Visibilidad y percepción del español en el paisaje lingüístico genovés

Since the processes of globalization and mass migration began, urban spaces have provided a setting for multilingual expression. Here, alloglot communities have established new forms of communication through texts written in public places, which have helped change and enrich the city’s linguistic landscape. Bilingual or multilingual landscapes in migratory contexts are a useful resource for obtaining sociolinguistic information. Written texts in urban public spaces highlight the close connections between language and society, not only in the communicative function such texts perform among local populations, but also in that they reflect linguistic vitality, making it possible to analyze the perceptions of the local population towards the languages and their respective users. This paper focuses on Genoa, where the permanent presence in recent years of a Latin American community has led to growing interest on the part of researchers who, each from a different perspective, have analyzed the Genoese linguistic landscape (Carpani, 2008; De Hériz, Morelli 2012). Starting from a pilot study, based on a corpus created from approximately 150 photographs taken in the three Genoese neighbourhoods with the highest density of Spanish speakers, this paper initially analyzes the presence and vitality of the Spanish language and the role it plays in the territory. Thereafter, short interviews with passers-by near the photographed areas, the focus shifts to how the Spanish language and the Hispanic community in general are perceived by the local population. Finally, the texts are analyzed from a grammatical, orthographic and lexical viewpoint, which provides information on the Spanish variants present in the city and the type of discursive practices, which the Latin American community uses to acquire visibility in Genoa’s linguistic landscape.