Linguistic Landscapes: A Sociolinguistic Approach 1107177545, 9781107177543

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Linguistic Landscapes

Visible language is widespread and familiar in everyday life. We find it in shop signs, advertising billboards, street and place name signs, commercial logos and slogans, and visual arts. The field of linguistic landscapes draws on insights from sociolinguistics, language policy, and semiotics to show how these public forms of language relate to multiple issues in language policy, language rights, language and education, language and culture, and globalisation. Stretching from the earliest stone inscriptions to posters and street signs, and to today’s electronic media, linguistic landscapes sit at the crossroads of language, society, geography, and visual communication. Written by one of the pioneers of the field, this is the first book-length synthesis of this exciting, rapidly-developing field. Using photographic evidence from across three continents, it demonstrates the methodology and approaches used, and summarises its findings and developments so far. It also seeks to answer common questions from its critics, and to suggest new directions for further study. jeffrey l. kallen is a Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin. He has written extensively on the English language in Ireland, including Irish English Volume 2: The Republic of Ireland (2013) and Focus on Ireland (1997), and co-directs the International Corpus of English (ICE) project for Ireland.

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Linguistic Landscapes A Sociolinguistic Approach Jeffrey L. Kallen Trinity College Dublin

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Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107177543 DOI: 10.1017/9781316822807 © Jeffrey L. Kallen 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2023 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kallen, Jeffrey L., author. Title: Linguistic landscapes : a sociolinguistic approach / Jeffrey L. Kallen, Trinity College, Dublin. Description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022058964 (print) | LCCN 2022058965 (ebook) | ISBN 9781107177543 (hardback) | ISBN 9781316628430 (paperback) | ISBN 9781316822807 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Sociolinguistics. | Place (Philosophy) | Signs and symbols–Social aspects. Classification: LCC P40.5.P53 K35 2023 (print) | LCC P40.5.P53 (ebook) | DDC 306.44–dc23/eng/20230314 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022058964 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022058965 ISBN 978-1-107-17754-3 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

List of Figures List of Places in Figures List of Diagrams List of Tables Preface Acknowledgements 1

Approaching the Linguistic Landscape 1.1 1.2

1.3 1.4

1.5

2

A World of Signs: Signs in the World Entering the Linguistic Landscape 1.2.1 Code Choices: Language Policy 1.2.2 Code Choices: Breaking Language Barriers 1.2.3 Code Choices: Conflict 1.2.4 Place and Code Choices: Names and Naming Regulating Space in the LL Discourse in the LL 1.4.1 Interaction in the LL 1.4.2 Writing and Speech in the LL The Historical Dimension in the LL 1.5.1 The Past in the Present 1.5.2 Layering of Past and Present 1.5.3 Remembering the Past

page viii xii xiv xv xvii xxiv 1 1 4 4 7 10 11 14 16 16 19 21 21 23 24

Why Linguistic Landscape?

27

2.1

27 28 28 31 33 34 39 42 46

2.2

A Sociolinguistic Perspective 2.1.1 LL Research: Past, Present, and Multiple Births 2.1.2 The LL and Antiquity 2.1.3 The Onomastic Background 2.1.4 The LL and the Visual Arts 2.1.5 Sociolinguistics, Globalisation, and Language Display 2.1.6 Language Policy and Language in Public 2.1.7 The Blossoming of LL Research Naming and Identifying a Field of Research

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3

Contents

Doing Things with Codes

51

3.1

51 52 55 57 72

3.2 3.3

4

Space and Landscape

80

4.1

80 80 83 85 86 88 94 99 105 111 120 123

4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9

5

Space 4.1.1 Ways of Knowing Space 4.1.2 The Public Space Landscape 4.2.1 Etymological Perspectives Space, Place, and Indexicality Dividing and Regulating Spaces Emplacement Effects Focus on the Proximal Space Proximal Space and Remote Space Signs of the Imaginary Unanchored Reference

People 5.1

5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

5.6

6

Code Choices: Policy Effects and Personal Choice 3.1.1 Language Policy in Action: Protecting Public Health 3.1.2 Recognising Codes Messages: Content and Codes Messages and Codes: Integrating the Visual

The LL as Social Indexicality 5.1.1 Markedness and the LL 5.1.2 Affordances in the LL 5.1.3 Social Indexicality: Local and Remote Local Indexicality Existential Claims: Indexing Codes and People Enregisterment Scaling Up the LL: The Networking of Units 5.5.1 The Village Model: Kilkeel and Warrenpoint 5.5.2 Finding Community in Urban Diversity: Astoria and Greektown Population Flows

The Linguistic Landscape as Discourse 6.1 6.2

6.3

6.4

Discourse: Engaging the Viewer Performance and Performatives in the LL 6.2.1 Performance 6.2.2 Entextualisation 6.2.3 Pragmatics of the LL 6.2.4 Genre Conversation in the Landscape 6.3.1 Conversing 6.3.2 Conversational Maxims Recognising LL Genres 6.4.1 Framing 6.4.2 The Street Name Plaque as an LL Genre 6.4.3 Regulatory Genres: Directives and Politeness

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125 125 126 128 130 132 134 136 145 146 149 156

161 161 165 165 166 167 169 173 173 178 182 182 184 197

Contents 6.5

6.6

7

Time, Space, and the LL 7.1

7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6

8

The Complexity of LL Genres 6.5.1 From LL Units to LL Ensembles 6.5.2 The Overseas Irish Pub as an LL Assemblage Multiple Discourses in the LL

The LL in the Perspective of Time 7.1.1 Mediating Time in the LL: The Observer’s Present 7.1.2 Fragmenting and Uniting Time in the LL Capturing the Present Ghosts and Remnants Layering the LL Markers and Remembrances Repurposing the Past

Researching Linguistic Landscapes 8.1 8.2

8.3

8.4

8.5

Looking Back and Looking Forward Problems of Scope 8.2.1 What Counts as LL? 8.2.2 The LL Unit in the Public Eye and Public Space 8.2.3 Linguistic Landscapes and Other -scapes Problems of Evidence 8.3.1 Methodological Diversity 8.3.2 Photographs as Evidence in LL Research 8.3.3 Non-photographic Evidence: Talking and Counting Some Further Frontiers 8.4.1 The LL and the World of Virtual Landscapes 8.4.2 Representing the LL Towards the Future

References Index

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vii 199 199 201 210

218 218 218 220 223 228 232 235 239

247 247 248 248 251 256 261 261 261 280 285 285 292 300

303 341

Figures

Figures are listed giving their title and location. Composite photographs have subdivisions labelled A, B, C, and so forth, designated from left-to-right and from the top downwards. 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9

Welcoming neighbours (Astoria, 2017) Not all signs are in the LL (Arlington, 2016) Cross-border train notices – Basle–Cologne (2018); New York–Montreal (2017); Dublin–Belfast (2014) Playing with codes (DCA airport, 2016) Crossing the boundaries of writing systems (Brighton, 2016) Public notice, language conflict (Warrenpoint, 2014; Belfast, 2007) Street name plaques (Kilkeel, Rostrevor, Grey Abbey, 2014) Regulating space – The Sitootery (Belfast), Rue barrée (Montreal), (2017) Foreigners graffiti (Dublin, 2016, 2017) Signs of protest – Cosecha march (Albany, 2017) The D Walls (Dublin, 2018) Latin inscription 1615 (Galway, 2019) Updating the Victorian postbox (Galway, 2019) Stolpersteine (Michelstadt, 2018; Strasbourg, 2019) Health warnings (Dublin, 2017; Bern, 2018; Montreal, 2017) Recognising codes (Liverpool, 2017; DCA airport, 2015) Balancing code and message (Haifa, 1995) Bus notice (Charlotte, 2016) Transliteration versus translation (Liverpool, 2017; Dublin, 2018, 2019) Asymmetric messages: Yin Wall City (Chicago, 2017) Intertextuality and the G & R (Champaign, 2017) Central plains restaurant/Hard Wok Café (Liverpool, 2017) Indexical French (Fukuoka, 2007; Newry, 2014; Michelstadt, 2019)

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page 2 3 6 8 9 11 12 15 17 18 20 22 24 25 53 56 58 59 60 62 63 64 65

List of Figures

3.10 Interlanguaging in the Tuin 10 menu (Amsterdam, 2014) 3.11 Hair Make Riche (Fukuoka, 2007) 3.12 Mixed messages (Chicago, 2017; Montreal, 2017; Strasbourg, 2019) 3.13 Translanguage scriptography (Champaign, 2017; Rosh Pina, 2019; Brighton, 2018) 3.14 Respellings for effect (Galway, 2014; Norton, 2016; Albany, 2017) 3.15 Playing with homophones (Newry, 2014; Vienna, 2018) 3.16 Incorporating images (Fukuoka, 2007; Michelstadt, 2019; Berkeley, 2015; Brighton, 2018) 4.1 Language and space on the New York–Montreal train (2017) 4.2 Regulating social space (Fukuoka, 2007) 4.3 Dominating the street view – Sammy’s Kitchen Ltd. (Hong Kong, 2014) 4.4 Discontinuity in a Look Up installation (Dublin, 2017) 4.5 Inversions in visual placement (Chicago, 2017; Beijing, 2019) 4.6 Materials and messages (Galway, 2014; Astoria, 2017) 4.7 Hereness (Dublin, 2014; London, 2019) 4.8 Irish border crossing (2012, 2013, 2019, 2014) 4.9 Marking Chinatown (Chicago, 2017) 4.10 Maps in Fukuoka (2007) and Dundalk (2012) 4.11 Diversity and space (Strasbourg, 2019; Oak Park, 2017) 4.12 Metonyms of spatial reference (Astoria, 2017) 4.13 Local and remote reference (Liverpool, 2017; Bangor, 2005) 4.14 Remote spatial reference (Chicago, 2017; Astoria, 2017) 4.15 Land’s edge (St. John’s, 1999) 4.16 Fragmentary heterotopias (Erbach, 2007; Astoria, 2017) 4.17 Imaginary spaces (Fukuoka, 2007; London, 2019; Dublin, 2014) 4.18 Lamp post stickers (Galway, 2017; Michelstadt, 2019; Champaign, 2017) 5.1 Code choices appeal to audiences (Chicago, 2017; Astoria, 2017) 5.2 Names in graffiti (Dublin, 2017) 5.3 Irish Sign Language (Dublin, 2013) and Travellers Cant (Dublin, 2018) 5.4 Local phrases (Brighton, 2006; Dublin, 2019, 2017; Kilkenny, 2016)

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67 69 71 73 75 76 78 96 98 100 101 102 104 106 108 110 112 113 115 116 118 119 120 122 124 133 134 135 138

x

5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12

6.13 6.14 6.15 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

List of Figures

Personal code choices (Galway, 2011; Dublin, 2016; Annapolis, 2014; Galway, 2005) Enregistering the distant (Astoria, 2017; Belfast, 2017; Annapolis, 2014) Remote and local graffiti (Dublin, 2017; Brighton, 2017; Dublin, 2016) Contrasting LL units in Kilkeel (2014) and Warrenpoint (2012) Indexing Greekness (Astoria, 2017) Indexing Greekness in Greektown (Chicago, 2017) The local and the global (Galway, 2014; Michelstadt, 2019) Irish American in Liverpool (Liverpool, 2017) The multinational becomes local (Dublin, 2015; Fukuoka, 2007) Viewing the Claddagh Laundrette (Galway, 2005) Discourse on the ‘Lennon Wall’ (London, 2019) Vernacular style and register (Chicago, 2017) Dialogues (Dublin, 2018; Fredericksburg, 2013) The Maxim of Quantity at work (Astoria, 2017; Annapolis, 2014) Flouting maxims (Michelstadt, 2018; Champaign, 2017; Chicago, 2017; Dublin, 2021) Framing Gnó trí Ghaeilge (Dublin, 2018) Fairview Strand, conflicting names (Dublin, 2021) Street name plaque diversity (Dublin, 2019; Strasbourg, 2019; Chicago, 2017; Vienna, 2018) High Street (Hong Kong, 2014); St. Mary’s Avenue (Galway, 2019) Adapting generic features (Armagh, 2012; Brighton, 2016) Dog cleanup discourse (Astoria, 2017; Warrenpoint, 2012; Kilkenny, 2016; Dublin, 2020, 2015, 2020) Overseas Irish pubs (Woodside, Montreal, Vienna, Chicago, Liverpool, 2017) Multiple discourses in a Belfast Street view (2019) Disentangling discourses in Belfast (2019) Milestone aggregate (Dublin, 2021) Ghost signs (Montreal, 2017; Amsterdam, 2006) Ghosts and remnants (Jonesborough, 2018; Astoria, 2017) Layering in the Montreal LL (Montreal, 2017)

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140 142 144 147 150 153 157 158 160 163 174 175 177 179 181 183 188 189 193 196

198 205 213 214 224 229 231 234

List of Figures

7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14

Remembering Maxwell Street (Chicago, 2017) Great War memorial (Fränkisch-Crumbach, 2018) Repurposing ogham (Dublin, 2017) Nostalgia Chez Tante Liesel (Strasbourg, 2019) Historical assemblage: ‘Do you know the Five Lamps?’ (Dublin, 2017, 2021) Forgotten but not gone (Dublin, 2017) Catching up with van graffiti (Dublin, 2020) Cropping a ghost sign photo (Coeburn, 2016) Main Street (Grey Abbey, 2014; Carrickmacross, 2012; Bangor, 2012) Adjacency of the local and the global (Galway, 2005) Building a neighbourhood with signs (Montreal, 2017) Aggregate effects (Astoria, 2017) The dialogue effect – Royal Mail and street name plaque (Newry, 2014) The palimpsest effect (Dublin, 2017, 2020) Former synagogue (Fränkisch-Crumbach, 2019) Putting the photographer in the picture (Wexford, 2020) Internet language displays (Reddit, Tumblr, 2021) Bill posting station (Dublin) Great Brunswick Street (Dublin, ca. 1904) Nichols’ the undertaker’s (Dublin, 2016)

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237 238 240 242 244 246 264 266 267 269 271 273 274 275 277 279 289 296 297 298

Places in Figures

Figure captions in this volume give the names of places succinctly. The lack of detail can create ambiguity: Arlington in Figure 1.2, for example, could be in Virginia, Texas, Massachusetts, or any other of the many locations detailed by O’Conor (2003), but it could also be in Gloucestershire (the inspiration for the American Arlingtons) or other locations in England and elsewhere. This list thus provides further information in order to locate the places referred to in the figure captions. Standard two-letter state abbreviations are used for locations in the United States, county names are given for locations in Ireland, and other territorial categories are given as appropriate. This information is indicative, not exhaustive. To facilitate searches for photographs of particular places, the relevant figure numbers are also given for each place. Place

Jurisdiction

Figure

Albany Amsterdam Annapolis Arlington Astoria

New York (NY) Netherlands Maryland (MD) Virginia (VA) Queens, New York City (NY)

Bangor Beijing Belfast Berkeley Bern Brighton Carrickmacross Champaign Charlotte Chicago

Co. Down, Northern Ireland China Northern Ireland California (CA) Switzerland Brighton and Hove, Sussex, England Co. Monaghan, Republic of Ireland Champaign-Urbana (IL) North Carolina (NC) Illinois (IL)

Coeburn DCA airport Dublin

Virginia (VA) Washington, D.C./Arlington (VA) Republic of Ireland

1.10; 3.14 3.10; 7.2 5.5; 5.6; 6.5 1.2 4.6; 4.12; 4.14; 4.16; 5.1; 5.6; 5.9; 6.5; 6.12; 7.3; 8.6 4.13; 8.3 4.5 1.6; 1.8; 5.6; 6.14; 6.15 3.16 3.1 1.5; 3.13; 3.16; 5.4; 5.7; 6.11 8.3 3.7; 3.13; 4.18; 6.6 3.4 3.6; 3.12; 4.5; 4.9; 4.14; 5.1; 5.10; 6.3; 6.6; 6.9; 6.13; 7.5 8.2 1.4; 3.2 5.7; 5.13; 6.4; 6.6; 6.7; 6.8; 6.9; 6.12; 7.7; 7.9; 7.10; 8.1; 8.8; 8.1; 8.13; 8.14

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(cont.) Place

Jurisdiction

Figure

Dundalk Erbach FränkischCrumbach Fredericksburg Fukuoka

Co. Louth, Republic of Ireland Hesse, Germany Hesse, Germany

4.10 4.16 7.6; 8.9

Virginia (VA) Chikuzen, Kyushu, Japan

Galway

Galway city, Republic of Ireland

Grey Abbey Haifa Hong Kong Jonesborough Kilkeel Kilkenny Liverpool London Michelstadt Montreal

Co. Down, Northern Ireland Israel Hong Kong, China Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland Co. Down, Northern Ireland Co. Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland Merseyside, England England Hesse, Germany Quebec, Canada

Newry Norton Oak Park Rosh Pina Rostrevor St. John’s Strasbourg Vienna Warrenpoint Wexford Woodside

Co. Down, Northern Ireland Virginia (VA) Illinois (IL) Israel Co. Down, Northern Ireland Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada Bas-Rhin, France Austria Co. Down, Northern Ireland Co. Wexford, Republic of Ireland Queens, New York City (NY)

6.4 3.9; 3.11; 3.16; 4.2; 4.10; 4.17; 5.13 1.12; 1.13; 3.14; 4.6; 4.18; 5.5; 5.11; 6.1; 6.10; 8.4 1.7; 8.3 3.3 4.3; 6.10 7.3 1.7; 5.8 5.4; 6.12 3.2; 3.5; 3.8; 4.13; 5.12; 6.13 4.7; 4.17; 6.2 1.4; 3.9; 3.16; 4.18; 5.11; 6.6 1.8; 3.1; 3.12; 4.1; 6.13; 7.2; 7.4; 8.5 3.9; 3.15; 8.7 3.14 4.11 3.13 1.7 4.15 1.14; 3.12; 4.11; 6.9; 7.8 3.15; 6.9; 6.13 1.6; 5.8; 6.12 8.10 6.13

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Diagrams

4.1 Indexing places in the LL 5.1 Social indexicality in the LL – local and remote factors 8.1 The public eye and the construction of the LL

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page 92 131 251

Tables

5.1 LL units in Kilkeel and Warrenpoint 5.2 Counting Greekness in Astoria 5.3 Counting Greekness in Greektown, Chicago

page 148 154 154

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Preface

Not long ago, the phrase linguistic landscape carried with it only a general metaphorical sense of having something to do with languages and their distribution or role in society. Just as people speak of the political landscape, the employment landscape, and the football landscape, talk of the linguistic landscape appeared as no more than a recognition that languages were not uniform, either formally or in their positions of relative power and prestige, in societies across the world. Since the early part of this century, however, the phrase has taken on a more specific sense in the academic world to refer to the display of language in public, and now designates one of the fastest-growing research areas in such established fields as sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. Not only do conferences, journal articles, and published volumes continue to expand our understanding of the linguistic landscape (or LL), but discussions of the LL regularly make their way into more general sociolinguistics introductions for students: Androutsopoulos (2014), Lou (2017), and Wardhaugh and Fuller (2021: 213–17) provide some recent examples. The expansion of the field’s geographical coverage and conceptual diversity provides an opportunity for reflection on fundamentals, methodology, and future research developments. The reflections presented in this volume are not directed towards the LL of any one place, but towards the construction of a more general notion of the LL as a way in which human beings relate language to space. Joining together such fundamentals as language, social relationships, and space determines that the origins of the LL lie deep in historical time and have universal reach. No single volume can address comprehensive evidence from within this universal framework, but this volume is intended as a contribution towards the development of a distinctive sociolinguistic perspective that is open to the analysis of the LL whenever and wherever it may be found. The plan of this volume follows a path which starts with a panorama of LL data, taken from fieldwork of mine that is described below. The selection is designed to illustrate several types of problem which I consider to be fundamental to the LL: code choices in the display of language, the relation of language to space, discourse in the LL, and the historical dimension of the LL. Every reader will have their own prior experience of LL, but the panorama in xvii

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Chapter 1 provides a common frame of reference for many of the problems which LL research encounters in looking at the real world. Chapter 2 aims to develop a sociolinguistic perspective for the LL, reviewing the development of the field and advancing reasons for maintaining linguistic landscape as the term of choice for a particular approach to the display of language as an act of discourse in public. The next three chapters focus on elements which are so fundamental to the LL that they are often taken for granted: roughly speaking, they concern codes (Chapter 3), space (Chapter 4), and people (Chapter 5). This separation is purely for the purpose of analysis, so that each chapter can focus on examples which bring a particular element more clearly to the fore. In the real world of signage and other such inscriptions (graffiti, stickers, labels, tattoos, T-shirts, etc.), it is precisely because these elements are brought together in the LL that they achieve their communicative impact. These chapters build towards what I consider to be the fundamental point of the LL, which is discourse (Chapter 6). The inscriptions which capture our attention as LL researchers do not exist by accident, and they do not exist simply for the sake of form. They mediate, in the literal sense that they are placed in the middle, between someone who has an expressive goal and someone who perceives an expressive goal from the inscription in place. Understanding the LL as discourse makes it possible to account for a great deal of what we see in the LL, whether it has to do with the way a prohibition is phrased in signage or the simultaneous display of two very different names in reference to the same street. It is the key to understanding genre in the LL and to disentangling the apparent linguistic chaos of many urban vistas. Perhaps most important of all, it drives home the point that the LL cannot realistically be restricted to written language, but also includes a spoken discourse element. Though the discourse of the LL shares many features with face-to-face discourse, it is also strikingly different from it, since LL discourse takes place across a gap of time which may be anything from momentary (as in a note on a shop door which says ‘closed, be back in 5 mins’) to one which spans centuries or millennia. In Chapter 7, I thus turn to the time dimension in the LL, considering not only different ways in which the LL marks the past, but the complexity of determining the ‘observer’s present’ in the LL. Chapter 8 then pulls these points together, suggesting a general model for the LL which includes text, the material aspect, and discourse viewed in the flow of time and the creation of social space. From this point of view, I consider some methodological problems arising from the use of LL photographs as evidence, and the role of interviews and data quantification in going beyond what photographs can tell us. Finally, I give a brief consideration of some further areas of LL research, especially the LL in relation to online and computer-assisted communication and the representation of the LL in visual art and literature.

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By way of an informal autoethnographic introduction to the photographs, which are an essential part of this volume, I stress, as I also discuss in Chapter 8, that there is no substitute for direct, personal experience of the LL when doing primary LL research. There is relatively little discussion of the ethnographic element of data collection in LL studies, perhaps because researchers have not interacted with people in the locales which they study or perhaps because the wider experience of data collection is not considered part of the subject. If describing the frequency of particular code choices in the LL is the main goal, then the experience of finding the signage or the activities which went with this experience does not count as relevant information. Given the space limitations of this volume, I have not ventured into this ethnographic approach apart from a few brief vignettes which have arisen in the course of fieldwork: further development from this perspective forms an important agenda for another day. Because of the importance which I attach to first-hand observation, the selection of photographic data is weighted towards those places I know best. Naturally, Ireland has loomed largest in my sights. In particular, I lived in Galway as a student from 1976 to 1977 and revisit it regularly, I have lived in Dublin since 1979, and I have had various connections with Belfast since the 1980s. I have previously published reports on aspects of the Irish LL in regard to tourism, immigration and minority language use, language policy, globalisation, and political borders in Kallen (2009, 2010, 2014, 2016b); Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha (2010) offers a comparative perspective on the LL, globalisation, and inter-language display in Ireland and Japan. A second focal point for data collection is North America. The Chicago photographs come from a fieldwork visit in 2017, but they follow from my prior involvement with the city. I grew up in Arlington, VA (lightly referenced here by photographs from Virginia and Maryland), but regular trips to visit family in Chicago gave the city a special prominence in my childscape – to use a term from Porteous (1990), which I discuss further in Chapter 8 – that owes a great deal to the display of language diversity. Greek was especially prominent because it was the language of my maternal grandparents, but signage in Italian, Polish, Chinese, Spanish, and other languages fascinated me, and told me that the question ‘who lives here, and what do they do?’ could not be answered by reference to English alone. The route of the Chicago photo expedition also overlaps in part with the ‘Addams area’ (Suttles 1968), which is now completely changed by urban redevelopment but is where I first did field sociological observations as an undergraduate student in 1973. Another set of American photographs comes from the 2017 ‘Documenting Linguistic Landscapes’ research trip referred to in the Acknowledgements. This trip focused on Astoria in the borough of Queens in New York City; Albany,

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NY; and Montreal. Astoria is one of the most multilingual urban districts in the world, and could easily serve as the basis for another volume; I have focused here on markers of Greek language and community from among many possible themes. As I discuss in Chapter 2, Montreal has played a major role in the development of LL research, and demonstrates a distinctive interaction between the LL and language policy at federal, provincial, and municipal levels. Albany provides neither the intensive multilingualism of Astoria nor the elaborated planning measures of Montreal, but it retains onomastic links to historical Dutch settlement and shows its own contemporary sociolinguistic concerns. The photographs here can only represent a small portion of the fieldwork evidence. Most of the other photographs also come from places I know from repeated visits for personal or professional reasons: Amsterdam; Strasbourg; Michelstadt, Erbach, and Fränkisch-Crumbach; Brighton, London, and Liverpool; and St. John’s all fall into this category. A few other photographs are from places I have only visited once, whether as a tourist or in connection with an academic conference, but only photographs 3.13B and 4.5B come from places where I have not been. As I discuss in Chapters 2 and 8, the orientation of this volume is towards the linguistic landscape concept, rather than a notion of semiotic landscapes or the hybrid linguistic/semiotic landscapes. My argument is neither (a) that the only elements of interest in the LL are those which display languages in the conventional sense, nor (b) that other means of expressing meaning (such as colour, visual imagery, dance, or smell) should be treated as languages. Rather, I proceed on the assumption that language in the lexical-grammatical sense – encapsulated in Chomsky’s ([1968] 2006: 23) view that ‘a person who has acquired knowledge of a language has internalized a system of rules that relate sound and meaning in a particular way’ and that it falls to the linguist ‘to construct a correct grammar’ which represents this knowledge – is a useful minimal point of reference for understanding the entry of language into the landscape of public space. The lexical-grammatical concept is useful because it accounts for much of what we see in the LL, but it is minimal because the signage and other texts which form the focus for LL research are not simply the product of grammars. They are actualised, contextually dependent expressions of communicative intent. The actualisation of any LL inscription relies on the display of non-linguistic elements, which may be as simple as the use of paint on a wall or as elaborate as large-scale signage that uses colours, sign shape, visual images, special letter shapes, flashing lights, and other means of expressing a message. Because of the display element, LL texts are not constrained by the same rules as those which set norms for written language in other contexts. Wordplay, cross-linguistic influences of many kinds, deviations from standard orthographic practices, and integration with visual

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imagery are expected in much of the LL, and can be more highly valued than strict adherence to the prescriptive rules of the language. There is thus no reason to expect the LL to contain linguistic expressions only from linguistic codes that have a socially recognised written form. The intimate relationships between language and other means of semiosis – the expression of meaning – therefore present a puzzle for understanding the linguistic in the LL. The answer to this conundrum lies in taking linguistics back to an earlier sense of language as one of many ways of engaging in semiosis. Saussure’s ([1916] 1974: 66) view of language took it as fundamental that ‘the linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image’. In more technical terminology, Saussure (1974: 67) designated the ‘concept’ as the signified (signifié in French) and the ‘sound-image’ as the signifier (French signifiant). The relationship between signified and signifier – arbitrary in the sense that there is no natural connection between the two, but one which arises by social convention – is a fundamental feature of the linguistic sign. Though Saussure did not live to elaborate what the semiology of non-linguistic systems would look like, the notion of the arbitrary nature of the sign in language helps to show its relationship to other sign systems, but does not limit the notion of language to grammar alone. A different approach to semiosis comes from the work of Charles Sanders Peirce. While Peirce did not give language the same central position that Saussure gave it, his concepts of the sign in semiotics also offers much for the LL. To summarise a complex, and at times self-contradictory, line of argument, Peirce understood the fundamental semiotic relationship to consist of three parts: the sign, formally a ‘representamen’; an idea which is meant to be conveyed, formally the ‘object’ of the sign; and an ‘interpretant’, which, as Merrell (2001: 28) explains it, ‘mediates between the representamen and the semiotic object in such a way as to bring about an interrelation between them’. This system differs from Saussure’s, and though the details do not concern us here, Peirce’s object is roughly similar to Saussure’s signified, and the representamen has many of the features of Saussure’s signifier; Peirce’s interpretant, however, separates out the meaning element in a way that contrasts with Saussure’s notion of the linguistic sign as relating the signifier and the signified directly. The importance of Peirce for LL research is that since his concern was with meaning more generally, his work provides a well-known (at least in its simplified version) three-way division of ways in which a representamen can represent its object. The ways in which one thing (a sound, a gesture, a hat, a tattoo, a drawing, a mark on paper, etc.) can convey another – an idea or intention – are, in this system, described by the relationships of the symbol (where the relationship between the two is arbitrary), the index (where there is a causal, historical, or other such connection), and the icon (based on a physical resemblance). Burks (1949: 674), comparing uses of the word red,

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the act of pointing to a tree, and the use of a drawing of machinery, summarises this trichotomy succinctly: A sign represents its object to its interpretant symbolically, indexically, or iconically according to whether it does so (1) by being associated with its object by a conventional rule used by the interpretant (as in the case of ‘red’); (2) by being in existential relation with its object (as in the case of the act of pointing); or (3) by exhibiting its object (as in the case of the diagram).

Language in this scheme is not the only symbolic system – traffic lights, flags used to signal the start or finish of races, and musical and numerical notation systems are also based on symbolic relations – but it exemplifies the symbolic well. Other means of semiosis, though, are constantly present in our world, and very often in mixed form. Much semiosis arises from intentional human activity, but in its widest sense, humans are constantly interpreting other messages as well: smoke as a sign of fire, particular smells as a result of food having turned rotten, and a rash as a symptom of a particular illness are all indexical signs which we interpret as having particular meanings, even though they have not been emplaced intentionally by someone else. The semiotic conundrum, then, comes down to recognising that in the LL, the term linguistic, and with it language, necessarily include all manner of linguistic variation and cross-language effects, and is to be understood within a broader context which includes iconicity and indexicality as means of semiosis. I rely especially on the notion of indexicality in the general sense that one thing can ‘point to’ another, especially by historical and social connections. This approach maintains a focus on language – taken as a universal cognitive faculty which is also inherently social – without losing sight of the broader semiotic picture, and without allowing that picture to obscure the specific contribution which language makes to the expression of meaning. It is, in short, only when our view of language makes due recognition of semiosis in general that maximum value comes from the term linguistic landscape. One consequence of this approach is that some specific terminological choices are necessary. Because of the way sign is used in semiotics, I refer here to such things as road signs, commercial signs, and street name plaques as sign units in order to avoid ambiguity. Any unit which constitutes part of the LL will consequently be referred to as an LL unit. This term provides a way of referring both to sign units and to other elements in the LL, such as graffiti, which are not signs in the conventional physical sense. I will use the term sign instigator to refer to the person or people who are responsible for a particular LL unit, recognising that many such units are put together by a team of people who may include planners, writers, graphic designers, sign makers, bill posters, and others. The person who writes a sign text is often not the person

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who commits it to paper or plastic, or the one who attaches it to a shopfront, and though these different levels of agency present important micro-level questions (e.g. when a signwriter may be required to write in a language they do not understand), they are not considered here. In turn, LL units are designed to be perceived and interpreted by people. To call such people ‘sign readers’ privileges the literacy element in ways that are not always accurate or necessary, so I use the term sign viewer to refer to any individual who perceives and interprets, by whatever means, an LL unit. Like sign, terms such as icon and symbol are not used in their popular sense but in the semiotic tradition of Peirce. I turn finally to some more technical matters. Many languages and writing systems are mentioned in this volume, and it is not possible to discuss them in detail: Cruttendon (2021) provides an especially informative linguistic overview of writing systems in languages around the world, which includes illustrations from the LL. Of particular concern here is the variety of character sets found across different writing systems. Japanese LL material, which is discussed in the following chapters, for example, includes the four different character sets of the Japanese writing system: kanji, based historically on the Chinese writing system; hiragana and katakana, which are syllable-based character sets used (roughly speaking) for grammatical functions and for foreign words and names, respectively; and romaji, which represents the Roman alphabet as used in Japanese writing. Chinese is represented in both its traditional letter forms (now found especially in overseas Chinese contexts) and in the simplified character sets that were introduced in the People’s Republic of China in 1956 and 1964. In all these cases, there can be sociolinguistic significance attached to the use of one character set or another, but usually I will simply note the choices rather than explore them in detail. Most of the presentation of material follows general practice in linguistics: sample words are in italics, with English translations in single quotation marks: Irish crann ‘tree’ provides an example. I use angle brackets (< >) to indicate not only letters of the alphabet and spellings, as is common practice, but to quote from sign units. In these quotations, I make every effort to use the letter shape of the original sign unit as part of the quotation. Within quotations, I have followed emphasis as in the original source, neither adding it nor taking it out. With regard to pronouns, I have used singular they where the context calls for it. I have usually used we in an inclusive sense, understood as one which is intended to draw the reader into the act of observation or contemplation of LL data. It should be taken as an invitation to join in LL research.

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Acknowledgements

This book relies on the creative activities of the designers, sign makers, graffiti artists, and others who have put together the materials that feature in the photographs and discussion here. In trying to understand these creative efforts, I have been helped by other people who have given me permission to take photographs, discussed signage with me, and in other ways provided further information about the workings of their local LL. Acknowledging the help of these anonymous individuals is not merely a formality, but a deep appreciation of their social expression and activity: without them, there would be no LL. As for photographs, I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Research Incentive Scheme of the Long Room Hub in Trinity College, Dublin, for the ‘Documenting Linguistic Landscapes: Communities, Globalisation, and Policy’ project that facilitated my trip to Astoria, Albany, and Montreal. Though I took nearly all the photographs in the book, I also express my sincere thanks for permission to use photographs taken and given to me by David Abrahamson (Figure 3.13B, Rosh Pina), Xiaoou Hong (Figure 4.5B, Beijing), Cormac Leonard (Figure 5.3A, Dublin), and Esther Ní Dhonnacha (Figures 5.7C and 5.13A, Dublin). The meme in Figure 8.11D is shown with thanks to the artist, ‘briosca-sa-spéir’. Special thanks go to the Dublin City Library and Archive for the photograph in Figure 8.12, which comes from the Dixon Slides Collection and appears by kind permission. Thanks go as well to people I have corresponded with on matters of documentation and permission, notably Anne-Marie McInerney, Breda McGuigan, Claire Cunningham, Julieann O’Reilly, Lucia Rinolfi, Paul Clifford, Pierre Boutet, and Robert Ethel. Very few restaurants replied to my email queries about signage, but a correspondent at Djerdan Burek in Astoria was very helpful. A particular high point for me centred on Connolly’s Irish Pub in Oak Park, IL, where Bill Kelly and friends Dana and Fred not only provided me with first-hand experience of the Old World–New World interface in the Irish diaspora, but advised me about promising LL sites in Chicago. I was honoured to be included in their quiz night team (where I learned the word diastema), and though I did not come up with many good answers, I am glad to have been welcomed into this Irish American setting.

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Every LL researcher is constrained by the limits of their own linguistic knowledge, whether in the basic lexical-grammatical sense or in the nuances of wordplay, interlanguage, and textual reference which feature prominently in the LL. I have benefited especially from Esther Ní Donnacha’s translations and discussion with regard to Japanese, and from extensive commentaries on Chinese in the LL given to me by Tingting Hu. I also express my thanks to Mohamed Ahmed and Nada Abdel Aal with regard to Arabic, Deirdre Dunlevy for Catalan and Spanish, Karina Vamling in connection with languages of the Caucasus, and for further comments on Chinese by Ying Wu, Junling Zhang, and Yaying Fang. Thanks, too, to Seán Whelan Dempsey for an insider’s perspective on graffiti. My first contact with the emerging field of LL research came about almost by chance, at the 2004 American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference in Portland, OR (see Chapter 2). Since the issues of language policy and its relation to community and territory discussed at the panel were so richly multidisciplinary, and had such strong parallels in the Irish LL, I knew instantly that I would want to work in this new field. To my great pleasure, Elana Shohamy invited me to join members of the panel and others for dinner afterwards; I thank her not only for her characteristically supportive and creative way of introducing me to the LL world, but for her leadership in the field as a whole. From this connection, I have been fortunate to have had many stimulating conversations with Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Miriam BenRafael, and with other LL researchers who were part of the early enterprise, notably Thom Huebner, Durk Gorter, and Jasone Cenoz. Many other students, colleagues, and friends have also contributed to my understanding of the LL in various ways, sometimes by hosting events which have given rise to lively discussions. I would particularly like to thank Adam Jaworski, Áine Connell, Alastair Pennycook, Amiena Peck, Bernard Spolsky, Breffni O’Rourke, Cassandra Moss, Christine Hélot, Ciara Kay, Crispin Thurlow, David Hanauer, David Malinowski, Deirdre Dunlevy, Des Ryan, Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, Elisabeth Okasha, Francis Hult, Greg Niedt, Hans van de Velde, Heiko Marten, Jackie Jia Lou, James Lantolf, Jennifer Putnam, Jessica Garska, Joe Murphy, Karen P. Corrigan, Kasper Juffermans, Kate Lyons, Kellie Gonçalves, Kevin Nolan, Larissa Aronin, Laura Diver, Laurence Mettewie, Liezl Hendryckx, Louis Strange, Luca De Santis, Maeve Dunn, Mark Sebba, Martin Howard, Maryssa Kozek, Olga Balaeva, Piotr Sadowski, Rakesh Bhatt, Rebecca Todd Garvin, Robert Blackwood, Robert Train, Robert Troyer, Roy Willoughby, Shoshi Waksman, Stefania Tufi, Susan Gass, Vicky Garnett, Vivian Cook, Viviane Ribes, Will Amos, and Yael Guilat. Within Trinity College, Dublin, colleagues of mine in history and geography have also given me new perspectives, and I thank Ciaran Brady

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and Michael Quigley for the innumerable conversations we have had on these and related matters. It has taken time – in a world that has changed in many ways – to bring this book to its conclusion. Helen Barton and Izzie Collins at Cambridge University Press have been consistently helpful with their encouragement, patience, and good humour. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their advice. The book-writing process has been greatly helped by members of my family. Thanks to my brother, Greg Kallen, whose arm appears in Figure 8.2B, and who now asks how the book is progressing. Esther Ní Dhonnacha and Margaret Mannion have contributed beyond measure to this enterprise. When Esther and I gave our ‘Rising Sun, Celtic Tiger’ presentation at the LL workshop in Siena in 2009, it was the first father–daughter paper in the field. Whether sourcing or discussing photographs, opening my eyes to the online LL, translating, bringing together the ‘three professors’ group with Karen Wade (who I also thank here), or in other ways, Esther has made an invaluable contribution to my attempts to understand the LL. Margaret Mannion, my wife, has enriched my understanding with an artist’s eye, a literary sensibility, and a sceptic’s independence of thought. Trekking through the sites of fieldwork, pointing out new LL material, and always ready to discuss the LL with me, Margaret has helped me see this book through to completion in ways that no other person could. Margaret and Esther share a love of good writing and editorial practice as well as an antipathy towards academic jargon, and I have tried to stay true to their advice. In this regard, as with everything else in this volume, any shortcomings are my own responsibility.

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1.1

A World of Signs: Signs in the World

The signage in Figure 1.1 is not particularly elaborate or spectacular, and it was probably not expensive to produce. Its simplicity illustrates the power of language display in the public space. On the left-hand side, the sign carries a single message in Spanish, English, and Arabic. The right-hand side contains further information about the functioning of the San Pablo UMC, the ‘United Methodist Church’: the address (given in English), the times of religious services (given in Spanish), the name of the minister of the church, and contact details by phone or Facebook. The Facebook page uses Spanish and English. As a way of using language to convey information, the sign is simple: the lefthand side is dominated by one message which is given three times, while the right-hand side contains largely practical information which can be understood without a high level of proficiency in English or Spanish. The address on the sign is not entirely new information, since the sign viewer will already be at that location in order to read the sign. Like all signage, though, the sign unit in Figure 1.1 is not only a linguistic expression; it is also a text-bearing object. When we consider the object as text-bearing, our attention focuses on the use of writing systems and their expression through letterforms and indicators of textual organisation such as punctuation and rules for the direction of reading. Text, however, is only an abstraction. To be realised physically, the text also relies on layout, by which elements of text are ordered and placed relative to each other, and integrated with non-linguistic visual features such as colour, shape, and imagery. The left-hand side of the sign unit thus includes both a unity of focus (since all versions of the message are semantically equivalent and use white lettering against a coloured rectangular background) and a diversity of display, since each language uses its own writing system and coloured rectangles use green for Spanish, blue for English, and orange for Arabic. The greater visual similarity of Spanish and English (which share the use of the Roman alphabet and a left-to-right text vector, in contrast to the Arabic alphabet and the Arabic use of a right-to-left text vector) carries over onto the right-hand side of the 1

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Figure 1.1 Welcoming neighbours (Astoria, 2017)

text, in which one system of black letters is used against an orange background, and there is no distinction of typography or layout between English Road and Spanish domingos ‘Sundays’. The differences in capitalisation follow the respective rules of each writing system. Considering the sign unit in Figure 1.1 as an object also draws our attention to the technology of writing, the material which the sign is written on, and the placement of the sign. Its size, location, and physical support or attachment are salient. We can note that the sign unit uses commercial printing on flexible plastic (probably vinyl), and that it is attached by plastic ties to a chain-link fence in front of the church which it references. The upper edge of the fence is visible in the photograph. It is not much more than a metre above the ground, so the signage is easily readable for passers-by. These physical features are all potentially meaningful: we can assume that the display of a brightly coloured plastic banner at the boundary between the church and the public footpath has a different effect from an equivalent linguistic expression engraved in stone in the fabric of the building itself. Assessing the effect which a sign unit has on the viewer raises a third, essential, element in the LL, which is its role in discourse. Taken literally, the left-hand messages in Figure 1.1 express a fact about the emotional state of the institutional speaker: we are glad . . .. Indirectly, however, and in a way that can only be understood with the help of more general knowledge, this expression of gladness is put forward as an act of welcoming. The first part of the

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Figure 1.2 Not all signs are in the LL (Arlington, 2016)

statement (no matter where you are from) addresses sign viewers from everywhere. The expression in three languages strengthens this address, since the three languages can be interpreted to stand for a much wider range of possible languages used by members of the public. Once addressed, the unknown sign viewer is no longer a stranger, but a neighbor. In changing the status of the sign viewer from that of stranger to that of neighbour, and in advertising times of being open to the public and ways of making further contacts, the institutional speaker (or sign instigator) thus extends an act of welcoming to a general public. Against a contemporary background of threats and hostility towards immigration and the use of languages other than English, the display of multilingualism in the act of welcoming strangers to engage with the sign instigator builds trust and motivates the text. Demonstrating the centrality of the pragmatic element in the LL, Figure 1.2 shows what happens when signage is not displayed as an act of discourse in the landscape. The signs at the counter of a hardware shop in Figure 1.2 are wellformed linguistic texts that issue various instructions and warnings. The discourse status of the elements in this display is not immediately clear. If the elements are all intended as samples of merchandise for sale, the presence of signs in French is anomalous in Arlington, where French rarely occurs in the

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LL, apart from fragmentary use in restaurants or other domains which appeal to cultural prestige. The sign is also anomalous, since this phrase is strongly associated with New York City (see Figure 6.12A below). The sign uses the visual genre of regulatory signage, but is an ironic comment not to be taken literally. The display as a whole might thus show off exotic or amusing signs as a matter of general interest, or it may entice the customer with samples of merchandise: the difference can only be determined by asking in the shop. Either way, the display is based on the assumption that the sign viewer knows enough about the LL not to interpret the signs as genuine acts of instruction or warning: the viewer is not expected to read French ‘exit’ and look for an actual exit. These text-bearing objects, then, are only potential players in the LL, with sign viewers expected to know that other elements of pragmatic intent are needed to transform them into LL units. 1.2

Entering the Linguistic Landscape

Figure 1.1 shows a linguistic text, produced and emplaced in a meaningful way that points to a specific space and a series of time-bound events within that space. The text comes from an identifiable sign instigator who takes responsibility for its content; it is addressed to a general public in order to achieve the sign instigator’s pragmatic objectives. In contrast, although the sign units in Figure 1.2 have the necessary features of text, layout, and physical production to accomplish certain pragmatic objectives (such as warning, prohibiting certain behaviour, or indicating an exit zone), the manner of their emplacement determines that they do not perform the speech acts which their texts spell out, but stand instead only as samples of possible speech acts. The role of the LL unit as a mediation between the sign instigator and the sign viewer is crucial, and provides a keynote for understanding the overview of LL data which this chapter is designed to provide. This section starts with an examination of code choices, followed by sections focused on space, discourse, and the historical dimension. I conclude with suggestions as to how this material points towards the sociolinguistic perspective to be developed in the chapters which follow. 1.2.1

Code Choices: Language Policy

The notion of code choices in the LL refers to the use of linguistic means to express meaning. Other modes which express meaning – from architecture and the use of space to the use of visual images, colour, and layout – are co-present with linguistic codes and are part of LL research, but linguistic codes provide a specific and, as I suggest in Chapter 8, inescapable focus within the LL. From the minimal sense of language as a socially conventional system for relating

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the intrinsically meaningless elements of sound to meaning, however, there is no expectation that a language will be politically recognised, that it will have a socially agreed writing system (or indeed any writing system at all), or that languages will be ‘pure’ and autonomous from other languages. Even the modality of sound waves in the phonological component of language is not guaranteed, since sign languages have phonological organisation that feeds into morphology and syntax, but does not rely on acoustic sound (see Brentari, Fenlon, and Cormier 2018 for a review). The notion of code choices, then, is broad enough to allow for a wide range of codes on display, but retains the idea that linguistic codes are different from other systems within the range of semiosis. Since one of the original motivations for LL research lies in the field of language planning (see Chapter 2), the illustration of code choices in this chapter starts with Figure 1.3, which displays language policies in action. These signs come from trains that cross internationally recognised political frontiers. Figure 1.3A shows a notice on a train journey which originates in Basle, Switzerland, and terminates in Cologne, Germany. The notice includes safety instructions in the three official languages of Switzerland: German, French, and Italian. Romansch also has official status in the Graubünden canton, but its non-inclusion in this notice underlines the difference between official status at the federal level and regional or local recognition. The bottom line in English raises questions. English does not have status as an official language in Switzerland, and it would be easy to view it here simply as a language of wider communication. Swiss census data cited by Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig (2019), however, show 4.8 million people who can speak English, which amounts to slightly more than half the population of the country; of this number, 425,000 people are first-language speakers of English. These figures suggest that globalisation, including the effects of population movement and second language learning, represents a challenge for notions of ‘what language is spoken where’ and how to interpret language display in the LL. Figure 1.3A also shows the salience of the relative size and position of text across languages. In Figure 1.3A, the main messages contain the same information, and use the same letter shapes and sizes with black print against a white background. The descending order of German, French, and Italian reflects their relative standing in percentages of speakers in Switzerland (Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig 2019). The word on the top line, however, is printed in red using a larger type size. It is an English word form, and though it differs from German automatisch, French automatique, and Italian automatica, the shared etymology of these forms (ultimately from Greek αὐτόματος) makes recognisable across language boundaries.

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Figure 1.3 Cross-border train notices – Basle–Cologne (2018); New York– Montreal (2017); Dublin–Belfast (2014)

Language policy is also in play in Figure 1.3D, from the Dublin–Belfast train. As this train crosses the political boundary between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the signage must be understood in relation to language policy in both jurisdictions. The message content is the same across all three languages, though English is given the most prominence, occupying the top position and using upper case letters. The use of English and Irish in public notices conforms to official signage regulations in the Republic of Ireland at the time, though more recent policy gives preference to putting the Irish language text above the English. In Northern Ireland, the default language of public signage is English, although the Local Government (Miscellaneous

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Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 also provides for bilingual Irish/ English street name plaques under certain conditions: see Dunlevy (2021) for a comprehensive review. Since these provisions are based on language use in local communities, facilities such as motorways and public transportation operating across Northern Ireland rarely include Irish. The Irish/English bilingualism in Figure 1.3D thus reflects a policy which is obligatory in the Republic of Ireland but unexpected in public transportation in Northern Ireland. The use of French on the bottom row of text does not follow from legal requirements or population demographics in either jurisdiction. The Dublin–Belfast train, however, was upgraded by a large cross-border train improvement scheme which received significant funding from the European Union at a time when the UK was still part of the EU. Since French is not used in domestic trains anywhere in Ireland, its occurrence in the sign of Figure 1.3D can be interpreted as a recognition of the role of the EU in facilitating cross-border transport and communication within the EU. The signs in Figures 1.3B and 1.3C also come from a train line which crosses a political border. In this case, however, different language policies determine different language displays at either end of the Amtrak train journey between New York City and Montreal. Figure 1.3C shows an instruction in New York for passengers headed to Montreal. Although the train is going to a destination where French is the official language, and the passenger population can be expected to include a significant number of French speakers, all information is in English; the spelling reflects English language usage. Figure 1.3B shows the counterpart Canadian signage, addressed to passengers going from Montreal to New York. It uses a similar typeface and the same recognisable Amtrak colour scheme and logo (not shown in the photograph), but gives passenger information with French in top position and English below, in accordance with the law in Quebec. As we will see in Chapter 4, these signs do not exhaust the LL of the New York–Montreal train, but they give an indication of policy decisions at work. 1.2.2

Code Choices: Breaking Language Barriers

Though language policy usually refers to languages which exhibit various degrees of codification and standardisation, code choices in the LL frequently break free from norms of standardisation, mix innovatively between codes, and present texts which cannot readily be assigned to one language or another. Figure 1.4 illustrates this point with a sign from Reagan National Airport (DCA) near Washington, D.C. The large-scale signage overhangs a freeflowing seating area which is designed with short-visit transient customers in mind. Many airports are extraordinary zones in the LL, since they have an intermediate status between public and private space, show essential

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Figure 1.4 Playing with codes (DCA airport, 2016)

uniformity around the world, are designed to facilitate movement through the space rather than to provide opportunities for community discourse, and may have only weak ties to local culture, exemplified by the sale of local souvenirs which can actually be made anywhere in the world. The code choices of the sign at the centre of the unit include an intentional hybrid of English say with French si bon ‘so good’. The resultant text is roughly homophonous with French c’est si bon ‘it’s so good’. The French meaning generates an advertising name that implies quality, and introduces an element of familiar exoticism for the Anglophone sign viewer, who may also know this phrase from the popular song ‘C’est si bon’, first copyrighted in 1948 and recorded by many artists since then (see Second Hand Songs website for further detail). The use of a song title in an unrelated shop name introduces the element of intertextuality, which Bauman (2004: 4) describes as ‘the relational orientation of a text to other texts’. Leeds-Hurwitz (1993: 41) observes that intertextuality allows texts to ‘“resonate” with meaning when they refer to previous texts, perhaps because they do not require as much work to decide how to interpret them’. Thus, with regard to Figure 1.4, intertextuality – addressed to a continuous flow of strangers in the unfamiliar and often intimidating atmosphere of an international airport – uses a familiar song text to make the unfamiliar more trustworthy. The linguistic hybridity of the inscription works at one level to attach a name to a place of business and to invite the sign viewer to become a

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Figure 1.5 Crossing the boundaries of writing systems (Brighton, 2016)

customer, but it does so by engaging in a playful cross-linguistic reference that builds on the sign viewer’s background knowledge to provide the familiar in an unfamiliar environment. Figure 1.5 shows that cross-linguistic influences in the LL are not limited to lexical-grammatical elements. The photograph in Figure 1.5 shows the signage of one restaurant among many on the same street in Brighton. This one stands out because of the large-scale repetition of the name Bombay, in the form . This name is attached in white letters to the brown walls of the building, and also features in white writing on a red background on signs in several locations visible in the photograph. The colour red has general appeal in street advertising as a means of gaining attention, but it is often used with specific Indian connections. The name Bombay is often taken to be an anglicisation of Portuguese Bom Bahia ‘good bay’: Portugal took control of the area in 1534, but it came under British control in 1661. The alternative place name Mumbai reflects the pronunciation in Marathi and other languages – apart from Hindi – of a name derived from the local goddess Mumbadevi + Aai ‘mother’. Neither Hindi nor Marathi is used in the signage. Since Bombay is an anglicisation that has been used since at least the early seventeenth century, the name on display fits easily into the rules for reading English, though the lower case at the start of the name is not normative. In this historical context, the name Bombay is not just an English language place name (or part of the English onomasticon, as I discuss below), but a reference to the city as part of the era of British colonisation. This reference to a familiar past in the English context could enhance a claim to authenticity of a particular kind; it contrasts with Mumbai,

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which in an English language context references more recent, post-colonial language policy in India. Most salient in the graphic presentation of the Bombay name, however, is the use of a horizontal line through the two characters and over the other lower-case letters to yield a visual effect that is (at least for the Englishspeaking reader) similar to the head line of the Devanagari script used for Marathi, Hindi, and many other languages of India. This use of iconicity creates an inscription which is meant to look ‘Indian’ to the sign viewer, enhancing the power of the signage to claim visual salience and cultural authenticity for the sign instigator. The sign viewer who recognises the resemblance can thus overlook the differences between Devanagari, in which the head line forms a functional part of the individual character, and English in which the horizontal line in the writing has no orthographic function. The modification of English language Roman typefaces in order to evoke features of other writing systems (at least as perceived by the designer and their intended audience) has been expanding since the nineteenth century. Kim and Kim (1993: 32), for example, document a ‘pseudo-Japanese’ font in the US from 1867 and a similar font known as Japanese in England two decades later: see also Sutherland’s (2015) discussion of ‘writing system mimicry’, Li and Zhu’s (2019: 151) definition of ‘tranßcripting’ as ‘the linguistic practice of creating a script with elements from different writing systems . . . or by mixing conventional language scripts with other symbols and signs including emoji’, and related analyses of Greek in online environments by Androutsopoulos (2015, 2020). 1.2.3

Code Choices: Conflict

While the code choices for the preceding signs show no signs of controversy, Figure 1.6 illustrates a conflict over code choices. The signage in Figure 1.6A shows a type which is common in Northern Ireland and can also be found with variations in northern parts of the Republic of Ireland (see Kallen 2014 for discussion). This type is immediately recognisable by its shape, text around the edge of the sign, and central image of a beer mug covered by a conventional red X denoting a prohibition: as I discuss in Kallen (2014), even the beer mug image is significant, since it was popularised in the 1920s and 1930s and has now come to index not simply drinking alcohol in general, but local traditions of pub life. The linguistic element in the signage of Figure 1.6A is purely in English, using the indirect phrasing that it is an offence to drink alcohol in public places in this area, rather than using a more direct form such as do not drink alcohol here or drinking prohibited. The element I focus on here is the expression of language conflict that arises in Figure 1.6B, where a sticker that reads As

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1.2 Entering the Linguistic Landscape

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Figure 1.6 Public notice, language conflict (Warrenpoint, 2014; Belfast, 2007)

Gaeilge Anois! ‘In Irish now!’ is pasted over the central image of the beer glass. The sticker uses text, typography (putting Gaeilge ‘Irish’ in a large distinctive font), and colour (with the preposition as and anois ‘now’ in red), to advance its argument. The linguistic conflict here pits those who support the Irish language, a minority language with limited legal status and recognition in Northern Ireland, against English as the dominant language of the signage. Like other stickers, as discussed further in Chapter 4, this one can be adapted to a range of situations: I have seen it in Belfast on English language parking and security signage as well. As with graffiti more generally, the LL thus becomes a linguistic battleground. 1.2.4

Place and Code Choices: Names and Naming

Signage that expresses place names shows the intersection between code choice and spatial relations with particular clarity. To name a place is to have power over it, and to choose the code of a place name is to invoke not only linguistic but historical and cultural references. Place name signage can thus become highly contested. Place names, and proper nouns more generally, are a problem for linguistic analysis, since they have many of the same syntactic features as nouns but do not have the same lexical, morphological, and semantic properties: for reviews of philosophical and linguistic arguments, see Ainiala, Saarelma, and Sjöblom (2016: 13–37), Nyström (2016), and Van Langendonck and Van de Velde (2016). I follow the position advocated by Coates (2006, 2009), who argues (2009: 439) that ‘proper names are truly devoid of sense’, but are instead used as ‘a mode of reference’, for ‘the picking

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out of an individual’. According to Coates (2009: 437), ‘this mode of reference, called onymic reference, is an alternative to what we can call ordinary semantic reference’. By this logic we can best understand the language of proper nouns by distinguishing between the lexicon of a language (which operates as a regular part of the linguistic system, in which words have the full range of rule-governed morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties) and the onomasticon (which stores proper names and generalisations about proper names that arise not by meaning but by experience, telling us, e.g. that English names like Fido and Snoopy usually apply to dogs and not to places or people). The street name plaques of Figure 1.7 come from different communities in Co. Down, Northern Ireland, and show problems of code choice and onymic

Figure 1.7 Street name plaques (Kilkeel, Rostrevor, Grey Abbey, 2014)

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reference at work. These sign units share certain features which help to define their genre: see also Chapter 6. They do not simply convey information, but instead have the performative quality of declarations as defined by Searle (1979): they change the world by bestowing a name on whatever part of the street or road they refer to. Each contains an odonym (the name of a street, road, or other thoroughfare), they are all of similar dimension and size, they form a series with other such signs in their respective localities, and they are all placed on walls. They also show contrastive differences. The sign unit in Figure 1.7A is monolingual in English (with a black serif typeface against a white background), the signage in Figure 1.7B puts a name in Irish on the top line with English underneath (using a white sans serif typeface against a blue background), and the sign in Figure 1.7C uses a similar format to Figure 1.7A in the top half, but also uses white lettering against a brown background to present a name that was used in Ulster Scots. Only the sign in Figure 1.7B gives the additional trust building information as to the authority responsible for the signage; this information is given in Irish on the left and English on the right. Considering a street name plaque as the declaration of an odonym, two names from different languages are equivalent in the sense that they both refer to the same place. As Chapter 6 shows, however, there is no guarantee that the two names will have equivalent etymologies or be composed of semantically equivalent words. In Figure 1.7B, however, the two-name inscriptions are approximate cross-linguistic equivalences, since Irish sráid and droichid correspond lexically to English street and bridge, respectively. These terms are names, not descriptions: we do not know if Bridge Street – Sráid an Droichid leads to a bridge, is itself a bridge, refers to the site of a historic bridge, or is based on other references. The English name carries the additional possibility that Bridge Street could refer to a person with the name Bridge; the grammatical construction of the Irish odonym (with the definite article an and the genitive singular form of the noun droichead) excludes this interpretation. The bilingual name pairing in Figure 1.7C is of a different type from that of Figure 1.7B. The bottom half of the sign presents an odonym in Ulster Scots, the variety of Scots which was brought to Ulster particularly after the ‘Plantation of Ulster’ in the early seventeenth century: see Smyth, Montgomery, and Robinson (2006) for a linguistic overview. The use of black lettering on a white background with black trim for English and white lettering on a brown background with white trim for Ulster Scots creates a visual complementarity that points to the sign as a single unit. The white lettering on a brown background, however, uses an international colour convention for information of historical or touristic interest. The Ulster Scots odonym is in a smaller italic font that allows the word formerly to introduce the name. Although the signage in Figure 1.7B and Figure 1.7C could be seen as parallel

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units of bilingual naming, consideration of pragmatic force shows them to be very different. In the Irish/English case, the display of each name carries out the speech act of declaration, but between English and Ulster Scots, only the top part has the force of a declaration. The bottom half is phrased as a mere statement of fact (an assertive in terms of Searle 1979) that explicitly negates the implication that the name is applicable today. Place name choices are politically significant, and Ulster Scots has been part of social debate on language rights in Northern Ireland in recent decades: see Stapleton and Wilson (2004) and Mac Síthigh (2018) for reviews, and Dunlevy (2021: 144–47) for a discussion of the LL. Figure1.7 shows that language displays are not always equivalent: to display a place name as a matter of cultural background is significant, but to bestow the place name in an act of declaration is a matter of different significance. In other words, sign units which may look similar may prove to be quite different when their pragmatic status is taken into account. 1.3

Regulating Space in the LL

Concepts of space are intrinsic to the notion of landscape, and some of the preceding figures emphasise the spatial aspect: signage in Figure 1.3 tells passengers where to stand, the name display in Figure 1.5 points to the immediate environment of a restaurant and to the source of its inspiration in a distant land, while street name plaques in Figure 1.7 confer odonyms on their immediate referents. Figure 1.8 shows two different ways of using language to regulate space, one relying largely on social convention, the other making more use of physical emplacement features. The signage of Figure 1.8A is placed inside the public area of a hotel. The visual aspect combines an iconic image of a cigarette with a symbolic red circle and diagonal ‘prohibition’ line that crosses the cigarette image. Though the sign is mostly in English, it also contains a spelling which references Ulster Scots. Like the indirect directive in Figure 1.6A, the first line of the sign in Figure 1.8A is phrased as a simple statement of fact. Its pragmatic force, however, is to direct the sign viewer not to smoke within these premises. This sign unit also creates new spatial zones (the so-called designated smoking areas) which are not visible from the vantage point of the sign. It is up to the viewer to use cognitive mapping in order to determine where these places are (within the rear car park and to the front of the hotel). This use of language to indicate a specific space allows it to act not just as a directive, but as a declaration in Searle’s (1976) sense, since it brings about a real-world change by creating two spatial zones, one where smoking is allowed and another where it is not. To prohibit hotel guests from smoking, however well intentioned, is also a threat to their ‘face’ needs, as discussed by Brown and Levinson (1987), to

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1.3 Regulating Space in the LL

Figure 1.8 Regulating space – The Sitootery (Belfast), Rue barrée (Montreal), (2017)

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proceed in the world with unimpeded freedom. Indirect directives have the advantage of lessening the face-threatening potential of prohibitions by mitigating the imposition which they express. In Figure 1.8A, however, Ulster Scots is used as a way of reducing the threat to face. Sitootery ‘a structure to sit out in’ (see DSL citations) is a Scots word; the spelling renders the pronunciation of the lexical item out in Scots, and this pronunciation and spelling crosses over into varieties of English in Scotland and Ulster. The word sitootery exemplifies a ‘positive’ politeness strategy in Brown and Levinson’s (1987: 103) terms, by invoking the ‘common ground’ of language forms that are local and not part of the formal prestige register. Figure 1.8B, however, shows a different approach to spatial regulation. The orange signs in the figure are mounted on temporary stands that use an internationally recognised genre of road traffic signs in which colour, shape, and position signal dangers, emergencies, or temporary situations. The signage of Figure 1.8B prioritises high visibility, with an orange and white striped pillar to the left of the signage, a parallel striped horizontal bar, and the use of black upper-case lettering against a contrastive orange background. The temporary stands which support the signage index a contrast with the normal expectations of traffic flow. The messages in the signs of Figure 1.8B state a general principle in the right-hand sign (stating ‘road closed’) and a limitation to the scope of the principle in the left-hand sign, allowing for ‘local traffic only’: their size and placement in the road become part of the message itself. As with Figure 1.8A, the phrasing does not use imperatives, but succinctly states two items as facts: it is up to the sign viewer to determine that these two facts constitute a directive. Also, like Figure 1.8A, the signage further expresses a declaration, using words to establish a new boundary between the zone of permitted traffic flow and the zone in which traffic is forbidden. In contrast to Figure 1.8A, however, the signage uses only the official language of the region, and uses no politeness to soften the effect of the declaration. 1.4

Discourse in the LL

1.4.1

Interaction in the LL

Though the approach developed here takes all LL units as acts of discourse, Figures 1.9 and 1.10 illustrate two types of LL unit which highlight discourse in action. One capitalises on the unregulated nature of graffiti, which provides opportunities for continuing discourse between sign instigators as interlocutors. A second illustrates the potential for public protest and debate, where people who instigate the temporary moving signage of protest address an unspecified political audience. Though these illustrations come from different countries, they both pertain to debates over migration in the contemporary

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1.4 Discourse in the LL

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Figure 1.9 Foreigners graffiti (Dublin, 2016, 2017)

world, and may be seen as contributions to a global discourse on migration and human rights. Figure 1.9 comes from a longitudinal study of graffiti on six seafront pedestrian shelters in Dublin, described in Kallen (2017). These shelters regularly attract graffiti, which is periodically removed by civic authorities. Figure 1.9A is from 2016, and expresses the anti-immigrant sentiment , followed by a subsequent response , and a third expression, . The latter comment adds gender to the sentiment, assuming the problematic foreigners to be men and relegating the foreign wives to a potential value as objects of male desire. (The spelling may reflect a potential merger in Irish English between words of the FOOT and STRUT sets as defined by Wells 1982; see Harris 1996 and Kallen 2013 for detail.) The messages in Figure 1.9A were painted over by authorities, but by 2017 the same initial slogan had reappeared. Not long afterwards, the word had been partly removed by another graffiti artist, and a riposte written adjacent to the remaining phrase, with the resultant message shown in Figure 1.9B, yielding . The reply in Figure 1.9B is specific to its original grounding. It alters the argument of the original inscription, and does so by using the same all capitals style of writing. This similarity of layout thus reinforces the substance of the reply message, which is to assert that foreigners are actually an asset to the city. Though such interchanges are usually fleeting (and this discourse was soon painted over again by city authorities), they constitute a part of the discourse of the LL. While the discourse on immigration in Figure 1.9 takes place entirely through writing on walls, discourse of a different kind is exemplified by

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Figure 1.10 Signs of protest – Cosecha march (Albany, 2017)

displays of language in social protest and political demonstration. Figure 1.10A gives an overall view of one such protest, on a day of national action, while Figures 1.10B and 1.10C provide details. Though this demonstration is not fixed in place and is not a permanent structure, it is a display of language in the public space which follows an identifiable generic structure (cf. Hanauer 2015 and Seals 2017). The march progresses from a starting point towards a destination, and the direction of the march defines a lead position which may favour certain banners and signs over others. The march shown in Figure 1.10 was proceeding down State Street, near the New York state capitol building. Large banners at the front bear the

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name and carry the logo of the organisers, Movimiento Cosecha (from Spanish cosecha ‘harvest’), a nationwide group which describes itself as ‘a nonviolent movement fighting for permanent protection, dignity, and respect for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States’, with a special emphasis on farmworkers (Cosecha website). Though the demonstration constitutes an ensemble, it is made from individual LL units: some have been professionally printed and others are homemade. Figure 1.10B shows a long rectangular sign reading [‘without hands there is no work’] in black letters followed by the Cosecha logo in blue, then the text in blue to the left and the wording in red to the right. Figure 1.10C features a preprinted poster with the Cosecha butterfly logo and the Spanish slogan ‘The workers’ struggle has no borders’. Colour adds salience, with black letters used against a white background in the upper half of the poster, and against a red background in the lower half. Behind this poster is one which shows a hand drawn map to represent the world, rimmed by the question and question marks in each corner of the poster. This public demonstration is thus not only multimodal – employing spoken and written language, physical and kinesic design, sound and music, and visual imagery – but engages in multiple discourses. The march as a whole shows an overall societal discourse about immigration, but it includes separate discourses about wealth, economic management, justice, religion, and other topics. Linguistic messages are central to the appeal of the demonstration, since the sign viewer would not know what viewpoints are being espoused without them, but multimodality adds to the persuasive power of the ensemble by eliciting and intensifying emotional responses from sign viewers. 1.4.2

Writing and Speech in the LL

The preceding examples rely on written language, but they demonstrate that writing is not all that is on display in the LL: layout, typography, use of colour, physical placement, and visual imagery inevitably come into the LL as well. The discourse dimension of the LL also points towards interactions between spoken language and the landscape, particularly when language is linked to place names, directions, and knowledge about places. Banda and Jimaima (2015), for example, argue that ‘semiotic landscapes in rural-scapes’ are not limited to physically delimited signage using written language, but must also include oral accounts of space and location. Banda and Jimaima’s (2015: 658–59) account of a ‘sign’ in rural Zambia which contains no written language but consists of a concrete slab painted green and ‘supported by two pillars built out of locally built bricks’, shows that it is used ‘as a point of

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Figure 1.11 The D Walls (Dublin, 2018)

reference to directions given orally’. Such cases motivate Banda and Jimaima (2015: 667) to suggest ‘a somewhat different taxonomy of “signs” for place making compared to urban areas’ which takes account of ‘faded orthographies, names and texts, and removed objects and socio-cultural materialities (e.g. “What used to be a graveyard/Sipalo Butchery”)’. Though Banda and Jimaima’s (2015) argument links spoken discourse and place in non-urban environments, it establishes a much broader principle that also holds in urban areas: that the written LL and its functions coexist with stable elements of discourse that circulate in oral tradition and thus form a complement to the world as mapped out by the written LL. With this point in mind, Figure 1.11 illustrates an LL place name feature that has no associated signage. Figure 1.11 shows a topographic feature known as ‘the D Walls’ in Marino, a Dublin housing estate built in the 1920s. A small grassy area with several trees in the centre of the photograph is contained within a low concrete border. This border shows a straight line on the left, parallel to the footpath. To the right, the border curves around in a shape that, viewed from above, resembles a capital letter . A mirror image area exists on the other side of the street that is visible at the far left of Figure 1.11. There is no signage designating these grassy areas as ‘the D Walls’, and the term has no official status. While the name is based on the shape of the walls, it was not inevitable that the name would be attached to this space: it arises and is maintained by social convention in oral tradition. Such discoursal elements in the LL provide

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1.5 The Historical Dimension in the LL

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a distinctive tie between language and landscape. To exclude such data from the LL is not just to privilege literacy (which is not equally accessible in all societies), but to overlook the everyday experience of people in societies of all kinds in using spoken language to supplement, comment on, contradict, or in other ways interact with the written LL. 1.5

The Historical Dimension in the LL

1.5.1

The Past in the Present

A still photograph carries with it an illusion of the LL unit as timeless, freezing the unit as it was at the moment the photograph was taken. A challenge for LL research, however, is to recognise that any given LL unit can only be understood within a flow of continual change. Not only do LL units themselves change (whether by conscious design or by the effects of weathering, daylight, and other physical dynamics), but their relationships to other LL units and to the landscape as a whole are always in flux. Even when the texts of LL units remain relatively stable, their function or affective value may change as they are perceived by new audiences. Various aspects of change and the relation of the LL to history are discussed in Chapter 7; I offer here some examples. Figure 1.12 shows a remnant of the past LL, repurposed to contemporary meanings. It is an example of ‘the past in the present’, since it is visible in the present-day LL, even though it no longer functions in its original role. The contemporary signage of an ice cream shop appears in Figure 1.12A, with a slogan in blue on a white fascia as well as an iconic image of a drop to indicate fresh cream or melting ice cream. The unified presentation of language, image, layout, and colour continues on the exterior wall and its modern doorway (barely visible in the photograph), and is designed to dominate the entire shopfront. Breaking this unity, and revealed by a cut into the modern exterior plaster, is a hexagonal stone with a Latin inscription dated to 1615, shown in Figure 1.12B. The stone was originally a fireplace keystone, which was put into the outer wall at a later date. According to the National Inventory website, the current building incorporates its original seventeenth century fabric, but was built ca. 1820. The top line of the inscription in the stone contains the letters , and the is topped with a cross. The abbreviation IHS developed from usage in late Latin as a shortening of Greek ΙΗΣΟΥΣ iēsous ‘Jesus’. Latin Ave Maria ‘Hail Mary’ and gratia ‘grace’ follow, written as and . The initials and conclude the inscription, and the stone features a heraldic crest. The right side of the crest resembles the crest of the Ffont family, one of the powerful merchant families in Galway at the time (Hardiman [1820] 1985: 6), but neither the image on the left side nor the initials have been convincingly identified.

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Figure 1.12 Latin inscription 1615 (Galway, 2019)

Though much of the intended significance of this remnant has become obscure, and it has been moved from its original emplacement in a domestic setting, the preservation and display of this remnant of the historical LL has relevance for residents and special appeal for tourists. Galway developed from a Gaelic fortified settlement that is first mentioned in historical sources for 1124; an Anglo-Norman borough was established in the thirteenth century, and during the late mediaeval period the city became a major European trading port. The city is now a popular tourist destination, and for the tourist in search of a sense of Galway’s early modern history, the original stone conveys a reality that a modern plaque would lack. Thus, while the stone originally had specific textual and visual references, a new indexicality of the past in a more indefinite sense – illustrating Lowenthal’s (1975: 22) principle that ‘tangibility invests antiquity with powerful affect’ – has been superimposed on the old indexicalities.

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1.5 The Historical Dimension in the LL

1.5.2

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Layering of Past and Present

A different historical perspective comes into view when older signage and new signage co-occur within the same broad function. The layering of past and present is a common feature in extensive LL systems such as street name plaques and postal or transportation services, since the complete replacement of older signage with new counterparts may be expensive and labour intensive. The retention of old signage to carry out present-day functions may create problems in times of rapid social change, where there may be strong pressure to develop new signage and replace that of old regimes – see Pavlenko (2009) on post-Soviet LL change, Themistocleous (2019) on shifts in the Cyprus LL, and related data from Eastern Germany in Buchstaller, Alvanides, Griese, and Schneider (2021) – but in other circumstances the retention of old signage may point to continuity, stability, or historical values. I discuss these and other problems of layering further in Chapter 7. The layering in Figure 1.13 represents a case in which a newly independent country retains functional elements of the old LL, even though new alternatives are available. The post box in Figure 1.13 was one of many cast iron wall boxes installed in Ireland during the Victorian era; it now contains inscriptions from three historical periods and political regimes. The upper section of the box retains the royal crown and insignia designating Queen Victoria (Latin Victoria Regina), as well as the English wording from the colonial period. The door of the box, however, has been replaced with or Saorstát Éireann ‘Irish Free State’, the a newer emblem, referring to designation polity created by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921–1922. The includes visual decoration based on traditional Irish motifs and is topped with a harp which is symbolic of Ireland. This presentation was frequently used on post boxes from the establishment of the Irish Free State until 1939 (for details see Ferguson 2009: 47–50). The Free State constitution was superseded by the Constitution of Ireland in 1937 and the Republic of Ireland Act of 1948, and the Irish postal service was later given a new identity as An Post (Irish, ‘The Post’) in 1984. This identity is expressed in the middle section of the post box. Following current language policy, the detailed information about postal services shown in Figure 1.13B is given bilingually, using Irish in black lettering on the left and English in green lettering on the right. Layering in this example also includes the overlay of colour. As Ferguson (2009: 42–3) documents, one of the first acts of the Free State was to paint post boxes in ‘emerald green instead of P. O. red’. This change obscures the earlier layer, but allows for the creation of new indexicality: during the 2016 commemorations of the 1916 Rising in Ireland, certain letter boxes were temporarily painted red as they were in 1916, in order to heighten awareness of this historical event (see McGrath 2016).

