Narrating Migration: Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy 9781138584679, 9780429505836

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Narrating Migration

This book reflects on the myriad ways in which forms of exclusion and inclusion play out in narratives of migration, focusing on the case of Northern Italian narratives in today’s superdiverse Italy. Drawing on over a decade of the author’s fieldwork in the region, the volume examines the emergence of racialized language in conversations about migrants or migration issues in light of increasing recent migratory flows in the European Union, couched in the broader context of changing sociopolitical forces, such as anti-immigration policies and nativist discourse in political communication in Italy. The book highlights case studies from everyday discourse in both villages and cities and at different levels of society to explore these “intimacies of exclusion,” the varying degrees to which inclusion and exclusion manifest themselves in conversation on migration. The book also employs a narrative practice-based approach that considers storytelling as a more dynamic form of discourse, thus allowing for equally new ways of analyzing their content and impact. Offering a valuable contribution to the growing literature on narratives of migration, this volume is key reading for graduate students and scholars in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, sociocultural anthropology, language and politics, and migration studies. Sabina Perrino is Assistant Professor of anthropology and linguistics at Binghamton University. She has conducted research in Senegal and Northern Italy on topics such as racialized language, offline/online narratives, intimacy, migration, language revitalization, transnationalism, ethnomedicine, and political discourse. She co-edited eight special issues for journals including Language in Society, Language & Communication, and Applied Linguistics.

Routledge Studies in Linguistic Anthropology

Promoting Heritage Language in Northwest Russia Laura Siragusa Narratives of Conflict, Belonging, and the State Discourse and Social Life in Post-War Ireland Brigittine M. French Difference and Repetition in Language Shift to a Creole The Expression of Emotions Maïa Ponsonnet Narrating Migration Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy Sabina Perrino

For more information about this series, please visit www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Linguistic-Anthropology/book-series/RSLA

Narrating Migration Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy

Sabina Perrino

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Sabina Perrino to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-58467-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-50583-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To my mother, Maria Novella To my father, Giampiero To my brother, Nicola And to their invaluable strength in being able to live intimate lives across unparalleled spatiotemporal scales

Contents

Acknowledgments Transcription Conventions Introduction

x xiii 1

Geographical Location: Northern Italy  3 Collecting Data in Northern Italy: Methodology  4 Co-Constructing Transcripts: Orthographic Conventions and Bivalency  5 Book Structure—Outline of Chapters  6 1 Migration and Politics in Northern Italy

13

1.1 Introduction 13 1.2 Mediterranean Migrations in and Through Italy  14 1.3 Multiculturalism and Superdiversity in Italy  16 1.4 Inclusion-Resistant Superdiversity and Communities of Practice in Northern Italy  20 1.5 Intimacy and Intimate Identities  23 1.6 Intimacies of Exclusion in and Through DNA  26 1.6.1 DNA and Brand Identities in Narratives About Italian Fashion  27 1.6.2 DNA and Language Use in Veneto, Northern Italy  32 1.7 Concluding Remarks  35 2 The Lega Nord (‘Northern League’): Language Revitalization and Anti-Immigration Politics 2.1 Introduction 39 2.2 The Lega Nord (‘Northern League’) and Its Anti-Immigrant Politics  41

39

viii Contents 2.3 Beyond the Lega: New Political Movements in Italy  45 2.4 Poeticizing and Politicizing Language Revitalization  46 2.5 Local Languages and Standardized Italian: A Brief Historical Background  47 2.6 Revitalizing Language, Culture, and History in Veneto and Beyond  49 2.6.1 The Liga Veneta Repubblica’s Flag  51 2.6.2 Terre dei Dogi in Festa in Portogruaro, Veneto  55 2.6.3 Revitalization of Venetan and the “Veneto State”  57 2.7 Concluding Remarks  62 3 Racializing Narratives: Stance, Scale, and Chronotope

66

3.1 Introduction 66 3.2 Narratives as Discursive Practices  67 3.3 Narrative Practices Through Spatiotemporal Scales: The Bakhtinian Chronotope  71 3.4 Chronotopes Through Scalar Intimacy  74 3.5 Racialized Storytelling: Stance and Stancetaking  76 3.6 Narrating Extracomunitari in Veneto’s HealthCare Facilities  79 3.7 Concluding Remarks  82 4 Intimacies of Exclusion in and Through Storytelling

85

4.1 Introduction 85 4.2 Racialized Narratives in Research Qualitative Interviews 87 4.3 Intimacies of Exclusion in Political Rallies  92 4.4 Narrating Authenticity and Migration in Northern Italian Historical Cafés  98 4.5 Concluding Remarks  109 5 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette 5.1 Introduction 112 5.2 Racialized Jokes as “Keyed” Performances  115 5.3 Barzellette and Italian Joke-Tellers  118 5.4 Racialized Barzellette in Formal Political Addresses  120 5.5 Enacting Extracomunitari in Barzellette in Veneto  123 5.5.1 “In Padua There Are So Many Extracomunitari!” 123

112

Contents  ix 5.5.2 “Starting Today, You Are Giovanni!”: Assigning Italian Names to Migrant Students  127 5.6 Concluding Remarks  132 Conclusion

137

Intimacies of Exclusion in and Through Storytelling Practices 140 Racialized Barzellette in Northern Italy  144 Intimacies of Exclusion: Future Research  147 References Index

149 167

Acknowledgments

This book could never have been written without the vibrant and continuous participation of my research collaborators throughout many years. I am deeply thankful to all of them even though I cannot name them here to respect their privacy. This book draws from ethnographic research that I conducted in Northern Italy during various phases: from 2001 until the end of 2003 and then every summer from 2003 until 2018. I wish to acknowledge support from a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (Grant Number 6957); the University of Pennsylvania’s Penfield Scholarship in Diplomacy, International Affairs, and Belles Lettres; the research funds offered by the Department of Anthropology of the University of Michigan for my research in Northern Italy in 2011– 2012; and the research funds that have been offered by the Department of Anthropology and the Linguistics Program at Binghamton University (SUNY) in 2015–2018. This research would not have been possible without this ongoing, generous financial support. Likewise, this book would never have been written without the many people in Northern Italy and in the United States who assisted me with interviews, transcription tasks, and ideas that developed during conference sessions, departmental forums, and discussions at the Café Strange Brew, in downtown Binghamton. I am especially thankful to my departmental colleagues (in alphabetical order) Elizabeth DiGangi, Carmen Ferradás, Ralph Garruto, Douglas Glick, Douglas Holmes, William Isbel, BrieAnna Langlie, Sebastien Lacombe, Carl Lipo, Michael Little, Randall McGuire, David Andrew Merriwether, David Mixter, Lubna Omar, Joshua Reno, Matthew Sanger, Kathleen Sterling, Steven Straight, Ruth Van Dyke, Katherine Wander, Thomas Wilson, and Matthew Wolf-Meyer for their ongoing willingness to offer feedback and ideas on my research after my departmental talks, in the departmental hallways, in our offices, and during countless coffee/tea hours. Of course, I express many thanks to all my undergraduate and graduate students for their patience in listening to my thoughts and for their availability to assist me during some of the academic venues I organized where some of the ideas and notions described in this book started to take shape and develop.

Acknowledgments  xi Outside my department, I wish to thank the Human Rights Group at Binghamton University for organizing seminars and workshops where some of my ideas were discussed. I am especially thankful to Bat-Ami Bar On and John Cheng for their astute remarks on migration issues during these venues. I wish to thank Anna De Fina for her ongoing support and for inviting me to participate in conferences and other academic venues in which many of this book’s intuitions have developed through critical discussions and productive feedback. My deepest thanks go to Stanton Wortham for his critical feedback on an article that inspired some of the chapters of this book. His ongoing support and constructive feedback have been key in the writing process. I wish to also thank Gregory Kohler for his patience in transcribing some of the data presented in Chapter 1, for his feedback on some portions of the text described in this book, for his collaboration as a co-fieldworker for our project on narratives in the Italian business world, and as an invaluable co-author of two articles that have inspired portions of this book. Michèle Koven and Cécile Vigouroux offered feedback on portions of a previous article that inspired parts of the text in Chapter 5. I offer my deepest thanks to them both. I owe my most profound thanks to the late, and very much missed, Alexandra (Misty) Jaffe for her enthusiastic support and brilliant feedback on several drafts of the article on joke-telling performances which inspired Chapter 5. Her original work on language revitalization has been key for writing Chapter 2 as well. Many thanks to Sonya Pritzker for our ongoing and very inspiring conversations on intimacy and intimate relations. I also wish to thank Michael Lempert, who offered constructive feedback on parts of the article on joke-telling practices which inspired Chapter 5. I offer my deepest thanks to my brother, Nicola Perrino, for his endless enthusiasm in sharing ideas, photographs, and critical thoughts during my many years of research and writing. I thank my mother, Maria Novella Zancan, and my father, Giampiero Perrino, for their ongoing support throughout my life and for understanding my anthropological leaning when I decided to migrate to the United States to follow my dreams. Many thanks go to Irene Perrino and Andrea Perrino for their availability in assisting me with various tasks (including delicious meals and fun trips) during my field research in the Veneto region. Portions of this book were presented at several venues, including various annual meetings of the American Anthropological Associations (2007–2017); two meetings of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (2015–2017); a symposium organized by the Transdisciplinary Areas of Excellence (TAE) at Binghamton University in 2015; an invited talk organized by the Linguistics Program for Linguistics Speakers’ Series at Binghamton University in 2016; the Inaugural Conference of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, held in Philadelphia, PA, in March 2017; an invited talk organized by the Department of Anthropology of the University of Albany (SUNY) in April 2017; an invited talk organized in

xii Acknowledgments honor of Prof. James Wilce, organized by the Department of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University, held in Flagstaff, AZ, in September 2018. Critical feedback to each of these papers has been invaluable. I thank all the participants of these conference sessions and talks for their acute criticism. Portions of this book contain data and ideas, in different versions, that I published in academic journal articles. The last section of Chapter 1 uses two short examples that are part of the data corpus that I collected with Gregory Kohler for a project on narratives in the Italian business world and from our article entitled “Chronotopic Identities: Narrating Made in Italy Across Spatiotemporal Scales.” Language & Communication, published online and still in press. Chapter 2 presents revised ideas that were part of “Exclusionary Intimacies: Racialized Language in Veneto, Northern Italy.” Language & Communication 59 28–41, published in 2018, and of “Intimate Identities and Language Revitalization in Veneto, Northern Italy.” Multlingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 38 (2): 29–50, published in 2018. Some of the data presented in Chapter 4 were published in “Narrating Authenticity in Northern Italian Historical Cafés.” Language and Communication 40 82–91, published in 2015. Chapter 5 contains a revised analysis of the data that I presented in “Performing Extracomunitari: Mocking Migrants in Veneto Barzellette.” Language in Society 44 (2): 141–60, which was published in 2015. I am very thankful to the editors and publishers of these journals for granting me permission to draw from these articles in revised form in this book. I am solely responsible for any remaining mistakes and infelicities.

Transcription Conventions

:::: syllable lengthening — syllable cut-off . stopping fall in tone , continuing intonation ? rising intonation @ laughter [ overlap [. . .] omitted material [   ] transcriber’s comments Bold: Terms or phrases that are discussed in the analysis Bold and Italic: Venetan (the local language of the Veneto region) Italic and Underline: Bivalent forms Regular Font: standardized Italian 

Introduction

When [I] use dialect [I] feel as if I were part of another world, a world that only a few of us can understand and fully share. So [I] use dialect only when there are certain people around me who can understand it and [I] also use it so that not everyone can understand me, [you] know, when [I] want to say some things hoping that not everybody understands me—does it make sense?1,2 (Giacomo,3 Veneto region, Northern Italy, July 2014)

In the summer of 2014, while I was conducting interviews and playback experiments4 on the use of codeswitching in joke-telling practices in the Veneto region, in Northern Italy, I noted that speech participants were metapragmatically aware of their frequent shifting from standardized Italian to Venetan—their local language, or dialetto (‘dialect’),5 as many Italians refer to it. In Giacomo’s view, speaking his local language transports him into “another world” where he can find speakers of the same language who share similar history, traditions, and political views. He also points out that he uses Venetan when he needs to communicate directly to his co-regional speakers, hoping that they will be the only ones who understand what he has to say about others or about some private matters. Giacomo’s observations are not uncommon as they emerge in one of the many narratives he recounted during our conversations. As Italian communities of practice become increasingly diverse and as speakers in most regions are less often monolingual, codeswitching and other similar discursive practices become part of individuals’ everyday lives. By shifting from one language to another, unconsciously or not, speakers go beyond the content of their stories and engage in explicit or veiled interactional moves while their stories unfold. Narrating Migration: Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy is a book about the stories that Northern Italians tell about and around migrants and migration issues. I have been collecting oral narratives in Northern Italy, with a focus on the Veneto region (Northeast Italy), since

2 Introduction 2003 when I started a project on migrants’ ethnomedical practices in Northern Italian hospitals. At that time, I was interested in comparing these practices with the ones that Senegalese migrants had back in Senegal, my other fieldsite. As soon as I started to collect data in Northern Italian hospitals, however, I realized that something else was taking shape in the life of the doctors, nurses, and ordinary people I was interviewing. Besides sharing stories of migrants’ behavior in hospitals and the use of their own medicine together with Western biomedical cures, these speech participants started to share stories about their anxieties around the changes that the Italian society had undergone since the 1970s when new migratory flows started to enter Italy. Many of the Northern Italian collaborators I worked with shared stories about their resistance to these new waves of migrants, made racialized remarks freely and unapologetically, and, overall, enacted strong ethnonationalist stances during our many conversations. I then suddenly realized it was the appropriate time to turn my attention to Italians and to listen to their stories to better understand the subtle, “implicit ideologies” (Woolard 2016) around their strong anti-immigrant sentiments. It was the early 2000s when I started to collect these stories, a moment in which right-wing political parties, such as the Lega Nord (‘Northern League’), were just at the beginning of their path of success across the country, as I explain in Chapter 2. In this light, Narrating Migration: Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy is not a book about the rise of neo-fascism in Italy and in other European countries (Holmes 2019). Nor is it about the political representatives of the Lega Nord and how they act in society through their political choices and their strong anti-immigrant agendas. Rather, this book is about the stories that Northern Italians have been telling about the growing diversity around them, their resistance to it, their unheard voices, and the circulating ideologies around migration as they relate to issues of identity construction, authenticity, and collectivity. Through a close analysis of Northern Italians’ storytelling events, this book shows why neo-fascism can exist, solidify, and be successful today in Italy and beyond. What we see today are just the aftermaths of what has emerged in people’s stories since the early 2000s, when I started to collect them. This book thus sheds light on why and how all these extremist movements can exist, solidify, and make sense in people’s everyday lives. How can these racializing and racialized ideologies exist in the first place? How can scholars unveil them first and then study them? How do individuals make sense of these ideological frameworks? It is through a close analysis of Northern Italians’ storytelling practices that some of these ideologies can surface and coalesce. These “ideological assemblages” (Kroskrity 2018), I suggest, form little by little, by adding different layers on to the other and by reinforcing certain beliefs and opinions across time and space. These existing ideologies can then reorient voters to cast a vote to support a far-right political party,

Introduction  3 for example. They are at the basis of certain racialized remarks that have been made, both in face-to-face interaction (Pagliai 2011, 2012; Perrino 2015c, 2018c) and in digital platforms (Chun and Walters 2011; Perrino 2017), as I show throughout this book. As ideologies emerge in storytelling practices, it is important for analysts to be able to unveil them and study them across a wide typology of narratives to better understand the old and new political and sociocultural patterns of our society. This book is thus about how storytelling practices can unveil the important ideological framework that has been circulating, covertly, in Northern Italian communities of practice. Ultimately, this book can be an example for many other places around the globe, including the United States, where similar racialized stories have been told.

Geographical Location: Northern Italy As I explain in Chapter 1, I started to conduct linguistic anthropological research in Northern Italy in 2003 because I was initially interested in finding out the fate of Senegalese ethnomedicine among Senegalese migrants in this geographical area. While, at that time, Northern Italy was my second fieldsite, as soon as I started to collect interviews from Senegalese migrants and from Northern Italians, I realized that I needed to give more attention to Italians and the way they were reacting to the waves of migrants landing in Italy. Since 2003, then, I have been collecting oral narratives from migrants and Northern Italians both in interview settings and in more informal conversations in many diverse sociocultural settings. Geographically, Northern Italy, being in the most northern part of Italy, borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia (once part of the former Yugoslavia). More generally, Italy is situated in southern Europe and occupies a surface of 301,230 sq. km (116,306 sq. mi). It is a peninsula with two large islands, Sardegna (Sardinia) and Sicilia (Sicily), and is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Adriatic Sea to the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. Italy is composed of twenty regions,6 among which there are seven regions that traditionally belong to the northern part of the Italian peninsula, namely (in alphabetical order) 1) Emilia-Romagna; 2) FriuliVenezia-Giulia; 3) Lombardia (‘Lombardy’); 4) Piemonte (‘Piedmont’); 5) Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (‘Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol’); 6) Valle D’Aosta (‘Aosta Valley’); 6) Toscana (‘Tuscany’), and 7) Veneto. Narrating Migration: Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy presents data that I collected in various towns of the following four regions: Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, Lombardy, and Veneto. In Veneto, which is the focus of Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5, however, I conducted research more intensely given my fluency in Venetan and to my well-developed social network of collaborators. More specifically, since 2003, I have conducted research in the following towns and villages of this

4 Introduction region: Abano-Terme, Bibione, Caorle, Cittadella, Montagnana, Meolo, Noale, Padova (‘Padua’), Portogruaro, Oderzo, Rovigo, San Donà di Piave, San Stino di Livenza, Tombolo, Treviso, Venezia (‘Venice’), Verona, and Vicenza. In all these locations, I collected many interviews in which Venetan and standardized Italian are both widely used. Being a native Venetan and Italian has made me able to explore certain sociocultural and linguistic patterns from various, contrastive perspectives.

Collecting Data in Northern Italy: Methodology The narrative excerpts that I present in this book have been collected following the insights of linguistic anthropological methods and analytical tools. Many changes have happened since the early 2000s when I started to collect stories in Northern Italy, however, especially in the technology that linguistic anthropologists have used to collect and analyze their data. I have thus found myself using various types of devices to audio- and video-record the many interviews and naturally occurring narratives in interaction that I have collected for more than a decade. From the classic analog-tape recorder and camcorder, I shifted to digital audio- and videorecording using the latest devices, including very well-equipped phones, GoPros, and other sophisticated cameras. In this respect, in my most recent data collection, the presence of the recording devices has become less imposing and invasive during the interviews and the naturally-occurring interactions I recorded. Since 2003, I have collected approximately 600 hours of data materials related to narratives in Northern Italy.7 My methods to collect the narratives analyzed in this book mostly rely on qualitative research interviews, which have become very popular among linguistic anthropologists not only for their referential function— the audible collected information—but also as key sites in which “situated speech” (Fuller 2000) can be explored for its interactional dynamics between researcher(s) and interviewee(s) (Fontana and Frei 2004; De Fina and Perrino 2011; Wortham et al. 2011). As Charles Briggs (1986, 2007) has keenly argued, interviewers always influence the dynamics of the interview as they co-construct this speech event with their interviewees. Research interviews are thus interactional encounters that need to be taken into account as a set of data besides the referential information (the content) that is collected during these speech events, a fact that I have always taken very seriously. All the narratives presented in this book have been considered as complex, interactional events. In my view, as in the view of many other linguistic anthropologists, the interview can thus take different directions, as stories can be more or less engaging, thus prompting different types of questions and sub-questions (Perrino 2011). Collaborators can talk for long stretches of time or just answer researchers’ questions rapidly in a “yes-no” fashion. Researchers need to take all this into account when they engage in research interviews.

Introduction  5 In this book, I thus follow Mishler’s (1986, vii) classic intuition that the interview “is a form of discourse.” As De Fina and I (2011, 8) have pointed out, researchers need to be aware of the fact that the narratives that they collect in interview settings are interconnected with speech participants’ interactional roles in complex ways. In this way, as I have suggested, narratives are constantly redefined as the interview unfolds. Many of the stories that I collected come also from naturally occurring discourse that I audio- and video-recorded during various types of events, such as conversations during meals and meal preparation, coffee hours in cafés, and walks in town or simply during long afternoon and evening hours. My collaborators agreed to keep the recorder on during these times.8 Furthermore, while I mainly conducted in-depth interviews with many of my collaborators, I turned to street interviews at times when collaborators wanted to keep their identity private and when they were in a rush (Briggs 1986; Sixsmith et al. 2003).9 As I explain in Chapter 4, in my research, I have mostly used open-ended interviews. As I mentioned earlier, over the years, I also conducted many playback experiments with my collaborators. These experiments have been used extensively in linguistic anthropology, although their origin lies in other disciplines (McGregor 2000). Playback experiments usually consist of follow-up interviews with previously interviewed collaborators during which portions of audio- or video-recorded materials are played back to them in order to glean more information on the topic or to resolve possible ambiguities. In my research, I have highly valued these types of follow-up interviews since scholars are often not aware of certain nuances of the phenomena they are studying. By playing back portions of audioand video-data, I was able to gain deeper, and more valuable, insights than just my own intuitions. More specifically, I found these experiments extremely useful to glean a more “objective” perspective on the underlying racialized ideologies that have emerged from the stories that I present in this book.

Co-Constructing Transcripts: Orthographic Conventions and Bivalency As every linguistic anthropologist knows well, transcription tasks can be very daunting, whether one is transcribing from one’s own native language or from the local languages spoken in the fieldsite(s). Transcribing has indeed been a key part of my research, both materially, in the sense that transcription tasks require long hours of physical labor, and theoretically, examining how to create and configure transcripts, which patterns to emphasize, and how to analyze them. All the narrative excerpts presented in this work were transcribed by myself except the transcripts housed in section 1.5.1 of Chapter 1, entitled “DNA and Brand Identities in Narratives about Italian Fashion,” which were carefully transcribed

6 Introduction and translated into English by my colleague Gregory Kohler. Although I am fluent in both standardized Italian10 and Venetan, I have always been in contact with my collaborators in Northern Italy to check my transcriptions and resolve any doubt I had. All my transcripts were carefully translated from standardized Italian or Venetan to English by me after long conversations with my collaborators when I encountered ambiguities and/or difficulties in translating a certain concept, figure of speech, and so forth. As I mentioned earlier, I conducted several playback experiments when unclear phrases, expressions and words needed to be clarified and better grasped within the context of their occurrence. One of the difficult tasks, for example, has been to discern where Venetan starts and where it ends in a clause, sentence, or entire conversation. Some of the words, phrases, and expressions are indeed used in both languages. Kathryn Woolard’s (1998) concept of bivalency has been very useful in these transcription tasks. Inspired by the Bakthinian concept of simultaneity in language (Bakhtin 1981), Woolard (1998, 7) famously elaborated the notion of “bivalency” or “the use by a bilingual of words or segments that could ‘belong’ equally, descriptively and even prescriptively, to both codes.” Bivalency, argues Woolard, is indeed another kind of simultaneity in language and needs to be valued as such. Thus, when scholars encounter such bivalent forms in their analysis, they need to make sure they distinguish them from the other codes. Bivalent forms are thus part of a fluid area in which speakers might speak one language or the other or both. In the examples presented in this book, in which speech participants codeswitch back and forth from standardized Italian to Venetan, bivalent forms are very common. I made sure to indicate them by using italics and underlining, as I clarify in my Transcription Conventions.11 As Woolard (1998) shows through her examples of codeswitching between Catalan and Castilian in ordinary speech, bivalent phrases and words happen more often than one would expect. If asked, not all speakers would agree on what language one specific form would belong to. During my playback experiments, for example, only a few speakers would say that certain phrases or words would be possible in both standardized Italian and Venetan. Bivalency, in other words, is a difficult concept to grasp, especially in communities of practice where one language is valued more than another, such as standardized codes, which have had more power and prestige than other local codes. Ideologies of language value, and of ethnonationalism, emerged during my playback experiments as well.

Book Structure—Outline of Chapters Narrating Migration: Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy houses five chapters, an Introduction, and the Conclusion. Every chapter starts with a short narrative excerpt, as an epigraph, to introduce the main

Introduction  7 argument of the chapter. This short excerpt is usually part of a more extensive narrative excerpt that is analyzed later in the chapter. Every chapter has a short Introduction and some concluding remarks that introduce and sum up the main points of the chapter. I now briefly summarize each chapter so that readers will be able to orient themselves through the various topics described in this book and see how they are interconnected. Chapter 1, entitled “Migration and Politics in Northern Italy,” introduces the main notion of the book, intimacies of exclusion, and engages with the following research questions: How do intimacies of exclusion get enacted in interaction? How can one define them? How can researchers unveil them and study them? This chapter starts with a historical and political contextualization of the book to better understand how people’s exclusionary stances can get created and solidified across spatiotemporal scales. This chapter shows that the concept of multiculturalism cannot be applied to the Italian linguistic, political, and sociocultural landscape. A multicultural Italy, I suggest, is far from being “multicultural,” where multiculturalism is intended to foster mutual acceptance and a settled integration of the new migrant groups. Italy has always had many multilingual communities of practice given the linguistic diversity that has been in existence for centuries (De Mauro 1969). This particular linguistic and sociocultural landscape has been recently enriched by other languages thanks to the arrival of migrant groups, especially from Africa, Eastern Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East. Thus, rather than a multicultural reality, what is happening, I suggest, is more similar to what Jan Blommaert, inspired by Vertovec (2007, 2009), has described as a “super-diverse” reality. Given the tremendous changes that globalization has brought about in many societies, Blommaert (2010) and Arnaut et al. (2016) have argued that multiculturalism has been gradually replaced by what Vertovec (2007, 2009) names “super-diversity.” A “superdiverse” nation, such as Italy today, is characterized by an increase of migrants belonging to many nationalities and ethnic groups, speaking many languages and having diverse religious beliefs and migration routes. Thus, given the present and ongoing transnational flows in an out of Italy, especially considering that Italy is already a historically fragmented country, this chapter proposes new ways to understand the present Italian landscape, namely as an inclusion-resistant superdiversity. This adaptation of Blommaert’s conceptualization adds a layer that captures the present, growing antiimmigrant stances and thus an emergent, overall resistance to accepting migrants across Italy. In this chapter, I thus propose to examine this new linguistic and sociocultural landscape from below, by exploring Northern Italian communities of practice, or heterogeneous communities of practice (Wortham and Rhodes 2013; Nichols and Wortham 2018; Perrino and Wortham In Preparation). Focusing on the analysis of narrative practices allows researchers to better understand the fluid configurations of these new communities of practice. Narrators indeed take advantage of the

8 Introduction heterogeneity and fluidity to occupy varied positions in interaction, but these positions also often coalesce into identities around social boundaries that position migrants as outsiders. Chapter 2, entitled “The Lega Nord (‘Northern League’): Language Revitalization and Anti-Immigration Politics,” provides a brief historical background on the rise of the Lega Nord, which has been one of the most successful political parties in Italy and which has become one of the most intense far-right movements across the European Union. This political party grew from a small movement focusing on differentiating Northern Italian regions from Southern Italian regions to a mass political party as it is today. Originally, the Lega Nord was created with the intent of keeping Southern Italians away from the northern regions— hence the name, Northern League. Today, however, the Lega Nord has recruited members from Central and Southern Italy as well, easing up the internal separation given the demographic changes that Italy has recently seen with the arrival of migrants and refugees (Albahari 2015a, 2015b). This political party has indeed recently been referred to as La Lega, ‘The League,’ a name change that indicates the new stances of this political party, trying to keep Italy united against newcomers, such as migrants. As I describe in this chapter, since the 1990s, this political party has become very popular, especially for its strong, anti-immigration efforts, which have occurred alongside efforts at regionalization, including local language revitalization. While language revitalization initiatives have occurred in many Northern Italian regions, such as Lombardy (Cavanaugh 2004, 2009), in this chapter, I focus on the Veneto region, in which various varieties of Venetan have been spoken for centuries. This region, I suggest, holds a special position in terms of language revitalization initiatives, since it has been considered one of the Northern Italian regions where the original “dialectal” varieties have been most “preserved” and are still spoken in addition to the regional variant of standardized Italian. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the precise number of speakers of Venetan in this region, and transnationally as well, recent statistics show that almost 70% of Venetans speak Venetan at home. I especially show how language revitalization initiatives are not just about language; rather, they are part of a complex fabric in which political, historical, artistic, and sociocultural variables play a key role. As this chapter demonstrates, the Lega’s strong antiimmigrant politics, together with these language revitalization initiatives, can create intimate exclusions, which often go even beyond Venetans’ narrative practices. Chapter 3, “Racializing Narratives: Stance, Scale, and Chronotope,” offers a brief overview of how recent research on narrative has shifted from a text-oriented model to a practice-oriented paradigm (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012, 2015) and how researchers have applied this paradigm to various linguistic anthropological subfields. This chapter

Introduction  9 then introduces the key notions of stance and stancetaking, the Bakhtinian chronotope, and spatiotemporal scales as they are applied to narrative practices theoretically and analytically. Throughout this chapter, I emphasize the dynamic nature of narrative practices in interaction by showing how these practices, and their analysis, are key in understanding ideological processes on the politics of migration in current times. I demonstrate, moreover, that these ideologies do not emerge in recent stories only and cannot be fully examined in a limited time framework. Rather, studying narrative practices across spatiotemporal scales can offer researchers a more complex framework through which they can examine how ideologies coalesce and get solidified across time and space. Through a linguistic anthropological analysis of the many narratives that I have collected since the early 2000s, certain racializing patterns have emerged more clearly today, especially when they are compared to more recent stories that I have collected in the same region. Moreover, the circulating ideologies emerging from these stories also unveil the overlayered belief of their deep historical roots. In this way, I argue, researchers can better understand how ideologies can be sustained and legitimized in Northern Italy. It is thus key to explore narratives across time and space instead of analyzing stories within a short time frame, as scholars working on longitudinal studies have also convincingly indicated (Wortham 2004, 2006; Wortham and Reyes 2015; Woolard 2016). This is, indeed, one of the main contributions of this book. Chapter 4, entitled “Intimacies of Exclusion in and through Storytelling,” explores how intimacies of exclusion are enacted and embodied in and through Northern Italians’ narrative practices around migrants and migration issues. These stories have been emerging in Northern Italy at various levels, not only explicitly (Perrino 2017) but also covertly, subtly (Perrino 2018c), sometimes by just avoiding a clear stance on certain topics (Pagliai 2011, 2012) or by using certain discursive strategies, such as silence, laughter, and overlap (Gumperz 1982). More specifically, I explore racialized narrative practices that I collected in two types of settings. 1) I examine these types of stories in interview settings (De Fina and Perrino 2011) with speech participants from various backgrounds, such as doctors and nurses, business executives, and ordinary speakers more generally. In this chapter, I especially focus on narrative excerpts that I collected during an interview with an executive of a historical café in the Veneto region in 2011. 2) I also explore racialized narratives as they emerge in Liga Veneta Repubblica’s (a subleague of the Lega Nord) political speeches and rallies, similar to the one examined in Chapter 1. Through a close analysis of transcripts stemming from these data, this chapter thus shows how intimacies of exclusion emerge and solidify, and thus can be legitimized, in these settings and beyond. The final chapter (Chapter 5), entitled “Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette,” focuses on a particular type of narrative practice: Barzellette,12

10 Introduction or ‘short funny stories,’ as they are performed by Northern Italian joketellers. Barzellette have an old history in Italy, and they have been very common in various sociocultural settings ranging from formal political addresses and speeches to more informal situations, such as dinner gatherings, parties, or just conversations among friends. In this chapter, instead of presenting short excerpts of several joke-telling events, I fully analyze two barzellette. 1) I explore a barzelletta enacted by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, after one of his formal political speeches in May 2011. This joke-telling event was addressed to the entire nation. Berlusconi didn’t use any local language. He delivered the barzelletta in standardized Italian. 2) I analyze a barzelletta performed by a Venetan professional joke-teller, Tony Davanzo, in which he uses both languages available in his region: standardized Italian and Venetan. The imagined audience for Davanzo is then composed of individuals who can minimally understand the local language, Venetan. Through the analyses of these joke-telling practices, I show how joke-tellers covertly enact racialized stances by positioning migrants as outsiders, while creating intimate bonds with the immediate and imaginary audience. In these cases, I suggest, the audience plays a key role since joke-tellers perform barzellette for their listeners. The audience members are then positioned as “insiders” who can share the local code, while non-speakers of Venetan, such as Italians from other regions and migrants, are positioned as “outsiders,” as individuals who do not share the code and the prestigious past of the Veneto region. In these situations, joke-teller and audience members might engage in covert racialized practices, or “covert racism” (Hill 2008). When these practices emerge, they may not only subtly solidify circulating ideologies about language, race, and migrant communities but also create imaginary, shifting boundaries in heterogeneous communities of practice. As is often the case, Northern Italian joke-tellers ridicule migrants by switching into Venetan, and thus they instantiate exclusionary dynamics that are protracted throughout the joke, and beyond. In this way, intimacies of exclusion can exist and be legitimized in Northern Italy and in Italy more generally. A final concluding section of Narrating Migration: Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy weaves together the various threads that are necessary to explain how intimacies of exclusion are created and why they continue to exist in Northern Italy and in Italy more generally. Some of the main threads that I discuss are the following: 1) The politicization of language by the Lega Nord and its various subleagues, especially the Liga Veneta Repubblica (‘Veneto League Republic’); 2) the revitalization of Venetan and Venetans’ desire and willingness to make the Veneto region a separate state, as part of the European Union but not of Italy; 3) the emergence of intimate, collective identities among Italians and Venetan speakers; 4) the racialization of the stories that are being told by various social actors, such as prominent politicians, doctors and nurses, business executives, and ordinary speakers;

Introduction  11 5) racialized joke-telling events, or barzellette, as they are told by politicians, ordinary speakers, and professional joke-tellers; 6) the language ideologies emerging from these racialized narratives; and, finally, 7) the great value of studying storytelling practices not only in linguistic anthropology but in many other disciplines as well. All these threads play an important role in understanding the intricacies of intimacies of exclusion, of their existence, and of their legitimization in Northern Italy and in Italy more generally. This concluding section also briefly discusses the main contribution of this book to the field of linguistic anthropology and the future research that could be inspired by this work.

Notes   1. Original Italian version: “Quando uso il dialetto mi sento parte di un altro mondo, un mondo che solo in pochi possiamo capire e condividere appieno. Quindi uso il dialetto solo quando ci sono certe persone intorno a me che lo possano capire e lo uso anche per non farmi capire da tutti, sai, quando voglio dire delle cose sperando che non tutti capiscano, mi sono spiegato?” (Giacomo, Veneto region, Northern Italy, July 2014).   2. All translations from standardized Italian or Venetan to English are mine unless otherwise stated.   3. In this book, I use pseudonyms for all my research participants to protect their identity and privacy.   4. See the section entitled “Collecting Data in Northern Italy: Methodology” for more details on playback experiments.   5. Although many scholars and speakers use the term dialetti (‘dialects’) (De Mauro 1969) to refer to the regional languages spoken across Italy together with the standardized language, commonly referred to as Italian, I opt to refer to these languages as languages, or codes, not to underplay their primary roles in people’s everyday lives. In many cases, indeed, these local languages are used more than the standardized code, Italian. See also Chapter 2 for more details on the history and fate of these languages.   6. The twenty Italian regions are Abruzzo (also called gli Abruzzi), Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, Lazio, Liguria, Lombardia (Lombardy), Marche (also called Le Marche), Molise, Piemonte (Piedmont), Puglia (Apulia), Sardegna (Sardinia), Sicilia (Sicily), TrentinoAlto Adige/Südtirol (Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol), Toscana (Tuscany), Umbria, Valle D’Aosta (Aosta Valley), and Veneto. These regions are divided into five macro-regions (Northwest, Northeast, Centre, South, and Islands). Five regions (Sardinia, Sicily, Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol, Aosta Valley, and Friuli-Venezia-Giulia) enjoy a special autonomous status and a degree of internal legislative power. Within Italy, there are two sovereign states, the state of San Marino and Vatican City.   7. This number does not include the data I collected in my other fieldsite, Senegal, during my dissertation fieldwork, which happened earlier (Perrino 2006).   8. All the narratives collected for this book are part of various projects that were fully approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). I obtained IRB approval from the following universities: The University of Pennsylvania, the Catholic University of America, and the University of Michigan. I also obtained IRB approval from Binghamton University, where I have been conducting research and have been teaching since 2015.

12 Introduction   9. This happened especially with some Northern Italian executives who didn’t have much time for my interview questions and with some migrants who did not want to sit down for long stretches of time. I have always tried to respect my collaborators’ needs and wishes. 10. See Chapter 1 for an explanation of my use of “standardized Italian” instead of “standard Italian” or “Italian.” 11. My transcription conventions have been mainly inspired by the classic Jeffersonian Transcription Notation (Jefferson 1984) and by Duranti’s (1997) conventions. Throughout the five chapters, however, I have used different types of transcription formats depending on the patterns that I wished to highlight. 12.  As I explain in Chapter 5, in standardized Italian, barzelletta is the singular feminine noun, while barzellette is the plural feminine noun.

 

1

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy

We can’t take extracomunitari1 anymore! They have been landing in Sicily and [they] enter Italy as [if it were] nothing [i.e., so easily] with respect to other European countries [that have] stricter rules; they [i.e., other European countries] really have the laws to keep them [i.e., migrants] out! But [you] tell me, how can [we] keep them all here with us? Here [we] already have our own problems with our children who cannot find a job and [we] have to take all these ones here [i.e., migrants]? But [they] should stay in their homes [i.e., countries] or [they] should go somewhere else! Here, [we] don’t want them!2 (Mauro, Northern Italy, July 2004)

1.1 Introduction The opening narrative excerpt well encapsulates the general climate I found in Northern Italy, where I started to collect oral narratives in 2003. At that time, I was interviewing Senegalese migrants in various locations as part of the second phase of my dissertation project on Senegalese ethnomedicine, its sense of modernity, and its transnational ramifications (Perrino 2006). It didn’t take too long to realize that the general Northern Italian ideological landscape was, and has been, very defensive against newcomers, such as migrants, as the preceding epigraph shows. Since then, I have been collecting oral narratives from migrants and Northern Italians both in interview settings and in more informal conversations. Through the collection and analysis of these stories for more than a decade, I have witnessed the development, and various enactments, of intimacies of exclusion among Northern Italians (Perrino 2018c), a concept that is key in this book. Recurring ideologies, such as the one of migrants overflowing the Italian island of Lampedusa, near Sicily, have frequently emerged in these narratives. Comparing Italy to other European countries that have “stricter rules” to keep migrants out of their borders

14  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy has been a common theme in these stories as well, as I show especially in Chapters 4 and 5. In this chapter, after briefly describing the sociocultural and political landscape of Italy and the Mediterranean migrations that have been taking place since the late 1970s, I show how Northern Italians consider Italy today, and I briefly introduce the notion of intimacies of exclusion as it is used in this book. While many apply the concept of multiculturalism to Italy and argue that this country has become “multicultural,” I contend that a multicultural Italy is far from being “multicultural,” where multiculturalism is intended to foster mutual acceptance and a settled integration of migrant groups. Italy has always had many multilingual communities of practice given the linguistic diversity that has existed for centuries (De Mauro 1969). This particular linguistic landscape has been recently enriched by other languages thanks to the arrival of migrant groups from across the globe. Therefore, rather than a multicultural reality, what is happening, I suggest, is more similar to what Jan Blommaert, inspired by Vertovec (2007, 2009), has described as a “super-diverse” reality. Given the tremendous changes that globalization has brought about in many societies, Blommaert (2010) and Arnaut et al. (2016) have argued that multiculturalism has been gradually replaced by what Vertovec (2007, 2009) names “super-diversity.” A “superdiverse” nation, such as Italy today, is characterized by an increase of migrants belonging to many nationalities and ethnic groups, speaking many languages and having diverse past histories, migration paths, and religious beliefs. However, the Italian case is rather different from the European cases described by Blommaert. A layer of resistance to the inclusion of newcomers emerges in this society. Thus, instead of superdiverse environments, Northern Italians’ storytelling practices show that Italians have been creating an inclusion-resistant superdiversity that becomes very visible across spatiotemporal scales as I show through various ethnographic examples. Thus, given the present and ongoing transnational flows in and out of Italy, especially considering that Italy is already a historically fragmented country, this chapter proposes new ways to understand the present Italian linguistic, political, and sociocultural landscape.

1.2 Mediterranean Migrations in and Through Italy As anthropologist Maurizio Albahari (2015a, 2015b) has contended, in the first nine months of 2015, more than 487,000 migrants arrived on Europe’s Mediterranean shores, twice the number for all of 2014. Since 2000, moreover, more than 30,000 migrants have lost their lives by attempting to reach Italy and the rest of Europe by boat, most of them dying in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Sadly, it is well known now that these figures have been increasing at a very fast pace.3 The unofficial

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  15 figures of these deaths are uncertain and could be multiplied, since many bodies have been lost and cannot be officially counted. For these dangerous trips across the Mediterranean Sea, migrants usually rely on human traffickers, or “smugglers,” in Albahari’s (2015a, 11) sense, while a large group of “bystanders,” such as fishermen and coast guards, take an indifferent stance and turn their backs on sinking ships, arguing that it is not their responsibility to rescue people at sea. While Albahari examines the tragic realities of migrants in “detention centers” through their storytelling and through a close examination of the European laws of the Mediterranean Sea, in this book, I turn to Italy, one of the key entry points for migrants and refugees to Europe and one of the most important host countries for them. By examining Northern Italians’ narrative practices, I try to shed light on these many “crimes of peace” and on why they have continued to happen in front of the eyes of the world. As Albahari (2015a) pointed out, given its strategic position in the Mediterranean Sea, Italy has recently become one of the key entry points for migrants and refugees. Italians’ reactions to these new flows of migrants, however, have often been defensive and unwelcoming. Yet, ironically, if one considers their historical background on migration matters, Italians have been migrating to various parts of the world, including Europe, the United States, and South America, especially from the end of the 19th century until the 1960s (Bonifazi et al. 2009; Sciortino 2010). Thus, before becoming a country of destination for many migrants and refugees, Italy, known as the door to “Fortress Europe,” has in fact been a country of emigration for decades, with nearly 19 million people leaving in between 1876 and 1942 (Zanfrini 2004). Given these premises, one would expect Italy to be a country rather sensitive, if not expert, in migration issues. Intuitively, one would think that Italians should show sympathy and have a welcoming stance vis-à-vis migrants moving to Italy. And yet, according to a survey conducted by Eurobarometer (the EU institution that conducts research on behalf of the EU Parliament) in 2014, 75% of the Italian population seems to have “total negative” feelings vis-à-vis migrants’ arrival to Italy, while only 18% of the population see them in positive terms (the remaining 7% does not know what to think). Why has Italy been so negative towards migrants? How can a country that has had so many emigrants across centuries produce so many anti-immigrant stories and be so ethnonationalist and, more recently, xenophobic? In order to understand this hostility, it is key, I suggest, to explore discursive practices such as the migration narratives that Italians have been enacting not just in recent times but for more than a decade. Since the 1970s, Italy has indeed become a receiver of migrants, specifically from China; Eastern Europe; Eastern, Northern, and Western Africa; South Asia; and, more recently, Syria as well, given the number of refugees landing on the small Italian island of Lampedusa, near Sicily, after travelling through the Mediterranean Sea.4 While there are

16  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy several dangerous routes for migrants to reach the European continent, the Mediterranean Sea has been considered one of the deadliest routes for people attempting to cross it. Many lives have been lost in these numerous attempts. There have been different reactions by Italians who have been receiving migrants in their towns, villages, and homes. On the one hand, many Italians, especially in the south, in regions such as Apulia, Calabria, Campania, Sardinia, and Sicily, which have witnessed first-hand the arrival of migrants under life-threatening conditions, have been welcoming and have helped migrants by hosting them in their homes and by offering them food, clothes, and an overall sense of hospitality (Sorge 2009). Schools have been key sites, for example, to welcome migrants’ children and to create a sense of inclusion in their classrooms, as De Fina et al. have recently argued (De Fina et al. 2019). As I show throughout the five chapters of this book, however, exclusionary ideologies are very common, especially in Northern Italy, where I have conducted my research. I show that storytelling practices are key sites in which ideologies of intimacies of exclusion are (co)created, developed, and then disseminated across time and space. These flows of migrants have triggered strong reactions by Northern Italians, which not only perpetuate nativist discourses about national culture and identity but also help fuel the aggressive, exclusionary, anti-immigration politics advanced and supported by the Lega Nord political party. These politics are mainly directed against the so-called extracomunitari, which is one of the many derogatory terms used across Italy to refer exclusively to ‘migrants from developing countries,’ as I mentioned earlier. In this respect, multiculturalism as a way to describe the Italian demographic reality doesn’t seem to be the best notion to capture the newly diverse Italian communities of practice, in which so much resistance, as enacted at various scales, against newcomers has emerged. These communities, as I see them, are heterogeneous in the way they enact their discursive and sociocultural practices on a daily basis, but they are also resistant to these new demographic fluctuations, as I explain in the following sections.

