Reterritorializing Linguistic Landscapes: Questioning Boundaries and Opening Spaces 9781350077966, 9781350077997, 9781350077973

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RETERRITORIALIZING LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPES

Advances in Sociolinguistics Series Series Editor: Tommaso M. Milani

Since the emergence of sociolinguistics as a new field of enquiry in the late 1960s, research into the relationship between language and society has advanced almost beyond recognition. In particular, the past decade has witnessed the considerable influence of theories drawn from outside of sociolinguistics itself. Thus rather than see language as a mere reflection of society, recent work has been increasingly inspired by ideas drawn from social, cultural, and political theory that have emphasised the constitutive role played by language/discourse in all areas of social life. The Advances in Sociolinguistics series seeks to provide a snapshot of the current diversity of the field of sociolinguistics and the blurring of the boundaries between sociolinguistics and other domains of study concerned with the role of language in society. Becoming a Citizen: Linguistic Trials and Negotiations in the UK, Kamran Khan Language, Culture and Identity: An Ethnolinguistic Perspective, Philip Riley Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies, edited by Sally Johnson and Astrid Ensslin Language and Power: An Introduction to Institutional Discourse, Andrea Mayr Multilingual Encounters in Europe’s Institutional Spaces, edited by Johann Unger, Michał Krzyżanowski and Ruth Wodak Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective, Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese Multilingual Memories: Monuments, Museums and the Linguistic Landscape, edited by Robert Blackwood and John Macalister Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, edited by Robert Blackwood, Elizabeth Lanza and Hirut Woldemariam Remix Multilingualism: Hip-Hop, Ethnography and Performing Marginalized Voice, Quentin Williams Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow The Language of Newspapers: Socio-Historical Perspectives, Martin Conboy The Languages of Global Hip-Hop, edited by Marina Terkourafi The Languages of Urban Africa, edited by Fiona Mc Laughlin The Sociolinguistics of Identity, edited by Tope Omoniyi The Tyranny of Writing: Ideologies of the Written Word, edited by Constanze Weth and Kasper Juffermans Voices in the Media: Performing Linguistic Otherness, Gaëlle Planchenault

RETERRITORIALIZING LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPES

QUESTIONING BOUNDARIES AND OPENING SPACES Edited by David Malinowski and Stefania Tufi

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 This paperback edition published in 2022 Copyright © David Malinowski, Stefania Tufi and Contributors, 2020 David Malinowski and Stefania Tufi have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xiv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Ben Anslow All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-7796-6 PB: 978-1-3502-4711-6 ePDF: 978-1-3500-7797-3 eBook: 978-1-3500-7798-0 Series: Advances in Sociolinguistics Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

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Per mamma e papà For Mom, Dad, and Reggie

CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction

xiv 1

PART A QUESTIONING BOUNDARIES, OPENING SPACES Section I Questioning Disciplinary and Methodological Boundaries

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1 What Do People Notice from Real-World Linguistic Landscapes? Jakob R. E. Leimgruber, Naomi Vingron, and Debra Titone

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2 The Quality of Quantity Kate Lyons

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3 Quantitative 2.0: Toward Variationist Linguistic Landscape Study (VaLLS) and a Standard Canon of LL Variables H. William Amos and Barbara Soukup

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4 “Mind the Gap”: Social Space in Linguistic Landscape Studies Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost

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Section II The Spaces and Places of LL Research 5 Online Linguistic Landscapes: Discourse, Globalization, and Enregisterment Jeffrey L. Kallen, Esther Ní Dhonnacha, and Karen Wade

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6 The Semiotics of Spatial Turbulence: Re/Deterritorializing Israel-Palestine at a South African University Natalija Cerimaj, Tommaso M. Milani, and E. Dimitris Kitis

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7 Hong Kong’s Paper Cities: Heterotopia and the Semiotic Landscape of Civil Disobedience Aaron Anfinson

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8 From Graffiti to Street Art and Back: Connections between Past and Present Sabrina Machetti and Claudio Pizzorusso

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9 F/Anfield: Banners, Tweets, and “Owning” Football’s Linguistic Landscape Frank Monaghan

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10 Exploring the Mediation Styles of LL Sites by Tourist Guides Shoshi Waksman and Elana Shohamy

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PART B RETERRITORIALIZING LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPES Section III Re-Writing, Re-Working, Re-Inventing Place

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11 The Semiotics of Heritage and Regeneration: Post-Apartheid Urban Development in Johannesburg Gilles Baro

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12 Blurred Lines: The Effect of Regional Borders on the LL in Northern Spain Deirdre A. Dunlevy

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13 Politically Open—Sociolinguistically Semi-Permeable: A Linguistic Landscape View into the Lithuanian-Polish Borderland Gintarė Kudžmaitė and Kasper Juffermans

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14 The Language of Public Mourning—De- and Reterritorialization of Public Spaces as a Reaction to Terrorist Attacks Rolf Kailuweit and Aldina Quintana

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15 A Swimming Pool, an Abattoir, and a Biscuit Factory: Discursive Presentations of Adaptive Reuse for Museum Spaces in France Robert Blackwood

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16 A Diachronic Examination and Interpretation of the Street-Signage Transformation in Granada, Spain, during the Transition to Democracy (1975–83) Yael Guilat and Antonio B. Espinosa-Ramírez

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Section IV Experimenting Space

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17 A Methodological and Pedagogical Framework for Designing L2 StudentBased Linguistic Landscape Research Hiram H. Maxim

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18 Linguistic Landscape as a Tool for Literacy-Based Language Teaching and Learning: Application for the Foreign Language Classroom Olga Bever and Diane Richardson

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19 Parents Interpreting Their Children’s Schoolscapes: Building an Insider’s Perspective Tamás Péter Szabó and Robert A. Troyer

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INDEX

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CONTRIBUTORS

H. William Amos is Assistant Professor in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick, UK. His research interests include regional and minority languages, language contact and mixing, and urban multilingualism. He has published on bilingual French/Occitan street signs in France, ethnolinguistic vitality in the Chinatown of Liverpool, UK, and Corsican and Occitan domains of expression in contemporary LLs. Aaron Anfinson is a reportage photographer and Director of analysis at Critical Research and Analysis in Washington, DC. He is a doctoral graduate of the school of English at the University of Hong Kong. Gilles Baro is a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand in the Department of Linguistics. He is interested in looking at multimodality in the linguistic and semiotic landscape of urban spaces, with particular focuses on typography and T-shirts. He has published on billboards, authenticity, and gentrification in Johannesburg. Olga Bever is Assistant Research Professor at the University of Arizona. Robert Blackwood is Professor of French Sociolinguistics at the University of Liverpool, UK, and currently Editor of the journal Linguistic Landscape with Elana Shohamy. He is the author of a number of articles and book chapters on language policy and regional language revitalization in France, including work on the linguistic landscape. He is the author of The State, the Activists, and the Islanders: Language Policy on Corsica (2008), and coauthor with Stefania Tufi of The Linguistic Landscape of the Mediterranean: French and Italian Coastal Cities (2015). Robert Blackwood also explores questions of French digital discourse. Natalija Cerimaj has recently completed her Master’s in Linguistics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in which she researched media representations of student protests in South Africa. Deirdre A. Dunlevy is currently a research fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast, on the AHRC-funded research project “Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies” (MEITS). Her research on the project focuses particularly on Irish and Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland, with a specific interest in the linguistic landscape and community attitudes toward the languages. Her contribution presented in this volume formed part of her PhD research, which she completed in 2017 under the supervision of Jeffrey Kallen at Trinity College Dublin. Antonio B. Espinosa-Ramirez is the academic director of the Superior School of Communication and Marketing (ESCO-Granada) and Senior Lecturer at the European University Miguel de Cervantes (Valladolid). His recent publications include “The Historical Memory Law and Its Role in the Redesign of the Semiotic Cityscapes in

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Spain: The Case Study of Granada,” coauthored with Yael Guilat, Linguistic Landscape, 2–3 (2016); “Memory, Propaganda and Identity. Mechanisms of Creation of Cultural Memory in the War of the Alpujarras” (2019); and “The Other through the Cybermedia: The Crime of Hate in the Comments of Readers and Anti-Semitism, the Death of Shimon Peres” (2019). Yael Guilat is the head of the Multidisciplinary Graduate Program in Humanities and Arts at Oranim College. Her recent publications include “Living Room” and “Family Gaze” in Contemporary Israeli Art: Comparative Perspectives on Cultural-Identity Representations, Israel Studies, 24: 1 (Spring 2019); “Art in Times of Precarity” in Dvarim 10 (2018) (Hebrew); “The Historical Memory Law and Its Role in the Redesign of the Semiotic Cityscapes in Spain: The Case Study of Granada,” coauthored with Antonio Espinosa Ramirez, Linguistic Landscape, 2–3 (2016); “Gender, Ritual and Video Art,” Me’ever la-halacha, special edition of Iyunim 7 (2014) (Hebrew); “Motherhood and Nation: Women Artists in Israel Memorial Discourse,” The Journal of Israeli History, 31:2, (2012). Kasper Juffermans has held doctoral and postdoctoral positions at the universities of Hong Kong, Tilburg, Hamburg, and Luxembourg, and was a visiting professor of Linguistic Anthropology at Ghent University, where he also obtained his first degree, in African studies. He is the author of Local Languaging, Literacy and Multilingualism in a West African Society (2015) and most recently coedited The Tyranny of Writing for Bloomsbury’s Advances in Sociolinguistics series (2018, with Constanze Weth). Kasper is currently affiliated with the University of Curaçao. Rolf Kailuweit holds a chair as a professor of Spanish and French Linguistics at the HeinrichHeine University at Düsseldorf/Germany. He wrote a PhD thesis in sociolinguistics dealing with the Catalan-Spanish language conflict in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He published a second book on French and Italian verbs of emotion. His main fields of research are romance regional languages and mass media, the syntax-semantics interface and the linguistic and cultural history of Argentina. Jeffrey L. Kallen is an associate professor in Linguistics and Phonetics in Trinity College Dublin. Much of his research concerns the English language in Ireland and English as a world language; he is the codirector of the Irish component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-Ireland), and the author of Irish-English: Volume 2 – The Republic of Ireland (2013). Having worked with other aspects of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and bilingualism, he has been active with Linguistic Landscape research since 2005, and is the current book review editor of the Linguistic Landscape journal. E. Dimitris Kitis is a lecturer at Xi’an Jaotong-Liverpool University and Visiting Researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He has published about the semiotics of protests in Greece and on media representations of masculinities in the South African media. Gintarė Kudžmaitė is a PhD student at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She is also a member of Visual and Digital Cultures Research Centre (ViDi). She conducts visual border research. Her areas of interest are visual methods, border studies, and linguistic and semiotic landscapes of border spaces.

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Jakob R. E. Leimgruber is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Basel, Switzerland. His research interests include sociolinguistics, language planning and policy, and World Englishes with a focus on Asia. He has published on language use in Singapore and Quebec. His most recent book is Singapore English: Structure, Variation, and Use (2013). Kate Lyons got her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation, “From Street to Screen: Linguistic Productions of Place in San Francisco’s Mission District,” explored the intersection of linguistic landscapes and social media in the production of place, applying methods from computational linguistics and statistics such as social media mining, topic modeling, and GAMs to theories centered in Linguistic Landscapes, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology. She is now pursuing a career in data science in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost is Professor at the School of Welsh, Cardiff University. He is the author of six single-author research monographs, one of which was nominated for the Orwell Prize. On matters of language policy, he has served as specialist advisor to the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, the House of Commons, Westminster, UK Parliament; expert advisor to the Equalities Commission in Northern Ireland; and expert witness, by invitation, to the several committees of the National Assembly for Wales. He is a fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Geographical Society. Sabrina Machetti is Associate Professor in Educational Linguistics at the University for Foreigners of Siena (Italy). Her research interests focus on Italian L2 teaching and assessment, and language policy in education, specifically in relation to migrants. Her most recent article (with C. Bagna and M. Barni) is “Language Policies for Migrants in Italy: The Tension Between Democracy, Decision-Making and Linguistic Diversity” (2018). Hiram H. Maxim is a professor at Emory University in the Department of German Studies and the Program in Linguistics. His research interests lie in the general area of instructed adult second language acquisition with specific interest in the relationship between second language reading and writing and curricular approaches that facilitate that intersection. His involvement in Study Abroad has also led to his recent scholarly focus on the linguistic landscape and its pedagogical possibilities for second language learners. Twice his scholarship has been recognized for distinction by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Tommaso M. Milani is Professor of Multilingualism at the University of Gothenburg, and Visiting Professor of Linguistics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. His main areas of research are language politics and ideologies and language, gender, and sexuality. He has written extensively on the nexus of language, sexuality, and space. Frank Monaghan is a senior lecturer in the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at The Open University in Great Britain. Esther Ní Dhonnacha holds a degree in Archaeology and Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, and now works in publishing and photography. Her research interests include linguistic landscapes and emerging digital cultures.

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Claudio Pizzorusso is Professor in History of Contemporary Art at the University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy). His research interests focus on contemporary and modern Italian art. His most recent article is “I fiori di Innsbruck: Lorenzo Lippi e Pietro Andrea Mattioli” (2018). Aldina Quintana is an associate professor in Ibero-Romance Linguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in Diachronic Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Linguistic Variation and Change, and Sephardic Studies. She has published numerous scholarly articles and is author of the book Geografía lingüística del judeoespañol (2006). Her most recent research (with R. Kailuweit) deals with expression of public mourning after terrorist attacks from a linguistic point of view (2017). Diane Richardson is Lecturer of German at the University of Florida. Her research is in second language learning and teaching, with particular interest in teacher training, linguistic landscape, and multilingual/multicultural awareness. She has published on ambiguity and digital gaming in the language classroom and curriculum. Elana Shohamy is a full professor in Multilanguage Education, Tel Aviv University, Israel. She teaches and researches various topics related to language testing (in a critical context), language policy, migration, and linguistic landscape. She authored The Power of Tests (2001), Language Policy (2006), and coedited two books on linguistic landscape (2009, 2010). She is coeditor of the journal Linguistic Landscape, published by John Benjamins. Barbara Soukup is Austrian Science Fund-sponsored Elise-Richter Research Fellow at the University of Vienna English Department. Her research interests comprise sociolinguistics at large—including language variation and multilingualism, language attitudes and ideologies, discourse and interaction. She has published on variation, perception, attitudes, and interactional language use in the context of Southern American English, Austrian German, and most recently, English in the linguistic landscape of Vienna, Austria. Tamás Péter Szabó is a university teacher of Multilingual and Language Aware Education in the Department of Teacher Education, and an Adjunct Professor (Docent) specialized in Linguistic Landscape Studies in the Centre for Applied Language Studies of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research interests include the management of diversity in institutional settings, schoolscapes, and agency in interaction. Recently, with Petteri Laihonen, he coedited a special issue for Linguistics and Education on schoolscape studies (“Studying the Visual and Material Dimensions of Education and Learning,” 2018). Debra Titone is a full professor in the Psychology Department at McGill University where she directs the Language and Multilingualism Laboratory. She is also a member and Axis leader of the Centre for Research on Brain, Language, & Music, based at McGill. Dr. Titone’s research investigates how our real-world experiences using language and other core neurocognitive capacities collectively enable us to read, speak, write, and converse with other people. She uses a variety of methods and approaches in this research, most notably eye-movement measures of multilingual reading. Robert A. Troyer is an associate professor of Linguistics at Western Oregon University, United States of America. His research interests in addition to Linguistic Landscapes include second language acquisition, literary stylistics, and corpus methodologies.

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His recent Linguistic Landscape publications address visualizing the LL, ethnographic, and qualitative fieldwork including videography, and minority languages in schoolscapes. Naomi Vingron is a doctoral student in the Psychology Department at McGill University, supervised by Dr. Debra Titone. Her work focuses on several aspects of bilingualism and visual attention, including visual search and bilingual reading in experimental and realworld settings. She is further interested in how language processing and reading patterns in both L1 and L2 change as a function of individual differences in language experience. Karen Wade is a postdoctoral fellow in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin. Her research interests include digital cultures, linguistic landscapes, life-writing, cultural analytics methodologies, and nineteenth-century literature. Shoshi Waksman is an independent researcher. Her main interests are social and cognitive aspects of literacy and especially multimodality in the process of meaning construction. Her focus is on the interactions between language, space, art, and visual culture. More specifically, her studies deal with the way the linguistic and multimodal landscape both reflect and construct social power relations using a variety of representational resources.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A book is never the result of a single individual’s efforts, and even less so when there are two editors looking after several chapters authored by different colleagues. Our thanks go to the authors for writing exciting papers, rich with invaluable insights and imbued with firsthand experience of LL sites—a material example of embodied research. It was an honor to work and to learn with them through the different stages of the manuscript preparation; we hope that we provided them with the right kind of support when needed. We would like to express our gratitude to others who have contributed to the realization of this volume, including our colleagues who assisted during the reviewing process: Carla Bagna, Monica Barni, Doris Correa, Melissa Curtin, Rebecca Garvin, David Karlander, Patricia Lamarre, Jackie Jia Lou, Laurence Mettewie, Amiena Peck, Christopher Stroud, Luk van Mensel, and Quentin Williams. Our gratitude also goes to the editors at Bloomsbury for accompanying us through this long journey—many thanks to Andrew Wardell, Helen Saunders, Gurdeep Mattu, Manikandan Kuppan and, particularly, Becky Holland for her patient explanations and clarifications up until the very end. Thinking about the organization of LL8, Stefania would like to thank Robert Blackwood and Will Amos as co-organizers of the workshop and as indefatigable, warm, and enthusiastic companions in that adventure. She wishes to acknowledge the support of Charles Forsdick, both in terms of his intellectual and personal contribution and in terms of his support as AHRC Theme Leadership Fellow for “Translating Cultures.” Heartfelt thanks go to our (at the time) postgraduate students Elizabeth Burgess, Jasem Eidan, and Eilsa Paine. And many thanks also to Lynn Farthman, Larissa Kolstein, and Caroline Stanley. Stefania would like to thank her Italian colleagues Rosalba Biasini, Marco Paoli, Barbara Spadaro and Federica Sturani at Liverpool University, and again Robert Blackwood (an honorary member of the Italian gang at Liverpool!), for their continuous support, the life-saving chats, and numberless cups of coffee when they were most needed. Finally, Stefania’s gratitude goes to her husband John for being an attentive and expert listener, for sharing her thoughts about progress on the volume, for inspiring her creative side at the breakfast table on many mornings, and for (literally) nourishing her body with delicious risotto dishes. And for always showing interest for whatever she does. Dave would like to express his heartfelt thanks to all who have offered support, advice, companionship, and smiles along this project’s long pathway, from the Morningside Heights dinner table where the plan for LL7 was born to the Berkeley Language Center where the workshop took place, to the Yale Center for Language Study where the volume grew into something real, to San José State University, where it was at long last brought to a close. Thank you, Vee Cangiano, Stéphane Charitos, Orlando Garcia, Angela Gleason, Minjin Hashbat, Keith Hernandez, Mark Kaiser, Rick Kern, Claire Kramsch, Elka Kristonagy, Mary Jo DiBiase Lubrano, Anna Moldawa-Shetty, Susan Moffat, Daphna Shohamy, Elana Shohamy, Ruslan Suvorov, Jim Tierney, Nelleke Van Deusen-Scholl, Victoria Williams, and John Wuorenmaa! And for his partner Pauline, “thank you” is not enough to express Dave’s gratitude for her great support, patience, and love. Hopefully, though, it’s a good place to start.

Introduction 1 ORIGINS OF THIS VOLUME This volume, as a collection of chapters from over thirty authors working in just as many geohistorical, cultural, and institutional contexts, with a wide variety of analytical perspectives and theoretical frameworks, cannot but have many beginnings. To trace them all would no doubt require the work of thirty or more editors, each commissioning their own volumes with their own histories. Yet, two tangible occasions for the genesis of this book can be identified from the start: the 7th and 8th International Workshops on Linguistic Landscape (LL), held in Berkeley, California (USA), in 2015, and in Liverpool, England (UK), in 2016, were the venues for two significant conversations in this burgeoning field of research that came to be represented in the pages of this volume. Briefly revisiting these two conversations will allow us to frame this book first and foremost as the outcome of a dialogue between two events, two groups of people gathered together under the auspices of two intersecting themes. “Questioning Boundaries, Opening Spaces” was the theme of the Berkeley workshop (LL7) that had as its goal to advance scholarship in LL, which by then had seen almost a decade of growth since 2006, the year the special issue of the International Journal of Multilingualism proclaimed LL to be “a new approach to multilingualism” (Gorter 2006). The 2015 workshop sought to stimulate the already interdisciplinary nature of the field of study, in part by inviting noted UC Berkeley faculty as keynote speakers on topics encompassing educational anthropology, applied linguistics, language revitalization, cultural geography, and urban humanities. Beyond the questioning of disciplinary boundaries, however, the workshop also had the goal of problematizing some of the methodological assumptions and debates that have remained with the field to this day, as evidenced in a host of recent publications on methodological concerns in LL (e.g., Barni and Bagna 2015; Blommaert 2013; Gorter 2018; Malinowski 2018; Puzey 2016; Van Mensel, Vandenbroucke, and Blackwood 2016). In this vein, presentations at the Berkeley workshop addressed questions such as tensions between the “linguistic” and the “landscape” in the field’s own name; roles, relationships, and ethical problematics between researchers, research sites, and the human subjects of LL; methods for investigating the historical dimensions of LL; and pedagogies in and of the LL. All of these themes find expression in this volume, as we elaborate below. The 8th International Workshop (LL8) took place the following year at the University of Liverpool under the theme “Regeneration, Revitalization, Reterritorialization.” The main topics of LL8 were inspired by the intense process of urban regeneration that the city of Liverpool had undergone in preparation for events planned for Liverpool as European City of Culture in 2008. Multiple spin-offs of initiatives supporting the city’s revitalization (and polishing) had effectively enacted the reterritorialization of local history and life, both in terms of the material undoing and redoing of the urban space and in terms of the public organization of memory—good examples are the International Slavery Museum, which was inaugurated in 2007 (International Slavery Museum 2019),

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and the Museum of Liverpool, which opened in 2011, and which aims to “reflect the city’s global significance through its unique geography, history and culture” (Museum of Liverpool 2019). These and other sites constitute a local museumscape which is integrated into a renovated dock area (the Royal Albert Dock) through the identification of a new set of social semiotics generated by the selective merging of local stories and global histories. Embedded in recent regeneration processes (and acts of city branding) are layered stories of spatial and social reformulations. These reformulations are symbolized by the successive recollocations of Liverpool’s Chinatown, for example, which have been lately challenged by new understandings of Chinese heritage through the arrival in the city of significant groups of Chinese students who have destabilized pre-packaged and institution-led notions of authenticity and legitimacy. As the field of LL continued to grow beyond its original boundaries, the theme of the eighth workshop invited us to consider how the public space and its contents undergo processes of change, expansion, and erasure. On the one hand, the theme words were intended to stimulate discussions relating to theoretical and methodological evolution in the field; on the other, they correlated with processes of gentrification and sociocultural hegemony that have become ubiquitous in the (so-called) developed world in general, and in the city of Liverpool in particular because of the specific time juncture. Based on the understanding that regeneration, revitalization, and reterritorialization are affecting the ways we perceive and study LL as much as the structure of LL itself, conference papers reflected on different dimensions, including phenomena of language contact and competition, language visibility and erasure, inclusion and exclusion, center and periphery, embodied narratives of identity, protest, and dissent, and processes of linguistic and cultural commodification. Papers also discussed aspects of regeneration, revitalization, and reterritorialization in terms of the evolution of theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the LL qualitatively, quantitatively, and ethnographically. There were, then, several favorable conditions for the bringing-together of the themes of these two workshops under the “roof” of a single edited volume: the temporal contiguity of two events in this ongoing series of annual workshops, with much dialogue and knowledge-sharing between them; a shared thematic interest in the dynamic and contested nature of space- and placemaking in LL studies; and a strong inclination to problematize existing conceptual frameworks and expand methodologies in the field. Rather than aim for separate volumes capturing the essence of each conference, as has been valuably done in the past (e.g., Shohamy and Gorter 2009; Shohamy, Ben-Rafael, and Barni 2010; Hélot, Barni, Janssens, and Bagna, 2012; Blackwood, Lanza, and Woldemariam 2015; Peck, Stroud, and Williams, 2018), the editors elected to let the two conference themes speak to each other in hopes that the resulting volume, like the historically embedded, dialogic word in Bakhtin’s (1981) analysis of novelistic discourse, might “brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads” and “become an active participant in social dialogue” (p. 276).

2 QUESTIONING BOUNDARIES AND/AS RETERRITORIALIZING LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPES Since the term “linguistic landscape” began to gain traction in the mid-2000s among researchers in sociolinguistics and language policy, it has been regularly scrutinized for the non-determinacy of its referent. That is, beyond even the question of the “ambiguities

INTRODUCTION

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embedded in landscape, as dwelling and picture” (Cosgrove 2006)—or, as Jaworski and Thurlow (2010: 6) elaborated, “the dichotomous, dialectical nature of landscape both as physical (built) environment [. . . and . . .] symbolic system of signifiers”—the question of whether “LL” points either or both to a situated geographic place (whether it be a physically or symbolically built environment), or an emergent academic field of study, remains unresolved. Indeed, Spolsky’s question to the readers (and, we can imagine, to the other contributors) of Shohamy and Gorter’s volume, Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery (2009) has enduring relevance: “Whatever we call it, is linguistic landscape a phenomenon calling for a theory, or simply a collection of somewhat disparate methodologies for studying the nature of public written signs?” (p. 25). This volume embraces and explores both sides of Spolsky’s question, while holding on to the tension between them as a productive, and necessary, embodiment of a young and quickly evolving field of knowledge. “Questioning boundaries” here connects with significant questioning of knowledge, ontology, and heuristic value. The variety of contributions presented here provides a significant illustration of the complexity of issues debated within LL studies today, and of its continuous engaging with the field’s challenges and heuristic approaches. Chapters address the dialectical relationship between open and closed spaces, at a variety of scales and conceptual/material specificities. They take up complexly negotiated dimensions of identity, belonging, inclusivity, and voice, leading us to question consolidated fields of knowledge and embrace the concept that both fluid multilingualism and resemioticization processes are particularly relevant in a world characterized by extreme mobility, where local policies are increasingly ineffective in promoting participation and citizenship (Desforges, Jones, and Woods, 2005; Dickinson, Andrucki, Rawlins, Hale, and Cook, 2008). Imagining, remembering, and embodying spaces of being are therefore structuring dimensions of life which are captured in the dialogic exchanges between being and becoming, as the chapters included herein illustrate through the human-centered problematics of LL they choose to set forth. In this sense, this volume is a good exemplification of current understandings of science as practice, where the researcher is at the construction site (Wehling, 2006) and embarks on a journey through a landscape that evolves under their own eyes and is constantly in the making. Of course, prominent among the “boundary concerns” of this volume are those that address material borders and bordering practices specifically. Chapters explicitly engaging with notions of the border by Kallen, Ní Dhonnacha, and Wade (Chapter 5), Kudžmaitė and Juffermans (Chapter 13) and Dunlevy (Chapter 12) exemplify the recent shift in scholarly attention to the issue. Rumford (2011: 67) highlights that in order to understand borderlands, it is necessary “to see like a border.” This perspective subsumes three key aspects of the research agenda for border studies. First, borders can also engender connectivity and facilitate mobility, as in those sites such as airports and railway stations that Augé (1992) defined non-places, but that in this view can assume the characteristics of ultra-places as locations where life-changing moments are inscribed. The border can therefore be conceptualized as a portal (including a virtual one), and both individuals and groups can construct the scale of the border as an entry/exit point. The discussion in Kallen, Ní Dhonnacha, and Wade in this volume is an exemplification of this. Second, bordering is not necessarily a top-down endeavor as individuals and groups (be they residents, business people, or activists) are also involved in bordering or un-bordering activity, both in their private and in their non-domestic sphere, and both at the local and at the supra-local level (see, for example, Kudžmaitė and Juffermans in this volume). Third, existential and experiential bordering can provide opportunities for

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claims-making and therefore for exercising agency that can replace traditional, state-led forms of citizenship. These acts of citizenship are therefore a means of empowerment and facilitate political action (see, for example, Dunlevy in this volume). Clearly border-making, border-keeping, and border transgressions—as three examples of boundary work (Jaffe and Oliva 2013) in multilingual settings more broadly—implicate not just borders of physical territory and visible landscapes but of language, culture, body and self as well. Indeed, with a turn in sociolinguistics and LL studies more specifically toward “spatial repertoires” and embodied sense-making practices of people-in-place (e.g., Bucholz and Hall 2016; Pennycook and Otsuji 2015; Peck, Stroud, and Williams 2018), we see an ongoing need for relational thinking in Linguistic Landscape studies (LLS) that approaches space-, place-, and subject-formation as co-constitutive across scales of time and space. With respect to bordering and de-bordering activity, such a perspective allows us to posit how, for instance, gatekeeping forces in societies of control (Deleuze 1992) subjugate mobility to security, causing regimented bodies to be divided even within themselves (in this volume see, for instance, Anfinson [Chapter 7] and Waksman and Shohamy [Chapter 10]). It is also a primary motivation for us in this volume to engage with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) notion of reterritorialization as a conceptual and, perhaps even more so, methodological guide in approaching the LL.

3 INTERSECTIONS: METHODOLOGY AND THE NATURE OF SIGNS Methodological issues have occupied center stage in LL studies, and the fact that the chapters in the first part of this volume (“Questioning Disciplinary and Methodological Boundaries”) are devoted to these issues is testament to this. Such preoccupation is understandable, and it is a legacy of the close relationship between LL and the social sciences, where research into social phenomena usually investigates contemporary settings and focuses on the here and now (or on recent times), and where social scientists interact and engage in dialogues with both places and people. Methodology, however, is not disconnected from the unit of analysis (Yin 2018), that is, the thing that we are looking at and that which we would like to understand more about. Again, social science distinguishes between the unit of analysis and the unit of observation—the latter being an item (an LL sign) as a part of a whole that the researcher observes and analyses in order to adapt, change, or reject their working hypothesis. The unit of analysis therefore emerges from one’s research questions (e.g., language policy in the workplace through LL), whereas the unit(s) of observation are the data (e.g., LL items in a given workplace). The feeling of unease experienced by linguistic landscapers when choosing, implementing, and describing their methodological tools is a constant in sociolinguistic and applied language studies for the reasons outlined above. A concern about how to define an LL sign rigorously is something that emerges regularly. The ever-recurring methodological dilemma revolving around the question “What is a sign?” has occupied much space in LL scholarship, and rightly so, we would argue. If we conceptualize signs as “things,” as Deleuze and Guattari (1987) would put it, their theorization of reality can help us identify some of the reasons for our methodological disquiet. Rather than classifying reality as made up of discrete entities which are repositories of essentialized static qualities, Deleuze and Guattari use the concept of assemblage (1987: 586; see also Pennycook 2017; Pennycook and Otsuji 2017; Anfinson,

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this volume). An assemblage is a semiotic system or regime of signs, a set of conditions that turn possibilities into realizations (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 162). Regimes of signs do not come into existence independently but operate in connection with other regimes of signs (ranging from social to biological and textual artifacts), and can stay operational for any lengths of time. Assemblages are situated on a continuum between immobility and change and fluctuate between the two poles, with tendencies toward one or the other. As a result, they are a combination of permanence and change. The issue with the discreteness and countability of entities is that this vision tends to universalize moments of stability, whereas reality is unpredictable because assemblages have the tendency to move toward change. Reality is also rhizomatic for Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 21) (see Monaghan, Chapter 9 in this volume), where a rhizome is a subterranean plant stem that generates roots and shoots from its nodes (as does a potato), therefore developing in a nonlinear, nonhierarchical manner. A rhizomatic metaphor offers a prime counterexample to that of the tree as it is used in the organization of positivist knowledge, with its predilection for clear lines of descent. A rhizomatic view of reality posits the uprootedness of causality and accounts for the continuous slippage of meaning—something that LL scholars contend with regularly. Insofar as it is integrated into the material world that surrounds us, it is possible to conceptualize LL alongside Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy. As a regime of signs developing in close interaction with other assemblages, elements of change, unpredictability, and inherent transformation of LL should not be seen as discrete entities, but as assemblages converging to create meaning continua which are slippery and unstable, therefore replicating the (non)pattern of human experience in stark contrast to the discrete, the countable, and the predictable. The discrete and the countable restrict permutations—the very matter that experience is made of. This view helps to frame the snapshot nature of LL investigations as stills of a film in the process of becoming. As Deleuze and Guattari suggested, assemblages and regimes of signs can stay operational for different lengths of time, and these lengths of time afford the researcher the ability to observe the durability of phenomena and the multiplicity, promiscuity, and heterogeneity of factors that can produce something new. It is in the potential for change, and in the interstitial, that agency pushes in and appropriates spaces of possibility or, as Cerimaj, Milani, and Kitis (Chapter 6, this volume) propose, turbulence emerges out of the disconnect between deterritorialization and reterritorialization processes. Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between relative and absolute deterritorialization—the former is always accompanied by reterritorialization, whereas the latter engenders a plane of immanence, that is, an infinite smooth space with no divisions, a boundaryless and pre-philosophical dimension, an image of thought separated from scientific and historical thought.1 We argue, therefore, that discursive and semiotic articulations of LL are the result of dialogues between (relative) deterritorialization and reterritorialization processes, where spatial and temporal disconnect and un-adherence allow the materialization of possibility and change. These processes intersect and become rhizomatic regardless of (and, often, because of) the hegemonic forces that (attempt to) direct them—be they grounded in the material environment and carefully planned and orchestrated (see Baro, Chapter 11 in this volume; Blackwood, Chapter 15; Dunlevy, Chapter 12; Guilat and Espinosa Ramírez, Chapter 16; Machetti and Pizzorusso, Chapter 8; Waksman and Shohamy, Chapter 10) or unplanned and symbolic (Anfinson, Chapter 7; Monaghan, Chapter 9; Kailuweit and Quintana, Chapter 14).

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As will become apparent in the following section, the chapters in this volume engage with the methodological and conceptual aspects outlined above, each foregrounding and focusing on specific LL sites and areas of interest.

4 THE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THIS VOLUME The authors of the nineteen chapters comprising this volume take up the thematic concerns of questioning boundaries and reterritorializing LLs in diverse ways, and to varying degrees of explicitness. They write from a number of disciplines and geographic locales across Europe, and from South Africa, Israel, Hong Kong, the United States, and beyond, following signs and signmakers across hours of guided tours, days of local protest, and decades of gradual shift or sudden rupture in regional histories. There is no single dominant theoretical foundation among the chapters, although the spatialization of social theory (often seen in readings of Lefebvre’s 1991 The Production of Space) seems to have made its mark on the field; the contributors make use of a number of methodological frameworks befitting their various purposes, with Scollon and Scollon’s geosemiotic framework continuing to inform many analyses more than fifteen years following the publication of Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World (2003). Further, the authors of this volume’s chapters situate themselves varyingly with respect to their research participants and objects of study, reterritorializing epistemological histories and possibilities in LL as a field of study. At the same time, we see in the contributions to this volume many common threads, including a now long-standing commitment to both a linguistic and non-logocentric understanding of LL—a stance first articulated at least as early as Shohamy and Gorter’s introduction to Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery (2009), as it reflected in turn the influence of multimodal literacies, ecological approaches, and chaos/complexity theory in applied linguistics (cf. Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008; Kramsch 2002). The authors in this volume further strive for completeness and triangulation of data, and increasingly engage with ethnographic methods, a trend seen particularly in the past decade (e.g., Blommaert 2013; Lou 2016; Maly 2016). LL studies has come a long way since the mostly descriptive studies of the so-called first phase (cf. Shohamy and Gorter 2009; Gorter 2013), and we welcome the exploration of mixed and novel methods. Following the dialogic intent of the volume, we have grouped the chapters into two parts named after the workshops’ themes from which they originated: “Questioning Boundaries, Opening Spaces” (Part A) and “Reterritorializing Linguistic Landscapes” (Part B). Each part is further subdivided into two sections, so as to foreground salient ways in which each chapter contributes to the main theoretical, methodological, and practical strands of the volume. In Part A, these are “Questioning Disciplinary and Methodological Boundaries” (Section I) and “The Spaces and Places of LL Research” (Section II); Part B consists of “Re-writing, Re-working, Re-inventing Place” (Section III) and “Experimenting Space” (Section IV). Of course, lest these groupings appear mutually exclusive or overly deterministic, we would emphasize from the start that each chapter speaks to several of the volume’s interests at once, such that some chapters might appear just as meaningfully in another of the book’s sections. We invite the reader to form her or his own associations between and across these texts. In the first section of the volume (“Questioning Disciplinary and Methodological Boundaries”), Leimgruber, Vingron, and Titone (Chapter 1) employ eye-tracking methods in the investigation of how LL visual stimuli are elaborated by social actors interacting

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with LL in Montreal, Canada, where official language policy imposes the dominance of French in the public space. They argue that systematic and rigorous research on viewing patterns is a critical part of conceptualizing and understanding LLs. In Chapter 2, Lyons applies an inferential statistical approach to the LL of the Mission District neighborhood in San Francisco, California, and demonstrates the benefit of combining different methodologies in uncovering aspects that would otherwise remain obscure, such as the correlation of language choice with socioeconomic indicators and diachronic assessments of LL. In Chapter 3, Amos and Soukup take stock of the qualitative turn in LL studies and aim to redress the balance in favor of quantitative approaches. They exploit the principles of variationist sociolinguistics in order to start devising a canonical matrix of variables underpinning a standard model for quantitative LL research. The section concludes with Mac Giolla Chríost (Chapter 4) discussing a case study on the London Underground and problematizing the notions of objectivity and subjectivity. The author argues that an approach based on a meaningful categorization of both the “linguistic” and the “landscape” in the field of LL Studies would be beneficial. The second section of the volume (“The Spaces and Places of LL Research”) opens with Kallen, Ní Dhonnacha, and Wade (Chapter 5) who problematize and develop the notion of boundaries in LL studies through in-depth analyses of Irish-language identity work in online environments. The study discusses the boundary-crossing and re-territorializing modalities between terrestrial and online LLs while also advancing their model of online LL’s peculiar affordances, such as the blurring between authorship and receivership. In Chapter 6, Cerimaj, Milani, and Kitis, drawing on Edward Said’s (Said 1994 [1978]) “imaginative geographies,” Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) de-/reterritorialization, and Stroud’s (2016) notion of turbulence, analyze the competing semiotic activities of two protest groups—Israeli Apartheid Week and Give Peace Wings—at a South African university. Anfinson (Chapter 7) then examines how reterritorialization constituted heterotopias in the occupied sites of Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy movement. The study demonstrates that the mass movement of bodies, the appropriation of urban space, and the emplaced signage of the Umbrella Movement encompassed reflexive performances of place that temporarily subverted the technologies and discipline of social order. By drawing a comparison between contemporary graffiti and forms of public inscription in use in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, Machetti and Pizzorusso (Chapter 8) argue that street art can simultaneously represent both an example of consensus and a model of dissent. Monaghan (Chapter 9) discusses a case study involving the use of offline and online resources on the part of Liverpool football fans to challenge the hegemony of the club’s owners, and to resist the latter’s deterritorialization of Anfield via the commodification of its physical environment and ethos. In the final chapter of the section (Chapter 10), Waksman and Shohamy discuss the ideologically interested nature of tour guide mediation in Jaffa, Israel. While the LL is perceived as something fixed, tour guides are major actors in the interpretation of the LL and in orienting tourists in specific readings of the spatial scenes. The third section of the volume (“Re-Writing, Re-Working, Re-Inventing Place”) begins with a study set in post-apartheid Marshalltown, a neighborhood of Johannesburg (South Africa). Baro (Chapter 11) questions the type of historicity backgrounded and foregrounded in the recent regeneration of the area, in a context of the private sector’s reterritorialization and appropriation of the formally public space. In Chapter 12, Dunlevy explores the blurred nature of internal boundaries in three autonomous regions of Northern Spain. It emerges that language agents representing different constituencies are all actively engaged

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in exploiting LL as a means of engendering language revitalization and of establishing language as a marker of identity. Kudžmaitė and Juffermans (Chapter 13) analyze the patterns of signage on the Lithuanian-Polish borderland to uncover degrees of overlap of political, ethnic, and linguistic borders. The study reveals the multidimensionality and relative porosity of borders in the midst of both material and symbolic directories constructed by LL. In Chapter 14, Kailuweit and Quintana highlight the re-functionalization of LLs by civil society in response to terrorist attacks, and the way the authorities react to the appropriation of the public space. Albeit with different modalities, due to varying contextual situations, the struggle for public space emerges amid processes of de- and reterritorialization. In his contribution, Blackwood (Chapter 15) presents examples of adaptive reuse of existing buildings in three French localities. Alternative spatial narratives represent architectural responses to deterritorialization, and one where language(s), texts, images, and other resources are activated to change the relation between places and cultural activities. In the final chapter of this section, Guilat and Espinosa Ramírez (Chapter 16) propose a multilayered (archaeological) investigation of street-signage transformation in Granada, Spain, during the transition to democracy. A historical reconstruction of urban naming practices underpins the interconnections between discourses, ideologies, practices, and policies that shaped the post-dictatorial public space in Granada. The fourth and final section of the volume (“Experimenting Space”) is introduced by Maxim’s investigation of a study abroad course for learners of German in Vienna (Chapter 17). Against a background highlighting the usefulness of LL as a resource for language learning, the chapter explains in detail how language learners may become LL researchers in their own right. In Chapter 18, Bever and Richardson present four classroom-based case studies from a university in Tucson (Arizona). Using a literacies-based approach, the authors show how language teaching and learning addresses reterritorialization of place and space by employing LL as a tool and as a medium for stimulating students’ creative and analytical thinking to fulfill their imagined realities. Finally, by adopting a walking tour methodology with parents of children at Hungarian schools, Szabó and Troyer (Chapter 19) analyze the modalities in which key actors reshape educational spaces. This process accentuates the features of LL as something in flux, viewed meaningfully through unfolding and sometimes contradictory human processes.

5 AND OPENING SPACES The reader of these introductory remarks may have noticed that while the title of this edited volume bears three gerund-noun pairs (questioning boundaries, opening spaces, reterritorializing LLs), thus far we have only explicitly addressed the first and the last. “Opening spaces” has remained implicit in the discussion, suggested perhaps in the applications of postmodern spatial theory in such works as Peck, Stroud, and Williams (2018) and Pennycook and Otsuji (2015), and Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) very notions of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, where changing configurations of people, place, power, and imagination manifest themselves as shifting tensions between “smooth” and “striated” spaces. There are certainly many ways to understand the notion of “opening spaces” with respect to the denoted content of the book: for instance, the ways in which each chapter in some sense advances the work of Spolsky and Cooper (1991), Landry and Bourhis (1997), Backhaus (2007), and other early innovators in the field by demonstrating the LL’s own agency as it retells local histories, mediates ethnolinguistic relations, redirects flows of capital, and shapes social futures; the ways in which the chapters speak to

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each other intertextually, giving new meaning to existing notions of borderwork and reterritorialization, while laying the groundwork for new theoretical and methodological directions; and the ways in which, in the final section especially, authors demonstrate the power of LL research to inform, guide, and transform research and pedagogy in practice. To focus on movements between research in LL studies and various kinds of lived practice as “opening spaces” was one goal of the 7th and 8th International Workshops on Linguistic Landscape, as described at the beginning of this introduction. It is also a goal of this volume, where each chapter’s authors have invited their readers to engage more deeply with their topics, sites, concepts, and methods through a series of guided questions and activities at the end of their texts. Following the references, there are a number of additional readings that expand upon the topics addressed in the chapter. Then, the authors have framed a few interpretive essay questions suitable for students’ writing at home or classroom discussion. Finally, they offer a few ideas for applied project work, with ample opportunity for students to replicate portions of the studies they have just read in new contexts, to creatively adapt and remix research questions and methods, and, of course, to develop their own critiques and speak back to the field, and to this volume, for the gaps that remain. Earlier, we discussed Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblage at an abstract level, glossing the term “a semiotic system or regime of signs, a set of conditions that turn possibilities into realisations.” However, Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 25) give us the opportunity and responsibility to confront this term at a much more concrete level as well, since they also discuss books themselves as assemblages. They write, An assemblage, in its multiplicity, necessarily acts on semiotic flows, material flows, and social flows simultaneously (independently of any recapitulation that may be made of it in a scientific or theoretical corpus). There is no longer a tripartite division between a field of reality (the world) and a field of representation (the book) and a field of subjectivity (the author). Rather, an assemblage establishes connections between certain multiplicities drawn from each of these orders, so that a book has no sequel nor the world as its object nor one or several authors as its subject. In light of the multiplicities into which the word-lines and image-vectors of this volume may enter, our sincere hope for this handbook is that it may occasion such an assemblage between its readers and the texts, ideas, places, and actions that will carry the field forward.

NOTE 1. The plane of immanence is one of the most complex concepts in Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy. It was developed in What is Philosophy (1994), where it is described as the internal condition of thought: “It is a plane of immanence that constitutes the absolute ground of philosophy, its earth or deterritorialization, the foundation on which it creates its concepts” (p. 41). For an analysis of the concept see, among others, Agamben (1999).

REFERENCES Agamben, G. (1999), Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Augé, M. (1992), Non-Places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London: Verso.

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Backhaus, P. (2007), Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Austin: University of Texas Press. Barni, M. and C. Bagna (2015), “The critical turn in LL: New methodologies and new items in LL,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1–2): 6–18. Blackwood, R., E. Lanza, and H. Woldemariam, eds. (2015), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, New York: Bloomsbury. Blommaert, J. (2013), Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity, Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Bucholtz, M. and K. Hall (2016), “Embodied sociolinguistics,” in N. Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates, 173–98, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cosgrove, D. (2006), “Modernity, Community and the Landscape Idea,” Journal of Material Culture, 11 (1–2): 49–66. Deleuze, G. (1992), “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” October, 59: 3–7. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1987), A Thousand Plateaus, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1994), What is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press. Desforges, L., R. Jones, and M. Woods (2005), “New Geographies of Citizenship,” Citizenship Studies, 9 (5): 439–51. Dickinson, J., M. J. Andrucki, E. Rawlins, D. Hale, and V. Cook (2008), “Introduction: Geographies of Everyday Citizenship,” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geography, 7 (2): 100–12. Gorter, D. (2006), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Gorter, D. (2013), “Linguistic Landscapes in a Multilingual World,” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 33: 190–212. Gorter, D. (2018), “Methods and Techniques for Linguistic Landscape Research: About Definitions, Core Issues and Technological Innovations,” in M. Pütz and N. Mundt (eds.), Expanding the Linguistic Landscape: Linguistic Diversity, Multimodality and the Use of Space as a Semiotic Resource, 38–57, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Hélot, C., M. Barni, R. Janssens, and C. Bagna, eds. (2012), Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingualism and Social Change, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. International Slavery Museum (2019), http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/about/index .aspx (accessed March 1, 2019). Jaffe, A. and C. Oliva (2013), “Linguistic Creativity in Corsican Tourist Context,” in S. Pietikäinen and H. Kelly-Holmes (eds.), Multilingualism and the Periphery, 95–117, New York: Oxford University Press. Jaworski, A. and C. Thurlow (2010), “Introducing Semiotic Landscapes,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, 1–40, London and New York: Continuum. Kramsch, C., ed. (2002), Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological Perspectives, London: Continuum. Landry, R. and R. Y. Bourhis (1997), “Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16 (1): 23–49. Larsen-Freeman, D. and L. Cameron (2008), Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics (Vol. 1), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Lou, J. J. (2016), The Linguistic Landscape of Chinatown: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Malinowski, D. (2018), “Linguistic Landscape,” in A. Phakiti, P. De Costa, L. Plonsky, and S. Starfield (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Applied Linguistics Research Methodology, 869–85, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Maly, I. (2016), “Detecting Social Changes in Times of Superdiversity: An Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis of Ostend in Belgium,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42 (5): 703–23. Museum of Liverpool (2019), http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mol/about (accessed March 1, 2019). Peck, A., C. Stroud, and Q. Williams, eds. (2018), Making Sense of People and Place in Linguistic Landscapes, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Pennycook, A. (2017), “Translanguaging and Semiotic Assemblages,” International Journal of Multilingualism, 14 (3): 269–82. Pennycook, A. and E. Otsuji (2015), Metrolingualism: Language in the City, New York: Routledge. Pennycook, A. and E. Otsuji (2017), “Fish, Phone Cards and Semiotic Assemblages in Two Bangladeshi Shops in Sydney and Tokyo,” Social Semiotics, 27 (4): 434–50. Puzey, G. (2016), “Linguistic Landscapes,” in C. Hough (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming, 395–411, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rumford, C. (2011), “Seeing Like a Border,” in C. Johnson, R. Jones, A. Paasi, L. Amoor, L. Mountz, M. Salter and C. Rumford (eds.), Interventions on rethinking “the border” in border studies. Political Geography 30: 61–69. Said, E. (1978 [1994]), Orientalism, New York, NY: Vintage. Scollon, R. and S. B. K. Scollon (2003), Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World, London: Routledge. Shohamy, E. and D. Gorter, eds. (2009), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, New York: Routledge. Shohamy, E., E. Ben-Rafael, and M. Barni, eds. (2010), Linguistic Landscape in the City, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Spolsky, B. and R. L. Cooper (1991), The Languages of Jerusalem, Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press. Stroud, C. (2016), “Turbulent Linguistic Landscapes and the Semiotics of Citizenship,” in R. Blackwood, E. Lanza and H. Woldemariam (eds.), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, 3–18, London: Bloomsbury. Van Mensel, L., M. Vandenbroucke, and R. Blackwood (2016), “Linguistic Landscapes,” in O. García, M. Spotti, and N. Flores (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society, 423–50, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wehling, P. (2006), “The Situated Materiality of Scientific Practices: Postconstructivism—a New Theoretical Perspective in Science Studies?” Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, 1: 81–100. Yin, R. K. (2018), Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods, 6th ed., London: Sage.

