original scientific article	UDC 323.15:81 '246.3'272
received: 2008-07-07
MORE LANGUAGE(S) - MORE SPACE(S)? REFLECTIONS ON THE REPRESENTATION OF HETEROGLOSSIA AND MINORITY LANGUAGES IN THE ALPE-ADRIA REGION
Nada ZERZER
Vienna University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, Institute of Art and Design, Department of Visual Culture,
AT-1040 Vienna, Karlsgasse 11 e-mail: nada.zerzer+e264@tuwien.ac.at
ABSTRACT
This article addresses the issue how heteroglossic people in the three regions of Carinthia, Primorska, and the Trst/Trieste region experience their multilingualism and its representations in everyday day life. The approach is transdisciplinary and includes theory and methods from fields of political theory, sociology of space, sociolinguistics, ethnography, visual cultures and multimodal discourse analysis. The research focus is on social constructions of space, created by heteroglossic people in their everyday life and by the representations of the languages in their living environment. This article wants to take a closer look at life with - or in - heteroglossia and at possible integrative handling of it.
Key words: heteroglossia, public space, representation, language and ethnic minorities, visual culture, geosemiotics,
Alpe-Adria region
PIU LINGUE - PIU SPAZI? RIFLESSIONI SULLA RAPPRESENTAZIONE DELL'ETEROGLOSSIA E DELLE LINGUE DI MINORANZA NELLA REGIONE ALPE ADRIA
SINTESI
L'articolo affronta la questione di come le popolazioni 'eteroglossiche' o, se vogliamo, eterolinguistiche della Ca-rinzia, Primorska e della regione di Trieste vivono il proprio multilinguismo e le proprie rappresentazioni nella vita quotidiana. L'approccio adottato e transdisciplinario e comprende la teoria e i metodi tratti dagli ambiti della teoria politica, sociologia dello spazio, sociolinguistica, etnografia, culture visive e analisi del discorso multimodale. La ri-cerca si concentra sulle costruzioni sociali dello spazio create da persone eteroglossiche nella loro vita quotidiana e dalle rappresentazioni delle lingue nei loro ambienti di vita. L'articolo si propone di esaminare com'e vivere con l'eteroglossia - o nell'eteroglossia -, nonche studiare i potenziali trattamenti integrativi della stessa.
Parole chiave: eteroglossia, spazio pubblico, rappresentazione, la lingua e le minoranze etniche, cultura visiva,
geosemiotica, regione Alpe Adria
Nada ZERZER: MORE LANGUAGE(S) - MORE SPACE(S)",
INTRODUCTION
This paper addresses the issue how heteroglossic people in the three regions of Carinthia, Primorska, and the Trst/Trieste region experience their multilingualism and its representations in everyday day life. It draws on research the author has done with participants from the three regions, collecting multimodal material - sketches, photographs, interviews - on the participants' impressions of and attitudes towards their environment.
Theoretically the research is based on political theory, sociology of space, sociolinguistics, ethnography, visual culture and multimodal discourse analysis. It is committed to transdisciplinarity.
The approach will be described more detailed, i.e. the basic conditions of the field work in those regions will be explained. Furthermore, the methods and theories applied will be introduced.
Results of the empiric research are being presented and discussed.
PROBLEM STATEMENT - SUBJECT AND AIMS
The research focus is on space - created by people using more than one language in their everyday life and by the representations of the languages in their living environment - the towns and villages. This paper wants to take a closer look at life with - or in - heteroglossia and at possible integrative handling of it.
The focus is mainly on the visual material and on the ways to collect this material in field work. Basically, this paper asks the following questions: How can questions of multilingualism be approached in a politi -cal/demokratiepolitisch/pluralistic way" How can negotiations of space and representation in a society constructed as minority and majority, be approached"
Which is the living experience of the minority speakers - their views of their multilingual environment, how much importance do they grant the visual representation"
And how can research of a multilingual environment be done with a focus on the visual experience"
The aim of this research is not to discuss multilingualism of minority contexts from a juridical point of view, i.e. reflecting on minority rights and laws, or even to compare the legislation of different European countries. This paper neither wants to define "good" or "bad", nor to estimate or to evaluate laws, administrations and politicians; there are experts for all these topics. In addition, the concerns are neither the gratification or imple-
mentation of minority rights nor the conservation of ethnical diversity or minorities.1
APPROACHING THE FIELD
Central Europe, particularly the Alpe-Adria Region, is very rich in culture and languages and highly diversified. Here, Romanic, Slavic and Germanic languages and cultural areas meet, intertwine and occasionally merge, which is a very special situation in itself.
Theoretically, areas of cultural contact are spaces of imagination, of untold cultural riches and of fathomless potentialities: where cultures and languages meet, circulate and merge, new forms of culture can emerge, i.e. individual compositions of those very components, of this very situation.