1.3 Multiculturalism and Superdiversity in Italy As multiculturalism and globalization have become obsolete concepts to represent our rapidly changing everyday, transnational lives (Armillei 2016; Sloan et al. 2018), superdiversity (Vertovec 2007), as Blommaert has argued, might offer better ways to make sense of our present, complex realities in which multidirectional, transnational migratory flows are involved. As I mentioned earlier, the idea of considering these new realities as superdiverse environments has indeed challenged several multicultural perspectives, especially as applied to European contexts (Meissner and Vertovec 2015), such as Italy. A

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  17 multicultural society is not something that can be chosen to have or to not have (Nye 2007), even though this label has been applied widely in our globalized world. As I mentioned in the previous section, Italians have been reacting strongly against migrants entering the country, thus producing a strong resistance to multiculturalist perspectives, even though there have not been explicit policies promoting multiculturalism (Allievi 2010, 724). In a country where, until the 1970s, the idea of migration focused on Italians migrating abroad (especially to Northern Europe, the United States, and South America) and on the internal movement of Southern Italians migrating to the north, a multicultural ideology has always had a different meaning with respect to a multiculturalist perspective in the United States, for example. As I discuss later, since the 1990s, various forms of growing xenophobia and ethnonationalism have emerged in reaction to these new waves of migration and have dominated the Italian political scene since then. The Italian terrain was thus ripe for political parties such as the Lega Nord, which, early on, started to implement strong anti-immigrant measures to get more voters and to influence other political parties to take a similar anti-immigrant stance. As Armillei (2016, 48) has explained in his research on “cultural diversity” in Italy, a deeper look at the history of colonialism implemented by the Italian forces is fundamental to better understand the political and sociocultural configuration of Italian society today. As he aptly writes, In the context of a society which is still trying to come to terms with its past and to establish a collective sense of identity, the rise of “ethno­nationalism,” historical amnesia and revisionism are all factors that have contributed to exclude “Othered” communities from a contemporary notion of “Italianness.” […] During the Liberal and Fascist periods, for instance, colonialism was used to create and reproduce a strong sense of nationhood, re-composing the many internal divisions by racialising “otherness” outside rather than inside the nation’s borders. […] [B]y pathologizing the “Others” and their cultures as ungovernable or prone to violence, crime and social collapse, the same “colonial logic” shapes the institutional approach towards cultural diversity. (Armillei 2016, 48) By taking into account the Italian colonial past, Armillei’s careful historical and political analysis of Italian society helps better appreciate its complexity and thus better captures the changing configuration of the present Italian linguistic, political, and sociocultural landscape. As a multicultural paradigm doesn’t seem to be the best option for Italy and for other European countries then, scholars have been exploring other ways to describe

18  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy these newly reconfigured societies. As Vertovec (2006, 1) writes referring to the situation in Great Britain, for example, [o]ver the past ten years, the nature of immigration to Britain has brought with it a transformative “diversification of diversity” not just in terms of ethnicities and countries of origin, but also with respect to a variety of significant variables that affect where, how, and with whom people live. In this light, while superdiversity as a concept can be very attractive to describe these new demographic formations, such as new neighborhoods in many Italian towns, for example, it still poses some theoretical challenges, as Blommaert (2010, 7) reminds us, Descriptively, these globalized neighbourhoods appear chaotic, and common assumptions about the national, regional, ethnic, cultural or linguistic status of the inhabitants often prove to be useless. The presuppositions of common integration policies—that we know who the immigrants are, and that they have a shared language and culture—can no longer be upheld. In addition, the dense presence of telephone and Internet shops shows that even if new migrants reside in one particular place, they are capable of maintaining intensive contacts with networks elsewhere, including often their countries of origin. A burgeoning network of satellite and Internet providers also allows them to follow (and be involved in) events in their country of origin and to consume its media and cultural products. Their spatial organization, consequently, is local as well. In Italy, as I mentioned earlier, the speed and scale of migratory processes have brought about unparalleled changes at every sociocultural and linguistic level. This has been particularly evident in urban contexts, where new complex demographic patterns have surfaced together with new types of local issues. These new demographic, heterogeneous configurations are the result, in Vertovec’s (2007) and Blommaert and Rampton’s (2016) perspectives, of these multidirectional and transnational movements in which, and through which, people, when they move, carry complex, individualized sociocultural and linguistic patterns (De Fina et al. 2017). In this perspective, we can imagine migrants’ sociocultural and discursive practices as if they were layered over the already existing diverse realities of the locations where these people move, thus forming new, heterogeneous communities of practice. The heterogeneity of these communities clearly emerges in people’s everyday lives, where multiple languages are used and various sociocultural activities are enacted. Blommaert and Rampton (2016) show, for example, various signs of superdiverse environments in the small Belgian town of Antwerp. Text signs with

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  19 superimposed languages are common, such as a text that is handwritten in Chinese advertising an apartment for rent, which, at first, seems to be just a simple text with no particular interest. Upon closer examination, however, the text has some superdiverse complexity which Blommaert describes in great detail: (1) The text is written in two forms of “Chinese”: a mixture of the simplified script, which is the norm in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and the traditional script, widespread in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and earlier generations of the Chinese diaspora. (2) The text articulates two different styles or voices, that of the producer and that of the addressee(s), and the mixed script suggests that their styles are not identical. In all likelihood, the producer is someone used to writing traditional script, while the addressee is probably from the PRC. (3) The latter point is corroborated by the use of “Yuan” rather than “Euro” as the currency, and (4) the mixed character of the text suggests a process of transition. More specifically, it suggests that the producer (probably an “older” diaspora Chinese person) is learning the script of the PRC, the unfinished learning process leading to the mixing of the scripts. Thus (5) this text points towards two very large-scale phenomena: (a) a gradual change in the Chinese diaspora, in which the balance of demographic, political, and material predominance gradually shifts away from the traditional diaspora groups towards new émigrés from the PRC; and (b) the fact that such a transition is articulated in “small” and peripheral places in the Chinese diaspora, such as the inner city of Antwerp, not only in larger and more conspicuous “Chinatowns” such as London. (Blommaert 2013, 23) This textual complexity is noticeable in other heterogeneous communities of practice not only in Europe but across the globe as well, given the continuous movements of people across geographical boundaries and continents (Blommaert 2010; Vigouroux and Mufwene 2008; Jaffe 2019). All these textual layers, moreover, have profound implications for public policy and professional practices as well. When I was conducting research in Northern Italian hospitals, for example, I interviewed Senegalese migrants who were very fluent in the local language, Venetan, while also speaking standardized Italian,5 Wolof, Pulaar, and French. Sometimes, depending on the participants who were present in the interaction, multiple languages were used at the same time with an intense codeswitching activity (see Chapters 4 and 5 for various examples of codeswitching). Textual signs for medical examinations were written in Venetan, standardized Italian, and French as well in various doctors’ offices. This linguistic awareness of a growing diverse population in Northern Italy didn’t mean that interactions were always smooth or easy, however, given

20  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy the lack of interpreters and hospital “mediators” in those particular languages (Collins and Slembrouck 2006), when patients were not fluent in other than their own underrepresented language(s). In this vein, the present Italian linguistic, political, and sociocultural landscape is made of many diverse layers of complexity and thus presents its own superdiverse nature. As I see it, superdiversity, as a concept, can be applied to Italy but at various scales: as a nation-state, as regions, as urban centers, as peripheries, as villages, as communities of practice, and so forth. Each of these localizations, I suggest, has its own type of superdiversity. Each region, for example, has its deep historical, linguistic, political, and sociocultural diversities which need to be taken into consideration when other groups are integrated (Blommaert 2010; Blommaert and Rampton 2016). Furthermore, there are invisible, but hearable, superpositions of these layers: the national ones are superimposed to the regional ones. The same can be said about the urban localities, for example, that often are overshadowed by the regional ones first and then the national ones. This deep fragmentation in Italy has existed for centuries, as it has been documented by historians and linguists (De Mauro 1979, 1979) (see Chapter 2 for more historical details on this fragmentation). There is one common denominator that ties all these superdiverse scalar environments together, however: a strong resistance to integrating non-Italians, especially migrants, in Northern Italian communities of practice. For these contexts, then, it is an inclusion-resistant superdiversity that analysts need to consider when they explore such complex, diverse environments. In my view, this notion better captures not only the internal diversity that has existed for centuries in Italy, but also the various layers of diversity that have been added since the late 1970s when the first migratory flows entered the country. These inclusion-resistant superdiverse environments are indeed very palpable today, especially if one explores them from the bottom-up, starting from the various communities of practice, as I describe in the next section.

1.4 Inclusion-Resistant Superdiversity and Communities of Practice in Northern Italy These rapidly changing, superdiverse communities of practice have become, I have suggested, heterogeneous in nature, and thus need to be explored as such. Labeling these communities as “multicultural” would thus be misleading, especially in European settings, such as Italy. Recently, multiculturalism-centered theories have received sharp criticism (Sloan et al. 2018), given their ideological underpinnings in which many cultural backgrounds come in contact and create an overall positive and fertile environment. European cases, such as Belgium and Italy, as I discussed earlier, do not follow this multicultural framework. An approach looking

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  21 at communities of practice from the bottom up instead of classifying them multicultural a priori, is thus more appropriate. As linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists have long demonstrated, the classic notion of the speech community (Gumperz 1968) doesn’t allow for the study of heterogeneous groups of speakers whose discursive practices are not based on language only. Nor do these communities develop within circumscribed spaces, given their transnational reach, especially in the present world, which is characterized by an unparalleled, and unmeasurable, volume of digital communication. On a narrower scale, among the various concepts that researchers have developed to capture the variability and heterogeneity of these communities, Wenger’s (1998) classic notion of “communities of practice” is applicable to communities in which several ways of speaking (Hymes 1974, 1983, 1996) exist among individuals with a diverse sociocultural and linguistic background, such as the present landscape in Northern Italy and in Italy more generally. In her research on students’ communities of practice in California, for example, Mary Bucholtz (1999, 2011) demonstrates that the concept of the community of practice is much more applicable than the classic Gumperzian notion. As she argues, the speech community is not adequate because it considers the centrality of language and of its speakers at the core while leaving out members who are at the margins and who speak other languages. It also explores groups of people rather than individuals and thus views social identification as more static than dynamic. By contrast, contends Bucholtz (1999), a community of practice offers researchers more flexible ways to study groups as they interact with each other and thus share their sociocultural and discursive practices (Wenger 1998). Wenger’s notion works better if analysts wish to explore gender dynamics in diverse groups, something that the Gumperzian speech community does not allow one to fully capture. For these reasons, the concept of the community of practice has much more potential for practicebased, ethnographic studies in which language and social contexts are in continuous mutual engagement and therefore are inseparable. In this respect, language, as Bucholtz (1999, 210) reminds us, is “one of many social practices in which participants engage.” Thus, given the great heterogeneity of contemporary communities of practice through which individuals travel both physically and digitally, and in which many languages are used, I see multilingual communities in Northern Italy as heterogeneous communities of practice (Perrino and Wortham In Preparation) given their superdiverse nature. Northern Italian multilingual communities are indeed superdiverse, especially if one considers the endless, very rapid, multidirectional, transnational movements of our contemporary world. Multilingualism needs to be adapted to the different contexts that are explored, however, since, as Blommaert (2010, 102) contends, besides languages per se, there are

22  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy also many other semiotic resources that need to be taken into account in these processes. As he writes, [It] should not be seen as a collection of “languages” that a speaker controls, but rather as a complex of specific semiotic resources, some of which belong to a conventionally defined “language,” while others belong to another “language.” The resources are concrete accents, language varieties, registers, genres, modalities such as writing—ways of using language in particular communicative settings and spheres of life, including the ideas people have about such ways of using, their language ideologies. What matters in the way of language for real languages users are these concrete forms of language. (Blommaert 2010, 102) These multiple and varied “ways of speaking” (Hymes 1964, 1996) have a fundamental ideological import on notions and ideas of competence, as Blommaert (2010, 102) and others remind us. Researchers have indeed proposed various concepts to capture the nuances of these discursive practices as they are enacted in these communities, such as polylanguaging (Jørgensen et al. 2011), metrolingualism (Otsuji and Pennycook 2010; Pennycook and Otsuji 2015), translingual practices (Canagarajah 2013, 2016; Canagarajah and Matsumoto 2017), and translanguaging more generally (Li 2017; Li and Zhu 2013; Baynham and King Lee 2019, to mention just a few). These notions, like many others that are developing along similar lines, focus more on linguistic practices than on a combination of linguistic and sociocultural practices. They might be useful for some scholars who wish to examine communities of practice in which multiple languages and registers are used. Yet, they might not be the most suitable concepts to capture the multifaceted and intricate relationships emerging in discursive practices in which language is not removed from its sociocultural settings. Sociocultural and linguistic patterns are indeed co-existent and thus always co-emerge, in any kind of discursive practice that scholars wish to study. I fully embrace this orientation in this book. In embarking to explore intimacies of exclusion in Northern Italy, for example, I could just look at codeswitching practices produced by speakers who can switch from standardized Italian to a local code, such as Venetan, which is spoken in the Veneto region. By looking at just codeswitching practices (Bailey 2000a, 2000b, 2007; Woolard 2006, 2016),6 I would learn about their linguistic preferences around certain topics. I would also learn about their unconscious and conscious strategic moves (Gumperz 1982) while they switched from one language to another. I would not learn, however, about their motivations to prefer a language over another in certain situations. I would not be able to draw the full picture of this phenomenon by not looking at speech participants’ past and present narratives, historical

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  23 background, sociocultural traditions and arts, and language ideologies (Irvine and Gal 2000; Kroskrity 2000). As scholars, we are able to get the whole picture of the communities of practice we set out to study only by exploring the multiple heterogeneous layers of people’s sociocultural everyday lives, as I aim to do in this book. In the next section, after briefly defining intimacy and intimate identities, which are fundamental notions for appreciating intimacies of exclusion as they are enacted in various settings, I show how these various intimacies can emerge in Northern Italian communities of practice and beyond.

1.5 Intimacy and Intimate Identities Although intimacy is a difficult concept to capture, humans often engage in various kinds of intimate relations and feelings across spatiotemporal scales. Intimacy is thus part of our sociocultural and emotional everyday life, but it might be challenging first to comprehend it and then to describe and define it. Is intimacy a feeling of attachment, camaraderie, closeness, friendship, rapport or romance, or is it something else? How can we, as scholars, make sense of it and study it? Like many other notions involving emotional stances (Wilce 2009), intimacy is difficult to describe not only because it varies cross-culturally but also because it is part of human beings’ emotional domain (Wilce 2009; Pritzker et al. In Press). Intimacy has rarely been examined from a linguistic anthropological perspective, for example. By contrast, intimacy has been widely studied in psychology and other cognitive and medical sciences, in communication studies and in sociology (Mashek and Aron 2004; Bernstein 2007; Halling 2008; Hines 2007, to mention just a few).7 From the perspective of anthropology, however, such research is still limited by being based on laboratory studies and data collected in self-reports as well as its emphasis on intimacy explored only in dyadic interaction (Perrino and Pritzker In Press). Sociocultural anthropologists and sociologists have also explored the ways in which the style of intimate, romantic relationships is part of the sociocultural and political fabric of people’s everyday lives (Giddens 1992; Friedman 2005; Zelizer 2005; Illouz 2012; Otto and Keller 2014; Keller and Bard 2017). More specifically, these scholars have even gone beyond this by examining intimacy in all aspects of people’s lives, including political affiliations and sentiments. In his famous research on “cultural intimacy,” for example, Michael Herzfeld (2005) contends that this type of intimacy, while being collective, greatly influences people’s individual identities. In his view, cultural intimacy can thus fossilize a national identity for insiders and can transform into a dangerous rhetoric, since it is the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide

24  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy insiders with their assurance of common sociality, the familiarity with the bases of power that may at one moment assure the disenfranchised a degree of creative irreverence and at the next moment reinforce the effectiveness of intimidation. Cultural intimacy may erupt into public life. (Herzfeld 2005, 5) By aggressively appearing in public life, as Herzfeld reminds us, a shared cultural intimacy can become stronger and more rooted in individual identities, which can become collective and thus, in my view, intimate identities. Collective identification has also been explored by Dorien Van De Mieroop (2015), who was inspired by Henri Tajfel’s (1982) classic work on social identity. In the early 1980s, indeed, Tajfel contended that individuals’ social identity develops not only by being part of their social groups but also by being connected to them epistemically and emotionally. Following these lines of inquiry, Van De Mieroop (2015) examines collective identities as they emerge in ingroup and outgroup relationships in migrant communities in Antwerp, Belgium, where she conducted her fieldwork. In her analysis, collective identities are fluid, since individuals can shift in and out of diverse memberships in many social groups to which they belong. In this way, they can enact, and thus be part of, several collective identities while also performing their individual identities in their everyday life. In such superdiverse settings, I suggest, issues of insiderness and outsiderness thus become blurry: by performing both individual and collective identities, members of heterogeneous communities of practice can feel excluded in certain situations, such as when other members codeswitch in an unfamiliar language for example, while feeling included in a different group, such as a gym or a sport club. Similarly, in the data that I analyze in this book, Venetans not only enact a collective identity by sharing their language, history, traditions, and political views but also seem to feel that these identities need to be cherished and protected. In this sense, Venetans’ identities are not only collective, they are also intimate. Linguistic anthropologists have started to explore intimacy in interaction by focusing on the co-construction of romantic intimacy (Ahearn 2001; Gershon 2010; Manning 2015), on distance and closeness through the use of certain codes (Hymes 1967; Gumperz 1982; Tannen 1993, 1994; Keshavarz 2001), and on non-romantic settings as well. In his renowned work on language and emotions in Bangladesh, for example, James Wilce (2003, 2009) explores intimacy as it is related not only to emotional stances but also to the immune system of his speech participants. Similarly, in my previous research that I conducted in Senegal, West Africa, I examined intimacy in healer-patient interactions. More specifically, in this work, I show how intimacy is believed to be one of the main therapeutic ingredients in Senegalese healing practices. To do

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  25 so, I drew upon a multimodal analysis (Goodwin 2010) to unveil how hierarchical relationships between social actors belonging to different Senegalese castes, such as healers and patients, can be intimate and how this closeness is believed to be essential for successful therapeutic results (Perrino 2002, 2006). Anthony Webster (2015, 10) has also explored the “felt attachments to linguistic forms” that characterize Navajo poets’ relationship to language, especially in their poetry. More specifically, Webster is inspired by Povinelli’s (2006) notion of “intimate grammars” to describe the ways in which Navajo poets’ linguistic choices have intimate feelings. In her research on the translation of Chinese medical texts, Sonya Pritzker (2014) has also demonstrated how intimacy can be present even in our relationships with objects. In particular, she examines how American students learning Chinese medicine engage intimately with their textbooks, and she notes that when Chinese medical texts are translated into English, they are never static. These translated texts are always “living” and subject to further interpretations. In Pritzker’s perspective, every act of translation is the result of intimate relations that speech participants might have not only between them, but also with the specific translated text and its author(s)/translator(s) (Perrino and Pritzker In Press). As I mentioned earlier, intimacy plays key roles in shaping people’s sociocultural identities and can act both at an individual level and at a more collective level when speakers of a particular language, for example, codeswitch in order to create a felt sense of solidarity between them (Woolard 2006, 2016; Bucholtz and Hall 2005; Bucholtz 2009; Kohler and Perrino 2017; Perrino and Kohler In Press). In this respect, crossculturally, people might experience intimacy, and engage in intimate relations, in different ways (Giddens 1992; Illouz 2007). Hence, the difficulty in defining intimacy, intimate relations and intimate identities. In this respect, Pritzker and I have recently proposed to define intimacy as an emergent feeling of closeness in combination with significant levels of vulnerability, trust, and/or shared identities, that can vary across cultures as well as in time and space. Intimacy, from this vantage point, is contingent and often precarious in that it must be constantly made and remade in specific contexts and interactional moments. (Perrino and Pritzker In Press) As we conceive of it, intimacy is never a static category that can describe people’s relationships or emotions. Rather, it is a fluid and shifting concept, which can be positive at times and negative at other times. As I show throughout this book’s chapters, intimacy is often an invisible, yet ongoing, social process that connects or disconnects people and that continuously influences their emotional stances (Garcia 2010; Mattingly 2014). Being part of our sociocultural and emotional everyday lives, intimacy thus “permeates everyday interaction, creating the collaborative

26  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy foundation for romantic and sexual, but also political, economic, and material relationships” (Perrino and Pritzker In Press). As I show in the following section, and in the remaining chapters as well, speech participants’ intimate, yet collective, identities can foster both solidarity and hegemonic ideologies in migratory settings (Perrino 2018a) or in other sociocultural and political situations.

1.6 Intimacies of Exclusion in and Through DNA Becoming intimate collectively is possible in Northern Italy, and in Italy more generally, since there is an ideological background that allows social identities to coalesce in certain situations. Language ideologies are key sites to explore together with other primary data to get a better understanding of why people’s identities become intimate. Referring to “implicit language ideologies and explicit discursive forms,” Kathryn Woolard (2016, 7) defines language ideologies as the “socially, politically, and morally loaded cultural assumptions about the way that language works in social life and about the role of particular linguistic forms in a given society.” Enacting intimate stances socioculturally and linguistically can thus be implicit or explicit. “Dominant ideologies can be doxic,” states Woolard, when they are “unspoken assumptions of which ordinary people as well as elites build social action and interpret the meaning of acts and events without question” (2016, 7). Analogously, intimate relations can thus be co-constructed implicitly, through an invisible, although embodied, common assumption: being Italian by birth, through a certain DNA sequence. This implicitness can become more or less visible, and thus explicit, in certain situations through various discursive practices, such as the narratives that I collected in Northern Italy, in which these biological metaphors emerged implicitly and explicitly. Venetans’ intimate identities emerged in many stories that I collected with Northern Italian executives and with political representatives, for example. Italians have indeed shown a strong sense of sharing history, art, and traditions that, in their view, cannot be shared easily with non-Italian citizens. In Veneto, a Northern Italian region, for example, speakers of Venetan (see Chapter 2 for more details on this language) emphasize that their common ancestry is crucial to their past and present sociocultural identity, a common rhetoric that is dangerously similar to Herzfeld’s (2005) “cultural intimacy,” which I discussed earlier. Across the centuries, Italians have been very proud of their history, literature, art, and traditions, which, in their view, have an aura of prestige and authenticity around them (Perrino 2015b). Italy’s history and art permeate many aspects of Italian sociocultural life, including the Italian business world, where I conducted research in the summer

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  27 of 2011 and 2012 with Gregory Kohler. More specifically, we wanted to explore how executives’ stances are enacted and shared through their storytelling events in various types of corporations, such as glassmaking, fashion design, manufacturing, food, and artisanship (Kohler and Perrino 2017). In our findings, Italian executives seemed to be concerned not only about maintaining a high image of the Made in Italy brand but also about making sure that its historical and artistic uniqueness is recognized across the globe. As a recurrent ideology that has transpired from all our interviews, Made in Italy gives a product the “authentic” flavor of being planned, manufactured, and even packed in a country with a longstanding artistic tradition. This is especially true and important for certain sectors, such as fashion, food, design, manufacturing, and artisanship. Thus, for Northern Italian executives, as for many Italian ordinary speakers, Made in Italy represents the sense of an international “uniqueness” of Italy as well as the “authentic” Italianness of people who share its historical past and artistic patrimony. This is frequently reflected in the narratives that we collected. Northern Italian executives’ intimate identities, which we later named brand identities (Perrino and Kohler In Press), based on sharing the same DNA, clearly emerged in their narratives. Northern Italian executives’ emerging brand identities are thus intimately connected to an imagined Made in Italy label as a form of national branding that serves to boost the nation’s position in the global marketplace. The couple of examples presented in this chapter are extracted from a corpus of twenty-five interviews with executives of various small- to medium-sized Italian companies.8 1.6.1 DNA and Brand Identities in Narratives About Italian Fashion In July 2011, Kohler and I conducted an interview with Moreno, an executive in charge of M. Moda’s marketing department. This interview, which lasted one and a half hours, took place in his main office in his company’s headquarters, in the province of Mantua. There were three participants during this speech event (Moreno and the two interviewers) with his secretary coming in and out of his office a couple of times to offer us coffee and refill our glasses with water. As Moreno recounted, he had been involved in his company for a long time. He was a grandchild of the founder of M. Moda and one of many family members sharing work and responsibilities for the company. After introducing his company to us by recounting its history and by merging his company history with his family history, Moreno shifted to talk about his family identity. History and art have been, indeed, part of the family’s identity and part of their DNA, as he outlines in the following example.

28  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy Example 1 (M: Moreno; I: Interviewer) Original Italian Version9 10. M: [. . .] e::hh sicuramente un altro punto di forza diciamo di successo 11. viene un po’ dal nostro DNA il fatto che Mantova 12. cioè sia di essere nati in Italia prima di tutto 13. che ovviamente ha un DNA di cultura rinascimentale il gusto del bello 14. ehh quindi l’arte un po’ il gusto di vivere bene 15. di saper realizzare dei prodotti che abbiano un grande appeal 16. quindi il fatto del DNA italiano e in particolare Mantova 17. che ha rappresentato per la cultura dell’abbigliamento 18. I: mmhmm 19. M: Isabella d’Este cultura rinascimentale [clears throat] è sicuramente un punto di forza 20. quindi direi la tradizione no? 21. la tradizione italiana e la tradizione la mantovanità [. . .] English Translation 10. M: [. . .] e::hh [it is] certainly another advantage let’s say of success 11. [it] comes a bit from our DNA the fact that Mantua 12. that is to say being born in Italy first of all 13. which obviously has a DNA from the Renaissance culture the taste for beauty 14. ehh so art a little bit [like] the taste for living well 15. for being able to create products which have a great appeal10 16. so the fact of the Italian DNA and in particular Mantua 17. which represented for the clothing culture 18. I: mmhmm 19. M: Isabella D’Este Renaissance culture [clears throat] [it] is certainly an advantage 20. so [I] would say tradition [is an advantage], right? 21. Italian tradition and the tradition of being from Mantua [. . .] Intimate identities emerge throughout this short excerpt. In lines 10–14, Moreno states that M. Moda’s success is rooted not only in its prestigious historical background but also in the local DNA of his town, Mantua (lines 11, 13), and the fact that he was born there is very salient. Mantua’s DNA is “rinascimentale” (‘from the Renaissance,’ line 13), thus contributing to an authentic historical and artistic aura (Benjamin 1936; Hansen 2008) that pervades his birth town, Mantua, its museums, antique churches, buildings, and companies, including M. Moda. Mantua’s history, art, and

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  29 traditions are thus part of a shared DNA, of something that is connected to the idea of being produced in Mantua. In his words, its “mantovanità” (‘being from Mantua,’ line 21). Scaling up, Moreno then extends his local DNA background to the national, Italian DNA in lines 16–21 and thus reinforces the circulating ideology of a national Made in Italy brand and of its historical, artistic, and cultural authenticity. At the same time, Moreno also enacts both his individual and collective identities, which are fluidly shifting from a more local, Mantua-based identity, to a more national, Italian one. In terms of scales, he shifts from a small, local scale, represented by his birth town and his family business, to a larger, national scale. Since scales are never neutral (Carr and Lempert 2016a; Gal 2016), as I show in Chapter 3, these scalar shifts carry significant meanings and instantiate Moreno’s subsequent interactional and narrative moves. The very fact of being born in Italy constitutes an important part of these intimate stances and collective identities in which history, art, and culture are shared and need to be cherished. This DNA rhetoric is even more pronounced in Example 2. Example 2 (M: Moreno) Original Italian Version 22. M: [. . .] ma per noi è ovviamente una cultura e un DNA che abbiamo 23. e che ovviamente abbiamo dentro di noi 24. e che ovviamente ci gratifica e ci fa- ci responsabilizza 25. anche sul fatto di dover ovviamente rappresentare il Made in Italy nei migliori dei modi 26. e quindi è un valore che abbiamo 27. un valore aggiunto che abbiamo che ci portiamo dentro [. . .] English Translation 22. M: [. . .] but for us [this] is a culture and a DNA that [we] have 23. and that obviously [we] have inside ourselves 24. and which obviously gratifies us and [which] makes us- holds us responsible 25. even on the fact of having to obviously represent the Made in Italy in the best way 26. so this is a value that [we] have 27. an added value that [we] have and [that we] carry inside ourselves [. . .] In lines 22–27, Moreno uses the deictic inclusive first-person plural subject (“noi,” ‘we’)11 and object (“noi” and “ci,” ‘us’) pronouns to refer not only to people from Mantua, his town, but to Italians more

30  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy generally. He thus connects his family’s historical and artistic DNA to a more collective Italian DNA—a DNA that gratifies Italians but also makes them responsible for representing it to the world with dignity. He thus enacts kin-related chronotopic stances, which are particular spatiotemporal configurations that have been recently defined “kinship chronotopes” (Agha 2015; Mcintosh 2015). These kin-related chronotopes are metaphoric, of course, but the fact that a common DNA is believed to hold these individuals’ identities together is very salient. In these kin-related chronotopic stances, family bodily fluids, such as blood, play a key role in defining who can be part of, and benefit from, this collectivity. Moreno’s stances thus bear some similarities with the stories collected by McIntosh among White Kenyans in Kenya, in which “claims about autochthony and indigeneity” emerge, following the ethno­ nationalist ideology that “one originates where one is found, having been born, as it were, ‘from the soil’, unlike immigrants or ‘strangers’” (McIntosh 2015, 254). In Moreno’s perspective, this biological trope, Italians’ DNA, elevates Italians with respect to other cultures, since Italians naturally have this prestigious DNA of their Made in Italy that cannot be shared but needs to be fairly represented and cherished. Moreno’s intimate stances in constructing a collective identity become very pronounced in this excerpt through a sustained use of various discourse strategies (Gumperz 1982). His use of first-person plural pronouns aligns Moreno with a collective vision of Made in Italy, as if all Italians have both the benefits in participating in this collectivity and the duty to salvage and cherish it. For Moreno, Made in Italy is a value that all his co-nationals naturally have (‘this is a value that [we] have an added value that [we] have and [that we] carry inside ourselves,’ lines 26–27) from their prestigious historical and artistic background. Intimacies of exclusion are thus constructed and solidified by Moreno’s kin-related chronotopic stances: by creating this collectivity in which only his co-nationals can participate, he automatically excludes all nonItalian citizens, such as migrant groups. Furthermore, he also uses some parallelistic structures in the preceding lines, giving even more emphasis to his intimate and collective claims about Made in Italy. Parallelism—a rhetorical device, which can be simply defined as repetition with variation—has been studied by some linguistic anthropologists for its discursive intertextual effects (Silverstein and Urban 1996; Tannen 2007). Critical to fully understanding parallelism is Roman Jakobson’s (1960) work on the “poetic function,” whose central aspect is parallelism. Jakobson’s concept of parallelism is not limited to familiar varieties of meter and rhyme. The poetic function refers to the patterned co-occurrence, or texture, of linearly unfolding semiotic tokens at any level—phonological, prosodic, morphological, syntactic, lexico-semantic, and so forth. In his analysis of Shokleng myths, for example, Greg Urban

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  31 (1991, 34–35) explored how agent- and patient-centricity is conveyed through grammatical parallelism. Through the repeated positioning of the topic—for instance, the noun phrase “beehive”—as the object of a transitive clause (i.e., as patient) across lines of the myth, the “object”-ness of the hive, its status as something acted upon, is foregrounded. Other Shokleng myths foreground agency by repeatedly positioning the topical noun phrase as the subject rather than the object of a transitive clause. The use of parallelism makes certain signs comparable with one another and at the same time makes them stand out as different from their co-text. In this way, parallelism helps create an elementary kind of textuality, which I called “texture” in my previous research (Perrino 2002). And as work in ethnopoetics has illustrated (Hymes 1981; Tedlock 1983; Woodbury 1985), the semiotic resources for creating textures through parallelism is immeasurable. As Silverstein (1998, 270) aptly writes, “[a]s structures of cohesion, texts are nothing more than by-degrees complex and multiply overlaid patterns of co-occurrence of (token) sign-forms one with respect to another.” The highly parallelistic structures in Moreno’s lines thus create an emphatic effect that is typical of political oratory (Lempert and Silverstein 2012) or religious sermons (Wilce 1998). The intertextual effect of Moreno’s parallelism emphasizes not only the uniqueness of Made in Italy (Kohler and Perrino 2017), but also its collective, intimate, and inclusive dimension. At lines 23, 24, and 25, he repeats the adverb ‘obviously’ (“ovviamente”) to reframe the fact that Italians naturally have a unique, gratifying DNA that holds them together as kins and that cannot be shared. At the same time, at lines 23, 26, 27, he repeats the verb ‘to have’ conjugated in the first-person plural, “abbiamo” (‘[we] must’ or ‘[we] have to’), which reinforces this ideology of an intimate, collective identity even more. The parallelistic repetition of the first-person plural object pronouns “ci” (‘us’) in the same lines is yet another discursive strategy confirming Moreno’s intimate and collective stances. Through these parallelistic moves, Moreno makes his claims more visible and more convincing. As has been widely demonstrated in linguistic anthropological research, parallelism helps any discursive practice “call attention to itself,” making it “memorable, repeatable, decontextualizable” (Wilce 2001, 191). These parallelistic structures continue throughout the interview thus reinforcing this sense of belonging even more. This is how intimacies of exclusion emerge in these various narratives: by sharing the same collective identity, based on a biological component such as DNA, this collectivity cannot be shared with non-Italian citizens, such as migrant groups.12 By looking at narratives produced by Northern Italian executives, politicians, and ordinary speakers, one can better understand the disconcerting developments of the present political landscape in Italy.

32  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy 1.6.2 DNA and Language Use in Veneto, Northern Italy The DNA rhetoric soon became evident in the narratives that I collected among political representatives in Northern Italy as well (see Chapter 2 for more details on Northern Italian political parties, especially on the Lega Nord [‘Northern League’] and its various subleagues). In the summer of 2010, for instance, I interviewed a prominent representative of a section of the Liga Veneta Repubblica (‘Veneto League Republic’, a subleague of the Lega Nord), called “Assessorato dell’Identità Veneta” (‘Division of the Veneto Identity’), in Venice (Venezia). His emphasis on the common DNA of speakers of Venetan immediately piqued my attention since it had been a recurrent, unsolicited point that many of my collaborators had made. The interview took place in his office and lasted two hours. At a certain point during the interview, he said the following to me:  Interview with Liga Veneta Repubblica’s representative Original Standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

  1. [. . .] nonostante  2. zentocinquant’ani   3. d’italiano tra virgolette   4. l’ottanta perzento dei veneti   5. parlano ancora veneto [. . .]   6. [. . .] i veneti parlano il veneto   7. nonostante tutti i tentativi di cancellarlo.   8. quindi significa   9. che è un qualcosa 10. ch’è fortemente radicato 11. dentro di noi 12. dentro alle nostre coscienze 13. e nel nostro DNA 14. e nel nostro sangue 15. e quindi questo il mio 16. partito ha voluto proprio 17. non solo metterlo in evidenza 18. non solo riscoprirlo 19. ma ridargli la dignità 20. che ha sempre avuto [. . .]

[. . .] despite one hundred and fifty years of Italian, so to speak eighty percent of the Venetans still speak Venetan [. . .] [. . .] Venetans speak Venetan despite the attempts to erase it. so [this] means that it is something that [is] strongly rooted in us in our souls and in our DNA and in our blood and so this [fact] my [political] party really wanted not only to highlight it not only to rediscover it but give it back the dignity that [it] has always had [. . .]

In this short narrative excerpt, this representative emphasizes the historical determination and prominence of Venetan throughout many centuries and the fact that there is a common DNA that its speakers

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  33 fully share. In lines 1–7, he points out that Venetan has been an active language even though it has co-existed with standardized Italian for 150 years and despite the many attempts to ‘erase it’ (“cancellarlo”).13 By adding “italiano tra virgolette” (which I translated ‘Italian, so to speak’) in line 3, he immediately takes a critical stance vis-à-vis what has been considered standardized Italian given the presence of many other competing languages, including Venetan, in Italy (De Mauro 1969; De Mauro and Lodi 1979). He then continues in lines 11–14 by emphasizing that Venetan is so deeply rooted in Venetans that it is running in their blood and it is part of their DNA, a biological metaphor that has emerged prominently in the narratives that I have collected, as Moreno’s examples indicate too. Here, past and present are fused, and they materialize in Venetans’ bodily fluids and self-replicating biological materials—their DNA. Venetan identification is thus not something that everyone can have and share; it is part of the bodily experience that only certain speakers naturally own: it is part of their “cultural intimacy” (Herzfeld 2005). It is, again, a kin-related chronotope that this political representative develops in his narrative. This means that this heritage language can be shared collectively only with other speakers of the same region. In this way, Venetan collective intimacy can exist and foster ethnonationalist ideologies in this region and beyond. Intimacies of exclusion can thus be co-constructed, enacted, and embodied given the present Italian ideological landscape that supports them. These intimacies are exclusive because only speakers of this language can share the benefits of speaking this language and of sharing the traditions connected to it. In Venetans’ ideological imagination, all non-speakers of this language, such as migrant groups, are excluded from this intimate collectivity (Perrino 2018a). These implicit ideologies (Woolard 2016, 7) are therefore key in establishing an overall accepted rhetoric in which DNA discourses can exist and circulate freely in this region and in Northern Italy more generally. This political representative then continues by saying that ‘my [political] party’ not only wanted to emphasize and to rediscover this local language (lines 16–18) but also wished ‘to give it back the dignity it has always had’ (lines 19–20). A dignity that this language has always had is a dignity that travels across time and space, a dignity that is not lost; rather, it has endured and has become more prominent and valuable in present times. Venetans’ collective and intimate identities are thus constituted and reinforced by their historical background, their present lives and bodies, and a DNA that cannot be shared with non-Venetans. Through this disconcerting ethnonationalist rhetoric, this representative enacts intimate exclusions between Venetans and other imaginary individuals who, in his ideal world, neither speak nor understand Venetan (e.g., Southern Italians and migrant groups) and thus cannot share the common view of his political party (Perrino 2018a, 2018c). Nowadays, however, many migrants in

34  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy Northern Italy are more fluent in the local languages that they speak on a daily basis than in standardized Italian. This DNA rhetoric seems to be commonplace among members of the Liga Veneta Repubblica. Eighty percent of the interviews that I have collected since 2003 include this biological trope without any mention of it on my part as the interviewer. This DNA-centered discourse has been recurrent in the many conversations I have had not only with political members but also with ordinary speakers more generally. The following short excerpt is from a political rally organized to introduce the new governor of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia (Z), in March 2010. A female representative (B) is part of this political event as well. The governor starts his rally by saying the following to the present applauding audience:  Liga Veneta Repubblica’s Political Rally B: Female representative Z: Governor Luca Zaia 1. Z: [. . .] gavemo perso il DNA leghista qua? 2. devo parlarve in italian? [applauses and excitement from audience] 3. B: e aora se parla in veneto 4. se parla in veneto se p5. parché ghemo parlà in veneto fin ‘ndesso 6. quindi no vedo parché ghemo da cambiare lingua ‘ndesso [. . .]

Z: [. . .] Did [we] lose the League DNA here? Do [I] need to speak to you in Italian? [applause and excitement from audience] B: and then we’ll speak in Venetan we’ll speak in Venetan we’ll spbecause [we] spoke in Venetan till now so [I] don’t see why [we] have to change language now [. . .]

To start his political address, Governor Zaia uses Venetan in lines 1–2, by saying ‘Did you lose the League DNA here? Do I need to speak to you in Italian?’ Since political representatives are supposed to address the audience in Italian, Zaia’s question is marked and thus very effective. The audience members react by applauding and nodding as a sign of approval. The female representative (B) takes over and reinforces this idea by saying that it would be indeed better to use Venetan instead of the standardized language. She switches to the local language instead of keeping standardized Italian as their main code. By addressing her audience directly in Venetan, she sets up the tone of the entire rally: the local scale is more valuable than the national one. She then asks the audience to use Venetan, and she does so almost entirely in Venetan—with some bivalent forms as well (Woolard 1998)—in lines 3–6. The fact that she uses mostly Venetan with a few codeswitches14 to Italian aligns her with an ideology in which this language, and thus the identity it represents, is the one that should be

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  35 used in regional politics as well. Her argument is historical: Since Venetans have always spoken Venetan, why do they have to stop now (lines 5–6)? She suggests that they need to continue to use their language at every social event including political rallies. By also invoking the historical roots of Venetan, when she claims that “we” have spoken this local code until now, she adds the prestigious past of this code to the present of the hereand-now interaction and adds a chronotopic layer, and her stance, to these discursive processes. The use of the inclusive first person plural pronoun “we” (which is included in the conjugated verbs in Venetan—see lines 1, 5, and 6) solidifies participants’ collective intimacy even more. Intimacies of exclusion are, again, enacted through a DNA rhetoric of belonging and inclusion in which only Venetans are entitled to participate.

1.7  Concluding Remarks How can intimacies of exclusion happen in heterogeneous communities of practice? How are these intimate boundaries (co)constructed and solidified in and through narrative practices? As I have discussed in this chapter, as Northern Italian communities become more diverse as a result of intensified migratory flows through the Mediterranean Sea, Italians have been reacting in various ways to these newcomers. By creating intimate connections between them, by reviving existing ideologies of sharing the same DNA, historical background, sociocultural traditions, art, and language, Northern Italians elevate imaginary walls around themselves to protect their shared, “authentic” patrimony. Through so doing, however, they counter the heterogeneity of the communities of practice to which they belong, by following an old, and disturbing, ideology of being homogeneous and sharing sameness rather than appreciating diversity. They enact their “cultural intimacy,” in Herzfeld’s (2005) terms. In this chapter, after briefly introducing Italy’s new historical and sociocultural background, which has been transformed as a result of several migratory flows through the Mediterranean Sea (Albahari 2015a), I have discussed notions such as multiculturalism and superdiversity as they are related to Italy. While many scholars apply the concept of multiculturalism to Italy and argue that this country has slowly become “multicultural” after the arrival of migrants from various parts of Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Eastern Europe since the 1970s, in this chapter, I have contended that a multicultural Italy is far from being “multicultural.” Multiculturalist ideologies are based on the generalized assumption of being able to foster mutual acceptance and a settled integration of the new migrant groups. Given the tremendous changes that globalization has brought about in many societies, this chapter is partly inspired by Blommaert et al’s (2011) recent research contending that multiculturalism has been gradually replaced by what Vertovec (2007) calls “super-diversity,” especially in European countries, such as Belgium and Italy. Thus, given

36  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy the present and ongoing transnational flows in an out of Italy, especially considering that this is already a historically fragmented country, I have proposed to look at these new demographic configurations from the bottom up instead of imposing ready-made concepts such as a multicultural framework. By looking at communities of practice and at their fluid relationships, a new type of superdiversity has emerged for the Italian nationstate, for its regions, urban centers, and so forth: an inclusion-resistant superdiversity, given the anti-immigrant sentiments and stances that can be found across many sociocultural layers of the Italian society. In this respect, studying heterogeneous communities of practice offers scholars an important venue in which subtle and invisible patterns can also emerge instead of being overshadowed by taken-for-granted concepts such as multiculturalism. Narrative practices, as they are explored in this book, are one of these venues, as many linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists have recently demonstrated. As I show in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, narratives are key sites to unveil circulating ideologies around language and race that would not be easily palpable otherwise. Before turning to several ethnographic cases of racialized narratives from various contexts and of different kinds (such as joke-telling events), I turn to Chapter 2 in which I describe the political landscape of Italy, focusing on the rise of the far-right political parties, such as the Lega Nord (‘Northern League’) and one of its subleagues, the Liga Veneta Repubblica (‘Veneto League Republic’). A brief survey of the historical, political, and sociocultural context of these political movements is key to better understanding the nuances and implicit ideologies (Woolard 2016) of the emerging racialized narratives. Critical in this new, extreme political orientation is an overall willingness to revitalize linguistic and sociocultural practices across various Northern Italian regions, such as Lombardy (Lombardia) and Veneto. As I have demonstrated in my research, language revitalization initiatives in Veneto have gone hand in hand with the enactment of exclusionary stances visà-vis migrant groups and other people who are believed not to be fluent in the local language.

