Mapping languages from inside: Notes on perceptual dialectology

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Mapping languages from inside:Notes on perceptual dialectologyGabriele Iannàccaro & Vittorio Dell'Aquila

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Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2001

Mapping languages from inside:notes on perceptual dialectology

Gabriele Iannaccaro1 & Vittorio Dell’Aquila2

1Linguistica, Universita’ di Trento, via Santa Croce 4, I-38100 Trento, Italy;2Vaasan Yliopisto/Vaasa Universitet, Wolf�ntie 34, P.O. Box 700,

Fin-65101, Vaasa, Suomi/Finland

Language maps can represent many aspects of the linguistic situation in a certain territory.They usually draw particular views of the language setting as seen from outside, i.e. bylinguists or scholars in general. However, maps can also be used to show the geographicaldistribution of the perception of language variation from the point of view of the speakers.The starting point for every kind of language map is the language border (and itsde�nition): thus a perceptual language map needs a de�nition of border from the point ofview of the speaker. To do that it is necessary to analyse ‘perceptual data’, that is to studythe opinion the speaker has of the language diversities and compare the different kinds ofperception. Points of interest can be, for example: the in�uence of the perceived ethnicdiversity on the language variation—or vice versa, the fact that perceived ethnic borders donot match with perceived language borders; or moreover that perceived language bordersdo not necessarily match with the perceived comprehensibility of other language varieties(symbolic versus communicative function of language). Hence a possible linguistic border-line on perceptual language maps could be the limit among social language behaviours.From this point of view, sociolinguistic studies can be a good tool to draw perceptuallanguage maps, since quantitative sociolinguistic researches provide the diatopic/diasthraticvariation of the data, whilst qualitative research provides the perception of the variation.The paper discusses some �eld research case studies, coming from the Eastern and WesternAlps in Italy, to better introduce this kind of perceptual geolinguistic explanation.

Key words: perceptual dialectology, linguistic geography, language border, �eld research,communicative/symbolic function of language.

Introduction

This paper focuses on perceptual dialectology,a branch of linguistics strictly connected withgeography. One of its main goals is to map thelinguistic landscape of a speci�c region or com-munity1 as it is seen from the inside— that is,

seen from the standpoint of the members of thecommunities living there. It attempts to drawthe geographical distribution of language vari-eties as it is perceived by the speakers them-selves, and this entails dealing with the notionsof linguistic border and linguistic boundary (formore general remarks on perceptual dialectol-

ISSN 1464-9365 print/ISSN 1470-1197 online/01/030265–16 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/14649360120073851

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266 Gabriele Iannaccaro & Vittorio Dell’Aquila

ogy see Canobbio and Iannaccaro 2000b; Ian-naccaro forthcoming; Niedzielski and Preston2000; Preston 1986, 1989, 1993, 1999).

Of course, perceptual dialectology is but oneelement of a far broader body of work con-cerned with the socio-spatial aspects of lan-guage use. Classical geolinguistic analysis, forinstance, pays particular attention to diatopicvariation of the internal structure of the lan-guage, as well as to the spatial determination ofdifferent types of speech.2 However, because ofmethodological issues, geolinguistics does notconsider the social aspect of the language, com-pressing all social variation into just one spatialdimension. In contrast, sociolinguistic’s view oflanguage reality focuses on the vertical differ-entiation among social and demographicclasses, as well as on communicative situations.Sociolinguistic explanations, nevertheless, areparticularly limited at the diatopic level, andtend to consider the area under considerationas geographically homogenous. Perceptualdialectology, as a ‘border’ discipline of bothsociolinguistics and geolinguistics, particularlyadopts an interpretive, interactional approach(see for instance Auer and Di Luzio 1984;Cameron 1995; Duranti 1997; Fasold 1984;Saville-Troike 1989; Schiffrin 1994).

Crucially, we would argue that perceptualdialectology— that is, the scienti�c evaluationof the speaker’s opinion— can be viewed as ameans of integrating these two perspectives.This proposal is certainly not new. Manystrands of the geolinguistic literature duringmuch of the twentieth century have sought toexplore the broader contexts of language usage.While a speci�c concern with perceptuallinguistics has developed slowly, nevertheless ithas gained much currency in recent years.

Perceptual dialectology then, in its speci�cterms, does not deal either with internallinguistic variability or with the variation oflinguistic phenomena. Its goal is the study of

the geographical treatment of the variation ofthe language itself; in other words, it focuseson linguistic habits and notions of linguisticidenti�cation. Indeed, it is an attempt toexplain through cartography some phenomenathat are internal to spatial communities.3 Cru-cially, by building on the tenets of perceptualdialectology, some familiar geolinguistic con-cepts take on a partially new shape, particu-larly the notion of the language border. Indeed,it is this well-known theme in geolinguisticsthat we seek to explore and re-evaluate in thispaper.

