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Publikation On the social life of a city anthem. semiotic objects, ideologies of belonging, and the reproduction of sociocultural difference(Routledge, 2015) Del Percio, AlfonsoThis article takes a closer look at the role of semiotic objects such as texts, monuments, songs, and flags in the definition of both sociocultural boundaries and legitimation of the resulting relations of difference. The focus is a specific anthem, Z'Basel an mym Rhy [In Basel on my Rhine], which is the official anthem of Basel, a city in northwest Switzerland. In line with Appadurai's [1996. The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] claim in favor of a complex analysis of an object's social life, this article is a historiographical investigation of the circulation of this semiotic object across time and space – from the moment of its conception as a poem in 1806, to the present day. The analysis centers on how this specific semiotic object has been re-appropriated and transformed continuously, throughout its social life, by new actors, in new contexts, and for new purposes. Indeed, from its origin as a romantic ode for intimate private consumption, this text gradually emerged as an object of cultural consumption on a larger scale, taking on the role of an instrument of pride and power, and becoming a tool to legitimize social structuration.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation Migration(Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2021) Del Percio, Alfonso01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation New speakers on lost ground in the football stadium(De Gruyter, 2015) Del Percio, AlfonsoFootball is a key site for local pride to be enacted by fans through the celebration of local dialects and local myths. At the same time, sport industries are currently undergoing major transformations and becoming global, professional and profit-oriented. Consequently, pride in a place is not solely the property of the given area or its inhabitants. Indeed, fandom is increasingly enacted by new groups who speak different languages and live in other places, and who thus cross borders to consume local fan practices and tokens of imagined local authenticity. Furthermore, football clubs are increasingly owned by multinational investors who employ international and multilingual football workers. Meanwhile, nostalgic adherents of so-called traditional football frequently interpret the emergence of these transnational actors as a corruption of this sport. The presence of such transnational actors raises questions regarding the challenges encountered by these new speakers when they produce and consume cultural resources that are widely perceived to be not only the commodities sold by the football industry but also tokens of local authenticity. Drawing on an ethnography conducted in the stadium of the FC Basel in Switzerland, I discuss the case of two transnational actors who are identified as new speakers of Basel’s local dialect and of standard German, both codes being specifically associated with being a legitimate fan or coach of FC Basel. In discussing the challenges faced by these new speakers during their encounters with FC Basel as a commercial product, I examine how these individuals have constructed their legitimacy as members of FC Basel’s imagined community and analyze how, why, and by whom this legitimacy is given or contested.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation The governmentality of migration. Intercultural communication and the politics of (dis)placement in Southern Europe(Elsevier, 2016) Del Percio, AlfonsoThe European Union and the Italian state have currently implemented a state infrastructure enabling to govern the migration flows towards Europe. This infrastructure has involved the formation of an ensemble of institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections that raise the efficiency of migrants' reception, integration or expulsion. Expertise on intercultural communication has been celebrated as a key resource of this infrastructure. In this article, I discuss the status of expertise on intercultural communication within an infrastructure managing migration in Italy. I focus on the circumstances by which expertise on intercultural communication has emerged as a crucial technology of this infrastructure and on ways this knowledge contributes to the regulation of migrants' access to the life projects migration stands for.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation Engineering commodifiable workers. language, migration and the governmentality of the self(Springer, 2017) Del Percio, AlfonsoThis article examines the strategies and forms of expertise on language and communication mobilized to engineer commodifiable migrant workers. Drawing on an ethnographic account of counselling practices in a state-run Italian job guidance centre for newly arrived migrants, I examine the calculations, tactics, and forms of expertise on language and communication mobilised by job counsellors. Here, I illustrate how these tactics regulate, or “police”, migrants’ communicational conduct and promote their socialisation into a desirable professional self that can be commodified on the Italian job market. In doing so, I demonstrate that the state’s investment in the policing of migrants and the commodifiability of their labour is an investment in a larger project of societal consent for both the arriving migrants and for the forms of precarity they are believed to embody in Italy. At the same time, I argue this state agenda should not make us blind to the fact that the individuals and actors, including professional counsellors, working in these job guidance centres seem ready to invest a great deal into these spaces in the interest of pursuing another, more emancipated agenda. Indeed, in my paper I aim to demonstrate that job guidance centres are also spaces of hope where people work to support migrants who are preparing themselves for a viable future and attempting to create the practical framework for their life projects.