an ‘idea of
English’ (Seargeant, 2009) that is not universal, something which
might not initially seem surprising. Where this is striking is that the
value attributed to the ‘English’ used shifts perceptibly on either side of
the national border. A pertinent example is the use of English in com-
mercial activity. Where there is an overlap in France and Italy in the
commodification of English in the economic market is in the food and
drink industry, especially in retail. In particular, the data attests that
the non-national food service industry employs widely the English lan-
guage (such as Chicken Baba in Nice, Thai China Fast Food in Marseilles,
Bangladesh Garden in Palermo and Snack Quick [sic] in Genoa), but these
are not the traditional high-quality restaurants, especially those identi-
fied with the prestigious national cuisines of France and Italy. As such,
we extend the ‘mythologies’ identified for France by Barthes (1957)
beyond wine, milk, and steak and chips to include high-value cuisine,
on the basis of the languages used to index national culinary tradi-
tions. The divergence in a shared ‘idea of English’ is highlighted in elite
cosmopolitanism where the data suggests that what we are coding as
English fulfils the role of conveying prestige much more extensively in
Italy than in France. In part, the weight of language ideologies, which
have in France fixed English as a challenger to French since the start of
the twentieth century, contributes to the value ascribed to the English
language. This deprecation of English is not indicated by the findings in
Italy, where English uncontroversially actualizes different values in the
LL and where a historical lack of institutional attention with respect to
the foreignization of the public space is exemplified by scarce or non-
existent legislation.
Despite its global reach, and despite the fact that it is the second most
visible named language in the LL, English has not come to dominate
visually the public space in either France or Italy. Despite a narrative
whereby English is seen insidiously to infiltrate the towns and cities in
which we live, we have not found that English competes meaningfully
or in a threatening way in comparison with the national languages
of French and Italian. Indeed, its quantitative visibility exceeds only
fractionally the regional languages, most notably Corsican, in the LL of

these Mediterranean cities. English indexes alterity in ways that some
managers of language choose to exploit. On Corsica, in a side street in
Ajaccio, the naming of a bar Le Freedom signals a particular value and
connotes with a specific concept. Given the social and political context
of Corsica, as discussed more fully in Chapter 4, the naming of this bar
in French would chime discordantly with nationalist ideologies on the
island; for those seeking at the very least greater autonomy within the
French state, to call a bar on Corsica ‘La Liberté’ is notable for several,
potentially conflicting reasons. At the same time, the choice of Corsican
as the name for the bar would embed the establishment, its owners,
and its clientele in a distinctive ideology; naming the bar ‘La Libertà’
resonates with a particular section of Corsican society. ‘Le Freedom’,
however, with its French morphological marker, calls on the visual rep-
ertoire (Blommaert, 2013, pp. 43–4) of potential customers and hints at
the cosmopolitanism we have explored in this chapter. It could also be
argued that the deliberate language mix represented by the French arti-
cle le and the English noun freedom performs a cosmopolitan identity
where regional and insular perceptions of Corsica need to be obscured,
and this is particularly meaningful with respect to our discussion of
insularity in Chapter 4. From this perspective it is interesting to note
that at times English appeared before Sardinian in Cagliari. For instance,
a sign on the premises of a local association, where the verbal message
was arranged vertically, welcomed passers-by in English first, then in
Sardinian and lastly in Italian, therefore establishing a hierarchy in the
multiple identities enacted by the sign itself.
7
Conclusions: The Transformative
Power of Emplaced Language
Introduction
LL is a defining quality of the urban fabric, understood as a web of mul-

tiple meaning-making activities. LL agents interact with, transform,
and challenge cityscapes as sites of evolving networks of individuals
and groups, and of political and socio-economic processes. They par-
ticipate in the construction of a communicational landscape that is
composed of both explicit and implicit relations so that it also points
to invisible or silenced linguistic dynamics. Discussions about language
are rarely about language itself but about the discourses woven around
language and via the medium of language. Choosing a language to
construct a narrative is never a neutral act, as expressed by Bakhtin
(1981, p. 294) ‘Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and
easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is popu-
lated – overpopulated – with the intentions of others.’ In the course of
the book we have highlighted themes as they emerged from our field-
work and from our reflections in relation to a sociolinguistics of place.
In this sense, our analyses are firmly anchored in physical spaces that
narrate localized stories and relational processes within given socio-
cultural sites. At the same time, however, we contend that the dynam-
ics which we have observed also exemplify directions, approaches, and
developments which can be shared and explored further in LL studies
and beyond.
In our concluding remarks we propose a characterization of space on
a metaphorical and symbolic level and in order to highlight the main
aspects of this project. We remain conscious that spaces and places
conflate and intersect, therefore producing those traits which confer a
unique character to our urban environments.
205
National spaces
It is hardly surprising that the two national standard languages domi-

nate the LL of the respective Mediterranean cities. French, explicitly
identified as the language of the Republic in the Constitution since
1992, and demanded in all commercial activity since the Toubon law
of 1994, saturates the public space in France. Given that this is the
first language for almost every citizen of France, acquired by migrants
seeking French nationality, and the lingua franca for many immigrants
to France, it is to be expected that a francophone public emplaces the
French language across the LL, including the Mediterranean cities
discussed in this book. As a consequence of the centuries of directive
language management strategies and aggressive gallicization processes
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is more striking to
note the proportion of signs which do not feature the French language
(Table 7.1)
There is an average, therefore, of 15 per cent of the signs encountered
in these French Mediterranean cities which do not feature French. In
many cases, these are signs which are predominantly English, and a
very small proportion of these are the regional languages, both of which
we discuss below. The iterations of French point to a widely accepted
discourse that French is the written code to be used in France, in part
because this exemplifies Spolsky and Cooper’s Sign Rules one and two
which point to knowledge of the language and its instrumental use
(1991, pp. 81–4). In other words, French is widely used for the fairly
obvious reasons that it is known by the overwhelming majority, and
used between them in written texts so as to facilitate communication.
Its absence is due, we argue, to the other factors in the construction of
place that we discuss below.
Table 7.1 Distribution of signs featuring French in the survey areas in France
Total no. of No. of signs Proportion of all

signs featuring signs featuring
French French
Corsica 9,122 7,763 85.1%

Northern Catalonia 9,645 7,409 76.8%
Marseilles 9,909 8,590 86.7%
Nice/Monaco 7,738 7,102 91.8%
Total / average 36,414 30,864 84.8%
Conclusions 207
Table 7.2 Distribution of signs featuring Italian in the survey areas in Italy
Total no. of No. of signs Proportion of all

signs featuring signs featuring
Italian Italian
Cagliari 11,379 9,031 79.3%

Genoa 7,352 6,484 88.1%
Naples 12,724 10,704 84.1%
Palermo 10,528 9,359 88.8%
Trieste 9,628 8,029 83.4%
Total / average 51,611 43,607 84.5%
As can be seen in Table 7.2, it is striking to note that Italian dominates

the public space of the sites surveyed in an almost identical fashion to
French in France.
The statistics return a situation of fundamental similarity in terms
of the visibility of the two national languages. Their appropriation
of the public space has taken place by virtue of standard language
ideologies (Milroy, 2001) which rest primarily on extensive bodies of
written production and on transmitted models of language elegance
and correctness which are rooted in the aesthetic visions promoted
by purist attitudes (see Chapter 1). Their dissemination is the result of
different language management styles directed at regulating language
practices, and the impact in terms of the stigmatization of local lan-
guages has been equally effective. What the statistics do not reveal,
however, is the type of information on language use which is collected
by organizations such as ISTAT (ISTAT, 2014a). This information con-
firms a situation of multilingualism for Italy that has been further
enriched by the linguistic repertoires which the millions of migrants
who have settled in the country in recent decades draw upon in their
daily activities.
Another aspect is that French and Italian (as well as other national
languages) in the LL do not often bring to the fore voice and agency
for those who are able to contribute fleeting inscriptions in the stand-
ard language or those who are silenced in their written universe. In
these instances the LL does not account for social disparities as they
are revealed in written language practices in a part of the world where
sophisticated levels of literacy in the standard language are essential
for a full participation in the mechanisms of communal life. However,
in comparison with France, the LL of Italy is manipulated by a more
diversified range of language agents. Whilst this is partly due to the lack
of norms governing the appearance of languages in the public space,

it also testifies to the range of linguistic repertoires available to the
population and, crucially, to the fact that increasingly individuals and
groups have displayed (often metalinguistically) the array of linguistic
resources available to them with newly found confidence.
Regional spaces and localized identities
As highlighted in the Introduction, the concept of minority language

is not uncontroversial and established discourses around minorities
are flawed inasmuch as the terms of the debate are usually dictated by
majority views (Philibert, 1990). In Italy, the recognition of national
minorities was an integral part of discourses of reconstruction in the
post-war period (Chapter 1). This perspective led to a number of institu-
tional initiatives for the safeguarding of national languages represented
in Italy which subsequently included other territorial languages in a
somewhat arbitrary manner (Toso, 2008a). The most notable exclu-
sions from national provision were the dialects, all those local varieties
which still play an active part in individual and group repertoires. Our
data indicates that the internalization of minoritization processes is
played out in the LL in a range of modalities and that diverse compo-
nents of localized identities are enacted via written language practices.
Significantly, official recognition and status are not directly related to
the visibility of the language varieties in question. The paucity of signs
featuring Sardinian in the LL of Cagliari (n = 31), for instance, is infe-
rior only to the number of signs displaying Triestino in Trieste (n = 22).
Even though they do not enjoy language status, Genoese, Sicilian and
Neapolitan appeared with similar frequency in the respective LLs (n = 55;
n = 48; n = 53).
Slovenian marks the public space of the province of Trieste more
prominently (n = 220), and this is in part the result of national legisla-
tion introduced in 2001. However, this is also a consequence of minor-
itization processes which entail linguistic appropriation of the public
space on the part of institutions. As shown in Chapter 3, Slovenian is
employed in the performance of the border at the national, regional,
and local levels. Boundedness and separation also reinforce percep-
tions of external peripherality with respect to Trieste. Triestino is in
turn assigned internal peripherality in the construction of a localized
identity, whilst othering processes with respect to Slovenian speakers
are primarily delegated to Italian in the westernmost strip of land of
the national territory.
Conclusions 209
Localized identities in the LL of Sardinia and Sicily have been elabo-

rated in particularly complex settings and are the result of multiple
pressures and tensions deriving from competing models of regionalism
within contradicting experiences of insularity. This includes the linguis-
tic exploitation of tradition according to modalities afforded by global
trends such as the massification of tourism and trade. The spatialization
of core islandness has been replicated at different levels on the islands
so that it is possible to identify gradients of nested insularity in the
configuration of both local and transnational spaces (see below). In
addition, local languages in both islands are employed to construct and
contest discourses of peripherality and, particularly in Sardinia, this has
entailed a minimization in the display of the local language as part of a
developing relationship between the centre and the periphery. The fact
that Cagliari is the regional capital of the island, and therefore the city
which receives and disseminates institutional management from the
centre, further reinforces this point.
Genoese and Neapolitan represent carriers of local culture in the
wider regions and elaborations of the past as cultural capital are evident
in both LLs, even though the ISTAT surveys consulted in the course of
the project highlight the significant differences in dialect use in the two
sites. That Neapolitan is a viable means of communication, however, is
testified by the range of functions that the dialect fulfils even in public
spaces normally inscribed in Italian. Conversely, Genoese participates
in the construction of localized identities either in its being anchored
in the past or in its becoming a component of global citizenship per-
formed within moveable identity borders. The respective LL also show
that both local languages are employable for operations of city brand-
ing, therefore contributing to a level of normalization of dialect use.
The minorization processes identified above have been echoed in
France, albeit with greater zeal and, arguably, more widespread success,
to the extent that some of the regional languages of France have been
positioned as obsolescent, given the declining numbers of speakers,
the increasing rarity of language use, and the persistent exclusion from
domains pertinent for revitalization. This marginalization extends to
the widespread absence of regional languages from the public spaces,
and nowhere is this more acute than in Marseilles, where no signs in
the 20 survey areas included either Occitan or Provençal. Despite the
historic significance of Marseilles in the founding myth of modern
Occitan revitalization, the regional language no longer – according to
our surveys – conveys symbolically the city’s past as a major city of
Provençal-speaking Provence. Even more notable is the evidence that
neither Occitan nor Provençal is appropriated by the civic authorities to

index the city’s past. As discussed below when exploring transnational
spaces, Marseilles distinguishes itself for having largely erased linguistic
diversity from its walls.
In striking contradistinction, Corsican is the most widely iterated
regional language across all nine cities examined for this book. The 592
signs coded as featuring Corsican point to the creation of a cultural
identity grounded in the regional language, conveyed to domestic,
national, and international audiences through linguistic (and semiotic)
resources. In part as a consequence of the island’s peripherality, which
resulted in the emergence of a confident representation of Corsica
as other than mainland France, and given the internal circulation of
ideas of Corsican-ness across the island, a localized linguistic identity,
with an echo in the LL, has emerged. Corsica’s island status contrib-
utes to the development of this ethno-linguistic identity, whereas in
Northern Catalonia, the connections with Catalan cultural identity
across the national border with Spain contribute in part to the crea-
tion of a regional space that does not respect the sovereign borders of
France or Spain. Catalan in Northern Catalonia appears less frequently
than Slovenian in Trieste province (n = 118) but is considerably more
widespread than the Italian dialects investigated here. This cross-border
identity, reinforced by semiotic resources – most notably the colours of
red and yellow – explains the visibility of Catalan, especially in rela-
tion to France’s regional languages which cannot turn to the use of
the variety beyond the national borders for support and the flow of
cultural matter. In this study, this applies in particular to Nissart and
Monegasque which have only the faintest of traces in the LL (five and
35 signs respectively). In both these cases, the emplacement of the
regional languages is a new phenomenon and part of a tradition that
is starting to take hold rather than the inverse. Although a long way
from indexing a specific role, especially given the prominent alternative
languages in the local repertoires (Italian for Nice, English for Monaco),
the iterations of Nissart and Monegasque suggest the establishment of a
branding of Nice and Monaco that recognizes the place of the respective
regional languages.
Transnational spaces and identities
Transnational spaces are identifiable in all the Italian cityscapes which

we have investigated and transnational subjectivities participate in dis-
cursive practices, even when their traces are sporadic. This is the case of
Conclusions 211
Trieste, for example, where occasional displays of Chinese (not included

