Objetivos de la propuesta.

Circulating metacommentary (Rymes, 2014) about which types of students attend which types of schools—or which types of schools create which types of students—

18 _{I use the term “citizen” here in the sense specified in Rymes & Leone (2014, p. 26) in the definition of}

Citizen Sociolinguistics: “people who use their senses and intelligence to understand the world of language around them.” In this case—which is more citizen semiotics than citizen sociolinguistics—the meanings that everyday people attribute to one anothers’ clothing, accessories, and affiliations become important sources of information for others navigating that same world.

contributes to the ideologies around particular social personae or figures of personhood associated with each of these schools (Agha, 2011) and reinforces their indexical links to particular ways of being. In the memes presented below (Figures 3, 4, and 5), certain scenes—some from school and others from non-school settings—depict behaviors that are linked to specific social personae, e.g., burnouts and troublemakers, which are recontextualized by the creators of the memes as pertaining to Italian secondary schools. In so doing, the memes’ creators draw a connection between non-school contexts (like the prison yard), the social types who frequent these non-school contexts (like

“troublemakers”), and school contexts (like the vocational school). I obtained Figures 3 and 4 during a brief period in which I was part of a WhatsApp19 group with the students in 3 Meccanica, and I came across Figure 5 upon exploring further the Instagram profile of the account associated with them. All of these images come from an Instagram account called nascecresceignora (the username could be translated as “be born, grow, ignore”), and received many laughs and crying-laughing emojis when they were shared in the WhatsApp group.

Figure 3: School trips (nascecresceignora 2017b)

Figure 3 comments on what school trips look like in four different types of schools,including the scientific lyceum (liceo scientifico, or simply scientifico), the industrial technical institute (ITIS), the vocational school for industry and artisanship (IPSIA), and the alberghiero, a vocational school for hospitality. The scientific lyceum students (males and females) are posed with teachers in an orderly rowin front of the façade of an important-looking building. Perhaps this is a trip to a nearby city, or to visit their cultural exchange partners in another country in Europe. The technical institute’s school trip, on the other hand, is depicted as a riot. The participants run around with bandanas over the lower half of their faces, hoods up, swinging blunt objects—boards, sticks, or paddles of some kind—on a paved surface backgrounded with a cloud of

smoke. For unknown reasons, the floating head of Jack Skellington, a character from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, also appears in the right-hand corner of the image, stamped with the word “gastone.” The vocational school for hospitality is

depicted as six men standing in a field of marijuana plants. Two (possibly three) of the men wear their hair in dredlocks, a hairstyle that is—in my experience—associated among youth in Italy as being associated with smoking marijuana. Finally, the vocational school for industry and artisanship is depicted as people behind bars, but wearing

everyday clothing rather than prison uniforms. The faces of the people are barely visible through the bars, but those that are visible appear to be of men.

Figure 4: Physical Education (nascecresceignora 2017a)

Figure 4 comments on what gym class looks like in four different types of schools, also including (as in Figure 3) the scientific lyceum (liceo scientifico, or simply

scientifico), the industrial technical institute (ITIS), and the vocational school for industry and artisanship (IPSIA). Instead of including the alberghiero used in Figure 3, however, Figure 4 uses the artistico, or the artistic lyceum. The scientific lyceum is depicted with young men and women jogging around a school gym, in athletic clothes, in an orderly

group. The technical institute is depicted as two young men in a physical fight in the hallway of the school, hands at each other’s throats. There is one male onlooker, and two figures who are presumably teachers (one man and one woman) walking toward the fighting students, possibly in order to intervene in the fight. The artistic lyceum shows five hands passing marijuana joints in what looks to be a parking lot or some other outside space paved in cement or asphalt. The vocational school for industry and

artisanship is, again, depicted as a prison. In this scene, a shirtless man does pull-ups on rusty metal equipment in “the yard,” flanked by two other men working out on nearby equipment. In the background is a group of other shirtless men, wearing just the pants of their orange prison jumpsuits, walking around the prison yard. No guards are visible in this image.