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Figure 1.13 Updating the Victorian postbox (Galway, 2019)

1.5.3

Remembering the Past

Overt acts of remembrance are also part of the LL, and to illustrate this point I turn to one of the most complex commemoration activities in the contemporary European LL: the Stolpersteine (‘stumbling stones’) project initiated in the 1990s by the artist Gunter Demning. A Stolperstein is a simple brass plaque which, as the Stolpersteine website puts it, commemorates individual ‘victims of National Socialism’ in Germany. Stolpersteine are usually inset into the pavement in front of the last place where the person who is being remembered lived by choice. As Demning explains it on the website, ‘The Stolpersteine in front of the buildings bring back to memory the people who once lived here. Each “stone” begins with HERE LIVED. . . One “stone”. One name. One person’. Stolpersteine have already been discussed in LL research: see

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Figure 1.14 Stolpersteine (Michelstadt, 2018; Strasbourg, 2019)

Krzyżanowska (2016) and Hanauer (2017), and further commentary by Hernàndez-Grande (2020) on Catalan Stolpersteine and an accompanying audio guide. To illustrate these features of the LL (which, according to the Stolperstein website, now include nearly 70,000 Stolpersteine in nearly 2,000 places), Figure 1.14 shows two Stolpersteine from Michelstadt and one from Strasbourg. Details of the individuals named in the Michelstadt Stolpersteine are given by Haag (2013) and for the Strasbourg Stolperstein by the AFMD website. The Stolpersteine project is indexical at many levels. The uniformity of the memorial plaque is an intentional device by which each Stolperstein references all the others: they become part of a series, and in that sense form one act of commemoration which extends to thousands of places and individuals.

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Uniformity of the individual message can be seen in the materials used (the brass plaque which is one face of a cube 96 mm x 96 mm in height and width, set to a depth of 100 mm), the letter shapes and layout, and the essential elements of the message. The German and French examples in Figure 1.14 show the same format, beginning with Hier wohnte or Ici habitait ‘here lived’, followed by the individual’s name, their year of birth (here German Jahrgang, abbreviated or French né(e) ‘born’), and a short reference to elements of the individual’s fate, such as German deportiert ‘deported’ and ermordet ‘murdered’ or French assassiné(e). The uniformity of form across all Stolpersteine is contrasted with the individuality of content: each Stolperstein refers to one individual, and by its emplacement indexes both person and place. Language is a significant feature of the Stolpersteine project. The policy that ‘inscriptions are in the language of the country in which they are being placed’ (Steps [2018]: 6) allows for a diversity of languages across the series as a whole. It does not appear, however, to cater for non-state languages such as Yiddish which may have been the mother tongue of individuals, nor afford any place to Hebrew. The inscriptions in Figure 1.14 thus illustrate a complex interaction in which language is put in place to create a site of memory that can be read locally, but which refers to people and events on a far wider scale. The nature of the project draws attention to three other questions for the LL: (1) the use of language that is addressed to viewers of sites of historical memory; (2) the use of language to give voice to those who are commemorated in such sites; and (3) the question of how – and if – languages themselves become the subject of historical memory.

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Why Linguistic Landscape?

2.1

A Sociolinguistic Perspective

The figures in Chapter 1 illustrate various kinds of data which a sociolinguistic approach to the LL needs to consider. The sample is weighted towards objects that are fixed in place and display written language, but it also includes the spoken tie between a location and its place name in oral tradition (Figure 1.11), and the moving and multi-voiced configuration of the political demonstration in Figure 1.10. While the sample is weighted towards languages which can be identified as discrete in both the lexical-grammatical sense and in having codified writing systems, it also shows cross-linguistic influences (as in the word play of Figure 1.4 and the visual style of Figure 1.5) and the integration of non-linguistic visual elements ranging from the everyday objects shown in Figures 1.6 and 1.8A to the elaborate symbolism of Figure 1.12. The unity across all these variations of textual composition, mode of expression, and manner of display is provided by discourse. What makes a text bearing object part of the LL (and not simply a piece of metal with words and images on it) is its role in discourse between a sign instigator and a sign viewer. In the world of public discourse, the sign viewer is assumed to be a relative stranger. When these aspects of form, spatial relationships, and discourse are understood as part of a continuous flow of change – in which each LL unit operates to its own time frame and in relation to other LL units – we can understand the LL not as a set of objects, but as a dynamic part of culture and society. What is not immediately clear is why the study of this kind of data should fall under the heading of linguistic landscape research. In the sense of referring to the public display of written texts which use a multiplicity of languages and writing systems or scripts, there is nothing new about the LL: archaeologists, historians, palaeographers, and others have been working with such materials for years. As the photographs in Chapter 1 show, LL units are not purely linguistic: they inevitably use other means of expressing meaning and intent, which could be described as semiotic resources, following Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) and Kress (2010). The term landscape could be puzzling, too, since its use in Chapter 1 is not the same as in some other domains: there 27

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are almost no photographs in the chapter which could plausibly be entered in a landscape photography competition or which resemble the usual subjects of landscape art. In this chapter I explore the roots of the LL notion which give it a distinctive quality that is especially relevant to sociolinguistics. Some themes indicated here are also picked up in Chapter 8, which focuses on future developments. 2.1.1

LL Research: Past, Present, and Multiple Births

There are several papers and book chapters which review the history of the LL field, some of these include the first-hand perspectives of individuals who have played important roles in this history. I do not try to cover the same ground here, though some overlap in approaches is inevitable. For further reading see in particular Backhaus (2005, 2007b, 2019), Spolsky (2009, 2020), Shohamy (2012, 2019), Gorter (2013, 2019), Huebner (2016), and Van Mensel, Vandenbroucke, and Blackwood (2017). Critical reviews from different perspectives include those by Jaworski and Thurlow (2010a), Rubdy (2015), Lou (2016b: 1–23), Puzey (2016), and Carr (2019). The Linguistic Landscape Bibliography website currently lists over 1,000 references and continues to expand, while the Linguistic Landscape Corpus edited by Troyer (2021) allows for the lexical searching of works linked to the Bibliography. Though there are earlier precedents within the field, which I discuss below, the crucial years for the development of LL research, in a broad sense, begin in the 1990s. This development includes both a Francophone strand of research articulated by Calvet (1990, 1993 [1990]) and followed by Dumont (1998) and papers in Lucci (1998), and an English language strand in which Spolsky and Cooper (1991) and Eastman and Stein (1993) provide key notions that precede the blossoming of the field in the papers edited by Gorter (2006c) and in Shohamy’s (2006) work on language policy. Rather than equating the field of LL research with the use of the term linguistic landscape, this section is designed to cast light on the development of central themes in the observation and analysis of language display in the public space. It is only from this point of view that it becomes possible to appreciate the sense in which later research speaks of ‘expanding the scenery’ (Shohamy and Gorter 2009), ‘expanding the linguistic landscape’ (Pütz and Mundt 2019), and ‘reterritorializing linguistic landscapes’ (Malinowski and Tufi 2020). 2.1.2

The LL and Antiquity

Though the LL frequently addresses the pressing issues of its time, it would be wrong to think of the LL as a new phenomenon: the LL is at least as old as written language itself. I use the phrase ‘at least as old’ because many visual

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inscriptions made by humans before the advent of writing also appear to have the goal of communication in social settings: see, for example, a review by Conkey (2010) and the argument by Miyagawa, Lesure, and Nóbrega (2018) that cave art sites show a multimodal attraction to sites with particular acoustic qualities. Though there is no scope to pursue such questions here, Coulmas (2009: 13) argues that ‘linguistic landscaping is as old as writing’, not by accident or coincidence but because ‘the first text put on view in open space was the seed of the public sphere’. Coulmas (2009) points out that the public sphere, as discussed by Habermas (1989), took centuries to develop, but his notion of the ‘seed of the public sphere’ suggests that the capacity of writing to make language accessible across time and space was crucial in constituting the public space as a social institution, and was not a later development that filled up an existing public space. The origins of writing systems are a subject for continuing research, though the details cannot concern us here: Robinson (1995), Coulmas (2003), and Cruttendon (2021:187–218) provide especially relevant perspectives. In broad terms, though, most discussions focus on what Woods (2010: 15) calls the four main ‘pristine’ writing systems that developed independently in Egypt and Mesopotamia (in the fourth millennium BCE), China (by 1,200 BCE), and Mesoamerica (2,500 years before the present). Though these writing systems are separated by differences in their linguistic bases and their settings in geography and time, they share the common function of representing language in a form that is visible, tactile, and durable. This representation entails a practice of literacy – people must learn the code in a socially conventional way in order to commit language to writing and in order to understand the linguistic meaning of marks made on clay stone, wood, or other media – and the possibility of public display. Though some displays might be designed for the short-term or for private use, the evidence of early textual genres such as law codes and boundary markers shows an intention of public display. Literacy is often restricted to a social minority, though the extent of literacy in any given society is a matter of specific history: see, for example, Charpin’s (2004) review of evidence for the extent of popular literacy in ancient Mesopotamia. Limitations on the social distribution of literacy, however, do not diminish the importance of display in the public space. Rather, they add a socially significant distinction between people who are initiated in the culture of literacy – and the power which it brings – and those who are not. Coulmas (2009) develops his perspective on epigraphy and the public sphere by discussing a number of major inscriptions, including the Rosetta Stone from 196 BCE (see Quirke and Andrews 1988 for the text and the ongoing Digital Rosetta Stone project website) and the trilingual Behustin (modern Persian Bīsitūn) inscription in Iran, which dates from the sixth century BCE: see King and Thompson (1907) for further detail and Rubio’s

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(2006) analysis of the interplay between the languages as an example of ‘alloglottography’ or ‘writing a text in a language different from the one in which it is intended to be read’ (p. 33). Pavlenko and Mullen (2015: 115) pick up the epigraphic theme in the LL, pointing out that classicists have long studied inscriptions in public spaces, ‘ranging from monumental inscriptions to graffiti, located . . . in urban public spaces, such as fora and crossroads, within enclosed public spaces, such as baths and temples, and in extensions of urban spaces, such as . . . rural sanctuary complexes’. Graffiti alone provides a rich area for LL research. Lohmann’s (2017) analysis of graffiti from houses in Pompeii, for example, describes these inscriptions as crossing social and linguistic boundaries, since ‘they were informal inscriptions within the formal environment of the domus; they consisted of unauthorised images and texts which drew upon the “language” of authorised media; and they communicated private issues – such as wishes, thoughts, and messages – in the most public spaces of the house’. Milnor’s (2014) analysis of the ‘literary landscape’ of Pompeii graffiti, notes crossovers between Greek and Latin as well as other evidence of multilingualism, though Gay’s (2015) brief review draws attention to the importance of oral tradition and the role of education in literacy practice in interpreting this material. Present-day arguments about inscription and place, social values attached to language, multilingualism, and the relationship between written displays and oral discourse in the LL, thus have their precedents in antiquity. I look briefly here at the ‘Code of Hammurabi’ for an illustrative example of the LL in earlier times. The conventional name for this text refers to the Babylonian king Hammurabi, who ruled from ca. 1792 BCE to 1750 BCE. The laws of the code are written in cuneiform script in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, and are displayed on a basalt stele or standing stone slab which is 2.25 m high and 79 cm across. The stele is now exhibited in the Louvre museum in Paris: the Louvre website provides photographs and details, while Richardson (2000) gives a modern translation and commentary. Though the text does not use other languages, Robinson (1995: 85) notes that the stele uses an archaic layout of the cuneiform writing system, with a vertical system having strokes at a different angle from the left-to-right writing common in clay tablets from the same time. The stele of Hammurabi is multimodal in so far as it includes text, visually imposing embodiment in a free standing stone installation, and a relief carving that depicts Hammurabi standing before the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash. As Slanski (2012: 106) details, the depiction of the colloquy between Shamash and Hammurabi is filled with imagery that depicts their identity and status. Shamash has a ‘stylized horned crown’ which indicates his divine status, and ‘wavy-line “rays”’ radiate from his body and footstool to indicate his divine link to the sun. By contrast, Hammurabi is depicted as a king, via his

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headgear, with a display of physical prowess in his bared right shoulder and ‘emphatic’ beard, and other indications. To the modern eye these images rely semiotically on symbolism and iconicity, but Slanski (2012: 107) argues that in Mesopotamian civilisation, the images were not ‘simply representations but rather manifestations of the deities and persons depicted’. Slanski thus maintains that for those who viewed the stele, the sculpted visual section had the performative quality of actually being an encounter between Shamash and Hammurabi. This performative aspect, in Slanski’s (2012: 107) view, conferred authority on Hammurabi and his legal pronouncements and ‘was intended to generate an unambiguously public space within which its inscription was to be read and its sculpture viewed’. Roth (1995: 16) further notes that the text alternates between the ‘ornate, formal, grandiose’ language of its initial frame and the more direct style of its ‘deliberate, matter-of-fact, sequential laws’. Showing the independence between the LL unit as an object and as a text, Roth (1995) points out that despite the stylistic differences between sections, there is no visually salient break in the manner of writing. 2.1.3

The Onomastic Background

Though space limitations prevent a consideration of the development of the LL from early writing systems to the modern age, it is fitting that a new consciousness about the display of naming practices that links directly to LL research is found in Minton’s (1950) observations on ‘class epigraphy’ in the shop names and signage of Manhattan. Minton’s (1950: 262) argument was that ‘shop signs are sensitive indicants of social and economic levels’, and that ‘in the study of such questions we should approach a rewarding branch of sociological linguistics’. Minton’s (1950) use of the term sociological linguistics predates Currie’s ([1952] 1971) publication of the term socio-linguistics, which is frequently, though not entirely accurately, cited as the first coinage of the term (see Ornstein 1977). Minton’s approach was mostly anecdotal, but his focus was on names and advertising signs as evidence of concerns for prestige, which could be marked by lexical or spelling innovations, exotic place names, and the use of non-English languages, especially French. Minton (1950: 256) noted that such uses of French did not have to follow standard practice, but could show ‘the commercially feasible mixture of two languages’, as in ‘Maison Glass / Table Delicacies’. Though Minton’s (1950) paper was his first to link street signage with social class, he published many papers on language and the display of names, including those of apartment houses (1945), perfumes (1946), and residential housing developments (1959–1961). Minton’s various notes did not cohere into a sociolinguistic programme, yet his observations on conscious displays of names that reflect social motivations and frequently break the norms of standard language for effect were picked up

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in Lowenthal’s (1977 [1962–1963]) geographical approach to place naming. Challenging some of the assumptions of what he called ‘the cult of wilderness’, Lowenthal (1977: 137) argued that ‘few people really look at the places they live in, work in, or travel through. Anesthetized against their surroundings, they spare themselves the pain’. Therefore, he continues, many homeowners are satisfied by linguistic landscaping. Through emotive names – even by such geographical fantasies as Hilldale Heights, Valmont Gardens, and Glencrest Homes – ‘an idealized landscape is imposed on an existing one by force majeure’, as Arthur Minton [1961] points out. . . . Maybe only God can make a tree, but any real-estate developer can create a veritable forest in the mind’s eye of his clients.

Lowenthal’s use of the term linguistic landscaping was not intended to develop a new landscape theory, but its verbal form emphasises the importance of conscious choice in geographical names; just as a gardener engages in landscaping by acts of planting and cultivation, the real-estate developers Lowenthal refers to engage in landscaping by instituting names which can be manipulated to achieve specific ends. In turn, Rapoport (1977) also uses the term linguistic landscaping in his approach to urban geography and ‘environmental cognition’ in which ‘cognitive processes are concerned with making the world meaningful’ (p. 108). Rapoport’s (1977: 110) approach to naming starts from the premise that ‘names incorporate memories and meanings of particular groups’. Rapoport contended that: Considering migrants, we find that not only do they select familiar landscapes as far as possible and alter them further but they also tend to name things in terms of where they come from to make the unfamiliar familiar. Thus in the New World we find names for streets, rivers, mountains, plains and cities, as well as plants and animals, based on the country of origin. In countries of varied migration naming reflects the origins of settlers . . . and these names and forms can, in fact, be used to determine origins. Naming places in this way may be a form of ‘linguistic landscaping’.

Rapoport’s (1977) focus on the immigrant and linguistic landscaping in place names illustrates a principle by which familiar names make unfamiliar places more familiar and trustworthy. The theme of trust in the LL also surfaces in Koegler’s (1986: 50) later use of Lowenthal’s terminology, as she observes that ‘no renter would be drawn to Floodplain Acres, but the use of Riverbend Estates renders an apartment complex more marketable! Through such “linguistic landscaping” . . . synthetic stereotypes of landscape qualities are perpetuated’. Jaworski and Yeung’s (2010) examination of naming practices in the LL of residences in Hong Kong continues this line of thought into today’s LL research. Looking at the distribution of languages in residential place names, Jaworski and Yeung (2010: 165) point out that

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the use of French, Spanish and Italian (or Italian-sounding) names such as ‘Chateau Vivienne’, ‘La Noblesse’ . . ., ‘La Hacienda’ or ‘Kelleteria’ (derived from the local place name Mt. Kellet) does not seem at all random in the areas of greatest affluence (where we also find a relative paucity of Chinese-only signs). These languages, being associated with some of the most powerful, Western-European nations and popular tourist destinations (for wealthy Hong Kongers), connote not only wealth but also . . . ‘high’ culture, sophisticated, good taste and design, and a relaxed lifestyle. Alongside the use of English, a handful of these prestigious ‘foreign’ languages seem to position the affluent residents of Hong Kong as globally connected.

2.1.4

The LL and the Visual Arts

The visual artistry of many types of commercial signage, graffiti, and other elements of the LL offers many possibilities for analysis. As I discuss in Chapter 8, there is as yet unrealised potential for the exploration of how the terrestrial LL is represented in the visual arts; I consider here some earlier contributions from the visual arts which look directly at the LL. In a campaign that began in the 1930s, for example, the artist and photographer Brassaï [Gyula Halász] extolled the virtues of graffiti as a source of artistic inspiration, arguing that ‘from the Cave-Man Age up to the classical era, it is the graffiti which give the most truthful, most spontaneous testimony as to the character, the intimate life of an epoch’ (Brassaï 1958: 6): see Ziebinska-Lewandowska (2016) for a wide-ranging review of this project and its manifestations in different exhibitions and collections. Drucker’s (1998b [1984]) view of ‘language in the landscape’ has special significance for the development of the LL notion. Though this view fits within a wider context of Drucker’s (1998a) ‘visual poetics’, and I examine discourse implications of Drucker’s (1998b) approach in Chapter 6, I examine here some observations which have direct implications for understanding the dynamics of the LL: see also Drucker (2010). Illustrating her arguments with photographs from Oakland, CA, Drucker (1998b) considers the relationship between materials and message to follow from the principle that ‘form affects meaning’ (p. 91). Commenting on the ‘kinetic digital lettering’ of LED displays, Drucker (1998b: 92) argues that the uniform nature of LED lettering robs it of the expressive power that is available in other media: ‘the most extreme crisis and the most mundane banality are rendered with equal sangfroid’. Commenting on a photograph of the Hotel Sutter in Oakland, which includes a large vertical inscription saying , Drucker (1998b: 95) first speculates that the advertisement might owe something to anxieties arising from the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Confirming this supposition, Downtown Oakland (2019: 309) describes the hotel, built in 1913, as part of a ‘post-earthquake development boom’. More trenchantly, though, Drucker

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(1998b: 96) emphasises the social value of the inscription, echoing the theme of trust in the LL: Besides alleging that the hotel is immune to fire, the statement emphasizes that it is the duty of the hotel’s management to be conscientiously aware of the danger. The guarantee is not against smoke and flames. It is a guarantee of responsibility. It is a policy statement comparing the Sutter to other hotels. The hotel’s managers are invoking the image of fire in their behalf to demonstrate their virtue. . . . The hotel articulates its aggressive stance on the sign so its stance is inseparable from its visible identity in the landscape.

Drucker’s comments from 1984 stem from a concern with art and design, but have clear relations to today’s LL research. More broadly, it is difficult to know where the study of art as semiotics ends and the approach to the LL begins. There will not be scope to develop this question in detail here, but I suggest that early considerations of language and public display share conceptual links with subsequent LL perspectives that have emerged in later works such as those of Chmielewska (2005, 2010), Guilat (2010), Aiello (2012), Jaworski (2017), Adami (2019), Thurlow (2019), and Machetti and Pizzorusso (2020). 2.1.5

Sociolinguistics, Globalisation, and Language Display

A different strand of research which relates to today’s approaches to the LL shows a concern with the relationship between public displays of language and issues of social identity and stratification. This concern is heightened by the social significance which commentators attach to new modes of population movement and language contact. Globalisation features prominently among these concerns, and an early approach appears in Yasuo Masai’s research in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo from 1962, published in 1972 as 東京の生活地図 Tōkyō no seikatsu chizu ‘Living map of Tokyo’. Despite its significance, this volume is rare and difficult to access, and I rely here mostly on discussions by Backhaus (2007b, 2011, 2019). According to Backhaus, Masai relied on a database of 3,000 items, counting languages, scripts, and types of business in order to characterise signage in the district. Backhaus (2011: 37), for example, cites Masai’s observation that ‘presently, Japanese shopping streets are most eagerly producing an exotic atmosphere. They don’t leave it at merely importing American and European style architecture, but even write their shop names in foreign style and increasingly with Roman letters’. Backhaus (2019: 158) thus summarises Masai’s conclusion to the effect that ‘the visibility of foreign languages in Shinjuku’s cityscape was rather extraordinary, to an extent that foreign readers might even think that Japan was under some sort of colonial rule’. In a critique, however, Backhaus (2007b: 48) also points out that Masai’s analysis overlooked the role of lexical borrowing to the extent that

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‘even well-established Japanese borrowings were counted as non-Japanese’; analysing a photograph which Masai uses as evidence, Backhaus (2011: 37) notes that only one sign actually uses the Roman alphabet, and that this sign also includes a katakana transliteration of this expression. Masai’s empirical research thus raises the theme of global cross-linguistic influence in the postwar signage of the local landscape. Further studies which understand language policy as part of an increasingly globalised world include studies by Nadel and Fishman (1977) and Rosenbaum, Nadel, Cooper, and Fishman (1977), published under the heading of ‘the sociology of English as an additional language’ (Fishman, Cooper, and Conrad 1977). Thus Nadel and Fishman (1977) review the development of language policy and the sociology of language in Israel before describing the use of English in Israeli radio, television, films, books, and newspapers. Noting ‘the association of English with modernity and with what is new in the world market . . . as well its connection with tourism and status’, Nadel and Fishman (1977: 163) maintain that ‘another visible verification of the attitudes relates to storefront signs’. Their survey of Hebrew and Roman alphabets in signage on the Jaffa Road in Jerusalem yields a quantitative picture which, broadly speaking, shows a shift from older Hebrew-only signage to newer, more mixed signs which include the Roman alphabet (almost always for English) more prominently (Nadel and Fishman 1977: 164). Rosenbaum et al. (1977: 179) describe the aim of their study as ‘disentangling the complex web of interrelationships which exist between urban linguistic and social organization’. Towards this end, observations on Keren Kayemet street in Jerusalem – chosen for its high density of small shops and other facilities, and its proximity to a variety of social groups within the city – focused on four types of evidence: ‘transaction counts’ which take note of the number of people heard speaking particular languages; ‘sign counts’ referring to the ‘degree of English used in public signs’; ‘planted encounters’ based on anonymous elicitations of speakers’ proficiency in and attitudes towards English; and ‘interviews’ with shopkeepers about their attitudes towards, and the use of, English (Rosenbaum et al. 1977: 182). Though the sign counts by Rosenbaum et al. simply measured the relative dominance of Roman script or Hebrew writing on individual units, they made it possible to demonstrate social differentiation in the use of English (favoured mostly in private offices and shops selling higher cost goods; p. 188), and to suggest that the display of English, the use of English in overheard conversations, and the ability of speakers to use English are systematically related. Tulp’s (1978) examination of the use of Dutch and French in billboard advertising in Brussels links with these early studies and brought geography together with language policy in a broad sense (including those of advertisers, employers, and others), in quantifying the language of signage district by

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district in Brussels. Though Tulp (1978: 306–07) noted that the frequency of Dutch (historically under pressure from French dominance) in general matched Dutch usage in the population, ‘certain key districts’ showed ‘little reflection of the number of Dutch speaking commuters’. This imbalance suggested a need for ‘balanced bilingualism in advertising’ to protect the language rights of Dutch speakers ‘against the pressures from French’. Jerusalem was also the setting for Spolsky and Cooper’s (1991) analysis of language in the public space. Against the background of centuries of language policies and the flow of languages in Jerusalem, Spolsky and Cooper (1991) further developed some of the principles indicated in Rosenbaum et al. (1977) and include, among other things, what they term a preference model for language choice in the signage of the Old City of Jerusalem. Their taxonomy of signs (Spolsky and Cooper 1991: 76–81) included a wide range of types – such as street name plaques, advertising signs, public regulation messages, commemorative plaques, and graffiti – and noted not only the languages used, but the modes and materials used in sign production. The discourse principles which characterise the preference model shift the analytical focus from the observation of signs to the motivations and knowledge which underlies particular code choices, and provide a way of understanding choices when a rule appears at first glance to be violated. These rules include not only rules for sign writers (such as the ‘“symbolic value” condition’, ‘prefer to write signs in your own language or in a language with which you wish to be identified’, p. 84) but complementary language choice rules for speech in the marketplace, such as the ‘accommodation condition’: ‘prefer to use what you assume to be the interlocutor’s preferred language or some other language (you own or one you value) according to your perception of the transaction and the power or solidarity involved’ (p. 107). Spolsky and Cooper’s (1991) study thus combines the observation of signage in place – relating it to historical and political situations – with a cognitive approach that looks beneath the surface of the visible signage to account for the discoursal intentions of the people who put signage in public view. Combining the interest in language policy with empirical description and interpretation, Calvet’s (1990, 1993 [1990], 2011 [1994]) notion of the environnement graphique provides a different model for the LL. For Calvet (1990), the graphic environment could be playful (as with graffiti tags) or militant (as in the eradication of inscriptions associated with colonial regimes), and is a rich source of information about structures and conflicts in society. Stressing the difference between the in vitro language policy of language planners and academic language use and the in vivo policies of actual users, Calvet (1990) argues that the distinction between in vivo and in vitro activity helps to understand a division in the ways of marking urban territorial boundaries: inscriptions based on power are distinct from those which stem from the

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practice of speakers themselves. Calvet’s (1990) photographic evidence, for example, contrasts the use of Arabic (in addition to French, German, and Japanese) in an international bank on the prestigious Avenue de l’Opéra in Paris with the use of Arabic in a butcher’s shop in the Belleville district. Whereas the bank signage shows complete conformity to norms of standard written Arabic and is aimed at wealthy customers from the Persian Gulf, the butcher’s signage is designed to present conformity with Islamic principles. Demonstrating ‘une connaissance imparfaite’ [‘an imperfect knowledge’] of written Arabic, it is aimed instead at immigrant workers from the Maghreb, whom Calvet sees as standing midway between the cultures of writing and oral tradition. Calvet’s (1993) study of Paris and Dakar contrasts the graphic environments of these two cities, noting (p. 78), for example, that while French in Paris is officially dominant and is kept apart from other languages in signage (so that Chinese appears in Chinese characters, Thai in the Thai alphabet, and Arabic in Arabic script), individual-level language choices in Dakar mean that Wolof can be written in the Roman or Arabic writing system, Arabic can appear in the Roman alphabet, and the entire system of linguistic relations is more fluid than in Paris. This fluidity correlates in other ways with social and economic similarities and differences between the two urban areas. Dumont’s (1998) study of signage in Dakar continues the sociolinguistic tradition of Calvet, using the term environnement graphique as the broad heading to incorporate semiotic, sociolinguistic, and discourse perspectives in the study of a single city. An approach which is also rooted in the study of one city, but which combines empirical work with more semiotic theory– building tied to sociolinguistics, comes from the same time in a collection of papers on signage and language in Grenoble, edited by Lucci (1998). The terminology in these contributions is focused on the notion of écrits dans la ville ‘writings in the city’ rather than the environnement graphique, although Malek (2012: 104fn) later identified the terms environnement graphique and écrits dans la ville as appropriate technical terms that could be used interchangeably. The related analysis by Varga (2000) of écrits in Grenoble is the earliest sociolinguistic approach I have seen to the physicality of signage. Though the term paysage ‘landscape’ does not enter into the technical vocabulary of this time, the concerns in this work are like those of later LL research: see also discussion by Bulot (2011a, 2011b) on links between LL studies and French sociolinguistique urbaine ‘urban sociolinguistics’. Like Spolsky and Cooper (1991), Eastman and Stein (1993) give prominence to the role of the sign writer or speaker in their notion of ‘language display’, which is based on the premise (p. 187) that ‘to enter the world is to enter the view of others. To display is to make a statement of self. It is an attempt to inform others of who one is, or would like to be in the world’. Looking at factors which motivate language displays of different kinds,

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Eastman and Stein (1993: 188) argued that ‘language display is most successful when there is limited ongoing contact with speakers of the displayed language’, because the individual who engages in language display is not trying to ‘negotiate a definition of self as a member of another speech community but to be seen as an individual with attributes associated with that community of speakers’. To apply this argument to an earlier case, we can assume that the owners of the ‘Gourmet Market’ in Figure 1.4 are not trying to be taken for French speakers with Say Si Bon, but are pointing to virtues which they hope the sign viewer will infer from this association with French. Much of Eastman and Stein’s (1993) argument is based on language display in signage and advertising. Eastman and Stein (1993: 196), for example, cite cases from Bogotá which include a ‘fashionable place to drink cafe con leche called “The Coffee Shop”’; the ‘casual but elegant sportswear’ outlet called ‘Jeans and Jackets’; and , whose apostrophe ‘randomly placed at the end of words’ functions effectively as part of the display. Their definition goes beyond signage, however, since it also includes written texts such as academic prose, spoken language (where code-switching is frequently used for language display), and non-verbal visual art. The all-encompassing nature of language display thus demonstrates, as Eastman and Stein (1993: 197) argue, that ‘using English or French in this context is not an attempt to say “I can speak English, I can speak French” . . . or “I am British or American or French” . . . but, instead, represents the assertion that “I am sophisticated, cosmopolitan, modern . . .’. For LL research, the work by Eastman and Stein (1993) stands not only as an early examination of LL material, but as a further study in which displays of written language participate in some of the same dynamics as speech. By the end of the twentieth century, linguistic forces of globalisation, particularly with regard to English and its interaction with other languages, had also given rise to new observations on signage and trans-language influences which are now assumed in LL studies. Recognising the pragmatic effect of displays of material using the Roman alphabet in the shop signage of Irbid, Jordan, El-Yasin and Mahadin (1996) point out that this material includes not only loanwords where no Arabic equivalent exists but elements whose aim is ‘to influence the customer’s behavior and have him or her do business with the particular store’ (p. 412). In this category, El-Yasin and Mahadin (1996: 412) include examples written in Arabic script and transcribed as dalas beergar ‘Dallas burger’ and ʔašrita oorijinaal ‘original tapes’. McArthur (2000) illus_ trates the operation of ‘interanto’ or the juxtaposition of languages in signage in various European locales, citing not only the use of English as ‘trendy’, but cross-linguistic forms, borrowings, and innovations such as the Uppsala sign Restauranag Baren Baren Casino ‘Restaurant the Bar the Bar Casino’, which brings ‘together the Swedish spelling of French restaurant with the English

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word bar (twice, with the Swedish definite-article suffix -en attached), and Italian casino’ (p. 43). In a similar vein, Machauf (2002) analysed interactions between English and Hebrew in Israel, Schlick (2002, 2003) continued from McArthur’s (2000) observations on English in interaction with other languages in European signage, and Griffin (2004) focused on the use of English in the signage of different districts in Rome. In a more sociolinguistic approach, relying on developments in Critical Discourse Analysis (e.g. Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999) and indexicality theory (e.g. Silverstein 2003), Collins and Slembrouck (2007 [2004]) present a combination of photographic evidence, interview data, and interpretative principles to examine the use of immigrant and official languages in signage units in Ghent as evidence of complex principles of identity and expression in an immigrant multilingual setting. Reh’s (2004) examination of information and language choice in the signage of Lira Municipality in Uganda, which I also discuss in Chapter 3, considers related issues in discussing signage that is bilingual at the surface level but which can contain very different messages – or only partially overlapping messages – across languages. Bringing together a range of perspectives on sociolinguistics, discourse, visual semiotics, and spatial studies, Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) ‘geosemiotic’ approach weighs heavily in any account of the development of LL research, not only for the breadth of its empirical examples but for the depth of theoretical discussion it provides. The Scollon and Scollon (2003: 7) model focuses on ‘three broad systems of social semiotics’: ‘the interaction order, visual semiotics, and place semiotics’. The interaction order (Scollon and Scollon 2003: 45ff.) includes ‘the sense of time’, perceptual spaces for different senses, ‘interpersonal distances’, and ‘units of the interaction order’ such as ‘singles’, ‘withs’, ‘queues’, ‘service encounters’, and ‘meetings’, following insights from Erving Goffman. Under ‘visual semiotics’, Scollon and Scollon (2003: 83ff.) include modality (including colour saturation, representation, illumination, and brightness), composition, and interactive participants such as the producer and the viewer or reader. This approach will be a point of reference at various points in the discussion which follows, but it is important to note that Scollon and Scollon (2003) do not use the term linguistic landscape as an analytical principle; their semiotic concerns go well beyond the question of written language in the landscape, but do not engage with the language policy issues that feature prominently in the LL field of research. 2.1.6

Language Policy and Language in Public

The concern with language policy distinguishes much LL research from work in related areas of language and semiotics. International interest in regulations of the right to display language in public developed extensively in the 1970s

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and 1980s. Verdoodt (1973), for example, reviewed language policies and administrative regulations in a wide range of political jurisdictions, while Laponce’s (1984) review concluded with a comparative table (pp. 206–09) of the use of languages in domains such as postage stamps, banknotes, and various legal functions in thirty-three countries around the world. A dramatic step for LL research followed with Leclerc’s (1989) worldwide survey of language regulations pertaining to signage. At the outset, Leclerc (1989: 13) defines the study of the languages of signage (‘langues d’affichage’) by reference to signs inscribed on public thoroughfares or in public places: these inscriptions include signs for road traffic, street name signs, commercial signage, display advertising, and the signage of public transportation facilities. Leclerc’s (1989) comparative analysis encompasses legal and administrative regulations from 77 sovereign states and 104 regional polities, touching on what he estimates (p. 21) at 56 per cent (2.8 billion) of the world’s population. The early works in this strand are all in French, and as Mounier (1990) points out, it was not surprising that a comparative work such as Leclerc’s should be developed in Quebec. Local research programmes had, by this time, used detailed analyses of signage to measure the implementation of language policy in Quebec. Maurais and Plamondon (1986), for example, situated their quantitative investigations of signage in Montreal in 1986 within the context of their 1984 photographic enquiry as to signage in four locations (Montreal, Quebec, Hull, and the Laurentides tourist area); this study in turn built on the methodology and data selection of an unpublished thesis by Guy Labelle from 1970. In keeping with their remit to examine the success or failure of language policy, Maurais and Plamondon (1986) used both synchronic description and diachronic comparison with available data from 1970 and 1984. Their conclusion (pp. 42–43) that French language signage had advanced overall from 1970 to 1986, was nuanced by the variation in the rates of different kinds of signage across different geographical subdivisions, and paved the way for further research. Monnier’s (1989) study of Montreal took this line of enquiry further, using the term paysage linguistique ‘linguistic landscape’ in his investigations. Monnier (1989) developed a two-fold approach which examined the language of signage in commercial sectors of Montreal in relation to the language of greeting and service provision in these sectors. Monnier’s report on what he terms more broadly the situation linguistique, does not articulate any special theoretical significance for the term paysage linguistique, but his explanation (p. 6), for example, of the way that shops which face directly onto the street contribute more to the LL than those in shopping centres gives a visual, geographic flavour to the paysage linguistique. Monnier (1989) also uses other terms to address different aspects of public language use. Thus Monnier (1989: 5) reflects on the ways in which statements about the language of greeting and

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service in Montreal refer to specific places, but points out that the ‘«personnalité linguistique» de l’Île de Montréal’ is not an undifferentiated whole, since it shows great diversity across locations and types of business. Introducing the results which pertain directly to signage, Monnier (p. 9) also refers to the visage linguistique ‘linguistic face’ of the various districts which form the basis of the study: Maurais and Plamondon (1986) had already referred to the ‘visage français du Québec’ in the title of their work. Without wanting to read too much into Monnier’s (1989) multiplicity of terminology, I think it offers beneficial insights into different aspects of the LL. The linguistic landscape offers a geographical understanding of the distribution of visible language in space; the linguistic personality suggests a site of interpersonal discourse and social interaction, and takes account of the relationship between spoken language and displays of written language; and the linguistic face invokes the intentionality of a language user in choosing a particular mode of self-presentation. This idea correlates with Goffman’s (1967: 5) definition of face in social interaction as ‘the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact’. The term is well known with regard to language in Montreal, as in Levine’s (1990: 199) account of ‘the “English face” of business in Montreal prior to the 1960s’, demonstrated by ‘photographs of downtown Montreal dotted with English-only commercial signs’ and ‘anecdotes of Francophone encounters with condescending, unilingual Anglophone clerks in the city’s major department stores’. The complexities of face and landscape are suggested, too, by Alain-Philippe Durand, who translated Milon’s (2002) French commentaries on graffiti. In the English version, Milon (2002: 91) makes the point that ‘the City has a face, but also a landscape’ and that ‘the face is often the most expressive part of the City’s body, whereas the landscape seems to be a simple extension of this body’. Durand (p. 98fn6) notes a challenge in this translation, due to ‘the proximity’ of French visage ‘face’ and paysage ‘landscape’. The concern with language policy, especially in Quebec and in Francophone Europe, provides a context for the paper by Landry and Bourhis (1997) that is often credited with introducing LL as a field of study (though see Gorter 2019: 40–1 for discussion of the actual influence of this paper). Landry and Bourhis (1997: 23) briefly characterised the LL as ‘the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region’. Expressing the desire to ‘introduce the concept of linguistic landscape’, they argue (p. 24) that it is ‘an important sociolinguistic factor contributing to the vitality of competing ethnolinguistic groups in multilingual settings’. Significantly – because it underlines their specific language policy orientation – Landry and Bourhis (1997) make no reference to actual signage, nor do they discuss other empirical studies of public signage. Instead, they focus on

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questionnaire responses concerning a multiplicity of factors which contribute to what they term (p. 24) ‘the vitality perceptions and language behaviors of French Canadian minorities across Canada’. It is in this context that Landry and Bourhis (1997) argue against the failure of language planners to take the LL fully into account, and characterise the LL in terms which are similar to the list of domains enumerated by Leclerc (1989: 13) and cited above. Though this list served Leclerc’s purpose of surveying legal instruments, the Landry and Bourhis (1997: 25) characterisation leaves open many questions for anyone who would try to use it as a definition of the LL: ‘the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration’. This list is not a complete characterisation, since Landry and Bourhis (1997) also mention other elements of the LL in passing, including ‘advertising signs displayed in public transport and on private vehicles’ (p. 26), graffiti (p. 28), and ‘advertising sent by mail such as publicity flyers and government information’ as well as ‘contacts with television programs, magazines or journals, movies, radio programs, and newspapers’ (pp. 40, 41). The indeterminacy as to what counts as part of the LL for Landry and Bourhis (1997) fits with the aims of attitudes research. For the study of language attitudes, it may not matter whether a respondent’s view of the vitality of French in Canada comes from street name plaques, commercial shop signs, government offices, television, film, radio, or advertising brochures. Visual elements such as letter shape, font size, colour, or graphics, which interest many of today’s LL researchers, do not enter the picture for Landry and Bourhis (1997), since these signage elements are unlikely to determine a lay person’s response on a language attitudes questionnaire. The LL as Landry and Bourhis (1997) discuss it, in other words, is a feature of the minds of questionnaire respondents, not a feature of the physical, observable landscape. This approach, however, demonstrated that something which could be called the LL reflects and affects social views of language status and vitality. 2.1.7

The Blossoming of LL Research

Essential elements of LL research – researching signage and other inscriptions by direct observation, examining content and translinguistic features in signage, investigating pragmatic features of signage, looking at the language of signs in relation to language policy and spoken language, and understanding the role of globalisation and community identity in language choice and display – coalesced in academic discourse by the end of the twentieth century. In writing about the linguistic landscape, Landry and Bourhis (1997) provided

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a term in English that was sufficiently open-ended as to be interpretable in different ways by subsequent writers, who used the term to draw together earlier research and newly developing interests under a single heading. In India, for example, a conference in 2002 which developed from ‘an IndoIsraeli contact’ (Singh 2002: vi) used both the Landry and Bourhis (1997) notion of the LL and developing work by Ben-Rafael, Shohamy, Amara, and Trumper-Hecht (1998) to examine LL issues with a strong focus on Indian multilingualism and language planning. Papers from this conference (Itagi and Singh 2002) include Dhongde’s (2002) cultural and linguistic analysis of roadside advertising strategies (given an extensive visual and linguistic treatment by Bhatia 2000), and a discussion by Ramamoorthy (2002) of French in Pondicherry as a post-colonial legacy in education, personal naming, and the display of street names. Conference papers given at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in 2003 and the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA) in 2004, helped to guide the development of research into what Huebner (2016: 2) calls ‘the symbolic construction of the public space through an examination of the use of language in multilingual signs, code-switching and hybrid varieties’. Subsequent LL session panels at the AAAL in 2004 and at the World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA) in 2005 continued this development. My first contact with the field dates from the 2004 conference, and my notes of comments made by the session chair, Jasone Cenoz, convey the diversity and open-endedness of LL research in these early days: Methodology includes photos, interviews (‘why decide to use one language or another’), questionnaires, etc. Multilingualism as omnipresent aspect of linguistic landscape. Involves conscious decisions. Reflects sociolinguistic context and contributes to it.

Particularly significant is the importance attached to interviews, questionnaires, and other means of learning about the LL besides the photographing of emplaced signage, and the role ascribed to ‘conscious decisions’ by those who put up signage, rather than assuming that LL expressions follow from deterministic rules. Two published works emerge from this time which show LL research blossoming into a coherent field of research. One is a collection of papers which constituted a special issue of the International Journal of Multilingualism and appeared as a volume edited by Gorter (2006c); the other is Shohamy’s (2006) work on language policy, especially chapter 7 (pp. 110–33), which is devoted to ‘language in the public space’. Though Gorter’s (2006b: 2) introduction states that the Landry and Bourhis (1997: 25) characterisation of the LL ‘is followed by all authors in this issue’ as a ‘definition’ of the LL, the authors offer critiques and explore limitations in this concept from the start. Ben-Rafael, Shohamy,

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Amara, and Trumper-Hecht (2006: 8), for example, argue that both Spolsky and Cooper (1991) and Landry and Bourhis (1997) ‘provide only a limited grasp of the genuine and far-reaching importance of LL’. Understanding the LL as ‘a gestalt made of physical objects – shops, post offices, kiosks etc. – associated with colours, degrees of saliency, specific locations and above all, written words’, Ben-Rafael et al. (2006: 9) call for ‘the study of these linguistic elements, when taken as a whole within a given setting’ on the basis that the LL thus understood can ‘constitute an interesting way of uncovering social realities’, particularly when ‘the drives and forces that stand behind its moulding’ are considered. Huebner (2006) emphasises the role of globalisation in Bangkok’s LL, not only examining the distribution of languages in signage across various socially differentiated districts of the city, but paying special attention to crosslinguistic mixing effects within individual sign units. Backhaus (2006) introduces yet another element in discussing the Tokyo LL, distinguishing between official and nonofficial signage, and examining different strategies of translation and information display between Japanese and other languages. Looking at the distribution of minority, official, and international languages in selected areas, Cenoz and Gorter (2006) pull the research in other directions, analysing the frequency with which particular languages appear in their respective settings (Dutch and Frisian in Ljouwert, Netherlands and Basque and Spanish in Donostia, Spain, as well as English), as well as the interactions between languages, status differences in visual semiotics, and problems of translation. A brief conclusion by Gorter (2006a) indicates ways in which the field could be broadened beyond the suggestions of the papers in the volume, all of which provide new elaborations and empirical insights for the LL concept. This volume thus brought together many strands of empirical research and carved out a space for linguistic landscape as a technical term of empirical research. Published in the same year, Shohamy’s (2006) discussion of the LL concept was grounded in language planning, but linked empirical investigation to social analysis. In Shohamy’s (2006) approach, ‘language in the public space’ is a general heading, encompassing ‘actual language items that are found in streets, shopping centres, schools, markets, office, hospitals and any other public space (and often private ones, such as homes), for example names of streets, public signs, names of shops, advertisements, documents, newspapers, billboards, verbal as well as non-verbal items such as pictures and images’ (p. 110), while the linguistic landscape is seen (p. 112) as ‘one domain within language in the public space; it refers to specific language objects that mark the public sphere’. Pointing out that language policy is not only what is formulated by official policy makers, and challenging the notion that language policy always works for the interests of a society as a whole, Shohamy (2006: 111) raises issues of power, coercion, and identity, stemming from the view that ‘language in the public space . . . serves as a mechanism to affect, manipulate

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and impose de facto language practices in hidden and covert ways’, and ‘can also serve as an arena for protest and negotiations’. Following on from this discussion, Shohamy (2006: 125–28) argues for the expansion of LL research to include graffiti, ‘labels of products and instructions’, ‘names of people’, and aspects of mobile phone and internet communication. This approach thus extends to covert language policies and mechanisms of ideological control in the LL (cf. Calvet’s in vitro and in vivo language policy, cited above), and brings a range of materials other than fixed signage into the scope of LL research. Though neither the Gorter (2006c) volume nor Shohamy (2006) formalised a new definition of the LL, and neither work attempts to present a unified theory or methodology for the field, it is these works that show the blossoming of the LL research idea. Fundamental to both is grounding in the fieldwork of empirical observation in the public space. The invitation to conduct fieldwork in a wide range of circumstances and across a wide range of genres expanded the field with new questions. Once the landscape becomes the subject of research, there is no predicting what genres, expressions, visual presentations, or messages will be encountered. This approach invites an interest not only in code choices, but in the signage itself, where linguistic, semantic and pragmatic, and visual features give sign units ideological, social, and political roles to play. The momentum generated by these conference presentations and publications led to other events such as the first LL international workshop (held in Tel Aviv in 2008) and the publication of papers in Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, edited by Shohamy and Gorter (2009). This expansion of the field brought in new elements which continue to motivate research, including the historical dimension, identities and community awareness, the role of sign instigators and sign viewers in understanding the LL, and the LL in educational environments. LL conferences continue on a regular basis, and the field has continued to grow through hosts of journal articles and book chapters, dedicated volumes of collected papers and special issues of journals, and a small number of book-length studies of specific locales such as Tokyo (Backhaus 2007b), Antwerp (Blommaert 2013), the French and Italian Mediterranean (Blackwood and Tufi 2015), and the Chinatown area of Washington, D. C. (Lou 2016b). Volumes of collected papers such as those edited by Gorter, Marten, and Van Mensel (2012); Hélot, Barni, Janssens, and Bagna (2012); Rubdy and Ben Said (2015), Blackwood, Lanza, and Woldemariam (2016), and Peck, Stroud, and Williams (2019) have greatly expanded the geographical span of LL research. A critical bibliographical review of the field would be much more extensive than is possible here, but in Section 2.2, I turn to the question of terminology and the possibility that semiotic landscape better describes the field than linguistic landscape.

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2.2

Naming and Identifying a Field of Research

The observation of language in public signage or in other language displays does not require a special term. For Rosenbaum et al. (1977), Nadel and Fishman (1977), and Spolsky and Cooper (1991), signage was a part of language use, and research proceeds from this understanding: Spolsky (2020: 1–5) explains this approach from a personal perspective. The survey in Section 2.1, however, has identified a number of specialist terms for this line of enquiry, each with its own shade of meaning. This survey is not comprehensive, however, since it is strongly biased to English and French. Scholarship in other languages also needs to be considered, since research which fits thematically under the LL heading may not use the linguistic landscape term, either in its English form or in translation. Relevant published work which I know of only scratches the surface of research in these languages, but I note here Franco-Rodríguez (2008) and Castillo Lluch and Sáez Rivera (2011) with regard to Spanish; a Brazilian Portuguese perspective from Melo-Pfeifer and Lima-Hernandes (2020); recent Hungarian work represented in papers edited by Tódor, Tankó, and Dégi (2018); and German language reviews from Tobiasz (2013), Verhiest (2015), and Ziegler and Marten (2021a). Other work is ongoing in, at least, Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian. From the limited survey presented here, though, several terms emerge which could in principle have described the LL field: the idiosyncratic class epigraphy of Minton (1950), language in the landscape (Drucker 1998b [1984]), linguistic landscaping (Lowenthal 1977, Rapoport 1977), language display (Eastman and Stein 1993), and (albeit with a different frame of reference) geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon 2003). French also contributes paysage linguistique (Monnier 1989), environnement graphique (Calvet 1990), and écrits dans la ville (see Millet 1998). The emergence of linguistic landscape as the term of choice for many researchers owes much to the variety of models and breadth of approach in the papers of the Gorter (2006c) volume and to Shohamy’s (2006) focus on how language in the public space relates to problems of policy, debate, conflict, and ideology in society. Almost as soon as linguistic landscape took on its specialised meaning, however, the urge to expand the field pushed toward new terminology. In particular, Jaworski and Thurlow (2010a: 2) addressed the limitations of the linguistic landscape notion by arguing instead for a concept of semiotic landscapes. Though admitting that the latter term is ‘potentially misleading’ since ‘all landscape is semiotic’, they aim for a precise sense by defining the semiotic landscape as referring ‘in the most general sense’ to ‘any (public) space with visible inscription made through deliberate human intervention and meaning making’; according to Pennycook and Otsuji (2015: 198fn), Jaworski has since ‘suggested that “observable” or “perceptible” might be preferable to

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“visible”’ in this context. This shift in terminology arises from the need ‘to emphasize the way written discourse interacts with other discursive modalities: visual images, nonverbal communication, architecture and the built environment’, on the basis that ‘“linguistic” is only one, albeit extremely important, element for the construction and interpretation of place’ (Jaworski and Thurlow 2010a: 2). The argument in this form is not simply about whether or not to examine modes of communication which are not verbal or lexical. Rather, it puts the construction of place in primary position – emphasising the landscape element – and uses semiotics to refer to the range of modalities by which place is constructed. Jaworski and Thurlow’s (2010a: 2–7, 15–21) discussion of landscape, cultural geography, identity, and semiotics shows the explanatory value of looking at the semiotic landscape as a mode of spatial structuration, rather than as a place in which language is displayed. The term semiotic landscapes thus enters not into the initial formation of the field, but as a reflection of its development. The term has been used in various ways. Zabrodskaja and Milani (2014: 1–2), for example, develop a concept of ‘semiotic space’ in which they portray LL research as going through a transition from early ‘large-scale, quantitative approaches’ to ‘a more qualitative turn’, whose ‘studies have highlighted the importance of transcending the purely linguistic element of public texts so as to also grasp their multimodal and multi-semiotic nature’: their examples include the ethnographic approaches of Stroud and Mpendukana (2009) on discourse and space in the LL and Curtin’s (2014) analysis of ‘cosmopolitanism’ in the LL of Taipei. Using the expression ‘the linguistic/semiotic landscape’, though, Zabrodskaja and Milani (2014: 3) imply that the difference between ‘linguistic’ and ‘semiotic’ with regard to ‘landscape’ is not a sharp distinction. Buchstaller and Alvanides (2017: 82fn1) express the view that ‘linguistic landscape research has increasingly broadened its remit towards the analysis of all kinds of symbolic practices such as, increasingly, non-textual visuals, images, and objects, as well as voices, music and olfaction’. On this understanding, the term semiotic landscape has the primary virtue of expanding the LL idea to include practices that are not linguistic in the lexical-grammatical sense, without changing the overall nature of the research programme. A recent collection of papers devoted to ‘multilingual creativity and play in the semiotic landscape’ (Moriarty and Järlehed 2019) shows the potential for using semiotic landscape to shift the emphasis towards the social creation of space as suggested by Jaworski and Thurlow (2010a). Blackwood’s (2019a) examination of Instagram posts connected via hashtags and imagery to Orly (ORY) airport focuses on discourse and identity among users who display a range of relevant images on Instagram messages: boarding passes and passports, beachwear, food and drink, and luxury goods associated with travel and leisure pursuits. This study is not one of ORY as a place of visual display – as

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in the DCA photograph in Figure 1.4 – but as a nexus for computer-mediated communication that includes visual images and short texts of particular kinds in a new spatial connection. In a similar vein, Gonçalves (2019) examines the role of a large sculpture by Deborah Kass – which reads as or depending on the point of view – in constructing a sense of spatial identity in the Dumbo area of Brooklyn. Though Gonçalves (2019: 48) points out the multilingual polysemy of both oy (an attention seeking call in English, a Brazilian Portuguese salutation, a Yiddish and Lithuanian exclamation, etc.) and yo (Spanish ‘I am’, ‘informal interrogative or a declarative imperative associated with African-American slang’, hip-hop marker, and more general part of informal English), her main focus is not on the display of language as a matter of code choice, but on the art installation as ‘a linguistic performance’ which enables viewers ‘to personally, psychologically and physically connect with the piece since it symbolises the cultural melting pot of New York City and perhaps Brooklyn in particular . . . by indexing values of authenticity, cultural diversity, and a sense of community’ (Gonçalves 2019: 53–4). Despite Jaworski and Thurlow’s (2010a: 2) own caution that ‘all landscape is semiotic’ (cf. also Nash 2016), the term semiotic landscape is appealing because it signals explicitly that there is more to the subject than language in the lexical-grammatical sense. If it is assumed that linguistic landscape refers only to code choices, especially where codes are restricted to languages with standard written forms, then what Pennycook (2019: 75) refers to as the ‘logocentric focus’ of early research could be seen as a limitation that should be overcome with an explicitly semiotic point of view. The argument I put forward here, however, is that linguistic landscape emerges from roots which are much broader than the objective of counting standardised code choices in fixed signage. During the development of the LL field, there has always been a recognition that linguistic denotes much more than language in the lexicalgrammatical sense, and that understanding the LL involves an interpretive element which pays special regard to expressions of identity, power, solidarity, and conflict. This broader sense of linguistic, to go beyond the lexicalgrammatical and to invoke social analysis, is not specific to LL research, but arises from the shared history of linguistics and semiotics. This topic is too extensive for discussion here, but see Leeds-Hurwitz (1993: 3–21) for a concise overview, Deely’s (2015) more detailed historical presentation, and the survey by Kull et al. (2015) of a multiplicity of approaches to semiotics. The semiotic inclination of linguistics was already indicated in Saussure’s (1974) foundational view (pp. 16–17) that ‘a science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable’, and that this sémiologie ‘semiology’ is wider than the linguistic sign: ‘by studying rites, customs, etc. as signs, I believe that we shall throw new light on the facts and point up the need for

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including them in a science of semiology and explaining them by its laws’. While grounding linguistic landscape in general linguistics thus foregrounds language, it also places it firmly within what Jakobson ([1974] 1990b: 459) called ‘the cycle of semiotic disciplines’. Jakobson found aspects of Saussure’s system problematic (see especially Jakobson 1980), and frequently developed notions which reference Peirce. Referring, for example, to Peirce’s trichotomy of icon, index, and symbol (see Preface above), Jakobson (1965: 26) argued that this division enables the comprehensive study of meaning, on the grounds that ‘the difference between the three basic classes of signs is merely a difference in relative hierarchy’. This approach brings language (as a primarily symbolic system) into line with semiosis based on iconic and indexical relationships, and was in keeping with Jakobson’s advocacy of poetics and verbal art as crucial to linguistics (Jakobson 1960). From a different perspective, Barthes ([1964] 1967: 10–11) also argued that ‘though working at the outset on non-linguistic substances, semiology is required, sooner or later, to find language (in the ordinary sense of the word) in its path, not only as a model, but also as component, relay or signified’. More recent approaches in social semiotics, however, involve a shift in the scope of analysis. Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996), approach to the semiotics of visual design includes what they call the ‘semiotic landscape’, defined (p. 33) by the ‘uses and valuations’ of ‘the range of forms or modes of public communication available’ in society. Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) geosemiotics, van Leeuwen’s (2005) social semiotics, and Kress’s (2010) approach to multimodality all keep language in view, but use other starting points in approaching the subject. For researchers whose interests start with language, the perspective of linguistic landscape inevitably leads to considerations of non-linguistic semiosis. As the panorama in Chapter 1 shows, and as the remaining chapters in this volume explore, an emplaced LL unit, or a spoken unit which is linked indexically to topography, is not a purely lexical-grammatical item in an abstract system. Rather, it is an entextualised, embodied unit of discourse which draws on broader semiotic knowledge simply because it is linguistic. The lexical-grammatical element which gives the unit systemic meaning is inseparable from its mode of expression and the social principles which make the unit work as an expression of power, solidarity, identity, irony, aggression, or other stances. To ground LL research in general linguistics entails an engagement with semiotic principles, even when the starting point and the focus remains on language. To start from an interest in semiotics – as the term semiotic landscape implies, and as Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) definition makes explicit – is to ask different questions and to risk losing sight of language (whether in language planning and policy, dialectology, language

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variation and change, wordplay and translanguaging, diglossia, pragmatics, onomastics, or other areas) as a fundamental area of interest. As I discuss in Chapter 4, the social construction of space is fully included in the notion of landscape once the landscape is understood not as a background or empty vessel into which LL units are placed, but as a social matrix of people, things, and space. In short, while the precise term linguistic landscape has not been in use for very long, it has the potential for a long and useful future.

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3

Doing Things with Codes

In this chapter I examine the question of doing things with codes as an intentional reference to Austin’s ([1962] 1975) work How to Do Things with Words. Austin’s concern with the pragmatic force of utterances will be discussed in Chapter 6, but my concern in this chapter is to look at ways in which sign instigators (1) choose and display codes; (2) map between the content of messages and code choices; (3) manipulate codes for cross-linguistic and intralinguistic effects; and (4) integrate linguistic codes with non-linguistic visual signifiers. Doing things with codes in this sense gives the sign instigator the opportunity to gain added communicative value for the text of the LL unit and to address specific audiences within the general public. 3.1

Code Choices: Policy Effects and Personal Choice

Code choices in the LL can be motivated by official policies and legal frameworks, but they may also be made on the basis of the choices and preferences of speakers within different language communities. Leclerc’s (1989) survey of legal policies, while now in need of updating, gives an indication of the potential for official policy to shape the LL. Out of 65 polities surveyed, 35 stipulated that a single official language was to be used in all governmental signage (including inscriptions on public places, road traffic signs, place names, and odonyms), while 15 other polities required bilingualism in state signage, whether nationally (as in Canada and Ireland) or territorially (as in Belgium and Finland). Community language interests may conflict with official policies, either explicitly as in Figure 1.6B, or by the implicit means of using languages in ways that are not encouraged or allowed by official policy. Calvet (1990) referred to this distinction as one between ‘in vitro’ official policy and ‘in vivo’ grassroots policy, while many other analysts, particularly following terminology introduced by Ben-Rafael, Shohamy, Amara, and Trumper-Hecht (2006), refer to ‘top-down’ versus ‘bottom-up’ flows of influence in the LL. Whether we use a laboratory metaphor, a spatial metaphor, or other terminology, the principle involved is that while the sign instigator may want to 51

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choose codes on the basis of their own linguistic competence and preference, the prestige values associated with particular languages, and the perceived linguistic skills and attitudes of a target audience, this sign instigator may not be a free agent in this regard. Instead, the sign instigator may be negotiating in a situation where some languages are required or prohibited, or where the layout and relative status of languages are regulated, and so on. What we see in the LL may thus reflect a collision between two very different understandings of how the LL should display codes. The differences may lead to outright conflict, but also to outcomes such as the ‘bilingual winks’ described by Lamarre (2014: 137), in which ‘humorous transgressions, examples of one language sneaking or crossing over into the domain of another’ make it possible to circumvent the regulations, giving primacy to French in Quebec, or the creation by Hungarian-speaking communities in Slovakia of contexts where unofficial signs without lexical inscriptions can be read as indexical of Hungarian (see Laihonen 2015, 2016). More problematic, however, is accounting for the codes we do not see in the LL. As I suggested in commenting on Figure 1.14 and as I discuss in Chapter 7, the non-occurrence of a language in the LL may tell its own story, reflecting the erasure of a language and the suppression of the people who speak or spoke it. 3.1.1

Language Policy in Action: Protecting Public Health

Chapter 1 showed some obvious cases of language policy at work and in conflict. Language policy effects are not only about the visibility of specific languages, but can include detailed elements of content and layout. To illustrate this point, Figure 3.1 provides a cross-jurisdictional comparison of the LL as a forum for enacting public health policy and attempting to influence behaviour with regard to smoking. The discarded cigarette packets in the figure are not fixed in place, and it is doubtful that the people who discard them do so with the intention of making a language display. Nevertheless, these items, which belong to what I have termed the ‘detritus zone’ (Kallen 2010), contribute to the dynamics of the LL: they (a) publicly index the language policies of the political regimes from which they originate; (b) express the pragmatic intention of warning consumers not to smoke; and (c) take on a further ability to index dynamics such as the movement of people and the social dimensions associated with aspects of consumer culture. Figure 3.1 illustrates three approaches to language policy and cigarette packets. The packet in Figure 3.1A follows the demands of Irish law (Statutory Instruments 271 [2016]), which is in turn shaped by European Parliament (2014) directive 2014/40/EU. The Irish measure requires that health care warnings be ‘in the Irish language and in the English language’, and that ‘they shall not be commented on, paraphrased or referred to in any

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Figure 3.1 Health warnings (Dublin, 2017; Bern, 2018; Montreal, 2017)

form’ (Statutory Instruments 271 [2016]: pt. 3, 10 (2, 3)). The Irish language is listed first in the legislation, and occupies the top position in all health warnings. The warning in Figure 3.1A includes a visual image and a ‘quitline’ which has information about a helpline to stop smoking: this information

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includes an internet address and the bilingual Irish/English designation for a Saorghlao/Freephone telephone number. These elements are prescribed in Irish law and follow the EU directive, as do other salient features such as the use of Helvetica font against a black background, with the top language in white and the bottom language in yellow. Irish law (Public Health 2015) also prescribes what is generally referred to as ‘plain packaging’, by which only minimal information about the product is allowed, and logos or other promotional features are prohibited. Following a common EU pattern, the Irish example demonstrates the interaction of policies on public health with language policy at national and supra-national levels. The label in Figure 3.1B reflects a different approach. Though Switzerland is not a member of the EU, the EU is its largest trading partner, and developments within the EU affect Swiss practice (see Trein 2017). An Interior Department document of 2007 (Ordonnance du DFI 2007) contains explicit instructions about health warnings on tobacco products, and while it does not discuss language per se, its examples all show texts in German (top), French (middle), and Italian (bottom). This order, as in the train notice of Figure 1.3A, is found in Figure 3.1B. Some additional features are also significant. The advertising slogan A world leader in quality tobacco appears in English on the Swiss packet, underneath the opening. This additional marketing illustrates the role of English as a global language and, like the display of the brand name, is contrary to the model of the EU directive. Compared to either European example, the label in Figure 3.1C is a marketing explosion. The brand name is given with a romanticised tropical illustration, while occurs in English only. In a small font below this block of text and to the left (not legible in the photograph) comes the French message ‘100% Naturel’; any claim for a cigarette to be ‘natural’ is explicitly prohibited by the European Parliament (2014) directive. The further declaration ‘Made by native enterprises on native territories / Fabriqué en territoire autochtone par des entreprises autochtones’ is on the side of the packet, as are other marketing claims in English and French. Though Canada has now adopted a plain packaging requirement in the Tobacco Products Regulations (Plain and Standardized Appearance) (2019), at the time this photograph was taken, the relevant laws such as the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act (1997) were more limited. They nevertheless required health warnings in French and English, using a specified layout. The example in Figure 3.1C, however, did not conform to any patterns on the relevant governmental Étiquettes relatives website. The claim that the cigarettes were produced in ‘native territory’ or ‘territoire autochtone’ could make the cigarettes seem more like handcrafted items: an element of folk culture. In reality, the label is more likely to point to the use of contraband

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cigarettes, manufactured in First Nation territories but sold or consumed elsewhere so as to avoid paying tax. This practice is a significant legal and public health problem in Canada (see Schwartz and Johnson 2010) and, as documented by Stratton, Shiplo, Ward, Babayan, Stevens, and Edwards (2016), reflects socially variable patterns of consumption. As a text, then, the discarded packet in Figure 3.1C references, though it is not completely compliant with, Canadian regulations on language and cigarette packaging. As an object, the packet may point secondarily to patterns of consumption in Montreal for cigarettes from First Nation territories. 3.1.2

Recognising Codes

Figure 3.2 shows approaches to language recognition which lie outside direct state control. In Figure 3.2A, British Sign Language (BSL) provides information in a Liverpool train station. Sign languages often face difficulties in gaining official recognition, not least because their speakers may have to struggle against a societal view that sign languages are incomplete representations of spoken languages or not languages at all. Though research on the linguistics of sign languages has long since demonstrated their cognitive and lexical-grammatical status as languages, the lack of writing systems for sign languages is still an obstacle for the visibility of sign languages in the LL. As De Meulder (2015) reports, however, there have been growing campaigns for the official recognition of national sign languages: recognition runs from constitutional recognition to recognition in language legislation, and to what De Meulder (2015: 504) terms ‘implicit (legal) recognition’ in which national sign languages are mentioned in provisions on disability, education, and so on. British Sign Language (BSL) is a current focus of efforts for legal recognition, though Batterbury Magill (2014) argues that recognition of BSL in the legal framework of the United Kingdom is virtually nil. In the context of such debates, the use of a video presentation in BSL, captured in Figure 3.2A, is not simply the provision of information in a minority language, but an emerging recognition of a language whose visibility in the LL is facilitated by new technologies. The credit card payment screen in Figure 3.2B invites customers to ‘select your language’, and lists Quebecois as a language choice, on par with English and four other languages presented in their own respective writing systems. The glottonym Quebecois does not arise from Canadian language policy, which refers consistently to français or French, whether at the federal level or at provincial level within Quebec; the ATMs I have seen in Montreal use the form . Though it is possible to refer informally to the Quebec variety of French as Québecois or Français Québecois; the term Quebecois in this context is not

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Figure 3.2 Recognising codes (Liverpool, 2017; DCA airport, 2015)

symmetrical with glottonyms such as Español or 中文 ‘Chinese’. We cannot tell from the signage if this term follows from the logic that ‘planes from this airport fly to Quebec, not to France’ (which would be true), or from some other logic, but the effect is to recognise an unofficial linguistic category in the LL.

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Messages: Content and Codes

While Figures 3.1 and 3.2 focus on language policies and language recognition, this section turns to communicative outcomes when two or more languages are present within LL units. These outcomes can be seen across two interrelated sets of variables. One set has to do with the relationship between the message that is presented in the LL unit and its expression in identifiable languages. This set of variables can be understood by means of an envelope metaphor, in which each language in the LL unit is understood as an envelope, and each envelope contains a message. This metaphor works very well with a model such as that advanced by Reh (2004), who points out that the relationships between messages in different languages can range from complete symmetry (in which the same message and function is expressed in different languages within an LL unit) through a variety of complementary and overlapping relationships, to situations in which each language in the LL unit expresses a separate message. Though this metaphor often works, I also suggest, developing a point put forward in Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha (2010), that there are cases where it does not apply. Such cases often arise with translanguage or interlingual signage, in which linguistic expressions do not belong clearly to one language or another, or when the message of the LL unit as a whole trades on cross-linguistic awareness in order to construct new messages that go beyond what is communicated by looking at each language on its own. A second set of message and code variables concerns linguistic form and layout. These variables include the size and shape of inscriptions in particular languages; the relative position of inscriptions in different languages; the use of variation in writing systems; the use of other visual devices (such as diacritics or text vector) which index language boundaries; and the means by which texts within the LL unit are presented as belonging to separate languages or as new forms which defy established categories. To illustrate such variables at work, I start with Figure 3.3, which shows an extreme example of symmetry in message and form. Hebrew and English are both displayed, and the same message – the name of the pub and the name of an associated beer – is given in each. The central part of the sign uses creamcoloured writing on a brown background, and uses linguistic differences between the two languages to achieve visual dynamism, since Hebrew on the top line is read from right-to-left using Noun-Adjective word order, while English on the bottom line is read from left-to-right in Adjective-Noun order. The word in Roman letters occupies a pivotal position in the centre. Whether to treat pub as English (in which its ultimate derivation from Latin pūblicus is at most of marginal significance), a loanword into Hebrew, or one of a set of internationally recognisable words in the Roman alphabet which belong to no particular language is an open question (see also Chapter 8). In

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Figure 3.3 Balancing code and message (Haifa, 1995)

any case, pub communicates the nature of the business to most passing strangers. The name Carlsberg Beer appears in white letters, using a distinctive green background and an image of a crown which is part of the Carlsberg trademark. Maintaining the unity of text vector and layout, Hebrew is on the right and English on the left, leading in either direction towards the message in the centre. Thus interpreted, the signage provides an example of Reh’s (2004) ‘duplicating’ arrangement in multilingual signage. The symmetry of message content across languages in the sign, however, is not the only symmetry at work. As well as the symmetrical interaction of text vector and sign layout, the variation in letter shape also supports the symmetry of message. The logo on the left uses an internationally familiar layout, and the Hebrew version on the right displays a close visual match. If the logo on the right had used the Hebrew block writing style which is used in the centre of the sign, it would appear as קדלסבדגבידה‬. The sign, however, includes visual elements that deviate from these Hebrew letter forms. Reading right-to-left, the first ר‬incorporates a ball terminal that matches the Roman typeface, while the second ר‬incorporates an upstroke that parallels the upstroke of the second Roman . More dramatically, the Hebrew does not use the block ג‬at the end of the first word, but instead , which is then extended by a swash flowing to the uses the Hebrew cursive right that is symmetrical with the swash flowing to the left from the in English. The top stroke of the ה‬in the second word is extended upwards to , just as the top stroke of the goes upwards meet the flourish from the to meet the flourish from the . Colour accents draw attention to this layout in both languages. The larger size of the ק‬and the ב‬at the start of each Hebrew word corresponds to the use of capital letters in the English. The notion of code choice in this case is not simply a matter of choosing equivalent

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Figure 3.4 Bus notice (Charlotte, 2016)

names in two languages, but of using typographical variation and layout to express this equivalence. In this process, the local (Hebrew) is brought into close alignment with the global Carlsberg persona. The symmetry in Figure 3.3 contrasts with more common examples of asymmetrical language display, as in Figure 3.4. The message of the sticker in Figure 3.4 is semantically equivalent across English and Spanish, but the visual presentation is not. English occupies the top position, using a large, bold font which contrasts with the smaller plain type for Spanish. Using the envelope metaphor, we could claim that each language contains the same message and that the presentation shows cross-linguistic equivalence. The asymmetry of visual presentation, however, is not socially neutral. Rather, it creates a visual metaphor in which English – in top position and visually more salient – is the major language while Spanish is subordinate. In a simple but powerful way, the sticker demonstrates that LL units express positions on the relationships between language communities not only by their lexicalgrammatical message content, but by the visual and physical manifestation of the linguistic text. Even where language policy calls for the display of functionally equivalent texts across languages, the LL raises questions as to how equivalents are determined. This question is especially acute with regard to proper names. Figure 3.5A and 3.5C illustrate different approaches in the Chinatown district of Liverpool. Overseas ‘Chinatowns’ present a complex set of variables which

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Figure 3.5 Transliteration versus translation (Liverpool, 2017; Dublin, 2018, 2019)

include the dynamics of population movement, commercial and social activity, and the relation of Chinatowns to their broader urban matrices (see Wong 2013 for review). They have featured in LL research in Washington, D.C. (Lou 2007, 2016b; Leeman and Modan 2009, 2010), Amsterdam (Wang and Van de Velde 2015), Liverpool (Amos 2016), Vancouver (Li and Marshall 2020), and elsewhere. I discuss other aspects of Chinese in the overseas LL elsewhere in this volume, but I concentrate here on the question of whether names that are part of the English onomasticon should be transliterated or translated when policy calls for the display of Chinese on street name plaques in a Chinatown district. Figures 3.5A and 3.5C show two different answers to this question. In Figure 3.5A, the English street name Berry Street is expressed in Chinese using a transliteration of Berry 巴利 ([jbɑli] in Cantonese), plus the Chinese word 街 ‘street’. The script is compatible with both the traditional and simplified writing systems for Chinese, and the text vector is from left-to-right. A similar orthography is used in the sign of Figure 3.5C, but Duke Street is given in Chinese by translating the word duke to Chinese 公爵 (gōng jué) rather than transliterating it. According to Horton (2002: 28), Berry Street was named after the dock engineer Henry Berry, who played a leading role in the development of the Liverpool docks, while the name Duke Street commemorates the reviewing of troops by William Duke of Cumberland, the son of King George II, in 1746 (Horton 2002: 48). The decision to treat Berry as an untranslatable name and Duke as a translatable generic term (even though it refers in this case to a single, named individual) reflects a linguistic choice, rather than an inevitable outcome.

