(De)centralising Italian speakers

Italian migration has been often noticed thanks to the presence of Italian clusters in big cities across the world such as Buenos Aires, New York, and Toronto, where groups have created ethnicised zones, among which the Little Italies are the most easily recognisable. Italian migration, however, has also reached remote areas that are less visible and have largely been excluded from the collective narratives of Italianness abroad, as well as from academic research. A case in point is Tasmania, where Italians have been settled for over 150 years and still fail to be included in the discourses produced by large Italo-Australian associations based in continental Australian cities. Although much is known about the history of Italians in Australia, Italians in Tasmania are effectively invisible. They do not appear in any major scholarly work on migrant communities in Australia, nor can they be found in accounts that focus specifically on Italo-Australians. The data discussed in this article was collected through ethnographic work that started with a trip to Tasmania in July–August 2014 and continued with follow-ups in the following months. During the trip, it was possible to gather some data on the migrants’ past and to trace some of the self-produced historiography that various members of the community have shared.

Much research is needed to understand the history of Italians in Tasmania, which is beyond the scope of this article, but a few tentative points can be made based on initial observations: (i) Italians started to arrive in the 1800s, at first mainly musicians and entrepreneurs, and kept arriving until they reached a peak after WWII; (ii) many Italians worked on hydroelectric dam projects, in the concrete industry, and in a single large silk and textile factory; (iii) two leading symbolic figures can be found among Italians in Tasmania: Diego Bernacchi (1853–1925), businessman and father of the explorer Louis Bernacchi, the first Australian to set foot in Antarctica; and Claudio Alcorso (1913–2000), industrialist, pioneer winemaker, humanitarian, and founder of the Italian club in Hobart (see Ottavi Reference Ottavi and Alexander2005; Rimon Reference Rimon and Alexander2005).

Toward spaces of speech

In this article I focus on how these migrants create space in interaction when they articulate their ‘experience of movement’ (Papastergiadis Reference Papastergiadis2000:147; Escobar Reference Escobar2001:35). The notion of space has been long debated among scholars and its distinction from place has not always been agreed upon. The works of Tuan (Reference Tuan1977) and Relph (Reference Relph1976) have been particularly influential in making a distinction between the two concepts, finding the notion of place more productive. They intended place as a location created by human experiences, while they thought of space as the part of the Earth's surface that exists regardless of human action. In this sense space was considered a less significant concept in that, unlike place, it was not explicitly invested with social meaning. Other theorizations, however, have progressively problematized this view by exploring space through the lens of social processes (Cresswell Reference Cresswell2004:8–10) and suggesting a more nuanced distinction between place and space. Harvey (Reference Harvey1973, Reference Harvey1989, Reference Harvey, Castree and Gregory2006) has shown that spaces are also both constructed and lived, in the sense that they exist because individuals have experienced them and contributed to their construction. Many other scholars have also rejected rigid dichotomies between place and space (cf. Hubbard, Bartley, Fuller, & Kitchin Reference Hubbard, Bartley, Fuller and Kitchin2002). In fact, the problematic nature of the distinction between the two concepts became apparent most notably through the research of Lefebvre (Reference Lefebvre1991), who argues that space is social in its very essence as it is formed by the action of human beings. Individuals represent space with plans, maps, and design and at the same time move through space in their daily activities such as buying, playing, and travelling, thus being actively involved in its formation. Moreover, space is made possible by attribution of meaning that is intertwined with relational practices (cf. also Massey Reference Massey2005); individuals meet, stay together, and speak with other individuals within and through space. For Lefebvre, indeed, human action—as localised practice—is key to the construction of space. SpaceFootnote ¹ is therefore both socially constructed and made possible through the relationship between individuals and their surroundings (Pickles Reference Pickles1985; Strohmayer Reference Strohmayer1998). It is inhabited and meaningful because of the presence of living beings, and is one of the primordial expressions of our being-in-the-world (Merleau-Ponty Reference Merleau-Ponty1945).