Figure 5 comments on what types of backpacks students of different schools use, featuring the scientific lyceum, ITIS, and the artistic lyceum as in Figure 4, but adding

agrario, or the vocational/technical school for agriculture. It appears that, despite the artistic lyceum and the hospitality school being two different categories of school, they are associated with similar figures of personhood (both Figures 4 and 5 feature marijuana as their defining characteristic). Also shown in Figure 5, the backpack of the scientific lyceum is a plain, light gray, nondescript Eastpak brand backpack. The backpack of the artistic lyceum, on the other hand, is a black backpack adorned with a pattern of

marijuana leaves, striped yellow, green, and red. The technical institute’s backpack is not a backpack at all, but a large bomb inside of a duffel bag. Finally, the “backpack”

attributed to the agriculture program is a backpack grass-trimming tool used by gardeners and landscapers.

The figures of personhood associated with each type of school are made very apparent by these three composite images. The scientific lyceum depicts the archetype of a class trip in Figure 3, showing a large group of students accompanied by adult

chaperones posed in front of an important-looking building, and of gym class in Figure 4, showing a group of students in athletic wear, jogging in formation around a school gym. Even the backpack of the scientific lyceum student in Figure 5 is framed as plain, clean, and neat. In ITIS, on the other hand, physical education is depicted as a fight between two boys in the hallway of the school and class trips are depicted as a riot of masked young people (seemingly all male) running through a smoke-filled, urban-looking scene. The backpack bomb in Figure 5 further complements this image of ITIS as

vocational school (IPSIA) is given the prison theme in Figures 3 and 4, with class trips being depicted as men behind bars, and gym class being depicted as shirtless men working out in a prison yard. There are no females in the images for ITIS, IPSIA, or

alberghiero except the female teacher who is on her way to intervene in the fight between the two male students in Figure 3. Females are only shown in the pictures designated for the scientific lyceum. The photo used for artistico does not provide any indication of whether females or males are present, although the absence of jewelry and nail polish could suggest that the creator of the meme did not make an attempt to highlight the presence of female students at this school.

These three composite images, in poking fun at what gym class looks like, what school trips look like, and what backpacks look like in different types of schools, hint at the communicative repertoires of secondary school students in Italy and which elements emerge as salient in different contexts. In these memes, particular scenes—some from school and others from non-school settings—depict behaviors and repertoire elements that are linked to particular social personae, e.g., burnouts and troublemakers, which are recontextualized by the creators of the memes as pertaining to Italian secondary schools. In so doing, the memes’ creators have drawn a connection between non-school contexts (like the prison yard), the social types who frequent these non-school contexts (like “troublemakers” or “criminals”), and school contexts (like the vocational school).

The uptake of these figures of personhood by secondary school students and by middle school students who are in the process of choosing schools may reinforce existing stereotypes and inform citizen and official discourses about schools and the people inside them. That is not to say that people interacting with these memes readily accept the

representations of each of these schools, but many Instagram users did post comments in response to them, such as the ones below regarding Figure 3 which came in response to other users’ questions about what IPSIA is20_:

serena__pisano: Will you tell me what the fuck this IPSIA is?

sgabess: @serena__pisano it’s a vocational school, but one of the ones made for the people who don’t feel like doing shit.

io_non_sono_leggenda: @serena__pisano a school where you learn to be a mechanic, etc… The

ones who don’t feel like studying go there. io_non_sono_leggenda: @serena__pisano the vocational school basically

_yassintibaldi_@its_francesco_1 ITIS the public industrial technical institute [is where] those who feel like studying go (unfortunately it’s lacking in girls) and there they teach you electronics, informatics, logistics, and other nice things while IPSIA is a kind of center for vocational

education but with 5 years and for people who don’t feel like studying.

