Language and Places in the North - views from Italy

To foredrag af Enrico Tolotti & Alessandro Cremonesi.

Abstracts

Kortlægning af fitotoponomastiske motivationer. Europæiske eksempler i et skandinavisk perspektiv

Enrico Tolotti

Formålet med opgaven er at udforske og efterfølgende kortlægge mulige universelle ikonomastiske tendenser inden for toponomastikken, med særlig fokus på et udvalg af europæiske fitotoponymer (stednavne som har et plantenavn som ikonym). Den første del gør rede for den teoretiske baggrund for hele opgaven, nemlig stednavneforskning og Mario Alineis ikonomastiske teori. Begge felter er kendetegnet ved deres markante tværfaglighed, idet de bestandig indgår i dialog med adskillige fag, bl.a. arkæologi, geografi, antropologi og sprogvidenskab. Især Alineis begreb ikonym sættes under lup, idet det medvirker til at afdække nogle vigtige antropologiske såvel som sproglige mønstre og bevæggrunde, der gemmer sig bag navngivningsprocessen. Teorien anvendes derpå i de sidste kapitler i analysen af fitotoponymerne. Analysen foregår for det første ved brug af en database; efterfølgende bliver de bearbejdede data indsat i et GIS-program med henblik på deres kortlægning. Alle kortene ledsages af kommentarer.

The Relation between Linguistic Landscape and Sociolinguistic Structures. Examples from a Field Research on the Danish Minority in Schleswig-Holstein

Alessandro Cremonesi

The Danish minority in the Land of Schleswig-Holstein, that counts approximately 50.000 members, is characterised by a peculiar sociolinguistic structure, in which the own language of the minority, that is Standard Danish, is only employed in formal contexts within minority institutions, in favour of the language of the majority, Standard German, which turns out to be the native language of most of the members. Investigating the linguistic landscape, namely the visible display of languages on signs in public space, of the town of Flensburg and its surroundings, the absence of Danish is remarkable. Comparing the case of Schleswig-Holstein with those of Catalan in Barcelona and Russian in Latvia, it seems that the absence of Danish in the landscape is directly connected with the peculiar sociolinguistic structure of the minority, as the widely spread native language among the members is Standard German, thus avoiding the need of having German-Danish bilingual signs. On the contrary, considering the case of the autonomous community of Catalonia, here the sociolinguistic structure is as specular as it is opposite to that of the Danish minority of Schleswig-Holstein: Catalan is the native language widespread among the members of the Catalan minority, adopted both in informal and formal contexts, in which Castilian is limited to. This results in the employment of Catalan on both public and private signage. The Linguistic Landscape approach has been proved to be essential for the study of minorities, on the grounds that it visually reflects the power and linguistic relations between different speech communities in the same territory. Thus, the linguistic landscape is the meeting point of language and place, two essential markers of ethnic identity.