Working on the nexus of space and language, in their volume on German speakers in Canada, Liebscher & Dailey-O'Cain (Reference Liebscher and Dailey-O'Cain2013:15) introduce the concept of sociolinguistic space, which they define as a ‘space for people to dwell in created through interaction’. Their study explores how spaces are created through the use of immigrant languages and positioning practices. Migrants, in their retellings, foreground instances where spaces were born while it is simultaneously the act of telling itself that brings about space in the interaction with the interviewer. It is what happens, for instance, when their informants are asked about using German far from Europe (Liebscher & Dailey-O'Cain:124–26). They may mention schuhplattler dancing in Edmonton to evoke the space created among Germans, explaining how various activities made sense for them at the time when they were performed. Crucially, however, the telling—the ways in which choices are narrated and constructed—generates meaning in the here and now of the interaction. In their analysis Liebscher & Dailey-O'Cain show that migrants position themselves inside, outside, at the edges of, or in the middle of spaces. They attribute meaning and concurrently create it using what Gee (Reference Gee, Barton and Tusting2005) calls ‘signs’ and ‘portals’, that is, respectively ‘what the social space is about’ and what people ‘use to enter the space’ (cf. Liebscher & Dailey-O'Cain Reference Liebscher and Dailey-O'Cain2013:19).Footnote ²

Liebscher & Dailey-O'Cain also provide an overview of how the concept of space has been used to study language in society. They describe the approach adopted by Li Wei's (Reference Wei2011) study of multilingual behaviour in his treatment of translanguaging. Chinese migrants in the UK create moments of particular semiotic relevance where researchers can see a ‘lived space, created through everyday, multiple social practices, including multilingual practices’ (Li Wei Reference Wei2011:1223). They also mention the research of Byrd Clark (Reference Byrd Clark2009), Kramsch (Reference Kramsch2009), Blommaert (Reference Blommaert2005), and Mendoza-Denton & Osborne (Reference Mendoza-Denton, Osborne, Llamas and Watt2010) to highlight possible links with research on migration and multilingualism, such as the importance of ‘the attributive qualities of space’ (Blommaert Reference Blommaert2005:223) for the use of linguistic varieties associated with space itself. Likewise, space is pivotal in narratives of migration as outlined by Baynham (Reference Baynham2003), as well as a number of other researchers, most notably Stevenson & Carl (Reference Stevenson and Carl2010) and Lefkowitz (Reference Lefkowitz2004), who have described a number of possible links between space and identity construction. For instance, space was found to be constitutive of narrative action in the sense that narratives themselves can be thought of as spaces where action occurs.

More recent research has further elaborated on some of these insights, delving into the intersections between identity, language, and space. Li Wei & Zhu Hua (Reference Wei and Hua2013:532) show the relevance to Chinese students in the UK of a ‘newly created social space’ where researchers can trace and analyse identity constructions that occur concomitantly with language practices. This is a ‘trans-space where new language practices, meaning-making multimodal practices, subjectivities and social structures are dynamically generated’ (Garcìa & Li Wei Reference García and Wei2014:43). In the creation of this space, Chinese students can express their creativity, their multiple affiliations, and their transnational identities. Similarly, fourth-grade pupils of a Spanish–English bilingual class in the US can use the space to work, learn, and play together across languages (Garcìa Reference García2011). In this space, one can appreciate the dynamic nature of multilingual practices of various kinds and the capacity of the speakers to ‘mobilize their linguistic resources’ (Li Wei & Zhu Hua Reference Wei and Hua2013:519).

In parallel, other scholars have paid more specific attention to the situated nature of spatial work beyond its role in identity construction. Pennycook (Reference Pennycook2010), for instance, has stressed the importance of considering the local sites where language is used in relation to specific activities and objects. Individuals interact by zigzagging and rummaging among their language resources, always relating to the ‘situational specificity’ (Wise Reference Wise and Velayutham2009:35) they happen to be in. In this sense, space is the material site where language practices come about, as well as being constructed ‘through such practices’ (Pennycook & Otsuji Reference Pennycook and Otsuji2014:179). In a restaurant in Tokyo the trajectories of the movements of people during a busy working day are at the base of a complex but fluid enactment of language where the socially construed boundaries between Japanese, English, and French allow room for new hybrid language practices.