PART A

Questioning Boundaries, Opening Spaces

SECTION I

Questioning Disciplinary and Methodological Boundaries

CHAPTER ONE

What Do People Notice from Real-World Linguistic Landscapes? A Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Future Eye-Tracking Research JAKOB R. E. LEIMGRUBER , NAOMI VINGRON , AND DEBRA TITONE

1 INTRODUCTION: STUDIES OF LL AND NOTICING The LL that surrounds us has been the subject of much recent scholarly attention. Ever since the term was coined by Landry and Bourhis (1997: 25) to cover “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings,” LLs have expanded to include “electronic flat-panel displays, LED neon lights, foam boards, electronic message centers, interactive touch screens, inflatable signage, and scrolling banners” (Gorter 2013: 191), or, put more inclusively, “the linguistic items found in the public space” (Shohamy 2006: 110). The recent launch of a dedicated journal Linguistic Landscape, an addition to the several monographs, articles, journal special issues, and edited volumes (such as the present one) published on the topic, is testament to the ongoing scholarly interest in the field. The LL has been approached from a variety of ways, and it is fair to say that issues of language policy have featured prominently in many. In the case of Montreal, the site of Landry and Bourhis’ seminal study, the LL exists within an elaborate language policy framework that operates at a minimum of two levels. The federal (Canadian) government’s policy is one of official bilingualism, which applies to its institutions regardless of geographical location inside and outside the country, and coexists with the provincial (Quebec) government’s policy of official monolingualism, as set out in the Charter of the French Language (known as “Bill 101”). The effect of these policies on the LL is such that signs pertaining to the federal government stand out because of their equally sized texts in French and English, whereas signs of the provincial government are entirely French. Provisions in the Charter further regulate the LL of private sector businesses, whose signage must include French, and may include other languages only if French appears “markedly predominantly.” The term “markedly predominant,” as

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explained in Leimgruber (2017), is further clarified in a subordinated regulation (C-11, r. 11) that deals in detail with cases where French co-occurs with “another language” on the same sign, on separate signs of the same size, and on separate signs of a different size. In all cases, the French text needs to be at least twice as large as the text in the other language, the characters in the French text need to be at least twice as large as those in the other language, and no other characteristics (such as color or font weight) are allowed to reduce the visual impact of the French text. In the case of separate signs or posters, those in French need to be either twice as numerous (in the case of same-sized posters) or twice as large (in the case of different-sized posters) than the posters in the other language. Quite apart from the LL, the Charter of the French Language deals in detail with other issues regarding language, most specifically on education. The state school system is offered in two parallel French and English streams, but admission to the English system is heavily restricted, namely to children whose parents are Canadian citizens who have received English-language education in Canada. This means that immigrants from other English-speaking countries as well as from elsewhere (“the main source of population growth in the province” [Leimgruber 2017: 2]) are assimilated into the French education system. These provisions have been quite successful, at least as far as the dominant home language among the allophone population is concerned: the rate of people speaking English dropped from 22.1 percent in 2001 to 19.7 percent in 2011. Still, it is the combination of French, English, and their heritage language that has most currency with immigrants (Leimgruber 2017), because of the local relevance of French in Quebec (without which employment is close to impossible) and the national, continental, and global importance of English (Pagé and Lamarre 2010). The interconnectedness of many lives in the metropolitan reality of Montreal, also reflected in its LL, is visible in the quarter (23 percent) of its residents born outside the country, and by the similar number that has a language other than French or English as their mother tongue (Leimgruber 2017: 3). In effect for over forty years, the provisions in the Charter of the French Language regarding the LL have secured the “French face” (Levine 1989: passim) of Quebec, seen as vital by policy-makers. However, the disconnect between official policies and realities on the ground, especially in a multilingual and functionally bilingual city such as Montreal, has not been lost on researchers. Leimgruber (2017) presents results from a systematic study of the LL of a single street in downtown Montreal, rue Sainte-Catherine, which crosses several neighborhoods and, from northeast to southwest, turns from a residential street to one in an industrial area to the main downtown shopping street, before again taking on a more residential character. Of the 148 signs documented (37 belonging to the “municipal discourse” of Scollon and Scollon [2003: 167], 109 to “commercial discourse,” and two being “transgressive”), one-third (34 percent) feature French only, 40 percent are bilingual, and nine signs (6 percent) are English only. Curiously, almost half of French-English signs have the two languages printed in equal size, and some even have French smaller than English. Seventeen signs (11 percent) feature languages other than French or English, ranging from Arabic to Vietnamese, and “differing in the amount of information they convey,” particularly with regard to the French or English text typically also present on the sign (Leimgruber 2017: 7). Some of these “other” languages fulfill primarily decorative functions for the majority of the intended audience, such as Chinese characters lacking any linguistic content for anyone but those with proficiency in the language. These decorative functions are not irrelevant, however, since they fulfill a “symbolic function” (Scollon and Scollon 2003) that indexes the business (restaurants, in

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many cases) as being authentically Chinese and situating it visibly within a given culinary, cultural, and commercial tradition, for instance. The LL of Montreal is, therefore, a highly complex linguistic cityscape (Coulmas 2009) in which many languages coexist within a sophisticated legal framework. Furthermore, the emergence of instances in Montreal in which signmakers actively address a highly bilingual population (56 percent, according to the 2011 census) points to creative ways in which the legislation is playfully circumvented (e.g., the French name “chou-chou” for a shoe store, an instance of wordplay called “bilingual winks” by Lamarre 2014). The LL, then, is a reflection of both governmental language policy and private sign-creating activity, and has, therefore, the potential to illustrate linguistic, cultural, and social realities in a given locale. As Leimgruber (2017: 12) suggests in his study of rue Sainte-Catherine, the LL present on the street nicely illustrates the interplay between language policies at three administrative levels (city, province, and federal state), economic concerns, “globally recognized indexical processes” (by which the symbolic use of language resources [qua Blommaert 2010] replaces their purely linguistic use), and more traditional, almost dialectological, distributions of languages across space (as seen in Leimgruber’s finding that English signs are less common in more “eastern” Francophone neighborhoods). Much less is known, however, about how people are actually impacted by the multilingual LL of such places. It is one thing to seek to achieve a French LL in a city like Montreal, but quite another to analyze the extent to which this regulation of the LL, this “linguistic landscaping” (Itagi and Singh 2002; Backhaus 2007) has (or not) had an impact on the reading or viewing behaviors of people who see the LL’s signs. Thus, we have recently embarked upon a program of research to investigate what parts of the LL people notice, and to what extent different languages or texts in the LL are noticed or encoded by participants (Vingron, Gullifer, Hamill, Leimgruber, and Titone 2017). One question, for instance, would be whether a native French-speaking1 resident of Montreal notices the presence of English words on French signs (and vice versa), or if there are differences in the way texts in different languages are viewed, and if there are differences, what they are. Could it be, for instance, that a native English speaker in Montreal is used to seeing French in the prominent position on a sign (as per the law), and therefore overlooks it in an attempt to seek English text on the same sign? If anything, this would run counter to the intent of the policy, and may, at worst, result in misreadings should the predominant language somehow contain information different from the non-predominant language, as may be the case in instances of “fragmentary,” “overlapping,” or “complementary multilingual writing” (Reh 2004: 10–14). What readers “notice” on signs in the LL has not received as much attention as other studies of the LL. Some exploratory work has touched on emotive responses to items in the LL (Stroud and Mpendukana 2009), others on “affect” in more general terms (Wee 2016), and yet others have considered the potential impact of the LL on language learning (Malinowski 2015). Research on “language awareness” (Candelier 2003; Perregaux et al. 2003), when applied to the LL as conducted by Dagenais et al. (2009), takes an educational approach to signs in the LL, typically in the form of student/ pupil documentary activities of languages in their neighborhood. The kinds of signs and the languages thereon that end up in the LL documentation, when compared with the researchers’ own documentation, shed some light on which elements of the LL gather most attention by this specific group of viewers. Garvin (2010) uses a “walking tour” methodology, in which participants actively traverse the physical cityscape while at the

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same time commenting on the LL and the languages therein. Collins and Slembrouck (2007) take a similarly ethnographic approach, carrying out in-depth interviews with a variety of participants in order to elicit reactions to multilingual signs from globalized neighborhoods. Also of interest is Lamarre et al.’s (2012) study, in which researchers presented participants with signs showing instances of “bilingual winks” or puns, that is, instances of linguistic creativity in the LL where English and French cunningly meld into a hybrid form that can be interpreted as belonging to either language. This includes the “chou-chou” example presented above, where a French term of endearment is used for a shoe shop, “T & biscuits,” which can be pronounced felicitously in both languages, or even a sign saying “U&I,” which reads as you and I in English but has no meaning in the French pronunciation of [y.e.i]. Their findings suggest that while respondents derive a guilty pleasure from decoding the sometimes-illegal wordplay, the “hidden” layer of English text often needs to be pointed out directly (at least to French-speaking respondents). While Lamarre’s qualitative survey of passersby in the city does attempt to capture some degree of “noticing” information that is present in the LL, it does so through accessing the conscious articulation of thought processes on the part of the informants. Moreover, in those instances where the “wink” is not noticed, attention is deliberately drawn toward it. Which elements or language are first activated or noticed by the participant is not straightforwardly clear. Thus, we argue that systematic and rigorous research on what gets noticed in a multilingual LL such as the one in Montreal is a critical part of conceptualizing and understanding LLs more generally. We argue that our method of choice, eye-tracking, allows researchers to precisely determine the viewing patterns of participants when presented with real-world instances of signs from the LL. This includes the areas of the sign that are fixated, the text areas that are spent most time on, and the movements back and forth between texts in different languages, for instance. The use of eye-tracking methods is fairly widespread in the advertising industry, both with regard to physical (i.e., printed) adverts (Rayner et al. 2001) and online stores (i.e., websites, see, for example, McCay-Peet et al. 2012, Roth et al. 2013, Higgins et al. 2014). In these studies, the primary concern is to identify which visual stimuli participants focus on, in order to increase the likelihood of the product on sale being noticed. None, to our knowledge, have considered bilingual billboards such as the ones we will turn to in the next section. The absence, heretofore, of a clear metric to measure what people “notice” in the LL is unfortunate. The legislation that the LL is subjected to in some jurisdictions (famously in Quebec), as well as the general interest, both lay and scholarly, paid to LL signs, is based on many agentive considerations (Woldemariam and Lanza 2014), and very often take the point of view of the policy-makers, the sign-creators, or commissioners (Malinowski 2009). The way in which the signs themselves are perceived has received much less attention (but see, for example, Starks and Nicholas 2015; Lamarre et al. 2012), and may only enter the lay discussion of the LL in anecdotal form. Clearly, particularly in a setting such as Quebec, where legislation is directly concerned with diverting readers’ attention toward French (which should be “markedly predominant” on any sign), some sort of measure of whether this legal provision is actually effective in promoting French to non-Francophones is desirable. Furthermore, any additional input gained on how people actually view the LL will help the field move in a direction that enables it to take into account actual, non-specialist readings of written language in public spaces.

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2 EYE-TRACKING Eye-tracking as a tool is in common use in cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistic research, and measures subjects’ eye movements when presented with a picture, text, or other visual stimulus. Reaction times, as well as the amount of time spent looking at an element of the picture or reading a given text, provide insight into the amount of cognitive effort involved in processing information (see, for example, Henderson and Ferreira 2004, 2013; Rayner 1998, 2009a; Findlay and Walker 1999). The eye tracker consists of a camera connected to a computer which, upon emitting a low-grade infrared light into the eye, calculates the reflections of that light from the front and the back of the cornea. This results in fairly exact measurements of where the subject is looking (known as “fixations”) and how the gaze moves between elements of the image (known as “saccades”). An analysis of these reflections over a given amount of time (typically at a rate of one measurement per millisecond, 1 kilohertz) produces an eye-movement profile that can then be compared across subjects and stimuli. The underlying assumption in eye-tracking research is that there is a close link between eye fixations and mental processes (Rayner 1998, 2009a). By way of illustration, results from the psycholinguistic literature suggest that when presented with a given sentence, L1 readers typically spend less time on high-frequency words and more time on low-frequency words: in “the cat’s hypothalamus is rarely of great noteworthiness,” the words “cat,” “rarely,” “great,” and so on are fixated for shorter periods of time, because they are easier to cognitively process. By contrast, “hypothalamus” and “noteworthiness,” which have a lower frequency, are fixated for longer periods of time because of the additional cognitive work required to process less frequent words. Furthermore, function words such as “the,” “is,” “of,” and so on are often skipped by an L1 English reader, since these words are likely processed concurrently with fixations on the words preceding them (so-called “parafoveal” processing). When it comes to advanced L2 readers, a similar pattern may be observed for the eye movements when reading the same sentence. However, low-frequency words are likely to be fixated even longer (Whitford and Titone 2016), as are words that overlap in spelling but not meaning in the L1 and the L2 (e.g., “chat” as a conversation in English but as a domestic feline in French, see Libben and Titone 2009; Titone et al. 2016; Whitford et al. 2015; Pivneva et al. 2014). The eye-tracking method, therefore, tells us about what parts of a visual display, and what languages presented, are more likely to take longer to process by the reader. The potential for the method has been recognized in areas beyond psycholinguistics, such as web design and advertising, where the optimization of target text and image placement is of relevance (Rayner et al. 2001, 2008; Higgins et al. 2014; Roth et al. 2010, 2013). For example, in a study on ads for cars and skin care products, Rayner et al. (2001) found that participants tended to focus on text first rather than on objects. Interestingly, they also found that participants who were asked to imagine wanting to buy a car or a skin care product spent more time reading and observing the ads that corresponded to the item they were asked to buy, compared to ads that were irrelevant. These findings suggest that readers’ specific goals impact their eye movements and thus the focus of their attention. This is relevant to LLs insofar as the presence of signs in the LL alone is probably not sufficient enough to guarantee that passersby will actively pay attention to the text on the sign. Eye-movement patterns in reading, scene viewing and visual search differ, as discussed in Rayner (2009b). Generally, the gist or general context of a scene can be

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recognized during the initial fixation, lasting only about 40 milliseconds (Casthellano and Henderson 2008). This process is automatic and is often what guides consecutive eye movements. During the later stages of examining the scenes, fixations may last as long as 300 milliseconds. Eye movements in reading, while also largely automatic, initially take longer, with average fixation durations on a word between 225 milliseconds and 250 milliseconds. It is further important to note that there is a larger amount of bottom-up (i.e., stimulus-driven) variability in the duration of fixations on text, since these are largely determined by length and difficulty of the content being read. However, eye movements on scenes beyond obtaining the gist of the scene are largely guided by top-down (i.e., participant-driven) goals and instructions provided by the researchers. It should be noted that none of the studies on scene viewing used visual displays that included text.

3 EYE-TRACKING IN THE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE One way to understand which elements of the LL are particularly prone to being noticed can be found in eye-tracking methods. Remarkably, very little research into LL from an eye-movement behavioral angle has been undertaken to date. To our knowledge, there is a single study (Seifi 2015) that investigated how the LL of a Dutch city is viewed by native and non-native speakers of Dutch. Findings included a higher likelihood of signs containing only Dutch or English to be viewed, whereas bilingual (Dutch-English) and minority language signs were viewed less frequently. Seifi’s study indicates that eye-tracking is a potentially promising tool for the analysis of how people view the LL, although it did not consider individual differences among subjects to a degree that would allow us to modulate viewing patterns for the same signs. Measuring viewing patterns based on such a modulation is exactly what Vingron et al. (2017) attempted to do. In their preliminary study, six bilingual subjects from Montreal, Canada, participated in an eye-tracking experiment. All of them were fluent in both English and French, with three of them L1 English speakers and three L1 French speakers. Participants were presented with sixty images from the LL of Montreal. The cover task for the experiment required participants to rate the informativeness and the aesthetics of the images presented. The signs involved contained text that was monolingually French, monolingually English, or multilingual (typically of the French-English bilingual combination), and were drawn from a database of over 1,000 signs collected over the course of a year in the province. The signs retained for the study fell into five types (see examples in Figure 1.1), with twelve images per condition: semi-matched2 French advertising billboards, semi-matched English advertising billboards, monolingual English signs, monolingual French signs, and bilingual (French-English) signs. On these latter bilingual signs, the French text tends to be placed in a prominent position or in larger font than the English text, in line with the legal provisions applying to commercial signage in the province. The results of Vingron et al.’s preliminary study provided some interesting clues as to how LL images are viewed. A first relevant, if basic, finding was that all participants, regardless of sign type and L1, spent more time fixating text than non-text objects on the sign. This is useful in confirming the relevance of the study, seeing as it proves that text in the LL is actually being read, and is therefore more than just a decorative element on a par with non-text objects. When shown the semi-matched billboard signs, L1 English speakers were found to view English signs by gradually moving their gaze away from the text to non-text objects over the viewing period, whereas when they viewed French signs,

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FIGURE 1.1 Examples of prompts used in Vingron et al. (2017). Clockwise from top left: bilingual sign, monolingual English sign, monolingual French sign, semi-matched French billboard, semi-matched English billboard.

FIGURE 1.2 The three L1 English participants’ viewing behavior of English, French, and bilingual (“mixed”) signs (adapted from Vingron et al. 2017).

they also began by looking at the text, and then moved away to objects, but then returned to the text toward the end of the viewing period. As for the L1 French speakers, they behaved similarly to the L1 English speakers when viewing signs in their L1, but when they viewed English signs, the same regression to text toward the end of the viewing period could be observed, although here the regression was not statistically significant. As far as the “natural” LL signs from the Montreal area were concerned, viewing behaviors differed depending on the L1 of the participant and on the type of sign. As can be gleaned from these results, reproduced here in Figure1.2, in the case of French-English bilingual

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FIGURE 1.3 L1 French participants’ viewing behavior of English, French, and bilingual (“mixed”) signs (adapted from Vingron et al. 2017).

signs, L1 English speakers began by looking at the French text, then moved toward the English text over the eight-second viewing period; however, the move was not categorical, and from the mid-point of the period, French and English text was looked at roughly the same amount of time. Figure 1.3 shows the same measures for L1 French speakers, for whom the initial fixations are much more likely to be on French than on English. Over time, however, there is a clear move toward English text as the primary fixation.

4 MEASURING THE READING OF SIGNS IN THE LL One of many questions that remain is the following: Who exactly are the legal provisions in Quebec affecting, and why? In other words, is the legislation more likely to affect L1 readers of the language promoted by language laws (French), or is it more likely to target L2 readers of French? In order to address this issue, we present here a novel reanalysis of Vingron et al.’s data that focuses on the bilingual (French-English) subset of our sign database. Specifically, and for the purposes of this study, we separated the signs that comply with Bill 101 (dictating that the size of the French text be twice as large as the English text) from those that do not. In this way, we may obtain clues about exactly what kind of bilingual LL laws making French more prominent are affecting viewers in terms of where people look. Figure 1.4 shows, on the left graph, fixations on signs where French text is in a larger font size than English text (i.e., in compliance with Bill 101) and, on the right, on signs where the two languages are of equal sizes (i.e., noncompliant). Native-speaking participants of English (solid line) and French (dashed line) are shown to fixate French and English text differently. As can be seen, both groups showed fewer fixations to the French text when that text was of a comparable size to the English text (right graph). This difference was larger for L1 English participants. A similar pattern can be seen for fixations to the English text; however, this effect seems to be specific to L1 English readers. Interestingly, in this instance the L1 French readers fixated English in a comparable manner, regardless of whether the French text was larger or smaller than the English text. Therefore, the overall

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FIGURE 1.4 French and English text fixations for Anglophones (i.e., English L1 participants) and Francophones (i.e., French L1 participants) on Bill 101-compliant versus noncompliant signs.

pattern is that the impact of text size difference was greater specifically for people for whom the dominant text (i.e., French) is their L2. Our interpretation of this preliminary result is that the L1 French readers are less affected by font size differences than L1 English readers. This may have occurred because it is easier for L1 French participants to read French text regardless of size (given that it is always on top). Therefore, L1 French readers can rapidly make their way to the English text. By contrast, when the French text was larger, L1 English readers may have gotten perceptually “caught” by this L2 text, spent more time reading it, and as a consequence, had less time left over for reading the English text. Thus, it appears that in this particular case, the impact of the language laws is most dramatic on the second language readers rather than on the first language readers of the dominant text that is being promoted by the language laws. This is particularly relevant for considerations of language policy, as it shines a light on who in the population is most likely to “notice” specifically regulated aspects of the LL. We must again emphasize the preliminary nature of these findings as they are based on a very small sample of six participants. Thus, we hope that our ongoing work investigating this issue in a much larger sample of bilinguals will both replicate and extend the preliminary findings presented here. It should be clear by now that we are extrapolating findings from the laboratory to actually much more complex viewing/reading behavior by participants who see such signs in daily real life. This is also where this study differs from that of Seifi (2015), who used not only wearable eye-trackers for the data collection on an actual street but also video recordings of the paths of participants’ points-of-regard (i.e., their gaze) for the subsequent analysis. However, no matter the specific eye-tracking used, there are inherent assumptions that researchers make when interpreting eye-movement data that must be considered. For example, although eye-tracking tells us where people are looking within a visual display, it does not tell us definitively if their attention is also directed at that location (i.e., the eye-mind assumption), or whether comprehension was successful. As well, the interpretation of eye-tracking data is highly constrained by the particular goals and instructions people have when viewing particular images (e.g.,

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are they simply inspecting an image or a real-world LL casually, or are they searching for something in particular). Thus the use of eye-tracking must be complemented by a solid experimental design and other forms of methodological rigor. However, in terms of providing an ongoing and temporally sensitive measure of what is highly correlated with both implicit and explicit attention within a visual environment, or with respect to visually delivered material, eye-tracking is an extremely useful tool that we believe could be highly complementary to other ways of investigating the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic theories of what people notice within the LL.

5 DISCUSSION: EYE-TRACKING AND NOTICING The results of Vingron et al. (2017), and the novel reanalysis of those data as a function of sign compliance with local LL laws, indicate that bilingual speakers may approach reading monolingual signs in the L1 and L2 differently, despite the fact that all participants were highly proficient in their L2. The patterns of viewing that differed included a slight regression to the L2 text toward the end of the viewing period in all instances (though this was not shown to be significant). Such a regression may be indicative of reading or comprehension difficulties in the L2, or point to a holistic processing pattern that includes non-text objects (typically fixated, when they were present, in the middle of the trial period), as well as text in the L2. In the case of the bilingual signs so prominent in the LL of Montreal, all of Vingron et al.’s participants looked at French first—this suggests that the legislation requiring French to be “markedly predominant” (i.e., at least twice the size of any other language, with no other stylistic choices that reduce its “visual impact,” such as a lighter color, for instance) has the desired effect of attracting viewers’ attention, and is a first indication that the legislation is actually working. Beyond the initial phase of the viewing period, however, an interesting pattern emerges: fixations on the English text increase toward the end of the trial, with the potential for L1 French speakers to spend even more time on the English text in the second half of the viewing period than L1 English speakers. Their interpretation of these results is that L1 French subjects are more interested in the English text, whereas L1 English speakers require more time to decode the French text, which is read first. Beyond the findings presented in Vingron et al. (2017), we also note a difference in how L1 English and L1 French participants read signs whose languages differ in the respective sizes. The results suggest that it is those whose native language is not French that are most affected by the font size difference on the signs in our database. This, in turn, suggests that it is these non-Francophones that “notice” the promoted French language most. This is particularly relevant in the language policy setting of Montreal, where deliberate efforts are undertaken to give the city a “visage français” (Levine 1989: passim). Language planners have often argued for this “French face” as being crucially important, first in underlining the local importance of the language to the Anglophone community, but mostly in conveying to the non-French-speaking immigrant that linguistic assimilation should happen toward French, rather than toward English (e.g., Bourhis and Landry 2002). Our results seem to provide the first psycholinguistic hint, to our knowledge, that this aim is being achieved. Therefore, the findings have relevance for other language political settings in which the LL is regulated with a view to revitalize or otherwise secure the presence of a given language, such as in Wales, Catalonia (Gade 2003), or the Basque Country (Gorter, Aiestaran, and Cenoz 2012). In the context of Canada, future research might want to consider the reading behavior of L1 French and L1 English participants in other provinces, in which different language policies are in place.

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While the findings of Vingron et al.’s preliminary study, and the reanalysis of those data here, are promising, they represent only the starting point of an exciting new direction in the field of LL. The study of how LLs are processed could benefit from much more refined experiments of this kind, which will need to be adjusted in several ways. Most importantly, a more convincing group of subjects will need to be tested (by recruiting locally born and bred Montreal Francophones and Anglophones); their language backgrounds will also need to be assessed precisely. Vingron et al. (2017) also propose creating a pretest environment that puts subjects in a given “language mode,” which may reveal new trends in their viewing patterns. Furthermore, they see potential in presenting subjects with “manipulated” LL data, in which the size and placement of languages would be the primary variables (a research program we are currently pursuing). Signs could be edited to violate language laws in varied ways (e.g., by removing French text altogether, or swapping its position or size with the English text). This is particularly promising, as it could shed light on the extent to which language attitudes, the awareness of language laws, and language proficiency govern viewing patterns in such cases, and whether the language legislation is actually effective: if viewing patterns do not change once the predominance of French is tampered with, it could tell us something about which aspects of regulation work and which do not. It should be clear by now that we consider the use of eye-tracking methods in the study of LLs to be significant for the field, in that they can shed new light on a hitherto understudied aspect of agency in the LL. Redrawing methodological boundaries to include eye-tracking methods makes it possible to map readers’ behaviors and preferences, some of which may operate below the level of consciousness, and thus not be easily accessible by other means. It is hoped that the method will eventually become a useful addition to the standard methodological toolkit in use in the field; it certainly has the potential to at least address issues of replicability and generalizability that have been addressed in the literature (Gorter 2013). Certainly, laboratory-based eye-tracking studies will not replace the more traditional fieldwork that remains the mainstay of LL studies, despite their potential to shine a light on attitudinal and cognitive processes in the context of LL viewing. Other methods to approach the concept of noticing, such as the qualitative approaches discussed in the Introduction, necessarily must remain a part of the interdisciplinary toolkit of LL research. The experimental setup of laboratory-based eye-tracking can be usefully complemented with wearable eye-trackers that record viewing behavior in the “real-life” experience of walking down a street, for instance. In combination with more qualitative surveys of people’s actual interpretations of the LL, a solid methodological foundation should emerge for the investigation of how viewers notice the LL.

FURTHER READING Lamarre, P., L. Mettewie, and L. Van Mensel (2012), “Clins d’œil bilingues dans le paysage linguistique de Montréal et Bruxelles: Analyse et illustration de mécanismes parallèles,” in C. Hélot, M. Barni, R. Janssens, and C. Bagna (eds.), Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingualism and Social Change, 201–16, Bern: Peter Lang. Seifi, P. (2015), “Eye Movements and Linguistic Landscape,” Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

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Titone, D., V. Whitford, A. Lijewska, and I. Itzhak (2016), “Bilingualism, Executive Control, and Eye Movement Measures of Reading: A Selective Review and Reanalysis of Bilingual vs. Multilingual Reading Data,” in J. Schwieter (ed.), Cognitive Control and Consequences in the Multilingual Mind, 11–46, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Vingron, N., J. Gullifer, J. Hamill, J. R. E. Leimgruber, and D. Titone (2017), “Using Eye Tracking to Investigate What Bilinguals Notice About Linguistic Landscape Images: A Preliminary Study,” Linguistic Landscape, 3 (3): 226–45.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. Discuss the potential for eye-tracking studies to inform language planning and policies in multilingual contexts. 2. How might language policies in various locales differentially impact what people notice when they view multilingual LLs? Would the impact be different for people as a function of their linguistic background or sociocultural-political identity?

PROJECT WORK 1. Noticing the LL: using a set of photos of signs from the LL of your city, try to elicit responses from laypersons. Draw their attention not just to the sign and the language(s) thereon but also to their reactions to them. Potential questions include: where do you think this sign was photographed? Which part of the sign strikes you most? How do you feel about the sign and the language(s) on it? Do you have any suggestions on how to change the sign? Based on the responses, (i) discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the concept of “noticing” to inform discussions of language policy and (ii) discuss how the responses might differ from those obtained with eye-tracking methods of the same signs. 2. Ask a group of laypersons to spend one hour photographing signs in their neighborhood that are the most meaningful or informative for them. How do the linguistic features of those signs relate to their language background or socioculturalpolitical identities? Are people more likely to naturally photograph signs that violate their cultural norms or those that affirm their cultural norms?

NOTES 1. Our use of the terms “native” and “L1” when referring to speakers of a particular language means that this is the language they grew up speaking at home and in their immediate surroundings. Participants self-identified as native speakers of their respective language. This does not preclude the possibility of multiple languages being known to a “native speaker” of a language, as the incremental “L1,” “L2,” . . . indicates. 2. Semi-matched advertising billboards are pairs of signs (one in French, one in English), whose text has been translated for marketing purposes. As a result, the pairs do not show exact translations, but individual texts in the two languages that make sense in terms of advertising in the respective language. The pair of signs features identical non-text objects.

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REFERENCES Backhaus, P. (2007), Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Blommaert, J. (2010), The Sociolinguistics of Globalisation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourhis, R. Y. and R. Landry (2002), “La Loi 101 et l’aménagement du paysage linguistique au Québec,” in Revue d’aménagement linguistique, Hors série, automne 2002, 107–31. Candelier, M., ed. (2003), L’éveil aux langues à l’école primaire. Evlang: bilan d’une innovation européenne, Bruxelles: De Boeck. Castelhano, M. S. and J. M. Henderson (2008), “The Influence of Color on the Perception of Scene Gist,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 34 (3): 660. Collins, J. and S. Slembrouk (2007), “Reading Shop Windows in Globalized Neighborhoods: Multilingual Literacy Practices and Indexicality,” Journal of Literacy Research, 39: 335–56. Coulmas, F. (2009), “Linguistic Landscaping and the Seed of the Public Sphere,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 13–24, New York: Routledge. Dagenais, D., D. Moore, C. Sabatier, P. Lamarre, and F. Armand (2009), “Linguistic Landscapes and Language Awareness,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscapes: Expanding the Scenery, 253–70, New York: Routledge. Findlay, J. M. and R. Walker (1999), “A Model of Saccade Generation Based on Parallel Processing and Competitive Inhibition,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22 (4): 661–721. Gade, D. W. (2003), “Language, Identity, and the Scriptorial Landscape in Québec and Catalonia,” The Geographical Review, 93 (4): 429–48. Garvin, R. (2010), “Responses to the Linguistic Landscape in Memphis, Tennessee: An Urban Space in Transition,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 252–71, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Gorter, D. (2013), “Linguistic Landscapes in a Multilingual World,” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 33: 190–212. doi:10.1017/s0267190513000020 Gorter, D., J. Aiestaran, and J. Cenoz (2012), “The Revitalization of Basque and the Linguistic Landscape of Donostia-San Sebastián,” in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten, and L. Van Mensel (eds.), Minority Languages in the Linguistics Landscape, 148–64, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Henderson, J. M. and F. Ferreira (2004), “Scene Perception for Psycholinguists,” in The Interface of Language, Vision, and Action: Eye Movements and the Visual World, New York: Psychology Press. Higgins, E., M. Leinenger, & K. Rayner (2014), “Eye Movements when Viewing Advertisements,” Frontiers in Psychology, 5. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00210 Itagi, N. H. and S. K. Singh, eds. (2002), Linguistic Landscaping in India with Particular Reference to the New States: Proceedings of a Seminar, Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages and Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University. Lamarre, P. (2014), “Bilingual Winks and Bilingual Wordplay in Montreal’s Linguistic Landscape,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014 (228): 131–51. Lamarre, P., L. Mettewie, and L. Van Mensel (2012), “Clins d’œil bilingues dans le paysage linguistique de Montréal et Bruxelles: Analyse et illustration de mécanismes parallèles,” in C. Hélot, M. Barni, R. Janssens, and C. Bagna (eds.), Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingualism and Social Change, 201–16, Bern: Peter Lang.

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Landry, R. and R. Y. Bourhis (1997), “Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality an Empirical Study,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16 (1): 23–49. Leimgruber, J. R. E. (2017), “Global Multilingualism, Local Bilingualism, Official Monolingualism: The Linguistic Landscape of Montreal’s St. Catherine Street,” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Online version 2017-11-10. doi: 10.1080/13670050.2017.1401974 Levine, M. V. (1989), “Language Policy and Quebec’s visage français: New Directions in,” la question linguistique. Québec Studies, 8 (1): 1–16. Libben, M. R. and D. A. Titone (2009), “Bilingual Lexical Access in Context: Evidence from Eye Movements During Reading,” Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition, 35 (2): 381–90. doi:10.1037/a0014875 McCay-Peet, L., M. Lalmas, and V. Navalpakkam (May 2012), “On Saliency, Affect and Focused Attention,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 541–50, ACM. Malinowski, D. (2009), “Authorship in the Linguistic Landscape: A Multimodal-Performative View,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 107–25, New York: Routledge. Malinowski, D. (2015), “Opening Spaces of Learning in the Linguistic Landscape,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1–2): 95–113. doi:10.1075/ll.1.1-2.06mal Pagé, M. and Lamarre, P. (2010), L’intégration linguistique des immigrants au Québec, Montreal: Institut de recherche en politiques publiques. Perregaux, C., C. de Goumoens, D. Jeannot, and J.-F. de Pietro, eds. (2003), Éducation et ouverture aux langues à l’école, Neuchâtel: SG/CIIP. Pivneva, I., J. Mercier, and D. Titone (2014), “Executive Control Modulates Cross-Language Lexical Activation During L2 Reading: Evidence from Eye Movements,” Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition, 40 (3): 787–96. doi:10.1037/ a0035583 Rayner, K. (1998), “Eye Movements in Reading and Information Processing: 20 Years of Research,” Psychological Bulletin, 124 (3): 372–422. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.372 Rayner, K. (2009a), “Eye Movements and Attention in Reading, Scene Perception, and Visual Search,” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62 (8): 1457–1506. doi:10.1080/17470210902816461 Rayner, K. (2009b), “The 35th Sir Frederick Bartlett Lecture: Eye movements and Attention in Reading, Scene Perception, and Visual Search,” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62 (8): 1457–1506. Rayner, K., B. Miller, and C. M. Rotello (2008), “Eye Movements when Looking at Print Advertisements: The Goal of the Viewer Matters,” Applied Cognitive Psychology, 22 (5): 697–707. doi:10.1002/acp.1389 Rayner, K., C. M. Rotello, A. J. Stewart, J. Keir, and S. A. Duffy (2001), “Integrating Text and Pictorial Information: Eye Movements when Looking at Print Advertisements,” Journal of Experimental Psychology-Applied, 7 (3): 219–26. doi:10.1037//1076-898x.7.3.219 Reh, M. (2004), “Multilingual Writing: A Reader-oriented Typology—with Examples from Lira Municipality (Uganda),” International Journal for the Sociology of Language, 170: 1–41. Roth, S. P., P. Schmutz, S. L. Pauwels, J. A. Bargas-Avila, and K. Opwis (2010), “Mental Models for Web Objects: Where do Users Expect to Find the Most Frequent Objects in Online Shops, News Portals, and Company Web Pages?” Interacting with Computers, 22 (2): 140–52. doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2009.10.004

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Roth, S. P., A. N. Tuch, E. D. Mekler, J. A. Bargas-Avila, and K. Opwis (2013), “Location Matters, Especially for Non-salient Features—An Eye-tracking Study on the Effects of Web Object Placement on Different Types of Websites,” International Journal of HumanComputer Studies, 71 (3): 228–35. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2012.09.001 Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon (2003), Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World, London: Routledge. Seifi, P. (2015), “Eye Movements and Linguistic Landscape,” Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Shohamy, E. (2006), Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches, New York: Routledge. Starks, D. and H. Nicholas (2015), “Noticing Linguistic Landscapes as Agentive Behaviour.” Paper presented at the Sociolinguistics of Globalisation conference, Hong Kong, June 3–6, 2015. Stroud, C. and S. Mpendukana (2009), “Towards a Material Ethnography of Linguistic Landscape: Multilingualism, Mobility and Space in a South African Township,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13: 363–86. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2009.00410.x Titone, D., V. Whitford, A. Lijewska, and I. Itzhak (2016), “Bilingualism, Executive Control, and Eye Movement Measures of Reading: A Selective Review and Re-analysis of Bilingual vs. Multilingual Reading Data,” in J. Schwieter (ed.), Cognitive Control and Consequences in the Multilingual Mind, 11–46, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Vingron, N., J. Gullifer, J. Hamill, J. R. E. Leimgruber, and D. Titone (2017), “Using Eye Tracking to Investigate How Bilinguals View the Linguistic Landscape: A Selective Review and Preliminary Data,” Linguistic Landscape, 3 (3): 226–45. doi: 10.1075/ll.17014.vin Wee, L. (2016), “Situating Affect in Linguistic Landscapes,” Linguistic Landscape, 2 (2): 105–26. doi:10.1075/ll.2.2.01wee Whitford, V., I. Pivneva, and D. Titone (2015), “Eye Movement Methods to Investigate Bilingual Reading,” in R. R. Heredia, J. Altarriba, and A. B. Cieślicka (eds.), Methods in Bilingual Reading Comprehension Research, 183–211, New York: Springer Science+ Business Media LLC. Whitford, V. and D. Titone (2016), “Eye Movements and the Perceptual Span During First- and Second-Language Sentence Reading in Bilingual Older Adults,” Psychology and Aging, 31 (1): 58–70. doi:10.1037/a0039971 Woldemariam, H. and E. Lanza (2014), “Language Contact, Agency and Power in the Linguistic Landscape of Two Regional Capitals of Ethiopia,” International Journal for the Sociology of Language, 228: 79–103. doi:10.1515/ijsl-2014-0006

CHAPTER TWO

The Quality of Quantity KATE LYONS

1 INTRODUCTION The field of LLs has grown significantly from the initial practice of counting languages present on signs in a neighborhood or region (Rosenbaum et al. 1977; Spolsky and Cooper 1983, 1991). From these quantitative1 origins, the study of LLs has developed and diversified, focusing not only on documentation of languages’ public presence but also on the complex relationships in the LL between language, place, and people. This expansion in scope has, for the most part, moved away from quantitative methods in favor of more in-depth ethnographic approaches. Such approaches position optimal analyses of a LL within careful consideration of the sociohistorical context(s) in which a sign may occur and/or bring about, as well as highlight the fluidity of interpretation researchers must allow in their assessments of signs’ significance (Banda and Jimaima 2015; Jaworski and Thurlow 2010; Malinowski 2010; Kallen 2010). In the face of such shifts toward contextualization over context or process over product, quantitative-based approaches which tend to rely on the establishment of discrete categories may be seen as problematic (Gorter and Cenoz 2015; Gorter 2006). This chapter, however, will show that if enacted with caution and precision, quantitative methods—particularly the use of inferential statistics—continue to offer significant insight for LL research. Building on method-focused discussions introduced at the 2015 Linguistic Landscapes 7 Workshop in Berkeley, California, and crucial points brought up in recent explorations of methodological considerations and challenges facing the field (Barni and Bagna 2015; Blackwood 2015), this chapter engages with so-called synergetic or symbiotic qualitative-quantitative combinative approaches (Blackwood 2015: 40) by presenting an in-depth discussion of what such methods might entail, their limitations and advantages and examples of how such techniques may be implemented. In so doing I aim to provide clear examples for the mindful application of such tools, acknowledging fully that the assumptions of algorithms must be balanced with those of interpretation. I advocate the use of statistics not for validation or irrevocable proof but as a potential complement to qualitative assessments. Counts and statistical models can highlight subtle patterns in research sites, as well as provide further means to motivate (as well as complicate) conclusions and theoretical arguments. Most importantly, quantification facilitates replication, a practice of great significance as we continue to refine both method and theory. This chapter consists of a brief overview of the current state of quantitative approaches in LL and central points of concern surrounding the application of these methods. This is followed by an introduction to inferential statistical models of interest to LL study and

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an exploration of underlying motivational principles, assumptions, and limitations. A case study is then presented detailing the application of these methods to the LL of the Mission District neighborhood in San Francisco, California.

2 ONTOLOGIES OF OBSERVING Concerns over method have always, and continue to be, central to the field of LL. From its beginnings as a formalized field to present, two issues, while evolving in scope and theoretical positioning, have remained: whether or not to count and if yes, what? While a noticeable shift has occurred in the production and encouragement of more in-depth ethnographically oriented LL work (Banda and Jimaima 2015; Blommaert and Maly 2014; Jaworski and Thurlow 2010; Stroud and Mpendukana 2009; Shohamy and Waksman 2009; Malinowski 2009), a number of papers have surfaced recently supporting the application of quantitative methods tempered by qualitative approaches. Barni and Bagna (2015), while presenting some of the drawbacks and challenges for quantitative techniques, argue for the potential of balance between the two and for viewing these approaches as lying on a continuum rather than diametrically opposed (14). Blackwood (2015) and Amos (2016) present similar arguments for the mindful amalgamation (Amos 2016: 131) or symbiosis (Blackwood 2015: 49) of counts and contextualization, demonstrating the feasibility and value of such combinative approaches in tracking overall distributional and diachronic patterns. Although it has been well established that presence does not necessarily entail use in other domains (Lou 2016; Blackwood 2015; Tufi 2013; Barni and Bagna 2009), lack of descriptive statistics makes it difficult if not impossible to substantiate claims regarding dominance of one type of display over another or compare changes in and across survey areas over time (Amos 2016; Blackwood 2015; Backhaus 2007). Synchronic comparison of different research sites or different site areas is also aided by the inclusion of counts, allowing an informative overview that can be enriched by analysis of individual instances. Adept application of this technique is well represented in the seminal collection of LL studies that make up Linguistic Landscapes: A New Approach to Multilingualism (Gorter 2006; Ben-Rafael et al. 2006; Huebner 2006; Backhaus 2006; Cenoz and Gorter 2006) and in more recent examples including Amos’s exhaustive tallying of the LL of Liverpool’s Chinatown and Vandenbroucke’s comparative study of English in socioeconomically stratified markets in Amsterdam and Brussels (Amos 2016; Vandenbroucke 2016). In pairing quantitative notation with qualitative observation, these studies highlight the complex relationships between the presence of a language in an LL, its presentation, and the varied perceptions these positionings may generate. Such work illustrates the potential advantages of incorporating some level of quantification while maintaining qualitative particularization, and provides additional support for the continuum view of mixed methodologies (Barni and Bagna 2015: 14). Whether positioned as a kind of continuum or symbiosis, or two sides of an LL analytic coin, the optimal degree of interplay between quantitative and qualitative (as well as the decision to use one over the other) cannot and should not be predetermined. Quantitative methods in LL, like any set of methods in any field, must be motivated by the research questions and goals of the study. The choice of whether or not to count, therefore, depends very much on what that counting is intended to show. This line of reasoning also extends to the other oft-mentioned point of concern in quantifying the LL, what should be counted. As highlighted by Blackwood (2015), most LL studies tend

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to use the sign as a unit of analysis, employing varied forms of Backhaus’s (2006, 2007) definition of some kind of text within a discernible frame. However, as Blackwood points out, it may be problematic to assign the same weight to a bumper sticker and a billboard in a quantitative analysis (see also Huebner 2009). Additionally, this particular set of definitions and dimensions may not be optimal for or applicable to all cases: if I am interested or come across a landscape with minimal or limited text or am only interested in tracking a particular feature the sign as unit might not be as informative. The development and assignment of categories to LL features may also vary depending on the site and what is relevant for the study. While it is possible to account for different magnitudes of tokens with the regression analyses presented in this chapter, the underlying question of what to count remains important, particularly for studies relying on tallies and percentages. Rather than suggest this a point of concern, however (as is hinted in Blackwood 2015, Barni and Bagna 2015 and Huebner 2009, among others), I would argue it may be approached in a similar manner as the question of whether or not to count in the first place. External validity, or the assumption that the results of a study will hold in other cases, does indeed require an agreed upon set of variables and observational practices, and in the ideal case, empirical establishment of causality. In the case of LLs, however, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine or assume causal relationships between most phenomena studied. Nor is it perhaps advisable or even desired, considering the various competing pressures, and the extent to which experience of what people see (and do not see) is so individualized (Blackwood 2015: 41). What is possible, ever more so with the further proliferation of like-minded quantitative endeavors, is the gradual accumulation of consensus on important or significant LL metrics. At the present such metrics vary somewhat in consistency and conformity, but will continue to be shaped and informed as studies sharing the goal of replicability and external validity develop. The metrics adopted for the case study presented in this chapter draw chiefly from those employed in Amos (2016). Of the eight classifications Amos uses for his data, I adapt four: Language, Communicative Function, Materiality, and Context Frame. Language was classified according to code preference, that is, what language was positioned as most dominant via relevance of information conveyed, size, or positioning (Scollon and Scollon 2003) and consist of eight levels: Monolingual English, Mostly English with Some Spanish, Equal Translation, Mostly Spanish with Some English, Monolingual Spanish, Thai, Chinese, and Tagalog. The Communicative Function metric describes the pragmatic role of the text (Amos 2016: 133), consisting of features such as Establishment Name or Advertisement. Materiality describes the materials with which the sign is composed (professionally printed, handwritten, etc.) and Context Frame describes the type of place in which the item is displayed (Ibid.). Additional metrics included in this analysis are location (what street a sign was located on), coordinates (expressed in longitude and latitude), available information on Yelp.com (a popular crowd-sourced review website for businesses) regarding the average cost of the establishment associated with a sign and an additional category denoting whether or not an establishment had closed since the time of data collection. The choice of these categories is by no means exhaustive. These criteria do, however, (to varying extents) incorporate and build on important LL theoretical developments of the past decade. The categories of Communicative Function and Context Frame reflect the increasing concern with the diverse kinds of meanings and contexts signs may generate for those who view them, for example (Coupland 2012; Kallen 2010; Huebner

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2009), and Materiality the interest to consider other mutlimodal semiotics present in the landscape (Peck and Stroud 2015; Banda and Jimaima 2015; Jaworski and Thurlow 2010). In quantitative analyses, however, the desire to preserve the specific and particular must be balanced by pursuit of the generalizable—as such the ideas encapsulated by these examples drawn from qualitative literature are inevitably simplified in the adaptation from description to label.

3 FROM DESCRIPTION TO INFERENCE To date, the majority of quantitative LLS have been descriptive in scope, relying on comparisons of percentages or counts in formulating claims regarding the distribution of features of interest in research sites. While this approach is useful in learning the overall trends in a distribution, percentages can mask some of the more subtle relationships between variables and, depending on the data, may not be the most informative option available. A step further in LL quantitative analysis is a shift to inferential statistics, or the application of mathematical models to data sets to obtain predictions or inferences. I will discuss two types of models of potential use for LL research: generalized linear regression models (GLM) and generalized additive models (GAM), providing a basic description of underlying model mechanics and logic, potential limitations and drawbacks of use, and examples of applications to various types of LL data.