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The Dublin examples in Figures 3.5B, 3.5D, and 3.5E demonstrate different cross-linguistic approaches to problems of naming. The street name plaque in Figure 3.5B uses name translation. The FitzWilliam family were among the earliest English landowners following the twelfth century colonisation of Ireland, and were, as O’Kane (2015) documents, actively involved in developing the southern suburbs of Dublin in the eighteenth century; the street name references the family. Following the general policy in the Republic of Ireland to use bilingual Irish/English street names, however, the name Fitzwilliam has been taken back to its etymology as ‘son of William’. The English surname element fitz ‘son of’ has a parallel in Irish, Mac, while the English given name William corresponds to Irish Liam. There is no evidence that the Fitzwilliam family ever used the name Mac Liam, but the translation in Figure 3.5B shows a result that implements a strongly bilingual language policy. Figure 3.5D shows a different approach in which Avenue is translated to Irish Ascal, but the English name Windsor – which Brief History (2007) derives from the eleventh century placename Windlesore ‘winding shores’ – is not translated. Rather, the name is transposed into the Irish language writing system, where the in this phonological context ( in more modern orthography) can be read as /w/. The sign in Figure 3.5E, while also maintaining a commitment to bilingual language policy, uses a third strategy, which neither translates Windsor nor uses any distinctive Irish language letter shapes or orthography. Figure 3.5 thus illustrates strategies for presenting names which rely on phonological representation, cross-linguistic transposition and transcription, and etymological translation. Though these strategies do not exhaust the possibilities of multilingual onomastic display – see, for example, related issues in the Toulouse LL raised by Amos (2017) and further discussion of Irish odonyms in Chapter 6 – they show that cross-linguistic equivalences can be accomplished in the LL in various ways, and that lexical-grammatical equivalence is but one of many relevant factors. The signage in Figure 3.6 returns to the Chinatown theme with a Chicago example that uses a common pattern of disjunction, in which one language expresses a name and a limited number of other identifiers for the sign instigator, while another language expresses the main propositional and semantic content. The Chinese fascia inscription in Figure 3.6 reads from left-to-right, and features three large Chinese characters in traditional script: 燕窩 ‘swallow nest’ and 城 ‘city’. Three smaller characters in simplified script denote ‘ginseng’, ‘pilose antler’, and ‘shop’. Taking on the metaphorical qualities of size and diversity associated with a ‘city’, the name not only identifies the business, but advertises goods which are indexical of Chinese herbal medicine. Further information on goods and sale prices is available in the shop window, exclusively in Chinese. None of this information is recoverable from the English,

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Figure 3.6 Asymmetric messages: Yin Wall City (Chicago, 2017)

which gives only the legal name of the business and its address. The name is based on a Cantonese transliteration – not a translation – of 燕窩 as yinwō, but the Chinese word 城 (Cantonese sing4) ‘city’ is translated into English. While the Chinese discourse tells the reader what is for sale and thereby includes the speech act of enticing the viewer to come in and buy goods, the English discourse simply provides a legal trade name and an identifying address. It is not a directive to enter the shop or to buy anything. The relationship between Chinese and English is not simply one of the complementary distribution of information across two languages, as suggested in the envelope metaphor. Rather, it points to a societal division of labour which values Chinese in reference to the community of practice associated with traditional medicine, and reserves English for the purpose of locating the business within the legal framework of trade names and Chicago’s geographical system of English language street names. To extend the envelope metaphor, it is not simply that the Chinese and English envelopes contain different information; more importantly, they are being sent for different reasons to different recipients. The use of intertextuality provides further opportunity for an LL unit to say more than can be found in the message of one language or another. In Figure 3.7 the Chinese message contains additional wordplay and cultural reference that is lacking in the literal message of the English.

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Figure 3.7 Intertextuality and the G & R (Champaign, 2017)

The English part of the signage gives a business name and description, with the promotional phrase . The Chinese part, using simplified characters in a traditional top-to-bottom vector, contains neither the English business name nor the Multicultural phrase. Rather, it announces ‘one’ ‘cut, shear’ ‘beauty’. A visual image which combines a barber’s scissors and a barber’s pole (using iconicity and symbolic reference) links the Chinese on the right with the English on the left. The notion ‘one cut beauty’ appears simply to support the general notion of a hairdresser’s work, but the phrase 剪美 is indexical to many native speakers of the theme song 剪梅 ‘a branch of plum blossom’, which was popular on Taiwanese television in the 1980s. The wordplay between ‘plum’ and ‘beauty’ works because the character 美 měi ‘beauty’ with a low falling-rising tone also indexes 梅 méi ‘plum’ with a high rising tone. Those who remember this song would understand the reference. As in Figure 1.4, intertextuality can make the unfamiliar appear familiar, and develop the sign viewer’s trust. While the English message and the Chinese message say different things at the level of literal reference, the comparison cannot stop there: it must also account for the way in which only the Chinese offers a playground for linguistic and cultural reference. A different type of wordplay and intertextuality is shown in Figure 3.8. In both sign panels, the name of the restaurant is given in top position in Chinese, with the English underneath. The names are equivalent in so far as they reference the same business, but they do not have the same semantic elements. The Chinese name 中原餐厅 ‘Central Plains Restaurant’ is not reflected in the English at all. The signage, however, is not simply a case of Chinese

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Figure 3.8 Central plains restaurant/Hard Wok Café (Liverpool, 2017)

expressing one meaning and English another. The word wok, which has been documented in English since 1952 (OED) and is derived from Cantonese 鑊 huò ‘cauldron, cooking utensil’, is pivotal. As Mair (2013) notes, wok puns involving anglicised Chinese and English are widespread in the Chinese diaspora: Bachelor’s Wok (an Asian-style restaurant on the street known as Bachelor’s Walk in Dublin), discussed in Kallen (2016b), provides a further example. The signage in Figure 3.8 retains the value of wok as indexical of Chinese cooking, but its phonological similarity to English rock allows for wordplay which references the international chain of Hard Rock Café restaurants, hotels, and casinos. An ironic commentary is thus only present in

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Figure 3.9 Indexical French (Fukuoka, 2007; Newry, 2014; Michelstadt, 2019)

English, using the wok ~ rock pun to connect a small, local business with a world-wide food and leisure enterprise. Though the envelope metaphor suggests that bilingual or multilingual LL units contain messages in each language, it is a common principle in the LL that a language may be displayed in order to index qualities associated with the language, but not to use the language for discourse. This point was noted early on in Minton’s (1945) discussion of ‘exotic’ place names for New York housing developments, and it is essential to Eastman and Stein’s (1993) understanding of language display, as I have discussed in Chapter 2. Figure 3.9 shows different locales using the same theme in which French indexes values connected to food and beauty without engaging the sign viewer in bilingual discourse: on restaurant French, see also Serwe, Ong, and Ghesquière (2013). Figure 3.9A shows detail from an outlet of a chain of Western-style bakeries run by the Yamazaki corporation, based in Japan, and trading under the Saint Etoile brand name (Yamazaki Baking website). The shopfront as a whole is dominated by a large sign that includes an image of a croissant and a further

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inscription in Japanese which is illuminated in neon by night. The advertising phrase , literally ‘hot bakery’, is shown in Figure 3.9A from a panel over the doorway. Though this phrase is not ungrammatical in French, and could mean that the bakery itself is hot (and perhaps by extension that the goods inside the bakery are hot), it is not an idiomatic phrase or advertising line for bakeries in the Francophone world. The French name and descriptor are exotic in the Japanese context, but index authenticity for Western-style food, without suggesting that the products come from France or are made by people who speak French. Figure 3.9B shows English in a small font (where the word salon, though integrated into English, may still retain some associations with French) to describe the business, while in a larger, more decorative italic font associates the business with ‘beautiful’ ideals. The orthography does not quite match standard French beauté ‘beauty’, but since there is no expectation that anyone in the hair salon is French by nationality or language, this display of French is sufficient to claim values associated with French fashion. Growing interest in translanguaging demonstrates a wide range of language expressions from different contexts that cannot realistically be ascribed to discrete linguistic codes: for critical reviews see Lewis, Jones, and Baker (2012), Otheguy, García, and Reid (2015), and Li (2018), and for critical perspectives within LL research see Gorter and Cenoz (2015b) and Pennycook (2017). The bag in Figure 3.9C shows a translanguage fusion in which French haute couture (borrowed into various languages to denote high fashion) merges with German Tüte ‘bag’ to yield the inscription . The bag is sold by the German-based Kaufland chain of supermarkets, whose marketing aims for popular, large-scale sales, not for exclusivity. Portable LL units of this kind raise methodological questions for LL research which I discuss in Chapter 8, but we can see the text as a neologism that violates standard linguistic norms, and whose pragmatic function draws attention to the Kaufland chain by an ironic commentary that connects an everyday German supermarket with high prestige, French-inspired notions of expensive and relatively unobtainable fashion goods. Since this text is supported by a portable object, the consumer can also share in the textual innovation and irony. The menu board for the Tuin 10 restaurant in Amsterdam (cf. Dutch tuin ‘garden’) in Figure 3.10 uses a layout which presents Dutch as the main language and English for translations. Close scrutiny of the text, however, shows communication with words from other languages and the use of words that cannot readily be assigned to a specified language. The lexical choices (including spelling variants) give an insight into the writer’s mind as to what words require translation, and what words belong to a general gastronomic lexicon that is transparent across languages. Transparency is a practical matter, which takes into account the anticipated knowledge of sign viewers (including

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Figure 3.10 Interlanguaging in the Tuin 10 menu (Amsterdam, 2014)

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both linguistic knowledge and background knowledge of culinary practice), as well as the writer’s linguistic knowledge. The word menu at the top organises the text: this word derives ultimately from classical Latin minūtus ‘small in size or extent’ via French menu de repas ‘list of what is served at a meal’ or simply menu. According to the OED, this sense of menu in French is first documented from 1718, while attestation in English dates from 1830. The word is now commonly used in Dutch, but since Dutch also has alternatives such as spijskaart (or simply kaart), the lexical choice is significant in favouring the more global restaurant lexicon over the local language option. Menu translations for the top two items follow the expectations of standard language. In the third item, quinoa, from Quechua kínuwa via Spanish quinua (OED), is incorporated with Dutch salade to form a regular compound; writing the word as a compound in English is not usual. The Dutch does not use the Dutch spelling or the Dutch word rundvlees ‘beef’, and so follows the orthographic rules of neither Dutch nor English. Likewise, , derived from Tamil kari (OED) and found in both versions of the menu, is normatively spelled in Dutch. The use of Dutch of ‘or’ in the same line may be a case of language transfer by the writer. The entry in the English text reflects the Dutch spelling , rather than the English . Words from French such as poussin and compote appear as equivalents in the Dutch and English versions, though Steak béarnaise combines the more English form steak (available as a loanword in Dutch, but contrasting with Dutch biefstuk) with a French place name adjective in each language. Neither the word Hamburger nor the choices within this entry are translated: Black Angus can be taken as English, and Vegetarisch as Dutch, but translations appear to be unnecessary, as they are for friet, sla ‘salad’, and topping. From the perspective of the language user, assigning words like menu, curry, hamburger, or roseval (a French coinage for a potato cultivar which reflects the cross-breeding of the Vale and Rosa potatoes in the mid twentieth century) to Dutch, English, or other codes may be an impossible task. What matters is communication, and it is a principle of the LL that it allows for the accomplishment of communicative goals that transcend or ignore language boundaries. Following the theme of translanguaging, Figure 3.11 shows still deeper cross-linguistic influences. The word appears at the top of this hairdresser’s signage, but, as Backhaus (2007a) has pointed out, menu has a broader scope in Japanese, simply to designate a range of choices, than it has in English. Thus, while the Japanese word menyū comes from English menu, the words are not lexically equivalent. The word , according to Backhaus (2007a), comes etymologically from English perm, but given the Japanese form of the word as pāma [paːma], spelled in katakana

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Figure 3.11 Hair Make Riche (Fukuoka, 2007)

script as , the spelling used in Figure 3.11 should not be seen as a deviation from English but as a romaji rendition of the Japanese word. The productivity of parm supports this view, since the menu also offers a ‘straight perm’ (sutorētopāma). This term extends the etymological sense of perm in reference to a hair curling process into a more general semantics of hair treatment; cf. what is known in English as a ‘Japanese straight perm’ (see Fletcher 2019). Backhaus’s (2007a: 81) argument about such words is that ‘from a formal point of view (script and spelling) they look English, but from a functional point of view (usage) they had better be considered Japanese’. Though a word of this kind can be analysed for its indexical reference to two linguistic systems, the coherence of translanguaging, which confronts the sign viewer, defeats any attempt to allocate it decisively to one language or another.

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While the translanguage forms discussed in Figure 3.11 have arisen in the more general development of Japanese, coinages which explicitly exploit translanguaging are especially common in commercial names, and are illustrated in Figure 3.12. English language reading rules for the sign in Figure 3.12A reference the English word nonsense, but the deviation from normative spelling and the colour coding ( in orange contrasting with in grey) trades on the viewer’s familiarity with the loanword naan ‘a type of bread’ used in South Asian cooking. This word is first cited in English from 1780, and the OED describes it as a borrowing from Urdu nān (< ‫)>ﻥﺍﻥ‬, ‘naan’ in the same meaning. An ultimately from Persian; cf. also Hindi iconic image of a hand to the left of the writing may index a hand kneading dough. Thus, while the inscription Naansense could be a simple neologism, layout features and expectations of viewers’ linguistic awareness point to wordplay based on bilingual fusion to mean ‘naan sense’, that is, ‘[good] sense about naan’. The signage in Figure 3.12B shows various types of mixing while using French as the matrix language for a target audience that is largely bilingual in French and English. Souvlaki is the Romanised form of Greek σουβλάκι in both French and English, sous-marins ‘submarines’ is given only in its French form, and hamburgers (as also in Figure 3.10) may be part of the international lexicon. Poutine is a Quebec specialty with different pronunciations, depending on the speaker’s region and language background: [puˡtsɪn] is one popular Francophone pronunciation. In the Pitarifique coinage, the word pita, which is indexical in both French and English of the eastern Mediterranean, becomes a base for word formation that looks French due to the ending but is a neologism. The second part of the coinage could be indexical of French magnifique, mirifique, or honorifique, for example; a further link to English terrific is not indexed by the spelling. Whatever specific interpretation springs to the viewer’s mind, indexicality connects the business to pita bread, the cuisine of the Mediterranean (underlined by souvlaki), and positive qualities associated with other words in French and English. A third cross-linguistic strategy, which involves the separation of lexical items to generate new translingual meanings, arises in Figure 3.12C. In the Francophone context, the English word Miss in the shop name has a surprise value, and the construction could reference fashion brands such as the Britishbased Miss Selfridge. French terre ‘earth’, however, also references the orientation in the shop towards jewellery and decorative items which come from rocks or semi-precious stones from far-away locations. Wordplay and further mystique are supplied when reading the text as one French word, mystère ‘mystery’. Thus while the signs in Figure 3.12A and 3.12B create new references by fusing elements across language boundaries, Figure 3.12C creates a new level of meaning by splitting a word and invoking a language

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Figure 3.12 Mixed messages (Chicago, 2017; Montreal, 2017; Strasbourg, 2019)

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boundary that is crossed at the same time. For examples of the breaking of words to create new meanings, especially in French, see the Bris de mots website. 3.3

Messages and Codes: Integrating the Visual

An LL unit which relies only on writing (as with the street name plaques of Figure 1.7) draws on visual choices that are specific to written language such as the writing system and orthography, text vector, letter shape, font size and style, and text colour. As a shorthand reference I will use the term scriptography, developed from Millet (1998: 47–9), to refer to visual features of this kind. Many other LL units go beyond the purely linguistic text to incorporate other visual elements, not as decorations but as an integral part of the message. In this section, I therefore consider a range of presentations which lead from the exploitation of cross-linguistic scriptography and orthography towards the integration of visual imagery. The sign in Figure 3.13A is placed over the door of a restaurant in a popular college student area. It has a wooden frame which shows signs of wear; most of the lettering is in black, with decorative elements and the bottom right-hand line of text in red, against a cream-coloured background. The linguistic elements of the signage are predominantly in English, but some elements index Greek language and culture. The term gyros (from Greek γύρος ‘turn’) referring to meat grilled on a rotating skewer may be part of the translanguage restaurant lexicon, but its popularity in the US also points to the historical development in the 1970s of a means for mass producing gyros which was first developed in the Chicago Greek community (see Segal 2009 and Block and Rosing 2015). The personal name Zorba is also significant, since it is not a personal indexical term for a unique individual such as the restaurant owner. Rather, Zorba is an intertextual reference to a name that has been popularised in the English-speaking world in the phrase Zorba the Greek, the title of the English translation of a novel by Kazantzakis ([1946] 1961), featuring Alexis Zorba as a central character. The book was subsequently developed as a film and a musical, and the associated music is well known. The visually iconic elements of the signage include the red image of the sword (a stylised and romanticised version of a kitchen skewer) and of fire within the . Both images point to the grilling of meat. The integration of the name Zorba’s with reference to grilling meat is accomplished visually, since the crossbar in the belongs to the sword rather than to the letter form; the is filled with an image of fire, and its close proximity to the surrounding letters is iconic of chunks of meat on a skewer. The reverse orientation of the adds an element of scriptal mimicry. Though Greek has no such letter, the Cyrillic alphabets used in languages such as Russian and

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Figure 3.13 Translanguage scriptography (Champaign, 2017; Rosh Pina, 2019; Brighton, 2018)

Bulgarian do. The scriptal mimicry is not precise, but it adds an exotic reference. The combination of linguistic and visual materials in the LL unit of Figure 3.13A indexes both the specific restaurant and a more extended association with Greek language and culture, although the Greek language in its written form is not used.

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Figures 3.13B And 3.13C illustrate different kinds of typographic crossinscription in Figure 1.5, which required no overs. Unlike the knowledge of another language to understand the stylised English text, these signs attribute functionality to the reading rules of the nonmatrix language. As in Figure 3.13A, the main sign in Figure 3.13B combines written language with an iconic image of a skewer to indicate grilled meat. In Figure 3.13B, the Hebrew word ‫שיּפּוִדים‬ ִׁ shipudim ‘skewers’ is written predominantly in yellow letters in a Hebrew cursive font, which (reading right-to-left) would have a . The Hebrew plural ending -im, hownormative form such as nor ever, shows the final consonant in neither the Hebrew word-final form , but in a red letter that is, essentially, a cursive-style the word internal form Roman letter . The reading across writing systems is accomplished with little threat to the intelligibility of the main Hebrew word, but indexes the use of English as a language of wider communication, shown also in the inscription . The signage in Figure 3.13C shows hybrid scriptography that is commonly used to index Greek language and culture. The letter shapes are often angular, which may be inspired by perceived characteristics of ancient Greek stone inscriptions, while the letter shapes may be crossovers between Greek and in has no Roman alphabets. In this case, the initial analogous letter form in the Greek alphabet (the closest phonetic analogues is not a being and the digraph ), and the angularity of the feature of modern Greek letter shapes; it is a visual device that indexes ‘Greek’ without being part of the Greek writing system. The use of the Greek capital ), however, is a functional carryover from Greek, since it (lower-case represents the sound /s/ and allows the sequence to reflect the English spelling rather than the Greek loanword spelling of ντελικατέσεν with a single . Despite this functional cross-linguistic use of , the words gods and street elsewhere in the signage revert to an form which is based on the Roman but uses angularity to reference ancient Greek inscription. Monolingual displays also use wordplay, polysemy, and intentional violations of standard rules which have the effect of calling out to the stranger and engaging them in discourse. Inscriptions which raise the value of local and otherwise stigmatised linguistic forms by displaying them in the public space will be discussed in Chapter 4 with reference to the notion of ‘enregisterment’ developed by Agha (2003), Johnstone, Andrus, and Danielson (2006), and others. I turn here to some other monolingual ways of ‘doing things with codes’ in the LL. The examples in Figure 3.14 play with English spelling in ways that can be understood as a matter of linguistic markedness, which allows speakers to negotiate new positions for themselves by breaking with conventional

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Figure 3.14 Respellings for effect (Galway, 2014; Norton, 2016; Albany, 2017)

expectations: see further discussion in Chapter 4. The use of innovative spellings is a long-standing feature in advertising, as Jaquith’s (1976) analysis of 1,512 ‘modified advertising spellings’ demonstrates. Drucker’s (1998b: 92) comments on a photograph of cleaners in Oakland shows the significance of such spellings: ‘Consider the subtle difference between NO DELAY CLEANERS and NO D-LAY KLEENERS. One name simply describes an operation. The other calls attention to itself. The odd spelling institutionalizes the service by removing it from the realm of pedestrian language. This is not conversation, this is commerce’. The extension of English is a frequent target for creative respellings, as shown in Figures 3.14A and 3.14B. The use of to replace the of Culture Curl in Figure 3.14A maintains phonological alliteration and creates an opportunity for visual unity which would be lacking in a spelling with . The spelling of Figure 3.14B displays a shorter word with more transparent orthography than standard English . To the sign viewer, the spelling could indicate speed and convenience by iconic resemblance: ‘it looks more quick’. The sign in Figure 3.14C also plays with visual elements and standard orthography. The top line uses lower-case white letters against a black background, except for the which is in hot pink, matching the advertising line underneath. The spelling could represent the common pronunciation [ɛksˡkeɪp] escape, but the large size and colour lend special significance to the . As Jaworski (2019) has pointed out, the character in Latin-based writing systems has taken on a semiotic significance of its own, which can operate

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independently of any particular language in which it may be embedded. The can thus signify anything from ‘the unknown, mysterious, aberrant and potentially menacing’ (p. 117) to ‘dynamism, development, or transformation’ (p. 122). In spatial terms, can represent a crossroads: a sign of coming from a direction and the potential of proceeding in a different direction. These associations of dynamism, transformation, and movement can index a potential consumer’s desire to escape from the humdrum. The visual presentation of the in Figure 3.14C thus does some code internal work in encoding a possible pronunciation of escape, but also grafts in a new element of meaning associated with the iconicity, indexicality, and symbolism of . Figure 3.15A shows a trade-related pun which is part of a generic practice for signage in the shoe repair trade. This example advertises ‘saving soles since 1984’, where sole is homophonous with soul and the expression saving souls is a well-known religious concept in the community. The signage in

Figure 3.15 Playing with homophones (Newry, 2014; Vienna, 2018)

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Figure 3.15B is over the door of a restaurant. Despite the setting in Austria, the sign uses only English. The inscription is multiply polysemous, since it could refer to a restaurant as a ‘meeting point’, indicate the availability of meat on the menu, or suggest that eating will take place. Though neither graphic nor crosslinguistic elements add extra value in the signs of Figure 3.15, the surprise value of such wordplay facilitates the sign instigator’s aim to gain the sign viewer’s attention and to influence their behaviour. Textual flows beyond code boundaries frequently involve non-lexical elements, whether from visual imagery or from other systems such as mathematics, chemical notation, and musical notation. Visual images frequently reference some element connected to the activity denoted by the sign unit, but the relation between the linguistic message and what is signified by an image can be indirect, covert to all but an in-group, or otherwise unpredictable. The integration of text and image within a message is a challenge to the idea of language as a discrete phenomenon in the LL, especially when other visual and physical properties of LL units are considered. In a different context, Becker (1991: 34), for example, has urged those who study language to ‘assume that there is no such thing as Language, only continual languaging, an activity of human beings in the world’. My argument, however, is that integrations of visual images with linguistic texts enhance the sociolinguistic interest of the LL, not because these integrations challenge the language notion itself, but because they show the LL as a proving ground in which the engagement of language with other means of semiosis provides a special insight into the role of language in social life. Thus, while the LL units in Figure 3.16 all require an analysis of visual imagery in order to understand their communicative force, their use of the visual is also based on knowledge of written language as part of the shared experience of sign instigator and sign viewer. The signage in Figure 3.16A incorporates visual elements into the writing system across two languages. The English inscription is in green on a cream-coloured background. It transliterates the Japanese on the top line, which reads from left-to-right and starts with okomei ‘rice’, in which the initial character conveys a sense of importance or politeness, which is not represented in English. This character is also in green, as is the inscription gyararī ‘gallery’. The second character in the Japanese inscription departs from the everyday typography and green colour scheme. It is a stylised presentation of the kanji character 米 komei ‘rice’, which uses the cream colour of the background against a rice bowl in bright yellow. Strokes above the rice bowl are in the same bright yellow, creating a decorative pattern as if steam or rays of light were streaming out of it. The gallery is located in the or district of Fukuoka; the Japanese place name is given in cream lettering in a green bar below the rice bowl. The business is an exhibition space and café

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Figure 3.16 Incorporating images (Fukuoka, 2007; Berkeley, 2015; Brighton, 2018; Michelstadt, 2019)

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which educates visitors about the rice industry, sells rice dishes, and distributes rice recipes. For the Anglophone viewer is only a name, since the semantic elements are not translated in the signage, but the Japanese-reading sign viewer will gain additional meaning from both the lexical-semantic elements and from the incorporation of graphic elements into the written word. In Figure 3.16B the flow of codes is not across two linguistic systems, but between German, where Nacht ‘night’ is the target lexical item, and musical notation, where a treble clef replaces the . The resulting hybrid picks up an extra meaning in denoting ‘music night’, which is what this poster advertises. The sign for in Figure 3.16C does not borrow across codes, but uses iconicity to present the letters in a graphic variation that resembles a twisting boiled noodle. Figure 3.16D, as I interpret it, demonstrates the triumph of form over linguistic substance. This example of graffiti takes up a large expanse of wall, but as far as I have been able to tell, it is not written in any language or formal semiotic system. Its placement, medium, and ground identify it as graffiti, and since it does not include representational or stylised images in the usual mode of graffiti, its regular, linear structure invites the viewer to read it as a text. The text, however, turns out to be unreadable. I leave open the possibility that the inscription does represent some language, but if it does not, it shows that an awareness of the formal structure of orthography can be presented in a pure form devoid of semantic or onymic significance.

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4

Space and Landscape

The landscape element in LL research usually receives less attention than the use of language. As the preceding discussion has shown, however, it is impossible to discuss the LL without taking physicality into account, whether at the level of the individual LL unit, the networks of units which coexist in making up the LL, or the geographical and political domains that often define the scope of specific LL studies. In this chapter, I will be concerned with the physical aspect of the LL, especially with the kinds of spatial relationships which LL units bring into play. My basic argument is that LL units should not be understood as physical objects which either occupy or exist in a given space, but as elements of discourse whose physical and referential properties (established largely through language) create spatial relationships. Since these spatial relationships include the sign instigator and the sign viewer, they form the basis for social relationships and underscore the sociolinguistic nature of the LL. In this chapter, I start with a discussion of three elements – space, landscape, and spatial indexicality – which provide a background for the empirical LL evidence which follows. 4.1

Space

4.1.1

Ways of Knowing Space

Fundamental questions about space, its relation to time, and to life on Earth go well beyond the scope of what could be considered in this volume. Nevertheless, there are some elements of thought about space which are essential to the workings of the landscape element in the LL. The space we will be concerned with here is not best described in terms of physical measurements or mathematical properties, but as a human – social and psychological – activity. Some expressions of this general view are well-known in other fields. Lefebvre (1991 [1974]: 26), for example, explores the principle that ‘(Social) space is a (social) product’ and further argues that ‘the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action; that in addition to being a means of production, it is also a means of control, and hence of 80

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domination, of power’. The field of ‘humanistic geography’, reviewed by Seamon and Lundberg (2017), brings the human element in space to the fore, but in different ways. Relph (1976), for example, distinguishes at least eight kinds of space, including ‘pragmatic or primitive’ space pertaining to ‘the organic space that is rooted in things’ (p. 8); ‘existential space’ or the ‘inner structure of space as it appears to us in our concrete experiences of the world as members of a cultural group’ (p. 12); ‘sacred space’; ‘geographical space’, in which named spaces and mapped spaces are ‘not objective and indifferent but full of significance for people’ (p. 17); and ‘abstract space’, or ‘the space of logical relations that allows us to describe space without necessarily founding those descriptions in empirical observations’ (p. 26). Tuan’s (1991) concern with the additional cultural values that create places by the use of mythology, naming practices, and the ‘quality (the personality or character) of place’ also lead him to argue (p. 694) ‘that speech and the written word be considered integral to the construction of place, and therefore integral to the geographer’s understanding of place’. From a perspective which relates directly to the LL, Drucker (2010: 139) gives a formative role to language, maintaining that ‘spaces are written, made, through acts of linguistic enunciation. Space does not preexist, a priori, and get filled with things. The signs help model its symbolic and lived reality’. There are many ways of knowing space. The cognitive map which each person constructs on the basis of experiences is an individual manifestation of a universal principle by which human beings orient themselves in the physical world and attach values to that world. In a general sense, cognitive mapping involves what Downs and Stea (1973: 9) call ‘a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes’ of the everyday world; they further argue that ‘human spatial behavior is dependent on the individual’s cognitive map of the spatial environment’. In sociolinguistics, as Cramer’s (2016) review explains, perceptual dialectology has undertaken extensive analysis of cognitive mapping, relying on the ability of speakers to report on their spatially organised knowledge of variable linguistic features. The cognitive map can motivate a great deal of individual action and value, and it will give a view of space that is different from the ‘bird’s eye’ point of view in most cartographic maps. The cartographic map will include and omit features differently from what is constructed in the cognitive map; the cognitive map will represent things in a different scale, and while the conventional cartographic map can be shared with others, the cognitive map can only be communicated to others in parts. Space as delineated by onomastics will be different yet again, since a cartographic map may not show all the names that are used in a given territory, may show spaces that have no names, and may use particular names when other names exist in the same language or in other languages.

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Space and Landscape

Talk about space also reveals cognition and affective value. Speakers can refer to space in linear terms that are absolute (‘there are 7,908 kilometres between Buenos Aires and Lagos’), or relative to a point of reference, as in ‘it is 5,271 kilometres from here to Lagos’. Space can be represented in procedural terms (‘to get to London Bridge from here, take the Victoria Line as far as Green Park, then change to the Jubilee Line going towards Wembley Park and get off at London Bridge Station’); time (‘Belfast is about two hours from Dublin’); social metaphors (‘the train let us off in the back of nowhere’); and other ways which involve culture, perception, and experience. Spaces are not conceived of equally: suburbs imply the existence of an adjacent urban area that plays a dominant role in some sense; a bedroom community indicates daily mobility from home to a centre of economic activity; an individual’s homeland may or may not be the physical location where the individual was born or currently lives; and speakers may refer to sacred ground or index social life with terms such as Chinatown, Little Italy, or Hell’s Kitchen. Space relations are also pervasive in linguistic metaphors, which conceptual metaphor theory, as developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), helps to unravel. English speakers can refer to close friends and distant relatives, even though a close friend could live on the other side of the world and a distant relative live next door. In terms that Lakoff (1993: 206–07) makes clear, such phrases establish the metaphor that INTIMATE IS CLOSE, in which CLOSE is the source domain (taken from the more basic experience of what is known) that is used to explain the target domain INTIMATE. The notion of a close friend on the other side of the world makes sense for those who know the metaphor and understand close to mean intimate rather than the physical sense of proximate. Spatial metaphors abound. We like to be looked up to and to be in high spirits, and we do not like to be talked down to or to be feeling down: one of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980: 16) best-known metaphors is that GOOD IS UP; BAD IS DOWN. Each way of engaging with space has its own frame of reference, and each is relevant for specific purposes. A cartographic map may be useful for a person navigating an unfamiliar territory, but a cognitive map will better lead them to a favourite restaurant in a busy city. What the modern cartographic map is less likely to do is to indicate values, memories, and associations linked with space. In the real world of personal involvement, these features are often the ones of greatest interest. Thus, when space is endowed with a social value of some kind, it can be useful to make a distinction and designate that space as having the quality of place. As I discuss in this chapter, the linkage between space and discourse in the LL is multifaceted. It includes the ability of LL units to create and define space, to refer to other spaces, and to draw sign instigator and sign

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viewer into new relationships of place. That it often does so indirectly – by metaphor, intertextuality, and other means – raises challenges for LL research. 4.1.2

The Public Space

The notion of public space is usually assumed to be central to LL research, but it is rarely scrutinised. There is, for example, a subtle but important conceptual difference between the Landry and Bourhis (1997: 23) approach to LL based on ‘the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory’, and Shohamy’s (2006: 110) expression ‘language in the public space’. For Landry and Bourhis (1997), language is found on signs, and the signs are found in a territory: metaphorically, TERRITORY IS A CONTAINER. To speak, as Shohamy (2006) does, of language in the public space is also to use a container metaphor, but the container is defined socially: PUBLIC SPACE IS A CONTAINER. The relation between LL and PUBLIC SPACE as a container is ambiguous: does the container hold the LL within it, or does the LL create the container? This ambiguity is familiar in spatial linguistics. Herskovits (1986: 42–3) points out the ambiguity of in with a phrase such as the nail in the box. The nail could be free in the sense that it is physically unattached to the box, yet be contained within the inner space of the box, or the nail could be driven into the box and help to construct it. Likewise, we can understand the LL in the public space as both language display that operates freely and is encompassed by the public space, and as language display that helps to create the public space itself. With the nail in the box, the linguistic ambiguity can only be resolved in favour of one physical meaning or another: it is not a metaphor. The TERRITORY IS A CONTAINER metaphor does not lead to ambiguity for the LL, since it does not claim that the use of language creates a territory or polity which serves as the container. Like the nail in the box, however, the PUBLIC SPACE IS A CONTAINER metaphor will always have a twofold interpretation, and this creative ambiguity opens the door for LL research. Focusing on the public space in this dual sense raises questions about what makes the public space public, and how the LL relates to spaces which are considered private, liminal (neither public nor private), uncharted, imaginary, and virtual. The flexibility of space as a creation of the LL also makes it possible to analyse connections between LL units that are physically discontinuous. The physical and social structuring of the public space is often taken for granted. Architecture, street layout and design, fencing, and other ways of structuring territory all contribute to a sense of what is public or not, and are designed to be seen as part of the natural order of things. These design elements, however, are crucial for the LL, because LL units are constructed

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and emplaced with them in mind. Access to public space for a city pedestrian is different from access for a motorist: an LL unit which assumes a slow pedestrian approach and the time for the sign viewer to read a complex message, such as a restaurant menu, is based on a different concept of access from that which shapes the design of a billboard that is intended to entice a high-speed motorist off the motorway to a restaurant in a service plaza. Expectations of bodily movement and behaviour also provide social conditioning to the public space. Physically free movement is only free for people who will not be excluded by social forces (either official or unofficial). Social segregation can exclude individuals from the supposedly public space, and create hierarchies of access among different public spaces within a single political or geographical unit; strong penalties may apply for crossing boundaries. We may think of the pedestrian on the street in a city centre as simply being in the public space, but many city centres carry with them a social expectation that pedestrians will be on the move. The fabric of the city is often designed with the expectation of movement in mind. An individual who is not seen to be engaged in some kind of ‘purposeful’ motion may fall afoul of regulations regarding loitering and vagrancy, which are frequently used by those in authority against individuals who are seen to be ‘out of place’. The social relations that create public spaces are thus sensitive to the factors of social division within a given society: perceptions of gender, age, ethnicity, social class, and other personal factors may encourage or discourage social affiliations in the public space. These considerations raise the question of how public any public space actually is. Beyond the question of access, a salient feature of the public space is its lack of a specific behavioural agenda when compared to dedicated spaces such as classrooms, meeting halls, restaurants, local religious units, private dwellings, etc. This lack of a specific agenda does not mean that all things or behaviours are socially accepted. On the contrary, as Lofland (1998: 25) points out, the lack of a specified agenda means that ‘a normative or (speaking metaphorically) a “legal” system’ for regulating behaviour is characteristic of the public realm. A corollary of this view is that some activities which are permissible for individuals in private will not be permissible in public, simply because the space is public. We have already seen LL units which function as part of this ‘legal’ system. Some, such as instructions regarding public alcohol consumption (Figure 1.6) or the flow of traffic (Figures 1.8B), invoke formal legal authority, but others – as in the small notice requiring customers to wear shirts and shoes in Figure 3.14B – rely on, and try to shape, social consensus. In these cases, the LL is involved in the creation of social space through definitions of public decorum as Goffman (1956) discusses it. This spatial perspective draws attention to the lack of any absolute boundary between LL units that exist in physical form and certain genres of speech.

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Physical LL units such as street name plaques are used to name locales, but this function is also taken over by, or shared with, the onomastics of oral tradition. Traditional place names may be different in language or content from official names; they may supplement official names with etiological information; they may attach names to locales or physical features which have no official names, and so on. Since this process works in both directions – with official names frequently deriving their validity from previously existing oral tradition – any attempt at rigid separation loses insight by isolating the written element of discourse from the spoken element to which it is attached. This problem is particularly acute in cultural settings which place a high value on oral tradition, or in which literacy plays a minimal role in everyday life. The principles which relate written and oral onomastics are fundamental in place name studies, but similar principles also hold for other types of names: a restaurant with an official name on the signage could easily be known by locals according to some other name such as a nickname for the owner, a play on words using the official name, a name in another language, or the name of a previous business. In some cases, understanding the role and function of the written signage is only possible if the associated oral discourse is taken into account. Written LL units, in short, are not only texts. They are also possible points of departure for further discourse, whether in speech or writing. 4.2

Landscape

Though the term landscape is intrinsic to LL research, there have been few probings of the way in which different understandings of landscape can be significant for understanding the LL. Leeman and Modan’s (2009: 336) call for ‘a geographically informed notion of landscape’ raises significant issues. Recognising the dual sense of landscape as referring both to space and to a view or presentation of that space, their analysis of language commodification in Chinatown, Washington, D.C., follows from the view (p. 327) that ‘the structuring of landscapes has material consequences’. Jaworski and Thurlow (2010a) also review approaches to landscape in art, photography, and geography, drawing attention (p. 6) to ‘the dichotomous, dialectical nature of landscape both as physical (built) environment, a context for human action and socio-political activity, while at the same time a symbolic system of signifiers with wide-ranging affordances activated by social actors to position themselves and others in that context’. As I discuss further in Chapter 8, terms other than landscape – such the schoolscape (Brown 2012; Szabó and Troyer 2017, 2020; Gorter 2018), skinscape (Peck and Stroud 2015; Roux, Peck, and Banda 2019; Peck and Williams 2019), smellscape (Pennycook and Otsuji 2015), and semiofoodscape (Järlehed and Moriarty 2018) – have occupied more discussion within the broad field of LL research than landscape itself.

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Ambiguities and shades of meaning which attach to the term landscape arise in part because different languages use related terms in different ways. Drexler’s (2013) exploration of landscape, German Landschaft, French paysage, and Hungarian táj, for example, demonstrates a range of overlap and discontinuity in the way these terms are used across the four languages, especially when each term is considered within its own semantic field. Baker’s (2003) review of ‘the landscape discourse in geography’ (p. 109) shows that these cross-linguistic differences have consequences in the academic world, since the cross-fertilisation of ideas across English-, German-, and French-speaking geographers, especially, has also led to a multiplicity of technical terms that fit into various research programmes in different ways. In English alone, landscape is used in different ways according to the frame of reference: the term is not ‘the same’ for a gardener, a geologist, or an art historian. In this section, I review some of the etymological disputes on the word itself as a prelude to comments on a view of the landscape which is geared specifically toward the LL. 4.2.1

Etymological Perspectives

The etymology of English landscape is a matter of dispute, although the uncertainty is not confined to English: cf. Baker’s (2003: 109) position, which relies in part on work by Jean-Marc Besse, that ‘the history of the word which gave rise to the concept of “landscape” in different European languages has yet to be written’. The OED derivation gives Dutch landschap as the source for English, and states that landscape (sometimes in the form landskip) ‘was introduced as a technical term of painters’. The earliest citation is from 1598, where Landskipes refers to paintings. These early references to art include a sense of landscape as ‘Parergon, Paisage, or By-work’, exemplified in Thomas Blount’s Glossographia of 1656: ‘all that which in a Picture is not of the body or argument thereof is Landskip, Parergon, or by-work’. As Duro (2019) details, this understanding of landscape as parergon – not as a painting which details or presents a view of the natural world, but as the element which is background to, or which lies outside, the main subject of the artwork – has a long history. As I discuss in Chapter 8, there are remnants of this attitude in LL research today, for if the linguistic text of an LL unit is considered as the main subject, then the physical setting – the landscape – becomes secondary, and is easily omitted from the usual LL photograph. My argument is that reducing LL units to texts and relegating or erasing the landscape limits the understanding of the LL. Artistic issues aside, cognate words and other early citations in the OED do not support the account of landscape as an English adaptation of a painting term from Dutch. The OED also cites Old English landscipe as a related word.

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The masculine noun land-scipe ‘a tract of land, region’ and the neuter noun land-sceap ‘a district, tract of country, land’ (Bosworth and Toller 1898–1921) introduce the crucial territorial element which is unrelated to painting and long predates any time given for the Dutch loanword. Olwig (1996: 631) makes the further argument that in context, the Old English terms and words which are related to Germanic Landschaft designated ‘not just a territorial unit’, but ‘a bounded area, e.g., the various lands (cultivated land, meadow land, common land) constituting a farm or manor’ (p. 633). Antrop (2013: 12) points out that one of the earliest Dutch attestations of the term lantscap, from the thirteenth century, ‘referred to a land region or environment’, in which the suffix -scep ‘refers to land reclamation and creation’. Thus, he maintains, ‘when “land” refers to soil and territory, “landscape” as “organized land” is also characteristic of the people who made it’. Jackson (1984) develops other arguments against the derivation of landscape from painting terminology. In his controversial view (cf. Howe 2006: 232, 239fn), scape does not refer to a space, but rather refers to a ‘composition of similar objects’, as in sheaf ‘a bundle or collection of similar stalks or plants’, comparable to fellowship and membership. Land in this sense thus refers not to soil or earth, but to a (socially) bounded segment of space. Jackson (1984: 7) cites the example of waterscape (‘a system of pipes and drains and aqueducts serving a residence and a mill’) from the tenth century, suggesting that a landscape could have been ‘something like an organization, a system of rural farm spaces’. Anne Whiston Spirn likewise disputes a simple reading of the OED derivation, arguing (DeLue and Elkins 2008b: 92) that: If you look at the roots of the word landscape in Nordic and Germanic languages, for example, Danish landskab, German Landschaft, or Old English landscipe, you see a combination of meanings that associate a place and the people who dwell there, past and present. Land means both the physical features of a place and its population. Skabe and schaffen mean ‘to shape’, and the suffixes -skab and -schaft, as in the English -ship, also mean association, partnership. . . . But the Oxford English Dictionary claims that landscape comes from a Dutch painting term, landskip, and was imported into English in the seventeenth century. Not so! Why is it that the meanings of the word landscipe in Old English get lost?

Olwig (2008: 160) takes up the theme, with the suggestion that the OED editors, faced with a ‘discordance’ between older definitions which focus on ‘a region; the prospect of a country’ and the artistic ‘a picture, representing an extent of space, with the various objects in it’ chose to favour only the ‘picture’ sense, and to elide the ‘land’ sense. Olwig’s (2008: 162) comment directly confronts the OED approach: The OED reduces the land in landscape to a form of nature – soil, and then counterpoises it to other natural elements . . . but the land in these paintings is clearly a cultural,

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not a natural, category. . . . A region, country, or land, in this sense, is not pre-given and unchanging, the way the laws of nature or space are often thought to be . . .. It is rather something that has come about historically through human cultural, economic, and legal practice.

Schama (1995: 10; see also p. 579 fn5) advances an approach which includes the derivation of English landscape from Dutch landschap and the view that the term denotes more than a pictorial representation of terrain. Schama accepts landscape as ‘a Dutch import’ from the late sixteenth century, but attributes to landschap the signification of ‘a unit of human occupation, indeed a jurisdiction, as much as anything that might be a pleasing object of depiction’. Contrasting the parerga of Italian painting (cf. the quotation from Blount’s Glossographia above) in which fields and hills were the ‘auxiliary settings for . . . classical myth and sacred scripture’, Schama claims that for Dutch painters of this era, ‘the human design and use of the landscape – implied by . . . fishermen, cattle drovers and ordinary walkers and riders . . . was the story, startlingly sufficient unto itself’. Following Schama’s (1995) logic, then, even if landscape came into English on the model of a Dutch painting term, the thinking behind the term reflects a graphic interest in human activity in the community, not simply the visual depiction of terrain. 4.3

Space, Place, and Indexicality

The notion of the landscape as a social and cultural construction which emerges from research in geography has direct relevance for the LL. Jackson (1984: 8) stresses the importance of human activity in his view that ‘a landscape is not a natural feature of the environment but a synthetic space, a man-made system of spaces superimposed on the face of the land, functioning . . . to serve a community’. Jørgensen (1998: 39) brings the social and visual arguments together in his view that ‘the meaning of landscape does not reside in the landscape itself, nor in the observer, but arises through mediation between the observer and the landscape’. Landscape is thus both ‘a “visual ideology”, a way of seeing the world’ and ‘an arena for daily life’. In a similar vein, Cosgrove (2008 [1998]: 20) argues that ‘landscape constitutes a discourse through which identifiable social groups historically have framed themselves and their relations both with the land and with other human groups, and that this discourse is closely related epistemically and technically to ways of seeing’. From the standpoint of historical geography, Baker (2003: 78) offers a definition which uses landscape ‘to refer essentially to the form, to the structure, to the appearance, to the visible manifestation of the relationship between people and the space/land they occupy, their milieu (both human and physical)’. Fortified by the understanding of landscape as an assemblage of natural, built, and cultural entities and activities whose visual and more

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broadly sensory presentation engages the viewer in the perception of meaning, an essential question for LL research is to understand how LL units work not only as linguistic expressions, but as landscape elements. To approach this question, I suggest that the mediation between sign instigator and sign viewer that is essential to any LL unit relies on indexicality which points to space at three possible levels: (a) the immediate space taken up by the LL unit; (b) a place of proximal reference, which is close to but not necessarily equivalent to this immediate space; and (c) a place of remote reference, by which the LL unit indexes a more distant space. Because the latter space is often culturally and socially significant, it readily shows social features which characterise space as place. For ease of reference, I refer to these levels by the shorthand designations HERE, NEAR, and THERE respectively. These spatial relationships carry with them a parallel element of temporal reference, bearing in mind Bender’s (2002: S103) view that ‘Landscape is time materialized’, specifically, ‘Landscape is time materializing: landscapes, like time, never stand still’. The need for LL units to engage in discourse permeates their functioning in space. Because most written LL units are emplaced as objects, they do not participate in interactive discourse with the sign viewer in the manner of spoken discourse. In order to engage in discourse, the LL unit allows the sign instigator to create a spatial relationship with the sign viewer. By drawing the sign viewer into this spatial relationship, the sign instigator has the opportunity to express pragmatic intent. While the text may answer the question ‘what does the sign say?’, and pragmatic force is addressed to the question of ‘what is the sign doing?’, the question for the sign viewer in the landscape is ‘what is this sign doing here?’. The default quality of the LL unit is to answer this question by expressing reflexive spatial reference, which makes a claim of hereness simply by display in the public eye. This display of hereness allows the sign instigator to say ‘HERE is a segment of space which I claim as my own for the purpose of saying X to a generalised interlocutor, Y’. As a unit of spatial reference, the LL unit is not constrained linguistically. The unit can display one word (or a wordlike symbolic representation), a name, a set of words, or many sentences organised as a text. These linguistic elements are interpreted in relation to co-occurring visual images and the layout of all elements within a coherent unit. The embodiment of a linguistic message as a spatial unit of the LL thus entails features which (a) frame the unit in contrast with its surround; (b) enable the visibility of the message by the use of layout and shape to organise medium (ink, paint, chalk, carving, LED display, etc.) and ground (stone, hard plastic, wooden board, vinyl, etc.); (c) provide a support for the unit in the landscape, whether it is free standing, incised, painted on, structurally attached, glued or pasted, or otherwise; and (d) use scriptographic features as discussed

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in Section 3.3 above. Dumont (1998: 60), Millet (1998), and Varga (2000) raise important issues in this connection; see further discussion in Chapter 8. Reflexive spatial reference, however, merely reflects a claim by the sign instigator to display an element of discourse in space. The question ‘what is this sign doing here?’ requires a further spatial interpretation, which determines a domain in which the proposition expressed by the LL unit holds true. The smoking prohibition in Figure 1.8A, for example, does not prohibit smoking as an absolute rule, but within a zone designated by the LL unit. This anchored spatial reference, in which the spatial domain of application for the LL unit is linked to a specific locale by combinations of textual and emplacement features, contrasts with the unanchored spatial reference typically found in political exhortations, general product promotions, and many types of health and safety information which are aimed at the cognitive or affective domain of the viewer regardless of location. The cigarette packet warnings in Figure 3.1 (but not the train safety warning in Figure 1.3A) provide an example. Reflexive spatial indexicality is generally taken for granted: even the viewer who does not understand the language or message of an LL unit is in a position to say ‘I know it’s a sign, even though I don’t know what it means’. Reflexive spatial indexicality is usually only the entry point for more complex spatial relationships. LL units which display street names and the names of shops, for example, also index a place of proximal reference – physically, a proximal zone – to which the name applies. While the LL unit claims to be HERE, it points the viewer to a locale which is NEAR. Figures 1.4, 1.5, 3.3, and 3.13 illustrate this principle with restaurant names, but the same principle holds for other signs we have seen. The viewer’s knowledge of where NEAR applies is based on interpretive principles that are learned in the culture. Wherever a name is displayed (shop fascia, shop window, free standing sign on a signboard or pole, etc.), successful performance from the sign instigator’s point of view depends on triggering the sign viewer’s ability to determine a location for the place of proximal reference. Since this determination involves social knowledge, it is analytically useful to think of NEAR not as space alone, but as a place. Frequently, the indexation of a NEAR referent involves claims of contrast between potential referents: in a street full of restaurants, an LL unit may be constructed so as to claim that this restaurant (the NEAR place) is not the same as that one, while signs marking political borders naturally draw attention to the difference between this political entity and that political entity. Further indexicality arises from two main dynamics. One is that while an LL unit can define its own reflexive spatial reference and an associated NEAR place, any given LL unit may also bear a relation (stated or otherwise) to other LL units. A ubiquitous example is the street name plaque. A single street name plaque tells the viewer that the place of proximal reference has the name X, but

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there may be hundreds of other signs which bear the same inscription. All the street name plaques that bear the same name reference the same street, constituting one horizontal set of points in geographical space. Depending on the local naming system, however, these points may not be physically contiguous, and the street name plaques may not use the same manner of presentation (or even the same names) for the same referent: see Figures 6.8 and 7.4 below. However constituted, the set of points which refers to this street forms an entity in its own right. If we know the local naming system, we can identify a beginning and an end to the set of points, and we can attribute significance to a change of colour in the lettering (which could, e.g. represent historical layering or a change of political jurisdiction). Each odonymic system has its own internal structure, and knowing the structure is part of knowing the LL. A common street name pattern in the US, for example, uses grids in which streets with letter names are ordered alphabetically with cross-streets in numerical order. In some cities, as in parts of Washington, D. C., the system also orders named streets by the number of syllables, so that a one-syllable street like Church Street is closer to the city centre than Euclid Street or the even more remote Buchanan Street. In such cases, the referential power of the street name plaque arises not only from its ability to index HERE (where the sign is emplaced) and NEAR (the segment of the street to which the sign refers), but to show the relative position of HERE within the overall system of naming and wayfinding. A second dynamic to the expansion of spatial reference in the LL arises from the capacity of the LL unit to index a place of remote reference. This place, or THERE, may be a more extensive terrestrial zone that includes the proximal space, or it may be an independent locale at a far remove from HERE. THERE is often a tangible place of cultural significance, but it may also exist in the cultural or literary imagination, within religious belief systems, or with an additional THEN reference that links the present to the past. Because of the higher degree of cultural reference and the physical abstraction of this more remote domain, the emplacement effects that are often sufficient to index the proximal space will not always work for the place of remote reference. Instead, the LL unit relies on place names, symbolic representations such as flags and emblems, and geographically based iconic elements to bring the viewer into a relationship that includes the immediate zone of HERE, the proximal place of NEAR, and the remote place of THERE. Following these arguments, Diagram 4.1 gives a schematic representation of the LL unit in its role as mediator between sign viewer and sign instigator via the indexation of spaces designated as HERE, NEAR, and THERE. In this conception, the LL unit expresses the message of the sign instigator to the sign viewer, who perceives the LL unit and, ideally, captures the instigator’s communicative intent. The written LL unit always entails its own indexicality

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Diagram 4.1 Indexing places in the LL

of HERE. Whether linguistically, by emplacement features, or a combination of both, the LL unit may index a place of proximal reference (the proximal place in the diagram) and a place of remote reference (the remote place in the diagram). Encodings and direct perceptions are indicated in the diagram with solid arrows. The dotted arrows of Diagram 4.1 indicate interpretive processes by which the sign viewer understands the LL unit spatially. This interpretation relies not only on what is directly encoded by the unit, but on the viewer’s understanding of the LL generally and on their knowledge of the world at large. The relationships in Diagram 4.1 are not present in all LL units. The unanchored spatial references of many product advertisements, for example, do not indicate any place of proximal reference, although they may trigger the viewer’s knowledge of a place where the product can be bought. When both NEAR and THERE are invoked, the usual pattern is to create a metaphor, in which the LL unit explains the NEAR in terms of a source domain THERE that is known or meaningful to the viewer. The LL unit thus uses a general metaphor that HERE IS THERE. In the case of Figure 1.5, for example, the locational term Bombay, emphasised by the use of colour and cross-linguistic scriptography, uses this metaphor to say to the sign viewer ‘HERE [the restaurant you do not know] IS THERE [a city in India you do know of]’. As with metaphor more generally, though, it is not the entirety of the source THERE which is used to explain the target HERE. The sign instigator often chooses to bring certain historical, social, cultural, or other qualities of THERE to the mind of the viewer in order to associate HERE with QUALITY X. In the

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restaurant context, the metaphor HERE IS THERE is enough to establish a claim of authenticity without specifying precisely what authentic qualities HERE embodies. Such metaphorical logic also works towards a two-way establishment of trust. Establishing that HERE IS THERE builds trust when authenticity is valued, but read the other way the metaphor also means that a real-world THERE (which might be threatening because it is so unfamiliar) is safe because it is actually HERE in a familiar setting. Using an example from Chapter 1, the name Bombay for the space of remote reference may, for some sign viewers, enhance the sense of trust because it is more familiar than Mumbai or a name written in Marathi or Hindi. Since these spatial metaphors develop from linguistic expressions, they may differ across languages within the same LL unit. In Figure 3.8, for example, the Chinese name indexes the region known as the Central Plains (中原) as THERE, but the English THERE relies on an ironic reference to a chain of other, unrelated restaurants. Though Diagram 4.1 appears to portray a set of static spatial relationships, I stress that the spatial work of the LL is dynamic, and is often oriented towards changes of relationships. Much of this work has to do with discourse towards strangers. As Mask (2020) points out, street name plaques are frequently only relevant to strangers or relevant in areas where strangers are socially significant. For fully integrated locals, navigation may take place by habit, visual landmarks, memory of particular people or events, or other cognitive mapping aids which do not rely on the street name plaque. Strangers who come to an area as tourists may rely on street name plaques, but their needs are different from the needs of people engaged in firefighting, postal delivery, or medical intervention. Large segments of the LL, however, are devoted to ensuring that strangers will not remain strangers. The enticements offered by the lure of the exotic, exciting, healthy, spiritual, efficient, or otherwise desirable often require the establishment of trust which facilitates the crossing of boundaries. Thus, the stranger becomes a customer; the tourist strikes up a relationship with the local culture; the indecorous individual behaves with decorum regarding smoking, drinking, or spitting in the public space, and so on. In short, whether metaphorically or in the literal expression of Figure 1.1, the LL invites the stranger not to be an outsider, but to join the congregation. With these points in mind, this chapter turns to themes in spatial relationships: (1) LL units which divide and regulate space; (2) the role of emplacement effects in the LL; (3) marking proximal space; (4) proximal space and remote space; (6) signs of the imaginary; and (7) unanchored spatial reference. This chapter does not discuss the LL as a general way of marking boundaries between language communities: I argue in Chapter 5 that this function is best understood as a fundamentally social demarcation.

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4.4

Dividing and Regulating Spaces

In developing a spatial model for the LL, the recognition that public space is a relative concept opens the way for further research. The shopfronts and fascia which feature prominently in LL research do not simply stand in the public space, but, rather, stand at the boundary between the public space of strangers in flow and the more internal spaces where relationships such as those of customer, client, patient, or friend can develop. The frontage of a shop or business, the signage on a public building, and the linguistic displays of public transportation all draw attention to the crossing of borders between public and more private spaces: passing by in the general public space YOU are a sign viewer, but crossing the border, YOU become a customer, client, or passenger. Milani (2014: 213–16) illustrates the importance of crossing from the open public space to more private spaces in contrasting the apparent heteronormativity of T-shirts on sale in a Swedish shop window with the ‘non-heteronormative’ T-shirts that are displayed and available inside the shop. Once the sign viewer crosses the threshold into more private spaces, in other words, different relationships and behaviours may ensue. These inner spaces are often treated as public space and, intuitively, fit within the LL. Though it is necessary, for example, to become a bus passenger in order to see the bilingual notice in Figure 3.4, the passenger as sign viewer is likely to see the sticker as a public notice. Alongside Parkinson’s (2013: 684–85) discussion of the multiple senses of ‘public’ in concepts such as public debate, public ownership, and public life, Gal’s (2002, 2005) notion of ‘fractal recursion’ in the division of public and private space shows that this division is not a simple binary. Building on the approach to the public space developed by Habermas ([1962] 1989), Gal (2005: 27) maintains that from one perspective the major division of public and private is between the house and the street (who can come in, for what kind of activity); however, if we take a closer perspective, looking only at the house itself, the public/private division can once again be applied. Focusing only on the rooms inside the house, the living room is public whereas the bedrooms are private.

With regard to spoken language, Wolfowitz’s (1991) ethnography of politeness and language style in Suriname Javanese demonstrates the crucial role which gradations of domestic space play in shaping language use. Turning to the LL, Hanauer’s (2009) study of wall space in a microbiology lab works with a space that has elements of public discourse but is not fully public, while Juffermans (2019) examines ‘micro-landscapes’ in Guinea-Bissau, exemplified by a display cabinet in one family’s living room and by the interior of a local hair and beauty salon. I return to the theme of gradations of space in

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Chapter 8, but in developing a spatial model for the LL in this chapter, I return to the theme of cross-border train travel introduced in Figure 1.3. The notices in Figure 1.3B and 1.3C are addressed to the general public. Though placed within a train station and thus not in a fully open space, these notices call out to a wide and unstructured flow of people, most of whom are travelling to or from other destinations, and some of whom may only be patronising shops that are also found in the station. From the general flow, the signage addresses those who intend to travel to New York or Montreal, and the instruction to form a line organises this sub-group into a specific formation with instrumental value. In filtering and ordering a group of would-be travellers from within the broader mass of strangers, the signage fulfils a regulatory function. The signage in Figures 1.3A and 1.3D, however, is not aimed at this general public. These sign units are placed inside the train, and are only visible to people who have already left the free-flowing public space. Those who are in the train now share a relationship which they did not have before. As fellow passengers, they may talk, eat, and drink together; if the journey is long enough, they may share confidences not expected of strangers, and they may fall asleep next to each other. The wording in Figures 1.3A and 1.3D reflects this inner perspective. Both units rely on their physical location to express their meaning: we cannot tell which handle is referred to, or what is indicated by glass and the button unless we are actually in the train compartments where these units are emplaced. The high level of spatial reference in this signage follows from the selection of an audience who are no longer general, but share a micro-space defined by the activity of travelling by train. Fine spatial distinctions of this kind often structure the LL. Figure 4.1 shows an expedition into increasingly private train spaces which begins on joining the queue indicated in Figure 1.3B or 1.3C. Once the passenger has left the most public zone and entered the train, they will find the fixed signage of Figure 4.1A, which is monolingual in English and rich in practical information that depends on its physical emplacement to express its reference. The carriage, however, is not the most private zone, as the toilet facilities contain still more private procedural messages that refer to their immediate physical environment. As Figure 4.1D shows, these notices (as well as some safety notices on the train) are presented in both standard English orthography and braille transcription. This tactile system is a distinctive way of putting language in the public space that is rarely mentioned in LL research. To sign viewers who do not know the relevant braille system, the presentation is simply a series of raised dots; to those who read it, the reception of language relies on a more physically intimate connection to the text than with visual display. Braille systems are not independent languages, but use language-specific means to represent the graphic systems of their respective languages. They, too, represent opportunities for further LL research.

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Figure 4.1 Language and space on the New York–Montreal train (2017)

The boundary of the zone – neither fully public nor fully private – which is created in the carriage of the train journey is marked by the signage in Figure 4.1B. The message explicitly limits the public space. Even the ticket-holding members of the public have no idea what features of language display lie in the backstage area beyond this barrier. The fixed signage, however, does not exhaust the LL of the train

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journey. Portable items such as foods that are available from the snack bar also display language on labels and wrappers. Passengers going into Canada receive a customs and immigration form to complete which is bilingual in French and English; at the time I took these photographs, no such checks were made on the trip in the other direction. Personal rubbish bags are available in connection with the catering system. On the way out of Canada, these brown paper bags are bilingual, as shown in Figure 4.1C. The bag is printed with English and French in bright red. These texts are imposed over an image of train tracks in black, with the railroad crossing signals and a Canadian maple leaf insignia in red. The voyager on this train passes through a series of spatial contrasts with potentially different graphic environments. The most public space is bilingual in Montreal but monolingual in English in New York. The space within the carriage contrasts with that of the station since it is only accessible to passengers (as well as employees and security personnel); this semi-public space further contrasts with the most private zone, which lies beyond the boundary marked in Figure 4.1B. The carriage zone is monolingual in English, though some messages of direct personal relevance include the additional tactile modality of writing in braille. The personal self-disclosure of completing customs and immigration forms comes under a French/English bilingual policy only when crossing the border on the way in to Canada. Railroad safety and the disposal of rubbish are also personal functions, but warnings in French are only available on the trip which originates in Canada and is therefore on the way out of the country. When the passenger goes through the same locale in the opposite direction, Canadian language policy – and with it the French language – disappears. For the LL researcher, the crucial points are that a binary contrast between public and private space is too simple to fit the facts, and that gradations between spaces have palpable consequences for the LL in relation to language policy. Since the communal space of train passengers is neither fully public nor private, managing the space can be a specific focus of the LL. Figure 4.2 illustrates the regulation of personal space and movement using LL units that call for public decorum in managing the personal and the collective. The four posters of Figure 4.2 come from a single notice board in a train station in Fukuoka; the train is used mostly by local commuters. The main message of each poster shows a different way of organising the use of space. Figure 4.2A is phrased, roughly speaking, as ‘Hey, no queue jumping’. The graphic element to the left illustrates the problem, and the victim is portrayed at the right. Figure 4.2B shows a woman sitting next to a man on a train carriage: he is reading a book, and she is applying makeup. Though the clouds of face powder shown in the larger picture may appear to be the problem, the main

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text can be translated as ‘It’s embarrassing to look at’, which refers to discomfort caused to a male viewer who sees a female passenger applying makeup in the public space. In what appears as a strongly gendered message, we can see an expression of the ‘male gaze’ as introduced by Mulvey (1975), who argued (p. 11) that ‘in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly’. In this case, the male gaze is portrayed as one which desires not to see a woman in the act of applying makeup, although her use of makeup may present a desirable styling (in Mulvey’s terms) if it is completed in a private space. The signs in Figures 4.2C and 4.2D focus on the problem of sexual harassment and groping in public, for which the word 痴漢 chikan denotes both the act of harassment and the person who perpetrates it. In both signs, chikan features in red using a large font, and the headline declares that ‘chikan is a crime’. The poster in Figure 4.2C illustrates a scene in which the writing in the gap between the man’s hand and the woman’s body reads ‘let’s eliminate chikan’. Figure 4.2D shows elaborations on this theme: on the left, a woman grabs a man’s hand under the legend ‘your courage catches chikan’, while on the right an otherwise unidentified person grabs a man’s hand while the text

Figure 4.2 Regulating social space (Fukuoka, 2007)

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says ‘everyone’s cooperation can eliminate chikan’. The hand in the middle is overwritten with the slogan, ‘let’s eliminate chikan’. The LL units in Figure 4.2 all refer to decorous behaviour on public transportation, but at the centre lies a regulation of space: to move in an orderly way, to conform to expectations of what a person in the public space should or should not see, and to respect the personal space and bodily integrity of others. The interaction of spatial orientations with gender roles and gendered behaviour calls for further research. 4.5

Emplacement Effects

Every physical LL unit relies on its physical emplacement for its participation in the LL, but some LL units are designed to exploit emplacement features as part of their engagement with the sign viewer. These emplacement effects are illustrated by the LL unit in Figure 4.3, which establishes proximal reference by displaying the name of the business, but does so by putting the English in a highly prominent setting. The entry to the restaurant is barely visible in the photograph, at the bottom right-hand corner. Salient emplacement effects, which add to the language elements of the signage, include the sign shape (where the cow indexes the restaurant’s steak specialties), size, and the dominant position obtained by attaching the sign unit at right angles to the building so as to overshadow the pedestrian area of the street. The medium and ground, using neon lighting to give the sign special prominence at night, on a metal ground which indexes substantiality, add to these effects. This sign has become a subject of historical interest in its own right, and as Lou (2016a) reports, it has now been removed due to health and safety concerns and put in a museum collection. This special treatment of the signage demonstrates that a combination of marked features has given it a new signification: it no longer marks a place of proximal reference, but takes on an independent identity as an art object. The inscription of graffiti introduces other emplacement effects. Since graffiti typically uses a wall or item of street furniture as its ground and support, a discourse conflict readily emerges between the graffiti artist and the owner of the surface that provides the ground. The rhetoric of much graffiti is built on the position that ‘here is a piece of the public space which I claim as my own for the purpose of saying X’, although the property owner or similar authority may dispute the artist’s claim that the space is public and available for discourse. Law and socially sanctioned practice usually support the latter perspective. The fusion of ground and support and the lack of a physical frame gives graffiti great freedom for its size and location. Placement in a dangerous or difficult location can be highly valued, and it may complement or strengthen the message. As a spatial unit, the inscription indexes its presence in the HERE

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Figure 4.3 Dominating the street view – Sammy’s Kitchen Ltd. (Hong Kong, 2014)

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of proximal reference, but it need not be anchored to any other place or activity. It may index its creator, at least within an in-group, or it may not. This spatial freedom enables a display, as in Figure 4.4, which incorporates discontinuous space into a single unit. At street level, the viewer sees only the pasteup signage stuck on a wall, as in Figure 4.4A. If they follow the instructions of the sign and ‘look up’, they will see a pair of sparkly high heel shoes dangling from an overhead wire shown in Figure 4.4B. Figure 4.4C shows the scale of the relationship between the parts of the message. As the Cara Courage website explains, the LookUp movement is a ‘crowdsourced architecture and photography project with the aim of getting people to “look up” and see what is around them’. This project

Figure 4.4 Discontinuity in a Look Up installation (Dublin, 2017)

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started in Brighton in 2013 and has included other locations in the UK and abroad, focusing on elements in the urban environment that include ‘an architectural detail’ and which are ‘one storey up or more’. The enterprise fits within Courage’s wider interests in art as placemaking: see Courage (2017). The installation in Figure 4.4, however, does not focus on an architectural feature, and Healy (2015) describes it as a ‘rogue version’ or one that was ‘hijacked’ from the original project. From an LL perspective, the installation in Figure 4.4 uses intertextuality as a link to the original LookUp project, but more dramatically uses discontinuous space to engage the sign viewer with the environment. The spatial discontinuity which displays the message thus becomes part of the message. Spatial orientations also arise with writing systems. A text vector can be from right-to-left, top-to-bottom, left-to-right, and so on. Individual characters have a normative ‘right way up’, and violations of the norm may convey meanings or become incoherent. Figure 4.5 demonstrates display features of LL units that combine language awareness with unexpected spatial orientations to create multiple meanings. The signage in Figure 4.5A is from the platform at the main elevated train station in the Chinatown district of Chicago; the photograph is taken from the perspective of walking down the stairs towards ground level. From this vantage point, the sign appears to be an upside down display of the Chinese character 福 fú ‘good fortune’. This character is used traditionally in ornamental displays. The action of placing

Figure 4.5 Inversions in visual placement (Chicago, 2017; Beijing, 2019)

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characters upside down, however, is referred to in Chinese as 福倒 fú dào, in which the element 倒 dào ‘inverted’ is homophonous with 到 ‘arrive’. Combining the reading of 福 fú with the knowledge that the word for character inversion sounds like the word 到 ‘arrive’, the placement features of the sign invite a reading in which 福 can be understood both upside down and right side up to yield the meaning ‘good fortune arrives’. The visual imagery of natural bounty supports this sense. The signage in Figure 4.5B (from Hong 2019: 38) also relies on character inversion. The first two characters in the name of the cupcake company, 逆爱 nì aì ‘inverse love’ are homophonous with nì aì 溺爱 ‘cosset, coddle, excessively love’. The resulting reading in Chinese, according to Hong (2019: 37), is ‘excessively love the cupcake’. As with Figure 4.5A, this reading relies not just on the words presented, but on the notion of inversion encoded in the first phrase, 逆爱. This wordplay does not translate into English, but the LL unit uses a parallel graphic inversion of the English word . Though the resultant image ƎɅO⅂ can be read right-to-left as a reversed image of the word love, it can also be read from left-to-right and pronounced as if the target word were evil, which is in keeping with the additional devil imagery. Anglophone marketing for chocolates and cakes frequently uses terms such as ‘sinfully delicious’ or ‘wicked’. While the viewer who knows only Chinese and the viewer who knows only English will each get the message that cupcakes are for sale in the place of proximal reference, only the bilingual viewer will see the full set of meanings in the LL. While LL units in Figure 4.3 and Figure 4.4 exploit the potential effects of scale and physical placement, they also make use of uncommon materials – large metalworks in one case, and sparkly shoes in the other. The choice of materials in signage, as Cook (2015) has also pointed out, is linked to the message, whether in demonstrating stability and permanence, novelty, or other significations. The signs in Figure 4.6 thus illustrate some further potentials of materials to be part of the expression in the LL unit. Figure 4.6A uses industrial castoffs that index the manufacturing element in , the name of a music venue which claims the aim of ‘fostering the underground and providing a space for new ideas to grow, through an eclectic programme of authentic experiences in music, art, film, food and design’ (FindGlocal website). The materials index factory work, but the unconventional nature of their deployment as language display elements also indexes creativity. Figure 4.6B shows a restaurant name on a weather-beaten yellow board which is integrated with the message and not simply the support for another unit. The Japanese name hi no maru ‘circle of fire’ consists of three characters (火 ‘fire’ の ‘of’ 丸 ‘circle’) in black, carved in a calligraphic style. A red spiralling swirl complements the text and indexes fire, which in turn indexes cooking. The circle of fire mirrors the character and finishes

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Figure 4.6 Materials and messages (Galway, 2014; Astoria, 2017)

with a brush stroke effect that transfers visual effects from the medium of calligraphy to the medium of wood carving. This transfer of an effect from one medium to another can be understood as a type of resemiotisation, which Iedema (2003: 41) explains to be ‘about how meaning making shifts from context to context, from practice to practice, or from one stage of a practice to the next’. The restaurant name is homophonous with 日の丸 ‘circle of the sun’, referring to the Japanese flag. Spatial reference in this case will work differently depending on the codes which the viewer can access. The viewer who knows Japanese will perceive the homophony and its indexicality of Japan and the Japanese flag. The viewer without such knowledge will still

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know the restaurant as the zone of proximal space, but will not retrieve the remote spatial reference. In both cases, the fusion of linguistic message with medium and ground, as well as the resemiotisation from calligraphy to woodcarving, stake claims for distinctiveness. 4.6

Focus on the Proximal Space

Following the model of Diagram 4.1, the signage in Figure 4.7A demonstrates proximal reference in a pared-down form: the Irish language locational term (anseo ‘here’) is the only element in the name of the pub. Since any inscription will necessarily be located ‘here’, this unexpected way of pointing to the proximal space draws attention to a concept of hereness. Other aspects of the setting contextualise the language. The fascia is set over a line of faded gold lettering on a dark glass background indicating ‘beers, wines, spirits, cocktails’, and the outside door and trim are painted a shade of bright red which is frequently associated with Irish pubs (see also Chapter 6). The gold lettering (whether original to the premises or recreated for effect) and the use of colour index tradition. The use of Irish may signal affiliation to the relatively small community of regular Irish-speakers in Dublin, or it may not: the Irish used in this signage is minimal, and the word anseo is part of the basic vocabulary learned by nearly all schoolchildren in the Republic of Ireland. In either case, Irish is used indexically to signal the hereness of community. By giving prominence to Irish in a Dublin LL that is dominated by English, a metaphorical codeswitch – which in Blom and Gumperz’s ([1972] 1986: 425) terms ‘brings in some of the flavor’ of an original setting to a new setting for language use – adds a social dimension to the physical equation of with HERE. Figure 4.7B shows LL units which represent two contiguous yet different perspectives on spatial reference. The stencil pasteup does not identify the sign instigator, but it draws attention to hereness by claiming this space for FO5H. In addition to this proximal space, the pasteup indexes other LL units with the same text in various parts of the world: see, for example, the Street Art Directory website. While pasteups of this kind open the potential for coindexing across discontinuous space, the street name plaques at the bottom of the photograph illustrate the principle that different language displays can label the same proximal space. Grimsby Street may reference the city of Grimsby, and was earlier known as St John Street. As Dwyer (2009) documents, it has played an important role in the development of London transport and infrastructure and taken on an unofficial role as a place of shelter and a site for graffiti and street art. The use of the Bengali writing system in the smaller plaque indexes a large Bengali-speaking population in the Brick Lane area of London’s East End,