Notes   1. The Italian term extracomunitario (masculine, singular) was first used in Italy in the 1980s to indicate the legal status of migrants in Italy, as people who are not citizens of the European Union (once called Comunità Europea, ‘European Community,’ hence extra-comunitario, ‘from outside the European Community’). However, more recently, it has been used derogatorily to indicate undocumented migrants across Italy. While its negative connotations are today evident, this term is still commonly used to indicate migrants coming from developing countries, especially from Africa, South Asia, Eastern Europe, and, more recently, the Middle East. Italian politicians, journalists, writers, and academics commonly use this term to indicate migrants from these countries.

Migration and Politics in Northern Italy  37   2. Original Italian version: “Noi degli extracomunitari non ne possiamo più! Continuano a sbarcare in Sicilia ed entrano in Italia come niente rispetto agli altri paesi europei che hanno regole più severe, loro sì che hanno le leggi per tenerli fuori! Ma dimmi, come facciamo a tenerli tutti qui da noi? Qui siamo già in difficoltà con i nostri figli che non trovano lavoro e dobbiamo prenderci tutti questi qua? Ma che stiano a casa loro o che vadano da qualche altra parte! Qui noi non li vogliamo!” (Mauro, Northern Italy, July 2004).   3. See www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/the-list-34361-men-womenand-children-who-perished-trying-to-reach-europe-world-refugee-day (last accessed, 07/09/2019).   4. Italy occupies a key position for migrants since Sicily, and more specifically the small island of Lampedusa, which is adjacent to Sicily, is one of the first landing points after many days of dangerous traveling.   5. In this book, I use the phrase “standardized Italian,” instead of “standard Italian,” to indicate the processual nature of languages that become standardized by human agency. Since what is considered Italian today was actually a local language spoken and written by famous writers such as Dante Alighieri, Boccaccio, and Petrarch (hence its fortune—see Chapter 2 for more details), the standardization process happened while in competition with other local languages, such as Venetan, Friulan, and many other local languages that are still part of the dynamic Italian linguistic landscape (De Mauro 1969; Coluzzi 2008).   6. For a full discussion on codeswitching practices and how I treat this phenomenon in this book, see Chapters 4 and 5.   7. Other scholars have explored intimacy and intimate relations on a broader scale, focusing on their relational identity, or the shared sense of “we-ness” that advances when individuals start including the other in their own selfidentification in romantic relationships and in friendship as well (Aron et al. 1991; Aron, Aron, and Smollan 1992). In these cases, relational identity is considered as a measurable consequence of intimate relations, as Pritzker and I have pointed out (Perrino and Pritzker In Press).   8. Our interviews with executives were collected in various towns and villages in the following Italian regions: Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, Lombardy, Piedmont, Sardinia, and Veneto. We interviewed executives from a wide range of businesses, such as glassmaking, fashion, wine production, dairy production (Kohler 2017), manufacturing, historical cafés (Perrino 2015b), and financial institutions (Kohler and Perrino 2017; Sischarenco 2019). All of our interviews were audio-recorded and fully transcribed over the course of two years.   9. To be able to fully read my transcripts, see my Transcription Conventions. 10. The English term “appeal” has become part of the Italian vocabulary among managers in companies and ordinary speakers as well. 11. In standardized Italian, personal subject pronouns are optional. Although their optional character varies regionally, they are mainly used for resolving certain discursive ambiguities and for emphatic purposes. 12. For a more complete analysis of Northern Italian executives’ narratives, see (Perrino 2015b; Kohler 2017; Kohler and Perrino 2017; Perrino and Kohler In Press). 13. One of the attempts to “erase” Venetan and just keep standardized Italian could have been during the Fascist period, for example, when Benito Mussolini prohibited the use of the local “dialects” throughout Italy in favor of a common language, standardized Italian.

38  Migration and Politics in Northern Italy 14. As I explain in more detail in Chapters 4 and 5, while there are various types of codeswitching, such as intersentential vs. intrasentential codeswitching, in this book, I consider codeswitching for its pragmatic functions in line with recent studies in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics on this phenomenon (Gumperz 1982; Perrino 2015c; Perrino 2018c). 

2

The Lega Nord (‘Northern League’) Language Revitalization and Anti-Immigration Politics

[I] have always voted Lega and [I] will always vote Lega because [I] want to be protected [I] don’t want these extracomunitari here anymore who wander around come’on who steal from us Italians come’on I don’t have anything against these immigrants but [they] can’t take away anything from Italians [you] can understand me, can’t you?1 (Cristina, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Northern Italy, June 2010)

2.1 Introduction In the summer of 2010, while I was conducting interviews in Northern Italy, I noted a recurrent antagonistic stance against migrants, derogatorily called extracomunitari, or ‘migrants from outside the European Union.’ These antagonistic stances had been going on for at least seven years, since I had noted them during previous summer fieldtrips as well. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, this rhetoric has today become stronger across Italy, after many migrants landed in Italy, trying to reach the European continent through perilous travel across the Mediterranean Sea. As a reaction to these constant waves of migrants arriving in Italy, Umberto Bossi, who was the leader of the Lega Nord (‘Northern League’) political party at that time, made a strong statement in an interview with a journalist on June 16, 2003. In his statement, which became very popular, Bossi made the following remarks: O con le buone o con le cattive i clandestini vanno cacciati. Entra solo chi ha un contratto di lavoro. Gli altri fuori. C’è un momento in cui occorre usare la forza. Marina e Finanza si dovranno schierare a difesa delle coste e usare il cannone. Ecco il regolamento giusto per attuare la legge. Nessuna scappatoia e nessun rinvio. (Cavalera 2003)

40 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization ‘By hook or by crook clandestine migrants need to be kicked out. Only migrants with a job contract can enter [Italy]. All the other ones [need to be] out [of Italy]. A moment arrives when the use of force is necessary. The Italian Marines and Finance forces will have to line up to defend our shores and to use their cannons. This is the correct way to apply the law. No way out and no delays.’ Bossi, who had a lot of followers in the early 2000s, claimed that only migrants with a job contract could enter Italy, while all the other undocumented migrants had to be pushed back. They could not enter Italy, a rhetoric that has been very common since Matteo Salvini, being the new Lega Nord leader, was elected as deputy prime minister2 and interior minister in June 2018.3 In his remarks, Bossi especially referred to the fact that numerous women and children are often present in overcrowded ships seeking to reach the European continent through Italy. For the former leader of the Lega Nord, in these cases, the use of force was necessary, and he even justified the possible use of cannons by the Italian Marines and finance forces to “defend” Italian shores. Almost two decades have passed since Bossi’s disconcerting remarks were made; yet, growing similar attitudes have emerged not only in Italy (Pagliai 2011, 2012; Perrino 2013, 2017, 2018c; Cammelli 2015), but in other European states (Holmes 2000, 2019) and in the United States (Santa Ana and GonzaÌlez de Bustamante 2012) as well. In this chapter, I provide a brief historical background on the rise of the Lega Nord, which has been one of the most successful political parties in Italy and which has become one of the most intense far-right movements across the European Union today. This political party grew from a small movement focusing on differentiating Northern Italian regions from Southern Italian regions to a mass political party. Originally, the Lega Nord was created with the intent of keeping Southern Italians away from the northern regions—hence the name, Northern League. Today, however, this political party has become very popular especially for its strong, antiimmigration efforts, which have occurred alongside efforts at regionalization, including local language revitalization, which is addressed in this chapter as well. While language revitalization initiatives have occurred in many Northern Italian regions, such as Lombardy (Cavanaugh 2004, 2009), where Umberto Bossi was born, in this chapter, I focus on the Veneto region, in which various varieties of Venetan have been spoken for centuries. Focusing on the Veneto region does not mean, however, that this is an example of what has been happening in all other Italian regions. As I mention later, there has been a great variety of revitalization initiatives for regional languages across Italy. Yet, the Veneto region holds a special position in this investigation since it has been considered one of the Northern Italian regions where the original “dialectal” varieties have been

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  41 most preserved and are still spoken in addition to the regional variant of standardized Italian. Although it is difficult to determine the precise number of Venetan-speaking Venetans in this region, and transnationally as well, recent statistics show that almost 70% of Venetans speak this language at home. As this chapter demonstrates, the Lega Nord’s strong anti-immigrant politics, together with these language revitalization initiatives, can create intimacies of exclusion, which often go even beyond narrative practices, as I show after I briefly sketch the political history of the Lega Nord and some of the language revitalization initiatives that have happened at key political moments.

2.2 The Lega Nord (‘Northern League’) and Its Anti-Immigrant Politics The Lega Nord (‘Northern League’), whose complete name is Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania (‘Northern League for the Independence of Padania’), can be considered today a far-right political party that has gained success across Italy.4 Its former leader, Umberto Bossi, whom I quoted earlier, started his career in the Lega Nord as its leader in 1987, and he remained in that position until 2012 when he resigned after a family scandal related to his son had surfaced. On December 7, 2013, Matteo Salvini was selected as Bossi’s successor. Since June 2018, moreover, Salvini has been serving as deputy prime minister of Italy and minister of the interior.5 In the run-up of the 2018 general election, however, this political party was officially renamed La Lega (‘The League’) without changing its official name in the party’s statute. This renaming practice emphasizes that this political party is not serving Northern Italian interests only, as it was in the past, but it is now a renewed, more unified political party serving equally the north and the south. The Lega Nord was indeed often referred to as just the Lega in the media and by ordinary speakers even before this official rebranding happened.6 Unless I refer to this political party’s historical past, from this chapter onward, I refer to the Lega Nord as the Lega. This rebranded name, moreover, now appears in their new emblems as well, as a sign of being a political party for the entire nation instead of serving only Northern Italian interests.7 As I mentioned earlier, this political party, which today is one of the most xenophobic and anti-immigrant political parties in the European Union, developed from a small political movement that focused more on separating Northern Italian regions from the rest of Italy to a national political party. As Giordano writes about this shift in their political discourse, partly because there is now minimal internal migration from the south to the north of Italy, the League has in recent years directed its attention away from the southern Italian “other” to another—according to

42 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization the League more threatening—“other,” namely the increasing number of foreign migrants to Italy, or so-called extracomunitari. (Giordano 2004, 64) This new political orientation has brought about an unprecedented number of the Lega’s followers not only from Northern Italy but also, ironically, from Central and Southern Italy, especially after they proposed, and later issued, several aggressive anti-immigrant laws. Besides the laws that were officially approved by the Italian government (with the Lega being part of the Italian government’s coalition),8 their ongoing anti-immigrant agenda has been key in recruiting many of their members and followers across Italy. As I described in Chapter 1, the Lega’s anti-immigrant politics can be seen as a reaction to the changes in the Italian demographic landscape, especially after the arrival of many migrants to Italian soil. Several anti-immigrant laws have indeed been implemented across Italy since the arrival of the Lega as one of the main political parties in the Italian government in the 1980s. Unlike other European countries, such as France, Italy did not issue any laws when the first wave of migrants arrived in the 1970s. The very first law in migration matters was issued in 1986 (law n. 943/86) with the intent to legalize the migrant groups that were already present in Italy. Yet, in the 1990s, other laws were issued with more restrictions for migrants who had already been in Italy and for the newcomers as well: the well-known “Martelli law 39/1990” went a step further and tried to issue more restrictive rules for migrants and refugees arriving in Italy. It also tried to better define the norms to acquire Italian citizenship for migrants residing in the country. This law was changed again eight years later by becoming the “Turco-Napolitano law 40/98.” It was an amendment of the Turco-Napolitano law elaborated by Umberto Bossi with Giancarlo Fini (the former president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and the leader of the conservative right-wing Alleanza Nazionale [‘National Alliance’] political party), known as the “Bossi-Fini law 189/02,” however, which officially started an openly aggressive stance against migrants in Italy (Terracciano and Chiacchiera 2002). Several revisions of this law were passed in the following years reinforcing this strong anti-immigrant legislation even further. In 2009, for example, a law passed that mandated the immediate expulsion of all ‘undocumented migrants,’ called clandestini in Italian. When they land in Italy, these migrants are usually taken to one of the centri di primo soccorso e accoglienza (abbreviated as “CPSA,” lit., ‘centers for first emergency and reception’), which, in reality, function like “detention centers” (Albahari 2015a). Migrants who arrive in Italy do not have a ‘permit to stay’ (permesso di soggiorno), which is now required to avoid deportation. The effects of this anti-immigrant legislation have been significant and dramatic and have had serious ramifications on migrants’ lives since

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  43 then (Storni 2011; Allievi 2014; Perrino 2018c, 2019). A political rally by one of the most well-known political representatives in the Veneto region, Giancarlo Gentilini, for example, shows how these fierce antiimmigrant stances can originate in politicians’ enactments during these political speeches. At the time of this political address, on September 14, 2008, Gentilini was the mayor of the small town of Treviso, in the Veneto region.9 G: Gentilini Original Italian Version

English Translation

[fry screaming by G] [audience participates by screaming and by uttering “bravo” many times throughout the speech] G:   1. il decalogo dello sceriffo d’Italia numero uno   2. dice rivoluzione  3. io voglio la rivoluzione contro   4. gli extracomunitari clandestini [laughter]  5. voglio la pulizia dalle strade   6. di tutte queste etnie che distruggono il nostro paese   7. voglio la rivoluzione nei confronti di nomadi  8. dei zingari   9. ho distrutto due campi di nomadi e di zingari a Treviso 10. non ci sono zingari 11. voglio eliminare tutti i bambini dei zingari 12. che vanno a rubare dagli anziani [. . .]

[fry screaming by G] [audience participates by screaming and by uttering “bravo” many times throughout the speech] G:   1. the rules of Italy’s number one sheriff [i.e., referring to himself]   2. call for revolution  3. I want the revolution against the   4. illegal extracomunitari [laughter]  5. [I] want the roads cleaned   6. of all these ethnic groups who destroy our country   7. [I] want the revolution against the nomads  8. of the gypsies   9. [I] destroyed two camps of nomads and gypsies in Treviso 10. there are no gypsies [anymore there] 11. [I] want to eliminate all the children of the gypsies 12. who go to steal in the elderly’s [houses] [. . .]

In these few lines of Gentilini’s speech, racialized stances emerge explicitly and unapologetically. Unlike other cases explored in Chapters 4 and 5, Gentilini’s remarks are not veiled, nor are they “covert” (Hill 1995, 2008). At that time, those explicit statements created shock and disbelief among the population, and they were considered so disturbing that Gentilini was charged with instigating racial hatred and had to pay 4,000 Euros as penalty. He was also banned from staging other political rallies for the following three years.10 Sadly, however, eleven years after this political address was delivered, such explicit racialized claims have become more common

44 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization following the ascendancy of the far-right led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who has recently enacted similar stances against migrants and refugees by calling for “mass cleansing, street by street, quarter by quarter” across Italy.11 The existing ideologies allowing such claims need to be considered to understand how ordinary speakers can react to these claims. For example, some Italians have reacted very strongly to the xenophobic politics promoted by Salvini, analogously to the recent Antifa movement on the rise across the United States. A closer analysis of this excerpt shows how Gentilini aggressively enacts intimacies of exclusion both through his explicitly racist remarks and through various discursive strategies (Gumperz 1982). In line 1, he refers to himself as “Italy’s number one sheriff,” as if he were the one who could create the rules to “defend” his town from migrants’ arrivals. In line 2, he introduces the idea of starting a “revolution” to “eliminate” all undocumented extracomunitari (line 4), nomads (line 7), gypsies (line 8), children of gypsies (line 11), and “all these ethnic groups who destroy our country” (line 6). Intertextually, he uses some parallelistic structures that emphasize his claims and enhance an intimate texture based on the ideology that his co-nationals will benefit from the course of action he proposes through his lines. As I have argued in Chapter 1, parallelism is an important rhetorical device that has various discursive and interdiscursive functions (Silverstein and Urban 1996; Tannen 2007). The highly parallelistic structures in these lines create an emphatic effect that is typical of political oratory (Lempert and Silverstein 2012) or religious sermons (Wilce 1998). The intertextual effects of Gentilini’s lines unveil his racialized stances even more. By repeating the term rivoluzione (‘revolution’) in lines 2, 3, and 7, for example, he introduces, and repeats, a term related to past revolutionary wars in which partisanship is supposed to create solidarity among the members initiating revolutions and rebellions. From his perspective, Venetans, and Italians more generally, need to unite to fight and “eliminate” all undocumented migrants, their families, and gypsies as well. Gentilini also repeats the modal verb volere (‘to want’) conjugated in the first person singular voglio (‘[I] want’) in lines 3, 5, 7, and 11, with a different conclusion for each clause. The use of this strong modal verb plus the first person subject pronoun in line 3 shows, again, his aggressive stance against newcomers. Since in Italian the subject pronoun is optional (being conjugated in verbs), the emphatic effect is even stronger. There is also repetition of the pejorative term zingari (‘gypsies’) in lines 8, 9, and 11, a term that appears several other times in his political address. All these parallelistic structures and the explicit use of particular terms coupled with his fry screaming voice make his claims even more disconcerting in a crescendo that has resemblances to Fascist speeches by Mussolini in the 1930s and 1940s. At the same time, I suggest, Gentilini creates an intimate, collective identity in which all his co-nationals can participate

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  45 by being part of the same region, and nation, and by speaking the same language(s). This is how intimacies of exclusion are co-constructed and solidified through discursive practices such as speeches at political rallies. New similar political movements have been mushrooming across Italy, since Gentilini’s times, as I describe in the following section.

2.3 Beyond the Lega: New Political Movements in Italy Besides the Lega, other political parties have been advocating an antiimmigrant agenda and have been shifting from a progressive attitude to a more conservative one. The political party called Movimento Cinque Stelle (‘Five Stars Movement’) is an example of this shift: from an agenda supporting a policy of integration of migrants, this political party has lately started to counter migrants’ integration and has promoted an antiimmigrant stance across Italy similar to the one promoted by the Lega. This political party has performed well in recent elections. Another example of anti-immigrant politics in Italy is a neo-Nazi political movement called CasaPound Italia (‘CasaPound Italy’), which was founded in Rome in 2003. When they created CasaPound Italia in 2003, the founders of this movement were inspired by the American expatriate poet Ezra Pound (hence the name bestowed to this political movement), who spent a long time in Italy during World War II supporting and promoting Fascist ideologies. Although the founders of this movement were fiercely criticized by the American poet’s daughter for this use of her family name, they nonetheless decided to keep his name as representative of their growing political movement (Cammelli 2015). This political movement has moreover recruited many members, and they have used old Fascist mottos in their political agendas. Since 2003, CasaPound Italia has become one of the most successful neo-Fascist organizations in Europe, by revitalizing Fascist ideologies and by advocating a very aggressive politics against migrants. In 2014, for example, they organized a massive demonstration in Milan, Lombardy (Northern Italy), together with the new leader of the Lega, Matteo Salvini, in which their anti-immigrant stance was made very clear. Like the Lega and its various subleagues, CasaPound Italia has tried to side with the many secessionist initiatives that have been happening in several European states (Perrino 2013; Holmes 2016, 2019). Through a convincing analysis of the difficulties that the European Union has had to become “integral” and of the recent resurgence of fascism in several European nations, Douglas Holmes (2000, 2016, 2019) keenly contends that fascist ideologies are informed by Counter-Enlightenment values that criticize “the secularist foundations of liberal, bourgeois society, notably the values and beliefs impelling European integration” (Holmes 2016, 2). From Holmes’s perspective, the resistance to European integration is thus underpinned by the belief that “‘multicultural’ and ‘multiracial’ societies are antithetical to sustainable human collectivities”

46 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization (Holmes 2016, 2). In his research in Europe, Holmes shows how recent waves of fascist activism navigate within a monocultural and monoglot (Silverstein 2018) ideology as an alternative to neoliberal economic policies. This monocultural ideology latches onto the DNA implicit ideology (Woolard 2016) that I explored in Chapter 1 and that will emerge in the remaining chapters as well. In this respect, migrants and refugees are seen as the ones to be blamed for using the state resources and thus for depriving the state of those welfare benefits. This is one of the reasons that migrants and refugees have become the prime targets of racialized stances and racist attacks not only in Europe but in the United States as well. Italy, as I show in this book, represents a case in point. What is typical of some Italian regions, however, like the Veneto region, is that together with these strong anti-immigrant stances, the Lega and its various subleagues have also engaged in language revitalization efforts in order to revalorize their local languages as a way to defend themselves even more from newcomers. Among them, the Liga Veneta Repubblica (‘Veneto League Republic’), an important sub-league of the Lega, has been promoting not only the use of Venetan but also the recognition of the Veneto region as an autonomous “state,” in which its own recognized language is spoken, at the European level, as I explain in the remaining sections of this chapter.

2.4 Poeticizing and Politicizing Language Revitalization Language revitalization, language endangerment, and language death have always been key research subjects for linguists, linguistic anthropologists, and sociolinguists. As Leone-Pizzighella and I have recently argued (Perrino and Leone-Pizzighella 2018), to restore, revive, or revitalize endangered or minoritized languages is always part of an intricate sociocultural, political, economic, and linguistic system rather being an isolated phenomenon (Roseman 1995; Jaffe 1999, 2012; Cavanaugh 2004, 2006, 2008; LeMaster 2006; Kaplan and Baldauf 2008; Kroskrity 2012; Meek 2012; Falconi 2013). While revitalizing their language, promoters might have other goals in mind, such as re-asserting their weakened political power or reinforcing their anti-government stances. In one of her last articles entitled “Poeticizing the Economy: The Corsican Language in a Nexus of Pride and Profit,” for example, Alexandra Jaffe (2019, 10) emphasized that language revitalization studies need to also include issues of “commodification, authenticity, performance/poetics and place.” Research such as Jaffe’s (1999, 2013, 2019) has unveiled evidence of such processes as having underlying, and frequently widespread, economic and sociopolitical objectives. In this respect, language revitalization efforts are fluid processes in which power and economic dynamics, political aspirations, and language ideologies play pivotal roles. Jaffe’s work on language revitalization in Corsica has added important

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  47 layers to the study of minority language contexts “where discourses of language politics and revitalization have historically been centered around pride and cultural rights” (Jaffe 2019, 10), illustrating how language revitalization practices are vital, heterogeneous, highly variable, contextualized, and unpredictable processes. Thus, not only are the incentives for revitalizing a language varied and ungeneralizable, but also the desired effects of such initiatives have different, sometimes unknown, configurations and consequences. Focusing on the revitalization of Venetan, the local language of the Veneto region, I show how this language has been revitalized through politicization (especially, after the Lega started its strong anti-immigrant politics) and aspirations for autonomy from the Italian state. Over the last 15 years, Veneto, one of the 20 regions of Italy, has become an embattled region trying to obtain regional political and linguistic autonomy (Perrino 2013). The arrival of migrants in Italy and in this region as well has created new demographic configurations and has pushed certain language promoters to be more active in re-establishing their historical and artistic traditions and in officially recognizing the use of their language, Venetan. Venetan,12 commonly referred to as Veneto “dialect” by many Italians (De Mauro 1969, 1979), is spoken by 3.4 million people in Italy alone, without counting the many other millions of Venetans spread out around the world who still use this language as their mother tongue. Linguists usually subdivide Venetan into four sub-groups: 1) “dialetto trevigiano-feltrino-bellunese” (‘dialect of Treviso, Feltre, and Belluno’) or “dialetto Veneto centro-settentrionale” (‘dialect of the Center-North of the Veneto region’); 2) “dialetto veneziano-lagunare” (‘dialect of Venice and surroundings’) from the town of Chioggia to the town of Caorle or “dialetto del Veneto orientale” (‘dialect of the East of the Veneto region’); 3) dialetto padovano-vicentino-polesano (‘dialect of Padova, Vicenza, and Polesine’) or “dialetto del veneto centro-meridionale” (‘dialect of the center-south of the Veneto region’); 4) “dialetto veronese” (‘dialect of Verona’) or “dialetto del Veneto occidentale (‘dialect of the West of the Veneto region) (Belloni 2009). Although it is sometimes difficult to classify the various linguistic forms into these four categories, given their shifting boundaries, in general terms, the Venetan explored in this book belongs to the first group (Treviso) and to the third group (Padova). To better understand the fate of these local languages vis-à-vis the creation and standardization of Italian as their competing language, it is worth briefly mentioning the history of this standardization process.

2.5 Local Languages and Standardized Italian: A Brief Historical Background While the unification of Italy and the formation of the modern Italian nation started in 1861 with the integration of most of Italy under the

48 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization ‘House of Savoy’ (Casa dei Savoia) (Piedmont-Sardinia) into the Kingdom of Italy, the modern Italian state was created when the area once called “Venetia,” which included the present Veneto region, and the former Papal States were integrated in 1871, after ten years of efforts at unifying many fragmented small states. Even at that time then, the Veneto region seemed to wish to remain an independent republic, autonomous from the newly born state of Italy (Cavallin 2010b). This sociocultural, linguistic, and political fragmentation lasted beyond Italy’s official unification and is still palpable today. These small states had different local languages that evolved directly from Latin in contact with these “vernaculars” as they were referred to. Many of these local languages have not only been revitalized in recent years, however, but have also sought official recognition as full-fledged languages. Other European languages, and mixes of them, are spoken in Italy: French is spoken in parts of Piedmont and in Aosta Valley; Slovenian is spoken in the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia around the Trieste area. German is widely used in the Bolzano Province, or South Tyrol (part of the Trentino-Alto Adige region), which was ceded by Austria in 1919. We need to briefly go back to the beginnings of Italian literature to appreciate how the Italian linguistic landscape has been developing since then. Italian literature has always included works written in standardized Italian and in the local languages as well, such as Venetan, Neapolitan, Roman, and so forth. The origins of Italian literature can be traced back to the thirteenth century, since it was at that time that writers started to write in their “vernacular” instead of using the more hegemonic Latin language that was in use across Europe in the Middle Ages. One of the first examples of early vernacular literature is a traditional lyric poetry performed in the Occitan language, coming from France, which started to enter Italy in the twelfth century. In fact, in the beginning, what was known as “Italian” literature was a mixture of vernaculars coming from what would become European languages, such as French, Spanish, and German. It was in this period that famous poets and writers emerged, and their style of writing was later so much imitated and praised that the language they used became what today is often called standard Italian. Among all the vernaculars spoken at that time, the Tuscan Florentine vernacular had a lot of fortune since writers such as Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)13 wrote famous poems and novels in it and thus became so prominent that it started to spread in many other fragmented states. Throughout the centuries, the Florentine vernacular became what today is referred to as standard Italian. At the same time, however, the other “vernacular” languages have continued to survive and prosper in their everyday use (De Mauro 1969; De Mauro and Lodi 1979; Coluzzi 2008, 2009; De Fina 2014; De Fina and Bizzoni 2003; Perrino 2013). Venetan, for example, has been used for many centuries, as many of my collaborators in Veneto have emphasized.

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  49 To explain this, they often invoked historical facts, such as the great power that the ‘Republic of Venice’ (Repubblica di Venezia), also known as the ‘Most Serene Republic of Venice’ (Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia), had for more than one thousand years, from AD 697 until 1797 (Cavallin 2010b). Its territory was very vast, covering most of northeastern Italy with its base in the lagoon communities of the wealthy town of Venice. Over the centuries, it became a leading European economic and trading “empire,” especially during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Historical roots, artistic patrimony, and their local languages have thus been part of Venetans’ everyday life for a long time. As I emphasized in Chapter 1, intimacies of exclusion start getting their basis from strong beliefs such as these: Venetans’ historical background, artistic patrimony, and languages are not supposed to be shared with other groups of people, such as migrants and Italians from other regions, and they thus need to be cherished and defended, as many of my collaborators pointed out. While my examples of language revitalization efforts focus on the Veneto region, where I have been conducting research since 2003, this does not mean that this region represents all other Northern Italian regions. Yet, as many of my research assistants pointed out, there has been a generalized trend of language revitalization across many other Northern Italian regions (Cavanaugh 2004, 2008) and Italy more generally.

2.6 Revitalizing Language, Culture, and History in Veneto and Beyond Throughout the stories that I have collected in the Veneto region, there has been a common thread related to the value of their local language: Venetan has been part of an important history for centuries and thus deserves more recognition in Italy and among the transnational communities of Venetans who live in different locations across the globe. There are, indeed, various associations promoting the use of Venetan in all these communities of practice abroad as well. During an interview I conducted with one representative of the Associazione Veneti nel Mondo (‘Association of Venetans in the world’),14 for example, he praised this association and stated that his political party, the Liga Veneta Repubblica, had been active in promoting the use of Venetan among Venetans abroad. Besides the strong revitalization efforts in the Veneto region, there have been revivals of this language in these communities abroad as well. In this quest for legitimation and use of Venetan across the globe, this association promotes the fact that Venetans need to find their transnational spaces and channels to activate this continuous exchange between the center and the new transnational peripheries in which they live. Some of these transnational spaces are online as well, given the vast availability of digital platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube, through which news, stories (Perrino 2017; König 2019), jokes, and traditional music in

50 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization Venetan can circulate very rapidly.15 On their website, for example, the Associazione Veneti nel Mondo states, “le radici profonde non gelano,” which means ‘deep roots do not freeze,’ and they lay out all the ways in which the Veneto region retains its connection to its people abroad and how their organization supports these links through the constant use of Venetan in their communicative practices. Many of the ordinary Venetan speakers I interviewed pointed out that their local language, Venetan, is part of their history as being Venetans. This language has significant literary traditions, as many writers and poets have been writing in Venetan since the thirteenth century (De Mauro 1969; Coluzzi 2009) such as Angelo Beolco, called Ruzante (1500–1542); Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793); and Biagio Marin (1891–1985), to mention just a few. In this respect, revitalizing Venetan language often means recalling not only these literary works and the history of the Italian linguistic landscape, as I mentioned earlier, but also the well-known history of the Republic of Venice (la Repubblica di Venezia). In this vein, Venetans have wished to retake control over their own land, traditions, and language, separate from Italy, and become a European state instead. These ethno­ national aspirations have similarities in several European nations today (Holmes 2000, 2019), such as the United Kingdom, where a referendum in June 2016 legalized their secession from Europe. Here, for example, Scotland reacted against this separation and asked for another separatist referendum to remain within Europe, with the possibility of becoming autonomous from the United Kingdom as well. The European region of Catalonia, within Spain, is another example of these attempts at becoming an autonomous European region/state instead of staying within their European State—in this case Spain (Woolard 2016). While these separatist movements have been studied from sociocultural, political, and economic perspectives (Holmes 2000), a focus on regional language revitalization initiatives has been less researched. In the examples that I examine in this chapter, I show how Venetan emblems and narrative practices invoke Venetans’ prestigious historical origins and art and their wishes to be separate from the Italian state. By looking at how these signs have traveled across time and space, through their chronotopic configurations, I show how Venetan intimacies of exclusion are first created and then solidified discursively and interdiscursively. Venetan has been recently revitalized not just linguistically, through the publication of several dictionaries and grammars (Cavallin 2010a; Siega et al. 2009; Turato and Durante 1995; Belloni 2009), folktale- and proverbthemed books (Cibotto 1979; Massari 1990), and poems in Venetan (Cévese 2001), for example, but also through politicized signage, such as emblems on flags, websites, posters, and so forth. In this section, I analyze some examples of revalorized emblems which have characterized Veneto’s political and sociocultural landscape in recent years. These various signs show that the revitalization of Venetan is not an isolated endeavor; rather,

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  51 it is infused with images, textual artifacts, significant colors, and particular shapes in which time and space fuse in various ways. The name of this sub-section of the Lega, Liga Veneta Repubblica, was itself created as a blend of standardized Italian and Venetan, Liga (‘League’) being in Venetan (the standardized Italian being Lega) and Veneta Repubblica being in standardized Italian. The addition of the noun Repubblica (‘Republic’) to their original name, Liga Veneta, in the 1980s, can be seen as an effort to recall the history and great power of the Republic of Venice and to make it available in the present. 2.6.1 The Liga Veneta Repubblica’s Flag  The Liga Veneta Repubblica’s flag is red in color today (see Figures 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3), but it was blue in the past, the blue color being a symbol of the great power of Venice as a maritime republic (Lane 1973). The flag’s color changed later and became red, one popular story recounts, to symbolize the blood that was lost in the many battles that the republic had to endure to become so vast and powerful. Another belief recounts that the Republic of Venice was so influential that it could be compared to the

Figure 2.1 Caption: Flag of the Liga Veneta Repubblica in Portogruaro, Veneto region Source: Photo taken by the author in July 2017 

52 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization

Figure 2.2 Caption: A different version of the Liga Veneta Repubblica’s flag in Venice, Veneto region Source: Photo taken by the author in July 2017 

Roman Empire—hence the imperial color red on their flag. Semiotically, all these signs carry important, and yet not always visible, meanings that are key in constructing intimate and collective identities among Venetans through spatiotemporal scales. The Lion of Venice, in yellow, represents the evangelist St. Mark—a central symbol of the Republic of Venice—and has the form of a winged lion holding St. Mark’s Gospel, which is kept open by one of its front paws. As Figures 2.1 and 2.3 show, the flag has six tails representing the six main towns of the Veneto region. As Figure 2.1 shows, the Liga Veneta Repubblica’s flags are hung out on balconies or windows in every Veneto town or village. These public signs have become very visible in recent years (Perrino 2018a), especially during certain historical celebrations or political demonstrations, as Figure 2.3 shows, for instance. In this particular demonstration, which happens every year on April 25, Italians usually celebrate il Giorno della Liberazione (Liberation Day), or l’Anniversario della Liberazione d’Italia (the Anniversary of the Liberation of Italy), which is a very important holiday for Italians since it celebrates the end of the Italian Civil War against the Fascist and Nazi occupation during World War II. The day was chosen as a symbol of the end

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  53

Figure 2.3 Caption: Flag of the Liga Veneta Repubblica in Venice, Veneto region, during a demonstration for the autonomy of the Veneto region Source: Photo taken by Nicola Perrino in April 2019

of the Fascist regime in Italy and the liberation of the country by the Americans. April 25, 1945 symbolizes the end of the Nazi occupation and of the Fascist regime in Italy. The country was officially declared free that day. However, as it is portrayed in Figure 2.3 here, Venetans have other ideals in mind when they celebrate this national holiday. They take this day to a different scale every year: instead of celebrating the liberation of Italy from the Nazi and Fascist regimes, they march in Venice (and in other towns in

54 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization the Veneto region) as a sign to claim the autonomous status of the Veneto region (Perrino 2013). This march in Venice has become very common in recent years. The Liga Veneta Repubblica’s flag represented in Figure 2.2 is quite different from the more classic flag of this subleague, as it is represented in Figures 2.1 and 2.3. The winged lion, which has a more animalesque, aggressive look, occupies the whole of the red background, which is just solid red, without the decorative yellow Venetian symbols. Instead of St. Mark’s Gospel, this Lion holds an open book with the following inscription in Venetan: Rialto no se toca (‘the Rialto bridge cannot be touched’). This inscription emphasizes that the well-known Rialto Bridge belongs to Venetians (Venetans living in the town of Venice) and thus cannot be touched. It is part of their artistic and architectural patrimony and will have to stay as is. This flag was specially created as a reaction to a foiled attack against the Rialto Bridge possibly planned by three Kosovo people in March 2017 (Povoledo 2017). Several variations of this flag were hanging around the Rialto Bridge in the summer of 2017 when I took the photograph presented in Figure 2.2. Intimacies of exclusion can thus be enacted, and fiercely embodied, through these various signs as well.  The more traditional Liga Veneta Repubblica flags are now also distributed in schools and sold to families in small formats as well, as Figure 2.4 shows. As my collaborators stated, children and families are proud to purchase these flags and to hang them inside and outside their houses as signs of a collective revalorization and continuous reminders

Figure 2.4 Caption: Small Flag of the Liga Veneta Repubblica in Portogruaro, Veneto region Source: Photo taken by the author in July 2017

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  55 of the existence of their history, traditions, and language. Their semiotic message is powerful: while the Lion of Venice represents its old prestigious history, it also emphasizes, spatially, the grandeur of Venice’s dominion resting on a wide territory. A religious layer is added with St. Mark’s Gospel displayed to protect Venetans. By hanging and showing this flag in public or by using it as their electronic emblems across various digital platforms, Venetans re-instate their collective identity as people with an old history and language that need to be revalorized and protected from newcomers and thus gain more visibility and power. Venetans’ collective and intimate identity can thus be enacted daily in many towns where revitalizing history, culture, and local language has been happening in a particular historical moment. 2.6.2  Terre dei Dogi in Festa in Portogruaro, Veneto  The Liga Veneta Repubblica has been actively supporting efforts to promote and revitalize Venetan history and traditions in local historical revivals, political rallies, and sagre or ‘local festivals involving food, games, and religious rituals.’ In the small town of Portogruaro, for example, there have been many local initiatives to revitalize their traditions, foods, and language, such as the annual Terre dei Dogi in Festa (‘Celebrations of Dogi’s Territories’), which usually takes place in May, as the flyer represented in Figure 2.5 shows. The celebrations are organized in concert with the preparation of local organic food, as this flyer outlines: Fiera del Biologico—Portogruaro Bio (‘Exposition of Organic Foods—Portogruaro—Organic’) as part of the Tredicesima Rassegna Enogastronomica Venezia Orientale (‘13th Eno-gastronomic Celebration—East Venice’). In this local festival, besides the opportunity to interact in Venetan, local wines and foods are also served to be tasted and purchased. As the flyer reminds its potential participants, moreover, the small town of Portogruaro is located on the east side of what was the vast Republic of Venice. It is as if Portogruaro would still exist as part of the former Republic of Venice by just jumping a few centuries back in time and space.  During this three-day-long celebration, dedicated to the Dogi of Venice, whose territories were very wide, including the town of Portogruaro, Venetans participate in religious and non-religious rituals (such as a long religious procession through the main roads of Portogruaro, brief re-enactments of important historical events, traditional food and wine tasting, and various types of dancing practices), dress in historically themed costumes (see Figure 2.6), recite poems and sing traditional songs in Venetan, and share memories and traditional stories among themselves. They also offer short boat trips along the local rivers, such as the Lemene River in Portogruaro. During the Terre dei Dogi in Festa, I often heard people speaking mostly Venetan, with brief codeswitches into standardized Italian. As many of my collaborators in this town stated, it is important for them to keep

Figure 2.5 Caption: Flyer describing the yearly event in Portogruaro, Veneto region, called “Terre dei Dogi in Festa” (‘Celebrations of Dogi’s Territories’) Source: Photo taken by the author in May 2017

Figure 2.6 Caption: Venetans in Portogruaro, Veneto region, wearing historically themed costumes for the “Terre dei Dogi in Festa” (‘Celebrations of Dogi’s Territories’) Source: Photo taken by Nicola Perrino in May 2019

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  57 their local language, Venetan, active on a daily basis. Thus, for them, these revitalizing initiatives play a key role in their lives. In many Northern Italian towns, such as Bergamo in Lombardy (Cavanaugh 2004, 2009), similar revitalization initiatives have been taking place at a fast pace in recent years. 2.6.3 Revitalization of Venetan and the “Veneto State” Venetan has been promoted in educational settings as well, since it is now officially taught (and required) in elementary and middle schools and at the university level as well in the local universities, such as the University of Venice. In many elementary schools, for example, educators use books in Venetan to socialize children with important historical facts and notions, such as “LEPANTO: la Gran Bataja” (‘LEPANTO: the Big Battle’), a comic book that dramatizes the historical battle of Lepanto (Morello and Nardo 2010) in 1571, which ended with a strong victory by the Republic of Venice over the Ottoman Empire. More specifically, the Battle of Lepanto (or the “Battle of the Three Empires”) was a naval battle that happened on October 7, 1571, when a fleet of the Holy League, of which the Republic of Venice and the Spanish Empire were the main powers, defeated the fleet of the Ottoman Empire near Lepanto—the medieval Italian name of the Greek town of Naupactus. It was a very important battle for resettling geographical borders at that time. The Republic of Venice was one of the leaders of the Holy League, together with other powerful European Catholic maritime states, such as Spain and Austria. This comic book, which sensationalizes this famous battle, is written entirely in Venetan (with some bivalent forms as well [Woolard 1998]) with the scope of not only teaching children about this key historical battle but also having them read in, and thus practice, their local language, Venetan. On the first page of the book rests its dedication to the president of the Cultural Association called Veneto Nostro—Raixe Venete (‘Our Veneto—Veneto roots’) which says, Original Standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

1. Al Popolo Veneto 2. parché, vardando al futuro 3. el sàpie riscovèrxare prima posibile

To the Veneto People because, by looking at the future they know how to rediscover as soon as possible the value of their Identity and the power of History which has seen it [i.e., Venetans] powerful in the world for centuries and centuries

4. el valór de la so Identità e la fòrsa 5. de la Storia che lo ga visto pa secoli 6. e secoli grando inte’l mondo Source: (Morello and Nardo 2010)

58 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization As this dedication shows, this book is not just for children who need to learn about the history of the Republic of Venice and about its power across the centuries; it is especially dedicated to all Venetans. The six lines of this text are almost entirely in Venetan (with some bivalent forms as well). While codeswitching has recently been studied as a discursive strategy in discursive practices in various settings (Gumperz 1982; Perrino 2015c, 2018b), it is useful to note its use in written texts as well, as this example shows. By using mostly Venetan over standardized Italian, this book is dedicated to speakers of this language who can share their past history, traditions, and language and whose identity is felt as Venetan. In lines 2–6, the author wishes that Venetans would rediscover their identity and the power of their historical background as soon as possible. Only through a close reading of their history could Venetans see and feel the great power they have had across the centuries and around the world—referring to the power that the Republic of Venice had for over one thousand years of domination. This identity is believed to be just for Venetans; it is thus an intimate collective identity that cannot be shared with other Italians, nor can it be shared with migrant groups, who are thus excluded. Intimacies of exclusion are, again, subtly emerging intertextually, through these lines as well and thus show the circulating ideologies from which these stances can exist and solidify across spatiotemporal scales. In other words, while this children’s book is intended to revitalize the local language, it also promotes a strong revalorization of Veneto history and traditions, without which Venetans would not be able to create an intimate space that can be shared only among themselves.  During my many trips to the Veneto region since 2003, I have seen an increase in the use of Venetan in public signage as well. Many of the towns in Veneto now have signs in both languages, Venetan and standardized Italian, or signs in which codeswitching between the two codes is used. Figure 2.7 shows an example of this phenomenon. The posters featured in this photograph were placed right at the center of the main hall of the train station of Padua (Padova). These posters were three-sided and orange in color, and they advertised the alcoholic aperitif called Spritz, considered traditional in this region. One side of one poster reads, “Par bevar un Spritz no ghe vol un privé, serve na piassa,” and the corresponding standardized Italian is “per bere uno spritz non ci vuole un posto privato, serve una piazza” (‘to drink a Spritz [one] doesn’t need a private place, [one] needs a piazza [i.e., a big square in downtown areas in Italian towns]’). Another side of the same poster reads, “bevitelo anca a casa” where “anca” is in Venetan and means ‘drink it at home as well’ (Perrino 2013). To whom are these public posters addressed? Who can fully understand and appreciate them? They are clearly placed in these public spaces for Venetans to remind them about their traditions, their foods, wines, and art. By using Venetan as their main code, these various signs have a powerful metasemiotic message: Venetans can drink Spritz

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  59

Figure 2.7 Caption: Three-sided poster at the station of Padova (Padua), Veneto region Source: photo taken by the author in August 2012 [see Perrino 2013]

intimately in their homes or in public piazzas, where intimate connections might be felt on a larger scale. Still, it is a ritual that unites Venetans, who thus co-construct their intimate identities with their families or with other Venetans who can share and appreciate these rituals. These revitalization signs, and many others, demonstrate that language revitalization is not an isolated endeavor; rather it always involves other spheres, such as political aspirations to become more prominent as a European state separate from Italy. Through these revitalization initiatives, moreover, Venetan is thus transformed into a political emblem of regional group membership. As I show in Chapters 4 and 5, this sense of bounded groupness has emerged in Venetans’ oral narratives and joketelling practices as well, where, strategically, speakers use code-shifts at particular moments of their telling to make specific comments or remarks. That language revitalization initiatives are intrinsically connected with aspirations to autonomy and secession becomes evident on the Liga Veneta Repubblica’s website. Importantly, in their view, their history, art, and language have belonged to them for thousands of years, as their stories have revealed. In this way, their intimate and collective identities are reinforced by these circulating separatist ideologies. The politicization of Venetan immediately emerges in the Liga Veneta Repubblica’s

60 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization signage, which metadiscursively links this language variety to their political agenda. On their website, for example, one of their mottos says, Original Standard Italian and Venetan

English Translation

paroni a casa nostra cresciamo grazie ai veneti

[we are] owners of our own home [we] grow thanks to the Veneto people

This emblem is addressed to all Venetans, who are invited to take ownership of their own land (against the Italian state and migrants) and thereby exert local control over it. The last line, written in standardized Italian, “cresciamo grazie ai veneti” (‘we grow thanks to Venetans’) suggests the autonomy that this region has wished to have for many years with respect to the other Italian regions and to the Italian state. This line has recently become emblematic of the whole political party, as it has appeared on each page of the Veneto section of the Lega Nord’s main website.16 Co-constructing Venetans’ collective identity through these revitalization initiatives not only solidifies a sense of intimacy and of being safeguarded from newcomers, such as migrants, but it also creates a collective aspiration for autonomy and independence from the Italian state. This autonomy has been desired for a long time, however. Even in antique prints and books, what today is the Veneto region was represented as an autonomous state as the original nineteenth-century print represented in Figure 2.8 indicates. Here, the antique map of the old capital of the Veneto region, Padova (Padua), is represented with many details. Today, the main town of the Veneto region is Venice. The inscription below the antique map says, “La Città di Padova Capitale della Provincia Padovana nello Stato Veneto” (‘The Town of Padua, Capital of the Paduan Province of the Veneto State’), indicating that Veneto was a state coming from the powerful Republic of Venice. Figure 2.8 is a photograph that I took of this antique print that I have inherited from a family member living in the United States but who was born in Padova. She offered me this print ten years ago or so contending that I was the only one in her family to be really “Venetan” and to be able to appreciate this print fully. Intimate identities between family members, enacted through various forms of “kinship chronotopes” (Agha 2015), are thus kept alive through the generational passage of cultural and artistic objects, such as antique prints, and through the revitalization of the code that has been spoken for centuries. In the many stories I have collected since 2003 in Veneto, the history of this region has always emerged. In their narratives, Venetans always go back to the Republic of Venice to claim the desired autonomy of the Veneto region, which, in their eyes, should be a state separate from the rest of Italy. More evidence of the aspirations of this region’s independence from Italy is shown by the various referenda that have been organized in recent

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  61

Figure 2.8 Caption: Nineteenth-century original print owned by the author. Inscription: “La Città di Padova Capitale della Provincia Padovana nello Stato Veneto” (‘The Town of Padua, Capital of the Paduan Province of the Veneto State’) Source:—photo taken by the author in July 2019

years, the last one being in September 2017, which was very well attended by Venetan voters. On their website, there are also emblems that have been used to advertise these referenda in which they define themselves as Veneti d’Europa (‘Venetans of Europe’), emphasizing their belonging to the European Union and their wish to separate from the Italian state, which has denied them their autonomy and the official recognition of their Venetan identity and language (Perrino 2018a). This separatist political position also manifests itself at times in the way this local, minority language is used with respect to the hegemonic standardized Italian. As Meek and Messing (2007) demonstrate for the Kaska and Nahuatl indigenous languages, a variety of roles and relationships can be constructed between minority languages undergoing revitalization and their dominant languages (English and Spanish, respectively), and the relationship between Venetan and standardized Italian shows similar dialogic tensions. By claiming their own language, land, traditions, and history through many revitalizing initiatives, members of the Venetan community of practice enact and solidify their regional, collective identity. Furthermore, by re-invoking their long history of autonomy and power, Venetans not only reinforce their sense of belonging to the European Union instead of Italy,

62 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization but they also assert their authority over their destiny and future (Meek 2012). In comparing these revitalization efforts with other similar initiatives in the European Union, it becomes apparent that the Veneto region has followed a different path. While France, Germany, and Spain have turned to some European structures to seek policy advice, support, and advocacy beyond the individual nation-state in an effort to follow the main European integration trends (Trenz 2007), Venetan promoters have not relied on these macro-social factors for their support. Rather, it has been Italy-internal political and economic forces that best explain these revitalization efforts, as I have contended in this chapter.