in the main discussion in Chapter 3) which were concentrated in the
area around the main railway station point to the existence of a triple
layer of peripherality in the area, with patterns of boundary-making
practices being replicated at the national, regional, and local levels. This
differs from the spatialization practices identified in Palermo, where
the mental representations of areas of disadvantage were mapped onto
the spatial distribution of linguistic repertoires. Language practices in
areas of the city centre point to the emergence of patterns of nested
insularity insofar as they have been led by migrant linguistic and cultu-
ral insularization which has taken place within existing patterns. This
type of insularity shows blurred boundaries and outlets of connectiv-
ity, as exemplified by the Ghanaian exploitation of semiotic resources.
Semiotic, non-verbal resources are employed in Cagliari more widely,
where the particularly mobile and scattered nature of migrant groups
has evidenced practices of spatial demarcation (Blommaert, 2013) with
primary identity functions aimed to claim ownership on portions of
social reality. This, too, can be interpreted through the lens of nested
insularity realized via a multiplicity of micro-sites. Transnational LL
spaces in Genoa are epitomized by Via Prè, where migrant languages
perform both national identities and wider diasporic identities and
they actualize processes of re-territorialization with shifting and move-
able borders. The narrative constructed by migrant languages in Naples,
finally, is accommodated into existing postcolonial discourses of sub-
alternity and exoticism (Fabietti, 2006). In addition, the LL highlights
that discourses of precariousness are underpinned by a re-function-
alization of space, as exemplified by both the LL in Piazza Garibaldi
and invisible language practices as reported in ethnographic sources
(Ammaturo et al., 2010).
In the French Mediterranean cities, transnational spaces are far more
fluid than in Italy, often to the point where the data suggests if not the
erasure of migrant groups, certainly their extreme marginalization. This
is most striking of all in Marseilles, regarded as one of France’s most
ethnically diverse cities, and home to high proportions of Arab- and
Berber-speaking communities of North African ethnicity, as well as
a significant Comorian population. In the ten most central districts
of Marseilles, in which these communities live (in addition to their
concentration in the city’s northern banlieues), Arabic leaves a mere
trace in the public space, and demarcates individual premises, such
as a halal butcher’s shop or an Islamic bookshop, rather than visibly
bordered places. Even more noteworthy is the almost complete absence
of Portuguese; despite the fact that the Portuguese, since 1982, have
been the single biggest ethno-national group in France after the French
(INSEE, 2006), there is no demarcation of a transnational Portuguese
space in any of the cities surveyed. A popular narrative has emerged
which characterizes the Portuguese as invisible immigrants, whereby
they are portrayed as white Roman Catholic Europeans, indistinguish-
able from the French. Based on our data, the Portuguese are further
elided into France’s population by the absence of written forms of the
language on the walls of Marseilles, Nice, Perpignan, and Ajaccio.
There is a more discernible trend for the construction of space that
indexes Italian migration, most strikingly – for obvious reasons – in
Nice, Monaco, and Ajaccio. In these cities, and especially in Nice, we
observe traces of transnational flows that head westwards from Italy
into France, a pattern not replicated in the reverse direction. Over
recent centuries, economic migration and geopolitical shifts explain the
presence of Italians in significant numbers in the French Mediterranean
cities, but unlike the Portuguese, who do not create lusophone borders
in the LL, Italian speakers are addressed and address each other in the
public space. In part, proximity between France and Italy explains this
visibility, and new trends in Northern Catalonia point to a long delayed
echo of this phenomenon, where the civic authorities, already address-
ing catalanophones in Perpignan, are belatedly speaking to Castilian
speakers through texts erected in the last few years.
English and cosmopolitan spaces
Despite what one might conclude from the narrative carefully woven
by France’s elite, the English language occupies a minor place in the
LL of the country’s Mediterranean cities. Proportionally, whilst English
is the second most widely attested language in Northern Catalonia,
Ajaccio, Marseilles, Nice, and Monaco, there are very few iterations of
the language, and far fewer signs featuring English in the French cities
investigated here in comparison with the Italian cities. Moreover, the
visibility of English is most often explained as a consequence of the free
mobility of goods within the EU and the wider implications of globali-
zation, such as the use of English by a Moroccan bank with global aspi-
rations. In other words, despite the widely rehearsed ideology of English
as a threat to the French language, there is little evidence to suggest
that English challenges the practical communicative role performed by
the national standard language. Moreover, despite the symbolic role
ascribed to the English language, where it indexes variously modernity,
Conclusions 213
technology, and popular culture, our data point less to these attributes
and more to alterity, especially in the food retail industry. Whilst high-
end restaurants address the passer-by in French, international foods,
especially those in less formal eateries use English in the act of nam-
ing their café or small restaurant. In this respect, cosmopolitanism in
France’s Mediterranean LL is performed by the English language more
often when the value of the product is lower than a French equivalent.
High-value clothes boutiques, award-winning restaurants, and all space
managed by the various levels of the civic authorities eschew English
in favour of French.
Counter-examples are provided by instances of elite cosmopolitan-
ism, but these are less widespread in the French cities investigated here
than the Italian ones. This elite cosmopolitanism points to various
prestige associations made with the English language, including the
identification with the French Riviera’s illustrious past as the destina-
tion of choice for the British royal family, or the connotations of luxury
entextualized in semi-permanent posters advertising the auction of
oriental carpets in Monaco. The LL of French Mediterranean cities, how-
ever, rarely attest to the use of English as a lingua franca, and instead
French more widely assumes this role – a point which reinforces the
significance of the national standard languages in both countries, as
discussed above. Although these cities on France’s coastline welcome
significant numbers of tourists, including English-speaking ones from
the United Kingdom, there is little evidence of translations into English
for non-francophone visitors. It is the case that, where a translation is
provided, English is the default language, but the approach to address-
ing non-French speakers is inconsistent, and cosmopolitanism in
France certainly does not equate to the widespread visibility of English.
Despite the metaphorical hand-wringing on the part of France’s elite,
the self-appointed watchdogs, and the various pressure groups about
the threat posed to French, English has been marginalized in the LL,
and we contend that, at least in part, this is the consequence of the
internalization of language ideologies which simultaneously elevate the
status of French and diminish the pertinence of English. Centuries of
strategies to form language beliefs that create this shared understand-
ing, and directive policies to balance, at the very least, every iteration
of the English language with a French equivalent, point to a restrained
presence of English.
Our data shows that the LL of Italy is much more varied and mul-
tilingual than the LL of France, and that a high number of languages
compete in the construction of the urban space. On the one hand,
this is a consequence of limited attempts to police public displays of

multiple language varieties, and, as a result, the foreignization of public
areas is created and recreated by social actors who do not apply self-
policing (Foucault, 1975) when inscribing the walls of Italian cities.
Although occasionally alarmed voices are raised against the alleged
invasion of Italian by English, defensive attitudes are in the minority,
and foreign words continue to dot the cityscapes of Italy either because
they carry cultural stereotypes in their symbolic usage or because of
the extreme mobility of goods and services which characterizes com-
mercial exchanges in the postmodern era. What looks like a rather
indiscriminate employment of English in the LL of Italy, however, can
be dissected to reveal more fine-grained manipulations in the perfor-
mance of cosmopolitan identities. These can be observed in examples
which range from the banal through to the politically engaged and the
transnational, and are exemplified by what can be decoded as ‘English’
in local company names, on shop signs, in graffiti, and as a component
of elite cosmopolitanism conferring distinction in social semiotic prac-
tices. English contributes to the performance of transnational identities
and, interestingly, it proves to be of versatile applicability in trans-
national understandings and experiences of cosmopolitan lifestyles.
English participates in discourses of multimodality and stratified identi-
ties and, as a result, is a significant semiotic resource in the construction
of city subjectivities.
Ultimately, we have been analysing signs in the public space, but,
at the end of this book, it is worth recalling that the LL is constructed
by people with competing motivations, desires, and tendencies. The
discourses entextualized on the walls of Nice, Monaco, Genoa, Trieste,
Perpignan, Palermo, Cagliari, Ajaccio, Marseilles, and Naples do not
emerge out of the sunshine which beams down on these cities. We
evoke here the individuals, groups, shopkeepers, elected representatives,
artists, designers, and many other people who collectively construct
identities, representations, aspirations, and realities that coalesce in the
Linguistic Landscapes of the Mediterranean.
Notes
An Introduction to Mediterranean Linguistic Landscapes

1. See for example Reh (2004), Gorter (2006), Backhaus (2007), Barni and Bagna
(2009), Ben-Rafael (2009) and Kallen (2010).
1 Sketching the Contexts: France and Italy

1. For an initial bibliography see, for example, Giumelli (2012).
2. For new dialectal uses see, for example, Sobrero and Miglietta (2006), Marcato
(2006) and (2012), and Miola (2012).
3. The text can be read in Italian, French, and English in Ferreri (2010). For a
discussion, see, for example, Lo Duca (2003).
4. A range of labels for varieties of French have been identified; for example,
Massian (1985) classifies five categories of French, whereas Battye et al. (2000)
name three labels.
5. For a detailed account see Serianni and Trifone (1994).
6. In spite of this, according to recent research Italian remains the fourth most
studied language in the world. See Italian Foreign Office (2014).
2 The Linguistic Landscapes of Borders: France and Italy

1. See Newman (2008) and Diener and Hagen (2009) for short summaries of
these debates around the turn of the new millennium.
2. This echoes the Mediterranean topos which we discuss more fully in Chapter 5.
3. We address élite cosmopolitanism in Chapter 6.
4. European legislation altering visa requirements can be accessed at the follow-
ing website: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:200
3:069:0010:0010:EN:PDF
5. See, for example, the newspaper article by Destefanis Botte e coltelli,
il Far West di Prè http://genova.repubblica.it/cronaca/2013/08/18/news/
botte_e_coltelli_il_far_west_di_pr-64925100/
6. Unfortunately the term latinos is often used in association with the phe-
nomenon of gangs in the Italian cities with relatively large groups of Latin-
American migrants. See for example La Stampa (2013).
3 Peripherality in the Border Areas with Catalonia and

Trieste
1. Finzi and Panjek (2001), however, highlight that the historically idealized
portrayal of Trieste as a model of a multinational and multicultural city relates
primarily to the urban elites. The different languages and cultures that have
215
216 Notes
passed through or stayed in Trieste have often acted more as barriers than as
bridges between different groups.
2. For a more detailed discussion of the historical background see Tufi (2013b).
3. Varieties of veneto coloniale (colonial Venetan) became established in those
areas of Friuli not bordering venetophone areas after Venice’s conquest of
Friuli in 1420. Venetan became the prestige variety (Finco and Rizzolatti,
2005) and was adopted by the local elites, subsequently spreading to other
social groups (Penello, 2005). Friuli was under Venetan rule until 1797.
4. In the post-war period five Italian regions were granted special statutes that
ensured a degree of autonomy in the administration of internal affairs. Three
of them are border regions with identifiable ethno-linguistic features and
whose dachsprachen correspond to national languages spoken just across the
border: FVG – Slovenian, Trentino-Alto Adige – German and Valle d’Aosta –
French. The other two are Sicily and Sardinia, the two largest islands in Italy
(see Chapter 4).
5. In 1863 G. I. Ascoli was the first to propose the term Venezia Giulia to name the
regional area currently bordering with Slovenia. Venezia Giulia was one of three
Venezie, together with Venezia Tridentina (current Trentino-Alto Adige) and
Venezia Euganea (current Veneto and central and western Friuli). Ascoli’s consid-
erations were primarily based on linguistic grounds (Salimbeni, 1980, p. 58).
6. The law is about public funding made available to support expenses incurred
by local authorities for the translation and the production of material to be
displayed in public spaces in the relevant minority language.
7. See Marley (1995, p. 18) for details of responses to the sociolinguistic survey
commissioned during the French Revolution.
4 Insularity in the Linguistic Landscapes of Sicily,

Sardinia, and Corsica
1. In the press, articles referring to the state of abandonment of Sardinia and
Sicily abound, and were a common feature in France when discussing Corsica,
until the creation of the Regional Assembly in the 1980s.
2. See Tufi (2013a) for an account of the context and the main issues relating to
the codification of Sardinian.
3. For a full discussion on the process, see Adrey (2009), Blackwood (2008), and
Jaffe (1999).
4. We fully recognize that this and other examples have the potential to fulfil
more than one function, and it is equally the case that the deployment of
Corsican in this signs is symbolic and indexes Corsican ethno-linguistic cul-
tural identity.
5 Social Representations of Marseilles and Naples’

Linguistic Landscapes
1. See, for example, Blackwood (2011), Muth (2012), and Mettewie et al. (2012).
2. Our matching of Marseilles with Naples is also noted by Dell’Umbria (2006,
p. 12) who includes Barcelona to create a trio of comparable Mediterranean
cities.
Notes 217
3. We address issues of cosmopolitanism in Chapter 6, and understand Temime’s

use of the word in the most generic of senses.
4. In the Odyssey (Book XII) Ulysses wants to listen to Parthenope’s irresistibly
seductive voice, but he has been warned by Circe that the sirens will lure him
to death. He therefore plugs up his men’s ears with beeswax and tells them to
tie him to the mast of the ship to stop him from jumping overboard to join
the sirens. Ulysses’ plan was successful, but Parthenope threw herself into the
sea out of desperation and died.
5. TV broadcasts of the theatrical production by Eduardo De Filippo
(1900–1984) and regular repeats of films interpreted by Neapolitan actor Totò
(1898–1967) are just two examples of the wide dissemination of Neapolitan
cultural products (and language) via television. Neapolitan song was taken
beyond the national borders by Neapolitan migrants and Enrico Caruso rep-
resents an illustrious example for singing at the Metropolitan Opera in New
York in the early 1900s. Neapolitan is used in different musical genres as well
and contemporary singer-songwriter Pino Daniele’s jazz-rock production is a
successful example of a non-traditional style sung in Neapolitan.
6. It suffices to mention the controversial The Moral Basis of a Backward Society
(1958) by Edward C. Banfield, who theorized that ‘amoral familism’ was the
ethos characterizing community life in southern Italy insofar as family inter-
ests were pursued at the expense of community relations and the pursuing
of the common good. Rather than amoral familism being considered a likely
consequence of historical processes and of the socio-economic structure of
parts of southern Italy, the category was used as an analytical tool to explain
the dynamics of family-centred relations and their detrimental influences.
7. The IEO was modelled on the Institute for Catalan Studies, founded in 1907.
8. Montuori (2006, p. 178), however, highlights the factors that may encour-
age a higher diatopic homogenization of Campanian dialects in the future.
These are recent emigration from Naples to the rest of the region and not just
from parts of the region to Naples, the fact that social interaction is currently
more diversified than it was among closed rural communities in the past and
the influence of the Neapolitan linguistic model, which has become rather
Italianized over time and therefore can accommodate Italian expressions
whilst still carrying identity functions.
9. This does not mean that there have not been episodes of intolerance or that
Naples represents an idyllic shell for migrants. To some extent the worsen-
ing of the economic crisis has affected the traditional welcoming attitude of
locals, as reported in the press and other sources. See, for example, Petruccelli
(2013) and Ammaturo et al. (2010).
6 Cosmopolitan Linguistic Landscapes of the

Mediterranean
1. Boon and Delanty (2007), however, point out the essentially legalistic dimen-
sion of Kantian cosmopolitanism: individual cosmopolitanism and world
citizenship can only be realized in the presence of strong international
law. Given that this vision presumes the existence of consolidated national
entities, ‘… [Kant’s] legalistic cosmopolitanism may even turn out to foster
nationalism as such’ (2007, p. 22).
218 Notes
2. Recent legislation about ‘Made in Italy’ products is a case in point. Law

8 April 2012, no.55 established that products can be branded ‘Made in Italy’ if
the production process has taken place predominantly in Italy and in particu-
lar if at least two stages of the production process have been completed in
the country. Although the law was conceived primarily to safeguard Italian
industry from counterfeiting, the wording of the law concedes explicitly that
many Italian companies have de-localized. This is in order to manufacture
their goods in countries where labour is cheaper.
3. See, for example, recent legislation in Bologna, Comune di Bologna
(2012) http://www.comune.bologna.it/media/files/odg_223_2012_mod_reg_
insegne.pdf) and discussions carried out in the municipality of Treviso as
reported in Tuveri (2011).
4. See for example the article by Bignami (2007) ‘Provincia, addio al question
time’ http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2007/03/01/
provincia-addio-al-question-time.html?ref=search
5. See Chapter 1 for examples of linguistic intolerance in pre-fascist times.
Although at times the debate was rather heated, both within institutions and
in the press, this was not followed by national legislation. As discussed in
Chapter 1, however, linguistic purism and its political exploitation had long-
term effects in terms of the consolidation of linguistic prejudice and in the
formation of negative language attitudes and opinions towards dialects and
non-standard Italian.
6. See Note.4 for a reference to legislation on Made in Italy branding.
Bibliography
Accademia della Crusca (2014) Statuto dell’Accademia, http://www.accademiadel-

