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Entering into politics: Interdiscursivity, register, stance, and vernacular in northern Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Jillian R. Cavanaugh
Jillian R. Cavanaugh
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2900 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11210, USAJcavanaugh@brooklyn.cuny.edu
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Abstract

This article focuses on how specific types of language use connect socially, geographically, and temporally distant speakers and span face-to-face and mediated language contexts. It examines one variety of political language (the Northern League register in Italy) in order to analyze how the interdiscursive potentials of register and stance-taking enable such connections. It also presents the metapragmatic effects of engaging in types of talk such as political language, which are less about individual expression or political participation, but are rather part of a complex of stance-taking and alignment of self within local and national political debates. Based on long-term ethnographic and linguistic research in Bergamo, Italy, this article introduces the concept of the interdiscursive trap, showing how the Northern League register functions in this capacity, forging indexical links to particular ideas and stances that some speakers find undesirable. (Political language, interdiscursivity, register, stance, Italy, Europe, Northern League, media)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 73 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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