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Figure 4.7 Hereness (Dublin, 2014; London, 2019)

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though to the best of my knowledge, the plaques only transliterate English names rather than using translations or alternative names: see Grześkowiak’s (2010: 179–95) discussion of Brick Lane in comparing the LL of London and Warsaw. The social construction of place applies not only to differences of naming practice, but to different views of whether particular locations should be named at all. Political boundaries have distinctive spatial features, reviewed, for example, in Cameron’s (2011) semiotic approach to boundary lines. A political boundary is usually described on a cartographic map as a continuous geographical line, yet it is not the line that is actually marked on the ground (or in the LL), but intermittent points of crossing. Each LL unit at a political boundary crossing indexes the ideology and political history which motivates it, and different approaches to the same boundary line can lead to different displays in the LL. One such point of contestation, which I have also discussed in Kallen (2014), is the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This border was instituted by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921–1922, but has remained an object of controversy between those who accept the territorial division and others who maintain a Nationalist goal for a single nation state comprising the entire island. Figure 4.8 shows the marking of the same border crossing from the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland at three different times, contrasted with the signage going into the Republic, which has remained constant during this observational period. The earliest sign (Figure 4.8A) shows an abstract diagonal symbol which designates the ‘national speed limit’ used outside built-up areas. This speed limit varies with the type of road and the vehicle involved, but the sign further advises the viewer that where a specific speed limit is mentioned, it will be given in miles per hour. Because speed limits in the Republic of Ireland are given in kilometres per hour, the emplacement of the sign unit indexes a point at which a kilometres regime ends and a miles regime begins. Since the signage does not mention the political border, the sign viewer’s real-world knowledge is required to interpret this information as an indication of a border whose significance is far greater than the measurement of road traffic speed. The closure of border security posts following the Belfast Agreement or Good Friday Agreement (Agreement 1998), combined with increasing cross-border cooperation under the rubric of the EU, has reconfigured the border experience at many levels, as discussed by Donnan and Wilson (2010) and Nash and Reid (2010). As I discuss in Kallen (2014), one outcome of this reconfiguration was the erasure of signs of the border, as Figure 4.8A shows. A similar approach applies for signage going into the Republic of Ireland, as in Figure 4.8D, which also makes no reference to the border. A border reference would not be expected going into the Republic of Ireland, since it would conflict with the view of Ireland as a single geopolitical unit, but the display of Irish/English

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Figure 4.8 Irish border crossing (2012, 2013, 2019, 2014)

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bilingual language policy and the practical reference to the kilometre regime alerts the sign viewer to the crossing of a political border. By 2013, however, the border-crossing sign in Northern Ireland had been redesigned to include an explicit mention of the political border (Figure 4.8B). As with similar signage in other Irish border regions, this explicit reference has drawn political attention, as evidenced in the vandalism shown in Figure 4.8C. This vandalism reflects contention about the border per se, but also addresses the possible reinstatement of border controls as a result of proposals then under discussion for the withdrawal of the UK from the EU (commonly referred to as Brexit). The dispute shown in Figure 4.8C is thus not about the language used to name the border: it is about the values which are attached by referring to the border at all. Spatial boundaries are not always legal boundaries. Many overseas Chinese districts, for example, have large decorative arches which turn the viewer’s attention to spatial boundaries and use language to index the significance of the demarcated area: see Wong and Chee-Beng (2013) for comparative examples. The spatial orientation of the Chinatown arch from Chicago shown in Figure 4.9 is crucial. Figure 4.9A shows the view from outside of Chinatown looking in. The architecture and colour of the arch (with gold writing on a red background) have strong Chinese associations, but the writing is mainly in English. The Chinese text is dominated by four Chinese characters tiānxià wèi gōng (variously translated as ‘the world is public’, ‘the world is a commonwealth’, or ‘the world is for all’), using traditional characters in the right-to-left vector. As a nearby plaque in Chinese and English explains, this inscription is based on the handwriting of Sun Yat Sen; Rigby (2013) provides further detail on the tianxia ‘all-under-heaven’ concept in Chinese history. Figure 4.9B shows the view of the same arch when leaving Chinatown; the writing is only in Chinese. All three lines use predominantly traditional characters and the right-to-left vector. The top line indicates ‘Chinese Benevolent Association’, while the central line displays the traditional ‘four cardinal values’ of ‘sense of shame’ (written in simplified characters), ‘integrity, honesty’, ‘righteousness, justice’, and ‘propriety’. The lower line declares ‘you [are] welcome to Chinatown’. These LL units thus mark places of proximal reference – the border between Chinatown and the city as a whole – but they do so by using code choices that reflect the moving perspective of people crossing the border and leaving the more Chinese locale behind. The LL and the flow of people are also marked by odonymic systems which play a role in wayfinding and spatial orientation. Street name plaques are a common feature of the LL, but they are not universal. The traditional system of urban orientation in Japan, for example, is not organised by street name with

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Figure 4.9 Marking Chinatown (Chicago, 2017)

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numbered addresses, but by blocks and the identification of specific buildings or functions within the blocks: as Mask (2020: 130) describes it, ‘Instead of naming its streets, Tokyo numbers its blocks. Streets are simply the spaces between the blocks’. The non-use of street name plaques is difficult to capture in LL data, but the maps in Figure 4.10 show different underlying systems of spatial orientation on display in the LL. Figure 4.10A illustrates a system common in Japan, in which each building is given a descriptor and there is no label for any of the connecting streets. This approach contrasts with that in Figure 4.10B, which shows a common western pattern that displays street names prominently and identifies only a small number of buildings or businesses by name. Figure 4.10B also shows that the system of names on a cartographic map can differ significantly from the system displayed on street name plaques. The street names in the map are almost entirely in English, even though the modern street name plaques are uniformly bilingual in Irish and English. The one exception in this part of the map, given as Bóthar an Iarainn ‘The Iron Road’ at the bottom of the figure, is evidently an informal name, not listed in the official Logainm website or maps; Talk of the town (2015) gives a glimpse of the name in use within the community. Both maps illustrate that place naming and wayfinding in the LL rely on complex interactions which include (a) the offsite naming systems of cartographic maps and place name registers, which may in turn be re-semioticised for display in the LL as in Figure 4.10; (b) the on-site displays of street name plaques in the LL; and (c) the cognitive mapping of individuals, who can add anything from place names that are not displayed visually to a wide range of cognitive, affective, and behavioural elements. 4.7

Proximal Space and Remote Space

The indexicality of LL units towards remote spaces, like the successive divisions of space between the public and the increasingly more private, often proceeds by degrees. I start with a pattern in which the remote place is an expansion of the proximal space. Figure 4.11 compares two sign units which express broadly similar messages. Though they are from different countries, they share visual features which include white lettering using a sans serif font on similar blue backgrounds. In Figure 4.11A, the proximal place of the signage is the administrative building of the Bas-Rhin Département in Strasbourg. The message in French [‘Bas-Rhin says NO to antisemitism and all forms of racism and rejection of the other’], however, is not presented as a statement pertaining only to these offices, but as one which applies to the entire Bas-Rhin region. Because the office building is a part of the Département, the logic of the signage is that what is true for the part (the NEAR of the proximal place) is true for the whole (the THERE of a remote place). We can think of

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Figure 4.10 Maps in Fukuoka (2007) and Dundalk (2012)

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Figure 4.11 Diversity and space (Strasbourg, 2019; Oak Park, 2017)

this part-to-whole reference as a type of metonymy, following Jakobson’s (1990a [1956]) influential contrast between metaphor and metonymy: for a critical review of relevant terminology, see Nerlich and Clarke (1999). The linguistic message in the figure is only in French, but it is complemented by symbols which represent religious groupings, gender equality, peace, and complementarity. The symbols index diversity, and their shapes can be read as letters spelling out . Coexist on its own is not standard French, but forms a root for words including the verb coexister and the noun coexistence. The display in Figure 4.11B is on a different scale. It is a small sign, designed for display in the front garden of private homes, though I have seen similar versions in the windows of individual apartments; see the Hate Has No Home Here website for detail. The dominant language in the sign is English, but the display of Arabic, Korean, Hebrew, Urdu, and Spanish indexes social diversity. The crucial word is , which is complemented by a heartshaped image that is iconic of the US flag. The LL unit thus scales its spatial referentiality upwards from HERE (the garden space where the sign is affixed) to NEAR (the home of the person who expresses the sentiment) and to THERE (the US as the place of remote reference). The interplay between the linguistic

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and the visual elements thus enables the part (expressed in the small-scale LL unit) to stand for the whole country. Metonymy has special importance in the LL when code choice is an attribute of the place of proximal reference that is extended to a larger spatial zone. Figure 4.12 illustrates a range of LL units which index a NEAR of proximal place, but also use place names to index a higher-level THERE that includes the NEAR place. These LL units index successively inclusive remote places, from street level to citywide reference. The signs in Figures 4.12A and 4.12B thus refer to the streets where they are located. Both signs assume the dominance of English for the street name, but the nature of the business is indicated in Spanish and Greek (Figure 4.12A) or in Greek (Figure 4.12B). The district toponym Astoria provides a more large-scale point of reference for the signs in Figures 4.12D, 4.12F, and 4.12G. Each LL unit displays its own distinctiveness in the NEAR place, but also shows that this distinctiveness is a part of the larger whole. The signage of Figure 4.12D uses German Bier ‘beer’ to index Germany as a place of remote reference which confers authenticity, but reference to shows that the smaller NEAR space with its exotic THERE referent is also a part of Astoria. A similar logic applies to the signage of Figure 4.12F, which displays the word ‘Greek’ and includes a neon sign advertising the ‘flower shop’, but uses the broader headings and to show that the indexicalities of a remote Greek THERE are a part of the more proximate THERE of Astoria. The unified colour scheme for both languages, using white or light yellow lettering on a blue background, emphasises this point. Reference to Astoria works likewise in relation to the red, green, and white colour scheme of the Italian flag in the of Figure 4.12G. The signage in Figures 4.12E and 4.12C invokes higher levels of spatial inclusivity to provide a matrix for the expression of identity in the NEAR proximal space. The sign in Figure 4.12E references the New York borough (Queens) that includes Astoria, while flags index THERE locales of Albania, the US, Greece, and Italy. The locale indicated in Figure 4.12C uses ‘New York’ as the whole, and uses the name in Ukrainian and English to locate the identity of a local Ukrainian credit union. Though the locally inclusive spaces in Figure 4.12 rely on metonymy, discrete remote locations are especially powerful for claims of authenticity. Figure 4.13 illustrates two such LL units. Both use remote spatial reference, but not in the same ways across languages. In Figure 4.13A, English over the doorway at the left corresponds to Chinese ‘fine food’ (using simplified characters with a left-to-right vector) on the banner at the right. These inscriptions establish proximal reference. Both the signage over the door and the banner use visual images to index Liverpool and Shanghai: the ‘Liver Bird’ on

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4.7 Proximal Space and Remote Space

Figure 4.12 Metonyms of spatial reference (Astoria, 2017)

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Figure 4.13 Local and remote reference (Liverpool, 2017; Bangor, 2005)

the left is associated with Liverpool, and the Oriental Pearl Tower on the right indexes Shanghai. The Liver Bird has a complex history in the heraldic traditions of Liverpool dating to the fourteenth century: see National Museums Liverpool (2004), which (p. 2) describes its current manifestation as ‘an eagle which was mistaken for a cormorant’. Thus, while Liverpool is a remote place that includes the proximal place, Shanghai for this LL unit is fully remote. The link between these two cities is made clear in the English name, which references A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Dickens 1993 [1859]). The comparable element in Chinese, literally ‘double city’, is written over the door and on the banner to the right; it has no comparable reference point in Chinese literature. Though the ‘two cities’ of the Dickens volume are London and Paris, the familiar literary reference relies on the insider’s knowledge of HERE (England) in order to demystify THERE (China). While the Liver Bird in Figure 4.13A resembles that used in the well-known logo of the Liverpool Football Club (LFC), it faces in the opposite direction: what could be seen as a misdirected representation of the LFC Liver Bird could also be read as a visual metaphor in which the Liverpool bird looks towards Shanghai for inspiration. All these elements combine to express the general metaphor that NEAR IS THERE; the image of the Oriental Pearl Tower suggests additionally that the salient attribute of THERE is its status as a modern, dynamic city. The proper names in English and Chinese in Figure 4.13B, however, use entirely different lexical compositions to reference the same restaurant. The typeface used for English is iconic of Chinese calligraphy, while the name relies on an indexical relationship between China and bamboo. Authenticity works on the basis that if China has bamboo and the

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NEAR space is the Bamboo Tree, then metaphorically NEAR IS CHINA. The Chinese inscription ‘Great Wall’, however, uses traditional characters in a top-to-bottom vector, and refers to a Chinese site of great cultural importance. From a Chinese perspective, the signage indexes tradition by character style and vector, and place by remote spatial reference. These two elements link the proximal place to authenticity. Thus, while the LL unit establishes authenticity for readers of either English or Chinese, the spatial and cultural references for each are substantially different. The NEAR IS THERE metaphor is extremely versatile, and frequently augments written texts with architecture, colour, and visual imagery. It also carries with it the possibility that if NEAR really is THERE, then NEAR is a place for discourse which is not possible in the wider society. The LL units in Figure 4.14 develop this metaphor in various ways. The building design in Figure 4.14A, for example, links the zone of proximal place to India by its iconic resemblance to the Taj Mahal and other Mughal buildings. In addition to this architectural feature, indexes both a mountain area in Nepal which is fabled for mountain climbing and a Hindu goddess associated with food and bounty. In Figure 4.14B from Astoria, the awning indexes the capital of Bangladesh as the remote place of reference, using both English and Bengali; information in English as well as a ‘Spanish spoken’ notice (not visible in the photograph) allows for discourse with speakers of these languages. The most salient metaphor, NEAR IS DHAKA, does not index authenticity in the same way as a restaurant, but for the business owner, an immigrant from Bangladesh, it is a means of engaging Bengali people with the business: see Mahmoud (2016) for further detail. The remote space in Figure 4.14C could be open to several interpretations – are the founders or owners from Tel Aviv?, can the customer expect an Israeli-style menu?, etc. – but the one which is explicitly indicated in the NEAR of the signage is that it is כשר‬kosher’. Further displays inside the restaurant, mostly in Hebrew, testify to the kosher status of the food and food preparation. The trust which this designation builds upon is spatialised by the indexing of Tel Aviv in the signage. The inscription in Figure 4.14D is a Roman alphabet rendition of ‘Caucasus’ in Russian and other languages. The place name (complemented by the mountain photograph in the background of the lettering) equates NEAR with a lexically specified THERE. The use of the Roman alphabet differs from practice in the remote locale, since the Cyrillic alphabet is used for Russian and it has been used since the 1930s for the two main non-Russian language groups in the region, Karachay-Balkar (a Turkic language) and Kabardian (a Caucasian language, for which terms such as KabardoCherkessian, and East or Upper Circassian refer to a range of varieties). Other icons and symbols, visible on the right in the photograph, add further

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Figure 4.14 Remote spatial reference (Chicago, 2017; Astoria, 2017)

indexicality. The Arabic < > – on the top line indexes a cultural feature of the region, which has a significant Muslim population: see Halbach (2001) for background. Like the כשר‬inscription in Figure 4.14C, the inscription establishes trust in the proximal space. The emblem below it on the left is associated with the Karachay people, and the emblem on the right incorporates both a mountain icon that is used in a number of contexts in this region and what are evidently Circassian family emblems (see Tsuyeqwe 2012). Most of these inscriptions are likely to be obscure to a stranger without inside knowledge, yet for those who do understand the indexicality, this combination of regional symbols links many aspects of THERE to the proximal place.

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Manipulation of the conventional expectations of directional signage can also create new spatial relationships between HERE and THERE. The signpost in Figure 4.15 uses the conventional format of the directional sign, and follows Canadian language policy in giving all locations in French and

Figure 4.15 Land’s edge (St. John’s, 1999)

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English. The post is located on a trail in the Signal Hill National Historic Site in St. John’s. Popular with tourists, the trail has a sheer drop to the sea and offers panoramic views of the North Atlantic. Despite its use of the directional genre, the signage is not constructed with the practical aim of guiding the viewer towards Montreal/Montréal, Moscow/Moscou, or Dublin/Dublin. Rather, it is a way of saying to the tourist, ‘HERE is a long way from home, wherever your home is’. The signposting of temporarily remote elsewheres is thus not a way of directing the viewer to a place, but of drawing attention to the tourist’s distance from the usual places, allowing them to ‘get away from it all’. 4.8

Signs of the Imaginary

Though constructed spatial relations, as in Figure 4.14, can unite a remote THERE with a proximal NEAR, thereness in the LL does not rely only on official onomastics, nor does it require that THERE be historically or territorially real. The LL units in Figure 4.16 use onomastic content, layout, and emplacement features that could be used to attach names to streets. The names that appear on these units, however, are not officially sanctioned in these locations, and do not function as part of the local geographical place-finding system. While the conventional street name plaque uses the HERE of the signage to confer a name on the NEAR of the street which it labels, these LL units engage the metaphor that HERE IS THERE but lack the legal authority to

Figure 4.16 Fragmentary heterotopias (Erbach, 2007; Astoria, 2017)

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confer a name on the NEAR place. Instead, they confer the space with metaphorical associations. From a spatial perspective, these LL units insert fragments of another place into the zone of the proximal space. Following Foucault ([1967] 2008), we can see them as fragmentary heterotopias: small slices of a world which is different from HERE but which helps the viewer to understand HERE in a new way. Figure 4.16A includes two name plaques on a narrow passage which lacks any official street name signage; the passage is off the main street of Brückenstraße. Though there are streets named Οδοσ Ευαγγελιστριασ ‘Evangelical Street’ in Greece, there appears to be no official connection between any of these streets and this locale in Germany. The smaller name plaque uses the toponym Judengasse (literally ‘Jews lane’, but also used to refer to urban Jewish quarters), which is used historically in various parts of the German-speaking world; Jochnowitz (2008: 301) points out that metaphorically the comparable Yiddish expression di yidishe gas ‘means not just the street itself, but what is going on inside the homes and even inside the minds of a Jewish community’. I can find no evidence of any historical Judengasse in Erbach. The Judengasse sign shown here appears instead to indicate an adjacent Jewish-themed wine bar named (‘the fifth quarter’, with standard German ‘fifth’ altered), whose official address is given in the window as 15 Brückenstraße. Das fünfte Viertel is a name sometimes given to the historic Josefov Jewish quarter in Prague, which provides a culturally relevant place of remote reference for the signage. The sign also contains an intertextual reference to the German title of Dagan’s (1992) novel set in this milieu. While there are also streets in Greece with the name Οδοσ 25ης Μαρτιου ‘25th of March Street’ as shown in Figure 4.16B, I can find no official record to authorise this name on Steinway Street in Astoria. The date is significant in Greek culture, as the Christian Feast of the Annunciation and the date traditionally given for the start of the rebellion in the Peloponnese of Greeks against Ottoman rule in 1821 (Clogg 1992: 33–5, 239). The signage in Figure 4.16 shows the potential of the LL to interrupt the viewer’s normal expectations of the marking of space by inserting an element from another space. This insertion creates a new spatial metaphor, which associates features of a real THERE with the HERE of proximal reference, but does so disruptively because it nullifies the normal practice of street marking. LL units which index places of the imagination can further disrupt the conventional expectations of terrestrial reference in order to generate new messages. Figure 4.17 shows three such examples in which advertising creates a dream world (4.17A); the idiom of anchored terrestrial reference is subverted by its application to a place in the political imagination (4.17B); and a reinstituted historical name plaque references a street which no longer exists (4.17C).

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Figure 4.17 Imaginary spaces (Fukuoka, 2007; London, 2019; Dublin, 2014)

As I also discuss in Kallen (2016b), ‘You me town’ in Figure 4.17A indexes a multi storey shopping mall which sells a wide variety of inexpensive goods. Designations such as town and world are common in advertising, and town is used more broadly in commercial names in Japan than in most Anglophone contexts. The element in Figure 4.17A might suggest friends shopping together or friendly relations between shopper and customer. In cross-linguistic reference, however, this phrase sounds very much like Japanese 夢 yume ‘dream’. For the viewer with this language awareness, is also ‘dream town’. In this case, the spatial metaphor that NEAR IS A DREAM is accomplished not by direct spatial reference, but by crosslinguistic knowledge referencing the world of dreams. The sticker in Figure 4.17B uses space to make a political commentary. When I took the photograph, the UK was in the throes of controversy over Brexit, and Turkish aspirations to join the EU, which date back at least to 1987, were the subject of debate that is still ongoing at various levels. The idiom of official town twinning is used in the lamp post sticker, and there are real lamp posts in London and in Turkey, but the LL unit does not constitute a socially valid marker of such a twinning. Rather, the sign instigator indexes an imaginary Turkish lamp post, as if a HERE IS TURKEY metaphor holds.

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The insincere announcement of a twinning arrangement thus expresses an ironic commentary which points to increasing political distances in Europe. Dublin’s Charlotte Street is not imaginary. It was a real street that existed in the seventeenth century or perhaps earlier, and was named for Queen Charlotte (1744–1818, the wife of George III). The street was closed by 1992, and was subsequently demolished and built over. It is not simply the name which is now defunct, but the street itself. The sign in Figure 4.17C has been attached unofficially to one of the buildings near the site of the old street. It is not a surviving remnant of the past or an official commemoration of people or events, but it does index the THEN of the past by being emplaced in a HERE space that indexes a historic NEAR place. 4.9

Unanchored Reference

There are many opportunities for LL units to engage in discourse without using direct spatial reference. Spatial reference is inevitable if LL research is restricted to the study of fixed LL units, but physically mobile or portable displays such as signage on vehicles, the placards and banners of political demonstrations, T-shirts, shopping bags, and tattoos all carry the power of entering into language display and discourse in public space. We have seen such examples in Figures 1.10, 3.1, 3.4, 3.9C, and 4.1; further arguments are advanced in Kallen (2010) and Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha (2010). While I discuss some questions pertaining to portable objects and tattoos in Chapter 8, I turn in this section to some issues raised by the lamp post stickers of Figure 4.18. The sticker has not been widely examined in LL research, though see Reershemius (2019) for a case study based in Birmingham. Plutser-Sarno (2007) also offers an extensive discussion of notices (usually handmade) which are stuck on walls and other street fixtures in Russia. In the physical sense of HERE, stickers are emplaced, but since they are widely reproduced and can be attached anywhere, they often have no anchored spatial reference. It is this status between the fixed and the nonfixed which enables them to develop new ways of advancing their messages. Figures 4.18A and 4.18B come from the political world, and 4.18C from the commercial world. The use of a printed sticker as the ground for the Germanlanguage message in Figure 4.18A [‘no person is illegal’] strengthens the message in support of the free movement of people. I photographed the sticker in Galway, but it could easily be emplaced anywhere in the world. The yellow hand and slogan (translatable as ‘don’t turn on my pal’) in Figure 4.18B is developed from a French yellow hand image and the slogan Touche pas à mon pote (with roughly the same meaning) which originated with the SOS Racisme group in the 1980s. Gordon (2015: 624) gives an account of the group’s objectives in ‘selling anti-racism not just to France but to the world’, and cites

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Figure 4.18 Lamp post stickers (Galway, 2017; Michelstadt, 2019; Champaign, 2017)

a 1985 report which is directly relevant to the sticker in Figure 4.18B: ‘a French youth group doing a language course in East Germany’s KarlMarx-Stadt found enthusiastic support from East German youth for their badges: “So on the other side of the Iron Curtain people are also starting to say ‘touche pas à mon pote’”.’ In each case, the sticker combines its linguistic message, freely available physical format, and intertextual reference to other stickers and movements to strengthen the message in support of the free movement of people. At first glance, the sticker in 4.18C appears to be a private exclamation of feeling. On closer inspection the symbol after the indexes the 2016–2017 hit record ‘Phone Down’ played by the Lost Kings featuring Emily Warren on vocals (EDMTunes website). Though the song can be purchased, the sticker does not direct the viewer to any point of sale. Awareness of the sentiment, the band, or the song could lead to sales, but sales information is not anchored in the spatial relationship of the sticker: it is only the sign viewer’s background cultural knowledge which will enable them to translate knowledge into action. In Figure 4.18C, as with much general advertising, the address is to the consciousness of the viewer regardless of their physical position, and the reference is to the flow of ideas, thoughts, and actions, which are independent of a location in space.

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People

5.1

The LL as Social Indexicality

Viewed as a mode of discourse, the LL takes on not only the spatial qualities discussed in Chapter 4, but social qualities which refer to personal relationships at various scales of organisation. It is easy to conflate territory and community in the LL. Landry and Bourhis (1997: 24), for example, imply an equivalence between the two in their view of the ‘linguistic landscape as a marker of the geographical territory occupied by distinctive language communities within multilingual states’. While there are situations where territory and community run closely together, any expectation that the LL will label each territory according to the language community which it contains (as suggested by the TERRITORY IS A CONTAINER metaphor) will not match the empirical realities. The border signage in Figure 4.8, for example, shows a contrast between monolingual English signage in Northern Ireland and bilingual signage in the Republic of Ireland. On both sides of the border, however, there are communities of Irish speakers, and there are people who never use the language. The difference in the LL reflects different political orders and ideologies, but it does not reflect the actual patterns of community language use. The official signage of the London street name plaques in Figure 4.7B uses Bengali transliterations to index a community of Bengali speakers, but there is no expectation that other East End language communities will be represented in street name signage, and there are many language communities elsewhere in London which are not indexed in this way. The use of French in Figure 3.9 does not index French-speaking communities, and in Section 7.4 I mention a converse case where the display of Hebrew as a community language ran into conflict with language policy in Montreal. Disentangling the spatial and geopolitical notion of territory from the language community provides a way of understanding the speech community as only one type of sociolinguistic configuration. While the speech community idea carries with it the expectation of regular face-to-face communication and allows for the association of a particular language or languages with the identity of the community, the notion of the language community shifts the 125

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focus to a shared use of language that may occur over a larger scale and not entail regular face-to-face communication. This rather neat dichotomy, however, does not account for many types of multilingualism, translanguaging, or the use of languages of wider communication and languages for specific purposes; neither does it account for patterns of rapid, regular, and longdistance personal mobility. The latter factors, especially, complicate any attempt to link the LL to one specific language in one specific place, as the TERRITORY IS A CONTAINER metaphor suggests. Using Fishman’s (1972: 3) model of ethnicity, nation, and state, we can say that although official language planning is largely the prerogative of the state (a political institution), and LL units often index the social institutions of ethnicity (with its ‘simpler, smaller, more particularistic, more localistic’ affiliations) and nationality (which relies on ‘sociocultural units that have developed beyond primarily local self-concepts, concerns, and integrative bonds’), the free-flowing discourse of the LL also enables it to index social referents that are not accounted for in this model. I therefore suggest that social indexicality in the LL is based on relationships which are not pre-determined by political or social institutions, but developed by the discourse of the sign instigator and the sign viewer with the LL unit as a medium. In this chapter, I develop a model of social indexicality in the LL which pays particular attention to the social value of communicative choices from the perspective of linguistic markedness and the importance of code choices in offering affordances to the sign viewer. 5.1.1

Markedness and the LL

Communicative choices in the LL – whether in lexical-grammatical code choices, scriptography, visual imagery, or the physicality of LL units – are not socially neutral. Within a particular social order, social consensus may operate to treat certain code choices as neutral or natural to the point where the LL units which use them are hardly noticed as language displays: a street name plaque that is bilingual in Irish and English is not surprising in the Republic of Ireland, nor is a monolingual French street name plaque in France. Such social perceptions, however, raise questions about the attitudes of sign viewers towards the dominant pattern, and how LL units which step outside this pattern are interpreted. Some sign viewers may feel that the dominant pattern is too limited, asking ‘why is our language not on the street signs’, while others may feel that the LL includes languages which they see as annoying or intrusive. Feelings that there is somehow something extra (whether positive or negative) which is being communicated by a particular code choice adds the dimension of markedness. Markedness theory in linguistics has a long history with many different applications, but Joseph’s (2002: 57) summary captures the essential idea,

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which is that ‘certain elements in the linguistic system have an interrelationship that is neither arbitrary nor purely formal, but defined by the fact that one element is distinguished from the other through the addition of an extra feature, a “mark”’. Particularly relevant for the LL is Myers-Scotton’s (1998a, 1998b) ‘Markedness Model’ (MM). Myers-Scotton’s formulation of the MM takes a rational choice approach to the question of how ‘speakers choose one variety over another because of the benefits they expect from that choice, relative to its costs’ (Myers-Scotton 1998a: 19). The speaker in the model is not expected to follow invariant rules but takes ‘account of all available evidence regarding the best strategies for the specific exchange at hand’ (Myers-Scotton 1998a: 20). With its emphasis on using communicative choices to best achieve particular aims, the MM is similar to the conversational maxims of Grice (1975) discussed in Chapter 6, and Spolsky and Cooper’s (1991) ‘preference model’ discussed above. For Myers-Scotton (1998b: 78), the MM stems from a general ‘negotiation principle’, phrased as ‘choose the form of your conversational contribution such that it indexes the set of rights and obligations which you wish to be in force between speaker and addressee for the current exchange’. The word form in this definition has particular significance for the LL, since it can pertain not just to the lexical-grammatical text of an LL unit, but to a wide range of other visual and physical features which constitute the unit. This negotiation principle relies on what Myers-Scotton (1998a: 22) calls a ‘markedness evaluator’, which recognises that ‘linguistic choices fall along a multidimensional continuum from more unmarked to more marked’ and that ‘marked choices will receive different receptions from unmarked choices’. Within the MM, choice of the unmarked code will maintain an established set of rights and obligations, but new rights and obligations can be indexed by the use of marked code choices. Crucial for the LL is Myers-Scotton’s (1988b: 81) ‘Exploratory Choice Maxim’, which directs a speaker to ‘use switching between speech varieties’ in order to ‘make alternate exploratory choices as (alternate) candidates for the unmarked choice and thereby as an index of a rights and obligations set which you favor’. I discuss markedness here because it is especially relevant to the work of the LL in referring to people, but LL units discussed thus far show markedness at work. The sticker in Figure 1.6B, for example, is a fight over markedness in the Northern Ireland context, since it makes a claim that Irish should be used as an unmarked code for public order messages. Treating Irish as an unmarked code has indexical value for those who affiliate with the language. The signage in Figure 1.7C takes a different approach by adding Ulster Scots to the English message, but displays it as a marked code that indexes historical language use. In a similar way, the neologisms, coinings, and word play shown in the coinages of Figures 3.12 and Figure 3.14 are based

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on the assumption that the sign viewer knows unmarked terms that follow standard usage such as nonsense (versus naan), mystère, and meet (versus meat), and will accept the sign instigator’s claim to be novel, clever, witty, trendy, or otherwise noteworthy in a world crowded with competitors. These examples of markedness can confer new value for the sign instigator, even if there is no attempt to enter such new words or spellings into general usage. The physicality of the LL unit offers opportunities for markedness which have no parallels in spoken language. Depending on local practices and regulations, there are unmarked expectations for traffic regulation signs, shopfronts and fascia, billboards, and other physical installations. The display of signs in Figure 1.2, for example, is marked not only in its use of code choices that are unexpected in this community, but in the separation of these sign units from the contexts that usually give them pragmatic force as LL units. Markedness draws the sign viewer’s attention to the display, and may index values such as humour and clever cosmopolitanism for the sign instigator. Signage which incorporates visual imagery into the writing system, as in Figure 3.16, uses markedness to draw the sign viewer’s attention to the disruption of the conventional writing system. Such disruptions signal novelty, but also allow the sign instigator to negotiate a higher impact for the verbal message by adding iconicity, as with the rice bowl in Figure 3.16A or the noodles in Figure 3.16C, or further indexicality as seen in the musical notation of Figure 3.16B. More dramatically, the shape and scale of the sign in Figure 4.3 dominates the street scene in a way that other signs do not. Markedness draws the viewer’s attention and negotiates a change for Sammy’s Kitchen from being one relatively old-fashioned restaurant in Hong Kong to being an institution: the later history of the sign, as I mention above, supports this interpretation. 5.1.2

Affordances in the LL

The consideration of markedness shows that code choices are not all of equal value: some fall in line with the unmarked expectations of society, while others negotiate new roles and positions for codes and their users. Equally, language displays are not equal in the opportunities they provide sign viewers to use language and achieve communicative goals. The presence of a language on a street name plaque, for example, may establish the language as an unmarked choice for the purpose, but it tells the sign viewer nothing about the opportunities for using the language conversationally in the locale. Is the language present, for example, because (a) everyone in the community uses it regularly; (b) it is the language of a former colonial power with limited and socially stratified use in the community as a whole; (c) it raises the visibility of a minority language for social or political reasons; or (d) it is useful for visitors

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as a language of wider communication? Taken together, the multiplicity of language displays in any given part of the LL will provide the sign viewer with intimations such as ‘While in this area, use Language X to find street directions and pay for parking, use Language W to buy fresh fruit and vegetables at market stalls, go into Shop A only if you are prepared to use Language Y, and there are people nearby who write on walls in Language Z’. I use the word intimations because these insights are only probabilistic – they are open to violation, to the use of alternative communicative strategies, and to other ways of negotiating new status values for particular codes in specific circumstances. Indications from the LL as to which languages can be used for what purposes can be understood in terms of linguistic affordances. Affordance theory was introduced into perception psychology by Gibson (1966), who succinctly puts the case that ‘the affordances of the environment are what it offers animals, what it provides or furnishes, for good or ill’ (Gibson 1977: 68). In this conception, says Gibson (1986: 130–31), ‘air affords breathing’ and it ‘also affords unimpeded locomotion relative to the ground which affords support’. Water, on the other hand, ‘does not afford respiration for us. Being fluid, it affords pouring from a container. Being a solvent, it affords washing and bathing. Its surface does not afford support for large animals with dense tissues’. Affordance theory has subsequently been developed in various areas of linguistics, with Segalowitz (2001: 15) proposing that ‘we can consider a language itself, like any physical environment, as possessing affordances’, and Singleton and Aronin (2007: 83) arguing that ‘multilinguals have a more extensive range of affordances available to them than other language users’. In line with affordance theory, LL units provide intimations to sign viewers about the question ‘what can I use this code for?’. One prominent feature for an LL unit with local anchored reference is that of discourse: an LL unit displaying an unmarked code implies by default that this code can be used for further discourse in the relevant space of proximal reference. The use of a marked code may imply that the code is additionally available for further discourse, though sign viewers must judge each situation on its own: the use of French in Figure 3.9 does not guarantee the opportunity for a successful conversation in French, but the use of English in the Little Haifa pub of Figure 3.3 may be more successful. Beyond conversation, the question ‘what code(s) can I use here?’ can involve goal-directed activity, for which the LL unit may provide cues as to relevant cognitive, social, and linguistic demands. As Jim Cummins and others have long shown (Baker and Hornberger 2001), a task which involves a high degree of contextualisation and a relatively low amount of cognitive complexity does not make the same kind of linguistic demands as a contextually abstract, cognitively demanding task. The demands of cognitive and linguistic complexity are very different for an ATM, small shop, restaurant, self-service petrol station, supermarket, bank, or law office, and the LL

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enables the sign viewer to engage in practical reasoning which assesses the demands of any activity associated with an LL unit. This reasoning – also a part of the sign viewer’s sociolinguistic knowledge – is about the affordances for particular codes, and leads to inferences of the type: ‘If you know or meaningfully associate with Code X, you may have an easy time engaging in particular activities here’, or ‘If you do not know Code X, you may have a difficult time engaging in these activities’. Restaurants often make use of this reasoning. Since their activities are largely context-dependent and generally predictable, they can often accommodate communication using simple key words or non-verbal communication. The display of a marked code in the LL, as on signboards or menus, is thus free to do the work of indexing authenticity, while the language of communication is open to negotiation between restaurant staff and customers. The monolingual English-speaking customer of either Chinese restaurant in Figure 4.13, for example, will assume that English as the locally unmarked code will have an affordance for ordering food, but will recognise the affordance of Chinese – as a marked code – in signalling authenticity. For the Chinese-speaking customer, the display of Chinese opens the possibility (subject to intra-language variations) of renegotiating the local markedness hierarchy and using Chinese as the unmarked code. 5.1.3

Social Indexicality: Local and Remote

Social indexicality relates to spatial indexicality by its use of both local and remote reference. Local indexicality pertains to what happens in the proximal space: an LL unit in Language X may be taken to show – subject to interpretations based on markedness – that Language X has an affordance for a particular purpose in the NEAR proximal space. Additionally, though, LL units may point to social organisation at different levels, independently of the proximal place. The bilingual bus notice in Figure 3.4, for example, does not simply give information in Spanish as a code whose markedness is indicated by its position, size, and relative rarity in public notices in Charlotte. It also indexes the presence of a Spanish-speaking community within the realm of the general public who use the local bus network. In my role as an observer of the LL unit, I do not know which of my fellow passengers, if any, used the affordance of Spanish to obtain the information from the LL unit, but I can reasonably assume that this community exists. Remote indexicalities can be employed at many different levels: ethnicity, nation and nationality, or state in Fishman’s (1972) terms; international entities such as the EU and the UN; local and world religions; various kinds of internet groups; and new configurations of factors such as ‘country of origin’, ‘migration channel’, ‘legal status’ and ‘transnationalism’ which Vertovec (2007: 1049) draws attention to in his notion of ‘super-diversity’. Since remote indexicality does not commit the sign

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Diagram 5.1 Social indexicality in the LL – local and remote factors

instigator to the use of the language in the proximal place, it offers great freedom to point to people who have lived in past times or are even products of the imagination: Bookishgal (2010) documents the use in San Diego of street signs in Klingon, which were linked to the Comic Con 2010 convention. Such signs could call to a community of practice in which Klingon functions as an in-group language, but for many sign viewers, the display of Klingon indexes not an opportunity for discourse but a community – a world – of the imagination. Diagram 5.1 suggests a way to understand the LL unit in the light of markedness, affordances, and social indexicalities. According to this model, the sign instigator uses code choices which the viewer interprets through a markedness filter. This filter engages not only in the evaluation of markedness (as in Myers-Scotton’s ‘markedness evaluator’) but in the assessment of affordances and indexicalities for the codes on display. Local indexicality is a matter of the sign viewer evaluating what any given code can be used for in the proximal space of the individual LL unit. Markedness facilitates this evaluation by cuing the sign viewer to distinguish, for example, between a marked ceremonial display and an unmarked invitation to do business. Remote indexicality also relies on markedness assessments to point to language users at various levels outside the space of proximal reference. To illustrate the operation of social indexicality at various levels, the rest of this chapter focuses on points which arise both locally and by remote indexicality. As Diagram 5.1 suggests, the LL unit is enmeshed in a network which includes not only the sign viewer and the sign instigator as discourse participants, but the local possibilities for discourse (and other affordances) and the

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higher-level social organisation of the wider world. These different levels of indexicality are not mutually exclusive, since many LL units combine different aspects of social indexicality. Neither are they fixed and context-free: their functioning depends on their emplacement as language display and on the viewer’s perceptions and sociolinguistic knowledge. 5.2

Local Indexicality

Code choices in the LL entail differences in affordances in relation to the cognitive complexity of the message. The Rue barrée sign in Figure 1.8 expresses one simple message which is supported by the placement and size of the unit and the symbolic expression of colour: minimal knowledge of French, if any, is needed to comprehend the message. In contrast, the signage for Yin Wall City (Figure 3.6) indicates that English offers few affordances compared to Chinese, and that Chinese will be the unmarked code for discourse about products and special offers. The affordances of a marked code take on special significance in situations which involve cognitive complexity, personal disclosure or vulnerability, or particular cultural expectations. In these situations, display becomes personal. It reaches out to deep-seated personal needs, and LL units often use codes with marked values to appeal to individuals whose linguistic practice attributes a high value to the code. Figure 5.1 shows the use of codes which are marked within the dominant society, but which offer some sign viewers an opportunity to follow Myers-Scotton’s ‘Exploratory Choice Maxim’ and negotiate a different language as the unmarked choice for complex or sensitive discourse. The Chicago law office in Figure 5.1A features the unmarked code of English as a framing device for complex legal services, but uses the marked codes of Polish ( ‘lawyer’ and ‘we speak (in) Polish’) and Spanish (simply ) to signal that these languages offer the sign viewer affordances for engagement with the English-based legal system. The sign in Figure 5.1B from Astoria also shows the unmarked use of English at the top, but then specifies services for and others planning to ship personal effects ‘back home to the Philippines’. Balikbayan is a Filipino English word derived from Tagalog balik ‘return’ + bayan ‘(home) country’, which refers to a person from the Philippines who returns home after a period of living abroad (OED). A Philippine flag appears next to the word , which is written in three colours of the national flag – blue, red, and yellow. The phrase in red denotes ‘reliable’ (maasahan) ‘speed’ (bilis) in Filipino. Thus, while the LL unit reflects its grounding in the unmarked code of the wider community, the use of a marked code increases trust for Filipino speakers engaged in the difficult task of moving goods from the US to the

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Figure 5.1 Code choices appeal to audiences (Chicago, 2017; Astoria, 2017)

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Philippines. The handmade notice shown in Figure 5.1C from Chicago is not framed by English, but announces that ‘hair removal with thread’ is on offer. Personal services in the hair and beauty sector often involve small talk which helps to build rapport while participants are engaged in an intimate goal-directed activity. The use of a community language in such settings is highly valued, and the LL unit in Figure 5.1C indicates Spanish as the unmarked code in this space. 5.3

Existential Claims: Indexing Codes and People

The LL frequently includes LL units which do not make any predications or engage in any directives. These units simply indicate the existence of the sign instigator or of a marked code which the sign instigator affiliates with. Making existential claims, such units index an individual or a community of language users and bring them into the public realm. Graffiti which gives the name, initials, or unique visual indicator of the graffiti artist commonly fulfils this function. Figure 5.2 illustrates existential claims for individuals, which complement existential claims for codes in Figure 5.3.

Figure 5.2 Names in graffiti (Dublin, 2017)

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Figure 5.3 Irish Sign Language (Dublin, 2013) and Travellers Cant (Dublin, 2018)

Figure 5.2A comes from the same seafront promenade area as the ‘foreigners’ graffiti in Figure 1.9. Versions of this inscription occur in several places, sometimes with the date 2017. These inscriptions are semi-anonymous indexations of their referents and imply the commemoration of time spent together by a group of friends. The artist has used layout, in which four names emanate from a single

, as iconic of social solidarity. From the simple inscription the viewer can conclude that these people exist, have fun together, and are socially close. The inscription in Figure 5.2B shows the name of a graffiti crew (IOU) using an orthography that is difficult for outsiders to decode. The descending stroke at the left () is followed by a circle () and a with a decorative flourish to the right. (We may note an additional gendered message which shares this space and links the word with an image of a woman, but I have no further information about this work.) The name in Figure 5.2C is Bluer, which can be read with especially decorative versions of and and a halo over the centre of the name. The artistic practices of these examples constitute a study in their own right, which goes beyond the scope of this volume. For the LL, they display a marked scriptographic code which indexes the sign instigator existentially. Though the inscriptions carry no further information, their use of marked scriptography makes extra claims for the sign instigator in addressing viewers who know the code and excluding those who do not. Existential displays of codes do not urge the viewer to action, but call out to the viewer to recognise that the code exists. Such calls are often claims to recognition for the community of speakers who use the code, despite efforts within society to marginalise or deny the existence of the code or its users.

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Figure 5.3A shows an inscription using stencil graffiti of Irish Sign Language (ISL). Using the fingerspelling system of ISL, the graffiti reads (from left-to-right) as ‘YOU CAN’T HEAR ME EIT–’ but appears to be unfinished (perhaps either is intended as the final word). ISL is an indigenous sign language with a distinctive history in which local practice and influences from Langue des Signes Française (LSF) and BSL have played a role (see Leeson and Saeed 2012: 31–6). As with many sign languages, ISL has been viewed negatively by supporters of ‘oralism’ (documented by McDonnell and Saunders 1993), but, as explained by Conama (2019), ISL has gained official recognition in Irish legislation after a prolonged public campaign. There is no standardised writing system for the language, so the stencils here reproduce ISL handshapes for fingerspelling. The code is a marked code as far as the wider society is concerned; for those who do know ISL, it could be taken as a statement about people who do not know ISL and therefore cannot ‘hear’ those who do. Similar to the display in Figure 3.2A, the inscription asserts the viability of ISL as an unmarked code for discourse. Figure 5.3B is a detail from the window of Exchange House Ireland National Travellers Service. Irish Travellers are a peripatetic indigenous Irish group whose distinct ethnic status is now widely accepted: see Haynes, Joyce, and Schweppe (2021) for a recent review. A distinctive linguistic code or codes, for which Cant is now the most widely used term, is associated with the Traveller community: Rieder (2018) gives a detailed ethnographic study of the role of Cant in contemporary Traveller society, while other relevant aspects are considered by McCann, Ó Síocháin, and Ruane (1994) and Kirk and Ó Baoill (2002). Cant does not have a standardised written form, and its strong in-group functionality in oral discourse argues against it fulfilling a major role in writing or in communication outside the community. The display in Figure 5.3B does not express a message with syntax, but shows some Cant vocabulary that is also relatively well-known in the broader community: beoir ‘woman’, lackeen ‘girl’, feen ‘man’, whiden ‘talking’, tribli ‘family’ and cant itself. This display is not offering the outsider affordances for Cant, and those in the community will already know about Cant. What the LL unit does, however, is display a fragment of a marked code that is available within the speech community; by raising its visibility, it negotiates higher prestige for the code and the speakers who use it. 5.4

Enregisterment

The term enregisterment, used by Agha (2003: 231) in reference to ‘processes through which a linguistic repertoire becomes differentiable within a language as a socially recognized register for forms’, has helped to expand the treatment of cultural value and social indexicality as a part of dialectology. Agha’s

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(2003) study was concerned primarily with spoken English and the rise of Received Pronunciation (RP). While Johnstone, Andrus, and Danielson (2006) deal largely with enregisterment in Pittsburgh-area speech, they also note the significance of newspaper articles, coffee mugs, T-shirts, and other tangible objects which comment on or display perceived elements of ‘Pittsburghese’. Johnstone’s subsequent consideration of ‘Pittsburghese’ T-shirts (which include representations of speech such as yinz ‘you, plural’ as well as lexical items and pronunciation spellings) argues (2009: 159) that by displaying aspects of local vernacular, these T-shirts contribute to the enregisterment of Pittsburghese: ‘they put local speech on display; they imbue local speech with value; they standardize local speech; and they link local speech with particular social meanings’. The signage in Figure 5.4 relies on various types of enregisterment. The units can all be read by an outsider as unmarked, literal communication, but rely on local dialect forms to engage the sign viewer. The sign viewer who knows the local form will not only understand this second meaning, but will be aware that outsiders are likely to miss the full meaning of the text. The interplay between the two sets of meanings adds salience; it engages viewers who have local knowledge in wordplay and it provides a threshold which the outsider can step over to engage with community language practice. Figure 5.4A plays on the phrase me old china, meaning ‘friend’ in rhyming slang. Cockney rhyming slang dates to the first decades of the nineteenth century (Green 2003: 222); Lillo and Victor (2017) document its social and geographical spread from London, and Marchant (1999: 142) gives a literary reference to ‘Brighton rhyming slang’. The meaning for me old china is derived by the process of rhyming and deletion, here rhyming mate ‘friend’ with china plate and deleting plate. Though the slang originates in a low-status milieu, Coleman (2010: 195) points out a modern potential for commodification, by which ‘the use of rhyming slang in films and on television has undoubtedly helped the continuing and developing home market for rhyming slang dictionaries’ which ‘represent light-hearted amusement’ and ‘a particular type of nostalgia’. Relations between Cockney rhyming slang and a reputed Brighton rhyming slang have not been well documented, but the two cities are only 76km apart and have a long history of interrelationship. The old china phrase, which Partridge (1989) dates to ca. 1890, is well-known to anyone familiar with rhyming slang or its later commodification. The enregisterment of rhyming slang, however, is only one aspect of the signage in Figure 5.4A. The name 新东方 Xīndōngfāng given in Chinese for the restaurant can be translated as ‘New Orient’, which makes no reference to the English name, but fits within the genre of Chinese restaurant names (see also Mair 2013). The signboard at the right advertises a ‘Chinese buffet’ in a bilingual sign. The wordplay thus works at several levels: the marked code of

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Figure 5.4 Local phrases (Brighton, 2006; Dublin, 2019, 2017; Kilkenny, 2016)

rhyming slang indexes informality and in-group knowledge in the local speech community, the term is ambiguous between the name of a country and a piece of crockery (indicated by china and by the deleted word plate in the slang expression), and the name in Chinese references culture and the remote space which indexes authenticity. The inscription in Figure 5.4B also indexes the notion of friendship in a way that is obscure to the outsider. Viewed in connection with

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the visual imagery, it could be read as a literal reference to flowers. The viewer who knows Dublin English, however, will know me auld flower as a term of address meaning ‘my friend’ (Share 2008: 263). The orthography, indicating the deletion of a final in alright, also references local pronunciation, where [ʔ] and [h], as well as deletion, are used in words of this type (see Kallen 2005). There is no commodification or invited discourse for this signage, but as with many other examples of artwork on signal boxes, there is a strong tendency to index the local. The phrase act the maggot in Figure 5.4C may look like a phrase of grammatically unmarked, though perhaps uncommon, English. Its use here, however, hinges on in-group knowledge of vernacular Irish English, in which the phrase act the maggot refers to behaviour that is irritating, mischievous, or otherwise uncooperative; see Kallen (2013: 157), and note Beale’s (1989) ascription of the phrase to ‘(mostly Anglo-Irish) bank clerks’ from 1935 onwards. Since the advertisement is for adult acting classes, the sign instigator enhances the salience and local personal contact of the advertisement by displaying both the unmarked sense of act and the marked sense based on familiarity with local dialect. In the same vein, the outsider who sees the inscription in Figure 5.4D might assume a reference to a coffee shop as a place for conversation. The sign viewer with local knowledge will know this interpretation, but will also know that a blaa is a type of bread roll. Associated especially with Co. Waterford, and thought to have been introduced by Huguenot bakers in the late seventeenth century, the blaa is part of regional culture (see Cowan and Sexton 1997: 127–29) and was given Protected Geographic Indication (PGI) status in 2013 (Digby 2013). Thus, the marked code which expresses a local meaning appropriate to the business hides in plain sight behind the unmarked blah blah blah ‘conversation’ of more general English. Apart from the commercial world, personal code choices also index community norms, and offer stance-taking resources that invite the sign viewer’s interpretation. Figure 5.5A shows an intra-language dialect conflict which comes down to a battle over markedness. Official announcements are usually written in unmarked codes, so the instruction aimed at dog owners is anomalous. The term poop in the sense ‘excrement’ has a limited dialectal history in England (EDD) and the United States (DARE), though it has more frequent use as a noun or verb in the sense ‘break wind’. It is not a part of the dialect or slang repertoire in Irish English. American English, however, has more recently developed such terms as pooper-scooper (commercially in 1956, with more general use from 1969 onwards) and poop-scoop (1972 onwards), as the OED documents. The graffiti writer who has superimposed the term uses a term that is wellestablished in the informal Irish English lexicon, as it is in traditional dialects of Scotland and the North of England (EDD). The graffiti writer has, in other

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Figure 5.5 Personal code choices (Galway, 2011; Dublin, 2016; Annapolis, 2014; Galway, 2005)

words, used the local term as the unmarked code choice and treated the city authority’s choice of an American-inspired neologism as a marked code to be opposed. The significance of the graffiti inscription in Figure 5.5B is underlined by reference to The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger 1951: 260–62), in which the lead

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character meditates on his frustration at finding Fuck you written on the school walls: I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody’d written ‘Fuck you’ on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. . . . I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another ‘Fuck you’ on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn’t come off. It’s hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the ‘Fuck you’ signs in the world. It’s impossible.

The inscription in Figure 5.5B thus takes a commonplace English expression and gives it a markedly local realisation based on the Irish English second person plural pronoun ye. Irish English has several second person plural pronoun forms, with yous and related versions more common in Ulster English and in Dublin, and ye more common elsewhere (see Kallen 2013: 118–20 for review). Social significance to the non-Dublin form ye written on a wall in Dublin can be inferred from features of its emplacement. The wall is at the side of a landmark building completed in 1953 which houses a national long-distance bus terminal and is also a large site for civil service offices. It is a well-established part of twentieth century folk knowledge that the civil service in Dublin provides many job opportunities for people from rural areas and towns in the rest of Ireland. The pronoun display in the potentially hostile or frustrated message in Figure 5.5B could thus be read as (a) that of a nonDubliner coming or going to the bus terminal and using their own dialect to express anger; (b) a civil servant using the term against Dubliners; (c) a linguistically aware comment by a Dubliner against outsiders in the civil service; or in other ways. Whatever way it is read, the inscription manifests a common Anglophone graffiti element in a variation that is not only local to Ireland, but which further builds on dialect-internal knowledge to express a stance. Figure 5.5C brings code choice to the personal level of the T-shirt. On display is a New England term with strong Boston connections, in which wicked is an intensifier and pissah denotes ‘great’, thus yielding ‘really great’. Since the T-shirt travels with the user, we do not know its spatial significance: is the wearer from New England, did they bring the T-shirt back to Maryland after a visit, did they buy it online, or does it have another history? Regardless of what we do not know about the spatial reference, we do know that this display enregisters a marked code which will be obscure to outsiders but negotiates positive value for the local. The shop window sign in Figure 5.5D also presents a spatial conundrum for the viewer. Welsh croeso is equivalent to Irish fáilte ‘welcome’, and the display of fáilte inscriptions is common throughout Ireland, especially in areas of high tourist activity such as Galway. There is no comparable domain for

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Figure 5.6 Enregistering the distant (Astoria, 2017; Belfast, 2017; Annapolis, 2014)

Welsh in the Irish LL, so the inscription appears out of place. It could be an example of pan-Celtic welcoming, but if so, the Scottish Gaelic equivalent fàilte or Breton degemer mat might also have been expected. Irish-language greeting cards were available in the shop, and I asked about the sign. The shop owner told me that he had recently inherited the family business, and that having returned to Galway from Wales – where he had been living for the past few years – he thought it would be right to put up the additional sign in Welsh. The connection was indeed geographical, but personal. The use of marked codes in the LL makes it possible to index distant communities by enregisterment, especially where authenticity is valued. Figure 5.6 illustrates three LL units which enregister local dialect features from communities that are far from the locale of the signage. The LL units in Figures 5.6A and 5.6C are from different countries, but they both use the word bubba from the lexicon of the southern US. Lighter (1994: 279–80) establishes bubba as a Southern American English term ‘often in direct address or as a nickname, esp[ecially] for a boy’ by 1864, with later twentieth-century references to ‘an uneducated southern white male; “good ol’ boy”’. Algeo (1998), who also notes the word’s usage in African-American and white English of the South, observes (p. 240) that ‘outside the south’ the term is ‘usually pejorative’, though it can be used by Southern speakers ‘generically’ with ‘an ironic,

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in-your-face tone’; bubba, he claims (p. 237), ‘is a quintessential Southernism, both in itself and in its apprehension by the rest of the nation’. Increasing familiarity with bubba outside the American South makes it readily available as a marked code choice that indexes a dialect and, by extension, culinary cultural features of the dialect region. Figure 5.6B uses the marked spellings ‘lobster’ and ‘chowder’ to reference non-rhotic pronunciations associated with New England. Since the LL unit mentions , , and directly, it uses the spatial metaphor THERE IS HERE as a mark of authenticity, but the marked spellings additionally index the people who speak New England English, and whose culture embodies authentic culinary practice. Though New England English would be open to local enregisterment in New England, its use in Annapolis uses markedness to add a speech community aspect to the claim that THERE IS HERE. The signage in Figure 5.6 allows fixed LL units to index remote locations, but graffiti has a special role as an index of personal mobility. Many graffiti inscriptions can be written anywhere, while tags and similar inscriptions are often repeated at multiple locations by the same artist. The graffiti artist thus uses the HERE of personal inscription in the LL as self-indexation, rather indexing a NEAR place of proximal reference in the manner of a shopfront or street name plaque. The personal dimension changes the dynamics of markedness. Whereas shops and businesses may be guided by social consensus or by official pressure to use particular languages as unmarked codes and to use marked codes for particular purposes, the graffiti artist is free to operate outside this social consensus or law and may reflect other values of markedness. Figure 5.7 shows several such examples. The graffiti inscription in Figure 5.7A comes from a graffiti-covered doorway in Dublin’s city centre. Most of the graffiti consists of local tagging and comments in English. The section in the figure, however, contains the French inscription ‘Long live France Fuck Ireland!’. This message is reinforced by the inscription to its left, which uses a spelling for the verb niquer that is common in French graffiti. French is a marked code in this context, but this markedness is not used to express authenticity or the appeal of the exotic. Rather, the LL unit uses French as the unmarked code to express a sentiment that is hostile to what is local. The message is incomprehensible for the sign viewer who only knows English as the local unmarked code, but it expresses a strong feeling that can be understood by those who know the marked code. We can infer personal mobility from the inscription: it is easy to imagine this comment as coming from a disenchanted French student on a school trip. The stencilled piece of French graffiti in Figure 5.7B appears to localise a discourse about French politics to England. The slogan refers to the right-wing

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Figure 5.7 Remote and local graffiti (Dublin, 2017; Brighton, 2017; Dublin, 2016)

Front National (FN) ‘National Front’, and can be compared to the slogan Le FN ne passera pas par moi, which Battesti (2017) illustrates in reporting on French demonstrations connected to the Presidential election of that year. Though the slogan could be loosely translated as ‘The FN will never succeed

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in Brighton’, its impact relies on intertextuality. The Battle of Verdun in the First World War sparked the dramatic slogan of French resistance against German forces, given variously as ils ne passeront pas or on ne passe pas ‘they shall not pass’ and attributed variously to General Robert Nivelle or General Philippe Pétain; Boileau (2021) maintains that the actual military order was the less rhetorical Vous ne les laisserez pas passer! ‘you shall not let them pass’. Its Spanish version, ¡No pasarán!, was well-known as an anti-Fascist slogan during the Spanish Civil War, and has retained this general signification in a wide range of political contexts. The inscription in Figure 5.7B thus uses a code which is marked in the local place, but which is unmarked for French political discourse. Localising the message to Brighton renegotiates a position for French as an unmarked code, and adds a possible parallel between opposition to the Front National and the ideologically comparable National Front in Britain. Figure 5.7C explicitly indexes visitors as sign instigators, creating an LL unit which expresses their presence in what is for them a remote location. The inscription starts with an introduction in Catalan (roughly, ‘You guys! We are the Catalans!’), and continues with a version of a traditional rhyme in Castilian Spanish, though the expression el man may represent a Latin American influence: The noble guy The immortal man To his peasants he gave them their liberty And his peasants, grateful, They gifted him a chamber pot.

This piece, signed with the first names of the writers, uses two languages of Spain to express geographical, cultural, and linguistic identity from visitors on the move, rather than indexing the inscription to any place of proximal reference. Its display in the public space negotiates higher values for Catalan and Spanish in the Irish context. 5.5

Scaling Up the LL: The Networking of Units

Even unique LL units do not express meanings in isolation. Any single unit derives part of its meaning from its relation to others: a unique piece of graffiti may be meaningful because of its distinctiveness, but the distinctiveness can only be judged within a genre of comparable units. Many other LL units derive at least a part of their meaning from their relationship to other units within a set whose scope can be anything from the local to the global. The viewer brings knowledge of these relationships into the understanding of any one LL unit, asking questions such as ‘Is this LL unit unique or not? Is it part of a series? Does it index other LL units? Does it conflict with or otherwise enter into discourse with other relevant LL units?’.

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The inter-connectedness of LL units also gives the sign viewer clues as to the linguistic hierarchies in any given space. The relationship between territory and community allows for the possibility that the distribution of LL units will show a particular code as dominant when factors such as distributional frequency, the indication of affordances, and the use of language in prestige domains are taken into account. Patterns of this kind enable the sign viewer to draw inferences of the type ‘We know we are in X-land because X dominates the linguistic landscape’. Territorial dominance may be marked by or coincide with explicit boundaries such as those of political states, but there are many situations where boundaries and internal community cohesion can only be understood in relative terms, and where many different markers of community affiliation exist side-by-side. I illustrate some different patterns in the following discussion: Section 4.6.1 uses a village model to examine a case where territorial differences are pronounced and quantifiable, while Section 4.6.2 compares two different ways of indexing Greekness in the urban diversity of Astoria and Chicago. 5.5.1

The Village Model: Kilkeel and Warrenpoint

The small towns of Kilkeel and Warrenpoint are only 19.7 km apart, but are demographically very different. According to the 2011 census (Russell 2015: 12), Kilkeel had a population of 6,541, in which Protestants had a small majority (54 per cent), followed by Catholics (41 per cent) and people of other religions or none (5 per cent). Warrenpoint (including nearby Burren townland), with an overall population of 8,732, showed a clear Catholic majority (87.7 per cent), with Protestants constituting 9.6 per cent of the total, and those of other religions or none 2.7 per cent. It is a popular assumption that Irish in Northern Ireland is associated only with the Catholic population. While this view is an oversimplification of both the historical record and current attitudinal research – see, for example, O Casaide (1930), Ó Glaisne ([1981] 1982), Mac Póilin (1997), Pritchard (2004), and Darmody (2016) – it is a factor which weighs heavily in understanding the LL. Figure 5.8 shows different kinds of LL units from these two communities. The LL units from Kilkeel (Figures 5.8B, 5.8D, and 5.8F) contrast significantly with those from Warrenpoint (Figures 5.8A, 5.8C, and 5.8E). Signage in Kilkeel is entirely in English. In Warrenpoint, however, the community health notice offers advice in Irish in italics, using red lettering with a smaller font size, and English, with larger blue letters. The street name plaque in Figure 5.8E is fully bilingual, with Irish in top position and both languages in the same font. The LL units in each locality do not stand alone, but index each other to give each town an overall public profile or, to use Monnier’s (1969) phrase, ‘linguistic face’. The impression in

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Figure 5.8 Contrasting LL units in Kilkeel (2014) and Warrenpoint (2012)

Kilkeel is that there is no population with affiliations to Irish (thus erasing what may be a substantial minority of the population), while the LL in Warrenpoint portrays Irish as a community language. The display of languages, however, is only one aspect of their life in the community. The LL also alerts the sign viewer to the affordances for particular languages. Table 5.1 gives an illustrative quantification of functions in relation

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Table 5.1. LL units in Kilkeel and Warrenpoint Kilkeel

Street names Infrastructure Business etc. Public order Tourist information Health and safety Graffiti Public memorials Total

Warrenpoint

ENG

GLE/ENG

Other

ENG

GLE/ENG

Other

5 12 9 1 — — 1 2 30

— — — — — — — — 0

— — 2 — — — — — 2

2 6 8 5 1 — 1 — 23

8 3 — — 1 1 — — 13

— — 3 — — — — — 3

to language display in the two towns, based on an impressionistic photo sample of 32 LL units in Kilkeel, and 39 in Warrenpoint. Though this sample is not exhaustive, it is broadly representative, and allows for a differentiation between common units with low affordances for discourse (such as street name plaques) and units which index retail shops, banks, and other businesses that offer more affordances for discourse and complex activities. In Table 5.1, ENG denotes the English language, and GLE Irish; the ‘Other’ category includes Chinese restaurants (two in Kilkeel, one in Warrenpoint), and commercial uses of French and Italian in Warrenpoint. Not quantified in Table 5.1 are two displays of flags in Kilkeel which have no accompanying text. One display includes the Union Jack, the Ulster Banner, and the flag of the Orange Order, while the other shows the Union Jack, the Ulster Banner, a US flag, and an Israeli flag: on Israeli flags in Loyalist areas in Northern Ireland, see Hill and White (2008). The cumulative effect of LL units in each town indicates and entrenches social hierarchies. The signage of civil authority (such as street names, public infrastructure, and public order notices) offers only a binary choice between monolingual signs as in Kilkeel or bilingual signs as in Warrenpoint. Where a central decision is made at the civic level, any potential for the LL to index the substantial Catholic minority in Kilkeel cannot materialise. A simple quantitative approach to Table 5.1 might attach special significance to the display of bilingualism in Warrenpoint, since 13 out of 39 units in the sample use Irish as well as English. Breaking down the LL units to take account of affordances, however, the two towns are more similar than this calculation would suggest. The sample shows no displays of Irish which appear to invite further discourse in Irish: even the tourist information and health notice are

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purely factual and not emplaced at points of social interaction. In terms of Diagram 5.1, the display of Irish does not offer affordances for public discourse, but instead offers the affordance of indexing a local community that affiliates with Irish. In short, the comparison shows that while Kilkeel and Warrenpoint are similar in their indications of language affordances for interactive discourse, their displays of social indexicality are profoundly different. 5.5.2

Finding Community in Urban Diversity: Astoria and Greektown

The village model can work in urban settings where there are clear boundaries between districts, but in many urban areas, community boundaries are not geographically discrete. In such cases, the LL can mark and afford discourse opportunities that sustain speech communities, but they do so in a fabric of urban diversity. In this section, I compare Greekness as a salient feature of the LL in Astoria and in the Greektown district of Chicago. Neither locale is a dense Greek settlement which excludes other communities. Many of the Greek-bearing LL units in Figure 5.9 from Astoria are adjacent to LL units that show other non-English languages, and it is common to find panoramas such as one I photographed on 31st Street, which includes a Greek American social club, an Italian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, and a Balkan restaurant with a slogan in Bosnian and English. One approach to this urban diversity would be to start with territory and consider all the signs of community within it. Though this approach could yield coherent quantification of the distribution of units, it is subject to the limitations of the TERRITORY IS A CONTAINER metaphor as discussed in Chapter 4. The approach which I follow here is to examine a thread of Greek indexicality that identifies points of contact and community presence to create Greekness in the public space. The proximity and inter-connectedness of LL units which index Greekness engage the PUBLIC SPACE IS A CONTAINER metaphor, and allow for a Greek public space in Astoria which is but one salient presence among many. In the LL of such multilingual areas, language and other code choices create a multitude of public spaces within a territorial matrix, and Greek is only one of many identities which could have been chosen for this analysis. The definition of Greekness in the LL which I use here includes a variety of markers, running from extended linguistic texts in Greek to non-verbal markers such as flags and a distinctive colour scheme of white lettering against a blue background. Astoria is a long-standing centre of Greek life in the US, documented by Costantakos and Spiridakis (1997) and Vouyouka-Sereti (2002). Figure 5.9 illustrates part of the range of LL units which index Greekness in contemporary Astoria. Figure 5.9A shows a piece of mural art, with a dominating blue background, and images inspired by ancient Greek art and mythology. The text

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Figure 5.9 Indexing Greekness (Astoria, 2017)

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visible in the photograph commemorates Melina Alexiou, the daughter of Greek community leader George Alexiou, who died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Greece at the age of 21 (Judge Tsoucalas 2006; Elaskandrany 2016). The poster in Figure 5.9B gives details of Greek-language schooling opportunities associated with the St. Irene Chrysovalantou Greek Orthodox church and school; it is entirely in Greek, apart from a street address. Figure 5.9C brings Greek and English elements together, with the name of the social club in a large Roman font; is written as a single unit, and a name in Greek (literally ‘GreekAmerican Pensioners’ Association’) is on the bottom line in a much smaller font. The awning uses white lettering against a blue background, and incorporates the flags of the US and Greece; these flags also fly at the sides of the awning. As a general rule across the Astoria sample, where any non-US flag is used for social indexation, the US flag accompanies it. Figure 5.9D announces that the Greek-American newspaper ‘National Herald’ is for sale at this newsstand. This newspaper is almost entirely in Greek, and a monolingual advertisement reaches out to a relevant audience. Figure 5.9E shows one of several companies in the area that use names in English which reference Greek mythology. The Greek name underneath the English makes no mythological reference and simply means ‘Hellenic Transport Company’. The poster in Figure 5.9F announces a cultural event: the performer has a Greek name which is given in the Roman alphabet, and loanwords such as rebetika (Greek ρεμπέτικο) and laika (λαϊκά), which denote forms of Greek vernacular music, are used without explanation. In Figure 5.9G, a blue street food stand advertises ‘Souvlaki Lady’ on the right, with a display on the left that boasts and includes the Greek word in a small font underneath the larger anglicised version accompanied by an image of three skewers of food for roasting. Chicago, too, has a long-standing Greek community. Demas (2004–05) demonstrates that while Greek migration in Chicago was dispersed into different parts of the city, a distinctive community had developed with a focus in the ‘Delta’ area of Harrison Street, Halsted Street, and Blue Island Avenue in the Near West Side of Chicago by the early twentieth century (see also Kopan 1995). After various urban renewal and development projects, which started in the second half of the twentieth century, many of the communities of the Near West Side were displaced in a gentrification process, described by Pauillac (2004). Thus while the area boasts architectural monuments in a Greek style (critically examined by Reed 2003), carves out a role for Greekness by hosting the National Hellenic Museum (Kouri 2015), and has other displays of Greek indexicality, it is, as Moskos and Moskos (2014: 80) put it, ‘significantly gentrified with non-Greeks’ and ‘survives as a Greek commercial strip with Greek restaurants, cafes, and a few retail stores’.

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Figure 5.10 gives a sense of Greekness in the LL of Chicago’s Greektown. Figure 5.10A shows a rare example of bilingual signage, with equivalent names in Greek and English for the restaurant, supported by the monolingual claim in English to offer ‘authentic Greek cuisine’. Figure 5.10B shows a boundary-marker in English, placed so as to guide vehicular traffic and pedestrians into Greektown. The sign in Figure 5.10C is one of many placed on lampposts, announcing that is and , and urging visitors to , , and . In Figures 5.10B and 5.10C, the reference is to Greekness, but the discourse aims to mark the zone for outsiders. Figure 5.10D shows a Greek LL unit from a shop specialising in Greek religious goods. Established in 1920, the shop is described by Moskos and Moskos (2014: 80) as the ‘oldest continuously operating Greek store’ in America. It is one of the few Greektown sites in my documentation with any extended Greek-language LL units. The musical event advertised in Figure 5.10E can be compared with that of Figure 5.9F. Both posters give prominence to performers with unmistakably Greek names, but in the Chicago poster, no Greek terms are used to describe the singer’s repertoire, although he has elsewhere been described as having ‘a laiko voice’ (Bezaitis 2012: 4). Figure 5.10F instances a street name plaque which is bilingual in Greek and English: the name is transliterated, but the word is translated into Greek. The National Hellenic Museum is shown in Figure 5.10G. The larger banner and inscription over the doorway use only English: the poster (as in Figure 5.10C) and the Greek flag are not part of the museum frontage. Foodways are indicated in the menu board of Figure 5.10H. The names of foods are nearly all transcriptions from Greek, with occasional uses of English (as in ) or international words such as . Some Greek transcriptions (such as ) are part of the international lexicon, but others are unlikely to be known outside the Greek community. A comparative analysis of Greekness in the LL of Astoria and Greektown rests on demographic factors and on the tracking of affordances. The survey area in Astoria has a population of 87,169, of which 7,404 people over the age of five are noted as speaking Greek at home: 2,773 (37.5 per cent) of this cohort report speaking English ‘less than very well’. Within this search area, the Greek-speaking population is the second-largest group of non-English speakers, following speakers of Spanish or Spanish Creole, who number 17,434 (NYC Planning website). Though census data from Chicago is not available in quite the same detail, a broad picture emerges which shows a total population in the Near West Side community area that includes most of Greektown having a total population of 54,881 in 2010 (City of Chicago 2010). Within this group, 27 people report speaking Greek at home and English ‘less than very well’; this figure can be compared to speakers of other

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Figure 5.10 Indexing Greekness in Greektown (Chicago, 2017)

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languages including Spanish (843), Chinese (678), and Korean (353) (Languages Spoken website 2014). The data, despite their different methodologies, suggest two different scales of language community. In order to get an overview of the life of language in the community, Tables 5.2 and 5.3 include information about differences in the affordances for Greek in the LL within the sample of collected data. As in Table 5.1, LL units are counted individually on the basis of their message content and physical format: for shops with multiple units in its windows, each LL unit Table 5.2. Counting Greekness in Astoria (2017) Domain

ENG

ELL

BLG

Mixed

BW

Flag

Street signs, parks, monuments Schools, newspapers Churches Business, professional services Health services, pharmacies Shops Restaurants, bars Social organisations and societies Events and publicity Graffiti, street art, personal notes Private dwellings Total

— 1 2 — — 2 2 — — — — 7

2 5 7 — — 2 — 1 — 1 — 18

— 2 5 4~ 2~ 2 3* 2 4 1 — 25

8 3 — 7 3 4 10 2 7 2 2 48

1 4 2 6 4 3 6 4 6 1 — 37

1 1 3 — — 2 3 2 — — 2 14

~ includes one unit with Spanish * includes one unit with French

Table 5.3. Counting Greekness in Greektown, Chicago (2017) Domain

ENG

ELL

BLG

Mixed

BW

Flag

Museum, markers, street names Schools, newspapers Churches Business, professional services Health services, pharmacies Shops Restaurants, bars Social organisations and societies Events and publicity Graffiti, street art, personal notes Private dwellings Total

13 — — — — 1 — — — — — 14

— — — — — 2 — — — — — 1

1 — — — 1 4 1 — 1 — — 8

3 1 — — — 5 9 — 3 — — 21

11 — — — — 5 5 — 1 — — 22

3 — — — — — 1 — — — — 4

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is counted separately. Both tables reflect all the markers of Greekness which I could identify in photographs of each LL. The counts in the tables are coded according to whether the unit is monolingual in English (ENG) or Greek (ELL), bilingual (BLG) in Greek and English, or mixed. Some Greek/ English bilingual units also include other languages, as indicated in the table. Mixed signage includes units which transliterate Greek words or names into the Roman alphabet or anglicised forms (as in Figure 5.10H), which use the Roman alphabet to refer to Greek mythology or other cultural attributes (as in Figure 5.9E), or in other ways have Greek linguistic indexicality without using the Greek writing system. Non-verbal markers such as the distinctive blue and white colour system (BW) and the Greek flag are tabulated independently of LL units, so that, for example, a shopfront with a sign and a flag will have each counted separately. In order to show comparability between the two zones, the domains of Table 5.3 are nearly the same as those of Table 5.2, except that Table 5.3 includes a museum and the boundary and positional markers as shown in Figures 5.10B and 5.10C. The breakdown of the LL by domain shows a differentiation according to prestige – contrasting ‘high’ or H domains such as schools and churches with ‘low’ or L domains such as graffiti in an extended version of Ferguson’s (1959) model of diglossia – and gives indications of what the sign viewer can do with the language in the locale. Several factors stand out in comparing the LL of Table 5.2 with that of Table 5.3. Particularly striking is the relative role afforded to the boundarymarking banners of Greektown. My photographic sample did not include all such banners, but the visitor to Greektown cannot miss them. They are nearly a literal fulfilment of Bauman’s (2001: 11–12) observation on community marking: Since ‘community’ means shared understanding of the ‘natural’ and ‘tacit’ kind, it won’t survive the moment in which understanding turns self-conscious, and so loud and vociferous . . . Once it starts to praise its unique valour, wax lyrical about its pristine beauty and stick on nearby fences wordy manifestoes to appreciate its wonders and telling all the others to admire them or shut up – one can be sure that the community is no more.