Actually, this imagination is not very sustainable and is threatened to burst very easily looking at the reality of border regions. The look at a neighbouring language, culture or country is very often more suspicious than interested, more disapproving than intrigued. Instead of overcoming the obstacles and cooperation, instead of creating a shared culture of this area, belonging, classification and differentiation, the distinction between we and they, between one's own and the other's seems to be more important than anywhere else.
The tension between the imagination, the idea of potentiality, and the pessimistic view of reality, both manifested and experienced in Carinthian society, is the source of this paper.
THEORETICAL APPROACH: POLITICAL DIMENSIONS OF LANGUAGE IN PUBLIC SPACE
The concept of this paper is political: the issues addressed are public (Öffentlichkeit) and power (Macht), which are both in the field of the political. The issue is further political in the sense that Chantal Mouffe (2005) explicates on, as many of the positions in question are contradicting, and concurring, and can not be reconciled. There is no possibility to unite the different positions in one position shared by everybody, and often there even is no compromise. To name a popular question of this field, further discussed in a later chapter, there is no compromise of a monolingual and a bilingual topographic sign, it has to be either the one or the other. The actual sign is the result of the prevalence either of the advocates of bilingual or of monolingual signs, and the defeated group has to cope with the result.
To argue with Chantal Mouffe, a democratic society needs to withstand those contradictions and is incum-
1 The term 'minority' is a little unprecise as it has adopted the connotation of being less not only in numbers but also in value in both the author's languages Slovenian (manjsina) and German (Minderheit). It is used simply because of the lack of an introduced and more suitable term.
Nada ZERZER: MORE LANGUAGE(S) - MORE SPACE(S)?,
bent on finding a kind of procedure that enables proponents of both positions living side by side, without one position being repressed or eliminated and without negating the contradictions.
While antagonism threatens to erupt in destruction, Mouffe proposes the term of agonism to describe the process of negotiation, and explains:
While antagonism is a we/they relation in which the two sides are enemies who do not share any common ground, agonism a we/they relation where the conflicting parties, although acknowledging that there is no ra-toinal solution to their conflict, nevertheless recognize the legitimacy of their opponents. They are adversaries, not enemies. This meant that, while in conflict, they see themselves as belonging to the same political association, as sharing a common symbolic space in which the conflict takes place. (Mouffe, 2005, 20)
The research, and this paper, started out in a very wide understanding of architecture, as the field of interest and research is space. As architecture being the art and science of space, it knows far more ways to create space than by building houses, rooms, walls and decorating them. It starts with the fact that architecture is more than the physical-material aspect of space, and more than something something static, predetermined, or unchanging. Besides it is not the idea of some euclidian space that would be defined by three dimensions, confined by borders dividing between some things inside and other things outside itself.
Much more, it is a construction of the idea of space being provided through people inhabiting it. By living, working, feeling, thinking, interacting, people produce space and at the same time they formulate/configure/create its character. When carrying this to the extreme, one could say, space is a social function. As people are living beings, changing in time, this kind of space is also a process of some kind, developing and changing with the people inhabiting it.
When the ways of living and interacting of people are established as constitutive elements of producing space, communication and language being means of interaction become crucial in their contribution to the evolvement of space.
This quality of space, to be constructed by emotional entanglement, is also described as an anthropologic place (Auge, 1992). Where people are engaged in emotions, relations, connections they connect the entanglement to the place. Those can be private, but also public spaces - town squares, memorials, the school one has attended, the city hall of one's marriage. It can be con-
nected to memories of single persons but also to the collective memory of a group or a whole society. The more people share those memories or have singular/personal memories connected to one place, the stronger the characterisation of the place becomes.
Those anthropologic places, or Lieux, are in opposition to an increasing number of Non-Places, or Non-Lieux, that are of no other importance but to lead to another place. Therefore, they can also be called transitory spaces. Those are places where no user is addressed personally, but only indirectly or impersonally, not as the person he/she is, but only as a user of this place. Typical examples are highways or airports and trainstations. Most communication happens by signs, sometimes pictographs, or by announcements (Lautsprecherdurchsage). Those are places not to stay but to transit, to pass through, places you do not want or need to linger in, but places you want to leave as quickly as possible. Non-lieux are places without connection, without relation, without emotional bonds with the local people or visitors.
In heteroglossic regions, the existence of more than one language, the representation thereof and the resulting social and emotional entanglements contribute significantly to the social constructions of space.
It is the contribution of heteroglossic inhabitants, of their social actions and the interaction of ethnic minority and majority to diverse and multi-faceted public space that this paper focuses on.
METHODS
The complex of qualitative methods chosen for research is by large ethnographical and sociological.
The research was commenced by explorative excursions and the collection of visual data. The collected data were mostly photographical, but also include examples of media and printed matter. This material was supposed to be completed by interviews with speakers of the local minorities. Since the aim of the research focuses on the living experience of the speakers themselves, their contribution was further expanded to visual data. Thus, two purposes are to be achieved: on the one hand, the participants gain importance as their contributions are given more attention and space in the research. On the other hand, the research tries to meet the complexity of the research issue by allowing a greater number of perspectives. For this purpose of expanding and enhancing the field research, cultural probes (compare Gaver et al., 2004)2 were designed in a way that a multimodal complex of information and data could be collected.
