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AbstractThis article explores the linguistic and meta-linguistic heritage of the Italian mine workers families that arrived in Belgian Limburg after the Second World War. On the basis of historical research, discourse analysis of texts and sociolinguistic interviews, I describe how the complex linguistic integration of first-generation migrants, that was scarcely noticed and debated until the 1960s, has been picked up and enregistered by second- and third-generation Italians in Limburg. I show how first generation's hybrid linguistic practices have come to be linked to one particular mining city, the city of Genk, and enregistered as an urban vernacular of this place, although they still refer to the larger historical background they are rooted in. I explain this heritage in three steps. First, I describe the complex contact-linguistic situation of first-generation miners' families. I will then present the linguistic consequences of this situation, by describing the emergence of a multilingual, but mainly French-based mining jargon among Flemish and foreign miners. In a third step, I place the social and linguistic situation of first-generation miners at the root of the linguistic practices of second- and third-generation Italians in Limburg.

Abstract
This paper explores the theoretical question of linguistic coherence by investigating lexical variation in contemporary Italian. In order to tackle issues regarding the coherence of lexical choice, variation is investigated with methods from lexical lectometry, which approaches the structure of language varieties (i.e. lects) by studying aggregate-level lexical distances between them. Based on uniformity measures, as introduced by Geeraerts et al. (1999), we have calculated the internal and external uniformity of spoken and written traditional standard Italian (represented by the academic section of the CORIS corpus for written Italian and the formal parts of the KIP corpus for spoken Italian) and neo-standard Italian (represented by the ParlaTO corpus for spoken Italian and the newspaper section of the CORIS corpus). The results confirm the hypothesis that two standard norms coexist in contemporary Italian and that traditional standard Italian appears to be more coherent at the lexical level than neo-standard Italian. Yet the study also indicates that other forms of coherence exist in contemporary Italian, depending on the adopted theoretical and methodological framework.

Interculturaliteit is al jaren een zeer actueel thema. Migratie, identiteit, multiculturalisme, globalisering, de islam, de omgang met het koloniale verleden, meertaligheid en standaardtaalideologie: het zijn onderwerpen die niet meer uit onze media weg te branden zijn. Dit boek biedt een academisch referentiekader bij de hedendaagse politiek-maatschappelijke debatten over deze interculturele uitdagingen. In de theoretische inleiding worden verschillende recente paradigma's voor de studie van interculturaliteit voorgesteld en gecontextualiseerd. Vervolgens schetsen specialisten uit verschillende disciplines - waaronder geschiedenis, literatuurwetenschap, taalkunde en regiostudies - de contouren van het debat zoals het zich in hun domein aftekent, analyseren ze de context ervan en reiken ze wetenschappelijk onderbouwde antwoorden aan op prangende actuele vragen