Along these lines of enquiry, in this study I employ the notion of spaces of speech. This concept was first introduced by Livingstone (Reference Livingstone2007) to bridge the spatial and social dimensions for the creation and circulation of meaning, but finds theoretical underpinning in phenomenological thought. In particular, Merleau-Ponty (Reference Merleau-Ponty1945:225) viewed speech as a prise de position of the speaking subject in the world of her/his meaning, where such a world is in fact a linguistic space in itself that the subject can modulate through linguistic tools (Merleau-Ponty Reference Merleau-Ponty1964:241). In this perspective, space is intended as a lived entity that is constituted by the experiences of the subject with her/his surroundings and her/his meaning-making as a conscious subject. In this sense, space can be considered linguistic at its core, in that it is made possible by the continuity between the subject in motion and linguistic tools that enable the prise de position. While Merleau-Ponty explains only that these linguistic tools are a system of elements that cooperate for expression (Merleau-Ponty Reference Merleau-Ponty1960:85) and fails to describe them in great detail, his description of linguistic space indicates that these elements are undoubtedly connected to the situated nature of speech. At the same time he underscores that speech in space is something that inevitably ‘brings to the surface all the deep-rooted relations of the lived experiences where it takes shape’ (Merleau-Ponty Reference Merleau-Ponty1964:166). Speech is both acted in a situational realm and emerges from the speaker's consciousness.

Here I specifically enquire into the tools suggested by Merleau-Ponty by exploring spaces of speech—interactional spaces where the speaking subject indeed takes position in phenomenological terms. It will become clear that the key actor of this study does so by mobilising centres as spatial resources in interaction, through which not only is social meaning created, but also ‘location and locution’ (Livingstone Reference Livingstone2007:75) shape each other.

The focus of this study is precisely on the intersection between spaces of speech and the experience of movement along the edges of Italian migration, far from large urban settings, where one can find areas that are sidelined in most cartographies of diasporas. Kelly-Holmes & Pietikäinen (Reference Kelly-Holmes, Pietikäinen, Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes2013:222) describe these sites as characterised by geographic, economic, and historical peripherality, where the presence of some notional centres functions as a reference point for the creation of meaning elsewhere. In their volume they illustrate the ways in which tensions between centre and periphery are reconfigured by contemporary multilingual practices. By paying special attention to ‘crucial sites’ (Philips Reference Philips and Kroskrity2000) such as airports, indigenous heritage sites, and commercial and tourist spaces, which are found to be indicative of the complex interactions between individual practices and systemic norms, they highlight the fluid nature of centre/periphery relationships. These centres are not fixed concepts but rather the result of processes of peripheralisation and centralisation, along which we can trace shifting and ambiguous positions (Ang & Stratton Reference Ang and Stratton1996) where the discursive power of some specific centres is not static. Kelly-Holmes & Pietikäinen argue for a concept of centre—and distance from it—as socially constructed also in the sense of being something that individuals and groups can do, thus acknowledging its performative potential (cf. also Giddens Reference Giddens1984). Following this direction, this study examines how various centres emerge in an interactional setting, where they are constructed and ‘positioned against one another’ (Dong & Blommaert Reference Dong, Blommaert, Collins, Slembrouck and Baynham2009:45). These centres are ‘brought in’ (Bauman Reference Bauman1986) but also created as centres in the making of space in interaction (de Certeau Reference de Certeau1984). How do Italians create such space in Tasmania? How do different centres relate to the network of resources that are relevant to these migrants? How are centres deployed in the contingent act of (re)creating space?