2 Cultural probes were furthermost developed for participative and integrative designing methods in urban planning. The idea was to empower the participants to contribute to the process without being design experts themselves. So for people who usually don't think about the design they would wish for their environment to have and who are not used to find the right words to tell what they mean, a bundle of tools, containing e.g. cameras, sketch pads, maps or postcards was developped. In addition, the probe is not to be used u n-der supervision but on their own to grant freedom of thought and action.
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Fig. 1: Cultural probe (photo: K. Nessmann). SI. 1: Kulturna raziskava (foto: K. Nessmann).
The cultural probes delivered to the participants consist of a disposable camera, maps of the region, pens and paper for notes.
Participants were found through contact persons, via community institutions and minority organisations such as cultural societies, university, or media and publishing houses. The research participants from Slovenia, Italy and Austria are conscious speakers of their minority language but not representatives of (political) minority organisations. This is for the reason that representatives need to be lobbyists for the benefit of the minority and their views are at least partly shaped by the function. As the focus was on personal experiences in everyday life, the lobby-view was not intended to be subject to this research.
The better part of the qualitative research was done between January and September 2007. At first contact, the researcher introduced herself to the participants, or was introduced by the contact person, shortly explaining the background and research interest. The whole procedure, interview and cultural probes, were explained to the participants, also giving them the freedom to consent only to parts of the process. The interviews were open and half-structured, with an initiating explanation of the general topic to be talked about. The aim of the interviews was to make it possible for the participants to tell their stories freely and, to a certain degree, to determine the course of their narration. Questions were asked only to avoid major deviations or, if needed, for better under-
standing. It was the decided aim to break through the hierarchy of question and answer by encouraging the participants to reflect on themselves in connection with the general topic. The participants should feel that they are important in the research process, and that they are being taken seriously. Following the idea of "research with" (Cameron et al., 1997, 153, 158f), in the course of the interview the statements of the participants were related to the general questions of the research, to get to a common understanding of what is being told. The interviews ended when the participants made clear that they felt they had no more to say, or that they wished to finish.
After the interview, the cultural probe was, together with an explanation of the information sought for, handed to the participants. The instructions for the disposable camera consisted of the task to take pictures of what they feel to be their bilingual environment or the environment where they recognize their minority language and culture to be represented. Those who wanted to use their own camera were provided with a blank CD for the digital photos to be saved.
The maps were selected in different scales; so, on one the places were rather detailed to make it possible to mark the exact places the participants considered significant or mentions in the interviews. On the other map the bigger area was shown at a smaller scale to allow for greater contexts. Paper and pens for notes were also provided.
After the picture-taking the participants were invited
Nada ZERZER: MORE LANGUAGE(S) - MORE SPACE(S)",
to give reflections or to add to their previous interview if new aspects had occurred. Most of them used this possibility for comments and explanations on their choice, or on the supposed subject of their photos, some added an index.
The point of view of each interview and probe was intentionally subjective and not trying to construct objectivity by external explications. Objective descriptions of situations or qualifying explanations were avoided, so as not to organise the contributions of the research participants into an external hierarchy.
TRIANGULATION
The term of triangulation was previously taken from surveying and mapping.3 The technique/procedure is used to measure a point from two or more directions in order to make out its position in a more reliable way or to be able to describe the point more accurately. Triangulation was transferred to social sciences, beginning in the 1960ies, and has lately become an increasingly popular approach to complex research questions. Like in its original field, applying triangulation to social studies means to choose several starting points and to aim towards the general direction of the research matter - the point searched for. Still, there are some profound differences between both uses and meanings of triangulation in geodesy and social sciences.
As Denzin (1994) suggests, triangulation in social studies is a useful way to approach a subject. Even for the definition of the subject triangulation can be used, especially if the subject can be a little diffuse and threatens to "escape". Actually, the closer to reality, to everyday life, and to human life experience, the more the research issue is subjected to continuous change, to nonrational processes.
Uwe Flick (2004, 8) says about the usefulness of triangulation in social sciences, it [...] to link different methodic approaches on the one hand (qualitative, quantitative, questioning, and observation), and different methodic perspectives on the other hand (objective facts, subjective attitudes, contemporary and historical).4
Triangulation was chosen because it is a serviceable and advantageous method to deepen and broaden the research. What triangulation cannot do, however, is to ascertain impartiality or objectiveness, as in this kind of
research objectiveness is not possible as it is not possible to capture the whole situation. Every position of a person concerned by the matter of research is individual and in addition is permanently changing because it is part of human life. Rather than the illusion of objectivity, multi-subjectiveness is created by triangulation.
The triangulation in this research includes the change of perspective of a partly involved researcher to involved research participants, and additionally to a number of participants who contribute their narratives and visual material.
