Adulti-in-mobilità e adulti professionalmente-in-contatto-con-la-mobilità : una coppia relazionale standardizzata

Abstract

The very fact that Europe is becoming increasingly multicultural, and consequently also multilingual, leads to communication problems. Foreigners are considered to be so because they have a different cultural background and because they behave ‘differently’, if not ‘strangely’, when compared to ‘natives’ or ‘locals’. For example, their communicative behaviour may be incomprehensible, their mannerisms may be different and they may use unusual gestures when seen from the point of view of the so-called ‘natives’. Foreigners often are excluded from the general urban network, forming their own network through associations and neighbourhoods. Language, and more specifi cally communication habits and practices, is one of the main resources through which people are included or excluded from a community or from a social network. In this paper we focus our attention on conversations between individuals with diverse cultural backgrounds in urban institutions and how certain conversation techniques and procedures become conversation strategies through which a person is constructed as being-a-foreigner.