Creating the conditions for space to emerge

The key actor (Fetterman Reference Fetterman2010:40–55) on whom this study focuses is a person who has long been involved with the activities of the Australian Italian Association of Tasmania and the adjacent Italian club, located in a northern suburb of Hobart. GiovanniFootnote ³ is from a small town in the province of Treviso in northeastern Italy. He did not complete secondary school, but he studied some Latin and rudiments of Roman and ancient Greek literature as well as history. He migrated to Tasmania in the 1960s and was almost immediately immersed in social and cultural activities, which he continued to be part of until his retirement. He speaks English, Italian, and Venetian. Giovanni was interviewed mostly in his home during meals to which the researcher was invited. The researcher is an academic based in the UK but is originally from a large city in the Veneto region of Italy. He has lived for several years in Sydney and has numerous connections with Italians in Australia across different generations. He also speaks Italian, English, and Venetian, and used all of them during the interviews. When the interviewer approached Giovanni, he endeavoured to create an open, reciprocal, and dialogic process, where the formation of space emerged thanks to the interaction between him and the key actor (Liebscher & Dailey-O'Cain Reference Liebscher and Dailey-O'Cain2013:31–35). Using an ethnographic approach, this research also aligns with Mondada (Reference Mondada1998) in underscoring the oscillations in visibility of the interviewer inherent in any linguistic interview, in keeping with a constructivist approach (Bucholtz & Hall Reference Bucholtz and Hall2005), which exposes and even nurtures the active contribution of the researcher in the formation of accounts. With this in mind, questions were posed in order to elicit lengthy answers (Liebscher & Dailey-O'Cain Reference Liebscher and Dailey-O'Cain2013:8–12) revolving around the actor's migrant experiences as ‘triggers for cultural self-reflectivity’ (Cronin Reference Cronin2006:62), with a specific focus on the significance of the fact that he migrated to Tasmania. Some of the questions used were the following: Why did you migrate to Tasmania? What kind of activities do you do with other Italians? What does the Australian Italian Association do? And the Club?

The interviews were in Italian, in Venetian, and in English, with varying degrees of language mixing. Their length varied from thirty minutes to approximately two hours. The interviews were transcribed and the transcription was then inspected in search of fragments where specific locations such as a city, a town, an area, or a church were mentioned. Here the data is discussed using illustrative conversational segments.

Multiple centres and the articulation of spaces of speech

The association and the club are the result of the long history of social and cultural activities of Italians who migrated to the Hobart area. They started in the 1950s and are still active to date. They are now mostly aimed at senior citizens of Italian background, who gather to play cards, share a meal, participate in community events, or simply have a chat (see De Fina Reference De Fina2007 for another example). Moreover, a restaurant, a soccer team, and various social and cultural activities, including some teaching of Italian, revolve around both the association and the club. The first fragment is from an interview with Giovanni where the interviewer is asking about the current and past activities organised by Italians.Footnote ⁴

1. (1)

   

In the first few lines Giovanni conveys that he should organise an event to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the death of Saint Pius X. Through the marked use of the pronoun io ‘I’, grammatically unnecessary in a null-subject language like Italian, and by referring to his organising the celebration as obvious, he is immediately making relevant his role in the community as the one in charge of such events. The celebration is due to the presence of a small church dedicated to the saint in a town in the Hobart area: the saint ‘has’ a church in Taroona, he holds a place among them. The centre, the discursive tool that makes the telling of this event relevant, is the local Tasmanian space where the saint already finds his place. In Gee's (Reference Gee, Barton and Tusting2005) terms, the church is a generator of meaning for the community, a sign for the creation of space related to being Italian in Australia. It is by virtue of such pre-existing relevance that Giovanni brings in the event, and the celebration is narrated as a portal to once again access this Italian space in Tasmania.

However, this creation of space through the Saint Pius X anniversary is articulated by Giovanni as a personal matter. There is another centre that holds importance for him; that is the small town of Riese where his mother was born (lines 7–10). Although Giovanni is not from the town itself but from another nearby, he claims ownership of the place and establishes a private connection with the saint, whom he twice calls paesano, which is the way Italians abroad refer to other Italians who come from the same town, considered a characterisation of intimacy (Baldassar & Pesman Reference Baldassar and Pesman2005). The interviewer, who is also from the Veneto region where Riese is located, extends the connection by mentioning that there have been a few popes from Veneto, and this triggers the use of Venetian by Giovanni, first with de Bełun, and then with Venessia.