Contemporary technology allows for an increasing number of collected pictures, a phenomenon which all researchers are confronted with and which could be a problem in some cases. It was partly met by providing disposable cameras with a limited number of takes.5 In an attempt to methodise the accumulation of visual data, a catalogue of categories was developed, arranging the examples by formal reasons, or by authors/competence for the installation.5
Though the line between the categories was not strictly drawn but fluid, this way of handling the visual material proved to be too rigid and constricting. It threatens to draw the focus on the categories, thereby influencing and obstructing the view of other, probably more important things than external formal criteria. It also induces to directly compare the examples of the three regions of one category - which was declaimed above.
As the idea of being helpful was not fulfilled by the categorisation, it was abandoned in favour of more ethnographic ways of work that respond to the visual character of the research.
The data were collected and arranged solely by visual criteria and by frequency of motives.
ABOUT THE REGIONS
The regions of this research were chosen by experience and preparatory research. This research is concerned with three minority situations: the Slovenian minority in Carinthia/Austria, the Italian minority in Pri-morska/Slovenia, and the Slovenian minority in the Italy. The towns introduced in this paper are Ce-lovec/Klagenfurt, Capodistria/Koper and Trst/Trieste with their outskirts.
3	In geodesy triangulation means to devide a field into triangles because of their geometric reliability.
4	[...] Verknüpfung einerseits unterschiedlicher methodischer Zugänge (qualitativ, quantitativ, Befragung und Beobachtung), andererseits verschiedener methodischer Perspektive (objektive Tatbestände, subjektive Einstellungen, Gegenwärtiges und Historisches) (translation by Nada Zerzer).
5	While the participants using their private digital camereas were asked to limit their contribution to about the number of takes of the disposable cameras, no contribution was excluded for an exceeding number of takes.
6	Possible categories were inscriptions made by the administration itself, by institutions, commercial or private, in the range of formal criteria. By content, categories would be remembrance, or art.
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IN NUMBERS
The three towns chosen for research differ in size, urbanity structure etc. Celovec/Klagenfurt has about 92.000 (Zahlenspiegel, 2007) inhabitants, including the outskirts (the so-called district Klagenfurt-Land/Celovec -dežela) there are about 150.000 (Statistik Austria, 2008)7 inhabitants. The city of Koper/Capodistria counts 24.000, the administrative borough about 49.000 (MOK 2, 2008). In Trieste/Trst, there are 208.000 (Rete civica di Trieste, 2008) people in the city and 240.000 (Re-gione FVG, 2008) in the region.
Official statistics state that 2,2%of the inhabitants of Koper/Capodistria avow themselves to the Italian minority (MOK, 2008), 2,5% of the inhabitants of Ce-lovec/Klagenfurt declare to speak Slovenian and in the Trst/Trieste region there live about 9% Slovenian speaking people.8
RESULTS
The corpus of collected information was regarded as a whole, i.e. the notes, comments and interviews are taken into consideration when interpreting the pictures.
Within the corpus of visual data collected, there are four groups of motives or topics that should be explained and discussed more in detail in this paper. Those are Places of social life, Topographic signs, Remembrance, and Irony/Humor.
Most of the groups were formed because the subjects were mentioned or depicted repeatedly, by several participants of the research. In opposite, the Irony/Humor section was chosen because it is so unique and was found only in one of the three situations.
By depicting the selected motives, the participants were also expressing a kind of evaluation. Especially those using the provided disposable cameras had to decide carefully as they had only 27 takes at their disposal. A motive had to be considered important by the research participant in order to take a picture of it instead of just mentioning it in the interview.
Places of social life
Nearly all of the participants contributed photos of several places of social life, of interaction with others, of meeting, shopping, or learning. In the comment, one participant from Trst/Trieste noted that the takes were a documentation of places where Slovenian language is commonly used by the customers/guests and staff. It was the possibility to use the language rather than the visibility of bilingual inscriptions which was important to the photographer in this case.
It seems significant, that in takes depicting places of social life, there are people relatively often included in the pictures. This inspires the conclusion, that the communicative, connecting and social aspects of the public use of minority languages are very important, as they contribute to the constructions of community. The places seen on the pictures are places to live - places to talk, places for public life, places to be a group, a collective, and not only a private person, an individual.
The motives vary from cafés and osmice9 to shops and various institutions like nurseries and schools.10
The importance of social interaction and personal entanglement for the social construction of public space was mentioned before. The numerous contributions concerning places of social life in the collected data from the cultural probes underlines this thesis.
Topographic signs
Lieux and Non-Lieux: why the language makes the difference
In many of the collected cultural probes, topographic signs were of significant number. There are several possible and plausible reasons for topographic signs to be of rather great importance to minority language speakers.
Topographic signs are often the first thing that comes to one's mind when asked about the representation of heteroglossia. They are indeed something very noticeable, even demonstrative as they are highly exposed to passers-by and call attention to the existence of two languages where mostly one is seen. Furthermore, topographic signs are a permanent issue in discussing minority rights.
7	The number of 150.000 is calculated by totalling the the districts of Klagefurt City and Klagenfurt Country, to get to a number comp arable to both the other sities with the area.
