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Alfonso Del Percio
Former Member
Last Name
Del Percio
First name
Alfonso
Phone
+41 71 224 3754
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PublicationType: book reviewJournal: Kodikas/CodeVolume: 31Issue: 3/4
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PublicationType: presentation
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PublicationType: presentation
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PublicationBranding the Nation : Swiss multilingualism's role in the context of governmental negotiations on Switzerland's promotion( 2012-05-04)In this paper, I aim to reflect on how current socioeconomic transformations affect the role that language and culture play for the postmodern nation-state. In this context, I am particularly interested in how and why multilingualism and cultural diversity emerge as key promotional arguments within the Swiss state and, principally in the field of governmental negotiations on Switzerland's nation branding strategies. The crises of western national economies in the 1970s and the liberalization of national markets resulted in a growing global competition. Consequently, since the 1980s, in order to create and ensure the conditions of access to the internationalized markets and to transform national territories into appealing business locations attracting foreign investments, several nation-states decided to undertake specific nation branding activities marketing their territories abroad. In Switzerland the promotion of the nation has been the object of an ongoing debate since the1920s. However it is only in 1996, after several US-American class action lawsuits targeting Swiss banks' role during the Nazi Regime and in the context of international critics regarding Switzerland's growing political isolation (neither being a EU nor a UNO member state), that to protect Switzerland from potential foreign retaliations, the Swiss government mandated a taskforce with the definition of a set of key messages expressing the "Brand Switzerland" [Marke Schweiz], allowing for an efficient branding of the nation. It is in this context that discourses on Switzerland as a brand have made of Swiss diversity - traditionally conceptualized as a central element of national pride - an economic argument. Through a critical analysis of institutional documents and audio recordings, I try to gain an understanding on the negotiation process transforming Switzerland into a brand and highlight the conditions, ideologies and interests making that the "Brand Switzerland" has taken the form it has and not another. Moreover, I argue that the transformation of Swiss diversity in an economic argument is not in contrast with an ideology of multilingualism conceptualized as a central element of national pride. Rather, both ideologies seem to intersect, co-occur and inform each other. Furthermore, I highlight the emerging tensions between from the one side the governmental necessity to impose a standardized, i.e. for every promotional aim and context prevailing fix "Brand Switzerland"; from the other side the local (city or regional) as well as sectorial (art, tourism, economy, science) promotion agencies' need of a marketing discourse on Switzerland which is unstable, i.e. constantly changing according to the target audience and the promoted sector. Finally, referring to Bourdieu's concept of the linguistic market, I explain that even if the discourses on the "Brand Switzerland" imply a valorization of diversity, they refer to a specific form of multilingualism, i.e. of prestigious, highly valued languages. In other words, the appropriation of diversity reproduces the currently existing hierarchies of languages in Switzerland and, consequently, the conditions of access of their speakers to prestigious positions in society.Type: presentation
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PublicationType: presentation
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PublicationComing up against capitalism: Economic interventionism and the appropriation of diversity( 2012-02-09)At the end of the 1980ies, the liberalization of the national markets resulted in a growing global competition between the national economies. In Switzerland, these transformations accelerated the crisis of the machine and watch industry, which locally resulted in high unemployment rates. In order to respond to these economic developments, the government (on both the national and local level) implemented several measures with the twofold aim of transforming the Swiss territory into an internationally appealing business location and of creating the conditions of an industry that capitalizes on local diversity. In our presentation, we will show how, reacting to the global transformations of the political economy, key actors in Switzerland - representing specific political-economic interests and ideologies - invested resources in the "redesigning" of Swiss capitalism. Our focus is on how these changes resulted in a political and economic appropriation of linguistic and cultural diversity that transformed local multilingualism into an economic resource but, at the same time, came up against limits inherent in the logic of capitalism itself. For this presentation, we are drawing on ethnographic data collected in the framework of two sociolinguistic research projects investigating the promotion of Swiss economy. Our analysis will critically highlight three points: First, the historical and ideological conditions of the commodification of diversity on both a national and local level, i.e., the bilingual city of Biel/Bienne. Second, the discursive construction of diversity as an economic resource, i.e., as a marker of distinction and as a unique selling proposition, but also as an instrument giving access to the multilingual international markets. Third, while the commercialization of diversity is conceived as an emblematic feature of late capitalism, the economic appropriation of diversity reproduces similar forms of social inequality which sociolinguists have observed in modernism.Type: presentation
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PublicationType: presentation
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PublicationType: presentation
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PublicationType: presentation
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