Stuck on lampposts, the banners in Greektown are clearly aimed at outsiders: they urge the visitor to eat, shop, and play, but give no indication that Greek has any affordances for these purposes. The full social life of a code within the community can be seen in its use across domains, understood both hierarchically in Ferguson’s (1959) H and L domains, and horizontally, since different H or L domains can involve very different kinds of activities. The ‘Shops’ category of Table 5.3, for example, should not be read to suggest that markers of Greekness are distributed evenly across different shops: the count is heavily influenced by the Athenian Candle

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Company, which uses its windows to display its own advertising and a variety of other objects which index Greekness as a matter of cultural background. What is evident, however, is that Greekness in Astoria is indexed across the H domains of churches, schools, and professional services as well as the L domains of graffiti, personal notes, and private dwellings, while Greekness in Greektown occupies a much more limited range of domains. Conversely, Greekness in Astoria is not commodified for outsiders as it is in Greektown. A comparison across the communities does not emerge from a simple tabulation, but from a comparison of the linguistic configurations and discourse functions which arise in each area. 5.6

Population Flows

Tourism offers indexicalities and affordances that frequently shape LL units. The tourist is, as Smith (1989: 1) puts it, ‘a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change’. The tourist’s agenda is thus not the same as that of the migrant worker, refugee, or global business executive, and much of the LL in touristrich locations caters to local expectations of this agenda. The tourist may be in search of an ‘authentic’ experience which introduces them to an experience outside of the usual, where authenticity may pertain to language, food, historical and cultural connections, or other factors. People in the tourist industry, however, frequently temper the offer of the exotic with an understanding that the tourist does not want to experience discomfort: language should be at least in part comprehensible, customs and practices should be feasible without specialist training, and so on. The degree to which the tourist balances the lure of the exotic with the comfort of the familiar depends in part on personal choice, and the LL plays a part in generating trust to negotiate these choices. Figure 5.11 continues the theme of accommodating the local and exotic for tourism in Galway, which I have also considered in Kallen (2009). The sign in Figure 5.11A comes from a restaurant in a district heavily frequented by tourists. The name indexes a location in Italy, using the English name rather than the Italian Venezia. This use of English is offset by the Italian designation . The intermediate code choice between Italian and English is continued in the advertising of , since the links two words of international lexicon without favouring English and or Italian e. Though the tourist in Galway may value Italian authenticity when it comes to food, it is not part of the distinctively Irish experience. The key to local tourism is thus also indexed in Irish, with the legend . The trilingual LL ensemble made up from elements of the fascia, the window frame, and the window thus displays (a) English as a language with affordances for doing business; (b) Italian as a language which

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Figure 5.11 The local and the global (Galway, 2014; Michelstadt, 2019)

indexes a remote national group and culture, providing authenticity and possibly signalling an affordance for doing business; and (c) Irish as a language to index the place of proximal reference and contribute to the tourist experience. Relations between the local and the global are not always self-evident, and the orally transmitted knowledge that accompanies LL units is sometimes crucial to understanding the indexicality of the unit. The signage in Figure 5.11B appears at first to be a quintessentially local reference, which can be compared with Anseo in Figure 4.7A. It has, however, an entirely different set of references, determined by features of emplacement, social indexicality, and the indexicalities which attach to portable objects. I photographed this LL unit in a shop in Michelstadt which sells local crafts and foods, and which caters to domestic and foreign tourists. English is a marked code choice in Michelstadt, indexing such things as education and the global movement of people rather than the presence of a resident Anglophone community. The LL unit puts high value on the local in opposition to the global, and supports the local craft orientation of the business in the NEAR proximal space. I was informed by the shop owner that she had bought the sign while she was on holiday in West Cork (Ireland). This physical history of the LL unit gives it an additional indexical value. While its literal exhortation to buy local refers to goals which can be achieved in the proximal space, and the choice of English suggests an affordance for English in this zone, the transposition of the object from its original location – where it uses an unmarked code choice with local reference – to a location where it expresses a marked

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code choice and defines a different proximal space as ‘local’ creates a new indexation of the movement of people and goods. Developing the theme of Figure 5.11, Figure 5.12 indexes a proximal place in the usual way for pub signage, but takes a multimodal approach to remote social indexicality that does not reference any specific geographical location.

Figure 5.12 Irish American in Liverpool (Liverpool, 2017)

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The three photographs in Figure 5.12 come from the same frontage and constitute one ensemble: I have split the view into three photographs for technical reasons. The flag in Figure 5.12A imposes the name of the pub on a representation of the flag of the Republic of Ireland; it is paired with a similar legend on a representation of the US flag in Figure 5.12B. The two flags index their respective countries as zones of remote reference: there is no flag to index the NEAR location of the pub in England. These flags flank the fascia shown in Figure 5.12C. This LL unit includes an image which follows the pattern of the US flag but uses green and white instead of the American red, white, and blue. This hybrid flag is not that of any polity, but points to a more general ‘Irish-American’ social category. Irish-American pubs will be discussed in more detail in Section 6.5.2, but what is of special interest here is that the display indexes these two countries in a third country – England – which is not included in the LL ensemble. The erasure of the local flag contrasts with practice in the US, but follows a common pattern of Irish pubs in Liverpool. In making no reference to the HERE of the UK, the ensemble in Figure 5.12 thus uses flags, colours, and language to index two REMOTE social categories: Irish (the less remote, given Liverpool’s large Irish community and physical closeness to Ireland) and American (the more remote). This conjunction indexes the international flow of people, with Ireland and the US referenced explicitly, and Liverpool left to implication. Multinational consumer outlets take the globalisation theme further, since any one LL unit indexes the indefinite set of other LL units that index the same consumer brand. Figure 5.13 illustrates the bivalent position of LL units which maintain both a global self-presentation and local indexicality. In these examples, global indexicality occurs linguistically with the I’m lovin’ it slogan and by variations on the word-formation unit M(a)c from the McDonald’s name, and visually with the ‘golden arches’ logo. The use of language and visual images also provides for local indexicality: for a relevant discussion of the LL and McDonald’s in Guadeloupe, see Blackwood (2019b: 50–2). Figure 5.13A fuses the commercial with Irish Mór ‘big’ to create a neologism that includes the global and the local. Local indexicality is reinforced by the names of cheese (Charleville Cheddar) and relish (Ballymaloe Relish) which are well-known local Irish brands, and the assertion of Irishness by reference to a putatively Irish practice of clapping hands when a plane lands. Figure 5.13B shows a comparable, though more elaborate, strategy, which is also discussed in Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha (2010: 30–1). The top of the sign in Figure 5.13B fuses the Japanese kanji 春 haru ‘spring’ with to create a hybrid neologism, harumac, which in the seasonal placement of the advertising and the cherry blossom motif worked into the poster as a whole references the high cultural value attached to cherry blossom season in Japan. The food which features in the poster is labelled in

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Figure 5.13 The multinational becomes local (Dublin, 2015; Fukuoka, 2007)

hirigana as てりたま teritama, which fuses the てりteri element of teriyaki with たまご tamago ‘egg’. This neologism denotes a teriyaki-flavoured hamburger with a fried egg on top. Further fusion of the new and the traditional is shown in the inscription at the right-hand part of the sign, which uses a traditional top-down, right-to-left reading vector to announce that ‘Spring comes in together with teritama’. These mixed indexicalities (which include a THEN element of tradition) fuse the global with the local, in keeping with the theme of building trust by rendering the unfamiliar familiar.

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6

The Linguistic Landscape as Discourse

6.1

Discourse: Engaging the Viewer

The fixed physicality of most LL units makes it natural to think of each LL unit as an object, and of the LL as a collection of objects. There are analytical advantages to treating LL units as objects, since quantification is facilitated if each LL unit is taken as a self-contained object that can be counted according to pre-determined categories of code choice. Ramamoorthy (2010: 14) exemplifies this approach in introducing the field: ‘Linguistic Landscape (LL) according to Landry and Bourhis (1997) refers to linguistic objects, which mark the public area’. With these observations in mind, it may seem paradoxical to think of LL units as discourse, since – apart from some types of graffiti and a limited number of technological innovations that allow sign viewers to change the LL of electronic display (see Gorter 2019: 50–2 for discussion) – sign viewers do not talk back to the signage. One can read a sign, but one cannot converse with it. The object-centred view of the LL is also reinforced by the widespread methodology in LL research which uses photographs as data. With very few exceptions – such as the ‘reluctant and eager’ sign viewers in Gambia pictured by Juffermans (2014: 212–13) – published LL photographs do not include sign viewers. Various treatments of what now comes under the LL heading have, however, foreshadowed a discourse approach. From the perspective of visual poetics, Drucker ([1984] 1998b: 90) observed that language in the landscape, whether road signs, billboards, or graffiti, shapes our relationship to the landscape in many ways. . . . In every case, written language represents an invisible conversation: someone is speaking, someone is being addressed, the message has a purpose, and the message is delivered in a particular way. Language is a symbolic system, full of implication. We cannot dismiss language in the landscape as auxiliary or duplicative.

Drucker’s use of the phrase ‘invisible conversation’ is particularly telling, since the signage she describes is unquestionably visible: it is the conversation behind it that is invisible yet indispensable. In a similar vein, Calvet (1990)

161

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begins with the declaration that ‘Les murs de nos villes parlent. On y lit les inscriptions du pouvoir (noms de rues, panneaux du code de la route, etc.) mais aussi celles du peuple (noms de magasins, graffitis, etc.)’ [‘The walls of our cities speak. There we can read the inscriptions of power (street names, road traffic regulations, etc.) but also those of the people (shop names, graffiti, etc.)’]. Thus, for Calvet (1990), the focus is not on inscriptions as objects, but on how ‘the walls’ speak to us by displaying language. The notion of ‘language display’ advanced by Eastman and Stein (1993) seamlessly includes code switching in spoken language and visual displays in shop signs as part of the same phenomenon. More recently, Seargeant and Giaxoglou (2019) have discussed LL and discourse from a different point of view, which gives particular emphasis to ‘noting how linguistic landscapes can become symbolic sites around which discourses are pitted against each other and negotiated’ (p. 321). Though this approach focuses more on LL artifacts and less on the content of LL units than the one I take here, it is also part of the discourse approach to the LL. The photograph in Figure 6.1 is an invitation to look at the LL as interpersonal discourse, since it captures both the LL unit and the moment of reception by sign viewers. The bilingual sign unit in the figure is part of the shopfront for the Claddagh Laundrette, whose bilingual wordplay is discussed in Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha (2010: 26–8): the Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha version shows the shop frontage in full, without people in the photograph. In the shopfront segment visible in Figure 6.1, Irish Fáilte Isteach ‘welcome in’ performs a greeting, while the list of laundry services on the right side of the window provides relevant information in English for customers. The signage portrays what appears to be a domestic couple, in which a man with an intense look of concentration is wearing boxer shorts (not visible in this photograph) and ironing a pair of blue trousers. A woman, holding a hot drink in a cup with a saucer, watches the man and the work in progress. Viewers will make what they like of this scene: is it, for example, a reversal of traditional gender roles and power relationships in which the man does the domestic work while the woman watches on in leisure, or is there some other aspect to the scene? However it may be interpreted, it appears to have caught the interest of the anonymous viewers in the figure: does it, perhaps, index discussions and relationships which are a part of their lives as well? Hundreds of people will view this signage every day: whether the viewers notice the playful bilingualism elsewhere in the signage, take in the practical information as potential laundrette customers, or have other reasons to notice the signage, it would be impossible to understand the dynamics of the LL without taking into account the everyday impressions that LL units make on sign viewers and the ways in which viewers engage with those impressions.

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Figure 6.1 Viewing the Claddagh Laundrette (Galway, 2005)

Figure 6.1 also portrays an instant which draws attention to the LL as a site of mobility and of multiple discourses. Our interest in the Claddagh Laundrette signage should not obscure the LL unit with the initials and crowing cock logo on the bag worn by the viewer on the left. These elements index the company brand Le Coq Sportif, a French-based sportswear and clothing company with sales outlets around the world (Le Coq Sportif website). Here we can say that the clothing manufacturer is the sign instigator, but the consumer who wears the LL unit is, following a distinction developed by Goffman (1979), the sign animator. This display has its ultimate origins in a French language initialism, though display of the object does not depend on the consumer knowing French in order to make its point. The bag itself may have semiotic value in the world of leisure goods and sports accessories, though this topic lies outside the scope of the LL. While the sign instigators for the local laundrette and the international clothing manufacturer are not in

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contact with each other, the combination of the institutional and the personal have brought these two elements of linguistic expression together at the moment captured in the photograph. This moment is unique, but comparable events which juxtapose mobile LL units (whether worn as consumer goods, attached to moving vehicles, or borne by the wind) with fixed-form installations in a single view are part of what constitutes the LL at any given time. Though such juxtapositions are rarely discussed in LL research, they illustrate the potential for the LL as a whole to be understood as a multitude of discourses. In Figure 6.1, the discourses initiated by the Claddagh Laundrette and by Le Coq Sportif are brought together – if only long enough for the observer to take a photograph – by the action of the individual acting as both sign viewer and sign animator. To understand the LL as discourse thus entails an analysis not only of individual LL units, but of the many discourses that share display in the public space. In order to develop an approach to the LL as discourse, Section 6.2 starts by exploring the LL as performance, following from Hymes’s (1975: 18) view of performance as ‘cultural behavior for which a person assumes responsibility to an audience’. Viewing the LL unit as a performance raises two further questions: (1) what qualities do LL units have which set them apart as performance; and (2) how do LL units use words together with other features of the LL unit to accomplish real-world goals which motivate sign instigators? My answer to the first question hinges on the notion of entextualisation, which Bauman and Briggs (1990: 73) describe as ‘the process of rendering discourse extractable, of making . . . a text – that can be lifted out of its interactional setting’. For the second question, I suggest that the LL unit always carries with it the ability to draw the sign viewer into discourse with the sign instigator, and that once that discourse relationship is established, LL units follow principles that are familiar in discourse pragmatics, especially in speech act theory and theories of implicature. Because LL units frequently try to maximise their expressive force while using minimal forms of presentation, they rely heavily on sign viewers’ ability to interpret inscriptions which frequently violate conversational expectations. Ultimately, the key to making the LL work – whether for the sign instigator who wants to entice customers or for the sign viewer who wants to experience a taste of the exotic at lunch – is a recognition of genre in the discourse of the LL. Genre categories are often taken as self-evident (even for LL researchers), but it is only by the signalling and interpretation of genre that the pragmatic intentions of LL units can be realised. Genre in the LL applies not just to individual LL units, but to higher-level linkages of LL units that constitute complex genres in themselves. The succeeding sections thus turn to empirical evidence for analysing discourse in the LL, the recognition and complexity of LL genres, and the problem of multiple discourses which are present in nearly all linguistic landscapes.

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6.2 Performance and Performatives in the LL

6.2

Performance and Performatives in the LL

6.2.1

Performance

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Performance is not a common topic in LL research, since most LL units do not perform activities in the usual sense of speaking, signing, or other dynamic events. Language display in the public space, however, encompasses more than simply being visible. As Figure 1.2 demonstrated, the visibility of a text does not give it a function in the LL; what makes it work as an LL unit is its status as performance. Hymes (1975), whose declaration of a ‘breakthrough into performance’ includes the definition of performance cited above, argued (p. 18) that performance should be distinguished from ‘behavior, as simply anything and everything that happens’ and ‘conduct, behavior under the aegis of social norms, cultural rules, shared principles of interpretability’ because in performance ‘one or more persons assumes responsibility for presentation’. In this sense (and see also Bauman 1977), the LL unit as performance comes into its own, following the view of Bauman and Briggs (1990: 73) that performance is seen as a specially marked, artful, way of speaking that sets up or represents a special interpretive frame within which the act of speaking is to be understood. Performance puts the act of speaking on display – objectifies it, lifts it to a degree from its interactional setting and opens it to scrutiny by an audience.

Though Bauman and Briggs (1990) refer to spoken language, their characterisation of performance fits language use in the LL. For an LL text to be more than an inert visible object, it must be on display in a particular way. Being on display, it is open to an audience’s judgement as to whether or not the text constitutes a valid speech act of one kind or another (‘is this really a shop sign, or is it a joke, a hoax, or something else?’), and a wide range of social, cognitive, and affective elements will come into play – ‘what is this place for?’, ‘I could probably find someone to talk to in here’, ‘yes, that’s a restaurant sign but it doesn’t look like my kind of place’, etc. The sign instigator, in other words, takes responsibility for an LL unit which balances the need to be recognisable as a token of a genre through which a communicative purpose can be expressed and the need to distinguish what makes THIS sign unit relevant to the sign viewer. All features of the LL unit – linguistic text, scriptography, visual imagery, colour, medium and ground, and other emplacement features – can contribute to meeting the sign instigator’s communicative goals. Some genres rely on limited variation in their mode of expression, while others allow for playful or rebellious reinterpretations and subversions of generic expectations. Signage for a bank follows different expectations from signage for a nightclub, restaurant, or political election, but all are accountable to a culturally based sense of what counts as a

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successful LL unit. Most of this cultural knowledge is implicit and governed by tradition, even though language policy, zoning regulations, official directives, company policies, and other formal devices can influence the precise form of the LL unit. Deviations from the tradition may use markedness for specific purposes, and may be ambiguous as possible examples of some other genre or something that is not part of the LL; it is this sense of accountability to the audience’s communicative expectations and interpretations that brings LL units into the domain of performance. 6.2.2

Entextualisation

Related to performance in the LL is the role of entextualisation, which Bauman (2004: 4) describes as ‘the organization of a stretch of discourse into a text: bounded off to a degree from its discursive surround (its co-text), internally cohesive (tied together by various formal devices), and coherent (semantically intelligible)’. Bauman’s remarks about spoken language also apply to the LL unit. Widespread practice in LL studies treats the fixed framed sign as the basic unit of data, and while this expectation can be loosened to accommodate graffiti, writing on vehicles, and portable objects such as handbills, badges, and T-shirts, any approach to these texts as LL units is based on the understanding that they have some way of being distinguished from their surrounding environment, and that they are textually and visually coherent. This sense of coherence extends to complex displays such as shop windows or shopfronts which display a multitude of texts. Using Figure 1.5 as an example, we can see six separate signs on the wall, each with its own physical boundary: the sign at right angles to the wall of the building, a large Bombay sign over the doorway, a smaller sign which gives examples of food available in the restaurant, a menu , and the sign at the right of the to the right of the door, the lettering photograph with the name of the restaurant over photos of food. Each unit is visually and semantically coherent, but the sign viewer is invited to group them together as a single restaurant front and distinguish this ensemble from the graffiti which also appears in the photograph and the signage at the far left whose green colour and unrelated text contrasts with the Bombay frontage. Whether at the detailed level of the individual LL unit or in the ensemble of a connected series of units, the sign viewer thus perceives the LL unit because it is a visually and semantically coherent expression which is set apart from its surround. This organisational principle in the LL is salient even when the sign viewer does not know the language or the writing system of an LL unit: a perception of coherence does not guarantee comprehension. For the sign viewer who cannot read the language on display, knowledge of practices in literacy and language display will nevertheless make it possible to assume that an LL unit expresses some linguistic intention on the part of a sign instigator.

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Language thus serves as a focal point for the sign viewer’s efforts at interpretation, and although the linguistic text is not the only means by which the sign viewer will come to understand a communicative intent, it is a distinguishing feature of the LL. 6.2.3

Pragmatics of the LL

Understanding the LL unit as an emplaced performance which relies on a particular mode of entextualisation may help to answer such questions as ‘what is this sign doing here?’, or ‘what does the sign say?’, but it does not answer the question ‘what is the sign doing?’. The latter question introduces the LL unit as a part of pragmatics – as a way of, in Austin’s (1975) terms, doing things with words. Features of text and emplacement work because they enable the sign instigator to try to gain the attention of the sign viewer and to engage them in discourse of some kind. The idea that LL units engage the sign viewer in discourse finds support in such notions as Bakhtin’s ([1952–1953] 1986: 95) view that ‘addressivity’ is a general feature of utterances which distinguishes them from ‘the signifying units of a language – words and sentences – that are impersonal, belonging to nobody and addressed to nobody’; Althusser’s (1971 [1970]: 174) concept of ‘interpellation or hailing’, in accord with his view (p. 173) that ‘all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects’; and Dumont’s (1998: 24) discussion of the sign, via Latin signum, as something which signals. The LL, in other words, is filled with units which call out to sign viewers and engage them – as the interpellation idea suggests – with the point of view and intentionality that lies behind the unit. The value of Austin’s (1975) approach to speech acts comes to the fore within the discourse frame established between sign instigator and sign viewer. For Austin (1975), the utterance, when considered from a purely lexicalgrammatical point of view – the locution – is distinct from the ‘illocutionary act’, in which the speaker is ‘performing such an act as: asking or answering a question, giving some information or an assurance or a warning, announcing a verdict or an intention’ (Austin 1975: 98). In Austin’s (1975: 101) analysis, doing things with words includes not only the illocutionary act, but a further ‘“perlocutionary” act’, by which ‘saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience . . . and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of producing them’. Though the details of Austin’s approach raise many questions which cannot be considered here (see e.g. Gaspard 2018; Sbisà 2014; Searle and Vanderveken 1985), Austin’s distinction between the lexicalgrammatical utterance (the locution) and the uses to which it may be put (the illocution and a consequent perlocution), give theoretical focus to the question of ‘what is the sign doing’.

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This question evokes different types of answers. A sign which says is linguistically phrased as a directive in Searle’s (1976: 11) sense of directives as ‘attempts . . . by the speaker to get the hearer to do something’: the grammatical address form of an English imperative and the emplacement features which define the space of proximal reference make the directive force clear. LL signage is frequently more indirect. The examples of restaurant signage which I have presented thus far all say the name of the restaurant, and in some cases give additional information about it. This information is not simply factual. More importantly, each of these LL units also counts as an act of enticement to the idealised potential customer. The act of enticement for these restaurants is an indirect directive, as also anticipated in Searle’s (1975) approach to indirect speech acts. Rather than relying on imperative syntax or another directive marker, sign instigators have chosen different strategies to support the act of enticement. Code choices, intertextuality, visual imagery, emplacement features, and other elements have been entextualised to index authenticity, cultural experience, and culinary values. Across all the different forms of such LL units, we cannot understand what these signs are doing without understanding them as acts of enticement. Section 6.4.2 examines one type of speech act in the LL – the street name plaque as the expression of a declaration in Searle’s (1979) terms – but at the outset it is important to point out that most LL units are involved in doing things in the extra-linguistic world, rather than simply stating facts or reporting information. Broadly speaking, they have the performative quality illustrated by Austin’s (1975: 5) example: ‘“I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth” – as uttered when smashing the bottle against the stem’. In such ‘performatives’, states Austin (1975: 12), ‘to say something is to do something’. In this example, the ship becomes named Queen Elizabeth by performance of the act of naming. Performatives for Austin (1975) are neither true nor false, but are felicitous when carried out in appropriate circumstances, and may be infelicitous otherwise. Austin’s (1975) view of the performative in speech acts has been the subject of considerable debate from a variety of perspectives: see Sadock (2004) for a linguistic review, linguistic arguments by Searle (1969) and Bach and Harnish (1979), and the social critiques of Bourdieu (1991) and Butler (1997). In the analyses which follow, however, I take the view that the broad programme sketched out by Austin (1975), Searle (1969, 1976, 1979), and Bach and Harnish (1979) offers a principled way to understand how the multiple voices of the LL engage in a multiplicity of performative speech acts. The physical and other constraints of display in the LL predispose many LL units to rely not only on the indirect expression of speech acts, but on the use of what Grice (1975) termed implicature in the expression of propositional content. Grice’s (1975: 43–4) introduction of this term follows on from the observation that the import of a speaker’s utterance often goes beyond what is

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said in a literal sense. Grice gives the example that when ‘A asks B how C is getting on in his job, and B replies, Oh quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues, and he hasn’t been to prison yet’, then ‘it is clear that whatever B implied, suggested, meant, etc., in this example, is distinct from what B said’. In Grice’s (1975: 44–5) analysis, implicatures may arise for reasons that are ‘closely related to the conventional meaning of the words’ and are therefore termed ‘conventional implicatures’. At other times, so-called conversational implicatures arise instead from more general discourse features, which include Grice’s (1975: 45) ‘cooperative principle’ (CP): ‘make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged’. The CP is supported by conversational ‘maxims’ which implement the CP in specific ways. Speakers do not always follow the CP or the conversational maxims. On the contrary, conversational implicature is extensive and creative because speakers regularly flout maxims and thereby generate implicatures. Grice (1975: 53) points out that a metaphor such as you are the cream in my coffee is literally untrue (thus violating the Maxim of Quality, with its submaxim ‘do not say what you believe to be false’), but can be used with the implicature that the speaker is comparing the addressee to some positive aspect of cream in coffee. Other maxims include those of Quantity, ‘make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange)’; Relation, ‘be relevant’; and Manner, divided as ‘avoid obscurity of expression’, ‘avoid ambiguity’, ‘be brief’, and ‘be orderly’ (Grice 1975: 46). Much of what happens in the LL reflects the ability of sign instigators to flout the maxims of the CP and say things by implicature in order to increase the power of LL units to say much with few words or little space. 6.2.4

Genre

The pragmatic force of an LL unit is taken up through the perception of that unit as belonging to a particular genre. If a message looks like graffiti, we will treat it one way, but if the same text looks like a traffic regulatory sign, we will treat it in a different way. The centrality of genre has good precedent in poetics and the ethnography of speaking. For Bakhtin (1986: 78), ‘the speaker’s will is manifested primarily in the choice of a particular speech genre’ since ‘we speak only in definite speech genres’. Hymes ([1972] 1974: 61) treated genre as fundamental to the ethnography of communication, arguing that ‘it is heuristically important to proceed as though all speech has formal characteristics of some sort as manifestation of genres’, while Briggs and Bauman (1992: 144) maintain that ‘there is no speaking without genre’. Despite the central role of genre from these perspectives, there has been very little discussion of genre in LL research: see Hanauer (2009), Järlehed (2017), and Reershemius (2019)

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for discussions of specific issues. I argue here that any understanding of LL units as discourse needs to draw attention to their generic qualities. There are many theories of genre, some of which are specific to the medium being analysed: film genres are not the same as genres in painting or literature. The principle stated by Ben-Amos (1969: 285) that ‘each genre is characterized by a set of relations between its formal features, thematic domains, and potential social uses’, however, summarises the essential features of many approaches. For understanding textual genres in the LL, it is also helpful to note Bakhtin’s (1986: 87) observation that when we select words in the process of constructing an utterance, we by no means always take them from the system of language in their neutral, dictionary form. We usually take them from other utterances, and mainly from utterances that are kindred to ours in genre, that is, in theme, composition, or style.

The understanding of genre in the LL starts not with the physical characteristics of the LL unit as a billboard, shop sign, road sign, or graffiti text, but with pragmatic intention. Miller ([1984] 1994: 21) develops the view that a ‘theoretically sound definition of genre must be centred not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish’, using the term action to refer to ‘typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations’ (Miller 1994: 27). By this logic, Miller (1994: 23) exemplifies genre by such categories as ‘the user manual, the progress report, the ransom note, the lecture, . . . the inaugural, the public proceeding, and the sermon’. Diverse though these genres are in terms of form, Miller (1994: 31) argues that each can be seen as ‘a conventional category of discourse based in large scale typification of rhetorical action’ which ‘motivates by connecting the private with the public, the singular with the recurrent’. Miller’s notion of the ‘recurrent situation’ is particularly apt for the LL, since the vast majority of LL units create their own situations of recurrence. Once emplaced, the LL unit makes the same pragmatic appeal to an open-ended number of viewers, day by day for an indefinite time period. The needs which the unit indexes are also recurrent: a restaurant is an enduring institution with a continuing need to entice customers, and each restaurant is in turn part of the social practice of community life and restaurant culture more generally. These recurrent needs to relate the individual sign instigator to the mass of strangers who are sign viewers give rise to an identifiable LL genre. LL units within the genre may vary considerably in code choice and form but they cross-reference each other as different fulfilments of the same goal. Building on the pragmatic functions of LL units, genre in the LL includes the textual expectations of sign instigators and sign viewers (spanning code choices, layout, visual elements, and emplacement features), the performance aspect of an LL text which determines how it is displayed and replied to by the

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sign viewer, and the role of the LL unit in broader cultural life. Bauman’s (2004: 3–4) view of genre as a ‘conventionalized orienting framework for the production and reception of discourse’ broadens the perspective to take in these other aspects. This approach is elaborated in Bauman’s (2008: 31) view of ‘the philology of the vernacular’, according to which texts have certain conventional properties: formal, thematic, and pragmatic. The formal properties of texts have to do with how they are made, their formal constituents and organizing principles, what it is that marks them off from their discursive surround and renders them internally cohesive . . . Thematics, by contrast, has to do with the referential or propositional contents of texts, their ways of representing the world. The pragmatic dimension of texts pertains to their modes of presentation and use, how they serve as resources for the accomplishment of social ends. . . . Taken singly or in combination, these sets of properties serve as criteria for the identification and differentiations of various orders of texts, that is to say, of genres.

Bauman’s (2008) view on speech genres helps to understand how LL genres are also genres of discourse. The requirement of a text in the LL refers in the first instance to lexical-grammatic content: Austin’s ‘locution’ or Bauman’s ‘thematics’. In the LL, this content is expressed in anything from fragments of words or names to the extended texts in standard language often used for legal notices or memorial sites. The pragmatic force of the LL unit – its ability to do things with words – arises from the fusion of the lexical-grammatical text with the formal properties that are used to perform the text in the public eye. These properties show a continuum in the LL from those that lie closest to language (including code choices, metaphor, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, scriptography, and spelling) to those which invoke other means of semiosis (such as visual imagery, physical location, layout, size, colour, shape, medium, ground, and support). The combination of text, performance features, and pragmatic function yield a sense of genre in the LL – not as a fixed set of categories, nor as a set of object types, but as part of the knowledge which sign instigator and sign viewer bring to the act of discourse in the LL. The path to discourse in the LL originates from the sign instigator’s desire to express a pragmatic act, their use of genre to shape and emplace the LL unit, and the elicitation of a reply from the sign viewer who has relied on their knowledge of genre to interpret the LL unit. The question then arises as to how viewers recognise LL genres. Goffman’s (1986) approach to framing in discourse points towards a solution. Papers such as Kallen (2010), Coupland and Garrett (2010), and Coupland (2012) have applied Goffman’s (1986) frame theory in analysing discourse in the LL, but I argue here that the main applicability of frame theory for the LL is in understanding the signalling of genre. Goffman (1986: 24) argued that ‘we tend to perceive events in terms of primary frameworks’, which he described (p. 25) as ‘a first answer to the question “What is it that’s going on here?”’. In Goffman’s (1986: 24–5) terms,

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the type of framework we employ provides a way of describing the event to which it is applied. When the sun comes up, a natural event; when the blind is pulled down in order to avoid what has come up, a guided doing. When a coroner asks the cause of death, he wants an answer phrased in the natural schema of physiology; when he asks the manner of death, he wants a dramatically social answer, one that describes what is quite possibly part of an intent.

Many genres in the LL rely on convention to the point where the genre is taken as a natural part of the landscape in which the sign instigator’s intention is transparent: a sign, a street name plaque, and a name placed over the door of a restaurant do not appear to pose problems of generic interpretation. Even in such apparently simple cases, though, the questions ‘what is this sign saying’, ‘what is this sign doing here’, and ‘what is this sign doing’ all depend on answering Goffman’s framing question ‘what is it that’s going on here?’. This ability to answer this question is not automatic: it is constructed by social experience and convention. Conversational participants can establish the frame by asking direct questions, such as ‘is this an interview, or just a chat?’. They can also influence the discourse with remarks such as ‘Just give a short answer; I don’t need a sermon or a lecture’. Since the typical sign viewer does not have this facility, the pressure is on the sign instigator to ensure that the genre is clear to sign viewers in a world of strangers whose background knowledge is unpredictable. This communicative demand constrains the discourse framing of the LL unit so as to make its genre maximally clear: genre is the window through which the sign viewer perceives the intention of the LL unit. Intertextuality emerges as one of the main framing strategies for genre recognition. Commenting on Bakhtin’s (1986: 87) view, which I have quoted above, that we take words ‘from utterances that are kindred to ours in genre’, Kristeva ([1966] [1986]: 36–7) argued that three dimensions or coordinates of dialogue are writing subject, addressee and exterior texts. The word’s status is thus defined horizontally (the word in the text belongs to both writing subject and addressee) as well as vertically (the word in the text is oriented towards an anterior or synchronic literary corpus).

Thus, for Kristeva (1986: 37), ‘the notion of intertextuality’ encapsulates the idea developed from Bakhtin that ‘any text is the absorption and transformation of another’. Shuman and Hasan-Rokem (2012: 69) characterise intertextuality as being ‘not a matter of the properties of texts but of proximities and distances among texts’, and evidence we have seen thus far shows that LL texts, in part because of their need to maximise communicative effect with limited means, rely heavily on intertextuality. Restaurants, hair dressers, convenience stores, garages, and other such businesses make known their presence in part through the use of formulas, wordplay, and recurrent textual units,

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which signal not only the unique space of local reference but membership of the local in a more general category. Framing in the LL can thus be understood as in Shuman and HasanRokem’s (2012: 70) view that ‘frame is a metacommunicative strategy for making a claim that a text or performance belongs to a particular category’. I discuss some examples which pose challenges for genre interpretation in Sections 6.5.1 and 6.5.2, but in general, the LL again shows strong parallels with spoken language. A particular stretch of spoken text, for example, can have linguistic and stylistic features that make it identifiable as a joke. Usually, it will be performed in a way that is designed to elicit laughter from an audience. The same text (locution) could, however, be spoken as witness testimony in a trial, responding to the question ‘what did the defendant say at that point?’. In this case, the discourse frame has shifted dramatically. Even though the words and code choice of the text remain the same, it is no longer a joke, but a quotation or citation of a joke; the purpose is not to amuse, but to answer a request for a report of an earlier speech act. Framing has made the difference, and features of performance will shift accordingly. The LL – with its high frequency of messages to passing strangers who usually have no opportunities for genre clarification from the sign instigator – brings us into a world where framing is crucial to the perception of genre, and genre is crucial to understanding the LL unit.

6.3

Conversation in the Landscape

6.3.1

Conversing

Figures 1.6B, 1.9, and 5.5A demonstrated the affordance that graffiti offers for discourse between conflicting sign instigators. Figure 6.2 shows the elaboration of this affordance, not as an incidental comment but as an intentional space for political dialogue in what has become known as the ‘Lennon Wall’ phenomenon. The original ‘Lennon Wall’ developed in Prague in the 1980s, stemming from a graffiti portrait of John Lennon which evolved into a tradition of graffiti oriented towards messages of peace and what Hou (2020) calls ‘romantic poems and anti-government messages’. Inspired by this wall, the practice of personal and political expression developed in Hong Kong in 2014: Kurfürst (2018) describes it as a cross-modal protest movement involving digital expression, the use of yellow ribbons and umbrellas, and other means (especially sticky notes) which allow for expression on the wall. For related discussions see Lou and Jaworski (2016) and Valjakka (2020). The idea of the ‘Lennon Wall’ has since developed into a global discourse practice which

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Figure 6.2 Discourse on the ‘Lennon Wall’ (London, 2019)

makes use of cross-referencing physical locations in protesting against the abuse of state power. Illustrating the global reach of this political discourse, Figure 6.2 shows a small portion of the Lennon Wall in London. Much of the messaging pertains to the Extradition Bill which was proposed at the time to facilitate the extradition of individuals from Hong Kong to mainland China, but other points are made as well. The use of tacked-up messages allows sign instigators to express themselves in a variety of languages (this photograph alone includes at least

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Chinese, Korean, English, German, French, and Spanish) as well as nonlinguistic images. Intertextuality abounds, whether expressed linguistically (as with the ‘be water’ reference to a martial arts philosophy popularised by Bruce Lee and adopted by Hong Kong protesters) or visually, as with the various umbrella images. This wall assemblage not only allows for expression by individuals using a variety of code choices, but for the linkage between this space and others in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Though the sign instigators may never speak to their counterparts around the world, they have used the potential of the LL to share in a common discourse. Most of the LL units discussed in earlier chapters are not only fixed in position, but rely textually on a declarative mode that does not seek to interact with the viewer. Vernacular signage – which can include homemade productions; personal engagement with the sign viewer; and the use of informal, slang, and taboo language – is often overshadowed by official and commercial signage in LL research, though it is central to Calvet’s (1990) notion of in vivo language policy and features in discussions which include Thurlow and Jaworski (2010: 49–90), Juffermans and Coppoolse (2012), HewittBradshaw (2014), Juffermans (2014), Mpendukana and Stroud (2019), and Li and Zhu (2021). Figure 6.3 illustrates a vernacular style which runs counter to the usual expectations of fixed signage, not only because it is on a vehicle, but because of the way it uses layout and register. The signage in Figure 6.3 does not follow the usual hierarchical layout of a professionally designed sign. Rather, it is organised in smaller units, which

Figure 6.3 Vernacular style and register (Chicago, 2017)

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must be read atomistically. On the side panel, for example, the middle contains a block of text which says , to the left of which is a block that could be read as . These blocks must be read independently in order to make sense. On the back panel, a question mark is to the right of the declaration ‘Spanish spoken’. This declaration is common as an LL unit in shops as an invitation to Spanish speakers, but these signs do not have question marks, and it is not clear what the question mark questions. Reference to at the bottom right suggests a Spanish-speaking contact person, though the name must be read separately from immediately below it. The combination of directness and metaphor in engages the viewer in a novel way. The invitation which reads as prompts the viewer to act by taking a card out of the attached basket, although it was empty when I took the photograph. The use of an apostrophe for English plurals is a common feature of LL units, which I discuss in Kallen (2016b): it is used for all plurals in the sign. Commercially produced signage could have communicated the same factual information, but would not have the same strategies in reaching out informally – with bilingual potential – to people in need of emergency plumbing services. Since the knowledge of practices relating to face-to-face conversation is part of the shared knowledge of interlocutors in the LL, it can in itself form a new point of reference for LL units. This point is illustrated in Figure 6.4. Figure 6.4A comes from the hoarding of a construction site in inner-city Dublin where a building is being redeveloped. A silhouette is recognisable as a stereotypical portrayal of two Dublin women from the inner city. This identity is indexed visually by their functional, rather than stylish, shoes, and by the stooped posture, head scarf, and handbag for the woman on the right as well as the shopping trolley and hat of the woman on the left. The names are also conventional: Bridie is especially associated with Irish tradition and an older generation, and fits with the timeless reference of Mary as a female name. The language is in a conversational tone of news and gossip, indexed by informal direct address (ya ‘you’) and the haha! exclamation, while Dublin vernacular is indicated by the grammatical form meself and the Irish English discourse marker sure, which Amador-Moreno and McCafferty (2015) discuss in detail. In a short vignette, the sign instigator has indexed not just code features associated with Dublin, but local discourse practice. The portrayal of familiar Dublin-type characters and the wordplay with facelift does not entice the sign viewer to become a customer, but attempts to build trust and good will through humour (albeit based on what could be considered stereotypical gendered images), while the inconvenience of construction is in progress. Discourse of a different kind is indexed in the LL unit of Figure 6.4B. Fredericksburg, VA, is the home of the University of Mary Washington, and

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6.3 Conversation in the Landscape

Figure 6.4 Dialogues (Dublin, 2018; Fredericksburg, 2013)

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we can assume that the tattoo parlour in Figure 6.4B is aimed at students. While indicates the nature of the business, the phrase flouts the Maxim of Quality, since the owner of the tattoo parlour is not apologising to anyone. An assumption that the inscription is conversationally relevant, however, gives rise to the conversational implicature ‘if you get a tattoo, you may end up apologising to your mother’. The sign viewer who works out the implicature becomes an interlocutor with the sign instigator, and may be enticed to become a customer: the prospect of apologising to ‘mother’ for acting independently may even be an incentive. As with Figure 6.4A, the portrayal of discourse is the point of salience, and the communicative intent follows indirectly. 6.3.2

Conversational Maxims

Figure 6.5 illustrates two contrastive approaches to the Maxim of Quantity. The LL unit on the fascia for Bartunek Hardware uses simple plastic letters and a mixture of primary colours on a plastic background. The shop name is in red, ‘material’ and are in green, and in orange, in blue (which matches the trim on the window and door to the right), and and in black. The window displays and in a neon sign, which was not turned on when I took the photograph. The area in front of the shop is filled with goods: pots, brushes, garden equipment, etc. The signage is in what Trinch and Snajder (2017) call an ‘old school vernacular’ style, listing available goods and services, and using samples to provide further information. The business is a long-standing community fixture – established in 1925 and remaining in the family since then (Ruhling 2011) – and provides a focal point for local, informative discourse. Ogle’s (2017) film documents this discourse in action. The LL ensemble of the shopfront is rich in information which goes beyond what is necessary to convey the nature of the business. In thus flouting the Maxim of Quantity, the ensemble takes no risks in leaving the stranger unfamiliar with what is available. The sense of engagement is strengthened by local tradition, which recognises the locale as one for discourse. Additional implicatures – that such violations of the Maxim of Quantity are old-fashioned within the genre of shop signs, and that the shop’s adherence to older norms makes it reliable and trustworthy or that the shop is out of date – will depend on further interpretive principles. The shopfront in Figure 6.5B adopts a completely different approach to the Maxim of Quantity. Written entirely in lower case, the name does not describe the business. Though the use of Japanese suggests some connection with Japan, and tsunami may imply something dramatic, the

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Figure 6.5 The Maxim of Quantity at work (Astoria, 2017; Annapolis, 2014)

business could easily be a clothes shop, an art gallery, or something else. No signage in the windows proclaims that the locale is a restaurant, and though the window contains some publicity flyers and posters such as one visible next to the bricks at the bottom of Figure 6.5B, it is only by inspecting a small-print menu close to the door that the sign viewer discovers that is a

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restaurant. LL units of this kind, which Trinch and Snajdr (2017: 81) refer to as ‘distinction-making signs’, are commonly found in areas of gentrification, and flout the Maxim of Quantity by intentionally giving the sign viewer less information than would be expected within the genre. As Grice (1975) anticipates, the understatement involved in flouting the Maxim of Quantity conveys its own message: that only those with insider knowledge will understand the signage, and that having this knowledge brings the sign viewer into an elite group defined by fashion, economic power, culinary expertise, local knowledge, or other factors. Violations of the Maxim of Quantity do not necessarily involve high prestige, but may, for example, index local knowledge and community ties. I used to frequent an unassuming local Chinese restaurant in Seattle called the bakery. The American-style name and plastic signage with brightly coloured letters were left over from the previous restaurant owners (Honey Kreme 1979), and the signage lacked any outward indication of Chineseness. Insider knowledge was needed in order to appreciate that the Honey Kreme served Chinese food at dinnertime: this knowledge did not connote trendiness or wealth, but it was a part of knowing the local community. Other types of text, shown in Figure 6.6, offer other means of violating or flouting Grice’s maxims in support of the communicative stance of the sign instigator. Figure 6.6A shows the top half of a window at the Tannenhöhe in Michelstadt, which offers ‘Traditional Thai Massage’, as denoted by the text at the top. The stylised drawing of a massage in progress on the left complements the text, which is further complemented by a photograph at the bottom of the image shown here; bamboo also indexes Thailand. Below the name inscription is a window (which in this photograph shows the reflection of trees across from the building), and behind the window is an electronic sign saying in English. I focus here, though, on the bright red lettering in the window which states , literally ‘no eroticism’. This element of discourse violates the Maxim of Quantity by providing more information than is necessary for the message. Conventionally, shops and businesses advertise what is available, not the much greater set of what is not available: we do not expect a hardware store to announce ‘No shoes for sale’ or a bank to declare ‘No ice cream available’. Where a maxim is flouted, however, the interlocutor can use background knowledge to find an implicature. In this case, the message directly cancels a presupposition that a business which offers massages would offer sexual services. Combined with the Maxim of Relevance, the message expresses the implicature that while OTHER related businesses do offer erotic experiences, THIS business does not. The sign viewer’s engagement with this argumentation thus depends on cultural knowledge, allowing the LL unit to entice a health-oriented target audience but discouraging others outside the target group.

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Figure 6.6 Flouting maxims (Michelstadt, 2018; Champaign, 2017; Chicago, 2017; Dublin, 2021)

The LL unit in Figure 6.6B comes from a bar in a student district. The inscription has simple declarative syntax, but gives no indication as to why the sign viewer should consider it relevant. In chemical terms, the statement is not true: while alcoholic beverages are solutions which mix alcohol and water, the alcohol itself is not a solution. The apparent violations of the Maxim of Relevance and the Maxim of Quality are resolved, however, when the reallife context of the inscription is taken into account. Since the signage appears at the entrance to a bar, any reference to alcohol is relevant to the business of the sign instigator. The term technically and its indexation of the terminological precision associated with academic life is also relevant to the student population which the signage targets. Intertextuality works because the common health advice that alcohol is not a solution to life’s problems is playfully contradicted; an internet search shows that variations on this phrasing

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are widely available in T-shirts, mugs, and other such goods. Rather than simply violating the CP, the sign instigator flouts maxims to generate the implicature ‘contrary to what you may have heard, drinking alcohol is good for you’; working out this implicature engages the sign viewer in discourse and may entice them to become a customer. Figure 6.6C shows a unit which has the pragmatic force of a directive, since it stipulates that a future act of the sign viewer (parking) is prohibited if the motorist is not a patron of the City Cat Doctor. The message in the top part of the sign makes this point using an implicature that is conventional since it is ‘closely related to the conventional meaning of the words’ (Grice 1975: 44): the logic is that if is for patrons, then non-patrons are not allowed. The message in the bottom part of the sign violates the Maxim of Quality, since it is not literally true. Flouting the maxim also generates an implicature (‘we are serious about not allowing parking by others’), but it does so by relying on specific features of the discourse context in which it arises and is therefore a conversational implicature in Grice’s (1975: 45) terms. Thus, in Figure 6.6C, the conventional implicature would hold anywhere where parking restrictions apply, but the wording of the conversational implicature would be very surprising in front of a dentist or a flower shop. The violations of conversational maxims in Figure 6.6D do not strengthen or enhance the referential qualities of the message, but the sign unit attracts attention since it obviously violates the Maxim of Relevance: tyres are in a literal sense gluten free, but the conventional gluten free concept is only relevant to food. The expression gluten free tyres relies on intertextuality, since advertisements for gluten free products are common in shops and restaurants. The apparent violation of the CP attracts the sign viewer’s attention because sign viewers expect that signs will follow the CP. Attracting the sign viewer’s attention in this way increases the sign instigator’s ability to entice viewers to become customers. The sign instigator tells me that he made up the sign because of the popularity of talk about gluten free foods, and that he has never had a sign receive as much attention as this one has. 6.4

Recognising LL Genres

6.4.1

Framing

Though sign instigators usually make the genre of an LL unit transparent, cases of ambiguity are informative in showing the importance of framing in the LL. The Irish-language LL unit in Figure 6.7, for example, is lexically and syntactically unambiguous, but its status in the LL is open to different interpretations. Figure 6.7 shows the entryway to a metal foundry. A display case shows a variety of gleaming metal objects in copper and brass, which show off the artistry of the foundry. All of the objects are eye-catching samples, though the

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Figure 6.7 Framing Gnó trí Ghaeilge (Dublin, 2018)

uses for some are obscure to the non-specialist. On the middle shelf is a monolingual Irish sign which uses traditional lettering to say déantar gnó anseo trí Ghaeilge ‘business done here in Irish’. Signs which invite the viewer to use Irish are well recognised in Ireland. Though they are not ubiquitous,

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they can be seen in shops, civil service offices, and community facilities. Since the sign unit does not use an imperative verb form, the indirect syntax marks the text as an indirect directive to speak Irish. English is usually the unmarked code for doing business in Dublin, and since the intended response by the sign viewer is to speak Irish, the sign unit serves to renegotiate markedness and encourage a switch to Irish as the unmarked code. The directive in the specific case is strengthened when the sign is recognised as belonging to the genre of signs that are used nationwide to promote the use of Irish. The indirect directive, however, is not the only interpretation available to the sign viewer. The emplacement of the sign in a display case operates as a discourse framing device to suggest that the sign could be read as a sample of merchandise like the other objects on display (cf. Figure 1.2). If the display of the sign is a sample, then the invitation – the target response from the sign viewer – is not to speak Irish, but to buy one or more of the signs as a way of promoting the Irish language. While the text is an unambiguous invitation to speak Irish and scriptographic features index Irish-language tradition, the pragmatic force does not follow simply from the text, but from the way in which the text is performed. The emplacement feature of putting the sign in a display case rather than in the shop window, on the wall, or on the public counter is a framing strategy which displays the LL unit as an enticement to buy signs for use in other locations, not as a directive to speak Irish. In one interpretation, the sign belongs to the genre of LL units which invite the use of Irish on the spot; in the other interpretation, it belongs to the genre of potential LL units which entice the viewer to buy text-bearing objects as merchandise. In answer to the question ‘What is it that’s going on here?’, the sign viewer can say with good reason, ‘Either I’m being encouraged to speak Irish here, or I’m being encouraged to buy a sign which encourages others to speak Irish in some other location, or perhaps both things are true’. The rarity of ambiguous framing in the LL arises because opportunities to resolve ambiguity are also rare. In this case, I was able to resolve the ambiguity by asking in the office, where I was told that the sign was an invitation to speak Irish. In many other situations, there is no way of asking such questions. 6.4.2

The Street Name Plaque as an LL Genre

Based on the principles of genre analysis discussed above, this section turns to the street name plaque as an LL genre. Street names and street name plaques of various kinds are a continuing theme in LL research. They are often mentioned in LL studies, but they feature prominently in Spolsky and Cooper’s (1991) work in Jerusalem, and in works such as Hassa’s (2012) analysis of Moroccan cities, in a discussion by Amos (2017) of French and Occitan in the LL of Toulouse, and in Järlehed’s (2017) extended discussion of street name signage

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as a question of genre in the LL of Galicia and the Spanish Basque country. The starting point for the exploration of street name plaques in this section, however, is not with physical qualities such as placement and size, or with such textual aspects as code choice, layout, or visual presentation. Rather, I start with the street name plaque as an act of naming in the public space. Starting from this point compels us to look not only at the emplacement of names in the LL, but at associated verbal practices that attach to names and places, as suggested in the discussion of the D Walls in Figure 1.11. It also makes it easier to account for contradictions, omissions, fragmentary heterotopias, and other aspects of the emplaced LL. Identifying generic features of the street name plaque as part of a larger enquiry into genre sheds light on crossover effects from the street name plaque to other genres. Odonymic practice in the LL involves two interacting, but distinct, planes of thought. One pertains to allocated names, which may be the work of official planners and authorities, but also of folk memory, community initiatives, and various groups and individuals who attach names to thoroughfares by mapping, administrative instrument, oral tradition, and other means. The other plane concerns displayed names, in which individual street name plaques confer names to places in specific locales. Onomastics is usually concerned with the former plane of thought (see Neethling 2016 for a review), but the display element of the latter plane makes it central to the LL. The two planes are not in a hierarchical relationship, and they do not necessarily work together. A street may have an official allocated name and display a name plaque emplaced by an institutional authority, but these official names will not necessarily match. Multilingualism increases the chance that allocated names and displayed names will be different. Allocated names (no matter what the source) refer to space without conferring the name as a terrestrial HERE. The street name plaque, in contrast, carries out an act of naming – a performative in Austin’s (1975) sense – that links the HERE of terrestrial signage, the NEAR of the proximal space to which the name applies, and a THERE which accounts minimally for the street name plaque’s relationship to other signs in the same system but may also include more remote locations and the THEN of temporal reference. Street name plaques are rich in their use of remote reference, since each plaque also indexes others: a single plaque indexes all the others on what is odonymically (if not physically) the ‘same’ street, and contrasts with the plaques for other streets. Complications such as the possibility of discrepancies between allocated names and displayed names may give rise to discourse, not only about names and language, but about the cultural, historical, and political systems which street name plaques index. Discussing the street name plaques of Figure 1.7 above, I argued that the names should be understood as proper names with onymic reference and not as descriptive terms. The discussion did not, however, consider the pragmatic or

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generic qualities of the signage. The immediate question that arises is whether street name plaques should be taken as signs which simply inform the sign viewer as to the odonym which applies in the proximal place – an assertive speech act in Searle’s (1979) terminology – or as a performative, more precisely a declaration, as Searle (1979: 17) defines it, which will ‘bring about some alteration in the status or condition of the referred to object or objects solely in virtue of the fact that the declaration has been successfully performed’. This difference is significant in speech act theory, because an assertive can be judged as true or false, but a declaration cannot: it will hold as long as the socially defined conditions for executing the declaration have been fulfilled. Following Searle, while it is possible for a judge or jury to state as an assertive that ‘X is guilty’, the assertive alone has no effect on X’s criminal status. It is only when ‘X is guilty’ is expressed as a declaration that X may be punished. Searle (1979: 20) labels such compound speech acts as ‘assertive declarations’: the declaration holds once it is made, but it includes a ‘sincerity condition’ that commits the speaker to a belief that the related assertive is true. The sincerity condition (see also Searle 1969) is not an accuracy condition: the assertive may be false, but the declaration still stands if the speaker has sincerely carried it out according to social convention. Social conventions which license the act of naming as a declaration are not uniform within a society, nor are they determined only by the power of the state. This diversity is anticipated by Bach and Harnish’s (1979: 108–9) notion of ‘mutual belief’, which allows for different socially defined views of what constitutes the valid execution of a declaration. Where different mutual beliefs supporting street name declarations clash, discourse ensues. This discourse – whether in multiple or conflicting name plaques, graffiti, or oral tradition – is part of the LL. Since street name plaques display names and not descriptions, they exercise what Coates (2009: 433–34) calls the function of ‘nomination’, or ‘the bestowal of an expression on an individual to serve as a distinguishing mark’. The notion of bestowal tallies with Cook’s (2018) view of building and street name plaques in England, which he sees as ‘performatively creating meanings by nominating the objects they are attached to: installing the sign gives the objects their names, like launching a ship’. More specifically, the street name plaque executes an assertive declaration: the sign viewer trusts that the authority which makes the declaration has good reason to give THIS name to THIS locale (the assertive), and that the declaration is carried out according to recognised procedures (the declaration). Where conflict arises – as when official names are overpainted with names in other languages – the conflict may involve the assertive (what is the ‘correct’ name linguistically or according to history), but the crucial element is the declaration: correctly or incorrectly, a new name has been bestowed. The debate which may follow has

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to do with whose authority or mutual belief system will prevail in making declarations. The view that street name plaques perform acts of declaration rather than assertion has a number of consequences which fit with the empirical evidence. One is that the display of multiple names for a single entity is not a contradiction in truth, in the sense that one name is true and the other false. Rather, this multiplicity derives from the ability of different declarations to be performed in different languages or for different audiences with regard to the same place. This principle works in Figures 3.8 and 4.13, where restaurant name signs display names in Chinese that are lexically and semantically unrelated to their English counterparts. Neither name is true or false. Each name points to the same referent, and though the names are part of different onomasticons and have different etymologies (since they are neither translations nor transcriptions), they fulfil the same function. The unified format of their visual presentation underscores this co-reference. In particular contexts and language relationships, such naming asymmetries may be common. The status of street name plaques as declarations diminishes the prospect that all plaques referring to the same street will have the same name. Street name plaques are useful for functions such as location, wayfinding, commemoration, and boundary-marking; these goals are not necessarily advanced by the continuous maintenance of editorial consistency. Figure 6.8 shows two street name plaques that are opposite each other on the same street. Though both give the name for the street in English, different names are given in Irish. Emphasising the point that names are not descriptions, the shoreline or strand in English and tráigh or trá in Irish, which the street names include, is a historical feature that is not part of the present-day landscape. The Irish name in the older plaque in Figure 6.8A names the strand in relation to Baile Bocht, literally ‘poor town’, which is a district (anglicised as Ballybough) near the locale. The place name Ballybough appears in a different thoroughfare nearby, but Tráigh Baile Bocht is not used on earlier maps or current official records (Logainm website). The plaque in Figure 6.8B also has a bilingual layout, but the Irish in a modern Roman typeface uses the place name Fionnradhairc (from fionn ‘fair’ + radhairc ‘view’), corresponding to the English Fairview Strand. All three odonyms fall within the bounds of ‘possible Dublin street names’, and both street name plaques display other characteristics of the genre: they both count as well-formed acts of naming. Though both plaques make the same odonymic declaration in English, the Irish-language declarations are conflicting. An appeal to historical records could argue that one Irish name or the other is historically correct, but an appeal to language planning might state that a different name is more in line with current language

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Figure 6.8 Fairview Strand, conflicting names (Dublin, 2021)

policy on place names and orthography. These arguments would address the assertive, but they cannot change the declaration in the LL: only changing the sign will do that. The street name plaques of Figure 6.9 demonstrate the ability of street name plaques to index further discourse when expressing declarations about a space of proximal reference; these approaches contrast with the appearance of certainty and closure as found in the signage of Figure 1.7. Figure 6.9A appears to show a simple bilingual street name plaque as expected in the Republic of Ireland. The LL unit is stylistically unified, using similar fonts and all-capital white letters on a blue background, but the two names are etymologically unrelated. The difference reflects both historical evolution and the ideological perspectives of language planners. is a long-established odonym which could have two historically plausible sources. One is the name of an estate in Co. Wicklow, which first appears in a document from 1716. The historical derivation for this name is now unknown (Ó Riain 2000), but the estate is not far from Dublin and is historically associated with the Monck family, who came to Ireland as part of British colonisation in 1617 and rose to regional prominence. In Duffy’s

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Figure 6.9 Street name plaque diversity (Dublin, 2019; Strasbourg, 2019; Chicago, 2017; Vienna, 2018)

(2017: 12) account, Dublin streets with the Charleville element refer to Henry Stanley Monck, who lived from 1785 to 1848. In keeping with current Irish place name policy, the name given in official sources (Logainm website; Dublin City Street Names) is Ascaill Charleville. The simple story based on Wicklow and the Monck family, however, is not the one declared on the plaque. The town of Charleville in Co. Cork was founded in 1661 and named for the English king Charles II, who granted the town a charter in 1671 (Binchy 1961–63: 220). The oldest-known name for the area is Irish Ráth an Ghogánaigh, anglicised to Rathgoggan, which is attested from the thirteenth century (Logainm website). This name is a linguistic compound of the Irish-language toponymic element ráth ‘ring fort, rampart’ and a reference to the family of Miles de Cogan, one of the leaders of the twelfth century Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland. Local Irish-language usage has favoured the name (An) Ráth ‘(The) ráth’. The place name Ráth Loirc or Ráth Luirc ‘Lorc’s ráth’ (anglicised as Rathlurk), which features on the plaque, has no historical grounding in Irish or English (see Binchy 1961– 63). Its existence appears to stem from an editorial footnote and translated passage in a nineteenth century collection of Irish poetry, after which it was taken up by Irish-language enthusiasts; Laoide’s (1905) guide for the use of Irish place names, for example, uses Ráth Luirc repeatedly. Thus Binchy (1961–63: 235) describes the ‘unsuspecting members of the Charleville Rural District Council’ who adopted Ráth Luirc as the official name in

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1920 as having bestowed what the Celtic scholar Thomas O’Rahilly ‘rightly described as a “ghost-name”’. From a postcolonial perspective, however, Ráth Luirc has the advantage of being based on the Irish ráth element and the personal name Lorc, whose referent is unclear. This unclear reference eliminates any link to Miles de Cogan or Charles II, both of whom are associated with English colonial rule. While the multiplicity of names for the town in Co. Cork was partially resolved by a town plebiscite in 1989 which opted for Charleville as the official town name (Hogan 1989; see also the Logainm website), the Dublin street name plaque name maintains the historical place name debate. Thus, while English most credibly refers to a family name that indexes colonial settlement in nearby Wicklow, Irish takes advantage of an ambiguity in the place name Charleville to bestow an Irish-language odonym that arises in nineteenth century Irishlanguage circles, and does not have colonial associations. The generic qualities of the street name plaque give rise to a visually unified declaration in the LL unit, but the asymmetry in the odonyms demonstrates very different stances towards the past. The sign in Figure 6.9B elaborates a principle that while street name plaques always include the performative act of declaration, they may include further assertives of culturally salient information. The plaque in Figure 6.9B is a bilingual declaration of both the French and the Alsatian . In keeping with French language policy, the higher position and larger all-capital font used for French establishes it as the dominant language. A cursory look suggests that the French and Alsatian names are based on the personal name Thomann. The assertive in the signage, however, indicates that the current name descends from Latin , referring to the ownership of a grove. In this case, the reference is to the orchard of the canons of Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune, which Moszberger (2012: 106) dates to 1296. This information, however, is only indicative of a more complex development. Against the background of language contact and conflict in Alsace, which stretches back over 2,000 years – discussed by Vassberg (1993), Weckmann and Rieger (2011), Burdick (2016), and Gardner-Chloros (1991, 2013a, 2013b) – the name developed from Latin forms, Germanic reshapings, and further influences from French and German; during the French Revolution, rue de Thomas and Quartier de la Justice were also used (see Moszberger 2012: 106). Thus, while the LL unit in Figure 6.9B performs a declaration using a simple correspondence between French and Alsatian odonyms, the assertive in French alludes to a multilingual and politically charged development that stems from a Latin original; no one named Thomann is involved. The brevity of this allusion follows from discourse and generic constraints. The maxims of Quantity and

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Relevance would restrict the information needed for a street name plaque to the minimum needed for location and wayfinding. If the discourse intention of the street name plaque is expanded to include commemoration, historical interest for tourists, or other such functions, the emplacement of a plaque, as in Figure 6.9B, in an area with a flow of casual pedestrians and tourist interest allows the plaque to flout the Maxim of Quantity. Invoking the Maxim of Relevance, the implicature is that ‘Local history is relevant’. Though the material constraint of the street name plaque limits the amount of additional information that can be presented, even a brief note can point to extensive discourses elsewhere. The power of code choices also emerges as significant in such cases. Though the use of French as the language of the assertive in Figure 6.9B gives no additional status to Alsatian, Amos (2017) reports examples from Toulouse, where Occitan is frequently used to provide information that is supplementary to bare odonyms given in French and Occitan. This status enhancement contrasts with Strasbourg, and demonstrates that within the street name plaque genre, an LL unit can add a layer of social signification by code choice in expressing an assertive, even when the name declaration is balanced between two languages. Figures 6.9C and 6.9D demonstrate contrastive approaches to odonyms based on personal names. Personal names offer an obvious way to index historical and political matters. If street name plaques were only for the purpose of spatial orientation, information about personal referents would violate the Maxim of Quantity, since they contain more information than is needed. Taking these plaques as sites of commemoration, however, the display of the bare name alone conversely violates the Maxim of Quantity by giving the viewer no information as to who is being commemorated, or the reason for the commemoration. The minimalist informational strategy is illustrated in Figure 6.9C. The designation of the portion of Devon Avenue shown in the figure as follows on from a 1991 resolution of the Chicago City Council (City Council 1991: 30500–01). This resolution received no substantive debate but includes the clarification that ‘marg means road in Hindi’. This designation is part of a larger system of honorary designations for streets in Chicago and many other jurisdictions in the US. The general principle is that honorary names do not supersede official cartographic names, but, as Mask (2000: 1–3) describes, decisions about designating honorary names can give rise to intensive political debate. Rose-Redwood (2008c: 438) cites estimates that in some years, more than 40 per cent of local measures approved by the New York City Council consist of street renamings. Honorary names provide an opportunity to display linguistic diversity and index communities and their languages and history. This principle arises in Figure 6.9C, which uses Hindi मागǸ mārg ‘road, path, way’ in Roman transliteration rather than Hindi

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orthography. The honorary name indexes the large-scale South Asian community activity sustained in this part of Chicago: see also Figure 4.14. The odonym, however, has wider cultural references. It is used in several cities of contemporary India, and mārg can also be used metaphorically: cf. the journal Gandhi Marg published by the Gandhi Peace Foundation. Those with local knowledge will also know the pronunciation with stress on the second syllable in the odonym Devon as a Chicago shibboleth (see Schaffner 2020). In contrast to the strategy in Figure 6.9C, the street name plaque in Figure 6.9D develops the street name plaque as a site of commemoration. Carl Faulmann wrote extensively about writing systems around the world, and devoted much of his attention to typesetting and shorthand systems. He lived for many years in Vienna, and according to the Luc Devroye website, became Professor of Stenography at the University of Vienna in 1884. The directive element to arouse strong emotions or raise political consciousness expressed in many sites of commemoration does not evidently appear here. The Maximum of Quantity allows for a short list in German of facts pertaining to Faulmann, but the relevance of Faulmann to Vienna is left to implicature. Turning to the relationship between the written LL unit and spoken discourse, Figure 6.10 shows LL units which appear to be complete and authoritative, but which are linked to elements of further discourse that are not part of the signage. The street name plaque in Figure 6.10A appears to display an uncomplicated semantic equivalence between English and Chinese: corresponds in word order and literal meaning with . In the street map of Hong Kong, with its overlays of British colonial and Chinese influences (reviewed by Yann and Heller 2009), there is a zone in the Sai Ying Pun district with street names in numbered orderliness (itself indexical of a particular ideology of street naming): First Street, Second Street, Third Street. What would logically be Fourth Street is the High Street of Figure 6.10A. Since the street is the highest in the hilly topography of the area, both High Street and 高街 could plausibly be used as topographically descriptive terms. In British English, High Street is also used to refer a street or area of retail prominence (especially in fashion or consumer goods) and as a metonym for the consumer sector more generally. The most salient element of discourse, however, arises from linguistic and cultural taboo in Chinese, discussed by Chan Sin Yan (2016), Koh Morollo (2019), and others. The cultural taboo springs from the near-homophony between Chinese 四 ‘four’ and 死 ‘death’ and related words: Sung and 严棉 (1979: 24) and Newman (1996: 103–4) provide detail. The desire to avoid this homophony inspired citizens to demand a name change. The recognition of cross-language taboo is part of a larger pattern for Hong Kong street names: Yann and Heller (2009: 2) document other cases where the principle that ‘names written in Chinese should always have a “good meaning” such as

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Figure 6.10 High Street (Hong Kong, 2014); St. Mary’s Avenue (Galway, 2019)

longevity or good fortune, and must not sound like some other bad or impolite words’ results in asymmetry between English and Chinese odonyms. Thus, while the displayed names appear to show English and Chinese in onomastic and lexical-semantic symmetry, additional discourse about the names shows significant asymmetry, with the English name taking on an additional commercial connotation and the Chinese name shaped by naming practices rooted in language and cultural belief. Figure 6.10B illustrates a different relationship between the declaration of the LL unit and the discourse behind it. The Irish odonym Ascaill [‘Avenue’] Mhuire [‘[Saint] Mary’] corresponds lexically to the English name . What the sign does not mention, however, is that O’Leary’s Lane is an alternative name in oral tradition for the same thoroughfare. Tim O’Leary and his wife, known locally as Mom O’Leary, ran a shop

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and small hotel at the end of the street up until the early 1950s. This shop functioned as a place for conversation and social connection, and as Kenny (2019) documents, the street was, accordingly ‘known to everyone in Salthill as O’Leary’s Lane’. Unlike the displayed name, the odonym allocated by tradition also illustrates a principle of oral composition, where the alliterative formula and basic term lane substitutes for the official cartographic avenue. To the best of my knowledge, there is no tradition for an Irish-language spoken counterpart. Figure 6.10B draws attention to names and wayfinding discourse which circulate in speech as a theme in LL research. Odonyms and other topographic names which circulate orally are examples of allocated names, regardless of whether they are the only names (as with the D Walls of Figure 1.11) or alternative names (as in Figure 6.10B). Since they are not displayed names, they cannot be photographed. They are, nevertheless, entextualisations of spatial cognition that function inextricably with any system of displayed names. These oral entextualisations take on added sociolinguistic significance because they depend on shared linguistic practice and community knowledge to index their topographic referents. The relationship between the names of community usage and official systems of name allocation and display is illustrated by Gabbert’s (2007) discussion of the introduction of a Rural Addressing System in the city of McCall, ID (population 2,304 in 2004). This system allocated official names and numerical addresses to all streets and roads, and signage was erected accordingly. Gabbert’s (2007) presentation of quotations from her informants illustrates the entextualising of local knowledge. Gabbert’s (2007: 191) quotation of ‘Sheila’ describing how the two systems work as separate languages shows the use of non-displayed odonyms as something which, in Hymes’s (1975) terms, is salient enough to be interpretable, reportable, and repeatable in the right circumstances. It is a part of cultural knowledge: So it’s like in a way there is a certain language deal, because I don’t know the new names. . . . I have to go the old—what I knew. It’s like, ‘I don’t know where Forest Street is, but is it anywhere by the Chevron station?’ . . . You say, ‘OK, I know those two things.’ ‘So then Forest Street is right in front of it, it’s the one that runs from here to the Star-News, to the Congregational Church.’ ‘Oh, that’s Forest Street.’ So I have to go through an intermediary language, whatever, point, reference to get to what most people now just go, ‘On, it’s Forest Street.’

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The importance of this knowledge for community membership is further illustrated by Gabbert’s (2007: 197) account of a real estate agent from outside the community who learns and uses what Sheila calls ‘the old family names’. For Sheila, the use of these names is not just a marker of community membership, but a way of engendering trust. Having ‘absorbed’ and ‘learned’ the names, the outsider ‘hadn’t experienced them, he had no knowledge of them’. With this knowledge of the system, however, ‘he could use it, not in the fairest way’. As Sheila explains: He could cheat with it. He could cheat with it. And it was meant to be— a kind of a certain trustworthiness there and he knew how to cheat with it.

