HERE OR THERE? THERE OR HERE?

DISCOURSE AND IDENTITY IN MOOCA

Abstract

This article aims to investigate how Italian language and culture have influenced the identity of the group of people that live in the neighborhood of Mooca, São Paulo, and how this is produced through discourse. The corpus of this study consists of discursive sequences extracted from interviews done with Italians who live in this neighborhood. Having as a theoretical and methodological contribution the studies of the French Speech Analysis, we look directed to the words of Italian subjects who are between-languages, to show the intertwining of languages in the constitution of memory, identity, and linguistic formation. By the gestures of interpretation of the corpus, we could deduce that being between languages as a constitutive mark of the identity of the subjects of the neighborhood incites the effects of a non-place, of a subject that is drifting, looking for a sonship.