What follows is a linguistically remarkable turn. In lines 23–24, Giovanni repeats three times synchronically (Tannen Reference Tannen2007:48–101) the sentence ‘they were from Veneto’ in Venetian. Each of the three repetitions, however, is phonetically different and represents a dialectal variation of Venetian: the first realisation of ‘they were’ is xera [ˈzeːra], the second iera [ˈjeːra], and the third gliera [ˈʎʎeːra]. This linguistic performance reduces the distance between Giovanni, who is from a small country town, and the interviewer, born in a large city, by introducing phonetic variation in the discourse and thus conveying lack of attachment to locally marked linguistic practices. Giovanni is talking to another person from Veneto and appears to choose his discursive strategy—the exhibition of phonological variation—in order to nurture this commonality by eliminating distance. It also establishes a connection between Giovanni and Veneto as a whole, including Venice itself, which he mentions several times. The Veneto region suddenly becomes an alternative centre to Riese; it is a centre shared by the interviewer and the informant, characterised by power and historical importance (lines 26–28). His self-positioning, knowledge of historical facts, and competence in Venetian allow him to shift centres in interaction, as he creates space with the interviewer. In line 43, despite the interviewer not interacting in Venetian, Giovanni decides to use the language again by repeating what the interviewer has just said in Italian. The use of Venetian, here in a closing repetition (Curl, Local, & Walker Reference Curl, Local; and Walker2006; Harjunpää & Mäkilähde Reference Harjunpää and Mäkilähde2016), is therefore key for Giovanni and the spaces he is creating with the interviewer in that the two share the present interaction, the language itself, and their place of origin. This voluntary choice of the code creates meaning for this specific interaction and, at the same time, indexes other spaces that are relevant to this migration experience.

In the following fragment, we see an example of creation of space that both relates to and transcends the locality from where Giovanni speaks.

1. (2)

   

Giovanni keeps his attention on the cultural production of Italians in Tasmania and reminds the interlocutor of the presence of another portal in Hobart, the bronze sculpture at the port. This artefact is somehow twice Italian-Tasmanian, as it represents a second-generation historical figure and, in addition, was made by a first-generation migrant. According to Giovanni, not only is this bronze significant because it testifies tangibly to the success of Italians on the island, but it also shows the ability of Italians to take ownership of their own reference figures and post tributes to them in visible arenas. The appropriation of space through this aesthetic act (Phipps & Kay Reference Phipps and Kay2014) is here made even more significant by the transnational movements of the sculptor (cf. Lemke Reference Lemke, Fluck, Pease and Rowe2011:214) and the literal recasting of local objects thanks to skills acquired across national boundaries. While the ‘situated significance’ (Levinson Reference Levinson1983:329) of the sculpture remains in the foreground, other centres are appropriated by Giovanni to generate space that is meaningful for this account. It is again a city in Veneto that holds relevance—Verona in this instance—together with its craftsmanship, which is transportable as well as embedded in its distant location. The sculptural techniques learnt through movements are used to model previously existing bronze items both in Tasmania and in other Australian sites. The mainland, mentioned through code-switching (lines 20–21), is used as a tool to expand the scope of action of the sculptor, who was not only a personal friend of Giovanni but also a translocal person in the sense of someone who has contributed to the moulding of visible items locally and elsewhere (Hall Reference Hall, Hall and Gay1996; Wilson Reference Wilson, Rando and Turcotte2008). He is defined as a man of the land, probably meaning ‘attached to a land’, although it remains unclear which land Giovanni refers to. What is clear is that he lived in a town nearby (lines 24–25) that is characterised as chiefly Italian-Australian. The tiny hamlet was named Campania by an Italian because of its fertility, which reminded him of the Campania region of Italy, famous for its crops. The town is repeatedly qualified in its bilingual duplicity, phonologically Australian for non-Italians and dual Italian-and-English-sounding for those like the interviewer who know its toponymical origin. The phonological shift here (lines 26–31) adds detail to the resignification of spaces through movements and through language, at the end being both appropriated and othered in their adapted version (Apter Reference Apter2006). Giovanni's historical transnational memory combined with linguistic competence allows layers of interpretation that help him to establish meaning in space. In this sense this fragment shows from a different angle how spaces of speech can be shaped by centres in interaction, which are here both brought in and contextually transformed.

