Siracusa: Italy’s smartest city? Re-branding issues from a critical ecolinguistic perspective.

Siracusa: Italy’s smartest city? A (critical) ecolinguistic perspective. This paper combines perspectives from traditional ecolinguistics (Dryzek, Harré et al, etc.) with critical discourse analysis (Fairclough and Wodak 1997, Wodak 2001) in an exploration of discourse in the case of Siracusa which, in 2012, was chosen for the IBM-sponsored programme Smarter Cities Challenge, the only Italian city to be selected. The Smart City agenda is an EU initiative in urban planning that aims to make traditional networks and services more efficient, ‘with the use of digital and telecommunication technologies, for the benefit of its inhabitants and businesses’ (European Commission). The programme provides financial aid to one hundred world cities, and advice on how to apply the ‘smart’ agenda. The (re)-branding of Siracusa as a Euro-Mediterranean pole of innovation and environmental sustainability, however, is not straightforward. The nearby coastal area of Priolo-Augusta-Mellili is occupied by petrochemical plants that represent risks both from an environmental and a geo-physical standpoint. Nowadays, cities are aware of the benefits of a positive image in terms of global branding (Kavaratzis and Hatch 2013, Flowerdew 2004), and Siracusa’s participation in the Smart Cities programme has provoked intense public reflection around its conflicting identities as a touristic/environmental or industrial centre. The paper is part of a funded project of the University of Catania entitled “Smart Assemblages: Frictions, Disasters and Green Economy”. The linguistic analysis conducted has two strands; from a macro-perspective, it explores Smart City discourse on Siracusa in the reports of IBM and on the website of the comune of Siracusa. Then, through analysis of ethnographic interviews with members of the local population, it also discusses lexico-semantic features and conflicting narratives in the re-branding of Siracusa as a smart city .