The language border

Re�ection upon language borders has been oneof the fundamental characteristics of tra-ditional linguistic geography (see Aitchison andCarter 1994; Ambrose 1980; Ambrose andWilliams 1988, 1991; Breton 1976; Laponce1984; Mackey 1973; Williams 1996).

Some of its methodological instruments,however, such as isoglosses (a line on a mapshowing the boundary of an area in which alinguistic feature is used (see Crystal 1992)),have always appeared very weak, even to thosewho have never been interested in social orvariational studies. For example, even Pisani, atraditional neo-grammarian indo-europeanist,argues that

Our delimitation of the dialects are always arbitrary,unless the differences are not between two differentlinguistic types, such as Romance and Germanic,where the lack of mutual comprehension betweenmonoglot (monolingual) speakers of the two lan-guages clearly shows the dividing line. In the absenceof this line, the best we can do is to take the type ofa well de�ned centre as a basis (for example, Milanand Turin) and given the most important distinctivefeatures, to ascribe to one type or to the other the

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Mapping languages from inside 267

local varieties according to these features. Anyhow,this is only a practical expedient, lacking in theoreti-cal basis. (1971: 77–78)

Of course, this is not to say that no worthwhileresearch has been conducted on the concept ofthe linguistic border. Indeed, some excellentquantitative elaboration based on scienti�cprinciples such as dialectometry has been con-ducted in this �eld (see among others Goebl1982). There is insuf�cient space to explorethese studies in this paper. We consider partic-ularly fruitful, however, the theoretical andempirical research that delegates the �naljudgement concerning the nature of the linguis-tic border to the speakers themselves. In otherwords, we believe that much may be gainedthrough a detailed exploration of ‘the limits ofthe experienced life that the bearer of thelinguistic phenomenon has’ (Telmon 1983:102). Fundamentally, it is the social environ-ment as a whole that creates language borders,through people’s experience of them. Ofnecessity, this point of view implies that bor-ders imposed on communities ab ovo do notexist; on the contrary, it is the community itselfwhich recognizes its own borders, and whichdecides then to �t in with them.

This theoretical outlook, however, is a majordevelopment from more classical geolinguisticresearch— mainly based on Gillieron andJaberg’s work— which has been focused onpure intralinguistic features and it is based onthe analysis of geolinguistic maps and atlases(see, for instance, Garcõá Mouton 1994; Pop1950). Precedents to our theoretical andmethodological perspective can be found in thelinguistic atlas of Itoigawa (Japan), developed,through Grootaers’ mediation, from Buld andWeiner’s Flemish school (Iannaccaro forth-coming; see also Goeman 1989; Grootaers1959, 1964a; Mase 1964a, 1964b). This atlas,which dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, traces

the linguistic geographies of the subjectivedialectical areas in Japan as they appear in theinformers’ explicit opinions, obtained throughdirect interview techniques (see also Iannaccaro1995, forthcoming). The main point here is thatthe ‘other’ varieties of language or dialect (dif-ferent from one’s own variety, but more or lesscontiguous) are always felt to be ‘completelydifferent’ from one’s own. Work carried out byWeinen (as quoted in Goeman 1989) in Flan-ders, Leonard (1987) in the Vendee, and dePaiva Boleo (1971) in Portugal support this.Crucially, objective phonetic and grammaticaldifferentiation between the languages anddialects4 are not considered: imagined geogra-phies of difference are far more signi�cant (onthis broad theme, see Said 1978).

The upshot of this discussion is that there isoften a signi�cant difference between eticisoglosses, that is, ‘objective’ boundariesbetween areas of different language usage con-structed by outside observers; and the linguisticemic spaces of the speakers of the language.5 Infact, in normal communicative situations,speakers always come in contact with manyvarieties that are different from their own froma diaphasic, diastratic and diatopic point ofview.

To communicate successfully during anongoing linguistic event means to be able todistinguish, often in a very subtle way, betweenthe different styles of language and dialect thatcan be used during a communicative exchange.Such statements suggest that we need to recog-nize the existence of a number of differentborders that intersect in different linguistic situ-ations. Therefore, to belong to a structuredculture involves (or implies) a reference to dif-ferent types of borders (diachronic, diaphasic,diastratic, and so on), and not only to a dia-topic one.