2.7 Concluding Remarks If language revitalization is not just about language, where should scholars start their investigations? Put another way, if a language needs to be maintained, or revived, what are the other variables that need to be considered in this process? While these questions have been debated for decades, it has become widely accepted that language revitalization is not an isolated phenomenon. Diverse forces (re)acting in multiple directions might require/yield different revitalizing configurations. In all the cases examined in this chapter, as diverse as they are, history, art, and politico-sociocultural realities have played a key role in promoting the local language, Venetan. By exploring revitalization dynamics across spatiotemporal scales, processes of changes in the Veneto region have emerged. Members of the Liga Veneta Repubblica, and of the Lega Nord, more generally (Cavanaugh 2004, 2012), have been promoting Venetan with political value, they have been politicizing it, so that they can recruit more speakers and thus more members who could also support their political agenda in its various points, such as excluding migrant groups from their region and from Italy more generally (Perrino 2015c, 2018b). By revitalizing not only their local language but also their past and present traditions and their historical and prestigious background, Venetans thus create intimacies of exclusion vis-à-vis non-speakers of this language and people who don’t share their past. In this way, Venetans can became “faithful” members of the Veneto region and of the Liga Veneta Repubblica, and they can thus share a collective intimate identity by just inhabiting these roles. Collective identification can emerge for various pragmatic ends, such as forms of solidarity among migrant communities (Van De Mieroop 2015), sharing common market values in defense of a national image and reputation (Kohler and Perrino 2017), or, as in the cases explored in this chapter, revalorizing their own regional language, culture, and history and, at the same time, elevating imaginary boundaries against migrant groups. It becomes clear that revitalizing a language is not an isolated effort; rather, the language being revalorized is just one side of the overall story. There

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  63 are multiple factors that influence the revitalization process, which is not unidirectional, nor is it predictable. This multiplicity of factors shaping a revitalization process becomes more visible by looking at not only words and expressions used in the local language that is being revitalized but also at the historical background of the people who have used that language. History and culture emerge semiotically through key symbols, such as the lion of Venice; significant colors, such as the colors of the Liga Veneta Repubblica’s flag; and meaningful shapes, such as the flag’s six tails representing the six main towns of the Veneto region. Textual artifacts, such as historical books for children written in Venetan and written rationales about them, play a crucial role as well in this process. By reading certain lines in standardized Italian with frequent codeswitches into Venetan, Venetans reinforce their collective identity, which becomes intimate and not sharable, as I showed in my examples. Analogously, narrative practices, such as the ones I collected in my interviews, show a similar dynamic: history and art are transposed into the storytelling event to emphasize the uniqueness of Venetan culture, language, and people. Time and space interweave in significant configurations and thus reinforce this sense of Venetan identity, which is intimate and collective at the same time. Through their stories, as I show in Chapter 4, speakers of Venetan include certain participants who can share the local code and who can thus understand their prestigious past and present political view, while excluding other groups, such as newcomers or speakers from other Italian regions. In this social identification process, however, Venetans also develop a strong sense of defense of this identity, since it is part of their DNA (see Chapter 1), as many of them claim, and cannot be amalgamated with other identities—an unfortunate rhetoric that has become more common across the globe, including in the United States. As I show in the next chapter, analytical tools such as the Bakhtinian chronotope, stancetaking, and a scalar approach (the chronotope being a special type of scale, collapsing time and space in significant ways) are key theoretical and analytical tools in unveiling these revitalization and racialization processes.

Notes   1. For the original Italian version of Cristina’s short narrative excerpt, see Chapter 4, section 4.2, entitled “Racialized Narratives in Research Qualitative Interviews.”   2. The deputy prime minister of the Italian Republic, who is also called ‘vice-president of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic’ (Vicepresidente del Consiglio dei ministri della Repubblica Italiana), is a senior member of the Italian Cabinet. She or he is often colloquially referred to as Vicepremier.   3. See, for example, how Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini invokes ethnic cleansing themes across Italy: www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ italy-matteo-salvini-video-immigration-mass-cleansing-roma-travellers-farright-league-party-a8409506.html (last accessed 07/20/2019).

64 The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization   4. Presently, the Lega Nord is composed of 15 sub-sections in the following regions (in alphabetical order): Abruzzo (Lega Nord Abruzzo), EmiliaRomagna (which has two sub-sections: Lega Nord Emilia and Lega Nord Romagna), Friuli Venezia Giulia (Lega Nord Friuli Venezia Giulia, with minor sub-sections), Liguria (Lega Nord Liguria), Lombardia (Lega Nord Lombardia), Marche (Lega Nord March), Piemonte (Lega Nord Piemont [in their local language]), Sardegna (Lega Nord Sardinia), Toscana (Lega Nord Toscana), Trentino Alto-Adige Sud Tirolo (which has two sub-sections: Lega Nord Trentino and Lega Nord Sud Tirol Alto Adige), Umbria (Lega Nord Umbria), Valle D’Aosta (Lega Nord Valle D’Aosta), and Veneto (Liga Veneta Repubblica).   5. As I am writing this book, however, an Italian government crisis has just taken place. New elections will thus happen soon (https://time.com/5659693/ italy-government-collapse/, last accessed, August 25, 2019).  6. The Lega is also often referred to as “il Carroccio” as a symbol of a fourwheeled war altar mounting a large vexillum standard, drawn by oxen, used by the medieval republics of Italy. It was a rectangular platform on which the symbolic flag of the city and an altar were erected. At that time, various priests celebrated their Mass at the altar before the battle, and the trumpeters beside them encouraged the fighters to the battle. This structure was very common in many towns of the Lombardy region and in Northern Italy more generally. Hence, the Lega’s adoption of this symbol.   7. For more details on the emblems of the Lega, see www.leganord.org/ (last accessed 07/20/2019).   8. In Italy, the president of the Republic (Presidente della Repubblica) doesn’t have as much power as in countries such as the United States. The president usually appoints a prime minister, officially called Presidente del Consiglio (‘president of the Council [of all the Ministers’]) of the Italian government. The government is then formed by an alliance of the main two political parties, called Coalizione (‘Coalition’), with the prime minister as their head. The Lega has been one of the most important political parties in the government’s coalition for many years, even when the coalition was composed of more than two political parties.   9. This and other segments of Gentilini’s infamous political rally can be found in the following YouTube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WCZNQJkV3E (last accessed, August 25, 2019). 10. www.ilgazzettino.it/nordest/treviso/odio_razziale_gentilini_condannato_ appello_sceriffo_sentenza_ingiusta-196245.html (last accessed on August 25, 2019). 11. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/italy-matteo-salvini-video-immi gration-mass-cleansing-roma-travellers-far-right-league-party-a8409506. html (last accessed on July 30, 2019). 12. In this book, I refer to Venetan (Coluzzi 2008; 2009) as the language spoken in the Veneto region and among transnational communities of practice of Venetans. I opt not to use the term “dialect” to refer to this or other local languages given the language ideologies existing around this definition— dialects being considered as not full-fledged languages like the standardized language(s) with which they co-exist. Similarly, I refer to Venetans as the inhabitants of the Veneto region or the people who migrated from this region elsewhere and as the speakers of Venetan. 13. In the 13th century, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was one of the most prolific poets and writers in the literary circles of that age. Besides his many famous works on language use, such as De Vulgari Eloquentia (1304–1307) and on politics, such as De Monarchia (1313), Dante has been renowned for his

The Lega Nord and Language Revitalization  65 Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy), which was written from 1308 until 1321. His work came to be among the most famous ones in Italy’s rich literary landscape. With Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the literature of the 14th century not only dominated the literary European landscape for many centuries, but it can also be considered the starting point of the Italian Rinascimento (Renaissance). Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio became key figures in the creation of new Italian styles that defined the sociocultural and literary Italian landscape for many years to come (Contini 1960, 1982). 14. The Associazione Veneti nel Mondo, which has different subsections around the world, was founded in Verona on 28 March 1998 as “un’associazione culturale e di aggregazione degli emigrati veneti all’estero” (‘a cultural association of Venetan emigrants living abroad’), and it has been expanding rapidly in different parts of the world since then. On its website, the association’s narrative about its history claims that 3.3 million Venetans migrated abroad between 1876 and 1976, allegedly constituting the highest number of Italian migrants in general. These narratives frame the migration out of Veneto as a search to find fortune abroad (and in other regions of Italy), as the Veneto region was poor and heavily dependent on agricultural activities (Holmes 1989) during that historical period (Perrino 2013). 15. To increase this global circulation and dialogue between center and peripheries, for example, one of their most recent initiatives has been to create and support a new network, named GlobalVen, for Venetans migrating abroad. This is an initiative that tries to recruit Venetans’ talent (businesspeople, university professors, artisans, and so forth) across the globe and to create a cultural exchange among them and between them and the central region, Veneto (Perrino 2013). 16. See www.leganord.veneto.it/, last accessed 07/27/2019.

 

3

Racializing Narratives Stance, Scale, and Chronotope

[we] had Muslims, [we] had Muslim chiefs who then come here fifty [at once] but it is always the case that theyto avoid them, [you] have to see them before the other [patients] a little bit how the gypsies were on[ce]now [we] are better I mean once a [patient] came because I remember years ago [we] had a problem with with an extracomunitario that [we] couldn’t succeed in understanding [. . .] that is we, with respect to Africans [we] feel they [the African migrants], with respect to us, I believe that [they] conside::::r themselvesthat they consider us as we consider the Americans [i.e., as a land of opportunity] that @ is you@ng @@@@ this is why [I] believe that the Chinese are people who will integrate less in thirty years[in] fifty years, the little niggers here =we poor Italians @@@@@@@ (Female dermatologist, Veneto region, March 2003)1

3.1 Introduction During my fieldwork in Northern Italy, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, I conducted many interviews in several hospitals as part of a project on the transnational ties affecting Senegalese ethnomedicine in West Africa. At that time, I was especially interested in exploring how Senegalese patients interacted with Italian doctors and how their medical cures were used in combination with Western biomedicine. As I describe later in this chapter, in March 2003, I interviewed the female dermatologist featured in the preceding epigraph in a group interview setting. The speech participants, including me, were fluent in both standardized Italian and Venetan. During this speech event, the dermatologist created various intimate moments in which I quickly became an insider, since I was also born in the Veneto region. Intimacies of exclusion emerged through her narratives at particular moments, especially when she codeswitched between the two codes. By

Racializing Narratives  67 codeswitching from standardized Italian to Venetan, coupled with bursts of laughter, the dermatologist repositioned the other speech participants as insiders who can share her nativist ideologies. By using several discursive strategies (Gumperz 1982), she created fluid states of inclusion and exclusion among the speech participants: she included the other doctor and me in her participation framework (Goffman 1981) while excluding the migrant groups. As these narrative excerpts demonstrate, intimacies of exclusion are co-constructed by the present speech participants and thus legitimized in Veneto. After an overview of how recent research on narrative has shifted from a text-oriented model to a practice-oriented paradigm (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012, 2015) and how researchers have applied this paradigm to various linguistic anthropological subfields, this chapter introduces the notions of stance and stancetaking, the Bakhtinian chronotope, and spatiotemporal scales, as I apply them to narrative practices. I thus emphasize the dynamic nature of narratives in interaction by showing how these discursive practices, and their analysis, are key in understanding ideological processes on the politics of migration in current times. I demonstrate, moreover, that these “ideological assemblages” (Kroskrity 2018, 2000) do not emerge in recent stories only and cannot be fully examined in a bounded time framework. Rather, studying narrative practices across spatiotemporal scales can offer researchers a more complete framework through which ideologies coalesce, emerge, and get solidified. Through a careful linguistic anthropological analysis of the many narratives that I collected in the early 2000s, certain racialized patterns are clearer today, especially when they are compared to more recent stories. Furthermore, the circulating ideologies emerging from these stories also unveil their historical underpinnings. In this way, researchers can better understand how certain narratives have been sustained and legitimized in Northern Italy since more than a decade, at its very least. It is thus key to explore narratives across long spans of time, as Woolard (2016) has suggested in her recent book, Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia. In her case, however, she conducted a 20-year longitudinal study by interviewing the same collaborators she had interviewed during her past field research.

3.2 Narratives as Discursive Practices Humans are prone to tell stories when they interact with each other. Knowing how many stories we tell in a day, for example, could be a difficult endeavor, especially because what counts as “a story” varies across disciplines. Narratives have always been primary modes in human communication and engagement across cultures, however, and have been used as key analytical tools across numerous disciplines in the social sciences and beyond. Indeed, speakers tell stories in many communicative

68  Racializing Narratives practices, and they have elaborated ideologies related to what are considered “good” or “bad” stories. While defining what a narrative is, how many units it contains, and so forth has been a daunting task in narratological studies and is certainly beyond the scope of this book, it is important to understand that only recently have narratives been appreciated not only for their content, or “denotational text,” but also for their pragmatic effects in the here-and-now of speech participants’ interactions (their “interactional text”), as I clarify in this chapter. From the classic Labovian model, in which narrative units were key elements for a narrative to be considered as such, to the more pragmatic and discursive approaches to narratives today, many advancements have been made in this field. In the 1960s, Labov and Waletzky (1966) elaborated their well-known narrative model in which narratives need to contain six units indicating the “necessary” progression of a narrative. The six Labovian narrative units are the abstract, the orientation, the complicating action, the resolution, the coda, and, finally, the evaluation (Labov and Waletzky 1966; De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012, 27–29). In Labov’s perspective, 1) the abstract summarizes the content of the story, what the story is about. It is usually made of a couple of sentences in the beginning of a story. Narrators often offer a glimpse of the stories they are about to tell (e.g., Do you know what happened to me over the weekend?). 2) In the orientation, the narrator offers some details about the characters, the location, and the time of the story. It is a contextualization of the upcoming story. 3) The complicating action is the main plot of the story, the most important events of the narrative. 4) The resolution represents the solution of the story, how the complicating action ends, positively or negatively. 5) The coda usually bridges the story with the present reality. The narrator might add a moral lesson to the story and thus might connect it to the present world. 6) In a story, the narrator might also add an evaluation, which is a personal perspective on the events presented in the story. This serves the function of orienting the listener to the key points of the story and to the lesson that the audience members should learn from the narrative (Labov and Waletzky 1966; De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012, 28–29). For Labov, the evaluation can have various ramifications given the key roles played by narrators when they “evaluate” their own stories. While the Labovian model has been used by many analysts and has been praised for identifying the units of a narrative, linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists have considered it too narrow and monologically oriented, in the sense that it does not include other speech participants’ contributions during the storytelling event. In other words, as De Fina and Georgakopoulou (2012, 35) have aptly contended, analyzing narratives through this model does not include “cases of systematic audience participation, co-construction of the story between teller and audience, and many other phenomena that characterize the telling of narratives

Racializing Narratives  69 in interaction.” Indeed, narratives are interactional events in which the classic Labovian units might not be applicable, or they might work only partially. In this light, as Ingold (2011) usefully reminds us, it is difficult, and unnatural, to add boundaries around beginnings and ends of stories. As he writes, For the things of this world are their stories, identified not by fixed attributes but by their paths of movement in an unfolding field of relations. Each is the focus of ongoing activity. Thus in the storied world, as we have already seen, things do not exist, they occur. Where things meet, occurrences intertwine, as each becomes bound up in the other’s story. Every such binding is a place or topic. It is in this binding that knowledge is generated. To know someone or something is to know their story, and to be able to join that story to one’s own. Yet, of course, people grow in knowledge not only through direct encounters with others, but also through hearing their stories told. (Ingold 2011, 160–61) For Ingold, as for many linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists, people’s past stories can become part of the present here-and-now interaction. In this way, there is not a clear division between the past story and the present storytelling event, which, at times, conflate (Perrino 2007, 2011). “To tell a story,” continues Ingold, “is to relate, in narrative, the occurrences of the past, bringing them to life in the vivid present of listeners as if they were going on here and now” so that past and present experiences can serve as great teachings for novices and children if a story is told in a family context, for example. In this more dynamic conceptualization of narrative, it is clear that the Labovian six narrative units, being too circumscribed, would thus not work. Ingold convincingly contends that there are always continuous movements between past stories and present interactional moments: There is no point at which the story ends and life begins. Stories should not end for the same reason that life should not. And in the story, as in life, it is in the movement from place to place—or from topic to topic—that knowledge is integrated. (Ingold 2011, 161) Like Ingold, many other scholars have started to embrace this more dynamic view of narrative in the last two decades. From Labov’s narrative advancements, narrative studies have indeed shifted from a text-oriented to a practice-oriented perspective of storytelling (Schiffrin 1996; Schiffrin et al. 2010; De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012; De Fina 2013). Since what has been called “the narrative turn” in the 1980s, linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists have studied narratives as performances

70  Racializing Narratives embedded in their sociocultural context and not as isolated, static texts (Bauman 1977, 1986). Narratives are indeed performances in the sense that they are contextualized and dynamic: the relations between narrators, events, and the sociocultural contexts are as important as the content of a story. In this view, narratives are interactional events in which the sociocultural surroundings are always fluid and can influence the story in unpredictable ways as it unfolds in interaction (Wortham 2001). As De Fina and Georgakopoulou acutely contend, [A] significant consequence of the fact that stories are not told in a vacuum but by tellers to audiences in specific settings and for specific purposes is that the mechanisms through which performers contextualize meanings for their audience come to the forefront. (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012, 61) Storytelling events are thus intricate and varied, since audience members not only become part of the story but also often influence and change it in the process—even silent audience members do. As Goodwin (1986) famously argued, in a storytelling event, the structure of the ongoing conversation both molds and is molded by the audience. Inspired by Goffman’s (1981) notion of participation framework, Goodwin thus emphasizes that the audience is a very intricate concept in the sense that “a group of recipients becomes an audience only when they orient to the storytelling through displays of attention and engagement” (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012, 92). Goodwin and others have compellingly demonstrated that the audience/storyteller binary is flawed, indicating how audience members can be storytellers too and can then influence the storied world of narratives. In this respect, the role of the audience is key in the interactional co-construction of these narrative practices. In this perspective, it is important to highlight, again, that narratives are valued not only for their content, or the “denotational text” (originally called “narrated event” by Jakobson [1957]) but also for the emerging qualities of their enactment in interaction, or the storytelling event, also known as the “interactional text” (Silverstein 1998; Wortham 2000, 2001; Perrino 2015b, 2015c), or, “narrating event” (Jakobson 1957). More specifically, while the “denotational text” refers to the coherence that the story has in terms of reference and predication about “states of affairs,” the “interactional text” refers to the quality of the coherence that the interaction itself has—what the roles of the speech participants are, what actions are being performed, how these actions are enacted, and so forth—and not necessarily the coherence of “what” interactants say (Silverstein 1998; Wortham 2000, 2001; Perrino 2015b, 2015c, 2019). In practice, of course, narrators create more intricate relations between the narrated event and narrating event, which are dynamic,

Racializing Narratives  71 heterogeneous, and fluid (Perrino and Wortham In Preparation). This is why oral narratives cannot be studied as decontextualized, denotational texts, because they are dynamically and continuously (re)configured by the interactional moves of their speech participants (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012, 2015; Schiffrin 1996; Schiffrin et al. 2010; Wortham 2000, 2001; Perrino 2005, 2007). In other words, stories are in a continuous relationship with their storytelling event in which they are created and solidified across spatiotemporal scales, as has been explored in various settings, such as interviews (De Fina and Perrino 2011; Perrino 2011; Wortham et al. 2011; Veronesi 2019), classrooms (Rymes 2008; Wortham 2001, 2006), medical and therapy settings (AinsworthVaughn 1998), and, more recently, the digital realm as well (Page 2011, 2015; De Fina 2016; De Fina and Toscano-Gore 2017; De Fina and Perrino 2017, 2019; Perrino 2017). It is precisely this orientation of narrative studies that I extend to narrative practices about the politics of migration in Italy, a topic that can unveil participants’ heterogeneous stances of exclusion of newcomers while creating intimate spaces of inclusion for Venetans and Northern Italians more generally. In these cases, anti-immigrant stances emerge in narratives—stances that can be widely shared and that can help solidify intimacies of exclusion (Perrino 2018c) with other speech participants who might share the same political views of the storytellers. Before describing the concepts of stance, stancetaking, and scale that have inspired this book, I briefly turn to the Bakhtinian chronotope, another important notion that has assisted me in demonstrating how time and space often conflate in narrative practices and which runs through the analysis of the narrative excerpts presented in this book.

3.3 Narrative Practices Through Spatiotemporal Scales: The Bakhtinian Chronotope In my research on Senegalese and Northern Italian narratives (Perrino 2007, 2011, 2015a; Perrino and Kohler In Press), I have been profoundly inspired by the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s writings (1981). More specifically, I have applied his concept of chronotope, which literally means “time space,” as a way to analyze the entwined temporal and spatial dimensions in narrative practices. With the rediscovery of Bakhtin and his circle in the 1980s by English-speaking scholars, fields such as linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics came to recognize its use in exploring the linguistic construction of time and space as they emerge in everyday discursive practices rather than in novelistic discourse as Bakhtin did in his work. “We will give the name chronotope (literally ‘time space’) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature,” wrote Bakhtin in 1937 (1981, 84–85; emphasis in original). Originally, Bakhtin

72  Racializing Narratives used this concept to study literary works, such as the well-known novels by Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, Balzac, and Rabelais. In his view, In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. (1981, 84) In his analysis of novels, Bakhtin unveiled some generic literary chronotopes, for example, the chronotope of “the encounter,” which he also called the “real-life chronotope of meeting” in which the time, the place, and the rank of the person met are fundamental to the kind of event being narrated. Bakhtin also explored other types of chronotope, such as that of “the road,” which is connected to the chronotope of meeting, since, in literature, many encounters happen on the road at a precise time. The chronotope of “the castle” derives from the Gothic novels of seventeenth-century England in which castles played a key role. The chronotope of cafés and salons, which figured prominently in French novels, such as the ones written by Stendhal and Balzac, were important places for literary and political encounters. The chronotopes of “threshold” and “crisis” are intimately linked to emotional stances since important novelistic actions happen in such locations as stairs, corridors, and so forth, at various moments of the day or night. Bakhtin elaborated many other kinds of chronotopes and emphasized that they are especially central to the narrative genres since “[t]he chronotope is the place where the knots of narrative are tied and untied” (1981, 434). Over the last two decades, linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists have explored time and space in conjunction, thus using the chronotope as one of their key units of analysis (Agha 2007, 2015; Blanton 2011; Blommaert 2015; Dick 2010; Divita 2014; Karimzad and Catedral 2018a, 2018b; Koven 2013; Manning 2017; Perrino 2007, 2011, 2015a; Perrino and Kohler In Press; Rosa 2015; Vokes and Pype 2018; Wirtz 2016; Woolard 2012, 2016, to mention just a few). After the initial foundational studies on this topic, such as Haviland’s (1996) research on spatiotemporal “transposition,” which Michael Lempert and I have treated as an analogy to Bakhtin’s chronotope (Lempert and Perrino 2007), many other researchers have applied this concept in original ways. Referring to narrative practices, for example, Silverstein has redefined Bakhtin’s chronotope in these terms: “the temporally (hence, chrono-) and spatially (hence, -tope) particular envelope in the narrated universe of social space-time in which and through which, in emplotment, narrative characters move” (Silverstein 2005, 6). While this perspective is narrower than Bakhtin’s

Racializing Narratives  73 original definition, it makes this notion a rich field for linguistic anthropological research. Inspired by this latest line of inquiry and by Wortham’s (1994) notion of “participant examples,” in my research on Senegalese and Italian oral narratives (Perrino 2007, 2015a), I have extended the chronotope concept to what I name “participant transposition,” which clearly shows how narratives can be creatively changed and manipulated by speech participants while the storytelling event unfolds. In some of the cases I examined, for example, Senegalese storytellers “move” their addressees into their stories by transforming them from past characters into real-time persons, such as the interviewer or other co-present participants. In this way, storytellers create a certain coherence of the interaction in progress while the boundaries between the story (or the narrated event) and the storytelling event (or the narrating event) are blurred. In these cases, there is an alignment between the chronotope of the narrated event (what the story is about, its content) and the chronotope of the storytelling event (the way the story is being told or performed by the storyteller in the here-and-now interaction). Past and present are thus part of the same frame in a chronotopic alignment in which time and space are blended in complex configurations. In this way, the chronotope concept helps unveil the hybridity and the continuous movement of past characters and interactants in storytelling events. Chronotopes are thus useful in unveiling racializing stances as well, as I show in many of my case studies. Focusing on politics, for example, Blanton (2011) argues that several forms of “environmental racism” emerge in “chronotopic landscapes” in a black community in Oklahoma. Through a close analysis of speakers’ chronotopic discourses, Blanton unveils patterns of “racialized spaces” in which degradation and pollution have been implemented by both contemporary and past municipalities. In this way, by exploring time and space and their numerous fused configurations, various forms of environmental racism come into view in Blanton’s analysis. Exploring migration issues across spatiotemporal scales in France, moreover, Divita (2014) shows how chronotopes are (co)constructed in Spanish seniors’ stories. More specifically, he studies theater performances in a social center where groups of Spanish seniors recount narratives of returning to their country, Spain, after many years of living abroad (France). These narratives of return are characterized by various chronotopic configurations, such as a “modernist chronotope” associated with France, which is the symbol of progress and sophistication for Divita’s collaborators, and, on the opposite end, a chronotope of backwardness and being rural associated with Spain, which is viewed as retrograde and provincial with respect to France. In this way, through the continuous shifting between these two main chronotopes, speech participants can (re) create, and thus make sense of, their past, present, and future migratory routes and experiences. Analogously, Koven (2013) analyzes the construction of racist and antiracist social types among Luso descendants living in

74  Racializing Narratives France. As she argues, the existence of these social types is grounded on particular chronotopes that cast some societies as more progressive than others. Like in Divita’s study, Koven’s collaborators framed France as a more progressive and antiracist society, while Portugal is portrayed as more backward and racist. In a similar vein, but within the context of the United States, Dick (2010) shows how Uriangatenese migration discourse relies on a particular modernist chronotope characterized by the contrast between Mexico and the United States, where the former is associated with morality, socioeconomic stagnation, and a slower place of life and the latter is constructed as a place of modernity, progress, and immorality. Dick shows how Uriangatenese construct themselves as belonging to certain social types (mis)aligning with this modernist chronotope. Focusing more on migrants’ identity construction, Blommaert and De Fina (2017) examine the construction of individuals’ identities in various migration settings. Inspired by Bakhtin’s notions, they elaborate on the concept of “chronotopic identities,” which, in their view, are formed at once by including several facets of migrants’ sociocultural life. This notion is particularly useful when studying complex, superdiverse environments such as multilingual locations characterized by migrants belonging to many nationalities and ethnic groups, speaking many languages, and having diverse histories, religious beliefs, and migration routes. From Blommaert and De Fina’s perspective, this allows analysts to investigate their identities in more accurate, realistic ways. Similarly, as I mentioned earlier, chronotopic identities emerge in Woolard’s (2012, 2016) longitudinal study focusing on how Castilian speakers have incorporated the Catalan language into their lives and identities in the Barcelona area in Spain. In particular, Woolard explores three chronotopes emerging in her follow-up interviews with her collaborators 20 years after the time she first met them in the 1980s: 1) a “biographical chronotope” for speech participants who have positively adapted to the acquisition of Catalan in their lives; 2) a “socio-historical chronotope” in which her interviewees see how their everyday lives have changed politically, socially, and historically; 3) a “chronotope of adventure time in everyday life,” in which her collaborators see their lives across long spans of time and spaces and in adventurous terms—similar to Bakhtin’s descriptions of novelistic characters traveling through time and space in rapid, fictional ways. Through these three chronotopes, Woolard is thus able to explore how her collaborators’ various identities have been constructed, and transformed, across temporal and spatial scales.

3.4 Chronotopes Through Scalar Intimacy In her research, Woolard (2012, 2016) also demonstrates that chronotopes are special types of scales, since time and space are culturally and discursively flattened in them through complex and unpredictable

Racializing Narratives  75 configurations. Unlike Blommaert (2015), who keeps chronotopes and scales as distinct analytical units,2 Woolard sees the various scalar dimensions as part of chronotopic configurations. Following her insights, I see chronotopes as spatiotemporal configurations that are scalar by nature. Within this scalar dimension, analysts can better explore social types as they interact, their narrative practices, and the embodiment of their (non) emotional stances. Within these various scalar configurations, I locate intimate relations that are co-constructed among participants during their storytelling events to better explore issues of exclusionary intimacies in interaction. An intimacy that has scalar qualities has emerged in many of the narratives that I collected among Northern Italians. As Pritzker and I have recently contended, the notion of scalar intimacy, as we define it, is very useful since it captures individuals’ embodied emotions and experiences in fluid and heterogeneous ways. In this respect, scalar intimacy is constituted by two overarching qualities, both of which are indexed by the term itself. First, scalar intimacy is, as the name suggests, “scalar”: it is enacted in multiple scaling strategies or “scaling projects” in which people use language to make analogies and draw important distinctions among things in the world, including people, ideas, and styles . . . Second, as a process of identification and contingency that is fundamentally rooted in ongoing relationships, scalar intimacy is “intimate.” (Pritzker and Perrino Under Review) Scalar intimacy, as we conceive of it, is thus chronotopic by nature since it involves people’s rapid and fluid actions through time and space. These chronotopic configurations can be more or less intimate depending on individuals’ emotional involvement, which can vary from context to context. Scalar intimacy thus involves the embodiment of speech participants’ sociocultural, political, and emotional stances as well as the co-construction of their individual and collective identities in the process. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, at times, these chronotopic relations can become as intimate as kinship relationships (Agha 2015; McIntosh 2015). Chronotopes are indeed complexly interrelated with intimate stances, especially in settings where family ties are appealed in participants’ storytelling events. As Agha (2015, 402) contends [P]articipants in social practices around the world routinely invoke the idiom of kinship to perform or construe interpersonal behaviors, whether their own or of those they meet or try to imagine. In doing so, they inhabit kin-like relationships with persons or groups that are sometimes nearby in time and place (such as their interlocutors), and sometimes quite far (such as the dead or the unborn). The social-semiotic practices through which people inhabit these relations are kinship

76  Racializing Narratives behaviors whose participants rely on chronotopic formulations of place, time, and personhood […] in order to become recognizable to each other as social beings of specific kinds, whether as persons already belonging to, or as persons hoping to avoid, group-specific historical trajectories in relation to others. It is thus important to also understand the omnipresent chronotopic and scalar dimensions in our everyday lives. Scales are key in understanding these processes in narrative practices as well. As Carr and Lempert (2016a, 4) argue, individuals continuously shift from one scale to another so that they can “anchor and (re)orient” themselves vis-à-vis already existing scales, such as those offered by various institutions, as well as developing new ones.” Scalar work emerges in narrative practices as individuals, continue the authors, “orient their actions, organize their experience, and make determinations about who and what is valuable” (Carr and Lempert 2016a, 9). As Pritzker and I (Pritzker and Perrino Under Review) have recently contended, “Scalar intimacy, in its fundamental reliance upon observing the pragmatic construction of scale in socially situated narratives, is thus highly attentive to the personal, embodied, and experiential (e.g., intimate) aspects of scale-making projects.” In concert with Woolard’s (2016) claim, chronotopes are thus particular types of scales and help analysts unveil not only their individual stances but also the co-construction of intimacies of exclusion vis-à-vis migrant groups at various scales, such as the regional scale, when narrators use the local code for example (Perrino 2015c); the national scale, when speakers enact their nationality by elevating their brand names and by adding protective, imaginary boundaries around themselves (Kohler and Perrino 2017); and other scalar moves that can change moment-bymoment in and through storytelling events. Intimacy, as I see it, is thus scalar by nature and emerges through the various stances that storytellers enact while they deliver their narratives. Stance and stancetaking are thus important notions especially in the examination of racialized narratives as I show in the remaining sections of this chapter.

3.5 Racialized Storytelling: Stance and Stancetaking How do narrators enact their individual and collective identities, and how do they navigate scalar intimacy? How can their identities be collective and intimate at the same time? How and why do they enact intimacies of exclusion while they tell their stories? Narrative practices are key sites to study sociocultural identification through the notions of stance and stancetaking, which are integral to the concepts that I described earlier in this chapter. Through their storytelling, speech participants enact and congeal their sociocultural identities by the various stances that they might take while they deliver their stories (Wortham 2004, 2006; De Fina 2003, 2013; to

Racializing Narratives  77 mention just a few). Stance (Du Bois 2007) and stancetaking, being defined as “taking up a position with respect to the form or the content of one’s utterance” (Jaffe 2009a, 2) have been widely used in linguistic anthropological research, as in the poetics of debate (Lempert 2008), classroom discourse (Jaffe 2009b; Bucholtz 2009), textual analysis (Irvine 2009), and the digital realm (Chun and Walters 2011; Walton and Jaffe 2011; Koven and Simões Marques 2015; Chun 2016; Perrino 2017). Goffman’s (1959, 1981) key notion of “footing” and the various types of speech participants’ alignments and disalignments in interaction are particularly salient in the conceptualization of stance and stancetaking. When Northern Italians align or disalign with a certain racialized remark or joke, for example, they may or may not take a certain stance in favor of or against it. In his well-known essay entitled “The Stance Triangle,” Du Bois (2007) contends that stance has some components that need to be taken into account when studying interaction, such as evaluation, positioning, and alignment. In this respect, in taking a stance, the stance taker first evaluates an object, then positions a subject (usually the self), and finally (dis)aligns with other subjects. For Du Bois, this particular configuration is key in understanding stancetaking processes as he defines stance as a public act by a social actor, achieved dialogically through overt communicative means (language, gesture, and other symbolic forms), through which social actors simultaneously evaluate objects, position subjects (themselves and others), and align with other subjects, with respect to any salient dimension of the sociocultural field. (2007, 163) As Du Bois underlines, the stance triangle is key in understanding processes of stancetaking since it helps capture participants’ positioning, alignment, and evaluation all at once. Similarly, but with a clearer focus on the performativity of stance, Jaffe (2009a, 4) describes stance as “an emergent property of interaction” that is not transparent and thus needs to be studied in empirical material within a sociocultural and historical context. As she writes, Speaker stances are thus performances through which speakers may align or disalign themselves with and/or ironize stereotypical associations with particular linguistic forms; stances may thus express multiple or ambiguous meanings. This makes stance a crucial point of entry in analyses that focus on the complex ways in which speakers manage multiple identities (or multiple aspects of identity). The focus on process also foregrounds multiplicities in the audiences indexed by particular linguistic practices, and on the social dynamics and consequences of audience reception, uptake, and interpretation. (Jaffe 2009a, 4)

78  Racializing Narratives Jaffe, moreover, emphasizes the inherently political nature of stancetaking when she contends that “the taking up of particular kinds of stances is habitually and conventionally associated with particular subject positions (social roles and identities; notions of personhood), and interpersonal and social relationships (including relations of power) more broadly” (Jaffe 2009a, 4). Along these lines, in their research on Orientalism and humor in digital platforms, Chun and Walter (2011) have contended that virtual participants’ humoristic stances can politicize digital spaces, such as blogs and YouTube, given the rapid recontextualization and (re)circulation of racialized remarks and Orientalist ideologies (Chun 2016; Perrino 2017) in these platforms. Similarly, Leppänen and Elo (2016) contend that by creating buffalaxed YouTube videos in which political stances are made vis-à-vis “the Orient,” Westerners can easily spread these Orientalist ideologies at a very fast pace within the context of superdiverse (Blommaert and Rampton 2016) communities of practice.3 In this vein, as I mentioned earlier, when speakers take a stance, they might move through different scales, by scaling up or scaling down, while delivering a racialized remark in their local code, for instance. By codeswitching from the national standardized code to a more local one, narrators scale down and create solidarity and intimacy with speakers who can understand their local code. Since scalar distinctions are never ideologically neutral (Carr and Lempert 2016b), especially in the context of migration and its politics, it is important that analysts take these processes into account. As Gal aptly writes, “scaling implies positioning and, hence, point of view: a perspective from which scales (modes of comparison) are constructed and from which aspects of the world are evaluated with respect to them” (Gal 2016, 91). Thus, when narrators scale up or scale down, they align or disalign not only with their remarks but with the surrounding context as well. In other words, they reposition themselves in their participation frameworks by aligning or disaligning with the ongoing interactional patterns. Their stances thus become more pronounced if they are scaled up or scaled down. Therefore, these exclusionary dynamics offer a window to better understand speech participants’ sociocultural knowledge and language ideologies (Schieffelin et al. 1998; Irvine and Gal 2000; Gal and Irvine 2019) around politics and migration issues in Italy in a historical moment in which migration crises have emerged not only in the Mediterranean Sea (Albahari 2015a, 2015b) but across the globe as well, including in the United States (Santa Ana and GonzaÌlez de Bustamante 2012). Exploring racialized remarks through stance and stancetaking in storytelling events is one of the main contributions of this book. Linguistic anthropological research on racialized language has been very prolific in the last decade. In their foundational Special Issue entitled Complicating Race: Articulating Race Across Multiple Social Dimensions, Samy Alim and Angela Reyes (2011) rightly argue that scholars need to include

Racializing Narratives  79 race as part of other social dimensions, such as class, gender, and sexuality, since it cannot be studied as an isolated entity. Race and racializing processes are indeed part of people’s everyday lives although, at times, these processes do not clearly emerge. An increasing number of linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists have turned their attention to these racializing dynamics in various discursive practices and settings more intensely both in offline domains (Jacquemet 2005; Chun 2009; Alim et al. 2010, Alim et al. 2016; Dick and Wirtz 2011; Lo and Fung 2011; Reyes 2011; Perrino 2015b, 2018b; Rosa 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2019; Chun and Lo 2016; Rosa and Flores 2017) and in the digital world as well (Chun and Walters 2011; Walton and Jaffe 2011; Chun 2013, 2016; Mendoza-Denton 2016; Perrino 2017). Using a “raciolinguistic perspective” (Rosa and Flores 2017), for example, Jonathan Rosa (2019) has recently demonstrated how raciolinguistic ideologies emerge on a daily basis in educational settings, such as high schools in Chicago. These ideologies, argues Rosa, relegate racialized students designated as Long-Term English Learners, Heritage Language Learners, and Standard English Learners to a perpetual status of linguistic deficiency regardless of the extent to which, from many perspectives, their linguistic practices might seem to correspond to standardized norms. (2019, 6) A raciolinguistic perspective has thus become a useful theoretical and analytical tool since it helps analyze “the ongoing rearticulation of colonial distinctions between populations and modes of communication that come to be positioned as more or less normatively European” (Rosa 2019, 5). Following this line of inquiry, this book studies how intimacies of exclusion are enacted by Northern Italians when they are around migrants or when their conversation topics focus on migration issues. Through a linguistic and ethnographic analysis of their narrative practices, I show different, gradient ways in which intimacies of exclusion are performed and how in each case these enactments reach beyond the immediate faceto-face encounter as the examples in the next section and in the remaining chapters illustrate.

