Applied Linguistics 2013: 34/5: 574–591 ß Oxford University Press 2013 doi:10.1093/applin/amt027 Advance Access published on 12 October 2013 ‘Veneto out of Italy? Dialect, Migration, and Transnational Identity’ *SABINA PERRINO Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan, MI, USA *E-mail: sperrino@umich.edu INTRODUCTION In recent years, Veneto, one of the 20 regions of Italy, has been a theatre of political agitation for increased regional autonomy, which has led to new ideological emphasis on Veneto’s identity and local language. The local ‘regional’ dialect, Veneto (‘Veneto dialect’), which has old roots and a significant literary tradition, has been strengthened within the region but also promoted beyond the region’s borders and the Italian state. Given the peculiar linguistic landscape of the Italian peninsula, this recent revalorization of Veneto dialect assumes a certain significance if one considers its historical background. De Fina (Forthcoming) recalls that although Italy has been unified since 1871, first as a kingdom, and later as a Republic (1946), it was fragmented in many small states for a long time, and this fragmentation lasted after Italy’s official unification. These small states had different languages, which evolved directly from Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 In recent years, new efforts have been made to revitalize and promote local dialects in northern Italy. This project of dialect promotion has occurred side by side with new political restrictions on illegal immigrants in Italy, and both projects—dialect revitalization and anti-immigrant legislation—have been led by the influential federalist political party called Lega Nord. This revitalization is part of a larger set of political initiatives launched by two main political parties in Veneto, Liga Veneta, a subdivision of the Lega Nord, and the new, independently born Veneto Stato. Using a variety of discourse data collected in the Veneto region, this article shows how the promotion of Veneto dialect is intimately related to Veneto speakers’ defense against migrants and the Italian state. This link between local linguistic revitalization and anti-immigration efforts is not just a case of ‘regionalization’ within the Italian state, however. On the one hand, Veneto speakers emphasize their regional belonging rather than their national one by promoting dialect over Standard Italian; on the other hand, they construct a transnational identity as Veneti nel mondo (‘Veneto people in the world’)—reaching out especially to Veneto speakers in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and the USA. Through an analysis of style shifting between Veneto dialect and Standard Italian in a corpus of naturally recorded data among Veneto speakers, I investigate how they foster and solidify a Veneto identity through opposition to foreigners and the Italian state, and how they build a Veneto transnational identity that stretches beyond regional and national boundaries. S. PERRINO 575 Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 Latin in contact with the local codes (the vernaculars). Although the Tuscan ‘dialect’ had some fortune due to its literary use by famous writers (Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, and others) and became what today is referred to as Standard Italian, the other vernacular languages (referred to as ‘dialetti’ by many Italians) have continued to survive through the centuries thanks to their intensive everyday use. It has been reported that only 2.5% of the population could speak Standard Italian at the end of the 19th century (De Mauro 1963), and ‘there was often little intelligibility between Italian speakers and speakers of these languages’ (De Fina Forthcoming). A significant and relatively recent change is that Veneto dialect is being reframed as something of a diasporic ‘heritage’ language (Blommaert, this issue), which Veneto speakers living abroad should adopt and Veneto people within Italy should appreciate, protect, and promote. In this way—besides the already existing variety of Veneto dialect forms spoken within the region (varying sometimes from town to town)—new hybrid forms are being created by communities of Veneto living abroad (such as Veneto-Brazilian, or VenetoArgentine, etc.). This hybridity may help contribute to ‘heritaging’, as Veneto dialect is used and reproduced in different ‘polycentric’ environments, even when tensions between local and global realities arise (see Blommaert, this issue). In travelling across the globe with its migrant speakers, Veneto has thus become a globalized if hybridized vernacular (Blommaert 2010). As transnationalism is one of the consequences of globalization (Vertovec 2009), Veneto dialect has been moving along transnational networks back and forth not only with its migrants physically travelling across the globe but also through digital channels, which have provided a rapid reciprocal mobility between migrants and their home country (see Vigouroux 2008). Although Veneto dialect travels along global and transnational lines, Veneto speakers (who encourage its use) nonetheless always refer back to the center, the Veneto region, where intensive dialect revitalization has been taking place— albeit for different reasons and under distinct political and economic conditions than sites abroad. The dialogue between center—the Veneto region—and peripheries—the various localities across the globe where Veneto people have migrated to—(Heller 2003; Vigouroux 2008) may seem harmonious and may help create the sense of a seamless connection across sites (which is often virtual in nature as