93426 - Language and Late Capitalism (1) (Lm)

Learning outcomes

The primary goal of this course is to explore the multifaceted interconnection between language and late/neoliberal capitalism. By the end of the course, students will show an understanding of the role that language plays in producing and unraveling contemporary global capitalism. Whether we see it as a commodity, a form of symbolic capital, a means of production, a disciplinary script, or a subversive technique of emancipation, language participates both in structuring and undermining the forms of political rationality and moral subjectivity that characterize our neoliberal present. Far from being a mere device for the transmission of information, language plays an important role in reproducing structures of social inequality and challenging power relations. Throughout the course, students will develop tools to analyze the discursive and semiotic forms that characterize our everyday lives. They will learn how to look at linguistic interactions and graphic artifacts (i.e., street signage, typefaces, letterforms, brands, logos, and other types of graphic media) as socially and politically meaningful semiotic technologies that shape our worlds. By the end of the course, students will gain a practice-based and theory-driven understanding of the intersection between language and capitalism, which they will be able to deploy in a vast range of professional and academic domains.

Course contents

This course will engage the role of language—both as a symbolic code and as a material tool—in the spreading of late/neoliberal capitalism. While most analyses of the world’s current order tend to focus on political and economic aspects, this course explores how certain ways of speaking and using language may produce capitalist forms of reasoning and practical conduct.

Throughout the course, students will develop tools to analyze the discursive and semiotic forms that characterize our everyday lives. They will learn how to look at linguistic interactions and graphic artifacts (i.e., street signage, typefaces, letterforms, brands, logos, and other types of graphic media) as socially and politically meaningful semiotic technologies that shape our worlds. They also will learn how to analyze new protocols of discourse that characterize our everyday lives: the customer satisfaction survey, the service encounter, the checklist, the logbook, the flowchart, the electoral mission statement, the training session, etc. Despite their apparent ordinariness, these discursive genres/textual artifacts are key for the production of the self-improving and self-reflexive subjects required by the regimes of moral accountability and the forms of market rationality that characterize our contemporary moment. While reading ethnographic analyses of specific technologies of discourse, students will engage broader questions: How pervasive are neoliberal structures of practice? To what extent can neoliberalism be represented as an overarching and coherent global trend generated by the homogenizing forces of Western Capitalism? Is our moral and affective experience completely shaped by the extension of economic rationality to all areas of life?

The aim is to show how, within a regime of advanced capitalism, life and labor unfold through complex interplays of semiotic codes, affective registers, and material objects.

Classes will begin on April 5, 2027 and will proceed according to the following schedule

· Monday 11-13

· Tuesday 15-17

· Wednesday 11-13

Readings/Bibliography

The Italian academic system differentiates between attending and non-attending students. At the beginning of the course, prospective students will decide in which capacity they wish to take the course. Regular attendance will make it easier to pass the exam. A student is considered attending if they participate in at least 75% of the classes. This means to be eligible for the status of attending student, you should not miss more than 4 classes out of 15 (the course consists of 15 classes). Please note that I will take the roll at the beginning of each class.

Students not attending class will be evaluated through an oral exam on two texts of their choice among the following list of books for non-attending students:

· Delfanti, Alessandro. 2021. The warehouse. Workers and robots at Amazon. Pluto Books.

· Donzelli, Aurora. 2019. Methods of Desire: Language, Morality, and Affect in Neoliberal Indonesia. University of Hawaii Press.

· Keane, Webb. 2007. Christian moderns. University of California Press.

· Holborow, Marnie. 2015. Language and neoliberalism. Routledge.

· Holmes, Douglas R. 2013. Economy of words: communicative imperatives in central banks.University of Chicago Press.

· MacLochlainn, Scott. 2022. The Copy Generic: How the Nonspecific Makes Our Social Worlds. University of Chicago Press.

· Ngai, Sianne. 2020.Theory of the gimmick: Aesthetic judgment and capitalist form. Harvard University Press.

· Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015.The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.

· Yurchak, Alexei. 2013. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. Princeton University Press.

Students attending class will be expected to read the set of articles or book chapters assigned each week (more details on are provided in the course schedule for attending students, below). All the course materials for attending students will be made available at the beginning of the course in the ‘teaching materials’ sections of the website (on VIRTUALE), only accessible to Unibo students with institutional credentials.

NB This reading list is tentative and subject to change

 

1. Week: Introduction-Late Capitalism Semiotic Ideologies and Linguistic Materialities

· Irvine, Judith T. 1989. "When talk isn't cheap: Language and political economy." American ethnologist 16(2): 248-267.