3.6 Narrating Extracomunitari in Veneto’s Health-Care Facilities During my research in Veneto in the early 2000s, I collected many stories from doctors and nurses and other health-care professionals, as I mentioned earlier. Through a careful transcription and analysis of roughly 250 hours of interviews in these settings, I was able to find emerging patterns of intimate exclusions enacted by these social actors. I also noted that

80  Racializing Narratives many doctors inserted many short ‘joking remarks’ (battute) when the conversation topics were uncomfortable or when they wanted to lighten up the mood of the speech participants (see Chapter 5 for more examples of joke-telling performances). In the following example, whose excerpt is part of this chapter’s opening quote, I examine how racialized language is enacted by a female dermatologist and a male doctor, while they were conversing in her office during a group interview I was conducting in a hospital in the Veneto region in March 2003.4 As soon as we started our conversation on Senegalese migrants, this female dermatologist started to complain about her patients more generally. She first lamented that some Southern Italians were not willing to undress for skin examinations because of shame in showing their bodies. She soon shifted, however, to discuss migrants’ behavior in her practice’s offices. She first said that Muslim women did not undress unless their husbands were present, and then she started to make more generalized grievances about African and Chinese migrants too. All speech participants were fluent both in standardized Italian and in Venetan. D = Female dermatologist M = Male physician Original Standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

  1. D: abbiamo avuto mussulmani  2. ghemo avuo capi mussulmani   3. D: che allora vengono qua in cinquanta   4. però va a finire che loro   5. per evitarli devi vederli prima degli altri   6. un po’ com’erano gli zingari una-

‘[we] had Muslims’ ‘[we] had Muslim chiefs’ ‘who then come here fifty [at once]’

  7. adesso semo pi boni   8. cioè una volta è venuto uno   9. perché me ricordo anni fa gaveimo un problema con 10. con un extracomunitario che non riuscivimo a capire [. . .] 11. D: cioè noi rispetto agli africani se sentimo 12. M: sì:::: 13. D: loro rispetto a noi credo che si sentano:::

‘but it is always the case that they’‘to avoid them, [you] have to see them before the other [patients]’ ‘a little bit how the gypsies were on[ce]-’ ‘now [we] are better’ ‘I mean once a [patient] came’ ‘because I remember years ago [we] had a problem with’ ‘with an extracomunitario that [we] couldn’t succeed in understanding’ [. . .] ‘that is we, with respect to Africans [we] feel ye::::s they [the African migrants], with respect to us, I believe that [they] conside::::r themselves-

Racializing Narratives  81 Original Standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

14. che i senta come noaltri sentimo i americani

that they consider us as we consider the Americans [i.e., as a land of opportunity] that @ is you@ng[@@@@[ yes@ young this is why [I] believe that the Chinese are people who will integrate less in thirty years [in] fifty years, the little niggers [here[ [ @@@@@@@ =we poor Italians @@@@@@@’

15. cioè @ giova@ni[@@@@[ 16. M: si@ giovani 17. per quello credo che i cinesi siano quelli che meno si integreranno 18. tra trent’anni 19. sinquant’ani i negreti [qua[ [ 20. M: @@@@@@@ 21. D: =noaltri italiani poveri @@@@@@@

In this short narrative, this female dermatologist codeswitches from standardized Italian to Venetan at particular moments when she interacts with the other doctor and with me. Stance and stancetaking are immediately enacted by the present speech participants interdiscursively through frequent overlaps, for example. While overlap can often be a sign of disagreement and uncooperative behavior in interaction (Gumperz 1982; Tannen 2007), in some cases, it can have an opposite function, by projecting intimacy and a sense of collectivity instead (Perrino 2002, 2018a; Perrino and Pritzker In Press), as I argued in Chapter 1. In this case, an intimate overlap clearly emerges since it is followed by a cooperative, supportive laughter (Gumperz 1982; Jefferson 1984; Glenn and Holt 2013) by the male doctor in lines 16 and 20. In terms of codeswitching, at line 2, the dermatologist repeats the standardized Italian clause “abbiamo avuto mussulmani” (‘[we] had Muslims’) in Venetan with “ghemo avuo capi mussulmani” (‘[we] had Muslim chiefs’). Topically, she negatively evaluates the cultural otherness of these people, so that the opposing first-person plural marking (‘we’) together with the use of the local code, Venetan, help motivate the interpretation of a regionalized “we.” Furthermore, her use of the pejorative term ‘gypsies’ (zingari) in line 6 and of the derogative term extracomunitari reinforces this exclusionary stance vis-à-vis migrant groups in Veneto. The desire of sharing a collective and intimate identity among Venetans, including the speech participants of this interaction, emerges more powerfully. Intimacies of exclusion are thus enacted through the various stances that these speech participants take while discussing how migrants react to Italian medical examinations. The female dermatologist uses codeswitching again in line 14 when she claims that Africans might think about Italians as Italians think about Americans, that is, they might consider Italy a dream place to live and work. She then codeswitches again in line 19 when she utters a racial slur

82  Racializing Narratives about Africans taking over Italy in 50 years, and she jokes about the fact that Italians might be mixed with or even overrun by Africans, whom she refers to with the racial slur negretti (‘little niggers’). The fact that she adds the diminutive suffix—etti to her racial slur is part of the joking effect she might wish to convey by perhaps softening the blunt effect of her racial slur. She then ends her story by making a prediction for the future at line 21 when she says that ‘we poor Italians’ (“noaltri poveri italiani”) will soon be the minority. By uttering this final statement, she subtly hints at the fact that there might be too many Africans in Italy, a tacit racialized remark that, added to the more explicit ones, makes her narrative even more disconcerting. This female doctor thus shifts from the role of being a professional dermatologist to a more intimate person with the other speech participants, thus creating a collective and intimate identity that, in her view, only Venetans can share. By codeswitching from standardized Italian to Venetan, coupled with bursts of laughter, this dermatologist repositioned the other speech participants as insiders, who can share her racialized ideologies. She thus creates intimacies of exclusion while telling their racialized stories. While telling her stories, and while codeswitching between standardized Italian and Venetan, the dermatologist creates fluid states of inclusion and exclusion, or heterogeneous intimacies of exclusion, among the present speech participants: she includes the other doctor and me in her participation framework (Goffman 1981) while excluding the migrant groups. From her perspective, as it emerges from her narrative, Chinese and African individuals are not cooperative in medical examinations, wish to be like Italians, will never be able to integrate in Italian society (especially, the Chinese communities, as she argues), and are described with a racial slur at the end of her story. The dermatologist also differentiates the type of integration that these two ethnic groups will undergo while living in Italy: in her view, Chinese migrants will never be able to integrate while Africans might do so in 50 years, but, for now, they are at the bottom of an imaginary scale. Her exclusionary stances reach a climax when she makes her final nativist racial slur in line 9, a moment that is supported by the other doctor, who cooperatively overlapped with her and laughed at the joke at line 10 (Perrino 2019). As these narrative excerpts demonstrate, political intimacies of exclusion are co-constructed by the present speech participants and thus legitimized in Veneto. They thus reinforce even more the ideological landscape on which they are created and through which they can be spread further.

3.7 Concluding Remarks As Italy has become one of the main key entry points for migrants and refugees arriving in Europe and as restrictive political agendas against these newcomers have been emerging at a very fast rate, it is important

Racializing Narratives  83 that researchers focus their attention on some of the everyday discursive practices, such as ordinary speakers’ narratives about politics and migration, to explore how certain racialized ideologies are first created and then solidified among speakers who share the same ideals, history, artistic patrimony, traditions, and language. As I have shown in this chapter, through their narrative practices, while interacting with each other, Venetans co-construct their collective and intimate identities and thus exclude possible participants who do not share the same values, such as migrant groups and other Italians who are not fluent in Venetan and who come from other regions. In this chapter, moreover, I have introduced the main theoretical framework of the book and have described how a narrative-oriented paradigm has been a valuable approach that has revolutionized narrative analysis across many disciplines. Thanks to this approach, certain interactional moves and discursive strategies become visible to analysts. By looking at both the denotational text (the content of the story) and the interactional text (how the storytelling event unfolds), narrative practices unveil much more complexity that is not based exclusively on the content of the story. In this way, nuanced and subtle patterns can emerge while the story is being delivered. This narrative paradigm, I suggested, becomes much more valuable if used in combination with notions such as stance, scales, and, ultimately, chronotopes. By closely examining speech participants’ alignments and misalignments, analysts are able to follow their various stances across a speech event and beyond. Stance thus becomes key in this investigation. Participants’ scalar moves, which are never neutral, have been crucial for this study too. By scaling up or scaling down, by codeswitching into their local code, for example, speakers might unveil their intimate stances and thus solidify intimacies of exclusion even more. Being special types of scales, as Woolard (2012, 2016) has keenly put it, chronotopes have been theoretically and analytically useful in my study as well. Chronotopic configurations help analysts better understand how spatiotemporal moves (such as reinvocations of past traditions and arts, the use of a past tenses in a narrative, or simply imagining future spaces just for intimate groups) influence and solidify certain claims or “ideological assemblages” (Kroskrity 2018). This theoretical and analytical framework has allowed me to unveil subtle dynamics in interaction as I show in all the case studies presented in this book. In the narrative excerpt outlined in this chapter, for example, audience members emerge as not passive speech participants; rather, they can actively influence and change the story by adding minimal responses or bursts of laughter at particular moments of the storytelling, by codeswitching into Venetan, or by overlapping with the storyteller—the female dermatologist in this case (Perrino 2019). In this example, both speech participants take a stance against migrants, first by complaining about their habits when they visit their offices for skin examinations and

84  Racializing Narratives then by (re)circulating ideologies based on how Africans desire to look like Italians, while the Chinese will never be able to integrate in Italy. This example demonstrates that discursive strategies, such as codeswitching, laughter, and overlapping in storytelling events, change the participation framework (Goffman 1981) of the interaction, thus creating various degrees of intimacies of exclusion in which a sense of collective and intimate identification can emerge. These interactional moves align participants with ideologies of who is considered “Italian,” that is, speakers of Venetan who can understand and share this code, and who is not, that is, the migrant groups or other Italian speakers who cannot fully understand this local code. In reality, migrants and Italians from other regions might be fully fluent in Venetan, of course. However, the mere fact of producing the problematic remarks in Venetan metapragmatically (Silverstein 1993) frames those remarks as something that not everyone should understand. As I describe in more detail in Chapter 5, codeswitching happens often in joke-telling practices, or barzellette, showing how racialized humor has become part of a disconcerting ideological framework in Italy. That is how, through these narrative practices, exclusionary ideologies can exist, be reinforced, and be legitimized in Veneto. As I show in Chapters 4 and 5, these racialized narratives—narratives that I have collected at different points in time since 2003—have been very common across various social actors in Northern Italy.

Notes 1. For the original version in standardized Italian and Venetan and for more details on the analysis of this epigraph, see section 3.5 entitled “Narrating Extracomunitari in Veneto’s Health Care Facilities.” 2. For Blommaert, chronotopes and scales are related but they maintain their individual characteristics. While chronotopes are pieces of history that can emerge in interaction, scales “[define] the scope of communicability of [chronotopes]” as well as “their scope of creativity” (Blommaert 2015, 111). In his view, scaling-up and scaling-down often involve power dynamics that are independent from chronotopic configurations. 3. See Chapter 1 for a discussion on superdiversity and multiculturalism in Italy. 4. The name of the hospital will remain private to protect the identity of my collaborators.

 

4

Intimacies of Exclusion in and Through Storytelling

[. . .] in reality [we] can’t stand all these extracomunitari anymore! [they] are just a danger for all of us, in all senses, really [they] are very disorganized, [they] demand our attention immediately and then [you] see them outside to sell [their] merchandise in the streets [they] are all vu cumprà at the very end, don’t you think?1 [. . .] (Fabio, Treviso, Veneto Region, July 2009)

4.1 Introduction In May 2012, I was in the Northern Italian town of Padova (‘Padua’), in the Veneto region, and as I walked toward the main downtown square, called Piazza Cavour, and passed the department store called Rinascente,2 I was stunned not to find any migrants selling their products on sidewalks, pedestrian friendly streets, and in main squares. It was a very different picture from what I was used to seeing during my previous summer trips to this town. During annual visits, I used to see migrant street sellers lined up outside Rinascente, sellers who are often called by the widely used pejorative phrase vu cumprà, which can be translated literally as ‘[you] want to buy’ (Carter 1997; Riccio 1997, 1999a, 1999b, 2000, 2001). More specifically, this phrase refers to the stigmatized way African migrants ask potential Italian customers if they wish to buy their merchandise. For Italians, as my collaborators explained, this widely circulating ideologically loaded derogatory phrase indexes African migrants’ presupposed incapability to fully pronounce Italian vowels, such as the ones contained in the second person singular conjugated form of the verb volere (‘to want’), that is vuoi (‘[you] want’), which, becomes “vu” in this phrase, with just the vowel “u.” Similarly, cumprà is a truncated form of the Italian infinitive verb comprare (‘to buy’), which, following these language ideologies in Italy, African migrants might not be able to fully pronounce. Furthermore, vu cumprà indexes the fact that African street sellers often address potential Italian customers using the informal tu (‘informal you’) instead of the polite

86  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling form of address Lei (‘formal you’), which would be the norm in Italian conversations between speech participants who do not know each other. Thus, besides being stereotypically seen as incapable of learning standardized Italian, African migrants are also portrayed as “rude” and “impolite” since, following this ideology, they don’t know how or they don’t opt to use the polite address form required in these social situations. Hence, the phrase vu cumprà is still widely used to indicate street sellers of African origin. I used to see migrant street sellers displaying their products on big colored sheets outside department stores or in large squares in the downtown area. The goods were usually counterfeit brands (Pang 2008; Nakassis 2012a) and included imitation Italian design-brand leather bags, belts, wallets, and sunglasses by Armani, Fendi, Versace, Gucci, and Dolce & Gabbana, as well as illegally copied CDs and DVDs. When the Italian police would approach them, the street sellers, who always worked in very well networked groups, would quickly wrap everything up and walk away, only to return later. In the Northern Italian cities I visited, the police never seemed to aggressively go after them, except in some rare cases. They would approach the street sellers slowly and deliberately from a distance, allowing the migrants to pack up and flee, which often meant stepping into a nearby café or restaurant so that they could no longer be indicted for “selling” anything. When the police would depart, however, these sellers would lay down their sheets and sell their products again. Yet, during my last trips to the Veneto region, after the rise of the Lega’s political party and the implementation of its anti-immigrant politics, the majority of these street sellers had mostly disappeared in these Northern Italian towns. In this chapter, I show how intimacies of exclusion are enacted, and embodied, in people’s stories in Northern Italy. These narrative practices around migrants or migration issues have been emerging in Northern Italy at various levels, not only explicitly, but also tacitly and subtly, sometimes by just avoiding certain topics in ordinary conversations or by using certain discourse strategies, such as silence, laughter, and overlap (Gumperz 1982). I explore various narrative practices collected in two types of settings. 1) I examine racialized narratives that I collected in interview settings (De Fina and Perrino 2011) with speech participants from various backgrounds, such as doctors and nurses, business executives, and ordinary speakers more generally. I especially focus on narrative excerpts that I collected during an interview with an executive of a historical café in the Veneto region in 2011. 2) I also explore narratives as they emerge in Liga Veneta Repubblica’s political speeches and rallies, similar to the one explored in Chapter 1. Through a close analysis of transcripts stemming from these data, this chapter thus shows how intimacies of exclusion emerge and solidify in these settings as well.

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  87

4.2 Racialized Narratives in Research Qualitative Interviews The narrative practices that I explore in this section were collected during the many interviews I conducted from 2003 to 2018 in Northern Italy with a special focus on the Veneto region (for a total of roughly 600 hours of interviews). As I explained in the Introduction, qualitative research interviews are amongst the most used methods of data collection across disciplines as diverse as anthropology, education, social history, social psychology, and sociolinguistics (Roulston 2019). There are indeed three main types of linguistic anthropological interviews, based on the kinds of questionnaires that researchers prepare prior to these events: 1) structured interviews with questionnaires organized with a list of fixed questions that need to be asked of all interviewees following the same order; 2) semi-structured interviews with questionnaires touching on general topics not following a particular order; 3) and, finally, open-ended interviews with very informal questionnaires that can lead more to informal conversations between researchers and collaborators. Sometimes all of these types of interviews are used at some point during a research project. I mostly used open-ended interviews with the option of conducting very quick interviews on the street too to maintain the anonymity of some of my collaborators who didn’t want to sit down with me for long interview sessions and who didn’t have the time to do so. Qualitative research interviews have become very popular among linguistic anthropologists not only for their referential function—the visible and audible collected information—but also as key sites in which “situated speech” (Fuller 2000) can be explored for the interactional dynamics between researcher(s) and interviewee(s) (Fontana and Frei 2004; De Fina and Perrino 2011; Wortham et al. 2011). As Charles Briggs (1986, 2007) has keenly argued, interviewers always influence the dynamics of the interview as they co-construct this speech event with their interviewees. Research interviews are thus interactional encounters that need to be taken into account as a set of data besides the referential information (the content) that is collected during these speech events. This information changes with the interaction in progress in the interview setting, and it can (or may not) be in sync with the interactional moves of the interviewer(s) and interviewee(s). This clearly emerged, for example, when I prepared semi-structured questionnaires for my interviews and then found myself not following them or asking different questions during the interview. The interview can take different directions, as stories can be more or less engaging, thus prompting different types of questions and sub-questions (Perrino 2011). As Briggs has pointed out, moreover, in many societies, interviews might not be

88  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling the preferred way to get the information researchers are seeking. It is thus key to “learn how to ask” (Briggs 1986) and be sensitive of the sociocultural and linguistic surroundings of the community of practice in which interviews are conducted. As interviews are primary interactional settings for data collection, narratives collected in these settings need to consider the fact that the interview “is a form of discourse” (Mishler 1986, vii). In these settings, narratives are thus co-constructed between the interviewer(s) and the interviewee(s) who have special interactional roles. In this respect, Mishler asked three important questions in the 1980s: What is the role of the interviewer in how a respondent’s story is told, how it is constructed and developed, and what it means? . . . how do an interviewer’s questions, assessments, silences, and responses enter into a story’s production? . . . How can the presence and influence of an interviewer be taken into account in the analysis and interpretation of a respondent’s story? (Mishler 1986, 96) While some of these questions are still unanswered, scholars have started to be aware of interactional qualities of the stories that they collect in interview settings, and they show how narrative genres “not only are intricately interconnected with interactional roles but also subject to continuous redefinition as interviews develop” (De Fina and Perrino 2011, 8), as I show in the examples that I present in this book. Many of the interviews that I collected in Northern Italy contain various kinds of racialized stories that were enacted and co-constructed by the speech participants through minimal responses, laughter, overlap (see Chapter 3), and silent moments. Some of my collaborators enacted intimacies of exclusion very explicitly, however, such as the following example. Here, I interviewed a pharmacist, Fabio, in his early forties, in the town of Treviso, in the Veneto region, in July 2009. The interview lasted two and a half hours and was fully transcribed and analyzed upon my return to the United States. The conversation centered around medical remedies across cultures, since I was curious to know more about the products he was selling in his pharmacy. Besides the regular Western biomedical remedies, on many of his shelves, he also had medical remedies from China and India. When I asked him about the efficacy of those remedies, he stated that he was very open to cross-cultural exchanges in the medical field and that some of his customers had been curious and open to try them. However, when I asked if migrants visited his pharmacy, he said the following:

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  89 I: Interviewer F: Fabio Original Standardized Italian Version

English Translation

I: 1. [. . .] quindi se nella vostra farmacia avete tutti questi tipi di medicine 2. avete anche molti migranti come clienti, no?= F: 3. =@@@ come no? 4. uhmm migranti, certo, africani da tutta l’Africa anche 5. e poi cinesi, russi, indiani, di tutto e di più 6. ma sai perché vengono? I: 7. no, perché? F: 8. perché? @@ di certo non per comprare le medicine cinesi o indiane, dai! 9. vengono per disturbare gli altri clienti 10. perché vogliono vendere le loro merci IN CONTINUAZIONE 11. una cosa incredibile ed insopportabile, davvero! I: 12. mmhh F: 13. in realtà non ne possiamo più di tutti questi extracomunitari! 14. sono solo un pericolo per tutti noi in tutti i sensi guarda 15. sono molto disordinati, richiedono la nostra attenzione subito 16. e poi te li vedi fuori a vendere merce per le strade 17. sono tutti dei vu cumprà alla fine, non pensi? 18. non so proprio come e dove andremo a finire con tutta questa gente 19. che entra in Italia senza permesso di soggiorno 20. e poi pretendono pretendono pretendono e basta!

[. . .] so if in your pharmacy [you] have all these kinds of medicines do [you] also have many migrants as clients, don’t you?= =@@@ of course! uhmm migrants, of course, Africans from the entire Africa too and then, Chinese, Russians, Indians, [we see] everything and more but do [you] know why [they] come? no, why? why? @@ naturally not to buy [our] Chinese or Indian medicine, come’on! [they] come [here] to disturb the other customers Because [they] want to sell their merchandise CONTINUOUSLY [this is] an incredible and unbearable thing, really! mmhh in reality [we] can’t stand all these extracomunitari anymore! look, [they] are just a danger for us all in all senses [they] are very disorganized, [they] demand our attention immediately and then [you] see them outside to sell [their] merchandise in the streets [they] are all vu cumprà at the very end, don’t you think? [I] really don’t know how and where [we] will end up being with all these people [i.e., migrants] who enter Italy without permit to stay and then [they] just demand [they] demand [they] demand!

90  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling In this short narrative excerpt, participants’ interactional dynamics reorient the conversation from topics such as cross-cultural medical remedies to racialized statements in which intimacies of exclusion are enacted and solidified. Prompted by the interviewer’s question about possible migrants as customers in his pharmacy, given the vast array of medical remedies, in lines 1 and 2, Fabio latches on to my turn with three bursts of laughter in line 3 and then immediately enacts a rather sarcastic stance vis-à-vis my question. As I showed in Chapter 3, laughter can have various interactional functions (Gumperz 1982; Glenn and Holt 2013; Jefferson 1984). He then utters “come no?” (line 3), which I translated as ‘of course,’ but which literally means ‘how not?’, meaning ‘of course, they come!’, thus emphasizing his sarcastic stance even more. He then explains that many migrants visit his pharmacy, from the entire continent of Africa and from other locations as well, and thus he sees ‘everything and more’ (line 4) in his pharmacy. His sarcastic stance is clarified in line 6 when he asks me whether I realize why all these migrants visit his pharmacy. Surprised by his question, I respond negatively and ask for clarification in line 7, triggering two other bursts of laughter in line 8 after he shows his surprise at my question by repeating “perché?” (‘why?’). His sarcastic stance is even more intensified in lines 9–11: migrants visit his store not to buy any medical remedies but to sell their own merchandise and to “disturb” his own customers continuously. He utters ‘continuously’ loudly to index his antagonistic stance with respect to these people in line 10. By adding that all this is unbelievable and unbearable in line 11, he transforms his sarcastic stance into a more aggressive, antagonistic stance in lines 13–20 after a minimal response of mine (line 12). By using the inclusive first person plural pronoun “we,” which is included in the verb conjugation in standardized Italian,3 Fabio aligns with other Italians who cannot stand migrants (referred to, derogatorily, as extracomunitari) anymore. From Fabio’s perspective, they are disorganized, and they sell their merchandise in the streets. He refers to them as “vu cumprà,” another derogatory phrase used to indicate that migrants are street sellers. As I described in the Introduction of this chapter, as a way to clarify the opening quote, this phrase defames migrants by not only classifying them as “street sellers” but by also indicating that they are ignorant and incapable of pronouncing standardized Italian correctly. Intimacies of exclusion are thus enacted throughout this narrative excerpt, from the initial, subtle sarcasm in Fabio’s bursts of laughter and inquisitorial questions to his more explicit commentary about migrants being street sellers who also go to his pharmacy to sell their products and disturb his customers instead of buying his medical remedies. In his view, migrants are also very disorganized, and he categorizes them all as undocumented—with no legal permit to stay in Italy. Fabio emphasizes his hostile stance by also using three parallelistic structures in line 20, by repeating the verb pretendono, which I translated with ‘[they] demand,’ indicating, metapragmatically, the fact that migrants, besides going to his store to sell

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  91 their products, also ask for too many services from Italians. Parallelism, as I explained in Chapter 1, is used for many intertextual effects (Silverstein and Urban 1996; Tannen 2007), such as adding emphasis to one’s claim, as in Fabio’s case. The repetition of the verb pretendono (‘[they] demand’) thus creates an emphatic effect that underscores even more strongly Fabio’s stance against migrants. In line 17, moreover, Fabio asks me a question, ‘don’t you think so?’ (“non pensi?”), after defining migrants as vu cumprà, thus seeking approval and connection with his interviewer, who shares his language(s) and nationality. His exclusionary stance is enacted at every line of his narrative, reaching a climax at the end of the excerpt when he paradoxically claims that migrants are very demanding. Intimacies of exclusion emerged in other types of stories that I collected among members of the Lega political party as well. In an interview that I conducted with a woman, Cristina, the owner of shoe store, in her late 50s, in the town of Trieste, in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, in June 2010, for example, an immediate antagonistic stance toward migrants emerged ten minutes into the interview. This interview lasted one hour and forty-five minutes and took place in her store, in the evening, when no customers needed her attention. We were talking about the Italian elections in general and the fact that the Lega had been very successful. She said that she had been a strong supporter of this political party since its origins, and she felt very faithful to them. To my question of why she felt so faithful to this political party, she answered in the following way: I: Interviewer C: Cristina Original Standardized Italian Version

English Translation

I: 1. [. . .] Non ha mai considerato di votare per un altro partito oltre alla Lega? C: 2. ho sempre votato Lega   3. e voterò sempre Lega   4. perché voglio essere protetta   5. non voglio più   6. ‘sti extracomunitari qui   7. che girano dai   8. che rubano a noi italiani dai   9. io non ho niente 10. contro questi immigrati 11. ma non possono togliere 12. niente agli italiani 13. mi capisci no? [. . .]

I: [. . .] have [polite you] ever considered to vote for another political party besides the Lega? [. . .] [I] have always voted Lega and [I] will always vote Lega because [I] want to be protected [I] don’t want these extracomunitari here anymore who wander around come’on who steal from us Italians come’on I don’t have anything against these immigrants but [they] can’t take away anything from Italians [you] can understand me, can’t you? [. . .]

92  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling While I found that it was unusual for people to reveal their political leanings and affiliations, Cristina explicitly discloses why she votes for the Lega to me. She votes for the Lega, she says, because she wishes to be ‘protected,’ protetta (line 4); she doesn’t want to be surrounded by extracomunitari, as she calls them. She has always voted for the Lega, moreover, which makes her look like a very faithful member of this political party. In line 6, she says that she doesn’t want ‘these extracomunitari here’ and thus enhances her anti-immigrant stance even more. By using the abbreviated form of the Italian demonstrative pronoun, “‘sti” (‘these’), this ordinary speaker distantiates herself (and, in her participation framework, possibly me, the interviewer) from them, the “extracomunitari,” as if they were not part (and could not be part) of her everyday life. In this way, this speaker fosters an intimate, collective identity of values that only Italian people can share and appreciate. In her view, migrants are not part of this collectivity and should thus not receive any benefits from it—such as job opportunities, housing, special treatment, and so forth. Intimacies of exclusion are thus discursively encouraged in Cristina’s narrative. Indeed, she explicitly says that she does not want to see any undocumented migrants going around “here” in her region, in her country. From a scalar perspective, her use of the spatial deictic ‘here,’ “qui,” can assume different meanings: here could refer to here in her town, in her region, or in her country. At all these scalar levels, migrants are not welcome, in her view. She continues by saying that migrants steal from “us,” Italians, in line 8, thus reinforcing her intimate and collective identity with Italians, her co-nationals, and excluding migrants. At line 9, however, she uses the first person pronoun “io” (‘I’), which is optional in standardized Italian, to emphasize that she does not have anything against these people as long as they don’t take anything away from Italians (lines 11–12). In line 13, moreover, she tries to include me in her participation framework by asking me whether I understand her claims and thus whether I share her view. In this short narrative excerpt, this speaker thus starts creating various, yet not defined, boundaries between “us” and “them,” boundaries that are later reinforced in our subsequent conversations. She also reinforces the collective identity that Italian speakers share and that, in her perspective, needs to be ‘protected’ from newcomers. These anti-migrant stances emerged in many narratives that I collected at political events as well, such as political rallies, to which I turn in the next section.

4.3 Intimacies of Exclusion in Political Rallies Racialized ideologies, such as the ones I examine in this book, can be constructed and legitimized in the many stories that emerge through mediatization of registers in political discourse (Cole and Pellicer 2012), in the media and, today more than ever, in the digital realm, where various

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  93 forms of recontextualization of political speeches and racialized remarks can travel at an unprecedented speed (Perrino 2017). As I showed in the first two chapters, racialized narratives often emerge in political speeches and political rallies as well. In this section, I analyze an excerpt of a political rally that was delivered in March 2010 by a representative of the Liga Veneta Repubblica, the subsection of the Lega that I described in Chapter 2. The total length of his speech was ten minutes and took place in the small town of Rovigo in the Veneto region. In 2010, the leader of the Lega was still Umberto Bossi (see Chapter 2), who was present at this rally. On the left of Bossi, there was Luca Zaia, the governor of the Veneto region. The main speaker was next to Bossi and addressed him from time to time (Perrino 2013). This representative (G in the transcript) said the following during this public event:

Original Standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

[applause and screams throughout the speech] G:   1. noialtri nel Veneto no semo abituai   2. a prometere noialtri fasemo i fati   3. quando che voialtri gavi visto  4. che semo stai al governo

[applause and screams throughout the speech] G:   1. we in Veneto [we] are not used to [just]  2. promise, we act

 5. gavi visto credo  6. che quei che gha un po’   7. che o gha merità   8. quindi che hanno una certa maturità   9. i se sia acorti che finalmente 10. nella repubblica italiana 11. ze arivà ‘n minstro de l’ agricoltura 12. che sevea queo che fasea 13. ch’el non confondea e che [????] 14. perché credo che la nostra identità 15. la nostra forza 16. la nostra cultura 17. la nostra intelligenza

  3. as you saw   4. when we were at the government   5. [you] saw- [I] believe  6. that those who have a little   7. or have deserved it   8. so [those] who have a certain maturity  9. they realize that finally 10. in the Italian republic 11. a minister of the agriculture arrived 12. who knew what he was doing 13. who didn’t confuse and who [????] 14. because I think that our identity, 15. our strength 16. our culture 17. our intelligence (Continued)

(Continued) Original Standardized Italian and Venetan 18. è essere del popolo e col popolo e il popolo 19. sa bene cosa significa il ventisette del mese 20. sa bene cosa significa il lavoro 21. sa bene cosa significa la fatica 22. sa bene cosa costa il risparmio 23. non credo che sia una questione di sud nord 24. centro eccetera eccetera eccetera 25. ma credo che tanti oggi26. e credo anche che non sia gnanca tanto positivo il discorso 27. e adesso ghemo comunque recuperato 28. ma queo che voevo dir 29. noialtri ze metemo tuti i nostri omeni migliori 30. i candidati, le persone, 31. quelli che deve fare 32. debbono soprattutto rispondere al movimento e 33. il movimento sono i militanti 34. il movimento sono i soccorritori 35. il movimento è la nostra zente 36. e quindi credo che, ragazzi credo che sia 37. veramente arrivato il momento 38. e questa Roma simpatica 39. nella quale la prima volta Umberto 40. quando ch’el ne gha mandà zo 41. ve digo un segreto

English Translation 18. is to be of the people and with the people and the people 19. know well what the twentyseventh of the month means 20. [the people] know well what it means to work 21. [the people] know well what fatigue means 22. [the people] know well what savings means 23. I don’t believe it is a question of south and north 24. center et cetera et cetera, et cetera 25. but I believe that many people today-, 26. and I believe that [this] discourse is not even very positive 27. and now [we] have recovered anyway 28. but what [I] wanted to say [is that] 29. we put all our best men 30. the candidates, [that is] the people, 31. those who have to do 32. they have especially to respond to the movement and 33. the movement is the militants 34. the movement is the rescuers 35. the movement is our people 36. and so I believe that, guys, I believe that the 37. moment has arrived 38. and this funny Rome 39. in which for the first time Umberto [Bossi] 40. when he sent us down [i.e., to Rome] 41. [I]’ll tell you a secret

Original Standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

42. mi no so mai andà a Roma [. . .]

42. I never went to Rome [. . .]

43. perché noi 44. perché noi- e credo che la lezio magistralis 45. sia il fatto che 46. il ministro Zaia a Pechino, dove ha spiegato 47. che la merda cinese se la tengano i signori [screams of “bravo” from the audience] 48. che a noi non ci interessa

43. because we 44. because we- and I believe that the magistral 45. lesson is the fact that 46. Minister Zaia in Beijing, where he explained 47. that the Chinese shit has to be kept to themselves [screams of “bravo” from the audience] 48. [because] we are not interested in it [i.e., the Chinese shit’] 49. when instead one speaks of serious things 50. then we are available and convinced also to cooperate 51. because, be careful, the world is round 52. the human rights are a little ball like this eh 53. that [we] don’t believe 54. t he Veneto [people] were in the world 55. [we] don’t want to see what happens now 56. that is that all the world comes to our house 57. because [we] can’t possibly take care of the whole world [. . .] 58. Venetans, let’s wake up! 59. with the Lega, 60. with Umberto Bossi, 61. with Luca Zaia and 62. with our candidates! [from the audience screaming: bravo]

49. quando invece si parla di cose serie 50. allora siamo disposti e convinti anche a collaborare 51. perché attenzione el mondo ze tondo 52. i diritti umani ze come un balin cussì eh 53. che no credemo 54. i veneti ze stai nel mondo 55. no voemo vedar queo che sucede ‘ndesso 56. cioè che tutto il mondo vegna a casa nostra 57. perché no riuscimo a mantegner tuto il mondo [. . .] 58. Veneti svegliamoci! 59. con la Lega, 60. con Umberto Bossi 61. con Luca Zaia e 62. con i candidati nostri! [from the audience screaming: bravo]

96  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling If one looks at how this representative’s political address develops, it is important to note that he begins his discourse in Venetan just as he invokes the voice of his co-citizens, Venetans (lines 1–13). He then switches back and forth between the two codes before shifting into standardized Italian for a fairly long stretch of discourse (lines 30–39; lines 43–50; lines 58–62). As a discourse strategy (Gumperz 1982), codeswitching is used in multilingual communities of practice (see Chapter 2 for more details on codeswitching practices). In this case, this representative knows that his audience members are fluent in both languages he uses, standardized Italian and Venetan.4 Using the local code in these political rallies carries a strong message about cultural, political, and linguistic belonging to this region, as I discussed extensively in Chapters 2 and 3. By using Venetan intensely and at precise moments in his speech, this representative enacts his intimate stances by trying to involve his audience members and have them side with him. In this way, he not only tries to involve and incite his audience in the topic he discusses, but he also tries to create a faithful and reliable network of voters for future elections. Intimacies of exclusion are thus enacted in public speeches as well through various discursive strategies, such as codeswitching, the use of deictics, and parallelism. In this representative’s speech, if one focuses on person deixis, especially first person plural pronouns as well as person marking in auxiliary and main verbs, throughout the whole discourse, there is a very strong tendency to use Venetan. Only two of the 11 first-person plural subject pronouns were in standardized Italian, noi; the rest, 82%, were in Venetan, noi/ni[i]/altri. In terms of first-person plural marking in verbs, 78% (18 out of 23) were in Venetan. Thus, when he invokes the “we” (which in standardized Italian is included in the verb conjugation), a “we” that suggests Liga Veneta Repubblica’s members and more broadly Venetans, there appears to be a strong preference for the local code. As I show in the following transcript portion, from line 1 up to line 7, this representative uses more Venetan than standardized Italian, and he switches intensely between the two languages. Line 2 is completely in Venetan, for example, while in the other lines, the speaker switches back and forth up to line 7: 1. noialtri nel Veneto no semo abituai 2. a prometere noialtri fasemo i fati 3. quando che voialtri gavi visto 4. che semo stai al governo 5. gavi visto credo 6. che quei che gha un po’ 7. che o gha merità

1. we in Veneto [we] are not used to [just] 2. promise, we act 3. as you saw 4. when we were at the government 5. [you] saw- [I] believe 6. that those who have a little 7. or have deserved it

At line 8, however, he switches completely to standardized Italian with the clause “quindi che hanno una certa maturità” (‘so [those] who have

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  97 a certain maturity’), while he enacts a very sarcastic stance: he states that only some politicians have a certain preparation to be in the government, and these politicians have finally realized that the minister of agriculture, who is from the Lega, knew what he was doing. Lines 9–13 show, again, a high frequency of codeswitching. However, at line 14, as shown in the following, he starts an eloquent and long speech just in standardized Italian, and he continues up to line 27 when he adds a word in Venetan, “gnanca” (‘not even’), to then go back to codeswitching between the two codes. As is the case in other narratives presented in this book, another prominent pattern that emerges in many instances in this political address is parallelism (see Chapter 1). The moments that are the most poetic—poetic in the sense of involving repetition and parallelism—tend to occur in standardized Italian, not in Venetan. In any stretch of discourse of this excerpt, we can indeed find all sorts of parallelistic textures (Perrino 2002). From line 15 to line 27, this representative produces an eloquent speech that is densely “poetic,” in the sense of having dense parallelistic textures. In these lines, he uses repetition with variation, as in 14. perché credo che la nostra identità 15. la nostra forza 16. la nostra cultura 17. la nostra intelligenza

14. because I think that our identity, 15. our strength 16. our culture 17. our intelligence

This representative repeats the Italian possessive adjective “nostro” (agreed in the feminine, “nostra”) four times with a different noun attached to them—all in the feminine: “la nostra forza, la nostra cultura, la nostra intelligenza” (‘our strength, our culture, our intelligence’). The poetic effect that is created intertextually enhances the meaning of his lines. At line 18, similarly, there is another case of parallelism but with the repetition of the word “popolo” (‘people’), preceded by different compound prepositions5 (“del” [‘of the’] and “col” [with the]) and by the definite article “il” (‘the’): 18. è essere del popolo e col popolo e il popolo (‘is to be of the people and with the people and the people’) Finally, lines 19–22 show a more complex parallelistic structure when he repeats the clause “sa bene cosa significa” (‘[people] know well what means’) four times, adding a different conclusion to each subsequent line: 19. sa bene cosa significa il ventisette del mese 20. sa bene cosa significa il lavoro 21. sa bene cosa significa la fatica 22. sa bene cosa costa il risparmio

19. [the people] know well what the twentyseventh of the month means 20. [the people] know well what it means to work 21 [the people] know well what fatigue means 22.[the people] know well what savings means

98  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling As we note in these lines, all these clauses are entirely in standardized Italian with no codeswitches in Venetan. More parallelistic structures emerge throughout his speech, moreover, until the end when he addresses the audience with an invocation to Venetans to “wake up” and be with the Lega and its most prominent members (lines 58–62). The more parallelism this representative engages in, the more standardized Italian he uses. In this sense, standardized Italian seems to be the language of public eloquence, a language in which to make important political claims. Perhaps this is due to the fact that this political address is designed to be heard not only by the members of his political party but also by Italians more generally and by the Italian state.6 This representative’s more explicit racialized remarks emerge in lines 43–50 when he refers to a trip to Beijing, China, that Governor Zaia took. During this trip, this representative says, the governor explicitly said that the Chinese need to keep their ‘shit’ with them since Venetans are only interested in serious collaboration. This representative’s statement emerges out of the circulating ideologies portraying Chinese products as imitations and thus fake (Pang 2008; Nakassis 2012b, 2013). The audience applauds and screams “bravo” at these racialized remarks. Intimacies of exclusion are thus enacted implicitly and explicitly throughout this political address until the final moments of his speech when this representative invokes unity and intimacy with his political party in highly parallelistic final lines (58–62). A collective, intimate identity is then coconstructed between this representative and his audience members who actively approve of his statements throughout his speech. As I briefly described in Chapter 1, these exclusionary stances emerge and solidify among Northern Italian companies’ executives as well, as I show in the following section.

4.4 Narrating Authenticity and Migration in Northern Italian Historical Cafés7 The narrative excerpts presented in this section were collected with Gregory Kohler in the summer of 2011 as part of a project on narrative practices in the Italian business world. This section focuses on stories we collected in historical cafés,8 which have been a particular type of corporation in Europe since the nineteenth century. Insofar as these coffee-houses have legal rights and liabilities that are distinct from their employees and shareholders, these historical cafés are full-fledged corporate entities.9 Many Italian towns have one or two historical cafés in the downtown area, in the historical district, and they are usually very well attended all day long. Besides serving high-quality coffee and coffee products, these cafés now serve main meals as well, which was not the case in the nineteenth century. And despite the fact that Italy imports all its coffee beans from equatorial countries and that Italy first came to coffee thanks to

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  99 the Ottoman Empire, coffee and coffee products have recently become indexes of Italianness itself. While coffee has become an Italian national heritage commodity and a solid and internationally recognized “Made in Italy” product (Morris 2008), its origins are not in Italy. As Ellis (2008, 156) clarifies, “the practice of drinking coffee is of comparatively recent origin: It goes back only 350 years in Northern Europe, and only another century or so in Ottoman Istanbul.” Many Italians are not even aware of the origins of this beverage and, from their own perspective, it is part of their shared cultural heritage. As Morris (2010) highlights, coffee has indeed been considered Italy’s “national drink”. As he writes, Nowhere has coffee become a more iconic symbol of the nation than in Italy. The “Italian espresso” has become closely identified with the country by both Italians and foreigners alike as have those beverages which employ this as a base such as cappuccino and caffè latte. (Morris 2010, 158) The first coffee-house in Italy was opened in Venice in 1683, a coffeehouse that later became the famous and prestigious Caffè Florian (Ellis 2004, 82–83), a public sphere where the Venetian intellectual communities used to meet to discuss politics, literature, and art, in a Habermasian (Habermas 1989) public sphere in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As I mentioned earlier, however, coffee-houses have an important non-European past that is often obscured: The very first coffee-house dates to Mecca in 1511, followed by one in Cairo in 1532, and one in Constantinople in 1554. It was precisely in Constantinople that coffeehouses became places of conviviality and social encounters (Ellis 2004, 2006 2008). A century later, in 1652, coffee-houses landed in Europe as well, the first one being in London, a town where many Turkish merchants, together with their coffee habits and traditions, started to make their appearance. Coffee-houses thus spread quickly throughout the country as places in which people of all social provenances could in principle meet and drink coffee while socializing (Ellis 2004, 2006, 2008).10 In this section, I examine how an executive (Lorenzo) of a Northern Italian coffee corporation narrates, takes stances, and enacts official and unofficial representations of his historical café and how these representations reflect and index the politics surrounding migrants who often work in competing smaller cafés or bars that have mushroomed in many Northern Italian towns today. Through an analysis of Lorenzo’s four narratives told during the course of a single interview, I demonstrate how he semiotically constructs and moves across different senses of the “authenticity” of his historical café and its coffee products and thus enacts a chronotopic, collective, and intimate identity that only his cocitizens can share and appreciate. In his narratives, the executive blends

100  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling time and space while emphasizing the uniqueness of his café as an architectural structure that needs to not only be praised but also protected. By looking at how executives portray migrants in narratives presented publicly to interviewers asking about the corporation, I examine how intimacies of exclusion are (co)constructed and solidified in the Italian business world as well. Throughout his four narratives, Lorenzo changes discursive gears from an official representation of the corporation to a more “unofficial” account toward the end of the interview. This shift is enacted partly through a shift in his stance toward us, the interviewers, and the shift moves from an inclusionary authenticity to an exclusionary, nativist authenticity. Although authenticity has been widely studied and problematized in anthropology (Bruner 2001; Wong 1999; Cutler 2003; Vann 2006; Jaffe 2011),11 in this chapter, I use this notion to mean an “aura” (Benjamin 1936; Hansen 2008) of historical rootedness that is felt to pervade the historical café, an aura that needs to be protected and cherished—a moral obligation (and prerogative) of museums and historical sites in general. Not only is this historical café’s authenticity repeatedly confirmed by Lorenzo, but it is also ratified at various scales—by the entire town and by its citizens more generally. The Café featured in this executive’s stories is very similar to the Venetian Caffè Florian. This café is located in the historical center of a Northern Italian town. Its prominent downtown location is fundamental to better appreciate the various, more recent relationships that this historical café has developed with its surrounding competitors as well as the managerial stances vis-à-vis their customers and the town inhabitants more generally. Thanks to its imposing architecture and its emplacement (Scollon and Scollon 2003) in the most prestigious downtown historical district of the town, this café attracts visitors from all over the world and faces no serious competition from the many other smaller cafés and bars in town (see also Manning 2012), as Lorenzo explained during the interview that Kohler and I conducted. The aura of authenticity of this café emanates not only from its architecture and preserved rooms but also from its workers and managerial staff. The executive of this café, Lorenzo, at the time of our interview, was a man in his fifties and had been in that position for a decade. While the interview questions were designed to discover the history of the café and the past and present function of the café in this town, this executive, through his narratives, enacted various, subtle racialized stances and thus supported and solidified circulating ideologies about the exclusion of migrants as well.12 During our interview with him, through his various stances, Lorenzo aligns himself with an “official” account of his café that positions us, the interviewers, as outsiders. However, later in the interview, he evaluates the café’s authenticity differently and shifts to position us as insiders who have access and “rights” to

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  101 enjoy his café’s services. By inhabiting these seemingly contradictory stances on the café’s authenticity and by shifting his alignment and positioning toward us—the two interviewers—this executive not only protects and defends the authenticity of his historical café vis-à-vis the surrounding competing smaller cafés and bars, but he also unveils his racialized leanings. The four narrative excerpts explored here are part of an interview that Kohler and I conducted in July 2011. The total interview lasted 37 minutes and took place in one of the most historically significant and luxurious rooms of this historical café, the Sala Bianca (‘White Hall’). By inviting us into this prestigious room, the executive semiotically constructed his stance toward the café, the two interviewers, and the prestige that his café has enjoyed in this town. His stancetaking is thus co-constructed during the interaction by the way he aligns himself with and positions the two interviewers through various discursive strategies (Gumperz 1982). The executive delivered the following four narratives during the interview:   Lorenzo’s Four Narratives Narrative 1

Narrative 2

Narrative 3

Narrative 4

The Sala Bianca (‘the White Hall’) in the nineteenth century (1831) [9 min]

“This Café is older than the Unity of Italy”

“We are not a multinational company”

“This Café is not a bar run by Chinese”

[7 min]

[10 min]

[11 min]

One of the first questions we asked was centered on the history of the café (Narratives 1 and 2). Lorenzo emphasized that his café is 180 years old, making it older than the unity of Italy (which happened in 1861). The year we conducted the interview, 2011, was the 150th anniversary of the unity of Italy, he clarified. But then, he underlined how his historical café had survived wars, revolutions, and foreign occupations (Perrino 2015, 85–88). As he points out in his first story, his café belongs to everyone in this town. It is an open, public space, a special location that is inclusive of people whose interest in history and coffee erases their diverse backgrounds. It is not limited to Italians, he implied. This openness and in principle inclusiveness of the café stems from its history itself, as Habermas (1989) reminds us in his descriptions of the public sphere of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European historical cafés. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, coffee consumption increased tremendously in relation to Europe’s expanding bourgeoisie at public establishments like cafés and salons. One ideological function of these European historical cafés was to attract and gather intellectuals of various

102  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling disciplines and backgrounds, such as philosophers, poets, novelists, artists, and so forth to exchange ideas about literature and art and later about politics. Thus, feeling “equal” was important among participants in coffee-houses, as Ellis reminds us: No one should be excluded from the discussion, nor should anyone have precedence by a quality they brought with them from outside such as status, wealth, power, or strength of arms. All speakers are considered equal and within the collective fiction of the coffee-house hierarchy is erased. (Ellis 2004, 61) ‘My Café has open doors today as well,’ said Lorenzo in his first narrative, and every month, the café hosts an intellectual or artistic event such as theater performances sharing local history and traditions. In other words, his historical café is framed in terms of its “openness,” and in this sense, it seems to recall its history as a site for the idealized Habermasian public sphere. The café’s openness to people of all economic backgrounds was also emphasized through the executive’s stress on its affordability. Although he emphasized that the café is very luxurious outside and inside and that this fact can intimidate ordinary people because of the imagined high cost of coffee and coffee products, he assured us that when one orders a coffee at the counter and drinks it standing, the price is not much different from the coffee ordered in a regular bar. In his words, the café is “alla portata di tutti” (‘affordable for everyone’), and this is so thanks to the fact that the café is not a multinational company, such as Illy, Lavazza, or Hausbrandt, which are renowned coffee companies in Italy today. In his third narrative, Lorenzo states,  (Excerpt from Narrative 3: “We are not a multinational company!”) Original Standardized Italian Version

English Translation

1. che il Caffè probabilmente eh con una multinazionale stona

the café probably eh is unlike (lit. ‘is not in tune with’) a multinational company probably [we] have- [we] have an excellent relationship with the president of the [Illy] coffee [company]. ehh [he] is a friend however, [I] have the impression that a multinational [company] that, they are like, I don’t know if [you] know the robots, that is, they go::

2. probabilmente abbiamo abbiamo un ottimo rapporto con il caffè [Illy] il presidente ehh è un amico 3. però ho l’impressione che una multinazionale che sono come non so avete presente i robot cioè vanno::

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  103 Original Standardized Italian Version

English Translation

4. hanno le loro strade quelle non si può andare fuori non si può decidere di fare una cosa diversa perché è quella

[they] have their roads, those [from which] one cannot stray, one can’t decide to do something different because it is that one [i.e., road one must take]

5. la multinazionale ragiona così preferirei se devo essere sincere una torrefazione di qualità [. . .] 6. noi tra l’altro pensiamo che il Caffè il Café all’epoca quando ha chiesto la licenza 7. l’autorizzazione per aprire il pubblico esercizio eccetera [. . .]

the multinational company reasons like this. [I] would prefer, if I have to be honest, a high quality roasting [. . .] among other things we think that the café, the [Café] Café at that time when it asked for the permit the authorization to open the public service etcetera [. . .]

In line 1, Lorenzo emphasizes that his historical café is not—literally “stona” or ‘is not in tune with’—a multinational company. A multinational company, he continues, behaves rigidly, like a robot, while a historical café such as his has a “torrefazione di qualità” ‘a high quality roasting’ (line 5) instead. Against the artificial, mechanized production methods of the multinational corporation and its inferior product, he presents his own roasts as natural, handmade, and authentic. He thus advocates the authenticity of his café, constructing its aura through stressing its historical rootedness in place, its continuity over time, and its uniqueness more generally. In short, his historical café is narrated as unique and Italian in all these respects, while multinationals are, contrastively, similar to each other; they are the same in lacking history and authenticity. They don’t have an aura. Lorenzo then describes the competition that his historical café has to face on a daily basis with the myriad small cafés offering the same products—but, from his perspective, of an inferior quality. He then starts changing his stance toward us, the interviewers. The explicit use of the inclusive first-person plural pronoun “noi,” ‘we,’ in line 6, which in standardized Italian is optional, emphasizes his inclusion in the construction of this image of the “perfect” Italian café in this Northern Italian town. Lorenzo thus continues to construct intimate, collective identities that last across spatiotemporal configurations. They are thus chronotopic. His café’s authenticity as a local, high-quality Italian café is thus reinforced through a sharp contrast with the other competing cafés in town that do not have any historical background and, thus, any prestige.13 Lorenzo then continues with the comparison between his historical café and the nearby competitors. Still in his third narrative, he states,

104  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling (  Excerpt from Narrative 3: “We are not a multinational company!”) L: Lorenzo I: Interviewer 1 or 2 Original version (Italian)

English translation

L: 10. e pensano di pagare due euro un caffè al banco invece lo pagano sempre un euro come lo pagano lì

and [they, i.e., the customers] think that they will pay for a coffee at the counter with two Euros [and] instead [they] always pay one Euro for it as they pay for it there [i.e., at another bar] however, the fact is that we try to have something ofto- of quality, whereas there [at another bar] perhaps [you] go there, ehh that is ehh, [I] don’t know why but [you] don’t know what coffee you are drinking. I don’t think that that bar theremm hmm makes its own coffee. [it] doesn’t make it- [it] doesn’t have [its own] coffee roasting, [it] doesn’t have [its own] factory there ehh however [you] enter [another bar] and [you] don’t know what kind of coffee you are going to drink mm hmm [it] could be sawdust for me, in the sense that [i] don’t know what they will give me ehh however not everyone [I] repeat not everyone mm hmm takes this into consideration and it is a shame because [it] is not me ehh who

11. però quel fatto è che noi cerchiamo di avere un qualcosa di 12. da- di somministrare la qualità mentre lì magari vai lì ehh cioè 13. ehh non lo so perché ma non lo sai che caffè stai bevendo io non penso che quel bar lì I: 14. mm hmm L: 15. faccia lui il caffè non lo fa- non ha torrefazione non ha lo stabilimento lì 16. ehhh però entri e non sai che caffè stai bevendo I: 17. mm hmm L: 18. potrebbe essere anche segatura per me nel senso che non so cosa mi danno 19. ehh però non tutti ripeto come dicevo prima non tutti I: 20. mm hmm L: 21. la fanno questa considerazione ed è un peccato perché non è che sono io ehh che 22. essendo del mestiere dico io la faccio ‘sta riflessione no? sono riflessioni così voglio dire anche banali 23. penso no? si come si va a comprare voglio dire eh un abito sai che vai 24. alla Rinascente trovi certe marche vai da Armani e compri l’abito di Armani vai a bere il caffè

being part of this job I say I have this thought, haven’t I? [these] are thoughts so I want to say, also banal reflections I think, aren’t they? yes, as one goes to buy I want to say eh a dress [you] know that you go to the Rinascente [proper name of a department store] where you can find certain brands [you] go to Armani [i.e., the Armani store] and [you] buy the Armani dress [you] go to drink coffee

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  105 Original version (Italian)

English translation

25. “che caffè stai bevendo bohhhhhhhh!” @@@@@@@@ cioè [general laughter of all speech participants] 26. @@@@ è brutta ‘sta cosa eh! bruttissima

“what kind of coffee are [you] drinking? [I] dunno!” @@@@@@@@ that is [general laughter of all speech participants] @@@@ this thing [i.e., drinking coffee from an unknown source] is ugly uh? very ugly @@@ “what is this? [I] dunno!” however no [it] is something that [we] ingest, [we] put it inside us and [we] don’t know what [we] are drinking

27. @@@ “che roba è? bohhh!” eppure no è un qualcosa 28. che ingeriamo lo mettiamo dentro di noi e non sappiamo cosa stiamo bevendo

In this excerpt, Lorenzo uses the explicit inclusive first person plural subject pronoun “noi,” ‘we,’ again, at line 11, to highlight how authentic his café is with respect to other coffee corporations in town. He then starts using parallelism by repeating a series of the Italian spatial deictic “lì” (‘there’) to index other cafés in town and to differentiate his from them. This differentiation is pronounced, as he uses lì repeatedly in lines 12, 13, and 15. While the café is close to the more recent cafés, the executive seems to create a palpable distance between his prestigious historical café and the competing ones nearby. At the same time, moreover, Lorenzo starts enacting more intimate stances with the interviewers, as if he were confiding something to us or even treating us as insiders, as part of his restricted participation framework. Lorenzo’s use of these spatial deictics coupled with the use of the shortened more informal form of the demonstrative feminine adjective “questa” ‘this’ in “‘sta riflessione” in line 22 and “‘sta cosa” in line 26 shows that the interactional space between him and us, the interviewers, becomes more intimate. Intimate exclusions thus emerge, in Lorenzo’s ideological framework, among the speech participants. In line 25, Lorenzo’s stance toward us shifts. There is indeed a change in interaction at the time when he starts complaining about popular appetites for inferior, inauthentic coffee. His change in stance is suggested, for example, when he follows a stretch of reported speech with self-initiated laughter. In response, we burst out in laughter too. He says, ‘what kind of coffee are [you] drinking? [I] dunno!.’ The use of the direct report plus the use of the Italian response cry “boh” (uttered with lengthening) in line 25 suggests a more relaxed orientation, as if he had become, little by little, more comfortable and familiar with us. In addition, by using the direct reported speech without a matrix verb in lines 25 and 27, Lorenzo contributes to a more engaging atmosphere and a more relaxed stance. Toward the end of the interview, in his fourth narrative, he continues to create this intimate space between the speech participants, but he also

106  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling adds something new. He starts expressing more overtly some nativist remarks. After his last joking remarks about the coffee Italians drink, 14 this executive lowers his voice and says the following:  (Excerpt from the Narrative 4: “The Café is not a bar run by Chinese!”) L: Lorenzo I: Interviewer 1 or 2 Original Standardized Italian version

English Translation

L: 30. [softly] (e qui per esempio no? io ma parlo anche per me io entro in un bar no? io non entro in un bar dove ci sono i cinesi) 31. non ci entro però io ho vissuto a Londra 32. giro abbastanza quando sono all’estero 33. entro in un locale in un bar entro:: 34. in qualsiasi parte certe cose non le noto 35. I: mm 36. perché sono miscelate bene 37. da noi diventa “ah vado dal cinese a bere il caffè chissà cosa mi dà ‘sto cinese”

[softly] (and here for example, no? I but I speak for myself as well. [when] I go to a café, don’t I? I do not go to a café where there are Chinese [people]) [I] do not go there but I lived in London [I] go around enough when [I] am abroad [I] go to a place in a café I go:: anywhere [I] don’t notice certain things mm because [they] are mixed well here [it] becomes “ah [I] go to the Chinese [café run by Chinese people] to drink coffee. Who knows what this Chinese [person] will give me [for coffee] mm by contrast abroad everything is different that is numbers aside [which are] completely different, the foreigners so the employment is different but there [I] don’t have this problem

I: 38. mm L: 39. invece all’estero è tutto diverso cioè a parte cioè i numeri completamente 40. diversi gli stranieri perciò l’occupazione è diversa 41. però lì il problema non me lo faccio 42. qua me lo faccio perché? 43. ehh perché lì ehhh mi trovo:: 44. mi trovo in un ambiente diverso mi trovo in una: situazione diversa 45. dove:: mi va benissimo andarci 46. sono hanno più storia loro probabilmente cioè loro nel senso che più . . . 47. eh che ne sono ci sono gli italiani i cinesi i tedeschi i francesi

here [I] have this problem, why? ehh because there [I] find myself [I] find myself in a different environment in a different situation where::: [I] feel totally fine to go [they] are- [they] have more history probably that is in the sense that more . . . eh [I] don’t know there are the Italians, the Chinese, the Germans, the French

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  107 Original Standardized Italian version

English Translation

48. eh le:: ehh il ragazzo di colore quella- il giapponese cioè 49. sono miscelati assieme in maniera: molto:: se io qua mettessi::

eh the::: the colored guy that one- the Japanese [person] that is [they] are mixed together in a manner very:: if here [in the café as a worker] I pu::t a guy [I] am not saying that [they, i.e., his colleagues] would give me any problems but if [I] put a colored guy, [we] are still in a town where perhaps [they, i.e., the customers] co:me there would be the one [customer] who perhaps doesn’t like at all this thing [he, i.e., this costumer] would be annoyed [by this], [we] are too behind a little bit on everything, there is nothing to do [about it] [we] still need fifty years mm hmm mm hmmmm hmm

50. un ragazzo non dico che mi darebbero dei problemi 51. però se mettessi un ragazzo di colore ancora siamo in una città dove magari vengono: 52. ci sarebbe quello che magari magari gli puzza ‘sta cosa 53. gli darebbe fastidio siamo troppo indietro non c’è nulla da fare un po’ su tutto ah 54. cinquant’anni ci vogliono ancora I: 55. mm hmm mm hmmmm hmm

While he claims to be very cosmopolitan because he traveled abroad a lot, Lorenzo also says he would not enter a café run by a Chinese person in his town. He says this very softly to us in line 30, as if he were confiding something backstage (Goffman 1959) or if he were telling the interviewers facts in an unofficial, off-record way. Through so doing, Lorenzo implements his intimate stance toward us and thus welcomes us in his imaginary, intimate collectivity in which racialized remarks against migrants can be shared. Continuing in this confidential, backstage tone with us, in line 30, he claims that he would not enter a bar run by Chinese people, but he did spend some time in London, he adds, and he goes around a lot when he is abroad. His cosmopolitan image cannot be compromised by the fact that he cannot enter a café run by Chinese people, so it is important for him to emphasize that he goes around a lot when he is abroad. The interviewers remain almost completely silent as he talks, just giving several minimal responses in lines 38 and 55. When he enters a café abroad, he doesn’t notice certain things, he says in lines 36–37, ‘because they are well mixed’ (meaning people from different backgrounds). The verb “miscelare,” meaning ‘to mix’ or ‘to blend,’ is usually seen in contexts to mean the ‘blending’ of different types of coffee beans. Yet, when it comes to a café run by Chinese owners in his town, he says, ‘here [it] becomes “ah [I] go to the Chinese [café run by Chinese people] to drink coffee. Who knows what this Chinese [person] will give me (for/instead of coffee)’ in line 37.15

108  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling Lorenzo goes even further with his nativist remarks; yet, this time, they are directed against another group of migrants, Africans. Up to line 47, he continues to describe how acceptable and “natural” it is to see diversity abroad and how unnatural the same diversity would be in Italy, at least for the time being, in his town, and in his historical café especially. Indeed, in lines 51–54, by using a third type of hypothetical construction with the imperfect subjunctive tense in the if-clause (“mettessi” [‘put’]), Lorenzo seems to be removing the responsibility of the following claim from himself. If he hired a person of color in his historical café, his colleagues would probably not give him any problem, he says, but the entire town would, since a customer might be annoyed by the presence of an African migrant among the staff of the old, illustrious café. From the local scale of his historical café, the executive scales up and argues that the entire town would be against having an African migrant among their staff. He scales up even more when he argues that visitors (from all over the globe perhaps) would be annoyed too. Scalar moves are thus key tools to study interactions such as the one featured in this example. In a way, the executive claims that he would not hire a person of color among his staff, but he removes all the responsibility for this claim: it is not his fault; it is the town’s fault or the customers’ fault, coming from all over the world to visit his prestigious and “authentic” café. Through these scalar moves, this executive enacts and solidifies intimacies of exclusion by justifying his racialized remarks and by excluding possible non-Italian staff members. The aura of authenticity of his café would be threatened, in short. The interview ended soon after this remark, since he needed to leave for another appointment. As other similar cases indicate, these nativist remarks happen toward the end of the interview when Lorenzo is sure that he can share his thoughts with the interviewers. Midway through the interview, however, he starts changing his stance toward the two interviewers: he closes the distance between the two interviewers and himself, and the space thus becomes more “intimate,” partly through discourse strategies such as his use of personalization, humor, soft speech, and self-initiated laughter (Gumperz 1982). His intimate stances are enacted, moreover, through his extensive use of the reported speech coupled with the increased use of spatial deictics in narratives 3 and 4. Although he didn’t reveal his political orientation explicitly during the interview, a strong attachment to his regional history and traditions emerged nonetheless at various moments during our conversation, and this became increasingly colored by tacit nativism and racism. In brief, as Lorenzo seems to relax his orientation toward us and reframe the event in more intimate terms, he makes racist and nativist remarks that suggest it is really authentic Italianness that needs to be protected in order for his historical café—and the coffee offered there—to be preserved. In this respect, he discursively constructs the authenticity of

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  109 his historical café together with its aura, its historical uniqueness, and its continuity over time, an authenticity that has been anchored in a specific place for a long time. It is a chronotopic authenticity. At the beginning of the interview, this authenticity was not inherently against migrants, nor was it exclusionary; this authenticity could become a basis for an exclusionary argument about purity, however, and that is what happened as the discussion unfolded. At the outset of the interview, Lorenzo makes the point that the café is ideologically inclusive and open to everyone, just as cafés were historically when they were sites for literary and political public spheres, following the romanticized vision of Habermas (1989) and others. Yet, as the interview unfolds, he turns from official representations of his café to unofficial or backstage confessions (Goffman 1959) that unveil his racist, xenophobic exclusionary stances. Intimacies of exclusion are thus fostered, and solidified, in the Northern Italian business world as well.

4.5 Concluding Remarks Why are narratives key sites to explore intimacies of exclusion as they are (co)created, solidified, and shared among speech participants and beyond? What are the tools that linguistic anthropologists can use to study these subtle interactional dynamics in these speech events? In this chapter, I explored two types of racialized narratives: 1) narratives that I collected in interview settings with ordinary speakers in the Northern Italian regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia and 2) narratives that emerge in formal political speeches and rallies in the Veneto region. After describing the latest theoretical orientations of narratives as contextualized events in interview settings, I have demonstrated how the subtle dynamics between interviewer(s) and interviewee(s) can re-orient the participation framework of these speech events. Through a fine-grained analysis of these interactions, I show how speech participants engage in co-constructing intimate and exclusionary stances vis-à-vis migrant groups. Unlike Lorenzo, the executive of the historical café, who was supposed to officially represent his company and who delivers many unofficial stories that emerge in backstage moments during the interview, both Fabio and Cristina implicitly and explicitly perform their aggressive stances against migrants while seeking approval from the interviewer. All these speech participants’ narratives have a common denominator, however: they navigate between widespread, and unmarked, racism and the intimate stances that they perform to create a subtle connection with the other present participants, the interviewer(s) in these cases. That is how intimacies of exclusion can exist and be legitimized in Northern Italy. Lorenzo, moreover, narrates the story of his historical café while inhabiting contradictory stances: 1) the official representation of his café as open, inclusive, and with an authentic character that everyone should enjoy

110  Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling and appreciate and 2) the unofficial representation of his business, which emerges after the first half of the interview, when the two interviewers are considered as “insiders,” as an exclusionary authenticity, that only co-citizens and tourists can enjoy but not migrants. In this way, even the authenticity of this café and of its products is narratively and discursively co-constructed. Similarly, and even more explicitly, the narratives emerging in the political rally of the Liga Veneta Repubblica’s representative move toward nativism and racism as well. Through various discourse strategies, such as codeswitching between Venetan and standardized Italian, parallelistic structures, and the use of inclusive deictics, this politician enacts exclusionary stances at every line of his speech. The audience members actively participate in the construction of his ethnonationalist ideals. This is how racialized ideologies circulate at a fast pace and thus become legitimized and unmarked in Italy (Pagliai 2011, 2012). Indeed, alongside widespread anti-immigrant sentiment in this country, there have been many negative stereotypes about certain groups of migrants, such as the “Arabs” and the “Africans,” in addition to the “Chinese,” and these stereotypes have been widely circulating in corporations as well, such as in the fashion industry in which hiring preferences based on skin color, for example, are common (Wissinger 2012). As I mentioned earlier, these types of emerging exclusionary stances are very intricate, as recent research in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics has demonstrated and as I showed in Chapter 3. All this, of course, needs to be understood in terms of the political climate that I described earlier, with the Lega’s assiduous anti-immigrant platform and popular support for this platform. Despite widespread antiimmigrant sentiment, many Chinese migrants have managed to open cafés and bars in the periphery of many Northern Italian towns and near the train stations and thus have created their own “spaces” within Italy and Europe more generally (see Rottmann 2019). This, of course, might have triggered Lorenzo’s reactions in defense of his café and its authenticity, for example. Throughout his narration, while he tries to construct the authentic experience of his historical café for his co-citizens and for other tourists, emphasizing that the café is open to everyone, he also uses this authentic aura to reinforce his exclusionary and xenophobic ideologies. Along these lines, Chapter 5 will continue the analysis of racialized narratives, focusing especially on joke-telling practices, or barzellette, which belong to a particular genre that has been very popular in Italy since the fifteenth century.

Notes   1. For the original version in standardized Italian and for more details on the analysis of this epigraph, see section 4.4 entitled “‘They Are Just a Danger!’: Narrating Everyday Intimacies of Exclusions.”

Intimacies of Exclusion and Storytelling  111   2. The Italian chain store called Rinascente is similar to Macy’s in the United States. The branch that was in Padua in 2012 was closed in September 2018.   3. In standardized Italian, subject pronouns are optional. They are used, however, to disambiguate certain situations in which the verb referent is unclear or for emphasis (Renzi and Cardinaletti 1988).   4. Italians are often minimally bilingual: they speak their own regional languages besides standardized Italian.   5. In Italian, simple prepositions are often combined with the definite article (“preposizioni articolate,” ‘compound prepositions’).   6. When I analyzed discourse from other political rallies, in other speeches of other Liga Veneta Repubblica members, I found similar evidence, namely, moments of high parallelism tended to occur in standardized Italian rather than in Venetan.   7. The section of this chapter is a modified and updated version of some materials included in an article of mine entitled “Narrating Authenticity in Northern Italian Historical Cafés” published by Language & Communication (Perrino 2015b). I thank Elsevier for granting permission to reproduce some portions of this article.   8. For this project, we collected a corpus of 37 oral narratives produced by executives in several Northern Italian coffee corporations and historical cafés in interview settings.   9. Although colloquially only publicly owned companies are referred to as corporations, I am using the term here in its legal meaning. 10. The forms of sociality that took place in these coffee-houses was not exactly how Habermas (1989) thought about it. He romanticized this space as an intellectual public sphere where participants could share ideas about politics, literature, and art. Rather, interactions in these first coffee-houses were not always civil, since “[c]offee-house debate most often degenerated into squabble and conflict, precisely because there were no polite limits” (Ellis 2004, 62) (for a critique of the Habermasian public sphere in historical cafés, see (Laurier and Philo 2007). 11. There is an extensive and conflicting literature on the sociocultural meanings of authenticity: see (Vann 2006) for an excellent review and synopsis. On issues of authenticity and authority referred to language, see (Jaffe 2011). 12. Many migrants are now legal workers in Italian corporations, yet tension exists between this new migratory workforce and Italians in general. 13. For similar cases of competition of coffee shops struggling with authentic standards in Vietnamese consumer markets, see (Vann 2006). 14. The way coffee is prepared and served is taken very seriously in Italian cafés, where espressos and cappuccinos are consumed. The most renowned coffee brands are (in alphabetical order) Brasiloro, Goppion, Hausbrandt, Illy, Kimbo, Lavazza, Mauro, Pellini, Segafredo Zanetti, Splendid, and Vergnano (Perrino 2015b). 15. The politics and ideologies surrounding the increased number of Chinese migrants in Northern Italy, and their willingness to work and run cafés in the periphery, can perhaps explain Lorenzo’s remarks. It may be in part that he draws on a more widely circulating ideology portraying the Chinese as the quintessential counterfeiters, whose ability to copy is both admired and feared. There may be here the “indirect recognition of a sort of magical power, in the sense that China can conjure up anything found in our present capitalist market” (Pang 2008). 

5

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette

In una classe in una scuola elementare italiana

In a classroom in an Italian elementary school

la maestra fa l’appello dei bambini presenti: “Mustafa El-Ekheseri” “Presente” “Achmed El-Cabul” “Presente” “Kadir Sel-Ohlmi” “Presente” “Mohammed Endahrha” “Presente” “Al Ber Tomar Tinoros-si” Nessuno risponde “Al Ber Tomar Tinoros-si” Nessuno risponde La maestra allora dice: “Per l’ultima volta: Al Ber Tomar Tinoros-si” Un bambino si alza e dice: “maestra, quel bambino devo essere io, però si pronuncia così:

the teacher takes attendance of the students who are present “Mustafa El-Ekheseri” “Here” “Achmed El-Cabul” “Here” “Kadir Sel-Ohlmi” “Here” “Mohammed Endahrha” “Here” “Al Ber Tomar Tinoros-si” Nobody answers “Al Ber Tomar Tinoros-si” Nobody answers The teacher then says: “This is the last time: Al Ber Tomar Tinoros-si” A kid stands up and says: “teacher, that kid must be me but it [i.e., his name] is pronounced in this way: Alberto Martino Rossi

Alberto Martino Rossi

Source: (Barzelletta sent via WhatsApp by Alessandra, July 2017)1

5.1 Introduction Barzellette,2 or ‘short funny stories,’ about migrants and migration issues have become very popular across Italy in the last two decades. Jokes about classrooms in which there are more students with “non-Italian” names,

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  113 for example, have been widely circulating on digital platforms as well, such as Facebook and WhatsApp. My collaborators in Northern Italy have been sending me these jokes partly because they know that I am interested in this topic for my research and partly because they consider me as an insider and thus want to share these “funny stories.” They also send me various comments of theirs and of their friends on these short jokes. The climax of this opening digital barzelletta and its potential laughability reside in the fact that the teacher has so many students with non-Italian names now that she doesn’t even recognize her only Italian student named Alberto Martino Rossi, whose Italian spelling is unveiled at the end of the joke. As I described in Chapter 2, in addition to being represented negatively in the Italian media on a daily basis (Montali et al. 2013), many migrant groups have experienced injustices and inequalities at various levels within the present Italian society, including being ridiculed in educational settings through joke-telling performances. This is not the case of every school in Italy, of course, but many parents, I was told, have complained about the new composition of the classrooms and the fact that schools had to remove crucifixes to respect all other religions, which has been a heated debate for a decade now.3 Given the generalized unmarkedness of racist remarks, which is typical in Northern and Central Italy (Pagliai 2011; Perrino 2018c), these joke-telling events are not unusual. In her analysis of narratives about migrants in the Italian region of Tuscany, Pagliai (2011, E96) reminds us that racism is not an individual concern, but rather, “[i]t is produced in interaction.” As she demonstrates through her detailed analysis of racialized stories, many cases of racializing discourses are “commonsensical and unmarked” not only because of the strong influence of the mass media and the political parties that makes racism taken for granted but also because speakers often do not react to such discourses in order to save face (Pagliai 2011, E97). To show disapproval of these jokes or to try to consider them not funny at all would be interactionally problematic. In general, as it has been demonstrated, joking discourse often coerces listeners to just play along and laugh as the preferred response (Sacks 1974). Alongside widespread anti-immigrant sentiment in Italy, there have been many negative stereotypes about certain groups of migrants, such as the “Arabs” and the “Africans,” in addition to the “Chinese,” and these stereotypes have been widely circulating in many sectors of Italian society, such as in corporations, in hospitals, in pharmacies, and so forth, as I have examined in this book. In this chapter,4 I examine how short, humorous stories, or barzellette, in Northern Italy, are at times performed to racialize certain migrant groups, especially the so-called extracomunitari (see Chapter 1) and how these stories exploit multilingual communities of practice. More specifically, I show how individuals supporting the Lega perform barzellette with frequent shifts from standardized Italian to Venetan as they enact

114 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette and mock migrant voices. Multilanguage play is thus not only a resource for expressing “covert racism” (Hill 2008) but also for positioning audiences who are its hearers and can become complicit as the performance unfolds. By mocking migrants in their local language, Venetans iconically5 model the jokes’ “concealment” or “containment”—as if limiting their jokes’ accessibility and potential offensiveness to an imagined audience of Italian-speaking migrants by choosing Venetan over standardized Italian. In his classic work with Hindi-English bilingual speakers, Gumperz (1976, 1982) discovered that the direction of a code-switch provides important clues about the intentional illocutionary force of an utterance. In his words, what at the societal level are seen as norms of language usage or symbolic affirmations of ethnic boundaries are transformed here and built upon in conversation to affect the interpretation of speakers’ intent and determine effectiveness in communication. (Gumperz 1976, 39–40) Thus, for Gumperz, code choice between the “they” code (or the code of the “threat” language, or, in this case standardized Italian, the language of the Italian state) and the “we” code (or the code indexing more intimate relationships, in this case, Venetan) is an approach that can determine and affect the interpretation of an utterance. However, as I have shown in the previous chapters, it is unrealistic to add boundaries around, and thus categorize, sociocultural and linguistic phenomena such as the we/ they code. More fluidity and heterogeneity are present when situations of intimacy versus distance happen. Generally speaking, it is not unusual for code- and style-shifting to be used as a strategy of containment, not only because the target code—in this case Venetan—may be relatively unintelligible (Wirtz 2007) to some Italian overhearers but also because the shift can iconically model that very inaccessibility, thus framing the event metapragmatically (Silverstein 1993) as unintelligible, tabooed, as something that should be avoided or concealed (Fleming and Lempert 2011). Although unintelligibility can vary, given the different degrees of knowledge of Venetan among speakers in the targeted audience, the very fact of trying to conceal problematic moments of jokes or to overshadow their implications purportedly makes the jokes inaccessible to all but insiders. Thus, multilanguage joke-telling practices play an important role in positioning audiences in Veneto, and in Northern Italy more generally: by concealing supposedly offensive remarks at particular moments of the joke (usually the climax of a short story), joke-tellers emphasize the divide between insiders, the ones who understand and speak the local code, and outsiders, the ones who do not share the code, such as migrant groups as in the cases explored in this chapter.

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  115 Furthermore, proscription often ironically enhances the performative strength of tabooed speech acts, such that the efforts at containment exaggerate the boundaries of inside and outside and heighten the exclusionary politics of these joke-telling practices. Intimacies of exclusion are thus co-constructed and shared through these various, and very frequent, joke-telling performances as well. While barzellette in the Veneto region can be delivered in standardized Italian, many speakers use Venetan as a resource for humor, and when they do, not only is the story addressed to audiences who are presumed to share this code, but when the objects of humor are migrants, such shifts can also enact the latter’s exclusion. In this way, Northern Italians create a heterogeneous stance that involves “exclusionary intimacies” (Perrino 2018c) in which migrants are metapragmatically excluded from the joke, while an intimate sense of pride and belonging develops between the joke-teller and his or her co-nationals. In this respect, these practices are never stable or static; rather, they are dynamic and heterogeneous (Nichols and Wortham 2018) as being part of heterogeneous communities of practice (Perrino and Wortham In Preparation). This last chapter thus explores three important aspects related to the emergence of racialized language in Northern Italians’ joke-telling practices: 1) the fluid creation of exclusionary restrictions on migrants in Northern Italian communities of practice as a result of the strong anti-immigration agenda of the Lega that happened at the same time as language revitalization initiatives, as I discussed in Chapter 2; 2) how Northern Italian joke-tellers enact their individual and collective, intimate identities and exclusionary intimacies (Perrino 2018c) while they deliver their jokes around migratory issues; and, finally, 3) how these emerging collective and intimate identities and racialized ideologies are co-constructed in these interactional events and later solidified as a result of these recurrent, legitimized narrative enactments. After a brief overview of some of the anthropological literature on jokes by which this chapter is inspired and a brief history on barzellette in Italy, I turn to the analysis of three joke-telling events, drawn from my corpus data: 1) a barzelletta told by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi after a formal political event; 2) a barzelletta delivered during a dinner gathering among friends in a Northern Italian town; and, lastly, a barzelletta delivered on television and recontextualized on various digital platforms by a well-known Venetan joke-teller.

5.2 Racialized Jokes as “Keyed” Performances As the anthropological literature on jokes has demonstrated, joke-telling performances can help reproduce normative structures, as in cases of teasing (Attardo 1994, 2010, 2017; Dundes 1987) or ritualized “joking relations” between kin (Radcliffe-Brown 1940; Handelman and

116 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette Kapferer 1972), just as they can be used to comment critically on a wider society. Focusing on the interactional, performative, and discursive aspects of joke-telling, linguistic anthropologists have considered jokes within broader social and cultural contexts, beyond the immediate interactions in which they are told (Sacks 1974; Sherzer 2002), rather than as isolated acts whose texts can be analyzed on their own. This capacity of jokes to comment on the sociocultural context comes not only from the content of jokes, through the “what is said,”6 or denotational text, but also through the manner in which jokes are delivered, or their interactional text (see Chapter 3 for more details on “denotational text” and “interactional text”). The performativity of joke-telling, which includes their capacity to create sociability, sharedness, and a range of other pragmatic effects, has recently begun to receive more scholarly attention. While anthropological research has often addressed humor as embedded in the cultural practices under study (Oring 1992, 2003, 2008; Raskin 2008), linguistic anthropologists have started to explore more systematically the performative qualities of joke-telling rather than, for example, their apparent versus opaque meanings per se—this being one way of theorizing how jokes “work.” This has resulted in descriptions of diverse pragmatic functions of joke-telling as embedded in various sociocultural contexts. Since the early 2000s, scholars have started to explore more thoughtfully the performativity of joke-telling practices, such as their capacity to create sociability, sharedness, a sense of belonging, and, more generally, intimate relations between joke-tellers and other present speech participants. Jokes indeed have various pragmatic functions, as it has been demonstrated by research on this topic. Focusing on interactions among members of a Zulu gospel choir in South Africa, for example, Black (2012) has shown that jokes can help patients face embarrassment and shame and can create supportive stances around the HIV/ AIDS stigma. Jokes also serve to define and reinforce one’s identity (Managan 2012; Perrino 2015c), as Bucholtz et al. (2011) demonstrate in their research on “entextualized humor.” The authors explore how students can become socialized in a scientific community through the performance of certain formulaic jokes. By recirculating scientific jokes (in the form of texts or jokes known in the community), undergraduate students can align or disalign with a more scientific identity thus reinforcing their own “scientific” position vis-à-vis this community of practice. Similar to the cases presented in this chapter, joke-telling has also been studied as a performative tool for making racist remarks in public and political discourse (Jacobs-Huey 2006; Hill 2008). As Hill (2008, 41) famously argues, while stereotypes and slurs are generally categorized as “racist” because “they are made salient by referentialist and performative linguistic ideologies respectively,” other types of speech or performances

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  117 are less discernible, but they are nonetheless part of a “covert racist discourse.” Dickinson (2007) examines bivalency and speech play in multilingual communities in the Czech Republic, for example, exploring how joke-tellers’ narrative authority can be asserted through the use of bivalent meanings in their jokes. Dickinson’s migrants’ stories demonstrate that interactions between different ethnic groups serve “as icons for ethnic and economic power relations” (Dickinson 2007, 236). In these stories, Czechs emerge as well off and bright, although very attached to money; Ukrainians come across as not very smart but generous and with good intentions; and, finally, Russians are seen as mostly mobsters. Similarly, in the joke-telling events analyzed in this chapter, migrant groups (in this case typified as “Arabs”) emerge as stereotypically aggressive and violent, sexually potent and desirable, and not very talented at learning the Italian language. Joke-tellers thus not only enact exclusionary stances vis-à-vis migrants or issues around migration, but they also create and congeal intimate relations with their audience, thus solidifying collective and heterogeneous identities and, ultimately, enacting intimacies of exclusion in the process. Joke-telling performances, moreover, are particular events since audience members are always presupposed. As Wilce keenly argues, “[t]o pretend that performances of verbal art take place in a social vacuum in which only individual intent matters, that the audience plays no role in shaping such performance, entails a serious failure of method” (Wilce 1998, 211). As I have argued about narrative as practices in Chapter 3, in joke-telling performances too, audiences need to be considered as co-performers (even if the audience is represented by just an individual). As Bauman and Briggs (1990) have reminded us, however, all performances are “keyed,” in the sense that the audience needs to be able to recognize certain aspects of the performance to be able to fully understand and appreciate it (Chun 2004). Every sociocultural setting needs to provide keys to be able to follow their performances or to even be able to understand that a performance is taking place. If the audience members are not familiar with the sociocultural patterns that are incorporated in the joking performance, such as mocking patterns, the performance might not be successful. In exploring participation frameworks, Goffman (1974) also referred to keyed events through his theory of “frames,” as ways to better appreciate that a performance is taking place. Naturally, storytelling events are keyed performances, for example, since speech participants can make sense of the cues of a storytelling event that is taking place (when it starts, when they should expect a peak moment, and so forth). In this light, joke-telling performances are clear and complex examples of keyed performances since they follow a particular structure in which a final punchline is expected and at which the audience is supposed to laugh, as I show in the remaining sections of this chapter.

118 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette

5.3  Barzellette and Italian Joke-Tellers Italian joke-tellers usually tell their barzellette after a meal with friends or relatives, especially in large social gatherings. One or two participants considered “good” barzellette tellers, or anyone who is spirited enough to perform a joke, secure attention from the surrounding audience and engage in their joke-telling practice(s). They usually tell more than one joke, as they are expected to keep the performance active for quite some time. Moreover, some joke-tellers are renowned for being able to change their joke-telling practices while they deliver the jokes. Thus, even though the audience might be familiar with some classic jokes, they can always expect variations and surprising punchlines at the end of these speech events. Although there are some jokes that are (re)told across events and venues, decontextualizations and recontextualizations of these joke-telling performances are common practices in Italy. Barzellette can last from five to 20–30 minutes, depending on the variations that are added to the basic joke and on the artistry of the joke-teller. And, of course, the length of these performances depends also on the participating audience, who might react in different ways. Barzellette are thus very complex interactional events, and they have existed for a long time. In standardized Italian, there are indeed at least three terms that could be glossed with the English term joke: 1) scherzo is the general term for joke, including the sense of ‘prank’ or ‘trick’; 2) barzelletta, as mentioned earlier, is a short, funny story usually performed by barzellette tellers or ordinary speakers in order to make the audience laugh; 3) battuta is a short joking and unexpected response on, or intervention in, some conversational topic (see section 3.6, entitled “Narrating Extracomunitari in Veneto’s Health Care Facilities, in Chapter 3, for an example of battuta). This joking practice is very common among Italians across regional and class boundaries. This chapter, however, is centered on barzellette only. Historically, barzellette have existed at least since the Renaissance, although, at that time, they had different formats. The first barzellette discussed in the scholarly literature were apparently a variation of the ballad or poem with a precise formal structure of rhymes and verses since many of them needed to be sung while being accompanied by musical instruments (Pèrcopo 1893). In the fifteenth century, given their musical components, barzellette were also called frottole, and their topic was usually love and amusing romantic situations (Pèrcopo 1893). Today, barzellette are mostly of sexual or political nature and involve such regionbased stereotyped figures as Southerners and Northerners with “funny” stories about Southerners told by Northerners and vice versa (Mizzau 2005). These stories emphasize the circulating stereotypes about these two categories of people, as the Southerners are derogatorily called terroni (Aprile 2010) and the Northerners are derogatorily called polentoni (Del Boca 2011). These widespread ideologies have deep historical roots

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  119 and have been essential in keeping Italy socioculturally and linguistically fragmented, as I briefly explained in Chapter 2. Since the 1980s, however, given the continuous changes in Italy’s demographics, barzellette have started to feature migrants, especially Muslims from sub-Saharan Africa, Northern Africa, and South Asia, as the joke-telling practices that I analyze in this chapter show. My corpus of data for this chapter consists of barzellette that I collected both from different age sets and a wide range of sociocultural events: 1) I looked at barzellette told during dinners and special, long Sunday lunches. These joke-telling performances usually involve a participant who launches into the telling of the joke and keeps the audience engaged for several barzellette. The first joke-telling event is usually a warm-up for several of them after it. These barzellette have some similarities with stand-up comedies (Chun 2004; Glick 2007; Haney 2007). 2) I collected barzellette during folkloristic events in towns, usually called sagre, or ‘local festivals,’ and during political speeches or rallies delivered live, on television, and on the Internet. At political rallies in the Veneto region, for instance, many speakers ended up telling barzellette. Such joke-telling performances were common in rallies and more formal political speeches, both at regional and national levels. 3) I collected barzellette from digital platforms as well as blogs, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, YouTube (Chun and Walters 2011; Perrino 2017), and WhatsApp. In these cases, I examined both the original posting of the barzelletta and the comments and reactions that virtual users added at later stages. While the original postings of the jokes were from Northern Italy, it was more difficult to track the origin of the comments, especially since virtual participants’ preference is to remain anonymous (Knuttila 2011; De Fina and Perrino 2019). Depending on these different settings, barzellette are delivered by variously experienced joke-tellers. Anyone really can tell a barzelletta among friends, but if the setting is more formal, people let more experienced joketellers tell their barzellette. Even if some of the audience members already know the joke, everyone is eager to hear the changes that the joke-teller makes. As I mentioned earlier, barzellette are often changed while they are delivered. Joke-tellers can change the typology of the main characters of the joke, for example, or the main plot can be contextualized in a different location, and, of course, the ending can be modified too. In this respect, barzellette are never the same, they are interactionally co-constructed by both joke-teller and audience members. Their enactment and outcomes are thus always altered. Joke-tellers can easily manipulate them to various ends: to better connect them to the particular context in which they are delivered, to make some subtle contextualized political claims in the process, and, finally, to try to involve the audience more so that the joke’s enactment can be more successful. When there are multiple languages used in the community of practice where the joke is delivered, codeswitching

120 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette moments are very common too, and as I show in my examples, they have important pragmatic functions. Thus, joke-tellers usually take the stage and start telling jokes, and, at times, they codeswitch from standardized Italian to the local language, Venetan, as I show later. While the extensive literature on codeswitching (Auer 1998; Auer 1999; Heller 1988; Bailey 2000a; Bailey 2000b; Bailey 2007; Woolard 2006, to mention just a few) would invite an analysis focused on the nature of the switches themselves (such as the differences between cases of codeswitching and code-mixing, intersentential and intrasentential codeswitching, and so forth), as I mentioned earlier, I use codeswitching in the Gumperzian (Gumperz 1982) sense, as a discourse “strategy” to disclose the pragmatics and social functions of the switches themselves rather than their typology. I especially focus on the role of Venetan in barzellette, as a discursive strategy to deliver remarks that might be perceived as offensive by certain speakers, particularly in discursive environments where migrant groups are represented and ridiculed. While joking remarks on migrants might be felt as unmarked for many Italians today (Pagliai 2011), it might still be problematic to deliver them openly without at least seeming to contain them (perhaps to maintain a supposedly antiracist self-image), especially considering the constant growth of the migrant population in the country. These code-shifts often happen in ordinary conversations as well,7 as I showed in Chapters 3 and 4, but barzellette in general are a frequent environment for them. In this way, codeswitching in Venetan at particular moments of the interaction, or of the joke, seems to be a strategy for joke-tellers to try to convey these remarks in a veiled or contained way, or tacitly.8 Regardless of how the audience of the joke might react, however, the relevant point is that the joke-teller, by codeswitching into the local language, positions the audience members as insiders who may be expected to share the views of the speaker. Codeswitching thus becomes a way for joke-tellers to enhance their affinity with the audience as they deliver their racialized remarks during their joke-telling event. Moreover, by laughing soon after the joke and by showing agreement, listeners co-construct, and thus reproduce, racializing discourse in everyday life (Perrino 2015c). In the following sections 5.4 and 5.5, I analyze racialized barzellette in various contexts such as in formal political addresses and in more informal settings, with and without codeswitching practices.

5.4 Racialized Barzellette in Formal Political Addresses Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been known for using barzellette before, during, and after his political meetings and even during more formal parliamentary sessions (Perrino 2015c). Like many Italians, he is considered gifted at this, even if, several times, he has produced serious gaffes or slips that the international press picked up (Hill 2008; Lempert and Silverstein 2012). After a political speech to a national audience in

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  121 Naples, on May 13, 2011, for example, Berlusconi launched into a barzelletta9 about a trip he took in a plane, in which, as he recounts, he met a beautiful blond woman absorbed in reading a book. The seat near her was vacant, and so he naturally threw himself into it. But she ignored him and continued to read intently. He then, instinctively, asked her why she was reading so intensely. Calmly, she said that she was reading a book about love. Berlusconi, with an inquisitive attitude, asked her what the book taught her. She responded that the book taught her two fundamental facts: 1) that the most sexually potent lovers are “Arabs” and 2) that the most romantic lovers are Neapolitans. Berlusconi’s barzelletta goes as follows: Original Standardized Italian Version

English Translation

  1. Ho viaggiato su un aereo normale

[I] traveled in a normal airplane [i.e., not a government one] [I] had to go outside Italy [I] get in the plane and there is a very beautiful girl Gianni [addressing the man near him], [you] should have seen her a very beautiful blonde girl who was intensely reading a book [the] seat [was] vacant next to her [I] catapulted myself into it [laughter from audience] and [I] tried to start a conversation [with her] [there was] no luck at all [she] was reading so at a certain point I even said loudly

  2. dovevo andare fuori Italia   3. salgo sull’aereo e c’è una bellissima ragazza   4. Gianni, dovevi vederla   5. una bellissima ragazza bionda   6. che leggeva intensamente un libro   7. poltrona libera vicino a lei   8. mi sono fiondato [laughter from audience]   9. e ho cercato di cominciare una conversazione 10. niente da fare 11. leggeva 12. allora a un certo punto proprio anche forte ho detto 13. “signorina, ma Lei legge con una intensità straordinaria” 14. di che cosa parla questo libro?” 15. e lei mi ha guardato e soavemente mi ha detto 16. “parla dell’amore” 17. “ah” 18. “E che cosa le ha insegnato di così importante 19. vista la sua straordinaria attenzione?” 20. “mi ha insegnato due cose fondamentali:

“Miss, but you read with an extraordinary intensity what is the book about?” and she looked at me and she said to me sweetly “[it] talks about love” “ah” “And what did [the book] teach you [that’s] so important given your extraordinary attention?” “[it] taught me two fundamental things: (Continued)

122 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette (Continued) Original Standardized Italian Version

English Translation

21. che gli amanti sessualmente più potenti sono gli arabi [light laughter from audience] 22. e quelli più sentimentalmente forti 23. quelli più romantici sono i napoletani” 24. e allora io le ho dato la mano e le ho detto:

that the most virile lovers are the Arabs [lovers] [light laughter from audience] and that the most sentimentally strong and romantic ones are the Neapolitan [lovers]” and at that point I gave her my hand [i.e., to introduce himself] and I told her” “Miss, let me introduce myself: Mohammed Esposito”10 [loud laughter from audience]

25. “  signorina permetta che mi presenti: Mohammed Esposito” [loud laughter from audience]

At the end of this barzelletta, Berlusconi delivers his punchline: he extended his hand to introduce himself to this beautiful blond woman and uttered, “Mohammed Esposito,” Esposito being a typical Neapolitan last name, something that Italians know well.11 Berlusconi’s sense of humor is not as uncommon as it seems to be. In this short story, the racialized understanding of sexuality as associated with the figure of the “Arab” calls into mind circulating ideologies of northern African migrants, especially from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, who are often represented negatively in the Italian media (Montali et al. 2013). Here, Berlusconi also pairs Southern Italians and foreign migrants—the latter having become the new “internal other” in Northern Italy (Perrino 2015c, 2017, 2018c). While codeswitching moments are not present in this barzelletta, since it is delivered to an Italian audience after a parliamentary session, Berlusconi uses several other discursive strategies to involve the present audience and to create suspense while his short story unfolds. While he uses past tense and keeps the story of his trip in the realm of the past, he uses long moments of reported speech, or “constructed dialogue” in Tannen’s (2007) terms (lines 13–25), to create more involvement and expectation for his listeners. Through his reported clauses, Berlusconi thus voices both protagonists: his own past self and the blond woman. In this way, the constructed dialogue between the two characters seems to be happening in the here-and-now interaction. Furthermore, interactionally, Berlusconi directly involves some of the present audience members by directly calling their names and thus making them witnesses of the story. More specifically, in line 4, he invites Gianni, an assistant of his, to think about the beauty of this blond woman by uttering, ‘Gianni, you should have seen her.’ Gesturally, as the video shows, Berlusconi also lightly touches Gianni’s shoulders to involve this participant in his story even more and to create solidarity with him, one who can only imagine the beauty of this

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  123 blond woman. As the story unfolds, Berlusconi creates expectation about a funny punchline, which is delivered in line 25 and which triggers loud laughter from the present audience members who support Berlusconi’s joke. The fact that he introduces an Arab name in his storytelling is thus unmarked, as the barzelletta that opened this chapter also demonstrates. When multiple languages are present, however, these jokes can become much more complex in terms of interactional moves through the switches that the presence of these languages allows, as I show in the remaining sections of this chapter.

5.5 Enacting Extracomunitari in Barzellette in Veneto In this section, I examine barzellette as they are enacted by ordinary Venetans at informal events and by professional joke-tellers on TV and the Internet. These joke-tellers are fluent in both standardized Italian and Venetan, which is very common in this region. As I mentioned earlier, while barzellette circulate widely and at an unprecedented speed on digital platforms today, they are also continuously modified in the process. In this sense, barzellette are often adapted to the various contexts in which they are delivered. This allows joke-tellers to creatively incorporate moments in which the audience’s participation is desired. With this, the dynamics of the jokes are constantly changing and involving different sets of participants who might share the language and the view of the joke-teller. Barzellette are thus variously recontextualized (Bauman and Briggs 1990), both in written and in spoken form. In the following barzelletta, the joketeller is from the town of Padua (‘Padova’) and contextualizes all the details of the joke around himself and his town. A joke-teller from the town of Verona (another neighboring town in the Veneto region), for example, would have replaced the main character with someone acting in favor of Verona and in typical locations belonging to this town. These recontextualizations are very common in barzellette across Italy and on various digital platforms as well. 5.5.1 “In Padua There Are So Many Extracomunitari!” This joke-telling event was delivered in June 2012 at the end of a dinner gathering in the town of Ferrara, in the Emilia Romagna region, by a man in his thirties, Adriano, who was born in Padua, in the Veneto region—Ferrara being located between the two regions. At that time, I was conducting fieldwork in Emilia-Romagna after a lethal earthquake hit the region (Perrino 2018b).12 Before he started his joke-telling performance, the topic of the conversation shifted around migrants, prompted by a South Asian man who entered the restaurant where we were having dinner to sell red roses at the various tables.13 As soon as the migrant left the restaurant, Adriano interrupted all conversations at our table and

124 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette said, “Volete sapere l’ultima sugli extracomunitari?” (‘Would you like to know the latest [news] on undocumented migrants?’) After securing the attention of everyone sitting at the table, and probably of listeners sitting at neighboring tables as well, he stood up, increased the volume of his voice, and delivered the following barzelletta: Original Standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

[loudly]   1. un albanese, un egiziano e un padovano sono in un bar a bere una birra insieme

[loudly] an Albanian, an Egyptian, and a man from Padua [i.e., a town in the Veneto region14] are in a bar to drink a beer together and the Albanian he drinks his beer and all of a sudden [he] launches his glass in the air [gesture of launching glass in the air] [he] grabs a gun [gesture of grabbing a gun] and [he] shoots and hits the glass [gesture of shooting in the air] and then he says “in Albania glasses are so cheap

  2. e l’ albanese el beve a so birra   3. e all’improvviso lancia il bicchiere in aria    [gesture of launching glass in the air]   4. impugna una pistola    [gesture of grabbing a gun]   5. e spara colpendo il bicchiere    [gesture of shooting in the air]   6. e poi el dise   7. “in Albania i bicchieri costano così poco   8. che non usiamo mai lo stesso bicchiere due volte”   9. l’egiziano che iera ben impressionato dell’azione dell’amico albanese::: @@@ 10. el beve a so birra 11. lancia il suo bicchiere in aria    [gesture of launching glass in the air] 12. tira fuori la pistola   [gesture of taking out a gun from pocket] 13. spara rompendo il bicchiere ancora in volo    [gesture of shooting in the air]   e:::l dise 14. “in Egitto abbiamo così tanta sabbia per produrre vetro 15. che non dobbiamo mai usare due volte lo stesso bicchiere”@@@@ 16. eee::l padovano fa finta de niente

that [we] never use the same glass twice” the Egyptian who was well impressed by his Albania:::n friend’s action @@@ he drinks his beer [he] launches his glass in the air [gesture of launching glass in the air] [he] takes out the gun [gesture of taking out a gun from pocket] [he] shoots and breaks the glass still in the air [gesture of shooting in the air] he::: says “in Egypt [we] have so much sand to produce glass that [we] never need to use the same glass twice”@@@@ the man from Padua pretends that nothing happened

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  125 Original Standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

17. alsa a so bira 18. e a beve con molto piaser

[he] raises his beer and [he] drinks it with a lot of pleasure he launches the glass in the air [he] grabs the hunting shotgun and he shoots the Albanian and the Egyptian he leaves the bar and he says to the bartender “in Padua there are so many extracomunitari [i.e., migrants from undeveloped countries] that [we] never drink with the same ones” @@@@@@@@@@@ [loud laughing, incitement, and applause from the surrounding audience]

19. el lancia el bicer in aria 20. p  rende el fusil da caccia 21. e el spara all’albanese e all’egissian 22. el va fora dal bar 23. e el dise al barista 24. “a Padova ghe se talmente tanti extracomunitari 25. che no bevemo mai coi stessi” @@@@@@@@@@@ [loud laughing, incitement, and applause from the surrounding audience]

This barzelletta features the use of Venetan in certain moments, starting with a more prominent use of it in line 16, when Adriano introduces the man from Padua and loudly voices his actions. The use of Venetan, and of bivalent forms, or of words or phrases that could be both Venetan and standardized Italian (Woolard 1998), is then sustained until the very end of the joke when he delivers the punchline at lines 24–25. By using Venetan over standardized Italian in this portion of the joke, Adriano addresses the surrounding dinner participants, who are expected to share this local language. Through this discourse strategy, he scales down to his local language and thus creates an intimate solidarity with the other dinner participants. However, he scales up when he uses standardized Italian while enacting the reported speech of the two migrants, the Albanian15 and the Egyptian in lines 7–8 and 14–15, respectively. In his view, these two migrants are not part of his participation framework; they are thus subtly excluded. Intimacies of exclusion are thus subtly co-constructed between the speech participants at this dinner event. It is then in lines 16–25 that Adriano performs the voice of the man from Padua, with whom he conflates his own voice by using Venetan over standardized Italian. Unlike the previous lines, in which he uses only standardized Italian when he voices the Albanian and Egyptian migrants in their reported speech, in these final lines, he doesn’t differentiate his voice from the one of the man from Padua and uses Venetan through the end of the barzelletta. The reported speech of the man from Padua is the punchline (lines 24–25), which is delivered in Venetan as if Adriano

126 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette wished to perform his own voice to make sure that only certain audience members could fully understand the subtleties of the joke, given his racist, aggressive stance in the final lines. While the Albanian and the Egyptian grabbed their guns to shoot glasses for very similar reasons (to show that glasses are cheap in their respective countries and, for this reason, they never use the same glass twice), the man from Padua took out his hunting shotgun and killed the two migrants, saying that “in Padua there are so many extracomunitari that [we] never drink with the same ones” (showing that he considers migrants themselves to be disposable; lines 24–25). The punchline is then followed by loud laughter, incitement, and applause by the surrounding audience members who were sitting not only at our dinner table but at neighboring tables as well. As a whole, the barzelletta’s use of Venetan increases in its intensity over the course of the joke and is delivered entirely in Venetan (and bivalent forms) from line 16 until the end. The emphasis that Adriano gives to the preservation of his local town and language emerges even more clearly through an analysis of the spatial scales that he projects during his joke-telling event. He soon elevates the town of Padua to the same, larger scale of the two other countries mentioned in the barzelletta, Albania and Egypt, in line 1, when he presents the three protagonists of his joke. From a scalar perspective, by performing the final portion of the joke entirely in Venetan, he downscales, again, to the local code of his region and thus reinforces the intimate exclusions that he has created throughout his joke-telling performance, until he reaches the final lines 24–25, when he delivers his strong racialized remark. He thus enacts forms of intimacies of exclusion, since he aliments negative stances against migrants instead of promoting integration, compassion, and understanding while also creating solidarity among the dinner participants, whom he considers as “co-citizens” who can understand Venetan and thus appreciate his racialized humor. Adriano doesn’t even seem to take any responsibility for his racialized remarks since this responsibility is shared among the various voices (Bakhtin 1981) that he performs: the Albanian’s, the Egyptian’s, and the voice of the man from Padua. It is this unresolved incongruence (Pepicello and Wisberg 1983) together with the final punchline that build the potential laughability of the joke. This crescendo-like effect of the barzelletta creates a hilarious and almost absurd, although certainly unsettling, effect. By this barzelletta in both standardized Italian and Venetan, Adriano creates a bond with the listening audience who thus becomes complicit in excluding some of his listeners—here the migrant groups—who do not share the code. In this way, intimacies of exclusion are, again, enacted by the joke-teller and supported among the audience members who share the same xenophobic views. These exclusionary stances rapidly solidify as they become part of the ideological assemblages (Kroskrity 2018) in Italians’ everyday lives.

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  127 5.5.2 “Starting Today, You Are Giovanni!”: Assigning Italian Names to Migrant Students In Italy, besides improvised, although talented, joke-tellers, there are also professional ones who even have a special designation, barzellettieri.16 These professional joke-tellers have some similarities with comedians, but they mostly specialize in telling barzellette. They are indeed usually hired for special events, local festivals, or TV programs, as is the case explored in this section. The barzellettiere Toni Davanzo works for a Veneto Language TV channel and performed the barzelletta that I present and analyze here. He usually appears on a program called Cronache Venete: Una Goccia nel Mare dell’Informazione (‘Veneto Chronicles: A Drop in the Ocean of the News’).17 As their website states, è una trasmissione che ha l’ambizione di trattare temi e problemi a sfondo socio-culturale, eventi e manifestazioni varie lungo il territorio del Veneto Orientale, dando, con i propri microfoni, voce al cittadino. ‘[this] is a program that aims to explore themes and problems with a socio-cultural background as well as various events and performances on the territory of Eastern Veneto, by giving, through [our] own microphones, the voice to the [Veneto] citizen.’ This program, broadcast in Venetan, is another example of the various revitalization projects supported by the Liga Veneta Repubblica, as I described in Chapter 2. Davanzo usually recounts one of his short, funny stories at the end of each program, and the space reserved for him is entitled in Venetan Vutu saver l’ultima? which in standardized Italian is “vuoi sapere l’ultima?” meaning ‘would you like to know the latest [news]?’ The viewers of this program are mostly speakers of Venetan residing in the region where the channel broadcasts national and local news and a wide range of shows. One of Davanzo’s barzelletta18 goes as follows: T: Toni Davanzo A: Announcer Original standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

A: [. . .] ed ora il sempre atteso appuntamento con il nostro barzellettiere Toni Davanzo [Music introducing the TV show] vuto saver l’ultima? [title of the barzellette show] T: 1. El e ‘sto bambino arabo che va a scoea el primo giorno

A: [. . .] and now the eagerly awaited appearance of our barzellette teller, Toni Davanzo! [Music introducing the TV show] do you want to know the latest? [title of the barzellette show] there is this Arab kid who goes to school the first day [of class] (Continued)

(Continued) Original standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

  2. ea maestra come che lo vede ‘rivare el ghe dise   3. “buongiorno ciao ciao come ti chiami?”  4. e lu “ellohellhellhellu”    [imitating the sound of Arabic]   5. “no no no no no fermo fermo là fermo là”   6. a varda el registro e vede che nessun bambino   7. se ciama Giovanni   8. e a ghe dise “bon da ti da ‘un cuoda oggi   9. ti te si Giovanni 10. in modo che no ghe sia etnie

the [female] teacher, when [she] sees him arriving, says to him “good morning, hello hello what’s your name” and he [says] “ellohellhellhellu” [imitating the sound of Arabic] no no no no no stop stop there stop there [she] looks at the gradebook and [she] sees that none of the kids’ names is Giovanni and she tells him “well since youstarting today- starting today you are Giovanni so that there are no ethnicities [i.e., ethnic differences] [so] that there are no differences [so] that there are no e:::::::h differences among kids [in the classroom] mmmmmm Giovanni please [your name is] Giovanni” the kid [who was] all happy goes home he says “mom the teacher said that starting today [I] am Giovanni” “Giovanni it is not true, you are ellohellhellhellu” [imitating the sound of Arabic] [the mother] beats [the kid] heavily “[you] will see tonight when your father comes home” the father arrives at night “dad, the teacher said to me that starting today [I] am Giovanni” “it is not true you are ellohellhellhellu” [imitating the sound of Arabic] [the father goes] beats [the kid] more heavily

11. che no ghe sia differense 12. che no ghe sia e:::::::h differenze fra bambini mmmmmm 13. Giovanni me racomando, Giovanni” 14. el putel tutto contento va a casa el ghe dise 15. “mamma gha dit la maestra 16. che mi da un cuo son Giovanni” 17. “Giovanni non è vero ti te si ellohellhellhellu”    [imitating the sound of Arabic] 18. zo on fraco de bote 19. “te vedara stasera quando che vien casa to papà” 20. ‘riva el papà ea sera 21. “papà la maestra m’ha dit che 22. mi da ‘on cuo son Giovanni” 23. “non è vero ti te si ellohellhellhellu”    [imitating the sound of Arabic] 24. zo ‘n altro fraco de bote

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  129 Original standardized Italian and Venetan

English Translation

25. maria vergine poaretto

holy virgin mary poor thing the morning he goes to school poor thing he has a completely swollen face so fully beaten up [mimicking a swollen face with his hands] “Giovanni” the teacher says to him “but what happened?” “shut up teacher shut up shut up in the one day that [I] have been Italian [I] found two extracomunitari who covered me with damned punches” [music and laughter from audience]

26. ea matina el va a scoea 27. poaretto el gha un viso tutto sgionfio 28. pien de botte cussi   [mimicking a swollen face with his hands] 29. “Giovanni” ghe dise la maestra 30. “ma cossa zeo success?” 31. “tasi maestra tasi tasi 32. en ‘n giorno sol che so italiano 33. gho trovà do extracomunitari 34. che me gha sgionfà de bote sacranon”19    [music and laughter from audience]

Davanzo’s barzelletta, which is mostly performed in Venetan with codeswitches in standardized Italian and bivalent forms (Woolard 1998), is a story about an “Arab kid” who went to an Italian school, and when he arrived in class the first day of school, the teacher (la maestra) asked him what his name was. At this point, Davanzo imitated the sound of Arabic for the child’s name, but it was a purposively invented name, just a random combination of sounds, something that the audience might find humorous. The teacher then abruptly interrupted the student and asked him to use an Italian name instead of his Arabic name and assigned him the name Giovanni. The teacher wished to do so, recounts Davanzo, to avoid any ethnic differences among the kids in the class—all the other children being Italian—perhaps, in an effort to integrate foreigners by erasing any perceptible otherness, or simply because the teacher didn’t want to have any difficulty pronouncing names among his or her students. It is worth briefly noting here that Davanzo’s barzelletta describes the migrant children (with non-Italian first and last names) in Italian classrooms through an opposite lens with respect to the barzelletta that I selected to open this chapter. In this vein, in lines 10, 11, and 12, after naming the child with the Italian first name Giovanni, the teacher asserts that it would be good to do so ‘so that there are no ethnicities [i.e., ethnic differences], so that

130 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette there are no differences, so that there are no differences among kids [in the classroom]’ (“in modo che no ghe sia etnie, che no ghe sia differense, che no ghe sia e:::::::h differenze fra bambini”). Since the classroom is supposedly composed of all Italian children and an Arab one, which is exactly the opposite situation of this chapter’s opening barzelletta, the teacher decides to name the new child with an Italian first name to miraculously erase all ethnic differences. But then, when the student goes home and tells his parents about the name change, he gets beaten up first by his mother (lines 15–18) and later by his father (lines 20–24). Davanzo makes some comments in between the storytelling, such as “maria vergine poaretto” (‘holy Virgin Mary poor thing’), invoking Christian images against the violence of his own parents who beat him up because the child accepted the name change imposed by the teacher. At the end of this short story, the punchline (line 31–34) goes as follows: The teacher asks her student what happened (line 30), since he went to school with a very swollen face (because of his parents’ violent acts). The child answers the teacher by saying that in just one day of being Italian, he ran into two “extracomunitari,” referring to his own parents, who beat him up. Why should this joke be funny for Northern Italians? As mentioned earlier, such jokes unveil circulating stereotypes about certain categories of people, migrant groups in the present case, especially those coming from Northern Africa. The climax of the joke indirectly indexes (Hill 2008) not only a supposedly aggressive behavior that is stereotypically associated with Northern Africans but also a generalized sense of their presumed foolishness by committing violence towards each other (Perrino 2015c). Unlike Berlusconi’s barzelletta in the previous section, which he delivered entirely in standardized Italian to a national audience, this barzelletta strongly features Venetan, progressing in intensity over the course of the joke-telling. Indeed, while Venetan is present from the start of the barzelletta (see lines 1, 2, and 4, for example), Davanzo doesn’t use it in his reported speech at first. When Davanzo directly reports the teacher’s speech in lines 3 and 5, for instance, he uses standardized Italian, not Venetan (line 3: “buongiorno ciao ciao come ti chiami?”, ‘good morning, hello hello what’s your name’; line 5: “no no no no no fermo fermo là fermo là,” ‘no no no no no stop stop there stop there’). However, in the climax of the story beginning at line 26 (ea matina el va a scoea, ‘the morning he goes to school’) when the child returns to school and is addressed by the teacher, both the narrator Davanzo and the voice of the teacher speak consistently in Venetan, not standardized Italian. Even the foreign boy now speaks the local language and delivers the punchline in Venetan at line 34 (“che me gha sgionfà de bote sacranon,” ‘who covered me with damned punches’). The fact that the boy speaks the local language shows how he is brought into the voice of the insider, as he reports on his parents’ violent actions against him. In a sense, it is as if he were

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  131 against his own parents, speaking as a rebaptized Italian person, thus an insider, against his outsider, “extracomunitari,” parents. All the voices— the teacher’s, the child’s, the two parents’, and the narrator’s—increase their shifts to Venetan steadily at every line. These exclusionary and inclusionary fluid shifts are common in such codeswitching instances: speech participants tend to codeswitch at particular moments of the interaction, creating an intimate space among insiders and leaving out those outsiders who are not supposed to share the code. In this way, the story as a whole moves from standardized Italian to Venetan: the more the barzelletta progresses in its intensity, the more codeswitching into Venetan the Davanzo uses until the final line, line 34, where the storyteller reaches the climax of the barzelletta in which he also uses a blasphemous expression (sacranon), which is derived from ancient French (sacré nom de Dieu), insulting the name of God. By codeswitching into Venetan, in this barzelletta, Davanzo not only positions the audience members as complicit and as participants in the joke (through laughs and applause), but, at the same time, he excludes the “other,” the migrant groups in this case, who might not be fully fluent in Venetan and thus might not understand the subtleties of the joke (Perrino 2015c). Moreover, immediately in line 4, the child pronounces his name by uttering nonsensical sounds to make his name resemble Arabic, but it is gibberish instead, which is received by the audience as hilarious, given their laughter. These nonsensical sounds resembling Arabic recall both the barzelletta I selected to open this chapter and Berlusconi’s barzelletta in section 5.4: Italians seem to have variously ridiculed Arabic names in many of their barzellette, a fact that indicates the underlying ideological framework regarding this category of migrants in Northern Italy. Analogous to cases of mock Spanish described by Hill (1995, 2008), Davanzo mocks the typical Arabic sound in a nonsensical fashion instead of uttering a meaningful name for the child. This Arabic sounds’ imitation is recurrent throughout the barzelletta and is thus another means by which the storyteller enacts his racialized stances and solidifies intimacies of exclusion with the audience members and beyond (given the transnational reach of barzellette when they are shared online—as is the case with Davanzo’s performances). Similarly, at line 17 and line 23, first the mother of the child and then his father reprimand him when he says that he has an Italian name, Giovanni, and they both repeat these Arab mocking sounds to remind him of his Arabic name instead. The presence of these nonsensical Arabic sounds coupled with codeswitching into Venetan reinforces these intimacies of exclusion even more. Davanzo’s use of different voices may be compared with Chun’s (2004) case of the comedian Margaret Cho, who, through the revoicings of her mother during her on-stage performances, manages to mock Asians in different ways, including producing stereotypical Chinese

132 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette accents and nonsensical syllabic sequences (see also Vigouroux 2015). It is through these different voices that Davanzo is able to deliver his jokes without seeming the main responsible agent, as he redistributes responsibility by including the audience members as tacit, and thus complicit, participants. The listeners are positioned as if they shared the same code, and, by extension, as if they shared the same view on the humor that is being performed. In a sense, through his telling, Davanzo is able to convey his remarks without taking responsibility for them since the attribution of these remarks is diffused and shared not only among these various voices that he performs, but also by having the audience participate by laughing and sharing the same code. The final lines of the barzelletta reach the climax of the joke when the teller puts a blasphemous expression in the mouth of the child himself at line 34 (“che me gha sgionfà de bote sacranon,” ‘who covered me with damned punches’). And, through so doing, Davanzo not only contains his racist remarks by switching into Venetan, but by using this local language and by putting it in the mouth of the migrant child, he also creates a stronger, and disconcertingly bonding, effect on the audience who shares this code. By laughing loudly, the audience becomes complicit with the storyteller. First, the storyteller assigns problematic remarks to the mouths of three different voices (the kid, his mother, and his father); then he starts using codeswitching more steadily until the climax of the joke, which is delivered almost entirely in Venetan. This crescendo-like effect of the barzelletta creates a hilarious and almost absurd, although certainly unsettling, effect. In this way, intimacies of exclusion, and the ideologies originating from them, can be tacitly solidified, and thus legitimized, in Northern Italy.

5.6 Concluding Remarks What is the significance of ridiculing and mocking migrants in joke-telling practices and in narrative practices (Chapter 4) more generally? As I have contended in this book, discursive strategies such as codeswitching between standardized Italian and the local language, as they happen at particular moments in the storytelling event, such as when racialized remarks are delivered, unveil key, and disconcerting, language ideologies (Kroskrity 2018; Gal and Irvine 2019) in these heterogeneous communities of practice. Given the many initiatives of language revitalization in Veneto, as connected to the politicization of Venetan, racialized remarks delivered in this local language at particular moments of the storytelling might index more than one would expect. These containment strategies, as I have suggested, show that the problematic indexical associations of one’s speech—such as sexual and sexist remarks, off-color and racist remarks—are ideologically mitigated by the framing of that speech in a local, in-group code.

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  133 In this light, the problematic speech is discursively set apart as “not public” (even if, in reality, it may be easily understood by all those copresent). The metaphoric containment of the strong indexicality of utterances like the ones discussed earlier puts these utterances “off-record,” at the same time that it sharpens the contrast between Venetans and migrant groups, and thus it enacts and solidifies intimacies of exclusion through these lines. By codeswitching into Venetan, Davanzo positions the audience members as complicit and as participants in the joke, for example, and thus he creates an intimate participation framework with his virtual audience members. At the same time, however, Davanzo performs an exclusion of the “other,” the migrant groups in this case, and therefore enacts intimacies of exclusion in his joke-telling performances. Davanzo’s codeswitching practices are very similar, pragmatically, to the ones performed by the female dermatologist featured in the last section of Chapter 3 (Section 3.5) when she codeswitches into Venetan to make her racial slur and other remarks about Chinese and African migrants. By switching into this language, she reinforces the intimacy that she presumes exists between the present speech participants, all native Italians who can understand Venetan. These assumptions, or ideologies, have been very recurrent in my corpus data. Similarly, although with no instances of codeswitching, Berlusconi’s barzelletta and the discourse strategies that he enacts when he delivers it reveal how race and racializing discourses are embedded in sociocultural practices, including views on the condition of migrants in the nation-state. By ridiculing Arabs and Arab last names, and by representing them stereotypically as “the most virile lovers,” Berlusconi’s barzelletta is tacitly racist: it contains racialized language that is “unmarked” for the Italian audience to whom the joke is addressed (Koven 2013; Pardo 2013). Reactions to “covert racism” (Hill 2008) vary in practice, of course, as has been demonstrated by research on this topic. While the format of barzellette seems to almost “coerce” the audience to play along and to laugh at the jokes, also to save face (Pagliai 2011), in some cases, reluctance, resistance, or even avoidance may occur in similar settings. In her research on the Lega’s register and the Bergamasco language,20 for example, Cavanaugh (2012, 92) examines how speakers who show a pro-local orientation often fall into “interdiscursive traps, which link speakers to undesired stances and thus evaluations of their social, cultural, economic, and political environment.” Similarly to the Veneto region, as conservative politics in the Lombardy region politicize local language preservation, speakers who support the revitalization of this language, or who communicate by using it, risk being taken to share the political views of a leghista (‘a follower of the [Northern] League’), with a strong attachment to regional roots, traditions and language as well as a strong defense of this patrimony against the new migrant groups who are viewed as a threat (Perrino 2013, 2018a, 2018c). Because of these “interdiscursive traps,”

134 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette argues Cavanaugh (2012), avoiding the use of Bergamasco might happen when speakers do not want to be associated with the political views of the Lega. Thus, when barzellette are used in a particular political climate like the one described in this book (see Chapter 2), they can become powerful political statements, such as, for instance, the expression of an alliance with anti-immigrant political parties like the Lega. In closing, as the jokes analyzed in this final chapter show, ridiculing migrants has been going on for quite some time and has thus become part of Italians’ everyday life to cope with the new demographic changes that have happened in the country (see Chapter 1). Intimacies of exclusion can thus be created at a rapid pace: a divide between the “we” of the local language users, Venetans in this case, and the “foreign” migrant “others,” who have been the target of anti-immigrant policy and prejudice, is often foregrounded. Venetans thus enact exclusionary stances while also creating intimate connections among them, since they consider themselves as “insiders,” “locals” who share the same cultural DNA and cultural traditions (see Chapter 1). In this way, they foster and solidify a “cultural intimacy” (Herzfeld 2005), which has deep roots in their regional history that predates the Italian nation-state and thus develop imaginary kin-related chronotopes (Agha 2015) in the process. Within this participation framework, the ideological divide between the insiders “we” and the outsiders “they” seems to mirror an image of who is considered an Italian citizen and who is not and, within this racialized ideological framework, will never be. This ideological paradigm adds different scales to Gumperz’s (1976) classic notion of a “we” versus a “they” code, by showing how codeswitching moments in the immediate interaction are iconic of the “we” versus “they” in Veneto and in Northern Italy, more generally. It is as if Venetan speech participants practice a strong, ideological monocultural and monoglot resistance to the heterogeneous communities of practice of the contemporary Italian sociocultural and linguistic landscape. Thus, within these new inclusion-resistant superdiverse environments (see Chapter 1), mocking migrants aliments this resistance and sharpens ideological boundaries between “us” and “them,” serving as one more exclusionary defense against people who are not considered co-citizens—although in many cases, as I have argued (Perrino 2017), they legally are Italian citizens.

Notes   1. In this barzelletta, I maintained all the original spelling choices.   2. In standardized Italian, barzelletta is the feminine singular noun, while barzellette is the feminine plural noun. In this chapter, I use both options depending on the number they index.  3. www.repubblica.it/esteri/2010/06/28/news/crocifisso_strasburgo-5219976/ (last accessed, August 7, 2019).

Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette  135   4. This chapter incorporates some data and ideas, which have been updated and revised, from the following article of mine: “Performing Extracomunitari: Mocking Migrants in Veneto Barzellette.” Language in Society 44 (2): 141–60, published in 2015. I thank Cambridge University Press for granting permission to use portions of this article.   5. Venetans model this concealment iconically in the sense that the shift from a widely intelligible code (standardized Italian) to one with a more restricted distribution (Venetan) models—is iconic of—the shift from something open to something concealed.   6. In terms of the content of the jokes, even when these short stories seem to be apparent, their laughable power is felt to be derived from their hidden, equivocal sense but not from other external resources that are part of the surround. Whether it is lexical, phonological, or deep structure ambiguity, the channel for fully appreciating a joke is when the incongruity of a joke is finally resolved (Pepicello and Wisberg 1983).   7. For example, as I mentioned in the previous chapters, while I was conducting fieldwork in Veneto at a state-run hospital (I was the only participant present with the doctors), code-shifting from standardized Italian into Venetan was common among doctors. A doctor I was interviewing once noticed a group of Senegalese migrants in the waiting room just outside his office, switched into Venetan, and said the following to a nurse: “varda come che i ze arivai sti qua, in sinquanta per far vedare el puteo, ahhhh benon semo a posto e i ze tui bei scuretti, eh?” (‘look how they have arrived —these ones here—fifty at a time, just to have their baby seen [by the doctor]. oh well . . . and they are beautifully dark, eh?’). This short excerpt, even though it doesn’t contain any explicit jokes, shows that problematic, off-color, and racist remarks all tend to be uttered in Venetan, regardless of whether the focus is on migrants or not. These remarks might have passed through as unmarked since there was no reaction from the nurse and the other people in the waiting room who could understand Venetan and thus the doctor’s remarks.   8. This also stems from the very nature of the traditional uses of the local code in family settings, where people engage in conversations that are not part of the public domain (Gal 2002).   9. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk3N9MhXTvI (last accessed, April 16, 2019). 10. The Italian last name Esposito is typically Neapolitan. 11. Italians can recognize the individuals’ provenance by knowing their last names. There are some stereotypical last names that have received a lot of attention in certain venues, such as barzellette. The Neapolitan last name Esposito is an example of these cases. 12. Besides being part of a study abroad program sponsored by the University of Michigan, I became interested in collecting stories about this earthquake after we experienced this natural disaster over the course of two months. 13. Selling roses and other flowers at restaurants and cafés is one of the many types of street selling activities that migrants perform in Italy. Some migrant groups indeed have networks providing the means to sell certain products. For example, Senegalese street sellers sell booklets, bracelets, wooden statues made in Senegal, and other objects (Riccio 1997, 1999a, 1999b, 2000). South Asian street sellers usually sell flowers in restaurants and cafés. These are usually the first stages for migrants before trying to obtain a regular job. Sometimes, companies hire them for jobs that Italians do not wish to do anymore, such as picking tomatoes in the fields and working in the leather industry, as many of the migrants I interviewed stated (Perrino 2006).

136 Performing Extracomunitari in Barzellette 14. Padova (Padua) is a town in the Veneto region, in Northeastern Italy. 15. While Albanians were some of the first groups to migrate to Italy in the 1980s and 1990s (Albahari 2015a) and thus are now more integrated than other, more recent arrivals, they are still stigmatized and “othered” by many Italians across Italy (Pagliai 2011), as this barzelletta shows. 16. Barzellettieri is the plural masculine noun, barzellettiere being the singular masculine noun. 17. www.piavetv.net/cronache-venete/ (last accessed, August 9, 2019). 18. To study Davanzo’s joke-telling style and topics incorporated in his barzellette, I watched hundreds of his short videos over the course of three years and fully analyzed thirteen of them. It is worth mentioning that the majority of Davanzo’s jokes, especially the ones with problematic, racialized remarks, show an increase of the use of Venetan as the jokes unfold. 19. The Venetan term sacranon literally means ‘sacred name of God’ and derives from ancient French, sacré nom de Dieu. 20. The local language of Bergamo, a town in the Northern Italian region of Lombardia (‘Lombardy’). 

Conclusion

Every utterance participates in the “unitary language” (in its centripetal forces and tendencies) and at the same time partakes of social and historical heteroglossia (the centrifugal, stratifying forces). Such is the fleeting language of a day, of an epoch, a social group, a genre, a school and so forth. It is possible to give a concrete and detailed analysis of any utterance, once having exposed it as a contradiction-ridden, tension-filled unity of two embattled tendencies in the life of language. The authentic environment of an utterance, the environment in which it lives and takes shape, is dialogized heteroglossia, anonymous and social as language, but simultaneously concrete, filled with specific content and accented as an individual utterance. (Bakhtin 1981, 272)

How and for what reasons are intimacies of exclusion created, widely circulated, shared, and crystallized among Northern Italians and Italians more generally? What are the mechanisms that hold these intimate stances together across spatiotemporal scales, such as a DNA that only some individuals who are born in Northern Italy, who share history and traditions, and who speak their local language are believed to have? What is the significance of these exclusionary intimacies in this historical and political moment in Italy and in Europe more generally? As Italy has become a focal European entry point for migrants and refugees and as exclusionary restrictions and practices against these newcomers have been emerging at a high rate across this country, it is important, as I have suggested, to focus our attention to some of the everyday discursive practices that have been accompanying the long series of injustices and “crimes of peace” (Albahari 2015a) committed on a daily basis on and around the Italian soil. As I have discussed in this book, for more than a decade at least, when I started to collect their stories in 2003, Northern Italians have been fueling ethnonationalist ideologies, such as the DNA biological trope

138 Conclusion (Chapter 1) in which a common “Italian DNA” is imagined as a unifying, centripetal force that has been keeping them together for centuries. Northern Italians have been connected across spatiotemporal scales by a metaphorical kinship chronotope (Agha 2015; McIntosh 2015), as I have demonstrated. Saving their artistic and historical patrimony, their traditions, and their local languages thus seems to have become their primary goal in the new communities of practice in which they live today. These communities of practices are heterogeneous given their superdiversity, however, with many people from different backgrounds, speaking different languages that are superposed to other languages and so forth. In Bakhtin’s (1981, 272) words, it is a “social and historical heteroglossia” in which intimate identities coalesce and solidify, going against the centrifugal forces and taking a centripetal counter-direction instead. That is why, as I have argued, these communities of practice are characterized by an inclusion-resistant superdiversity, which becomes palpable by exploring interactional patterns in narrative practices. This sociocultural, historical, and linguistic multidirectionality in these heterogeneous communities of practice has made it difficult for concepts such as multiculturalism to be applied to them, as I have suggested in this book. Italy is not multicultural. As I explained in Chapter 1, multiculturalist ideologies usually have a positive stance in which integration is desired and presupposed. Nowadays, the very notion of the migrant as an individual who moves from one place to another has significantly changed. Individuals who move are presently very “mobile” given the transnational relocations that can happen at a very fast pace. A “mobile migrant,” where mobility is intended as a multidirectional force, would be a better descriptor than “immigrant” for some scholars today (Canagarajah 2017). As Blommaert has keenly argued, although globalization may have simplified the many transnational ties that have developed across the globe, the “global village,” as he names it, has even rendered sociolinguistics so much denser and more multidimensional. As he writes, “Globalization forces sociolinguistics to unthink its classic distinctions and biases and to rethink itself as a sociolinguistics of mobile resources” (Blommaert 2010, 1). These multidirectional forces thus need to be taken into account when exploring migration issues in European countries such as Italy and Belgium from a sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropological perspective. As I argued in Chapter 1, Vertovec’s (2007) concept of “super-diversity” seems to be a better fit for such heterogeneous sociocultural and linguistic communities of practice. Superdiversity allows more fluidity given the tremendous increase of migrants who are now present in Italy. These migrants belong to many nationalities and ethnic groups; they speak different languages and have diverse sociocultural backgrounds and religious beliefs. It is precisely in these newly heterogeneous environments that intimacies of exclusion can be (re)configured as subtle reactions to them, as a defense of a national artistic, historical, and linguistic patrimony that

Conclusion  139 is seen lost if amalgamated with the ones belonging to these newcomers who have entered the country, including, recently, refugees from Syria and Eritrea.1 Superdiversity can become a “messy marketplace” (Blommaert 2010, 28), however, in which the political economy of languages shifts continuously because of their high mobility (Regan et al. 2016). While superdiversity might work better in certain communities, I propose to study these Northern Italian heterogeneous communities of practice from below, without taking a multicultural framework as an a priori fact, as something that needs to fit in all communities where migration happens. Exploring these communities as heterogeneous communities of practice adds more nuanced options to make certain processes emerge, such as people’s racialized stances. These processes would remain invisible, however, if scholars just applied “already made” models stemming from a multiculturalist perspective. Heterogeneity in these communities allows researchers to better capture the real, everyday realities of people’s lives, such as their “fleeting language of a day, of an epoch, a social group, a genre, a school and so forth,” as Bakhtin (1981, 272) reminds us. In this book, I have thus complicated the notion of heterogeneity by showing how intimacies of exclusion can coalesce in such multidirectional and diverse communities. In a heterogeneous environment, individuals have different lives based on different histories, traditions, artistic forms, and languages. However, when heterogeneity happens in locations such as Italy and, more specifically, Italian regions, where people have been living within their own local realities, contrastive forces might surface. Rather than a superdiverse context, some Italian regions, such as the ones explored in this book, are now characterized more and more by an inclusion-resistant superdiversity. There is indeed resistance to diversity by/in some pockets of Italian society since there is already a local diversity in place, which is made of different local languages, traditions, and artistic patrimony that have been active within Italy for centuries. If considered from a different scale, the national scale, for example, this diversity is even still believed to be monocultural, as many of the stories that I collected and analyzed indicate. This might be the case because despite their various diversities, Italians still consider themselves as part of the same historical background, the same country, since its official unification in 1871, and thus wish to defend their country and national identity when they are, as many of my collaborators stated, “under attack.” It is precisely in this inclusion-resistant superdiverse context that intimacies of exclusion can be created and solidified across regions, reaching out to transnational members, such as Italians living abroad, too, as I showed in Chapter 1. This emerges clearly in the analyses of some of the historical symbols, such as flags of the Liga Veneta Repubblica and other emblems and textual artifacts that I described in Chapter 2. Here, after a brief survey of the historical, political, and sociocultural context of the far-right political parties and movements, such as the Lega, I offer a

140 Conclusion fine-grained analysis of key symbols to show how Venetans’ ideologies on maintaining and keeping alive their language, culture, and art have been fueled by a strong anti-immigrant attitude which has been advocated by these political parties. Language revitalization initiatives have often been paired with political orientations and the various enactments of exclusionary stances vis-à-vis migrant groups. In these settings, diverse forces (re)acting in multiple directions might require/yield different revitalizing configurations. In all the cases examined in Chapter 2, history, art, and politicosociocultural realities, I suggest, have played a key role in promoting the local language of the Veneto region, Venetan. By exploring revitalization dynamics across spatiotemporal scales, processes of change in the Veneto region have emerged. Members of the Liga Veneta Repubblica, in particular, have been engaged in politicizing this local language, so that they can recruit more voters and become more visible at a European scale. By revitalizing not only their local language but also their past and present traditions and their historical, prestigious background, Venetans thus create intimacies of exclusion vis-à-vis non-speakers of this language and people who don’t share their past. As I show here, revitalizing a language is not an isolated effort; rather, the language being revalorized is just one side of the overall story. History and culture emerge semiotically through key symbols, such as the lion of Venice; significant colors, such as the colors of the Liga Veneta Repubblica’s flag; and meaningful shapes, such as the flag’s six tails representing the six main towns of the Veneto region. Textual artifacts, such as historical books for children written in Venetan and textual rationales about them, play a crucial role in this process as well. By reading certain lines in standardized Italian with frequent codeswitches into Venetan, Venetans reinforce their collective identity, which becomes intimate and not sharable, as I showed in my examples. Thus, there are always multiple factors that influence revitalization processes, which are not unidirectional—nor are they predictable. Language revitalization practices are thus key sites to explore in which these ideologies are continuously being created and enacted among members of a community of practice. These protective and defensive stances have emerged strongly in the many narratives that I have collected since 2003.

