Publications
Publication details [#62748]
Santello, Marco. 2017. ‘Quella era veramente è Little Italy, la nostra Little Italy’: Multiple centres, cultural presence and the articulation of spaces of speech from Tasmania. Language in Society 46 (2) : 207–230. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Journal WWW
Annotation
This paper explores the intersections between migrant experiences, multilingual practices, and the creation of space. It does so by centering on Italians who migrated to Tasmania, a group that has long been isolated from the rest of the Italian diaspora. Employing an ethnographic approach within a constructivist framework, this inquiry displays that when experiences of movement are recounted in interaction they produce spaces of speech that are possible thanks to the articulation of local and transnational ‘centres’, which in turn are intertwined with a rich range of linguistic resources. These resources cover code-choice, codeswitching, and intentional exposure of phonological variation, and are variously combined to permit the apparition of spaces for people to move through. Spaces of speech are thus situated interactional spaces where acts of (re)telling are linked to centres as spatial resources via which not only social meaning is generated but also location and locution are mutually constitutive.