Consequently, the concept of the ‘languageborder’, which, according to some linguists is

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in crisis, does not seem to disturb the speakers.On the contrary, they are incredibly aware ofdiatopic variation, and subsequently of ‘other’varieties. As such, they seem to mark theirwhole experience of linguistic space with sode�nite and precise boundaries that they may,to the outside observer, appear disconcerting(Canobbio 1995: 107). To summarize, there-fore, the speakers and those geolinguistsbelonging to the classical school propose ageographical and spatially de�ned vision con-cerning linguistic facts. But speakers’ borders,even if they are marked in a precise and geo-graphically determined way, do not match withthe ‘objective’ ones assumed by linguists on thebasis of phonetic and grammatical differences(see Dell’Aquila 1997).

We believe, therefore, that the perceptualapproach may be useful since it enables us toexplore and penetrate speaker’s statements, andto test the effective geographical value of his orher assertions concerning language and dialectusage. In fact, ‘l’enqueteur est bien la dernierepersonne a qui l’on parlera franchement’6

(Chaurand 1968: 20). That is why the so-calledvertical boundaries are concealed to the dialec-tological inquiry: the interviewed does notreadily speak with the researcher about theintra-communitary tensions. Therefore, it isdif�cult to explore the internal variation withina given community, either diachronic or dias-tratic, or diaphasic, if this last is importantenough to be considered. Rather than elaborat-ing on these internal variations, we wouldargue that respondents tend to focus on linguis-tic stereotypes (see Labov 1972; Quasthoff1987), or the conscious level of linguistic differ-entiation (Iannaccaro forthcoming). In otherwords, it is the speaker’s ideological answer tothe problem concerning borders that carrieswith it a hyper-evaluation by the speaker ofdiatopic linguistic differentiations.

Therefore, not to analyse the grammatical

linguistic border as it is conceived by theresearcher, as well as the linguistic border as itis experienced by the speaker— even if it isnecessary to keep these two levels distinct—seems limiting. However, until recent years,researchers have tended to pay far more atten-tion to considerations of the so-called externalboundary, rather than on its perception. More-over, no attempt to compare the �ndings ofthese two perspectives has been made, althoughsuch attempts would be useful since they couldfurnish many fruitful results.

The above discussion, therefore, enables usto recognize two basic meanings of the term‘linguistic border’, ones that may imply differ-ent linguistic and dialectological realities:

· The more traditional geographical and staticlinguistic boundary, which does not considerother forms of differentiation or anydynamic process. It is usually related to stan-dard dialectological works, and has itslinguistic counterpart in the classicalisogloss, which does not take into consider-ation the internal structure of the societyspeaking the language.

· The abstract non-intralinguistic (in otherwords, non-grammatical or phonetic, etc.)border that modi�es the linguistic vision orthe linguistic behaviour of the speaker.Those internal and ideological borders areresponsible for the actual linguistic behav-iour of the speaker, but they are perceived asgeographical borders.

We will deal here only with the second kind oflinguistic border. When asking the speakersabout their perception of the linguistic land-scape in which they live, we can obtain differ-ent kinds of responses referring to a wide rangeof perceived realities and those responses are—according to the subject of the question— moreor less in�uenced by social and ideologicalfactors.

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So, for instance, when directly asking aboutlanguage borders, we obtain classic, ideologi-cally or socially acceptable answers; in a word,answers pointing out the perceived symbolicvalue of the language (Edwards 1985). Thoseare principally diatopic: the main goal for thespeaker being to distinguish very clearlybetween the ‘we-group’ and the ‘other-group’(see Canobbio 1995: 106–107; De Simonis1984), and, of course, the �rst division one canthink of is the geographical one. That is whylinguistic variation is most of the time seen asa diatopic one, clearly overstating the terri-torial distinction among different dialects inneighbouring communities. For the same rea-son, internal borders are very frequentlyneglected.

By testing the interviewed with indirect hintsabout actual language use or situations,7 wecan obtain a different set of data which pointmore to the pragmatic linguistic landscape. Bydoing this, we are far more likely to obtaininformation about the communicative value ofthe language (Edwards 1985). These data showa minor degree of rationalization and are henceless in�uenced by the symbolism of the lan-guage issue; they are also less sharply de�nedand show more blurred borders. Finally, in thelight of this second type of information, we canoutline the structure that rules the linguisticbehaviour of the community.

Language borders: examples from the Alps

In this section, we discuss some brief vignettesdrawn from some research we have conductedin the Alpine region of Italy. Taken together,these examples help to demonstrate the utilityof perceptual dialectology to the study of lan-guage.

