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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 651

Part of Session 125: The legitimate speaker in a transforming political economy (Other abstracts in this session)

Who is legitimate to sell the nation ?: Language as a variable argument in a competing market

Authors: Del Percio, Alfonso
Submitted by: Del Percio, Alfonso (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland)

As a reaction to the global economic transformations, the Swiss government mandated Osec, the Swiss Office of Commercial Expansion, to coordinate the worldwide branding of the national economy. The aim of this mandate is twofold: 1) to create and ensure Switzerland’s conditions of access to the deregulated global markets, and 2) to transform Switzerland into a business location attracting foreign investors. The mandate further includes the promotion of Swiss goods and services and the marketing of Switzerland as a business location in the context of international fairs and events for potential investors organized by Osec. It is in these promotional events that the decision of which promoters are legitimated (or not) to promote (i.e. speak about, represent, stage, embody, brand) the nation becomes the object of Osec’s strategic investment.

This paper aims to reflect on who (speaking which language(s)? With which origins? Having what knowledge about Switzerland and its economy?) counts as legitimate to promote the nation in the context of Osec’s nation branding activities and on how the legitimization of these promoters is conditioned by the current political economic conditions as well as by Switzerland’s strategic positioning in the globalized economy.

Based on a critical sociolinguistic discourse analysis of ethnographic data I explain that the legitimate promoter of Switzerland is not stable. The legitimation attributed to promoters, their language(s) and ethnic origins by Osec and the public varies, depending on the kinds of Swiss products marketed, the public addressed or the Swiss location promoted (e.g., the nation as a whole, a region or a municipality). Furthermore, my analysis will highlight the emerging tensions between three communicational challenges: 1) Osec’s strategic need to choose promoters which represent a clearly defined and in the global markets highly recognizable brand of Switzerland and its citizens; 2) Osec’s political obligation based on Switzerland’s federal structure to select someone who is legitimate to represent the linguistic, cultural and economic particularity of every region pertaining to the diverse but also fragmented business location that is Switzerland; and 3) Osec’s strategy to address the target markets in their own language and through local speakers.

This analysis on the legitimate promoter enables a deep understanding of the interrelationship between, on the one hand, ideologies of language (varieties) and ethnicity and, on the other, logics of the liberalized markets in the context of nation branding activities, highlighting how a nation constructs an ideal of itself, its citizens, languages and cultures as well as who is included in this ideal and who is not.