well, through TV programs on the Internet and radio broadcasting, see De Fina, this issue), but disjuncture exists. On the one hand, Veneto dialect has become a valued symbolic resource for the transnational communities of Veneto speakers across the globe, who, by maintaining it, often aspire to reinforce their Veneto identity from afar. On the other hand, within Italy, this transnational character of Veneto dialect has been intimately connected to a program of conservative political parties that have tried to strengthen regional borders against the Italian state and against foreign migrants. This is not to say that some who embrace Veneto as a heritage language in places like Argentina do not also know and embrace the conservative politics associated with dialect revitalization in Italy—especially if the language 576 VENETO OUT OF ITALY? DIALECT REVITALIZATION FOR AN EMBATTLED VENETO Trenz (2007) has shown that at least for the cases of France, Germany, and Spain, minority language revitalization in Europe has had certain revealing similarities in recent years, despite the historical differences. These similarities are best explained, argues Trenz, by considering macrosocial forces of European integration and not by looking at minority politics within the nation-state. ‘[T]he new salience of minority politics and the extended politics of recognition’, writes Trenz, ‘is not so much a causal effect of an intensified ethnic struggle or a rational response to ethnic mobilization, but rather is the result of a symbolic re-evaluation of ethnic difference in the course of European integration . . .’ (p. 158). Later Trenz observes, ‘[t]he recognition of the cultural diversity in Europe entails recognition of cultural diversity inside each European country’ (p. 164). New European organizations devoted to the preservation of minority languages have arisen such that language revitalization movements have had new places to turn for support, policy advice, and advocacy beyond the nation-state. This coordination with larger scale European organizations helps explain some of the emerging similarities between these minority language movements. Although Veneto promoters in Italy have also turned beyond Italy to the European Union for help with their cause, their efforts in turning to the EU have been weak compared with other movements, and, instead, it has been Italy-internal politics that best explains the new energy behind Veneto dialect revitalization. The recent fate of Veneto dialect is strongly connected with conservative politics in Italy, notably with the Lega Nord (‘Northern League’),1 which has been one of the most successful political parties in Italy in recent years. Led originally by Umberto Bossi, it grew from a ‘small movement stressing the ethnic and linguistic distinctiveness of the regions of northern Italy to a national, mass political party’ (Giordano 2004: 64). A great deal of the Lega Nord’s popularity, in Veneto in particular, has been derived from its strong anti-immigration efforts, which have occurred alongside efforts at regionalization, including local dialect revitalization. As Cavanaugh (2004, 2008, 2009) has shown for the Bergamasco dialect,2 the Lega Nord, and its various, regional Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 resources they read and consume are produced by Veneto promoters in Italy itself. Still, the environments in which Veneto serves as a heritage language are different. Though the conditions vary, both those in Italy and abroad do often collaborate in seeking to revitalize Veneto and thereby participate in a globalizing dialog for minority language revitalization (cf. May 2001; Trenz 2007). Before turning to the analysis of how these processes are enacted in discourse by political parties and Veneto diaspora organizations, I will first sketch the present situation of Veneto dialect within the Veneto region (and the Italian state). I will then follow with a consideration of Veneto dialect’s fate along its transnational trajectories and call attention to some ironies that persist concerning the continued dominance of Standard Italian. S. PERRINO 577 Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 sub-leagues, such as the Liga Veneta (‘Veneto League’), have been active in reviving and promoting dialect use. The Liga Veneta’s promotion of dialects and anti-immigration policies work in opposite directions but complement each other: they set out to defend Veneto people against foreign migrants while also drawing a boundary around their region and language. This extreme regionalization has gone together with a stress on transnationalism. Just as these movements localize and revalorize their cultural inheritance in the region, they reach out to Veneto people across the globe, as they believe that these share a common code and culture and that their identity is being threatened. In this article, I examine the discourse of the Liga Veneta, which has been promoting Veneto dialect as an emblem of regional and transnational groupmembership. I also mention the secessionist initiatives of a new related political party, Veneto Stato (‘Veneto State’), which was founded in 2010 by a group of frustrated members of the Liga Veneta taking their separatist ideals to the extreme. Even though Veneto Stato is more ideologically extreme, both political parties are rather similar in terms of their promotion of dialect and regionalization, and both share the aspiration to promote Veneto language and identity transnationally. The politicization of dialect can be immediately noted, for instance, in the Liga Veneta’s emblems that metadiscursively (Silverstein 1993) link this language variety to their conservative political agenda. In their website, for instance, one can find posters that feature Veneto dialect (see Figure 1). In this poster, Veneto dialect appears twice in the Liga Veneta’s seal, the terms Liga and paroni (‘owners’) being in Veneto dialect. The line ‘Paroni a casa nostra’ means ‘owners of our own home’, and it is addressed to the Veneto people who are invited to take ownership of their own land (against both migrants and state control) and to exert more local control over it.3 The last line, written in Standard Italian, reads ‘cresciamo grazie ai veneti’ (‘we grow thanks to the Veneto people’), which, again, suggests the independence that this region has, or should have, with respect to the other Italian regions and to the Italian state. 