lacrusca.it/it/laccademia/organizzazione/statuto-dellaccademia, date accessed
5 December 2014.
Adamson, R. (2007) The defence of French: A language in crisis (Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters).
Adrey, J. B. (2009) Discourse and struggle in minority language policy formation:
Corsican language policy in the EU context of governance (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan).
Agostini Associati (2010) Itanglese’: aumenta del 773% l’uso di parole inglesi nella
lingua italiana scritta delle aziende, http://www.agostiniassociati.it/UserFiles/
File/CS_Agostini_Associati_itanglese.pdf, date accessed 20 February 2013.
Agostini Associati (2012) L’itanglese cresce ancora del 343%, http://www.agostini-
associati.it/itanglese.php, date accessed 20 March 2013.
Amato, F. (ed.) (2008) Atlante dell’immigrazione in Italia (Rome: Carocci).
Amenta, L. and Assenza, E. (2012) ‘Fenomeni di dissolvenza nell’Italiano
regionale di Sicilia. Un’analisi dei dati ALS’ in P. Bianchi, N. De Blasi, C. De
Caprio and F. Montuori (eds.) La variazione nell’Italiano e nella sua storia. Varietà
e varianti linguistiche e testuali. Atti dell’XI Congresso SILFI, Società Internazionale
di Linguistica e Filologia Italiana (Napoli 5–7 ottobre 2010). Vol. II (Florence:
Cesati), pp. 729–38.
Amoruso, C. and Scarpello, I. (2005) ‘Dialetto, integrazione, esclusione. Percorsi
immigratori urbani a Palermo’ in G. Marcato (ed.) Dialetti in città (Padova:
Unipress), pp. 171–83.
Amos, H. W. (forthcoming) ‘Redefining multilingual signs in the linguistic land-
scape: Discursive content and text-types on street signs in Toulouse’.
Ammaturo, N., de Filippo E. and Strozza, S. (eds.) (2010) La Vita degli immigrati a
Napoli e nei paesi vesuviani. Un’indagine empirica sull’integrazione (Milan: Franco
Angeli).
Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of
nationalism (London: Verso).
Anderson, M. (1996) Frontiers: Territory and state formation in the modern world
(London: Polity).
Appadurai, A. (1990) ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’,
Theory, Culture and Society, 7, 295–310.
Appadurai, A. (1995) ‘The production of locality’ in R. Fradon (ed.) Counterworks:
Managing the diversity of knowledge (London and New York: Routledge),
pp. 208–28.
Aprosio, S. (2008) ‘Genova centro di formazione e di irradiazione del vocabo-
lario marittimo nel mediterraneo occidentale’ in V. Orioles and F. Toso (eds.)
Circolazioni linguistiche e culturali nello spazio mediterraneo. Miscellanea di studi
(Recco: Le Mani), pp. 267–78.
Ara, A. and Magris, C. (2007) Trieste. Un’identità di frontiera (Turin: Einaudi).
219
220 Bibliography
ARLeF (2015) Agenzia Regionale per la Lingua Friulana, www.arlef.it, date accessed
20 February 2015.
Arneri, G. (2002) Trieste. Breve storia della città (Trieste: LINT).
Arrighi, J. M. and Pomponi, F. (1997) Histoire de la Corse (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France).
Augé, M. (2008) Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity,
2nd edn (London/New York: Verso).
Augoustinos, M., Walker, I. and Donaghue, N. (2006) Social cognition: An inte-
grated introduction (London: Sage Publications).
Aymard, M. (2008) ‘Spazi’ in F. Braudel (ed.) Il Mediterraneo. Lo spazio, la storia, gli
uomini, le tradizioni (Milano: Bompiani), pp. 123–44.
Ayres-Bennett, W. (1996) A history of the French language through texts (London:
Routledge).
Ayres-Bennett, W., Carruthers, J. and Temple, R. (2001) Problems and perspectives:
Studies in the modern French language (Harlow, UK: Longman).
Azienda Napoletana Mobilità (2006) http://www.anm.it/Upload/RES/PDF/cam-
pagna_napolimania.pdf, date accessed 19 February 2015.
Backhaus, P. (2007) Linguistic Landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilin-
gualism in Tokyo (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters).
Baghino, C. (2015) Via Prè: Il sestiere, la Commenda e via Balbi, http://www.guidadig-
enova.it/storia-genova/via-pre-commenda-balbi/, date accessed 13 February 2015.
Bagna, C. and Barni, M. (2009) ‘A mapping technique and the Linguistic
Landscape’ in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.) Linguistic Landscape: expanding
the scenery (London: Routledge), pp. 126–140.
Bagna, C. and Machetti, S. (2012) ‘LL and (Italian) menus and brand names: A
survey around the world’ in C. Hélot, M. Barni, R. Janssens and C. Bagna (eds.)
Linguistic landscapes, multilingualism and social change (Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang), pp. 217–30.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981) The dialogic imagination: Four essays (Austin: University of
Texas Press).
Banca d’Italia (2013) Il turismo internazionale in Italia: dati e risultati, http://www.
bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/seminari_convegni/conv-12/n.12_turismo_inter-
nazionale.pdf, date accessed 28 March 2013.
Banfield, E. C. (1958) The moral basis of a backward society (Glencoe, IL.: Free Press).
Barni, M., and Bagna, C. (2010) ‘Linguistic landscape and language vitality’ in
E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael and M. Barni (eds.) Linguistic landscape in the city
(Bristol: Multilingual Matters), pp. 3–18.
Barni, M. and Vedovelli, M. (2012) ‘Linguistic landscapes and language poli-
cies’ in C. Hélot, M. Barni, R. Janssens and C. Bagna (eds.) Linguistic land-
scapes, multilingualism and social change (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang),
pp. 27‒38.
Barrale, F. (2011) ‘La comunità ghanese a Palermo’, Dirittinegati.eu, 13, http://
www.dirittinegati.eu/?p=5144, date accessed 31 July 2013.
Barthes, R. (1957) Mythologies (Paris: Editions du Seuil).
Barthes, R. (1977) Image, music and text (London: Fontana).
Bartoli, E. (2007) Milord. Avventure dell’anglomania italiana (Vicenza: Neri Pozza).
Bateman, J. A. (2011) ‘The decomposability of semiotic modes’ in K. L. O’Halloran
and B. A. Smith (eds.) Multimodal studies: Exploring issues and domain (Abingdon:
Routledge), pp. 17–38.
Bibliography 221
Battye, A. C., Hintze, A.-M. and Rowlett, P. (2000) The French language today,
2nd edn (London: Routledge).
Beck, U. (2003) ‘Rooted cosmopolitanism: Emerging from a rivalry distinctions’
in U. Beck, N. Sznaider and R. Winter (eds.) Global America? The cultural conse-
quences of globalization (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press), pp. 15–29.
Beck, U. (2006) The cosmopolitan vision. Cambridge: Polity.
Bembo, P. (1525) Prose della volgar lingua (Tacuino: Venice).
Benjamin, S. (2006) Sicily: Three thousand years of human history (Hanover,
NH: Steerforth Press).
Ben-Rafael, E. (2009) ‘A sociological approach to the study of Linguistic
Landscapes’ in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.) Linguistic Landscape: expanding
Berruto, G. (1987) ‘Lingua, dialetto, diglossia, dilalìa’ in von G. Holtus and
J. Kramer (eds.) Romania et Slavia Adriatica. Festschrift für Zarko Muljačić
(Hamburg: Buske), pp. 57‒81.
Berruto, G. (2006) ‘Quale dialetto per l’Italia del Duemila? Aspetti dell’italianizzazione
e risorgenze dialettali in Piemonte (e altrove)’ in A. A. Sobrero and A. Miglietta
(eds.) Lingua e dialetto nell’Italia del Duemila (Galatina: Congedo), pp. 101–27.
Bertellini, G. (2009) Italy in early American cinema: Race, landscape, and the pictur-
esque (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
Bignami, S. (2007) Provincia, addio al question time, http://ricerca.repubblica.it/
repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2007/03/01/provincia-addio-al-question-time.
html?ref=search, date accessed 20 February 2015.
Billig, M. (1995) Banal nationalism (London: Sage Publications).
Blackwood, R.J. (forthcoming) ‘Chestnut beer, Corsica-Cola, and wine bottles: the
commodification of Corsican in the linguistic and semiotic landscapes of the
island’s drinks industry’.
Blackwood, R. J. (2004) ‘The Gallicisation of Corsica: The imposition of the
French language from 1768 to 1945’, Language Policy, 3, 133–52.
Blackwood, R. J. (2007) ‘L’Exception française? Post-war language policy on
Corsica’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 28, 1, 18–33.
Blackwood, R. J. (2008) The state, the activists and the Islanders: Language policy on
Corsica (Dordrecht: Springer).
Blackwood, R. J. (2009) ‘Le Paysage linguistique et la langue corse’, Etudes Corses,
69, 175–91.
Blackwood, R. J. (2010) ‘Marking France’s public space: Empirical studies on
regional heritage languages in two provincial cities’ in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-
Rafael and M. Barni (eds.) Linguistic landscape in the city (Bristol: Multilingual
Matters), pp. 292‒306.
Blackwood, R. J. (2011) ‘The linguistic landscape of Brittany and Corsica:
A comparative study of the presence of France’s regional languages in the
public space’, Journal of French Language Studies, 21, 2, 111–30.
Blackwood, R. J. (2013) ‘French, language policy and new media’, Sociolinguistica,
27, 37‒53.
Blackwood, R. J. (2014) ‘The top-down revitalisation of Corsican: Considering
the reversal of a language shift in the linguistic and semiotic landscapes of
Ajaccio’, French Studies, 68, 1, 61‒77.
Blackwood, R. (2015) ‘LL explorations and methodological challenges: Analysing
France’s regional languages’, Linguistic Landscapes 1, 1/2, 38–53.
222 Bibliography
Blackwood, R. J. and Tufi, S. (2012) ‘Policies vs. non-Policies: Analysing regional

languages and the national standard in the linguistic landscape of French and
Italian Mediterranean cities’ in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten and L. Van Mensel (eds.)
Minority languages in the linguistic landscape (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan),
pp. 109‒26.
Blanchet, P. (1992) Le Provençal, essai de description sociolinguistique et différentielle
(Louvain: Peeters).
Blanchet, P. (2004) ‘Provençal as a distinct language? Sociolinguistic patterns
revealed by a recent public and political debate’, International Journal of the
Sociology of Language, 169, 125‒50.
Blanchet, P. (2006) ‘De l’Identité (Socio) linguistique: l’Exemple du provençal et
du niçois’ in C. Bourrier-Reynaud (ed.) Le Comté de Nice: De la Savoie à l’Europe,
identité, mémoire et devenir: actes du colloque, Nice, 24–27 avril 2002 (Nice: Serre
Editeur), pp. 137–47.
Blasco Ferrer, E. (1984) Storia linguistica della Sardegna (Tubingen: Niemeyer).
Blommaert, J. (2005) Discourse. A critical introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
Blommaert, J. (2008) Grassroots literacy: Writing, identity and voice in central Africa
(London: Routledge).
Blommaert, J. (2013) Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscapes: Chronicles
of complexity (Bristol: Multilingual Matters).
Boon, V. and Delanty, G. (2007) ‘Cosmopolitanism and Europe: Historical consid-
erations and contemporary applications’ in C. Rumford (ed.) Cosmopolitanism
and Europe (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press), pp. 19–38.
Boorstin, D. J. (1973) The Americans: The democratic experience (New York:
Random House).
Bordes, M. (1976) Histoire de Nice et du pays niçois (Toulouse: Privat).
Borkert, M., Bosswick, W., Heckmann F. and Lüken-Klaßen, D. (2007) Local inte-
gration policies for migrants in Europe (Dublin: The European Foundation for the
Improvement of Living and Working Conditions).
Bothorel-Witz, A. and Huck, D. (2003) ‘Les dialectes alsaciens’ in Bernard
Cerquiglini (ed.) Les Langues de France (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France),
pp. 22–45.
Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste (London:
Routledge).
Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and symbolic power (Cambridge: Polity Press).
Boyer, H. (2005) ‘«Patois»: Continuité et prégnance d’une désignation stigmati-
sante sur la longue durée’, Lengas, 57, 73‒92.
Braudel, F. (1949) La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe
II (Paris: Colin).
Brezigar, S. (2009) ‘The Slovene language in Italy: Paths to a value-added posi-
tion’ in S. Pertot, T. M. S. Priestly and C. H. Williams (eds.) Rights, promotion
and integration issues for minority languages in Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan), pp. 207‒15.
Brigaglia, M., Mastino, A. and Ortu G. G. (eds.) (2006) Storia della Sardegna. Vols.
1 and 2 (Rome-Bari: Laterza).
Brucculeri, M. C. and Giannitrapani, A. (2010) ‘3 a.m. Pub e locali notturni’ in G.
Marrone (ed.) Palermo. Ipotesi di semiotica urbana (Rome: Carocci), pp. 137–69.
Brunetta, G. P. (2003) Guida alla storia del cinema italiano (Turin: Einaudi).
Bibliography 223
Calhoun, C. (2002) ‘The class consciousness of frequent travellers: Towards a

critique of actually existing cosmopolitanism’ in S. Vertovec and R. Cohen
(eds.) Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context and practice (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), pp. 86–109.
Camera di Commercio (2012) In dieci anni +232 per cento le imprese cinesi in Italia.
È imprenditore un cinese su cinque, http://www.west-info.eu/files/imprenditori-
cinesi-2012.pdf, date accessed 19 February 2015.
Cancila, R. (2008) ‘Il Mediterraneo, storia di una complessità’, Mediterranea
Ricerche storiche, 13, 243–54.
Cardinaletti, A. and Munaro, N. (eds.) (2009) Italiano, italiani regionali e dialetti
(Milan: Franco Angeli).
Caritas (2014) Dossier statistico immigrazione, http://www.caritasitaliana.it/
home_page/area_stampa/00003960_Rapporto_Immigrazione_Caritas_e_
Migrantes_2013.html, date accessed 12 December 2014
Carli, A. (2002) ‘Fra mantenimento e obsolescenza. Alcune note sulla situazione
dello sloveno a Trieste’, Plurilinguismo, 7, 103‒16.
Carli A., Guardiano C., Kaučič-Baša M., Sussi E., Tessarolo M. and Ussai M. (2003)
‘Asserting ethnic identity and power through language’, Journal of Ethnic and
Migration Studies, 29, 5, 865‒83.
Carrera Díaz, M. (2000) ‘Forestierismi: norma italiana e norme europee’ in
S. Vanlvolsen, D. Vermandere, F. Musarra and Y. D’Ulst (eds.) L’Italiano oltre frontiera.
Atti del V Convegno Internazionale del Centro di Studi Italiani. Vol. 1 (Leuven, 22–25
aprile 1998), (Florence/Leuven: Franco Cesati/Leuven University Press), pp. 19–29.
Cartago, G. (1994) ‘L’Apporto inglese’ in L. Serianni and P. Trifone (eds.) Storia
della lingua italiana (Vol.III). Le altre lingue (Turin: Einaudi), pp. 721–50.
Casta, F. (1995) ‘Les parlers de la foi – religion et langues régionales’, Etudes
Corses, 44, 133–42.
Castex, Jean-François (2005) La Catalogne Nord en quête d’identité: société et territoire,
géopolitique et géoculture d’une région-frontière, pancatalanité et espace européen.
Cabestany: Temple d’or.
Castellani, A. (1982) ‘Quanti erano gli italofoni nel 1861?’, Studi Linguistici
Italiani, 8, 3‒26.
Castellani, A. (1987) ‘Morbus Anglicus’, Studi linguistici italiani, 13, 137–49.
CCC (2015) 10 anys de capital de la cultura catalana, http://www.ccc.cat/noticies.
php?Id_noticies=253, date accessed 20 February 2015.
Cenoz, J. and Gorter, D. (2006) ‘Linguistic landscape and minority languages’
International Journal of Multilingualism, 3, 1, 67‒80.
Centro Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani, http://www.csfls.it/?id=22, date
accessed 1 August 2013.
Cerquiglini, B. (1999) Les Langues de France: Rapport au Ministre de l’Education
nationale de la Recherche et de la Technologie et à la Ministre de la Culture et de
la Communication, Paris, http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/rapports-
publics/994000719/index.shtml, date accessed 19 February 2015.
Cerquiglini, B. (ed.) (2003) Les langues de France. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France.
Cerruti, M. (2011) ‘Regional varieties of Italian in the linguistic repertoire’,
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2, 10, 9‒28.
Chaubin, H. (2005) ‘Corse des années de guerre 1939–1945’, Cahiers des Troupes
de Montagne, 22, 3–14.
224 Bibliography
Chiari, P. (2005) Immigrazione ecuadoriana a Genova, http://store.torrossa.it/