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation Genealogies of reflexivity. Register formations and the making of affective workers(De Gruyter, 2022) Del Percio, AlfonsoHow has the ability to express reflexivity, including regulating affect, come to be part of the bundled self that workers are required to be? This paper offers a rigorous genealogical analysis of the multiple histories of knowledge and power that have informed the emergence and shaping of ‘reflexive registers,’ or socially typified ways of speaking and reflecting about oneself that stand for morally marked models of selfhood. It takes as a starting-point programs documented in my ethnography of employability programs in London, UK where workers of all sorts are asked to learn to examine their personalities and to express their feelings. It then draws on original historiographical and ethnographic data that allows documentation of the logics and circumstances informing the emergence and development of reflexivity as a resource for employability. It argues for an interdisciplinary understanding of reflexivity and its communicability that theorises the workers as products of history, capital, and affect.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation Introduction. language, work and affective capitalism(De Gruyter, 2022) Dlaske, Kati; Del Percio, AlfonsoThis special issue contributes to scholarship on language and affective economy by exploring the role played by affect in shaping work and workers under current configurations of capitalism. We take as a starting point the observation of increased valorisation and instrumentalisation of affect in the contemporary phase of capitalism. In this editorial introduction to the special issue, we set the scene by first outlining our questions, aims and objectives. Subsequently, we situate the contribution made by this issue in a larger social theorisation of affect and capitalism, particularly the notion of affective capitalism, and reflect on how this theorisation can contribute to sociolinguistic scholarship on work. The introduction concludes with an outline of the articles in this special issue, highlighting the way, empirically and conceptually, each article contributes to our understanding of the intersections between language, work and affective capitalism.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation Language and neoliberal governmentality(Routledge, 2020) Martin Rojo, Luisa; Del Percio, Alfonso; Martín Rojo, Luisa; Del Percio, AlfonsoAgainst a background of the ongoing crisis of global capitalism and the fracturing of the neoliberal project, this book provides a detailed account of the ways in which language is profoundly imbricated in the neoliberalising of the fabric of social life. With chapters from a cast list of international scholars covering topics such as the commodification of education and language, unemployment, and the governmentality of the self, and discussion chapters from Monica Heller and Jackie Urla bringing the various strands together, the book ultimately helps us to understand how language is part of political economy and the everyday making and remaking of society and individuals. It provides both a theoretical framework and a significant methodological "tool-box" to critically detect, understand, and resist the impact of neoliberalism on everyday social spheres, particularly in relation to language. Presenting richly empirical studies that expand our understanding of how neoliberalism as a regime of truth and as a practice of governance performs within the terrain of language, this book is an essential resource for researchers and graduate students in English language, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and related areas.03 - SammelbandPublikation When linguistic capital isn’t enough. Personality development and English speakerhood as capital in India(Routledge, 2021) Highet, Katy; Del Percio, Alfonso; Petrovic, John E.; Yazan, BedrettinDiscourses of development, as well as popular understandings, hold that access to education in English is essential for alleviating inequality. As such, since the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, India has witnessed a boom in not only private English coaching, but also NGO educational institutions. However, drawing on ethnographic data from an English and soft-skills training NGO in Delhi, this chapter argues that the conceptualization of linguistic capital does not fully capture how students invest in English in the hope of achieving future success. Besides the speculative capital (Tabiola & Lorente, 2017) that the language represents, and the shaping of neoliberal subjectivities through soft-skill training (Urciuoli, 2008; Allan, 2013) and “personality development”, students equally invest in the cultural capital of English speakerhood, that is, the “doing” and “being” of an English speaker, a notion deeply intertwined with class and caste, and which extends to encompass students’ bodies and “personalities”.04A - Beitrag SammelbandPublikation Branding the nation. Swiss multilingualism and the promotional capitalization on national history under late capitalism(John Benjamins, 2016) Del Percio, AlfonsoThis paper discusses how Switzerland is branded by the Swiss state under late capitalism. Drawing on discursive data collected in the framework of a research project investigating the international promotion of Switzerland, I particularly focus on how multilingualism and cultural diversity are constructed by the Swiss government as a capital belonging to Switzerland and its history and on how and why this imagined historical capital is reframed in promotional terms. In doing so, I question the function of the historicity of Swiss multilingualism and cultural diversity in nation branding practices and analyze the logics causing specific tokens of multilingualism and cultural diversity to emerge as desirable promotional features. Finally, I research how the promotional investment in Swiss multilingualism and cultural diversity affects the status and value of its historical capital and how this has consequences for what can be said (or not) about Switzerland and its history.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift