Drawing the Strands Together

The six data sets presented are drawn not only from a number of discursive genres, but also from separate historical periods: from the Italianisation of the province from the 1920s; the solutions sought in the 1960s; the historical present, in which these solutions are increasingly contested and for different reasons. These provide an image of the multiple and conflicting ideologies on language and identity, ideologies which change, and how these ideologies impact upon language in education within the province.

The data presented in section 3.4 (Articles 2 and 19 of the Statute of Autonomy of 1972), section 3.5 (il discorso of Ettore Tolomei from 1923) and section 3.6 (the interview with

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Provincial President Luis Durnwalder) all illustrate ideologies which view language as a fundamental part of group (or national) identity, despite separation by genre and time.

Tolomei’s discorso was an attempt, largely through language and other semiotic means, to assimilate and make both the people and place “Italian”. The Statute of Autonomy was drawn up, under international auspices, to protect German-speakers in the province from assimilation. The fear of assimilation, underpinned by an adherence to ideologies which rigidly identify groups by language, is presented by Durnwalder as the main reason to resist the diffusion of immersion education. All three of these data sets represent the ethno-linguistic and ethno-nationalist politics which has typified provincial socio-political discourse (and social action) throughout the 20^th century.

In data set 3.3 (The Panel Game) and data set 3.7 (Hannes Mair, An Alternative SVP) we see the foregrounding of economic arguments for the extension of bi/multilingual education, as a response to changes in global market conditions. This reflects in greater part Duchêne’s reflection that:

the ever-increasing mobility of people and the circulation of goods (Appadurai 1996) in a globalised market place give rise to new language needs (e.g., translators, multilingual workers) and practices…[in which n]ew realities are emerging from the contact between contemporary forms of language and culture, which are tied to migration and trade

(2009:29)

For both speakers in these data sets (sections 3.3 and 3.7, bi-/multilingualism becomes an economic resource in the broader sense. Particularly in extract 3.7.5, languages are “the

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key” to unlocking global markets and potential customers from all over the globe. Note here that the speaker does not refer to language, but rather languages in the plural (line 158), and this is closely linked to the need for technical qualifications to make a

competitive workforce. In data set 3.7.1 the senior SVP politician states that it is

‘inhuman’ (lines 8-17 and again in lines 34-36) that those who live with the two languages and cultures at home should have to choose between them when it comes to school.

However there is a sense that for this speaker, the “practical” economic aspects are paramount. Conspicuously absent from both data set 3.3 and 3.7 are any direct

statement or affirmation on language and identity. Language here does not appear to be strongly representative of group identity, or at least not so strong as to override the economic costs of not extending bi/multilingual education in the province. The link between language and identity which comes through in data sets 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6 is not engaged with at all, or not least not directly. Nevertheless, there is ideological tension.

The link between language and identity is however under frontal assault in the last data set, in section 3.8 (the Children of Priests). This data set summarises succinctly Polyglot’s raison d’etre: bi/multilingual children from bi/multilingual home environments. These are unprovided for, and would appear an uncomfortable, oft ignored reminder to institutions (including political elites and legal frameworks) of the limitations of social solutions based on rigid linguistically defined notions of identity. We are also afforded a view of another aspect of how globalisation touches life in the province, with reference to newer

residents in the province, who originally come from outside. Whilst this is an aspect I do not deal with in this thesis, principally for reasons of space, it is an aspect that is having its

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presence felt increasingly in provincial life and one which emphasises Duchêne’s point on migration, above.

The final aspect worth highlighting is the implicitness of physical geography and the taken-for-granted links between language and place. Tolomei’s programme was to italianise the people and the place, this meant the removal of the linguistic and semiotic traces of anything other than what he deemed “Italian”, especially within educational establishments (see Extract 3.5.4). Durnwalder references the land and the Statute of Autonomy is a set of rules, agreed under the guidance of actors from the United Nations, which are applicable only within the geographical space of the province. For Durnwalder, that the province is a socio-political space shared by different linguistic groups is the reason for resisting immersion or extending bilingual education. The shared socio-political space is also implicit in the Statute of Autonomy, in Articles 2 and 19 (section 3.4), which presents linguistic provisions as applicable within ‘…the Region…’ (see Extract 3.4.1) and ‘In the Province of Bolzano’ (Extract 3.4.2), and nowhere else. The effect is that the statute creates a particular social space with rules, requirements and norms regarding language in particular but affecting a great deal more, not found outside the province. What is curious is that although these rules apply only in South Tyrol-Alto Adige, they are drawn from standards agreed by the international community of nation-states, reflecting international or globally dominant ideologies.

With this in mind, I now turn to language in the material world (Scollon & Wong Scollon 2003), attempting to understand why, during the research process, discourse on

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bilingualism in Bozen-Bolzano were often linked to place names, and then, Fascist era monuments.

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182 CHAPTER FOUR

THE NAMING OF PLACE & THE PLACING OF NAMES IN BOLZANO-BOZEN

(Social) space is a (social) product… the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action…a means of control, and hence of domination…

Lefebvre 1991:26

Everybody used to refer to history. But which history?

Volpe 1927: 24-5, in Moretti 1999:111

4.1 Introduction

In the previous chapter I looked at social action and discourse related to bi/multilingual education and how these related to bilingualism in Bolzano-Bozen. I began in the

present, with the nexus of practice of this study (a Polyglot meeting) and sought to follow the discourse itineraries (Scollon 2007), which led to an examination of factors from outside the historical present. I showed how language in education was used during the early to mid-twentieth century as an instrument to transform the southern Tyrol into Alto Adige, very much part of Italian cultural (or social) space. Yet, as Alcock reminds

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(1970:13), language and education had become contentious and problematic for Austro-Hungarian Italian speakers in the region from the 1860s: the period which saw the House of Savoy consolidate its territorial expansions and the making of the Kingdom of Italy (see also Riall 2009). I looked at the internationally-remediated solutions, based on taken-for-granted Herdian ideas of language and national identity, and how these solutions, and the concepts which underpin them, are now themselves being contested from various

quarters and for various reasons (see Heller 2011, Duchêne & Heller 2007, Blommaert &

Rampton 2011).

In this chapter I discuss language in the physical world. Specifically, I look at the naming of place, within the context of discourse and social action related to bi/multilingualism: in Bozen-Bolzano and the wider province of South Tyrol-Alto Adige. The general approach I take here is similar to that of the previous chapter. To begin, I discuss how and why I came to include discourses related to place names from the semiotic landscape (Jaworski

& Thurlow 2010:2, after Scollon & Wong Scollon 2003) in this study.

The focus here is on the discourses in place (for a fuller discussion of the all three elements, see chapter 2 section 2.3) and their ‘discourse itineraries’ (Scollon 2007). A discourse itinerary’, as Blommaert reminds (2013:28), is Ron Scollon’s evolution of the concept of ‘discourse cycle’, which is found in earlier work produced alone or with Wong Scollon (in particular Scollon 2001; Scollon & Wong Scollon 2003, 2004). The concept of

‘itinerary’ as opposed to ‘cycle’ sits far more satisfactorily with the work of Bakhtin, and notions of intertextuality, interdiscursivity and the Bakhtinian position that each time something is said, or seemingly repeated, it is made anew (see also Blackledge