Books by Alfonso Del Percio
Bloomsbury, 2024
Providing a series of crucial debates on language, power, difference and social inequality, this ... more Providing a series of crucial debates on language, power, difference and social inequality, this volume traces developments and dissonances in critical sociolinguistics. Eminent and emerging academic figures from around the world collaboratively engage with the work of Monica Heller, offering insights into the politics and power formations that surround knowledge of language and society.
Challenging disciplinary power dynamics in critical sociolinguistics, this book is an experiment testing new ways of producing knowledge on language and society. Critically discussing central sociolinguistic concepts from critique to political economy, labor to media, education to capitalism, each chapter features a number of scholars offering their distinct social and political perspectives on the place played by language in the social fabric. Through its theoretical, epistemological, and methodological breadth, the volume foregrounds political alliances in how language is known and explored by scholars writing from specific geopolitical spaces that come with diverse political struggles and dynamics of power. Allowing for a diversity of genres, debates, controversies, fragments and programmatic manifestos, the volume prefigures a new mode of knowledge production that multiplies perspectives and starts practicing the more inclusive, just and equal worlds that critical sociolinguists envision.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Elements in Applied Linguistics, 2023
In this Element, the authors write about the everyday production and experiences of banal inequal... more In this Element, the authors write about the everyday production and experiences of banal inequality. Through a series of sections, each comprising of a blogpost written for Disruptive Inequalities, and a commentary from the author on the predicaments they encountered in the writing process, this Element shares, and confronts, the ways we fabricate stories and use writing to resist. It makes visible the choices, practices, and reflections that have led to the writing of our stories and offers the tools we have used to fabricate them, to all those who may find them meaningful to appropriate, adapt, and translate to fight the struggles that they want to fight. These tools are formulated in a way for writers to develop their own methods of storytelling and activism. The authors hope this Element contributes to an ongoing debate on how writing serves banal resistance.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This edited volume presents an empirical account of how neoliberal ideas are adopted on the groun... more This edited volume presents an empirical account of how neoliberal ideas are adopted on the ground by different actors in different educational settings, from bilingual education in the US, to migrant work programmes in Italy, to minority language teaching in Mexico. It examines language and education as objects of neoliberalization and as powerful tools and sites through which ideological principles underpinning neoliberal societies and economies are (re)produced and maintained (and with that, inequality and exclusion). This book aims to produce a complex understanding of how neoliberal rationalities are articulated within locally anchored and historical regimes of knowledge on language, education and society.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This book presents an empirical account of how neoliberal ideas are adopted on the ground by diff... more This book presents an empirical account of how neoliberal ideas are adopted on the ground by different actors in different educational settings. It aims to produce a complex understanding of how neoliberal rationalities are articulated within locally anchored and historical regimes of knowledge on language, education and society. Review A rich collection of empirical studies showing how important language education and language of education are as terrains for struggles around neoliberal governmentality, and illuminating debates about what neoliberalism is, how it works for individuals, groups, corporations and states, and where its contradictions lie.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Articles and Book chapters by Alfonso Del Percio
Applied Linguistics and Politics, 2024
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism , 2023
This article offers an original ethnographic documentation of employability schemes targeting mig... more This article offers an original ethnographic documentation of employability schemes targeting migrants in contemporary Italy. It argues that analysts' current theorisations of time and space compression do not help us understand the multiple temporalities that migrants are subjected to when crossing borders, including those of labour market regimes. This ethnographic account is informed by a scholarship of migration that has extensively documented how the acceleration of movement and access to language, citizenship or work co-exist with experiences of waiting, elongation, withdrawal and delayprocesses that complicate our understanding of the temporal regimes migrants are subjected to. Through a thick documentation of the experiences of unemployed migrants, job counsellors and other social actors in employability programmes in Rome, this article argues that both speeding up and slowing down are technologies of temporal management, including time-space compression, elongation and partitioning. These technologies regulate the time and speed of migrants' incorporation into the labour market and allow the performance of processes of differential inclusion.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Page 1. Ingo Warnke (ed.): Diskurslinguistik. Band 1: Die Diskurslinguistik nach Foucault. Band 2... more Page 1. Ingo Warnke (ed.): Diskurslinguistik. Band 1: Die Diskurslinguistik nach Foucault. Band 2: Methoden der Diskurslinguistik.In: KODIKAS/Code. Ars Semeiotica 31(3/4), S.362-366 Alfonso Del Percio ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Die Stellung von Subjekt und Akteur im Diskurs gehört zu den zentralen Problemen der Diskurstheor... more Die Stellung von Subjekt und Akteur im Diskurs gehört zu den zentralen Problemen der Diskurstheorie. Der folgende Dialog dreht sich um die Schülerin Sarah, die sich mit ihren LehrerInnen (Szene 1), Eltern (Szene 2) und FreundInnen (Szene 3) über die Frage diskursiver Agency auseinandersetzt. Dabei wird sie mit strukturalistischen und poststrukturalistischen sowie pragmatisch-interaktionalen Perspektiven zur Frage konfrontiert, inwiefern Subjekte Diskurse produzieren oder umgekehrt Diskurse Subjekte hervorbringen. Der Dialog greift auf theoretische Positionen in den Sozial- und Sprachwissenschaften zurück, die in Gestalt fiktiver Personen performativ dargestellt und in Beziehung gesetzt werden. Dabei geht es um fundamentale Fragen der Diskurstheorie wie etwa: Wie ist sozialer Sinn zu sehen – als das Produkt einer Grammatik, die von den DiskursteilnehmerInnen ausgeführt wird, oder als das Produkt ihrer kreativen Praxis? Agiert das Subjekt als eine vernunft- bzw. wissensgeleitete Handlungsinstanz oder stellt es eine Illusion innerer Einheit dar, die in kontingenten diskursiven Akten vernäht wird? Inwiefern wird es zum Objekt hegemonialer Praktiken, die auf die Konstruktion einer sozialer Ordnung oder einer Sprachideologie zielen?