3.1 Linear and generalized linear regression The most common example in linguistics and related fields of inferential statistics is a regression model,2 an equation that explains the relationship between two or more variables as a slope. The basic premise of such models is that values associated with or representing the response variable (Yi) can be used to estimate the effect (β1 … βk) of values representing predictor variable(s) (x1j…xkj) when the data is fitted to a regression line.3 Yj

b

b x1jj + b 2 x2 j

b k xkj + e j

(1)

The popularity and power of the regression model lies within its simplicity and versatility. The basic linear regression shown in equation (1) is limited to describing continuous data with a linear relationship and cannot be used on nonlinear distributions or distributions containing outliers or interrelated predictor variables. However, the linear regression can be easily transformed in various ways to accommodate different types of data and different types of distributions. This is particularly relevant for the case of LL studies, whose response variables tend to be categorical in nature. In order to use a regression model on a distribution of categorical data, the linear regression is transformed by taking the log of each variable of the equation. Yj

æ p ö lln nç ÷ = b + b 1 x j + b 2 x2 j + è1- p ø

+ b k x kj

(2)

The linear regression is therefore transformed into a logistic function which models a range from 0 to 1. This range is useful for modeling categorical data as it serves as a representation of a probability, specifically the probability that a category is present. The logistic regression

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model behaves exactly as a linear regression in that it uses response variable values (Yj) to estimate the relative impact (β1…βk) exerted by predictor variable values (x1j…xkj) but instead of using a continuous outcome to calculate the influence of xkj on Yj, it uses a probability ranging from 0 to 1 (p/[1 − p]). As this model is providing a probability as its output, when applying it a reference category must be established.4 While the choice of this reference category is not particularly important for the performance of the model (most statistical programs will pick a reference category at random or alphabetically), it is important to note what the reference category is when interpreting model results. Applying a logistic regression model (also known as a logit model)5 to a categorical distribution can take two forms: binomial and multinomial. Both forms follow the same logic and assumptions as presented in the transformed linear regression represented by equation (2), and the choice of which one to use depends on how many categories there are under investigation and how many observations are present within each category. A binomial logit model works by comparing two outcomes of a category (e.g., Y1 present vs. Y1 absent) and a multinomial logit model compares multiple outcomes all at once (presence of Y1 vs. Y2 vs. Yk). If a study has more than two categories, multinomial regression might present itself as the best option as it does not simplify the distribution to a binary difference (i.e., a distribution of French, Spanish, and English is not reduced to French vs. Other); however, if there are too many categories or negligible amounts of observations within categories a multinomial logit may become less informative as there might not be enough information for the model to estimate β for all predictor variables. Depending on the research question, cases of more complex and/or sparse configurations of categorical data may be simplified with running a series of binomial regressions which manipulate the intercept category to look at each categorical outcome individually, or studied with application of more complex statistical models such as a GAM. The results of a logistic regression model, depending on the statistical program, usually consist of an output of estimated coefficients (β), standard errors, and associated p values. The most relevant aspects of a logit model output for interpretation of the data are the estimated coefficients, which can be transformed into odds ratios by exponentiating them for a more intuitive representation of relationships between variables,6 and p values. Estimated coefficients and odds ratios provide information regarding the degree and direction of relationships between variables, and p describes the probability that a specific result would occur if the null hypothesis (i.e., no relationships exist between variables) is true. While a low p value is frequently pointed to as evidence of the occurrence of a phenomenon, the purpose of the p value is not to suggest that a finding is true, but to serve as an additional metric to evaluate a model in comparison with future models. The very idea of significance at p < 0.05 was first introduced in 1926 to provide a rough numerical guide of the strength of evidence against the null hypothesis, with 0.05 as a suggested cutoff to indicate merely that one should repeat the experiment (Goodman 2008:135; see also Fisher 1958). This point is of crucial importance in motivating and interpreting inferential models, particularly in the case of the field of LLs. Inferential statistics should not be viewed as a way to prove something about a landscape, but an enhanced way of describing and characterizing LL features. The benefit of these techniques over descriptive statistics is not that a configuration of variables can be deemed significant, but that certain aspects can be highlighted and noted for future surveys and that relationships between variables may be more precisely characterized. To put this in context, let’s say a researcher is looking at a corpus of signs they’ve collected from different neighborhoods all over a city, and want to know what seems to be

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the most influential co-occurring factor with the language displayed on a sign. As they’ve collected multiple contextual variables (sign size, font, color, location, type of business, type of area, content frame of the sign, etc.), a simple percent breakdown can make definite conclusions difficult. For example, the researcher is interested in the relationship between the type of business and language displayed in a specific neighborhood. 58 percent of the neighborhood grocery stores have English signs and 41.9 percent have Spanish signs, while 35.8 percent of restaurant signs are in English and 64.2 percent are in Spanish. Is one business significantly (i.e., a strong relationship between business type and language not due to chance) more associated with a particular language than the other? This question can’t be answered just from percentages, as we don’t know whether the effect size of these variables (i.e., effect size of business type) in context of these distributions is large enough to reject our null hypothesis. Additionally, we can’t produce a measure of exactly how much more or less English is associated with grocery stores versus how much Spanish is associated with restaurants. Inferential approaches such as a logistic regression make this possible by giving us an effect size (and thereby an idea of how likely these observations were due to chance or an actual relationship) as well as coefficients and odds ratios which tell us the magnitude and direction of relationships between our variables. We can then move from statements regarding compositions of distributions to relationships in distributions—for example, that English is 2.46 times more likely to be displayed on a grocery store and Spanish is 2.5 times more likely to be on a restaurant, enabling a more definitive conclusion that Spanish is more associated with restaurants than English is associated with grocery stores. Appropriate application of regression models to LL depends on the characteristics and distribution of data. A linear model, for example, would be best suited to look at the relationship between different sign characteristics and a continuous response,7 such as the distance from a point of interest or the number of times people were seen looking at the sign. A logit model, on the other hand, would be needed to model categorical outcomes, such as the language or color of a sign. As data sets grow in size and complexity, however, the scope of linear and generalized linear models becomes limited. A central goal of quantitative analyses of LL is to incorporate as many relevant variables as possible, even if some variables are not present on all signs surveyed or only present in select areas. This issue might be addressed by running multiple models on different aspects of an LL distribution, but this is not a very accurate representation of a research site as a whole. While linear regressions may be transformed in various ways to fit nonlinear patterns and more complex data sets, there are unique characteristics of spatial data that remain unaddressed. Location of an item, in particular, must be denoted one dimensionally to be included in a regression model. This is a simplification that threatens to erase potential interactions present on a two-dimensional place or forces the researcher to resort to convoluted representations of coordinates. Fortunately, significant developments in the availability of complex models capable of tackling spatial data have been made possible by the proliferation of open-source statistical packages on free programming environments such as R, offering unprecedented access to robust and powerful analytical tools. This is the case of the next inferential technique discussed, the GAM.

3.2 Generalized additive models Relatively inaccessible until quite recently (due to the prohibitive amount of computational power needed to run it), the GAM incorporates slopes and splines of predictive variables to represent relationships between nonlinearly distributed data.8 Instead of using

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transformations with log or higher ordered polynomials to produce different curves that may approximate the shape of a relationship between variables, GAMs add up series of slopes that directly represent these relationships as they occur in the data (Wood 2006). Like linear and transformed linear models, GAMs enable the contribution of each predictor variable to be made clear but have the added benefit of not assuming anything a priori about the nature of the relationship of the predictor and response (Larsen 2015). In other words, GAMs do not impose a structure on the relationships observed between variables; which is a stark contrast to techniques like logistic regression, which require active manipulation of data in order for it to fit the assumptions that enable the model to work. g( E(Y )) = a

s1( x1 j x j ) s2 ( x3j 3j )

sk ( x kjj ) b 0 + b 1 x1 j

b k x kjk

(3)

A generalized model is able to avoid making these assumptions by combining nonparametric functions (functions that replicate the exact relationship between variables) and parametric functions (functions that assume variables follow a certain pattern or distribution, such as the assumption in a binomial logit that distribution of data is binary, that is, TRUE or FALSE, 1 or 0) in computing its output. Nonparametric functions in a GAM are referred to as smooths (represented in equation (3) as s1( x1 j , x j ) s2 ( x3 j ) + + sk ( x kj ) ) and are functions directly derived from the observed configuration of predictor variables. The inclusion of nonparametric terms considerably widens the options of what data can be modeled, as distributions that do not fit within classic parametric parameters (e.g., Bernoulli, Poisson, Binomial, Logistic, etc.) can be accounted for with a series of smooths. Smooth terms can also be added on to parametric functions (the familiar b 0 b 1x1 j + ... + b k x kj ) to ascertain the collective influence of both parametric and nonparametric variables on an outcome. Of particular relevance to LL analyses is that GAM smooths can account for coordinates expressed in degrees of latitude and longitude (Wieling et al. 2014; Wieling, Nerbonne, and Baayen 2011), providing unprecedented granularity in looking at how minute and gradual changes in space relate to other LL elements. GAMs can be applied to continuous and categorical response data. Categorical responses are treated similarly as in GLMs, with resulting coefficient values representing probabilities of binomial or multinomial comparisons. GAMs are also inherently more complex than GLMs and require careful evaluation to ensure model results accurately represent the data, such as checking for concurvity (whether or not a smooth term is approximated by one or more of the other smooth terms in the model which is a particular concern for spatial and temporal data [Wood 2006]) and evaluating how well model smooths represent nonparametric variables.9 Despite the caution needed to ensure these models are applied appropriately, the interpretation of GAM results is fairly straightforward and similar to a GLM output, consisting of estimated coefficients, standard errors, and corresponding p values for each level of each term. Odds ratios may also be obtained by exponentiating coefficients, allowing a closer look at the comparative dynamics of a distribution. The most compelling reason to use GAMs over GLMs in LL analysis, however, is their ability to incorporate two-dimensional spatial data. The inclusion of specific coordinates in LL statistical models enables more variation present in a research site to be captured, leading to more robust representations in both quantitative and qualitative senses. Subtle differences contained along a street or within a market can be accounted for and incorporated into the larger picture quantitative studies provide. The inclusions of such

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details are not unprecedented in LL studies, of course (Barni and Bagna 2009, 2010), but the opportunity to use these details in conjunction with other LL metadata in such a way is new and promising in advancing a synergetic mixed methodology.

3.3 “All models are wrong but some are useful” This being said, I would like to return to a point addressed in the general discussion of LL methodology, that choices regarding whether or not or how to count very much depend on the research question and research goals. The application of inferential statistics is useful in that it provides additional information about the makeup of an observed distribution. Such methods provide more detailed means to compare observations across distributions and time periods, but are by no means put forward as the only way to track or categorize LL processes. GLMs and GAMs, while perhaps more encompassing in scope than percentage comparisons, are not able to fully capture the nuance of all the things displayed semiotics are doing on the ground: how their meaning shifts, or how they engage or are animated by a daily barrage of perception, comment, contest, or apathy (Jaworski 2015; Waksman and Shohamy 2016). An oft-cited aphorism of famed statistician George Box, “all models are wrong but some are useful” (1979), is well repeated and remembered when applying these techniques. No p value will ever fully explain a linguistic landscape, but it may be useful when revisiting that landscape ten years down the line.

4 CASE STUDY: THE MISSION DISTRICT, SAN FRANCISCO Having introduced the underlying mechanisms and assumptions of logistic regression models and GAMs, I now present a case study of their application to the LL of the Mission District neighborhood in San Francisco, California.

4.1 The Mission District Located in the mid to southeast part of the peninsula (Figure 2.1), the Mission is a mixed residential and business district with a turbulent and violent past. The land was populated by the Yelamu, a Native American tribe of the Ohlone language family, for approximately 5,000 years until Spanish colonization in the late eighteenth century (Macris et al. 2007). The area became the site of an addition to the Spanish network of complexes known as missions extending down the California coast to modern-day Mexico, settlements consisting of religious, military, and community structures intended to serve as foundations of the expansion of the Spanish colonial empire (Archibald 1978; Phillips 1974). Mexico’s achievement of independence from Spain in 1821 and the 1848 Mexican-American War soon changed the purpose and populations of Californian missions, however, as the territory was ceded to the United States in the war’s aftermath. The chapel built for the settlement on the peninsula, Mission San Francisco de Asis, still stands, however, lending its name to both the neighborhood and city that have built up around it. From the first wave of colonization by the Spanish, Mission area territory has been at the center of contention and debate and a site of involuntary and enforced displacement. The latter half of the nineteenth century was a gradual occupation of American and Northern European inhabitants as deeds of Mexican landowners were overridden by the US government’s sanction of squatter’s rights (Macris et al. 2007) while the devastating earthquake and fires of 1906 left the Mission relatively unscathed compared to other

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FIGURE 2.1 The Mission District, San Francisco.1 MAP obtained with the ggmap package in R (Kahle and Wickham 2013).

neighborhoods in the city, prompting a rapid and intensive period of urbanization. Throughout the early to mid-1900s the populations of the Mission shifted from predominantly Polish, German, and Irish descent until the 1950s when a combination of increased immigration rates from Mexico and other parts of South America and white-flight suburbanization shifted the Mission to a predominately Hispanic neighborhood (Macris et al. 2007; Howell 2015). In the 1970s, however, this dynamic began to change as city-led infrastructural projects and larger commercial developments proliferated throughout the neighborhood, raising land values, increasing rents, and sowing the seeds of gentrification. First used to describe the movement of wealthy Londoners back to the inner city (Glass 1964), gentrification refers to the process in which communities (usually urban) with a recent history of limited investment and institutional neglect receive financial and cultural capital (Smith 1979). Gentrification encompasses physical and ideological displacement, as publicly and privately funded investments that tear down structures often dismantle social networks of individuals and families who either no longer have a home or can no longer afford to due to the increased external interest in and demand for their revitalized neighborhood. Due to systemic correlations of socioeconomic status and race in the United States, displacement caused by gentrification in American cities has been noted for its significant bias toward urban residents of color, characterized as a new urban colonialism by which

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a white Anglo appropriation of urban space and urban history is asserted (Atkinson and Bridge 2005: 2). The new colonization of the Mission gathered momentum slowly, receiving consistent support through the 1980s and early 1990s in various forms of public and private infrastructural development. The process was then dramatically accelerated in the mid-1990s and late 2000s when successive Dot Com booms in neighboring Silicon Valley spiked demand for nearby inner-city residences for wealth-accumulating young professionals. From the period between 2000 and 2014, approximately 2,400 of 30,000 Mission Latino residents had left the neighborhood and from 2010 to 2014 the white population increased by more than 20 percent, with no-fault evictions10 skyrocketing to 62 percent (San Francisco Chronicle 2014). Due to the rapidly changing social climate of the Mission in the midst of such drastic population shifts and accelerated development, the neighborhood was chosen as a research site to document aspects of the impact of gentrification relatively overlooked or unaddressed in previous research, the central focus being the Mission’s LL.

4.2 Data collection and coding Collection of Mission LL data was completed in December 2014. Four primarily commercial streets, Valencia Street, 18th Street, Mission Street, and 24th Street, were selected as research sites for the magnitude and variety of signs present and for the colloquial importance of these streets in the history, day-to-day life, and debates surrounding the neighborhood. A token or “sign” was defined as text in a “discernible” frame (Backhaus 2006, 2007) and only tokens that were noticeable from the sidewalk outside a structure were counted. Photos and video of 1,032 tokens were initially coded for Language, Location, Communicative Function, Materiality, and Context Frame (Amos 2016) and then revisited in 2016 with the help of Google Maps’ Street View service and the crowd-sourced review platform Yelp. Comparisons between data recorded for the LL study and street-level images on Google Maps were made to assign precise latitude and longitude coordinates to signs, observe whether or not a business tied to a sign had closed since the time of data collection and to note any available metadata from Yelp on the estimated cost associated with signs’ corresponding establishments. Inclusion of the latter two categories was an attempt to incorporate additional potential indicators of gentrification into LL models. The overall goal of these models was to assess the presence and extent of significant relationships between aspects of interest in the LL and their distribution in the neighborhood. For the logistic regression, distribution was simplified to presence on a particular street. For the GAM, distribution was notated with physical coordinates. A full list of categories and category levels is provided in Table 2.1—with the exception of sign coordinates, all characteristics noted are categorical in nature.

4.3 Logistic regression results The first round of inferential analysis applied to the Mission LL is a multinomial logit that models the impact of Location on Language.11 Multinomial logistic regression was selected over binomial so that the observed distribution of the five-leveled response variable would not be simplified to two outcomes. The number of terms and categories involved in this model are relatively small and the amount of data points for each category relatively well-populated; therefore, it is likely the model will not be too complex for the

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TABLE 2.1 Mission LL Factors and Levels Category

Levels

Language

English; Spanish; Mostly English, Some Spanish; Mostly Spanish, Some English; Equal Translation and Other (Chinese, Thai, and Tagalog)

Coordinates

32.747–37.765; −122.425–−122.405

Location

Valencia Street; 18th Street; Mission Street; 24th Street

Communicative Role

Advertisement; Establishment Description; Establishment Name; Graffiti; Information; Instructions; Leaflet; Slogan; Street Sign; Trademark

Materiality

Flier; Handwritten; Home Printed; Permanent; Professionally Printed

Context Frame

Auto Mechanic; Bakery; Bar; Beauty or Hair Salon; Business; Cafe; Clothing; Commentary; External; Flier; Gallery or Museum; Grocery Store; Liquor Store; Gym or Fitness Studio; Hardware; Hotel; Institution; Jewelry Store; Laundromat; Menu; Movie Theater; Nightclub; Notary and Financial Services; Residential; Restaurant; Shop; Specialty Foods; Super Market; Travel Agency

Yelp

$$$$; $$$; $$; $; N/A

Closed

True; False

data. As this investigation into the LL is framed by the issue of gentrification, English and Valencia Street were chosen as reference categories so as to situate interpretations of comparisons around the most gentrified street (Valencia) and the most common language in the Mission (English). Results highlighted as significant by the model are shown in Table 2.2. Results suggest that occurrences of signs characterized as written in categorical Spanish and in Spanish with some English are more likely to occur on 24th Street than English signs present on Valencia Street. This finding in itself can be considered useful or interesting, as 24th Street, the Heart of the Mission is colloquially positioned as the least gentrified street in the neighborhood (Macris et al. 2007), and the suggestion that there appears to be a considerable difference between the display of Spanish on this street compared to Valencia, the most gentrified street, provides a specific metric with which to reevaluate as gentrification of the Mission continues. The insight this model provides, that the presence of permutations of Spanish on 24th is significantly different from English on Valencia, is particularly exciting when we look at the actual distribution of counts of languages on signs across locations shown in Figure 2.2. From this representation of percentages, this relationship is not immediately apparent—a difference between Spanish on 24th and English on Valencia is noticeable, but the same observation could be made for Spanish on Mission versus English on

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TABLE 2.2 Summary of Significant Multinomial Logistic Regression Results Location

Language

β (SE)

95% CI for Odds Ratio Lower

Odds Ratio

Upper

Pr(> |z|)

24th Street

Spanish

1.34 (0.63)

1.1

3.8

13.0

0.012

18th Street

Mostly Spanish, Some 1.34 (0.92) English

1.28

7.8

47.4

0.024

FIGURE 2.2 Language distribution across location categories.

Valencia. An inferential model is able to identify these differences of interest with more precision than percentages, especially when the odds ratio is taken into consideration. In the case of this model, for example, it is not just that a difference between Spanish on 24th and English on Valencia is found, it is that Spanish is found to be 3.8 times more likely on 24th and mostly Spanish with some English signs 7.8 times more likely. In so doing the logit model provides an increased level of scrutiny and specificity when describing the distributional patterns of an LL and when building a replicable system or method of analysis.

4.4 Generalized additive model results While the multinomial logit serves to highlight relationships within the distribution of categorical assignments in an LL, it is not the best or closest representation available of what is actually unfolding on the ground. The problem of identifying a sign’s location by a category such as Street is a big one, as the variation of how those signs occur within that street is lost. This can be seen quite clearly in the case of the signs of the mission depicted in Figure 2.3, a representation

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of the distribution of each language category. The distribution of languages on Valencia Street and 18th do not appear to change much moving along the streets (i.e., English is fairly evenly distributed on Valencia, as seen in the top left graph), but the signs on Mission and 24th do seem to suggest some intra-street variation. Moving South to North up Mission, there appears to be small pockets of Spanish dominance near the intersection of 24th and Mission and 18th and Mission. Similar instances of close-proximity variation are also seen in the distribution of other categories, such as concentrations of signs that are reported with different levels of cost on Yelp (Figure 2.4). To incorporate this variation in a quantitative analysis, I employ a GAM which accounts for sign coordinates with a two-dimensional smooth function. As GAMs are more robust models than GLMs in terms how many categories they may include and how much data they required in each category, the nonparametric smooth function can be run with five other additional parametric categories of interest (Communicative Role, Materiality,

FIGURE 2.3 Language distribution across individual signs.

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FIGURE 2.4 Yelp price distribution across individual signs.

TABLE 2.3 Summary of Significant GAM Results on English Presence β (SE)

Odds Ratio

$$

1.358 (0.31)

3.9

1.21e-05

Yelp

$$$

3.031 (1.159)

20.7

0.00891

Communicative Role

Establishment Description

−0.95 (−0.47)

0.37

0.02609

Communicative Role

Information

−1.35 (0.46)

0.268

0.00321

Materiality

Professionally Printed

1.68 (0.856)

5.4

0.04903

s(Lat., Long.)

—

—

—

0.00015

Category

Level

Yelp

Pr(> |z|)

Context Frame, Yelp, and Designation and whether or not a business or organization associated with a sign is still there). To continue the focus on the distribution of English versus Spanish, a multinomial GAM with language as the response variable and English as the reference was performed.12 In building this model, the Location category was left out as the smooth term already served to approximate a sign’s position and the number of nodes was increased to forty to better fit the distribution of the data. The results of the model for English (Table 2.3) as a response suggest that signs’ coordinates are important for the presence of English. Additional aspects highlighted by the GAM include positive correlations between English-only signs and midrange

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to expensive businesses and professionally printed signs. Relationships of distance are pointed to as well, with negative correlations found between the presence of English and signs that describe or inform. The distribution of Spanish is also suggested by the model to have a close relationship with location, but seems to behave almost in opposition with English sign patterns (Table 2.4). Spanish-language signs exhibit negative correlations in all of the levels identified, being less likely to be found among or related to midrange businesses, and permanent or professionally printed signs. Interestingly, smooth terms in models for Mostly English with Some Spanish, Equal Translation and Mostly English with Some Spanish (not included here due to spatial concerns) were not identified as having a significant relationship with their predictor. Results of the GAM model suggest that within the present corpus of Mission LL data, signs with some combination of languages do not appear to have a generalizable pattern in their placement. The results of these models become particularly illustrative and useful when they are visualized with graphs. Figures 2.5a, b and 2.6a, b show pairs of two plots generated by GAM results which show how probabilities of Language presence on signs change over stretches of latitude and longitude. These representations allow a perspective on relationships between displays and space unprecedented in LL studies, providing a means of characterizing and recording complex and nuanced changes that can occur in the span of a few yards. These findings for the Mission are particularly interesting in that they do not provide evidence of gradual, steady change from one direction to the other in the neighborhood. For English moving South to North (latitude) probabilities remain fairly high and steady until a small blip around 24th Street at 37.74, and then gradually decrease moving through

TABLE 2.4 Summary of Significant GAM Results on Spanish Presence β (SE)

Odds Ratio

Pr(> |z|)

$$

−1.273(0.38)

0.279

0.00109

Materiality

Permanent

−3.197(1.24)

0.04

0.01024

Materiality

Professionally Printed

−2.501(0.89)

0.2.29

0.00544

s(Lat., Long.)

—

—

—

0.00129

Category

Level

Yelp

FIGURE 2.5a Changes in probability for English presence by coordinate (latitude).

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FIGURE 2.5b Changes in probability for English presence by coordinate (longitude).

FIGURE 2.6a Changes in probability for Spanish presence by coordinate (latitude).

FIGURE 2.6b Changes in probability for Spanish presence by coordinate (longitude).

the Mission in-between 24th and Valencia, taking off again when hitting the commercial stretch of Valencia. Moving west to east on the longitude plot, English starts high, runs across the Mission and 24th intersection at −122.420 and even though continuing East into more traditionally Hispanic neighborhoods that are perceived by locals to be relatively less impacted by gentrification, the probability of encountering an English sign

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continues to climb. When it is possible to zoom in on these changes, generalizations made by percentages or models like the logistic regression discussed above that use Location or site as one static category begin to seem increasingly inadequate. The map of probabilities of Spanish presence by latitude, for instance, refutes regression model results that suggest little to no Spanish occurs further north near Valencia. This representation also provides a characterization of a series of sharp dips of Spanish probabilities that each last for around the same distance as a city block.

5 DISCUSSION The degree of detail provided by GAMs on the distributions they are applied to is not only exciting as a further enrichment to our understanding of the overall dynamics of LLs or even as more advanced ways of tracking LL features for comparison or reduplication. The application of new metrics and the continued development of elegant and informative ways of visualizing and articulating what is going on in a landscape is of great benefit and use to the further interpretation of the field across disciplines and across the broader communities in which LL work is completed. In terms of what these results mean for our understanding of gentrification’s impact on the Mission, we can see that we cannot make the claim that English is the “language of gentrification” (due to the steady high probability of finding it in the eastern part of the neighborhood) or even that it is characterized by a lack of Spanish. Instead, we see more subtle patterns of distribution. It is instances like this that exhibit the necessity of enriching quantitative results with qualitative observations. For example, if we return to the actual signs present around these coordinates, we see no difference in language but the representation of language. Figures 2.7a, b and 2.8a, b highlight this difference. Figures 2.7a and 2.7b show two restaurant signs in Spanish on Valencia street and Figures 2.8a and 2.8b show Spanish restaurant signs on 24th street. The difference between the framing of these establishments is not language (technically Loló is a woman’s name—the nickname of the owner and executive chef’s wife Lorena— but I argue the acute accent diacritic presents it as Spanish, they also market themselves as serving Mexican cuisine): all market themselves as serving Mexican-style food and employ Spanish to represent their business in the LL. The difference is made through other semiotic choices such as the amount and size of signage on the storefront, the presence, or absence of text on windows, the font used and the inclusion or exclusion of other imagery. 24th street’s La Torta Gorda and Taqueria Vallarta both feature multiple signs, descriptive sentences about the food available and pictures. Taqueria Vallarta in particular has multiple signs and banners with pictures of menu items and pricing information prominently displayed. Valencia’s Loló and Limón, on the other hand, are relatively demure—Loló confined to a slim fabric banner in handwritten lowercase cursive and Limón a small wooden sign. Both have their windows unadorned with no menus in sight. Loló’s and Limón’s particularly austere style of framing has also been observed in gentrified urban neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York (Trinch and Snajdr 2016). In their study, Trinch and Snajdr note differences between what they call Old School signs and distinction-making signs, claiming pre-gentrification era Old School signs are configured to index multiple inclusions in the neighborhood economy and suggest a capitalism without distinction whereas distinction-making signs signal an exclusivity that

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FIGURE 2.7a Sign for Loló restaurant, Valencia Street.

for some readers also represents exclusion (2016: 64). They identify salient Old School features as ancillary; large typefaces; store names that refer to location, surnames, type of business and/or products or services; reiterations; non-standard written English forms; languages other than English in Roman transliteration and/or non-Roman scripts; complementary symbols or pictures, [and] sincere references to religion, ethnicity, national origin, race and class. (2016: 70) and distinction-making as one word or a short phrase written in a reduced font-size; polysemic or cryptic names; languages other than English that index sophistication and worldliness; (sometimes erudite) historical and literary references [and] all lowercase letters. (Ibid.: 75) While differing somewhat from patterns found in Brooklyn signage, framing techniques observed in the Mission such as those employed by Taqueria Vallarta, La Torta Gorda, Limón, and Loló fit these characterizations quite well—Taqueria Vallarta does reference a specific location in its name, reiterates it in a large font and features multiple banners with product descriptions and pictures. La Torta Gorda references a specific place (Puebla) in describing its style of cooking (“La Cocina Poblana”) and has a name that refers to one of its products (a fat “torta” or type of Mexican sandwich). Meanwhile, Loló’s monomorphemic sobriquet is written in lowercase, doesn’t reference anything sold at the restaurant directly, and features no other images. Limón Rotisserie is more descriptive than Loló, however is relatively cryptic and austere when compared to Taqueria Vallarta and La Torta Gorda.

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FIGURE 2.7b Sign for Limón restaurant, Valencia Street.

FIGURE 2.8a Sign for La Torta Gorda restaurant, 24th Street.

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FIGURE 2.8b Sign for Taqueria Vallarta restaurant, 24th Street.

While all of the differences noted by Trinch and Snajdr in Brooklyn between Old School and distinction-making type signs do not necessarily apply in the Mission (for example, Trinch and Snajdr’s Old School signs contain phrases like All nationalities welcome! or consist of restaurants actively advertising the availability of Kosher or Halal food (Ibid.: 78), something that is not prevalent on Mission signs), these categories are useful in understanding what these differences mean, particularly when considering our GAM results. We see that while the same language is in use, its representation is qualitatively quite different. Areas with higher likelihood of Spanish in more gentrified parts of the Mission use Spanish in a manner that “signal[s] . . . exclusivity” while Spanish-likely pockets in less gentrified areas exhibit more “inclusive” signs (Ibid.: 70). Trinch and Snajdr’s argument that distinction-making signs (can) signal an exclusivity that for some readers also represents exclusion (Ibid.: 64) is important, as it highlights the significance of these differences to neighborhood life. We see in these differences that gentrification limits not only who can afford to live in the Mission but also who is invited or able to participate in Mission establishments. Economic inequities of rent and housing reverberate in the production of semiotic inequity in the LL, separating “those in the know” and those “out of the loop.” Together, GAMs and follow-up qualitative assessment help us show that this is not a question of what language is used, but how that language is used.

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6 CONCLUDING REMARKS In presenting these findings, I have hoped to demonstrate the kinds of research questions and data that can be tackled using quantitative methods like GLMs and GAMs and the exciting and promising insights these techniques may provide. In doing so, I aim also to emphasize the necessity of such findings to be qualified by one’s subjectivity as a filter for knowledge production (Mendoza-Denton 2008: 4). The social significance, not only the statistical, must be taken into deep consideration when discussing the meaning of quantitative results. As shown in the example outputs of the models discussed here, a statistically higher likelihood for a language or feature to occur in a particular street or location does not mean that other features are not present nor that significant features are absent from other streets. Significance in the LL is not only where a display occurs but also how it is used or represented. While these methodological perspectives within LL may be differently calibrated in their execution, they are not mutually exclusive. With this outline of a cautious and mindful application of an inferential quantitative framework, I hope to have shown how one might inform another to the benefit of both.

FURTHER READING Amos, H. W. (2016), “Chinatown by Numbers,” Linguistic Landscape, 2 (2): 127–56. Blackwood, R. (2015), “Ll Explorations and Methodological Challenges: Analysing France’s Regional Languages,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1–2): 38–53. Lyons, K and I. Rodriguez (2017), “Quantifying the Linguistic Landscape: A Study of Spanish-English Variation in Pilsen, Chicago,” Spanish in Context, 14 (3): 329–62. Soukup, B. (2016), “English in the Linguistic Landscape of Vienna, Austria (ELLViA): Outline, Rationale, and Methodology of a Large-scale Empirical Project on Language Choice on Public Signs from the Perspective of Sign-readers,” Vienna English Working Papers, 25.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. When might it be a good idea to apply inferential statistics? That is, what research questions would be addressed? What research questions might best be addressed without inferential statistics? 2. If you were researching multiple neighborhoods and wanted to introduce a quantitative comparative analysis, what variables would you select? How might the variables you choose influence what kind of generalizations or findings you produce?

EXAMPLE PROJECTS 1. Form a group and each go out and record the location (preferably coordinates), language(s), and at least one other variable of your choice in a three-block radius of each group member’s home or favorite place to spend time. Now use the methods detailed here to compare your results. Were there any differences identified as significant? What are some potential explanations for these differences? (Remember, however, that correlation does not equal causation!)

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2. Come up with a diachronic research plan. What area would you focus on and why? What variables would you look at? Why? Choose an inferential statistical analysis method and explain how you’d apply it. What would be the independent variable and the dependent variable(s)? What technique would you use? Why use that technique over the others?

NOTES 1. The term “quantitative” here refers to the use of counting and percentages to characterize a dataset. Depending on the field, “quantitative” can also specifically refer to the use of inferential statistics. In the field of LLs, however, “quantitative” has been established as reference to any kind of counting or numerical notation of sign or area features. This LLspecific definition is used here. 2. Also referred to as an Analysis of Variance or ANOVA. An ANOVA is a regression model whose output concerns the comparison of two groups. 3. j here represents an individual observation. is an error term, in essence representing those things in the model that cannot be captured by the other parts of the equation (“model noise”). 4. As in order to make sense of the distribution of category occurrences the model needs something to compare this distribution to. 5. The terms “logistic regression” and “logit” can and are frequently used interchangeably, but technically a “logistic regression” refers to the transformed function and logit to the function that results in that transformation (i.e., the inverse of the logistic function). Depending on the program used to compute the model, “logistic” and “logit” commands can give a different representation of model results (much like running a linear regression command vs. ANOVA). 6. Odds ratios enable descriptions such as “this outcome is four times more likely than that outcome’ instead of “the probability of this outcome is 0.2 and the probability of this other outcome is 0.385.” 7. Predictor variables can be continuous or categorical for any type of regression. 8. “Nonlinear” refers to data that doesn’t roughly follow a distribution required for linear models. LL data, especially when plotted according to geographic coordinates, is a great example of this: in most contexts, it’s unlikely that a simple linear relationship between coordinate and frequency of a factor of interest exist (e.g., that as longitude increases, likelihood of a language increases). Realistically, relationships between space and language or other variables of interest are likely to have much more complex relationships that can’t be characterized by a linear distribution. 9. The slope used in a smooth is generated by a number of nodes assigned across a distribution. The default number of nodes ranges from twenty to thirty in most statistical programs, but this number may be too small or too large depending on the distribution. If the number of nodes is too small, the distribution is not accurately represented in the model, and if the number of nodes is too large the model runs the risk of overfitting, and is unsuccessful in capturing more general trends in the data. 10. “No-fault” denotes a landlord declining to renew a lease citing the Ellis Act, owner move in, demolition, capital improvement, substantial rehabilitation, sale of unit converted to a condo [or] lead paint abatement (San Francisco Tenants Union 2017). Passed in 1975, the Ellis Act allows landlords to go out of business, enabling them to move in themselves

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or sell a previously rented property. Landlords frequently use the Ellis Act to legally evict their tenants to capitalize on rising housing prices, especially in cases of rent control (San Francisco Tenants Union 2017). 11. Performed using the nnet package for R (Venables and Ripley 2002). 12. Using the mgcv package in R (Wood 2006, 2011).

REFERENCES Amos, H. W. (2016), “Chinatown by Numbers,” Linguistic Landscape, 2 (2): 127–56. Archibald, R. (1978), “Indian Labor at the California Missions: Slavery or Salvation?” The Journal of San Diego History, 24 (2). Available at (August 11, 2019), https://sandiegohistory. org/journal/1978/april/labor Atkinson, R. and G. Bridge (2005), “Introduction,” in R. Atkinson and G. Bridge (eds.), Gentrification in a Global Context: The New Urban Colonialism, chapter 1, London: Routledge. Backhaus, P. (2006), “Multilingualism in Tokyo: A Look Into the Linguistic Landscape,” in D. Gorter (ed.), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism, chapter 3, 52–66, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Backhaus, P. (2007), Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo, volume 136, Clevedon: Multilingual matters. Banda, F. and H. Jimaima (2015), “The Semiotic Ecology of Linguistic Landscapes in Rural Zambia,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 19 (5): 643–70. Barni, M. and C. Bagna (2009), “A Mapping Technique and the Linguistic Landscape,” in Elana Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 126–40, New York: Routledge. Barni, M. and C. Bagna (2010), “Linguistic Landscape and Language Vitality,” in Elana Shohamy, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, and Monica Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, chapter 1, 3–18, Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Barni, M. and C. Bagna (2015), “The Critical Turn in LL: New Methodologies and New Items in LL,” Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal, 1 (1–2): 6–18. Ben-Rafael, E., E. Shohamy, M. Hasan Amara, and N. Trumper-Hecht (2006), “Linguistic Landscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public Space: The Case of Israel,” in D. Gorter (ed.), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism, chapter 1, 7–30, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Blackwood, R. (2015), “Ll Explorations and Methodological Challenges: Analysing France’s Regional Languages,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1–2): 38–53. Blommaert, J. and I. Maly (2014), “Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis and Social Change: A Case Study,” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 100: 11–33. Box, G. (1979), “Robustness in the Strategy of Scientific Model Building,” Technical Summary Report 1954, University of Wisconson Madison Mathematics Research Center. Cenoz, J. and D. Gorter (2006), “Linguistic Landscape and Minority Languages,” in D. Gorter (ed.), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism, chapter 5, 67–80, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Coupland, N. (2012), “Bilingualism on Display: The Framing of Welsh and English in Welsh Public Spaces,” Language in Society, 41 (1): 1–27. Fisher, R. (1958), Statistical Methods for Research Workers. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

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Glass, R. (1964), “Aspects of Change,” in J. Brown-Saracino (ed.), The Gentrification Debates: A Reader, Abingdon: Routledge. Goodman, S. (2008), “A Dirty Dozen: Twelve p-value Misconceptions,” Seminars in Hematology, 45: 135–40. Elsevier. Gorter, D. (2006), “Introduction: The Study of the Linguistic Landscape as a New Approach to Multilingualism,” in D. Gorter (ed.), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism, 1–6, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Gorter, D. and J. Cenoz (2015), “Translanguaging and Linguistic Landscapes,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1–2): 54–74. Howell, O. (2015), Making the Mission: Planning and Ethnicity in San Francisco, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Huebner, T. (2006), “Bangkok’s Linguistic Landscapes: Environmental Print, Codemixing and Language Change,” International Journal of Multilingualism, 3 (1): 31–51. Huebner, T. (2009), “A Framework for Linguistic Analysis of Linguistic Landscapes,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, chapter 5, 70–87, New York: Routledge. Jaworski, A. (2015), “Word Cities and Language Objects: ‘love’ Sculptures and Signs as Shifters,” Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal, 1 (1–2): 75–94. Jaworski, A. and C. Thurlow (2010), “Introducing Semiotic Landscapes,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, Advances in Sociolinguistics, 1–42, New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group. Kahle, D. and H. Wickham (2013), “ggmap: Spatial Visualization with ggplot2,” The R Journal, 5 (1): 144–61. Kallen, J. (2010), “Changing Landscapes: Language, Space and Policy in the Dublin Linguistic Landscape,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, Advances in Sociolinguistics, chapter 1, 41–58. Continuum International Publishing Group. Larsen, K. (2015), “GAM: The Predictive Modeling Silver Bullet,” http://multithreaded.stit chfix.com/blog/2015/07/30/gam Lou, J. J. (2016), The Linguistic Landscape of Chinatown: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Macris, D., N. Hart, M. Luellen, and M. Weintraub (2007), City within a City: Historic Context Statement for San Francisco’s Mission District. Available at (August 11, 2019), http: //ohp.parks.ca.gov/pages/1054/files/mission%20district%20nov07.pdf Malinowski, D. (2009), “Authorship in the Linguistic Landscape: A Multimodal- Performance View,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, chapter 7, 107–25, New York: Routledge. Malinowski, D. (2010), “Showing Seeing in the Korean Linguistic Cityscape,” in Elana Shohamy, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, and Monica Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 199–218, Multilingual Matters. Mendoza-Denton, N. (2008), Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs, Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Peck, A., and C. Stroud (2015), “Skinscapes,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1–2): 133–51. Phillips, G. H. (1974), “Indians and the Breakdown of the Spanish Mission System in California,” Ethnohistory, 21 (4): 291–302. Rosenbaum, Y., E. Nadel, R. L. Cooper, and J. A. Fishman (1977), “English on keren Kayemet Street,” in J. A. Fishman, R. L. Cooper, and A. Conrad (eds.), The Spread of English, 179–96, Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

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San Francisco Chronicle (2014), “A changing Mission.” Available at (August 11, 2019), http:// www.sfchronicle.com/the-mission San Francisco Tenants Union (2017), “Ellis Act Evictions,” https://www.sftu.org/ellis Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon (2003), Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World, London: Routledge. Shohamy, E. and S. Waksman (2009), “Linguistic Landscape as an Ecological Arena: Modalities, Meanings, Negotiations, Education,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 313–31, New York: Routledge. Smith, N. (1979), “Toward a Theory of Gentrification a Back to the City Movement by Capital, Not People,” Journal of the American Planning Association, 45 (4): 538–48. Spolsky, B., and R. Cooper (1983), “The Languages of Jerusalem: Arab-Jewish Relations in the Old City,” Technical report, Research report to the Ford Foundation, Bar-Ilan University. Spolsky, B., and R. L. Cooper (1991), The Languages of Jerusalem, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Stroud, C. and S. Mpendukana (2009), “Towards a Material Ethnography of Linguistic Landscape: Multilingualism, Mobility and Space in a South African Township,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13 (3): 363–86. Trinch, S. and E. Snajdr (2016), “What the Signs Say: Gentrification and the Disappearance of Capitalism without Distinction in Brooklyn,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 21 (1): 64–89. Tufi, S. (2013), “Shared Places, Unshared Identities: Vernacular Discourses and Spatialised Constructions of Identity in the Linguistic Landscape of Trieste,” Modern Italy, 18 (4): 391–408. Vandenbroucke, M. (2016), “Socio-economic Stratification of English in Globalized Landscapes: A Market-oriented Perspective,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 20 (1): 86–108. Venables, W. N. and B. D. Ripley (2002), Modern Applied Statistics with S, Springer: New York, fourth edition. Waksman, S. and E. Shohamy (2016), “Mediating LL: Focus on Tour Guides.” Linguistic Landscapes International Workshop 8. Wieling, M., S. Montemagni, J. Nerbonne, and R. H. Baayen (2014), “Lexical Differences Between tuscan Dialects and Standard Italian: Accounting for Geographic and Sociodemographic Variation using Generalized Additive Mixed Modeling,” Language, 90 (3): 669–92. Wieling, M., J. Nerbonne and R. H. Baayen (2011), “Quantitative Social Dialectology: Explaining Linguistic Variation Geographically and Socially,” PloS one, 6 (9): e23613. Wood, S. (2006), Generalized Additive Models: An Introduction with R, Boca Raton: CRC Press. Wood, S. N. (2011), “Fast Stable Restricted Maximum Likelihood and Marginal Likelihood Estimation of Semiparametric Generalized Linear Models,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Statistical Methodology), 73 (1): 3–36.

CHAPTER THREE

Quantitative 2.0: Toward Variationist Linguistic Landscape Study (VaLLS) and a Standard Canon of LL Variables H. WILLIAM AMOS AND BARBARA SOUKUP

1 INTRODUCTION In recent years, LL research has undergone a turn away from the quantitative survey approaches of what has been described as the “First Wave” (Woldemariam and Lanza 2015) toward more small-scale, nuanced, qualitative investigations of specifically selected data and their meaning potentials in public spaces. Over this period, studies still attempting large-scale quantitative field surveys have become subject to the criticism that the concomitant methodology entails an undue simplification of their data’s character and context, to the point where the approach has been dismissed as merely “counting signs” (Blackwood 2015). In this chapter we challenge this criticism, arguing that quantitative LL studies, too, are capable of capturing and explicating details regarding the appearance and context of LL signs and their function in public space, by their power to throw into relief general patterns and trends of distribution and co-occurrence. Crucially, the foundation for such analysis is the categorization of LL signs according to a well-thoughtout matrix of independent variables that break down and record the signs’ character and context in terms of a set of features whose patterning can then be explored quantitatively (statistically). Ideally, such a matrix would be applied across LL studies, in order ultimately to facilitate meta-analysis and cross-comparison of findings from a wide variety of locales. Prior to the methodological turn toward more qualitative approaches (see Barni and Bagna 2015 for an overview; see also Section 2 for discussion), LL research was only beginning to see the emergence of a canonical matrix of variables whose values were to be recorded systematically for each item in a given corpus. As a result of the subsequent concentration on more qualitative examinations, there is currently no agreed method by which large datasets can be analyzed, cross-compared, and tested for quantitative patterns and variation, beyond basic impressions and generalized assumptions.

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The purpose of this chapter is to launch a redressing of the situation as described. Our goal is to work toward a canonical matrix of variables to be recorded in quantitative LL surveys, and thus toward a standard model for quantitative LL research. In the following, we begin by building a foundation for our argumentation and rationale on the principles of variationist sociolinguistics, a discipline that already successfully harnesses systematic and rigorous quantitative analysis of distributional and co-occurrence patterns in its data for the analysis of language use in context. In fact, the affordances of this methodological linkage lead us to frame our venture within a new “Variationist Linguistic Landscape Study” (VaLLS—see also Soukup 2016). Then, we make so bold as to draft and expound an actual list of variables for a standard model for quantitative LL analysis, based on existing proposals in the literature and drawing on our own research experience with large LL corpora collected in Toulouse, Marseille, Ajaccio, and Bastia in France, Liverpool in the UK, and Vienna in Austria.1 We conclude with a brief discussion on how to counter some obvious operational challenges presented by our method, and finally provide an outlook on future perspectives and directions for this line of enquiry. It is thus our hope to rekindle interest in quantitative LL research methods, to enhance their scientific rigor, and to demonstrate their capacity for highly detailed and rich analyses of patterns of language use, choice, and status in multiple contexts and in numerous sociolinguistic settings. We consider this to be in the interest of pushing the boundaries and venturing into new spaces in the study of LLs, in terms of both the analysis of real-world text objects and their conception and categorizations within empirical frameworks. Yet, it is important to state that we do not claim to have already devised a definitive canon for all future quantitative LL research. Rather, we wish to put forward the argument that such an undertaking is possible and worthwhile, and to propose a starting point. It is our contention that comparisons and meta-analysis of data across multiple spaces are desirable and useful, and significantly substantiated by data compatibility that allows for further statistical analyses involving such procedures as probability testing, statistical data modeling and inferential analysis, as we are in fact already beginning to see in the field (e.g., Lyons and Rodríguez-Ordóñez 2015).

2 SHIFTING FIELD BOUNDARIES The origins of the quantitative strand of the LL field are commonly attributed to Landry and Bourhis’ (1997) study of ethnolinguistic vitality construction through the LL. Later, Backhaus (2007: 12–53) provided detailed evidence of even earlier studies, dating back to the 1970s, which explore sociolinguistic realities through the medium of public writing. Around the time of the field’s renaissance and the seminal special issue of the International Journal of Multilingualism (Gorter 2006), much LL work was concerned with quantitative data. Each of the four studies collected in the special issue examines the distribution of multilingualism, comparing the visibility of languages in terms of presence on mono- and multilingual items and the public and private status of their assumed authors. The model for authorship followed Landry and Bourhis’ (1997) binary classification of official and nonofficial items, and through the popularization of the parallel terms “top-down” and “bottom-up,” this approach came to characterize the majority of quantitative LL scholarship in what has become known as the field’s First Wave (see, for examples, Akindele 2011; Blackwood 2011; Dunlevy 2012; Lanza and Woldemariam 2009; for a comprehensive overview see Gorter 2013).

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As early as 2008, however, the empirical-distributive approach to analyzing multilingualism faced constructive criticisms. These were debated at the first international LL workshop in Tel Aviv (in 2008), and many of the arguments were published in the proceeding volume (Shohamy and Gorter 2009). The discussions focused on a series of proposed problems with the quantitative approach, concerning the identification of sign units and spaces, the agency of sign authorship, language classification, and the operational difficulties of collecting survey data. Huebner (2009: 71–72), for example, criticized the generic spatial definitions of signs, which “afford equal weight to a 3 x 6 inch sign reading ‘pull’ . . . to a 20 x 40 foot sign proclaiming the name, telephone number, and products of the shop itself.” Earlier, Backhaus (2007: 66) had acknowledged that the classification of large numbers of signs often relies on ad hoc decisions, meaning that specific characteristics of signs are ignored if they are not within the classification scheme. Evidently, nonspecific classifications make accurate comparisons of complex spaces virtually impossible. Rather than revisiting these questions, however, most LL research turned toward targeted classifications and assessments of smaller numbers of signs, and away from analyzing the distribution of these elements across large numbers of units. This turn toward the qualitative now dominates the majority of works in the field. In this strand, discrete elements of a given LL are selected and discussed individually, and are not typically compared with other items in that space or elsewhere in terms of quantitative distributional patterns. In the years that have followed the mostly qualitative approaches in the 2009 volume, further such examples have been provided by Coupland and Garrett (2010), Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha (2010), Marx and Nekula (2015), Muth (2015), Pavlenko (2010), Rasinger (2014), Screti (2015) and Tufi (2013), among others. Throughout all these and more, the emphasis is on specific aspects of a given area, language group, or society, with examples from the LL used to provide illustrations of these realities in situ. A number of studies have transcended both quantitative and qualitative strands of LL research, using empirical surveys to give a general overview of language distribution, but relying on select qualitative data to exemplify the more central discussions of the analysis (Blackwood 2011; Blackwood and Tufi 2015; Kallen 2009; Lou 2010). Much of this and other work has transformed the field beyond the traditional boundaries of linguistics and into alternative areas such as education (Brown, 2012; Cenoz and Gorter, 2008), art (Jaworski 2015; Mor-Sommerfeld and Johnston 2012), memory (Abousnnouga and Machin 2010; Busch 2013), and economics (Peukert 2015). This has also seen an expansion in the classification of “language” to include semiotic aggregates other than text. The theoretical basis for the incorporation of images, colors, and materials with written language was provided by Scollon and Scollon (2003), and driven further by the development of nexus analysis, which incorporates these fundamental semiotic aspects into the investigation of social action and change affected by humans (Pietikäinen et al. 2011; Scollon and Scollon 2004, 2007). Throughout a series of international workshops devoted to the LL since 2008, in Tel Aviv, Siena, Strasbourg, Addis Ababa, Namur, Cape Town, Berkeley, Liverpool, and most recently Luxembourg and Bern, the object of focus has varied from the traditional textual sign to public marches and protests (Hanauer 2012; Seals 2012), tattoos and human bodies (Kitis and Milani 2015; Peck and Stroud 2015), space and time (Shohamy and Waksman 2009; Vandenbroucke, 2015), food (Blackwood 2019), soundscapes (Backhaus 2015) and smellscapes (Pennycook and Otsuji 2015). Alongside this qualitative turn, a number of studies have continued with lines of investigation originally developed by quantitative means. Following Ben-Rafael et al.’s (2006) exploration of a number of social and commercial variables, certain studies have

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examined LL items in terms of specific contextual characteristics, such as commercial activity or neighborhoods within a specific city (Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael 2012; Bogatto and Hélot 2010; Comajoan and Long 2012). Elsewhere, signs have been grouped in “frames” relating to various types of social action such as tourism, commerce, and immigration (Coupland 2012; Coupland and Garrett 2010; Kallen 2010). Spolsky and Cooper’s (1991: 76–81) typography of signs foregrounded similar approaches by Landry and Bourhis (1997) and later by Blackwood (2010), who nominates five and nine categories of sign respectively. More recent quantitative research has classified not only the purposes, characteristics, and roles of the signs themselves but also the characteristics of the places in which they are found (Lyons 2015; Peukert 2015). When compared with the array of variables that are analyzable by qualitative assessment, the quantitative schemas of the so-called First Wave appear simplistic and scientifically unsatisfactory. This is because many of these studies have sought to reduce the number of variables in order to make data handling less complex. Blackwood (2010: 296) speaks of limiting the divisions of sign types “for ease of use,” and Spolsky and Cooper (1991: 74) admit to taking a “parsimonious” approach in order to expedite the coding of data. Within a single study, this permits the setting of workable parameters. However, it does not yield particularly detailed information and comparisons between data points, nor does it generate data that are necessarily compatible across different settings. Accepting the benefits of the level of detail achieved by qualitative models, this chapter seeks to relaunch the quantitative approach by opening a discussion into the similar potential for a standard model in empirical LL survey research, and suggesting some directions in which this might be developed. Notably, we believe that the principles and approach of variationist sociolinguistics are a sound foundation on which to build such a model, for reasons we expand on in Section 3. Sections 4 and 5 operationalize the argument in our proposed model, followed by critical discussion of our undertaking in Section 6.