· Keane, Webb. 2005. "Signs are not the garb of meaning: On the social analysis of material things." In Daniel Miller (ed.) Materiality, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 182-205.

· Duranti, Alessandro. 2002. “Linguistic Anthropology.” (pp. 8899-906). In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Oxford: Elsevier.

· Hilgers, Mathieu. 2011. “The three anthropological approaches to neoliberalism.” International Social Science Journal 61(202): 351-364.

· Coombe, Rosemary J. 2016. "The knowledge economy and its cultures: Neoliberal technologies and Latin American reterritorializations." HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6(3): 247-275.

 

2 Week: Ethnographic Explorations and Late Capitalist Cityscapes

· Trinch, Shonna, and Edward Snajdr. 2017. "What the signs say: Gentrification and the disappearance of capitalism without distinction in Brooklyn." In Journal of Sociolinguistics 21(1): 64-89.

· Järlehed, Johan. "Alphabet city: orthographic differentiation and branding in late capitalist cities." In Social Semiotics 31.1 (2021): 14-35.

· Donzelli, Aurora. 2025. QRcoding the Smart City: dystopic governmentality and digital infrapolitics of the post-pandemic present. In Signata 16. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/signata/5594

 

3. Week: Linguistic ideologies covert racism and regimes of language

· Bucholtz, Mary. 2001. "The whiteness of nerds: Superstandard English and racial markedness." Journal of linguistic anthropology 11 (1): 84-100.

· Londoño, Johana. 2015. "The Latino-ness of type: Making design identities socially significant." Social Semiotics 25(2): 142-150.

· Barrett, Rusty. 2006. "Language ideology and racial inequality: Competing functions of Spanish in an Anglo-owned Mexican restaurant." Language in Society 35 (2): 163-204.

 

4. Week: Structures of Practice & the Discursive Genres of late Capitalism

· Prentice, Michael M., and Ilana Gershon. 2022."Introduction: genre work and the new economy." Journal of Cultural Economy: 1-10.

· Gershon, Ilana. 2015. "“I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man” Typing the neoliberal self into a branded existence." In HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6.3 (2016): 223-246.

· Wilf, Eitan. 2022. "Phaticity as a technical mystique: the genred, multi-sited mediation of the innovation architect’s expertise." Journal of Cultural Economy 15(6): 782-798.

· Matza, Tomas. 2009. "Moscow's echo: Technologies of the self, publics, and politics on the Russian talk show." Cultural anthropology 24(3): 489-522.

 

5. Week: Affective Economies & Technologies of Self-making

· Hochschild A. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press pp. 3-23

· Cameron, Deborah. 2000. “Styling the worker: Gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy.” In Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(3): 323- 347.

· Lamoureaux, Siri, and Alexa Hagerty. 2023."Animating machines, alienating women: Siri and Alexa as affective linguistic labourers." In Maria Rentetzi (ed.) The Gender of Things. Routledge, pp. 167-182.

Teaching methods

Teaching methods will be based both on instructor’s lectures and seminar-like discussions/workshops.

Lectures: the instructor will introduce specific topics and relevant scholarly debates, providing relevant ethnographic examples. Students will be encouraged to comment and ask questions.

Seminar discussions and Workshops: Every week a certain amount of time (approx. 2 hours) will be specifically devoted to collective discussions of the weekly readings, the themes exposed during the lectures, and collective workshops based the notes and observations collected by students in response to weekly prompts.

Assessment methods

NB To qualify as "attending" a student must at least attend 75% of the classes, or else they will be considered as "non-attending" and assessed accordingly (see below the different requirements for assessing "non-attending" and "attending" students)

· Assessment For non-attending students

Students who do not regularly attend class and choose not to engage in classwork will have to sustain an oral exam on two of the books provided in the list above (see list of books for non-attending students). They will be asked questions aimed at verifying their knowledge of the themes discussed in the two texts of their choice. The questions will be aimed at testing the students’ ability in exposing with an appropriate language some of the topics tackled by the books, as well as their skills in making connections between different texts in order to build an argument.

To pass the exam with flying colors, you will need to show an in-depth understanding of the two texts you selected. This means taking the time to read the actual books without relying on summaries or reviews found online and critically engage with the texts’ overarching argument (i.e., what is the author’s core thesis), empirical apparatus (i.e., what type of evidence is presented in support of such thesis), expository structure (i.e., how is texts’ theoretical and empirical content presented, what type of dialogues unfold throughout the text?). Students will be expected to expose the content of the books they read and discuss it with the instructor in a dialogical way. The exam is not an oral version of a multiple-choice test, but a scholarly conversation between student and instructor, which entails being prepared to respond to open questions, make connections between the two books, and be prepared to actively think through the text as you talk about it during the exam.

