Rappresentare le spazialità complesse. L’esperienza dell’ALS (Atlante Linguistico della Sicilia),

In this paper, we will deal with quantitative and qualitative data collected throughout the last quarter of the XX century in Sicily. We will focus on the mapping of the latest sociolinguistic results obtained by means of an ample investigation, and then included in the Linguistic Atlas of Sicily (ALS). In ALS, we have the chance to observe data on the perception and representation of linguistic differences collected through three questions contained in ALS questionnaire. The first preliminary question inquiries the generic existence of differences between the village where the informant is from and the close ones, while through the second and the third questions the informant reveals the specific villages and linguistic phenomena of the above mentioned differences. Following the complexity of the ALS sample, characterized by multidimensional variables (age, education, mother tongue) and structured in familiar groups (grandfather, father, son), a deep analysis needed to be carried on by using powerful mapping instruments. In order to fulfill this task, the researchers worked on the theorization of new analytical models, able to integrate micro and macro analysis and considering at the same time both the qualitative and the quantitative aspects of the linguistic phenomena. In the article the particular phenomenon of "dichotomies opposing linguistic and pragmatic" collected in ALS corpus is kept under observation. It is a representation of the processes speakers use to put in opposition the levels of space/territory, language, ideology as they identify a linguistic difference. At the core of the new model lies the idea of a ‘lived space’, i.e. the result of the native speaker linguistic biographical experiences compared with the unidimensional extension of the physical space. Lived space could be described in terms of social salience, which has its mutually related in the linguistic salience. By means of mapping, the aim is to obtain specific information on the linguistic dimension, physical - and cognitive - spaces. The accurate information is certainly included in the mapping process and it also represents a fundamental element of it.