The �eldwork consisted of interviews carriedout by the authors following a path which

derives in part from Gould andWhite’s (1986)instruction for the drawing of ‘mental maps’and in part from the suggestion of Preston(1986, 1999). These ‘hints’ have been furtherprocessed within a working group on ‘folklanguage borders’ at the University of Torino.8

Given the qualitative structure of the research,the sample was composed of 40 persons chosenamong the population of the target areas.These individuals were asked to perform twobasic tasks. At �rst we asked to draw on awhite paper the position of the informants’village in relation to the surrounding regions,in order to understand the extension and thearticulation of their declared mental map. Thesecond task let them draw lines correspondingto their perceived language borders (or per-ceived language areas) on a simpli�ed geo-graphical map. Afterwards the interviewedwere asked to answer speci�c and ideologicalquestions about language identities in the area.

The Borders of Ladinia

The �rst example relates to a perceptual pollcarried out in the Fassa valley. According to theliterature on Romance languages, the regionbelongs to the so-called Ladin-speaking areasof the Dolomites. Geopolitically speaking, thisarea, in common with other areas of the north-eastern border of Italy, was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until 1919. Along withItalian, Ladin is (since 1995) the co-of�ciallanguage of this small area, comprising ofseven municipalities and approximately 10,000inhabitants. More than half of the overallLadin-speaking population, however, resides inthe bilingual (German–Italian) AutonomousProvince of South Tyrol, north and west ofFassa valley, in villages where the of�cial andschool languages are Italian, German andLadin (Dell’Aquila and Iannaccaro 1999; Ian-

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Figure 1 Dialectal intercomprehension in the Dolomic area.

naccaro and Dell’Aquila 2000). The Romancevarieties that lie southward and eastward of theFassa valley are closely related to Ladin, but noof�cial status is granted to them, and they areconsidered as merely Italian dialects.9 Criticalfor our discussion is the neighbouring Alpineregion of Cadore, in which Ladin-like varietiesare spoken but yet was never part of the Em-pire. In recent years, an ideological movement

has arisen here re-vindicating the ‘Ladinity’ oflocal dialects and folklore.

We can start the discussion by analysingFigures 1 and 2. Figure 1 demonstrates thelinguistic geographies produced as a result ofasking a group of speakers, placed in front of ablack and white map of the region, ‘can youdraw an imaginary line beyond which you nolonger understand if the local variety is spo-

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Figure 2 (Perceived) varieties of Dolomitic Ladin.

ken?’ As we can see, the area of better compre-hension lies to the south of the Fassa valley.Figure 2, however, represents a map of linguis-tic perceptions, based on answers to the ques-tion ‘Where is Ladin spoken?’. Very curiously,but not unexpectedly, Ladin is said to be spo-ken to the north and east of Fassa valley.Southward, it is believed that another languageis spoken, namely Italian and its dialects.

Signi�cantly, the two maps seem to depictdifferent linguistic realities. In particular thesecond map is an ideological one. Every inhabi-tant of Fassa valley knows (by heart) where theboundary between Ladin varieties and ‘others’are: they are taught at school to recognize thoseborders on a map. In fact, the area outlined inthe second map tallies well with the receivedideas of ‘Ladinia’, or in other words, the terri-

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tories in which Ladins are said to live and inwhich Ladin varieties are said to be spoken.

The crucial point we would wish to empha-size is the difference between the two maps. Wehave noted above that Ladin speakers tend torecognize the fact that most of the easily com-prehensible languages and dialects are locatedto the south of the Fassa valley, even thoughFassa valley lies at the southernmost point ofthe classical Ladin region. Whilst the secondmap represents the symbolic value and ideo-logical geographies of the language, the �rstillustrates the pragmatic linguistic landscape,or, in effect, the borders of the communicativevalue of the Fassan variety.

The examples discussed above clearly showsthat linguists (dialectologists), speakers andlanguage-behavioural rules do not seem to fol-low the same borders. Most particularly, thelanguage borders as perceived by the speakerdo not necessarily respect the variations of theinternal structure of the languages involved.Inside the same linguistic continuum, perceivedborders and phonetic-grammatical variationsseem to be following different paths, even if ahigh gap in the linguistic structure and typol-ogy of the neighbouring languages can help thetwo kinds of border to merge. At the sametime, areas in which people understand theother’s varieties can easily cross the perceivedlinguistic borders.

Gardenese: Germanic or Romance?