In the following fragment, he recounts the birth of ethnically marked spaces in Hobart and goes on to explain the significance of the Italian presence in Tasmania.

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Giovanni recalls that the creation of a cluster of Italian shops was opposed by local residents, so much so that indignant letters were sent to the media. Authorities expressed adverse opinions about Italian spaces in Hobart, which Giovanni invokes as the epitome of the resistance to the newly formed Italian area. In line 11 he employs the codeswitched deictic here to refer to the localised response to the dispute and then the Italian qui ‘here’ and l à ‘there’ in reference to Italian shops in lines 15–16, thus projecting his belonging to the Tasmanian space whence he speaks; these points are referred to as physically near, located in a space that is adjacent to the one he is currently inhabiting (cf. Haviland Reference Haviland, Baynham and Fina2005). He reiterates the hostility of the Hobart citizens in the second turn as well. He opposes the way the letters to The Mercury described Italians as ‘those Italians’ with his internal placement within the Italian space (‘our Little Italy’). He builds his allegiance to the Italian community, which has been othered by Anglo-Australians, and at the same time positions himself in the middle of the dispute. It is also interesting that at the end of the turn when mentioning Little Italy he uses first the past tense and then the present tense (line 26–27). Although by his own admission the Little Italy of Hobart no longer exists and is placed in the past, it is recreated now for and through this interaction. It is meaningful at the very moment when he is telling it.

The interviewer enquires more into the personal experience of the man in relation to the formation of Little Italy in Hobart, which triggers an animated turn where Giovanni raises the issue of the cultural distance between Italians and Australians. He exemplifies such distance by telling about the change in the use of olive oil. Before Italians started their food businesses, olive oil was available only as a form of medication in pharmacies. By importing it systematically and establishing it within an Italian Australian space, Italians re-appropriated it as a grocery item. Thanks to the newly acquired Italian space, signs could be added and appropriated as ethnically marked products thus acquiring a key transnational image as legitimate Italian items. More importantly, these products are narrated as carriers of change in the wider ‘up-scaled’ (Blommaert Reference Blommaert2007) Tasmanian space. They function as an entry point where Giovanni can move from the Italian space placed at the margin of the wider Australian society, to a central position. Starting from line 49, the centre becomes the Tasmanian society around Italians, which is seen as both the receiver of change and the device by which the Italian presence gains prominence. Giovanni recounts this position of Italians, comparing it to the arrival of Caesar in Gaul and citing in Latin the phrase veni, vidi, vici and translating it into a codeswitched Italian English phrase. He positions himself as a teacher, enacting the educational space that he used to inhabit, by employing both discourse-pragmatic markers (non è vero?) and a high degree of codeswitching in lines 78–80 and 95–97. The Italian influence on Tasmania is characterised as an epic achievement where semiliterate migrants who write letters to their mothers in Italy can achieve a form of triumph thanks to both cultural presence and hard labour. It is evident that the centres here have nothing to do with the local Italian origin that was made relevant in the previous fragments. Rather, pan-Italian spaces in Tasmania are constructed as victorious. It is through the use of space references that this creation of meaning is subjectively possible, and is appropriated and ‘re-ordered’ (Valentine, Sporton, & Bang Nielsen Reference Valentine, Sporton and Nielsen2008:385) in the here and now. In doing this Giovanni nimbly breaks language borders and mobilises the network of spatial resources at his disposal.

Soon after, Giovanni decides to tell the interviewer about the Australian Italian Association and the changes that have occurred in recent times. Clearly also in this fragment spatial work intersects with language through the deployment of centres that are variously characterised as local and transnational.

