Autumn 2026 | Languages, Sport and Youth in Minority Language Contexts

Abstract: This communication aims to contribute to the emerging field of the sociolinguistics of sport by exploring how language functions as a central mechanism in the regulation, configuration and governance of bodies — bodies which, in our societies, are perceived as instrumental in the production of value, prestige, and moral and national superiority within the political economy of sport. The analysis is based on a series of interrelated — but highly heterogeneous — ethnographic projects conducted in Switzerland and France. This talk highlights how these seemingly disparate contexts converge to shape a moral economy where language, sport, and the body are articulated within broader logics of power, nation, and capitalism. Regulating bodies in sport through language is not merely about ensuring the success of the sports industry; it also serves to reinforce broader social and national projects. This serves not only sports capitalism but also the more general social order and the national imaginaries that it helps to reproduce.

Alfonso Del Percio is a Research Associate at the School of Business – Science.Lab of the FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. He was trained in the fields of applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology at the University of St. Gallen, University of Fribourg and University of Chicago. His ethnographic and historiographic research deals with the intersection of language and political economy, and focuses on language, migration, and governmentality, as well as the links between language, labor, and social inequality. He is co-editor of Language, Education and Neoliberalism (with Dr. Mi-Cha Flubacher, 2017) and Language and Neoliberal Governmentality (with Prof. Luisa Martin Rojo, 2019) and the Handbook of language and mobility (2025), among many others.