A second example relates to particular lan-guage situations that seem to be considered byspeakers as connecting areas between two lan-guage groups. The Gardena valley representssuch a view. Gardena is of�cially a trilingualvalley. Whilst Ladin is the local variety, Ger-man (both High German and Tyrolian sub-standard) is the code that holds the highest

prestige. In that area, Ladin is deeply in�uencedby German, especially in vocabulary, but alsoin some phonetic items. Spoken languages aremainly Ladin and German Dialect, but writtenones are predominantly Italian and German.Interestingly, our informants in the Fassa valleyconsider the Gardena Ladin to be a sort ofbridge between Germanic language andRomance ones. By doing so, they disregard theRomance character of the Gardenese Ladin,which is clearly evident. In the same way, inBadia, the northernmost Ladin area, which islinked in terms of economy and administrativepurposes to Bruneck/Brunico in the German-speaking Pustertal (see Figure 3), speakers seemto neglect unconsciously the existence of theRomance–Germanic border in the north oftheir territory. Those speakers state that whilethey can understand people speaking a sort ofGerman Pustertal as well as Romance varietiesof South Tyrol, they also say they do notunderstand either Germanic or Romance vari-eties in other surrounding areas. In this waythey seem not to have injected any form ofdifferentiation between Romance and German(which is very striking for a linguist). Theirperception of ‘understandable’ varieties asopposed to ‘non-understandable’ ones is simplybased on geographical consideration of prox-imity.

We still do not have any scienti�callyobtained data about the language perception ofthe Gardena inhabitants, but our experiences inthe region allows us to suggest that even theyfeel their own language to be a link betweenthe two main areas. We believe that a questionlike: ‘Is Gardenese more similar to German orto French?’ would not give any clear answer,even among the Gardenese speakers them-selves. It is clear that the peculiar way of life,the good relationships of the Gardena inhabi-tant with the German-speaking population andtheir high use of German as a culture language,

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Figure 3 Perceived linguistic position of Gardenese (Fassan speakers).

are all factors that deeply in�uence the percep-tion and evaluation of the linguistic characterof this group. What is important here is thatregardless of how the thinking has developed, itonly takes linguistic features for the neighbour-ing Ladins to state that in Gardena they speaka highly Germanized Ladin (instead of, say,stating that in Gardena they ‘feel’ themselvestoo Germanic). In other words, differentiation

takes the shape of a linguistic (and more impor-tantly, spatially de�nable) stereotype and notthat of a generic negative judgement about theinhabitants.

Similar linguistic opinions can be found inthe judgements made by Fassa inhabitantsabout Cadore, the of�cial Italian-speaking areathat lies eastward of the Fassa valley. Com-monly heard statements include the following:

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‘They do not speak any Ladin over there, theirway of speaking is much too Italianized’. Theinhabitants of the Fassa valley maintain suchviews even though Cadore dialects are muchmore easily understandable than Gardeneseones. Obviously, this is just an unconsciousway of saying that Cadore people are not— andmust not— be part of the Ladin in-group.

Moreover, the opinion towards German isless negative than that towards Italian, since inthe region German has— for historical, politicaland economical reasons— a higher prestigethan Italian. In the mind of the speakers, thefact that a certain local variety (dialect) is moreor less understandable— at least inside the samelinguistic continuum—does not affect itsaf�liation to one language or another. Instead,historical, political and especially social reasonsseem to be what attributes a dialect to onelanguage or to another. Those reasons are thenre�ected in the pragmatic use of the language.It is quite common, for instance, that a Fassanspeaker will use Italian to communicate withpeople of the adjacent Fiemme valley, and Fas-san with Gardenese speakers, even if the inter-nal (phonetic, grammatical and lexical)distance between Fassan and Gardenese ismuch deeper than between Fassan andFiemmese. Actually, our informants themselvescon�rm that Fiemmese is much easier to under-stand than Gardenese.

In this regard, the conceptual differentiationbetween the ‘symbolic value’ and ‘functionalvalue’ of the language, as theorized by Edwards(1985), is very fruitful for the explanation ofthe linguistic behaviour and the perception oflanguages in the Dolomitic area. Furthermore,it is presumably possible to extend such avision to the geographical level, and determinea ‘symbolic value’ and ‘functional value’ of theterritory. The territory of everyday life— thefocus of a person’s economic and social rela-tionships (in addition to one’s own village; the

town or the region in which school, health,commerce and administration facilities arelocated; as well as the place where communi-cation networks are more effective)— does notnecessarily match with the territory of whichone feels to be a part, and within which onedecides to tie one’s aesthetic, emotive feelingsand identity needs.

