Community and space in Italian sociolinguistics: The experience of the Linguistic Atlas of Sicily (Atlante Linguistico della Sicilia -- ALS)

Abstract

The paper focuses on the notions of ‘space’ and ‘community’ within the most recent developments of Italian sociolinguistics. This research area has roots in the tradition of Italian geolinguistic studies and has been enhanced by other research traditions. In fact, Italian sociolinguistics has reused the relationship between ‘community’ and ‘space’ investigated in the early twentieth century by Benvenuto Terracini’s (1886–1968) seminal studies on ‘minimal linguistic point’ (‘punto linguistico minimo’) and on ‘community of speakers’. Since the 1970s and, with more weight, in the last decades, some important contributions coming from scholars such as Alberto Sobrero, Tullio Telmon and Giovanni Ruffino returned to Terracini’s issues, intertwining them with the approaches of variationist sociolinguistics. More recently models viewing community and space as contextualized discourse practices have been elaborated. In the most productive way, the Linguistic Atlas of Sicily (Atlante Linguistico della Sicilia, ALS) project uses the notions of ‘community’ and ‘space’ as they have been developed in the Italian geo- and sociolinguistic tradition. For more than twenty years, ALS has been exploring the Sicilian speaker’s language use, carrying out an innovative project. In this paper both the theoretical assumptions and achievements of the ALS project will be discussed