8	In Italy the use of language is not subject to population census, so there is no up to date data. The estimations vary broadly. The latest census dates of 1971, and states in Trst/Trieste round 24.000 slovenian speaking people, which makes round 8,9% of the population of the region at that time, which was round 271.000. compare also Voltmer (2004).
9	Osmica (slo.) or osmizza (it.) is a temporary inn at a farm, popular in the region of Trst/Trieste and farther around, similar to the Buschenschank (ger.) in Austria.
10	Schools and other educational institutions could of course also form a separate section, as their function is on several levels. Actually, in this paper the decision to include them in the section of places of social life was based on the comments stating that for the partic i-pant this place was important because of the interaction with peers, as for students school mostly is a major place of social contact.
Fig. 2-5: Places of social life: Farm tourism, pubs and a shop (photo: fig. 2, 5 Anna, fig. 3,4 Maja).
SI. 2-5: Prostori družbenega življenja: kmečki turizem, gostilne, trgovina (foto: sl. 2, 5 Anna, sl. 3,4 Maja).
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Besides legal, psychological or political approaches to the questions of bilingual topographic signs, whose justification shall not be lessened, there is the approach of the character of space. In the first place it has nothing to do with minority issues, but with different kinds of space people are used to meet in certain situations.
One of the reasons for the topographic signs being an issue in mixed language areas can be approached/explained with Marc Augé's definition of Lieux and Non-Lieux, or Places and Non-Places (Augé, 1992).
Actually, topographic signs mark a line, not only between town and periphery but also, and in this context most importantly, between Lieu and Non-Lieu.
Most topographic signs are situated in what Marc Augé calls transitory places or spaces.
In spite of the exposure, most passers-by probably do not really see the signs. As soon as a topographic sign is written in two languages, it does not only indicate the
city border, but also gives further information about the languages being spoken by the inhabitants. In the sensitive climate of minority and majority, this bilingualism of a sign does not remain unnoticed; on the contrary, observers see and notice the bilingualism and the main focus shifts from the notion of 'there is a town' to the notion of the local languages. This attention creates relation - and the Non-Lieu shifts to Lieu.
This shift is a disruption of the common ways: it draws attention to a place nobody wants to notice, and it irritates the onlooker. The monolingual topographic sign does not disturb the Non-Lieu because it is not really noticed, but the bilingual sign evokes relation and emotion and in that way changes the structure of the space, simply by being there.
Regarding bilingual topographic signs taking in consideration the disruption of the order of places and non-places the highly conflictuous potential becomes evident.
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Fig. 6-8: Between Lieux and Non-Lieux: bilingual topographic signs (photo: fig. 6 N. Zerzer, fig. 7 Miha, fig. 8 Maja).
Sl. 6-8: Med Lieux in Non-Lieux: dvojezični topografski napisi (foto: sl. 6 N. Zerzer, sl. 7 Miha, sl. 8 Maja).
In addition to latent minority/majority conflicts of power, and the conflict of the historical ideal of a monolingual ethnically homogenuous nation state confronted with the multifaceted, here multilingual postmodern society, there is even more potential for conflict represented by bilingual topographic signs. It is also the traditional attribution of transitory Non-Lieux and relational Lieux that gets out of control and therefore courts resentment.
From a point of view like Marc Auge's, the cluster of problems which might occur around the installation of bilingual signs is expanded by one uncanny aspect, as this aspect is mostly subconscious and unuttered.
The performative powers of name
Topographic signs are of great importance because they carry names, and naming is a way of exerting power, very close to inventing, creating and producing. Naming is also defining, declaring something what it is. Consequently, naming changes something in the real world as we perceive it, it can be performative (Austin, 1975).
By naming a place, the performance is one of declaring a certain claim on the place, i.e. one of ownership, of belonging, or maybe simply of being there and of being related to the place. In a multi-ethnic society, the existence of two names, in two languages, for one place is an expression of two existing groups, separated by language, who share the territory. Accepting the second language, and the second name of a place, expresses the disposition to admit the speakers to their claim, or co-claim to the place.
In a nation-based way of thinking, this is a very difficult thing to do, as the ideal of a homogeneous people, with one language, one culture, and the respective territory forming a unit is still very much present in 21st century Central Europe.
The ideas and ideals of one United Europe, of a Europe of the regions and of diversity are very often far away from people's everyday life experience. When thinking about the complex of questions arising in connection with bilingualism and ethnic or language minorities we can see that the source of constructions of 'state' or 'country' is still the 19th century nation state (Anderson, 1997).
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Remembrance
Cemeteries
The probes include a significant number of references to remembrance of the past, both individual and collective. An explanation for this is to be searched in
the importance of remembrance for the construction of individual and collective identities.
Many pictures of the preliminary collection as well as of the cultural probes depict headstones and cemeteries. The types of photos ranged from overviews of the cemetery to detailed takes focusing on the writing on the stone.