resources/an/2199324?ref=http://www.torrossa.it/resources/an/2199324, date
accessed 13 February 2015.
Chirco, A. (2005) Palermo la città ritrovata. Itinerari fuori le mura (Palermo: Dario
Flaccovio).
Cini, M. and Regis, R. (eds.) (2002) Che cosa ne pensa oggi Chiaffredo Roux? Percorsi
della dialettologia percezionale all’alba del nuovo millennio (Alessandria: Edizioni
Dell’Orso).
Clark, M. (1996a) ‘Sardinia: Cheese and modernization’ in C. Levy (ed.) Italian
regionalism: History, identity and politics (Oxford: Berg), pp. 81–108.
Clark, M. (1996b) Modern Italy: 1871–1995 (Harlow: Longman).
Clerico, G. (1999) ‘Le français au XVIe siècle’ in Chaurand, J. (ed.) Nouvelle histoire
de la langue française (Paris: Seuil), pp. 147‒224.
Cologna, D. (2013) Rapporto sull’inserimento socio-economico degli immigrati
bangladeshi in Italia e sulla loro propensione al rimpatrio o al ricorso a programmi
di rimpatrio assistito, http://www.reterirva.it/DOC-RIRVA/all.%201report%20
VOLVER%20_Bangladesh.pdf, date accessed 2 August 2013.
Colombo, M. and Ongini, V. (2014) Alunni con cittadinanza non italiana.
Rapporto nazionale a. s. 2012–13, http://www.istruzione.it/allegati/2014/
Miur_2012_2013.pdf, date accessed 12 December 2014.
Comune di Bologna (2012) Regolamento per la collocazione delle insegne di esercizio,
http://www.comune.bologna.it/media/files/odg_223_2012_mod_reg_insegne.
pdf, date accessed 20 February 2015.
Conrad, P. (2009) Islands: A trip through time and space (London: Thames and
Hudson).
Corni, G. (2011) ‘The Exodus of Italians from Istria and Dalmatia, 1945–56’ in
J. Reinisch and E. White (eds.) The disentanglement of populations. Migration,
expulsion and displacement in post-war Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan),
pp. 71‒90.
Costa, J. (2012) ‘De l’hygiène verbale dans le sud de la France ou Occitanie’,
Lengas, 72: 83‒112.
Costa, J. and Gasquet-Cyrus, M. (2014) ‘What is language revitalisation really
about? competing language revitalisation movements in Provence’ in M. C. Jones
and S. Ogilvie (eds.) Keeping languages alive: Documentation, pedagogy, revitalization
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 212‒24.
Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana (2014) http://www.quirinale.it/qrnw/
statico/costituzione/pdf/Costituzione.pdf, date accessed 1 December 2014
Cote d’Azur-Touriscope (2015) Italie, http://www.cotedazur-touriscope.com/pdf/
fiches/14/normal.pdf, date accessed 13 February 2015.
Council of Europe (2007) A European reference document for languages of education?
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=A+European+Reference+Document+for+Langua
ges+of+Education%3F, date accessed 16 December 2014.
Council of Europe (2010) Guide for the development and implementation of
curricula for plurilingual and intercultural education, http://www.coe.int/t/
dg4/linguistic/source/source2010_forumgeneva/GuideEPI2010_EN.pdf, date
accessed 16 December 2014.
Coupland, N. (2010) ‘Welsh Linguistic Landscapes ‘from above’ and ‘from
below’’ in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.) Semiotic Landscapes: language,
image, space (London: Continuum), pp. 77–101.
Bibliography 225
Coupland, N. (2014) ‘Wales and Welshness: Boundedness and peripherality’

in D. Watt and C. Llamas (eds.) Language, borders, and identity (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press), pp. 137–53.
Courrière, H. (2011) ‘L’annexation du Comté de Nice à la France en 1860.
Proposition de relecture d’un événement fondateur’ in R. Schor and
H. Courrière (eds.) Le Comté de Nice, la France et l’Italie: Regards sur le rattache-
ment de 1860 (Nice: Editions Serre), pp. 97–108.
CRDP (2015) Le Vieux Nice. http://www.crdp-nice.net/patrimoine/vieux_nice/
vn_oeuvre.htm, date accessed 13 February 2015.
Croce, B. (2006) Un paradiso abitato da diavoli (Milan: Adelphi).
Curtin, M. L. (2009) ‘Languages on display: Indexical signs, identities and the
linguistic landscape of Taipei’ in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.) Linguistic
landscape: Expanding the scenery (London: Routledge), pp. 221–37.
DAF (2000) Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, seconde tome, 9th edn (Paris: Fayard).
D’Agostino, M. (1996) ‘Spazio, città, lingue. Ragionando su Palermo’, Rivista
Italiana di Dialettologia, 20, 37–92.
D’Agostino, M. (2004) ‘Immigrati a Palermo. Contatti e/o conflitti linguistici e
immagini urbane’ in R. Bombi and F. Fusco (eds.) Città Plurilingui. Lingue e cul-
ture a confronto in situazioni urbane (Udine: Forum), pp. 191–212.
D’Agostino, M. (2006) ‘Segni, parole, cose. Immagini della Palermo plurietnica’
in N. De Blasi and C. Marcato (eds.) La città e le sue lingue. Repertori linguistici
urbani (Naples: Liguori), pp. 25–38.
D’Agostino, M. (2007) Sociolinguistica dell’Italia contemporanea (Bologna: Il
Mulino).
D’Agostino, M. (2012) ‘Dalla “tutela della diversità linguistica” alla “educazione
plurilingue”: l’Europa, i suoi cittadini, i diversi idiomi’ in G. Ruffino (ed.)
Lingua e storia in Sicilia (Palermo: Centro Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani),
pp. 125–30.
De Blasi, N. (1993) ‘L’Italiano nella scuola’ in L. Serianni and P. Trifone (eds.)
Storia della lingua italiana, Vol. I – I luoghi della codificazione (Turin: Einaudi),
pp. 383–423.
De Blasi, N. (2003) Campania (Rome-Bari: Laterza).
De Blasi, N. (2006a) Profilo linguistico della Campania (Rome-Bari: Laterza).
De Blasi, N. (2006b) ‘Perché a Napoli non tutti parlano il napoletano? Riflessioni
sulle implicazioni linguistiche del ruolo di capitale’ in N. De Blasi and
C. Marcato (eds.) Lo spazio del dialetto in città (Naples: Liguori), pp. 219‒35.
De Blasi, N. (2006c) ‘Nuove parole in città’ in N. De Blasi and C. Marcato (eds.)
La città e le sue lingue. Repertori linguistici urbani (Naples: Liguori), pp. 281‒92.
de Filippo, E. (ed.) (2003) Gli immigrati nella città di Napoli, http://www.coopdeda
lus.it/areeper cent20diper cent20intervento/materiali/Gliper cent20immigratiper
cent20nellaper cent20cittper centC3per centA0per cent20diper cent20Napoli.
pdf, date accessed 19 February 2015.
Delanty, G. (2009) The cosmopolitan imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press).
Dell’Umbria, A. (2006) Histoire universelle de Marseille: De l’an mil à l’an deux mille
(Marseilles: Agone).
De Mauro, T. (2013) Gli anglicismi? No problem, my dear, http://www.treccani.it/mag-
azine/lingua_italiana/speciali/italiano_inglese/demauro.html, date accessed
8 April 2013.
226 Bibliography
De Mauro, T. (1963) Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita (Rome-Bari: Laterza).

De Mauro, T. (2014) Storia linguistica dell’Italia repubblicana. Dal 1946 ai nostri
giorni (Rome-Bari: Laterza).
De Mauro, T. and Vedovelli, M. (eds.) (1996) La diffusione dell’italiano nel mondo e
le vie dell’emigrazione: retrospettiva storico-istituzionale e attualità (Rome: Centro
Studi Emigrazione).
Desforges, L., Jones, R. and Woods, M. (2005) ‘New geographies of citizenship’,
Citizenship Studies, 9, 5, 439–51.
Destefanis, G. (2013) Botte e coltelli, il Far West di Prè, http://genova.repubblica.it/
cronaca/2013/08/18/news/botte_e_coltelli_il_far_west_di_pr-64925100/, date
accessed 13 February 2015.
Dettori, A. (1988) ‘Sardisch: Grammatikographie und Lexikographie.
Grammaticografia e lessicografia’ in G. Holtus, M. Metzeltin and C. Schmitt
(eds.) Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik, IV (Tubingen: Niemeyer),
pp. 913–35.
Dickinson, J., Andrucki, M. J., Rawlins, E., Hale, D. and Cook, V. (2008)
‘Introduction: Geographies of everyday citizenship’, ACME: An International
E-Journal for Critical Geography, 7, 2, 100–12.
Diener, A. C. and Hagen, J. (2009) ‘Theorizing borders in a “Borderless World”:
Globalization, territory and identity’, Geography Compass, 3, 3, 1196–216.
Diener, A. C. and Hagen, J. (2010) ‘Introduction: Borders, identity and geopoli-
tics’ in A. C. Diener. and J. Hagen (eds.) Borderlines and borderlands: Political
oddities at the edge of the nation state (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield),
pp. 1–14.
Dimova, S. (2007) ‘English shop signs in Macedonia’, English Today, 23, 3‒4,
18‒24.
Donnan, H. and Wilson, T. M. (2010) ‘Symbols of security and contest along the
Irish border’ in H. Donnan and T. M. Wilson (eds.) Borderlands: Ethnographic
approaches to security, power and identity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield),
pp. 73–91.
Duchêne, A. and Heller, M. (eds.) (2012) Language in late capitalism: Pride and
profit (London: Routledge).
Eckert, P. (2000) Linguistic variation as social practice (Malden, MA: Blackwell).
Edelman, L. J. (2009) ‘What’s in a name? Classifications of proper names by lan-
guage’ in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.) Linguistic landscape: Expanding the
scenery (London: Routledge), pp. 141–54.
Elliot, G. (1977) Parliamo itang’liano, ovvero le 400 parole inglesi che deve sapere chi
vuole fare carriera (Milan: Rizzoli).
Estival, D. and Pennycook, A. (2011) ‘L’Académie française and anglophone
language ideologies’, Language Policy, 10, 325–41.
Etiemble, R. (1964) Parlez-vous franglais? (Paris: Gallimard).
Fabietti, U. (2006) ‘Sulle idee di “esotico” e di “esotismo”: lo sguardo di un
antropologo’ in E. Banfi and D. Iannaccaro (eds.) Lo spazio linguistico italiano
e le “lingue esotiche”. Rapporti e reciproci influssi. Atti del XXXIX Congresso della
Società di Linguistica Italiana. Milano, 22–24 settembre 2005 (Rome: Bulzoni),
pp. 451–61.
Fanfani, M. (2003) ‘Per un repertorio di anglicismi in italiano’ in A. V. Sullam
Calimani (ed.) Italiano e inglese a confronto: problemi di interferenza linguistica.
Atti del convegno Venezia 12–13 aprile 2002 (Florence: Cesati), pp. 151–76.
Bibliography 227
Ferguson, R. (2007) A linguistic history of Venice (Florence: Olschki).

Ferreri, S. (ed.) (2010) Dieci tesi per l’educazione linguistica democratica – Dix thèses
pour l’éducation linguistique démocratique – Ten theses for democratic language
education (Viterbo: Sette città).
Finco, F. and Rizzolatti, P. (2005) ‘Il veneto “cittadino” nei centri urbani del
Friuli occidentale’ in G. Marcato (ed.) Dialetti in città (Padova: Unipress), pp.
317‒24.
Finley, M. I., Mack Smith, D. and Duggan, C. (1986) A history of Sicily (London:
Chatto and Windus).
Finzi, R. and Panjek, G. (eds.) (2001) Storia economica e sociale di Trieste ‒ Vol. 1:
La città dei gruppi (Trieste: Lint).
Fischer, D. (2010) ‘Scene da una terra di confine: il riso, il ricordo e il rimpianto
nel teatro dialettale triestino’, Spunti e ricerche, 25, 1, 30‒51.
Fishman, J. A. (1967) ‘Bilingualism with and without diglossia: Diglossia with
and without bilingualism’, Journal of Social Issues, 23, 2, 29–38.
Fishman, J. (1991) Reversing Language Shift: theoretical and empirical foundations of
assistance to threatened languages (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters).
Foresti, F. (ed.) (2003) Credere, obbedire, combattere: il regime linguistico nel
Ventennio Bologna: Pendragon.
Forgacs, D. (1990) Italian culture in the industrial era 1880–1980. Cultural industries,
politics and the public (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press).
Forner, W. (1997) ‘Liguria’ in M. Maiden and M. Parry (eds.) The dialects of Italy
(London and New York: Routledge), pp. 245–52.
Foucault, M. (1969) L’archéologie du savoir (Paris: Gallimard).
Foucault, M. (1975) Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard).
Friuli-Venezia Giulia (2014) Regolamento in materia di certificazione della con-
oscenza della lingua friulana, http://lexview-int.regione.fvg.it/FontiNormative/
Regolamenti/D_P_REG_0079-2014.pdf, date accessed 20 February 2015.
Frolla, L. (1960) Grammaire monégasque (Monaco: Imprimerie nationale).
Frolla, L. (1963) Dictionnaire monégasque-français (Monaco: Imprimerie
nationale).
Fusco, F. and Marcato, C. (2005) Forme della comunicazione giovanile (Rome: Il
Calamo).
Fusina, J. (1994) L’Enseignement du corse: Histoire, développements et perspectives
(Ajaccio: A Squadra di un Finusellu).
Garcia, O. (2009) Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective
(Chichester: John Wiley & Sons).
Garvin, R. T. (2010) ‘Responses to the linguistic landscape in Memphis,
Tennessee: An urban space in transition’ in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, and
M. Barni (eds.) Linguistic landscape in the city (Bristol: Multilingual Matters),
pp. 252–71.
Gasquet-Cyrus, M. (2004) ‘The Sociolinguistics of Marseille’, International Journal
of the Sociology of Language, 169, 107‒123.
Gauthier, G. (1982) ‘Corse’ in R. Lafont (ed.) Langues dominantes, langues dominées
(Paris: EDILIG), pp. 109–21.
Géa, J-M., Rey, D., Bertoncini, P., Marchini, V., Ambroselli, M. and Solinas, Y.
(2008) Histoires et mémoires des immigrations en région corse: Synthèse du rapport
final (Corte, Corsica: L’ASCE).
Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell).
228 Bibliography
Gensini, S. (2005) Breve storia dell’educazione linguistica dall’Unità a oggi (Rome:

Carocci).
Giordan, H. (2008) ‘Les langues régionales dans la Constitution: Un pas en avant
très ambigu’, Diasporiques, 3, 25‒30.
Giumelli, R. (2012) Scoprirsi italici. Una riflessione sull’identità italiana in
tempi di globalizzazione, http://www.openstarts.units.it/xmlui/bitstream/han-
dle/10077/7290/Giumelli_VisioniLA_7_2012.pdf?sequence=1, date accessed
25 November 2014.
Gonnet, P. (2003) La Réunion de Nice à la France (Breil-sur-Roya: Les Editions du
Cabri).
Gorter, D., Aiestaran, J. and Cenoz, J. (2012) ‘The revitalization of Basque and the
linguistic landscape of Donostia-San Sebastián’ in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten and
L. Van Mensel (eds.) Minority languages in the linguistic landscape (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 148–63.
Gorter, D. (2006) Linguistic Landscape: a new approach to multilingualism
(Clevedon: Multilingual Matters).
Graf, A. (1911) L’anglomania e l’influsso inglese in Italia nel secolo XVIII (Turin:
Loescher).
Grassi, C., Sobrero, A. A. and Telmon, T. (1997) Fondamenti di dialettologia italiana
(Rome-Bari: Laterza).
Hagège, C. (1996) Le Français, Histoire d’un Combat (Boulogne-Billancourt:
Editions Michel Hagège).
Hannerz, U. (2006) ‘Cosmopolitanism’ in D. Nugent and J. Vincent (eds.)
Companion to the anthropology of politics (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 69–85.
Harvey, D. (1973) Social Justice and the City (London: Arnold).
Harvey, D. (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of
Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell).
Harvey, D. (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Oxford: Blackwell).
Harvey, D. (2006) Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven
Geographical Development (London: Verso).
Hatubou, S. (1999) Comoriens de Marseille ou … Marseillais des Comores? http://
www.humanite.fr/node/209542 date accessed 25 February 2015.
Haugen, E. (1966) ‘Dialect, language, nation’, American Anthropologist, 68, 4,
922‒935.
Hawkey, J. (2011) ‘Towards an understanding of the contemporary sociolinguis-
tic situation in the Pyrénées-Orientales. What questions need to be asked’,
Cahiers AFLS, 15, 1, 35–51.
Heller, M. (2003) ‘Globalization, the new economy, and the commodification of
language and identity’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7, 4, 473–92.
Henayaka-Lochbihler, R. and Lambusta, M. (2004) The Sri Lankan diaspora in
Italy. (Berlin: Bergof Research Centre for Conflict Management).
Hilhorst, J. G. M. (1971) ‘Spatial structure and decision-making’ in D. M. Dunham
and J. G. M. Hilhorst (eds.) Issues in regional planning (The Hague: Houton),
pp. 47‒72.
Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds.) (1983) The invention of tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Hoepli online dictionary, http://www.grandidizionari.it/Dizionario_Italiano/
parola/I/itanglese.aspx?query=itanglese, date accessed 26 February 2015.
Bibliography 229
Horden, P. and Purcell, N. (2000) The corrupting sea: A study of Mediterranean his-
tory (Oxford: Blackwell).
Hornberger, N. H. (2002) ‘Multilingual language policies and the continua of
biliteracy: An ecological approach’, Language Policy, 1, 27–51.
Huebner, T. (2006) ‘Bangkok’s linguistic landscapes: Environmental print,
codemixing and language change’, International Journal of Multilingualism,
3, 31‒51.
Huebner, T. (2009) ‘A framework for the linguistic analysis of Linguistic
Landscapes’ in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.) Linguistic Landscape: expanding
Iannaccaro, G. and Dell’Aquila, V. (2011) ‘Historical linguistic minorities:
Suggestions for classification and typology’, International Journal of the Sociology
of Language, 210, 29‒45.
INSEE (2004) Atlas des populations immigrées en Corse (Ajaccio: Imprimerie
Sicillano).
INSEE (2005) Produit Intérieur Brut en 2005: Comparaisons départementales, http://
www.insee.fr/fr/themes/tableau.asp?reg_id=99&ref_id=t_2601D, date accessed
20 February 2015.
INSEE (2006) Les immigrés en France, http://www.insee.fr/fr/ffc/docs_ffc/ref/
IMMFRA05d.PDF, date accessed 28 February 2015.
INSEE (2012) Fréquentation des touristes venant de l’étranger dans l’hôtellerie en
2011, http://www.insee.fr/fr/themes/tableau.asp?reg_id=6&ref_id=sertc13505,
date accessed 27 March 2014.
INSEE (2014a) Taille des communes les plus peuplées en 2011, http://www.
insee.fr/fr/themes/tableau.asp?reg_id=0&ref_id=nattef01214, date accessed
13 February 2015.
INSEE (2014b) Les immigrés par sexe, âge et pays de naissance, http://www.insee.fr/
fr/themes/tableau_local.asp?ref_id=IMG1B&millesime=2011&niveau=1&typge
o=METRODOM&codgeo=1, date accessed 26 February 2015.
ISTAT (2008) Bilancio demografico anno 2008 e popolazione residente al 31 dicembre,
http://demo.istat.it/bil2008/index.html, date accessed 21 May 2009.
ISTAT (2010) Bilancio demografico anno 2010, http://demo.istat.it/bil2010/index.
html, date accessed 20 February 2015.
ISTAT (2012a) Cittadini stranieri: popolazione residente per sesso e cittadinanza al
31 dicembre 2008. Comune: Genova, http://demo.istat.it/str2008/index.html,
date accessed 14 June 2012.
ISTAT (2012b) Popolazione straniera residente al 1 gennaio 2011, http://demo.istat.
it/strasa2011/index.html, date accessed 3 December 2012.
ISTAT (2013) Popolazione straniera residente al 1 gennaio 2013, http://demo.istat.it/
strasa2013/index.html, date accessed 7 October 2013.
ISTAT (2014a) L’uso della lingua italiana, dei dialetti e di altre lingue in Italia, http://
www.istat.it/it/archivio/136496, date accessed 14 November 2014.
ISTAT (2014b) Cittadini stranieri. Bilancio demografico anno 2009 e popolazione
residente al 31 dicembre, http://demo.istat.it/str2009/index.html, date accessed
16 January 2014.
Italian Foreign Office (2014) Promozione della lingua italiana, http://www.esteri.
it/MAE/IT/Politica_Estera/Cultura/PromozioneLinguaItaliana/, date accessed
12 December 2014.
230 Bibliography
Jaffe, A. M. (1999) Ideologies in action: Language politics on Corsica (Berlin: Mouton

de Gruyter).
Jaffe, A. and Oliva, C. (2013) ‘Linguistic Creativity in Corsican Tourist Context’
in S. Pietikäinen and H. Kelly-Holmes (eds.) Multilingualism and the periphery
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 95–117.
Jaworski, A. (2010) ‘Linguistic landscapes on postcards: Tourist mediation and
the sociolinguistic communities of contact’, Sociolinguistic Studies, 4, 3, 569–94.
Jaworski, A. and Thurlow, C. (2010) ‘Introducing semiotic landscapes’ in
A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.) Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space
(London: Continuum), pp. 1–40.
Joseph, J. E. (2006) ‘The grammatical being called a nation: History and the con-
struction of political and linguistic nationalism’ in N. Love (ed.) Language and
history: Integrationist perspectives (London: Routledge), pp. 120–41.
Jørgensen, J. N., Karrebæk, M. S., Madsen, L. M. and Møller, J. S. (2011)
‘Polylanguaging in superdiversity’, Diversities 13, 2, 22–37.
Judge, A. (2007) Linguistic policies and the survival of regional languages in France
and Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Kallen, J. L. (2010) ‘Changing landscapes: Language, space and policy in the
Dublin linguistic landscape’ in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.) Semiotic land-
scapes. Language, image, space (London: Continuum), pp. 41–58.
Kasstan, J. R. (2015) ‘Denomination and the ‘problem’ of Francoprovençal’ in
J.-M. Éloy (ed.) Le nom des langues IV: Nommer les langues romanes (Leuven:
Peeters), pp. 76‒95.
Kaučič-Baša, M. (1997) ‘Where do Slovenes speak Slovene to whom? Minority
language choice in a transactional setting’, International Journal of the Sociology
of Language, 124, 51‒73.
Kelly-Holmes, H. (2000) ‘Bier, Parfum, Kaas: Language fetish in European adver-
tising’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 3, 1, 67–82.
Kelly-Holmes, H. and Pietikäinen, S. (2013) ‘The peripheral multilingualism
lens: A fruitful and challenging way forward’ in S. Pietikäinen and H. Kelly-
Holmes (eds.) Multilingualism and the periphery (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), pp. 222–27.
Klajn, I. (1972) Influssi inglesi nella lingua italiana (Florence: Olschki).
Klein, G. (1986) La politica linguistica del fascismo (Bologna: Il Mulino).
Kress, G. (2010) Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary commu-
nication (London: Routledge).
La Fauci, N. (2010) L’ultra-nazione (Pisa: ETS).
La Stampa (2013) Sgominata la gang ‘Ms13’: a Milano 25 arresti dopo due anni
di violenze, http://www.lastampa.it/2013/10/08/italia/cronache/blitz-contro-
gang-di-latinos-arresti-l3DLnklUZP1cIvvlyRVroO/pagina.html, date accessed
14 February 2015.
Labov, W. (2001) Principles of linguistic change. Volume II: social factors (Malden,
MA: Blackwell).
Lachuer, V. (1998) L’Etat face à la langue bretonne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires
de France).
Lagarde, C. (2013) ‘Le Catalan’ in G. Kremnitz (ed.) Histoire sociale des langues de
France (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes), pp. 455–64.
Landry, R. and Bourhis, R. Y. (1997) ‘Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic
vitality: An empirical study’, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16, 1,
23‒49.
Bibliography 231
Lanza, E., & Woldemariam, H. (2015) ‘English in Ethiopia: Making space

for the individual in language policy’ in B. Spolsky, O. Inbar-Lourie, and
M. Tannenbaum (eds.), Challenges for Language Education and Policy: Making
space for people (London: Routledge), pp. 109–134.
Latouche, R. (1932) Histoire du comté de Nice (Paris: Boivin).
Laurendeau, P. (1994) ‘Le concept de patois avant 1790, Vel vernacula lingua’ in
R. Mougeon and E. Beniak (eds.) Les origines du française québécois (Sainte-Foy,
Canada: Presses de l’Université Laval), pp. 131‒66.
Law 15 March 1997, no.59 Delega al Governo per il conferimento di funzioni e com-
piti alle regioni ed enti locali, per la riforma della Pubblica Amministrazione e per
la semplificazione amministrativa, http://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/atto/serie_gen
erale/caricaDettaglioAtto/originario?atto.dataPubblicazioneGazzetta=1997-03-
17&atto.codiceRedazionale=097G0099&elenco30giorni=false, date accessed
25 November 2014.
Law 15 December 1999, no.482 Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze
linguistiche storiche, http://www.camera.it/parlam/leggi/99482l.htm, date
accessed 1 December 2014
Lecherbonnier, B. (2005) Pourquoi veulent-ils tuer le français? (Paris: Albin Michel).
Ledgeway, A. (2009) Grammatica diacronica del napoletano (Tübingen: Niemeyer).
Lefebvre, H. (1970) La révolution urbaine (Paris: Gallimard).
Lefebvre, H. (1991) The production of space (Oxford: Blackwell).
Legge Regionale 32/1990 Norme per lo studio, la tutela, la valorizzazione e l’uso
sociale di alcune categorie di beni culturali e in particolare dei dialetti e delle
tradizioni popolari della Liguria, http://www.regione.taa.it/biblioteca/norma-
tiva/regioni/ordinarie/liguria.pdf, date accessed 14 February 2015.
Leonforte, S. (2009) ‘Spazi del tempo libero nella società interculturale’ in M. T.
Consoli (ed.) Il fenomeno migratorio nell’Europa del Sud (Milan: Franco Angeli),
pp. 115‒31.
Ligresti, D (2012) ‘La prospettiva storica’ in G. Ruffino (ed.) Lingua e storia in
Sicilia (Palermo: Centro Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani), pp. 29–36.
Lillis, T. and McKinney, C. (2013) ‘The sociolinguistics of writing in a global context:
Objects, lenses, consequences’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 17 (4), 415–39.
Lochlin, J. and Laftray, F. (1999) Insular regions and European integration: Corsica
and the Åland islands compared, http://www.ecmi.de/uploads/tx_lfpubdb/
report_5.pdf, date accessed 19 February 2015.
Lo Duca, M. (2003) Lingua italiana ed educazione linguistica: tra storia, ricerca e
didattica (Rome: Carocci).
Lo Piparo, F. (1987) ‘Sicilia linguistica’ in M. Aymard and G. Giarrizzo (eds.) La
Sicilia (Turin: Einaudi), pp. 733–808.
Lo Piparo, F. (2013) ‘Il caso Sicilia: una nazione senza lingua’, http://ww2.unime.
it/erasmusip/wp-content/uploads/Lo-Piparo-Sicilia-Nazione.pdf, date accessed
25 November 2013.
Lo Schiavo, F. (2004) L’Italia preromana. Sardegna, http://www.treccani.it/
enciclopedia/l-italia-preromana-sardegna_(Il-Mondo-dell’Archeologia)/, date
accessed 19 December 2013.
Lodge, R. A. (1993) French: From dialect to standard (London: Routledge).
Lorinczi, M. (1997) ‘La Storia della lingua sarda nelle Carte d’Arborea’, in
L. Marrocu (ed.) Le Carte d’Arborea. Falsi e falsari nella Sardegna del XIX secolo
(Cagliari: AM&D Edizioni), pp.407–38.
Louis, S. (2006) Le phenomène ultras en Italie (Paris: Mare and Martin).
232 Bibliography
Liddicoat, A. L. and Diaz, A. (2008) ‘Engaging with diversity: The construction of

policy for intercultural education in Italy’, Intercultural Education, 19, 2, 137‒50.
Lukacs, J. (2008) Blood, toil, tears, and sweat: The dire warning (New York: Basic
Books).
Lyttleton, A. (1996) ‘Shifting identities: Nation, region and city’ in C. Levy (ed.)
Italian regionalism. History, identity and politics (Oxford: Berg), pp. 33‒52.
Mack Smith, D. (1997) Modern Italy: A political history (New Haven/London: Yale
University Press).
Maiden, M. and Parry, M. (1997) The dialects of Italy (London: Routledge).
Marazzini, C. (2004) Breve storia della lingua italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino).
Marcato, C. (2001) Friuli Venezia Giulia (Rome-Bari: Laterza).
Marcato, C. (2002) ‘Il Friuli-Venezia Giulia’ in M. Cortelazzo, C. Marcato, N. De
Blasi and G. P. Clivio (eds.) I dialetti italiani. Storia, struttura, uso (Turin: UTET),
pp. 329‒56.
Marcato, G. (ed.) (2006) Giovani, lingue e dialetti. Atti del convegno Sappada/Plodn
(Belluno), 29 giugno‒3 luglio 2005 (Padova: Unipress).
Marcato, G. (2012) Scrittura, dialetto e oralità (Padova: CLEUP).
Marchetti, P. (1989) La corsophonie: Un idiome à la mer (Paris: Editions Albatros).
Marley, D. (1995) Parler catalan à Perpignan (Paris: L’Harmattan).
Marshall, T. H. (1950) Citizenship and social class (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
Martel, p. (2012) ‘Une norme pour la langue d’oc? Les débuts d’une histoire sans
fin’, Lengas, 72, 23‒50.
Marten, H. F., Van Mensel, L. and Gorter, D. (2012) ‘Studying minority languages
in the linguistic landscape’ in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten and L. Van Mensel (eds.)
pp. 1–15.
Martin, T. (2011) ‘Le rattachement de Menton et Roquebrune (mars 1848 – avril
1865)’ in R. Schor and H. Courrière (eds.) Le Comté de Nice, la France et l’Italie:
Regards sur le rattachement de 1860 (Nice: Editions Serre), pp. 97–108.
Massian, M. (1985) Et Si l’On Ecrivait Correctement le Français? (Paris: Hachette).
Mazzette, A. (1992) ‘Identità, appartenenza e insularità nel sardismo’, Studi di
Sociologia, 30, 4, 365–78.
Maturi, P. (2006)’ Le scritture esposte: dialettalità e multilinguismo sui muri di
Napoli’ in N. De Blasi and C. Marcato (eds.) La città e le sue lingue. Repertori
linguistici urbani (Naples: Liguori), pp. 243‒51.
Mengaldo, P. V. (1994) Storia della lingua italiana: il Novecento (Bologna: Il
Mulino).
Mény, Y. and Wright, V. (1985) ‘General introduction’ in Y. Mény and V. Wright
(eds.) Centre-periphery relations in Western Europe (London: George Allen and
Unwin), pp. 1–9.
Mettewie, L., Lamarre, P. and van Mensel, L. (2012) ‘Clins d’œil bilingues dans
le paysage linguistique de Montréal et Bruxelles: Analyse et illustration de
mécanismes paralleles’, in C. Hélot, M. Barni, R. Janssens and C. Bagna (eds.)
Linguistic landscapes, multilingualism and social change (Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang), pp. 201–16.
Migliorini, B. (1963 [1943]) Lingua contemporanea (Sansoni: Firenze).
Ministero dell’Interno (2015) Archivio storico delle elezioni, http://elezionistorico.
interno.it/index.php, date accessed 20 February 2015.
Bibliography 233
Miola, E. (ed.) (2013) Languages go web: standard and non‒standard languages on the
Internet (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso).
Milroy, J. (2001) ‘Language ideologies and the consequences of standardisation’,
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5(4): 530–555.
Moscovici, S. (1984) ‘The phenomenon of social representations’ in R. M. Farr
and S. Moscovici (eds.) Social representations (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press), pp. 3–69.
Moscovici, S. (2001) ‘Why a theory of social representation?’ in K. Deaux and
G. Philogène (eds.) Representations of the social: Bridging theoretical traditions
(Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 8–35.
Montuori. F. (2006) ‘L’area metropolitana di Napoli e la scrittura spontanea del
dialetto’, in N. De Blasi and C. Marcato C. (eds) Lo spazio del dialetto in città
(Naples: Liguori), pp. 175–210.
Muljačić, Z. (2008) ‘Due idiomi illustri (il genovese e il veneziano): parallelismi e
differenze concernenti il loro status’ in V. Orioles and F. Toso (eds.) Circolazioni
linguistiche e culturali nello spazio mediterraneo. Miscellanea di studi (Recco: Le
Mani), pp. 357–70.
Mumford, L. (1961) The city in history: Its origins, its transformations, and its pros-
pects (London: Secker and Warburg).
Muth, S. (2012) ‘The linguistic landscapes of Chişinău and Vilnius: Linguistic
landscape and the representation of minority languages in two post-soviet
capitals’ in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten, and L. van Mensel (eds.) Minority languages
in the linguistic landscape (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 204–24.
Muth, S. (2014) ‘Informal signs as expressions of multilingualism in Chisinau:
how individuals shape the public space of a post-Soviet capital’, International
Journal of the Sociology of Language, 228, 29–53.
Nava, M. (2002) ‘Cosmopolitan modernity: Everyday imaginaries and the regis-
ter of difference’, Theory Culture Society, 19, 1–2, 81–99.
Navas, C. (2012) ‘Nice Côte d’Azur devient la première métropole en France’, Les
Echos, 2 January 2012, 5.
Nesvetailov, G. (1995) ‘Changing centre-periphery relations in the former soviet
republics: The case of Belarus’, Social Studies of Science, 25, 4, 853‒71.
Newman, D. (2008) ‘The lines that continue to separate us: Borders in our
“borderless world”’, Progress in Human Geography, 30, 2, 143–61.
Nugent, P. (2012) ‘Border towns and cities in comparative perspective’ in
T. M. Wilson and H. Donnan (eds.) A companion to border studies (London:
Blackwell), pp. 557–72.
Nussbaum, M. C. (2002) ‘Kant and stoic cosmopolitanism’, Journal of Political
Philosophy, 5, 1–25.
Oppo, A. (ed.) (2007) Le lingue dei sardi. Una ricerca sociolinguistica, http://
www.regione.sardegna.it/documenti/1_4_20070510134456.pdf, date accessed
9 December 2013.
Orientale Caputo, G. (2007) Gli immigrati in Campania. Evoluzione della presenza,
inserimento lavorativo e processi di stabilizzazione (Milan: Franco Angeli).
Orioles, V. (2003) Le minoranze linguistiche. Profili sociolinguistici e quadro dei docu-
menti di tutela (Rome: Il Calamo).
Orioles, V. (2011) Politica linguistica, http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/politica-
linguistica_%28Enciclopedia_dell%27Italiano%29/, date accessed 2 December
2014.
234 Bibliography
Otsuji, E. and Pennycook, A. (2010) ‘Metrolingualism: Fixity, fluidity and lan-