3 TOWARD VARIATIONIST LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE STUDY (VALLS) Variationist sociolinguistics provides a useful framework for a relaunch of quantitative LL analysis due to its demonstrably successful scheme for exploring and ultimately explicating the “inevitable” (Fasold 1990: 223) interactions between linguistic and social structures and dynamics on a quantitative basis. This is typically achieved by statistically establishing the distributional patterns that particular variants of linguistic “variables” (“alternative ways of ‘saying the same thing’”—Labov 1969: 738) exhibit across various social contexts (see, for example, Chambers 2008; Fasold 1990; Guy 1993; Kiesling 2011; Meyerhoff, Schleef, and MacKenzie 2015; Milroy and Gordon 2003; Tagliamonte 2006, 2012; Walker 2010). The evidence thus garnered regarding “the likelihood of co-occurrence of a variable form and any one of the contextual features in which we are interested” (Bayley 2002: 118) is taken as the basis for detailed descriptive and, ultimately, explanatory statements about the very nature of the relationship between language and social life, and how they mutually shape each other. Hence, we suggest that the same rationale and procedures be applied to LL field survey data of a quantitative nature, in order to explore the relationship between written language use in public space and its social character, context, and contingencies.

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It follows from this suggestion that quantitative LL research must adhere to the same methodological requirements as variationist sociolinguistic research at large. Three very basic requirements that the variationist approach entails are (1) an objectively imposable, ex ante definition of the unit of analysis under study (in quantitative LL research, something typically identified as a “sign”) that is ideally applicable across a wide variety of research settings; (2) a clearly defined and delimited sample within which all occurrences of the unit of analysis are recorded exhaustively as data points (a “count-all procedure”— Labov 1969); and (3) a list of independent variables that capture the features of each data point and its context of occurrence that are, according to respective research hypotheses, likely to have had some bearing on its value/composition (in other words, on a given dependent variable).2 The first point, the definition of a unit of analysis, in fact constitutes an issue that has its own long history of discussion in LL research, to which we cannot possibly do justice here for reasons of scope. As we describe in more detail below, we endorse Backhaus’s (2007: 66) “spatially definable frame” model, which we argue sets a reasonable, satisfactory, and workable precedent.3 While Backhaus (2007: 67) excludes texts exhibiting certain, less easily measurable characteristics, an ongoing large-scale LL project in Vienna (see Soukup 2016) takes the spatially definable frame definition to its logical conclusion, where it includes any object, even as small as a (permanently fixed) screw, if it bears any written text (lettering) on it. Arguably, this procedure is required for a true count-all collection of items in an LL if surveyed at a comprehensive level.4 The second point listed above, regarding the requirement of a count-all procedure, relates to what is perhaps the most basic, axiomatic principle underlying all variationist research, which lends it its scientific rigor, and which facilitates the statistically sound exploration of distributional patterns at the outset: the Principle of Accountability.5 This principle holds that “any variable form (a member of a set of alternative ways of ‘saying the same thing’) should be reported with the proportion of cases in which the form did occur in the relevant environment, compared to the total number of cases in which it might have occurred” (Labov 1969: 738; original formatting omitted). Or, as Tagliamonte (2006: 13) puts it, “You cannot simply study the variant forms that are new, interesting, unusual or non-standard. . . . You must also study the forms with which such features vary in all the contexts in which either of them would have been possible.” Thus, the basic function of the Principle of Accountability is to reduce the likelihood of over- or understating occurrences of certain variants of a variable by way of anecdotal and selective reporting (e.g., due to the allure of their markedness, exceptionality, non-standardness, or categorical non/fit; see Labov 1969: 737–38). Under this provision, a standardized and normalized measure of the frequency with which a variant occurs on average in a data sample can be provided, where this frequency is expressed as the proportion (typically, percentage) of occurrences of the particular variant within the entire set of occurring variants of the same linguistic variable (i.e., the set of all attested and relevant alternative ways of “saying the same thing”—ibid.). It is this very procedure that paves the way for investigating the interaction between the choice of linguistic variants and aspects of social context by means of comparing statistically the different rates of occurrence of particular variants across different contexts. If it is then found that one variant is more likely to occur (i.e., occurs at a higher rate) in one particular type of context (independent variable category) than in another, this provides evidence and a basis for discussion of the meaning of this association—in other words, how it may reflect and/or construe broader social structures and dynamics.

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For reasons of feasibility, the application of the Principle of Accountability and the concomitant count-all procedure in comprehensive, quantitative VaLLS surveys will inevitably necessitate the careful selection of a limited survey area in which it is humanly possible to record any and all written signs in all languages, shapes, and sizes, for the dataset (as Blackwood [2015: 41] puts it, “It is challenging to the point of being unfeasible to survey an entire city or town.”). It is important to stress, however, that only on the basis of the count-all procedure is the statistical computation and derivation of findings based on distributional patterns of LL signs across different variables scientifically sound. Addressing the issue of systematic survey area selection, Soukup (2016) has proposed to adapt the common variationist strategy of “hypothesis-driven stratified judgment sampling” for VaLLS (see also Soukup, forthcoming). Survey areas are selected for the composition of their local sign-reading audience following respective research hypotheses. The underlying assumption is that signs are, among other things, addressed to the local population of passersby; and in that sense, the makeup of the local population bears an effect on language choice on signs. Thus, survey areas are taken to represent certain audience characteristics, whose bearing on language choice is the target of investigation. For example, the VaLLS project described in Soukup (2016) selects administrative districts in Vienna for data collection in application of the hypothesis that signs geared toward the different local audiences (predominantly young vs. old, predominantly monolingual German vs. multilingual, more/less tourist footfall) will exhibit different amounts of English-language use (which is the dependent variable for that study). Such hypothesis-driven selection of survey areas already introduces a set of independent variables into a study design, namely the ones that capture and operationalize those contextual elements that are the subject of a study’s immediate research questions. At the same time, we suggest here that it is in the broader interest of the overall agenda of LL research that each VaLLS project also features a common set of variables (contextual features) with which data are coded, in view of facilitating hitherto unfeasible, rigorous meta-analysis, and cross-comparison of findings. Variationist sociolinguistics has demonstrated that such cross-comparison can be a fruitful avenue for the overarching agenda and research interests of a discipline. Studies routinely record and investigate variables such as speakers’ socioeconomic status, gender, age, ethnicity, as well as the formality of speaking context. Cross-cultural meta-study of findings has, for example, yielded the insights that local/vernacular linguistic variants are used more by groups of lower socioeconomic status; that vernacular variants are typically used more by men than by women (in situations of stable variation); that a majority/ dominant social group is typically seen as using the standard variant; and that shifts from informal to more formal situations are typically concomitant with shifts from vernacular to standard (see Kiesling 2011 for an overview). Under the outlined provisions, we now proceed to our proposal of a standard list of variable categories that we posit should routinely be included in VaLLS designs for large-scale, comprehensive, quantitative LL field surveys. This standard list captures independent variables of sign context on two levels: a “physical” level and a “discourse” level. As described in the following two sections, the physical level refers to aspects of a sign’s material appearance and presentation (i.e., where and what the sign is), while the discourse-level accounts for the properties of the text itself (i.e., what the sign is about), relating to what Landry and Bourhis (1997) originally describe as the symbolic and informational functions of LL items.

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On the physical level we propose that it is useful and meaningful for VaLLS projects routinely to record at least basic information about a sign’s physical location within a survey area, as well as its rough size and the resources that contributed to its creation. In addition, because it is our contention that it is important to record details not only about the items themselves but also about the ways in which they relate to the LL through their associated meanings, the discourse-level accounts for relationships between languages in the LL and the topics, people, and activities with which they are associated. It captures these discourses in terms of not only the signs themselves but also the places in which they are found, the authors who write them, and the functions of the message(s) they convey. Before we continue, let us briefly step back and explicitly stress the importance of keeping the set of dependent and independent variables featured in a VaLLS design conceptually and analytically separate from the criteria defining the unit of analysis (the “sign” as such), as forced by the Principle of Accountability. Anything else would, for reasons of undue circularity, compromise the validity and scientific soundness of a subsequent statistical computation of findings, and thus undermine the basic premise of a quantitative variationist LL survey.

4 TOWARD A VALLS VARIABLE CANON: PHYSICAL LEVEL The rationale for recording information about a sign on the physical level is to capture its location and appearance through physically manifested extra-linguistic factors, in order to explore their potential correlations with language use/choice (i.e., the basic dependent variable in a VaLLS study—see above). In the interest of subsequent cross-comparison of studies, it is evidently necessary to provide the country and city (town, village, etc.) in which the data are recorded. Another aspect to take into consideration is the facilitation of study replication. We suggest that in this interest also the street name and street numbers be recorded for each data point, as far as this is feasible.6 In addition to this basic information, we suggest that interesting research questions can be built around the comparison of data distributions regarding the type of physically manifest ensemble or setting of which a given sign is a part. For this purpose, we propose a set of ten fundamental independent variable values to describe the “physical location” of a sign (see Table 3.1). Further details on the actual type of establishment are to be captured in the “contextual setting” variable on the discourse level, as discussed in Section 5.2. On the physical level, the list of values for the location variable is designed to allow simply for the testing of hypotheses regarding, for example, the placement distribution of different types of signs (stickers, graffiti, posters), and potential cross-effects with language use. In addition to physical location, our proposed canon includes three variables expressing basic dimensions of physical appearance (inspired by the model and logic of the large-scale Metropolenzeichen project—see, for example, Cindark and Ziegler 2016, as adapted for the Viennese ELLViA project). The rationale is to capture aspects pertaining to the resources (including expenses) used in the production of a sign, in order to explore trends of language use occurring on signs whose creation required more or less effort, dedication, or financial commitment. The first appearance variable is “sign size,” recording eyeball measurements relating to the international standard paper sizes.7 We suggest five values for the variable

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TABLE 3.1 The “Physical Location” Variable and Its Values Physical location

On a wall and clearly pertaining to some kind of establishment unit (e.g., shop, restaurant, institution) On a wall but not clearly assignable to such an establishment unit (e.g., signs such as the street number or graffiti) On a construction site On a memorial On some natural growth (e.g., tree, lawn) On the pavement (e.g., manhole cover, markings for repair) On a pole (pertaining to, for example, a traffic sign or traffic light, street lamp, public transportation stop signal, flagpole, bollard) On the roadway (e.g., on a manhole cover, or a painted stop sign) On street furniture (e.g., bench, advertising column, bike stand, fire hydrant, phone booth, trash can, fence or railing, public transportation stop shelter, gum dispenser, mailbox, drinking fountain, meter box) Other

TABLE 3.2 The “Sign Size” Variable and Its Values Sign size

Equal in size to or smaller than A6 Larger than A6 and equal in size to or smaller than A3 Larger than A3 and equal in size to or smaller than A0 (roughly 1 m2) Between 1 m2 and 10 m2 (common size for billboards) Larger than 10 m2

(see Table 3.2), as a compromise between feasibility of respective eyeball measurement in the field and information required to pursue hypotheses regarding resource investment. Further aspects regarding the investment of resources in sign production are captured in the variables “materiality of the sign” and “application form of the text.” As the names suggest, the former refers to the material that carries the text, while the latter refers to the manner in which the text is inscribed on this material. One obvious problem here is that the list of possible values for both variables may seem endless. But as our and other research suggests, there appears to be a limited number of recurring categories that cover the majority of the data, so that we propose standardized coding for seven values regarding “materiality of the sign” (see Table 3.3) and for five values for “application form of the text” (see Table 3.4), plus the value “other” for any forms not separately listed. Each coding refers only to the dominant materiality/application form of the sign. It is important to stress that it is by no means our intention nor purpose to suggest an exhaustive list of variables and their values for which to code LL field survey data. Each study has its own research goals and questions to address, which must be reflected and operationalized accordingly in the study design and variable matrix. Rather, we propose that quantitative LL research would greatly benefit from studies that feature the listed variables in addition to or as a subset of their own, so that meta-analysis, a method

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TABLE 3.3 The “Materiality of the Sign” Variable and Its Values Materiality of the sign

Digital display Glass Metal Neon (or similarly illuminated sign, including illuminated lettering) Paper Sticker (including adhesive letters/decals) Wood Other

TABLE 3.4 The “Application Form of the Text” Variable and Its Values Application form of the text

Digital Embossed Engraved Handwritten Printed Other

of knowledge generation successfully applied in many scientific fields to advance their overarching agenda, becomes possible. This applies to features of physical sign appearance as well as of sign content and function; these will now be addressed in Section 5.

5 TOWARD A VALLS VARIABLE CANON: DISCOURSE LEVEL Adapting existing terminology, we propose that discourse-level LL phenomena be recorded in three categories, which we operationalize in the variables “authorship,” “contextual setting,” and “discourse type.” Because the nature of these variables is not as evident as for the physical-level variables discussed above, each of these are expounded in detail below.

5.1 Authorship As outlined in Section 2, the classic position of quantitative LL studies is to differentiate between two domains of authorship: “top-down,” which indicates official forces exerting political control over a given community (i.e., institutions acting within central and local government structures); and “bottom-up,” which is composed of the rest of the nonofficial (often referred to as “private”) actors who author signs in the LL. While some studies have adapted these terms to suit local conditions and specific research interests, empirical efforts have rarely moved beyond this basic dichotomy. We agree that the field’s collective research substantiates these two classifications (which we

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here generically call “official” and “private”), but it also justifies a third, which we term as “unauthorized” (see Table 3.5). While the “official” and “private” categories report on the sociopolitical power dimension, the “unauthorized” category concerns an object’s license to be situated in the space to begin with—in other words, whether it is permitted or transgressive. As has been explained elsewhere in relation to graffiti (Kallen 2009; Pennycook 2009, 2010), recording unauthorized items captures the actions of individuals who display texts in the LL without the permission of the space owners (or otherwise legitimate managers)— ultimately, what may be considered defilement or vandalism. By contrast, we consider all “official” and “private” signs to be authorized. Our studies (along with others) indicate that it is possible and meaningful to record authorship values at a higher level of detail, capturing more information about the roles and purposes of the authors in question, by marking further divisions within the official dimension (e.g., municipal, regional, or national governmental levels) as well as the private (e.g., individuals, independent businesses, domestic chains, international chains). However, the specifics of such detail may not be relevant or meaningful to all places and research interests; hence, we argue that including them in our canon would quite unnecessarily burden the data coding process for all. Further, as Table 3.6 illustrates, variable matrices that do feature subcategories may easily be upscaled to the general standard categories for the purposes of cross-study comparison. By way of example, Table 3.6 matches our tripartite proposal for the “authorship” variable with the more detailed scheme applied in the French data (Amos 2017), illustrating how a study may capture a bespoke level of detail while implicitly adhering to the wider standard model.

TABLE 3.5 The “Authorship” Variable and Its Values Authorship

Official Private Unauthorized

TABLE 3.6 “Authorship” in the Standard Model and How It Subsumes an Alternative, More Detailed Coding Scheme (Amos 2017) Standard model authorship values

Alternative model authorship values

Official

Municipal Regional National International

Private

Individual Independent business Domestic chain International chain

Unauthorized

Unauthorized

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We argue that the kind of data transposition and recoding shown in Table 3.6 (i.e., subsuming a more detailed classification scheme within a more general one) is a strategy that can be applied with basically all variables we nominate for the standard model. This is in fact one of the vital design features of our proposal for a standard model in the first place: not to constitute the ultima ratio of coding, but to provide a maximum of common data coding denominators (variables) to ensure the compatibility of datasets for later integration in cross-study meta-analysis, while at the same time preserving ample room for individual research agendas.

5.2 Contextual setting The “contextual setting” variable specifies the type of place or ensemble in which the sign is found, or to which it relates, as rudimentarily recorded by the location variable on the physical level (see Section 4). This permits categorization of signs not only as discrete units but also in the context of their surroundings and their associated discourses. “Contextual setting” thus provides important metadata about the roles of certain types of places and groupings in the LL and their relationship(s) with specific objects, authors, and languages. This facilitates not only the cross-comparison of signs within their discursive contexts but also a greater understanding of the composition of the LL beyond the official/private and authorized/unauthorized dichotomies. Our definition of the “contextual setting” variable is extrapolated from Kallen’s (2010: 46–55) argument for the LL to be considered as a “confluence of systems” which operate simultaneously within a given visible space. His typology includes the civic frame, denoting official or state activity; the marketplace, reserved for commercial communications; portals, which indicate physical and virtual spaces representative of entrances and exits of people and goods; the wall, incorporating noticeboards and other sites of mixed public expression; and the detritus zone, which accounts for deliberately discarded texts signaling a lack of authorial intention to contribute meaningfully to the conventional LL. Evidently, Kallen’s approach incorporates characteristics relating to both the physical and discourse levels: the wall, for instance, is a frame that is defined spatially, whereas the civic frame is identified according to authorship. Following Kallen, we, too, contend that it is useful to identify discursive units in the LL that are defined through both semiotic properties and physical space. Contextual settings are thus initially spotted in terms of location on the physical level (e.g., buildings lining a street, shop fronts, parks surrounded by gates, bus stops), but their specification furthermore captures information vital to a discourse-based analysis of the social actions and activities associated with these spaces, and hence of the signs found therein. Our proposal for the “contextual setting” variable is to adopt a categorization system that is already definitive in other areas of the investigation of public life: the “International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC)” (United Nations 2008). Issued by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the ISIC is “a coherent and consistent classification structure of economic activities based on a set of internationally agreed concepts, definitions, principles and classification rules” (United Nations 2008: 3), where the term “activity” is defined as “the use of inputs (e.g., capital, labor, energy and materials) to produce outputs” (ibid., 13). Crucially for our purposes, the ISIC captures activities regardless of originator (whether enterprises, governments, or private organizations), setting, formality, level of institutionalization, non/market orientation, or even legality (ibid., pp.11). Thus, we argue, this system can be used as a heuristic to sort and describe all kinds of public activity, beyond the strictly “economic.”

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ISIC breaks down activity into twenty-one “sections” (see Table 3.7), which can each be subdivided into further “divisions,” “groups,” and “classes,” thus allowing for categorization on four levels. Adopting the ISIC activity classification system is beneficial because it offers a comprehensive how-to manual that makes characterization of LL ensembles fairly straightforward and should ensure consistency within and across studies. Signs pertaining to a fitness center, for example, would be characterized as thematically belonging to section “R—Arts, entertainment, and recreation,” division “93—Sports activities and amusement and recreation activities,” group “931—Sports activities,” and class “9311—Operation of sports facilities,” while signs on a plumber’s workshop would be categorized as belonging to section “F—Construction,” division “43—Specialized construction activities,” group “432—Electrical, plumbing, and other construction installation activities,” class

TABLE 3.7 The Top Level “Sections” of the ISIC Activities Classification ISIC Section ID

ISIC Section Name

A

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing

B

Mining and quarrying

C

Manufacturing

D

Electricity, gas, steam, and air-conditioning supply

E

Water supply; sewerage, waste management, and remediation activities

F

Construction

G

Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles

H

Transportation and storage

I

Accommodation and food service activities

J

Information and communication

K

Financial and insurance activities

L

Real estate activities

M

Professional, scientific, and technical activities

N

Administrative and support service activities

O

Public administration and defense; compulsory social security

P

Education

Q

Human health and social work activities

R

Arts, entertainment, and recreation

S

Other service activities

T

Activities of households as employers; undifferentiated goods- and services-producing activities of households for own use

U

Activities of extraterritorial organizations and bodies

Source: United Nations (2008: 43).

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“4322—Plumbing, heat, and air-conditioning installation”; or signs on a national tax office would be labeled as pertaining to section “O—Public administration and defense; compulsory social security,” the similarly named division “84—Public administration and defense; compulsory social security,” group “841—Administration of the State and the economic and social policy of the community,” and class “8411—General public administration activities,” and so on. Analysis can then move up or down in this four-level scheme as required by its individual research concerns, while compatibility of classifications is fully ensured across studies. Researchers may even add another layer of yet finer granularity, while still fitting their data with the standard model, as exemplified in Table 3.8. Of course, an additional advantage of using the ISIC system is that it makes the integration of all kinds of other data sources (e.g., economic statistics) into LL studies possible, in the interest of additional contextualization and evaluation of findings. As pointed out in the ISIC manual, Since the adoption of the original version of ISIC in 1948, the majority of countries around the world have used ISIC as their national activity classification or have developed national classifications derived from ISIC. . . . Wide use has been made of ISIC, both nationally and internationally, in classifying data according to kind of economic activity in the fields of economic and social statistics, such as for statistics on national accounts, demography of enterprises, employment and others. (United Nations, 2008: iii) A multidisciplinary compilation and analysis of data is thus facilitated that has the potential to transcend the immediate concerns of LL research and reach a much broader community of scholars.

5.3 Discourse type The third and final variable on the discourse level of our canonical matrix is “discourse type,” a label and conceptualization we adopt and adapt from the large-scale German

TABLE 3.8 The Standard Model’s ISIC Classification Level of Activity “Classes,” and How It Might Correspond with an Alternative Study’s (here, Amos 2017) More Detailed Coding Scheme Standard Model (ISIC “class” level)

Alternative Study

4771—Retail sale of clothing, footwear, and leather articles in specialized stores

Children’s clothing shop

4771—Retail sale of clothing, footwear, and leather articles in specialized stores

Adults’ clothing shop: men

4771—Retail sale of clothing, footwear, and leather articles in specialized stores

Adults’ clothing shop: women

4722—Retail sale of beverages in specialized stores

Wine shop

4722—Retail sale of beverages in specialized stores

Beer shop

5510—Short-term accommodation activities

Hotel

5510—Short-term accommodation activities

Bed and breakfast

5510—Short-term accommodation activities

Youth hostel

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TABLE 3.9 The “Discourse Type” Variable and Its Values Discourse type

Artistic Commemorative Commercial Infrastructural Political Regulatory Religious Technical jargon Transgressive Other

“Metropolenzeichen” project (e.g., Cindark and Ziegler 2016; p.c.), where in turn reference is made to a line of thought first expounded by Scollon and Scollon (2003). The general idea of “discourse types” is to capture, characterize, and classify “the ways in which people engage each other in communication” (as per the respective definitions of “discourse” in Scollon and Scollon 2004: 4). Based on our own extensive fieldwork and research in France, the UK, and Austria, we propose to expand the “Metropolenzeichen” set of values for the variable “discourse type” from six to nine (adding “political,” “religious,” and “technical jargon”), plus the category “other” for any cases not thus captured (see Table 3.9). As we have underlined throughout the presentation of our standard model, we do not pretend that the proposed classification of discourse types is the only valid level for analyzing LL signs and the language use they contain. Rather, it is intended to address one particular kind of research question, namely concerning the probabilistics of distributional patterns regarding certain kinds of language choice across different contexts of occurrence and use in the LL. Thus, applying the respective variable, one could investigate whether the choice of a particular language is more or less likely to occur on commercial or regulatory signs. At the same time, one could wish to implement a more fine-grained categorization addressing more nuanced questions (what kind of product is being advertised in a commercial sign? What aspect of public life is being regulated?). In the latter case, however, an individual study’s coding scheme is ideally set up in a way that establishes clear correspondences between its own particular (sub) categories and the standard model, in the interest of preserving the option of subsequent data recoding and transposition in a grander scheme of investigation.

6 TOWARD A STANDARD MODEL The physical- and discourse-level variable matrix as outlined here represents a suggested starting point for developing a common methodology for VaLLS research undertakings, which we posit with the aim of initiating discussions about the potential further exploitation of quantitative field survey data and its facilitation of scientifically sound statistical comparisons between datasets collected in different times and spaces. In this

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sense, a standard model should be thought of as a baseline upon which variation and change in different settings can be measured and understood. As stated throughout, it is clear that the degree of classification granularity discussed here may not be satisfactory for all types of studies, particularly in the face of diverging research goals. Certain investigations, for instance, may identify materiality as a key interest, while choosing to neglect other variables such as thematic context or discourse type. Similarly, researchers interested in capturing a breadth of information wider than the ones described here may wish to record more values of each variable than are featured in our system. This is the reason for which we are proposing what we consider a minimal scheme whose basic parameters, however, can be expanded and added to at any point, as we illustrate in Tables 3.6 and 3.8. In other words, the implementation of a standard model may be facilitated by establishing under-running secondary dimensions, on which specific variables are collapsed into broader categorizations. This would allow participating studies to record data at a level of detail specific to the current goals, while simultaneously permitting comparisons on a more fundamental, standard model level, across a broad body of research. The more or less specific interests of different studies mean that a standard model cannot hope to allow for all possible classifications that future research may find. However, it can provide the basis for a standardized set of fundamental categories, in addition to which more specific variables can be recorded. We argue, therefore, that comparative studies do not require all data to be compatible and transferable; merely that relevant comparisons may be based on data that are recoverable at the fundamental level. It is our intention that this fundamental level (i.e., the “standard” model) nevertheless includes a range of detailed and relevant data fields. Moreover, by cross-comparing aspects of the physical and discourse levels across data recorded in multiple settings and at multiple times, the data can illustrate trends that become more than the sum of their parts as new comparative perspectives emerge.

7 CONCLUSION This chapter has provided us with the opportunity to suggest that quantitative LL research may be usefully reconceived within variationist sociolinguistic terms. It is our contention that VaLLS bears important benefits for rigorous data collection and analysis in LL research, since establishing certain standards allows for cross-comparison of otherwise disparate datasets and, ultimately, meta-study conducive to further theorizing. Based on research carried out in multiple settings around the world, we suggest that a standard model be comprised of both physical-level and discourse-level variables, to account for the mixed methods which currently characterize LL study. We have explained these here in terms of a number of variants, the terminology, and application of which, we argue, capture the central interests in quantitative LL study. It is our intention that this chapter serves not only as an overview of ideas relating to this endeavor but also as a call for further development and contributions from scholars working across the LL field. At the very least, we hope to launch a discussion of our proposal, ideally leading to further application and testing regarding its usability and informativeness. We propose this because we firmly believe that in the LL enterprise, quantitative study designs and data analyses have their rightful place next to qualitative ones, the two strands ideally coalescing into carefully strategized and rigorously executed mixed methods research. The meanings and functions of language use in public space are

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multifaceted and multidimensional—it is our contention that the methodological toolkit used to study them must be so as well, in order to capture the most in-depth analysis possible of trends in language choice, use, and presentation in the LL.

FURTHER READING Fought, C. ed. (2004), Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poplack, S. (1993), “Variation Theory and Language Contact: Concepts, Methods and Data,” in D. R. Preston (ed.), American Dialect Research, 251–86, Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Tagliamonte, S. A. (2012), Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. Debate the points for and against quantitative and qualitative approaches. 2. How far do you consider it is possible to analyze any given LL with a singular, agreed methodology, and what are the benefits and drawbacks of doing this?

PROJECT WORK 1. Pick an existing quantitative LL survey and closely focus on its methodology. How would you need to adapt the study design to consolidate it into a VaLLS project as described in this chapter? 2. In groups, select a stretch of busy urban street (e.g., 25 meters), photograph all written items within it, and categorize them according to the VaLLS model described in this chapter. Comparing results between groups, what aspects of the standard model do you consider to be more (or less) beneficial, and what context-specific subcategories might you propose?

NOTES 1. Viennese data were collected under the project “ELLViA—English in the Linguistic Landscape of Vienna, Austria.” This project is financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), project number V394-G23 (for further information, see the project homepage at https:// bit.ly/projectellvia—January 29, 2019). The Liverpool data were recorded for a project about ethnolinguistic identity in the city’s Chinatown (Amos 2016). The French data were recorded for a project about the visibility and status of the regional languages Corsican and Occitan in the LL (Amos 2017). 2. In an LL study of multilingualism, a given dependent variable might be language use/ language choice. Of course, coding for language choice entails a host of decision-making in its own right. However, in the present chapter, we are primarily focused on the selection and implementation of independent variables in a quantitative LL coding scheme. For further discussion and viable models of operationalization of “language choice”/“multilingualism” see, for example, Reh (2004), Backhaus (2007) and Cindark and Ziegler (2016).

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3. Dubious cases of spatial (material) delimitation may also be resolved under considerations of layering (i.e., whether items were put up simultaneously as a unit of sorts, or at different times; for example, graffiti)—although, admittedly, this particular operationalization remains subject to grey areas and ad hoc judgment calls. 4. This, of course, still leaves us with the abovementioned issue of great size variance across the units of analysis in a dataset (see Huebner’s [2009] criticism cited above). As explained in Section 4, we suggest that this issue is best addressed by incorporating a respective independent variable in the coding matrix, to be followed up by corresponding hypothesis testing. 5. The implications of this principle within VaLLS were first expounded in Soukup (2016), on which parts of the following paragraphs are based. 6. While geo-coding data is possible in this regard, it may not be easily feasible nor equally accurate in all cases and settings. But see the German “Metropolenzeichen” project (e.g., Cindark and Ziegler 2016) for a large-scale LL survey that implements geo-coding in data collection and analysis. 7. As specified in ISO 216 (for reference, see the publishing institution’s relevant webpage https://www.iso.org/standard/36631.html—January 29, 2019).

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Milroy, L. and M. Gordon (2003), Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Mor-Sommerfeld, A. and J. Johnston (2012), “Linguistic Landscape—the Seeing and Writing of Art,” in C. Hélot, M. Barni, R. Janssens and C. Bagna (eds.), Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingualism and Social Change, 155–68, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Muth, S. (2015), “‘Ruralscapes’ in Post-Soviet Transnistria: Ideology and Language,” in M. Laitinen and A. Zabrodskaja (eds.), Dimensions of Sociolinguistic Landscapes in Europe, 199–232, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Pavlenko, A. (2010), “Linguistic Landscape of Kyiv, Ukraine: A Diachronic Study,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 133–50, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Peck, A. and C. Stroud (2015), “Skinscapes,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1/2): 133–51. Pennycook, A. (2009), “Linguistic Landscapes and the Transgressive Semiotics of Graffiti,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 302–13, London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2010), “Spatial Narrations: Graffscapes and City Souls,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, 137–51, London: Continuum. Pennycook, A. and E. Otsuji (2015), “Making Scents of the Landscape,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (3): 191–212. Peukert, H. (2015), “Urban Linguistic Landscaping: Scanning Metropolitan Spaces,” in M. Laitinen and A. Zabrodskaja (eds.), Dimensions of Sociolinguistic Landscapes in Europe, 29–52, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Pietikäinen, S., P. Lane, H. Salo and S. Laihiala-Kankainen (2011), “Frozen Actions in the Arctic Linguistic Landscape: A Nexus Analysis of Language Processes in Visual Space,” International Journal of Multilingualism, 8 (4): 277–98. Rasinger, S. M. (2014), “Linguistic Landscapes in Southern Carinthia (Austria),” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35 (6): 580–602. Reh, M. (2004), “Multilingual Writing: A Reader-oriented Typology—With Examples from Lira Municipality (Uganda),” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 170: 1–41. Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon (2003), Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World, New York, NY: Routledge. Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon (2004), Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet, New York, NY: Routledge. Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon (2007), “Nexus Analysis: Refocussing Ethnography on Action,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 11 (5): 608–25. Screti, F. (2015), “The Ideological Appropriation of the Letter in the Spanish Linguistic Landscape,” Social Semiotics, 25 (2): 200–08. Seals, C. A. (2012), “Creating a Landscape of Dissent in Washington, DC,” in C. Hélot, M. Barni, R. Janssens and C. Bagna (eds), Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingualism and Social Change, 127–38, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Shohamy, E. and D. Gorter (2009), “Introduction,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 1–10, London: Routledge. Shohamy, E. and S. Waksman (2009), “Linguistic Landscape as an Ecological Arena: Modalities, Meanings, Negotiations, Education,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 313–31, New York, NY: Routledge.

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Soukup, B. (2016), “English in the Linguistic Landscape of Vienna, Austria (ELLViA): Outline, Rationale, and Methodology of a Large-scale Empirical Project on Language Choice on Public Signs from the Perspective of Sign-readers,” Views, 25: 1–24. Soukup, B. (Forthcoming), “Addressing the Problem of Survey Area Selection in Quantitative LL Research—A Report from the Project ‘ELLViA—English in the Linguistic Landscape of Vienna, Austria.’” Manuscript, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Spolsky, B. and R. L. Cooper (1991), The Languages of Jerusalem, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tagliamonte, S. A. (2006), Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tagliamonte, S. A. (2012), Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Tufi, S. (2013), “Shared Places, Unshared Identities: Vernacular Discourses and Spatialised Constructions of Identity in the Linguistic Landscape of Trieste,” Modern Italy, 18 (4): 391–408. United Nations (2008), “International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC), Rev. 4.” Available online: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/publication/seriesm/se riesm_4rev4e.pdf (accessed January 29, 2019). Vandenbroucke, M. (2015), “Language Visibility, Functionality and Meaning Across Various TimeSpace Scales in Brussels’ Multilingual Landscapes,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 36 (2): 163–81. Walker, J. (2010), Variation in Linguistic Systems, New York, NY: Routledge. Woldemariam, H. and E. Lanza (2015), “Imagined Community: The Linguistic Landscape in a Diaspora,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1/2): 172–90.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Mind the Gap”: Social Space in Linguistic Landscape Studies DIARMAIT MAC GIOLLA CHR Í OST

1 INTRODUCTION Despite considerable theoretical and methodological innovation, it remains the case that it is not unreasonable to ask how intellectually distinctive LLS is when one considers fields such as visual anthropology,1 the sociology of advertising, of which the offering by Goldman and Papson (1996) merits considerable attention by researchers in the field of LLS, or even some contributions to international law.2 Indeed, the point made several years ago by Laur (2007) that LLS suffers from a “lack of shared conceptualizations” and that “a number of methodological questions are raised, such as how sample neighbourhoods are and should be selected, how data should be analyzed and presented” still holds, to a considerable degree. Similarly, a lack of methodological clarity sits at the core of Nash’s (2012: 553) criticism: “The problematic of defining the field of LL and utilizing its epistemology and method beyond ‘simply a collection of somewhat disparate methodologies’ appears to be a current fundamental weakness of LL.” It is argued in this chapter that the issues identified by Laur and Nash share a common weakness. This weakness is as follows: that the concept of space is under-theorized in LLS and, as a consequence, the term “landscape” itself holds little by way of precise meaning in the field. By way of response to this weakness, it is further argued here that the concept of social space ought to form a part of the methodological approach to the study of LLs. In order to demonstrate the potential of such an approach, the London Underground is presented as a case study.

2 METHODOLOGICAL QUANDARIES For many researchers in the field of LLS a paper by Landry and Bourhis (1997) has remained to this day a critical point of reference. As regards what is understood and implied by the term “linguistic landscape” as deployed in that paper, a number of points are of immediate salience. First of all there is the assertion that the idea of the LL “first emerged” in the field of language planning and policy: “Language planners in Belgium and in Québec were among the first to recognize the importance of marking the

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boundaries of linguistic territories through the regulation of language use on public signs including billboards, street signs, and commercial signs, as well as in place names” (my italics) (Landry and Bourhis 1997: 24). In other words, particular languages are publicly displayed in a deliberate manner so as to signify the extent of a discrete linguistic space. In addition, for Landry and Bourhis that linguistic space carries authoritative, officially sanctioned political meaning. They refer to the case of Belgium to illustrate their point that the application of the principle of territoriality (McRae 1975) to managing, if not resolving, the language conflict between the French-speaking and the Flemish-speaking communities meant that Belgium was divided into two quite autonomous “unilingual territories made up of the Flemish-speaking community in the north (Flanders) and the French-speaking community in the south (Wallonia)” (Landry and Bourhis 1997: 24). According to Landry and Bourhis, it was necessary that the linguistic boundary between the two territories be “clearly demarcated,” and this was accomplished through the use of either Flemish or French as the exclusive language of public signs in the respective territories. Thus, It is through the systematic use of unilingual public signs in Flemish and French, respectively, that the identity of each region was made most salient as one crossed the linguistic frontier. It is to this Belgian case that we owe the origin of the concept of linguistic landscape as a marker of the geographical territory occupied by distinctive language communities within multilingual states. (Landry and Bourhis 1997: 24) Finally, Landry and Bourhis explain that the linguistic material that constitutes the LL, understood as a “given territory, region, or urban agglomeration” (my italics) (Landry and Bourhis 1997: 25), comprises therefore of “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings” (Landry and Bourhis 1997: 25). Moreover, they assert that as one ordinarily passes through this landscape that one can infer from it some meanings that are “informational,” along with others that are “symbolic” (Landry and Bourhis 1997: 25). Thereby, the LL tells one where one is in a literal sense, but it also tells one where one is in an ideological sense. In this type of LL visual language in the physical environment can be read as a “top-down” instrument of imposition, control, and management. At this juncture, however, I wish to set to one side an issue that has been effectively explored in a range of texts on the subject of the LL. The issue is whether the social reality, as opposed to the political conception, of the territories to which Landry and Bourhis refer might ever be reasonably described as unilingual; from the perspective of the geography of the everyday (Sullivan 2017) the presence of a language lacking in official sanction may, for example, signal transgression, and it is the case, of course, that officially sanctioned meaning is often contested. Thus, the “given” is necessarily problematized. Writing in this vein, broadly speaking, Gorter (2006) asserts that being clear about the “unit of analysis” (p. 3) is a fundamental problem for LLS. The confusion, it is argued, is twofold. The first issue is to do with the linguistic data in that while it is understood that “the linguistic landscape refers to linguistic objects that mark the public space,” it was less clear what is meant by “objects” (Gorter 2006: 3). The dilemma is described as follows: The question is what constitutes such an object or sign? In other words, what constitutes the unit of analysis? Different answers can be given. It has to be determined what belongs to the linguistic landscape. For instance, are texts on moving objects such as buses or cars to be included? For convenience sake they are probably not. (Gorter, 2006: 3)

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If the phenomenon being studied is mobile or ephemeral in some senses, the fact that “the landscape may change from day to day, some posters will be removed or added, but other signs may be fixed for many years” is properly pointed out in this text (Gorter 2006: 3), then it is the task of the researcher to develop the instruments and methods that will allow for the capture of the data necessary to explaining it. The question which must be kept in mind here is this: What are we trying to look at?—and if “moving objects” are a constituent part of the view then they must be accounted for. And if not, then their exclusion ought to be robustly justified. In exploring the issue of unit of analysis (Gorter 2006: 3), Gorter draws upon Backhaus (2006; see also, 2007) who, he notes, defines the unit of analysis as “any piece of [written] text within a spatially definable frame” (Gorter 2006: 3). Gorter, Marten and Van Mensel (2012) draw upon Cenoz and Gorter (2006: 73) to propose that the unit of analysis could be aggregated to various scales such as to refer to a complete building “a store, a bar or a restaurant,” while also noting that the unit could be broader again. Gorter, Marten and Van Mensel state (2012: 4): It is indeed possible to take an even wider and more holistic approach. A landscape, after all, refers to what one can see from one’s point of view. However, it is hard to avoid arbitrary decisions about the unit of analysis. It could be worthwhile to experiment with an approach in which the unit of analysis becomes “a landscape” as it can be seen in a single view. It depends, of course, on the perspective of the researcher and the goal of the analysis. The problem with this is that if the “spatially definable frame,” or the “single view,” is chosen arbitrarily, then it follows, inevitably, that the research results will be similarly arbitrary. Hammersley (2006), for example, rejects the view that the choices made by researchers in shaping the parameters of their research are “necessarily arbitrary” (p. 7) but rather are contingent upon the purpose, or aims, of the research (see also, for example, Silverman 2015) and that the judgment involved in making those choices “can be exercised in better and worse ways” (Hammersley 2013: 52). Jaworski and Thurlow (2010) suggest that “frame analysis offers a possible resolution” to LLS’ “methodological quandary,” thereby solving the unit of analysis problem. Jaworski, along with Yeung, makes use of frames elsewhere, drawing explicitly upon Goffman, describing these as “discursive frames” and as “interpretative frames” (Jaworski and Yeung 2010). Jaworski (2015), Coupland (2010 and 2012), Coupland and Garrett (2010) and Kallen (2010), among others, variously use “frames” as a tool for analyzing visual language in social space. While Kallen describes all of his frames as “spatial frames” (Kallen 2010: 43), and some of them are geographical units of analysis, such as “portal” or “school” or “detritus zone,” others are conceptual rather than spatial, such as the “civic frame” (Kallen 2010). Coupland’s approach to the matter is driven by the conceptual and not the spatial. He presents five frames, with two of these being top-down frames—“non-autonomous Welsh” and “parallel-text bilingualism,” and the other three being bottom-up—“nationalist resistance,” “Welsh exoticism,” and “laconic metacultural celebration.” Coupland and Garrett (2010) also adopt this approach to frames in which three “discursive frames” are identified, namely the “colonial history” frame, the “reflexive cultural Welshness” frame, and the “Welsh heritage” frame. Frame analysis suffers from the risk of logical fallacy in that the conceptual frames, as devices of the researcher, beg the research question. In other words, some frames may merely confirm a researcher’s a priori perspective on the object and may not be an

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analytical tool sufficiently independent of the researcher’s own preconceptions. Frames, in their original meaning (Goffman 1974), are not consciously used or manipulated but instead are unconsciously adopted in the course of communicative processes. Frames are tacit rather than overt conjectures. Frame analysis, therefore, is a process of inductively identifying themes that persist across a set of communicative data. It is used especially in the analysis of news media narratives (Entman 1993). The problematic issue of how specific frames may be empirically detected in the data by the researcher, as opposed to being subjectively imposed upon the data by the researcher, reflected in part in the preponderance of idiosyncratic frames that are unique to single case studies, is a criticism made widely of many studies that employ frame analysis (Borah 2011; Hertog and McLeod 2001; Maher 2001). By now, much of the work that employs frame analysis contrasts with Goffman’s conception of frames as being latent in that in this work frames are presented as being actively constructed and adopted. Yet, as Koenig (2004) points out, this does not address the question as to how the researcher might objectively identify frames in a given set of data. Similarly, it is not entirely clear to me that frame analysis as used in LLS explicitly addresses that issue. Also, just as importantly, Coupland and Garrett (2010) do not appear to adopt as an aim in their work the task of identifying a “spatially definable frame.” In this context the concept of landscape would appear to be understood in general terms and not as a discrete social space. Kallen keeps the notion of space within sight, although there are problems here too. For example, there is a lack of conceptual precision with regard to the “non-exhaustive” list of frames, or “spatial frameworks” (Kallen 2010: 43). Also, contrary to what this chapter implies, it is the case that there are very significant differences between the various producers of signs in the “civic frame”; in many societies that space is not occupied exclusively by agents of public office, and in postindustrial societies there is no hard-and-fast distinction between the “marketplace” and the “civic” realm. One could also make the case for given linguistic items, such as discarded McDonalds’ packaging, to pertain to both the “marketplace” and the “detritus zone” and that a train station, while a “portal,” must also be said to comprise the following frames: “civic,” “marketplace,” “wall,” and “detritus zone.” More problematic is the treatment of space. In his critique of Landry and Bourhis, Kallen points out that there is a reductive tendency in approaches of this type to the LL. He puts it as follows: Under such approaches, the spatial notion of what constitutes the landscape appears to be relatively unproblematical. There is an implicit general view in most linguistic landscape research that only one linguistic landscape occupies a given physical space at a particular time. [. . .] Rather than viewing the linguistic landscape as a single system, then, I propose to analyse it as a confluence of systems, observable within a single visual field but operating with a certain degree of independence between elements. [. . .] The frameworks in the landscape can be defined by the functions of discourse entered into by interlocutors and by the language choices and forms of expression available to these interlocutors. I suggest that it is necessary to see the visual field in terms of separate visual discourse frameworks. (Kallen 2010: 42–43) It is fair to say that Landry and Bourhis define their landscape in terms of an administrative or governmental unit. It ought to be borne in mind, however, that a landscape may, very readily, be defined in various other ways too and, as Kallen rightly suggests, that is something not dealt with by Landry and Bourhis. That said, the idea of landscape as a distinct vista is problematic in Kallen’s work. He proposes, reasonably, “to understand

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the linguistic landscape as an ensemble of multiple systems within the same visual field and not as a single system” (Kallen 2010: 46). However, a difficulty arises in attempting to give empirical reality to this “same visual field” through choosing to identify the fieldwork site: “Within a well-defined geographical area [namely] a walk of roughly five kilometres, starting with the Malahide Road on the north side of the city and including major streets in the city centre. [. . .] This ‘sample route’ is supplemented by other data as appropriate” (Kallen 2010: 46). Yet, this poses a fundamental challenge in that certain key terms here are undefined, including “well-defined,” “within the same visual field,” “sample,” and “appropriate.” Robust definitions for these would lend greater rigor to this approach to the idea of the LL. If we are to hold onto “landscape” in LLS then does the idea of the “semiotic landscape” offer a way forward? Jaworski and Thurlow (2010: 1) justifiably assert the centrality of the notion of space to LLS when they say, “We are concerned here with the interplay between language, visual discourse, and the spatial practices and dimensions of culture, especially the textual mediation or discursive construction of place and the use of space as a semiotic resource in its own right.” That said, it would appear from the case studies in the Jaworski and Thurlow text that their main concern is with ensuring that the field engages with other discursive modalities. The displacement of “linguistic” by “semiotic” arises from their concern that the former term entails too narrow a conception of the communicative sign, that the term “linguistic” is insufficiently visual in its reach. This is useful to the extent that by juxtaposing “linguistic” and “semiotic” they rightly draw attention to the fact that in order to understand visual language in social space more fully one also has to attend to how other qualities such as aurality, orality, imagery, and body language, as well as other sign systems apart from language, in the semiotic meaning of the term, relate to the signs of visual language. Jaworski and Thurlow, however, imply that the “semiotic” resides in the landscape, like visual language does. Gottdiener (2012) asserts that this is a mistake because the field of semiotics is an approach to an object and not the object in itself; in other words, semiotics is a method. In LLS the term “linguistic” refers to the object of study itself, namely language, while “semiotic,” in actual fact, refers to a particular approach to the object of study. Thus, Jaworski and Thurlow may be best understood as advocates of a semiotic approach to LLS. Therefore also, Gorter’s (2012) criticism of the Jaworski and Thurlow collection that most of the contributors make use of the term “linguistic landscape” and not that of “semiotic landscape” is a little wide of the mark in that the work indeed demonstrates that semiotics has the potential to provide for a perfectly sensible, methodologically robust, approach to reading visual language in the locale of public space. It remains the case, however, that while Jaworski and Thurlow hold unto “landscape” they largely avoid addressing the methodological quandary in LLS of how to define the spatial frame.

