A multilingual network in the re-activation of Italian as the third language among German speakers: Evidence from interactions

The purpose of this paper is to document a number of multilingual practices in which more than two languages are used in interactions. The data were gathered in a multilingual context in the mostly German-speaking town of Basle (Switzerland). Tape recordings of sales conversations are the source for the following observations. The data were collected in the following manner: an Italian-speaking customer B I shall call her Anna in the examples below B enters a shop, asks a question or makes a request, which triggers an immediate response from a German-speaking shop-assistant. Of 160 addressees, one third answered in Italian quite fluently and without showing any particular sign of surprise; approximately one third chose to speak German or rather, most of the time, Swiss-German, and one third reacted in unexpected and varied ways.