‘No in English I don’t do that’: exploring Gambian migrants’ linguistic cooperation in Italy

Abstract

This study explores the experience of linguistic cooperation of migrants, focussing on their varying degrees of reliance on others for communication. It adopts an approach that draws theoretically on innovations in the understanding of competence beyond the cognitive-structuralist paradigm and more broadly on the importance of cooperation in the social sphere. Based on the lived experience of Gambian migrants in a shelter as it emerges interactionally between the researcher and three participants, the data show that asking for help can be problematic, and reliance on others changes over time and depending on the tasks and languages involved. Furthermore, when migrants lean on others it is not necessarily long-standing social networks that complement one’s competence but also fleeting encounters, and online tools for individual language learning can be useful when cooperation is not there. Competence beyond individual skills needs to be further researched, so that gradation in cooperation, the use of material affordances and different stances towards reliance on others, as well as where they stem from, are more fully accounted for.