3 REASSERTING LANDSCAPE In approaching the problems outlined above, I would like to identify the key elements of the LL as an object of social scientific scrutiny, and in doing so draw upon the scholarly literature on the concept of landscape from a range of disciplines. To my mind, the object of study has four qualities: (1) linguistic, (2) social, (3) visual, and (4) spatial. These may be said to interrelate in a very particular manner. In this context, a LL may be said to be a discrete and objectively observed social space that is constituted by language in visual form. It is discrete in that it is visually distinct. It is a social space, and on this

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matter I draw upon various sources in the field of human geography (Mayhew 2009, Mehta 2013, Soja 1985 and 1996), in that it is a culturally complex, flexible, multiply configured, networked, and reflexive environment that is perceived and used by certain social groups. A LL is constituted in that it is understood as being defined, shaped, or made by language; it is a social construct. Language in the LL takes visual, multiple forms, it may be ephemeral and permanent, and it can be understood in relation to other forms of sign or sign systems. Finally, it is objectively observed and nonarbitrary in that it is a perceived environment that is constructed by a social group, or groups, comprised of individual persons or social actors. What I mean by this is that from the subjective point of view of the persons or actors that comprise a social group, a social space is perceived of as being “objectively out there” (Silverman 2013: 1.9.3) in the world apart from or at a remove from them as individuals. This assertion may be said to adhere to a constructionist sensibility, and I take it to stand in contrast with a positivist stance that views “social facts” as things that exist “out there” in the world wholly independent of both such persons and the researcher (see, for example, Silverman 2013: 1.9.1). The objectivity I have in mind adheres also to the position taken by some in semiotics (Cassirer 1985 and 1996; Ferreira 2015) on the idea of objectivity referring not to the objectivity of existence but rather to that of meaning. In this sense, objectivity does not refer to the notion of an external and independent reality. Instead, objectivity is understood as being “achieved through language,” and it is a “symbolic construction” given meaning by a community of persons or a social group (Ferreira 2015: 1136). Some (Williams 2015; Hammersley 2011) in sociology might understand this as “situated objectivity,” a version of objectivity that emerges out of “intersubjective agreement.” In this way, in this narrow or particular sense, social spaces like Toronto’s Chinatown or the London Underground or Manchester’s Curry Mile or Belfast’s Gaeltacht Quarter can be said to be objectively perceived and discrete entities. It is important to note that the social group, or groups, involved in such social spaces are not necessarily resident in these spaces, rather they may be mobile or transient in that context. Therefore, a specific LL, as opposed to the LL as a universalizing concept, is a type of social space that is comprised of, is the construct of, and is a site of action for, not simply the occupants or a resident population but also mobile subjects. These may co-construct a social space while also imputing contrasting meanings to it. Thus, the field of LLS is the study of how visual language is implicated in the social logic of space. Or, to put it another way, to study a LL is to interrogate how visual language is implicated in the spatial analysis of social formations. Each given landscape may be said to have its own particular, distinctive structure (e.g., Forman and Godron 1986; Turner et al. 2007; Wu and Hobbs 2007). For the LL, language in visual form structures the landscape, and it does so in terms of the composition of the landscape and in terms of its configuration, in accordance with how landscape in general is understood. For the LL in particular, these terms may be defined as follows: ●

●

Composition—this is the nonspatial aspect of a landscape and refers to the number and frequency of the elements found in it. For a LL, this comprises the individual linguistic items that are found in the landscape. They may be subject to either of, or both, quantitative and qualitative approaches to data collection and analysis. Configuration—this refers to the spatial character of a landscape, specifically the spatial arrangement and particular context of the elements found in the landscape.

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This may be understood as, or be presented as, a map. The configuration also has a clearly definable spatial extent; it has limits, boundaries, or borders. For a LL, the spatial extent is marked, in some sense, by language in its visual form. The LL, therefore, as with other types of landscape, possesses a particular conceptual organization, a particular cartography, but in this case it is made from language in visual form in some way. In approaching the idea of landscape in this manner, a LL is understood as a particular form of social space, and the distinctive purpose of the field of LLS therefore is to understand how language, in visual form, is implicated in the construction, or in the meaning, of social space. How might this look when applied? By way of illustration I will set out how the London Underground may be said to be a LL. It is chosen for a number of reasons. It has the quality of familiarity thereby rendering this brief case study relatively accessible, despite the brevity required by the form of a modest book chapter. This familiarity, I hope, will invite others in the field of LLS to identify other similar such social spaces and subject them to analysis as LLs. My key question at this point is as follows: How might we understand the London Underground as a LL? Or, to put it another way, how is the London Underground constituted by language in visual form as a discrete and objectively observed social space? The London Underground can be said to be a discrete social space that may be objectively observed. That it is objectively out there in the world and not the arbitrary construct of the researcher, in this sense, is amply demonstrated in several ways. For example, the design of Harry Beck,3 composed of its Tube Stations and their idealized distribution, lends the London Underground an iconic cartography (Figure 4.1). This cartography has its own history,4 an important consideration in any diachronic exploration of imaginings of the London Underground. In order that the London Underground may be understood in terms of the field of LLS, one has to ask whether it can be said to be constituted by visual language, and if so then how. There is a linguistic item associated with the London Underground that is as iconic as Beck’s map and its subsequent iterations, and that is the prerecorded announcement warning passengers embarking and disembarking from the trains to “mind the gap.” For example, Luke Flanagan, writer-director of a short film on the story of Oswald Laurence, one of the original voices of “mind the gap” and professional actor,5 describes its significance to Londonist magazine as follows in 2016: The actual mind the gap announcement is as iconic a part of London as the double decker bus or the post box. For Londoners it goes deeper—many of us remember the actual voice of Oswald Lawrence [sic] on the Northern Line, so when we hear it now we have a recall to that time. There’s a kind of nostalgia for growing up in London and using the tube.6 Archival research reveals that although the voiced “mind the gap” has its origins in the 1960s as the relevant technology became more available—it was first used on the Northern Line in 1968—it was not universally present throughout the London Underground until after the disaster of the King’s Cross fire in 1987.7 While the item may be captured in that voiced form for the purposes of research at each and every one of the Tube Stations that comprise the London Underground, as a linguistic item it is pertinent to this study in its visual form in particular. In fact, use of the written form substantially predates the voiced version. Indeed, there is photographic evidence dating to the 1930s of “mind the gap” painted on platform edges. One could

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FIGURE 4.1 The London Underground. © Transport for London.

FIGURE 4.2 T-shirt (source: http://shop.tfl.gov.uk/clothing-and-accessories/menswear/product/ White-Mind-the-Gap-t-shirt.html—accessed November 24, 2016).

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also, therefore, collect data on the historical development of the visual version of this linguistic item from the various Tube Stations. That sort of in situ quantitative data could be used to demonstrate how “mind the gap” maps onto and makes the London Underground a particular social space. However, other types of data are available that enable a nuanced analysis. Visual forms of “mind the gap” are currently manifest in various contemporaneous guises, and not only do these data allow one to engage with the diverse modalities of “mind the gap,” thereby serving to underscore Jaworski and Thurlow’s insight regarding the necessity of a semiotic approach to the field of LLS, but they also help the researcher to foreground the meaning of landscape. The sort of data I have in mind conform, to some degree, with some of the linguistic items mined for meaning by Coupland (2012) in his treatment of bilingualism (Welsh-English) on display. Of particular interest to me are the ephemera associated with the visitor to London, and I will draw upon several such items in order to show how language in visual form constitutes the London Underground as a particular social space. Bear in mind also that in conceiving of a LL as a specific social space, we must identify a distinct social group, or social groups, whose behavior with regard to visual language, or use of visual language, in some sense gives a particular meaning to that space. Turning now to the data, the first linguistic item is a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “mind the gap” (Figure 4.2). It is advertised as for sale on the official online shop of the British Tourist Board “visitbritainshop” where it is recommended to the public for purchase as a “reminder” of where “the famous announcement [is] heard [. . .] when you board or leave a tube.”8 The T-shirt is designed to work at a distance, at a remove from the actual physical site of the London Underground. As a “reminder” it is designed to be worn by the purchaser once London has been departed from and the visitor has returned home. The linguistic item signals the London Underground which in turn evokes the visitor’s encounter with London more generally. Part of the meaning of this T-shirt is also that the producer is the same organization that is responsible for the management of the London Underground, Transport for London (TfL). In producing such T-shirts aimed at visitors to London, TfL are effectively commodifying the London Underground as a product other than mere transport; thus, the London Underground is consumed as an idealized landscape. For the visitor, the T-shirt may be read as authenticity signaling whereby the visitor lays claim to a direct and purposeful encounter with an experience that is at the heart of London’s identity. A fuller expression of this claim to authenticity is pinned to another T-shirt similarly emblazoned with “mind the gap” (Figure 4.3). In this case the item is the product of Anglotopia,9 an American website founded in Chicago in 2007 aimed at “people who love Britain”; according to their website they make their T-shirts through a company of theirs named Anglotees. This “mind the gap” T-shirt is advertised on the website with the accompanying blurb: There’s a certain bit of romance about the Tube. That cool breeze of air that precedes the next train. That particular “Tube smell.” Rocking back and forth as the train speeds through the tunnel. Jostling with locals. Riding the Tube can be quite pleasurable (and quite miserable, especially in the summer!). The world’s first underground transit system spreads out through London like the tendrils of an octopus. You can hop on one train and in 20 minutes be somewhere completely different. It’s very friendly for tourists and the easiest way to see London. You also get to pretend to be a Londoner; you get a sense of the rhythm of life for the locals. This shirt takes the iconic Mind the

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FIGURE 4.3 T-shirt (source: http://www.anglotopia.net/site-news/featured/anglotees-alert-newshirt-live-mind-gap-tribute-london-tube/—accessed November 24, 2016).

Gap design and creates something completely new you won’t find in any tourist shops. Mind the Gap is an iconic phrase—for those that don’t know, it’s what’s announced over station intercoms to warn riders to watch their step when they get on or off a train. This is our tribute to that wonderful phrase. The middle of the shirt is made of the famous phrase and the round edges of the design feature our favorite stations in central London. The typography uses the actual London Underground font so it looks like what you’d see throughout the network.10 The implication is clear: buying this T-shirt allows the purchaser to “pretend to be a Londoner,” to feel the “breeze,” and sense the “smell” of the Tube, and to display personally what can actually be “seen” there. It too signals authenticity. Even as the actors behind Anglotopia do this, they at the same time idealize the experience of travel on the Tube in a self-aware manner in prefacing the blurb with the word “romance.” Their assertion that their T-shirt is not for sale in “any tourist shops” adds to their claim to authenticity. A doormat (Figure 4.4) emblazoned with the slogan “mind the gap” is advertised on Anglotopia as being in stock with the BBC America Shop. It may be said to perform a function similar to that fulfilled by the T-shirts in evoking the London Underground and signaling authenticity. It is described in the following terms on the Anglotopia website: “In London, Britain’s most familiar warning alerts you to the gap between the station platform and the Underground train. At your front door, it puts a smile on your face while removing dirt and dust from your shoes.”11 Thus, entering the front door via the “mind the gap” doormat, and thereby crossing the threshold between two places, echoes the act of exiting and entering the train on the Tube.

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FIGURE 4.4 Doormat (source: http://www.anglotopia.net/british-travel/london/anglophiledeal-mind-the-gap-doormat-want/—accessed November 24, 2016).

FIGURE 4.5 YouTube upload screenshot (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40H qTIC9Vyg—accessed November 24, 2016).

Setting aside products that are manufactured for the consumption of visitors, one can turn to social media sites for a wealth of data on the responses of visitors to “mind the gap” that are posted by visitors themselves. This upload to YouTube from December 2008, along with its related “comments” field, is relatively typical of the genre (Figure 4.5). As of October 2016 it had elicited 116,517 views, 98 likes, and 59 comments. The visitor is styled “zeekzilch” and was on a stopover between Denver in the United States and New Delhi in India. The description of the upload incorporates a link to a personal webpage by “zeekzilch” detailing his visit to London, as well as other destinations.

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The webpage includes a specific section on the London Underground entitled “Mind the gap!” (Figure 4.6) and there he sings the praises of the Tube and recounts a Sunday morning ride “to watch the sunrise” on the London Underground.12 As a linguistic marker of the Tube “mind the gap” can be interrogated for its meanings to other distinct social groups apart from visitors, and in doing so alternative, even contrastive, meanings are revealed. For local author Emily Kearns, it stands for freedom as “the capital’s subterranean railway not only offered a sense of freedom, but its history provided a wealth of untold stories and hidden stations ripe for discovery,” as she describes in her book on the London Underground entitled Mind the Gap, as advertised by online shop of the London Transport Museum.13 Writing with a like-minded sense of quirkiness, Simon James’s book also entitled Mind the Gap is, it says, “a warm, nostalgic, eccentric book about London’s tube lines, and particularly the ends of the lines” and is described elsewhere as a celebration of poor design and the “English” quality of muddling through: “Basically, Mind the Gap is a particularly English way of celebrating, and making the best of compromises and really poor design.”14 Moreover, it is not aimed so much at visitors to London but rather appears to be aimed at “the millions of commuters” with whom James shares his daily journey, as one customer reviewer on the Amazon website puts it; in the same place another exhorts that it is a “must have for any Londoner.”15 The insertion of the poster image of “Keep calm and mind the gap” set against a background of the Union Jack (Figure 4.7) in the body of the review of the book on the website of “The museum of thin objects” reinforces the localness of the intended context. For TfL and others responsible for the management and operation of the London Underground, the primary function of “mind the gap” is to serve the public as a literal warning as to the possibility of there being a rather large gap between carriage and platform at various Tube Stations. In this context “mind the gap” speaks of authority; it is the routine voiced and visual language of health and safety.16 In this context too one may pay attention to the gender of the voiced language and how that is decided upon by those

FIGURE 4.6 Website screenshot (source: http://www.rogerwendell.com/unitedkingdom.html— accessed November 24, 2016).

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FIGURE 4.7 Website screenshot (source: https://inlanding.wordpress.com/2014/05/10/book-re view-mind-the-gap-by-simon-james/—accessed November 24, 2016).

commissioning the “mind the gap” voiceovers as well as how those voices are received by their millions of listeners. In the case of the latter, there are examples with considerable emotional depth, such as the story of Margaret McCollum, widow of Oswald Laurence, who after his death traveled on the London Underground via Embankment Tube Station simply to hear his voice as that was the only site on which it remained. She was distraught when his voiceover was replaced. The story has a happy ending, however, as we learn how TfL, on hearing of her plight, not only provided her with a permanent copy of the voiceover recording but also restored it to use.17 The authoritative function of the voiced “mind the gap” has, on occasion, been played with. For example, Emma Clarke, one of the commissioned voices of “mind the gap,” created, with the blessing of London Underground, a set of spoof London Underground announcements for her comedic website.18 There is also a sense of playfulness inherent to TfL commissioning a series of celebrities to do voiceovers in recognition of “London Poppy Day” in 2014, one of whom, Peter Dickson, “the voice” of the popular UK television show the X Factor,19 proudly declared that “it has always been on my wish list to do a ‘mind the gap’ announcement.”20 One could say that there is even a playful sense of transgression at work here. Adopting a semiotic approach to “mind the gap” causes us to pay attention to a distinctive set of meanings and the connections between them. Very simply, in terms of semantics, or of what a sign stands for, there is a straightforward indexical relationship between “mind the gap” as a sign and as a piece of safety advice. In terms of syntactics, or the structural relations between signs (Morris 1938, 6–7—following Peirce (1931– 1958); Chandler 2017), the voiced, or auditory, sign has, since its introduction, become increasingly important in relation to the visual sign. However, the superior mobility of the visual form, for the time being, allows “mind the gap” to be exported, as Van Leeuwen (2004) would put it, to other social contexts beyond the immediate physical confines of the London Underground itself in which a range of different types of sign come to play a part in making, and remaking the meaning of “mind the gap.” Finally, in terms of pragmatics,

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that is, the relation of signs to interpreters, “mind the gap” is understood as safety advice that is authoritative and hierarchical, instructing passengers about their behavior; but it is also subject to commodification, ironic appropriation, and reinterpretation.

4 CONCLUSIONS The London Underground can be understood as a discrete and objectively observed social space that is constituted by language in visual form by distinctive social groups. The linguistic item “mind the gap” is variously used by both visitors to London and routine commuters in the city in the construction of this particular LL. Moreover, in reasserting the idea of landscape the approach taken in this chapter to the concept of the LL attempts to address some of the methodological quandaries identified by others with regard to the “unit of analysis” and the “spatially definable frame”: for the former, the formulaic term “mind the gap” presents a discrete and unambiguous linguistic item that would be suitable for both quantitative and qualitative approaches; for the latter, the London Underground is identifiable in an objective manner as a discrete and unambiguous social space in which distinct social groups use the said linguistic item so as to give diverse social meanings to it. To my own mind at least, the approach I offer here takes both the “linguistic” and the “landscape” in the field of LLS to be robust and meaningful categories. I would venture that other case studies of greater complexity than the one presented here, and therefore more revealing, could be conducted using this approach.

FURTHER READING/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS/ IDEAS FOR INDEPENDENT RESEARCH Many studies in the field of LLS identify fieldwork sites that may be conceived of as social spaces in the geographical sense of the term. Read the following studies of the LLs of Cheetham Hill High Street, Curry Mile, and Chinatown: Asadova, K., I. Cuéllar, M. Inam, I. Khalid, and M. Rödder (2015), Linguistic Landscapes Across Manchester: A Comparative Analysis of Five Areas. http://mlm.humanities.man chester.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Linguistic-Landscapes-across-Manchester -A-comparative-analysis-of-five-areas-.pdf (accessed September 10, 2018). Gaiser, L. E. (2014), Reading the Curry Mile—Language Use in the Linguistic Landscape of Rusholme, Manchester. http://mlm.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/20 15/12/Reading-the-Curry-Mile.-L-E-Gaiser4.pdf (accessed September 10, 2018). Ryan, D. (2011), A Comparison of the Linguistic Landscapes of Manchester. http://mlm .humanities.manchester.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Linguistic-landscapes.pdf (accessed September 10, 2018) Smith, A. and E. Dorsett-Smith (2016), A Linguistic Landscape of Cheetham Hill’s high street. http://mlm.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/LL-Cheeth am-Hill-high-street-1.pdf (accessed September 10, 2018).

All of these places are to be found in Manchester, England, the UK, and each study arises from a multidisciplinary research project focused on the city. You may read about the project here: Multilingual Manchester. Linguistic Landscapes http://mlm.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/ reports/linguistic-landscapes (accessed September 10, 2018)

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Having read this chapter along with the aforementioned case studies from Manchester, discuss the following questions: In terms of methodological approach, how are these studies different to the case study presented in this chapter? To what extent are Cheetham Hill High Street, Curry Mile, and Chinatown characterized as social spaces by the authors of the case studies relating to these fieldwork sites? The city of Manchester could be said to be home to a mosaic of LLs. To what extent would it be possible to identify, and to examine, Manchester as a single LL? As with many other academics in the field of LLS, several of the authors of the Manchester case studies refer to power in dichotomous terms, as flowing from a particular source, either “top-down” or “bottom-up.” An alternative approach would be to conceive of power as something that has no fixed center, whether at “the top” or at “the bottom,” but rather that it circulates “through a net-like organization” (Foucault, 1980: 98). This view of power also contends that it may be not only repressive, to some degree, but also, in its greater part, emancipatory (Foucault, 1980: 119). How could this approach to understanding power be applied to the study of Manchester’s LLs?

FURTHER OTHER READING Foucault, M. (1980), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972– 1977, edited by C. Gordon, translated by C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, and K. Soper, New York: Pantheon Books.

NOTES 1. http://www.visualanthropology.net/?p=431—accessed November 24, 2016. 2. http://lril.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/2/357.extract—accessed November 24, 2016. 3. https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/culture-and-heritage/art-and-design/harry-becks-tub e-map—accessed November 24, 2016. 4. http://www.clarksbury.com/cdl/maps.html—accessed November 24, 2016. 5. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0491143/—accessed November 24, 2016. 6. http://londonist.com/2015/02/mind-the-gap-tells-the-true-tale-of-a-beloved-tube-annou ncer—accessed November 24, 2016. 7. http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=75 - accessed November 24, 2016; http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/apr/12/kings-cross-fire-fennellreport—accessed November 24, 2016; http://www.metadyne.co.uk/mind_the_gap.htm— accessed November 24, 2016. 8. http://www.visitbritainshop.com/world/souvenirs/clothing/product/mind-the-gap-undergr ound-t-shirt.html—accessed November 24, 2016. 9. http://www.anglotopia.net—accessed November 24, 2016. 10. http://www.anglotopia.net/site-news/featured/anglotees-alert-new-shirt-live-mind-gap-tribu te-london-tube/—accessed November 24, 2016. 11. http://www.anglotopia.net/british-travel/london/anglophile-deal-mind-the-gap-doormatwant/—accessed November 24, 2016.

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12. http://www.rogerwendell.com/unitedkingdom.html—accessed November 24, 2016. 13. http://www.ltmuseumshop.co.uk/books/mind-the-gap-a-london-underground-miscellany— accessed November 24, 2016. 14. https://inlanding.wordpress.com/2014/05/10/book-review-mind-the-gap-by-simon-james/— accessed November 24, 2016. 15. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Gap-Simon-James/dp/0007114478—accessed November 24, 2016. 16. https://sm.britsafe.org/mind-gap-safety-london-underground—accessed November 24, 2016. 17. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-21719848—accessed November 24, 2016; http://www.theimportanceofbeingtrivial.com/the-original-mind-the-gap-returns-....html— accessed November 24, 2016. 18. http://www.emmaclarke.com/fun/mind-the-gap/spoof-london-underground-announcement s—accessed November 24, 2016. 19. http://www.peterdickson.co.uk—accessed November 24, 2016. 20. https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/news-articles/mind-the-celebrity-voice—accessed November 24, 2016.

REFERENCES Backhaus, P. (2006), “Multilingualism in Tokyo: A Look into the Linguistic Landscape,” in D. Gorter (ed.), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism, 52–66, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Backhaus, P. (2007), Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Borah, P. (2011), “Conceptual Issues in Framing Theory: A Systematic Examination of a Decade’s Literature,” Journal of Communication, 61 (2): 246–63. Cassirer, E. (1985), The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 4. The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, New York: Yale University Press. Cassirer, E. (1996), The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 3. The Phenomenology of Knowledge, New York: Yale University Press. Cenoz, J. and D. Gorter (2006), “Linguistic Landscape and Minority Languages,” in D. Gorter (ed.), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 67–80. Chandler, D. (2017), Semiotics: The Basics, 3rd edn, London: Routledge. Coupland, N. (2010), “Welsh Linguistic Landscapes ‘from above’ and ‘from below’” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, 77–101, London: Continuum. Coupland, N. (2012), “Bilingualism on Display: The Framing of Welsh and English in Welsh Public Spaces,” Language in Society, 41 (1): 1–27. Coupland, N. and P. Garrett (2010), “Linguistic Landscapes, Discursive Frames and Metacultural Performance: The Case of Welsh Patagonia,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 205: 7–36. Entman, R. M. (1993), “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication, 43 (4): 51–58.

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Ferreira, M. I. A. (2015), “Semiosis: The Dialectics of Cognition,” in P. P. Trifonas (ed.), International Handbook of Semiotics, 1125–37, Toronto: Springer. Forman, R. T. T. and M. Godron (1986), Landscape Ecology, Oxford: Wiley. Goldman, R. and S. Papson (1996), Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising, New York and London: The Guildford Press. Goffman, E. (1974), Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, Boston: Northeastern University Press. Gorter, D., ed. (2006), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Gorter, D. (2012), Book review: Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow (eds.), “Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space,” Language in Society, 4 (11): 130–33. Gorter, D., H. F. Marten, and L. Van Mensel, eds. (2012), Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gottdiener, M. (2012), Book review: Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow (eds.), “Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space,” Applied Linguistics, 33 (1): 107–11. Hammersley, M. (2006), “Ethnography: Problems and Prospects,” Ethnography and Education, 1 (1): 3–14. Hammersley, M. (2011), “Objectivity: A Reconceptualization,” in M. Williams and W. P. Vogt (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Innovation in Social Research Methods, 25–43, Los Angeles: Sage. Hammersley, M. (2013), The Myth of Research-Based Policy and Practice, Los Angeles: Sage. Hertog, J. and D. McLeod (2001), “A Multiperspectival Approach to Framing Analysis: A Field Guide,” in S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy, and A. E. Grant (eds.), Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and our Understanding of the Social World, 139–61, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Jaworski, A. (2015), “Welcome: Synthetic Personalization and Commodification of Sociability in the Linguistic Landscape of Global Tourism,” in B. Spolsky, O. Inbar-Lourie, and M. Tannenbaum (eds.), Challenges for Language Education and Policy, 214–32, London: Routledge. Jaworski, A. and C. Thurlow (2010), “Introducing Semiotic Landscapes,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, 1–40, London: Continuum. Jaworski, A. and S. Yeung (2010), “Life in the Garden of Eden: The Naming and Imagery of Residential Hong Kong,” in E. Shohamy, B-R. Eliezer, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 153–81, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Kallen, J. (2010), “Changing Landscapes: Language, Space and Policy in the Dublin Linguistic Landscape,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, 41–58, London: Continuum. Koenig, T. (2004), Reframing Frame Analysis. Systematizing the Empirical Identification of Frames Using Qualitative Data Analysis Software. Paper Presented at the ASA Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, August 14–17, 2004. Landry, R. and R. Y. Bourhis (1997), “Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An Empirical Study,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16 (1): 23–49. Laur, E. (2007), Book review: Durk Gorter (2006) “Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism,” http://linguistlist.org/issues/18/18-1072.html Maher, T. M. (2001), “Framing: An Emerging Paradigm or a Phase of Agenda Setting?” in S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy, and A. E. Grant (eds.), Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and our Understanding of the Social World, 83–94, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Mayhew, S. (2009), A Dictionary of Geography, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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McRae, K. (1975), “The Principle of Territoriality and the Principle of Personality in Multilingual States,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 4: 33–54. Mehta, V. (2013), The Street: A Quintessential Social Public Space, London: Routledge. Morris, C. W. (1938/1970), Foundations of the Theory of Signs, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Nash, J. (2012), Book review: Adam Jaworski ans Crispin Thurlow (eds.), “Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space.” London and New York: Continuum. 2010. Elana Shohamy and Durk Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, New York: Routledge, 2009. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 16 (4): 552–55. Peirce, C. S. (1931–58), Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (8 volumes), edited by C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss and A. W. Burks, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Silverman, D. (2015), Interpreting Qualitative Data, 5th edn, Los Angeles: Sage. Silverman, D. (2013), Doing Qualitative Research: A Practical Handbook, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Soja, E. (1985), “The Spatiality of Social Life: Towards a Transformative Retheorisation,” in D. Gregory and J. Urry (eds.), Social Relations and Spatial Structures, 90–127, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Soja, E. (1996), Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other Real-and-Imagined Places, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Sullivan, R. (2017), The Geography of the Everyday: Toward as Understanding of the Given, Athens: University of Georgia Press. Turner, M. G., R. H. Gardner, and R. V. O’Neill (2007), Landscape Ecology in Theory and Practice: Pattern and Process, New York: Springer-Verlag. Van Leeuwen, Th. (2004), Introducing Social Semiotics, London and New York: Routledge. Williams, M. (2015), “Situated Objectivity, Values and Realism,” European Journal of Social Theory, 18 (1): 76–92. Wu, J. and R. J. Hobbs, eds. (2007), Key Topics in Landscape Ecology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SECTION II

The Spaces and Places of LL Research

CHAPTER FIVE

Online Linguistic Landscapes: Discourse, Globalization, and Enregisterment JEFFREY L. KALLEN , ESTHER N Í DHONNACHA , AND KAREN WADE

1 INTRODUCTION LL research has usually focused on signage in the physical, terrestrial world. The early study by Rosenbaum et al. (1977) had a strong territorial orientation, since it focused on a single geographical area (Keren Kayemet street in Jerusalem) and compared the frequency of the Roman alphabet (taken as a proxy for English) and Hebrew in signage with the use of English as a spoken language within the same locale. Spolsky and Cooper (1991) likewise took a strongly geographical approach to their discussion of the distribution of languages in the signage of Jerusalem, Backhaus (2007) developed a quantitative geographical approach to Tokyo signage in which district-by-district comparisons play a major role, and Barni and Bagna (2010) measured the “visibility and vitality” of Chinese, Romanian, Russian, and Ukrainian in specific districts of Italian cities. The study of LLs in relation to language policy (e.g., Sloboda’s 2009 comparison of Belarus, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) naturally invites a geographical approach, since language policies are framed within geopolitical boundaries (see also chapters by Dunlevy and by Juffermans and Kudžmaitė, this volume). Studies of globalization and the LL such as Blommaert (2013) and Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael (2016) focus not on the world as a whole but on the visible relationships between globalization and specific areas such as Berlin and Antwerp, respectively. Though tourism also involves long-distance population movement, studies in this field (e.g., Bruyèl-Olmedo and Juan-Garau 2015) also take it for granted that the basic material for LL research consists of signs in specific locations frequented by tourists. Androutsopoulos (2014: 82) describes LL as a field in which the “main empirical object is language use on street signs,” while Nash (2016: 384) argues against LL as a separate field of research since “at ground level, all landscape research which involves language is arguably linguistic and all linguistic research must somehow be landscape connected.” This geographic orientation for LL research is not accidental: accepting Scollon and Scollon’s (2003: 164) argument that “the geosemiotic meaning

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of the sign depends on where on the earth it is placed,” it becomes clear that signage itself derives part of its meaning from the circumstances, physicality, and reception of its emplacement. The LL, however, has not always been seen in purely physical and geographical terms. Landry and Bourhis (1997: 41) used the term “linguistic landscape” not only to describe physical signs but also to include “contacts with television programs, magazines or journals, movies, radio programs, and newspapers.” Shohamy and Waksman (2009: 315) bring this broader perspective into the internet era with the view that it is essential to draw attention to the sphere of the cyberspace where again boundaries between “private” and “public,” “real” and “virtual,” “space” and “place” lose their original meanings as they converge and overlap. Thus the cyber space (e.g., YouTube) expands the LL “geography” to include people who are not necessarily present physically but nevertheless become active participants in the LL scenery in virtual ways. (Emphasis in original) Marten, Van Mensel, and Gorter (2012: 4) offer a critique in pointing out that “the emphasis in most linguistic landscape work has been on [. . .] static signs,” and state that new research is needed because “this focus may seriously limit the variety of signs that one can encounter in public space.” More recently, Halonen (2015: 128) has argued in favor of “perceiving virtual environments as landscape,” supporting a view that “social media applications and the internet should be considered as specific landscapes where people spend a lot of their spare time,” which are “explored and experienced as material places just like other types of physical landscapes” (p. 142). This chapter is designed to fit within this broader tradition in LL research, deriving its impetus from the study of visible language in public places, and developing the notion of place to include the online world in specific ways. Our approach thus starts with the notion of landscape as applied to online environments, rather than with a focus on internet discourse itself. There is a large body of research on various aspects of discourse in new online media, and space limitations preclude a full review here. Soukup (2006) and Androutsopoulos (2010a, b), for example, have explored themes in relation to online environments and physical space. Kutsuno and Yano (2007) and Gottlieb (2010) consider linguistic creativity in Japanese online writing and discourse; code-switching and creativity in the development of Persian, Indian and Greek diasporic communities online have been examined by Androutsopoulos (2007); Li and Juffermans (2011) have considered similar issues for Dutch-Chinese internet discourse, as has McLaughlin (2014) for Senegalese communities. Deumert (2014) focuses more specifically on the building of identity using playful discourse in social networking sites. Papers closer to the subject of this chapter include those by Androutsopoulos (2012), which consider the semiotics of layout and the use of English (in such functions as “heading,” “bracketing,” and “naming”) in German online communication, and the efforts by Ivkovic and Lotherington (2009: 17) toward “conceptualising the virtual linguistic landscape” in order to, as they say (p. 18), “map out the possibilities for research, both conceptual and empirical, of multilingualism in cyberspace within the LL framework.” Though our discussion is informed by the insights of these and other studies on the nature of internet discourse, we want to start by bridging the gap between mainstream LL research and the specific demands of an online linguistic landscape (OLL) that is made of digital, rather than terrestrial, images, and language displays. In order to develop this concept of the OLL, we divide our discussion into two parts. The first part focuses on LLs in online environments. Taking the LL as what Shohamy

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and Waksman (2009: 314) call “text presented and displayed in the public space,” we ask how to characterize an OLL in which anything linguistic (or semiotic) can happen: monolingualism, multilingualism, translanguaging that breaks the barriers between existing codes, and multimodalism. The second part illustrates our understanding of the OLL by the close scrutiny of one specific domain of activity: the construction of Irishness by internet users, based on the demands of community-building in the online environment and on the affordances of the online environment for the creation of LLs. This approach is designed not only to describe a specific case but also to facilitate further research in a wide range of circumstances.

2 PART ONE: DEFINING THE OLL We start with the development of three sets of problems which are fundamental to the OLL. These problems can be grouped under the following headings: 1. Boundaries: – What is a landscape in the online environment, given the disconnection between the terrestrial world and the world as it appears online? – How is the public space of the online environment distinguished from private space and language use? – How does the OLL reterritorialize the historical dynamics of the terrestrial LL? 2. Spatial fluidity: – Given that online units such as words and images can exist on one computer or device at a given moment, but may also exist on millions of spatially diffused devices at the same time, we ask, does the OLL exist in a defined physical space? – What effects in the OLL arise from the impermanent nature of the online environment, in which end users can change the environment at will and may also find it changing involuntarily as a result of their own online histories? 3. Expressive fluidity: – How does the OLL develop new discourses which involve frequent interchange between the roles of sign creator and sign recipient as well as translanguaging which crosses barriers between codes and modalities? We approach the issue of boundaries by parsing the phrase “text presented and displayed in the public space” closely. No LL study can claim to be entirely inclusive of all text that can be found within a given spatial area. An LL study which uses data from shops, for example, is likely to focus on signs in shop windows or doors: little attention will be paid to newspapers, magazines, and goods within the shop, and still less to the language of till receipts, inventories, wiring, and plumbing fixtures or other texts that may be considered incidental, but are nevertheless present. The texts that usually feature in LL studies are framed in physical ways that make their status as presentations self-evident. A poster, road sign, billboard, public notice, shop sign, or notice in a window has a discrete physical boundary, a commissioning authority (whether personal or institutional), and a publicly recognized function: even examples such as graffiti and the accumulations in what Kallen (2010) terms the “detritus zone” have physical attributes of display in the public eye. Thus it has not been difficult for LL studies to select written texts for analysis, abstracted

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from (though connected to) a cultural space in which spoken languages permeate social interaction. We face a potential problem in the online environment, however, since most material is already textual, and what is not textual (e.g., images and music) is usually accessed through textual interfaces. If all public text is potentially part of the LL, then the OLL must include nearly all the content on the internet, and a concept of the OLL becomes meaningless. The study of the OLL, therefore, requires a distinction between those components of online linguistic engagement which are analogous to the everyday language of the terrestrial world, and those online elements which, like elements in the terrestrial LL, count as “text presented and displayed” in public. Our suggestion is that the OLL resides not in the content of websites, comments, and messages, but in the linguistic features and affordances of these online spaces that can be harnessed by both users and web developers for the purpose of language display and enregisterment. In setting this boundary, we are influenced by notions such as Eastman and Stein’s (1993: 187) definition of language display as “an attempt to inform others of who one is, or would like to be in the world.” What sets apart the material of the terrestrial LL is its focus on ways in which variable linguistic resources such as code-switching, cross-linguistic borrowing, and the ascription of value to particular codes are always at the ready to allow language users to display who they “would like to be in the world.” Using a theory such as the “markedness model” of Myers-Scotton (1998), we can suggest specifically that the creators and administrators of online spaces make marked choices of linguistic and related visual elements which set out their own identity in particular ways. By contrast, user identities can be encoded by marked choices such as usernames; even using a “default” setting (such as the Twitter egg) represents a display choice. Because these visually encoded elements are examples of linguistic display, they make up part of the OLL. Language display in this sense is clearly related to Coupland’s (2001) view of “stylization” in the use of dialect. For Coupland (2001: 348), this notion “implies seeing dialect as PERFORMANCE rather than as BEHAVIOR, and [. . .] as SOCIAL PRACTICE rather than as VARIATION” (emphasis in the original). As we will see below, display and stylization in the OLL rely heavily on intertextuality, defined by Bauman (2004: 4) as “the relational orientation of a text to other texts,” based on “the ways in which each act of textual production presupposes antecedent texts and anticipates prospective ones.” Following from these principles, we suggest that from within the potentially limitless data of online discourse, what counts as OLL must be framed in specific ways so as to be presented and displayed, rather than simply used as a medium of communication. To pick an illustrative example, Wikipedia is a highly public, information-centered web-based resource with versions in a number of languages. It would be redundant to argue that the English-language version of Wikipedia engages in significant acts of identity by using English. That is not to say, however, that Wikipedia has no LL. A menu on the left-hand side of the typical page displays a wide range of languages which can be used for Wikipedia texts: this language choice is an element of the LL, and a screenshot of this section would be more multilingual than a terrestrial sign is ever likely to be. In the context of the main English text, then, Magyar (for example) is a linguistically marked choice: it is not simply a link to Magyar Wikipédia (Hungarian Wikipedia), but tells the reader something about Wikipedia itself. Yet once the reader has clicked on to Magyar Wikipédia, Hungarian becomes the default language and there is no added significance in the use of Hungarian: the LL element fades from language display into the unmarked chatter of information giving.

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Our approach to the boundary between public and private space in the OLL is also linked to the question of spatial fluidity, and relies on spatial metaphor. Bittarello (2009), for example, points out that spatial metaphors such as navigating or surfing the internet; chat rooms, web pages, and home pages; and the very nodes and webs that are basic in thinking about the internet can be shaped to define internet “spaces” for specific purposes. Crucially for the OLL, terms such as “internet traffic,” “surfing the internet,” “forums,” “boards,” “chat rooms,” and “email” each involves notions of space and access. The continuum of access from traffic (which implies widespread and easy access leading to large numbers of participants) to email (analogous to postal mail which is usually addressed to a specific individual and meant to be read privately, even if copies may also be sent to others) includes a boundary between public and private. At the public end, we find online resources such as Wikipedia, which aim to cater for as much traffic as they can support; in general, any internet user can visit the site without cost or entry barriers, and the way is open for information recipients to become information contributors. Most forums and blogs, as well as many websites, also operate at a level of access which encourages public participation. Many newspapers have now breached traditional boundaries between public and private: whereas the print newspaper entered the public domain in a way that made readers’ comments purely private and personal (apart from the possibility of publishing a few tightly controlled “letters to the editor”), newspapers now often facilitate online public comment. Privately owned social networking sites such as Facebook use the framework of the public network platform to provide users with a general landscape in which discourse can take place. Through the use of different privacy settings (ranging from “public” to “secret”), however, it is possible to create a more private space within the public domain, in which membership and viewability may be controlled. Online communities created this way may be small, but they function as a public domain. Building from the existing spatial metaphor that the internet is a highway, we argue that search engines (the signposts which guide us on journeys) are public; website landing pages (the shop fronts which tell us what goes on inside establishments) are public; members-only forums, private Facebook groups, privacy-enabled blogs, and pay-walled content providers (parts of the business which are marked off as “private,” “employees only,” or “restricted”) are usually private; and emails (communications which take place within specifically delimited spaces) are private. The expressive fluidity of the OLL gives prominence to the interchange of roles between sign recipients and sign receivers. Most of the terrestrial LL is constructed by agents with commissioning responsibility and control over the space in which textual elements are displayed, regardless of whether the agent is a multinational corporation, a civic authority, or a local shopkeeper. Graffiti and detritus represent exceptions, the first because it often transgresses rules over control of public writing spaces, the second because it is constructed without willful design. There are many parts of the online environment, however, where the public can participate in the construction of a changing LL. As we demonstrate below, however, this fluidity and the possibility of rapid change do not preclude a demarcated OLL. Rather, what it means is that certain specific characteristics of discourse will become integrated into the language of the OLL. We proceed here on the basis of core concepts in the use of the term “landscape” that transcends the boundary between the terrestrial LL and the OLL. These concepts include the visual ensemble, in which the whole of the observable landscape in any given space provides a context for that part of the landscape which contains language presentation and display; textual stability, according to which visible texts may range from relatively

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permanent fixed signs and inscriptions to those with short-term existence or placement, but are not transient in the manner of spoken, signed, or similarly short-term language use; and code choices in which linguistic codes (including mixed, interlanguage, and indeterminate code choices) are displayed for specific purposes. The construct of the visual ensemble allows us to include nonlinguistic visual and auditory elements in analyzing texts; the adherence to the notion of public display differentiates the OLL from other types of multilingual behavior; and the identification of common problems and behaviors in terrestrial and OLLs differentiates LL study from more general landscape research.

3 PART TWO: COMMUNITIES AND THE OLL— IRISH LANGUAGE, INTERLANGUAGE, AND TRANSLANGUAGING Using data which come especially from our own participant observation on social media (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Ravelry) and commercial websites, we examine here a set of data which is not designed to be “representative” in a statistical sense, but is intended to demonstrate a variety of strategies which are used to negotiate aspects of Irish identity in the OLL. These include usernames and other identifiers that rely on the use of the Irish language, Irish English bilingualism, or features associated with Irish English; global internet memes and other displays which index language awareness in the Irish setting; the commodification and enregisterment of Irish and Irish English; and discourse which relies on Irish English bilingualism to signal in-group identities. The development of the OLL by Irish internet users expands Wade’s (2013: 56) observation that “Irish bloggers make use of cultural texts [. . .] to perform and shore up their individual and communal identities” and focuses particularly on elements of the OLL which connect smaller communities in the global context of the internet. The general dynamic we describe is not unique to Ireland—Juffermans, Blommaert, Kroon, and Li (2014), for example, have examined community-building and internet discourse in the Chinese diaspora in the Netherlands, while Nassenstein and Hollington (2016) discuss the use of globalized linguistic repertoires and expressions of identity in Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other such examples can be found elsewhere—but each situation has its own distinctive features which require detailed examination in order to understand these practices as part of the development of LLs.

3.1 Usernames and other identifiers The technology of mass communication carries with it the possibility of personalization via language display. Kalčik’s (1985: 101) early analysis of nicknames (known as handles) used by CB radio operators pointed out that a handle is “chosen, or said to be chosen, because it reflects some part of a person’s identity,” thereby offering “the option of choosing a handle that reflects some desired quality or state and building a fantasy identity and life around it.” More recently, Bechar-Israeli’s (1995) study of chat room data leads to a conclusion that “even the most elementary symbolic or intellectual property—in this case one’s nickname—is experienced as an extension of the self,” while Deumert (2014: 25) notes that “every time we log onto Facebook we experience the volitional dimension of who we are.” Our Tumblr sample includes (a) Irish-language usernames based on standard Irish, albeit written in conformity with online conventions, such as aprilisainmdom.tumblr.com, condensing Irish April is ainm dom “My name is

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April,” and An Moncaí Míshuaimhneach “The uneasy monkey,” who describes himself as Stiofán. Éireannach. Is feirmeoir agus mac léinn na Gaeilge mé “Stiofán. Irish person. I am a farmer and a student of Irish”; (b) neologisms, including easpageag.tumblr.com, which combines easpa “lack” and geag “limb” to create “legless” (British and Irish English slang meaning “drunk”), contrasting with standard Irish gan chos, literally “without a leg” or éagosach “legless,” neither of which conveys the sense of “drunk”; and (c) literary references, as with truagh-mo-thuras.tumblr.com. The phrase truagh mo thuras references two seventeenth-century poems: the penitential “Truagh mo thuras go Loch Dearg” (translated by Ó Tuama and Kinsella 1981: 27 as “Vain My Visit to Loch Dearg”) and the polemical “Truagh mo thurus ó mo thir,” rendered as “Sad Is My Journeying from My Country” by Ua Muirgheasa (1910: 309) and attributed to the Protestant clergyman Pádraig Ó Duincín (Patrick Dungin). The latter reference further indexes powerful themes of Irish diaspora identity. These usernames meet the expectations of language display. They present Irish in a global blog platform dominated by other languages (especially English); the use of Irish is not driven by the demands of presenting information through Irish (contrast the Irish-language web content surveyed by Kelly-Holmes 2006); and they use intertextuality to associate the individual user with Irish culture in ways that can contain layers of cultural meaning. Though the Tumblr usernames contain no special visual elements, the four user profiles in Figure 5.1, from Ravelry (a social networking platform based in the United States and devoted to fiber arts such as knitting and crochet), are more like the terrestrial LL in combining language display with visual imagery. In the context of a global (English-dominant) internet platform, these profiles display Irish expressively. Though the Irish does not always correspond to standard orthography, especially in the lack of accent marks which are integral to modern Irish spelling but problematic in many online environments, the goal of display is accomplished: eanair (standard Eanáir) “January” and cniotaili (cniotálaí) “knitter” can be parsed simply. CorcraCroise combines corcra “purple” and croise “cross [genitive].” The phrase stretches the language, since noun-adjective word order in Irish would require cros corcra “purple cross,” and “purple of the cross” is obscure. Obscurities, unexpected uses of language, wordplay, and rule violations are often found in the terrestrial LL (see, for example, Jørgensen 2008): they should be taken for granted in the OLL. The

FIGURE 5.1 Ravelry usernames in Irish.

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identifier roisindubh (Róisín Dubh) is more complex, building on a play between the literal meaning “little black rose” (Irish rós “rose” + diminutive suffix –ín and dubh “black”) and the visual image of a black rose. Though the name Róisín is common in contemporary usage (thus “black-haired Róisín”), the name makes intertextual reference to a chain of historical associations which includes the seventeenth-century political poem “Róisín Dubh.” This poem is based on an older love poem (see Ó Tuama and Kinsella 1981: 308–09), but is now best known for subsequent translations and imagery which portray Róisín Dubh (sometimes anglicized as “dark-haired Rosaleen”) as the embodiment of the Irish nation. Usernames in the OLL also index Irishness by code-mixing and the use of Irish English. Figure 5.2 shows a profile from Twitter with an extended bilingual message, along with bilingual usernames from Ravelry. The four Ravelry examples follow a pattern of juxtaposing an Irish word with an English word, allowing for modifications and polysemy. We parse Bogbean as English bog + Irish bean “woman” (phonetically [ban]), yielding “bog woman” according to English syntax and referencing the topiary sculpture of a woman which appears to the left of the text; SewBabog as English sew (also referencing so) + Irish babóg “doll”; Surfguna as combining English surf (linked to the seaside photograph to the left) with Irish gúna “dress”; and CarrigkerryCailin as a place-based identifier, indexing the Carrigkerry townland in Co. Limerick + Irish cailín “girl.” The Twitter profile is framed as the discourse of an official organization (Coiste Focal Nua “New words committee”), but belongs to an individual user. The notice regarding “slang and modern words in Irish” is followed by an Irish version which closely parallels the English and relies on the neologism phitmhaisithe, offered as an equivalent to vajazzle, based on Irish pit “vulva” + maisithe “decorated.” Variation in Irish English also contains a wide range of linguistic features that can function as markers of identity. Signmakers in the Irish terrestrial LL sometimes use local lexicon, morphology, or representations of phonology for specific purposes (Kallen 2013: 154, 158, for example, illustrates signage using the lexical items one and one “fish and chips” and bazzer “haircut”), but such usage for fixed signs (as opposed to commodities such as T-shirts) is relatively rare. Official signage does not assign high value to these features, and issues of prestige as well as the over-familiarity of local dialect or vernacular may discourage their use in commercial signage. In the OLL, however, local linguistic features can take on added value for the very reason that they are familiar within the

FIGURE 5.2 Twitter and Ravelry usernames: Code-switching.

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community but may be obscure to, and are often misinterpreted by, outsiders (cf. the enregisterment of “Pittsburghese” described by Johnstone, Andrus, and Danielson 2006). Tumblr usernames in our sample illustrate this principle. The username janeymac-ie. tumblr.com, for example, trades on knowledge of Janey Mac as a euphemism for Jesus Christ when used as an exclamation, and on a rhyme well known in Irish tradition: Janey Mac/me shirt is black/what’ll I do for Sunday?/Go to bed and cover me head/and not get up till Monday. The username culchiescorner.tumblr.com indexes culchie, a term used with various connotations to refer to people from rural areas or areas outside of Dublin (see Dolan 2012 and Kallen 2013: 159–60). Figure 5.3 illustrates four further identifiers from Twitter, Tumblr, and Ravelry. The Twitter username for Aidan Lawlor, @aidolawlo, appears to be a simple shortening of his actual name, but there is more to it than that. The process of name truncation and –o suffixation is a traditional feature of Dublin English. Perhaps the best-known example is the historic red-light district known as the Monto (named for Montgomery Street) in north Dublin; other well-known examples include the Jervo (Jervis Street Hospital) and personal names such as Anto “Anthony” and Steeo “Steven.” The form aido “Aidan” thus sends a signal of identity to those who know the vernacular. The graphic from official-ireland.tumblr.com introduces another element of cultural and linguistic reference. The profile is satirical, using a profile format that is typical for Tumblr, but does not refer to the actual blogger. Instead, the picture shows Enda Kenny, the then-taoiseach (head of the government): pale and ginger are meant to refer to Kenny’s complexion and hair color, and the mention of 1916 references the historic Irish uprising against British authority. The phrase the immersion has particular cultural reference. Immersion heaters are used to heat water in domestic settings, and while the term is not unique to Irish English, reference to the culture of having domestic hot water available only when the immersion has been turned on for specific purposes (a bath or shower, doing dishes), together with a requirement to turn off the immersion at all other times, has become a familiar part of Irish culture (though now reducing with the more widespread availability of central heating): see “Des Bishop’s immersion routine” for an Irish-American insight. In this example, the immersion refers not simply to an electrical device but to a household routine that is perceived to be distinctively Irish.