Fig. 9-11: The public face of private remembrance: ce-metries (photo: fig. 9 Miha, fig. 10-11 N. Zerzer). Sl. 9-11: Javni obraz osebnega spomina: pokopališča (foto: sl. 9 Miha, sl. 10-11 N. Zerzer).
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Shared memories - shared memorials
Cemeteries are not simply places where the past is piled up, where the deceased wait for the living to arrange flowers or to say a prayer. Cemeteries are places where issues of belonging are addressed on different levels.
On an individual level, a cemetery is where a family's past is represented by names of predecessors. It is a place where one can go looking for one's roots, to visit the graves of one's ancestors and see the names of those who spoke this language ages ago, and to construct a continuum to the present and to the own person. place and the claim of the territory is being argued by the age of graves and headstones, or by the number of names and inscriptions in one or another language. It is not only the language of the buried that is represented in the inscription; it is in the first place the language of the living which can be seen on the stones. When the language is aborted by new generations, the inscription on the headstone will also change. Some of the headstones on the contributed photographs feature the names of many generations of one family. One can learn a lot about the history of the region, when the spelling changes through time, or the family name gets translated.
The symbolism of the cemeteries also becomes visible in pictures taken of dilapidation and overgrowth. These pictures correspond to the fear of disappearance of history, of language and culture. A neglected grave is a way of being forgotten, of not being cared for any more.
In mixed language areas there is often an assortment of headstones in several languages. In the Italian part of the research there are even stones with German inscriptions, dating about 100 years of age, when this part of today's Italy was part of the Habsburg Monarchy. But as a rule the inscription of one stone is in one language, except for some very rare examples on private graves -and the graves of clergy. Clergymen seem to have an integrative function in their parish, being responsible for all members of the parish. In analogy, the inscription on the headstone of the priest needs to include all the languages.
Remembrance is represented in the probes not only by cemeteries, but also by memorials. While memorials are also a part of the construction of identities by referring to the past and history, they are of a different character: they are more public and more formal.
Memorials with bilingual inscriptions are mostly found in probes from today's Italy, few of them are from
Slovenia, none in the probes from Austria. There is one explanation coming to mind above all others: Memorials are a way of the living to manifest their memory of the past, and memorials are made by the living and the living make them for themselves. So when the Slovenian and Italian population of the Trst/Trieste region has a past they can and want to remember together, there will be a memorial with a bilingual inscription. They can do that, because at least part of World War II they were fighting on the same side.
On the other hand, in Carinthia, the Slovenian and the German speaking combatants were on different sides of war, so to date any memorial erected in Carinthia can serve as a place to commemorate either the soldiers of the National Socialist Reich or the partisans fighting against it - it is simply impossible to raise a monument for both groups of fighters together.
On a more collective level, the right to be in this Taking it further: Irony and Humor in the Field of Bi-/Multilingualism
The research on representations of heteroglossia led to a collection of projects which are significantly different from the results presented and discussed before. They represent a different approach to heteroglossia, a way to draw creativity and activity of a conflictuous and ambivalent situation. The conclusions they might allow to draw about the sociocultural and political backgrounds still need research and discussion. Still, they shall be introduced in this place as they cast a light on possible ways of dealing with and in ethnically mixed situations
All of them are taken from Carinthia, as there were no comparable examples found in both other areas. Anyway, what these result have in common is a way of playfulness, maybe a dose of irony or sarcasm, or even a hint of subversiveness. The examples being presented are all results of conscious engagement with the complex of problematic of minority/majority; they are to a certain degree addressing bilingualism on a meta-level.
One could say that they are in the range of magina-tion, of the potentialities that pluralism, multi-ethnicity and heteroglossia can afford. They do not correspond to the rules fixed in hegemony, they do not try to find a way inside the known limits, but they try to change the rules.
Those results do not stem from cultural probes but from the author's own explorations and collections.
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Fig. 12-15: Bilingual memorials for the shared memories of combattants (photo: fig. 12, 14 N. Zerzer, fig. 13 Miha, fig. 15 Antonia).
Sl. 12-15: Dvojezični spomeniki skupnih spominov na borce (foto: sl. 12, 14 N. Zerzer, sl. 13 Miha, sl. 15 Antonia).
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Taking the topographic sign to other places
The importance of topographic signs in the whole complex of representation of multilinguality has been discussed earlier and has its impact also in other areas than the typical signs at crossroads.
The design of the topographic signs in Austria has become a kind of symbol of the whole complex of minority policy, minority rights and the constant dispute over the erection of bilingual signs. While the public discourse was concerned with questions concerning the necessity of bilingual signs, the connotation of the sym-
bol became graver. A solution to the problem that would satisfy all involved parties seems far away.
The dominance of the design of topographic signs in the Carinthian discourse of the representation of bilin-gualism found new places for the application of the symbol - like lighters, stickers or T-shirts, stating Carin-thia to include both languages, both ethnic groups, as the sign features the name of the Austrian province in both languages: "Karnten - Koroska".