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 targeted for revitalization and dominant languages (English and Spanish, respectively), and the relationship between Veneto dialect and Standard Italian carries a similar tension. As I show later in the text, there are ironies in which staunch proponents of Veneto ‘use’ still rely on a matrix of Standard Italian as the public language of political eloquence and communication. In terms of promotion, members of both Liga Veneta and Veneto Stato have started to turn outward as they emphasize their independence from the Italian government, as if to deliberately ‘look past’ the boundaries and authority of the Italian state and of the European Union. Thus, they have been constructing a transnational Veneto identity by reaching out to Veneti nel mondo (‘Veneto people in the world’). Veneti nel mondo is, in fact, the name of a separate association for the transnational promotion of Veneto language, culture, and identity, originally founded by the Liga Veneta. This association, which is not 578 VENETO OUT OF ITALY? explicitly political in nature, has branches that reach out to Veneto speakers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Australia, Uruguay, Peru, China, and the USA, where many Veneto expatriates live. In sum, by defying the boundaries both of the Italian state and of the European Union, promoters of Veneto dialect try to build a new transnational identity in which their dialect is the anchor. Lega Nord Dialect revitalization in Northern Italy, and in Italy more generally, must be understood in relation to recent immigration politics in Italy. During the 1970s and 1980s, Italy changed from being a country of emigrants, having provided immigrants especially to the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to a country of immigrants, and although the number of immigrants is inferior to that of European countries like France and England, the new and increased flows of immigrants have affected Italian discourses about national culture and identity. Beginning with the 2001 election, the Lega Nord began to shift from its original focus on the cultural and economic threat of southern Italians migrating to northern Italy towards an emphasis on foreign migrants. 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 the League more threatening – ‘other’, namely the increasing number of foreign migrants to Italy, or so-called extracomunitari (Giordano 2003: 222; emphasis in original; see also Giordano 2004). In 2009, a law was passed that mandated the immediate expulsion of all ‘undocumented migrants’ (clandestini), that is, those that lack a permesso di soggiorno (‘permit to stay’). The effects of this legislation, especially in northern Italy, were significant and dramatic. Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 Figure 1: Liga Veneta’s poster S. PERRINO 579 Liga Veneta (S: Stival) Standard Italian English Gloss S: [. . .] nonostante zentocinquant’ani d’italiano tra virgolette l‘ottanta perzento dei veneti parlano ancora veneto. [. . .] despite one hundred and fifty years of Italian, so to speak, eighty percent of the Veneto people still speak Veneto [dialect]. [. . .] i veneti parlano il veneto, nonostante tutti i tentativi di cancellarlo. Quindi significa che è un qualcosa che è fortemente radicato dentro di noi dentro alle nostre coscienze, e nel nostro DNA e nel nostro sangue, e quindi questo, il mio partito, ha voluto proprio non solo metterlo in evidenza, non solo riscoprirlo, ma ridargli la dignità che ha sempre avuto. [. . .] [. . .] Veneto people speak Veneto despite the attempts to erase it. So [this] means that it is something that is strongly rooted in us, in our knowledge, and in our DNA, and in our blood, and so my [political party] really wanted not only to highlight, not only rediscover it, but give it back the dignity that it has always had. [. . .] Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 Founded in 1980, Liga Veneta is by far the largest political party in Veneto (Cavallin 2010). It was the first party of its kind in northern Italy, pre-dating Umberto Bossi’s Lega Lombarda (which is considered the main subleague within the Lega Nord) by 4 years, and it was a founding member of the Lega Nord.4 The Liga Veneta’s efforts at revitalizing and promoting the Veneto dialect have targeted various media, including radio, television, public signage, textbooks, and comic books. In addition, there has been an increased use of Veneto dialect in events such as political rallies and sagre—local festivals involving food, games, and religious rituals. Many of these dialect promotion initiatives have occurred very recently—in the past 6 years—such as new dictionaries and media in Veneto dialect. In terms of schooling, Veneto dialect is now taught at the elementary level through the use of books in