FIGURE 5.3 Irish English references in usernames.

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The Ravelry username beanzer is polysemous. The affixation of –er to nouns in Irish English is highly productive: common forms cited in Kallen (2013: 155–56) include chipper “fish and chips shop,” Croker “Croke Park,” backer “back laneway between houses,” and sanger “sandwich.” The name beanzer can thus be glossed as beans + -er using an Irish English derivational rule. As we have already seen, though, Irish bean “woman” is also a feature of Irish usernames, and we should not be surprised to find it in a largely female group such as Ravelry: hence beanzer may also reference Irish bean. No such ambiguity holds for UnderMeOxter, which references oxter “armpit,” a dialectal word whose spread includes Ireland, England, and Scotland.

3.2 Internet memes and displays: Irish and bilingual awareness Internet memes are readily adaptable across languages, and Irish is no exception. The displays of Irish on Tumblr in Figure 5.4, however, are not simply translations; rather, they index the cultural experiences of Irish speakers, focusing especially on the position of Irish as a minority language which nevertheless has high official status and features prominently in education and government. Each of the memes in Figure 5.4 follows an international type; further information is available from the Know Your Meme website. The four-part “50 Shades” meme follows the international pattern: in the top left-hand panel, Tá dúile . . . ar leith agam can be translated as “I have . . . unconventional desires,” which is followed on the top right by

FIGURE 5.4 Irish-language internet memes.

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Taispeáin dom “show me.” The bottom right panel gives the local cultural reference, showing a demonstration in support of Irish-language rights in which the slogan Cearta teanga = Cearta daonna “Language rights = human rights” features prominently. The “Boromir” meme usually develops from the line, “One does not simply walk into Mordor,” which quotes the film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The version here follows a common pattern, with the top line reading Níl sé ró-éasca “It is not too easy,” followed by Gaeilge Thír Chonaill a thuiscint “to understand Donegal Irish.” The reference to Donegal Irish reflects a widespread perception (at least outside of Ulster) that Donegal Irish is particularly difficult to understand. The “Success kid” meme has GaelSpell ar Microsoft Word “GaelSpell on Microsoft Word” on the top line, followed by níl líne dearg faoi gach focal “no red line under every word.” GaelSpell is a commercially available Irish-language spellcheck for use with Microsoft Word, and the reference to the red line under each word speaks to the frustration of using Irish when it is not recognized by Word. The examples in Figure 5.5 instantiate global meme formats by using Irish and referencing non-Irish material. Along with the images in Figure 5.6, these bilingual displays engage in the discourse frame which Coupland (2012: 22) labels “laconic metacultural celebration.” The Mila Kunis and John Travólta memes follow the celebrity “Name Pun” pattern. In the former case, the reading of this actor’s surname sounds like the Irish word ciúnas “silence.” Mila ciúnas thus contrasts with the phrase Mila ag caint “Mila speaking.” The latter meme plays on the contrast between the Irish word ólta “drunk” (complete with vodka bottle in the bottom left of the picture) and English sober. The “Pun Dog” meme also follows an international type, in this instance asking Cén sort Gaeilge a labhraitear ar an nGealach? “what kind of Irish do they speak on the moon?” The answer, Gaeilge na Mumhan! means “Munster Irish!”: the humor (reminiscent of the “culture of ‘fake’ subtitles” on YouTube described by Androutsopoulos 2010a: 214–16) derives not from the direct meaning, but from the phonological similarity between English moon and

FIGURE 5.5 Memes in Irish punning with non-Irish material.

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FIGURE 5.6 Irish hiding in plain sight.

Irish Mumhan [muːn] “Munster.” The examples of Figure 5.5 thus use cross-linguistic references to index membership in a bilingual community which understands the humor, displayed on platforms read by outsiders in the global online environment. The elements of display in Figure 5.6, both from Tumblr, share a rhetorical stance of explaining Irish to outsiders. This stance references a common experience for Irish people who interact with tourists or who live abroad. The promise that the “cute Irish term of endearment” would endear the speaker to “any Irish sweetheart” is a joke for insiders: go ndéana an diabhal dréimire de cnámh do dhroma ag piocadh úll i ngáirdín Ifreann can be translated as “may the devil make a ladder of bones from your back and pick apples in the garden of Hell.” Likewise, the “short poem in my native tongue” is a translation of standard examination regulations (“now read carefully in your examination paper the instructions and questions which belong to section a”), referencing the experience of studying Irish in school. Given the discrepancy between outward presentation and actual meaning, we can say that the Irish is hiding in plain sight.

3.3 Commodification The links between LLs and commodification have been explored in various ways. Leeman and Modan’s (2009: 353–54) observations of Chinatown in Washington, DC, show ways in which “spatial branding [. . .] has led to the Chinese language becoming a floating signifier that can be used to signify, or to sell, not just things Chinese but anything at all,” while Jaworski (2015) focuses on the transformation of items of text into “language objects” (artworks, sculptures, etc.). Commodification in the OLL goes beyond what is readily available in terrestrial environments. Not only can a wide range of language objects be bought and sold on the internet but the online displays of language that advertise goods or facilitate access to them become objects of display in their own right: the publicity itself becomes an object of exchange in a way which rarely happens in the terrestrial LL. Figure 5.7 displays three examples of marketing Irish-language T-shirts. The T-shirt slogans are in Irish, yet the advertising can be in English and Irish, and references to Anglophone culture are evident. The slogan An bhfuil tusa ag caint liomsa? (from the Hairy Baby website) translates “Are you talking to me?” spoken by Robert De Niro in the film Taxi Driver; the graphic continues this reference. A similar link is made with Tá an geimhreadh ag teacht “Winter is coming” (T-léine website). This phrase and the graphics that go with it can only be fully understood in the context of the television series Game of Thrones. The marketing even claims that “this is the 1st Game of Thrones inspired t-léine as Gaeilge [‘T-shirt in Irish’] anywhere.” The legendary popularity of tea in Ireland is referenced by the Is maith liom cupán tae “I like a cup of tea” T-shirt from

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FIGURE 5.7 Commodification of Irish in T-shirts.

the now-defunct freshmilkclothing.com website. Here the marketing translates the slogan into English and adds “you can’t argue with that. Unless you don’t like tea of course, in which case you are a freak!” Across these three cases, we see displays of the in-group language, in two cases making simultaneous reference to global culture and in one case emphasizing local tradition. Commodification also shows identity references which use bilingualism and the enregisterment of Irish English dialect and vernacular. Figure 5.8 shows four T-shirts with mixed code references. No better buachaill [“boy”], from the Hairy Baby website, uses simple code-switching, but takes added value from the idiomatic status of phrases of the type “No better X” in Irish English. As Hairy Baby explains, “No Better Man (Boy/Lad/Fella) Usually used to give respect to someone.” Is maith liom Mayhem “I like Mayhem” from freshmilk.com appears to be a case of simple code-switching, though we cannot rule out the possibility that there may be another reference involved. The Connemara-based company An Spailpín Fánach (The Wandering Farmhand) has parallel websites in Irish and English, and offers a meditation on the T-shirt Ach ar dtús fan go dtógfaidh mé #selfie “But first wait until I take a #selfie.” Justifying the code-switch to #selfie, they point out that “there is an Irish word ‘Féinphic’ [literally ‘self-pic’] but we thought the internationally recognized one was better in this case.” The mixed expression What the fliuch!, using Irish fliuch “wet,” has become a catchphrase found in various internet contexts. The phrase simultaneously references the international What the fuck! exclamation, the outsider’s likely misunderstanding of Irish fliuch, and the insider’s shared experience of high amounts of rainfall in Ireland. Marketing from the T-leine website claims, “There are many times in Ireland when this phrase is required. Rain, rain and more rain!” Figure 5.9 shows commodification which displays Irish English and a range of cultural and linguistic references. The Hairy Baby T-shirt on the left, for example, returns to the immersion as a point of cultural reference. The use of feck it and sure it’s grand from the GrandGrand website uses two well-documented phrases with particular Irish associations. Phrases such as feck it and feck off fulfill a wide range of discourse functions in Irish English and are not simple euphemisms for their non-Irish equivalents with fuck. Even in the relatively standardized register of the International Corpus of English for Ireland (ICE-Ireland; Kirk, Kallen, Lowry, Rooney, and Mannion 2011) and Great Britain (ICE-GB 1998), we can contrast

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FIGURE 5.8 Irish and English bilingual commodification.

FIGURE 5.9 Irish English and commodification.

the eight occurrences of expressions with feck in ICE-Ireland (e.g., And I was in the mood to buy something so I said feck it) with its complete absence in ICE-GB. Similar considerations hold for grand, which functions more widely as a mark of approval in Irish English than elsewhere: see Kallen (2013: 207) for more ICE data and Hickey (2015: 25–27) for a historical view. The overall layout using the Irish harp (an image used in a range of official and unofficial contexts) also references the “Keep calm and carry on” international meme which uses the British crown. The image from the Freshmilk website which contains the word “bold” (“badly behaved” in Irish English)

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indexes a ubiquitous marker of this language variety. Irish English usage is generally taken to represent a loan translation from Irish dána, defined in Irish lexicography as “bold, brave, intrepid,” “determined, shameless, barefaced,” and “ "naughty,” as a child” (see Dineen 1934 and further discussion in Kallen 2013: 148–49). Since the word occurs so commonly in household contexts, its display here is not simply a dialect feature, but an aspect of stylization which references the experience of growing up in Ireland. The catch phrase Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir? (English “would you like to sleep with me tonight?”) has a mixed history in English. Its earliest textual documentation appears to be in the novel Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos, where it exemplifies the fragmentary use of local language by soldiers in an overseas environment (see Dos Passos 2002: 62); it features more recently in a variety of pop songs recorded by various artists. The T-shirt on the Freshmilk website, however, substitutes Irish English shift “kiss” for French coucher. As documented by Share (2008) and others, Irish English shift can be used as a verb (usually transitive) or as a noun, as in He’s a shift I think (ICE-Ireland). Finally, we turn to Facebook discourse which exhibits stance-taking with regard to issues in Irish linguistic culture. The “Oh my God what a complete Aisling” group on Facebook focuses on a constructed figure known as Aisling. This name for girls is of relatively recent currency; it ultimately derives from Irish aisling “dream, vision,” but the most relevant reference is to aisling poetry and song which developed from the eighteenth century onwards as an expression of national vision and cultural resurgence. In the Facebook context, Aisling represents a stereotypical young woman from rural or small-town Ireland who lives in Dublin and embraces some aspects of rural tradition as well as aspects of global modernity: see the OMGWACA Wiki website, and the more recent work by McLysaght and Breen (2017), for further information. Aisling’s equally fictional boyfriend, “Generic John” (GJ), also forms a focus of attention. Contributors to the anonymized Facebook discourse in Figure 5.10 use elements of Irish and Irish English to construct a collaborative view of the stereotypical figure, at the same time engaging in an extended “laconic metacultural” discourse. The initial response to the question of Aisling’s ability to speak Irish—cúpla focail “a couple of words”—is a set phrase which refers to a low level of Irish usage. It can be used positively to suggest an effort to employ some knowledge of Irish, but it can be

FIGURE 5.10 Metalinguistic display on Facebook.

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used disparagingly to suggest a minimal competence underlying any visible efforts to use the language. The next comment uses the distinctive Irish English terms “leaving” (short for “leaving certificate,” the concluding secondary school qualification in the Republic) and grinds “tutorial sessions,” before referring to the poem “Faoiseamh a Gheobhadsa” (“I would find peace”) by Máirtín Ó Díreáin (1984), which frequently features on the Irish-language secondary school syllabus. The comment which follows indexes the experience of Irish people who find that even a small amount of Irish serves as a code that cannot be understood in foreign countries, while Féach, GJ, na broga úafááááásach uirthi “look, G[eneric] J[ohn], the aaaaawful shoes on her” captures an Anglophone prosodic pattern in an Irish-language utterance. Other expressions also pepper the discourse: tír gan teanga tír gan anam “a country without a language is a country without a soul” and the words geansai “jumper,” plámás “smooth talk, flattery,” citeog “left-handed person,” amadán “idiot,” bainisteoir “manager” and srl “etc.” are all elements that would be well known from the study of Irish in school and can be inserted into conversation to demonstrate knowledge of Irish without necessarily reflecting substantial competence. Arra huist involves two discourse particles in traditional dialect: arrah, long-attested in Irish English and related to various Irish counterparts (see Kallen 2013: 182 for a review), and whist “be quiet,” which is related to English dialectal whister and to Irish fuist. The subsequent discussion also comments on Aisling’s attempts to mix with the Irish club while in college, despite her shaky knowledge: note the return to the first comment using the neologistic verb formation cúpla focailing. The suggestion that Aisling hides her lack of knowledge behind mention of cross-dialectal differences also indexes common experience for Irish-language learners, while the expression Scarleh Johannson references both an international celebrity and Irish English scarlet “embarrassed” using a vernacular pronunciation of /t/ with final [h]. In this discourse, English is the unmarked language which provides a matrix for communication, while Irish and elements of Irish English index attitudes to language in contemporary society by their use as language display.

4 CONCLUSION Returning to the questions raised in our introduction, our view is that the OLL constitutes a definable segment of online activity which can be coherently separated from the totality of online visual discourse. Using the metaphor of the highway and the affordances of the internet, it is possible to define a distinctive landscape of online public space. As our Irish data show, discourse in this OLL is relatively rich in language display, and uses linguistic markedness, stylization, and intertextuality to heighten the awareness of display. There are strong links, too, between reterritorialization and features of OLL discourse such as intertextuality and commodification. As our data show, events which occur in the offline world—whether the language rights protests in Figure 5.4, banal instructions over immersion heaters, or the use of Irish as a spoken language—can be extracted, expressed in an identifiable form which can be repeated (in keeping with the Bauman and Briggs 1990: 73 notion of “entextualization”), and displayed in the OLL. Commodification crosses and recrosses boundaries, since, for example, images of T-shirts in the OLL can lead to the purchase of T-shirts in the physical world; these T-shirts can be photographed and put online; and a cycle continues. Similarly, globalization effects in the terrestrial LL have their parallels in the OLL; though the internet memes we consider in Figures 5.4 and 5.5 provide obvious examples, much of the display we consider here derives its force from being directed to local recipients within a global platform.

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With regard to spatial and expressive fluidity, our evidence suggests that these are affordances of the medium rather than barriers to the development of an OLL. As in the terrestrial LL, some parts of the OLL are relatively stable, while others are much more variable. Proprietary platforms like Facebook and Tumblr are not entirely public, but they provide a stable visual format (like a wall in our highway metaphor) which defines an expressive nearly public domain that, like a legal graffiti wall, allows for language display. The physical diffusion of imagery across devices provides unique affordances for the OLL: though the Irish data considered in this chapter express a shared sense of Irishness, and usually originate from Irish internet users, they are on view to the world at large and may include a geographically dispersed population within the community. Irish signage with a community focus can be found in the terrestrial LL (see Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha 2010 and Moriarty 2012 for examples), but is heavily dependent on its physical placement: the reader must be in the right place at the right time to get the message. Impermanence is a problem for researchers, since there is no guarantee that data once observed can be retrieved again by another researcher, but not a problem for the OLL itself. We have shown here too that the boundaries between sign user and producer in the OLL change freely in ways that even graffiti and other informal LL inscriptions cannot match. Shops in the terrestrial world display their identities in the LL, but customers do not: usernames are a distinctive feature of the OLL. Graffiti can show a cycle of inscription, response by other graffitists, eradication by civic authorities, and revival, but the opportunities for participation are limited and the pace of interaction far slower than the pace of dialogue shown here in Figure 5.10. In short, we suggest that not all online discourse counts as LL, and that the OLL shows parallels to, divergences from, and intersections with the terrestrial LL and its wider linguistic culture. The dynamics of these relationships, in turn, become a subject for research in its own right.

WEBSITES An Spalpín Fánach website. https://www.spailpin.com/en. Des Bishop’s Immersion Routine. (2003). Available on https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=52bna-tn_dY (accessed March 2, 2017). Grandgrand website. http://www.grandgrand.ie Hairy Baby Clothing Company website. https://www.hairybaby.com Know Your Meme website. http://knowyourmeme.com T-léine website. https://t-leine.ie OMGWACA Wiki website. http://omgwaca.wikia.com/wiki/Aisling

FURTHER READING Danet, B. and S. C. Herring, eds. (2007), The Multilingual Internet: Language, Culture, and Communication Online, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Georgakopoulou, A. and T. Spilioti, eds. (2016), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication, Abingdon: Routledge. Seargeant, P. and C. Tagg, eds. (2014), The Language of Social Media: Identity and Community on the Internet, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Thurlow, C. and K. Mroczek, eds. (2011), Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. Given the importance of boundaries in online spaces, and the sometimes ambiguous ways in which public and private spaces are delineated online, what are some of the ethical concerns that may arise when conducting OLL studies? How can we best reconcile these concerns with the requirements of research? 2. Look back through your own social media posts, usernames, blog posts, forum histories, and so on. Do you use language display (which may include bilingualism, code-mixing, translanguaging, dialect play, etc.)? What purposes does this display serve in your posts, and how conscious were you of these purposes when you posted? How does your use of language display vary over time and/or across different online spaces?

PROJECT WORK 1. Analyze the OLL as it pertains to either a cultural or linguistic group or a specific online community such as a Facebook group, a subreddit, or an Instagram community. What languages, dialects, and other semiotic references are used in marked ways? How do members use language and semiotic display to express and develop their individual and group identities? Use examples. 2. Landry and Bourhis (1997) saw the LL as including “contacts with television programs, magazines or journals, movies, radio programs, and newspapers,” but these areas have received much less attention in LL studies compared to street signs, shop fronts, graffiti, and so on. Choose one of these less-studied landscape areas, or name another area which you think has been overlooked in LL research. Outline the important features and parameters of your chosen area: What discourse is public, what is private, and what is in between? Then, conduct a case study of language use in that area. What forms of language display can you find? What cultural features are indexed? What social structures are subverted or shored up? How do individuals and groups construct their identities within the landscape?

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CHAPTER SIX

The Semiotics of Spatial Turbulence: Re/ Deterritorializing IsraelPalestine at a South African University NATALIJA CERIMAJ , TOMMASO M. MILANI , AND E. DIMITRIS KITIS

1 INTRODUCTION Taking service delivery protests in South Africa as a case in point, Stroud has recently proposed that turbulence could be a useful heuristic lens for the field of LL in that it captures “the disruptive ‘revolutionary moment,’ where different orders and regimes of understanding may come together through moments of dissonance, disagreement, and contest” (Stroud 2016: 15). In saying so, Stroud draws upon the work of geographers Cresswell and Martin (2012) who suggest how turbulence—unlike other concepts— aptly grasps the complex “shifting registers of order and disorder, neither of which is permanently stable, always locked into disjunctive interplay” (Creswell and Martin 2012: 15). And what counts as “order” and “disorder,” and the struggle for their definition, are themselves part of the creation of turbulence (see, for example, Milani 2015 for an analysis of the politics of order/disorder in the context of LGBT activism in Johannesburg). Inspired by the notion of turbulence, we analyze in this chapter another instance of the complex dynamics of order and disorder, and how these two registers play out through forms of spatial semiotics. More specifically, we focus on the competing activities of two protest groups at a South African university, Israeli Apartheid Week and Give Peace Wings, each of which supports Palestine and Israel, respectively. In casting a critical gaze on the spatial semiotics of these two opposing groups, we seek to offer both an empirical and a theoretical contribution to the burgeoning LL scholarship. Empirically, existing LL scholarship (see, for example, Shohamy 2006; Ben-Rafael et al. 2006) has analyzed semiotic artifacts geographically located in Israel-Palestine mounting arguments about the power differentials of Hebrew vis-à-vis English and Arabic in Israeli/Palestinian public spaces. By contrast, we offer an example of what Said

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calls “imaginative geographies” (Said 1994 [1978]), illustrating how Israel-Palestine is perceived, represented, and reimagined through language and other meaning-making resources (e.g., color, images) outside of its borders—in South Africa. Such a focus on the ways in which Israel-Palestine are represented in a South African context allow us to illustrate the complex spatio-temporal multi-layeredness of semiotic signs (Blommaert 2013; Blommaert and Maly 2014). Theoretically, we concur with Stroud (2016) that turbulence is a suitable metaphor through which to grasp the uncertainty and unpredictability of human/spatial dynamics. Protests are a typical case in point of spatial turbulence with people staking political claims by re-signifying sections of built environments with a plethora of semiotic devices: cardboards, slogans, T-shirts, and their own bodies (see also Kitis and Milani 2015 and Rojo 2014). On its own, however, turbulence might be too generic. Therefore, further operationalization is needed for the concept to offer a fine-grained analysis of LL data. In line with the remit of this book, we believe that there is much to be gained by bringing together turbulence with two conceptual traditions that have historically had little engagement with each other, namely Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) ideas about space, and Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, which offers a readily available framework for scrutinizing linguistic and visual data (see Kress and van Leeuwen 1996; Machin and Mayr 2012). We do not have space to delve into either of these conceptual frameworks in detail here (see, however, Pietikäinen 2015; Milani and Levon 2016). Suffice it to say that, in their monumental oeuvre, A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari (2004) distinguish between what they call striated and smooth spaces. Described with the help of a variety of highly suggestive metaphors, striated space is typically the result of sedentary human labor—a ploughed field would be a case in point. A neighborhood would also count as a striated space since “it is constituted as a semiology of coded arrangements of closed spaces, crossed by walls, enclosures and routes between enclosures” (Bremner 2010: 76). By contrast, smooth space is like the wind-swept, grass vastness roamed by the nomad; it “is directional rather than dimensional. It structures movements in vectors, holding space for a while before moving on” (Bremner 2010: 77). This distinction, however, is only at best partial because “the two spaces in fact exist only in mixture: smooth space is constantly being translated, trans-versed into a striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space” (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 524). In light of this, it could be said then that turbulence emerges out of the spatial morphing from striated to smooth and back again. Deleuze and Guattari go on to clarify that striated/smooth dynamics occurs as a result of specific spatial processes: striated space is created through (re)territorialization, which produces spatial arrangements according to categorical markers such as nationhood, class, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, and so on. By contrast, smooth space is the product of deterritorializing processes, which are like vectors that go against the grain delinking space from identity categories. (Re)territorialization and deterritorialization, in turn, are achieved through a variety of semiotic means which encompass specific linguistic, visual, and other semiotic choices, which can be deconstructed with the help of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. A basic assumption in Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis is that visual elements such as color, shapes, and images constitute a “pool” of affordances with meaning potential, and text producers need choose among them every time they want to create a textual artifact. Whether intentional or not, such choices are never random but depend

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on a variety of factors which include inter alia the historical associations that, say, a color has with a specific nation-state (e.g., blue with Israel; green, red, and black with Palestine). Moreover, meaning is created by the juxtaposition of a verbal text, for example, the personal pronoun “we” with particular visual choices such as the South African flag, which anchors the pronoun to the “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) of South Africans, including the addresser and addressee. As we illustrate, below, multimodal choices play a key role in the two protest groups under investigation in this chapter: they rely on both similar and different visual and linguistic affordances in order to create diametrically opposite political messages, the one in support of a free Palestine, and the other one in support of Israel. In sum, we believe that the notion of turbulence can be productively operationalized with the help of Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) understanding of space, and Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, thus offering a granular analysis of the semiotics of order and disorder, and their political meaning-making. Before delving into detailed analysis of relevant examples, however, we want first to give some background about how the data was collected.

2 METHODOLOGICAL NOTE The data analyzed in this chapter consists of visual resources distributed by the Israeli Apartheid Week and Give Peace Wings on the University of the Witwatersrand’s (Wits henceforth) Braamfontein campus around the week of March 8, 2015, as well as photographs of each group’s information stands. The items in question include posters, pamphlets, stickers, T-shirts, and any other noticeable structures of the university built environment, which were covered with words or pictures by either group during that week. A total of ninety-one images were collected, of which we have chosen ten for detailed analysis here. They were selected because they are the most representative thematically and in terms of salience of the discourses circulated by both protest groups during that week. In what follows we perform a detailed Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of the selected data, paying special attention to the language used as well as other semiotic means such as colors, shapes, images, and symbols, and their meaning potential. Concurrently, we are aware that the examined materials are mediational means in actions carried out by social actors; therefore, we illustrate the complex relationship between text and action, showing how these semiotic choices are deployed in a way that territorialize, reterritorialize, and/or deterritorialize Israel-Palestine in relation to South Africa and thereby produce a turbulent pattern of smoothing and striation. For the sake of clarity, we analyze each protest group in turn, followed by an example in which both groups struggle for space on university campus.

3 ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is not exclusive to Wits, but is an annual series of events held globally during February/March that aim to organize—and give a brand to—pro-Palestine campaigns such as the movement for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Wits is no exception, and several distinct pro-Palestine organizations on campus operate as a collective under the banner of IAW. “Apartheid” is a well-known Afrikaans word that literally means “separation,” and indicates the system of oppression on the basis of race, which marginalized nonwhite people in South Africa for decades. Because of the collective

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trauma it generated as well as the resistance it prompted, apartheid is a highly emotionally charged word in the South African context. By branding the activist movement as IAW, this organization is not only reterritorializing what is often considered a uniquely South African historical phenomenon but also applying it to the territorial division between Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the concomitant differential treatment of Israelis and Palestinians, but, because of its emotional load, the word “apartheid” also creates shared affective attachments that transcend spatial/temporal differences between Palestinian and South African experiences. The poster in Figure 6.1 is perhaps the richest example of the nexus of discourses circulated by IAW on campus. The style and composition are similar to those in another poster created by the famous artist and cartoonist Carlos Latuff for the 2009 IAW.1 In the

FIGURE 6.1 Israeli Apartheid Week.

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poster of Figure 6.1, a little boy is portrayed from behind holding a sad-faced teddy bear and a South African flag, walking in a no man’s land between two high walls. Several linguistic and visual choices are particularly relevant in Figure 6.1. To begin with the visual elements, the boy is wearing a keffiyeh—the black-and-white chequered scarf which was popularized worldwide by the late leader of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine, Yasser Arafat, and has become a global symbol of pro-Palestinian support. Moreover, the color palette of the image consists of red, green, and black, accented with white text, which evokes the flag of the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli flag, on the other hand, is visible on the towers, which the boy is facing. Taken together, these visual choices territorialize the image making it uncontroversial that the walls and high towers in the picture represent the Israeli-West Bank barrier built by the state of Israel after the second Intifada in 2000, allegedly to work as a security barrier against terrorist attacks on Israeli soil. It is also important to highlight the choice of a child as the central represented participant (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). This is an intertextual reference to an iconic figure of Palestinian struggle—Handalah, the ten-year-old boy represented from behind with his hands clasped against the back, which was created in 1969 by Palestinian cartoonist Naji-Al-Ali. Like Handalah, the boy in the poster is represented from behind. His hands, however, are not clasped but carry a sad teddy bear whose grief becomes proxy for Palestinian suffering. Another strong affective element encoded in the poster is a suffocating sense of imprisonment. The child is completely surrounded by two lines of walls; his movement is restricted by the bulwarks and monitored by the turrets built by Israel. This claustrophobic feeling is produced further by the dark hues of the ground on which the boy stands, a darkness symbolizing death that is restricted to the space within Israeli-built walls. By contrast, the sky the boy is looking at is filled with the colors of Palestine. As such the sky and the ground are in a dichotomous relationship: the sky stands for the possibility of a freedom, which is, however, out of reach for Palestinians at present; by contrast, the ground symbolizes the current reality of restrictions and control operated by Israel. Nevertheless, the boy faces a point in the horizon behind the walls, where the sky’s (bright) colors seem to dominate, indicating his intention to walk in this direction. His posture metonymically stands for the Palestinian people’s longing for freedom and the hope of a future free Palestine. Overall, visual elements are marshaled together in such a way that territorialize the space in the poster to Israel-Palestine. However, such discursive spatialization is complexified by the presence of the South African flag, coupled with the imperative “Boycott Apartheid Israel,” which creates a spatial and historical link between Israel-Palestine and South Africa. It is as if the Israel-Palestine conflict were reterritorialized and rehistoricized via semiotic props that index South Africa. It is to such instances of reterritorialization that we will turn now. In another poster, which is a variation of the one represented in Figure 6.1 and cannot be reproduced here because of space constraints, it is stated that “IAW 2015 will be held across South Africa in remembrance of the over 500 Palestinian children killed during this recent Israeli bombing of Gaza.” This text helps to clarify why a child was chosen in this year’s IAW campaign. The explicit reference to Gaza also gives territorial precision to the message of the campaign. Moreover, just as the bulwarks and turrets marked by the star of David in Figure 6.1 visually symbolize Israel’s active containment of Palestinians’ movement, the words “assault” and “bombing” in the text of the poster help to represent

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Israel as the aggressive agent while the description of Palestinians as “besieged” casualties of war position them as the patients of Israeli actions. At the bottom of the poster is a collection of logos from established political organizations in South Africa, which include the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party, and the Wits Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC). The latter is a student-run organization exclusive to Wits, which was launched in 2005 to coordinate the various student groups/parties supporting the Palestinian cause—its main task being the promotion of the BDS movement. Analogous to the South African flag and the word “apartheid” in Figure 6.1, the logos of supporting South African official bodies help to reterritorialize the Israeli/Palestine conflict, and thereby create a spatial and political association to South Africa. Moreover, because of the status of these organizations, their presence on the poster operates like an authenticating discursive means that invests the pro-Palestine movement with authority and legitimacy. Needless to say, two posters alone cannot create spatial turbulence. Rather, they work in conjunction with a multitude of other posters circulating discourses that are not typically seen around campus at other points in the year. The most common IAW poster on campus was created by the Wits PSC. As can be seen in Figure 6.2, the slogan “To Exist Is To Resist” in a large, bold, black typeface is positioned next to the invitation to “JOIN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST APARTHEID ISRAEL,” expressed in a direct imperative form, above a miniscule dark human silhouette twisting in preparation to shoot a stone against a large blue military tank with its guns targeting the silhouette. Thus, the textual excerpts and image work side by side juxtaposing power (volume and guns) to resistance (silhouette hurling a stone). Like the previous examples, visual elements territorialize this image to Israel-Palestine: (1) the casting of stones, which visually symbolizes the Palestinian revolt—the intifada; (2) the color blue that marks the tank as Israeli; and (3) the Palestinian flag. These are combined with other semiotic devices that simultaneously reterritorialize the space in the poster to the South African context: the word “apartheid” and the South African flag. Here the positioning of the two flags next to each other visually conveys South African/ Palestinian solidarity. In light of this complex weaving of Israel-Palestine with South Africa, the statement “To Exist Is To Resist” could not only be interpreted as a description of the fighting character of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation but also be taken as a normative appeal to South African students to consider their own existence as carrying some sort of obligation to challenge systems and institutions in solidarity with their Palestinian peers as well as to honor their own history of past struggles. Such a link between South Africa and Palestine is imbued further with a strong emotional layering through the usage of the word “apartheid” to describe the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories (Figure 6.1). This reterritorialization is strengthened and enhanced by the accompanying text underneath the visual part of the poster, in effect justifying the direct admonition to join in the struggle as part of the South African legacy (see, especially, the second sentence). Such a transnational allegiance is further reinforced through the pronoun “we” and “struggle” in the accompanying text: “As students of a democratic post-Apartheid South Africa, we stand with all those engaged in the struggle.” Through the pronoun “we,” the poster creates an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) of South African students, who, cognizant of their repressive past and aware of their current belonging to a democratic polity, commit themselves to supporting anyone who is still fighting for freedom, including Palestinian people. Moreover, in the South African context, the word “struggle” evokes

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FIGURE 6.2 To Exist is to Resist.

the resistance against racial inequality and oppression. In this way, the historical loading of the word “struggle” helps to create a spatio-temporal connection between the South African fight against apartheid of the past and the movement for Palestinian liberation in the present. In this way, the struggle against Israeli apartheid is reterritorialized within the local context as part of students’ own identity but also internationalized as was the case with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. This internationalization process in effect breaks any territorial boundaries, making the struggle an international one, not restricted to or placed in any particular space or context. Such a spatio-temporal link and rationale for action is further enhanced by reproducing a quote from a speech given by Nelson Mandela at an event in Pretoria to commemorate the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on December 4, 1997. The quote is placed at the bottom of the page in a larger typeface than the main body of text: We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.—Nelson Mandela (International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Pretoria, December 4, 1997)

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Mandela’s voice is a powerful reminder that the achievements of the South African liberation movement are curtailed by the acknowledgment that the Palestinians still lack freedom. Moreover, his own history as a fighter against apartheid and his role of first president of democratic South Africa imbue the Wits PSC and the IAW movement with legitimacy and gravitas. Crucially, we will show below that IAW is not the only organization that mobilizes Nelson Mandela’s words in order to legitimize their agenda. GPW also did it, albeit with a view to advocating for Zionism rather than against it. Posters were not the only discursive semiotic means through which “imaginative geographies” (Said 1994 [1978]) of Israel-Palestine were created on campus during the week of action. Wits PSC and its affiliates such as the BDS movement and pro-Palestine student political parties also had a presence on the Library Lawns, which are a focal point for student activities on campus. Here the IAW collective set up a tent to host talks and gatherings while creating an installation under the theme “Welcome to Gaza.” The installation, seen partially in Figure 6.3, consisted of an area of the lawns demarcated by caution tape in the shape of the Gaza strip. In order to represent the Palestinian children killed in a recent bombing of Gaza, wooden rods were stuck into the ground in the approximate sites of the strikes, while next to them paper signs carried the name of the locations in question. The creation of the map of Gaza on the university grass is another example of reterritorialization through which the Israeli/Palestinian reality is reimagined on South African soil, this time, however, in a three-dimensional way. Unlike posters or banners, which are two-dimensional artifacts, an installation such as this offers the possibility of an embodied engagement on the part of the viewer vis-à-vis the assemblage of different semiotic objects—the welcome boards, the wooden rods, and the paper signs (see also Bucholtz and Hall 2016; Milani 2015; Peck and Stroud 2015 for the sociolinguistics of embodiment).

FIGURE 6.3 Welcome to Gaza.

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Visitors approaching the installation were met by two signs carrying the words “Welcome to” and “Gaza,” each of which on adjacent trees formed an imaginary entrance into the conflict-ridden strip of contested land. In this context, it is important to observe the role played by typography in saturating the space with ideologically laden connotations. On the one hand, the font of the “welcome to” sign is typically found in the military and is used in labels of vehicles, supply crates, or name tags. In this way, this typographical choice permeates the space with a sense of militarization. On the other hand, the word “Gaza” has been spray-painted in red in a font that resembles graffiti tags, which, as a large body of LL work has illustrated (e.g., Pennycook 2010; Williams 2014), are semiotic means that index urban transgressive practices. The usage of graffiti in relation to Palestinian resistance could also be seen on the walls of a tunnel on the university campus, which is free to be painted by students. There, the Wits IAW movement spray-painted a large mural saying “Free Palestine” next to “Israeli Apartheid Week 2015.” Taken together, these typographical choices reterritorialize the militarization of Gaza in a South African university space, and resignify Palestinian resistance in a way that is palatable to urban youth who study at a university campus located in a neighborhood—Braamfontein— that is well renowned for its street art. Moreover, as transgressive semiotics, graffiti also register the perception of writers that they are marginalized or fighting against an oppressive authority (see Kitis 2011; Serafis et al. 2018). Meanwhile, social media and new communication technologies amplify their message of protest by disseminating actual graffiti onto online platforms as can be seen, for instance, with the graffiti drawn on the Israeli-West Bank barrier by the famous street artist Banksy but also with our own graffiti/ installation data in this chapter (see Blommaert 2016). All in all, these examples illustrate how territorialization and reterritorialization produced a complex striated texture in which Israel-Palestine and South Africa are woven together in an inextricable spatio-temporal pattern. The material disorder of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is rendered in an orderly fashion on the university campus through posters, graffiti, and other installations, but the affective turbulence of the war is amplified via shared emotional attachments between the South African past and the Palestinian present. Quite a different arrangement emerges from the competing group, Give Peace Wings.

4 GIVE PEACE WINGS The Give Peace Wings (GPW) movement at Wits is an initiative primarily spearheaded by the South African Union of Jewish Students (SAUJS), which has a significant membership at the university. It should be noted that South Africa has a sizeable Jewish community, which has been instrumental in promoting the country’s diplomatic and military ties with the state of Israel—especially, and quite controversially, during the period of Apartheid (Polakow-Suransky 2010). The contrast, both visual and linguistic, between GPW and IAW is striking. In terms of color choice, while IAW used mainly red, green, and black, GPW designed their posters and banners exclusively around the scheme of blue and white, which are the two colors of the Israeli flag. As for linguistic labels, just as IAW is heavy with discursive and affective connotations of oppression, resistance, and struggle surrounding the word “apartheid,” a peace-advocating identity is immediately set up by its name and logo of “Give Peace Wings,” which represents a stylized dove. The canon of Judeo-Christianity is credited with associating the white dove with peace. The biblical story of Noah’s ark describes the arrival of a white dove with an

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olive branch as being a herald of difficult times coming to an end. Thus, GPW wants to set the movement for peace in motion by giving it “wings,” the way the white dove had wings and could fly to Noah with its message. Although the symbol of the white dove might not overly mobilize its religious origins every time it is used in popular culture, it regains much of its religious meaning in the context of GPW’s campaign—it is organized by Jewish students who thereby foreground both their own religion and other Judeo-Christian denominations. GPW had three variations of the placard reproduced in Figure 6.4 informing the viewer of scheduled talks in the beginning of March. The posters are quite uniform in layout, the only differences being the stylized photograph of the guest speaker, the quote provided, and the actual dates of the talk. In the same way as IAW territorialized the Israel-Palestine conflict to South Africa with the help of specific semiotic choices, territorialization is also present in GPW, albeit through different means, to which we will now turn.

FIGURE 6.4 Olga Meshoe Give Peace Wings.

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Although democratic South Africa has economic and diplomatic relationships with the state of Israel, since 2012, the ANC has been participating in the international campaign for BDS, issuing a travel ban to Israel “for members and leaders of the ANC, the Alliance, Members of Cabinet, Members of Parliament and Government Officials.” Several cabinet ministers have also over the years publicly discouraged South African citizens from traveling there. It should also be mentioned that by 1986 Israel was one of the few countries that defied UN-sanctions against South Africa, and provided nuclear know-how to the apartheid government. With this historical background in mind, it is notable how the pro-Israel campaign includes the picture of a black woman as part of their posters. Through the inclusion of a black person, the movement is attempting to deterritorialize, and thereby smooth off, the historical connections between Israel and South Africa’s politics of racial segregation of the past, by reterritorializing them in a different fashion in the present. Here Olga Meshoe, the CEO of the NGO DEISI (Defend, Embrace, Invest, Support Israel) is presented as the spokesperson of all those who “are not alone.” It remains unclear who they are and what this might mean. However, one might argue that she represents all black South Africans who think differently from the ANC line and support Israel. It is not only racial inclusion that is invoked by GPW. Religious inclusivity is also capitalized on by the group in another poster in which the Greek-Orthodox priest Father Nadaf is quoted saying: “Israel is the only place where Christians in the Middle East are safe,” in an excerpt taken from a speech given at the UN Human Rights Council. Here, GPW appeals to an ideology of faith and religious tolerance, and the predominantly Jewish student society seems to be widening their scope welcoming people of a different faith—Christians—into the discussion. The inclusion of a Christian speaker suggests that there is no single religious (i.e., Jewish) agenda on the part of SAUJS in their campaign because multiple faiths are welcomed into the dialogue. Most importantly, the claim that Christians are not safe anywhere else in the Middle East presupposes that their well-being is dependent exclusively on that of the state of Israel. By implication all other countries in the region are assumed to be a danger to Christianity. We witness here an example of “orientalism” (Said 1994 [1978]), that is, a long-standing set of discursive processes through which Israel positions itself as more progressive, liberal, and democratic vis-àvis a retrograde, intolerant, and undemocratic Middle East, including the Palestinian territories (see also Milani and Levon 2016). Moreover, according to GPW, Palestinians themselves seem to agree on such an orientalizing representation, as can be seen in another poster (Figure 6.5) that advertised a talk held by Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist, who is quoted from his opinion piece in the Times of Israel as saying: We Palestinians hold the key to a better future.2 Followed by the caption: He will be speaking about sustainable solutions in the Middle-East conflict. In the same way as Olga Meshoe is made to stand as a representative of all South Africans supporting Israel in Figure 6.4, Bassem Eid becomes the spokesperson of an imagined community of “we Palestinians,” whose better future is dependent on finding “sustainable solutions in the Middle-East.” “Solutions” is an important keyword for the GPW movement, as can also be seen in the campaign hashtag #LetsTalkSolutions, which suggests that Zionism and pro-Israel sentiments are not meant to be promoted at the expense of Palestinians, but for their own benefit. Moreover, in the extract above, the conflict is momentarily “smoothed” being deterritorialized from the geopolitical specificities of Israel-Palestine, and recast as part of a rather indefinite geographical Middle East.

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FIGURE 6.5 Bassem Eid—the key to a better future.

Deterritorialization operates in this example by avoiding the positioning of two specific polities as being against one another, thereby suggesting that more room for cooperation and negotiation is provided. Neither party is presented as an antagonist. The use of the exhortative “let’s” also plays a similar interpersonal metafunction (Halliday 1994) to that associated to the inclusive “we.” The interlocutor is welcomed into a dialogue wherein all parties stand on an allegedly equal footing, the only required commonality being an interest in problem-solving for the conflict in the Middle East. Quite unsurprisingly, such claims did not remain unchallenged, as is testified by the warnings “Stop defending apartheid” and “Run Zionist run” handwritten inside the letters of the word “WINGS” in all three posters. These forcibly embedded admonishments in the imperative form enacting face threatening acts obviously try to deconstruct any sense of relocating the problem in such terms, that is, reterritorializing it in the South African context/space. Textual resistance aside, the peace discourse not only was encoded in the posters but also took semiotic manifestation on the library lawn, this time on the information

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table featuring a large board encouraging viewers to “Tweet for Peace.” The board was interactive in that people were invited to trace the shape of their hand and sign their names or write a message of support. As for the actual tweets containing the hashtag on Twitter, a brief examination seemed to reveal little in the way of productive discussion among the most popular tweets. It was another platform on which pro-Palestine and pro-Israel supporters could challenge the agenda of the other group or market their own agenda further. Members of IAW and other pro-Palestine accounts hijacked the hashtag to some extent in order to call the validity of GPW’s arguments into question, or simply to post images bearing anti-Israel sentiment. The peace discourse also took material shape at a rally near the information tent, where a very large banner displays “#LETSTALKSOLUTIONS” with photos of the speakers featured in the posters, and the GPW logo (Figure 6.6). Behind it, members have gathered with their black-and-white placards. What is most notable here is how GPW has also elected to quote Nelson Mandela extensively, confirming his universal status as a symbol of peace and reconciliation. Namely, members of GPW are holding up placards displaying the following Mandela quotations: I cannot conceive of Israel’s withdrawing if Arab states do not recognise Israel with secure borders. Nelson Mandela (visit to Israel, November 18, 1999) We insist on the right of the state of Israel to exist within secure borders. Nelson Mandela (Opening of the 37th Congress of South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Johannesburg, August 21, 1993) We recognise the legitimacy of the [sic] Zionism as a Jewish Nationalism.” Nelson Mandela (Opening of the 37th Congress of South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Johannesburg, August 21, 1993)

FIGURE 6.6 #LETSTALKSOLUTIONS.

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Nevertheless, the quotations have been decontextualized by GPW since they were mainly attempts by the former South African president to address the issue of post-apartheid relations with Israel, rather than express support for Israeli policy, of which the ANC and Mandela personally were always critical. The third quote is repeated, and it can also be found on a banner next to the information tent with the date and location of Mandela’s pronouncement (“Johannesburg, August 1993”). The banner itself displays a photograph of a smiling Mandela. Beneath the quote is a graphic depicting two hands grasping each other; one hand is made to look like the South African flag and the other, the Israeli flag. Just as IAW carefully wove together South Africa and Palestine through visual and linguistic strategies of reterritorialization, and legitimated a pro-Palestinian position with the help of Mandela’s words, so GPW constructs a territorial link between South Africa, Israel, and Zionism via visual means and employs Mandela’s statements to legitimize a pro-Israeli position. Moreover, while the inclusion of a black woman as a pro-Israel spokesperson in Figure 6.4 contributes to delinking the connection advanced by IAW between contemporary Israel and South Africa’s history of racial segregation, Mandela’s voice is strategically deployed to further legitimize Israel, as a multicultural, pluralistic society. The legitimation of pro-Israeli politics through racial inclusivity reached its embodied peak when a group of Zulu dancers appeared in traditional clothes happily waving an Israeli flag and showing support for the GPW movement (Figure 6.7). In sum, similar to IAW, GPW reimagines South African/Israeli relationships by weaving them together with the help of semiotic processes of reterritorialization, as well as racial and religious inclusivity. Moreover, deterritorialization is employed in order to “smooth” the spatial specificities of the conflict, presenting it as a more abstract process of “peace” and “solutions” in a generalized “Middle East.” The words “peace” and “solutions” emphasized by GPW are also presented as a more constructive, less turbulent alternative to

FIGURE 6.7 Zulu dancing.

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the narrative of struggle, apartheid, and aggression presented by IAW, and are legitimized via black people’s voices and bodies.

5 TURBULENCE IN ACTION While the analysis of the data in the previous two sections offered an overview of the opposition between two conflicting groups in constructing very different “imaginative geographies” (Said 1994 [1978]) of Israel-Palestine drawing upon semiotic resources of territorialization, reterritorialization, and deterritorialization, we want to delve now into an example of a turbulent attempt to vie for control over the “Graffiti Wall,” a three-timestwo-meter block of concrete located next to the popular area of the “Matrix Building” which contains restaurants, banks, and other retail enterprises on campus (Figure 6.8). The wall is free to be painted by anyone who asks for prior permission from the Wits Student Representative Council. In the days leading up to and during this activism week, the wall underwent several transformations, eventually becoming a turbulent semiotic battleground between IAW and GPW. In the first mural by IAW (Figure 6.8), we can see a human silhouette waving the Palestinian flag emerging from between sections of a blue wall. These are being pulled apart by two red and orange hand fists that are disproportionally bigger than the human figure. The size of the hands is indicative of the collective strength in the Palestinian fight against the Israeli-West Bank barrier, and the struggle for liberation more broadly against Israeli occupation. Moreover, the human silhouette metonymically stands for the Palestinian people squeezed between the wall, which in turn metonymically stands for the Israeli apartheid policy, while the hands symbolize the (Palestinian and international) resistance to that policy. On the bottom right-hand side is the graffiti-like writing IAW,

FIGURE 6.8 Free Palestine.

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which once again weaves Israel and South Africa into a spatio-temporal nexus. Such an interconnection is also realized through the writing “Free Palestine” on the floor just in front of the feet of the human silhouette. Similarly to the Gaza installation on the library laws, the wall and adjacent floor are props for the re-creation of Palestine on South African soil, and the viewer is no longer confronted with the conflict between Palestine and Israel in a purely remote or abstract way, since there is now a physical reproduction of this “dividing wall” on their campus. About midway through the week, half of the wall was coated over by GPW with white paint on which the slogans “Give Peace Wings Week” and “#LetsTalkSolutions” in blue are juxtaposed to handprints in green and blue (Figure 6.9). The deployment of the color white to erase the barbed wire and blue background is another example through which GPW seeks to deterritorialize the Israeli conflict, by transforming it into a less concrete, and less threatening, event delinked from a specific geopolitical location. Moreover, the pattern of green and blue hands next to each other suggests some form of reconciliation and unity between Palestinians (green) and Israelis (blue). However, while these visual choices, together with the omnipresent “peace” and “solutions,” might seem to suggest a serene compromise between parts, the erasure of the word “free” from “Palestine” on the floor might give away that the conditions for such a cooperation are not the result of negotiations between opposing parties, but have actually been single-handedly determined by Israel and its supporters. IAW did not witness GPW’s actions passively, but reacted by repainting the mural (Figure 6.10). The change was not drastic but nonetheless significant. IAW capitalized on the semiotic choice of handprints that GPW provided, replacing them though chromatically with the Palestine colors of red, green, and black. While GPW tried to

FIGURE 6.9 Green and blue hands.