guage in flux’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 7, 3, 240–54.
Ožbot, M. (2009) ‘Sloveno e italiano in contatto: qualche osservazione sugli
scambi linguistici in una zona bilingue’ in C. Consani, P. Desideri, F. Guazzelli
and C. Perta (eds.) Alloglossie e comunità alloglotte nell’Italia contemporanea.
Teorie, applicazioni e descrizioni, prospettive. Atti del XLI Congresso internazionale
di studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana (SLI), Pescara, 27‒29 settembre 2007
(Rome: Bulzoni), pp. 39‒52.
Paasi, A. (1991) ‘Deconstructing regions: Notes on the scales of spatial life’,
Environment and Planning A, 23, 239‒56.
Paasi, A. (1996) Territories, boundaries and consciousness. The changing geographies
of the Finnish-Russia border (Chichester: Wiley).
Pasolini, P. P. (1971) ‘Nuove questioni linguistiche’ in O. Parlangèli (ed.) La nuova
questione della lingua (Brescia: Paideia), pp. 78‒100.
Passet, C. (2010) Histoire linguistique de Monaco, http://www.ald-monaco.org/
langues-monegasque/histoire-linguistique-de-la-principaute-5, date accessed
13 February 2015.
Passet, C. (2012) Permanence de la langue monégasque au XXIème siècle, http://
www.ald-monaco.org/langues-monegasque/permanence-de-la-langue-mone-
gasque-au-xxieme-siecle-12, date accessed 13 February 2015.
Patriarca, S. and Riall, L. (eds.) (2011) The Risorgimento revisited. Nationalism and
culture in nineteenth‒century Italy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Paulis, G. and Lupinu, G. (2006) ‘Tra Logudoro e Campidano. I volgari sardi e le
espressioni della cultura’ in M. Brigaglia, A. Mastino and G. G. Ortu (eds.) Storia
della Sardegna 1. Dalle origini al Settecento (Rome-Bari: Laterza), pp. 130–39.
Pavlenko, A. (2006) Emotions and multilingualism (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy
Press).
Pellegrinetti, J.-P. and Rovere, A. (2004) La Corse et la République: La vie politique
de la fin du Second Empire au début du XXIe siècle (Paris: Seuil).
Penello, N. (2005) ‘Dialetti e città di mare nell’alto Adriatico’ in G. Marcato (ed.)
Dialetti in città (Padova: Unipress), pp. 325‒30.
Pennycook, A. (2010) Language as a Local Practice (Abingdon/New York:
Routledge).
Peraldi, M. and Samson, M. (2005) Gouverner Marseille: Enquête sur les mondes
politiques marseillais (Paris: Découverte).
Petruccelli, E. (2013) Afragola, raid razzista contro 31enne, http://www.ilmattino.
it/napoli/cronaca/raid_razzista_afragola_nero_aggressione/notizie/294242.
shtml, date accessed 19 February 2015.
Petrucci, L. (1994) ‘Il problema delle origini e i più antichi testi italiani’ in
L. Serianni and P. Trifone (eds.) Storia della lingua italiana. Vol.3 – Le altre
lingue (Turin: Einaudi), pp. 5‒73.
Philibert, J.-M. (1990) ‘The Politics of Tradition: Toward a Generic Culture in
Vanuatu’ in J. M. Philibert and F. Manning (eds) Customs in Conflict: The
Anthropology of a Changing World (Lewiston, N.Y.: Broadview Press), pp. 251–73.
Philogène, G. and Deaux, K. (2001) ‘Introduction’ in K. Deaux and
G. Philogène (eds.) Representations of the social: Bridging theoretical traditions
(Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 3–7.
Pietikäinen, S. (2013) ‘Heteroglossic authenticity in Sámi heritage tourism’, in
S. Pietikäinen and H. Kelly-Holmes (eds.) Multilingualism and the periphery
Bibliography 235
Pietikäinen, S. and Kelly-Holmes, H. (eds.) (2013a) Multilingualism and the periph-

ery (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Pietikäinen, S. and Kelly-Holmes, H. (2013b) ‘Multilingualism and the periphery’
in S. Pietikäinen and H. Kelly-Holmes (eds.) Multilingualism and the periphery
Piller, I. (2001) ‘Identity constructions in multilingual advertising’, Language in
Society, 30, 153–86.
Piller, I. (2003) ‘Advertising as a site of language contact’, Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics, 23, 170–83.
Pujolar, J. (2013) ‘Tourism and gender in linguistic minority communities’ in
S. Pietikäinen and H. Kelly-Holmes (eds.) Multilingualism and the periphery
Pupo, R. (2005) Il lungo esodo. Istria: le persecuzioni, le foibe, l’esilio (Milan: Rizzoli).
Puzey, G. (2012) ‘Two-way traffic: How linguistic landscapes reflect and influence
the politics of language’ in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten and L. van Mensel (eds.)
pp. 127–47.
Raffaelli, S. (1983) Le parole proibite. Purismo di stato e regolamentazione della pub-
licità in Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino).
Rando, G. (1987) Dizionario degli anglicismi nell’Italiano post-unitario (Florence:
Olschki).
Redfield, R. and Singer, B. (1954) ‘The role of cities in economic development
and cultural change’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 3 (1), 53–73.
Regional law 15 October 1997, no.26 Promozione e valorizzazione della
cultura e della lingua della Sardegna, http://www.regione.sardegna.it/j/
v/86?v=9&c=72&s=1&file=1997026, date accessed 2 December 2014.
Regione Autonoma della Sardegna (2001) Limba Sarda Unificada. Sintesi delle
norme di base: ortografia, fonetica, morfologia e lessico, http://www.nuraghe.eu/
wax/web/docs/lsu.pdf, date accessed 20 May 2011.
Regione Autonoma della Sardegna (2006) Limba Sarda Comuna. Adozione
delle norme di riferimento a carattere sperimentale per la lingua scritta in
uscita dell’Amministrazione regionale, www.regione.sardegna.it/docu-
menti/1_74_20060503165407.pdf, date accessed 25 May 2011.
Reh, M. (2004) ‘Multilingual writing: a reader-oriented typology — with exam-
ples from Lira Municipality (Uganda)’, International Journal of the Sociology of
Language, 170, 1–41.
Richardson, B. (2001) ‘Questions of language’ in Z. G. Baranski and R. J. West
(eds.) The Cambridge companion to modern Italian culture (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press), pp. 63‒80.
Rinaudo, C. (2008) ‘Nice: Ben écrit le parcours du tram en toutes lettres’, http://
www.nice.maville.com/actu/actudet_--Nice%C2%A0-Ben-ecrit-le-parcours-du-
tram-en-toutes-lettres-_-491370_actu.Htm, date accessed 24 February 2015.
Rindler Schjerve, R. (1993) ‘Sardinian: Italian’ in R. Posner and J. N. Green (eds.)
Trends in romance linguistics and philology, vol.5 (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter),
pp. 271–94.
Rocco, B. (1995) ‘Le tre lingue usate dagli ebrei in Sicilia dal sec. XII al sec. XV’ in
Archivi di Stato (ed.) Italia judaica: gli ebrei in Sicilia fino all’espulsione del 1492.
Atti del V Convegno Internazionale, Palermo 15–19 giugno 1995 (Rome: Ministero
per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali), pp. 355–69.
Ross, N. J. (2008) ‘Signs of international English’, English Today, 13, 2, 29–33.
236 Bibliography
Ruffino, G. (1997) ‘Sicily’ in M. Maiden and M. Parry (eds.) The dialects of Italy
(London: Routledge), pp. 365–75.
Ruffino, G. (ed.) (2012a) Lingua e storia in Sicilia (Palermo: Centro Studi Filologici
e Linguistici Siciliani).
Ruffino, G. (2012b) ‘Premessa’ in G. Ruffino (ed.) Lingua e storia in Sicilia
(Palermo: Centro Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani), pp. 15–6.
Salone, C. (2005) ‘Polycentricity in Italian policies’, Built Environment, 31, 2,
153‒62.
Sanga, G. (1981) ‘Les dynamiques linguistiques de la société italienne (1861–1980):
De la naissance de l’italien populaire à la diffusion des ethnicismes linguistiques’,
Langages, 61, 93–115.
Salimbeni, F. (1980) ‘Graziadio Isaia Ascoli e la Venezia Giulia’, Quaderni Giuliani
di Storia, I, 51‒68.
Sardigna Natzione (2015) http://www.sardignanatzione.it/, date accessed 20
February 2015.
Sawchuk, M. (2010) ‘After the Plebiscite: Cafés and conflict in Nice and Savoy
during the 1860s’ in J. Lovecy and B. Lebrun (eds.) Une et divisible? Plural identi-
ties in modern France (London: Peter Berg), pp. 27–43.
Sbisà, M. and Vascotto, P. (2007) ‘How to conceive of the other’s point of view.
Considerations from a case study in Trieste’ in S. Millar and J. Wilson (eds.) The
discourse of Europe: Talk and text in everyday life (Amsterdam: John Benjamins),
pp. 153‒71.
Schor, R. (2006) ‘La vie culturelle et artistique à Nice au XXe siècle’ in Alain
Ruggiero (ed.) Nouvelle histoire de Nice (Toulouse: Editions Privat), pp. 311–26.
Schor, R., Mourlane, S. and Gastaut, Y. (2010) Nice cosmopolite 1860–2010 (Paris:
Editions Autrement).
Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. W. (2003) Discourses in place: Language in the material
world (London and New York: Routledge).
Scott, J. W. (2012) ‘European politics of border, border symbolism and cross-bor-
der cooperation’ in T. M. Wilson and H. Donnan (eds.) A companion to border
studies (London: Blackwell), pp. 83–99.
Seargeant, P. (2009) The idea of English in Japan: Ideology, and the evolution of a
global language (Bristol: Multilingual Matters).
Seargeant, P. (2011) ‘The symbolic meaning of visual English in the social land-
scape of Japan’ in P. Seargeant (ed.) English in Japan in the era of globalization
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 187–204.
Seargeant, P. (2012) ‘Between script and language: The ambiguous ascription
of “English” in the linguistic landscape’ in C. Hélot, M. Barni, R. Janssens
and C. Bagna (eds.) Linguistic landscapes, Multilingualism and social change
(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang), pp. 187–200
Serianni, L. (1987) ‘Presentazione’ in G. Rando (ed.) Dizionario degli anglicismi
nell’italiano post-unitario (Florence: Olschki), pp. VII–XIII.
Serianni, L. and Trifone, P. (1994) Storia della lingua italiana. Vol.3 – Le altre lingue
(Turin: Einaudi).
Serio, S. and Soriani, G. (2005) ‘Abbanniate e interazioni nei mercati del Capo e
di Ballarò di Palermo’ in G. Marcato (ed.) Dialetti in città (Padova: Unipress),
pp. 99–106.
Shohamy, E. (2006) Language policy: Hidden agendas and new approaches (London
and New York: Routledge).
Bibliography 237
Shohamy, E. and Abu Ghazaleh-Mahajneh, M. (2012) ‘Linguistic landscape as

a tool for interpreting language vitality: Arabic as a “minority” language in
Israel’ in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten and L. Van Mensel (eds.) Minority languages in
the linguistic landscape (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 89–106.
Shohamy, E. and Waksman, S. (2010) ‘Building the Nation, Writing the Past:
history and textuality at the Ha’apala memorial in Tel Aviv-Jaffa’ in A. Jaworski
and C. Thurlow (eds.) Semiotic landscapes: language, image, space (London:
Continuum), pp. 187–218.
Sibille, J. (2000) Les Langues Régionales (Paris: Flammarion).
Silvani, P. (1976) Corse: Des années ardentes 1939–1976 (Paris: Editions Albatros).
Sobrero, A. A. and Miglietta, A. (eds.) (2006) Lingua e dialetto nell’Italia del
Duemila (Galatina: Congedo).
Sottile, R. (2005) ‘Il mercato in città: contesti comunicativo-relazionali a Ballarò
e al Capo di Palermo’ in G. Marcato (ed.) Dialetti in città (Padova: Unipress),
pp. 93–8.
Spolsky, B. (2004) Language policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Spolsky, B. (2009) Language management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Spolsky, B. and Cooper, R. L. (1991) The languages of Jerusalem (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Staniland, M. (1970) ‘The rhetoric of centre-periphery relations’, The Journal of
Modern African Studies, 8, 4, 617‒36.
Stefanelli, S. and Saura, A. V. (eds.) (2011) I linguaggi giovanili (Florence:
Accademia della Crusca).
Sussi, E. (2003) ‘Gli sloveni in Italia: la situazione attuale e le prospettive’,
Plurilinguismo, 9, 203‒16.
Telmon, T. (1992) Le minoranze linguistiche in Italia (Alessandria: Edizioni
dell’Orso).
Temime, E. (2005) ‘Présentation: Au carrefour des suds’, in P. Blanchard and
G. Boëtsch (eds.) Marseille Porte Sud 1905–2005 (Paris: Éditions La Découverte),
pp. 8–11.
Thiers, J. (1989) Papiers d’Identité(s) (Levie, Corsica: Editions Albiana).
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2010) ‘Silence is golden: The “anti-
communicational” linguascaping of super-elite mobility’ in A. Jaworski and
C. Thurlow (eds.) Semiotic landscapes. language, image, space (London:
Continuum), pp. 187–218.
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2011a) ‘Banal globalization? Embodied actions
and mediated practices in tourists’ online photo-sharing’ in C. Thurlow and
K. Mroczek (eds.) Digital discourse: Language in the new media (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), pp. 220–50.
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2011b) ‘Tourism discourse: Languages and banal
globalization’, Review of Applied Linguistics, 2, 285–312.
Tombs, R. and Tombs, I. (2006) That sweet enemy: The French and the British from
the Sun King to the present (London: William Heinemann).
Tosi, A. (2008) ‘The language situation in Italy’ in R. B. Kaplan and R. B. Jr. Baldauf
(eds.) Language planning and policy in Europe. Vol. 3: The Baltic States, Ireland and
Italy (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters), pp. 262–350.
Toso, F. (2002) ‘La Liguria’ in M. Cortelazzo, C. Marcato, N. De Blasi and
G. P. Clivio (eds.) I dialetti italiani. Storia, struttura, uso (Turin: UTET),
pp. 196–225.
238 Bibliography
Toso, F. (2006) Lingue d’Europa: la pluralità linguistica dei Paesi europei fra passato e
presente (Milan: Baldini Castoldi Dalai).
Toso, F. (2008a) Le minoranze linguistiche in Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino).
Toso, F. (2008b) Linguistica di aree laterali ed estreme (Recco: Le Mani).
Toso, F. (2009) La letteratura ligure in genovese e nei dialetti locali. Profilo storico e
antologia (Recco: Le Mani).
Toso, F. (2010) ‘Del posto che spetta al ligure nel sistema dei dialetti italiani: la
posizione ascoliana’ in C. Marcato and F. Vicario (eds.) Il pensiero di Graziadio
Isaia Ascoli a cent’anni dalla scomparsa. Atti del convegno internazionale, Gorizia-
Udine, 3–5 maggio 2007 (Udine: Società Filologica Friulana), pp. 411–24.
Toso, F. (2011) La langue monégasque, son origine et sa typologie, http://www.
ald-monaco.org/langues-monegasque/la-langue-monegasque-son-origine-et-
sa-typologie-6, date accessed 24 February 2015.
Tufi, S. (2010) ‘Degrees of visibility of immigrant communities in the linguistic
landscape of Genoa and Cagliari’ in A. Ledgeway and A. L. Lepschy (eds.) Into
and out of Italy: The language and culture of migrants (Perugia: Guerra), pp. 31–42.
Tufi, S. (2013a) ‘Language ideology and language maintenance: The case of
Sardinia’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 219, 145‒60.
Tufi, S. (2013b) ‘Shared places, unshared identities: Vernacular discourses and
spatialised constructions of identity in the linguistic landscape of Trieste’,
Modern Italy, 18, 4, 391‒408.
Tufi, S. (forthcoming) ‘Constructing the self in contested spaces: The case
of Slovenian-speaking minorities in the area of Trieste’ in R. J. Blackwood,
E. Lanza and H. Woldemariam (eds.) Contesting and negotiating identities in
linguistic landscapes (London: Continuum).
Tufi, S. and Blackwood, R. (2010) ‘Trademarks in the linguistic landscape: meth-
odological and theoretical challenges in qualifying brand names in the public
space’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 7, 3, 197‒210.
Tuveri, L. (2011) Insegne in lingua straniera, la Lega vuole la traduzione, http://
www.oggitreviso.it/insegne-lingua-straniera-lega-vuole-traduzione-38606, date
accessed 30 May 2013.
Urry, J (1995) Consuming places (London: Routledge).
Van Doosselaere, Q. (2009) Commercial agreements and social dynamics in medieval
Genoa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Vecchio, S. (2013) Da lingua a dialetto. Percorsi dell’ideologia linguistica in Sicilia,
http://www.academia.edu/3589991/Da_lingua_a_dialetto._Percorsi_dellideolo-
gia_linguistica_in_Sicilia, date accessed 25 November 2013.
Vernier, O. (2006) ‘La restauration sarde (1814–1848)’ in A. Ruggiero (ed.)
Nouvelle histoire de Nice (Toulouse: Editions Privat), pp. 155–69.
Vertovec, S. (2007) ‘Super-diversity and its implications’, Ethnic and Racial Studies,
30, 6, 1024–54.
Vertovec, S. (2010) ‘Towards post-multiculturalism? Changing communities,
conditions and contexts of diversity’, International Social Science Journal, 199,
83–95.
Vertovec, S. and Cohen, R. (eds.) (2002) Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, con-
text and practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Ville de Nice (2008) L’art dans la ville, http://www.nice.fr/Tourisme/Decouvrez-
Nice/L-art-dans-la-ville, date accessed 13 February 2015.
Bibliography 239
Visciola, S. (2011) ‘La question de Nice dans la culture historique italienne. De