Sociogeographical variation in the WesternAlps

A further example can be taken from anothervalley in the Alps, Val Vigezzo in Piedmont, onthe Swiss–Italian border. Here, Lombard localvarieties and Italian are spoken (the two codesare not mutually understandable), Italian beingthe only written and of�cial language (see Ian-naccaro 1994, forthcoming). The local dialectspoken in the village of Coimo has some pho-netic features which help to distinguish it fromneighbouring dialects. For instance, Latin shortO and short E give [ø] in Coimo, but [e] in therest of the valley; similarly, Latin CL and GLgive respectively [ky] and [gy] in Coimo, but[ch] and [j]10 in the rest of the valley. As such,these two features, along with the existence ofa few archaic words, make a slight difference(for the linguist) between Coimo and the othervillages. However, the same differences are per-ceived as being so signi�cant by the inhabitantsof Val Vigezzo that they all consider the Coimodialect as one which is ‘completely different’from all the other local dialects. When speakersare asked about the nature of the differences,they usually respond by saying that ‘words’ aredistinct in Coimo, and possibly that ‘in Coimothey just put [ø] in every word’. Respondentsnever mention the difference between [ky] and[ch] or [gy] and [j]. It has actually been proventhat, for speakers, one phonetic stereotypedand over-generalized variable (for instance,

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they put [ø] everywhere), is enough to de�nethe differentiation between two dialects. Thisvariable, then, has the potential to hide allother means of differentiation (see Leonard1987).

The example of Mrs Giuditta, born andnurtured in Coimo, but living in Gagnone forsixty years, is instructive in this respect. In herown words, ‘every village has its own dialect.Each village has just one dialect, its own.Everybody speaks the dialect inside the village’.But actually she speaks Coimo dialect with herhusband from Gagnone while the husband hasbeen speaking Gagnone dialect with her forsixty years. At the same time, she only speaksItalian with the parson of the parish, eventhough he comes from Coimo too, and eventhough they used to play together in the samecourtyard as children, speaking the Coimo dia-lect. The clear-cut perception of the linguisticreality shown by Mrs Giuditta (whose behav-iour is shared by the rest of the population ofGagnone, regardless of age and gender11) doesnot seem to match with the pragmatic use oflanguage in the society in which she lives. InGagnone, as in probably all other villages ofthe world, in the same house, in the samefamily, more linguistic codes co-exist. Thenorms ruling the use of these linguistic codesare to be found in the social structure of thepopulation and particularly in the different set-tings of the single language interactions.

The geographical de�nition of the languageborder seems thus to be a necessary conditionfor the classi�cation of reality— at least forEuropean people— even when it does not corre-spond to the ‘objective’ reality. It seems then tobe clear and unique for all the speakers, inde-pendent of age, social class or so on.

Furthermore, this geographical perception oflanguage variation has been supported by twocenturies of dialectology for which the static(geographic) isogloss is a founding principle

(Telmon 1983: 101). What a perceptual dialec-tological approach can discover, however, arethe internal borders, seen and rationalized bythe speakers as geographical borders. By meansof language, the speaker organizes and system-atizes the surrounding reality. The ‘we-reality’includes not only the village and the neighbour-ing ones, but also all situations in which thesubject comes into contact with the peopleliving there, and all the language codes he orshe uses to interact with them. Thus the lan-guage not only organizes the geographicalspace between the we-group and the other-group, but it also arranges the internal struc-ture of the society.12 Language is the instrumentof cultural differentiation, the �rst way to statea perceived variation. A common linguisticcode does not unify different communities; it isthe feeling of belonging to the same communitythat makes its members consider speaking thesame language. The border of this language isthus prominently geographic.

Discussion and conclusions

Language differentiation de�nes the borderbetween the ‘we-group’s’ space and the ‘other-group’s’ space and at the same time structuresthe internal ‘we-group’ space. The stereotype,which is the diatopic characterization of other-groups, is the ideological and culturally pro-duced answer of the speaker to the problem oflinguistic variation— both diastratic and dia-topic. This is the �rst, most obvious issue onwhich the interviewed has rationally thoughtabout; in other words, that ‘we’ are differentfrom ‘them’. With regard to social relations, alllinguistic borders have the same practical,pragmatic and functional value. Language con-sciousness (Canobbio and Iannaccaro 2000a)applies to all borders and profoundly in�uencesthe corresponding linguistic behaviour.

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Linguistic behaviour does not follow anyrule that has been determined according toobjective differentiation, but is rather adjustedto the perceived representation of linguisticspace. In other words, to react adequately to allcommunicative situations, linguistic conscious-ness has the capability to create evaluationschemes, which enable the speaker to recog-nize— consciously or unconsciously— all kindof linguistic borders. Only some of these evalu-ations are then rationalized as stereotypes.