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FIGURE 6.10 Replacing blue with green and red.

convey a sense of accord with a pattern of united blue (Israel) and green (Palestine) handprints, IAW actively rejected any idea of Israeli/Palestinian human “unity” by erasing all the blue handprints and replacing them with the colors of Palestinian solidarity only. This struggle for physical space is only one facet of a broader struggle for ideological space among Wits students. The painting and repainting of the wall speaks most vividly to the turbulence of protest- and counterprotest evident on campus: one group makes a statement, the next retorts with a counterstatement, and so forth. This wall is perhaps the most visible manifestation of such turbulence

6 CONCLUDING REMARKS Mondada highlights the “importance of social action for the making of space,” encouraging scholars to pay attention to “the details of the embodied production of these voices in and on space as well as of the controversial nature of plural versions of space” (2011: 291). It is out of the clanks and crashes of this multi-voicedness that turbulence emerges in the shape of “articulations of citizenship [. . .] mediated by contesting engagements with placed inscriptions in the politics of everyday change” (Stroud 2016: 16). IAW and Give Peace Wings, despite having opposing interests, had the same university space and demographic to work with, and yet their semiotic acts of placemaking is a complex nexus of similarities and differences. The most patent divergence lay in the use of color: GPW prefers blue and white— the two main colors of Israel’s flag—while IAW employs predominantly green, red, and black—the colors of the Palestinian flag. Moreover, GPW seems to have designed their brand to function as a “peaceful” alternative to “apartheid,” “struggle” and “resistance.” Their approach prefers not to identify an antagonist, but rather to foster

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an environment of blanket tolerance. This discursive antithesis to IAW suggests that GPW is more a “reactionary” protest—one that arose to mitigate the message of the existing IAW, rather than to disseminate pro-Israel sentiment as an isolated objective. While GPW aligned themselves to discourses of religious tolerance—of Christians, at least—and the emphasis on peace and negotiation, IAW promoted a discourse of resistance to oppressive powers, also including their obvious efforts to deconstruct GPW’s very announcements to talks by physically inserting their own version of interpretation to the poster aspect of them. Among the similarities are the strategies of legitimation and authentication via quotes from Mandela’s speeches in support of either pro-Israeli/Zionist or pro-Palestinian discourses. Moreover, in the creation of an “imaginative geography” (Said 1994 [1978]) of Israel-Palestine, both groups relied on strategies of territorialization and reterritorialization through which the South African past is reimagined and woven together with the present situation in Israel-Palestine. Whether tying Israeli politics to apartheid (IAW) or delinking Israel from its historical connections to apartheid South Africa (GPW), one element is clear—apartheid continues to be a key spatio-temporal reference point in framing “articulations of citizenship” (Stroud 2016: 15) in relation to current sociopolitical issues, even ones that are far from home. Young South Africans are cognizant of apartheid’s continuous “haunting presence,” and their re-entextualization of it in their campus activism is a deliberate attempt to connect the unique historical experience of South Africa in the past with other struggles, identities, and issues in the present.

FURTHER READING Kitis, E. D. and T. M. Milani (2015), “The Performativity of the Body: Turbulent Spaces in Greece,” Linguistic Landscape 1 (3): 268–90. An article that seeks to apply Stroud’s theoretical framework of turbulence to specific examples of protests in Greece. Rojo, L. M. ed. (2014), “Occupy: The Spatial Dynamics of Discourse in Global Protest Movements,” Special issue of Journal of Language and Politics, 13 (4). A thought-provoking collection of articles about protests in a variety of contexts, from Tahrir Square in Cairo to City Hall Park in Los Angeles. Stroud, C. (2016), “Turbulent Linguistic Landscapes and the Semiotic of Citizenship,” in R. Blackwood, E. Lanza, and H. Woldemariam (eds.), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscape, 3–18, London and New York: Bloomsbury. A key text that explains why the notion of turbulence is relevant in order to make sense of the dynamics of LLs.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. Critically discuss the notions of territorialization, reterritorialization, and deterritorialization, and apply them to specific examples from the LL. 2. Consider the notion of turbulence and how it was applied to the data in this chapter. Can you think of other ways in which to operationalize turbulence in order to make sense of the dynamics of LLs?

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PROJECT WORK 1. Collect photographs about IAW or any other demonstration/event which takes place somewhere near you. Analyze the data by focusing on the meaning-making resources (e.g., choices of words, colors, people). What are the connotations of these verbal and visual elements? What are the ideological implications of those choices? Are they problematic? Why? 2. Construct a corpus of texts that deal with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Drawing upon Said’s notion of “imaginative geographies,” examine how the conflict is portrayed in a variety of spaces (online and in the built environment). How are the spaces of Israel and Palestine represented through words and images?

NOTES 1. See: Israeli Apartheid Week | The Palestine Poster Project Archives, https://www.palestin eposterproject.org/taxonomy/term/436/slideshow 2. See: Bassem Eid “We Palestinians hold the key to a better future,” February 12, 2015, The Times of Israel.

REFERENCES Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Growth and Spread of Nationalism, New York, NY: Verso. Ben-Rafael, E., E. Shohamy, M. Hasan Amara, and N. Trumper-Hecht (2006), “Linguistic Landscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public Space: The Case of Israel,” International Journal of Multilingualism, 3 (1): 7–30. Blommaert, J. (2013), Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity, Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Blommaert, J. (2016), “‘Meeting of Styles’ and the Online Infrastructures of Graffiti,” Applied Linguistics Review, 7 (2): 99–115. Blommaert, J. and I. Maly (2014), “Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis and Social Change: A Case Study,” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 100: 11–33. Bremner, L. (2010), Writing the City into Being: Essays on Johannesburg, 1998–2008, Johannesburg: Fourthwall Books. Bucholtz, M. and K. Hall (2016), “Embodied Sociolinguistics,” in N. Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates, 173–97, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cresswell, T. and C. Martin (2012), “On Turbulence: Entanglements of Disorder and Order on a Devon Beach,” Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 103 (5): 516–29. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (2004), A Thousand Plateaus, London, UK: Continuum. Halliday, M. A. K. (1994), An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Arnold. Kitis, E. D. (2011), “The Subversive Poetics of a Marginalized Discourse and Culture,” in E. Foust and S. Fuggle (eds.), Word on the Street, 53–70, London: IGRS Books. Kitis, E. D. and T. M. Milani (2015), “The Performativity of the Body: Turbulent Spaces in Greece,” Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal, 1 (3): 268–90. Kress, G. R. and T. van Leeuwen (1996), Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, London, UK: Routledge.

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Machin, D. and A. Mayr (2012), How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction, London, UK: Sage. Milani, T. M. (2015), “Sexual Citizenship: Discourses, Spaces and Bodies at Joburg Pride 2012,” Journal of Language and Politics, 14 (3): 431–54. Milani, T. M. and E. Levon, (2016), “Sexing Diversity: Linguistic Landscapes of Homonationalism,” Language & Communication, 51: 69–86. Mondada, L. (2011), “The Interactional Production of Multiple Spatialities within a Participatory Democracy Meeting,” Social Semiotics, 21 (2): 289–316. Peck, A. and C. Stroud (2015), “Skinscapes,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1): 133–51. Pennycook, A. (2010), Language as a Local Practice, London, UK: Routledge. Pietikäinen, S. (2015), “Multilingual Dynamics in Sámiland: Rhizomatic Discourses on Changing Language,” International Journal of Bilingualism, 19 (2): 206–25. Polakow-Suransky, S. (2010), The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, New York: Vintage. Rojo, L. M. (2014), “Occupy: The Spatial Dynamics of Discourse in Global Protest Movements,” Journal of Language and Politics, 13 (4): 583–98. Said, E. (1978 [1994]), Orientalism, New York, NY: Vintage. Serafis, D., E. D. Kitis and Archakis, A. (2018). “Graffiti Slogans and the Construction of Collective Identity: Evidence from the Anti-austerity Protests in Greece,” Text & Talk, 38 (6): 775–97. Shohamy, E. (2006), Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches, London, UK: Routledge. Stroud, C. (2016), “Turbulent Linguistic Landscapes and the Semiotics of Citizenship,” in R. Blackwood, E. Lanza and H. Woldemariam (eds.), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, 3–18. London: Bloomsbury. Williams, Q. E. (2014), “Hip-hop, Graffiti Writing and Multiple Urban Identities,” in Z. Bock and G. Metha (eds.), Language, Society and Communication: An Introduction, 485–89, Pretoria: Van Schaik.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hong Kong’s Paper Cities: Heterotopia and the Semiotic Landscape of Civil Disobedience AARON ANFINSON

1 INTRODUCTION In a densely populated district of Hong Kong, a protester screams while blindfolded by the flag of the People’s Republic of China (Figure 7.1). Her voice is lost in the white-noise crossfire of prime-time shopping and distorted national anthems blaring from nearby megaphones. It is the first of July in Hong Kong. Marking the anniversary of the 1997 transfer of sovereignty from Britain to China, it is a holiday commemorating the end to over 150 years of colonial rule. Officially named Establishment Day, it is a solemn celebration of a new Special Administrative Region contentiously tethered to an estranged “motherland.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is also a day of protest. For various groups in Hong Kong, the establishment of this Special Administrative Region constitutes a handover from one colonial rule to another. Commemoration, therefore, involves much more than memorializing the administrative transition to China. It involves an ongoing struggle for autonomy, universal suffrage, and the continued preservation of free speech (cf. Chan and Kerr, 2016; Ho, 2017). Since its inception in 1997, protesters have used government holidays as a platform for imagining an alternative Hong Kong. Recently, however, the call has left the confines of holidays and well-organized marches. Dissent has overflowed into an everyday civil disobedience. In late 2014, thousands of Hong Kong residents took to the streets, forming a decentralized insurgent mobility that would come to be referred to as the “Umbrella Movement.”1 This unprecedented sit-in lasted nearly 80 days, involved more than 100,000 participants (at its peak), and resulted in occupied encampments in 3 distinct sections of the city: Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong Kok. Exemplifying Rancière’s (2001) notion that “politics is first and foremost an intervention upon the visable and sayable” (p. 9), the physical occupation of space begat a complex landscape of political dissent. The mass movement of bodies and emplaced signage inspired a temporary disruption of the prevailing order, providing space for imagining an alternative Hong Kong. A parallel paper city emerged, juxtaposed against Hong Kong’s metal and glass skyline.

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FIGURE 7.1 Establishment Day protester, July 1, 2015.

Not unlike Occupy New York, the Indignados, or the Arab Spring, dissent in Hong Kong entailed the appropriation of public space—it involved reterritorialization (cf. Deleuze and Guattari [1972] 1977; [1980] 1987). Linguistic and semiotic performances of resistance emerged, bringing about the “transformation of public space and the production of a counter-space” (Martín Rojo, 2014b: 625; cf. Martín Rojo, 2014a). In Hong Kong, this counter space was considerably extensive. Sites of protest quickly “generated new spatial practices, such as camping in tents, attending lectures in makeshift classrooms, organising art exhibitions, and even growing plants and vegetables in the patches of soil seized from roads and sidewalks” (Lou and Jaworski 2016: 611). Spanning nearly twelve weeks, the large-scale production of multilingual signage and protest art constituted evolving parallel cities made out of paper and plastic. These paper cities, however, were constructed to be temporary. They were not permanent settlements; they did not constitute a progression toward a new social reality. They were not a revolutionary breakthrough, a “new land” beyond hegemony (Deleuze and Guattari [1972] 1977: 318; cf. [1980] 1987:471–72; Purcell 2014).2 Instead, the materiality and multimodality of Hong Kong’s civil disobedience movement illustrate the need for a fluid approach to reterritorialization. In what follows, I consider how this approach can be enhanced by Foucault’s ([1984] 1986) conception of heterotopia. Literally meaning “other places,” heterotopia is defined by Foucault ([1984] 1986) in Des Espace Autres (“Of Other Spaces”) as sites of crisis and deviation that temporarily subvert the order of external space. In contrast to his early depictions of heterotopia as involving the mere decentering of language (cf. Foucault [1966] 1989), this conceptualization extends beyond deterritorialization and into reterritorialization. Through six principles of heterotopology, Foucault describes the architecture of a social world interpolated by relational disruptions of space and time. He conceives of heterotopia in relation to the evolving power dynamics that invest place with meaning and authority. The concept is specifically used to describe how “we do not live inside a void” but that “we live inside a set of relations that [constantly] delineates sites” that are only constructed in relation to other sites and already existing power structures (p. 3). Heterotopia, therefore, is reflexive. It not only describes the plurality of space but also entails the realization that place is only made meaningful in relation to the power dynamics of other places. In

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highlighting subversive elements, heterotopia encompasses the reflexive construction and materiality of place. This makes it a particularly useful concept for analyzing the appropriation of public space and fleeting expressions of political dissent. Throughout this chapter, I highlight how this conception of heterotopia can enhance an approach to reterritorialization, informing a reflexive analysis of the semiotic landscape (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010; cf. Shohamy and Gorter, 2008) of civil disobedience. Following Jaworski and Thurlow’s (2010) notion of semiotic landscapes, I consider how the emplacement of bodies, written text, images, protest artifacts, and makeshift structures shaped and constituted heterotopias within Hong Kong’s civil disobedience movement. I detail how heterotopia can be used to enhance the theorization of language and place, describing the affordances in which “written discourse interacts with other discursive modalities” (p. 2). Although LLS have begun to utilize the notion of heterotopia to provide detailed evidence of the role of language within the plurality of place (cf. Lou, 2007; Pietikäinen, 2014; Tufi, 2017), a considerable gap exists in exploring the reflexive power dynamics entailed by the subversive, multimodal elements of heterotopic sites. Heterotopia defined as an inverse, multimodal site of crisis and deviation has yet to be examined in detail. Therefore, I will focus on how the six principles of heterotopology can inform (and be informed by) linguistic and semiotic approaches to reterritorialization. From over 10,000 images taken across over 80 days as a documentary photographer and participant observer, I detail how Hong Kong’s paper cities encompassed each of Foucault’s ([1984] 1986) 6 principles of heterotopology. I describe how this landscape of civil disobedience (1) constituted spaces of crisis and deviation, (2) had evolving specific functions, (3) entailed spatial juxtapositions, (4) were designed to be ephemeral and temporary, (5) contained specified borders, and (6) amounted to an overall subversion of external space. I illustrate how Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement exemplified heterotopic counter spaces that temporarily inverted both China’s nation-state project and the hegemony of aggressive forms of neoliberal spatiality that have targeted this “World City” as the center for the investment of transnational capital. I conclude by considering how these principles of heterotopology can enrich an understanding of the process of reterritorialization, expanding the scenery by informing a reflexive approach to analyzing the multimodal materiality of civil disobedience.

2 THE UMBRELLA MOVEMENT, IN CONTEXT From Occupy New York to the Arab Spring and Taiwan’s “Sunflower Movement” (cf. Curtain, 2015; Messekher 2015; Shiri, 2015), an unprecedented number of protesters have occupied state capitals and financial centers. This insurgent mobility has been predominately directed at the austerity of global capitalism and overwhelming feelings of political disenfranchisement—a lack of both economic justice and “real democracy” (Ortiz, Burke, Berrada, and Cortèz, 2013: 14–24; cf. Rancière, 2006).3 According to the World Economic Forum (2016), “Protest intensity has reached a new and higher plateau,” a level of social turmoil not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall (p. 44). Citing these movements as a substantial global threat, analysts describe the “paradox of the (dis) empowered citizen”: how we are increasingly empowered by technological advances that make it easier to communicate, organize, and disseminate information but, at the same time, are “increasingly excluded from meaningful participation in traditional decisionmaking processes” (p. 40). Similarly, for many in Hong Kong, life has been characterized

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by a lack of both economic justice and any meaningful participation in the political process. In late 2014, life in the world’s “least affordable” city was hit by an abrupt, external decision.4 On August 31, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) in Beijing declared that Hong Kong’s next leader would not be elected by a popular vote as previously indicated. Instead, candidates would be chosen by a nominating committee established to ensure that Hong Kong’s next leader will “be a person who loves the country [China] and loves Hong Kong” (Yi, 2014: para 4). In response, what began as a student boycott and clashes with police in Civic Square quickly transformed this financial hub into a site of conflict. Thousands of Hong Kong residents from various backgrounds and age groups called for “genuine universal suffrage” by occupying not just the area surrounding the Central Government Complex but also symbolic sections of strategically located sites in Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong Kok.5 Almost immediately, this occupation involved the reterritorialization of public space into counter sites of resistance. Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement quickly became subsumed in its own production and circulation of linguistic and semiotic practices. Similar to that which Martín Rojo (2014b) has detailed in the 15M movement in Spain, the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization forged “new ways of inhabiting a space” (p. 625). This process was even more extensive in Hong Kong. As Lou and Jaworski (2016) point out, During the Umbrella Movement, streets were renamed, tents were numbered and identified with their occupant’s names, and new pathways created. Temporary “institutions” such as first aid stations, bottled water and food supply stations, tent rental stations, study corners, libraries, postal services, battery charging services, rest areas (“living rooms”), galleries shrines and temples sprang up. (pp. 612–13) Within barricaded places, new ways of inhabiting space flourished. Writing in English and traditional Chinese characters were reinforced in response to a perceived encroachment of simplified Chinese. Specifically reacting to the symbolic violence of external minoritization practices, Cantonese language ideology was emphasized (cf. Ho, 2014), and a lasting “affective community” emerged (Wu, 2016). As Hutton and Wu (2018) highlight, this new community forged an “Umbrella Land,” a quasi-jurisdiction with its own temporary public and private distinctions of space. Overall, this appropriation of space has changed the local political landscape in ways that are still being realized. The Umbrella Movement, however, did not constitute a revolutionary new social order. Hong Kong’s protest sites were not a new form of urbanity. They were not comparable to developments made out of metal and glass. Instead, this reterritorialization was fleeting, performative, and made out of paper and plastic. Hong Kong’s protest sites were materialized as parallel paper cities designed to temporarily subvert external space. In what follows, I highlight how this form of resistance calls for a more fluid interpretation of reterritorialization and the disciplining of place. It exemplifies Foucault’s ([1984] 1986) conception of heterotopia.

3 HETEROTOPIA: OF OTHER PLACES The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space. In other words, we do not live in a kind of void, inside

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of which we could place individuals and things. We do not live inside a void that could be coloured with diverse shades of light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another. (Foucault [1984] 1986: 3) Space is only given meaning through human interaction, and “our words are produced and understood in places that are themselves constructed and interpreted” (Pennycook, 2010: 7). And yet, just as the multiplicity and fluidity of language has been historically neglected, space has traditionally been confined to depictions of sameness, uniformity, and homogeneity. With the intent of challenging these static depictions, Foucault’s ([1984] 1986) notion of heterotopia describes marginalized, off-center places that invert, subvert, and respond to the everyday disciplining of place. Literally meaning “other places,” heterotopias are “counter-sites” in which the technologies of social order are “simultaneously represented, contested and inverted” (p. 3). In other words, heterotopic sites are evidence that we do not live in a void—that the disciplining of place is always in flux, constantly being invested with meaning and authority. In 1966, Foucault first defined heterotopia in relation to language. It was conceptualized as a “detonator of order, logic and language,” even utilized as a form of linguistic pluralism (Sohn, 2008:47; cf. Tafuri, 1987:52–53; Foucault [1966] 1989). During a radio broadcast on “France Culture” later that year, however, it would no longer be used to describe language and discourse. Instead it would be applied to space, becoming a new science: a “heterotopology.” In 1967, the principles of this heterotopology were presented in a lecture, and the notion of heterotopia would become more clearly defined as a category of difference, a relational disruption of spatiality that subverts external space. This lecture, however, remained unpublished until shortly before Foucault’s death in 1984 when its ability to describe the spatial dynamics of global capitalism began to be realized within contemporary studies of architecture, urbanization, and public space. Since its conceptualization, heterotopias have become increasingly salient to a multidisciplinary investigation of the commodification of identity and the emergence of new depoliticized regimes of technomanagerialism.6 As urban centers have expanded, the notion of heterotopia has come to describe the implications of a shift toward the production of a seemingly unlimited commodity: the spaces of everyday life (cf. Lefebvre, 2009:239). It details the architecture of a social world increasingly interpolated by relational disruptions of space and time. From this perspective, the concept directly relates to Deleuze and Guattari’s ([1972] 1977; [1980] 1987) description of capitalism as a schizophrenic process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Accordingly, Lou (2007) utilizes heterotopia to describe the spatial and temporal juxtaposition brought about by the mandated preservation of Washington, DC’s Chinatown. She illustrates how efforts to commodify and preserve the local community resulted in deterritorialized displays of Chinese signage regardless of the actual demographics of the businesses operating within Chinatown. Pietikäinen (2014) also uses heterotopia alongside Bakhtin’s (1981) conception of chronotope to highlight the spatial and temporal plurality of multilingual public signs in an indigenous Sámi village in northern Scandinavia. Similarly, Tufi (2017) positions Venice, Italy, as a heterotopic space. Highlighting the role of deterritorialization, she describes how the gradual displacement of local residents coupled with the global consumption of Venice as a tourist destination has led to a liminal LL. While all of these approaches have utilized heterotopia to richly

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detail the plurality of language and space, Foucault’s ([1984] 1986:8) notion that heterotopia entails a reflexive subversion of external space has not yet been explored in relation to linguistic and semiotic landscape studies. Foucault’s conception of heterotopia is wide ranging, at times even “frustratingly incomplete, inconsistent, incoherent” (Soja, 1996: 196).7 As Dehaene and De Cauter (2008) warn, if it is not engaged with fully, “everything tends to take on heterotopian traits” (p. 6). Not all space, however, is heterotopic. In order to be a heterotopia a place must subvert external space. As Sohn (2008) points out, Foucault’s conception of heterotopia carries “a deeper connotation than that of mere spatial displacement.” It contains “an essentially disturbing function” that reflexively subverts and inverts society (p. 44). In what follows, I consider how this reflexivity can enhance the dynamics of reterritorialization, informing an understanding of the materiality of civil disobedience. Throughout the remainder of this chapter, I engage with the concept fully to demonstrate how the Umbrella Movement encompasses all of Foucault’s ([1984] 1986) six principles of heterotopology. As a reportage photographer and participant observer, the following analysis is informed by years of documenting demonstrations in Hong Kong and a personal corpus of over 10,000 images taken while embedded with protesters across 85 days of the movement. This, however, is not a quantitative study. The staggering number of participants and the sheer volume of frequently removed, destroyed, or weathered signs made attempts at quantifying the semiotic landscape of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement an impossibility. Instead, this analysis concentrates on what rendered the Umbrella Movement unique from the demonstrations and marches that proceeded and followed its occurrence: the reterritorialization and subversion of urban space. Considering how written discourse interacts with the mass movement of bodies and protest artifacts (cf. Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010), I draw upon a personal corpus of documentary images to qualitatively illustrate how the materiality of various multimodal expressions of dissent constituted paper cities, or heterotopic sites that temporarily disrupted and inverted the dominant social order. I fully engage with the six principles of heterotopology to establish that the Umbrella Movement constituted spaces of crisis and deviation, had evolving specific functions, entailed spatial juxtapositions, were designed to be ephemeral and temporary, contained specified borders, and amounted to an overall subversion of external space. This analysis brings the full concept of heterotopia into linguistic and semiotic landscape studies. It begins with an examination of the Umbrella Movement as a space of crisis and deviation.

4 SPACES OF CRISIS AND DEVIATION The first principle of heterotopology claims that heterotopias are a product of the human condition, a constant across the production of space. For Foucault ([1984] 1986), this constant is manifested in diverse forms that can be divided into two main categories: heterotopias of crisis and heterotopias of deviation. Heterotopias of crisis are theorized as premodern, sacred, privileged, or forbidden places (with or without geographic markers). They are spaces for individuals that are in a “state of crisis” in relation to the dominant discipline of the social order. Examples might include adolescent coming of age trials and the ritualized, demarcated spaces for menstruation, virginity, and fertility. Foucault describes how heterotopias of crisis are disappearing, institutionalized into modern heterotopias of deviation. Examples include boarding schools and honeymoon trips,

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which attempt to institutionalize the “crisis” of adolescence and sexuality by partitioning them to “elsewhere.” As Witteborn (2014) notes in a study of asylum seekers and digital heterotopias, Foucault is arguing that modernity is characterized by these spaces of institutionalized deviation (p. 74). In other words, modernity is constituted by the institutionalization of crisis and heterotopias become spaces of deviation—spaces that can “serve as ‘steam-releasing’ sites, deflecting the forces of change by locating them outside society, in specially designated spaces” (Allweil and Kallus, 2008: 191). This is true for Allweil and Kallus’s (2008) analysis of public-space heterotopias of masculinity along the Tel Aviv shoreline and for Witteborn’s (2014) institutionalized accommodations for asylum seekers. Similarly, expressions of political dissent in Hong Kong can largely be classified as heterotopias of deviation. Protected by Basic Law, political demonstrations in Hong Kong must be registered and approved beforehand. They act as “steam releasing sites” where citizens can denounce the technologies and discipline of the social order in an area and time deemed appropriate by the establishment. With the Umbrella Movement, however, unrest boiled over. Instead of a controlled site of deviation, the Umbrella Movement began as a “state of crisis” in both a time and a place that was most inconvenient for the dominant social order: an eight-lane highway outside the Central Government Complex that runs straight through the heart of the financial center of Admiralty. Throughout the Umbrella Movement, individuals were in a “state of crisis” in relation to the discipline of the dominant social order. This was exemplified from the first steps taken by protesters who walked into oncoming rush-hour traffic to force the closure of the roadways surrounding the Central Government Complex. Perhaps the most iconic representation of this crisis, however, is the so-called Umbrella Man, an anonymous protester who stood motionless with an umbrella in each hand as police launched the first volley of tear gas. Immediately mediatized across local and international media outlets, his embodied resistance punctuated a “state of crisis” felt by tens of thousands of people who not only joined students in Admiralty but also occupied sites in Causeway Bay and Mong Kok. The resulting “Umbrella Movement” designation would attempt to materialize feelings of crisis and disenfranchisement. The Umbrella Movement, therefore, began as a ritualistic walk through barricades to join protesters in the streets. This occupation of space, however, was soon followed by a complex and demarcated architecture formed by the production and dissemination of multilingual signage. As Figure 7.2 illustrates, it began with police banners. Holding a sign reading “DISPERSE OR WE FIRE” in an official parallel translation of English and Chinese, armed riot police dressed in military greens attempted to force protesters to clear the streets. In response, protesters fashioned their own “official” signs: the “Right of Public Assembly Shall Not Be Infringed” and “STOP CHARGING OR WE WILL UNFURL UMBRELLAS.” Holding these signs to counter the police, protesters began to institutionalize their own state of crisis. Dressed in an assemblage of unmatched clothing, safety goggles, facemasks, and cling wrap, protesters constituted an alternative order, a counter space that subverts the external space administered by the Hong Kong government. Rather than new social order backed by the power of their own police force, protesters constructed a “paper” order, a heterotopia of crisis that is both mythical and real—a temporary space that forced both participants and observers to take notice and imagine an alternative Hong Kong. This emerging paper city also matched the second criteria for heterotopias. It had evolving functions.

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FIGURE 7.2 Police and protester banners, September 2014.

5 EVOLVING SPECIFIC FUNCTION(S) According to Foucault’s ([1984] 1986) second principle, a heterotopia must have a “precise and determined function within society” (p. 5). This function evolves synchronically, adapting to a confluence of new experts and events. Foucault cites the cemetery as one such example. The cemetery is depicted as the institutionalization of the crisis of death and mortality. Changing meaning over time, the cemetery has moved from the city center to the outskirts where it has become “the other city, where each family possess its dark resting place” (p. 6). Similarly, with a specific function of institutionalizing the crisis of political and economic disenfranchisement, the occupied sites of the Umbrella Movement became the obverse image of the established social order. They became parallel cities made out of available materials: paper and plastic—anything protesters could use to build structures and voice dissent. The resulting mass production and dissemination of signage constantly reacted to and inverted the discourses of the Hong Kong government, creating a carnivalesque counter space that continually evolved to undermine the changing discourses of the established order.8 In early October of 2014, for instance, the “official” tone set by the inverse police banners was perpetuated with “sorry for the inconvenience” posted across all three occupied sites (Figure 7.3). As structures began taking shape in the barricaded areas, protesters responded to the criticism of blocking traffic and disrupting business as usual with a performative apology. This response subverted the discourses of commercial construction projects that have become a consistent feature of life in Hong Kong. As Hutton (2014) points out in an analysis of new managerial modes of governance across the linguistic and legal landscape of Hong Kong and mainland China, The citizen and the visitor are positioned as consumers with an entitlement to good service, and the authorities present themselves as service providers, with quasicontractual sets of aims and objectives, and as moral cheerleaders form community mindedness and a better shared future. (p. 611)

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FIGURE 7.3 “Official” protest site signage in Admiralty, October 2014.

In a nuanced subversion of this mindedness, “sorry for the inconvenience” mimics a service provider mentality, suggesting that it is actually the pro-democracy protesters and not the multinational companies providing a service for the people. In a provocative counter space that places the Hong Kong protester not just in opposition to electoral reforms but also in opposition to the austerity measures of neoliberal spatialization, business would not run as usual in the occupied sites of Hong Kong. As time went on, clashes with police became more numerous, and the function of the Umbrella Movement as a heterotopia evolved. On October 15, 2014, pro-democracy activist Ken Tsang was arrested, and while lying on the ground handcuffed, he was beaten by seven police officers. This was not the only instance of police brutality reported but this assault happened to be captured by a Television Broadcast Limited (TVB) news crew. As it was streamed to audiences in Hong Kong, the Umbrella Movement shifted, responding with various signage continuing to subvert the police order. Numerous “wanted” posters like the one in Figure 7.4 were issued by protesters. Using “wild west” typography and image stills from the TVB footage, they depicted the seven officers involved in Ken Tsang’s beating as outlaws. Additionally, a hotline was established and advertised (Figure 7.4) to record, track, and respond to such incidents. A new tactic was also developed: as police cleared sections of the occupied areas, individuals sat quietly and calmly on the front line, holding signs reading “STOP VIOLENCE ARREST ME” (Figure 7.4). Accompanied by thousands of variations, these signs created a counter space that suggested that the Umbrella Movement had its own police force capable of apprehending police officers. They implied that the protesters were actively monitoring and policing the police, subverting the notion that it is the police that maintain order and subdue violence. As the next section illustrates, the evolving functions of these and numerous other signs also entailed Foucault’s third criteria: a juxtaposition of events across space and time.

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FIGURE 7.4 Evolution of signs subverting the police order.

6 SPATIAL JUXTAPOSITION Heterotopic sites must also entail relational disruptions and inversions across space and time. Heterotopias are socially determined “spatio-temporal units” that reflect the conflicting multiplicity and heterogeneity of the production of space (Defert, 1997: 275). They are evidence that the disciplining of place is always in flux, constantly being invested with meaning through human interaction. Accordingly, Foucault’s ([1984] 1986) third principle states that heterotopic sites are “capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several places, several sites that are in themselves incompatible” (p. 6). Citing the cinema as one such example, Foucault describes how an “odd rectangular room” becomes contradictory space. Like ancient tapestries, it becomes a microcosm, projecting other places and other worlds. Notably, the Umbrella Movement engages in this process of “worlding,” merging several seemingly incongruous places together in one “real” place and time. Perhaps the most striking example of spatial juxtaposition was a project launched by media artists entitled the “Add Oil Machine for OCLP (Occupy Central with Love and Peace).” In early October of 2014, this initiative projected a live stream of messages of support that were uploaded to their website from around the world. In Figure 7.5, a message from Las Vegas assures supporters that “the World is with you” and utilizes “an expression of exhortation in Cantonese, 加油 (ga1yau4; ‘add/increase fuel’)” that, as Lim (2016) points out, became even more popularized by the Umbrella Movement. Projected on the side of the Central Government Complex just above the “Lennon Wall”—a project that featured thousands of handwritten notes of support—this “worlding” instantaneously illuminated ephemeral messages from various incongruous places. In the above example, Hong Kong and Las Vegas were, if only for a fleeting second, seemingly one.

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FIGURE 7.5 Juxtaposition of space.

Another example of the incongruous juxtaposition of space was the consistent self-reference to protest movements happening at that same time elsewhere. In early clashes with police, one frequently used reference was the “Hands up, don’t shoot” gesture and chant that became popular after the August 9, 2014, police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, USA (Fisher, 2014). As protests and unrest continued in both places, the Admiralty protest site reacted to ongoing clashes and unrest with police in America. Various iterations of “I CAN’T BREATHE” (Figure 7.5) circulated in reference to Eric Garner, who uttered the phrase eleven times before he was killed in an incident of police brutality. Additionally, a “HONG KONG IN SOLIDARITY WITH FERGUSON #UMBRELLAMOVEMENT” chalk tag was featured in the middle of the occupied eight-lane highway (Gloucester Road) in Admiralty (Figure 7.5). These instances of juxtaposition involve an interplay from physical protest spaces to their emplacement online and back again to another protest site (cf. Chun, 2014). In the above cases, they have instantaneously become incongruently materialized into the Hong Kong context. This spatial juxtaposition, however, needn’t be reliant on digital space. Foucault’s 1967 theorization of heterotopia was, after all, concerned with describing an “offline” world. As the following example indicates (Figure 7.6), the Umbrella Movement also utilized offline multilingual signs and fixed notions of language and place to juxtapose space. On an embankment in Admiralty, “SUPPORT DEMOCRACY IN HONG KONG” was written in dozens of languages, suggesting that the whole world was shouting for universal suffrage in Hong Kong. Similar to what Stroud and Mpendukana (2009) describe as a principled material ethnography of multilingualism, protesters drew upon multilingual resources to create signage that impacts how space is read within each occupied site. In this case several “material ethnographies” of place were juxtaposed in a single incongruous place. Signs such as “I’M CANADIAN AND I SUPPORT DEMOCRACY IN HONG KONG” were also commonplace alongside numerous other examples of support from individuals

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FIGURE 7.6 Multilingual variations of “SUPPORT DEMOCRACY IN HONG KONG.”

“elsewhere” via stating their nationality. The particular display of fixed languages in Figure 7.6, however, was given special attention. As the image on the bottom right indicates, when the Swedish sign went missing, it was immediately replaced with a picture of the original handwritten sign. Rather than creating a new one, reference to its original emplacement was highlighted. This juxtaposition of time will be explored more thoroughly in the following section.

7 EPHEMERALITY, TEMPORAL DISCONTINUITY, AND ACCUMULATION Just as heterotopias disrupt space, they also rupture time. For Foucault ([1984] 1986), heterotopias only “begin to function at full capacity when they arrive at a break with their traditional time” (p. 6). The fourth principle, therefore, is concerned with the architecture of this rupture. It describes heterotopias as “slices of time” embodying the “most flowing, transitory, and precarious aspect” of temporality (p. 7). Foucault cites three examples. First, reference is again made to cemeteries. He notes how the cemetery is one of discontinuity in which the loss of life puts forth an organized parallel city for the dead, a “quasi-eternity in which her permanent lot is dissolution and disappearance” (p. 6). Then, referencing museums and libraries, Foucault describes how heterotopias must involve “indefinitely accumulating time,” recreating worlds through texts and exhibits that pull us out of the synchrony of our temporal realities. Finally, he references the festival as a heterotopia. For Foucault, it is the temporary nature that renders it exciting and meaningful. The Umbrella Movement encompasses all three of these notions of temporal discontinuity, accumulation, and ephemerality.

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On September 28, before the tear gas and the Police Tactical Units were deployed holding banners in their military green uniforms, rumors were circulating. Many protesters were stating that they had heard that the police were authorized to use force and open fire, like the troops with tanks and assault rifles during the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989. In a city in which over a hundred thousand people annually commemorate the June 4 incident, the temporal discontinuity of seeing military-style police deployed against student protesters certainly added to the mass number of Hong Kong residents that flooded into the streets, joining protesters and forcing the police to retreat. This discontinuity colored much of the Umbrella Movement and the allusions took many forms. Images of Jeff Wider’s “Tank Man” stopping the advance of a column of tanks became associated with Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Man,” the unknown protester who stood defiant as police launched tear gas. In Figure 7.7, an image of the “Tank Man” is emplaced on a police traffic cone, emphasizing alarm and caution. Similarly, a tank was also constructed by protesters out of found materials (Figure 7.7). Alluding to an incongruous event and time, it became an impromptu photo spot in which one could become the “Tank Man.” Emplaced at the border of the Admiralty site as if to be advancing toward the police, it also suggested an alternative counter space, a new history in which, this time around, the protesters are the ones in possession of tanks. Besides discontinuity and rupture, the Umbrella Movement also featured its own accumulation of time. Through constant self-reference, it constituted is own mythology (cf. Lou and Jaworski, 2016). Occupied sites featured numerous instances of performance art that reenacted clashes with police, reinterpreting events through music and choreographed dances with umbrellas. Each site also contained an accumulation of thousands of emplaced signs and posters constructed by individuals. If particular signs were torn down by counterprotesters or disintegrated due to weather conditions, they were either replaced with new signs or an image of the sign emplaced in the exact location, emphasizing accumulation. For some protesters, this accumulation is still ongoing. As of late 2016, protesters still regularly demonstrate in the Gau Wu (鳩嗚) or “Shopping Revolution” that formed after the clearance of the Mong Kok site.9 On Sai Yeung Choi Street, a popular shopping area in one of the world’s most densely populated districts, protesters can still be seen with yellow umbrellas, responding to contemporary discourses. From another perspective, however, it is the ephemerality of the movement that makes it salient. For Soja (1996), heterotopias “are meant to detonate, to deconstruct, not to be poured back comfortably in the old containers” (p. 76). This is especially true for the Umbrella Movement. The paper cities were never meant to last forever—like the festival, it is the impermanence that draws participants to the streets. This ephemerality was also expressed throughout its emplaced signage. On December 11, as police and bailiffs approached the site in Admiralty to orchestrate its dismantlement, “WE ARE NOW AMONG YOU” (Figure 7.7) could be seen stenciled into sidewalks. Soon to be no longer confined to spatially demarcated sites, the Umbrella Movement protesters were to be among the everyday populace. This emplacement suggests that members of the Hong Kong public can be activated at any time and that future protests may spontaneously emerge. In Figure 7.7, “WE WILL BE BACK” further emphasized this sentiment, emplaced next to an open tent as police were clearing the Admiralty site. The occupants’ toothbrushes can be seen carefully placed on display as if they were going on a brief holiday, creating a counter space in which this tent is their home and their home is the temporary holiday destination.

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FIGURE 7.7 Temporal discontinuity and ephemerality.

8 RITUALS OF ENTRY AND EXIT, SYSTEMS OF OPENING AND CLOSING For Foucault ([1984] 1986), heterotopias are not public places.10 According to principle 5, they “always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable.” To constitute a heterotopia, “one must have certain permission or make certain gestures” to be allowed entry (p. 7). As Foucault points out, religious rituals may be concentrated on opening and closing certain spaces for participants. Additionally, he references how sex hotels are often openly available but at the same time participation is sheltered and hidden, requiring transactions. Perhaps best placed somewhere in between these examples, the Umbrella Movement also required certain rituals and crossings to enter and exit its occupied space. As the movement progressed, the act of walking into the streets to protest became a ritual. For many supporters, the Umbrella Movement involved altering busy schedules and delaying planned meetings and dinners with friends and family. It physically involved a crossing of a police line or the rushing to the scene of dispersed tear gas and pepper spray. Figure 7.8 displays how the demarcated borders of Hong Kong’s paper cites were constantly evolving, adapting different sites of entry and exit, different systems of opening and closing. From a simple police line (Figure 7.8), the borders became more elaborate structures assembled from available materials. Figure 7.8 depicts how bamboo scaffolding and workers gloves were used to “flick off” approaching units of police that might attempt to dissemble or reclaim the streets. As time went on, the barricaded borders

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became even more sophisticated. During the clearing of Admiralty in December of 2014, engineers tasked with helping police clear the streets spent several minutes trying to pry apart barricades that had been fixed together using a cement mix (Figure 7.8). Despite these varying degrees of permeable and impermeable borders, a deliberate architecture to the entry and exit points of these paper cities emerged. Figure 7.8 “EXIT ONLY/NO ENTRY” sign illustrates how dedicated systems arose to facilitate the mass crowds of protesters and curious passersby that streamed through the occupied zones daily. Rather than long-term managerialism or a new urbanity, this parallel paper order was subversive. The facilitation of people exacerbated the feeling of a parallel city where entry and exit becomes a specifically demarcated, ritualistic experience. Additionally, entry and exit often encouraged the donning or removing of a symbolic yellow ribbon associated with supporting the Umbrella Movement. In Figure 7.8, the warning “For Your Safety! Please … Take Off YOUR YELLOW RIBBON” was issued at the exit to the Admiralty site after a series of bloody attacks and sexual assaults were

FIGURE 7.8 Rituals of entry and exit.

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directed against protesters by Triad gang members allegedly hired by pro-establishment groups.11 This point of exit further emphasizes the occupied site as a counter space where it is safe to wear your ribbon—a subversive, alternative city where you can express yourself safely without being assaulted.

9 SUBVERSION OF EXTERNAL SPACE The final principle is the most important: heterotopias “function in relation to all the space that remains” (Foucault [1984] 1986: 8). They are reflexive of external space. For Foucault, this reflexivity has two extremes. On the one hand, heterotopias can “create a space of illusion that exposes every real space.” It can offer profound critique and subversion through the manifestation of a carnivalesque illusion. On the other hand, it can create “another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed and jumbled” (p. 8). Foucault offers the brothel as an example of a subversive illusion and the Puritan colony as an example of a new, meticulously planned, and ordered space. Thus, as Heynen (2008) points out, heterotopias can be “sites of hegemonic violence and oppression, but they might also harbour the potentials for resistance and subversion” (p. 320). The Umbrella Movement did not constitute a meticulously arranged hegemonic order. It was not a Puritan colony or an outpost for a new urbanity. Instead, it offered a temporary illusion that reflexively responded to and attempted to subvert oppressive forms of governmentality. Similar to other protest movements, this subversion involves the reterritorialization of space (Deleuze and Guattari’s ([1972] 1977; [1980] 1987; cf. Martín Rojo, 2014a; 2014b), a “simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the place in which we live” (Foucault [1984] 1986: 4). With signage from each site, Figure 7.9 illustrates how protesters used specific instances of the reterritorialization of space to construct an illusion that subverts the established social order. In Figure 7.9, a parking sign in Causeway Bay is recontextualized into a similarly stylized 24-7 “Democracy Scheme.” Figure 7.9 displays how “True Democracy” reterritorialized one of the main roadways in Admiralty, styling it as “True Democracy Street” with a nickname for the chief executive of Hong Kong, “689,” marked through. In the commercial hub of Mong Kok, a faux menu is posted which further communicates disdain for the chief executive (who was elected by only 689 votes) by featuring a $689 special for roast pig (Figure 7.9). Other renditions included faux 689 bus stop signs, phone books, movie posters, and dollar bills all creating the illusion of a parallel Hong Kong, denouncing both the chief executive and the electoral reforms. This parallel city, however, was not completely imagined. It was not entirely illusionary. The appropriation of public space by the Umbrella Movement was material. It involved a real contestation of space that, from occupying an eight-lane highway to numerous clashes with police, temporarily challenged the social order. There were real casualties, blood, assaults, and arrests. Additionally, as Figure 7.10 displays, these alternative cities offered services that undermine the established order. In Figure 7.10, for instance, a parallel translation of “WELCOME TO STAY OVERNIGHT” illustrates how this movement brought forth housing alternatives in the world’s most expensive housing market (cf. Li, 2016). The tents that sprang up within each occupied site offered a stark contrast to the world’s least affordable city: free housing. As Figure 7.10 displays, each site also had “Study Corners” with dedicated tutors and open lectures. In the image on the top right (Figure 7.10), “English Lesson for Free(dom)”

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FIGURE 7.9 Subversion of external space.

displays how instruction was often language based or focused on exam preparation and university placement for secondary students. Not only did these Study Corners attempt to subvert the mainstream education system, they also ran parallel to Hong Kong’s Shadow Education system, a system of privatized supplementary tutorial centers (cf. Bray, 2009). In Hong Kong, exam tutors are given a celebrity-like status. As tutorial centers spend millions on advertising (Ives, 2016), star tutors frequently grace the same billboard spaces as designer handbags and supermodels promoting the latest fragrance. With rates for tutorial centers averaging a few hundred Hong Kong dollars an hour, offering free lessons provided a provocative, subversive service. Through both illusion and the real appropriation of public space, the Umbrella Movement temporarily undermined the dominant social order. Illustrative of the notion that heterotopia “draws us out of ourselves” (Foucault, 1984: 3), the Umbrella Movement created an unsettling, temporary counter space. Often focused on political and economic disenfranchisement, these paper cities forced participants and observers to imagine an alternative. Figure 7.10 summarizes how this subversion of external space was directed at a very specific agenda: China’s relationship with Hong Kong. Cardboard cut-outs of Xi Jinping, the current general secretary of the Communist Party of China, were often seen with a yellow umbrella, showing support for the Umbrella Movement. His function changed over time—during Halloween he was spotted wearing a yellow banana costume. His appearance encompasses a rupture in space and time and is both illusionary as well as a material, paper reality. A microcosm of the entire movement, he forces participants to imagine how Hong Kong, China, and the world might be a different place. That, at least on paper, an alternative is possible.

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FIGURE 7.10 Contestation of external space.

10 CONCLUSION Throughout this chapter, I have demonstrated how Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement exemplifies all six principles of heterotopology. I depicted how the extensive reterritorialization of public space resulted in complex paper cities, or heterotopic sites that attempted to subvert external space through temporary performances of place. Within this examination, the concept of heterotopia stands in stark contrast to linear depictions of uniformity, sameness, and homogeneity. It encompasses the notion that place is constantly being (re)constructed and (re)imagined, invested with meaning through ruptures across space and time. At the same time, however, heterotopias also constitute an architecture. Rather than a poststructuralist embrace untethered to power relations, heterotopias encompass the reflexive, disruptive, and synchronic tendencies of the production of place as always being encompassed within (or deviating from) the technologies and discipline of social order. This makes heterotopia a useful concept for analyzing the architecture of reterritorialization and the semiotic landscapes of civil disobedience. Theoretically, it encompasses the power dynamics implicated within the reterritorialization of place. Analytically, it extends the focus on landscape beyond language and multilingualism. First, heterotopia can be used to enhance theoretical approaches to reterritorialization and the materialization of dissent. Heterotopias are, by definition, reflexive of external space—they temporarily subvert and invert the disciplining of social order. This reflexivity avoids idealized notions of a revolutionary “new” imaginary. Instead of positioning reterritorialization in relation to a revolutionary new social order, it encompasses the realization that the materialization of place is dialectically tethered to the disciplining of other spaces. From this perspective, heterotopia has the potential to resonate with contemporary political theorists like Rancière (1995).12 It describes the landscape of those

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fleeting moments in which the voice of the voiceless is briefly realized before a police order is (re)established, inevitably making others voiceless. In other words, heterotopia can be used to describe how the fleeting materiality of dissent reveals disenfranchisement before it is once again overshadowed by emerging new or reestablished old regimes. Second, heterotopia encompasses the role of multimodal resources within the disciplining of place. Although it has already been used in accordance with multilingualism to describe how linguistic resources play a substantial role in spatial and temporal plurality (cf. Lou, 2007; Pietikäinen, 2014; Tufi, 2017), it can further expand the scenery by looking beyond an explicit focus on language. As Hong Kong’s paper cities have exemplified, the principles of heterotopology can be used to highlight how the vast movement of bodies, emplaced images, and the materiality of signs were as important to the construction of place as the discourses contained on the signs or the languages in which the signs were written. Indeed, within Hong Kong’s paper cities, multilingual signs and other protest artifacts were imbued with meaning precisely because they were situated within heterotopic sites that were first established by the mass emplacement of bodies stepping into oncoming traffic and occupying major roadways. From this perspective, the six principles of heterotopology resonate with what Jaworski and Thurlow (2010) delineate as semiotic landscapes. They have the potential to describe how multiple discursive modalities are implicated in the reflexive construction of civil disobedience. At the same time, Foucault’s heterotopia is by no means a perfect concept. Foucault’s examples are wide ranging. Each of the six principles of heterotopology makes use of various, seemingly sporadically chosen instances of counter sites. Despite this inconsistency, I have illustrated how all six principles can enhance an approach to reterritorialized landscapes of civil disobedience. One question, however, remains: How might the six principles of heterotopology be defined and situated outside of the materiality of dissent? More research is needed to consider how these principles might be further defined and situated. Just as heterotopia can inform some aspects of linguistic and semiotic landscape studies, linguistic and semiotic studies can further enhance both the conceptualization and application of Foucault’s heterotopia.

