Sociolinguistics, Political Economy, and the Romance of Resistance 

Alfonso Del Percio, University College London 

Language is political. It is entangled with social inequality, violence and oppression. Its construction, celebration or stigmatization serves the making of capitalism and colonialism. As sociolinguists, we are aware of this, we are outraged. The establishment of sociolinguistics in the 1950ies was one among many attempts globally not just to study, understand and transform the oppressive effects of language. It has also been an attempt to produce alternative, more emancipatory knowledge about language. To do this, we surrounded ourselves with an apparatus of resistance allowing us to challenge, rethink and subvert the oppressive effects of language.  What makes our resistance possible? What makes our scholarship on language and social inequality circulate, be picked up and integrated into projects of resistance?  In this talk, I explore my own resisting practices by discussing three projects that I developed in the last two years with the objective to reimagine language for a more inclusive, equal and peaceful world. Differently from liberal, political theorists who understand power and resistance as opposites, power as oppression, resistance as emancipation, I introduce an analytical shift which allows me to understand resistance not as a practice expressed from a position of exteriority to capitalism and colonialism. Inspired by Abu Lughold (2008), Tebaldi (2022) and Urla (2012) on resistance and social critique, and Foucault's work on power and counter-conduct (Foucault, 2003), I challenge a romanticized understanding of resistance as an expression of a heroic, conscious, free will of resisting people. Our resistance, I argue, rather takes shape from within the very structures of power we intend to challenge and transform. With Urla (2012), I ask: why does our resistance takes the shape it takes? And what is our resistance telling us about the forms of disciplinary control, modernization, and oppression in which our practices of resisting are enmeshed?