Die zentrale Figur ist die siebzehnjährige Sarah, die als Tochter eines marokkanischen Vaters und einer deutschen Mutter in einem Gymnasium zwei Leistungskurse in Deutsch und Sozialwissenschaften besucht. Sie sieht sich auf Grund ihrer ungezügelten Intelligenz, ihrer rebellischen Art und ihrer interkulturellen Biographie in ihrer Schule tendenziell als eine Außenseiterin. In der Schule hat sie mit LehrerInnen „aus altem Schrot und Korn“ zu tun. Mit ihren top-down pädagogischen Methoden stehen diese für ältere strukturalistische Tendenzen in der Soziologie und Linguistik. Ihre Eltern dagegen, die die pragmatisch-interaktionistische Wende in diesen Disziplinen personifizieren, sind von dem liberalen und kritischen Geist der 1970er Jahre getragen. Sarah ist kein Kind, das sich einfach mit den Rollen arrangieren würde, die an es herangetragen werden. Immer wieder unterläuft sie die in der Schule vorgeschriebenen Regeln, entzieht sich den normativen Erwartungen ihrer Eltern und verwickelt sich in kritische theoretische Auseinandersetzungen mit ihren FreundInnen.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Multilingual Encounters in Europe's Institutional Spaces - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/multilingual-encounters-in-europes-institutional-spaces-9781441107817/#sthash.pXSOOBm3.dpuf, Feb 2014
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Football is a key site for local pride to be enacted by fans through the celebration of local dia... more Football 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.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This article analyzes the logics governing the Swiss state’s valorization of Swiss linguistic div... more This article analyzes the logics governing the Swiss state’s valorization of Swiss linguistic diversity under conditions of late capitalism. If Helvetic governments have historically invested in national multilingualism, contemporary Switzerland continues to focus on multilingualism to maintain the privileged position occupied by its economy on global markets. However, in order to be able to capitalize on this historical capital, the Swiss state adapts the argument of multilingualism to the markets it addresses, which leads to a hierarchization of the forms of « diversity » in Switzerland. In order to explain the role of diversity in the context of the current economic policies and activities of the Swiss state, to understand which form of diversity is considered as a source of added value, and finally to understand the interests influencing the value attributed to diversity, I analyze the promotional practices conducted by the Swiss state in Germany, aiming to attract German entrepreneurs and capitals to Switzerland. I particularly focus on the role of multilingualism as a key feature of the international marketing strategy of Switzerland and highlight the strategic adaptation of that argument to the targeted publics.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
A B S T R A C T This article documents the debates surrounding the policing of the brand " Switze... more A B S T R A C T This article documents the debates surrounding the policing of the brand " Switzerland. " It demonstrates that debating nation brands—particularly within the framework of a state policy of economic expansion—seems to be about who gets to produce and consume the desires that nations are imagined to stand for as much as about who gets to capitalize on the imagined value that these nations seem to have in specific markets. I also argue that if brands effectively seem to be precious sources of added value that can be exchanged with other forms of capital, not everybody is considered to have equal access to this capital. Because of their capability to produce and naturalize hierarchies between commodities, nation brands—and the entire institutional apparatus within which they are anchored and regulated—have also to be understood as key technologies of a state infrastructure governing the distribution of capital under current capitalistic conditions.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This paper discusses how Switzerland is branded by the Swiss state under late capitalism. Drawing... more This 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 country's 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.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Books by Alfonso Del Percio
Challenging disciplinary power dynamics in critical sociolinguistics, this book is an experiment testing new ways of producing knowledge on language and society. Critically discussing central sociolinguistic concepts from critique to political economy, labor to media, education to capitalism, each chapter features a number of scholars offering their distinct social and political perspectives on the place played by language in the social fabric. Through its theoretical, epistemological, and methodological breadth, the volume foregrounds political alliances in how language is known and explored by scholars writing from specific geopolitical spaces that come with diverse political struggles and dynamics of power. Allowing for a diversity of genres, debates, controversies, fragments and programmatic manifestos, the volume prefigures a new mode of knowledge production that multiplies perspectives and starts practicing the more inclusive, just and equal worlds that critical sociolinguists envision.