To understand the street name plaque as an LL genre is thus also to understand the role of oral performance in showing that the world as mapped by displayed names is not fixed, complete, or closed off from other discourses. While the street name plaque carries out the function of an assertive declaration, both the assertive and the declaration can be the subject of dispute, commentary, and other discourses. These discourses can thrive in crosslinguistic relationships. Klieger and Peltz (1997: 99), for example, use evidence provided by Mordkhe Shekhter to suggest that Yiddish speakers in New York who referred to Livonia Avenue in Brooklyn as levone (Yiddish ‘moon’) or Essex Street as esikstrit, corresponding to Yiddish ‘vinegar’, were not simply making mistakes relative to English, but using ‘cleverly (if not always consciously) construed strategies whereby immigrants could bring their worldview to bear on their accommodation in New York’. To seal off and focus exclusively on the LL of displayed names runs the risk of missing out on how physical LL units actually function in society, and of ignoring the related linguistic practices which fulfil complementary functions. As Banda and Jimaima (2015) point out, there are societies where practices of spoken language are more prominent than those of written display, and as Klieger and Peltz (1997) and Gabbert (2007) show, the written texts can work as a foil which highlights oral discourse in the life of the community. Genre in the LL relies not only on pragmatic intent, but on textual, physical, and emplacement features. As with all genres, the LL genre of the street name plaque allows for variation along its defining parameters. Minimally, this genre must include a name and a recognisable physical format that co-indexes other LL units within the same system, though the physical format can, as Järlehed (2017) discusses, show considerable variation within a single system. Changes in the requirements over time must also be accounted for within the genre. The general principle is that genre definition balances (a) the need to make a street

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Figure 6.11 Adapting generic features (Armagh, 2012; Brighton, 2016)

name plaque visually identifiable as a valid act of assertive declaration within a particular system of mutual belief, with (b) the need to allow for variation in the way the declaration is carried out. The sign viewer’s social knowledge is called on to identify what counts as variation within the genre and what should be regarded, for example, as (a) a counter-assertive or counter-declaration against a prevailing political authority; (b) an LL unit which displays a name that is not officially emplaced but stems from another source; or (c) an LL unit which looks like a street name plaque but has different pragmatic force and therefore belongs to a different genre. The ability of sign instigators to use the salient features of one genre in realising a different genre is illustrated in Figure 6.11. Figure 6.11A shows a UK-type roadway direction sign (similar to the street name plaque, but asserting distance and direction rather than bestowing names), while Figure 6.11B shows a restaurant name sign that uses many of the generic features of the roadway direction sign to convey its own message. Recognition of the readily identifiable UK road direction sign – with its distinctive green background and sans serif Transport typeface in a sign trimmed in white – is part of cultural knowledge in this polity. The generic borrowing in Figure 6.11B trades on this knowledge, since it uses a colour scheme, font, and layout that is similar to that of the road direction sign. The white arrows directing the potential customer towards the restaurant’s interior repurpose a design motif that is an essential feature of the road direction sign. The designation in white within a white-trimmed blue rectangle takes its format from road signs that are specific to high-speed motorways. The designation is not chosen at random, but is the name of the wellknown arterial route between Brighton and London. The restaurant is not on the A23, but it is close to it; the proximity of the route, together with its general

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familiarity, allow the signage to index the local while at the same time pointing to the regular movement of people between Brighton and London (cf. Figure 5.4A). The format of the black-trimmed rectangle with a white background is used for information in the UK road sign system, and the number within this rectangle uses a generic feature to make a local reference, since it is part of the restaurant’s street address. The significance of the directional road sign format in Figure 6.11A, however, is not simply that of a visual template. Those who know the visual code will also know that it represents governmental authority in the UK, and is tied to institutional practices regulating roads and transportation. The roadway direction sign is pragmatically different from the street name plaque; it does not confer a name on the spot, but is constrained to indicate distance and direction relative to a locale whose name must be presupposed. Using Seitel’s (2003: 286–87) terminology, the genre of Figure 6.11A is ‘institutionally bound’: not only is it controlled by a governmental agency, but the number of messages which the unit can contain (place names and directions, without any expansions of the type seen in Figures 6.9B and 6.9D) is constrained by the demands of the genre. The restaurant signage of Figure 6.11B, in contrast, represents a relatively ‘nonbound’ genre. The sign instigator has freedom to express varying content in presenting the restaurant’s persona. The appropriation of the generic features of a power-based institutional sign type by a local restaurant is thus an inversion of a power relationship that can easily be read as playful or subversive. The signage further indexes movement between London and Brighton, while the name indexes the food and culture of Thailand using the name Siam, which, like Bombay in Chapter 1, displays a name known from colonial practice rather than contemporary usage (see Juntanamalaga 1988). The borrowing of familiar and institutionalised features of one genre into the signage of another genre flouts Grice’s (1975) maxims: it appears to be falsely equating a governmental road sign with a local restaurant entrance, but flouting the Maxim of Quality makes the implicature that something clever or creative is going on. Cross-generic implicatures of this kind are common, and Järlehed (2017) gives a similar example: they rely on the exploitation of knowledge shared by sign viewer and sign instigator as to the differing generic expectations of LL units. 6.4.3

Regulatory Genres: Directives and Politeness

Regulatory genres are inherently face-threatening: they either tell the sign viewer to do what they might not otherwise do, or prohibit the sign viewer from doing what they might do if left to their own devices. As exemplified by the smoking prohibition in Figure 1.8A, these threats can be compensated for by linguistic politeness strategies which, in Brown and Levinson’s (1987)

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terms, support the sign viewer’s sense of regard (‘positive’ politeness) or minimise the nature of the imposition made by the LL unit on the viewer (‘negative’ politeness). One widespread kind of regulation, concerning the need to clean up dog excrement, invites indirect expression not only as a matter of linguistic politeness, but due to social taboos concerning the focus of the regulation. These expressive strategies may operate differently across languages and cultures, and though they have not been widely studied, I show some comparative data in Figure 6.12. The signs in this figure all belong to the same directive genre, but take different approaches to linguistic politeness, code choice, and performance. Figure 6.12A uses a euphemistic style, which hinges on the phrase curb your dog and uses please as a politeness marker. As Allen (1993: 50) explains, the curb was part of a system of street architecture in the development of nineteenth century New York ‘down from the sidewalk, onto the curb, into the gutter, and down the sewer’. Each of these parts has spawned its own lexical imagery. Curb your dog was popularised on New York signage in the 1930s

Figure 6.12 Dog cleanup discourse (Astoria, 2017; Warrenpoint, 2012; Kilkenny, 2016; Dublin, 2020, 2015, 2020)

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(‘Traffic’ sign 1937), and the phrase in Figure 6.12A is not based on the verb curb ‘restrain’, but is a specific directive to bring the dog to the curb (next to the gutter) in the interests of cleanliness. There is no direct mention of what the dog does at the curb. The directive force of the sign emplaced in New York in Figure 6.12A contrasts with the sample display in Figure 1.2. Figure 6.12B is more direct, since it refers to as a prohibited behaviour. The language does not indicate the nature of the fouling (itself a euphemistic term), but a cartoon-style graphic complete with wavy ‘smell’ lines radiating from a shape under a dog’s posterior makes the point clear. The strategy in Figure 6.12C also uses as a focal point but makes an explicit directive to the sign viewer. The parallel between the dog doing its and the done by the sign viewer flouts Grice’s Maxim of Quantity, since it does not offer information to clarify the difference between the two types of business, but the parallelism counts on the sign viewer’s real-world knowledge (complemented by the accompanying image) to engage the sign viewer in working out the implicature: this engagement strengthens the directive. Cross-linguistic differences in euphemism and elision are signalled in Figure 6.12E. In this bilingual Irish/English notice, English contains a directive that mentions the offensive object (albeit in a playful register), while Irish ‘clean it up’ does not mention what é ‘it’ refers to. Figure 6.12D introduces the vernacular element, since it shows a homemade sign which borrows from the generic form of the traffic sign. It also makes an intertextual reference to the catch phrase Smile, you’re on Candid Camera, popularised by the television show of the same name which ran in the US from 1948 into the 1990s and gave rise to spinoffs elsewhere (note Farkas 2002). It adds the threat I will post your picture here next. The vernacular signage in Figure 6.12F, however, issues a direct directive with no euphemism, politeness, or reliance on implicature. Since all the signs in Figure 6.12 could have followed the same strategy, the sociolinguistic question for the LL is why the other strategies were chosen by their respective sign instigators. 6.5

The Complexity of LL Genres

6.5.1

From LL Units to LL Ensembles

Thus far I have discussed LL genres in terms of individual LL units or their inter-relations in systems of units such as street name plaques. I have also taken it for granted that physically and textually separate combinations of units that are closely related in function – such as the restaurant front in Figure 5.11A and the signage for the pub in Figure 5.12 – constitute LL

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ensembles. These ensembles contrast with LL assemblages, in which more diverse groupings involving different modalities or more fragmented textual linkages nevertheless maintain a presence that distinguishes them from the surround: the Cosecha demonstration in Figure 1.10 and the Lennon Wall of Figure 6.2 provide examples. The notion of the assemblage has gained currency following the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987 [1980]), though as Nail (2017: 22) points out, Deleuze and Guattari use the word agencement ‘a construction, an arrangement, or a layout’ in the French original, rather than assemblage, which refers to joining together or assembling. Pennycook (2019) uses the assemblage notion to make sense of what he terms (p. 80) ‘the dizzying array of semiotic possibilities presented by an expanded notion of linguistic landscapes’ that includes ‘bodies, buildings, tattoos, sounds, smells, objects, space and much more’ (p. 85). I used the term assemblage in Kallen (2016b: 367) to refer to the co-presence of textual units and other means of expressing meaning in the LL. I develop this approach further in Section 6.5.2, analysing LL units in the context of a wider assemblage of signifiers, but not attempting to take on the entire semiotic assemblage as the subject for LL research. Before discussing such assemblages, I explore the LL ensemble as an analytical tool. The Bombay restaurant in Figure 1.5 displays 11 different LL units that each contain a coherent text with a discrete physical border. These units could be analysed separately, but they can also be grouped together on the grounds of their pragmatic, textual, and visual unity. Such unified ensembles are common in many enterprises. The 11 units are spread across five genres associated with restaurants: (1) the name sign; (2) the menu; (3) service provision signage relating to hours of opening and closing and the possibility of takeaway services; (4) markers of trust, in this case two indications of status, not visible clearly in the photograph; and (5) a help wanted genre, which is realised by an advertisement for a kitchen porter in the window near the door. Though the photograph thus shows a multiplicity of LL units and genres, it would be unrealistic to ignore their unity of purpose and separation from neighbouring LL units: they constitute an LL ensemble. The ensemble does not erase the individuality of each LL unit, but from the perspective of the sign instigator and the sign viewer, the ensemble effect is predominant. Examples of this kind suggest the LL ensemble as a higher level of genre than the genres based on individual LL units such as the street name plaque or the dog cleanup sign. In Figure 1.5, the designation in England indexes not only India as the THERE of remote reference, but claims that this restaurant is part of the genre of overseas (British) Indian restaurants. As is common in diasporic cultural settings, the Indian notion creates a large category by erasing geographic, political, and cultural boundaries that may exist in the homeland. Such broader categories allow not only for the

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breakdown of local distinctions, but for syncretism between homeland traditions and the host country. The LL is a part of this dynamic. Though some LL units – such as the help wanted sign with its technical term kitchen porter – contribute to the restaurant genre without specific Indian indexicality, and the sign contributes authenticity and trust by indexing more general Islamic practice, the effect of the ensemble is to appeal to the idealised sign viewer’s knowledge to establish that THIS restaurant is part of a familiar genre of restaurants. Individual units and genres such as the sign play their part, but it is the LL ensemble which interpellates the sign viewer. 6.5.2

The Overseas Irish Pub as an LL Assemblage

The greater complexity of the LL assemblage usually involves a looseness of connection between messages of the LL ensemble, and the inclusion of other means of expressing meaning. The LL assemblage may also include a wider range of referents than would be expected in more focused LL genres. In examining the overseas Irish pub as an LL genre, I suggested in Kallen (2018) that notions of community in the LL need to account for the local and remote references of complex LL genres. In particular, the complexity of the overseas Irish pub lies in its ability to index Irishness both locally and globally, and to index the distinctive affordance of informal conversation. In this sense, the LL of the overseas Irish pub is discourse about discourse. Overseas Irish pubs have received considerable attention in recent years, from market analysis (Muñoz, Wood, and Solomon 2006; Patterson and Brown 2007), cultural studies (Heininge 2013), ethnography (O’Carroll 2005), and other perspectives. Blommaert and Varis (2015) include overseas Irish pubs in their study of ‘enoughness’ and contemporary identity, understanding such pubs as a ‘globalized commodity’ (p. 11) which relies on a small number of signifiers: pub names; ‘Celtic lettering’; visual images such as the Irish flag, shamrock motifs, the Irish harp, the Claddagh ring, and the colour green; Irish music; and products such as Guinness stout, Jameson whiskey, and Kilkenny ale. By the use of such signifiers, Blommaert and Varis (2015: 13) state that ‘authenticity is manufactured by blending a variety of features, some of which – the defining ones – are sufficient to produce the particular targeted authentic identity’. Blommaert and Varis (2015) do not mention the Irish language as a feature of the commoditised Irish pub, but I discuss below the significant role which it plays. In discussing the following LL data, I start from the premise that the question of whether any particular LL unit or LL assemblage in a diaspora setting is authentic – or if true authenticity can be distinguished from commodified or manufactured faux authenticity – is not the right question for sociolinguistics. Authenticity is not a quality such as a colour, size, or shape.

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Rather, it is a relative concept, which in this case relies on a combination of mimesis – the imitation or replication of features in the homeland – and metaphor, by which claims are made that NEAR IS THERE. By the logic of metaphor, if the Dublin Grill is in Chicago, the name (HERE) equates the Dublin Grill (the NEAR of proximal space) with Dublin (THERE), and states that the qualities of Dublin are to be found in the Dublin Grill, even though it is located in Chicago. As with metaphors generally, such equations are selective and governed by cultural knowledge. In commercial contexts, these metaphors highlight aspects of any given THERE that are viewed positively (the use of time-honoured ingredients and preparation methods, the adherence to dietary laws, the historical attachment to place, etc.), but suppress other aspects of THERE, some of which (such as poverty, food scarcity, or political oppression) may have motivated people in the diaspora (or their ancestors) to leave the old setting for the new. Because the NEAR IS THERE metaphor is based on partial and selective equivalence, there is never a question that the NEAR place of the diaspora is actually an example of its counterpart over THERE. To the degree that the NEAR place uses language and engages in practices found THERE, it will resemble these counterparts, but there will be competing demands for the NEAR place to follow the demands of its immediate surroundings, and appeal to other publics. Bendix (1997: 9) addresses this paradox with the view that ‘the notion of authenticity implies the existence of its opposite, and this dichotomous construct is at the heart of what makes authenticity problematic’. Therefore, she argues (p. 21), ‘the crucial questions to be answered are not “what is authenticity?” but “who needs authenticity and why?” and “how has authenticity been used?”’. Considering the data in this section, the Irish pub in Chicago can never be just an Irish pub; it is, by definition, also a Chicago pub. The crucial questions in analysing the overseas Irish pub as an LL assemblage are thus: (a) how does the LL index notions of Irishness; (b) how does this indexation help to construct a distinct genre of place and practice; and (c) what affordances are associated with this genre? Though the results here are only preliminary, they suggest that while place and personal indexation in the LL follows patterns visible in other diaspora contexts (cf. the discussion of Greekness in Section 5.5.2), a distinguishing feature of the overseas Irish pub is the importance afforded to the pub as a venue for discourse. The examination of a global genre which seeks to establish the local in this particular way shows that Scollon and Scollon’s (2003: 145–46) distinction between ‘situated semiotics’ where meaning is ‘predicated on the placement of the sign in the material world’ and ‘decontextualized semiotics’ such as ‘brand names and logos’ and ‘national flags’ in which ‘all the forms of signs, pictures, and text . . . appear in multiple contexts but always in the same form’ can be reinterpreted in the overseas Irish pub, since an outwardly

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decontextualised signifier such as an Irish flag can become a local, situated symbol in particular contexts. My argument, in short, is not that specific sign units define this LL assemblage as a genre, but that the genre relies on a configuration of features which, taken together, mark out globally recognisable spaces as places for particular social experiences. The importance of discourse as a referent for this LL assemblage is put into perspective by Oldenburg’s (1999 [1989]: xxviii) notion of ‘the great good place’ or ‘third places’, defined as ‘distinctive informal public gathering places’ in which ‘the stranger feels at home’. Such places, says Oldenburg (1999: 22–40), achieve the goal of being ‘a home away from home’ by being construed as ‘neutral ground’ with social levelling, in which ‘conversation is the main activity’, relying on the presence of at least a core of regular participants. By a combination of these factors, as Oldenburg (1999: 37) puts it, ‘the persistent mood of the third place is playful’. Such places are culturally distinctive, and though most of Oldenburg’s examples are grounded in the culture of the US, the ‘English pub’ is one of his defining cases (see Oldenburg 1999: 123–44). For Oldenburg (1999: 125) the English pub can be understood as a third place not only because these pubs ‘are intimate, even cozy settings, designed more for an immediate neighbourhood than a horde of transients and sometime visitors’ but because ‘people like to feel at home and in no way must the customer be made to feel out of place.’ Though the pub in Ireland has its own distinctive history, it has been analysed within ‘third place’ research by Share (2003) and in the detailed ethnographic work of Scarbrough (2008). Classic anthropological studies and oral histories illustrate similar dynamics: see Arensberg and Kimball (2001 [1940]), Brody (1973), and Kearns (2014 [1996]). The status of the pub as a third place, however, takes on new interpretations in diaspora settings, which historically involve the movement and settling of people in a new host country, but now show additional dynamics that foreground mobility and reduce the expectation of long-term community establishment. With regard to the nineteenth century, Duis ([1977] 1995: 503) considers the development of the ‘ethnic saloon’ in Chicago as ‘a particularly public institution’: ‘it was not only public space, but it also seemed to be universal space’. Duis ([2004] 2005) characterises the Chicago ethnic saloon of the later nineteenth century in detailed terms, which include the ‘third place’ idea of a common space for social interaction, but go a step further in showing how such institutions catered to a range of practical needs: In neighborhoods where literacy was low, the bar provided the principal place for the exchange of information about employment, housing, and the many tragedies that beset the city’s poor; a savvy politician could turn his access to resources into votes. In slum districts, his place provided a safe for valuables, a telephone for emergencies, a newspaper for the literate, a bowl on the bar for charity collections. In factory districts,

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saloons became labor exchanges and union halls, as well as providing a place to cash paychecks.

The Irish saloon in late nineteenth century Chicago was made famous in the newspaper columns of Finley Peter Dunne, whose dialect writing reflected an immigrant Irish English-speaking community centred on the fictional saloon kept by one Martin Dooley in Archey Road (the name referencing Archer Avenue, which hosted a large Irish community at the time). The wide range of topics, conversational style, regular friendships, and in-group use of Irish English make Mr Dooley’s world one that, in real life, would have exemplified an Irish-American ‘third space’: see further Schaaf (1977), Fanning (1987 [1976]), and a linguistic commentary in Kallen (2013: 261–64). Whether part of the everyday experience of people who affiliate to Irishness or of the cultural imagination, the idea of the overseas Irish pub as a centre for discourse and social life has deep roots in Irish-American cultural history. Figure 6.13 illustrates different expressions of the overseas Irish pub genre in the LL. These expressions depend on the indexation of the homeland as well as local conditions and expectations. The photographs in Figure 6.13 are taken from a larger set of 40 overseas Irish pubs which I have photographed in North America, England, and continental Europe. The crucial elements which work as signifiers are (a) names; (b) the Irish language; (c) flags, shamrocks, and other visual images and objects; and (d) practices which include not only drink and food, but social activity and the opportunity for informal conversation. The use of Irish family names for pubs is not a trivial factor. As Molloy (2002) shows, Irish public drinking establishments share a history with their counterparts in Great Britain, but a variety of social, economic, and political factors have also given rise to many differences. Though English law had required the use of signs for pubs and inns since a decree by Richard II in 1393, and Berry (1910) documents the use of names (typically with illustrated signage) such as the Drapier’s Head, Hen and Chickens, and the Cock and Punch Bowl in eighteenth century Dublin paralleling common practice in England, Molloy (2002: 35) states that by the late nineteenth century it was far more common in Ireland to name pubs after the licence holder or the pub’s founding family. This practice gave such personal names the potential to index Irishness and to allow the figure of ‘the landlord’ to act as a metonym for the pub as a place of social interaction. Transplanted to the Irish diaspora, these indications of personal connection become especially important. Figure 6.13 illustrates five pubs which form a range of developments from the traditional third place pub setting in an immigrant Irish community to a globalised product that indexes Irishness without relying on close-knit community support. in Figure 6.13A indexes Irishness by the personal name and the term public house, a designation that

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Figure 6.13 Overseas Irish pubs (Woodside, Montreal, Vienna, Chicago, Liverpool, 2017)

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is much less common in the US than in Ireland or the UK. The central display is flanked by an Irish flag to the right and an American flag to the left. This dual-flag pattern is widespread in the Astoria–Albany sample: of eight other Irish pubs which displayed the Irish tricolour, the American flag was also displayed in all but one. The additional images of a fiddle and banjo index traditional Irish music, while the figure in the centre, featuring a middle-aged man in a tweed hat drinking a pint of beer, references traditional local clientele and culture. The pub is painted in a bright red which is common with overseas Irish pubs, as a distinct and recognisable alternative to the use of green. Woodside, where Maguire’s is located, is historically an Irish district, and the LL units of this ensemble are sufficient to establish the Irish identity of the pub. in Montreal embodies further indexation strategies. Though the pub only dates from 1997 (making it several decades newer than Maguire’s), the pub’s story is readily available online (McKibbin’s Irish Pub website) and forms part of its public image. The name McKibbin (seen in Figure 6.13C in a type face that reflects traditional Irish letterforms) is that of the great-great grandfather of one of the pub’s owners, who emigrated to Canada in 1913 on the Lusitania. The Lusitania was torpedoed near the Irish coast by German forces in 1915, resulting in the deaths of 1,198 people; Cobh in Co. Cork became the central point for the recovery of victims and survivors. As Molony (2004) documents, this connection has given the Lusitania special poignance in Irish history. The name of the pub is thus a personal one which also indexes a national Irish backstory. The Irish link is supplemented linguistically by the Irish-language greeting céad míle fáilte ‘one hundred thousand welcomes’ over the door shown in Figure 6.13B. Non-verbal indexicality includes the use of two Irish flags (without a Canadian flag), a green shamrock, and the doors in the shade of red associated with Irish pubs. Linked to the LL ensemble of the signage, food is also used indexically in the McKibbin’s assemblage. The menu fuses Irish and North American elements (e.g. Fighting Irish Nachos and Guinness Beef Nachos) with a ‘Traditional Irish Dishes’ section that includes and . Irish English boxty (from Irish bacstaí) designates a traditional bread made from grated potatoes, egg, flour, and salt, which may also include onion: see Cowan and Sexton (1997: 117–18) for further detail. The traditional Irish section also includes , which is not Irish in any historical sense but is, as Highmore (2009: 185) describes it, one of the ‘inventions peculiar to the UK high street itself’. Ahmed (2006: 62) notes the commercial success of chicken tikka masala – with 23 million portions a year sold in UK restaurants – and maintains that it ‘occupies a distinct “third space” between the purities of South Asian and British cuisine’ which ‘exists only because of the fusion of these cultural

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experiences’. Though it does not occupy the same position in Irish restaurants and ready-meal culture, it is certainly well-known in Ireland today. From the standpoint of an Irish pub in Canada, authenticity is thus indexed by reference to contemporary popular practice in the homeland: there are segments of Irish society today that would be much more familiar with chicken tikka masala than with boxty. Since the historical factors of large-scale Irish immigration and community settlement which apply in parts of North America are not applicable in continental Europe, in Vienna, represented by Figures 6.13D and 6.13F, indexes authenticity in a different way from Maguire’s or McKibbin’s. As shown in Figure 6.13D, the personal name for the pub is displayed on a green background in gold lettering which reflects the Irish manuscript tradition, and uses a Celtic graphic motif between the lines of text. The green motif continues in all signage and decoration on the exterior of the site. The pub has several windows which display objects that act as signifiers of authenticity. Figure 6.13F shows one such object – a post box painted in the green of the contemporary Irish postal system, with the Englishonly inscription . As mentioned in Chapter 1, this inscription is at odds with the bilingual system in Irish and English that was instituted in 1922, though relic inscriptions (as in Figure 1.13) are found throughout the country. Below the inscription is a rectangle which has a diagonal gash in it, but no text. It would appear that a British royal cipher was originally in this space, but has since been removed: keeping it would have been historically accurate, but would have disrupted the sense of Irishness for this signifier. Below this space is a bilingual plaque with postal collection times, reflecting current practice in the Republic. While a visibly old post box has no direct connection to the pub’s business, the artifact as an LL unit displays the Irish language and uses colour and layout to index its functioning counterparts in Ireland. The pub’s LL also includes a tie-in between Irish indexicality and situated language use in Vienna in a sign at the side of the building which ‘delivery’. This practical information is given in German, indicates but the sign maintains the indexical value of Irish letter forms. Dating from the same period as McKibbin’s, in Chicago (represented here by the menu in Figure 6.13E), indexes Irishness without indexing a local community or personal connections. Irish fadó ‘long ago’ is an intertextual reference to its frequency as an introductory element in traditional oral narratives: cf. bhí duine uasal ann fadó ‘there was a gentleman long ago’, bhí gabha ann fadó ‘there was a blacksmith long ago’, and bhí triúr fear i nGleann Sál fadó ‘there were three men in Glensaul long ago’ (Mac Thorcail 1942: 134, 135, 138). The main frontage of the pub adds the designation Irish pub, uses decorative spirals which are iconic of Celtic artistic motifs, and prominently displays a Guinness logo featuring an Irish harp design. As

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elsewhere in the LL, the non-use of elements can be as significant as their use: is differentiated from more old-style types of Irish pub because it does not display flags, shamrocks, or the familiar green or red colour schemes. This distancing is intentional, as the owner of the international Fadó chain of Irish pubs explains (Carswell 2015): The concept was: there were a lot of Irish pubs in the US, and by and large we didn’t think very much of the quality. They were sort of plastic shamrock kind of pubs and mostly appealed to expat Irish or Irish-American. We wanted to do for Irish pubs what Riverdance did for Irish music. We wanted to bring it into the present day. We wanted it to be for a broader population, a broader demographic.

Despite the absence of some familiar markers, the display of the Irish language, Irish-inspired decorative elements, and the promotion of Irish drinks, puts it clearly within the genre. What the Fadó signage also offers is , which explicitly indexes a feature that the more old-style pub will indicate by implicature. The Fadó website claims that ‘the most important part of the pub is the hospitality’, that ‘we talk about baking a lot of care, curiosity, and craic into each lunch’, and that the pub is designed with ‘many “snugs” – perfect little areas for bringing people together’. The word craic or crack has an identifying indexical value in Irish English, though it has a complex and sometimes disputed etymology. In Kallen (2013: 149–50) I review the lexical development of the word, and suggest that while it may ultimately stem from English crack ‘talk, conversation, gossip, chat’ and ‘a tale, good story, joke; gossip, scandal’ as found in Scotland and the north of England, it has also been adopted into Irish and reetymologised so that many speakers of Irish English view it as an Irish word. The spelling indexes this etymology. Native speakers of Irish whom I know have expressed a dislike for the word and view it as artificial – it is not, for example, found in Dineen’s (1934 [1927]) major dictionary – but it has a distinctive range of meanings in Irish English which differentiates it from British usage. Display of the word thus directly refers to the social practices of informal discourse and social relationships and indexes in-group language knowledge that goes with this socialising. Though the Fadó LL references only banter and leaves craic to the website, the latter term is displayed in many other Irish pubs, and is crucial in Figure 6.13H. Though the culinary outcomes of fusion, innovation, and tradition are not part of the LL, the linguistic display of culinary practice brings it into the LL assemblage. I represent Fadó with the portion of its outdoor menu in Figure 6.13E because it demonstrates the tension between globalisation and tradition in the diaspora. The word boxty occurs frequently in Figure 6.13E, as in boxty wedges, potato boxties, chicken boxty quesadilla, and the boxty ‘blini’. The usage here departs from tradition, since ‘potato boxty’ is a

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redundancy unlikely to be used in vernacular Irish English, and such terms as the ‘boxty blini’ bring Irish English boxty and Russian блины́ ‘small pancakes’ together in novel ways. Other words in this excerpt index, depending on the viewer’s perspective, other languages and cultures, or the international lexicon of contemporary cuisine: Spanish pico (short for pico de gallo, literally ‘rooster’s beak’, which denotes a type of salsa or a salad, depending on tradition), tacos, and quesadilla; French (via Provençal) aioli; Jamaican English (via Spanish) jerk; and the ‘Bavarian pretzel’. While other LL units, as in Figure 4.14, establish authenticity by indexing the REMOTE in the LOCAL either geographically or socially, the menu in Figure 6.13E does not aim for this kind of indexicality. Rather, it is closer to a display of metrolingualism as put forward by Otsuji and Pennycook (2010: 246), which describes ‘the ways in which people of different and mixed backgrounds use, play with and negotiate identities through language’, where the ‘focus is not on language systems but on languages as emergent from contexts of interaction’. Since this menu is not a spontaneous conversational interchange, it does not arise in the kind of discourse described by Otsuji and Pennycook (2010), but by displaying an easy familiarity with an international lexicon and with fusions of food practice, this LL unit indexes the pub as a site of innovation and boundary-crossing. By using the indexicality of an Irish THERE as a path to index a global, metrolingual THERE, the menu reflects an aspiration to , as displayed at the left of the figure. The Liverpool pub in Figures 6.13G and 6.13H invokes elements of grounding in tradition, while at the same time departing from it. The pub does not use a family name, though the fascia and the signboard above it show the influence of Irish-style letterforms. The name is a playful anglicised spelling of Irish póg mo thóin ‘kiss my arse’. Since this fixed phrase is well-known to many English speakers who have little productive knowledge of Irish, the spelling leads the reader phonetically to an element of in-group knowledge. This in-group status takes on value in overseas contexts: while póg mo thóin would never be used to name a pub in Ireland, an internet search shows Irish pubs in Toronto, Milan, and Kiel, for example, which also use the phrase in their name. This use of Irish, the familiar red colour used throughout the shopfront, and the Guinness logo over the door link the locale unquestionably to the overseas Irish pub genre. More crucially, especially in an area with a large Irish community and continuing movement between Ireland and the overseas site, the pub offers craic as an affordance. The sandwich board in Figure 6.13H offers the sign viewer a contrast between ‘real life’ outside the pub and a combination of inside. The LL ensemble thus combines a playful use of Irish that signals in-group membership without expecting linguistic proficiency, and the offer of discourse in a ‘third place’ as described by Oldenburg.

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Though the discussion in Sections 6.4 and 6.5 is necessarily limited, it raises important issues for a discourse approach to the LL. These examples show that genre in the LL is not only concerned with the genre of the sign unit, but with the genre of the ensemble and the genre of the assemblage. While some LL genres are focused at the level of the LL unit, there are configurations of language display, emplacement effects, and the social situation which define higher-level genres that can only be identified when LL units are taken together as a group. The indexicality of the LL means that LL ensembles and assemblages in turn index genres of locales, where the LL plays a vital role in signalling the particular affordances of the locale. Locales are usually taken for granted on the basis of pre-existing categories such as school, offices, restaurants, shops, or local religious units, but understanding the LL as discourse makes it possible to change the focus from asking how these categories display language, to asking how the LL constructs locales in which communicative events of particular kinds take place. 6.6

Multiple Discourses in the LL

This chapter has examined single LL units as discourse, and examined the way LL assemblages account for large-scale LL configurations, but it has not asked whether the LL should be understood as a single discourse composed of many elements, or as many discourses which exist side-by-side with relative independence. Much LL research contains an ambiguity concerning territorial boundaries: researching ‘the LL of Place X’ could be seen as (a) researching an LL which stops at the geographical and political boundaries of Place X, or (b) researching one global LL, a slice of which exists in Place X. One advantage of taking position (a) is that it creates a sense of boundedness which facilitates the quantitative observation of the display of specific languages in the LL. Researching the effect of language policy on the LL naturally benefits from working within the polity where the relevant policies have political effect. At the same time, there is strong evidence to support position (b): the international sample of scriptographic effects in Figure 3.13 shows that these effects can happen anywhere; the signs in Figure 5.13 are linked to each other by globalisation although they exist in completely disconnected physical and political environments; and the globalisation of the Irish diaspora gives the unconnected LL units of Figure 6.13 common and distinctive properties. Intertextuality gives further support to position (b), since it links texts with texts across the boundaries of polity, community, and genre. A combination of these positions is illustrated by Ben-Rafael and BenRafael’s (2019) approach to the LL of five cities which they describe as ‘world cities’: each city (as well as a handful of other cities described in less detail) is described not only in independent terms as a geopolitical entity with its own

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LL, but as part of a network of globalising, multicultural, and multilingual practices. I expressed an approach to the problem of discourse and scope in the LL with the view (Kallen 2010: 42) that the LL is not a single system, but rather ‘a confluence of systems, observable within a single visual field but operating with a certain degree of independence between elements’. As I discuss further in Section 8.3.3, this view contains an argument against the over-use of quantitative methods in the field: to count all tokens of Language X and all tokens of Language Y as if they were alternative ways of ‘doing the same thing’ makes no sense if tokens of Language X occur only in public signage as required by government policy, while tokens of Language Y occur because local market stalls use Language Y in order to appeal to customers using a widespread vernacular. Returning to Goffman’s (1986: 25) framing question ‘What is it that’s going on here?’, I suggested (p. 43) that what is ‘going on here’ in the LL could be understood in terms of ‘spatial frameworks within the linguistic landscape’. The five frames which I proposed – the ‘civic frame’, ‘the marketplace’, ‘portals’, ‘the wall’, and ‘the detritus zone’ – were an attempt to separate the different kinds of discourse which potentially operate in any given segment of the LL, though I suggested that additional frames could also be at work. These five frames were intended as ways of dividing the LL spatially, but they actually mixed spatiality and features of authorship. The signs that are physically on ‘the wall’ could be from a governmental authority, a business, or a car park provider, and therefore participate in different discourses, regardless of their common use of a wall as ground for the LL unit. Following the discussion in Section 6.4.1, I argue in this volume that Goffman’s frame theory has most value for understanding how sign instigators cue sign viewers to assign an LL unit to a genre: the genre is the answer to the question ‘what is it that’s going on here’. The complexity of discourses in any given segment of space can then be accounted for by saying that different genres (such as the regulatory sign, the commercial shop sign, the street name plaque, and more complex LL assemblages) involve particular discourses. Across genres there will be both shared features and discrepancies that separate one genre from another: a street name plaque is similar to a public health notice because both are emplaced by a civic authority, but they differ between the pragmatics of naming a location and, for example, exhorting members of the public not to smoke. These pragmatic differences allow for different linguistic strategies. It may be that while all street name plaques in a polity use Language X and Language Y bilingually as a matter of policy, the anti-smoking signs use Language X, Language Y, Language Z, and inter-language graphics. Where sign viewers are alerted by framing to the presence of LL units which belong to different genres, they are open to LL units engaging in different discourses which include differences of content, form, and linguistic expression.

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Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael (2012) describe the chaos of multiple discourses in the urban LL as ‘un chaos intelligible’. To make sense of this chaos, I would compare it to a traditional print newspaper, in which different and independent (sometimes contradictory) discourses take place side-by-side while editors allocate space, give some discourses prominence over others, and in other ways shape textual coherence. This newspaper, though, is not the idealised layout of a page as the editors send it to be printed, but a physical page which bears not only the planned contributions of writers, editors, and advertisers, but the effects of other forces over time: the person who has filled in the crossword and written in the margins or drawn a moustache on the face of a leading politician, the coffee spilt on the front page, and the fading and curling of the paper which follows if the newspaper is kept for a long time. To address the multiple discourses in the ‘intelligible chaos’ of the urban street scene, Figure 6.14 shows a relatively simple example from Belfast. Looking from right-to-left, we note at street level the division between the road and the footpath; the footpath is constructed with bricks and paving slabs and a stone border which separates it from the road. Allen’s (1993) discussion of the New York streetscape quoted above suggests that this purely physical, non-linguistic bit of urban design can have significance for discourse. The perimeter of the road is painted with a single white line, using the symbolism of road markings to indicate that parking is legal in this area but subject to restrictions. The border between the area designed for road traffic and that for the pedestrian flow is reinforced by other installations, each of which is an opportunity for LL display. This boundary zone contains two signal boxes, a pole for hosting banners, a bicycle parking stand, several trees, one post box, two rubbish bins, several bollards which prevent vehicles from mounting onto the footpath, a bus shelter, a phone box, and an information kiosk: for detail, see the excerpted closeup in Figure 6.15B. The remains of graffiti and stickers are visible on the signal boxes; though old examples have been removed, more will probably be put up in due course. The pole hosts a large banner which says ; a comparable banner on a pole adjacent to the viewpoint for Figure 6.14 is shown in Figure 6.15F. The distinctive shape and bright red colour of the post box index the Royal Mail postal service in the UK, and the box is a support for images and text, all in English, which also display this identity. Another distinctive shape and colour motif for the telephone box indexes the British Telecom (or more recently BT) brand. The box includes BT-related information in English, but an affordance of an unattended telephone box is that it can support other paid advertising and serve as a ground for graffiti, stickers, cards, and other ephemera. These items often bear messages in various languages. The rubbish bins are monolingual in English, and

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Figure 6.14 Multiple discourses in a Belfast Street view (2019)

display an official notice using black against a yellow background to issue the directive Keep Belfast Clean, with threats of fines for violations on account of litter or dogs. The trees sport lanterns which commemorate the Chinese New Year and have been sponsored by the Chinese community and by Belfast City Council. While this zone is heavily laden with the voice of civic authority, regulating and reflecting systems of movement in the public space, it also affords opportunities for other LL instigators to occupy this space in different roles. The tendency of these messages, whether official or unofficial, to be physically small and linguistically short is not accidental: it is a function of their position in the flow of pedestrians. The small-message format of this marginal zone gives extra importance to the officially emplaced banner which

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Figure 6.15 Disentangling discourses in Belfast (2019)

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uses lines of vision to enable its large size and spatial elevation to communicate across a wide area. Space that is legally private but is treated as public space in so far as members of the public have physical access to it under certain conditions comes to the left of the zone for pedestrian passage in Figure 6.14. The interface between the space of this private activity and the zone of public passage is richly marked with LL units. When viewed at the level of shop fascia, these LL units form a series which constitutes a commercial discourse. The closeup in Figure 6.15A shows an employment agency (), an unoccupied commercial unit, a women’s leisure wear shop ( incorporating the brand logo), cafe, another vacant premises, shoe shop, a phone repair shop, an shop, and the global bank, whose logo is visible at the far right. Prominent above the fascia level is an additional sign which is directed towards the management of space, since it advertises retail premises to let. The perspective of Figure 6.14 does not show shopfronts, so in Figure 6.15 I change the viewpoint slightly in order to capture a multilingual display from the local outlet of the Nisbets cooking supply chain, which uses a ‘Chinese-style’ English font to advertise sales relevant to the Chinese New Year, and includes a window with the Chinese word 猪 zhū ‘pig’ to mark the ‘year of the pig’ in the Chinese calendar (see Figures 6.15C and 6.15D). Most of the other signage in this zone uses English exclusively, though represents further globalisation, since the German word (‘shoe’) of the brand name refers to a British-based shoe company: for further discussion of the Schuh brand and globalisation in the LL, see Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha (2010: 28–9). Size becomes a part of signification in the LL ensemble, since a space such as the shop window in Figure 6.15C allows some sign instigators more scope for large and visually salient displays than would be possible in the marginal zone of small messages: see also Varga (2000) on related questions of size and support in LL units. The border between the zone of public passage and the places of private property that are conditionally open to the public is as rich in private commercial signage as the zone of the pedestrian footpath is in the voice of public authority. Two other free standing LL units from this locale point further to the role of editing in the LL. The alcohol prohibition in Figure 6.15E is on a free standing pole to the right of the street that features in Figure 6.14. Its location is thus at a distance from the public periphery zone of Figure 6.15A, and it occupies a higher space than the signage in this zone. This use of horizontal isolation and vertical raising sets the LL unit apart from the zone of the pedestrian footpath and the commercial boundary zone, enhancing its visibility and giving additional authority to this unit of regulatory discourse. Similarly aloof is the banner in Figure 6.15F, which is on a pole adjacent to the spot from which

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I photographed Figure 6.14. This banner is from the BelfastOne group, whose purpose is to redevelop and stimulate commerce in the Belfast city centre. The invitation to uses the highly characteristic Ulster Scots word wee ‘little’, which is widely used in the Ulster dialects of Irish English (see Kirk and Kallen 2011: 272). The phrase wee bite is not aimed towards any specific business, but uses in-group language to index the practice of eating socially in Belfast. Looming over the movements of pedestrians and traffic, as well as the public-private interface of commercial life, banners of this kind give authority to the generalised activities which they encourage. The identification of divisions within complex spaces such as the urban vista has important consequences for understanding the LL. Figure 6.14 shows that each LL unit is rooted in its own set of choices that determine markedness and indexicality. The post box in this scene, for example, follows an official language policy that does not allow for any code choices in Northern Ireland. Its use of code choices thus indexes language policy in the UK, but not the presence of any linguistic minorities. The dustbins, however, do allow for code choices within the terms of language policy in Northern Ireland: in Rostrevor, for example, rubbish bins that are bilingual in Irish and English contrast with the monolingual English bins in Figure 6.15B. Whereas the nonuse of Irish by local civil authorities instigating street name plaques, rubbish bins, and other LL units represents a socially meaningful choice within Northern Ireland language policy, the non-use of Chinese does not carry the same meaning, since language policy does not provide Chinese as an option in these contexts. Within the zone of private businesses, however, the display of Chinese and Chinese-inspired typography in Figures 6.14 and 6.15 uses a marked code that indexes a specific community and a time-related cultural practice; the display therefore becomes a meaningful choice. Code choices, in other words, are not determined by abstract space, as a term such as ‘The Belfast LL’ might imply: they are determined genre-by-genre according to the pragmatic and communicative intentions of sign users. Adapting Scollon and Scollon’s (2003: 194–95) notion of the ‘semiotic aggregate’ to the specifics of the LL, I suggest that the interactions of LL genre, language policy, the authorial voice of the sign instigator, and the social structuring of movement through spaces of different kinds show that the LL is not a single discourse. Rather, it is an aggregate of discourses that exist physically side-by-side, oriented towards different participants and purposes, and indexing different linguistic affordances. These different discourses may include competition – one restaurant uses the LL to entice customers and reject the competing enticements of other restaurants; one political candidate persuades voters to the detriment of another – but discourses are often simply juxtaposed and do not engage with each other. The state, for example, usually

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has no competitors in the LL of street name plaques, postal services, and public utilities: where it does face unofficial competition (as when non-sanctioned languages are used to paint over regulatory signs or in the emplacement of unofficial street name plaques), markedness of a special kind arises, as in the fragmentary heterotopias of Figures 4.16 and the word choice conflict in Figure 5.5A. Small shops and professional services in many countries, on the contrary, can use code choices and indexicality to interpellate sign viewers, whether they are in the most general public of strangers in motion or in more intimate and specific networks of people. When the LL is thus broken down into networks of discourses which are spatially linked and edited by the forces of urban development, but operate with their own sense of who speaks to whom in what way and for what purpose, even the most chaotic urban vista is indeed intelligible.

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7

Time, Space, and the LL

7.1

The LL in the Perspective of Time

7.1.1

Mediating Time in the LL: The Observer’s Present

From the preceding discussion, it would appear that a general characteristic of the LL unit is that it performs a speech act in the sign viewer’s present by displaying an act of writing that occurred in the past. The dual nature of the LL unit as the mediator between what was once the sign instigator’s present and the present time of the sign viewer establishes a metaphor. Taking the sign viewer’s point of view, the time at which an LL unit was emplaced can be understood as THEN time, in contrast to the NOW time, when the LL unit is perceived: the metaphor is that THEN IS NOW. In the example of the street name plaque, the plaque as an LL unit continues to perform the act of nomination in NOW time, even though the emplacement of the act took place in THEN time. The default expectation is that speech acts such as nomination, enticement, regulation, and so forth, which take place in the NOW time of their emplacement, maintain their force continuously into any future sign viewer’s NOW time. In principle, no matter how old the LL unit, its presence in NOW time makes its expressed speech act one of current relevance. The reality of the LL is not as simple as this default expectation. Part of the fascination of an LL unit from antiquity is that it brings the sign instigator and the sign viewer into discourse across a chasm of time: in this way, people from the past actually speak to us. Although the THEN IS NOW metaphor still holds, the reliance of LL units on implicature and background knowledge means that the sign viewer in NOW time may not have enough information to interpret the LL unit of THEN time fully. The historical LL unit in Figure 1.12, for example, is comprehensible for a sign viewer who can understand the Latin and the religious symbolism in NOW time, but it is also obscure, since the referents of and , which were understood in THEN time, are no longer known. Though the LL unit has lost its original function, it has added the function of indexing the general past in today’s LL in a way that was not anticipated by the sign instigator. A tourist searching for the experience of 218

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history, a local official proud of the antiquity of the city, or an individual who dislikes the continuing presence of a remnant of colonisation may interpret the present-day LL unit in different ways, but in all cases the LL unit interpellates the sign viewer and brings them into contact with the original sign instigator and with those who have successively repurposed the unit. Other LL units add time reference not only to the NOW time of the sign instigator’s present, but to an earlier time invoked by the text. Historical commemoration, as in Figures 1.14 and 6.9D, uses direct reference to index a time before the sign instigator’s present. In so doing, the LL unit brings the sign viewer into contact with both the THEN time of the sign instigator and the earlier ‘time before time’. The unofficial street name plaques in Figures 4.16 and 4.17C emerge as disruptive not only because they bestow names that are not officially recognised, but because they interrupt the unmarked NOW time of the street naming system with references to THEN times which the official system does not recognise. Since the political authority in most jurisdictions claims a monopoly on the use of street name plaques to commemorate historical times, the injection of unofficial or subversive THEN times by an LL unit can have major political implications. Despite the complexity of time relationships in the LL, most LL research relies on data which is collected by the observer in the present and analysed accordingly. Particularly where quantitative methods are used, the picture which emerges from fieldwork may be presented as if it describes the LL at a fixed moment in time, but this observer’s present is almost always an interval of some duration. Reliance on the observer’s present does not rule out the possibility of looking at the time factor in the LL, since LL units of the present can commemorate the past, retain messages and indexicalities from past political and linguistic regimes, adapt to new contexts of use, show the physical effect of layering new elements onto old LL units, and so on. Examples such as Pavlenko (2009), Marten (2010), Woldemaram (2016), Train (2016), Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael (2016), Bock and Stroud (2019), Blackwood (2020), Phan (2021), and studies edited by Blackwood and Macalister (2020) show a range of approaches to time factors in the LL. A smaller number of studies – such as those by Pavlenko (2010), Guilat and Espinosa-Ramírez (2016, 2020), and Moore (2019) – integrate historical documentation and evidence from the more remote past into the analysis of the present. This approach creates two observer’s presents: one from the documentary record and a later one from contemporary signage. A conceptually different approach incorporates Bakhtin’s (1981 [1937–38]) notion of the chronotope into the analysis. For Bakhtin (1981: 84), the chronotope denotes ‘the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships in literature’, in which ‘spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole’. Time, in this analysis, ‘thickens,

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takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible’, while space ‘becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history’ (see also Bemong and Borghart 2010 for a review). LL studies which see the display of time and space in terms of chronotopes include Pietikäinen’s (2014) analysis of Sámi signage in Finland, Lyons and Karimzad (2019) on uses of nostalgia and modernity in India, Guissemo (2019) on postcolonial Maputo, and Baro’s (2019) analysis of authenticity in Johannesburg. My argument, however, is that the fusion of time references in the space of the LL is a necessary feature of the LL in general, and that displays which appear as specific chronotopes are examples of much wider patterns. In the following section, I therefore suggest an approach which treats the LL as a dynamic confluence of times, in which the observer’s present is not taken for granted, but understood within a more complex whole. 7.1.2

Fragmenting and Uniting Time in the LL

Though the THEN IS NOW metaphor sets the general tone for the LL, other aspects of the time factor enter into research methodology and the conception of the LL. Consequences follow, for example, from recognising the observer’s present as an interval, rather than a point in time. It is only over an interval that the observer can perceive and process a multiplicity of LL units. The more the observer’s present extends geographically, the more it will necessarily extend in time, whether the extension is to observe all the signage on one street, a city district, or an entire city. The extension of time also brings in the inevitability of change. Some changes are regulated by periodic factors: many commercial sign units are lit up and turned off at various times in a daily and weekly cycle, seasonal LL units are emplaced and replaced, national and community holidays and commemorations carry their own LL engagements, and so on. The LL in today’s NOW time may resemble the LL of NOW time yesterday or tomorrow, but it will also differ in ways that range from the minute to the dramatic. The LL units of passing buses, vans, and people as sign instigators or sign animators provide an instability to the LL, but these units are an integral part of what constitutes the LL at any given time and call for suitable observation techniques. The language of research methodology makes it possible to package observations from extensions in time and space as if they occurred in a single, truly synchronic, moment. I can say that the fieldwork from Astoria which is reported here was conducted between the 19th and 25th April 2017, but even this short interval is not a synchronic moment. The LL as I report it was revealed only successively, through my emerging familiarity with the territory, and my record takes only a small account of the comings and goings of mobile LL units and of any changes in stationary LL units, whether periodic or

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unpredictable. The figures in Table 5.2 look like synchronic observations, but since they come from nearly a week of observation, there is no guarantee that they represent the reality of any actual moment in time: a marker of Greekness seen on one day could be gone or supplemented by an additional marker on the next day, and the table cannot show this change. I already know of several changes to the LL as I have presented it in this volume: a Turkish restaurant had replaced the Bombay Restaurant (Figure 1.5) by the time of my latest visit to Brighton in 2018; I understand from the internet that Bartunek’s (Figure 6.5A) has changed its shopfront, and the vernacular dog cleanup messages of Figure 6.12D and 6.12F are no more. Capturing the dynamism of the LL, both in the psychology of the observer’s perception and in the tangible landscape, is a challenge which calls for further methodological development. A deeper problem for the time structure of the LL is the array of THEN times which confront the observer. Within a particular spatial segment, one LL unit may be from Time1, and be emplaced next to a unit from Time2, while a nearby LL unit from Time3 may partly obscure one from Time4. Though there is, as I suggest in Chapter 6, an environmental editing which influences the terrestrial distribution of units, it is far from rigorous and is not focused on time. Even if, as in Figure 6.14, the signage on rubbish bins lies at the margins of the zone of pedestrian flow while shop signs occupy the boundary between this zone and the zone of commercial public space, there is no systematic way to predict which LL units from these spatial zones will have older or more recent emplacement times. Within the idealisation of instantaneous observation, the observer’s present sees all these units at once in NOW time. It is also in this time that a quantitative approach gives a picture of the distribution of code choices within the LL. Crucially, however, the NOW of the observer’s time is completely different from the NOW time of the sign instigator. The THEN time indexed by each LL unit in the observer’s present is based on its own original NOW time. The code choices, message content, emplacement features, and pragmatic force for each LL unit stem from this THEN time, and not from the observer’s present. The discrepancy between THEN time (indexed in the sign instigator’s NOW time) and the observer’s NOW time gives rise to the metaphor THEN IS NOW for each individual unit. This metaphor cannot not hold for the LL as a whole, because each LL unit indexes a potentially different THEN time. Though the gap between the sign instigator’s present and the sign viewer’s present forms a temporal context for the LL unit, the unit itself also has internal temporal qualities. These qualities include (a) temporal reference, in which the text of the LL unit refers directly to time; (b) alignments to time signalled by language choice, scriptography, visual imagery, choice of medium and ground, and other such strategies which work as time inflections attached to the referential message of the unit; and (c) unit time as indexed directly by the

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LL unit, not as the result of the sign instigator’s choice but as a consequence of the unit’s status as a physical object. Time inflections are free to roam over a variety of temporal references: one LL unit from the current time may use an art deco typeface to index some notion of the past, while another may index a periodic event such as the New Year and refer to an impending celebration which is part of a regular cycle of New Year commemorations stretching to a past in antiquity. Unit time is often indicated by natural consequences such as the degenerating effects of weathering, fading, and incidental damage, but may derive from such features as the choice of medium and ground. Gilt lettering in windows, the use of neon signage, and hand painted fascia signs were all more common at certain times in the past, and the default expectation now is that such signs in the observer’s present are relatively old. A sign instigator can take advantage of this expectation and add a time inflection to a new sign, using features which look old in order to index continuity, authenticity, nostalgia, or the coolness of retro fashion. The fundamental principle which emerges in this necessarily brief critique is that the observer’s present is a convenient fiction that collapses a dynamic, changing landscape into a steady state for the purpose of analysis. This fiction is comparable to the notion of the specious present associated with William James (see Andersen and Grush 2009 for a review). Becker (1932: 226–27) invokes this concept in his approach to history, pointing out that the ‘specious present’ can be a relatively short period (as in ‘the present year’) or a more extended one such as ‘the present generation’; whatever the period chosen, it inevitably contains ‘more or less of the past’, from which ‘the future refuses to be excluded’. The same principle holds for the LL. The observer’s experience of the LL includes a multiplicity of elements from the pasts of different sign instigators, inflected by time references within each LL unit, and pointing towards the future behaviour, affect, and cognition of people who are interpellated by LL units. The LL, in other words, is not only what is seen directly in the idealised observer’s time, but is composed of discourses that spring from other times and which index still more times – past, present, and future. The complex and multivocal fusion of times in the space of the LL is anticipated by other approaches to space and time. In Chapter 4 I cited Bender’s (2002) view that ‘Landscape is time materialized’. Conversely, Ethington (2007: 466) argues that ‘the past cannot exist in time: only in space’. Consequently, ‘natural or cosmic “time” cannot be a container or background of any spatial sort, in which to travel. Time is travel’ (p. 472). Whether we see the landscape as the materialisation of time or time as a succession of places is a question that goes beyond the scope of LL research. Either way, these considerations determine that the LL cannot be understood only in the fictionally instantaneous present of the observer’s time, but must follow the complex

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interweaving of times brought together in the landscape. In the rest of this chapter, I explore some aspects of this time factor in the LL. 7.2

Capturing the Present

Figure 7.1 shows a simple setting which illustrates the complexity of capturing the present in the LL. Figure 7.1A includes four LL units, while Figure 7.1B shows five. Unlike the LL ensemble or assemblage as I have discussed in Chapter 6, these units do not work together towards any sense of common purpose. I refer to them as an LL aggregate to reflect both their relative independence and their co-presence at the moment of observation; methodological issues pertaining to LL aggregates are discussed further in Chapter 8. Most prominent in each photograph is a milestone at the left, giving the distance from the spot of emplacement to the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin’s city centre in one direction and the village of Malahide in the other. To the right of the milestone is a graffiti tag, over which are the remnants of a poster; though only the taped edges of the poster are now in place, they imply the presence at one time of a notice that was placed over the graffiti. Figure 7.1A also shows a van with the inscription in the far distance; a closeup view is in the inset at the bottom of the photograph. This van’s signage includes visual images which use icons to index plumbing and heating services, and a telephone number. Other elements in the semiotic order of social life are visible in Figure 7.1A and fit into Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) concept of the semiotic aggregate: traffic lights and signal boxes to the right, traffic signs whose backs are included in the photograph, and the planting of daffodils maintained by Dublin City Council, barely visible at the right of the black car in the inset. These features are not visible in Figure 7.1B, in part because of the angle of the photograph, but also because the foliage in Figure 7.1B blocks the view of some of these units. This seasonal factor is not trivial, since it conditions the sign viewer’s experience of the LL by changing the lines of vision and perception. Figure 7.1B contains two new LL units: a sticker which says , placed inside the frame provided by the defunct notice seen in Figure 7.1A, and a directional traffic sign using Irish on the top in a smaller font and English on the bottom in a large font using all capitals, with an arrow to indicate the direction for traffic to follow. The inscriptions in Irish and English carry the same meaning. The van in Figure 7.1A is not present in Figure 7.1B, but another van is; the implication is that while the presence of any one van in this area is transient, the presence of vans which may carry signage in this line of sight is a recurrent event. The time relationships captured in Figure 7.1 provide a focus of interest. I took the photograph in Figure 7.1A at 11.34 in the morning on 10th February

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Figure 7.1 Milestone aggregate (Dublin, 2021)

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2021 in Dublin; Figure 7.1B is from roughly the same spot, and was taken at 9.32 on 28th September 2021. These times co-ordinate the observer’s present with a world-wide system of timekeeping and create a sense of the instantaneous, but they only indicate a fraction of the temporal structure of the scene. Though the milestone is the most prominent element, it has no internal marker of its time of emplacement, nor does it make any other temporal reference. It is pragmatically an assertive, putting a locational and directional fact on display. As with most LL units, the milestone implicates much more than it says, and external evidence is needed to understand the implicatures. This milestone is one of a series which, according to Montgomery (2004), was initiated shortly after 1810 as part of a programme to improve the postal service between London and Dublin. The establishment of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland following the Act of Union, which took effect in 1801, had by this time brought Ireland more directly under British rule. Linking the postal services of London and Dublin was legally a matter of internal communication, and substantiated a prevailing notion of empire: see Hughes (2015) for further detail. As part of this development of the postal system, the first of these milestones marked the road between Dublin and the harbour at Howth, while subsequent milestones marked the route for nearby Malahide. The NIAH website gives the milestone in the figure a date of ca. 1850. The GPO which is indicated on the milestone was opened to the public in 1818 as another part of the improvement of postal services. As Buckley (2016) and Ferguson (2016) explain, the GPO was the culmination of a series of developments for a central Dublin post office, which shifted the centre towards business rather than administrative authority. The postal history points to other aspects of this milestone as an LL unit. As shown in Figure 4.8, contemporary signage in the Republic of Ireland uses kilometres to measure distance. While historic milestones routinely give distances in miles, miles from the time the stone of Figure 7.1 have political significance. As Montgomery (2004) points out, the miles which these milestones refer to are not Irish miles (2.048 km), but the shorter English statutory mile (1.609 km). Both systems were in use at the time the milestones were erected, but the use of English miles on a Dublin–London postal route was an indexation of colonial rule. The milestone in Figure 7.1, however, is not only a trace of a past act of emplacement: it is also a speech act in an ongoing present. Since the unit is still approximately two miles from the GPO and seven miles from Malahide, the assertive which it originally expressed is still valid, and is still relevant to the viewer. The temporal metaphor THEN IS NOW is upheld here, showing the present of an LL unit as an elastic present, which stretches from the time of emplacement to a continuing succession of sign viewers’ NOW times. The sign instigator would have been aware of the milestone’s broader role in the

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political and social world of its time, but has pared down the text to the speech act necessities of place and distance. Pivoting around this continuity, the markedness values of the LL unit have changed: the unmarked monolingual English code choice and the markedness attached to using English statutory miles in the sign instigator’s time clash with the markedness filter of the sign viewer’s present, in which bilingual signage in Irish and English and distances in kilometres are the unmarked choices. Adding background knowledge to the minimal message in the LL unit enables the sign viewer to engage in deeper interpretations of the LL unit, understanding what appears to be nothing more than an old milestone as the remnant of a past world of empire-building, colonialism, and infrastructural development. The bilingual LL unit in Figure 7.1B adds a competing version of the THEN IS NOW metaphor in its expression of a directive. Unlike the milestone, its emplacement is visibly temporary, and its indexicality is to movement in the immediate future, as dictated by the conditions of nearby roadworks. The use of large black letters against an orange background introduces global intertextuality, as exemplified by the similar visual format for the Rue barrée signage in Figure 1.8B. The use of Irish and English emerges from the same political and linguistic era as that of the sign viewer’s present, showing its relative recency and its participation in a globalised system of LL units for traffic direction. The milestone and the Malairt slí sign both express valid speech acts and use the THEN IS NOW metaphor. For the milestone, however, THEN is a remote time whose full indexical values are hidden from most present-day sign viewers, while THEN for the road traffic sign belongs to a recent past with direct, current, and short-term relevance. Further difficulty in fixing the observer’s present arises in considering the other LL units in the figure. The graffiti tag to the right in the photograph belongs to an unspecified time in the relatively recent past. With external evidence from Google Street View, its inscription can be dated to a time between July 2018 and September 2019; inside knowledge in the graffiti community might help to date the tag and understand its indexicality more precisely. The fragmentary tape remnants of an A4 size poster are on top of the graffiti inscription and must therefore be newer. The sticker in Figure 7.1B is newer still, and the sign instigator has used the frame of the former A4 poster to give the sticker visual salience. These stickers refer to plans for the closure of the nearby Tolka Park football grounds and, according to Martin (2021), started to appear in the area early in 2021. On this lamppost alone, we can thus identify three distinct layers of unrelated LL units. Each unit provides its own, independent THEN time which determines its pragmatic value and engagement in the LL. The vans in Figure 7.1 add the element of mobility to the observer’s present. The van in Figure 7.1A had signage emplaced in what is THEN time for the

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sign viewer, but its engagement with a sign viewer depends on where the van is at any given time. Moments after this photograph was taken, other viewers engaged with the same LL unit in a succession of other locations. The configuration shown in Figure 7.1A thus represents the LL at a specific observer’s present which may never occur again. The presence of another van in Figure 7.1B suggests that commercial vans pass through this area on a regular basis and frequently stop at the traffic lights in the right-hand part of the picture. The regular visibility of such commercial signage distinguishes this area from more residential suburbs or pedestrianised areas of historic preservation, and enters into the social knowledge of the LL in this locale. Rather than disrupting the coherence of the LL, such fleeting LL units emphasise the reality which is lost if only stable units are considered: that the LL is never a static collection of objects, but a continuing display of discourse. Though the difference between Figures 7.1A and 7.1B is simple, such small changes show the instability of the supposed observer’s present. Time reference in the space of the photograph also relies on the ability of the LL unit to point to the future. The milestone expresses a continuing truth, regardless of the changes in political structures and systems of measurement that have taken place over the years; the relevance of this truth (as opposed to the historical implicatures) is to the future movements of the sign viewer. The graffiti tag implies novelty and currency, which may be lost as the inscription loses its referential power over time or as a consequence of erasure by civil authorities; unlike the milestone, this genre does not entail an expectation of permanence. The remnant of an earlier notice dating from a time after September 2019 has already lost its outward expressive power, and its physical state points towards its future disappearance. The van indexes the sign instigator’s act of enticement for the sign viewer to become a customer, but this message is only expressed fleetingly in this location. Though it is, quite literally, here today and gone tomorrow, it can resurface in an unpredictable fashion and become part of the observer’s present once again. The Tolka Park sticker may be obscure to outsiders, but at the moment of emplacement, it is directed towards the future acts of the sporting and political establishment. The Málairt Slí sign is a direct directive about traffic movements in the immediate future of the sign viewer. To summarise, the snippet of LL in Figure 7.1 presents not just six LL units, but six different time configurations that engage the sign viewer in this particular space. Unlike the dialogic graffiti of Figures 1.9 and 6.2, the LL units of Figure 7.1 operate with almost no reference to each other. Though there is a methodological convenience in working with the LL on the basis of an observer’s present which unites all these units into a single data set, this supposed present – in which the moment of observation must reckon with speech acts and temporal references from many different times, discourses, and

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orientations toward the future – can only be seen as a point of departure for deeper investigations of temporal reference in the LL. 7.3

Ghosts and Remnants

Figure 7.1 showed an LL unit which long predates the contemporary sign viewer’s present but which nevertheless retains its core pragmatic function. Many LL units date physically from earlier times but have lost their original pragmatic functions and have not been artfully repurposed as in Figure 1.12. I discuss such units in this section as ghosts and remnants, which represent different configurations of function and physical completeness. A ghost is an LL unit which is largely complete but which has lost its original pragmatic and referential function, usually due to changes in real world circumstances such as a business becoming defunct, a product going out of production, etc. Ghosts typically remain in the open space from the time of their emplacement onwards, unlike uncovered signs which, having been covered over at one time, become fleetingly visible before being covered by new signage or construction (see Ong 2021 and discussion in Chapter 8). The best-known type of ghost is the ghost sign, which has attracted attention in local histories and in various popular and design-oriented treatments, but which is now attracting scholarly attention from historical, social, and artistic points of view: see further the papers edited by Schutt, Roberts, and White (2017). Most of these ghost signs are wall paintings, but I use the more general term ghosts to include other LL units. Figure 7.2A shows a painted ghost sign in the name St. Lawrence Warehousing Company, which originally occupied the landmark Montreal building now known as the Entrepôt Van Horne, built in 1924. Though the building has been through changes of ownership and function and is now in a state of decline, it retains large-scale painted signage and the industrial water tower that reflects its earlier history. As Wagner (2016) explains, this development gives the building special significance within its locale. As an LL aggregate, the special significance of the building is the retention of its English-language signage, since such displays are now contrary to language policy in Quebec. This use of English is not simply a code choice, but a display designed to be seen from a long distance and to occupy a dominant position in the skyline: the scale is a commercial statement in its own right. The extensive graffiti at the bottom of the building, however, brings the aggregate into the present linguistic era. Figure 7.2B indexes changes over a longer time span. This art nouveau building was designed by Gerrit van Arkel and opened in 1900, replacing several earlier buildings. It was constructed for Max Büttinghausen, a photographer who was born in Germany in 1847 and settled in Amsterdam in 1873:

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Figure 7.2 Ghost signs (Montreal, 2017; Amsterdam, 2006)

see Krabben (1993) for further details. It is referred to as the Gebouw Helios ‘Helios building’, which connects sunflower motifs on the building with the Greek sun god Helios and, according to Helios, an intaglio printing process for photographs known as heliography. Büttinghausen died in 1906, and the building went through various changes of use, including the conversion of the lower part of the building to a café in 1909 and the closure of the photography business, which remained upstairs until 1929. The ground floor of the building was occupied by the Tokyo restaurant at the time I took this

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photograph, but the tiled evidence of Büttinghausen’s photography salon remains. Code choices include the use of the photographer’s name, the French spelling artistique (cf. Dutch artistiek), and ‘photography’ which is spelled identically in Dutch and German. It is difficult to decode precisely the values attached to these choices, but the use of French for the arts follows a common prestige pattern. The LL of Figure 7.2B thus includes not only the contemporary speech act of enticing customers to the Tokyo restaurant, but an earlier act of enticement, in which photography, artistic design, and linguistic values are indexed by LL units. The retention of this signage, despite its loss of current pragmatic or referential force, in turn indexes art, culture, and history in THEN time. The ghosts in Figure 7.3A and 7.3B are of a different kind from Figure 7.2, but they also use language that indexes space and THEN time. Jonesborough (Baile an Chláir in Irish) is a community in Armagh in Northern Ireland, close to the border with Co. Louth in the Republic, and situated off the main motorway between Dublin and Belfast. Since the establishment of the Irish Free State and, subsequently, the Republic of Ireland, the value of the Irish pound was consistently maintained on par with the pound sterling in the UK. The two currencies became decoupled in 1979 after Ireland joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and the UK did not. Relative values of the Irish punt Éireannach, or simply punt, and the pound sterling fluctuated from that time onwards, but in 2002 the Euro became the currency in the Republic while the UK (and thereby Northern Ireland) retained the pound. The fuel pumps in Figures 7.3A and 7.3B are from an abandoned fuel station in Jonesborough, and reflect its position near the border on a heavily trafficked cross-border route. Since currency fluctuations and changes in taxation rates can affect the relative price of fuel on either side of the border, and since cash customers may only have one currency with them at the time of sale, the choice of pricing facilitates cross-border purchases. The ghostly display of the word punts is significant here. The Irish word indexed the political divide between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland from the decoupling of the currencies in 1979 to the replacement of the punt by the Euro in 2002. The neutral designations and for Irish and British pounds were widely used at the time, and could have been used here. Instead, the word punt (using an anglicised plural form punts, rather than Irish puint) accommodates the Irish language. The pump labelling is thus a symbolic display which captures a moment in an ongoing political history. Not all evidence of past discourse is as fully formed as the LL units of Figure 7.2. The abandoned fuel pumps in Figure 7.3 are in decay, but the remnant in Figure 7.3C shows that even fragmentary remains can carry significance. Such remnants are usually retained for historical, visual, or practical reasons – sometimes by accident – when another function has taken

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Figure 7.3 Ghosts and remnants (Jonesborough, 2018; Astoria, 2017)

over in the same spot. The remnant in Figure 7.3C belonged to a video rental business in Astoria. The place name Athens is a typical marker of Greekness as discussed in Chapter 5. The signage which remains does not indicate if the video business had any connection to Greek video culture, or if it marked Greek community connections in other ways. What is clear from the

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display in the upper right part of the figure is that a beauty salon was in this location when I took the photograph. In the changing social context of the city, a marker of this kind is more than just a marker of a business that is no longer present. This remnant indexes the decline in video rental outlets globally; locally, it could index the decline of Greekness in the area. 7.4

Layering the LL

The discussion of Figure 1.13 drew attention to the layering of past and present in a Victorian letter box. In this case, the LL ensemble includes inscriptions from several different times within a unified presentation. Layering has been defined in different ways in LL research and other fields, but broadly speaking, there are two possible focal points in most definitions: the individual unit, and a network or complex of units within a single area. Glassie (1991: 264), for example, refers to ‘creative layering’ as a meaningful change which occurs in the context of use and modification: a shirt once bought becomes ‘a component in a composition of attire that informs on you’, while houses, cars, and other parts of the material world have layers of meaning added by owners who modify the original. Leeds-Hurwitz (1993: 161) focuses this sense of layering semiotically, arguing that ‘when an old sign acquires a new meaning yet retains the original meaning as well, that is layering’. In this understanding, layering usually happens because of changes over time or reception by new audiences: a schoolchild’s backpack may appear to the parent as simply a container for carrying objects, but ‘the additional meanings conveyed by minor differences in color, material, or design matter to the child who must display the backpack before peers’. Scollon and Scollon (2003: 137) also focus on the individual unit in layering, seeing it when ‘a sign is attached to another sign in such a way that one is clearly more recent and more temporary’; these changes are ‘not part of the original semiotic design’. Backhaus (2007b: 131–32), however, takes a different perspective on layering in the LL, formalising the term to refer to ‘the coexistence of older and newer versions of a given type of sign’, which, especially, ‘lays bare different linguistic states in the recent history of the city’. For Backhaus (2007b), layering can be seen in differences of language, script, spatial design, and information in LL units from different times in the Tokyo LL. Examples I have introduced thus far have shown layering at the level of the individual unit, with or without modification of the original intent, and at the level of systems within the LL. In addition to the post box of Figure 1.13, the defunct street name plaque in Figure 4.17C shows layering at the level of the LL unit. In this case, though, it is not the original text which has changed. Rather, new meanings have been added for new audiences because the original

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street referent is gone, and the LL unit now indexes a critique pertaining to contemporary urban development. Lou’s (2016) account of the Sammy’s signage in Figure 4.3 suggests a dynamic in which the sign unit becomes an object of interest. The sign’s meaning developed from indexing the restaurant owner and his business (in THEN time) to a more general indexation of what Lou (2016: 216) calls ‘the discourse of entrepreneurship’, involving the success of the business in the context of British colonial rule. This discourse in turn invokes a ‘discourse of nostalgia’. These new layers of meaning, available to the sign viewer in NOW time, arise from the changing social and political circumstances of the signage rather than from any change in the text. Connections between LL units also form a focus for layering. We have seen, for example, the older system of street name plaques in the Republic of Ireland which use Irish respellings in traditional orthography to present names derived from English, in contrast with the newer system that uses only modern Roman letter shapes and makes fewer orthographic modifications towards Irish: the plaques in Figures 3.5D and 3.5E name the same street, but chronological layering displays the Irish form in different ways between the two sign units. Examining this point in further detail, Figure 7.4 illustrates layering in the system of street name plaques in Montreal. Earlier practice in the city allowed for street names which were monolingually in English. As part of the largescale change in language policy in Montreal and Quebec more generally, French odonyms are now required, although there are circumstances in which French-dominant bilingual signage is possible: see Bisson and Richard (2015) for further detail. Figures 7.4A–D show four distinct layers of LL display which reflect not only the change in language policy (where both names and generics such as Street versus Rue are subject to regulation) but the role of historical marking and potential interest to tourists. Figure 7.4A comes from the oldest layer of street name practice, which uses the English generic in a small font and the proper name . The street was given this name in 1876 by Pierre Beaubien and references Beaubien’s son-in-law, Hannibal Dellagenga Maguire (Patrimoine – La Toponymie website). Figure 7.4B shows an older Francophone plaque, using the French generic in a small font and the proper name Dante, referencing Dante Alighieri. Since this street name has been in use since 1922 (Patrimoine – La Toponymie website), it can be assumed that an older street sign would have used the generic. The newer Montreal style in Figure 7.4C is also monolingual in French, but includes the logo of the city of Montreal in red at the left. A further innovation in street name signage is shown in Figure 7.4D. Street name plaques in the Old City (or Vieux-Montréal) use a distinctive style which includes a decorative serif font with a light colour against a bright red background and a decorative

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Figure 7.4 Layering in the Montreal LL (Montreal, 2017)

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frame, rather than the sans serif black font against a white background used elsewhere in the city. This layer of street name practice marks the historical origins of the city, and in so doing provides a visible prompt to identify areas of interest for tourists. The layering of this network encodes its own historical development, while the odonyms themselves also index conceptions and attitudes to history. Layering in these examples is thus not only significant as an indication of changing practice in response to language policy, but as a way of creating a network of THEN times united by the common function of location and wayfinding in the NOW experience of the sign viewer. Layering as a response to language policy is not, however, confined to public signage. The adoption in 1977 of the Charte de la langue française ‘Charter of the French language’, widely known as Bill 101 or loi 101, in Quebec had profound sociolinguistic effects, as reviewed, for example, by Levine (1990) and Bourhis and Landry (2002). These developments have had a formative influence on the field of LL research itself. Notable among the provisions of Bill 101 and succeeding measures are the ways in which private signage is required to put French in a dominant, and often exclusive, position. The replacement of old signs by new signs which conform to language regulations is a simple, though sometimes expensive, response to changing policy. The physical layering in Figure 7.4E is another response, which keeps the old policy visible while conforming to the new one. The company denoted by the signage was founded in 1922 by Louis Berson. The sign in Figure 7.4E was put in place in approximately 1947; it is now also a ghost sign, since the business has moved to a new location (see Freed 2015). Though the LL unit conforms to the regulated use of French in the designation ‘L. Berson & son’, the English word can be read underneath the equivalent French Fils. With fils painted over son, layering in this case is a simple physical act. This particular sign also became the subject of controversy because the Hebrew word matzevot ‘monuments, gravestones’ is written in a larger font and in a higher position than the French monuments (see a report with an interview featuring Marvin Berson at https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=580754). Waller (1998: 205) reports that the deviation from the strict letter of the law was eventually allowed, with arguments made that the religious and communal importance of Hebrew justified its significant appearance in this context. 7.5

Markers and Remembrances

Remnants in the LL index a past time because they survive from it into the present, despite the loss of their original function. This section, however, considers LL units which use the sign instigator’s NOW time of emplacement to refer to a THEN time of the past. References to THEN time can be to

