Abstract
This paper deals with the definition of languages and communities that are other than one’s own. This topic is particularly interesting in contexts in which various communities co-exist and interact in daily communicative practices, as it happens in officially bilingual areas and more and more in urban centers where the migrant population is becoming numerically relevant. The research presented here has been carried out in an Italian school of Bolzano (the main town of the bilingual region Alto Adige/Südtirol) in which the ethnic composition of pupils is highly varied because of their migratory background. Through the analysis of three focus-group recording sessions, the mechanisms of categorizing, name-giving, exclusion and inclusion will be explored.