Veneto for children [e.g. LEPANTO: la Gran Bataja (‘LEPANTO: the Big Battle’) featuring the historical battle of Lepanto (Raixe Venete 2010)].5 During my fieldwork in Veneto, in the summer of 2012,6 I found visible signs of this revitalization. For example, at the train station in the Veneto town of Padova (‘Padua’), there were three-sided posters advertising the alcoholic aperitif ‘spritz’ that is considered traditional in this region. One side of one poster reads: ‘Par bevar un Spritz no. ghe vol un privé, serve na piassa’7 whose corresponding Standard 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’). Another side of the same poster reads, ‘bevitelo anca a casa’ where ‘nca’ is in Veneto dialect meaning ‘drink it at home as well’ (see Figure 2). Members of Liga Veneta showed their support for these revitalization initiatives in interviews with me. In the summer of 2010, for example, I interviewed Daniele Stival, head of a section of the Liga Veneta called ‘assessorato dell’identità veneta’ (‘section of the Veneto identity’), in Venice. Emphasizing the importance of Veneto dialect for Veneto speakers, Stival said the following: 580 VENETO OUT OF ITALY? In this stretch of discourse, Stival underlines the historical persistence and prominence of Veneto dialect throughout the centuries, despite challenges to its existence. According to him, both the ‘Veneto’ people and the ‘Veneto’ language have persisted because the language is in the ‘blood’ or ‘DNA’ of its people. Looking at his interaction with the interviewer (myself), however, one may notice the irony that Stival speaks almost entirely in Standard Italian, even though he talks passionately about the need to promote Veneto dialect. The 45-min interview was almost entirely in Standard Italian, with no sustained shifts into Veneto dialect. Despite the fact that the Liga Veneta has made tremendous efforts to transform Veneto dialect into an emblem, Stival did not choose to display any tokens of Veneto dialect as indexes of group membership even before the interview formally began. Although he knew that I am from Veneto, that I could at least comprehend his dialect and that I was interested in linguistic issues, he didn’t greet me or address me in his dialect at any point during the interview and after it—even though he handed me a lot of promotional brochures and books in Veneto dialect. For somebody who is so strongly in favor of promoting the dialect and regards it as part of the patrimony of his people, such lack of dialect use during the interview may seem surprising. Stival’s linguistic behavior would seem to suggest that Standard Italian is still the dominant language of communication in official business in Italy, even if Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 Figure 2: Posters at the station of Padova, Veneto (photos taken in August 2012 by the author) S. PERRINO 581 noticeable shifts into dialect have started to gain a special symbolic significance. I found that such shifts are common in political rallies and debates held by Liga Veneta members. In the following excerpt, for example, Mara Bizzotto, who represents the Liga Veneta before the European Parliament, introduced the governor of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia, during a political rally, which took place in March 2010. This is the beginning of the rally. (B: Mara Bizzotto; Z: Luca Zaia) Man: [. . .] Did we lose the leghista DNA here? Do I need to speak to you in Italian? [crowd applauding and screaming] B: e aora se parla in veneto se parla in veneto se p- parché ghemo parlà in veneto fin ‘ndesso quindi no vedo parché ghemo da cambiare lengua n’desso [. . .] and then we speak in Veneto [dialect] we speak in Veneto [dialect] because we have spoken in Veneto [dialect] till now and so I don’t see why we have to change language now [. . .] Luca Zaia began his political speech by addressing his audience in Veneto dialect with the question ‘Did you lose the leghista DNA here? Do I need to speak to you in Italian?’ As political rallies are usually conducted in Standard Italian, one can understand why such a question might be asked. Mara Bizzotto followed Zaia’s lead and suggested that, indeed, it was better to speak Veneto dialect, and she addressed the audience almost entirely in Veneto dialect. The very fact that explicit, metadiscursive talk about a shift should occur at all reveals much about the continuing dependency on the national language, even in rallies for a movement that believes in regional autonomy and promotes local dialect. An enormous effort needs to be made to make a shift away from Standard Italian, which remains the undisputed public language, toward the use of Veneto dialect—which is still, in the minds of most Italians, a regional variety, a ‘dialect’, rather then a true ‘language’ that can be used for political speeches. In the political rallies of the Liga Veneta that I have examined thus far, the default language still tends to be Standard Italian; Veneto dialect tends to be limited to brief but noticeable shifts. Only on some occasions, it is used for longer stretches of discourse, though perhaps this is a sign of what we can expect in the near future. In a political rally led by Gianpaolo Gobbo, the mayor of the small town of Treviso and the national secretary of the Liga Veneta, long stretches of his speech were delivered in Veneto dialect. In this example of a 10-min speech, which occurred during a political rally that took place in March 2010, Gobbo, who stood in front of the founder of the Lega Nord, Umberto Bossi, said the following: [applauses and screams throughout the speech] [applauses and screams throughout the speech] Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 Z: [. . .] gavemo perso il DNA leghista qua? devo parlarve in italian? [crowd applauding and screaming] 582 VENETO OUT OF ITALY? 