The ideological aspect of the declared geo-graphical linguistic border helps to determinenotions of the ‘we-group’ and the ‘other-group’, and this evaluation can be made publicand explicitly af�rmed. The pragmatic aspectof the linguistic border (actually the recogni-tion of a network of diastratic and diatopicboundaries) instead allows the speaker to selectthe right linguistic variety and the socially cor-rect linguistic behaviour. Hence, for thespeaker, the quantitative content of a (linguis-tic) border is not really important. He or shedoes not quantify the degree of differentiationbetween the ‘we-group’s’ speech and the ‘other-group’s’ speech, which can be characterized byeither major or minor grammatical or phoneticdifferences. It is just the others’ way of speak-ing. The speaker does not care how the otheractually speaks, or why the other speaks likethat. What is important instead in or at alanguage border are the pragmatic consider-ations that enable the individual to select theright code and, furthermore, to allow themaintenance of the linguistic behaviour rulesinside the ‘we-group’ (see Leonard 1987: 11).

Although the diatopic variable would seemto be the �rst and most important variable, infact when the interviewees were asked directlythis variable seems to in�uence the linguisticbehaviour less than other (social/interactional)variables. The diatopic variation can— depend-ing on the sociolinguistic situation of the

area— at most lead to a switch to a completelydifferent code. The diastratic variation, instead,induces the speaker to adjust and accommodatehis or her speech to a high variety of codes (upto the overall switch to a completely differentcode) according to precise, but sometimesunconscious, social rules. It seems thus that thelanguage border is an ideal boundary amongdifferent linguistic situations. In effect, it repre-sents the moment of the recognition of thedifferent language-behaviour situations.

Such perceived language borders are funda-mental in the reconstruction of the linguisticspace of the speaker, the mental map of his orher community and moreover the ‘actual’ one(not the declared one). It is the mental mapthat teaches the rules for the selection of thesocially appropriate language code. It is, how-ever, important to interpret it beyond anymerely geographical and static schemes. ‘DieGrenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzenmeiner Welt’, wrote Wittgenstein: The limits ofmy language mean the limit of my world.Actually, language borders, producing linguis-tic behaviour rules, give meaning to the prag-matic linguistic acts and to the socialcommunicative interactions between speakers.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their grati-tude to Colin Williams, Rhys Jones and LukeDesforges for their assistance and useful sug-gestions. They also would like to thank MaitePuidgevall Serralvo and Ilenia Taddei for theirhelp.

Notes

1 We use the term in a very broad sense. For somepreliminary remarks on Alpine communities, withwhich we will deal here, see Cole and Wolf (1974).

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2 Here and below, with regard to received sociolinguisticterminology, the term diachronic 5 ‘concerning (lan-guage) variation through the time’; diastratic 5‘concerning (language) differentiation through socialand demographic strata’; diaphasic 5 ‘concerning (lan-guage) differentiation through communicative situa-tions’; diatopic 5 ‘concerning (language) differentiationin geographical terms’.

3 See Ludo Melis (1996: 176), who argues that ‘au depart,le chercheur dispose donc d’un jugement intuitif etglobal de la part des locuteurs natifs sur l’existence devarietes linguistiques. Cette intuition ne peut quedif�cilement etre traduite immediatement en une repre-sentation spatiale, par manque d’instrumentsd’observation adequats’.

4 About the crucial distinction between language anddialect (which we will not discuss here) see Alinei(1980, 1981), Berruto (1995), Haugen (1966), Kloss(1967) and Lepschy (1999).

5 By etic we mean that kind of knowledge and analysismade by an observer who is alien to the culture anduses concepts and ways of analysis which are externalto the culture itself. Emic, on the other hand, is notonly the way of acquiring knowledge typical of themembers who are internal to any culture, but also ofwhichever type of approach that tries to account for thevision of the world peculiar to a certain community(from Pike (1967); see also Pignato (1981) and Carpitelliand Iannaccaro (1995)).

6 ‘The interviewer is actually the last person to whomone speaks freely’.

7 For a broader discussion on the principles and method-ologies of perceptual dialectology see Canobbio andIannaccaro (2000b), Carpitelli and Iannaccaro (1995),Goeman (1989), Iannaccaro (forthcoming), Preston(1986, 1999) and Niedzielski and Preston (2000).

8 Gruppo di Torino (forthcoming).9 In fact, three villages formerly belonging to the Empire

are part of the Region Veneto since 1920. Of�cially theyare monolingual Italian, but they are part of the self-recognized community of ‘true’ Ladin-speaking villages.Even to the south and east there lie many other villagesin which varieties very close to Ladin are spoken, butwhich gain no consideration neither by the Italian law,nor by the main Ladin community.

10 We have used a simpli�ed transcription based onEnglish spelling to ease the typographic work ([ø] is likeGerman o in Lowe ‘Lion’).

11 In the majority of the small villages of the Alps (atleast) there is no evidence of social class differentiationnor do the inhabitants feel any difference in social state

inside the same small community. We have chosen tomention Mrs Giuditta because of her explicit state-ments about the unity of the dialect.