Articles and Book chapters by Alfonso Del Percio
Die zentrale Figur ist die siebzehnjährige Sarah, die als Tochter eines marokkanischen Vaters und einer deutschen Mutter in einem Gymnasium zwei Leistungskurse in Deutsch und Sozialwissenschaften besucht. Sie sieht sich auf Grund ihrer ungezügelten Intelligenz, ihrer rebellischen Art und ihrer interkulturellen Biographie in ihrer Schule tendenziell als eine Außenseiterin. In der Schule hat sie mit LehrerInnen „aus altem Schrot und Korn“ zu tun. Mit ihren top-down pädagogischen Methoden stehen diese für ältere strukturalistische Tendenzen in der Soziologie und Linguistik. Ihre Eltern dagegen, die die pragmatisch-interaktionistische Wende in diesen Disziplinen personifizieren, sind von dem liberalen und kritischen Geist der 1970er Jahre getragen. Sarah ist kein Kind, das sich einfach mit den Rollen arrangieren würde, die an es herangetragen werden. Immer wieder unterläuft sie die in der Schule vorgeschriebenen Regeln, entzieht sich den normativen Erwartungen ihrer Eltern und verwickelt sich in kritische theoretische Auseinandersetzungen mit ihren FreundInnen.
Challenging disciplinary power dynamics in critical sociolinguistics, this book is an experiment testing new ways of producing knowledge on language and society. Critically discussing central sociolinguistic concepts from critique to political economy, labor to media, education to capitalism, each chapter features a number of scholars offering their distinct social and political perspectives on the place played by language in the social fabric. Through its theoretical, epistemological, and methodological breadth, the volume foregrounds political alliances in how language is known and explored by scholars writing from specific geopolitical spaces that come with diverse political struggles and dynamics of power. Allowing for a diversity of genres, debates, controversies, fragments and programmatic manifestos, the volume prefigures a new mode of knowledge production that multiplies perspectives and starts practicing the more inclusive, just and equal worlds that critical sociolinguists envision.
Die zentrale Figur ist die siebzehnjährige Sarah, die als Tochter eines marokkanischen Vaters und einer deutschen Mutter in einem Gymnasium zwei Leistungskurse in Deutsch und Sozialwissenschaften besucht. Sie sieht sich auf Grund ihrer ungezügelten Intelligenz, ihrer rebellischen Art und ihrer interkulturellen Biographie in ihrer Schule tendenziell als eine Außenseiterin. In der Schule hat sie mit LehrerInnen „aus altem Schrot und Korn“ zu tun. Mit ihren top-down pädagogischen Methoden stehen diese für ältere strukturalistische Tendenzen in der Soziologie und Linguistik. Ihre Eltern dagegen, die die pragmatisch-interaktionistische Wende in diesen Disziplinen personifizieren, sind von dem liberalen und kritischen Geist der 1970er Jahre getragen. Sarah ist kein Kind, das sich einfach mit den Rollen arrangieren würde, die an es herangetragen werden. Immer wieder unterläuft sie die in der Schule vorgeschriebenen Regeln, entzieht sich den normativen Erwartungen ihrer Eltern und verwickelt sich in kritische theoretische Auseinandersetzungen mit ihren FreundInnen.
Nous nous appuierons sur six études de cas qui examinent les discours sur le plurilinguisme dans des espaces éducatifs, économiques, politiques, gouvernementaux et administratifs situés dans des contextes nationaux et internationaux différents (Canada, France, Suisse, Luxembourg). Nous chercherons à comprendre quels savoirs produits par quels acteurs sont considérés comme légitimes pour contribuer à la production de quels discours sur quelle diversité linguistique et sur quel plurilinguisme. Nous réfléchirons aussi aux effets de ces savoirs sur les types de pratiques éducatives, sociales, politiques, et économiques qu’ils contribuent à légitimer.
https://disruptiveinequalities.wordpress.com/2017/06/02/brexit-love-and-the-political-economy-of-rights/
https://channelviewpublications.wordpress.com/2017/09/14/the-impact-of-neoliberalism-on-education-and-language-learning/