1. noialtri nel Veneto no semo abituai a prometere noialtri fasemo i fati quando che voialtri gavi visto che semo stai al governo gavi visto credo che quei che gha un po’ che o gha merità quindi che hanno una certa maturità 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 27. 28. 29. i se sia acorti che finalmente nella repubblica italiana ze arivà ‘n minstro de l’agricoltura che sevea queo che fasea ch’el non confondea e che [???] e adesso ghemo comunque recuperato ma queo che voevo dir noialtri ze metemo tuti i nostri omeni migliori i candidati, le persone, quelli che deve fare debbono soprattutto rispondere al movimento e il movimento sono i militanti il movimento sono i soccorritori il movimento è la nostra zente e quindi credo che, ragazzi credo che sia veramente arrivato il momento e questa Roma simpatica nella quale la prima volta Umberto 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. quando ch’el ne gha mandà zo 41. ve digo un segreto 42. mi no so mai andà a Roma [. . .] 30. the candidates, [that is] the people, 31. those who have to do 32. they have especially to be responsive with 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 42. I never went to Rome [. . .] Looking at how Gobbo’s speech develops, first, it is striking that he began his discourse in Veneto dialect just as he invoked the voice of the Veneto people. However, Gobbo did not continue to speak in Veneto dialect but switched frequently between the two codes before shifting into Standard Italian alone for a fairly long stretch of discourse (lines 30–39).8 If we look at person deixis, especially at first person plural pronouns as well as person marking in auxiliary and main verbs, we notice that Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 1. we in Veneto [we] are not used to [just] 2. promise, we act 3. as you saw 4. when we were in 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 [???] 27. and now [we] have recovered anyway 28. but what [I] wanted to say [is that] 29. we put all our best men S. PERRINO 583 Veneto Stato While the Liga Veneta was founded in 1980 as the political party of the Veneto region, Veneto Stato is very recent, having been founded in 2010. Whereas Veneto Stato’s politics are more extreme than those of the Liga Veneta, both political parties treat Veneto dialect as one of the main instruments to create and maintain a Veneto identity within and outside regional boundaries (cf. Joseph 2004). Although Veneto Stato is still a new political party, its members appear to put even more stress on the need to speak Veneto dialect at meetings and with their members. In practice, however, their strategies for promoting Veneto dialect are not different from the ones used by Liga Veneta. If one compares their websites, for example, one notices that Liga Veneta and Veneto Stato are somewhat similar in the way they promote the use of Veneto dialect. In both sites, there are links to Veneto dialect dictionaries, websites, and initiatives, but the main language of each site is Standard Italian. In Veneto Stato’s political speeches and conversations that I have recorded and analyzed thus far, speakers, too, switch between Veneto dialect and Standard Italian but still treat Standard Italian as the default public language (cf. Schmidt 2002). Here is an example, taken from an interview I conducted with an important member of Veneto Stato, a representative in the town of Verona, in July 2011. The transcript below reproduces what Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 throughout the whole discourse, there is a tendency to use Veneto dialect. Only 2 of the 11 first-person plural subject pronouns were in Standard Italian, noi; the rest, 82%, were in Veneto dialect, noi/ni[i]altri]. In terms of first-person plural marking in verbs, 78% (18 of 23) were in Veneto dialect. So when Gobbo invokes the we—a ‘we’ that suggests Liga Veneta members and more broadly the Veneto people—there appears to be a strong preference for dialect. In this speech, we may further observe that when Gobbo alternated between Veneto dialect and Standard Italian, he reserved Standard Italian for the most ‘eloquent’ moments of his address [moments featuring poetic parallelism (Jakobson 1990) (e.g. lines 32–35)]. It may be that he did this when he made claims that needed to be heard not only by Veneto speakers but also by Italians in general, by the government, and especially by the Italian state. Whatever the case may be for the specific motivations of these shifts, we may be observing a certain tacit, ironic conservatism in which the national language retains a stronghold (cf. Meek and Messing 2007). Liga Veneta members have been investing Veneto dialect with political value and have been trying to recruit people to speak it, and through speaking it, these recruits are to become members of Veneto in the strongly political sense of the regional and transnational identity that the Liga Veneta intends. Veneto’s success as a language may simply be ‘incomplete’ at this historical moment, or perhaps Veneto is tacitly being positioned—even by Liga Veneta members—as a subordinate but important ‘dialect’ that deserves to have a place in public life. 584 VENETO OUT OF ITALY? he said while explaining the various cultural initiatives promoted by his political party: [. . .] indeed, in September every year there is, [I] don’t know if you have ever been [there], there is the celebration of the Veneto people in Cittadella in the county of Padova; there is a celebration that has been on since 2002 if I am not wrong, and Friday there is a conference, and Friday night and Saturday, there is usually music in [the] town square with Obrano and other singers, and all day long there are typical products, [cultural] shows and historical reenactments in the town square and many varied little things, [it] is very beautiful, after so many years, [it] seems to me that it is the first weekend in September in Cittadella [. . .] In his description, there is continuous code-switching between Veneto dialect and Standard Italian (with several bivalent forms as well); although these shifts are not qualitatively different from shifts one observes in speakers at Liga Veneta’s political events, they are more frequent. Earlier in my conversation with this representative, he addressed me exclusively in Veneto dialect, assuming that I could thoroughly understand this dialect (and converse in it). Even his initial greetings were in Veneto dialect, unlike in my first interview with Daniele Stival of Liga Veneta, which was entirely in Standard Italian (see earlier in the text). In sum, although these two political parties are similar in their views and in the way they carry out their ideals, Veneto Stato seems to be more committed to the use of Veneto dialect both at political rallies and in casual conversations with Veneto ordinary speakers. Still, it must be noted that this use involves frequencies of shifts, as there is still no evidence of the supremacy of Veneto dialect ‘over’ Standard Italian, the latter remaining the undisputed public language (cf. Schmidt 2002). VENETO BEYOND VENETO Besides being an important representative of the Liga Veneta, Daniele Stival is also one of the main promoters of the Associazione Veneti nel Mondo (‘Association of Veneto people in the world’), an association that tries to expand and preserve the identity of Veneto people around the world.9 During an interview I conducted with him, he praised this association and stated that his political party (Liga Veneta) had been active in promoting the use of Veneto language among the communities of Veneto speakers abroad. 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 Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 [. . .] infati a settembre ghe ze ogni ano, no so se te si mai stà, ghe ze la festa dei veneti a Citadea in provincia de Padova ghe ze ‘na festa che ze ormai dal 2002 se non sbaglio e venerdı̀ ghe ze n’ convegno venerdı̀ sera de solito e sabato ghe ze musica in piassa con Obrano e co’ altri cantanti e tutto il giorno ghe ze con prodotti tipici, manifestassioni e rievocazioni storiche nea piassa e tante cosine varie ze beissimo de tanti ani che ghe voe, me par che ze el primo weekend de setembre a Citadea [. . .] S. PERRINO 585 Intervista de Valentina Baldan a l’editor Darcy Loss Luzzatto, scritor e autor in lengua veneta (Italian o veneto-braxilian). Luzzatto, disendente de veneti emigrà in Interview of Valentina Baldan to the editor Darcy Loss Luzzatto, writer and author in Veneto language (Italian or VenetoBrazilian). Luzzatto, descendant of the Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 aggregazione degli emigrati veneti all’estero’ (‘a cultural association of Veneto emigrants living abroad’),10 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 Veneto people 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) during that historical period. The transnational expatriate Veneto communities nowadays constitute, in the Association’s own words, ‘l’altro Veneto: quello al di là del mare, dove i quasi cinque milioni di emigrati e oriundi non hanno dimenticato né la lingua né le tradizioni della loro terra d’origine’ (‘the other Veneto region: the one beyond the ocean, where almost five million emigrants and real Veneto people have not forgotten either the language or the traditions of their original soil’).11 As their narrative suggests, a Veneto diaspora emerged. The task now, as they see it, is to extend the project of regionalization to all these expatriates. In this quest for legitimation and use of Veneto dialect across the globe, Veneto migrants 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 virtual as well, such as their website and their international television and radio broadcasts, through which news, stories, and traditional music can circulate rapidly. To increase this global circulation and dialog between center and peripheries, for example, one of their most recent initiatives has been to create and support a new Veneto migrants’ network, named GlobalVen, an initiative that tries to recruit Veneto talent (businessmen, university professors, artisans, etc.) across the globe and to create a cultural exchange among them and between them and the central region, Veneto.12 On their website, 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. One of the ways these links are kept alive is through speaking and writing in Veneto dialect, as the writer and Liga Veneta member Darcy Loss Luzzatto underlined during an interview that was broadcast on a Veneto television channel.13 Frequently shifting into Veneto, he says the following about his efforts in favor of dialect revitalization: ‘loto tuti i dı̀ par tegner viva la nostra lengua’ (‘I fight everyday to keep our language alive’). Here is the introduction to the interview (see Figure 3), as shown in the following transcript: 586 VENETO OUT OF ITALY? Interview of Valentina Baldan to the editor Darcy Loss Luzzatto, writer and author in Veneto language (Italian or VenetoBrazilian). Luzzatto, descendant of the Veneto people, emigrated