Proper language and the ability to critically speak about the books' content will lead to a good/excellent final grade

Acceptable language and the ability to summarize the books' content will lead to a sufficient/fair grade.

Insufficient linguistic proficiency and fragmentary knowledge of the books' content will lead to a failure in passing the exam.

During the 2026-2027 academic year, oral exams sessions for non-attending students will be held in the following months:

· April (reserved for students who enrolled in previous academic years and are “in debt of exam”)

· May,

· June,

· July,

· September,

· December,

· February

· Assessment For attending students

Class attendance and class participation will be one of the elements taken into account for the final evaluation. The course is designed for regular (not intermittent) attendance. Impeccable attendance record is a plus. Students may miss a maximum of 4 classes out of 15 (any additional absence will result in the loss of "attending student status"). Students must come prepared for each week’s class by doing the assigned reading ahead of time. In addition to the readings, attending students will be given four small ethnographic tasks/prompts. Such prompts are aimed at stimulating the theoretical discussion of the readings, refine students’ ethnographic skills, and provide possible suggestions that could be further developed in the final paper (see below).

Final paper due no later than June 15, 2027. In addition to active participation in class discussions, students attending classwork will write a final paper on a topic agreed with the teacher and based both on the class reading list and on further specific bibliography selected by the student.

The grade you will receive will reflect both the quality of your final paper and your performance in class (i.e., attendance record, active participation in seminar discussion, timely submission of the 4 weekly prompts).

Performance in class and scholarly attitude

Active participation and engagement in class discussions are requirements for both your individual and our collective success in this course. A substantial part of the course will center on group discussions of the readings assigned for each week and of the notes collected on the prompts. Students should be prepared to talk and devote their full attention to discussion.

Your approach to the course materials and class discussion will follow a few basic guidelines:

Be collaborative and collectivity-minded. Students have a collective responsibility toward seminar discussion and class participation. Participating in a scientific community requires embracing a commitment to collective work that should always distinguish any individual pursuit of knowledge. Although I am aware that people may have different personalities and different ways to participate in class discussions, active engagement in classroom activities is not simply a course requirement, but a fundamental responsibility towards the rest of the class and the scientific community at large.

Be charitable. All the readings selected for the syllabus are insightful and theoretically innovative. Listen to what the texts have to say. Critiquing aspects of the readings is fine, but if you find yourself rejecting an argument in toto, this indicates your reading is not sufficiently generous.

Be open to discomfort. Remember that a learning process always entails a certain degree of discomfort and effort. You will read interesting and engaging materials, but there may be difficult concepts or technical aspects that you may find challenging. Some of the texts are quite complex and not all of them are entertaining. When you encounter a difficult concept, please avoid a whining approach and focus on developing a constructive and proactive attitude towards the intellectual challenges you face: Take notes on what you could not understand and ask questions. Re-read difficult passages and be patient. Understanding a text is a process that requires time.

Be open to the possibility of changing your mind. Seminar discussions entail the possibility of revising our inherited positions. You are allowed, or better said, encouraged to speak in a provisional manner and required to be supportive and patient towards the other participants.

Be relevant. “Active participation” in class and group conferences is encouraged. However, this does not mean bringing the discussion on a tangent. It means listening carefully to what other people have to say, engage with the topics discussed by the readings, come to class with questions and issues to be vetted and debated, and offer feedback and advice on your classmates’ work in progress.

Final paper

To achieve an excellent grade you will have to pay attention to the quality of your writing and be committed to improve it. By “quality of writing,” I mean evidence of care for your readers, as well as of facility in written English. You will need to follow formatting guidelines and be carefully proofread and edited for typos, misspellings, convoluted constructions, and basic errors in punctuation.

The grade assigned to the paper will be based on:

- selection of the topic and its relatedness with the course content

- ability to identify relevant bibliography

- critical analysis

- clarity in structure and aims

- language proficiency

Your paper should be about 10-15 pages long (approx. 4000 words, 4500 words TOPS) should identify a key research question and a unifying theme that you will explore in relationship to the existing relevant bodies of academic literature and some references to your own original ethnographic investigation. You will need to discuss the relevant literature, describe your data and the methodology through which you collected them, advance your own interpretation of both the literature and your own data. Your own interpretation will be advanced in an introduction, articulated in the body of the paper, and clinched in your conclusion I expect your papers to be carefully polished.

