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Code-switching and the construction of ethnic identity in a community of practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2007

ANNA DE FINA
ANNA DE FINA
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Italian Department, ICC Building 307 J, 37 and O Streets NW, Washington D.C. 20057, [email protected]
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Abstract

In the past twenty years the existence of a sense of ethnic belonging among immigrant groups of European ancestry in the United States has become the focus of frequent debates and polemics. This article argues that ethnicity cannot be understood if it is abstracted from concrete social practices, and that analyses of this construct need to be based on ethnographic observation and on the study of actual talk in interaction. This interactionally oriented perspective is taken to present an analysis of how Italian ethnicity is constructed as a central element in the collective identity of an all-male card playing club. Linguistic strategies, particularly code-switching, are central in this construction, but their role becomes apparent only when language use is analyzed within significant practices in the life of the club. Code-switching into Italian is used as an important index of ethnic affiliation in socialization practices related to the game and in official discourse addressed by the president to club members through the association of the language with central domains of activity.I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor of this journal, Barbara Johnstone, for their insightful suggestions, which have substantially contributed to the shaping of this article.

Keywords

ethnicityethnic identitycode-switchingcommunity of practiceimmigrant communitiesItalian Americans
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , July 2007 , pp. 371 - 392
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

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