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specific events such as a visit from a head of state or the opening of a specific building, or to more diffuse series of events or eras, such as wars, buildings or communities which are no longer present, and epochs in history. Depending on the historical referent and the nature of the sign instigator’s discourse, these references take different perspectives on the relationship between time and space. Markers unite THEN and HERE because the event or events which they refer to happened on the spot where the LL unit is emplaced; remembrances have more general spatial reference and may, as in the case of war memorials, commemorate events whose precise place is far away or unknown. Both types of LL unit perform speech acts in the present which are intended for sign viewers of the future to read as evidence of a selected past. They are comparable to Nora’s (1989) notion of lieux de mémoire ‘sites of memory’, combining the ‘material, symbolic, and functional’ in a ‘play of memory and history’ (p. 19), where memory ‘remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting’ and history ‘is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer’. The LL unit as a marker is illustrated in Figure 7.5, which expresses a particular historical perspective on urban development and gentrification. Chicago’s Maxwell Street area rose to prominence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a multi-ethnic area, known for its open-air market, its role in the development of the blues, and other aspects of cultural life. Part of the district was destroyed for motorway construction, while most of the rest was torn down in the expansion of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Maxwell Street has been documented extensively: Berkow (1977) takes an approach from oral history, while Cresswell (2019) applies the insights of urban geography into an analysis of the development, redevelopment, and representation of Maxwell Street. Other documentation can be found at the Maxwell Street Foundation website. Because of extensive building and community displacement, nothing of the social history of this area can be seen by the present-day viewer. Instead, installations as shown in Figure 7.5 provide historical background material. Figure 7.5B shows one side of a free standing display in its entirety; the other side is devoted to Maxwell Street as the ‘Birthplace of the Chicago Blues’. The photographs complement blocks of text, but I concentrate in Figure 7.5 on the text, shown in Figures 7.5A, C, D, and E. The text emphasises ethnic and cultural diversity, yet neither the text nor the photographs attach value to language. The text in Figure 7.5A mentions Yiddish, but the photographs do not include any LL units which use Yiddish or any language other than English, despite documentary evidence such as Bledstein’s (2017) photo report which shows LL units from this period using Yiddish and Hebrew. What the remembrance in Figure 7.5 does is to portray HERE as a place which showed ethnic diversity and commercial activity over a 100-year

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Figure 7.5 Remembering Maxwell Street (Chicago, 2017)

THEN period. The linguistic diversity which was a part of this heritage is erased by a focus on commercial activity from an almost entirely anglophone perspective. The remembrance of war, genocide, and violent death opens the way for displays of language and more general semiotics that have been studied from a variety of points of view. Santino (2001), for example, ties in visual displays on murals and installations with verbal discourse in the Northern Ireland Troubles, while later developing interdisciplinary perspectives on

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Figure 7.6 Great War memorial (Fränkisch-Crumbach, 2018)

‘spontaneous shrines’ which engage in the ‘public memorialization of death’ (Santino 2006). Abousnnouga and Machin (2013) and Macalister (2020) focus on war memorials; Kosatica (2020) on Sarajevo’s War Childhood Museum; Wee (2016) on the LL and the generation of affect in Arlington National Cemetery; Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael (2016) on an artistic ‘counter-monument’ and its role in the remembrance of the persecution of Jews in Berlin; and Kailuweit and Quintana (2020) on remembrance and the public in ‘grassroots memorials’ arising from terrorist attacks in Madrid and Paris. Wee and Goh (2019) raise a number of related points under the heading of ‘theorising affect’. Since space limitations prevent a full-scale discussion of these issues, I discuss here an instance of bringing time and space together in the LL, which makes more use of silence than of discursive text. Figure 7.6A shows a memorial in front of the Protestant church in the centre of Fränkisch-Crumbach. A statue depicts a soldier with a gun who is kneeling with hands clasped as if in prayer. His face is turned downwards, and his helmet is pulled over his forehead. Behind him are five tablets with the names of those from the village who were killed in the German war effort in the First World War. The names are arranged alphabetically by date, and Figure 7.6B shows one such tablet in detail. In keeping with many German memorials of this time (see Koshar 2000: 98–103), this installation is striking in its relative silence: there is no verbal inscription on the plinth or anywhere else on the memorial. Only the inscription of years, the crosses at the head of each list of

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names, and the non-verbal evidence of the statue give an indication of what the memorial is for. This use of silence is a code choice which demonstrates the importance of discourse properties in the LL. The silence is not incidental, but fits within a general principle identified by Nora (1989: 19) that ‘the most fundamental purpose of the lieu de mémoire is to stop time, to block the work of forgetting . . . in order to capture a maximum of meaning in the fewest of signs’. Names, however, play a significant role in this LL ensemble. The small size and inter-dependence of the village community, whose population was just over 1,700 during these years (Fränkisch-Crumbach, Odenwaldkreis 2018), meant that many people listed on the plaques would have been known to passers-by: the deaths were personal. The crosses, as with symbols more generally, are polysemous. They index the shared German military identity of all those listed on the tablets, but if read as Christian symbols, they cannot reflect the personal identities of the three Jewish people named in the memorial. The remembrance in Figure 7.6 thus indexes the deaths of individuals which took place in THEN times that are spelled out by year. While the marker in Figure 7.6 uses the THEN IS NOW metaphor to bring the deaths of these individuals into the NOW of the sign viewer’s present, the remembrance in the figure also unites the different remote THERE spaces where these individuals died to the HERE of the village monument. Space and time are united in a single LL in which THEN IS NOW and THERE IS HERE. The image of the soldier thus uses iconic semiosis to provide a model for contemplation, while the linguistic elements of silence and naming focus the contemplation on those who were killed. 7.6

Repurposing the Past

The intentional invocation of the past is not limited to markers and memorials, but frequently provides sign instigators with a means to index other values. Indexations of the past in the LL are frequently oriented towards authenticity, nostalgia, and community. This indexicality often uses the logic of heritage, which Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1995: 370) describes as ‘not lost and found, stolen and reclaimed’ but, rather, as ‘a mode of cultural production in the present that has recourse to the past’. Being ‘time honoured’ can mean concretely that a locale has been in business for a relatively long time, but it can also rely on more abstract conceptions of antiquity and cultural origin. Figure 7.7 shows a health club in Dublin using indexicality in the LL to align itself with putative ancient values. The banner in Figure 7.7 may appear initially to the sign viewer as a monolingual English name and advertisement. Each , however, contains a smaller display of the Irish ogham writing system: this inscription is used

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Figure 7.7 Repurposing ogham (Dublin, 2017)

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repeatedly in the shop frontage. Ogham is a writing system which was developed for the Irish language before the introduction of the Roman alphabet (whose earliest Irish texts date from the sixth century). Though there is much about the use of ogham that is not certain, McManus (1991: 1) localises its initial development to the southern part of Ireland, and suggests a date of the fourth century. It is generally agreed that the system was developed by people who knew the alphabet and grammar of Latin, and while most of the surviving texts which use ogham are stone inscriptions with memorial or marking functions, it may also have been used on less durable media such as vellum and wood. The script continued to be used marginally in later texts in the Middle Ages. Most ogham writing relies on the inscription of lines along a vertical or horizontal axis, depending on the medium. As McManus (1991) explains, the correspondences between ogham and the Roman alphabet are well established: see also the Ogham in 3D website for archaeological documentation. The ogham within the of the upper part of the banner can be read from left-to-right, and that of the bottom part from bottom-to-top: in both cases, it spells the Irish word sláinte ‘health’. The merger of modernity in the English language with tradition through the oldest written form of Irish is intentional: the Icon website boasts that ‘central to our logo is the ogham symbol representing health, love and happiness at the core of our organisation. Ogham is the earliest known form of Irish script and is also symbolic of our iconic heritage’. Though there is no nostalgia expressed for Irish life as it actually was in the fourth century, an earlier writing system specific to the national language has been repurposed to imbue the modern health club selectively with time-honoured values. Time reference in the heritage mode is deeply extendable, and frequently indexes an imagined past which lies outside the world of industrialisation and urbanisation. The concept of nostalgia refers directly to this confluence of time and space. As Fuentenebro de Diego and Valiente Ots (2014) detail, the word nostalgia was coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer, a Swiss medic, using Greek roots (nosos ‘return to the native land’ and algos ‘suffering, affliction’) to express the German term Heimweh, today translated as ‘homesickness’. Hofer’s concern was with the trauma suffered by soldiers far from home, but in English, according to the OED, the term has been used since 1900 to refer to a longing for the past, including a ‘sentimental evocation of a period of the past’. That the original sense of pain for displacement in space has gravitated in usage towards a sense of longing for the past has a counterpart in the tendency of the LL to bring time and space together in units or assemblages of nostalgia. Where tourists are concerned, the indexation in NOW time of a preindustrial past in THEN time can give an exotic location extra value as an authentic experience of local culture. Authenticity of this kind is signalled by

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Figure 7.8 Nostalgia Chez Tante Liesel (Strasbourg, 2019)

linguistic choices and imagery in Figure 7.8 from Strasbourg. Tourism in Strasbourg frequently relies on the display of a distinctive Alsatian identity, expressed linguistically and through regional cuisine. Chez Tante Liesel uses a French language matrix, but points to its authentic Alsatian persona in a number of ways. As in many parts of the world, an affectionate kinship term

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(tante ‘aunt’) for an older family member functions as part of the restaurant’s trust-building exercise. The name Liesel points to an Alsatian (Germanic) linguistic form rather than towards French: the Chez Tante Liesel website indicates that Valérie, Eric, and Emilienne are in charge, with no evidence of an actual Liesel. The term , while cognate with standard German Weinstube ‘wine bar’, is widely recognised as Alsatian and adds lexically to local authenticity (cf. also Bogatto and Hélot 2010: 284). The traditional lettering, use of old-fashioned curtains and rustic objects in the window, as well as the menu (with a strong emphasis on local specialties using Alsatian terms such as , literally ‘chick’s cheese’, a local speciality of soft white cheese), reinforce the claim to authenticity. This assemblage, however, is not a remnant: its current incarnation was only five years old at the time I took this photograph, and the building had earlier housed a shoe repair shop. Nevertheless, by a conscious display of linguistic and other indexicalities, the sign instigator brings the THEN of an unspecified but appealing past as well as a distinctively local NEAR space into the NOW of the customer in search of authenticity. A more complex assemblage of linguistic and visual communication linked to local oral tradition is shown in Figure 7.9. The locale is in the area of the 1941 ‘North Strand Bombing’, when German aerial forces let loose a bomb killing 28 people and damaging or destroying over 300 homes, despite Ireland’s neutrality during the Second World War. The vista is dominated by the mural in Figure 7.9A. A bilingual Irish/English sign at the left of the mural designates the area as a Memorial Garden. Figure 7.9C shows a different perspective, which includes a stone monument dating from 1991 in remembrance of those who died in the bombing. The text of the monument is in Irish and English, and Figure 7.9B provides a closeup view. The mural was painted in 2015 by members and associates of the Swan Youth Services group in Dublin’s north inner city; it presents an overview of Irish history from a local community perspective (see Five lamps website for details). This history is depicted visually by iconicity and indexicality. Themes referenced by the images include, from left-to-right: (1) Vikings, who played a pivotal role in medieval Ireland and are connected to this locale by the Battle of Clontarf which took place nearby in 1014 and is popularly seen as the turning point in the retreat of Viking power in Ireland (see Duffy 2013 for a contemporary review); (2) the burning of the GPO (cf. Figure 7.1) during the 1916 Easter Rising, which was also a turning point in the campaign for an independent Ireland; (3) the North Strand bombing; and (4) contemporary music and community activity. Also visible in the mural is an image of the installation known as the Five Lamps, shown in Figure 7.9D. This structure is very close to the Memorial

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Figure 7.9 Historical assemblage: ‘Do you know the Five Lamps?’ (Dublin, 2017, 2021)

Garden, and was erected ca. 1880 following a bequest to provide two water fountains in Dublin: for history and earlier photographs, see Hiney (1987). The water fountain originally had four basins and could provide water for people and horses. While the lamps provided light, the ‘five lamps’ name is also popularly said to mark the five converging streets where the fountain is situated or to commemorate five battles fought by the British Army in India (Five Lamps Revisited website). In a further illustration of layering, the installation has developed from its original practical purpose and has taken on its own identity as a fixture in the community, which, as the NIAH website points out, ‘derives from the role of private patronage in tackling the slum conditions of the period by the provision of clean drinking water at the fountain which would otherwise have not been available to the local population’.

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Understanding the verbal and visual references to the Five Lamps in the mural requires not just knowledge of the erstwhile water fountain and lampstand as a physical object, but an understanding of its social meaning in providing some relief to a disadvantaged part of Dublin. More to the point, though, is that Dubliners from this area will know the expression Do you know the Five Lamps? as a traditional catch phrase which can be used in a humorously aggressive way to draw attention to an outsider’s status, to reject unwanted amorous advances from a male speaker, or in other such ways. I have often heard the phrase used or alluded to, but Lordstilton (website comment) gives a narrative account which expresses its use clearly. In this account, Dub and culchie denote, respectively, a person from Dublin and an outsider from other parts of the country, while bollix, bollocks ‘testicles’ is well-known in Irish and British slang: the five lamps was used as a way of telling people they were annoying you and you’d like them to stop . . . ‘Do you know the five lamps?’ If they were a Dub they knew what was going to be said next and would leave you alone . . . If they were a culchie they’d say they do know the five lamps . . .next would come ‘well go and hang your bollix off it’.

The Memorial Garden, its monument of remembrance, and the mural thus use not only Irish and English in an act of commemoration which follows the contemporary pattern for civic commemorations, but visual imagery that indexes the local in the context of national history, and in-group language which is obscure to the uninitiated. The assemblage which the sign viewer finds HERE, in short, uses strongly local reference to bring together THEN and NOW in a way that spans from the Viking period to present-day banter which might be heard in nearby social encounters. A final example in this category illustrates a principle of anti-memory, in which the sign instigator ironically comments on the resistance of historical events to the changes which the sign instigator considers desirable. The historical specificity of the inscription in Figure 7.10 shows its force as a political commentary. Though it is impossible to know exactly when the inscription was put up, I took the photograph on 14th March 2017. By this time, Enda Kenny had been Taoiseach (the head of government) in the Republic of Ireland since March 2011. Following a general election in 2016, however, Kenny had been in a politically weakened position due to the government’s reliance on opposition party support for a minority government. Mounting political pressures arising from Brexit proposals in the UK eventually led to Kenny’s resignation in June 2017. The inscription in Figure 7.10, is thus not only an intertextual inversion of the familiar phrase gone but not forgotten, but a timely commentary on the unfolding of events which declares

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Figure 7.10 Forgotten but not gone (Dublin, 2017)

the embattled head of government to be forgotten, even though he was not yet officially gone. The emplacement of this inscription next to an abandoned building – with its rotting pillars, padlocked door, and graffiti-tagged main door – complements the linguistic message.

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Researching Linguistic Landscapes

8.1

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Following one of the first LL conference panels, a member of the audience suggested that one of the strengths of the LL approach was that it had no theory. That comment was made in 2005, but in many ways could still hold true today. Descriptive papers are valued, and LL researchers are free to invoke theories developed in philosophy, geography, sociology, semiotics, and many other areas, including sociolinguistics. LL methodology is also open to many approaches: as Shohamy (2019: 34) states, ‘there is a consensus that any method is legitimate if it addresses the research questions and goals’. If a body of LL theory is to develop, it will require not only debate and analysis, but a will to articulate distinctive theory. Whether the LL is a topic for research that can be successfully approached through existing theories and methodologies, or whether the term linguistic landscape indicates a distinctive way of seeing the world that calls for its own theory and methodology is a question that calls for further debate and development. As part of this development, I discuss in this chapter some issues of particular concern for sociolinguistics and LL research. I consider first some methodological problems. Problems of scope (Section 8.2) pertain to the question of ‘what counts’ as LL, and where (or whether) there should be borders between LL studies and other fields. In view of the evidence and interpretations which I have advanced in earlier chapters, I put forward a model of the LL in the public eye which understands the LL as a temporally and spatially dynamic fusion of text, materiality, and discourse. This model, I suggest, can be useful for knowing where the LL stops and other modes of semiosis take over. Problems of evidence (Section 8.3) address methodological issues including the photograph as data; arguments for and against quantification; accounting for change over time; and the role of interviews, conversational data, documentary evidence, and other sources of information beyond visual observation in the observer’s present. In Section 8.4, I sketch out some further topics in LL research. This research can go in as many directions as there are researchers, but I first discuss the 247

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Online Linguistic Landscape (OLL), and then turn to the representation of the LL in literature, using James Joyce’s Ulysses (2012 [1922]) as a case study. Though there is already a considerable amount of work on the LL and online environments, I treat the subject under the heading of ‘further developments’ because there are many problems which have yet to be resolved in working out the relationship between the OLL and the terrestrial LL. In the final section, I consider some more general suggestions for new horizons on the LL. 8.2

Problems of Scope

8.2.1

What Counts as LL?

It follows from the discussion here that while the term linguistic landscape uses language as a starting point, it also points to other aspects of semiosis, simply because LL units are not linguistic abstractions, but entextualised, material performances of public discourse. Though these terms are meant to specify LL units distinctively, they cannot be interpreted too strictly. If, as I argue in Chapter 6, LL research must allow for oral discourse that fulfils various place-indexing functions, then this aspect of the LL has a material aspect only by virtue of its terrestrial referent, not by the encoding of a written text. On the assumption, however, that LL research needs some boundary in order to differentiate it from other ways of researching language, one approach would be to enumerate the physical objects that constitute the LL: street name plaques, traffic and other regulatory signs, billboards, shop fascia, posters, graffiti, etc. would fall uncontroversially into the list. A definition by listing, however, will inevitably fail, not for the incidental reason that it would be impossible to list all possible physical objects and inscriptions that could count as LL units, but for the more principled reason that it is not the object itself which defines its inclusion in the LL, but its role in the matrix of public discourse. The samples of signage in Figure 1.2 do not participate in the LL because they are not emplaced in such a way as to be interpreted as genuine examples of the speech acts which they index. They may be interesting as objects, and we are aware of their potential for participation in the LL, but the cultural knowledge which underlies the LL tells the sign viewer that these objects are not displayed as functioning LL units. Conversely, the discarded cigarette packets of Figure 3.1 are not like street name plaques or shop signs: they are not fixed in position, there is no expectation that these packets will be displayed in the street, and their presence there may violate laws (as against litter). They nevertheless demonstrate linguistic landscaping, since someone has put them into view, and their textual features of code choice, response to a substantive area of language planning, and use of layout and visual imagery have made them objects of interest in the public display of language.

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Shohamy and Waksman’s (2009: 314) succinct view of the LL as ‘text presented and displayed in the public space’ points in a more fruitful direction. Text in this sense can be taken to include the whole of what contributes to the ability of any lexical-grammatical text (no matter how partial, playful, or translanguage) to mediate in communication between sign instigator and sign viewer. Presentation and display are not incidental features: they are essential to the sign viewer’s knowledge of whether or not a text participates in the LL. Shopping in my local supermarket, for example, I occasionally find someone else’s shopping list in my shopping trolley. The shopping trolley is a public space, since it is accessible to a general public (albeit tempered by its status as an object actually owned by the supermarket and available to users for a conventionally fixed period). Unlike the cigarette packets of Figure 3.1, however, the shopping list will have no design or presentation features that frame it as an object of public display. It may contain drawings, abbreviations, and other marked textual features, but these are private expressions for the benefit of the user and, at most, other household members. The shopping list textual genre has value for research – Goody (1977: 135), for example, describes it as ‘a way of constructing the future schedule of an individual or group, a schedule of movements in space and in time, relative to the requirements of the household economy’ – but its lack of presentation and performance features keeps it out of the LL. Although these items could be re-mediatised and displayed on the internet (see The Grocery List Collection website), it is precisely the discourse and display features of the OLL that could turn shopping lists into LL units. More flexible views of what counts in the LL give rise to studies in new areas and to proposed limitations of the LL notion. Studies have expanded to examine topics such as flyers and similar ephemera (Gaiser and Matras 2016; Hanauer 2015; Yelenevskaya and Fialkova 2017), protest signs (Kasanga 2014; Martín Rojo and Díaz de Frutos 2014; Selvelli 2016), T-shirts (Coupland 2012; Curtin 2014; Gubitosi, Puma, and Narváez 2020; Milani 2014; Milani and Levon 2016), and tattoos (Peck and Stroud 2015; Roux, Peck, and Banda 2019). Wendel (2018: 108) makes an argument for examining ‘calendars, postage stamps, grave stones, and visa stamps’ as part of the LL, though he labels these as ‘alternative linguistic landscapes’ in contrast to the mainstream LL of ‘graffiti, fresco and mosaic inscriptions’. At the same time, other studies have rejected LL research as a model, often because the LL is equated with signage. Sebba (2013: 103), for example, mentions LL research, but points to public texts such as ‘newspapers, magazines, leaflets, timetables, transport tickets, receipts, and a huge variety of product packages’ and comments that ‘signage is only one aspect of written language on display in the public sphere’. His analysis of postage stamps, coins, and banknotes as illustrative of ‘language hierarchies in public space’ thus turns to Kress and

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van Leeuwen’s (1996) approach to multimodality and Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) geosemiotics, rather than to LL research. Aronin and Ó Laoire (2013) shift the research question away from the public sphere to the use of multilingualism in artifacts of various kinds, with Aronin (2018: 22) arguing that ‘signs in public spaces are only a portion of an infinite number of material items that exist’. Their investigations of household objects such as medications, decorations, and foods without verbal inscriptions but which trigger language-specific vocabulary depart so radically from the idea of ‘language in the public space’ as to suggest an incompatibility with the LL notion. Wallach’s (2020) examination of ‘urban texts’ in Jerusalem makes a similar argument. Though Wallach (2020) includes signage reminiscent of that discussed by Spolsky and Cooper (1991), he explicitly rejects the LL framework, on the grounds (p. 262fn) that ‘it is less suitable for capturing the circulation of mobile text artifacts such as coins, banknotes, ID cards, or visiting cards’, which – along with graffiti, onomastics, and memorial inscriptions – form a large part of his discussion. Faced with the contradiction between (a) the push to treat an ever-expanding list of physical formats, modes of presentation, and non-linguistic modes of communication such as visual art, clothing, smells, and food as part of the LL; and (b) the view that LL research is only about the study of code choices on fixed signage, LL research faces two dangers. The drive to expansion could lead us to ask, as Shohamy (2019: 34) puts it, ‘So, is everything linguistic landscape?’. If the answer to this question is ‘No, not everything is linguistic landscape’, is there a converse danger that the field could be restricted to the observation and counting of instances in which discrete languages appear on signage, following a pre-determined list of relevant sign types? Spolsky (2020: 9) acknowledges the latter possibility, and argues that ‘when papers are purely descriptive and simply list and interpret signs without authorship, reference to the full sociolinguistic situation, and acknowledgement of the theoretical background, Linguistic Landscape becomes a game like insect-collecting or Pokémon’. The dangers are thus (a) that the term linguistic landscape could denote a field which incorporates so much as to be meaningless or unmanageable; and (b) that in the effort to constrain the field to something quantifiable such as code choices on a pre-determined list of text-bearing objects, it might become an academically trivial pursuit. I have argued throughout this volume, however, that the sociolinguistic term linguistic landscape works by identifying a configuration of linguistic and other elements whose origins are at least as old as writing itself, and which can be found – if we consider the power of oral tradition and performance in the LL – throughout the world. The LL is not only a feature of the world which people inhabit, but of virtual spaces that humans animate. Given this global reach, understanding the LL is not a trivial pursuit. The scope of LL research,

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however, is not defined by objects or units themselves, but by the researcher’s decisions on how to investigate language in the public space – whether we find it in street signs, menus, classroom posters, postcards, T-shirts, discarded labels, or tattoos. Signage can be studied from many social, historical, semiotic, and spatial perspectives which provide valuable insights into the social worlds in which signage participates: cf. Henkin’s (1998) study of ‘written words and public spaces’ in nineteenth century New York, Jakle and Sculle (2004) on American road signage, Abel (2010) on mechanisms of racial segregation in the US, and papers edited by Zukin, Kasinitz, and Chen (2016) which examine globalisation and urban diversity. Though these and similar studies examine types of signage that are familiar in LL research, they do not ask the questions that arise in the LL paradigm. Features of that paradigm, as I understand it, are discussed in the next section. 8.2.2

The LL Unit in the Public Eye and Public Space

To understand LL research as a particular approach to language in the public space, I suggest a model: Diagram 8.1. In this model, the eye at the right of the diagram represents both the public eye of sign viewers and the observing eye of the LL observer as a researcher. The public eye is at once individual and social:

Diagram 8.1 The public eye and the construction of the LL

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every sign viewer will make their own interpretation of what they perceive, yet the participation of the LL unit in the public space means that the unit may be seen by an unlimited number of strangers who engage with the same unit by anything from complete indifference to marked behavioural change. Most encounters are not first encounters, so the repeated experience of viewing an LL unit will mean that some units become familiar parts of the individual’s routine, while others do not. For the sociolinguistic observer, accounting for the social and linguistic knowledge which sign viewers and sign instigators bring to the experience of the LL unit is at the heart of the research enterprise. Counting external features of LL units (such as code choices) will tell us something about the LL, but there is much more to learn if the observing eye is to account for the LL as it is in the public eye. Taking up Pavlenko and Mullen’s (2015: 116) point that ‘all approaches to linguistic landscapes, ancient and modern, are highly subjective’, I suggest that this subjectivity – what sign viewers bring to the interpretation of the LL unit in their relationship with the sign instigator – is central to the sociolinguistics of the LL. Every LL fieldworker is also a sign viewer, and the fieldworker’s knowledge and experience can construct a picture of what is in the public eye. There are, however, many gaps in this observational process that can only be filled by the further discourse of sign viewers, sign instigators, and external evidence. Within the public gaze, LL units, as shown in the centre of Diagram 8.1, are composed on three inter-related planes: the Textual, the Material, and the Discoursal. The Textual plane includes not only the lexical-grammatical text of the LL, but the scriptographic elements, uses of intertextuality, and visual imagery (which may be iconic, indexical, or symbolic) that together provide coherence as a message. This coherence is a feature of messages, not of comprehension by the reader: obscurity to the outsider may be unintentional or intentional, but does not detract from the coherence of the text. The Material plane recognises the physicality of the LL unit, using emplacement parameters such as location, size, shape, colour, medium and ground, uniqueness of the object, illumination, and other ways of displaying the text to the sign viewer. The Discourse plane is crucial since it accounts for the motivation of the LL unit and its reception. LL units are expressions of motivated speech, and the pragmatic question ‘what is the sign doing’ is always one which the sign viewer can ask, regardless of their knowledge of the language of the text. If the LL observer does not take account of what happens on the Discourse plane, LL units are just so many bits of metal, plastic, wood, or stone with words on them: they do not form an LL. The configuration of these three planes in an LL unit is never static, but instead flows through time, as I have discussed in Chapter 6. An LL unit may refer explicitly to time, and it may express various time inflections, but even if it is presented as a timeless truth, it will always

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carry its own unit time, which in turn becomes part of the message in the NOW of the sign viewer’s present. The TIME line running through the planes of Diagram 8.1 is thus a reminder that time reference can be made in many ways on the Textual plane, and that on the planes of the Material and Discoursal, time for the LL unit never stands still. The entire interaction between the LL unit and the public eye occurs as part of the public space. The public space, however, is not a simple container, but a relationship which is created socially in various gradations of what can be considered public. The graded and negotiable nature of public space is represented in Diagram 8.1 by the use of a dashed line encircling the LL unit and the public eye. The line which signifies the boundary of the public space is thus permeable and flexible, sometimes expansive and full of subdivisions, as with the open street of a busy urban district (cf. Figure 6.14), but other times shrinking to the toilet facilities of a train, as in Figure 4.1D. In most of the LL units considered here, the LL unit is physically emplaced as part of the public space, but in other cases the LL unit is moved through space by the actions of a sign animator, who in some cases is also the sign instigator: the protest signs of Figure 1.10, the shopping bag of Figure 3.9C, the T-shirt in Figure 5.5C, the clothing emblem of Figure 6.1, and the vans of Figures 6.3 and 7.1 all provide different dynamics of mobility and display in the public space. The discussion in Section 4.4 of gradations within the notion of public space, together with many of the examples we have seen thus far, invoke a more general principle for LL research, which is that for any given segment of physical space, we are likely to encounter meaningful contrasts on a public/ private space continuum. These contrasts interact with the display environment of the LL. In many workplace environments, for example, canteens and rest areas, photocopying and mail rooms, locker rooms, and common rooms are more public than individual offices or consulting rooms. Though these more public zones are usually off-limits to the general public, they often display texts in a workplace public domain: cf. Hanauer’s (2009) microbiology study, cited earlier. Logos and instructions on a photocopying machine or coffee maker are usually incidental to the space where they are displayed, though multilingualism in such texts often indexes globalisation in everyday technology. More significant are displays in such settings which intentionally build workplace solidarity and identity of various kinds. Some LL units follow the decorous identity of the host institution or encourage local cooperation: a type in a workplace kitchen (with variations of language and imagery) is a common example. Other types – as documented, for example, in Dundes and Pagter’s (1975) study of photocopied and traditionally reproduced drawings, pseudo-memoranda, tongue-in-cheek glossaries

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of bureaucratic language, and other ephemeral creations in office environments – exemplify Goffman’s (1956) concept of backstage language by undercutting the demands of decorous behaviour in the public space. Displays of this kind often express irony, sarcasm, rebellion, and aggression, but in doing so, they form a discourse of the in-house LL. This vernacular stream of linguistic and visual expression is designed for display in the liminal spaces that are not open to a general public of strangers, but are in the public space of workplace networks of communication. Many of these materials have been re-mediatised for internet circulation – any internet search for terms such as purity test (or innocence test) and funny excuses, for example, will reveal materials similar to those in Dundes and Pagter (1975: 119–25, 140–41) – so that they now live a dual life in the OLL and the terrestrial LL. As performances of language display, their role in constructing public discourse also provides opportunities for LL research. The public/private gradations of the LL also extend to the domestic sphere. The more public side of this domain includes street names and addresses, with shadings towards the more private in the names of houses and residential buildings. In some settings, the public display may extend to doors, balconies, front gardens, or flagpoles. In more private zones, we may include lobbies and reception areas for apartment buildings, front rooms of private dwellings (for which terms such as living room, sitting room, lounge, parlour, Hungarian tisztaszoba ‘clean room’, etc., often refer to social function rather than architectural location), bedrooms, studies and home offices, kitchens, and bathroom or toilet facilities. Different cultures will arrange these and other architectural features (porches, steps, gates, courtyards, etc.) and their functions in different ways. Linguistic texts can be displayed in any of these zones, whether the display is intentional (as with posters, plaques, and other artifacts), or the incidental show of brand names and logos on consumer products. Domestic front room culture has been the subject of sociological and semiotic research at least since Laumann and House’s (1970 [1969]) study of living room decoration and social class, ethnicity, and modernity; see Riggins (1994a) for a review. Studies of this kind, however, rarely mention language as a factor in the expression of identity, even though many of the decorative objects which are discussed include inscribed displays of language. The principle for the LL is that since text-bearing materials are displayed in these relatively public spaces, they constitute spaces for LL research: it falls to researchers to ask the LL questions. Portable objects offer other avenues for LL research. The notion of reflexive spatial reference discussed in Section 4.3 determines that text-bearing objects – running the gamut from discretionary objects such as home decorations, tourist souvenirs, picture postcards, and personal adornments to the pre-designed and obligatory displays found in passports, coins and banknotes, postage stamps,

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and health warnings – always carry their own space with them as design objects. This spatial reference is frequently displayed in open public space: the expression on the T-shirt in Figure 5.5C is displayed in the public space by the wearer (as sign animator), and its linguistic meaning is systematically comprehensible for anyone who knows the local phrase. The photograph, which does not include the wearer’s face or similar personal identification, foregrounds the public element. Such portable objects, however, are not just for public display, and they are likely to accumulate layers of personal meaning. These layers recall the sense of layering articulated by Glassie (1991) and Leeds-Hurwitz (1993) and cited above; they become part of the use which individuals make of mass-produced goods, and add meaning to what is expressed on the Textual plane in the LL. Corrigan (1994: 435) addresses this problem in the social semiotics of clothing, noting that the ‘clothing object’ contains three dimensions of signification: one ‘as a public thing revealing the various social attributes carried by clothing in a given society’ and therefore capable of being ‘interpreted by any competent member of society’; a second as an ‘object to which things happen’ (e.g. clothes may be lent, borrowed, or appropriated by other family members or close friends); and a third which ‘concerns clothing not as a public object in the street but as an object in the private domain of specific persons’. Thus the individual who wears a T-shirt, as in Figure 5.5C, may do so for personal motivations that the text cannot express: it might have sentimental value, it might have been a chance borrowing from a friend, it could be an expression of local loyalty, or it could be an internet purchase of a comfortable shirt which has no intended community reference. The elements of meaning which are accessible from public display, in short, will take us only part way to understanding the semiosis of the T-shirt from the wearer’s point of view. With these spatial principles in mind, the principle for LL research is that there is always the potential to view portable objects as part of the LL. Language-bearing objects such as the cigarette packets of Figure 3.1 come easily into the LL, but other objects which are tied to specific modes of discourse and entextualisation may also constitute spaces for the LL. The crucial elements for the LL are pragmatics and display. The more the pragmatic force of the object – the sense of what is the object doing here? – is conveyed at the textual level, the more easily it fits into LL research. Conversely, the more that private spaces or personal meanings provide the frame of reference for understanding the object, the more likely it is to fit into other research perspectives. Nearly any text-bearing item can be displayed in the public space at one time or another and thereby take part in linguistic landscaping, but some such items are so rarely displayed – as opposed to being used in their socially defined contexts – that they are unlikely to feature prominently in the LL. Postage stamps, for example, have been analysed using

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Peirce’s semiotics by Scott (1995) and in my approach to significations of nationhood in Greece (Kallen 2002), but displays in the public space do not feature in these discussions. For portable objects, then, the boundary between the LL and other domains of analysis is a matter of degree, coming down to the empirical evidence of discourse and display, and how we choose to engage with it. 8.2.3

Linguistic Landscapes and Other -scapes

I have thus far approached the LL using landscape as a central term, not in the sense of ‘a view of the land’, but referring to a social constellation which involves human activity that is engaged with the built and natural environment (see especially Section 4.2). Despite the multiplicity of spaces which this approach entails, it could be argued that landscape is an inadequate term, and that various other -scapes better focus attention on expressive forms or contexts that the landscape notion overlooks. English compounds with -scape are widespread and, according to the OED, have been expanding since such eighteenth-century coinages as rockscape (‘a rocky landscape’) and prisonscape (‘a view or picture dominate by a prison or prisons’). Lehrer (1998) and Gold (2002) document a host of modern innovations. Many of the terms in Gold’s (2002) list are based on the graphic representation of something (e.g. nightscape ‘depiction of a night scene’), but others are not: such terms as skinscape from the work of Inga Clendinnen (‘my skin-scape turned tropical: huge bruises bloomed like orchids’) and soundscape ‘range of sounds; musical panorama’ from the Third Barnhart Dictionary of New English use -scape in other ways. Similar coinages have been developed in a wide range of disciplines as technical terms. Appadurai’s (1990: 296) formulation of ‘dimensions of global cultural flow’ in terms of ‘ethnoscapes’, ‘mediascapes’, ‘technoscapes’, ‘finanscapes’, and ‘ideoscapes’ is frequently cited as a way of encapsulating the movement of people in an era of globalisation, the enhanced role of technology, and related notions. Porteous (1990), on the other hand, takes a geographical approach to the development of what he terms ‘landscapes of the mind’, expounding on the smellscape and soundscape for the senses, and such ‘landscapes of metaphor’ as the bodyscape, homescape, and childscape. Though it is not possible to develop a critique of these approaches here, Porteous (1990) applies a method which helps to characterise -scapes related to the LL. His notion of the smellscape, for example, brings together psychological and perceptual research with perspectives derived from the study of spatial and social relations in a context where memory plays a crucial role. Illustrating the interaction of these factors, Porteous (1990: 39–41) examines the role of the smellscape in literary and autobiographical works. John Raynor’s London autobiography

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evidently details ‘at least fifty distinct smells in a little over two hundred pages’; the smells pertain to plants, food, buildings, people and animals, and miscellaneous other entities, real and imagined. Memory is also important for the childscape, in which Porteous (1990) includes the sensory experiences of childhood (touch, contact with the ground, smell, the experience of noises and silences, etc.), the world of the imagination, and place. Porteous (1990: 169) illustrates this configuration of memory and the experience of various places for play, adventure, and danger by producing a map of the territory of his own childhood. Produced from the child’s point of view, the childscape map – like all cognitive maps – does not match the cartographer’s perspective, but gives an insight into what is significant and salient in the mind. LL research has, in its own right, given rise to a number of other -scapes, including the graffscape (Pennycook 2010), the schoolscape (Brown 2012), soundscapes (Pappenhagen et al. 2016; Backhaus 2016), smellscapes (Pennycook and Otsuji 2015), and the semiofoodscape (Järlehed and Moriarty 2018). Domke (2019: 115–17) argues, ‘to consider linguistic landscapes as semiotic textscapes, which include not only different semiotic resources such as images and buildings . . . but also all possible modes of perception’. A problem arises, however, in trying to relate the scope of the LL to the many other -scapes which could be proposed. Brown’s (2012) use of the term schoolscape explicitly treats the display of language in schools as only a part of the broader educational process. Brown (2012: 282) thus defines schoolscape ‘to refer to the school-based environment where place and text, both written (graphic) and oral, constitute, reproduce, and transform language ideologies’, projecting ‘ideas and messages about what is officially sanctioned and socially supported within the school’. Given the long-standing connection between the LL and the languages of education (cf. Gorter and Cenoz 2007, 2015a; Gorter 2018; Malinowski, Maxim, and Dubreil 2020a), it is not surprising that schoolscape has gained popularity for particular approaches: see also Brown (2018) and Im (2020). The difference between the schoolscape idea and the linguistic landscape of the school, however, is not always clear. Following Brown (2012), researchers whose interests in language display is only a part of an examination of educational policy, process, and content may find that the LL focus on language display is too restrictive to do the subject justice: see further Szabó and Troyer (2017, 2020). If, however, the term schoolscape simply captures the idea of language display in environments that are not fully accessible or open to the public (classrooms, school corridors, gyms, notice boards, etc.), then the argument advanced here for a multiplicity of gradations of public spaces suggests that such language displays certainly constitute part of the LL. I illustrate the problem of -scapes with discussion of the foodscape. This volume has shown many ways in which the language of restaurant

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culture – including signage, menus, and restaurant names – participates in the LL. This participation is not just from the display of code choices, but by using language to build trust, claim authenticity, and index place and social relations. Gerhardt (2013) reviews a long tradition of research on food and language, while works such as Gerhardt, Frobenius, and Ley (2013) bring the study of foodways – defined succinctly by Long (2010: 6) as ‘the total network of activities and conceptualizations around food’ – into contact with many topics familiar to sociolinguists. These areas include corpus-based research (e.g. Jurafsky 2014; Kallen 2015), etymology and the global politics of food, textual genres, and various kinds of talk related to food. Where food and language display come together, as in the discussion of the menu in Figure 6.13E above, the suggestion could be that analysis should shift from landscape to foodscape. Though foodscape is not listed in the OED, the word has been developing in different senses since the time of Yasmeen’s work (1996, 2006) on the foodscape of Bangkok. Developing from spatial theories such as Certeau (1984) and Smith’s (1987) feminist geographical and social perspective, Yasmeen (1996: 2) brings the overlapping domains of gender, ‘food systems’, and place into a model of the foodscape that stresses the importance of gender in the public space and the private domain, while giving close attention to food practices, especially with regard to public eating. Many foodscape studies focus on questions of supply, source, and mobility, but others lean towards social and cultural interpretations, which sometimes bring language and discourse to the fore and are directly relevant to LL research: for reviews, see Mikkelsen (2011) and Vonthron, Perrin, and Soulard (2020). Jochnowitz (2008), for example, advances a foodscape concept which builds on Schafer’s (1994 [1977]) idea of the soundscape, Shandler’s (2006) Yiddishland notion which brings semiotic and sociolinguistic perspectives to the study of Yiddish and popular culture after the Second World War, and Bell and Valentine’s (1997) geographical approach to foodways. Jochnowitz’s (2008: 297) approach merges the geographical and the semiotic, formalising a definition of the foodscape as ‘consisting of these five separate and partly nested personal sites: the mouth, the body, the kitchen, the table, and the street’. This approach encompasses language as one among other systems, since, as Jochnowitz (2008: 296) explains, ‘as a liminal zone, neither outside nor inside, the mouth is a particularly contested cultural landscape’ where ‘tasting and smelling, chewing and swallowing, speaking, smoking, and spitting are all performances that distinguish the mouthscapes of a culture’. The almost incidental way that Jochnowitz (2008) mentions speaking is a reminder for linguists that while speech is an important part of what people do with their mouths (or hands), there are many other functions which also need to be considered in the ensemble of the foodscape. The other spaces

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which Jochnowitz (2008) uses to organise the foodscape are filled with linguistic and non-linguistic meaning. Food in the kitchen and on the table is not linguistic, but words for foods and food processes are. For LL research, ‘the street’ is an obvious zone of interest, but Jochnowitz (2008: 301) highlights spoken interaction in the street of local shops, arguing that ‘in any urban context the street is a significant theater’, and citing the Yiddish expression Shikt dayne oyern in di gasn ‘send your ears into the streets’, meaning ‘be aware, or find out what is really going on’, as an example of the role of street in the community. More recently, Johnston and Goodman (2015) also take up the importance of discourse in the foodscape, which, as Johnston and Goodman (2015: 207) put it, ‘highlights the dialectical relationalities between and among food culture (values, meanings and representations) and food materiality (physical landscapes, ecologies and political economy)’. These inter-relations of language and food culture raise problems of scope for LL research. The developing concept of foodscape brings spatiality together with the wider world of foodways and the anthropology and semiotics of food practices: see reviews by Mintz and Du Bois (2002) and Stano (2015). In this complex, there are many other areas where social dimensions of language are involved, but language display is at most secondary. These areas range from the lexicon of foods, processes, and events to written genres such as the recipe, cookbook, restaurant review, memoire, or blog; and to spoken discourse at mealtimes, in marketplaces, in reminiscence and narrative, and in cookery demonstrations at home, in teaching, and on electronic media. Järlehed and Moriarty (2018) and Abas (2019) address the apparent limitations of linguistic landscape or even semiotic landscape as terms to account for the expression of meaning in regard to Basque Txakoli wine or restaurant culture, respectively. These critiques explore the boundary of LL research, with Abas (2019: 53–4) proposing ethnic foodscapes in ‘referring to the entire built environment which comprised any visible written inscriptions (shop signs, menu) and, the literacy of people moving in and out of the restaurant’, and Järlehed and Moriarty (2018: 27) suggesting semiofoodscape as a term which includes elements under the headings of ‘foodstuffs’, ‘spaces’, ‘actors’, ‘practices’, ‘norms’, ‘inscriptional genres’, and ‘(other) semiotic resources’. The latter category includes items familiar in LL research: ‘names, linguistic code, script, orthography, typography, color, material, images’. In the semiotic world of food and drink, the position of the LL is based on its concern with motivated language having particular discourse aims that spark discourse responses from others by display in the public space. Spatial issues follow from the principles of gradation in the public space as discussed above. Restaurants may show subdomains from the street level through reception areas to kitchens and more private zones such as offices or toilet facilities. Each has its own configuration of display and the public eye, and each may

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shape a different way of displaying language: the instructions to staff in the kitchen may be in a completely different language, using different stylistic features, from the menu or posters in the dining room. Menus mediate between the insider who provides food and the outsider who consumes it, whether the menu is printed, delivered orally, communicated visually, or in a mixture of modes: code choices and negotiations over markedness may be crucial to this part of the LL. Because language display is motivated by discourse aims, the LL analysis is not strictly lexical-grammatical. As I suggest in discussing Figure 6.13, for example, the real-world referents of food terminology are also crucial for the LL. It is not enough to know that boxty is the name of a potatobased food: it is crucial for understanding the relevant LL data to know how the term fits into the pragmatic force of enticing particular sign viewers. Similar issues arise in more private domains such as community eating events and private homes, but space limitations preclude their discussion here. I use the genre of the menu to exemplify the boundary of the LL in restaurant culture, mentioning an experience of mine from 1981. I was in a Vietnamese restaurant in Paris, where the menu was in Vietnamese and French. One entry, however, was only given in Vietnamese: Tiết canh. Lured by an unfamiliar food, I asked for tiết canh, but was told with a shake of the head, Non, non, non, monsieur, c’est pas pour vous. C’est seulement pour les vietnamiens ‘No, no, no sir, that’s not for you. It’s only for the Vietnamese’. This warning intensified the lure of the exotic, and I persisted with my order. The layout and code choices of this menu were significant for the LL. The asymmetry of translation could have been due to an oversight, difficulty in finding a suitable translation, or the belief as expressed to me, that non-Vietnamese people would not eat tiết canh. Such decisions of language presentation and translation are relevant to the public face of the restaurant in a Francophone environment. Further questions arise for foodways research, and these questions might fit into a foodscape perspective: precisely what goes into Tiết canh (a cold pudding of congealed blood, garnished in this instance with peanuts and coriander leaf ), what attributes are ascribed to it in Vietnamese culture, and why different people choose to eat it or not when given the opportunity (it is frequently ascribed to northern Vietnam and said to be favoured by men). These questions, however, do not belong to the LL. In sum, while the LL of food culture includes a range of textual genres, methods of display, and discoursal functions, the foodscape involves many non-linguistic modes of semiosis. The two concepts also differ in spatial orientation, since the LL is concerned with the public space in its various gradations and relationships, but foodscape research can readily explore distinctly private spaces such as the bodily experiences of taste and mouthfeel. The difference between these two notions is partly one of which questions different researchers ask about the same phenomenon, but also one of substance. There

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are many opportunities for cooperation as these LL research and foodscape studies develop, but there are productive differences between them. This principle operates for other -scapes as well. Where language is not the focal point of research but part of a broader complex of social practice and spatiality, another -scape notion may provide a rubric for further research: anyone investigating the smellscape or the childscape as suggested by Porteous (1990) or Appadurai’s (1990) finanscape will need to start from a consideration of much more than language, even if language comes into play at some stage or another. In contrast, where language – in the broad sense which entails other means of semiosis by default – is the focus of interest, the term linguistic landscape provides a focusing concept that can encompass a wide range of socially defined spatial domains. To speak of the LL of schools, the LL of restaurants, the LL of monuments and memorials, and so on is not to limit the study of these domains but, on the contrary, to place them into a comparative perspective which aims to understand the way that human beings use space and language. 8.3

Problems of Evidence

8.3.1

Methodological Diversity

The interdisciplinary nature of LL research has meant that it has been open to a variety of research methods. To approach the LL from the perspectives of sociology, applied linguistics, semiotics, art and design, urban planning, advertising and marketing, or sociolinguistics is to bring certain methodological assumptions and ways of thinking to the field. Methodological diversity has allowed the field to grow, and given the diversity of situations, research questions, societies, and languages which generate LLs, it is difficult to see how any particular theme can be privileged over another. Urban LLs are no more or less important than rural ones, although they will call for different research methods; studies which feature globalisation as a research concern are not necessarily more insightful or important than those which concentrate on local dynamics of meaning-making; and so on. There are, however, some problems which researchers of various backgrounds and interests perpetually come up against, and which call for debate within the field. In this section, I focus on two types of problems concerning evidence: (1) the use of photographs in LL research, and (2) the non-photographic evidence of conversation and quantification. 8.3.2

Photographs as Evidence in LL Research

Photographs have been used as evidence of the linguistic displays we now consider as the LL since the early works by Drucker (1998b [1984]), Calvet

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(1990, 2011 [1994]), Spolsky and Cooper (1991), and others. They feature prominently in the formative studies of Shohamy (2006) and the papers of the Gorter (2006c) collection. The growth of digital photography, the widespread use in academic conferences of electronic presentation programs, and the expansion of digital printing technology have all facilitated the use of photographic evidence. Though the implications of photography for LL research have not been widely discussed in the field, Gorter (2019: 47–50) raises important questions in recognising the LL photograph as a photographic genre, urging LL photographers to pay more attention to photographic clarity, and advocating (p. 50) that ‘LL researchers take their images more seriously. . . . They have to consider the conditions in which their images are produced and the effects images can have’. In this section, I explore some of these issues. LL photography has two different, and sometimes contradictory, objectives. One is to create records which document the LL, while the other is to generate data that can be used for analysis and the presentation of information about the LL to others. A starting point in this regard is to consider the role of the photographer as the author of data. Though the camera has an appearance of objectivity about it, it is a long-recognised principle in photography that the photograph is never neutral: it is created by human agency in particular ways which include the choice of subject, the setting up of the photographic moment, and the post-production processes which turn the effects of light on a medium into a photograph. Schwartz (1995: 44–5) addresses these points with regard to archival photographs: Optical precision . . . is not a guarantee of documentary neutrality. The photograph is neither truth nor reality, but a representation willed into existence for a purpose and mediated by the persons concurring in its formation. . . . The ability of photography to use optical-chemical transformations and Renaissance perspective to convey outward appearances with unparalleled accuracy does not negate its ability, simultaneously, to communicate carefully crafted messages.

Given, then, that LL photographs do not constitute the LL, but are instead representations of it, critical questions arise for the LL researcher as to what ‘carefully crafted messages’ are to be created. Is the objective, for example, only to record a linguistic text which shows a language inscription, or an LL text in the broader sense that includes all the visual and physical features that contribute to the display of a coherent message? Giving prominence to the landscape idea, perhaps the objective of the LL photograph is not to focus exclusively on LL texts in either of these senses, but to record LL units as part of a spatial whole. We may want the photograph to show, for example, if an LL unit is one of many in a local shop window crowded with messages, if it is placed in a dominant position in a shopping arcade or mall, or if it is surreptitiously attached to another unit. We may, as Scollon and Scollon (2003: 194)

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show, photograph an LL unit in relation to other forms of semiosis in the same vista: is the sign, for example, near road markings, a private house or business, a national flag, or other elements of the semiotic order? Choosing whether or not to photograph the LL unit in this wider context is an editorial choice, which also has consequences for the practicalities of fieldwork. Some kinds of photograph can be taken in passing and allow the LL researcher to remain a stranger, but others require the cooperation of the shopkeeper or manager and thus engage the researcher with sign instigators: either approach has its advantages and disadvantages. It is crucial, then, to recognise the effect which the apparent objectivity of the LL photograph has in obscuring the active role of the photographer in choosing what to photograph and how to photograph it. The use of LL photographs as documentary records also obscures the deeper question of how the LL fieldworker experiences the LL as a sign viewer. Some of this experience – thoughts, affective responses, non-visual sensory perceptions – cannot be photographed. A central, and easily overlooked, part of this experience is also that of movement. Much of the LL is designed with the movement of a flow of relative strangers in mind. The sign instigator’s desire to capture the moving viewer’s attention from amidst competing visual elements – using marked linguistic expression, visual imagery, or emplacement features to accomplish this aim – accounts for a great deal of what we see in the LL. This sense of movement – central to the idea of the urban observer as flâneur (one who strolls), reviewed by La Rocca (2017) – is rarely discussed in LL research, but Certeau’s (1984: 97) assertation that ‘the act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language’ supports a view that to understand the LL requires an understanding of how movement and visual display work together. The LL photographer’s paradox is thus that while it is relatively easy to take photographs of LL units, what makes the LL a living social practice is the sign viewer’s experience of affect and cognition in the perception, recognition, understanding, and take-up of speech acts expressed in the LL. Since a still photograph can only capture a fragment of this experience, it falls to the LL photographer to take a critical approach to their own role in segmenting and entextualising what is a continuous, multimodal experience. Though photography as a documentary record of the LL can create record photographs, not all record photographs are suitable as display photographs in communicating the results of LL research to others. Record photographs often contain vital contextual features that are cropped out for publication in order to show LL texts clearly. Though most published photographs from the terrestrial LL feature fixed sign units, recent work has also demonstrated the potential of using photography to convey other ways of experiencing the LL. Niedt (2020), for example, focuses on what he calls tempo and affect in the LL pertaining to an Italian-American seasonal festival in Philadelphia, detailing his role as an

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Figure 8.1 Catching up with van graffiti (Dublin, 2020)

observer in structuring the data, and including photographs that index general contexts and practices which he describes in an ethnographic mode, rather than presenting the festival exclusively by photographs of fixed signage units. This approach captures the LL experience, not only in the observer’s memory and documentation, but in the choice of what to present to the reader. If LL research is to develop ethnographic perspectives that account for the LL as social practice, published LL photographs will necessarily extend from photographing LL units to include the process of experiencing the LL. As a simple illustration of movement in the LL, Figure 8.1 shows three views of graffiti written in the dust of a van in traffic. Unlike many of the photographs in this volume, they have not been cropped, but show the perspective as the van came into my view. Figure 8.1A shows the initial perception, from which it is possible to make out some bits of language and a simple face-shaped image. The photograph shows the van in context, revealing that it is in traffic and going through a wide street in a residential area. The lighting and lack of leaves on the trees suggests that it is a winter afternoon. These contextual factors may not be important if we are only interested in the text on the van – where only ‘As Soon As Possible’ is legible in this photograph – but if we were, for example, researching the LL of moving signage in Dublin or the comparative LL of urban neighbourhoods, the context of this bit of graffiti transiting through this district (and not, for example, through more quiet residential suburbs) could be significant. Figure 8.1B shows the graffiti inscription as it comes more into my view. The contextual factors of the neighbourhood and traffic are largely lost, but is now clearly visible, and more writing can be seen underneath the iconic image of a smiling face. Closer to the van, as in Figure 8.1C, it is

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possible to read under the face, and under that the inscription . This expression is the one that caught my eye initially, since it is a common discourse phrase in Irish English, used to emphasise what the speaker has said and to gain the listener’s agreement or engagement. Had I chosen in Chapter 5 to discuss the graffiti as an example of the enregisterment of vernacular speech, the image in Figure 8.1C would have been sufficient. A researcher whose only interest was in this display of enregisterment could also justify cropping out the roadway and much of the van in order to focus on the discourse phrase alone: for reasons which I explain below, I would not follow that course. Though it is easy to demonstrate motion in Figure 8.1 because both the signage and the researcher are moving, the same principle holds for the LL in general: the sign viewer’s experience of the LL is a process of motion which the observer’s single still photograph does not capture. The choice between a record photograph which documents the fieldworker’s experience and a display photograph is illustrated by editorial choices in presenting the ghost sign of Figure 8.2. Though Buchanan Furniture advertised in local publications into the 1960s, it was no longer present by the time I took this photograph. The image in Figure 8.2A would be sufficient for a discussion of the ghost sign as a historical artifact, or of the pragmatics of enticement expressed by the word in . That image, however, does not capture the sign as I actually saw it. Figure 8.2B shows that I did not see the sign as a pedestrian, but as a car passenger from the opposite side of the road. If we add the traffic and the road to the LL data, we become more aware of the scale of the signage on the side of a two-storey building on one of the main roads in Coeburn. The relatively large scale is designed to catch the eye of visiting traffic as it passes through a small town with a population of less than 2,000. Viewed from this perspective, the phrasing of the LL unit has the force of a directive to the moving sign viewer to stop, because home lies at the end of a journey. In this case, the home is not the viewer’s home, but the putative home of values. The chance that the passing motorist might have to stop at the railroad crossing in Figure 8.2B enhances the ‘stop at home’ message. From the text-based perspective, Figure 8.2B is filled with unnecessary details, including the glare of the car windscreen and the car driver’s arm. Conversely, as an attempt to document the role of the signage in interpellating the viewer who drives through Coeburn, the photograph in Figure 8.2A lacks the details to convey the experience. Though Figure 8.2A shows the more typical LL photograph when compared to Figure 8.2B, neither is correct in any absolute sense: each conveys a different sense of the LL. The crucial role of spatial relations in the LL poses other problems for photographic evidence. Figure 8.3 shows Main Street signs from three

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Figure 8.2 Cropping a ghost sign photo (Coeburn, 2016)

different Irish locales. Main Street is an odonym of very general reference, since it does not refer to any specific historical or political features, and it is only descriptive by some sense of being main when compared to other streets in the system. Estimates vary, but in the US alone, there are apparently between 7,000 and 11,000 Main streets (see Chalabi 2014). This generic quality makes Figure 8.3 useful in probing the ability of LL photographs to

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Figure 8.3 Main Street (Grey Abbey, 2014; Carrickmacross, 2012; Bangor, 2012)

capture the act of naming as performed in the discourse of the street name plaque: what evidence can an LL photograph provide of the experience of Main Street, or of how any one Main Street differs from thousands of other Main Streets? Each photograph in Figure 8.3 shows significant code choices: English and Ulster Scots in Figure 8.3A, English and Irish (where the Irish translates as ‘The big street’) in Figure 8.3B, and English alone in Figure 8.3C. Though all

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three photographs are adequate as records of the language of the inscribed odonyms, they adopt different strategies in deciding what features are relevant for presentation. Figure 8.3C adopts a minimalist approach, for which there is ample precedent in published LL work. The photograph displays a text which indicates code choice, font, and colour (using black lettering on a white background). The Main Street to which it refers could be anything from a small lane to a major thoroughfare, and emplacement features are not shown: the sign unit could be free standing at eye level, attached to a wall or building, or swinging from wires over the road itself, as is common in the US. The street name plaque in Figure 8.3B also displays choices of code, font, and colour (white lettering on a blue background); the far right of the plaque includes the Carrickmacross town crest with the motto in Irish Is fearr comhairle ná comhrac ‘talking is better than fighting’. The photograph also includes enough of the surrounding background to show the sign’s physical context. The sign unit is attached to the wall of a building which is either free standing or at the end of a row of buildings. The fragmentary decorative trim at the bottom right of the photograph comes from the display window of a business. Figure 8.3B thus follows a limited contextual approach, treating the LL unit as the central part of the photograph, but giving a sense of spatial orientation for the unit. Taking LL units as acts of discourse in place, the limited context is the minimum which shows the unit at work. Figure 8.3A, however, follows a richer contextual approach, which is less common in published LL work. Only this level of context can convey some feeling for the experience of Main Street. This part of Main Street in Grey Abbey, a village of about 1,000 people, is in a tree-filled residential area, with space for pedestrian access and relatively little road traffic. I was able to step into the road to take the photograph; doing so in Bangor would have been much more dangerous. A different problem of contextualisation is shown in Figure 8.4, where the researcher is faced with a choice between the display photograph that illustrates a particular research interest or one which documents the broader context. Figure 8.4A shows a view of a shopfront discussed in Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha (2010: 24–5) to illustrate the use of Irish to market local tradition in a district where tourism features prominently. Code choice, style of presentation, and content are all part of the LL ensemble. The shop, known in ‘The Little Treasure’, uses these features to appeal to the Irish as visitor in search of an authentic Irish experience. The fascia offers the greeting ‘a warm-hearted welcome from An Taiscín’, and the panel on the right uses traditional letterforms to display proverbs in Irish ‘any little thing may serve as a such as ‘travellers have tales to tell’. reminder of someone’ and These proverbs are not translated in the signage, but potential customers will not

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Figure 8.4 Adjacency of the local and the global (Galway, 2005)

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be expected to know Irish to do business. Together with other elements in the shopfront, these LL units provide an exotic tourist experience for the visitor without threatening the need for communication and trust. What Figure 8.4A does not show, however, is that this display of local authenticity occurs in a much more global context. Immediately to the right of is an outlet for Benetton, an Italian-based international clothing company founded in 1965, with approximately 5,000 outlets around the world (see Benetton website). In addition to the distinctive green-and-white Benetton signage in Figure 8.4B, it is also possible to see the presence of as a reflection in the Benetton window. Topshop was founded in England in 1964 and expanded at one time to have over 500 outlets in a variety of countries (see Graziano 2016). The ground in front of the building shows brickwork and a fragmentary view of a strolling pedestrian, which indicate that this frontage is in a pedestrianised shopping area, rather than a city street busy with traffic. This ambience suggests a reason why the potential customer of might have the time to read the proverbial wisdom on offer. It also demonstrates that while the photograph in Figure 8.4A accurately shows a shop whose language display indexes its local authenticity, the overall shopping experience in this locale is filled with global indexicality. The difference between the minimalist approach and the expanded contextual approach for LL photographs is not just about putting LL units into context, but about showing how signage units contribute to the social space as a whole. I illustrate this point in Figure 8.5, which shows different perspectives from the same locale in the Mile End district of Montreal. The signage of a skin and body care clinic in Figure 8.5A shows an interaction between French and English which is common in Montreal (see especially Lamarre 2014). The top line of the text references the English word skins, but contains several violations of normative English orthography. The use of lower-case letters only, the character, and the free use of the diaeresis over the and the are all anomalies which separate the inscription from standard English. Disavowing standard English indirectly fits with the demands of language policy in Quebec and follows the appeal of ‘globalese’ as Jaworski (2015) discusses it. The bottom line of the LL unit carries out the informative function, using standard French clinique du corps ‘body clinic’. Figure 8.5A is adequate to convey the text, but the minimalist approach can be expanded, as in Figure 8.5B, to contextualise the LL unit to the business which displays it. Due to the circumstances of lighting, most of what is shown in the shop window is actually a reflection of the shop across the road. Nevertheless, it is possible to read a phone number and website address in the bottom right-hand corner of the window, and there are various stickers in the door which can be seen but not read in the photograph. Figure 8.5B thus adds a sense of scale and context to the minimal text of the fascia.

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Figure 8.5 Building a neighbourhood with signs (Montreal, 2017)

What neither photograph conveys, but which is the question that must be answered when research examines how LL units engage in the creation of place, is how the LL unit contributes to the overall nature of this part of Mile End, a district known for restaurants, small shops, and the arts. Figure 8.5C makes it possible to pick out , and to see it in its context of older, red-brick buildings which allow for pedestrians (shown at the right) and bicyclists. From left-to-right, the photograph includes (1) a large graffiti mural; (2) the Forge and Quincaillerie Filo, a metalwork and hardware shop first established in 1976 by Karl Filo, who immigrated from Slovenia in 1955 (Côté 2008); (3) the hairdresser , whose name references Greek (literally ‘doll’, but also used as a term of affection and to denote ‘dressing up’, comparable to English all dolled up), but replaces standard Greek with a globalese ; and (4) the holistic care health spa, the sign for which uses French syntax with the English spelling

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instead of French . In this small part of Mile End, the LL indicates local relationships and linguistic diversity, including not only names such as Filo and Koükla (as well as the global freedom of the nomad), but globalese graphic conventions. To view any one outlet in isolation illustrates a point, but to view the entire strip in a photograph is to show how each relates to the other and creates the experience of place. While Figure 8.5C shows the potential of wider contextual photographs, a different set of challenges arises when a single physical locale contains many LL units. In Kallen, Dunlevy, and Balaeva (2015), we use the term ensemble effects in reference to the problem of complex sites where many different messages use a variety of codes within one physically coherent setting. In keeping with the terminology of Chapter 7, I refer to these problems here as aggregate effects, since the different parts do not form a unified message, despite their physical proximity. Figure 8.6 illustrates a typical problem. The awning in Figure 8.6A contains an English-language message, and for the casual passer-by, the shop may appear to display only English. I have, however, counted over 20 other LL units in the space which this photograph shows. Most of them are small, such as an advertisement for the and the notice of an ATM which includes the logos of eight card-issuing companies. Many of the small notices are attached to the windows and doors of the business, but some are displayed in fruit and vegetable boxes in front of the shop; there are also written instructions for operating the chewing gum and novelty vending machines at the right. Two such displays are recoverable from the photograph and are shown as Figures 8.6B and 8.6C. Figure 8.6B thus shows an advertisement for cleaning and hygiene products which is attached to the shop door. The poster is dominated by the Spanish headline ‘lasting’ and its informative content (apart from the brand names) is entirely in Spanish. Figure 8.6C captures a portion of the shop window, whose displayed merchandise includes the Greek-American newspaper , mentioned in Chapter 5. Even the smallest LL unit offers an independent opportunity for language display. The lack of detail in Figure 8.6A therefore means that it is only roughly indicative as an observational record: it does not convey the linguistic character of the aggregate, nor does it enable the researcher to answer questions about the origins and target audiences of particular LL units. Knowing the sign instigator can also be problematic: some LL units will be instigated by the business, but in many cases the business only acts as the animator for signage initiated by others. The LL researcher in this case will need a much more detailed set of record photographs, and may need further ethnographic engagement in order to analyse the display of language in the public space.

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Figure 8.6 Aggregate effects (Astoria, 2017)

Unlike the aggregate effects in Figure 8.6, Figure 8.7 shows the effect which can arise when one photograph captures different LL units from different zones of the urban landscape. Most LL photography follows the fault lines of the physical editing of space in the community, as discussed in the Belfast

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Figure 8.7 The dialogue effect – Royal Mail and street name plaque (Newry, 2014)

street views of Figures 6.14 and 6.15. The photograph in Figure 8.7, however, creates a different effect by framing LL units from different zones of the urban landscape as if they were within a single zone. In the foreground on the right of the photograph, a street name plaque conforms to policy in Northern Ireland: the English name is obligatory, and the Irish name arises by local request. The same letter shape is used for both languages, with English in top position. The plaque is emplaced on a building which fronts onto the pedestrian footpath. Set well back from this pedestrian zone is a facility run by Royal Mail, the nowprivatised development of the postal service in the UK. The Royal Mail logo in a distinctive yellow font against a red background with a crown emblem above the writing, is visible in the background of the photograph. Royal Mail operates a language policy that makes few local concessions: a Welsh logo that includes the Welsh phrase Post Brenhinol in a smaller font above the words Royal Mail may be used (Royal Mail 2016), but there appear to be no provisions for the use of Irish or Scots Gaelic. The selection of a point of view and framing in the photograph gives the appearance of an aggregate, as with the milestone photograph of Figure 7.1 or the shopfront in Figure 8.6. Yet while the LL units of Figure 7.1 are grouped together on the same pedestrian footpath, and disparate voices and objectives are united in the shopfront of Figure 8.6, the two LL units in Figure 8.7 are only brought together by the framing effect of the photographer: they are not in the same zone of the urban flow. The result could be seen as a false aggregate effect. Since the photograph shows an actual view which could be experienced at any time by a sign viewer, though, it is more realistic to understand it as a

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dialogue effect, in which LL units from different spatial zones are portrayed as if they were part of the same zone. The dialogue effect in Figure 8.7 is significant, since it shows two different language policy authorities – the state domain of the UK and the local domain of the Newry and Mourne District Council – operating different language policies (each with its own understanding of language, place, and identity) within sight of each other. The editing effects of the urban landscape may suppress such dialogues, but the LL researcher can also use the camera to cross boundaries and bring these dialogues to prominence. Change in the LL can be captured by examining layering effects, ghost signs, and remnants, but a complete reliance on the observer’s present can overlook what was in the LL at an earlier time. Documentary evidence can fill many gaps, but the potential of uncovered signs is another opportunity for the LL photographer. Figure 8.8 shows two views of the same locale. Figure 8.8A shows the fascia of a veterinary clinic, while Figure 8.8B shows that underneath that fascia is the signage of a previous occupant of the building. This signage only became visible for a brief period, while the signage in Figure 8.8A was torn down in order to make way for new veterinary signage, not shown here. Since the LL unit of the present overwrites the LL unit of the past, which is only recovered by chance or by deliberate excavation, it is like the manuscript palimpsest, in which the old text is effaced and new writing superimposed. The palimpsest effect in the LL provides its own insights about language display. Figure 8.8 does not show a change in code choices, though the term victualler, to denote someone who prepares and sells meat to the public, is now recessive. In other situations of changing language policy or population change and displacement, such uncoverings do show changes of language choice and expression. Nevertheless, uncovering the name of the erstwhile shop keeper

Figure 8.8 The palimpsest effect (Dublin, 2017, 2020)

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in Figure 8.8B indexes a local sports and community figure, who was the subject of local legend, documented by Humphries (2002). To uncover the old sign, then, is to index a store of local knowledge for some members of the community; to cover it again obscures or erases the memory. Uncovered signs present a tangible, if fleeting, link between the LL of THEN time and the LL of NOW, but a more common occurrence – and another challenge for the LL photographer – is the obliteration, destruction, or replacement of LL units. Language change (including changes of writing system and orthography), changes in language policy, and the dispersion of people through out-migration and in-migration, colonisation, and genocide result in changes to the LL which are not always visible in the observer’s present, or which may only be visible in non-linguistic remnants of architecture or ornamental design. The challenge is to bridge the gap between what is directly observable and the state of the LL in former times. Pavlenko and Mullen (2015: 129) state the case powerfully that the phenomenon of removal of languages from writing . . . reminds us that our analyses cannot be limited to the languages and texts present in the signage – we also need to consider the absences and to ask questions about who did not find their languages and voices reflected in the public space, why, and with what consequences.

I illustrate such a case of erasure with Figure 8.9. Figure 8.9A shows the building of the former synagogue in Fränkisch-Crumbach, whose Jewish community was destroyed through forced migration and murder under the Nazi regime in the Second World War (see Katzenmeier, Knodt, Kunz, and Born-Hauenstein 2007 [2004]). The building was opened in 1874 and ceased to function as a synagogue in 1936, after which it was remodelled and used for a time as a cinema. Evidence from Altaras (2007: 355) and a drawing of the synagogue on the Rodensteinmuseum website shows that the building was architecturally distinct, with two high arched windows and a small arched porch on the gable end. Further inscriptions or symbols would also have marked out the distinctiveness of the building, but without photographic evidence, it is impossible to know what LL units may have been present. The building now gives no indication of its history as a synagogue. The later use of the building is indexed by the word Lichtspiele ‘cinema’ in a traditional letter form. Differences in paint colour suggest that another sign unit was once in place under the present inscription. The LL of the observer’s present includes a memorial stone across the road from the site, shown in Figure 8.9C, and signage in the windows on the right-hand side of the building, exemplified by Figure 8.9B, which advises that ‘a good morning begins with fresh bread rolls’. The latter are available from the bakery next door, which is run by the family who acquired the former synagogue. Applying the principle of strict synchronic observation, all that is visible in

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Figure 8.9 Former synagogue (Fränkisch-Crumbach, 2019)

the LL of the synagogue is an indication of a cinema (which does not function) and a bakery and coffee shop (which does). The memorial stone across from the synagogue is an LL marker in the sense of Chapter 7. The stone is headed by the transcription (Hebrew ‫שלֹום‬ ָׁ ) ‘peace’ and its German translation . It mentions the synagogue and the fate of the verfolgten und ermordeten ‘persecuted and

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murdered’ community. Its presence contrasts with many former synagogue buildings which have no such markers: cf. Altaras (2007) regionally and the Historic Synagogues website more generally. Though the marker serves an important cognitive and affective purpose, it is not designed to interrupt the horizon of NOW time by showing the LL of former times to the viewer. The LL of the building itself indexes only its seemingly benign role as a cinema, after the destruction of the community. Though the memorial stone references a THEN time, it gives the sign viewer no indication of the display and social life of language in this community. The LL researcher, then, is faced with the need to overcome the limitations of synchronic observation in understanding the LL. In line with the complexities of time reference and change in the LL as discussed in Chapter 7, these limitations are pervasive; in some cases, challenging the limitations can challenge the erasure not just of languages, but of people themselves. Here the LL researcher cannot simply observe with a camera, but will need archival evidence and engagement with local historians, archivists, archaeologists, community members, and others. As a final point on photographic evidence, I come to the question of putting the LL researcher literally ‘in the picture’ as part of the research process. The most common convention in LL research is to photograph and write from a position of detachment, with little discussion of the researcher’s role in producing photographic evidence beyond the outward features of time and place. With very few exceptions – such as Milani’s (2014: 214) photograph of himself holding up what he calls a ‘non-heteronormative’ T-shirt in a shop in Sweden – the observer does not appear in the photograph. The decision to leave out any mention or image of the observer is a conscious choice with consequences for the portrayal of LL research. I discuss this point with Figure 8.10. Figure 8.10A shows the hairdressers in a typical LL editorial format. Nothing is visible apart from the fascia, slightly contextualised by showing its top and bottom edges. The cropped photograph has been adjusted so that the lines of text are as parallel to the visual orientation of a printed page as possible. This photograph illustrates the modification of standard English spelling in the LL perfectly well. The inscription could be read as ‘New You’ (desirable image-building for a hairdresser), the we element in the spelling could further signify ‘we will make a new you’, and the use of for you indexes widespread CMC practice. These modifications index an innovative and personally engaged persona for a hairdresser, and the signage may also include other intertextual references which I have not recognised. Figure 8.10B, however, shows that there was more to the observation process than the fascia shows. The hairdresser has a large plate glass window, which reflects several features of the LL environment. On the right in the foreground of the photograph, it is possible to see two observers: I am the

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Figure 8.10 Putting the photographer in the picture (Wexford, 2020)

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person on the left. The large lorry at the left of the photograph suggests a major road, and Wexford Harbour features in the background. This photograph gives evidence that customers can see the scenic beauty of the area through the large window, and that the hairdresser is readily encountered on a seafront walk, rather than being reached through more complicated wayfinding known only to locals. My appearance with a companion in the photograph provides information about the context of the photography, without obscuring the text. If the aim of the display photograph is only to portray the text of an LL unit, omission of the wider context as in Figure 8.10A may be advantageous; if the attention of LL research shifts towards an ethnographic account of experience and practice in the LL, then there may be times when including the researcher in the picture breaks the illusion of objectivity and facilitates insight into the social life of the LL. 8.3.3

Non-photographic Evidence: Talking and Counting

Photographic evidence conjoins two potentially different approaches to the LL. There is an air of objectivity about the photograph; though I question this objectivity in the discussion above, the popular expression is that ‘the camera never lies’. Pared down to the minimum of text, medium, and ground, the photograph shows an object, and nothing more. The appeal of constructing reports of the LL from such photographs is captured in Lou’s (2016: 4) citation of a remark by Bernard Spolsky at the Tel Aviv LL workshop: ‘signs don’t walk away, or ask why you are observing them’. In order to overcome the danger of turning this kind of objectivity into a trivial pursuit, however, LL research has held open the possibility of expanding the scope of enquiry by interpretive means and, conversely, by using quantification to see patterns at work which are not visible from individual units. Diagram 8.1 maintains that each LL unit is a unique act, whose function, meaning, and interpretation depends not only on the text, but on the emplacement features and pragmatics involved in its reception by sign viewers. Some LL units are textually unique, and many others are not: there may be thousands of Main Street plaques, and dozens in any one particular city, and there are VISA stickers in shop windows all over the world. Since each LL unit has its own site of placement, it will generate a unique zone of proximal reference and appeal to different target audiences. Kailuweit (2019: 134) expresses the individuality of the sign unit in semiotic terms: ‘From a semiotic point of view signs are uncountable. A sign does not exist as a semiotic item independently of the effects it produces in a semiotic process’. Following this logic, we could treat the LL as an art gallery, viewing and interpreting each LL unit as a work in its own right. Much of what I have said about individual LL units in this volume is in keeping with this approach.