12 It is worth recalling that the vertical (social) boundariesare very often hidden to the researcher. The intervieweddoes not readily speak with the researcher about theintra-communitary tensions and shifts the attention tothe outer differentiations.

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Abstract translations

Cartographier les langues de l’interieur: notes sur ladialectologie perceptuelle

Les cartes de langues peuvent representer plusieursaspects de la situation linguistique d’un territoire.Elle dessinent habituellement une vision particuliered’un cadre linguistique percu de l’exterieur, c’est-a-dire par des linguistes ou autres scienti�ques. Pour-tant, ces cartes peuvent aussi etre utilisees pourdemontrer une distribution geographique de la per-ception des variations de langage selon le point devue des gens qui le parlent. Le point de depart detoute cartographie des langues est la frontiere dulangage (et sa de�nition): ainsi une carte linguistiqueperceptuelle necessite une de�nition de la frontiereancree dans la perspective de l’utilisateur. Dans cebut il est necessaire d’analyser “l’information per-ceptuelle”: en d’autres mots, d’etudier l’opinion quel’utilisateur se fait de la diversite de la langue etcomparer les differents types de perception. Suscep-tible d’interet, par exemple, serait l’in�uence de laperception d’une diversite ethnique sur les variationsde langage ou, vice-versa, le fait que les frontieresethniques percues ne correspondent pas aux fron-tieres linguistiques percues. De plus, les frontiereslinguistiques percues ne correspondent pas neces-sairement a la comprehension d’autres varietes delangage (fonction symbolique vs fonction commu-nicative de la langue). Ainsi une ligne donnee defrontiere linguistique sur une carte perceptuelle pour-rait representer la limite d’un comportement socio-linguistique. Des etudes sociolinguistiques peuventdonc servir d’outil pour la creation de cartes linguis-tiques perceptuelles puisque les recherches socio-lin-guistiques quantitatives fournissent les variationsdiatopiques/diasthratiques des donnees, tandis queles recherches qualitatives etablissent la perception deces variations. L’article presente des analyses de casbasees sur des etudes de terrain effectuees en Italiedans la region est et ouest des Alpes, offrant ainsi unemeilleure introduction a ce genre de perception geo-linguistique.

Mots clefs: dialectologie perceptuelle, geographie lin-guistique, frontiere linguistique, terrain, fonctioncommunicante/symbolique du langage.

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Trazar los idiomas desde dentro: notas sobre dialec-tolog õ a perceptible

Mapas de idiomas pueden representar muchos as-pectos de la situacion linguõ stica en un territoriodado. Normalmente trazan opiniones particularessobre el marco linguõ stico como es visto por los defuera, es decir, por linguõ stas o eruditos en general.Sin embargo, se puede hacer uso de los mapastambien para senalar la distruibucion geogra�ca dela percepcion de variacion linguõ stica desde el puntode vista de los hablantes. El punto de inicio paratodos los mapas de idiomas es la frontera linguõ stica(y su de�nicion): as õ´ un mapa que de�ne las percep-ciones de un idioma requiere una de�nicion de fron-tera desde el punto de vista del hablante. Para haceresto hay que analizar ‘datos de percepciones’: esdecir, estudiar las opiniones que tienen los hablantesde las diversidades de la lengua y comparar lasdiferentes percepciones. Puntos de interes puedenser, por ejemplo, la in�uencia de la percebida diver-sidad etnica sobre la variacion linguõ stica— o viceversa, el hecho de que las percebidas fronteras etni-

cas no son iguales a las percebidas fronteras linguõ s-ticas, o por otra parte, que las percebidas fronteraslinguõ´sticas no son necesarialmente iguales a la per-cebida comprensibilidad de otras variedades del id-ioma (funcion simbolica vs funcion comunicativa dela lengua). Por lo tanto una posible linea fronterizalinguõ´stica en los mapas que de�nen las percepcionesde un idioma serõá el lõ´mite de comportamientossociolinguõ sticos. Desde este punto de vista, los estu-dios sociolinguõ sticos pueden ser muy utiles a la horade trazar un mapa de las percepiones de un idiomaya que las investigaciones sociolinguõ sticas cuantati-vas proporcionan la variacion diatopica/diastraticade los datos, mientras que investigacion cualitativaproporciona la percepcion de la variacion. El papelhabla de estudios de caso elaborados en los Alpesoccidentales y orientales de Italia para mejor intro-ducir este tipo de explicacion geo-linguõ stica.

Palabras claves: dialectologõá perceptible, geografõálinguõ´stica, frontera linguõ´stica, investigacion decampo, la funcion comunicativa/simbolica dellenguaje.

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Mapping languages from inside: Notes on perceptual dialectology

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