Esempi di eteroglossia nel paesaggio linguistico milanese

This article explores tools and findings in the study of the linguistic landscape created by foreign shop owners in two of the most multiethnic districts of Milan, Baggio and Giambellino, that moved from monolingualism to plurilingualism and heteroglossia due to the massive immigration of the last decades. The analysis of some samples of shop signs in Spanish and Arabic, which are two of the most widely represented foreign languages in these districts, is focused mainly on the relationship between languages, identity practices and communication or translation strategies, adding further information about the complex and changing patterns of language contact in a global city. This qualitative, multi- and interdisciplinary approach, and a scale of analysis focused on the multimodal display of the single sign with its units and subunits, is intended as complementary to the gathering of quantitative data, and calls for a reflection about the respective conceptual and methodological scopes of the many disciplines involved in Linguistic Landscape Studies.