1. (4)

   

In lines 1–9 Giovanni refers to a small library that he was able to put together when in the Australian Italian Association. The library is a contentious topic among those who revolve around the association and the club as it was dismantled when the association was renovated and most of the books were lost. During the various interviews Giovanni mentioned this library a total of five times, recollecting how it was built and its sad end. For him the library was an important asset for the community, culturally charged and validated by the involvement of Italian institutions (lines 3–4). Giovanni finds it is difficult to create an interest in culture among migrants, and he mentions profit as a current driving force among Italians involved in the association. A great deal of personal investment is expressed in this fragment, evident when he says bibliotechina, diminutive for ‘library’, avevamo ‘we had’, è una vergogna ‘it's a shame’. Giovanni has dedicated his life to the promotion of Italian culture in Tasmania and in this account he shares his frustration about what happened when he was no longer able to take care of the association. Interestingly, here the alignment with the activities of other migrant communities is brought in as a relevant reference point (Cohen Reference Cohen2013:109–19); the local cultural and educational practices of Greeks in Tasmania are indicated as the benchmark for how these matters should be administered. According to Giovanni, the Greek cultural centre has shown the right way to go; the Greek centre never allowed interference on the part of the Greek club, because the club is dedicated to activities that are not concerned with culture. Giovanni shifts centre here very clearly and calls into question local practices of amici ‘friends’ as significant to the management of cultural assets among Italians. Similarly, the involvement of an academic from the University of Tasmania in the performances organized by the association reinforces both the cultural and the local relevance of these past activities, in relation to which Giovanni positions himself as chief promoter (lines 28–37). Interestingly, such reinforcement comes from someone specifically identified as non-Italian and non-Italian speaking. The spatial work is once again multilayered and linguistically meaningful as a result of reference points used to find direction while cultivating space (La Cecla Reference La Cecla2000:102). Moreover, these instances are in line with much recent research that has questioned the usefulness of setting rigid boundaries to define communities (Pennycook Reference Pennycook2010; Blommaert & Backus Reference Blommaert, Backus, de Saint-Georges and Weber2013). It is space, instead, that appears to be socially relevant here, and so are the ways in which cultural activities create communality.

In the following fragment, we can see another example of how movement and language are strictly connected.

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This extract further elaborates on the spatial work in interaction where linguistic abilities and choice of codes become particularly salient. Giovanni recalls an episode where an acquaintance asked him to bring some radicchio seeds from Italy. Radicchio is a leaf vegetable cultivated and used in the northeast of the country and as such points to specific spaces with which both interlocutors are familiar so much so that the interviewer reacts to this topic with a constant smile. In this sense introducing this element creates shared empathic ground in this recount (Hayashi Reference Hayashi1996:11–13) where both Giovanni and the interviewer acknowledge the importance of this item. Planting radicchio is a typical example of constructing ethnic space abroad, as described by Liebscher & Dailey-O'Cain Reference Liebscher and Dailey-O'Cain2013:176–217. The communal life around a shared sign is made relevant in the Italian Tasmanian context through the re-enactment of behaviours that are fixed in time as pre-migration habits. At the same time, this space is resignified by the retelling of a visit to Italy and by connecting it with different parts of the island (lines 14–18). More interestingly, the reported exchange between Giovanni and his acquaintance shows the creation of a different form of communication, that is, the linguistic bridge between Trentino and Venetian speakers. Many varieties of Trentino share a degree of typological similarity with Venetian that translates into partial mutual intelligibility (Zamboni Reference Zamboni and Cortelazzo1979; Pellegrini Reference Pellegrini1992). Giovanni enacts this mutual intelligibility by using Venetian as if the sharing of radicchio and the sharing of linguistic tools were contiguous for him. The two speakers could dispense with Italian while talking to each other, thereby creating a bond that allows one of them to ask for a favour. The favour would result in new radicchio leaves grown in Tasmania, in turn shared as a result of amicable bonds actively created through spaces of speech. Giovanni also uses Italian in this exchange, however, signalling the ambiguous nature of the choice of Venetian. The centres shift dynamically between transversal Veneto-Trentino-Italian planes and local contexts of interaction, where by using a variety of linguistic resources including abundant deictics (lines 2, 4, 7, 9, 13, 16) and specific locations (line 14), Giovanni situates his common life with the other Italians. In other words, the combination of linguistic tools help Giovanni to ‘construe and construct the very context within which that interaction is taking place’ (Sidnell & Enfield Reference Sidnell and Enfield2012:309).