The design of the signs has become so popular and so much a symbol for a place to be, that it got used in several contexts that are not actually connected to the original discourse.
Fig. 16-17: Topographic signs for everyday use: on T-shirts, lighters and stickers (photo: fig. 16 K. Nessmann, fig. 17 P. Krivograd).
Sl. 16-17: Topografski napisi za vsakdanjo rabo: na majicah, vžigalnikih in nalepkah (foto: sl. 16 K. Nessmann, sl. 17 P. Krivograd).
A language symbolized by a little "v"
By the mid 1990ies, the public discourse about bilingual topographic signs in Carinthia had once more peaked, running in solution-free circles about the questions of competency responsibility, of demands and entitlement, of necessity and symbolics.
In this climate, the cultural society at the University of Celovec/Klagenfurt realised the idea of ''Hacek (k)lebt'1.11 The Hacek is a diacritical sign that distinguishes written Slovenian from German language in a very easily-recognizable way. Among Carinthians, it has become a kind of symbol for Slovenian language and culture, as the cultural difference between Slovenian and German-speaking Carinthians is solely the language. By centuries of cohabitation of both ethnic groups, of both languages in the same social and economical environment, everyday culture has become very similar, if
11 klebt - sticks; lebt - lives (ger.).
not the same: from religious festivities to food and also the melodies of folksongs, the significant difference is the language used when celebrating, cooking or singing. There is even a bookshop in Celovec/Klagenfurt named Hacek for the reason of the wide identification.
Hacek (k)lebt is actually a sheet of stickers cut to little and large haceks, about the size of a postcard. The instructions on the card say that the stickers are to be used to complete lacking inscriptions in public space -wherever one would wish for bilingual inscriptions, the sticker would come handy. By doing that, the diacritical sign gains importance as it appears as a foreign particle within a German text. It becomes as disturbing as the inscriptions in Slovene are sometimes declared to be. By the playfulness, it subverses the attributed annoyance and makes people grin at its boldness, at the funny image of a little displaced hacek.
ANNALES • Ser. hist, sociol. • 19 • 2009 • 1
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tions/soup dinners of this project were performed in cooperation with a jazz band and the language artist Jani Oswald in whose texts both languages, German and Slovenian, intertwine. Cuisine, politics and Carinthian life itself were regarded with a fair share of irony and sarcasm.
To complete the multilingual menu, another example of enjoyable multilinguality should be mentioned. The example was not an art project, but a commercial idea. A number of deli-dealers in Carinthia commissioned a chocolate manufactory to produce a special type of chocolate that should mirror Carinthian history and cuisine at their best, i.e. the interlacing of Slovenian and German Carinthian identities.
Even the name is programmatical: "Fia uns zwa - za naju dva" is the bilingual name, saying "For the two of us", and the addition locates the two: "aus Kärnten - iz Koroske" - "from Carinthia". The sleeve of the chocolate bar features the Prince's Stone (Knezji kamen, Fürstenstein), which is considered the oldest symbol of demo-
Fig. 18: To complete lacking inscriptions: a kit of stickers in various sizes.
Sl. 18: Dopolnitev pomanjkljivih napisov: set nalepk različnih velikosti.
Humor and enjoyment: a new way to face
"Buhstabenzupe" is a wordplay of an originally German word in Slovenian notation. Actually, the product at matter is pasta - the small kind in the shape of letters, known and loved by all kids as they can play and combine them to words while eating their soup. The kids eating and playing with the pasta do usually not care which language the soup was cooked from.
Unikum, the cultural society that has been mentioned before, had their own idea about this pasta and commissioned the production of special pasta in the shape of letters - including the Slovenian diacritical signs: SCZ shapes pasta was produced only for this project. And as the name of the project states, the letters mingle in the soup, without worries whether their neighbours are supposed to be of the one or the other language. Furthermore, they get on very well and in the end they are all eaten with the soup. The presenta-
Fig. 19: Well known and still different: pasta with unusual shapes ŠČŽ (photo: G. Maurer). Sl. 19: Dobro znano, a vendar drugačno: testenine nenavadnih oblik ŠČŽ (foto: G. Maurer).
ein FÜRSTLICHER genuss
Fig. 20: Uniting indulgence: chocolate bar, representing Carinthia's both languages in many ways. Sl. 20: Užitki, ki združujejo: tablica čokolade, ki v marsičem predstavlja oba jezika koroške regije.
Haček (k)lebt!
15 piflUtilihB Siiikir QEMwftlie, liOtpriUftlti .ur Ergänzung van emtprathigen OrtStaleln und anderen Aufiih'iften h Kärnten ivuvw.üitlkum. «c,dl
Maria
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cracy in the region of Carinthia as well as in Slovenian culture. On the inside of the sleeve, the history of the Prince's Stone is told.12 The chocolate bar itself is filled with raisins, walnuts and cinnamon, the traditional filling of pogaca, or Reindling, depending on the language - a strudel loved by both ethnic groups in Carinthia and eaten at many occasions.
