[ecrea] Semiotics of Economic Discourse - Ocula special issue

Semiotics of Economic Discourse

Since the beginning of the crisis, some financial and economic terms 
have become familiar. Expressions such as “subprime”, “hedge fund”, 
“derivative”, “spread”, “quantitative easing”, “stress test”, “black 
pools”, “black liquidity” etc., are now habitual. We listen and read 
discussions about the distinction between “savings bank” and “investment 
bank”, between “public deficit” and “public debt”, between “inflation” 
and “deflation”, between “virtuous countries” and “Piigs” (sometimes 
“Pigs”). We worry when “Markets evaluate” a national “reduction of 
expenses” or a “spending review”. We finally image the European Central 
Bank Governor, ready for “whatever it takes”, armed with a “big bazooka” 
for a liquidity injection buying state bonds. At the same time it is 
always more difficult to understand how it should be possible to exit 
from the crisis, how to restart growth and what are the aims of the 
“structural reforms”. We are living in a time of uncertainty, while the 
economic discourse is pervading every cultural place with its own 
reasoning about costs, gains, savings, credits, debts. But also the 
dominant economic theory lives in an unstable situation, between the 
imposition of neoliberal economic policy and well-known rethinking (e.g. 
the IMF on the economic condition of European Union), between the news 
of mistakes in the Reinhart-Rogoff mathematical model connected high 
relation debt/Pil and low growth and heterodox bestsellers, both essays 
and pamphlets (e.g. Stiglitz, Krugman, James K. Gailbraith, Picketty, 
Mazzucato, Lazzarato).

Linguistics, semiotics and economics have several common contents. 
Consider for instance the historical analogies between linguistic sign 
and money, or the concept of “value”, which Saussure's linguistics 
gained from the Austrian School of Economics. Value is perhaps a good 
instrument for a semiotic investigation on economic activities and on 
the social science of economics. Nevertheless, semiotics has 
sporadically discussed on economy. There are several works about 
semiotics and marketing compared to the few theoretical and critical 
works on economic discourse: Ferruccio Rossi Landi's theoretical works; 
some interesting papers (e.g. F. Galofaro, “Semiotica e produzione. 
Verso un'economia politica del segno”; F. Montanari, “Form of Economic 
Discourse, the Crisis and Financial Markets”; L. Frattura, “Il governo 
di sé e degli altri, un caso di studio: Potere e Auto-Controllo del 
Mercato”); the Carte Semiotiche's issue on “Semiotica del denaro” (n. 5, 
2003); the section “Linguaggio e Moneta” of the 20th Congress of the 
Society of Philosophy of Language (published on the Rivista Italiana di 
Filosofia del Linguaggio website http://www.rifl.unical.it/); the 
meetings on “Segni e monete. La semiotica nel campo dell'economia” 
(Turin, 2014: the videos are avalaible on Lexia. Rivista internazionale 
di semiotica's Youtube channel). Linguistic and semiotic tools had an 
important influence on Jean Baudrillard's and Gilles Deleuze - Felix 
Guattari's works about the new forms of capital. More recently this 
instrumentation has influenced the Actor Network Theory: the ANT, with 
the sociology of finance, has investigated the “performativity” of the 
economic discourse and the tangle between economics and business, 
especially in the building of financial markets (see Bruno Latour's, 
Michel Callon's, Donald MacKenzie's works). Semiotics, indeed, has 
important and strict links with close approaches: Foucault's and 
Foucaultian works on biopolitics and governmentality; Bourdieu's and 
Boltanski - Chiapello's sociological researches; Searle's and Ferraris' 
ontologies on social objects; Giovanni Leghissa's and Maria Grazia 
Turri's recent works on the grounds of the contemporary economic discourse.

This special issue of Ocula would gather papers with the aim of 
outlining a first review on semiotic studies and analysis of economy. 
The call for paper is open to papers from different disciplines (such as 
economics, philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology) demonstrating 
an interdisciplinary approach with semiotics. The argument is the 
economic discourse. We make the list of the three sections in which we 
divide the semiotics of the economic discourse, making some questions:

1. Analytics of the Economic Discourse. This section includes articles 
on the relations between economy and culture. What are the better tools 
to study the economic discourse? We think above all about the concept of 
“value” and its own analytical possibilities. Has the cultural role of 
economic discourse changed during the crisis? What does “pervasiveness 
of economy” mean? What is the role of the market in culture? Considering 
economic activities, how do they seep through in the ways of life, 
especially in times of crisis? What is the role of the economics in 
relation to economic activities? What does the “performativity” of 
economics mean, particularly in financial markets? What are the 
modalizations of the economic discourse? What are its effects and its 
statements?
2. Rhetorics of the Economic Discourse. This section includes articles 
on the economic language. In which sense can the economic language (i.e. 
the Central Bank Governor's sentences or signs which brokers use in the 
financial market places) be performative? What are its effects? What are 
the tools of the economic science (i.e. images, mathematical models, 
statistics)? This question seems interesting considering the predictive 
aspect of the economic discourse. In which sense will the economic 
discourse predict or build the future? Is it a trait of the scientific 
discourse or of the public discourse? What is the model lector in the 
public discourse, both official and critical? How does this discourse 
make a tale of the economic events and how does it popularize economic 
categories?
3. Ideology of the Economic Discourse. This section includes articles on 
the imaginary and the representation of economy. How do the different 
cultural manifestations (such as art, film, novel, music etc.) represent 
economy? How do they narrate the crisis? What are the passional paths 
both in economic and in financial representations? Can we talk, with 
reference to Marc Shell's works (see Money, Language and Thought), of 
cultural texts co-structured by an historically determined economic 
ideology with the economic values? How does economic ideology influence 
cultural manifestations? We also may ask: how do economic discourse 
manifestations (such as management theory, marketing, human capital 
theory etc.) represent culture?

Informations:
Maximum abstract length: 2,000 characters (including spaces).
There are no limits for the essays but we recommend not to exceed 40,000 
characters (including spaces, notes and bibliography).
The essays can have any kind of images.
Text formatting will be done by the authors according to instructions 
supplied by Ocula.
The essays must undergo a blind peer review for acceptance and publishing.

Deadlines:
Abstract submission deadline: 31 March, 2015 (please select under the 
title the section which could include the proposal by number 1, 2 or 3).
Notification of acceptance: April, 2015.
Essays submission deadline: 31 July, 2015.
Notification of acceptance or edit requests after blind peer review: 
September 2015.
Intended publication: October/November 2015.

Languages:
Italian, English, French.

Please send the abstracts simultaneously to the editors:
Giorgio Coratelli: (giorgio.coratelli /at/ live.com).
Francesco Galofaro: (semioatp /at/ gmail.com).
Federico Montanari: (federico.mont /at/ gmail.com).

Further informations: http://www.ocula.it.
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