[Linganth] TOMORROW Invitation to talk by Dr Cécile Vigouroux 'Strategic Transnationalism or the Sociolinguistic Life of a Con Artist' - 5.30-7 pm (UK time), 22 June, 2023, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Pl, London WC1E 7HB, United Kingdom

[Del Percio, Alfonso]

UCL IoE Centre for Applied Linguistics Research Seminar Series



                 Strategic Transnationalism or the Sociolinguistic Life of a Con Artist


Dr Cécile Vigouroux, IEA Paris & Simon Fraser University, Canda



5:30-7pm (UK time) Thursday 22 June, 2023,

University College London, 1-19 Torrington Pl, London WC1E 7HB, (Lecture Theatre 115)

The talk can also be attended online using this link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/2053485234


In this presentation, I show how sociolinguistics can contribute productively and uniquely to the theoretical and methodological debates on transnationalism. I examine the social and language practices of WillCo, a migrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who relocated to South Africa 18 years before I met him in Cape Town. Although WillCo was sedentary, his transnationalism was produced through the intersection of material artefacts, bodies, identity formations, and performances. I interpret transnationalism here as a body of semiotic practices of bordering and debordering that involve both anchoring in a physical location (a national-border imagination according to which practices are organized and identities assigned) and challenging the regime of mobilities enforced and sustained by nation-states. I invoke the notion of strategic transnationalism which I define as involving the instantiation of the nation-state as a category of concurrently thinking and acting while at the same time usurping the nation-state’s sovereign power to identify, regiment, and control bodies and their mobilities.


Cécile B. Vigouroux is currently an Associate Professor of sociolinguistics in the French department at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her scholarship focuses on transnational identity formation, the reshaping of linguistic ideologies, sociocultural transformations triggered by new forms of mobility, socioeconomic inequalities, the impact of informal economy on language practices, and La Francophonie. Her work bridges sociolinguistics with other disciplines such as geography and economics. She has held fellowships from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, in Göttingen, Germany (Spring 2012); the Mellon Foundation, through the University of Cape Town, South Africa (Oct. 2012); and the Collegium de Lyon, France (2013-14).



Dr Alfonso Del Percio
Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics
IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society
University College London
Centre for Applied Linguistics
20 Bedford Way, Room 628a
London WC1H 0AL
Co-Editor: Language, Culture and Society
https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/lcs/main
Blog: https://disruptiveinequalities.com/


Dr Alfonso Del Percio
Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics
IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society
University College London
Centre for Applied Linguistics
20 Bedford Way, Room 628a
London WC1H 0AL
Co-Editor: Language, Culture and Society
https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/lcs/main
Blog: https://disruptiveinequalities.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/linganth/attachments/20230621/65cab6b7/attachment-0001.htm>