The chocolate bar is regularly on sale in several groceries and delicatessen in Carinthia, its presentation evoked a lot of positive media response.
With a look at the continuous conflicts in Carinthia concerning topics of ethnic diversity the question occurs, why the creative potential of the multifaceted culture is not more often explored.
CONCLUSIONS
Through a short look at the visual data this paper could provide, the big diversity of heteroglossic life and views becomes visible - the diversity of one minority situation to the next, and within the minority itself.
The material discussed in this paper is only a part of the wide range of topics and motives found in the research process. Some of the topics left out were just as informative and insightful as those presented. There is the rather numerously represented motive of deficiency
that was addressed in interviews or by photos and comments. Unauthorized inscriptions in public space, like graffiti, still need to be explored.
The situations of plurality and diversity are promising, offering a potential for creativity and development. At the same time they can be polarising and, especially when the protagonists feel repressed, these situations threaten to develop into an antagonism of "we"and "they", into an insurmountable opposition and destructive conflict. It is the task of a democratic society to keep the positions in a kind of equilibrium.
As history has taught striving to achieve the ideal of a homogenuous society is not only an illusion, but also dangerous. The dealing with pluraltiy can be regarded as a criterion for the sustainability and stability of democratic development. As was stated at the beginning of this paper, observing multilinguality is only observing one element of social constructions of space. In reality there are several other modes of plurality concerning society.
Ethnicly mixed areas can show how democracy has developed in a certain society: the markers for this process, for the status of practised democracy are in the negotiation of representation, in the acceptance rather than tolerance of the other, the strange as part of ones own society.
VEČ JEZIKOV - VEČ PROSTOROV? RAZMIŠLJANJA O UDEJANJANJU HETEROGLOSIJE IN MANJŠINSKIH JEZIKOV
V REGIJI ALPE-JADRAN
Nada ZERZER
Dunajska univerza za tehnologijo, Fakulteta za arhitekturo, Inštitut za umetnost in dizajn, Oddelek za vizualno kulturo,
AT-1040 Dunaj, Karlsgasse 11 e-mail: nada.zerzer+e264@tuwien.ac.at
POVZETEK
Avtorica v članku obravnava vprašanje, kako ljudje na Koroškem, Primorskem in Tržaškem doživljajo svojo večjezičnost in njeno udejanjanje v vsakdanjem življenju. Raziskava je osredotočena na prostor, ki ga ljudje ustvarjajo z vsakdanjo uporabo večih jezikov in njihovim udejanjanjem v življenskem okolju - vaseh in mestih. Avtorica želi pobliže predstaviti življenje s heteroglosijo (ali v njej), prav tako pa tudi njene možne integrativne izvedbe. V teoretičnem smislu so območja kulturih stikov prostori domišljije, neizpovedanih kulturnih bogastev in nedoumljivih potencialov: kjer se jeziki in kulture srečujejo, zlivajo in krožijo, lahko nastanejo nove oblike kulture, t.j. individualne kompozicije taistih komponent dane situacije. Nasprotovanje in konflikt sta neizbrisna dela življenja in družbe, ki pa se bosta ob poskusih potlačitve morda ponovno pojavila skozi nasilje (Mouffe 2005). Da bi se izognili nasilnim konfliktom, mora družba najti načine za vzpostavitev ravnotežja med protislovnimi položaji, ki se včasih pojavijo v
12 From the mid 12th century untill 1414 the installation of the Prince of Carantania was an early form of democratic process. The (Ge rman speaking) Prince to be had to take an oath in Slovenian language to a farmer seated on said Prince's stone. When the farmer's right was satisfiesd they changed places and the Prince was installed.
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zvezi s heteroglosijo in njenim udejanjanjem. Arhitektura kot umetnost in znanost prostora pozna poleg izgradnje hiš, sob, zidov in njihovega opremljanja še mnogo več načinov ustvarjanja prostora. Izhaja namreč iz dejstva, da arhitektura presega fizično-materialni vidik prostora, da je več kot nekaj statičnega, vnaprej določenega ali nespremenljivega. Prebivalci ustvarjajo prostor z življenjem v njem, z njegovo uporabo kot družbene funkcije, ki jo ustvarjajo skozi družbene odnose in interakcije. Avtorica se v članku osredotoča na jezikovne odnose in njihova udejanjanja v večjezičnih regijah. Za predstavitev udejanjanja heteroglosije in njenega pomena za družbeno izgradnjo prostora se poslužuje vizualnih gradiv, ki jih je skupaj z sodelavci zbrala v omenjenih treh regijah in ki ponazarjajo primere iz različnih kontekstov in področij družbenega življenja. Glede na to, da je pričujoči članek poročilo raziskave, ki še vedno poteka, predstavlja njene predhodne rezulate in ugotovitve kot obete še neizvedenih raziskav.
Ključne besede: heteroglosija, javni prostor, udejanjanje, jezik in etnične manjšine, vizualna kultura, geosemiotika,
regija Alpe-Jadran
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