to Brazil, he lives in the State of Rio Grande of the South Com’è bela ‘a nostra lengua, com’è melodiosa. E poetica. Basta parlada con orgoglio e alegria, mai con paura o co la boca streta e vergognosa. E si con onor, con tanto tanto amor e simpatia How beautiful is our language, how melodious. And poetic. [one just] needs to speak it with pride and happiness, never with fear or with the narrow and shameful mouth. and yes with honor, with a lot a lot of love and amicability During this TV interview, and after praising the Veneto language and cultural traditions, Mr Luzzatto said the following to its regional, national, and transnational audiences: [. . .] semo veneti la ze ora de abbrassarse tuti e ‘ndar zo a Roma dirghe e mostrarghe ‘scolta ze la nostra lengua parché alora la deventa una lengua official, la ze zà ‘na lengua official, anca una lengua literaira e la deventa ‘na lengua internasional [. . .] [. . .] [we] are Veneto people, it is time to hug each other all and go down to Rome and tell them and show them listen this is our language because then it becomes also an official language, it is already an official language, also a literary language and it becomes also an international language [. . .] [. . .] la maniera de mantegner la nostra lengua è parlando il veneto sempre a casa sua, par strada, a scola [. . .] E’ un dirito nostro’’ [. . .] the way to maintain our language is by speaking in Veneto all the time, at home, in the street, at school [. . .] it is our own right’’. Luzzatto uses the first plural pronoun ‘we’ to claim that all Veneto people (including himself) should feel close, as if they were to hug each other (‘abbrassarse tuti’), and then they should go to Rome and ask the Italian government for the legal recognition of their Veneto ‘language’. The Veneto language is already an official language, Luzzatto says, although it has not been recognized at the national level yet. Luzzatto claims, further, that Veneto language can become an international language. Veneto language is not limited to the Veneto region anymore, but it has to become an ‘international’ language, spoken and maintained by all Veneto speakers across the globe. Its international status does not mean that it is seen as able to compete with a global language like English, but rather that it has become like an internationalized ‘heritage’ language yielding hybrid forms that look more like a ‘heritaging’ code (Blommaert, this issue), given the natural influence of Brazilian Portuguese on Veneto (in his case, but of other languages for Veneto speakers residing in other countries), as it is also metapragmatically indicated in Figure 3: ‘Darcy Loss Luzzatto, scritor e autor in lengua veneta (italian o veneto-braxilian). Luzzatto, disendente de veneti emigrà in Braxile, el vive inte’l Stato de Rio Grande do Sul’ (‘Darcy Loss Luzzatto, writer and author Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 Intervista de Valentina Baldan a l’editor Darcy Loss Luzzatto, scritor e autor in lengua veneta (Italian o veneto-braxilian). Luzzatto, disendente de veneti emigrà in Braxile, el vive inte’l Stato de Rio Grande do Sul. S. PERRINO 587 in Veneto language (Italian or Veneto-Brazilian. Luzzatto, descendant of Veneto emigrants to Brazil, he lives in the State of Rio Grande of the South). As Luzzatto states, the way to maintain his heritage language is to try to speak it everywhere, at home, at work, and in the street. The association Veneti nel mondo has even created an anthem for the Veneto migrant, with frequent shifts into Veneto dialect. The anthem is called ‘la melodia dell’emigrante veneto’ (‘the melody of the Veneto migrant’).14 The end of the anthem reads: E sto pensiero me da an sentimento Veneto lontan dal Veneto, smari’ nel mondo And this thought gives me a feeling Veneto far away from Veneto [i.e. region], lost in the world an sentimento talian migra nel vento a feeling of an Italian migrated in the wind and a song that gives me a feeling. e ‘na canzon che me dà an sentimento E come il fiume che va riva nel mar da Verona, Treviso, Vicenza e Rovigo And like the river that leads to the sea from Verona, Treviso, Vicenza, and Rovigo mi rive nel mondo e poi Venezia, Padova bela Belun I am going into the world and then Venice, Padua, the beautiful Belluno zighe nel vento E sto pensiero me da an sentimento. screams in the wind And this thought gives me a feeling This anthem praises the Veneto region and the link that this region has with its transnational migrants around the world. A Veneto migrant is far away from Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 Figure 3: Darcy Loss Luzzatto, writer in Veneto language and the interviewer Valentina Baldan (www.raixevenete.net) 588 VENETO OUT OF ITALY? CONCLUSION Although there are differences between the Liga Veneta and Veneto Stato, both these regional political parties advocate the use of Veneto dialect both nationally and transnationally. As for Liga Veneta, although part of the Liga Veneta’s project is to get their members to speak Veneto dialect, and thus to share the Liga Veneta’s political views about the ‘north’ and about the region of Veneto, in particular, Standard Italian is still very much the public language of eloquence and effectiveness. It is used for making important claims, claims that need to be heard not only by the members of the Liga Veneta, but by all Italians, the government, and the Italian state. However, efforts have been made by its political members to speak Veneto dialect more often in their political rallies and more in general to revitalize their dialect. The same is true, only more so, for the new, more extreme