Talking English to talk about difference: everyday transcultural meaning-making in Naples Italy

Abstract

This qualitative empirical study explores the articulation of meanings about difference, belonging and positionality that are emerging in English talk across transcultural boundaries in Naples, Southern Italy. It shows that the fraught encounters that take place on street markets, on public transport and at community events lead both to tactics of racialized closure, exclusion and division; as well as to the formation of innovative and ambivalent convivialities. In stressing the importance of talking English in intersubjective interactions it not only tells a story about the particular context and history of race relations in the city – where different sorts of speaking are central to a history of internal subordination and mass emigration – but also offers new ways of thinking about the complex and ambiguous multilingual reality that has resulted from intensified migration across the world.

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