l’unité à la Seconde Guerre mondiale’ in R. Schor and H. Courrière (eds.) Le
Comté de Nice, la France et l’Italie: Regards sur le rattachement de 1860 (Nice:
Editions Serre), pp. 73–84.
Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612) (Alberti: Venezia).
Voltaggio, F. (2010) Italia mediterranea. I flussi migratori nelle principali città riviera-
sche (Rome: Edup).
Wagner, M. (2001) Immagini di viaggio dalla Sardegna (Nuoro: Ilisso).
Walter, H. (1988) Le français dans tous les sens (Paris: Robert Lafont).
Walter, H. (2001) Honni soit qui mal y pense: l’Incroyable histoire d’amour entre le
français et l’anglais (Paris: Robert Laffont).
Watt, D. and Llamas, C. (2014) ‘Introduction’ in D. Watt and C. Llamas (eds.)
Language, borders, and identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 1–7.
Weber, E. (1977) Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of rural France
1870‒1914 (London: Chatto and Windus).
Wolf, L. (1972) ‘Le français régional. Essai d’une définition’, Travaux de
Linguistique et de Littérature, 10, 1, pp. 171‒77.
Wright, S. (2002) ‘Fixing national borders: Language and loyalty in Nice’ in
P. Gubbins and M. Holt (eds.) Beyond boundaries: Language and identity in con-
temporary Europe (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters), pp. 91–100.
Zappieri, M. (1981) ‘Uso dell’inglese nelle insegne commerciali’ in I. Guţia, G.
M. Senes, M. Zappieri and F. Cabasino (eds.) Contatti interlinguistici e mass
media (Rome: La Goliardica Editrice), pp. 111‒69.
Zurru, M. (ed.) (2007) Rapporto sulle migrazioni in Sardegna – 2007 (Cagliari:
CUEC).
Zurru, M (ed.) (2010) Rapporto sulle migrazioni in Sardegna – 2009 (Cagliari:
CUEC).
Index
Académie française 30, 183–185 Bengali 63, 113, 117

Accademia d’Italia 19, 25, 39 Berber 38, 39, 69, 70, 139, 211
Agency 2, 10, 13, 66, 73, 115, 118, Berruto, Gaetano 177
129, 179, 182, 207 Blommaert, Jan 22, 88, 117, 119,
Agenzia Regionale per la Lingua 129, 204, 211
Friulana 80 Border 5, 6, 10, 16, 17, 25, 27,
Ajaccio 6, 13, 14, 55, 95, 129–134, 41–43, 44, 55, 57, 62, 68, 72–74,
136, 139, 140, 196–198, 201, 204, 75–79, 82, 83, 87, 89, 92, 93, 94,
212, 214 99–100, 101–103, 104–105, 150,
Albania 66 203, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212
Albanian 26, 63, 112–113, 164 Border studies 6, 16, 41–42, 72, 75
Albenga 42 Borrowings 30, 32, 40, 65, 89,
Algeria 139, 162, 177, 197 182–185, 199
Alghero 27, 122 Bottom-up 10–11, 162
Alpes-Maritimes 43, 50 Branding 65, 144, 179, 193, 209,
Alterity 60, 101, 105, 111, 154, 162, 210
204, 213 Bressola 92
Ancien Régime 30, 31, 89, 90 Bulgarian 155
Anglomania 17, 181, 183–186 Byzantium 59, 76, 107, 121
Anglophilia 17, 181, 183
Anglophobia 17, 183 Cagliari 14, 120–129, 148, 187,
Arabic 5, 38, 39, 63, 69, 70, 72, 189–190, 204, 207, 208, 209,
107, 113, 125, 128, 139, 143, 155, 211, 214
160, 161–163, 175, 177, 197–199, Camino 97–98
201, 211 Camorra 154
Aragon 107, 129 Campidanese 122
Armenian 151 Cannes 42
Arrondissement 14, 155, 158, 162 Carinthian 80–81
Assemini 125 Castilian 16, 76, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97,
Austria 43, 77, 78, 81, 153 99–102, 153, 160, 212
Authenticity 3, 28, 64, 65, 89, 102, Catalan 14, 16, 26, 27, 33, 36, 76,
103, 106, 141–142, 180, 187 89–92, 93–99, 100–102, 122, 142,
153, 160, 201, 210, 212
Backhaus, Peter 3, 4, 12, 15, Cavour, Count Camillo Benso di 44
Banal globalization 46, 100, Centro Studi Filologici e Linguistici
140, 202 Siciliani 109
Banal nationalism 202 Charter for the Corsican
Bangladesh 116–117, 188–189, 203 Language 133
Banlieue 211 China 66, 116, 171, 197, 203
Bas-Lauriol law 36–37 Chinese 5, 63, 82, 113, 125, 128,
Bastia 136 139, 155, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175,
Bellay, Joachim du 29, 34 189, 190, 197, 211
Bembo, Pietro 19, 20 Churchill, Winston 181
240
Index 241
City 1–2, 14, 61, 89, 90, 107, 110, De Mauro, Tullio 20, 22, 23, 24,
111, 116, 117, 122, 125, 129, 132, 40, 182
133, 134, 136, 139, 143, 147, 150, Dalmatia 77
155, 157, 176–177, 191, 203, Danish 9, 82, 125, 155
209, 214 Dante Alighieri Society 25
Cityscape 6, 28, 205, 210, 214 Deixonne law 91, 131
Civic frame 47, 48, 49, 54, 94, 134, Diachronic 6, 92
137, 160 Dialect 3–4, 7, 10, 20–23, 24,
Clothing 54, 56, 93, 113, 185, 191 25, 26, 32–33, 34, 39, 49, 57,
Collectif Provènço 156–157 60, 62, 64, 80, 87, 88, 106,
Commercial 2–3, 11, 24–25, 36–37, 110–116, 144, 148, 155,
41, 59, 60, 63, 67, 69, 70, 81, 83, 163–164, 166–169, 177, 191,
86, 99, 113, 110, 117, 118, 121, 208–210
128, 139, 140, 141, 163, 172–173, Diasporic 61, 66, 70, 71, 73, 120
180, 184, 188, 189, 192, 196, 197, Diogenes 178, 199, 202
203, 206, 214 Dutch 45, 63, 125, 155
Commodification 11, 102, 103,
141–142, 177, 203 Ecuador 66
Commodification of Ecuadorean 66–67, 70, 71
tradition 141–142 Edict of Villers-Cotterêts 33
Communicational landscape 188, 205 Education 9, 20, 22–28, 34–39, 52,
Comoros 151, 176 56, 62, 81, 92, 112, 117, 130–131,
Connectivity 104–105, 118, 157, 184
120, 211, Elite cosmpolitanism 17, 63, 177,
Core islandness 16, 147–148, 209 191, 199–200, 213
Corsica 7, 12–14, 16, 38, 46, 49, Emperor Frederick II 107–108
75, 104–107, 122, 129–142, 147, English 113, 119, 125, 126, 128,
195–196, 204, 206, 210 135, 140, 144, 155, 165, 166, 167,
Corsican 12–14, 33, 36, 55, 58, 170, 173, 179–189, 194–204, 206,
129–139, 141–142, 147, 195, 204, 210, 212–214
210 Ethnography 4, 211
Corsican Territorial Authority 131, Ethno-linguistic vitality 82, 210
135–136 Etiemble, René 185
Cosmopolitan space 144–145, Etruscans 153
212–214 European City of Culture 204
Cosmopolitanism 151, 155, 164, European Union 36, 41, 120, 212
173, 175, 178–179, 183, 188, Exoticization 143, 154, 156, 211
189–191, 193, 196, 197, 198, 199,
202–204 Fascism 44, 77, 108, 130,
Council of Europe 10, 27, 112, 180, 182
Crispi, Francesco 108 Félibrige 156–157
Crusade 42, 59, 67 Filiberto, Emanuele 44
Cultural capital 166, 177, 179, 209, Film 11, 22, 65, 119, 150, 152–154,
Czech 125 158, 185
Finnish 155
D’Agostino, Mari 27, 110, 111, First World War 77, 81, 126, 184
116, 180 Florence 21, 181
De Blasi, Nicola 20, 26, 153, Font 47–48, 52, 114, 137, 160, 161,
164, 169 165, 166, 191, 200
242 Index
Food 3, 13, 17, 65, 117–118, 124, Glorious Revolution 182

144, 174–175, 178, 185, 188, 189, Graffiti 11, 67, 113, 115, 126, 169,
197–198, 203, 213 189–191, 201, 214
Football 53–54, 150, 186 Grand Tour 154, 181
Foreignization 203, 214, Grasse 42
Foucault, Michel 154, 214 Great Britain 130, 183, 213
France 4, 5, 7, 10, 13, 15–17, 18, Greek 26, 43, 63, 82, 92, 107, 125,
24, 28–33, 33–38, 41–43,43–45, 151, 152, 153, 155, 160, 178, 199
45–49, 50, 52, 55, 56, 57, 61, Grégoire, Abbot 34
72–73, 75–76, 89–92, 93, 96, 99, Grup Rossellonès d’Estudis Catalans 92
100–101, 156–157, 161, 176,
206–207, 209–210, 211, 212, 213 Habsburgs 77, 86
French 2, 4, 9, 10, 11, 14, 17, 19, 28– Hebrew 113, 143, 155
33, 33–38, 39–40, 42, 43, 44–45, 46– Hindi 125, 128
49, 52–56, 57–58, 60, 63, 69, 70, 71, Hungarian 82
72, 73, 82, 89–90, 90–92, 94–100, Hybridity 188, 197
102, 105, 113, 125, 129–140, 150, Hypercorrection 168
152–153, 155, 158–163, 174,
175–177, 179, 183–184, 196–197, Identity 2, 9, 11, 19, 21, 35, 41, 46,
203, 206–207, 211, 212, 213 53, 54, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62, 71, 73,
French Constitution 36–38, 132, 206 77, 82, 83, 87, 88, 93, 101, 102,
French language policy 33–38, 90, 103, 104–108, 111, 112, 118, 120,
129–134, 183–186, 196 121, 124, 128, 129, 132–136, 139,
French linguistic history 28–33, 141, 147, 148, 160, 164, 170, 176,
129–134, 151–152, 183–186 178–179, 189, 194, 204, 208, 209,
French Revolution 28, 30, 32, 34, 210, 211
43, 45, 56, 89, 90, 130, 132 Ideology 10, 19, 24, 29, 31, 34,
Friulian 26, 50, 78, 80–81, 87 36, 37, 51, 62, 87, 102, 121–122,
Friuli-Venezia Giulia (FVG) 16, 41, 124, 137–138, 150, 161, 164, 176,
76, 78–81, 86, 99 204, 212
Image 3, 12, 15, 133, 150, 163,
Garibaldi, Giuseppe 44, 107, 181 Indexicality 5, 141–142, 210
General Delegation for the French Indian 151, 188–189
Language and Languages of France Indochina 151
(DGLFLF) 30, 39 INSEE 43, 90, 139, 140, 197, 212,
Genoa 14, 16, 20, 41, 42, 43, 46, 57, Insegne 25
59–72, 73, 129–130, 164, 187, 188, Institut d’Estudis Occitans 157
195, 203, 207, 211, 214 Institut Rossellonès d’Estudis
Genoese 7, 14, 16, 27, 57, 60, 62, Catalans 92
63–66, 73, 208–209 Insularity 7, 16, 17, 104–107, 111,
Georgian 60, 113, 160 117, 118, 120, 125, 127, 129, 134,
German 25, 33, 45, 46, 63, 78, 80, 136, 141–148, 204, 209, 211
81, 86, 92, 113, 125, 128, 139–140, Insularization 117, 211
155, 180 Internet 117, 169,
Germanic 26, 77, 78 Islands 13, 16, 27, 49, 75, 103,
Ghana 113, 116–119, 211 104–107, 118, 141–148, 204
GISCEL 27 ISTAT 21, 23, 61, 66, 81, 116, 125,
Globalization 5, 99, 100, 115, 140, 126, 127, 128, 170, 207, 209
181, 186, 187, 202, 212 Istria 77–78
Index 243
Italian 2–4, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 148, 153, 154, 158, 170, 176–177,
18, 19–23, 23–28, 30, 32, 33, 36, 178, 184, 193, 197, 207, 208, 210,
38–41, 43, 44, 45, 45–49, 50, 56, 211, 214
57, 60–62, 63–72, 77–78, 78–82, Language revitalization 4, 54, 80,
82–87, 88, 89, 92, 101, 103, 105, 91, 133, 209
110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 123–124, Language shift 23, 45, 62, 76, 91,
125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 116, 121, 123, 124, 134, 148, 180
139, 140–141, 143, 144, 145, 146, Latin 3, 19, 20, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34,
148, 150, 153–155, 164, 165, 166, 38, 44, 45, 63, 67, 77, 92, 121,
168, 170, 174, 180–183, 186–191, 155, 161
193–195, 197–198, 201–204, Le bon français 30, 152
207–210, 212, 213, 214 Leeuwarden 149
Italian Constitution 20, 26, 36, Liguria 60–62
39, 80 Ligurian 42, 43, 49, 50, 57, 60, 72
Italian language policy 23–28, 56, Ligurian Sea 41–42, 46, 75, 140
62, 87, 110–113, 123–127, 179–183 Limba Sarda Comuna 123
Italian linguistic history 19–23, Limba Sarda Unificada 123
110–113, 123–127, 153–155, Lingua franca 42, 188, 197, 203,
179–183 206, 213
Italianization 22, 23, 26, 45, 61, Linguistic diversity 2, 19–20,
77, 110 32, 36, 56, 77, 105, 109, 129, 138,
Italy 3, 4, 5, 7, 15–17, 18, 19–23, 176, 210,
23–28, 29, 32, 35, 37, 39–40, 41, Linguistic repertoire 8, 15, 16, 21,
42, 44, 53, 59–72, 72–73, 75–76, 22, 27, 39, 56, 78, 79, 81, 102, 111,
77, 79, 88, 103, 104, 105, 107, 116, 145, 180, 191, 198, 203, 207,
111–113, 116–118, 120, 122, 123, 208, 210, 211
127, 130–132, 140, 148, 149, 152, Lion, Gulf of 75
153, 170, 171, 173, 179–183, 193, Local language 3, 11, 16, 19, 20, 62,
196, 197, 203 79, 80, 87, 88, 101, 115, 123, 124,
Itanglese 182 126, 133, 148, 166, 176, 180
Itangliano 182 Localized identity 65, 73, 138, 175,
205, 208–210
Japanese 63, 82, 125, 139, 155, 180, Logodurese 132
186, 187 London Memorandum 77
Jerusalem 3–4, 46, 98, 159 Longobards 59, 77, 153
Louis XIV 30, 90,
King Edward VII 199
King Henri II 129 Majority language 5, 83, 86, 87, 102
Kingdom of Naples 20, 107, 152, 153 Malherbe, François de 29
Kingdom of Sardinia 122 Marseilles 14, 17, 108, 149–152,
155–163, 175–177, 196, 197, 198,
La Brigue 43 199, 200–203, 206, 209, 210, 211,
Language policy 5, 15, 18, 23–28, 212, 214
28–38, 38–39, 56, 87, 90 Massilia 151
Language practices 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, Materiality 7, 8, 11, 162, 179
14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 28, 34, Mazzini, Giuseppe 181
35, 37, 39, 44, 45, 47, 73, 82, 83, Mediterranean 2, 16, 17, 42, 59, 60,
86, 87, 88, 91, 92, 95, 101, 106, 104–105, 109, 130, 136, 139, 147,
111, 121, 124, 129, 133, 138, 147, 149, 150, 154, 160–161, 196, 212
244 Index
Menton 56, 72, 199 Nested insularity 16, 117–118, 120,

