Spanish in-motion in Milan

This chapter explores the role of Spanish as a globalized language in Milan through the ¬parameters of postmodern sociolinguistics, in which new orders of indexicality emerge in the unprecedented diversification of forms of communication in the global era. Phenomena such as mobility, the dynamics of center and periphery, and deterritorialization processes have prompted questions about speech communities, language normativity, and the concept of language itself. Recent research in the context of globalization has shown how mobility affects the phenomenology of language. According to Blommaert (2010, p. 42) “sociolinguistic phenomena in a globalization context need to be understood as developing at several scale-levels, where different orders of indexicality dominate, resulting in a polycentric ‘context’ where communicative behavior is simultaneously pushed and pulled in various directions.” As a matter of fact, scales, orders of indexicality, and polycentricity will be used throughout the chapter as conceptual tools to explain the complex and creative linguistic practices among the Hispanic population in Milan, a city that has experienced a large increase in its number of transnational citizens, including Spanish speakers.