Abstract

From a social representations perspective and focusing on the study of values, the paper examines the twelve settlement speeches delivered by the Mayors of Milan since the end of WWII. On such occasions, the Mayors operate as «entrepreneurs of identity» (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001) and contribute to defining representations of «citizenship» (Sanchez-Mazas & Licata, 2005). With the aim of exploring its lexicon and cultural values (Schwarz, 2004), the corpus was submitted to lexicometric and qualitative content analysis. The results indicate a spiral trajectory. References to Ethnos and to the common values are typical of the first post-war; Demos principles (political before and post-political after «Clean hands») are evoked from the Seventies. A recent return to Ethnos appears as an attempt of giving a symbolic answer to ongoing local and global transformations.