This exchange between users highlights the circulating metacommentary about

vocational schools, and about IPSIA (the vocational school for industry and artisanship) in particular, as being for people who do not like studying. The representation of school trips in IPSIA as people behind bars in Figure 3 may suggest that the IPSIA students— when left relatively unsupervised—get into serious trouble. This representation, which is both born from and contributing to existing discourses about school types and the

students who attend them, provides telling commentary and a moralistic discourse around low academic performance, laziness, and a lack of desire to study by associating those qualities with criminals and incarceration. In the case of this representation of IPSIA,

20 _{Original posts in Italian:}

serena__pisano Mi dite cosa cazzo è sta ipsia?

sgabess @serena__pisano è un professionale, ma di quelli proprio per fatti per la gente che non ha voglia di fare un cazzo

io_non_sono_leggenda @serena__pisanouna scuola dove si impara a fare il meccanico ,ecc.. Ci vanno

quelli che non hanno voglia di studiare

io_non_sono_leggenda @serena__pisano il professionale in poche parole

ma.r.i.a_@serena__pisano sarebbe un istituto professionale

_yassintibaldi_@its_francesco_1 itis istituto tecnico industriale statale ci va chi ha voglia di

studiare(sfortunatamente è privo di ragazze)e li ti insegnano elettronica informatica logistica e altre cose carine mentre l'ipsia è una specie di cfp ma con 5 anni r ci va chi non ha voglia di studiare

many of the commenters appeared to agree with or at least appreciate the connection between vocational school students and incarcerated criminals, but other users took issue with the way other schools were represented. The exchange below occurs in response to the representation of the artistic lyceum students as users of marijuana—“burnouts”—in Figure 321:

ama_v_12: enough with these discriminations. it’s not true that everyone smokes weed at the

artistic lyceum. maybe a little but not everyone does it.

Chiaraadominici @ama_v_12: really because I want to go to the artistic lyceum but I’m scared.

ama_v_12 @chiara_dominici13: really they’re just discriminations. This friend of mine is in the second year and he doesn’t smoke doesn’t drink and at his school they don’t sell weed, but not even in others so don’t worry

Chiaraadominici @ama_v_12: thank you so much💟

In this exchange, a prospective student appears to be comforted by the reassurance of another person who has a personal contact in the artistic lyceum that not everyone at the school “smokes weed.” As mentioned above, metacommentary such as these three Figures is not intended to be taken up by users without any reflection; instead, they can provide jumping-off points for discussions and contestations, as was done by these two users. The importance of taking citizen sociolinguistic metacommentary seriously— rather than brushing it off as too biased—lies in the wealth of interactions it facilitates and the wealth of perspectives that emerge in response to it. On this topic, and in relation to narrative, Moore (2015) asserts that

[…] Citizen Sociolinguists are unreliable narrators. Sweeping generalizations, tendentious claims, pseudo-expert posturing and downright prejudice are all richly on display in online discussions of such matters as ‘accent’. But these “biases” become virtues once we ask not about the accuracy of ordinary people’s

21 _{Original in Italian:}

ama_v_12: Ma avete rotto con queste discriminazioni. Non è vero che all' artistico si fumano canne. Forse un po ma non tutti lo fanno.

Chiaraadominici @ama_v_12: davvero perche io voglio andare all'artistico ma ho paura

ama_v_12 @chiara_dominici13: davvero sono soli discriminazioni. Questo mio amico è in 2 e non fuma

non beve e non si droga e a scuola sua non si spaccia ma nemmeno in altre quindi tranquilla

metacommentaries on language, but about the conventions governing their production and reception, and the performative implications of the act of expressing them—which is to say, the conditions under which they become effective (and, perhaps, worth “liking” or “sharing”). (p. 4)

The narratives presented in the remainder of this chapter are a further iteration of citizen metacommentary, both drawing on and contributing to popular formulations of school types and student types such as those proposed in Figures 3, 4, and 5. These narratives about school choice, in which students recount—often via an explanatory sequence (Ochs & Capps 2001)—their past desires to attend particular schools, who and what was

involved in influencing their decision, and how they feel about the decision today, often rely on the audience and co-tellers to accept as a fact that there are qualitative differences between the schools in addition to differences in subject matter.