Negotiating languages, identities and space in Hispanic linguistic landscape in Milan

Based on a database composed of 1500 pictures, belonging to 401 analytical units from the Linguistic Landscape (hereafter: LL), and representing mainly the signs on the shop of migrant traders in two multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in Milan, this paper will describe the positioning strategies of Latin American (hereafter: LA) communities in a multilingual urban space, and the processes of identity negotiation in which they are engaged. We will use a scale-sensitive and contextualised interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of LL (Vandenbroucke, Mieke. 2015. “Language Visibility, Functionality and Meaning Across Various TimeSpace Scales in Brussels’ Multilingual Landscapes.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 36 (2): 163–181), combining quantitative and qualitative methods. The aim is to show how the presence of Spanish in the LL indexes the collective identities, as well as the language and social attitudes of the LA communities living in Milan. We will analyse the emerging practices of flexible multilingualism, or translanguaging (García, Ofelia, and Ricardo Otheguy. 2014. “Spanish and Hispanic Bilingualism.” In The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Lingusitics, edited by Manuel Lacorte, 639–658. New York: Routledge), as a creative response to linguistic differences and potential conflicts.