Metrolingualism 8, 195 121, 129, 134, 147, 209, 211
Middle Ages 18, 35, 89, 121, New media 182
129, 153 Nice 6, 16, 41, 43–44, 44–55,
Migrant language 5, 17, 28, 38, 62, 56, 57, 65, 72, 73, 95, 141, 147,
63, 66–72, 115–120, 127–129, 139, 157, 196–199, 201, 203, 206, 210,
149, 151, 155, 162, 170–175, 176, 212, 214
177, 180, 211 Nissart 16, 45, 49–55, 57, 65, 72,
Migration 4, 5, 6, 7, 16, 39, 50, 60, 73, 210
81, 89, 121, 170, 188, 197, 206, Normans 153
207, 211, 212 North Africa 151, 162, 197, 211
Milan 153 Northern Catalonia 14, 16, 38, 46,
Minority language 4, 5, 10, 26, 27, 76, 89–92, 93, 94, 98, 99, 101, 102,
39, 83, 92, 106, 113, 123, 148, 156, 103, 141, 142, 147, 196, 201, 206,
163, 208 210, 212
Mistral, Frédéric 49, 156–157, 160
Modernity 1, 2, 5, 41, 109, Occitan 26, 36, 49–50, 57, 89, 97,
186–188, 212 158–161, 162, 176, 209, 210
Monaco 16, 41, 45, 55–59, 72–73, Organització Capital de la Cultura
196, 206, 210, 212, 213, 214 Catalana 93, 99
Monegasque 16, 45, 57–59, 73, Osci 153
160, 210 Osservatorio Regionale della Lingua e
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de della Cultura Friulane 80
Secondat 181 Ostau dau país marselhés 158–159
Moors 59, 121, 133
Morocco 60, 66, 116, 128, 139, Palermo 3, 6, 20, 107–120, 143,
162–163, 177, 197, 201, 212 187–193, 203, 207, 211, 214
Moscovici, Serge 17, 150 Paoli, Pasquale 130, 137–138
Muggia 81, 84, 86, 88 Paris 18, 29, 32, 43, 51, 72, 77, 90,
Muggisano 88 132, 134, 138, 158, 176
Multilingualism 4, 22, 31, 75, 76, Parthenope 152
105–106, 131, 142, 149, 151, 152, Patois 32–35, 49, 57, 157
160, 161, 179, 180, 202, 207, 213 Peripherality 2, 7, 16, 75, 89, 101,
Multimodality 8, 15, 214 103, 105, 111, 123–124, 134, 135,
Music 185 138, 140, 147, 208–209, 210, 211
Mussolini, Benito 46, 65 Periphery 16, 20, 75–76, 94, 102,
103, 105–107, 110, 111, 121, 141
Naples 6, 14, 17, 20, 107, 108, 109, Perpignan 6, 14, 89, 90, 92–101,
149–150, 152–156, 164–175, 177, 102, 196–198, 201, 212, 214
187, 188, 200, 207, 211, 214 Peru 66, 71, 171
Napoleon 35, 43, 45 Phocæa 43, 151, 155
Napoleon III 44 Phoenicians 107, 121
Napolimania 166–167, 169 Piazza Garibaldi 172–175, 177, 211
National law 482/99, 27, 164 Piedmont 19, 21, 43–44, 50, 60,
Nationalism 21, 38, 105, 108, 109, 61, 122
202, 204 Pisa 122, 129
Neapolitan 17, 63, 88, 150, 153–155, Place 1–2, 9, 13, 14, 23, 29, 42, 55,
163–170, 173, 174, 177, 208, 209 70, 102, 154, 177, 179, 193, 205,
Neo-sardismo 123 211, 212
Index 245
Pléiade 29, 34 147, 149, 155, 158–161, 176, 204,

Plurilingualism 23, 39, 61, 152, 206, 209, 210
180, 202 Regional law 26/1997 27, 113,
Polish 82, 125, 155 126, 148
Polycentrism 19–20, 32 Regional law 85/1981 111–112
Polylanguaging 8, 169, 194, 202 Regional law 9/2011 112
Ponte-Nuovo 130 Regionalism 16, 209
Port 43, 48–49, 54, 59, 68, 77, Renaissance 29, 30, 164, 181
107, 121, Republic 26, 35, 36, 37, 59, 60, 62,
Portuguese 63, 82, 113, 125, 139, 80, 91, 132, 137, 181
155, 212 Restaurant 64, 70, 71, 84, 89, 113,
Postcolonial 211 124, 145, 146, 172, 197, 203, 213
Prestige 5, 19, 20, 32, 34, 40, Rhodanien 156–157
53, 59, 62, 83, 88, 93, 122, 153, Richelieu, Cardinal 29
180, 186–187, 191, 193, 199, 201, Risorgimento 38, 181
203, 213 Rocca, Petru 130
Product labelling 46, 63, 90, Romania 66, 116, 128, 171
140–142, 163, 193, 202 Romanian 63, 155
Provençal 7, 43, 45, 49, 50, 57, 72, Rome 21, 76, 98, 153, 171, 196
156–158, 176, 209, 210 Russian 45, 82, 113, 125, 155, 170,
Provence 43, 49, 72, 156–158, 175, 180
160, 209
Public signage 2, 10 Samnites 153
Public space 2–6, 8, 10, 11, 12, San Sebastian 4, 149
14, 15, 17, 18, 23, 25, 28, 32, 33, Sardigna Natzione Indipendentzia 126
42, 72, 73, 87, 102, 105, 124, 126, Sardinia 14, 16, 27, 43, 44, 56, 75,
128, 133, 134–136, 138, 139–142, 120–125, 126, 127, 138, 148, 209
147, 149, 155, 158, 160, 169, Sardinian 7, 14, 26, 27, 120–128,
175–177, 179–181, 186, 193, 196, 145, 147–148, 204, 208
197, 202–203, 206–208, 209, 211, Savoy 43–46, 107, 122, 126
212, 214 Scola Corsa 131
Pyrénées-Orientales 38, 89, 90, 92 Second World War 22, 26, 43, 44,
79, 109, 130–131, 181
Qualitative 4, 7 Selargius 125
Quantitative 4, 7, 12, 13, 93, 140, Senegal 66, 128
162, 175, 203 Serment de Strasbourg 28
Quartiere 14, 113, 116, 125, 155 Sestiere 62
Quartu Sant’Elena 125, 126, Sestu 125
Quartucciu 125 Shohamy, Elana 4, 24, 34, 98
Queen Victoria 44, 200 Sicilian 3, 14, 107–109, 111–113,
113–115, 121–122, 143, 144, 145,
Re-functionalization 175, 177, 211 148, 160, 190, 208
Region 20, 30–31, 32, 59, 60, Sicilianismo 109
61, 62, 78, 79, 80, 102, 121, Sicily 16, 75, 105, 106, 107–113,
156, 164, 133, 143, 148, 209
Regional Italian 110, 115 Sign 2–3, 4, 5, 8, 10–11, 12–15,
Regional Language 4, 6–7, 10, 13, 17, 24–25, 28, 29, 45, 82, 98,
16, 17, 31–38, 39, 50, 106, 111, 100, 159–160, 179, 187, 191, 192,
131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 141, 142, 201, 203
246 Index
Sign coding 5, 10–13, 93–94, 203 Tourism 49, 63, 90, 140, 142, 143,
Silence 191, 205, 207 160–161, 176, 180, 199, 209
Sinhalese 5, 63, 113, 155, Transgression 2, 11, 54, 67
171–172, 175 Transnational space 61, 70,
Slavic 77 73, 188–189, 199, 202, 209,
Slavs 77, 153 210–212, 214
Slovenia 16, 77, 78, 83 Treaty of the Pyrenees 89, 98
Slovenian 16, 26, 76–87, 89, 99, 101, Treaty of Versailles, 1768 130
102, 136, 208, 210 Treaty of Versailles, 1919 56, 184
Social Representations 6, 17, Trieste 6, 7, 12, 14, 75, 76–78, 79,
149–152, 155, 157, 164, 166, 176 80, 81, 83–83, 86, 87–88, 101, 102,
Song 54, 62, 131, 150, 153, 136, 187–188, 194, 207, 208, 210,
164, 166 211, 214
Space 1–14, 16, 17, 18, 23, 25, 28, Triestino 16, 76, 81, 82, 87–89,
32, 33, 36–40, 42, 46, 48, 49, 59, 101, 208
61, 62, 72–73, 83, 87, 89, 91, 92, Tunisia 66, 71, 116, 128, 139, 197
94, 97, 99, 102–103, 149–150, 154, Turkish 9, 63, 82, 113, 199
155, 160, 169, 172, 175–177, 180, Twi 113, 119
186, 193, 202, 205, 206–208,
208–210, 211–212, 212–214 Ukrainian 155, 170–171
Spanish 9, 11, 45, 46, 63, 67, 68, Urban 1–2, 6, 8, 20, 22, 31,
69–70, 71, 73, 76, 82, 92, 94, 99, 55, 61, 64, 67, 68, 109–111,
100, 101, 102, 113, 122, 125, 139, 117, 119, 133–134, 139, 149–150,
153, 155, 160, 180, 202 152, 157, 164, 175–177, 180, 186,
Spatialization practice 16, 74, 111, 193, 195
147, 209, 211 Urban culture 1–2
Spolsky, Bernard and Cooper, Urdu 63
Robert 3–4, 46, 86, 159–160, 206
Spolsky, Bernard 15, 18, 24, 29, Value 17, 19, 32, 33, 51, 54–55,
31, 87 89, 96, 102, 106, 108, 111, 112,
Superdiversity 6, 8, 9, 105, 118, 119 128, 142, 144, 148, 177, 186–187,
Survey 3, 6–7, 12, 14, 45, 53, 54, 203–204, 213
61, 63, 66, 81–82, 92, 93, 101, 125, Vaugelas, Claude Favre de 30
128, 134, 138, 140, 141, 142, 148, Venetan 76, 78, 80, 81, 87, 88
155, 158, 160, 162, 165, 167, 182, Venetian 78
186, 187, 196, 201, 206, 207, 209 Venice 20, 77, 164
Swedish 155 Vertovec, Stephen 6, 8, 105, 179, 194
Via Prè 67–68, 73, 188, 211
Television 22, 153 Vietnamese 38, 39, 197
Tende 43 Visibility 133, 134, 138, 139,
Territorial language 79, 81, 140, 156, 161, 169, 180, 181, 185, 186,
179, 208 202–203, 207, 208, 210, 212, 213
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 107 Visual frame 7
Theatre 62, 82, 88, 150, 152, 164 Vitality 4, 5, 22, 83, 89, 92, 131, 170
Top-down 10–11, 38, 47, 73, 162 Voltaire, François-Marie 181
Toso, Fiorenzo 26, 43, 56, 57, 60, 62,
79, 80, 81, 83, 87, 108, 109, 112, Wolof 38, 39, 63, 69, 70, 155
113, 164, 208
Toubon law 3, 39, 141, 196, 206 Zena 63–66

The LL of The Mediterranean - French and Italian Coastal Cities

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The LL of The Mediterranean - French and Italian Coastal Cities

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The LL of The Mediterranean - French and Italian Coastal Cities

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the purpose of the Language and Globalization book series?

What is the purpose of the Language and Globalization book series?

What topics are covered in the books featured in this series?

What topics are covered in the books featured in this series?

Language and Globalization

Series Editors: Sue Wright, University of Portsmouth, UK and Helen Kelly-

Also by Robert J. Blackwood

Language and Globalization

Robert J. Blackwood and Stefania Tufi

ISBN 978-1-349-57636-4 ISBN 978-1-137-31456-7 (eBook)

1. Languages in contact—Mediterranean region. 2. Bilingualism—

Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

List of Figures and Tables x

An Introduction to Mediterranean Linguistic Landscapes 1

3 Peripherality in the Border Areas:

6 Cosmopolitan Linguistic Landscapes of

2.1 Sign in Italian commemorating the death of Paganini 47

4.4 Shop providing services for the Ghanaian community 119

6.9 Street name in Menton 200

1.1 Language practices in contemporary Italy:

The city as space, place, and symbol

A high level of dynamicity and complexity can similarly be applied to

Origins of public signage

LL studies and our contribution

significance of the language in contradiction to management strategies

highly pertinent to the cities we investigate; political science, social

This book responds to calls for a re-positioning of writing within

The identification of languages as discrete units was instrumental in

groups in those settings where categories such as ethnicity, gender, age,

Terms used in the course of the book

In approaching the writing of this book, we have had to agree on the

types of signs – for instance, between the sign on a government min-

institutional discourse which has already been framed from a ‘major-

Elsewhere (Blackwood, 2015), we identify a series of challenges that have

Chapter 4, Corsican distinguishes itself as France’s most visible regional

a particular named language. Of particular note in this study is the use

either’. What we seek to do, therefore, is to use the sites of enquiry

Organization of the book

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the linguistic histories of France and

Chapter 2 is where we first contrast sites on either side of the national

contributes to the enactment of complex linguistic identities which,

The main aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of language

Accademia della Crusca (founded in 1583) and following the codification

Italy – polycentrism and linguistic diversity

object of interest on the part of Italian and international scholars and

1997). As a result, and unlike anglophone environments, the dialects of

Table 1.1 Language practices in contemporary Italy: Italian/dialect use

Home Friends Strangers

Mainly or only Italian 53.1% 56.4% 84.8%

Source: ISTAT, 2014a.

This is partly a consequence of the fact that the spread of Italian

complex because dialectal varieties and varieties of Italian have multi-

Language policy in Italy

Elsewhere, we have used the term non-policies with respect to institu-

covert (Shohamy, 2006), but pursued via education, which is one of

nationalist groups appropriated the language issue for an anti-German

including cemeteries, where even proper names were Italianized. Whilst

protection of minority languages, therefore reflecting attempts to com-

Intercultural education is at the heart of Italian attempts to address