You should present work of a quality that you would be willing to submit to a scholarly journal for consideration. Consequently, you must pay close attention to professional standards in your writing and citations. You should write for an imagined audience who may not be familiar with the literature you read for class and for completing your final paper. Therefore, you should illustrate and explain your points carefully.

The paper must be proofread and spellchecked, in proper AAA formatting for all footnotes, citations within text, and references, see the AAA style guide http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/style_guide.htm, as well as the additional guidelines I uploaded on the handout tab under the heading how to format your texts.

The final paper will need to have a:

Title

Subtitle

Abstract of no more than 250 words

A list of 6 keywords

A list of references cited at the end, following AAA format

It should be divided in number sections (and subsections if you deem it necessary) each bearing its own heading (and subheading)

Length may vary, but it will need to be about 15 pages long, 1.5 or 2 spaced , with 1-inch margins.

You must number your pages.

Due date: June 15, 2027, by midnight

NB

· Late submissions will not be accepted

· Academic Integrity and Plagiarism: Plagiarism is defined as using the ideas or words of someone else without acknowledging their source, for example:

· Copying of passages from works of others into your papers without acknowledgment.

· Using the views, opinions, or insights of another without acknowledgment.

· Paraphrasing another person's original phraseology, metaphor, or other literary device without acknowledgment.

A student’s name on any exercise (e.g., a report, a thought piece, a prompt response, a course paper, quiz, or examination) is regarded as assurance that the exercise is the result of the student’s own thoughts and study, expressed in their own words, and produced without assistance. Quotations marks, references, and footnotes should be used to acknowledge the use of printed sources or other outside help.

Acts of plagiarism and violations of the principles of academic integrity will be strictly sanctioned.

Use of Generative AI

Currently, there is no guaranteed way to detect an AI-generated text and I do not consider AI detection as part of my job. This said, you should make informed decisions regarding the use of generative AI. I have designed the course as series of readings and assignments aimed at enabling students to make meaningful connections between the different course units and choose a final paper research topic they care about and could be interested in further exploring in their future studies. I am committed to ensuring that students can fulfill the course requirements and, at the same time, develop scholarly and intellectually honest skills and habits. Any surreptitious use of generative AI technologies seriously undermines these efforts, preventing you from fully appreciating that learning is a collaborative process, not an output-driven pursuit. Furthermore, AI Data centers require massive amounts of electricity to operate and millions of liters/gallons of water for cooling, which depletes shared natural resources with devastating environmental consequences. If you want to utilize generative AI, you must apply human oversight to the chatbots’ output and explicitly disclose any assistance received from AI technologies. This will involve explicitly stating, in writing, at the top of your submission:

1. What generative AI tool(s) you used,

2. How you used the tool(s), and

3. The prompts you used.

Teaching tools

The instructor will occasionally use audio-visual sources (documentaries, maps and photos)

Students who attend class are requested to subscribe to the following mailing list (“Teachers-students” distribution list) through which they can receive any urgent communications about changes to the timetable or location of the lectures:

aurora.donzelli.Language_and_Late_Capitalism

To register: go to https://www.dsa.unibo.it/default.aspx
Go to SDA, log in and look for "teacher-student lists" on the left drop-down list, then write aurora.donzelli.Language_and_Late_Capitalism

.... And register

 

Accessibility and Accommodations

Students with learning disorders and/or temporary or permanent disabilities: please, contact the office responsible ( https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students ) as soon as possible so that they can propose acceptable adjustments. The request for adaptation must be submitted in advance (15 days before the exam date) to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of the adjustments, taking into account the teaching objectives.

 

Instructor Communication Preferences

Pronouns and Terms of Address

I use she/her pronouns. You may address me as Professor Donzelli or as Aurora, if that’s more comfortable. Please avoid using Ms. or Miss Donzelli.

 

Preferred Method of Communication

The best way to contact me is via my institutional email aurora.donzelli@unibo.it [mailto:aurora.donzelli@unibo.it]

Please be aware that I generally need 48 to 72 hours to reply. If the matter is urgent, please include “Urgent” in your message’s subject line.

 

Class Recording and Distribution of Course Materials

I do not plan to record class meetings. I also ask that you do not record the class. If you have a learning need that is best accommodated by recording class meetings, please contact me by email. Reading materials for attending students will be made available on VIRTUALE in mid-January 2027 (or sooner)

Office hours

See the website of Aurora Donzelli