In the following fragment, a different combination of linguistic tools ‘cooperate for expression’ (Merleau-Ponty Reference Merleau-Ponty1960:85) so that Giovanni can take position.

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In this final fragment we see that the Italian community is described as still alive in Tasmania on two different levels. On one level Italians still organise a range of activities including passing through the land during religious processions and visiting Italian Tasmanian localities such as a Catholic church founded by Italians. On another level their presence is marked by the existence of repositories that are meant to testify not only to the participation of the community in its religious life (Fortier Reference Fortier2000) but also to the attention of international companies that connect Italy and other places (lines 38–40). His subscribing to the category of Italians abroad and placing his contribution in a transnational perspective enables him to elevate his Tasmanian Italian space and, at the same time, to articulate such space as ‘culturally meaningful’ (Duranti Reference Duranti1994:49) because of this validation from elsewhere. Yet the space created through donations to the church is seen as precarious, where a division between the clergy and laypeople causes objects to disappear. Not all spaces created by Italians in Hobart are successfully appropriated, and the placement of valuable objects within sites that mark cultural presence is not described as a safe strategy to claim rights (lines 41–48). The area of the church is recounted as Italian but associated with out-group members—nuns and priests—who are Italian but do not (or who no longer) share space with the community.

Concluding remarks

When recounting episodes of their experience of movement individuals invoke instances where spaces were brought to life and, in parallel, it is the moment-to-moment unfolding of talk that brings about space. This article has investigated the tensions between the creation of space in interaction and the use of a number of centres, appropriated as meaningful points in relation to which migrants ‘take position’ (Merleau-Ponty Reference Merleau-Ponty1945:225). Tasmanian Italians offer a good entry point into these processes in light not only of their remote location, which makes centre-periphery dynamics particularly relevant (Wang, Spotti, Juffermans, Cornips, Kroon, & Blommaert Reference Wang, Spotti, Juffermans, Cornips, Kroon and Blommaert2014), but also of their being completely ignored in the transnational ‘master narratives’ (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou Reference Bamberg and Georgakopoulou2008:385) of Italian diasporas.

The data analysed here shows that Giovanni, when deciphering his past and present experiences (Villareal Reference Villareal, Rubdy and Alsagoff2014:269), deploys a number of meaningful centres to make sense of his migration. These centres are often related to the very local dwelling sites from where he happens to speak. They are variously characterised as Italian, Australian, or Tasmanian and made significant along a fluctuating pattern of membership categorisation—for example, the case of the procession of Saint Carlo Borromeo through the streets of Hobart or the reference to how other groups managed their cultural activities in Tasmania. But the centres this migrant can exploit in interaction are also those located elsewhere: a small town in Veneto, a large area in the north of Italy, as well as the Australian mainland. The key actor here is able to navigate around these sites both locally and transnationally, constructing them while he retells his experiences. He does so by using an ample range of linguistic resources, among which code choice, codeswitching, and intentional exposure of phonological variation are particularly evident. It is through the skilful management of these resources that he is able to create space. Giovanni tells episodes of success, failure, validation, and personal attachments, and concomitantly, his language allows him to transport and rebuild value. In doing so, centres are employed as momentarily fixed orienting points (Liebscher & Dailey-O'Cain Reference Liebscher and Dailey-O'Cain2013:266–69) that resonate with other points to create spaces of speech precisely because they are both discursively mediated and spatially distributed (Pennycook Reference Pennycook2016). These centres are therefore not simply reference points used as deictic tools, but foci endowed with different powers that are used through and for the spaces of speech they help to shape. Continuing this examination of this highly personalised configuration of space and language practices might open a rear window onto the linguistics of Italian migration, one that could help to understand the nexus of mobility, situated meaning-making, and hybrid language use.