political party Veneto Stato. For both these political parties, the status of Veneto language is important for the political project of increased independence from the Italian state. For both, efforts have also been made not just to revitalize and promote Veneto dialect use within the boundaries of their region, but also to construct a new ‘Veneto citizenship’ that is separate from the other Italian regions and from the Italian state. In the same way, though to different degrees, both Liga Veneta and Veneto Stato advocate independence for the Veneto region from Italy and the EU. Their efforts at localization coincide with efforts at creating transnational connections with several Veneto communities abroad, thus aspiring to reinforce the sense of a Veneto identity across the borders as well. It is in this interchange between center and peripheries that a new transnational space is being created for Veneto language and identity. One wonders, then, what an independent Veneto state would look like given this ideological project that reframes Veneto dialect from a regional dialect into a diasporic and hybrid heritage language. Though the motivations for the outreach to Veneto speakers living abroad are undoubtedly many and complex, one effect is that ‘the local’ language gets its authority from beyond its historical Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 the Veneto region, and this reality makes this migrant feel connected both to the other migrants across the globe and to the center, the Veneto region (see Vigouroux 2008; Vertovec 2009; Dejaeghere and McCleary 2010). The transnational fate of this migrant is then compared with a river touching the most important towns of Veneto (Verona, Treviso, Vicenza, Rovigo, Venezia [‘Venice’], Padova [‘Padua’], and Belluno) and then dispersing into the ocean. Despite this dispersion, there is always a connection and a strong sense of identity that is kept alive through the contemplation of the towns and, more generally, of the region. In this anthem, there are no verses entirely in Standard Italian: in every line, Veneto dialect and bivalent forms are prominent. Still, Standard Italian remains present, casting a long shadow over its many minority languages. S. PERRINO 589 and cultural borders and from beyond the state that should be, but is not, protecting it. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS APPENDIX Transcription Conventions Standard Italian = regular font. Veneto dialect = bold and italic. bivalent forms = italic and underline. [???] = unclear speech. [word] = transcriber’s commentary. wor- = sharp cut-off. wo::rd = prolonged syllable. NOTES 1 2 3 4 The political party Lega Nord, also called Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania (‘Northern League for the Independence of Padania’) presently is composed of 15 regional subsections (see http://www.leganord. org/ilmovimento/manifesti.asp, last accessed September 2010). The local dialect of Bergamo, a town in the northern region of Lombardia (‘Lombardy’). In this respect, Veneto dialect has been promoted only for Veneto people and not for immigrant populations living in the region. Having been a strong promoter for a secessionist Northern Italy (the North, the imaginary Padania, separated from the Center-South), today the Lega Nord supports an anti-globalization Federal State for Italy, an initiative that has been well received throughout Northern Italy (Giordano 2003, 2004; Spektorowski 2003; Cento Bull 2009; Woods 2009). This phenomenon is not unique to Italy, as similar political parties promoting federalism, or even a more radical separatism, exist in other European states. In opposition to policies of European integration and in particular to new waves of foreign migration into Europe, a number of conservative, nationalistic political parties have emerged throughout the European continent, such as the Downloaded from http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Michigan on August 24, 2014 My deepest thanks go to the many speakers in the Veneto region who agreed to be part of this project. I wish to deeply thank Gregory Kohler, for his assistance in transcribing many of the above materials in Italian and Veneto dialect and for his editorial feedback. I also wish to thank Michael Lempert for his editorial feedback on several drafts of this article. Many thanks to Anna De Fina for her ongoing enthusiasm first in co-organizing a panel on transnational identities at the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Boston in 2012, and then in putting together this special issue. I deeply thank her also for her thorough feedback on several drafts of the present article. Finally, I wish to thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor of Applied Linguistics for their astute comments and criticism. Any remaining mistakes are my own. 590 VENETO OUT OF ITALY? 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Although the extensive literature on code-switching (e.g. Heller 1988; Berruto 1997; Alvarez-Caccamo 1998; Auer 1998; Cavanaugh 2006; De Fina 2007, just to mention some) would invite an analysis focused more on the nature of the switches themselves (such as the differences between cases of code-switching and code-mixing), this article uses this notion to unveil the moments of the switches rather than their typology. The present president of this Association is Mr Aldo Rozzi Marin (http:// www.venetinelmondo-onlus.org/stor ia.asp, last accessed on 12 February 2013). http://www.venetinelmondo-onlus. org/storia.asp (last accessed on 12 February 2013). See Note 10. 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