Intimacies of Exclusion in and Through Storytelling Practices Why are narratives key sites to explore intimacies of exclusion as they are (co)created, solidified, and shared among speech participants and beyond? What are the tools that linguistic anthropologists can use to study the subtle interactional dynamics in these speech events? In the many examples that I have used in this book, I have demonstrated how the subtle dynamics between interviewer(s) and interviewee(s) can re-orient the

Conclusion  141 participation framework of these speech events. Through a close analysis of these interactions, I have explored how speech participants engage in co-constructing intimate and exclusionary stances vis-à-vis migrant groups. As I show in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, for example, narrators enact their intimate identities while they tell their stories. Collective identification thus emerges subtly in various interactional moments. Language practices, such as narratives, are thus significant sites for studying processes of identity co-construction and their enactment in our everyday life. As Tetreault has recently discovered in her research in Parisian banlieues, in France, for example, naming practices among northern African migrant teens are ways to construct “social difference and identities, both selfascribed and other-ascribed” (Tetreault 2015, 3). Stance, stancetaking, and the various spatiotemporal configurations that stories can take, as I explain in Chapter 3, are key notions for the analysis of individuals’ identities. Collective identities can thus be established, and performed, among individuals who wish to share the same habits or simply their solidarity if they belong to certain migrant communities, as Van De Mieroop (2015) has shown in her work in Antwerp, Belgium. In her case, migrants belong to various communities of practice and thus shift in and out of these groups, showing how these collectivities are always fluid and without fixed boundaries. Intimate and collective identities emerge also in defense of a national image and brand, such as Made in Italy among businessmen who wish to keep their national standards elevated and protected (Kohler and Perrino 2017), or, as in the cases explored in this chapter, revalorizing their own regional language, culture, and history and at the same time elevating imaginary boundaries against migrant groups. As I have shown in these chapters, while they narrate their stories, Northern Italians subtly co-construct their intimate and collective identities, while excluding, at the same time, other possible participants who do not share the same values and language, such as migrant groups. History and art are transposed into their storytelling event to emphasize the uniqueness of their culture, language, and people. Time and space interweave in significant chronotopic configurations and thus reinforce this collective sense of their identity even more. In this social identification process, Northern Italians also develop a strong sense of defense of their identity, since it is part of their DNA (see Chapter 1), as many of them claim, and cannot be integrated with other identities—an unfortunate rhetoric that has become more common across Europe, recently, and other parts of the world, including the United States. Without a narrative-aspractice paradigm, it would be difficult to unveil these circulating ideologies. The value of the more pragmatic orientation in narrative studies is at the core of these chapters: without looking at both denotational text and interactional text and at their intricate relationships, researchers would be missing pivotal moments of these stories, especially in cases where racialized remarks emerge in these speech events. Thanks to this approach,

142 Conclusion certain interactional moves and discursive strategies become visible to analysts. The role of the audience is thus key in storytelling events: audience members emerge as not passive speech participants; rather, they can actively influence and change the story by adding minimal responses and bursts of laughter at particular moments of the storytelling event, by codeswitching into Venetan, or by overlapping with the storyteller (Perrino 2019), as several of the cases explored reveal. Intimacies of exclusion are thus reinforced and (re)circulated through the enactment of these various discourse strategies, such as overlap, latching, laughter (which can be nervous laughter), and codeswitching, whose emergence in interaction is very common, as we have seen and as Gumperz (1982) taught us long ago. When people share the same sociocultural background and the same language(s), they might experience synchrony in their interaction, or “interactional synchrony,” instead of asynchronous behavior. As Gumperz writes, “Conversational synchrony thus yields empirical measures of conversational cooperation which reflect automatic behavior, independent of prior semantic assumptions about the content or function of what was said” (Gumperz 1982, 176). It is precisely this “automatic behavior” that is of interest in better understanding individuals’ assumptions and engrained beliefs. For Northern Italians, as I have demonstrated, certain racialized remarks accompanied by synchronous laughter in the audience are “unmarked” and show the ideological underpinnings that allow those remarks to surface. In the example presented in Chapter 3, for instance, the female dermatologist makes those troubling remarks because she imagines she has a supportive participation framework around her, the other doctor and myself. The fact that the other doctor enacts a supportive laughter multiple times shows how her imagined supportive surrounding is based on these tangible assumptions. Her racialized remarks, then, can be made freely and unapologetically. Both the female dermatologist and the other doctor take a clear stance against migrants, first by complaining about their habits when they visit their offices for skin examinations and then by recirculating ideologies based on how Africans desire to look like Italians, while Chinese, in her perspective, will never be able to integrate in Italy. This example demonstrates that discursive strategies, such as codeswitching, laughter, and overlap in storytelling events, change the participation framework (Goffman 1981) of the interaction, thus creating various degrees of intimacies of exclusion in which a sense of collective, and intimate identification emerges. These interactional moves align participants with ideologies of who is considered “Italian”—that is speakers of Venetan who can understand and share this code—and who is not— that is the migrant groups, or other Italian speakers, who cannot fully understand this local code. In reality, migrants and Italians from other regions might be fully fluent in Venetan, of course. However, the mere fact of producing the problematic remarks in Venetan metapragmatically

Conclusion  143 (Silverstein 1993) frames that speech as exclusive, in the sense that not everyone is entitled to understand it. Of course, the reality is different, as I mentioned earlier, since today many migrants are fluent in Venetan and in other regional codes. These racialized ideologies clearly emerge in the long narrative excerpts I presented in Chapters 4 and 5. More specifically, in Chapter 4 the long narrative portions that I presented were produced by a Northern Italian executive, Lorenzo, who expressed the wish to advertise his historical café as a Habermasian public space but only for certain social actors. However, his storytelling events have revealed something else. While prestigious historical Italian cafés may advertise themselves with official narratives produced by their staff and administration and on their websites as well, they often also have many unofficial stories that emerge only in more backstage moments and settings, such as in research interviews. While Lorenzo was indeed supposed to officially represent his company with the two ethnographers, he found himself in the situation of having to negotiate between widespread, unmarked racism in his town and the allegedly inclusive authenticity of his historical café. By looking at the discursive strategies that he uses over the course of his storytelling event, I could pinpoint how he enacts intimacies of exclusion at various levels, interactionally and denotationally. As I discussed in Chapter 4, from his stories, Lorenzo seems to be worried about the image of his historical café, an image that needs to project an aura of authenticity. In his four narratives, two contradicting representations of his historical café thus emerge: 1) an official representation of his café as open and inclusive, as a public space that anyone can enjoy and benefit from; 2) an unofficial representation of his café as a closed space that is more private than public, and that can be enjoyed only by locals and selected tourists. This is how this executive covertly constructs intimacies of exclusion: the authenticity of his space and of his main product, coffee, is something that can be enjoyed only by insiders, leaving out those who cannot share the history, the artistic patrimony, and the local traditions and languages of his region and of Italy more generally. This authenticity is discursively and narratively negotiated and co-constructed: its meaning varies in relation to the complex relationship between the denotational text and the interactional text of his narratives (Perrino 2015b). In brief, Lorenzo’s stances are thus unmarkedly native and racist (Pagliai 2011). This fact confirms, again, that these racialized ideologies about the “Arabs” and the “Africans” seem to be part of everyday talk among various categories of Italian citizens, including doctors and executives of well-known corporations. Executives like Lorenzo thus feel entitled to decide who can be hired for a certain position and who cannot. In such decisions, they often remove the responsibility of this choice from themselves and make the consumers’ preferences accountable instead—a typical interactional maneuver that Italian (non)professional joke-tellers use too, as I showed

144 Conclusion in Chapter 5. If these racialized ideologies have been part of the corporate world, if they are (re)circulated by executives such as Lorenzo, one can appreciate why it is important, as analysts, to unveil them. These very ideologies are indeed the propellers of aggressive anti-immigrant politics, which we have been witnessing in recent years. Aggressive stances, such as the ones enacted by the recent politics and political events of the Lega, are not coming from one day to the other. Rather, they have a long incubation time, as the stories that I collected a decade ago clearly indicate.

Racialized Barzellette in Northern Italy What are the meanings of the covert discourse? And what is the significance of mocking migrants in barzellette at this historical and political moment in Northern Italy? While there are different ways of being covert, or contained, in Chapter 5, I focus on the tacit exclusion of migrant others while they are ridiculed in joke-telling practices. As Hill (2008, 41) argues, while stereotypes and slurs are generally categorized as “racist” because “they are made salient by referentialist and performative linguistic ideologies respectively,” other types of speech or performances are less discernible, but they are nonetheless part of a “covert racist discourse.” As I contended in the final chapter of this book, it is during these joketelling performances, or barzellette, that joke-tellers position migrants as outsiders, while positioning the immediate audience members as intimate insiders, who share the local code in which the joke is transferred through “strategic” codeswitches. These intimacies of exclusion are thus common in these types of events in Northern Italy. In this respect, strong anti-immigrant platforms are intimately connected with language revitalization initiatives that can be gleaned from Venetans’ everyday discursive practices as well. Given the increased politicization of Venetan, mocking migrants in this local language would likely mean, ideologically speaking, more than what the usual shifts would typically mean. In general, codeswitching from standardized Italian into Venetan is a distinctive way to iconically model indexical containment. It is containment in the sense that the problematic indexical associations of one’s speech—in many of the cases presented in this book, racist remarks—are supposedly mitigated by the framing of that speech in a local, in-group code. The problematic speech is discursively set apart as “not public” (even if, in reality, it may be easily understood by all those co-present, of course). The metaphoric containment of the strong indexicality of utterances like the ones discussed in Chapter 5 puts these utterances “off-record,” at the same time that it sharpens the contrast between Venetans and migrants. This multilingual language play in the Veneto region, and in Italy more generally, has analogues elsewhere in Europe, as Frekko’s (2011) research on Catalan and Castilian, for example, demonstrates. Drawing on Woolard’s (1995, 1998, 2016)

Conclusion  145 work on bilingualism and codeswitching between Catalan and Castilian in Spain, Frekko demonstrates that the use of the state language Castilian in a Catalan radio talk show can be a strategy of containment. While Catalan is supposed to be the language of the talk show, Frekko (Frekko 2011, 83) notes a significant use of Castilian in the interactions between the host and the callers. Thus, although Castilian is not “proscribed” in Catalonia, she argues that this code is used creatively by certain speakers while “simultaneously containing it,” at their discretion and creating bonds with only certain speakers who understand the code. As I argued in Chapter 5, the interplay between standardized Italian and Venetan during joke-telling practices presents similar containment issues. In this vein, Venetan joke-tellers manage to convey problematic remarks while at the same time discursively containing them, superficially disguising them so that only certain members of the audience can receive them. By doing so, however, as I explained, they exclude other speakers. Thus, on the one hand, by producing these problematic remarks, these joketellers heighten discriminatory exclusion; on the other hand, this very act is interactionally coercive since joke-tellers position the immediate listeners as insiders who are presumed to share the local code, and thus the view, of the speaker. Thus, by codeswitching into Venetan, the joketeller Davanzo, featured in Chapter 5, positions the audience members as complicit and as participants in the joke and thus creates a strong bond with them. At the same time, however, he enacts intimacies of exclusion, since he creates intimate bonds with his co-citizens and excludes the “other,” the migrant groups in this case. The problematic speech is discursively set apart from non-ratified publics (Goffman 1981), even if, in reality, it may be easily understood by all those who are co-present. The metaphoric containment of the strong indexicality of these utterances to Venetans thus intensifies migrants’ exclusion: it sharpens the divide between Venetans and migrants, while, at the same time, creating intimate spaces for the speech participants who share the local language in which portions of the jokes are delivered. In this way, however, exclusionary and racialized ideologies are reinforced in the process. It has been an inescapable no-way-out. At this historical moment in Italy, given the rise of far-right, antiimmigrant politics and the link between language revitalization and these politics, as I discussed in Chapter 2, intimacies of exclusion acquire new meanings. These underlying exclusionary ideologies, that have been fermenting for many years, have been emerging at a very fast and contagious pace. Indeed, Italy is not the only case in which these exclusionary stances have been happening. Being now at “the eye level” (Holmes 2019), these anti-immigrant forces and far-right stances have spread across Europe (and the United States) in an unprecedented way, given also the fast digital media communication (De Fina and Perrino 2019; Perrino 2019). This is how even in heterogeneous communities of practices, an ideological sharp

146 Conclusion divide between the “we” of Venetans, who have deep roots in regional history that predate the nation-state, and the “they” of the migrant “others,” who have been targets of anti-immigrant policies, prejudice, and mocking stances, can still exist and solidify. This is why these communities are not simply superdiverse, as Blommaert (2010; Blommaert and Rampton 2016) would put it. Rather, as I argued in Chapter 1, they are complexly characterized by exclusionary stances that emerge interactionally and interdiscursively. These communities of practice are, in my view, not only superdiverse, but they are also inclusion-resistant to this superdiversity. Exploring these racialized stances through a chronotopic perspective has been key in my analysis as well. Using the Bakhtinian chronotope (Bakhtin 1981) as a special type of scale, as Woolard (2012) has acutely suggested, has been key in my understanding of how individuals move across spatiotemporal scales to make their claims more powerful or more covert, depending on the setting and the participation framework. Intimacies of exclusion are co-constructed precisely through various levels of racialized stances and discursive strategies. While the analysis of these storytelling events has required a separation of these various elements through which these racialization processes happen and develop, in reality, everything in these interactional events is conflated and flattened in layered chronotopic racialized stances. Mocking migrants in Venetan thus enhances this ideological stance between “us” and “them” even more, serving as a way to feel protected from individuals who are not considered part of the Veneto region, nor are they considered Italian, even though they have held Italian citizenship for many years (Perrino 2017) and have spoken both standardized Italian and some of the local languages. As I have demonstrated in the final chapter, Northern Italian joke-tellers position their audiences as complicit and as participants to these exclusionary ideologies through laughter, applause, and codeswitching practices. Joketellers also engage in scalar processes when they take a stance vis-à-vis these racializing ideologies. In this respect, a scalar perspective (Carr and Lempert 2016b; Gal 2016) offers analysts key theoretical and methodological resources to study sociocultural identification in heterogeneous multilingual communities. These interactional dynamics are processual and by degree; they change continuously in a single interaction and so do speech participants’ various stances and scalar moves. In the process, these dynamics are instrumental in constructing and solidifying speech participants’ identities, which are fluid and heterogeneous (Nichols and Wortham 2018). Through these various racialized stances, disconcertingly, Northern Italian and Italian identities are reinforced while excluding and deprecating migrants by assigning them undifferentiated national labels, such as Chinese, northern Africans, Albanians, Egyptians, Senegalese (to mention just a few) and, more generally, by grouping these people into the derogatory category of extracomunitari. Thus, storytellers enact stigmatizing

Conclusion  147 moves that reinforce a collective and intimate identity among them and thus create their exclusive, and dangerous, “cultural intimacy” (Herzfeld 2005). The idea of a local collective identity also reinforces people’s aspiration to become autonomous from the Italian state, as I have suggested in Chapter 2, and to just be European, as has recently happened in other areas in Europe. Venetans can thus develop a strong sense of defense of their identity, since it is part of their DNA, as many of them have claimed (Perrino and Kohler In Press), and cannot be amalgamated with other identities—an ethnonationalist rhetoric that has become more common across the globe.

Intimacies of Exclusion: Future Research The narrative practices that emerge in the heterogeneous communities of practice in Northern Italy that I examined in this book are reminiscent, although on a different scale, of the Bakhtinian utterances in dialogized heteroglossic environments, as the epigraph of this concluding essay proposes. Narrative practices take shape, live, and develop within dialogized heteroglossic environments (Bakhtin 1981, 272), where individuals’ continuous interaction influences and changes their content, path, and significance. As I have argued in this book, it is fundamental that researchers study various kinds of narrative practices in environments such as the Italian one. While collecting stories from migrants and refugees has been invaluable to understand the hardships they have endured to migrate to Italy (Perrino 2006; Albahari 2015a), turning the attention to narrative practices produced by Italians is as valuable and as important to better understand, and predict, the fate of these heterogeneous communities of practice. This book has thus unveiled these new, constant voices that have played a key role in the politicization of migration. The analysis of these myriad stories has unveiled strong ethnonationalist stances since the early 2000s when the Lega was not as strong as it is today. Yet, some of my collaborators’ racialized attitudes and enactments of intimacies of exclusion have not changed in more than a decade. What we explicitly see and hear today, at a very fast pace through digital media, has been going on for a longtime. As Italy has become one of the main key entry points for migrants and refugees arriving in Europe and as communities of practice have become more heterogeneous as a result of these transnational movements, it is important that researchers focus their attention on Italians’ everyday discursive practices to better understand the covert subtleties of a growing ethnonationalism across the country and beyond. This is particularly visible in Northern Italy, as I have demonstrated, where the Lega has had a lot of success since its very creation in the 1970s. The Lega’s strong anti-immigrant agenda, which is supported by other political parties and movements, coupled with regionalized language revitalization efforts (see

148 Conclusion Chapter 2), has emerged in Northern Italian speakers’ everyday discursive practices, such as storytelling and joke-telling performances. It is through close attention to these practices that analysts can explore new racializing ideologies (Rosa 2016a, 2016b) that are often tacitly legitimized. In this respect, given the prominence of joking discursive practices across Italy, it is important to study them in various settings, such as in situations where migrants are present or when migration topics are part of Italians’ conversations. Furthermore, because of the rapid rise of racialized stances not only in Italy but in Europe (Holmes 2000, 2016) and in the United States more generally, it has become even more critical to explore these topics from a variety of discursive angles to gain a more solid reflexive grasp on these very processes and on their inevitable costs. The rise of far-right movements across Europe, including Italy, a very recent phenomenon that has been defined “Fascism 2” (Holmes 2016) and that is now perceptible even at “eye level” (Holmes 2019), as I mentioned earlier, was already visible more than a decade ago (Holmes 2000). By looking at Northern Italian narratives, various patterns have emerged. And these are the patterns that need to be explored in future research on this topic: 1) implicit and explicit racialized stances against migrants; 2) a strong connection with other co-regional and co-national individuals as long as they are Italian citizens; 3) the enactment of intimacies of exclusion at various scales; 4) returning circulating, racialized ideologies that have been recurring for more than a decade in Northern Italy; and, finally, 5) a profound, and disconcerting, ethnonationalist stance that is engrained in people’s everyday lives. These patterns would not have emerged without a careful analysis of the stories, collected over more than a decade, that people tell in their everyday lives. By looking at how individuals perform intimacies of exclusion in their everyday lives, researchers can better understand these racializing processes: when and how they are created, how they develop, and how they can circulate across the globe at an unimaginable speed.

Note 1. For an example on how the present Italian Government has reacted to the arrival of refugees in Italy, see www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/23/italyevicts-more-than-500-people-refugee-centre-near-rome (last accessed, August 15, 2019). 

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Index

Africans 66, 80–82, 84, 89, 108, 110, 113, 130, 142–143, 146; see also extracomunitari; immigrant Albahari, Maurizio 8, 14–15, 35, 42, 78, 136–137, 147 Albanians 136, 146; see also extracomunitari; immigrant Alighieri, Dante 37, 48, 64–65 alignment: align 30, 34, 77–78, 84, 90, 100–101, 116, 142; disalign 77–78, 116; disalignments 77; misalignments 83 Americans 53, 66, 81 antagonistic stances 39 anti-immigrant agenda 2, 42, 147; see also anti-immigrant politics anti-immigrant politics 41–42, 45, 47, 86, 144 Associazione Veneti nel Mondo 49–50, 65 audience: audience members 10, 34, 68, 70, 83, 96, 98, 110, 117, 119–120, 122–123, 126, 131–133, 142, 144–145 audio 4–5, 37; see also methodology; video; video-recording authenticity 2, 26, 29, 46, 98–101, 103, 108–111, 143 autonomy 47, 53, 59–61 backstage 107, 109, 143; see also Goffman, Erving Bakhtin 6, 71–72, 74, 126, 137–139, 146–147; see also Bakhtinian chronotope; chronotope barzelletta: barzellette 9–12, 84, 110, 112–127, 129–136, 144; short funny stories 10, 112

Battuta 118; see also barzelletta, barzellette; barzelletta, short funny stories; scherzo Belgium 20, 24, 35, 138, 141 biological metaphor 26, 33 bivalency: bivalent forms 6, 34, 57–58, 125–126, 129 Blommaert, Jan 7, 14, 16, 18–22, 35, 72, 74–75, 78, 84, 138–139, 146 Boccaccio, Giovanni 37, 48, 65 Bossi, Umberto 39–42, 93–95 Bossi-Fini law 42 brand identity 5, 27 Briggs, Charles 4–5, 87–88, 117, 123 café 5, 9, 37, 72, 86, 98–103, 105–111, 135, 143; see also coffee; coffee-houses; historical café CasaPound Italia 45 castle 72 Chinese 19, 25, 66, 80–82, 84, 89, 95, 98, 101, 106–107, 110–111, 113, 131, 133, 142, 146; see also extracomunitari; immigrant chronotope: Bakhtinian chronotope 9, 63, 67, 71, 146; chronotopic configurations 50, 73, 75, 83–84, 141; chronotopic identities 74 clandestini 39, 42–43; see also extracomunitari; immigrant; undocumented closeness 23–25; see also intimacy co-citizens 96, 110, 126, 134, 145 code 6, 10–11, 22, 24, 34–35, 58–60, 63, 66, 76, 78, 81, 83–84, 96–97, 114–115, 120, 126, 131–132, 134–135, 142–145; see also dialect

168 Index codeswitching 1, 6, 19, 22, 37–38, 58, 67, 78, 81–84, 96–97, 110, 119–120, 122, 131–134, 142, 144–146 codeswitching practices 22, 37, 96, 120, 133, 146; see also code; codeswitching coffee 5, 27, 98–99, 101–102, 104–108, 111, 143 coffee-houses 98–99, 102, 111 collective identity 10, 24, 29–31, 44, 52, 55, 58–61, 63, 75–76, 92, 103, 140–141, 147 collectivity 2, 30–31, 33, 45, 81, 92, 107, 141 community of practice 21, 61, 88, 116, 119, 140 complicating action 68 co-nationals 30, 44, 92, 115 concealment 114, 135 containment 114–115, 132–133, 144–145 corporations: multinational corporation 103 counterfeit brands 86; see also imitation covert racism 10, 114, 133; see also racialized ideologies; racialized narrative; racialized remarks; racialized stances; racializing narrative crisis 64, 72, 78 cultural diversity 17 cultural intimacy 23–24, 26, 33, 35, 134, 147; see also intimacy data 2–5, 9, 11, 23–24, 26, 86–88, 115, 119, 133, 135 De Fina, Anna 4–5, 8–9, 16, 18, 48, 67–71, 74, 76, 86–88, 119, 145 deictics 96, 105, 108, 110 denotational text 68, 70–71, 83, 116, 141, 143; see also interactional text dermatologist 66–67, 80–83, 133, 142 derogative term 81 derogatory phrase 85, 90 detention centers 15, 42 dialect: dialetti 11; dialetto 1, 11, 47 diaspora 19 discourse 5, 16, 30, 33–34, 41, 47, 71, 73–74, 77, 86, 88, 92, 94, 96–97, 108, 110–111, 113, 116–117, 120, 125, 133, 142, 144

discourse strategies 30, 86, 108, 110, 133, 142 discursive practices 1, 15, 18, 21–22, 26, 45, 58, 67, 71, 79, 83, 137, 144, 147–148 discursive strategies 9, 44, 67, 83–84, 96, 101, 122, 132, 142–143, 146 distance 24, 86, 105, 108, 114; see also intimacy diversity 2, 7, 14, 17–18, 20, 35, 108, 138–139; see also cultural diversity DNA 5, 26–35, 46, 63, 134, 137–138, 141, 147 emblem 41, 50, 55, 59–61, 64, 139; see also flag emigrant 15, 65; see also immigrant Emilia-Romagna 3, 11, 37, 123 emotional stances 23–25, 72, 75 encounter 4, 6, 69, 72, 79, 87, 99 ethnonationalism 6, 17, 147 European Union 8, 10, 36, 39–41, 45, 61–62 evaluation 68, 77, 133; see also Labov, William; Labovian units exclusion 1–3, 6–11, 13–14, 16, 22–23, 26, 30–31, 33, 35, 41, 44–45, 49–50, 54, 58, 62, 66–67, 71, 76, 79, 81–93, 96–111, 115, 117, 125–126, 131–134, 137–140, 142–148; see also exclusionary; exclusionary intimacies; exclusionary politics; exclusionary restrictions; exclusionary stance exclusionary: exclusionary intimacies 75, 115, 137; exclusionary politics 115; exclusionary restrictions 115, 137 exclusionary stance 7, 36, 81–82, 91, 98, 109–110, 117, 126, 134, 140–141, 145–146 extracomunitari 9, 16, 37, 39, 42–44, 79, 81, 84–85, 89–92, 112–127, 129–136, 146; see also immigrant fascism 2, 45, 148; see also CasaPound Italia festival 55, 119, 127 flag 50–55, 63–64, 139–140 fragmentation 20, 48 Friuli-Venezia Giulia 39, 91, 109 Gal, Susan 23, 29, 78, 132, 135, 146 Gentilini 43–45, 64

Index  169 globalization 7, 14, 16, 35, 138 Goffman, Erving 67, 70, 77, 82, 84, 107, 109, 117, 142, 145 Goodwin, Charles 25, 70 gothic novels 72 Gumperz, John 9, 21–22, 24, 30, 38, 44, 58, 67, 81, 86, 90, 96, 101, 108, 114, 120, 134, 142 Habermas, Jürgen 99, 101, 109, 111 health care facilities 84, 118 here-and-now interaction 69, 73, 122; see also interaction; interactional dynamics; interactional moves; interactional role; interactional text Herzfeld, Michael 23–24, 26, 33, 35, 134, 147 heterogeneous 7, 10, 16, 18–21, 23–24, 35–36, 47, 71, 75, 82, 115, 117, 132, 134, 138–139, 145–147; see also heterogeneous communities of practice heterogeneous communities of practice 7, 10, 18–19, 21, 24, 35–36, 115, 132, 134, 138–139, 145, 147; see also community of practice Hill, Jane 10, 43, 114, 116, 120, 130–131, 133, 144 historical café 9, 37, 86, 98–103, 105, 108–111, 143; see also café; coffee; coffee-houses history 1, 10–11, 14, 17, 24, 26–29, 41, 47, 49–51, 55, 57–63, 65, 72, 74, 83–84, 87, 100–103, 106, 108, 115, 134, 137, 139–141, 143, 146 Holmes, Douglas 2, 40, 45–46, 50, 65, 145, 148 humor 78, 84, 108, 115–116, 122, 126, 132 humorous stories 113; see also barzelletta, barzellette identity 2, 5, 8, 10–11, 16–17, 23–34, 37, 44, 52, 55, 57–63, 74–78, 81–84, 92–93, 97–99, 103, 115–117, 138–141, 146–147 ideologies 2–3, 5–6, 9–11, 13, 16, 22–23, 26, 33, 35–36, 44–46, 58–59, 64, 67–68, 78–79, 82–85, 92, 98, 100, 110–111, 115–116, 118, 122, 132–133, 137–138,

140–146, 148, 152, 156, 158, 162, 165; see also implicit ideologies ideological assemblages 2, 67, 83, 126 imitation 86, 98, 131; see also counterfeit brands immigrant 2, 15, 17–18, 30, 36, 39, 41–42, 45–47, 71, 86, 91–92, 110, 113, 134, 138, 140, 144–147; see also extracomunitari implicit ideologies 2, 33, 36 inclusion-resistant superdiversity 7, 14, 20, 36, 138–139 independence 41, 60 individual identity 23–24 Ingold, Tim 69 insiderness 24 insiders 10, 23–24, 67, 82, 100, 105, 110, 114, 120, 131, 134, 143–145 integration 7, 14, 18, 35, 45, 47, 62, 82, 126, 138 intentional 114 interaction 3–4, 7–9, 19, 23–25, 35, 67–70, 73, 75, 77, 81, 83–84, 87, 101, 105, 108–109, 111, 113, 116–117, 120, 122, 131, 134, 141–142, 145–147 interactional dynamics 4, 87, 90, 109, 140, 146 interactional moves 1, 71, 83–84, 87, 123, 142 interactional role 5, 88 interactional text 68, 70, 83, 116, 141, 143; see also interactional dynamics; interactional moves; interactional role interdiscursive 44, 133; see also interdiscursively; intertextually interdiscursively 50, 81, 146 intertextually 44, 58, 97 interview: interview setting 3, 5, 9, 13, 66, 86–88, 109, 111; open-ended interviews 5, 87; research interview 4, 87, 143; research qualitative interviews 63, 87; semi-structured interviews 87; semi-structured questionnaires 87; structured interviews 87 interviewee 4, 74, 87–88, 109, 140 interviewer 4, 27–28, 34, 73, 87–92, 100–101, 103–110, 140 intimacies of exclusion 1–3, 6–7, 9–11, 13–14, 16, 22–23, 30–31, 33, 35, 41, 44–45, 49–50, 54,

170 Index 58, 62, 66–67, 71, 76, 79, 81–93, 96–111, 115, 117, 125–126, 131–134, 137–140, 142–148; see also exclusionary; exclusionary intimacies; exclusionary stance; intimacy; intimate identities; intimate relations; intimate relationships; intimate stances intimacy 1–3, 6–7, 9–11, 13–14, 16, 22–26, 30–31, 33, 35, 37, 41, 44–45, 49–50, 54, 58, 60, 62, 66–67, 71, 74–76, 78–79, 81–93, 96–111, 114–115, 117, 125–126, 131–134, 137–140, 142–148 intimate identities 23–28, 33, 59–60, 83, 115, 138, 141 intimate relations 23, 25–26, 37, 75, 116–117 intimate relationships 114 intimate stances 26, 29–30, 75, 83, 96, 105, 108–109, 137 Italian business: Italian executive 12, 26–27, 31, 37, 143 Italian DNA 28–30, 138; see also collective identification; collective identity; cultural intimacy; DNA; exclusionary intimacies; intimacies of exclusion; intimacy Italian government 42, 64, 148 Italian identity 146 Italian regions 8, 11, 36–37, 40–41, 46, 49, 60, 63, 109, 139 Italianness 17, 27, 99, 108; see also collective identification Italians 1–3, 8–10, 13–17, 20, 26, 29–31, 33, 35, 39–40, 44, 47, 49, 52, 58, 66, 71, 75, 77, 79–85, 90–92, 98–99, 101, 106, 111, 115, 118, 120, 122, 126, 130–131, 133–139, 141–142, 147–148 Italy 1–4, 6–11, 13–50, 52–53, 59–67, 71, 78, 81–82, 84–90, 98–99, 101–102, 108–115, 118–119, 121–123, 127, 131–132, 134–139, 141–145, 147–148 Jaffe, Alexandra 19, 46–47, 77–79, 100, 111 Jakobson, Roman 30, 70 joke-teller 10–11, 114–120, 123, 126–127, 143–146 joke-telling performances 80, 113, 115, 117–119, 133, 148; see also

jokes; joke-telling practices; joking remarks jokes 49, 82, 112–120, 123, 130, 132–136, 145; see also barzelletta, barzellette; scherzo joke-telling practices 1, 10, 84, 110, 114–116, 118–119, 132, 144 joking remarks 80, 106, 120; see also battuta kinship 30, 75, 138; see also kinship chronotope kinship chronotope 30, 138 Labov, William 68–69 Labovian units 69; see also complicating action; evaluation; Labov, William La Lega 8, 41, 95; see also Northern League; Lega Nord Lampedusa 13, 15, 37 language death 46 language endangerment 46 language ideologies 11, 22–23, 26, 46, 64, 78, 85, 132 language revitalization 8, 36, 39–55, 57–65, 115, 132, 140, 144–145, 147 language use 32, 64 laughter: bursts of laughter 67, 82–83, 90, 142 Lega, The 2, 8, 10, 16–17, 32, 36, 39–55, 57–65, 86, 91–93, 95, 97–98, 110, 113, 115, 133–134, 139, 144, 147; see also La Lega; Lega Nord; Northern League Lega Nord 2, 8, 10, 16–17, 32, 36, 39–55, 57–65; see also Northern League Lepanto 57 Liga Veneta Repubblica 9–10, 32, 34, 36, 46, 49, 51–55, 59, 62–64, 86, 93, 96, 110–111, 127, 139–140 linguistic autonomy 47 linguistic practices 22, 77, 79 lion of Venice 52, 55, 63, 140; see also emblem; flag local code 6, 10, 22, 35, 63, 76, 78, 81, 83–84, 96, 114, 126, 135, 142, 144–145; see also dialect, dialetti; dialect, dialetto local DNA 28–29; see also DNA local language 1, 5, 8, 10–11, 19, 33–34, 36–37, 40, 46–50, 55,

Index  171 57–58, 62–64, 114, 120, 125, 130, 132–134, 136–140, 144–146; see also code; codeswitching; codeswitching practices; dialect made in Italy 27, 29–31, 99, 141; see also brand identity Mantova 28; see also Mantua Mantua 27–29 maritime republic 51; see also Repubblica di Venezia; Republic of Venice; Venezia; Venice Martelli law 42; see also Bossi-Fini law medical Examinations 19, 81–82 Mediterranean migration 14; see also Albahari, Maurizio Mediterranean Sea 3, 14–16, 35, 39, 78 metapragmatically 1, 84, 90, 114–115, 142 methodology 4, 11 methods 4, 87, 103 middle ages 48–49 migrant voices 114 migration 1–3, 6–7, 9–10, 13–38, 41–42, 65, 67, 71, 73–74, 78–79, 83, 86, 98, 112, 117, 138–139, 147–148 migratory flows 2, 16, 20, 35 minimal responses 83, 88, 107, 142 minority language 47, 61 mocking migrants 114, 132, 134–135, 144, 146 monocultural ideology 46 monoglot 46, 134 Movimento Cinque Stelle 45 multiculturalism 7, 14, 16–17, 20, 35–36, 84, 138 multicultural paradigm 17 multicultural society 17 multilanguage joke-telling practices 114; see also barzelletta, barzellette; humorous stories multilingual communities of practice 7, 14, 96, 113; see also community of practice; heterogeneous communities of practice multimodal analysis 25 muslims 66, 80–81, 119; see also extracomunitari; immigrant; migrant voices; migration; migratory flows narrated event 70, 73; see also narrating event

narrating event 70, 73 narrative 1, 3–9, 11, 13, 15, 22, 26–27, 29, 31–33, 35–37, 41, 50, 59–60, 63, 65–84, 86–88, 90–93, 97–106, 108–111, 113, 115, 117, 132, 138, 140–141, 143, 147–148; see also narrated event; narrating event; narrative practice; narratives in interaction; narrative turn narrative practice 7–9, 15, 35–36, 41, 50, 63, 67, 70–72, 75–76, 79, 83–84, 86–87, 98, 132, 138, 147 narratives in interaction 4, 67 narrative turn 69 nativist remarks 106, 108; see also racialization; racialized ideologies; racialized remarks; racism; racist remarks Northern Europe 17, 99 Northern Italian executive 12, 26–27, 31, 37, 143 Northern Italians 1–3, 9, 13–16, 35, 71, 75, 77, 79, 115, 130, 137–138, 141–142 Northern Italy 1–4, 6–7, 9–11, 13–39, 42, 45, 64, 66–67, 84, 86–88, 109, 111, 113–114, 119, 122, 131–132, 134, 137, 144, 147–148 Northern League 2, 8, 32, 36, 39–41; see also Lega Nord Northerners 118 novelistic discourse 71; see also Bakhtin offensive remarks 114; see also racialized remarks; racist remarks official representation 100, 109, 143 oral narrative 1, 3, 13, 59, 71, 73, 111 orientation 22, 36, 42, 68, 71, 105, 108–109, 133, 140–141 Ottoman Empire 57, 99 outsiderness 24 outsiders 8, 10, 100, 114, 131, 134, 144 overlap 9, 81, 86, 88, 142 Padania 41 Padova 4, 47, 58–61, 85, 123, 125, 136; see also Padua Padua 4, 58–61, 85, 111, 123–126, 136 parallelism: parallelistic structures 30–31, 44, 90, 98, 110; parallelistic textures 97 participant transposition 73

172 Index participation framework 67, 70, 78, 82, 84, 92, 105, 109, 117, 125, 133–134, 141–142, 146 performances 69–70, 73, 77, 80, 102, 113, 115–119, 127, 131, 133, 144, 148 Petrarch 37, 48, 65 playback experiment 5–6, 11 poeticizing 46 political address 10, 34, 43–44, 96–98, 120 political representative 2, 26, 32–34, 43 Portogruaro 4, 51, 54–56 positioning 10, 31, 77–78, 101, 114, 144 poster 50, 58–59 practice-oriented paradigm 8, 67 public signage 58 public sphere 99, 101–102, 109, 111; see also Habermas, Jürgen racialization 10, 146 racialized ideologies 2, 5, 82–83, 92, 110, 115, 143–145, 148 racialized narrative 9, 11, 36, 63, 76, 84, 86, 93, 109–110 racialized remarks 2–3, 78, 93, 98, 107–108, 120, 126, 132, 136, 141–142 racialized stances 10, 43–44, 46, 100, 131, 139, 146, 148 racializing narrative 8, 66–84 racism 10, 73, 108–110, 113–114, 133, 143 racist remarks 44, 113, 116, 132, 135, 144 rallies 9, 35, 43, 45, 55, 86, 92–93, 96, 109, 111, 119 recording 4 referendum 50 referential function 4, 87 refugee 8, 15, 37, 42, 44, 46, 82, 137, 139, 147–148 register 22, 92, 133 remarks 2–3, 7, 35, 39–40, 43–44, 59, 62, 78, 80, 82, 84, 93, 98, 106–109, 111, 113–114, 116, 120, 126, 132–133, 135–136, 141–142, 144–145 renaissance 28, 49, 65, 118 repetition 30–31, 44, 91, 97 reported speech 105, 108, 122, 125, 130 Repubblica di Venezia 49–50; see also Republic of Venice

Republic of Venice 49–52, 55, 57–58, 60 resistance 2, 7, 14, 16–17, 20, 45, 133–134, 139; see also inclusionresistant superdiversity resolution 68 revitalization initiatives 8, 36, 40–41, 50, 57, 59–60, 115, 140, 144 road 43, 55, 72, 103 sagre 55, 119 scalar approach 63; see also scalar moves; scalar shifts; scales; scaling down; scaling up scalar intimacy 74–76 scales: scalar moves 76, 83, 108, 146; scalar shifts 29; scaling down 78, 83; scaling up 29, 78, 83; spatiotemporal scales 7, 9, 14, 23, 52, 58, 62, 67, 71, 73, 137–138, 140, 146; see also Bakhtin; chronotope, Bakhtinian chronotope; chronotope, chronotopic configurations scherzo 118 self-initiated laughter 105, 108 semiotic 22, 30–31, 55, 75 Senegalese: Senegalese ethnomedicine 3, 13, 66; Senegalese migrants 2–3, 13, 19, 80, 135 Sicily 3, 11, 13, 15–16, 37 silence 9, 86, 88 Silverstein, Michael 30–31, 44, 46, 70, 72, 84, 91, 114, 120, 143 situated speech 4, 87 sociocultural identification 76, 146 soft speech 108 southern Italians 8, 17, 33, 40, 80, 122; see also Southerners Southerners 118 space 2, 9, 16, 21, 25, 33, 49–51, 55, 58, 63, 71–75, 78, 83, 100–101, 105, 108, 110–111, 127, 131, 141, 143, 145; see also scales; time spatiotemporal 7, 9, 14, 23, 30, 52, 58, 62, 67, 71–73, 75, 83, 103, 137–138, 140–141, 146 speakers of Venetan 8, 10, 26, 32, 63–64, 84, 127, 142 speech community 21; see also community of practice stancetaking 9, 63, 67, 71, 76–78, 81, 101, 141

Index  173 standardized Italian 1, 4, 6, 8, 10–12, 19, 22, 32–34, 37, 41, 47–48, 51, 55, 57–58, 60–61, 63, 66–67, 80–82, 84, 86, 89–98, 102–103, 106–107, 110–111, 113–115, 118, 120–132, 134–135, 140, 144–146 St. Mark 52, 54–55; see also flag story 1–5, 9–10, 13–15, 26, 30, 49, 51, 55, 59–60, 62–63, 67–71, 73, 76, 79, 82–83, 86–88, 91–92, 98, 100–101, 109, 112–115, 117–118, 122–123, 127, 129–131, 135, 137, 139–144, 147–148 storytelling event 2, 27, 63, 68–71, 73, 75–76, 78, 83–84, 117, 132, 141–143, 146 strategic 15, 22, 144 street sellers 85–86, 90, 135 superdiverse complexity 19 superdiverse environment 14, 16, 18, 20, 74, 134 superdiversity 7, 14, 16, 18, 20, 35–36, 84, 138–139, 146, 149, 151, 153, 157–159 Terre dei Dogi in Festa 55–56 textual artifact 51, 63, 139–140 textures 31, 97 time 2–5, 9, 12–13, 15–16, 19, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 39, 43–45, 48–51, 55, 57, 60–64, 66–69, 71–76, 79, 84, 87, 93–94, 97, 100, 103, 105, 107–109, 112–113, 115, 118, 120, 123, 131, 133–135, 137, 141–142, 144–145 transcribing 5; see also transcript; transcription transcript 5–6, 9, 37, 86, 93, 96; see also transcription transcription 5–6, 12, 37, 79 transnational communities 49, 64 transposition 72–73 Treviso 4, 43, 47, 64, 88 undocumented 36, 40, 42, 44, 90, 92, 124; see also extracomunitari; immigrant

unification of Italy 47; see also unity of Italy unintelligibility 114 unity of Italy 101 unmarkedness 113 unofficial representation 99, 110, 143 Venetan 1, 3–4, 6, 8, 10–11, 19, 22, 24, 26, 32–35, 37, 40–41, 44, 46–67, 71, 80–84, 93–98, 110–111, 113–115, 120, 123–136, 140, 142–147 Venetan identity 63 Veneto 1, 3, 8–11, 22, 26, 32, 34, 36–37, 40, 43, 46–67, 79–82, 84–88, 93, 95–96, 109, 114–115, 118–119, 123–124, 127, 132–136, 140, 144, 146 Veneto League Republic 36, 46; see also Liga Veneta Repubblica Veneto region 1, 8–11, 22, 34, 40, 43, 46–54, 56, 58–60, 62–66, 80, 85–88, 93, 109, 115, 119, 123, 133, 136, 140, 144, 146; see also Venetan; Venetan identity; Veneto State; Venezia; Venice Veneto State 57, 60–61 Venezia 3–4, 11, 32, 37, 39, 48–50, 55, 64, 91, 109; see also Venice Venice 4, 32, 47, 49–55, 57–58, 60, 63, 99, 140 vernacular 48; see also dialect, dialetti; dialect, dialetto Vertovec, Steven 7, 14, 16, 18, 35, 138 video 4–5, 63–64, 78, 122, 136 video-recording 4; see also interview vu cumprà 85–86, 89–91; see also extracomunitari; immigrant Wilce, James MacLynn 23–24, 31, 44, 117 Woolard, Kathryn 2, 6, 9, 22, 25–26, 33–34, 36, 46, 50, 57, 67, 72, 74–76, 83, 120, 125, 129, 144, 146 Wortham, Stanton E.F. 4, 7, 9, 21, 70–71, 73, 76, 87, 115, 146