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A particularistic view of LL units, however, does not capture the experience of the LL as a whole, nor does an observer’s perspective that is based only on what is directly in view or capable of being photographed. One way to go beyond these limitations is to extend the discoursal plane of Diagram 8.1 from the discourse intentions of the sign instigator to discourse about the LL. In this volume, I have given some examples of situations – such as the croeso sign in Figure 5.5 and the metal foundry signage in Figure 6.7 – which required parsing from the sign instigator, but systematic interviews with sign instigators and sign viewers have long been a part of the LL field. Tixier’s (1998) interviews with sign viewers in Place Sainte-Claire in Grenoble provide an early example, but several different approaches are developed in Shohamy and Gorter’s (2009) volume. Malinowski (2009), for example, demonstrated the value of interviewing sign instigators and others connected with Korean businesses in the Oakland/Berkeley area of California; Dagenais et al. (2009) reported on working with children’s awareness and perceptions of language in connection with the LL in Montreal and Vancouver; Trumper-Hecht (2010) used telephone questionnaires to examine residents’ perceptions of the LL in Upper Nazareth, Jaffa, and Acre in Israel; and Garvin (2010) used face-toface interviews on walks in Memphis to probe residents’ perceptions and attitudes towards language and space in relation to the LL. Later work has extended the application of interview and ethnographic methodologies. Lou’s (2016) analysis of the LL in the Chinatown district of Washington, D.C., for example, relied on interviews with members of the general public as well as planners and other community figures who shape the LL. Lou’s elicitation of cognitive maps in which participants draw their own maps of the area, complete with linguistic and geographical labelling, draws on another way of accessing the knowledge that participants have of their LL. Further community involvement is demonstrated by Szabó and Troyer’s (2017, 2020) work with parents in Hungarian schools, which builds on ‘interpretative conversations about schoolscapes that index identity (the roles that parents construct in interaction) and agency’ (Szabó and Troyer 2020: 388). Using a different notion of community, Purschke (2017) also suggests ways of crowdsourcing LL data and research. For Dunlevy’s (2020) work with regional borders in Northern Spain, interviews with a sample of ‘pillars of society’ and owners of community shops and businesses were essential for understanding code choices, cultural commodification, and other dynamics of the LL. What these and other studies demonstrate is that sign units alone can only provide incomplete information about the LL. Various techniques which involve working with people – whether sign instigators, sign viewers, or people for whom the LL is part of a wider framework of activity – provide distinctive insights into the life of the LL.

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Talking to people about signs, however, is not the only way to overcome the limitations of particularism. Counting and quantitative analysis also have a long history in LL research, with influential papers in the Gorter (2006c) volume demonstrating that quantification can facilitate large-scale accounts of LL units in urban areas and enable comparisons across different zones within a given territory. Counting code choices on LL units has an intuitive appeal, since the procedure appears to be straightforward. If we were to start with Figure 1.1 in this volume, we could say that it unequivocally uses three languages, and a study of the LL in Astoria could be based on counting the relative frequencies of these and other languages within this territory. This method has a broad appeal, but it can also run quickly into difficulty. Personal names, place names, company logos and trademarks, and a wide range of internationally circulating words commonly found in such domains as foodways, technology, business, and entertainment defy rigid categorisation: papers by Edelman (2009), Tufi and Blackwood (2010), and Seargeant (2012) address aspects of this problem in the early expansion of LL research, with subsequent researchers approaching it in different ways. More recent discussions of translanguaging (see Chapter 3) further demonstrate the complexity of the issue. This categorisation problem is not unique to the LL. Part of it reflects the flexibility of the onomasticon, which gives proper names certain freedoms and allows for cross-linguistic influences which are rarer in the lexicon. Another part of the problem reflects the simple facts of language change. A feature of the emergence of Modern English, for example, was its massive lexical expansion. Coining new words by affixation or the adaptation of existing words has always allowed the English lexicon to expand, but, as Nevalainen (1999: 351) shows, borrowing from other languages became the main source of the new Modern English lexicon during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This expansion occurred as part of the globalisation of English, long before the globalisation associated with airplane travel and electronic communication. Words pertaining to food have been discussed in earlier chapters, and the OED cites many examples of borrowings from the early Modern English period which are integrated into the present-day lexicon: croquette and ragout from French, avocado from Spanish and ultimately from Aztec ahuacatl, sherbet from Turkish and Persian but ultimately from Arabic sharbah, etc. The globalisation of yesterday may (or may not) be taken for granted in today’s lexicon. For the LL, however, cross-linguistic lexical adaptations are matters of interpretation. They show gradations of integration into new host languages, which viewers may interpret in different ways. Sign instigators are not obliged to represent etymological or historical research: their concern is to use words for indexical effect. The word bistro(t), for example, is derived by the OED from French, with a first English attestation in 1922. The orthographic shape of

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the word and its lack of relation to other English words could make it desirable for bistrot signage to frame the word as a display of French. A competing etymology to Russian быстро bystro ‘quickly’ is based on stories of Russian soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars ordering food to be served quickly in small French restaurants; though Gold (1991) dismisses this derivation as folk etymology, it has for some people a certain romantic charm. A restaurant signboard in an Anglophone context could thereby display bistro as French, Russian, English with French prestige overtones, or unmarked English. Any of these presentations could index authenticity or exotic appeal. The categorisation of such words and names in the LL depends on how they are displayed and received: their users may not assign them to rigid categories, nor to the categories of historical research, and the categories may vary from context to context. Simple coding, as I propose above with regard to Figure 1.1 and the Astoria LL, may therefore not capture the reality of the LL. Further problems arise for quantification which centre on the problem of knowing what LL units enter into tabulated comparisons. A small sticker could count as a token of a particular language, as could a large unit which overhangs the city street. Both units contribute to the LL, and each could be counted as an element of language display. The difference in size and placement between such units, however, determines that their salience and contribution to the creation of space in the LL is not equivalent; this discrepancy will not be recognised in a simple count of code choices. LL aggregates, as in Figure 8.6, also pose a challenge to quantitative methods, since the shopfront as a whole contains a great many units. Most of the units are monolingual (especially if names are taken out of the counting process), but the shopfront as a whole is not. It is possible to make a consistent methodological decision either to count each LL unit separately, or to treat the entire shopfront as a single unit. One decision treats a multiplicity of LL units as if they were unrelated, while the other merges very different messages from different sign instigators into a single unit. Each decision is rational, and each loses some descriptive power. Balancing the uniqueness of each LL unit with the ability of each unit to relate to others is a problem that is familiar in linguistics, where the relationship between usage and system has long been addressed by Saussure’s (1974) parole and langue, Chomsky’s (1965) performance and competence, and the many critiques which have followed. The problem for the LL, however, is not the same as it is for the language system. Variationist sociolinguistics as expounded by Labov ([1966] 2006, 1972) and subsequently developed in many ways has profited greatly by the use of the ‘linguistic variable’ to account for the relationship between use and system. Informally, the linguistic variable is often defined to refer to ‘two or more ways of saying the same thing’. Labov’s (2006: 32) early statement expounds this view in noting that linguistic variables are ‘high in frequency, have a certain immunity from

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conscious suppression, are integral units of larger structures, and may be easily quantified on a linear scale’. Reflecting later argumentation, Tagliamonte (2012: 4) clarifies an additional condition that ‘linguistic variables must also be alternatives (i.e. options) within the same grammatical system which have the same referential value (meaning) in running discourse’. The LL, however, does not constitute a linguistic system in the sense of variationist linguistics. Labov’s condition of ‘immunity from conscious suppression’ is a crucial dynamic in analysing language variation and the direction of language change; this condition hardly applies in the LL, where a great deal of conscious attention, much of it directed at the perception of language by others, goes into text composition and presentation. The notion of referential equivalence between different realisations of a single variable can hardly operate in the LL. A street name plaque in French in Montreal can be placed near a McDonald’s sign in French and English, but they do not constitute a sociolinguistic variable. They have no referential equivalence, and they do not have the same spatial reference: they are not equivalent ways of saying the same thing. A succession of street name plaques that name the same street have a certain amount of referential equivalence, but they are likely to be highly standardised and show no linguistic variation. Figure 6.8 showed that two different names can be given to the same street by different plaques, but the appearance of variation is accounted for by the real-time layering of tokens from different acts of naming. The relationships from one LL unit to another are thus unpredictable, idiosyncratic, intertextual, and open to subjective interpretations of many kinds. While the links from utterance to utterance, as understood in variationist linguistics, relate to a linguistic system, the links in the LL do not construct systems of this kind: they do not form grammars. Methodological problems and idiosyncrasy in the LL do not, however, rule out the value of quantification in LL research. Regardless of its individual expressive qualities, the LL unit is also part of something larger: an LL genre, a series of other LL units from the same sign instigator expressing the same function, the aggregation of LL units on view in a particular street, and so on. Observing an LL unit on its own tells us nothing about what features it shares with others in the locale, or if the use of particular kinds of LL units correlate with social, economic, and political factors. Whether one LL unit is representative of a more general pattern or a stand-alone expression can only be understood by a systematic comparison. Individual units are also poor guides to change. Regime changes and changes in language policy shape the LL, and the layering effects which can give evidence of change are only visible by comparisons across units. Though this book has used very little quantification, there are questions which I have raised that cannot be answered without it. Figure 5.8 shows differences in the LL units of Warrenpoint and Kilkeel, but for anyone who has not seen these communities, the systematic quantitative

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survey in Table 5.1 gives more convincing evidence of differences than does the figure alone. Likewise, Tables 5.2 and 5.3 compare ‘Greekness’ in Astoria and Chicago using linguistic and non-linguistic evidence which expresses a feeling of neighbourhood difference better than the photographic evidence of Figures 5.9 and 5.10 alone. The quantification of LL evidence depends very much on the research question. The paper by Ben-Rafael et al. (2006), for example, is often referred to as a quantitative study, but it is not simply a count of code choices in signage units. Rather, it uses quantitative evidence to examine the sociological forces which motivate language choice in the LL, according to axes of ‘power relations’, ‘presentation-of-self’, and a ‘good-reasons hypothesis’ by which ‘benefit considerations explain LL choices’ (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006: 16). In other words, the quantification is not an end in itself, but a way of supporting interpretations of motivations for LL displays across different communities. The problems for quantitative methodology, which I have discussed here, can only be resolved in relation to specific research questions. An exhaustive method which demands that all personal names (from the name of the local shopkeeper to the fictional character James Bond) and words such as cappuccino, sorbet, pizza, Wi-Fi, Facebook, and okay should be unequivocally and consistently assigned to a single language in all LL units will run into difficulties. These difficulties turn back to the question of why the material is being quantified in the first place. Knowing that the sign in Figure 1.1, for example, displays Spanish does not resolve the question of how to assign the Pastor’s personal name to a discrete language. The need to make this assignment, however, is an artifact of a research method that requires such an assignment; for other methods, there will be other ways of quantifying the contribution of the sign unit to the LL of Astoria. Where quantitative methods capture a bigger picture than is possible in a particularistic analysis, operational decisions as to which LL units count, what features of LL units should be identified and counted, and how to interpret results will depend on the locale being researched and the questions asked by the researcher. 8.4

Some Further Frontiers

8.4.1

The LL and the World of Virtual Landscapes

Nearly all of this volume has been taken up with LLs in the terrestrial world. Slowly, however, LL researchers have begun to get involved with online and other forms of computer mediated communication (CMC). Different approaches may be found in Ivkovic and Lotherington (2009), Androutsopoulos (2012, 2015), Juffermans, Blommaert, Kroon, and Li (2014), Dovchin (2017), Blommaert and Maly (2019), Lyons (2019, 2020),

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and Kallen, Ní Dhonnacha, and Wade (2020). Relating CMC in all its different modalities to the LL notion is arguably the single biggest challenge in exploring the boundaries of the LL. CMC grows ever more ubiquitous, and continuing technological developments pose new questions for Appadurai’s (1990) early observations on the ‘technoscape’ or Shohamy’s (2006) suggestion to include mobile phone technology in the LL. One argument could be that most CMC is in the LL, since it involves language which is either visible in itself or which is accessed by visible language. Though many types of CMC messages are designed for private communication rather than public display, any CMC can ultimately enter the public view. A great deal of content is designed in the first instance to be accessed by a general public, and though pay walls and membership in social media groups can reduce the degree to which material is seen by the public, surveillance and hacking give even the most privileged communication the possibility of public display. This point is not incidental: it is an affordance of the electronic medium that is not applicable with most writing on paper. Many of the themes which are familiar in the terrestrial LL such as expressions of social indexicality, cross-language effects, and fusions between orthographic and pictorial representations are found in internet discourse of various kinds. An opposing argument would be that while CMC uses language, it is not accessible to a general public. Apart from physical display boards and other devices which are put into the terrestrial public space, the use of CMC requires access to an enabled device, and this threshold for access takes it out of the public domain. In parts of the world where cost and other factors make CMC inaccessible or the reserve of a few, the terrestrial public space is still accessible. When the content of CMC is accessed, the access often takes place in a private physical setting. While it is true that Person A can view a website which can be viewed simultaneously by a nearly infinite number of other viewers at the same time, this potential for sharing material does not necessarily make the experience a public one. Admittedly, CMC has interactive, discoursal affordances – such as the possibility of adding comments or changing texts, watching ads come and go according to internet viewer algorithms, or simply adding ‘likes’ – which are not available with printed books. These features, however, could establish CMC as discourse, rather than public display or landscape. Terms such as cyberspace and cyberscape imply that the world of CMC constitutes a space in its own right. In Kallen, Ní Dhonnacha, and Wade (2020), we argue that the online world constitutes a spatial domain of its own, underscored by the many spatial metaphors that are part of this internet world, ranging from the web page which we can scroll down while surfing the internet to the images of paper clips, long-outmoded floppy discs, files, and folders which organise electronic work space. Accepting the view that space

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relationships are constructed socially, it follows that CMC creates new spatial relationships and representations, many of which are not possible in the terrestrial world. A web page may be like a paper publication in so far as it is widely accessible, contains information and graphics, and may be seen by a large number of people, but a Facebook page can create a new community of practice among people who do not know each other in the terrestrial world. Though understanding the OLL in relation to the LL depends on further research, I suggest three approaches which may point the way for further development. One was articulated in the approach of Kallen, Ní Dhonnacha, and Wade (2020), which follows the LL notion of looking at language in the public space, emphasising the role of display in this language, and ruling out private domains such as emails, SMS messages, and social media groups with limited membership. Examining elements which parallel display in the terrestrial world, we concentrate on the indexing of Irish identity through the use of the Irish language, Irish English and Irish cultural references, and crosslanguage influences. The textual genres in this study are almost entirely ‘front of house’ phenomena in which individuals or companies announce themselves to the world, language display is made for display’s sake, or language is commodified: examples include usernames on social media, internet memes, the commodification of language in T-shirts, and Facebook discourse. This approach elaborates a parallel between what happens in the terrestrial LL and the dynamics of the OLL. Usernames on social media, for example, are like shop names and fascia signage, in that they present the public face of the instigator to a wider public. Online trust is built in different ways from trust in the physical world, but there are many parallel features. We do not know if a person’s username on social media actually corresponds to their legal name, but as I point out in Chapter 7, there does not need to be an actual Tante Liesel running the restaurant in order for the name to establish trust. Internet memes present less obvious parallels with the terrestrial LL. Though they may rely on humour, puns, and all manner of commentary on aspects of the world, the terrestrial world offers only marginal opportunities for such expressions in signage and graffiti. Viewed as performances, however, internet memes rely on principles of entextualisation as discussed by Bauman and Briggs (1990). The transmission of a meme not only puts a specific piece of text or visual material into a distinct performance frame, but generates crosstextual relationships that create meme genres. The combination of textual stability, variation, and intertextuality in internet memes is thus analogous both to genres of oral discourse such as jokes, riddles, and other short-form texts, and to genres which rely on visual imagery such as graffiti; the cartoons, hoax memos, and other forms of fax and photocopying lore which laid the ground for much contemporary meme culture (see Dundes and Pagter 1975 cited above, Preston 1994, and Buccitelli 2014); and the commodified forms of

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T-shirts, mugs, and souvenirs. Internet memes comprise a highly varied set of texts, and the distinction between memes which simply use language and those which involve language display would require further analysis. In Kallen, Ní Dhonnacha, and Wade (2020: 105–7), however, we concentrate on language memes, demonstrating the ability of memes in Irish to interpellate an audience who will appreciate the indexical qualities of Irish as a local community language entextualised in the global format of the internet meme and displayed in the public space of Tumblr or Twitter. To illustrate some of the issues involved, Figure 8.11 brings together four internet images which hinge on language awareness. Figure 8.11B is a simple realisation of the ‘Pun Dog’ meme from the Reddit website. The punchline is contained in the final panel, which relies on the near-homophony between the Irish word seacht /sʲaxt/ ‘seven’ (which many non-native speakers pronounce with /k/ instead of /x/) and English shocked. Figures 8.11A and 8.11D are versions of the ‘Distracted Boyfriend’ meme which originated in 2017 from a stock photograph taken by Antonio Guillem (see Know Your Meme website). The meme in Figure 8.11A, posted on the Reddit website with the heading ‘These make me dislike the French language’, contrasts the simplicity of English with the supposedly greater complexity of French, where the grammatical marking of such features as gender, number, and definiteness expands the list of available French word forms. Figure 8.11D, from the Tumblr website, features one of the most distinctive features of the Irish language, known to linguists as the system of ‘initial mutations’: grammatical accounts are given by The Christian Brothers (1977) and Stenson (2020), while Lawless (2018) provides theoretical insights. In this system, word-initial consonants undergo phonological changes according to a combination of grammatical and phonological rules. The details of these rules lie outside the scope of this volume, but their distinctiveness, and the relative rarity of such grammatically triggered phonological alternations outside the Celtic language family, makes them a salient feature of Irish linguistic identity. The two processes referred to in the meme are traditionally referred to in Irish as séimhiú (from the verb séimhigh ‘thin, attenuate’) and urú ‘eclipsis’ (the meme’s spelling is not standard); linguistic accounts often refer to these processes as lenition and nasalisation respectively. In lenition, for example, a noun such as cóta ‘coat’ with initial /kˠ/ is realised with the corresponding fricative /xˠ/ in the grammatical construction mo chóta ‘my coat’. Nasalisation determines the use of a voiced or nasal consonant instead of the form in the lexicon. Thus, the voiceless /kˠ/ of cóta is realised as /gˠ/ in ár gcótaí ‘our coats’, while the voiced consonant /bˠ/ in bord ‘table’ is realised as the nasal /mˠ/ in a mbord ‘their table’. The meme refers to these processes, but also references a pattern of language variation, by which Ulster Irish has developed a preference in vernacular speech for séimhiú instead of urú

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Figure 8.11 Internet language displays (Reddit, Tumblr, 2021)

(see O’Rahilly 1932: 169). This realisation of the Distracted Boyfriend meme thus plays on some complex grammatical and dialectal knowledge, appealing to the distinctive experience of anyone with a background in Irish grammar. That it does so in very few words by using the format of a globalised meme whose structure is familiar to a wide audience but whose indexicality will only be understood by a much smaller in-group demonstrates the power of the OLL unit. The picture in Figure 8.11C is an Irish-language adaptation of a graphic which the Know Your Meme website attributes to the Comedy Cemetery Reddit page. In this version, the woman asks the man ‘will you put ketchup on the shopping list’, to which he replies with the common phrase of affirmation, ceart go leor, literally ‘right enough’. In the lower panel, a hand holds up a ketchup-streaked list and the voice says, ‘Hmmm . . . now I can’t read

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anything . . .’. Though the version in Irish is slightly different from Englishlanguage versions, it has not undergone the kind of thematic or linguistic variation in its reproduction that is characteristic of internet memes. It so happens that English put catchup on the list and Irish cuir citseap ar an liosta share the ambiguous readings of putting something on a list (as a conceptual group of items) and putting something on a piece of paper in the physical sense. There are, no doubt, cross-language pairs where this ambiguity will not translate. In the context of a Tumblr category of Irish memes, the picture allows the sign instigator to post a pun which, unlike the bilingual reference in Figure 8.11B, works monolingually in Irish. Putting this joke in the public space of Tumblr makes it visible to all, but specially addresses that portion of Tumblr users who will understand the language of the joke. Though the approach in Kallen, Ní Dhonnacha, and Wade (2020) emphasises the parallelism between functions in the terrestrial LL and those of the OLL, these parallels do not mean that the OLL and the terrestrial LL are unconnected. On the contrary, there are types of online discourse which are also a part of the OLL, but which engage more directly with the terrestrial world. The work of Lyons (2019), Auleer Owodally and Peeroo (2021), and Themistocleous (2021) focus on different kinds of interaction between the OLL and the terrestrial world. I discuss them here briefly to illustrate other potentials for research. Rather than taking the OLL as separate from the terrestrial LL, Lyons (2019) demonstrates linkages between the two, sometimes by the overt references of online communicators, but at other times by connections that are only visible to the analyst of online messaging. Using the term phygital to refer to ‘the interplay of digital and physical . . . spaces in the language of public displays’ (p. 179), Lyons (2019) pays particular attention to debates on gentrification and social inequality in the Mission District of San Francisco, using data from popular print media, the physical LL, and a database of 16,756 geotagged Instagram posts relating to the Mission District. In addition to considering the themes arising from the terrestrial LL in this locale, Lyons (2019) argues that the geotagged Instagram posts are entextualised in the sense of Bauman and Briggs (1990), and that this entextualisation is made necessary by the requirement for the user to make caption and tagging choices in order to post an image. It follows, then, that these entextualised performances are, as Lyons (2019: 187) puts it, ‘both representations and productions of place’. Lyons (2019: 187) also plots frequently used terms in the Instagram messages on a cartographic map, illustrating not only the geographical distribution of terms related to physical space, but the inter-relation between the terrestrial space which Instagrammers flow through and the Instagram space which they construct. The idea, then, that a body of geotagged Instagram posts which relate to a terrestrial locale can be analysed as the creation of space provides a

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novel instantiation of Lefebvre’s (1991 [1974]) view of the social construction of space. Auleer Owodally and Peeroo (2021) demonstrate a different kind of interaction between the OLL and the terrestrial world, in which the notion of a virtual linguistic servicescape provides a framework for examining interactive service encounters on the Facebook pages of multinational fast food companies operating in Mauritius. The servicescape notion advanced by Bitner (1992) has been used in the business world to refer to physical settings in which customers and business employees come together to achieve goals of mutual satisfaction; see Mari and Poggesi (2013) and Touchstone, Koslow, Shamdasani, and D’Alessandro (2017). Auleer Owodally and Peeroo’s (2021) concept of an online linguistic servicescape can be related to the ‘internet of things’ idea (see Teo 2013), since it encompasses the online world in which the pragmatics of sales promotion, ordering, and verbal feedback are accomplished and the physical world in which fast food is prepared and delivered. Strikingly, Auleer Owodally and Peeroo (2021) illustrate the relative rarity of Facebook replies in Mauritian Kreol to customer-generated messages in Kreol, even though Kreol is the most widely spoken home language in Mauritius. They show (p. 26) that such replies are possible, yet the greater frequency of responses in English or metropolitan French index prestige, globalisation, language standardisation, and literacy practice. I suggest that these interactive displays take on special significance because they become part of the public space of the OLL. If a customer walks into a shop and speaks Kreol but receives a reply in French, the interchange is relatively private and disappears with the spoken word, but when this kind of interchange takes place on the Facebook page of a fast food outlet, it enters the public domain and thereby plays a role in the construction of values connected to language, as would be expected in the LL more generally. Political discourse can also show interactions between the terrestrial world and the OLL, since the two domains can use intertextuality and resemiotisation to cross-reference and reinforce each other. Lou and Jaworski’s (2016) discussion of the ‘Umbrella Movement’ in Hong Kong, for example, provides an example of new relationships in terrestrial space – in which ‘streets were renamed . . ., tents were numbered . . . and identified with their occupants’ names, and new pathways created’ as part of civil protest (p. 612) – which were accompanied by a flow of related discourse on social networks, blogs, and YouTube. In this context, Lou and Jaworski (2016: 615) state, ‘the reemplacement of signage in the encampment sites from online to offline spaces was prevalent’. Themistocleous (2021) brings the cross-modal perspective further in her analysis of the ‘Unite Cyprus Now’ (UCN) peace protests of 2017. Themistocleous (2021: 1fn) describes this movement as a counter-discourse,

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whose calls for the unification of Cyprus run contrary to both Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot nationalist agendas. Building on in-depth ethnographic observations of the terrestrial LL in the divided city of Nicosia (Themistocleous 2020), Themistocleous (2021) demonstrates the interaction between demonstrations and events taking place in the terrestrial world and the content of UCN Facebook pages. These online displays have in turn engendered terrestrial displays from protest supporters in different parts of the world, which also, as Themistocleous (2021: 9–10) shows, appear on UCN Facebook pages. Themistocleous (2021) supplements these direct observations with interview data from a local peace activist, who explains (p. 6) not only the importance of colour in UCN graphics – where yellow and white are chosen because they are central to the Cypriot flag and avoid colour associations with Greece or Turkey – but the role of language choice: ‘I speak Greek, the other one speaks Turkish, English was the only language that we could use to understand each other. And to address the politicians and the whole world so that the protest is inclusive’. These comments point out the political neutrality, in this case, of English as a lingua franca, but they also show that code choices of language display in the terrestrial world follow a dual agenda of offline communication within the group and online communication to a global audience in the OLL. The sign instigator in such circumstances thus engages in linguistic landscaping for both the terrestrial LL of the here-and-now protest and the re-mediatised world of the OLL. 8.4.2

Representing the LL

Though this volume has given the landscape element an essential position in LL research, the secondary question of how the LL is represented in other media provides a further research area which has hardly been developed. Long before linguists decided to identify the LL, other art forms referred to or depicted displays of language in the public space. In the Western visual arts, we may think, for example, of Pieter Bruegel the elder (ca. 1525–1569). Bruegel included inn signs and other displays of language and visual imagery in various works; the painting known in English as ‘The Hunters in the Snow’ (see Kunsthistorisches Museum website) is perhaps the best known. Through these and similar works Bruegel shows LL units in vivo, as part of the social life depicted in the piece as a whole. Bruegel’s ‘Netherlandish Proverbs’ (see Staatliche Museen website) depicts people, objects, and activities that refer to proverbs and folk metaphors which the viewer could be expected to know: Dundes and Stibbe (1981) identify 115 such oral texts which are resemioticised as visual images. Bruegel, in other words, used visual art to depict both the material and discoursal aspects of the LL. Ways in which other artists from

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various cultural traditions have worked with the same themes could be discussed extensively. In Chapter 5, I mentioned one literary reference to graffiti, but the depiction of the LL in literature – whether in the abundant Biblical references to writing, public display, and onomastics, or in recent depictions of the LL in comics, film, and television – offers a large, and mostly uncharted, area for research. Rather than attempt a discussion of this area in its own right, I illustrate some of the potential for LL research in modern literature with a discussion of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Ulysses is set in Dublin and centres on a day – 16th June 1904 – in the life of the fictional Leopold Bloom. The 16th June has since been popularly nicknamed as Bloomsday. This work has been commented on and annotated extensively from many literary, historical, and biographical points of view, but the LL perspective which I suggested in Kallen (2016a) differs from these approaches, since it links the literary aims of the text not simply with the physical locations of the Dublin of that time – for which see Gunn and Hart (2004 [1975]) – but with Joyce’s textual representations of LLs. I suggest that Ulysses portrays two LLs, an external LL which is marked by references to street names, businesses, advertisements, and minutiae such as tram timetables, and the internal LL which is represented in the minds, especially, of Leopold and his wife, Molly. Much of the external LL can be traced and recovered by historical research, even though Joyce, for one reason or another, presented many elements differently from their precise historical attestations. This goal of external description reflects an ambition of Joyce’s, as quoted by Budgen (1972: 69): ‘I want . . . to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book’. The internal LL includes the thoughts and reactions of characters to elements of language display. Some of these feelings are reactions to the external LL, but others rely on more private domains, such as material culture and the semiotics of the body; many are conjured up in memory rather than being directly observed in the course of events. Though there is a tendency for the external LL to be put in the narrator’s voice and the internal LL to be in the voice of the relevant character, the division is not entirely simple and would require more discussion than is possible here. To give a taste of Joyce’s merging of topographical description, texts from the world of advertising, and the internal world of characters, I cite the following passage from Joyce’s (2012: 55–9) depiction of Bloom’s morning walk. The level of detail is such that Bloom’s ramblings can be plotted cartographically: for a map, description, and photographs see Gunn and Hart (2004: 34–6). What is of concern here, though, are LL features, consisting of (a) historically attested street names, businesses, and elements of the built

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environment, indicated below by underlining; (b) advertising copy based on attested advertisements from this era, though in some cases altered by Joyce, shown in bold; and (c) Bloom’s internal monologue in reaction to what he sees in the LL, shown in underlined italics. Text in simple italics follows the original. By lorries along Sir John Rogerson’s Quay Mr Bloom walked soberly, past Windmill lane, Leask’s the linseed crusher’s, the postal telegraph office. . . . He turned from the morning noises of the quayside and walked through Lime street. By Brady’s cottages a boy for the skins lolled . . .. He crossed Townsend street, passed the frowning face of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. And past Nichols’ the undertakers. . . . In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental Tea Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets: choice blend, finest quality, family tea. . . . He strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. . . . He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly: What is home without Plumtree’s Potted Meat? Incomplete. With it an abode of bliss. . . . Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. . . . Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane’s Ginger Ale (Aromatic). Clery’s summer sale. . . . Hello. Leah tonight: Mrs Bandman Palmer. Like to see her in that again. Hamlet she played last night. Male impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. . . .

As with Joyce’s work in general, references in the passage above have received many commentaries, both in annotations of Ulysses as a whole and in papers on specific points. With regard to Plumtree’s Potted Meat, for example, it is true that Plumtree was an English manufacturer of potted meats, but the precise text given by Joyce did not appear in Plumtree advertisements. In one such advertisement, from the Cork Examiner (1893: 2), a notice for Plumtree’s uses the phrase home-potted, but only in a bare description: ‘Plumtree’s delicious home-potted meats to be had at Manley’s, 18 Winthrop street’. As Hayward (2017) details, Joyce makes a number of Plumtree references in Ulysses which index themes such as marital infidelity, consumerism, and colonialism. What matters for the LL is that Joyce takes words from a familiar advertisement of the time (much as he does with the names of streets and businesses), but turns them around into the meditations of Bloom, the fictional sign viewer, who relates the word home not to the meat product but to the circumstances of his own life. Likewise, ‘the frowning face of Bethel’ refers to the Salvation Army hall which was located near Townsend Street in Dublin, and known as Bethel (Joyce 2012: 587n10). This reference is the point of departure for one of Bloom’s meditations, not about the Salvation Army, but (in one of many points which index Bloom’s Jewish heritage) on the Hebrew

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meaning of ‫ ביתאל‬bet el ‘house of God’ and the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, ‫ א‬aleph and ‫ ב‬bet. There is no evidence that an inscription in Hebrew was part of the LL of the Salvation Army building, but Joyce portrays a world in which this indirect contact with Hebrew unlocks an element of Hebrew knowledge in Bloom’s mind. In this literary mode, Joyce is able to represent both the outward form of the LL in building and advertising and the sign viewer’s internal reception of the LL. This internal reception is vital to an understanding of the dynamics of the LL, but it is something which a photograph cannot capture. There are, however, opportunities to link Joyce’s depiction of the external LL with photographic evidence. Figure 8.12 gives an example of a ‘private bill posting station’ on St Patrick’s Close in Dublin (see details in photograph). Though the year of the photograph is uncertain, internal evidence links it with the early twentieth century. Despite the lack of colour and the dilapidated state of many of the posters, the photograph in Figure 8.12 references the kind of ‘multicoloured hoardings’ which Joyce refers to in the passage cited above. Joyce (2012: 481) later describes Bloom’s meditations, in which he ponders ‘the infinite possibilities hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed in triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum visibility (divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered) and of magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest, to convince, to decide’. This view of advertising pragmatics prefaces a recitation of posters, among which ‘Veribest (Boot Blacking)’ provides a point of comparison to the large poster for Cooney’s Blacking – in penny boxes at the top right of the figure. Also on the right are two posters in which the word Poole’s can be read; they refer to Poole’s Myriorama. The myriorama was a popular form of entertainment which featured dramatic presentations of large-scale pictures, which could be accompanied by music, lighting, and commentary, as well as other entertainment acts. The Poole brothers and their relations came regularly to Dublin from the 1860s onwards, and Rockett and Rockett (2011: 144) describe them as ‘the most prominent panorama and diorama showmen in Britain and Ireland’ until the early 1900s. Motion pictures overtook the myriorama entertainments, though the two genres overlapped in the early part of the twentieth century. Thus, when Molly Bloom recollects ‘I saw him and he not long married flirting with a young girl at Pooles Myriorama’ (Joyce 2012: 521), she references a familiar social setting, which we can glimpse in the posters of the figure. Figure 8.13 shows a postcard from Great Brunswick Street, now Pearse Street, which indirectly indexes multilingualism in Bloom’s rambles cited above. The street scene in the photograph shows awnings and businesses, and while most inscriptions are not legible, the one that stands out belongs to

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Figure 8.12 Bill posting station (Dublin)

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Figure 8.13 Great Brunswick Street (Dublin, ca. 1904)

Giuseppe Cervi, an Italian immigrant who, in the 1880s, established the first fish and chip shop in Ireland (Costello 2011). Joyce does not mention Cervi directly, but in the passage cited above, ‘the corner’ where Bloom is said to read the advertisement for is close to the vanishing point at the right edge of the photograph. This part of Brunswick Street would have been visible from the street corner for anyone looking to the left. As it happens, Bloom’s walk turns instead to the right, where he sees and meditates on some cab drivers with the expression ‘voglio e non’, after which ‘He hummed: Là ci darem la mano / La la lala la’. These lines in Italian are from Mozart’s opera, ‘Don Giovanni’. ‘Là ci darem la mano’ [‘There I’ll give you my hand’] is the first line of a well-known duet between the characters of Don Giovanni and Zerlina. As Slote’s commentary (Joyce 2012: 584) indicates, ‘voglio e non’ is a shortened form of voglio e non vorrei ‘I would like to and I wouldn’t like to’, which Bloom uses earlier in the narrative (Joyce 2012: 49). Bloom’s line refers to the opera, though it does not faithfully quote Zerlina’s line ‘vorrei e non vorrei’ [‘I would and yet I would not’]. What is important for the LL is that Cervi and his Italian wife Palma were well-known to Dubliners of the time. Not only have they entered local legend, but the Cervis were the first in a long line of Italians associated with the Irish fish and chip trade. At the time of the literary Bloomsday, this Italian-run business would have been a salient and popular rarity. Although we cannot know whether or not the report of Bloom’s interest in Italian opera at this point

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in the narrative is triggered by Joyce’s own cognitive map and knowledge of Cervi’s shop, neither can we escape noting the codeswitching – which coincides with a documented LL unit that indexes this popular Italian-run business – in the internal monologue of Bloom, the Dublin flâneur. The recirculation of terrestrial landscapes and the world of the literary imagination is illustrated in Figure 8.14. In the passage cited above, Joyce’s reference to indicates a known business in a place which helps to establish the topography of Bloom’s walk. I have not found any photograph of the signage as it was in 1904, but Figure 8.14 shows a recent vista that includes not only the signage relating to the modern-day funeral business, but, in lettering directly on the brick wall, the quotation and citation from Ulysses which refers

Figure 8.14 Nichols’ the undertaker’s (Dublin, 2016)

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to the business in the past. Such is the fame of this literary work that several other present-day sites in Dublin display plaques or otherwise mark their significance in the real world of NOW by reference to their mention in the fictional THEN of Ulysses. As a final point on this theme, I turn to Joyce’s invocation of graffiti, which relies on the inner workings of the minds of characters who contemplate the LL. In the so-called Nausicaa episode later in the day, Bloom is in Sandymount, a seaside suburban area to the south of Dublin. He contemplates writing a message in the sand to Gerty MacDowell, who has been the object of his lustful intentions. As Joyce (2012: 275) portrays Bloom’s thoughts: Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write a message for her. Might remain. What? I. Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away. Tide comes here a pool near her foot. . . . What is the meaning of that other worlds I called you naughty boy because I do not like. AM. A. No room. Let it go. Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing sand. Nothing grows in it. All fades.

In this incident, Joyce demonstrates the potential of writing a message in the sand and the transience of the medium. This transience leaves Bloom’s desire to communicate unfulfilled, and the reader is not told what Bloom intends to say. Later in the day, though, in the ‘Nighttown’ episode set in an area notorious for poverty and prostitution known as the Monto, Bloom comes face to face with his accusers (Joyce 2012: 352): A DEADHAND (Writes on the wall.) Bloom is a cod. Slote (Joyce 2012: 785) interprets the ‘deadhand’ as a legal term relating to land held by ecclesiastical authorities, but what the deadhand prompts is the inscription that ‘Bloom is a cod’. The word cod is well-known in Irish English, meaning ‘fraud’ in this context (see Kallen 2013: 159). Does the actualised graffiti in Nighttown complete the frustrated graffiti in Sandymount? Did Bloom think to describe himself as a cod and change his mind, only to have the complete the inscription? We cannot answer that question, but these two passages demonstrate the importance which Joyce attached to medium and ground in language display: the self-description on the strand fails and Bloom’s thought is left unexpressed, but the accusation on the wall stands for all to see.

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The book finishes with an extended soliloquy from Molly Bloom, in which she considers a wide range of topics. Though the soliloquy lacks the landscape element of Bloom’s travels, a striking LL feature is Molly’s recollection of graffiti and sexual advances in her young days in Gibraltar. Some of her recollections parallel obscene graffiti which Bloom sees in the ‘Nighttown’ episode, but I cite here an example which expresses Molly’s recollection of shock, starting with reference to speech but continuing with reference to visual imagery and graffiti: I hate an unlucky man and if I knew what it meant of course I had to say no for form sake dont understand you I said and wasnt it natural so it is of course it used to be written up with a picture of a womans on that wall in Gibraltar with that word I couldnt find anywhere.

Through the lens of the LL, what Joyce has succeeded in doing is providing not a brick-by-brick description of Dublin, but something more important: an insight into the reactions of human beings as they move and live as part of the city. Documentary and photographic evidence can help to uncover Joyce’s system of external indexicalities, but Ulysses is not simply a reconstruction of topography: it is a perceptual and psychological reconstruction. This knowledge of the inner world of the sign viewer is vital for LL research, and cannot be accessed by photography alone. 8.5

Towards the Future

The LL perspective as I understand it can be expanded in a great many ways without losing its conceptual coherence. In this chapter, I have sketched out some possible future directions in empirical OLL research and in the analysis of artistic representations of the LL. I have also suggested boundaries and possibilities for productive partnerships with researchers working with -scapes where language does not have the same role it has in the LL. Of the many other points which could be raised for the future, I mention a few here. Geographically, there are many parts of the world where LL research has not been conducted. This point holds not only for countries or global regions, but for spatial organisation more generally. The appeal of urban areas has left many other settings unexamined, and all of them have their own LL dynamics: rural areas, suburbs, small towns and villages, and parts of the world where the urban/rural contrast does not apply. Since spaces are socially constructed, they will not always follow city, neighbourhood, or national boundaries. Some spaces may be long and thin, and cross political boundaries of various kinds: long distance train lines, interstate highways in the US, and other terrestrial corridors of transportation generate their own culture and LL: see, for example,

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Silverman and Rader’s (2012) semiotic analysis of signage on US Route 66. As I have argued above, the relatively public zones of private space such as workplace canteens and the front rooms of private dwellings provide LL spaces which call out for further research. Political border areas, touched on briefly here, present specific research opportunities (see Dunlevy 2020 on Spanish regional borders and Kudžmaitė and Juffermans 2020 on the PolishLithuanian border), as do tourist zones (e.g. Bruyèl-Olmedo and Juan-Garau 2009, 2015; Yan and Lee 2014; Moriarty 2015), places of refuge (noting especially Moriarty 2019 and Yochim 2020), and sites of memory. While the study of the LL and educational environments is expanding rapidly (e.g. recent collections edited by Malinowski, Maxim, and Dubreil 2020b; Niedt and Seals 2021), many other environments have hardly been considered. Globalisation and mobility give rise to discontinuous LL spaces that do not fit within predetermined boundaries. Diaspora studies, especially, open new possibilities for LL research: while I have included some observations here from the Irish diaspora and the Irish homeland, the data from the Chinese and Greek diasporas also call for homeland comparisons of a type that is rare in current LL research. Together with further spatial orientations, LL research can benefit from revitalising its onomastic roots: cf. Rose-Redwood (2008a, 2008b, 2011) and Azaryahu (2012). Names of all kinds – official and unofficial, written and spoken or signed, those which transcend established onomasticons, and names involved in political and territorial conflict – cannot be taken for granted or viewed as annoyances for quantitative LL coding, but call for deeper LL analysis. Temporally, LL research has a great deal of catching up to do in order to give an account of the life of the LL in society. The recent past invites the possibility of using techniques in digital humanities to explore the reconstruction of vanished LLs using available photographs, but LL research can develop productive partnerships with history and archaeology to explore questions of text, space, and display over time and cross culturally. The use of writing and visual imagery in relation to urbanisation, the rise of standard languages, the expansion of literacy, and numerous other factors await an LL perspective. In an era of continuing social debate over memorials, names, and the ability of society today to address slavery and genocide, LL perspectives can make a positive contribution to wider social debates. Materially, the portable goods of the LL, which range from T-shirts and other clothing to mugs, postcards, fridge magnets, and decorative objects of many kinds, open up rich analyses of commodification in the literal sense of selling goods that display language. Again, while I have mentioned a few such instances here, there is much more to be done when the spatial characteristics which distinguish the portable LL from its fixed terrestrial relations are

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considered in more detail. Likewise, the human body – as the ultimate mobile ground for LL inscription that is both public and private in different senses – presents another frontier for LL research. Tattoos (as cited above) provide rich material, but text-bearing or text-indexing expressions can be found in jewellery, scarification, and other forms of body modification. Ethnographically, the development of the field has shown that LL research is not simply about taking photographs of signs and tabulating code choices, but is about probing the knowledge and cultural practices of people who create and engage in the discourse of the LL. I have cited some of the research which uses interviews and community involvement to enrich our understanding of the LL. Further development of these approaches can shift the LL paradigm from focusing on the objects of signage towards an emphasis on the experience of the researcher in engaging with the LL and the people who animate it. Developing these perspectives helps us to understand the why of the LL as well as the what which we photograph. With these points in mind, and with the unique contribution which LL research makes to understanding the dynamic relations of text, materiality, and discourse in the public eye, it becomes possible for LL research to play a major role in the ongoing study of the life of language in society.

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Index

access. See public space, access addressivity, 167 affect, 21–22, 82, 90, 111, 165, 222, 238, 263, 278 affordance theory, 129 affordances, 126, 130–32, 136, 146–49, 154–57, 173, 201–2, 209, 210, 212, 216, 286 aggregate effects, 272–73 aggregate, LL, 223, 228, 274, 283 airports, 7–8, 47, 56 Akkadian, 30 alliteration, 75, 171, 194 Alsatian, 190–91, 243 ambiguity, 83, 182, 184, 190, 210, 290 American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), 43 Arabic, 1, 37–38, 113, 118, 282 archaeology, 301 architecture, 4, 47, 83, 101–2, 109, 117, 151, 198, 254, 276 art, 33–34, 38, 48, 99, 102, 105, 230, 250, 261, 292 art gallery, LL as, 280 art nouveau, 228 assemblage, 88, 175, 200, 241, 243 assemblage, LL, 200–3, 206, 208, 210–11, 244–45 assemblage, semiotic, 200 assonance, 171 asymmetry, cross-linguistic, 59, 62, 187, 190, 193, 260 ATM (Automated Teller Machine), 55, 129, 272 authenticity, 9–10, 48, 66, 93, 114, 116–17, 130, 138, 142–43, 156–57, 168, 201–2, 207, 209, 220, 222, 239, 241, 242–43, 258, 268, 270, 283 authority, 13, 31, 84, 99, 120, 140, 148, 185–87, 196–97, 211, 213–16, 219 backstage language, 254 bags, 66, 97, 123, 163, 253

bakeries, 66, 276–77 banknotes, 40, 249–50, 254 banners, 123, 155, 212, 239 bars. See pubs Basque, 44, 259 Behustin (Bīsitūn) inscription, 29 Bengali, 105, 117 Biblical literature, 293 bistros, 282–83 body clinics, 270 Bombay (Mumbai), 9–10, 93, 197 border, Ireland, 107–9, 125, 230 borders, 6–7, 19, 20, 90, 94, 97, 107–9, 125, 200, 212, 215, 230, 281, 301 Bosnian, 149 boundaries, 275, 286, 300–1 code, 77 community, 149, 155, 200 language, 5, 9, 30, 57, 68, 70, 72 language communities, 93 physical, 166 political, 107, 210, 300 spatial, 96, 109 territorial, 36, 84, 146, 149, 210 braille, 95 Breton, 142 Brexit, 109, 122, 245 British Sign Language (BSL), 55, 136 Bruegel, Pieter, 292 buses, 59, 94, 130, 141 Cant, Irish Traveller, 135–36 Catalan, 25, 145 catch phrase, 199, 245 cave art, 29 change, LL, 21, 23, 27, 91, 128, 161, 220–21, 226, 228, 232–33, 275–76, 278, 284 chaos, 212, 217 character inversion, 102–3 character reversal, 72 childscape, 256–57, 261

341

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342

Index

Chinatowns, 59–60, 109 Amsterdam, 60 Chicago, 61–62, 102–3, 109–10 Liverpool, 59–60 Vancouver, 60 Washington, D.C., 60, 85, 281 Chinese, 56, 60–64, 102–3, 109, 114, 116–17, 130, 132, 137–38, 174–75, 192–93, 215 Cantonese, 60, 62, 64 Chomsky, Noam, xx, 283 chronotope, 219–20 churches, 1–2, 151, 154–56, 238 cigarette packets, 52–55, 90, 248, 255 clothing, 163, 253, 255, 301 CMC (Computer Mediated Communication), 278, 285 affordances, 286 linguistic landscape, 286 code choices, 4, 7, 10, 12, 48, 51–52, 58, 109, 114, 126–28, 131–33, 168, 171, 191, 216–17, 221, 230, 260, 267, 285, 292, 302 codeswitching, 38, 105, 298 coffee shops, 139, 277 cognitive approach, 36 cognitive complexity, 129, 132 cognitive maps. See maps, cognitive coherence, 69, 166, 227, 252, 300 colonial, 23, 36, 128, 190, 192, 225 colour, 1, 9, 19, 21, 23, 42, 70, 72, 75, 92, 105, 109, 114, 117, 132, 149, 155, 165, 171, 196, 206–9, 212, 233, 292 commemoration, 23–25, 191–92, 219, 235 commodification, 137, 156, 201, 287, 301 communicative choices, 126 Markedness Model, 127 community, 125, 130, 134–35, 146–47, 155, 195, 239 community of practice, 62, 287 conceptual metaphor theory, 82 conflict, 52, 107, 186 dialect, 139 discourse, 99 language, 10–11 conversational maxims, 169 Manner, 169 Quality, 169, 178, 181–82, 197 Quantity, 169, 178–80, 190–92, 199 Relation, 169 Relevance, 180–82, 191 cooperative principle, 169, 182 culinary practice. See food cuneiform, 30 cyberscape, 286 cyberspace, 286 Cyrillic alphabet, 72, 117

decorum, 84, 93, 97, 253 Demning, Gunter, 24 detritus zone, 52 Devanagari, 10 dialect, 136–39, 142–43, 188–89 diaspora, 200, 203–4, 208, 210, 301 digital humanities, 301 diglossia, 155 discourse, xviii, 2, 17, 27, 36, 49, 80, 88, 125–26, 129, 136, 148–49, 161–62, 167, 171, 185–86, 193, 201–2, 212, 249, 255, 302 commercial, 215 counter-discourse, 291 face, 41 foodscape, 259 global, 174 interpersonal, 162 oral, 195, 248 political, 19, 145, 174, 245, 291 regulatory, 215 spoken, 19, 192 Discourse plane, 251–52, 281 discourses, multiple. See multiple discourses disjunction. See asymmetry, cross-linguistic display, xx–xxi, 3, 28, 111, 117, 128, 136, 165, 212, 216, 228, 243, 249, 253, 255, 259, 283, 286–87 language. See language display online, 292 onomastic, 61 diversity, social, 113 domestic front rooms, 254 Drucker, Johanna, 33–34, 46, 75, 81, 161, 261 Dunne, Finley Peter, 204 Dutch, 35, 44, 66–68, 230 écrits dans la ville, 37, 46 editing, environmental, 215, 221, 273, 275 elastic present, 225 emblems, 118 emplacement, 4, 91, 99, 107, 120, 123, 157, 165, 168, 184, 218, 227, 246, 252, 280 English, 1, 5–8, 10, 13–14, 23, 35, 38, 44, 48, 53–54, 57–59, 61, 63, 66, 68, 70, 72, 77, 97, 113–14, 116–17, 129, 132, 146, 152, 156–57, 162, 175, 180, 187, 192–93, 199, 207, 212, 223, 228, 233, 235, 243, 267, 270–71, 274, 288, 291 ‘Pittsburghese’, 137 African-American, 48, 142 American, 139 American, Southern, 142 dialects, 139 Dublin, 139

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Index Irish English, 17, 139, 141, 176, 208, 265, 299 lingua franca, 292 New England, 141, 143 rhyming slang, 137 enregisterment, 74, 136–37, 141–42 ensemble effects. See aggregate effects ensemble, LL, 19, 166, 178, 200–1, 206, 215 entextualisation, 164, 166–68, 194, 248, 255, 287, 290 envelope metaphor, LL messages, 57, 62, 65 environnement graphique, 36–37, 46 epigraphy, 29–30 erasure, 52, 147, 159, 237, 276 etymology, 282 euphemism, 198–99 European Second Language Association (EuroSLA), 43 existential claims, 134–35 experience, xix, 77, 82, 156, 235, 268, 272 cultural, 168 observer’s, 222, 264–65 researcher, 302 sign viewer’s, 223, 263 social, 172 tourist, 156–57 Filipino, 132 finanscape, 256, 261 flags, 91, 114, 132, 148–49, 151–52, 155, 159, 203–4, 206, 208, 292 flow. See movement flyers. See leaflets font, 10, 42, 54, 59, 66, 72, 74, 151, 190, 196, 215, 235 food, 117, 152, 159, 197, 206–9, 250, 260 foodscape, 257–61 foodscapes, ethnic, 259 foodways, 152, 258–59 fractal recursion, space, 94 frame theory, 171–72 conversation, 172 framing, 172–73, 182, 184, 211 genre, 211 French, 3, 5–8, 26, 31, 35, 37–38, 52, 54, 65–66, 68, 70, 97, 113, 123, 129, 132, 143, 163, 175, 190–91, 230, 233, 235, 243, 260, 270, 272, 283, 288, 291 Frisian, 44 gender, 17, 94, 98–99, 135, 162, 176, 258, 278 genocide, 237, 276, 301 genre, 18, 145, 164–65, 169–72, 202, 211, 216, 249, 287

343 assemblage, 203, 210 cross-generic implicature, 197 ensemble, 200, 210 frame theory, 171 generic borrowing, 196 institution, 197 Irish pub, overseas, 204 LL, 170–73, 182, 195 LL research, 169 locales, 210 restaurants, 200–1 sign unit, 210 speech, 173 theory, 170 variation, 196 gentrification, 151, 180, 236, 290 geosemiotics, 39, 46, 49, 250 German, 5, 26, 37, 54, 66, 79, 114, 121, 123, 175, 180, 190, 207, 215, 230, 243, 277 ghost signs, 228–29, 265–66 globalese, 270–72 globalisation, 34–35, 38, 44, 159, 201, 208, 210–11, 215, 253, 270, 282, 291, 301 graffiti, 17, 45, 79, 99–101, 134, 136, 140–41, 143, 156, 173, 186, 212, 223, 226, 228, 264, 300 antiquity, 30 in art, 33, 135 graffscape, 257 Greek, 70, 72, 74, 114, 121, 151–52, 271–72 Greekness, 149–56, 231 ground, 89, 99, 105, 165, 171 hairdressers, 68, 134, 271, 278 Hammurabi, code of, 30–31 health clubs, 239 health spas, 271 Hebrew, 26, 35, 39, 57–59, 73–74, 113, 117, 235–36, 277, 294–95 hereness, 89, 105–6 heterotopias, fragmentary, 120–21 Hindi, 9, 70, 191–92 history, 23, 222, 230, 235, 243, 301 hoardings, 176 homophony, 8, 76, 103–4, 192 hotels, 14, 33–34 humanistic geography, 81 humour, 176 Hungarian, 52, 254 hybrid, 8, 79, 159 icon, semiotic, xxi, 49 iconicity, xxii, 10, 14, 31, 63, 70, 72, 75–76, 79, 91, 113, 116–17, 128, 135, 223, 239, 264

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344

Index

illocution, 167 imagery lexical, 198 visual, 77, 117, 128, 139, 165, 168, 171, 252, 292, 300 images, 10, 21 face-shaped, 264 non-linguistic, 175 visual, 63, 72, 77, 204, 206, 223 imaginary, 122 imagination, 131 cultural, 204 literary, 298 immigrants, 19 immigration, 3, 19 implicature, 168–69, 182, 191–92, 197, 199, 208, 218, 225 conventional, 169, 182 conversational, 169, 178, 182 index, semiotic, xxi, 49 indexicality, xxii, 25, 63, 65, 73–74, 76, 90, 103–4, 116, 118, 139, 155, 157–59, 201–2, 206, 209–10, 216–17, 230, 232, 239, 282, 287, 289 change, 228 dialect, 143 future, 226 heritage, 239, 241 local, 159 past, 218, 239 social, 126, 130–32, 134–35, 143, 149, 157–58, 258, 286 spatial, 89, 91, 130, 156, 204, 258 reflexive, 90 street name plaques, 185 time, 22–23, 221–22 visual, 176, 180 innovations, lexical. See neologisms interaction order, 39 internet, 45 interpellation, 167, 217, 219, 265 interpretive principles, 48, 90, 92, 178, 280, 285 intertextuality, 8, 62–63, 72, 102, 121, 124, 145, 168, 172–73, 175, 181–82, 199, 207, 226, 245, 252, 278, 284 interviews, 35, 43, 281, 292 intimations, affordances, 129 Irish, 6, 11, 13, 23, 54, 61, 105, 111, 127, 141, 146, 156, 159, 162, 183, 187, 189, 193, 199, 206–9, 223, 230, 243, 267–68, 274, 288–89 grammar, 288–89 Irish Sign Language (ISL), 136 Irishness, 202, 204, 207 irony, 4, 64, 66, 93, 123, 245

Italian, 5, 39, 54, 156, 297 Jakobson, Roman, 49, 113 Japanese, 35, 37, 44, 66, 68–69, 77, 97–98, 103–4, 122, 159, 178 Joyce, James. See Ulysses Kabardian, 117 Karachay-Balkar, 117 Klingon, 131 knowledge, 9, 19, 36, 49, 77, 81, 92, 104, 122, 171, 249, 252, 300, 302 background, 68, 107, 124, 172, 218, 226 community, 194 conversation, 176 cultural, 166, 180, 194, 196, 248 in-group, 208–9 insider’s, 116 linguistic, xx, 68, 103, 166 local, 139, 180, 192, 194, 276 orally-transmitted, 157 sign viewer, 201 social, 196 sociolinguistic, 130 spatial, 90 Korean, 113, 175 labels, 45, 54, 97, 251 lampposts, 122, 152, 226 landscape, 27, 50, 80, 85, 88, 256, 262 art, 86 etymology, 86–88 social meaning, 88 term, 86 language, xx–xxii, 4, 77, 261 in-group, 216, 245 mixing, 70 language attitudes, 42 language awareness, 57, 102, 122, 288 language change, 276, 282 language choice. See code choices language community, 125, 154 language contact, 34 language display, 37–38, 46, 65, 123, 129, 147, 162, 260, 283 language planning, 5, 42, 44 language policy, 6–7, 10, 26, 36, 39–41, 43–44, 51–52, 61, 97, 109, 188, 190, 210, 216, 274, 284 bottom-up, 51 Canada, 55, 97, 119 conflict, 51 European Parliament, 52 in vitro, 36, 51

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Index in vivo, 36, 51, 175 Ireland, 52–54 Quebec, 40, 228, 233, 235 top-down, 51 language recognition, 55–56 language regulations, 40, 51 language standardisation, 291, 301 language transfer, 68 Langue des Signes Française, 136 Latin, 21, 23, 68, 190 laundries, 162 law offices, 132 layering, 23, 219, 232, 255, 284 individual unit, 232–33 physical, 235 street name plaques, 233–35 layers, 226, 255 layout, 1, 21, 26, 52, 57–58, 66, 70, 89, 120, 135, 171, 175, 196, 260 leaflets, 249 Lennon Wall, 173–75 letter form. See letter shapes letter shapes, 26, 58–59, 61, 72, 207, 209, 274, 276 lettering, 33 lexicon, 12 international, 70, 282 lieux de mémoire. See memory, sites of linguistic landscape, 46, 49 concept, xx, 41, 43–44 research, 27, 42–43, 45–46, 83, 210, 219 term, xvii, xxii, 28, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 247–48, 250, 261 terminology, related class epigraphy, 31, 46 linguistic face, 41, 146 linguistic personality, 41 paysage linguistique, 40, 46 personnalité linguistique, 41 visage linguistique, 41 theory, 247 workshop, 45 linguistic landscaping, 32, 46, 248 linguistic system, 284 linguistics, 49, 283 spatial, 83 literacy, 21, 29, 85, 291, 301 Lithuanian, 48 LL aggregate. See aggregate, LL LL assemblage. See assemblage, LL LL representations, 292 visual arts, 292–93 LL units, xxii, 89, 170, 249 artifact, 207 discourse, 161, 248

345 fleeting, 227 ghost units, 228, 230 human body, 302 Kilkeel, 146–49 markers, 236, 277 mobile, 164, 226–27 objects, 157, 161, 248 portable, 66, 97, 301–2 remnants, 230–32 speech acts, 218, 248 time, 221–22 time reference, 227 Warrenpoint, 146–49 locution, 167, 171, 173 male gaze, 98 maps cartographic, 81–82, 107, 111 cognitive, 14, 81–82, 111, 257, 281 Marathi, 9 markedness, 74, 126–32, 134, 136–37, 139, 142–43, 157–58, 166, 184, 216–17, 226 markedness filter, 131, 226 massage studios, 180 Material plane, 251–52 materials, 33, 103 Mauritian Kreol, 291 mediascape, 256 medium, 89, 105, 165, 171 memes, 287–90 ‘Distracted Boyfriend’, 288–89 ‘Pun Dog’, 288–89 language, 288–89 memorials, 237–38, 243 First World War, 238–39 memory, 24, 93 anti-memory, 245 folk, 185 historical, 26 memory, sites of, 26, 236, 239, 301 menu, word, 68 menus, 68, 84, 130, 152, 179, 200, 206–9, 243, 251, 260 metal foundries, 182–84 metaphor, 82, 171, 176 spatial, 121 visual, 59 metaphors folk, 292 HERE IS THERE, 92–93, 120–21 HERE IS TURKEY, 122 NEAR IS A DREAM, 122 NEAR IS CHINA, 117 NEAR IS DHAKA, 117

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346

Index

metaphors (cont.) NEAR IS THERE, 116–17, 202 PUBLIC SPACE IS A CONTAINER, 83, 149 spatial, 82, 286 TERRITORY IS A CONTAINER, 83, 125–26, 149 THEN IS NOW, 218, 220–21, 225–26, 239 THERE IS HERE, 143, 239 methodology. See research, methodology metonymy, 113–14, 204 metrolingualism, 209 migration, 17, 151, 276 milestones, 223–26 mimesis, 202 mimicry, scriptal, 10, 72, 215 mobile phone, 45 mobility, 126, 143, 163, 253, 301 mouthfeel, 260 movement, 84, 197, 209, 216, 263–65, 270, 290 pedestrian flow, 212–13 people, 52, 123 multimodality, 19, 29–30, 49, 158, 173, 250 multiple discourses, 163–64, 210–11, 216–17, 222 mural art, 149, 243 museums, 152 musical notation, 78–79 myriorama, 295 names, 187 allocated, 185, 194 brand, 272 colonial practice, 197 commercial, 70 displayed, 185, 194–96 family, 204 honorary, 191 multiple, 187 oral tradition, 85 personal, 45, 72, 191, 239, 282, 285 place. See place names proper, 11–12, 31, 59, 116 neologism, 66, 70, 140, 159 neon, 66, 99, 222 newspapers, 35, 42, 44, 137, 151, 249, 272 nomination, 186, 218 nostalgia, 220, 222, 233, 239, 241, 243 notes, personal, 156 NOW time, 218, 221, 241, 278 objects, 1–2, 4, 27, 31, 55, 80, 161, 207 design, 255 indexical, 243 inert, 165

physical, 245 portable, 66, 157, 163, 254–56 observer’s present, 218–22, 225–27, 275–78 observer’s time. See observer’s present observing eye, 251 Occitan, 191 odonymic system, 91, 109, 219 odonyms, 13, 185, 193, 235 ogham. See writing system, Irish online discourse, 286, 290 online linguistic landscape (OLL), 248, 254, 287, 288–92 onomasticon, 12, 187, 282 onomastics, 81, 85, 120, 185, 301 onymic reference, 12 oral tradition, 20, 27, 37, 85, 185–86, 193–94, 207, 243, 250, 292 orthography, 60–61, 66, 72, 75, 79, 135, 191–92, 233, 270 palimpsest effect, 275 parergon, 86, 88 passports, 47, 254 pasteup, 101, 105 Peirce, Charles Sanders, xxi, xxiii, 49 interpretant, xxi object, sign, xxi represantamen, xxi semiotics, xxi–xxii, 256 sign, xxi perceptual dialectology, 81 performance, 164–66, 171, 195 performative, 13, 31, 168, 185–86 perlocution, 167 permanence, 227 Persian, 70 photographer’s paradox, 263 photographs, 21, 161–62, 164, 264–65, 280, 295 contextual approaches, 268, 270 dialogue effect, 275 display, 263, 265, 268 framing, 274 point of view, 274 record, 263, 265 photography, 43, 262, 278 physicality, 80, 126, 128, 161, 252 signage, 37 picture postcards, 251, 254, 295, 301 place, 81–82, 89–90, 92, 271 imagination, 121 proximal reference, 89–90, 92, 114, 280 remote, 111 remote reference, 89, 91–92, 117

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Index social construction, 107 place name policy, 188–89 place names, 9, 11, 14, 19, 27, 31–32, 65, 77, 85, 91, 111, 114, 117, 187, 189, 197, 231, 282 Polish, 132–33 politeness, 16, 77, 94, 197–99 polysemy, 74, 239 Portuguese, 48 position, 99 post boxes, 23, 207, 212, 216 postage stamps, 40, 249, 254–55 postal service, 225, 274 post-colonial, 10, 43, 190, 220 power, 11, 29, 36, 44, 48–49, 81, 128, 162, 174, 180, 186, 197, 285 practical reasoning, 130 pragmatic force, 14, 89, 128, 169, 171, 184, 196, 260 pragmatic intent, 4, 89 pragmatics, 4, 14, 38, 164, 167, 170, 216, 252, 255, 280, 295 preference model, 36 presentation, 21, 23, 45, 55, 59, 76–77, 85, 91, 95, 164–65, 171, 187, 232, 249–50, 260, 268, 283–84 prestige, 33, 66, 180, 230, 283, 291 pronunciation, 9, 139, 143, 192 protest, 18–19, 45, 249, 253, 291–92 proverbs, 268, 292 proximal reference. See place, proximal reference public, 94 public display, 29, 249, 255 public eye, 171, 251–52 public health, 52, 55, 146 public space, 7, 29–31, 43–44, 83–84, 94, 99, 164, 253, 259, 286–87, 291 access, 84, 215, 286 behaviour, 84 gradations, 253, 259 public sphere, 29 pubs, 57, 105, 158, 181 English, 203 ethnic, 203–4 Irish, 203–4 Irish, overseas, 201–10 puns, 64–65, 76, 287–88, 290 quantitative research. See research, quantitative Quebecois, 55–56 Quechua, 68 questionnaires, 42–43, 281 rational choice, 127

347 recurrence, 170, 172, 223, 227 referential equivalence, 284 refuge, places of, 301 religion, 130, 146, 235 religious goods, 152 re-mediatised. See resemiotisation remembrances, 24, 236–39 remnants, 21–22, 226, 228, 230–32, 235, 276 remote reference. See place, remote reference repurposing, 21, 196, 219, 241 research, 271, 278, 302 contradictions, 250 crowd-sourcing, 281 documentary evidence, 219, 275 ethnographic, 264, 280–81, 302 external evidence, 225–26, 278 fieldwork, 45, 219, 252, 263, 265 geographic, 300–1 methodology, 220–21, 227, 247, 261, 283 photographic, 295 photographs, 261–62, 300, 302 quantitative, 35, 40, 47, 147–48, 156, 161, 210–11, 219, 221, 282–85 scope, 49, 163, 222, 247, 250–51, 255, 259, 286 time, 301 resemiotisation, 104–5, 111, 249, 254, 291–92 restaurants, 9, 63, 66, 72, 77, 99, 130, 137, 152, 156, 170, 179, 196, 200, 243, 259–60 rhyme, 171 rhyming slang, 137 road signs, 107, 196 pragmatics, 197 Roman alphabet, xxiii, 1, 10, 34–35, 37–38, 57–58, 70, 74, 117, 151, 155, 187, 191 Romansch, 5 Rosetta Stone, 29 rubbish bins, 212, 216 Russian, 117, 209, 283 saloon. See pubs samples, 3–4, 178, 182, 184, 199 Saussure, Ferdinand de, xxi, 283 linguistic sign, xxi sémiologie, 48–49 signified (signifié), xxi signifier (signifiant), xxi scale, 128, 265 scarification, 302 schools, 151 schoolscape, 85, 257, 281 Scots, 16 Scottish Gaelic, 142, 274

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348

Index

scriptography, 72–74, 89, 92, 135, 165, 171, 184, 210, 252 sculpture, 48 semiofoodscape, 85, 257, 259 semiosis, xxi–xxii, 49, 77, 171, 239, 247–48, 255, 260, 263 semiotic aggregate, 216, 223 semiotic landscape, 49 concept, 45–50 space, 47–48 term, xx, 47–48 semiotic resources, 27 semiotic textscapes, 257 semiotics, xxi–xxii, 34, 39, 47–49, 256, 280 clothing, 255 visual, 39 servicescape, 291 sexual harassment, 98 shape, 10, 42, 89, 99, 128, 171, 212 shipping companies, 132 Shohamy, Elana, 44–45, 83, 247, 249–50, 262, 286 shopfronts, 21, 65, 94, 128, 143, 155, 162, 166, 178, 209, 221, 241, 268, 274, 283 shopping lists, 249 shopping mall, 122 sign animator, 163, 220, 253, 255, 272 sign instigator, xxii, 4, 27, 77, 80, 82, 89–91, 128, 145, 163, 165–66, 170–71, 175, 178, 182, 196, 199–200, 216, 218, 220, 225–26, 252, 263, 272, 281 sign languages, 5, 55, 136 sign unit, xxii sign viewer, xxiii, 4, 27, 77, 80, 82, 89–91, 128, 166, 170–71, 178, 200, 263, 265 sign viewers, 19, 162, 252 signal, 167 signifier, xxi signifiers, 51, 85, 201, 203–4, 207 signposts, 119 silence, 238–39, 257 size, 99, 171, 215 skinscape, 85, 256 slavery, 301 smellscape, 85, 256–57, 261 social semiotics, 49 sociolinguistics, xvii, 31 linguistic variable, 283–84 variationist, 283–84 soundscape, 256–58 space, 14, 80–81, 283 abstract, 216 discontinuous, 101, 105, 301 domestic, 94, 254 existential, 81

geographical, 91 imaginary, 83 immediate, 89 liminal, 83, 254 linear, 82 micro-space, 95 phygital, 290 pragmatic, 81 private, 7, 83, 94–95, 260, 301 procedural, 82 proximal, 91, 111 public/private continuum, 253–54 regulation, 99 remote, 93, 111 semiotic, 47 social construction, 50, 291 social metaphors, 82 time, 82, 222, 239 Spanish, 1, 19, 44, 48, 59, 68, 113–14, 117, 132, 134, 145, 175–76, 272 spatial reference, 123 anchored, 90 reflexive, 89, 254 unanchored, 90, 92, 124 spatial relationship, 80, 89, 91, 287 specious present, 222 speech act theory, 167, 186 speech acts, 165, 226, 263 apologising, 178 assertive, 14, 186, 188, 190, 225 assertive declaration, 186, 195 declaration, 13–14, 16, 168, 186, 188 directive, 16, 168, 182, 184, 198–99, 226, 265 enticement, 62, 168, 184, 218, 227, 265 greeting, 162 indirect, 14, 16, 168, 184 naming, 11–12, 168, 185–87, 211, 267, 284 regulation, 218 threat, 199 warning, 52 welcoming, 3 speech community, 125, 136, 138, 143, 149 spellings, 66, 171 cross-linguistic, 68, 74 innovative, 31, 70, 75, 278 pronunciation, 16–17, 75, 137, 209 splitting, word form, 70 stance, 139, 141, 190 stickers, 10, 59, 122–24, 212, 223 Stolpersteine, 24–26 strangers, 3, 8, 27, 93–94, 170, 172, 178, 217, 263

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Index street name plaques, 12, 85, 90–91, 105, 109, 152, 168, 184–85, 218, 267, 274 counter-assertive, 196 counter-declaration, 196 discourse, 188 genre, 184, 187, 195–96 pragmatics, 185–87, 195 unofficial, 121, 123, 219 street name system. See odonymic system strolling. See movement subversion, 121, 165, 197, 219 super-diversity, 130 support, 89, 99, 171, 215 Swedish, 38 Switzerland, languages, 5 symbol, xxi, 49, 63, 76 symbols, 113, 117, 212, 239 symmetry, 58, 193 cross-linguistic, 57–58 synagogues, 276–78 synchrony, 220–21, 276, 278 taboo, 175, 192, 198 cross-language, 192 Tagalog, 132 Tamil, 68 taste, 260 tattoo parlours, 178 tattoos, 123, 249, 251, 302 technoscape, 256, 286 telephone box, 212 tempo, 263 territory, 41–42, 83, 87, 125–26, 146, 149, 282 text, 1, 31, 55, 165, 167, 171, 249 text vector, 1, 57, 63, 72, 109, 117, 160 Textual plane, 252 THEN time, 218–19, 221, 226, 230, 235, 241, 278 theory, LL, 247 thereness, 120 third places, 203, 209 time, 89, 252–53 configurations, 227 inflections, 221–22 LL unit, 221–22 space, 222, 241 temporal reference, 221 tourism, 22, 156, 242, 268, 301 tourist souvenirs, 254 tourists, 93, 120, 235, 241 tradition, 194, 208 local, 178 traffic, 265 traffic lights, 223 traffic signs, 16, 223

349 trains Dublin–Belfast, 6–7 Fukuoka, 97–99 New York–Montreal, 6–7, 95–97 Switzerland–Germany, 5–6 translanguage, 57, 66, 70 translanguaging, 66, 68–69, 126 translation, 60, 66 name, 60–61 transliteration, 60, 62, 77, 107, 191 transportation corridors, 300 trees, 213 trust, 3, 8, 13, 32, 34, 63, 93, 117–18, 132, 156, 160, 176, 178, 195, 200–1, 242–43, 258, 270, 287 T-shirts, 123, 137, 141, 249, 251, 253, 255, 278, 287, 301 Ukrainian, 114–15 Ulster Scots, 13–14, 16, 127, 216, 267 Ulysses, 293–95, 298–99 external LL, 293 internal LL, 293 uncovered signs, 228, 275–76 uniqueness, 145, 164, 280, 283 urban design, 212 urban diversity, 146, 149 urbanisation, 301 Urdu, 70, 113 usernames, 287 vandalism, 109 vans, 223, 226–27, 264 vehicle, signage, 175, 223 vernacular, 171, 178, 199, 211, 254 vernacular music, 151 vernacular signage, 175, 199, 221 vernacular speech, 137, 139, 176, 209, 265, 288 Vietnamese, 260 village model, 146, 149 virtual linguistic servicescape, 291 visual incorporation, 77 vitality, linguistic, 41 wayfinding, 91, 109, 111, 187, 191, 194, 235 Welsh, 141–42, 274 winks, bilingual, 52 Wolof, 37 wordplay, 63, 70, 74, 77, 137 workplace LL, 253–54 World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), 43

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350

Index

writing system Bengali, 105 Chinese, xxiii, 60–61, 63, 102–3, 109, 117 Greek, 74 Hebrew, 58, 74 Irish, 61, 239–41 Japanese, xxiii, 68–69, 77, 160

writing systems, xxiii, 1, 5, 29, 37, 57, 74, 77, 102, 128 borrowings, 10 sign languages, 55 X, letter, 75–76 Yiddish, 26, 48, 121, 195, 236, 259

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