FURTHER READING Foucault, M. ([1984] 1986), in J. Miskowiec (trans.) “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics, 16 (1): 22–27. Jaworski, A. and C. Thurlow (2010), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, London: Continuum. Purcell, M. (2014), “Rancière and Revolution,” Space and Polity, 18 (2): 168–81. Rancière, J. (1995), On the Shores of Politics, London and New York: Verso. Tufi, S. (2017), “Liminality, Heterotopic Sites, and the Linguistic Landscape: The Case of Venice,” Linguistic Landscape, 3 (1): 78–99.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. Heterotopic sites have their own established social order. Looking through the figures of this chapter, detail three examples of norms or rules within the heterotopic sites of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement.

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2. Compare Foucault’s usage of heterotopia in the preface to the Order of Things ([1966] 1989) to his conceptualization in “Of Other Spaces” ([1984] 1986). How are the concepts similar? How are they different? What relevance might this distinction have for linguistic and semiotic landscape studies?

PROJECT WORK 1. Outline the descriptions and examples of each of Foucault’s ([1984] 1986) six principles of heterotopology. Which principle(s) do you think is most important to the concept? Which principles are the least defined? 2. Find your own example of a heterotopic site. Detail how it relates to all six principles of Foucault’s ([1984] 1986) heterotopology. How does your analysis relate to other studies of linguistic and semiotic landscapes?

NOTES 1. The “umbrella” referent was coined after protesters used umbrellas to shield themselves from tear gas, pepper spray, and police batons. In particular, imagery of an unidentified man holding an umbrella, known as the “Umbrella Man,” helped solidify the term after photographs were disseminated across local and international media outlets in late September 2014. 2. As Purcell (2014) explains, what separates Deleuze and Guattari from contemporary political theorists like Mouffe and Rancière is the notion of a revolutionary idealized potential to escape hegemony and “create a new land beyond both capitalism and the state” (p. 176). 3. In an analysis covering global protest movements from January 2006 to July 2013, Ortiz et al. (2013) conclude that the top two demands from participants are in relation to economic justice (anti-austerity) and political representation. 4. Hong Kong consistently tops the charts for the most expensive city to rent retail space and, for the last six years, has ranked as the “least affordable city to buy a home globally,” recently setting the record for the highest “least affordable median multiple ever recorded” (cf. Li, 2016; Day, 2016: 2; CBRE, 2014). 5. With the Central Government Complex, the Legislative Building, and numerous corporate offices, Admiralty is a center of business and government. Causeway Bay is a shopping district that, in 2014, was the “most expensive place in world” to rent retail space (CBRE, 2014). Mong Kok is a commercial hub and one of the world’s most densely populated spaces. 6. In particular Dehaene and De Cauter (2008) position heterotopia as crucial to describing the “redrawing of the contours of public and private space” that have profoundly impacted the governance of civil society (p. 3). 7. According to Genocchio (1995), this is in a large part due to Foucault’s two seemingly contradictory conceptions of heterotopia: his original usage in The Order of Things ([1966] 1989) and his more robust principles of heterotopology outlined in Des Espace Autres (“Of Other Spaces”). 8. As Defert (1997) points out, heterotopia can be described as decidedly Bakhtinian, “as though the polyphonic or dialogic and carnivalesque dimension that Bakhtin had discovered in language were being applied here to the analysis of spaces” (p. 275).

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9. Gau Wu (鳩嗚) is a Cantonese transliteration of Gou Wu (購物) or “to shop.” It was created in reference to Chief Executive CY Leung’s remarks that people should “go shopping” to help boost the economy allegedly detrimentally affected by the Umbrella Movement. 10. There are exceptions. Allweil and Kallus (2008), for example, use the term “public-space heterotopias” to describe how spaces of masculinity along the Tel Aviv shoreline do not adhere to this principle. 11. On October 3, 2014, Amnesty International (2014) criticized the police following reports that they were “standing by” as incidents of sexual assault and harassment were directed at female protesters by pro-establishment groups in Causeway Bay and Mong Kok. Additionally, in Mong Kok, riots erupted after members known for their gang affiliation tore down tents, beating protester occupants bloody and causing allegations that the government was using Triad gangs to disperse protesters (Buckley, Ramsey, and Wong, 2014). 12. For Rancière (1995), democracy entails a form of radical equality. It can only ever take place at the brief moment in which the established order is disrupted by an insurgency that had not previously been represented or accounted for. In contrast to post-Gramscian theorists like Laclau and Mouffe, a revolutionary transformation of society can never take place. According to Rancière, the transformation of society and the establishment of a new hegemony inevitably entail disenfranchisement administered by an unequal and undemocratic police order.

REFERENCES Allweil, Y. and R. Kallus (2008), “Public-space Heterotopias: Heterotopias of Masculinity Along the Tel Aviv Shoreline,” in M. Dehaene and L. De Cauter Dehaene (eds.), Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Post-Civil Society, 191–202, New York: Routledge. Amnesty International (2014), “Hong Kong: Women and girls attacked as police fail to protect peaceful protesters,” Available online https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/10/hon g-kong-women-and-girls-attacked-police-fail-protect-peaceful-protesters. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Austin and London: University of Texas Press. Bray, M. (2009), Confronting the Shadow Education System: What Government Policies for what Private Tutoring? Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Buckley, C., A. Ramzy, and E. Wong (2014), “Violence Erupts in Hong Kong as Protesters are Assaulted,” The New York Times, Available online https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/ world/asia/hong-kong-protests.html CBRE (2014), Hong Kong World’s Most Expensive Retail Market: Global Retail Rents Report Finds Prime Rents Reaching Record Breaking Levels in Major Markets. Available online http: //www.cbre.com.hk/EN/aboutus/mediacentre/mediaarchives/Pages/HongKongWorldsMostE xpensiveRetailMarket-.aspx. Chan, J. M. M and D. Kerr (2016), “Academic Freedom, Political Interference, and Public Accountability: The Hong Kong Experience,” AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom, 7: 1–21. Chun, C. W. (2014), “Mobilities of a Linguistic Landscape at Los Angeles City Hall Park,” Journal of Language and Politics, 13 (4): 653–74. Curtin, M. L. (2015), “Negotiating Differential Belonging via the Linguistic Landscape of Taipei,” in R. Rubdy and S. Ben Said (eds.), Conflict, Exclusion and Dissent in the Linguistic Landscape, 101–22, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

From Graffiti to Street Art and Back: Connections between Past and Present SABRINA MACHETTI AND CLAUDIO PIZZORUSSO

1 INTRODUCTION From Laudry and Bourhis (1997) to date, the LL has established itself as a dynamic discipline within the field of sociolinguistics, grounded in various theoretical and methodological approaches (Blackwood, Lanza, and Woldemariam, 2016). These approaches draw upon semiotic studies, where specific objects of analysis are all signs in a Peircean sense. They also draw upon a tradition of sociolinguistic studies, where the systematic analysis of language signs is integral to LL insofar as the use of different languages in public signs is regulated as part of language planning (Gorter and Cenoz, 2007). This chapter is the result of close collaboration between the two authors. However, in particular Sabrina Machetti is responsible for the drafting of Sections 1, 2, and 5, while Claudio Pizzorusso is responsible for the drafting of Section 4. Both authors provided equal input for Section 4. Sociolinguistics uses methodological approaches, which are of fundamental importance also for LL studies, as in the case explained by Spolsky and Cooper (1991), who provide different criteria to establish taxonomies of language signs. In fact, they define three sign rules, focused on the motivation for using some languages instead of others on language signs. In addition, other sociolinguistic studies contribute to “make a clear difference between official top-down and private bottom-up signs and also identify the informative and symbolic functions of linguistic signs which are basic aspects of the study of the linguistic landscape” (Gorter and Cenoz 2007: 4). Initially, and more generally, LL was mainly concerned with the use of public and private (linguistic) signs, especially commercial and place-name signs located in urban areas, with the attempt “to link publicly displayed—or emplaced—discourse to some aspects of the sociolinguistic reality of the place” (Jaworski and Thurlow 2010: 10). Over time this approach has developed to become “only one, albeit extremely important, element for the construction and interpretation of place” (id.: 2). The contribution and application of multiple perspectives from different disciplines, including applied linguistics, education, economics, history, and semiotics, are due to the multiplication of objects of study which, in addition to linguistic signs, have become of particular interest for LL, as well as to the consequent variety of aspects that those objects are characterized by. Moreover, the idea

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that landscape is not just a place but a semiotic place/space, “an ecological arena that goes beyond written texts of signs and includes oral languages, images, objects, placement in time and space, and also people” (Gorter, 2013: 197), has increasingly required LL studies—as suggested by Shohamy and Gorter (2009)—to expand the scenery to any public space. Due to the fluidity and ill-defined nature of its borders, public space is composed of a potentially never-ending number of signs, elaborated through both deliberate and unintentional human intervention for the creation of meaning. Focusing on those elements of the public space which are constantly subjected to processes of change, expansion, and erasure, much academic attention has recently been paid to the study of street art, and in particular of graffiti, seen as common forms of expression in most urban LLs (Pennycook, 2009, 2010a, 2010b; Papen, 2012; Dovey, Wollan, and Woodcock, 2012; Muth, 2016). This chapter provides an analysis of graffiti as an object of study in LL, starting with the studies conducted by Alastair Pennycook in 2009. By “graffito” we mean not only the modern drawing or inscription made with colors and spray paints on walls, façades, and surfaces of means of transport but also, in the strictest sense of the term, a pictorial technique already widespread in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, used for the decoration of the façades and walls mostly of noble Italian palaces (De Mauro, 1999–2000). In this case, the artist (or artists) applied a layer of dark plaster over the façade, which was covered with a second layer of white plaster, on which, with a sharp instrument (scratch), the drawing was engraved, removing the white lime in order to leave uncovered the underlying brown layer, so that the images were outlined thanks to the contrast between the two colors. Graffiti is also analyzed in terms of the characteristics that, over time, have led to it being considered a significant manifestation within the artistic canon. Whether a gesture of political anger, the simple challenge laid down by an act of vandalism, or a form of self-assertion expressed by an individual or group, whether limited to marginalized and degraded metropolitan areas, or works destined to disappear by being covered over or erased, nowadays artistic expression through graffiti is well established across institutional art circuits (Pomajambo 2015). Consequently, this chapter also focuses on the recent shift of street art from the street to galleries, at the service of power and those who hold it, or even from the street to expressing dissent against preestablished power and those who hold it, but acting from within. Considering the previous definition, the chapter will also examine a particular form of street art, whose precise specificity is linked to its spatial and temporal location: the sgraffio (or sgraffito) decoration, used in Italy (Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice, etc.) between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, to embellish the façades of building with scenes, figures, and trophies of classical inspiration, and with plant-related motifs. This analysis is carried out in accordance with the theoretical and methodological approach outlined by Pavlenko and Mullen (2015), who highlight the importance of a diachronic approach for LL studies. A diachronic perspective can be useful in that it illuminates characteristics detectable for similar phenomena but from a previous era, thus helping us to better understand the modern. In particular, this perspective can help to demonstrate how, already between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, street art was subject to forces and dynamics very similar to those of today. This early form of “graffiti” was settled in institutional power, which “used” it for the regeneration and revitalization of a given urban space, transforming that space from a potential expression of dissent and transgression into a consensus tool for a preestablished power (Pennycook, 2009; 2010b).

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The chapter posits that graffiti can simultaneously represent both a great example of consensus and a model of dissent. The former reuses, in fact, the methods of the latter, which is not explicit or entrusted to words, but rather hidden within and illuminated by the painting and the represented subjects. Fading and/or erasure of the message, be it institutional or transgressive, is enacted by time, a player that man or woman cannot outwit. In our analysis we will also refer to the socio-semiotic Hallidayan model, utilized by Kress and van Leeuwen in 2006. In this model, the construction and transmission of meanings take place thanks to their being inserted within a social reality. This process is aimed at achieving different functions and purposes: an ideational function, whose purpose is the transmission of information; an interpersonal function, whose purpose is to specify the relationships and contacts between the members of a linguistic community; a textual function, aimed at creating texts and relating them to the situational context. The conclusion includes a reflection on the theoretical and methodological approaches taken in this chapter. Following Pavlenko and Mullen (2015), we focus our analysis on both linguistic signs (and texts) and other visual items (and texts). Signs and texts of this nature are part of a universe of textuality, but function through meaning mechanisms with a greater range than those which characterize written and spoken texts. Finally, we will also allude to how the double dimension within which street art is placed is simultaneously glocal and local, and how this suggests that a further rethinking of the categories of analysis for LL might be necessary.

2 GRAFFITI IN LL STUDIES LL interest in the study of graffiti begins with Pennycook (2009). The studies that have followed represent a new horizon not just for LL studies but also for semiotic studies, which deal with graffiti but appear mainly interested in its written language elements, and primarily in tags (Petrilli, 2017). In these studies, the tag is considered to be a transfiguration of writing from sign to form, and writing on walls is seen as a linguistic act that, even before proposing its own meaning to the potential reader, overwhelms him/ her with the illocutionary force of dangerousness and illegality. In some cases, the tag is also analyzed as language that, reproducing a form of signature, is transformed from the private into the authorial. LL studies, however, broaden the field of interest from the tag to graffiti’s different figurative manifestations. At the same time, these studies open up to the contribution of those sciences usually aimed at the interpretation of the figurative arts, through a particular attention to the concept of artisticity—in doing so, LL studies have turned an object that had been analyzed exclusively within artistic studies into an object of linguistic and semiotic interest. Artistic studies were in fact concerned mainly with establishing the degree of artisticity of an artifact, that is, with assessing whether graffiti was a work of art, whether it possessed an aesthetic value and could be critically historicized, and also in order to establish its material value (Velotti, 2012; Petrilli, 2017). Looking at graffiti as a form of transgressive urban semiotics, Pennycook opens up new directions for an understanding of urban space. Pennycook considers graffiti writing “as one of the four core elements of the broader hip hop culture (rapping or MCing, scratching or DJing, and break-dancing being the others)” (2010b: 138). He argues that graffiti is about production, learning skills, style, and identity, as well as different ways of claiming space. Analyzing graffiti, he suggests a more dynamic account of space, text, and their interaction; thus landscaping and languaging become interactive and energetic

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processes. He proposes a completely original model of analysis for graffiti which revolves around four parameters: the question of the dominance of one or more signs over one or more other signs; the question of how and why certain signs are created; the ways in which they are read and interpreted; the ways in which, within the graffiti, different linguistic resources are used (Pennycook, 2010a). The approach adopted by LL studies in dealing with graffiti in many cases leads to a new interpretation of the motivations that push an artist to choose the street as the primary place of work: the critical motivation, linked to society and its artistic system; the political motivation, relating to public space; and the promotional motivation, which is of great importance because of the recent growth of the media exposure of the phenomenon (Tomassini, 2012). More generally, these are diverse motivations, which range, as Muth (2016) points out, from political opinions and ideological manifestations to artistic impression and the demarcation of space. From an LL perspective, the analysis of the different motivations makes graffiti a part of the urban landscape, “as one of the ways in which cities are brought to life and space is narrated” (Pennycook, 2010b: 137). This aspect highlights the important role of street art artifacts in alternative narrations of urban spaces and of its legitimate or illegitimate consumption. Nonetheless, as we have already underlined, these signs “are not necessarily transgressive texts as some are visible on abandoned property or sanctioned by the authorities” (Muth, 2016). As Pennycook (2010b: 143) outlines, “Participation in graffiti production may have important social, cultural and educational values, it is also its unsanctioned deployment in public space that is central. [. . .] Graffiti largely depends on its confrontations with the lines of authority around public space” and recently “it is not uncommon for cities to have specific ‘graffiti management’ plans.” Therefore, graffiti can be considered “as integral parts of the city; they contribute to the definition of its exterior aspect, its size, as well as to the definition of its interior design, its soul,” a part of the integrative life of the city that gives it meaning (Appadurai 1996; 2001). Thus, according to LL studies, graffiti and other processes associated with street art can be significantly related to important phenomena linked, in turn, to urban/public space. In particular, reterritorialization dynamics in a given public space can be triggered by either institutional or grassroots initiatives. From this perspective, graffiti becomes an element that Pennycook (2010b), taking up Milon (2002), defines as integral with respect to the city. The formalization of the reterritorialization process dates back to Deleuze and Guattari who, in their 1987 work entitled A Thousand Plateaus, argue that the physical, biological, as well as cultural world is made up of layered regulatory systems or “strata.” Stratified systems are “territorialized,” embodied instances of an abstract function, and also subject to processes of deterritorialization, where differences escape from territorialized functions, and reterritorialization, where new systems are formed or, conversely, an old one is reembodied in a different context. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the physical, biological, and cultural worlds would therefore be defined, identified, and above all, transformed, through the continuous interaction between the two processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. In our view, each world could correspond to a territory, defined by the continuous interaction of the deterritorialization and reterritorialization forces: the territorialization is determined in the material and symbolic construction of a territory (Magnaghi 2000). This concept implies necessarily the existence of a conflictual dimension, which involves representations, objectives, strategies, and actions of a plurality of actors and which often leads to a deterritorialization, intended as a partial or total abandonment of the territory. Some actors move away from it, due to its excessive neglect, while others continue to live there, tolerating or even

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contributing to this degradation. In a dynamic process, the territory can be approached by different actors, who eventually reterritorialize it through the setting in motion of new processes of material and symbolic construction. As Pennycook (2010a) points out, the degraded or deprived urban space or, as Deleuze and Guattari say, the space where the differences have escaped from territorialized functions, is revitalized by the presence of graffiti and transformed into a new, public, and in some cases, gentrified place (Papen, 2012). This revitalization can determine a reterritorialization because the space, perhaps degraded, half-abandoned, or even more simply anonymous, becomes a visited and inhabited space. In some cases, reterritorialization takes the form of the transmission of a new sense to spaces and objects, such as buildings, which previously had other characteristics. The graffiti and the different images depicted on walls and façades are intended to demonstrate on the one hand the power of the social actors who commissioned that work, and on the other that power can be used to express both consent and dissent. Being integrated and visible within institutional power is an attempt to gain an insider’s role, or rather it can serve to better control power itself. When reterritorialization is successful, graffiti could also take the form of a social inclusion tool, where social inclusion is a process which is able to “incorporate both fluidity of language and identity and fixity of assumed norms, both a desire to be included and a willingness to use outsider status to transgress sociolinguistic norms. Social inclusion from this point of view suggests more than inclusion into a more stable environment: it also involves the disruption and re-construction of common linguistic and cultural practices” (Otsuji and Pennycook, 2011: 418). Examples of this phenomenon are some neighborhoods of Italian cities, such as San Basilio and Tor Marancia in the city of Rome. Initially created to territorialize a no-space, an uninhabited place, the speed of construction works undergone by these neighborhoods have been the very engine of their degradation and rapid deterritorialization. Since 2008, two different street art projects have been carried out in these neighborhoods, with the aim to reterritorialize them. These projects have used and intended street art as a public art, participatory and inclusive, not so much with the intent of an artistic redevelopment of these neighborhoods, but for their cultural and social reterritorialization (Cuzzola, 2017). However, reterritorialization, as a process of revitalization of a degraded space, remains, potentially, a source of conflict. This is primarily because in the same territory in which street artists work, there are also those who consider street art to be illegitimate or even see it as a usurpation of their right to have a shared urban landscape and therefore ask for its removal. Second, attempts at the musealization of street art have often been clumsy and unsuccessful. For example, the creation of open-air museums, within specific touristic circuits, has created a low impact in the reterritorialization processes of spaces affected by extremely serious social problems. This is the case of the neighborhoods of some cities in the South of Italy, which have traditionally dealt with chronic issues in relation to organized crime. In any case, the musealization of street art led to discussions around the possibility of using conservation techniques such as those associated with more conventional works of art on street art, to the point of removing them from their original location and exhibiting them in exhibitions or museums. A clear example of this phenomenon is the recent exhibition A Visual Protest. The Art of Bansky, organized at the Museo delle Culture, MUDEC, in Milan (November 21, 2018–April 14, 2019). Finally, there is a spasmodic and conflicting search for their own individual visible space among street artists, overlapping or perhaps sometimes in dialogue with existing spaces (Mania, 2017: 99–100).

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3 STREET ART AND LL If, as Marroni (2017: 117) suggests, the desire to communicate through a visible trace is born with man, the graffiti drawn in the caves by primitive humans certainly had a communicative function. They expressed the desire to give an aesthetic order to experience, to transform events into narratives, to transcode scenes of memory. Over the centuries, although gradually, there has been a constant “updating” of this type of expressive instruments, which have evolved and aimed at overcoming previous models. Street art is one of the forms of this evolution which begins to define itself as an artistic expression from the years following the Second World War, due to the changes that affect the structure of urban spaces. Street art can be defined as a complex of practices, expressions, experiences, and artistic-visual communication relating to the public dimension of urban space (Blanché, 2015; Bengtsen, 2014), within which it is possible to distinguish at least two different creative activities, namely writing (“graffiti writing”) and a more directly figurative production (Petrilli, 2017: 9). Although the most relevant feature of street art would seem at first glance to be the lack of organicity, the various practices—and therefore also graffiti—have common traits, and this allows artists engaging with different techniques and subjects to identify themselves with this area of expressive production. The first of the common traits is the street, where the different processes, initially unauthorized, and varying in materials, actions, forms, and contents, are located. Another common feature is the preponderance of cultural and artistic forms of popular culture origin, which responds to the artist’s goal of having immediate recognition and reaching the widest possible audience. Another important aspect is the desire to build a dynamically open dialogue with the distinct corporeal and incorporeal animate and inanimate elements that describe, permeate, and live in a given urban place (Pennycook, 2010b). The artist then takes inspiration from models that are typical of a popular culture and uses them in his works without excessive re-elaboration, enough to make such works more recognizable by a larger audience. Keith Haring, for example, uses very simple figures in his works, inserting them into frames that are just as simple. In some cases, for these works, he chooses very well-known places, such as the New York subway, a space that makes his figures carriers of symbolic meaning and easily recognizable (Gruen, 2007). The aim of the street artist is the conquest of visual space, accompanied by the attempt to change not only the perception of the space in which he or she works but also the perceptual profile of that space itself. Within this objective, the position of the graffiti writers is perhaps slightly different from that of other street artists, because of their tendency to close self-representation, through forms, approaches, and codified modes which do not suggest a desire to communicate outside the members of their own group, or of rival groups (Petrilli, 2017). The first use of the term “street art,” in its closest sense to contemporary use, dates back to 1985 and is linked to a book by Allan Schwartzman, entitled Street Art. The book collects the works of several writers and artists from New York in the early 1980s. Through their work, they intended to transform the perception of the urban space, expanding the expressive dimension of the visual landscape, through the works themselves and by means of the implied criticism of the preestablished order of culture and art. Since the 1980s street art, in its various stylistic forms—from lettering to figurative stencils—has established itself as a specific “artistic genre” and has become more and more

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media-related and increasingly less based on the street. The global success of artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat up to the more recent Banksy phenomenon has contributed significantly to this (Marroni, 2017). The phenomenon has rapidly spread throughout the world, both on the internet and in the streets of all cities in the Western world, showing a growing presence in different geographical and cultural contexts, as evidenced by the interesting experiences that have, since 2010, affected the countries involved in the so-called Arab Spring (Haas and Lesch, 2017). In Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, the expression of feelings, opinions, fears, and hopes has often been entrusted to the street art, which immediately turned out to be a formidable tool of communication, reaching out to the public directly without the censorship imposed by the national government (Al-Abed Al-Haq and Abdelhammed Hussein, n.d.; Lacquaniti, 2015). All the forms of art recognized as street art, although originally characterized by an alternative physiognomy which is spontaneous, ephemeral, and unauthorized, become less and less sanctioned and, in many cases, not sanctioned at all. They are eventually encapsulated into mass popular culture by the global market as well as by institutions (Tomassini, 2012). As Campitelli (2017: 60) points out, this phenomenon has quite clear origins: the spread of street art (and the impossibility for the institutions of preventing, containing, and repressing a phenomenon of a size and extent beyond the reach of any control) triggers a process of assimilation, homologation, and use promoted in some public spaces and museums, mostly on the initiative of local government authorities. In the process of shift “from streets to galleries,” museums and galleries across the world start to offer exhibitions and events dedicated to street art. Many local governments, for example, have set specific and protected spaces for graffiti artists—such as the famous East Side Gallery in Berlin. Private initiatives have consolidated the spread of street art through promotion and documentation, as in the Mural Project in Richmond, Virginia, or the Upfest Festival in Bristol (Irvine, 2012). It is therefore in close connection with this phenomenon that street art becomes, mainly unconsciously, an instrument at the service of the complex process of institution-induced reterritorialization of urban areas, mainly degraded ones. It can be argued that the spread of street art and its visceral and spontaneous expressive need therefore morphs from an “antagonistic” and illegal activity into a rhetoric of authorized subversive language. Similarly and simultaneously, the street artist, that is an anonymous “I” belonging to an anonymous civic collective, evolves into an acclaimed author, whose anonymity has been resolved—or rather dissolved—in a “signature” that does not exist on any civic rolls, but is extoled in the art (Thompson, Remnant, and Azoulay 2015). In this way street art does not remain exclusively related to a project aimed at rehabilitating deprived urban areas, but is incorporated into places of power and wealth, and becomes official in nature. The following three examples clearly illustrate institutional appropriation and exploitation of street art. The first has the city of Boston in the United States of America as a protagonist and dates back to September 2015. On the façade of its tallest skyscraper and one of the city’s current icons, 200 Clarendon Tower, there is an image of a man in shorts or in a bathing suit standing on a platform floating in the sky (Figure 8.1). Boston Properties, a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Company that owns the skyscraper, commissioned the work, which was designed and carried out by the French artist JR, with the collaboration of Pedro Alonzo, an independent curator specializing in mural art. The second example is also from the city of Boston and is again from September 2015: along the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Dewey Square, a large wall on the Department of Transportation building has in the past few years become an officially sanctioned

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FIGURE 8.1 Man in shorts on the façade of 200 Clarendon Tower (Boston).

“canvas” for mural paintings. It is a public place officially managed by Boston public institutions such as the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the List Visual Arts Center at MIT. In 2015 the wall hosted the work of the renowned New York conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner (Figure 8.2). The mural is 150 feet wide and 86 feet tall, printed on perforated vinyl. It extends from the 44th to the 50th floor of the 62-story tower. Weiner is not usually considered a street artist but has assumed this role on commission. However, it was not the first time he had presented such a work. He conceived the idea in the 1960s and presented the actual work in Amsterdam in 1996. Although he does not identify himself purely as a street artist—Weiner is an integral figure of the Conceptual Art movement of the 1960s—his work is very influential for LL, and identifies new perspectives for the field. In fact, he creates subversive installations that alter an existing space or environment, as Figure 8.2. The writing in Figure 8.2 is particularly interesting, because it suggests that every form of communication and expression requires, to be understood, a form of translation and interpretation. This process reminds us of that performed by an object when it is placed in a place different from that in which it was conceived: it changes its position, but also the meaning carried by the object changes. The third and last example is from Rome, Italy, and is dated November 2015. The Institute of the Italian Encyclopaedia Treccani, an authoritative repository of knowledge, entrusted the design and execution of its new logo to a Roman street writer, Mathieu Romeo, known as “Trout” (Figures 8.3a and 8.3b). Since then, Treccani has been organizing events dedicated to graffiti writing and street art—for example, the event organized in April 2016, entitled Strade d’Arte. 30 anni di graffiti writing e street art a confronto. These are just three examples of how rebellion, subversion, and street rage now sit at the table of cultural power, accepting its rhetoric and icons. Therefore, when the street

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FIGURE 8.2 Mural on the wall of the Department of Transportation building (Boston).

FIGURE 8.3a Advert for the exhibition celebrating ninety years of the Italian Encyclopaedia Treccani.

FIGURE 8.3b Logo commissioned by the Italian Encyclopaedia Treccani.

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artist, or the contemporary muralist, works on behalf of a hegemonic power, his or her mark inevitably turns into an expression of that power. In conclusion, the phenomena described above are characterized by dynamics which are relevant for LL studies, especially in terms of their objects of study and of their methodological approaches. In particular, we observe that street art and graffiti are created as signs aimed at conveying meanings of rebellion, and are subversive toward preestablished power; that street artists and graffiti artists, in a more or less conscious manner, become authors of signs that translate their own original semantic field—that of freedom of expression—to that of the currency of exchange with preestablished power; and that preestablished power appropriates these signs and their meanings to generate new meanings that conform to institutionalized ethics.

4 LA BEAUT É EST DANS LA RUE We now turn to what we consider a very ancient form of graffiti—the Italian sgraffiodecorated façades (a topic recently addressed in the conference-research workshop Facciate dipinte a sgraffio - Italia XV-XVII secolo). As we said at the beginning of this chapter, the artistic tradition considers the sgraffio as a form of graffiti. In this part of the chapter, our attention is particularly focused on the analysis of the sgraffio on the façades of the Italian noble palaces of the Renaissance age. Italian sgraffio-decorated façades were first of all part of the so-called phenomenon of theatricalization of cities (Pecchioli. 2005). The city became an open-air theater, and the decorated façades were the sets of this theater. In this way, as in the case of modern processes of reterritorialization, those who held and administered power promoted and/ or personally gave life to the regeneration of the city through the decoration of the façades. The buildings that were affected by this were not degraded and/or located in the outskirts of the city, but were noble and central buildings that rulers used to mark, directly or not, their power and/or their consent to the dominant power (Figure 8.4). Despite the variety of the repertoire and the overall visible wealth, in Figure 8.4 everything appears dominated by white frames that adapt to the architectural score of the building. Within this scheme, the individual decorative elements respond to the categories of the variety and the bizarre: harpies, greyhounds, hookah smokers, satirists, hippogriffs, putti, monkeys, rams, male, and female figures follow one another among candelabra and grotesque. Also, we can see that, using the technique of sgraffio, the arme medicea (the Medici coat of arms) is surmounted by the crown of the Granduca, on whose sides there are two ovals, characterized by a swan theme and a motto, alluding both to the candor of the animal and to the name of Bianca Cappello. The practice was particularly widespread in Florence in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, in general commissioned or at least inspired by the ruling Medici dynasty (Cardini, 1990). The temporary adornments set up for weddings, baptisms, funerals, or important diplomatic visits, with their architectural structures, sculptures, and paintings, started a transformation of the urban space in a fashion that can be directly related to the contemporary appropriation of street art by institutions of power. Following the example of those festive ceremonies and the widespread trend in the early sixteenth century for painted façades in Rome by Polidoro da Caravaggio and Maturino da Firenze, some Florentine families had their family palaces decorated. Leaving aside those instances where a decorative repertoire was prevalent, the first and most sensational historiated façade is the palace of Sforza Almeni, the cupbearer of Duke Cosimo I. The

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FIGURE 8.4 Palazzo di Bianca Cappello (Florence).

FIGURE 8.5 Palazzo Benci (Florence).

façade, completely lost and therefore difficult to analyze precisely because of one of the limits that Pavlenko and Mullen (2015) identify for the diachronic approach applied to the studies of LL, was designed by Giorgio Vasari and Cosimo Bartoli in 1554. The celebration of the prince and his servant was inserted into a vast and complex allegorical program combining science, virtue, and planets, for a cosmic depiction of man’s whole life from birth unto death (Pecchioli, 2005). Twenty years later in a public square, Piazza Madonna Aldobrandini, the Benci family declared their loyalty to Duke Francesco I by painting the façade of their palace with a series of allegories (Figure 8.5), which are still partially visible.

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The function of sgraffio, therefore, was to display consensus to power. This consensus was evident and declared not only in the intentions of the Benci family while having the façade decorated but also through the very pictorial elements of which the façade is composed—the twenty-two virtues which are attributed to Duke Francis I by those who designed the sgraffio, for the celebration of his glory (Pecchioli, 2005). This iconographic framework was fully implemented in Florence at the beginning of the seventeenth century in one of the largest squares of the city, Piazza Santa Croce. Piazza Santa Croce itself represents an element of interest for what can be considered to be a particular form of reterritorialization, all linked to this historical period and to certain Italian cities. Since the fifteenth century this square had been a traditional meeting place for rulers and people during celebrations, tournaments, and football matches, and only became a place for official celebration in 1600. It was thus used to show consensus toward power, managed by, and therefore under the control of, the noble Florentine families. In 1619, Senator Niccolò Dell’Antella entrusted the decoration of the monumental façade of his palace in Piazza Santa Croce to the painter and architect Giulio Parigi (Figure 8.6). The dedicatory inscription corresponding to the marble bust of Grand Duke Cosimo II, positioned at the center of the whole composition (Figure 8.7), summarizes the entire enterprise: “With these Walls your devoted Antelli / COSMO / consecrate their Hearts to Your great Name / Each of your merits is impressed here.” The physical portrait of the Grand Duke is accompanied, to signify the highest consensus on established power, by his moral portrait, consisting of the allegorical representation of sixty-three virtues. In this way, a private citizen publicly celebrated his ruler and imposed a civic focus onto the square beside the spiritual home of the great Franciscan basilica—the basilica of Santa Croce—already consecrated as the pantheon of

FIGURE 8.6 Palazzo dell’Antella (Florence).

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FIGURE 8.7 Marble bust, Palazzo dell’Antella (Florence).

FIGURE 8.8 Detail modeled on Caravaggio’s Sleeping Cupid, Palazzo dell’Antella (Florence).

the city. Except for one, all the figures on the façade faithfully correspond to the most recent and most complete iconographic repertoire used by the artists of the time, the Iconologia by Cesare Ripa, published in 1593 with an illustrated edition from 1603. The façade is a classic example of graffiti as the full expression of consent to a preestablished power, with the precise use of well-known figures within the traditional iconographic repertoire. The only figure not found in this source was Tranquillitas animi (Tranquillity of the mind) (Figure 8.8), for which the Florentine painter Giovanni da San Giovanni inserted—like a sort of collage or stencil—a different literary reference by introducing a copy of Caravaggio’s painting of Sleeping Cupid, which at that time was in the Dell’Antella family collection inside the palace (Pizzorusso, 1983). The copy of Sleeping Cupid on the façade provided a subtle interpretation of the meaning of the Caravaggio painting and publicly displayed a controversial artist, a

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contentious man, a painter who worked outside the boundaries (Calvesi, 1997; Langdon, 1998): a street artist who became famous. In this sense, the Dell’Antella family’s façade, which through its components, appears to want to represent full consensus toward the pre-constituted power, creating their own sort of “brand,” perhaps intends rather to emphasize distance from that power, through a sign that has the function not of disagreeing with, but of distinguishing the Dell’Antella family from that of the Medici, who ruled the city of Florence. The façade of the Dell’Antella palace is an interesting example of ancient street art for at least three other reasons. First, it was executed by a crew of thirteen artists, who suppressed their own individuality for the sake of a common project, blending themselves into a single body, fully covering “all-over” the surface available to them. This was not unusual at the time, but it is nevertheless a feature that brings these artists closer to the “modern” street artists; second, as it happens with current street creations, the time it took them to complete the work was incredibly short—twenty days—or, an average of a little more than a day for each of the artist based on typical working times for fresco painting; and third, and similarly to contemporary graffiti, the work was surely not meant to be effaced, and yet time—with its slow and unrelenting ruinous action—took care of what the authorities, in this instance, had not done.

5 CONCLUSION The analysis carried out in this chapter leads us to propose some final remarks that primarily concern the theoretical and methodological approaches used in LL studies with regard to graffiti. The diachronic approach would seem to be appropriate for an analysis of signs emplaced in different eras from the current one, primarily due to the interpretative capacity that the results of such analysis are able to transfer to contemporary LL. The application of this approach in our study has allowed us to identify and analyze graffiti produced and placed in very distant eras, reaching the conclusion that the semiotic processes that they activate and in which they are incorporated are almost the same, despite the time distance. The sgraffio on Florentine façades, like modern graffiti, activates—according to the intention of those who perform it—chains of meaning aimed at expressing consent and at the same time dissent from the dominant power. The consent to the dominant power is explicit in the sgraffio that selects figures from the iconographic tradition; the dissent—not corresponding to the attack on power but to the defense of its individual and family identity with respect to that of those who govern the city—is entrusted to the selection of noncanonical figures, as in the case of Palazzo dell’Antella. In modern graffiti, whose original justification is the transmission of dissent to institutional power, dissent turns into consensus when graffiti becomes institutionalized, moving from the street to the galleries. Thus, the dominant power institutionalizes it, radically changing its meaning. In addition, the dominant power uses graffiti, and more generally street art, as a means of active participation in the process of reterritorialization. As we have pointed out, this process seems to be the same, whether it takes place in ancient or in modern times: in Florence, where the Medici family built palaces decorated with allegories and images celebrating their power; in modern Italian cities, where those who are in charge of the city administration revitalize the most degraded neighborhoods using this form of art. To understand the mechanisms of meaning described above, we believe that the diachronic approach can intertwine and blend well with a synchronic approach, but also, and not least, with the socio-semiotic approach proposed by Kress and van

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Leeuwen (2006). According to this model, the analysis of images should be related to a semiotic landscape, a social context that—following what was proposed by Halliday (1978)—corresponds to a semiotic construction, a set of different meanings. In our case study, different functions could be referred to the Florentine façade images: ideational and interpersonal, aimed to construct and maintain a range of relationships between the image’s producer/s and the observer/s and between the different observers; textual, contributing to the construction of a text—the whole façade—which is coherent and related to the social and cultural context of reference. Finally, the analysis proposed in this chapter creates the possibility of exploring the “local” and the “glocal” framework (Bauman, 1998) in relation to the semiotics of images. The images on the Florentine façades carry out a “local” meaning, completely linked to the social and cultural context of reference; at the same time, those images currently remain able to produce and transmit “local” meanings within a dimension of “glocality.” Nowadays, the façades interact with global interlocutors and, in this dialogue, open their local meaning to a global interpretive dimension. They are from a past time, but they reflect the same semiotic circuit as images of current street art: consensus to power, out of power; dissent against power, within power; consensus to power, within power.

FURTHER READING Baird, J. and C. Taylor, eds. (2011), Ancient Graffiti in Context, London: Routledge. Cole, B. (1987), Italian Art 1250–1550: The Relation of Renaissance Art to Life and Society, New York: Routledge. Muri Brighenti, A., ed. (2009), The wall and the City, Il Muro e la Città, Le Mur et la Ville, Trento: Professional Dreamers.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. A diachronic approach is essential for LL studies. Discuss. 2. Analyze the phenomenon of the institutionalization of street art by drawing examples from different historical periods.

PROJECT WORK 1. Select images relating to different themes from the Banksy Archives (https://www. dezeen.com/tag/banksy/) and discuss their main features with respect to the topics of representation. 2. Select examples of graffiti from ancient times and compare their characteristics with those of modern ones.

REFERENCES Al-Abed Al-Haq, F. and A. Abdelhammed Hussein (n.d.), The Slogans of the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions: A Sociolinguistic Study, https://docplayer.net/30285820-The-slogansof-the-tunisian-and-egyptian-revolutions-a-sociolinguistic-study.html Appadurai, A. (1996), Modernity at Large, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Appadurai, A., ed. (2001), Globalization, Durham: Duke University Press. Bauman, Z. (1998), “On Glocalization: or Globalization for some, Localization for some Others,” Thesis Eleven, 54 (1): 37–49. Bengtsen, P. (2014), Street Art World, Granada: Lund University—Alemendros de Granada Press. Blackwood, R., E. Lanza, and H. Woldemariam, eds. (2016), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, London: Bloomsbury. Blanché, U. (2015), “Street Art and Related Terms-discussion and Working Definition,” Street Art & Urban Creativity Scientific Journal, 1 (2): 32–39. Calvesi, M. (1997), La realtà del Caravaggio, Torino: Einaudi. Campitelli, A. (2017), “Dalla strada al museo: la Street Art da illegal ad istutuzionale,” in P. Mania, R. Petrilli, and E. Cristallini (eds.), Arte sui muri della città. Street Art e Urban Art: questioni aperte, 55–70, Roma: Round Robin Editrice. Cardini, F. (1990), Breve storia di Firenze, Pisa: Pacini Editore. Cuzzola, C. (2017), “Il progetto ART: museo open-air Monte Ciocci-Monte Mario,” in P. Mania, R. Petrilli, and E. Cristallini (eds.), Arte sui muri della città. Street Art e Urban Art: questioni aperte, 131–39, Roma: Round Robin Editrice. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1987), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. De Mauro, T. (1999–2000), GRADIT. Grande Dizionario Italiano dell’Uso, Torino: UTET. Dovey, K., S. Wollan, and I. Woodcock (2012), “Placing Graffiti: Creating and Contesting Character in Inner-city Melbourne,” Journal of Urban Design, 17 (1): 21–41. Gorter, D. (2013), “Linguistic Landscape in a Multilingual World,” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 33: 190–212. Gorter, D. and J. Cenoz (2007), “Knowledge about Language and Linguistic Landscape,” in N. H. Hornberger (chief ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd revised edition, 1–13, Berlin: Springer Science. Gruen, J. (2007), Keith Haring. La biografia, Milano: Dalai Editore. Haasm M. L. and D. Lesch, eds. (2017), The Arab Spring: The Hope and Reality of the Upspring, New York: Routledge. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978), Language as Social Semiotic, Baltimore: University Park Press. Irvine, M. (2012), “The Work on the Street: Street art and Visual Culture,” in B. Sandywell and I. Heywood (eds.), The Handbook of Visual Culture, 235–78, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Jaworski, A. and C. Thurlow, eds. (2010), Semiotic Landscapes. Language, Image, Space, London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Kress, G. and T. van Leeuwen (2006), Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. Lacquaniti, L. (2015), I muri di Tunisi. Segni di rivolta, Roma: Editore Exòrma. Langdon, H. (1998), Caravaggio: A Life, London: Chatto & Windes. Laudry, R. and R. Y. Bourhis (1997), “Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An Empirical Study,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16 (1): 23–49. Magnaghi, A. (2000), Il progetto locale, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Mania, P. (2017), “Iconografie e iconoclastie nella ‘cancellazione’ di alcuni casi di Street Art,” in P. Mania, R. Petrilli and E. Cristallini (eds.), Arte sui muri della città. Street Art e Urban Art: questioni aperte, 99–114, Roma: Round Robin Editrice.

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Marroni, M. (2017), “Bansky: le parole nella Street Art,” in P. Mania, R. Petrilli and E. Cristallini (eds.), Arte sui muri della città. Street Art e Urban Art: questioni aperte, 115–30, Roma : Round Robin Editrice. Milon, A. (2002), “Tags and Murals in France. A City’s Face or a Natural Landscape?” in A. P. Durand (ed.), Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture in the Francophone World, 87–98, Lanham: The Scarecrow Press. Muth, S. (2016), “Street Art as Commercial Discourse: Commercialisation and a New Typology of Signs in the Cityscapes of Chisinau and Minsk,” in R. Blackwood, E. Lanza and H. Woldemariam (eds.), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, 19–36, London: Bloomsbury. Otsuji, E. and A. Pennycook (2011), “Social Inclusion and Metrolingual Practices,” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14 (4): 413–26. Papen, U. (2012), “Commercial Discourses, Gentrification and Citizens’ Protest: The Linguistic Landscape of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 16 (1): 56–80. Pavlenco, A. and A. Mullen (2015), “Why Diachronicity Matters in the Study of Linguistic Landscapes,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1–2): 114–32. Pecchioli, E. (2005), The Painted Façades of Florence. From the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century, Firenze: Centro Di. Pennycook, A. (2009), “Linguistic Landscapes and the Transgressive Semiotics of Graffiti,” in E. Shoahamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 313–31, New York: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2010a), Language as a Social Practice, New York: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2010b), “Spatial Narrations: Graffscapes and City Souls,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes. Language, Image, Space, 137–51, London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Petrilli, R. (2017), “Immaginazione simbolica. Funzione e significati per la Street Art,” in P. Mania, R. Petrilli and E. Cristallini (eds.), Arte sui muri della città. Street Art e Urban Art: questioni aperte, 9–24, Roma: Round Robin Editrice. Pizzorusso, C. (1983), “Un ‘tranquillo dio.’ Giovanni da San Giovanni e Caravaggio,” Paragone, 405, 50–59. Pomajambo, S. (2015), The Art of the Mural: A Contemporary Global Movement, vol. 1, Atglen: Schiffer. Shohamy, E. and D. Gorter, eds. (2009), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, New York: Routledge. Spolsky, B. and R. L. Cooper (1991), The Languages of Jerusalem, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Thompson, N., J. Remnant and M. Azoulay (2015), JR. Can Art Change the World? London: Phaidon. Tomassini, M. (2012), Beautiful Winners, la street art tra underground, arte e mercato, Verona: Ombre Corte. Velotti, S. (2012), La filosofia e le arti. Sentire, pensare, immaginare, Roma-Bari: Laterza.

CHAPTER NINE

F/Anfield: Banners, Tweets, and “Owning” Football’s Linguistic Landscape FRANK MONAGHAN

1 INTRODUCTION Football is big business. In 2018, Europe’s top five leagues earned $8.2 billion in media rights alone. Sales of broadcasting rights and other commercial deals (e.g., kit sales, corporate branding and stadium-naming rights) accounted for 83 percent of club revenues with only 17 percent coming from match-day sales. To give an indication of the sums involved, Barcelona, one of the wealthiest clubs, had a kit deal with Nike worth $116 million for a single year (Ozanian 2018). FIFA (Fédération International de Football Association—the sport’s international governing body) reported that a record 3.57 billion people (half the global population) watched at least some broadcasts of World Cup games in 2018, with 1.12 billion tuning in to the final (FIFA 2018). Despite the fact that the game plays an important part in so many people’s lives and the economy, and has a massive presence in broadcast, print and social media, football has largely escaped the attention of applied linguistics, with some notable exceptions (e.g., Schiering 2008; Kytölä 2013, 2015; Monaghan 2014; Del Percio 2015; Siebetcheu 2016). This chapter seeks to redress this by showing how football fans use a range of semiotic resources to resist the “deterritorialising,” monetizing power of owners, and to lay claim to the traditions of the club as their space, a space articulated through the “reterritorialisation” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) of their LL. I use the terms “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” here to describe the processes and states of “becoming undone” (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 322) and becoming again of spaces, relations, and texts in contact. In focusing on this clash of cultures, it also contributes to applied linguistics’ increasing engagement with neoliberalism (Block et al. 2012), the economic doctrine that privileges free markets, globalized trade, private property rights, and the primacy of the individual over the collective good, memorably captured in Margaret Thatcher’s comment, “Society? There is no such thing!” English football provides an interesting case study for this clash of cultures. The English Premier League was formed in 1992 (two years after Mrs. Thatcher was ousted from power) and comprises the top twenty football clubs in England and Wales. It is the world’s most watched sports league, reaching some 212 countries worldwide, with

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an estimated in-home audience of 3 billion people and accounted for 232,000 hours of coverage in 2016 (Elliott 2017). The cost of screening Premier League football matches rose from £191 million for the first five seasons of its existence (1992–97) to £5.14 billion for the three seasons (2016–19), the highest sum for any national league in the world (Millward 2017). Ticket prices for fans have risen by an average 13 percent since 2011 (more than triple the rate of UK inflation) and many fans feel alienated from what they had previously regarded as “their” club due to changes made to meet the needs of a more corporate business model aimed at a less working-class market. Such changes range from the institution of all-seater stadiums, which led to increased ticket prices and corporate lounges for what has been derisorily termed “the prawn sandwich brigade.” Football matches are scheduled to suit international broadcasting demands rather than fans, who now frequently have to travel long distances at awkward times to attend away matches midweek. Since the inception of the Premier League, football has also become a contested site of globalization, with fans finding themselves repositioned as consumers and clubs, once seen as part of their local community turned into brands traded on international stock markets and owned by foreign oligarchs (Hassan and Hamil 2011). The advent of subscription television viewing, which accompanied the creation of the Premier League, has brought with it shifts in ownership of the most successful clubs from local businessmen pursuing a personal passion to global entrepreneurs pursuing private profits (King 1997). Football stadiums that once offered their largely local and working-class supporters little more than rickety wooden seats, rain-swept terraces, and junk food have now been transformed to attract a more affluent clientele, offering exclusive corporate lounges from which to view (or ignore) the spectacle while enjoying a fine-dining experience, and opportunities to buy expensive club merchandise from on-site shops. This has transformed both the financial basis of the clubs and their fans’ experience of the game. Where once English football was dismissively described as “a slum game played in slum stadiums by slum people” (The Sunday Times [1987], cited in Goldblatt 2007: 542), a more sanitized environment designed as much to meet the needs of a global TV audience as the local fan base, has brought about changes that have not always been welcomed by the fans (Millward 2011; 2012), who see their traditional football culture being eroded by a corporatizing culture, and as we shall see, find ways to actively resist it, including using the LL. The genesis and evolution of just such an act of resistance by supporters of Liverpool Football Club and their efforts to reterritorialize both the physical space of the club’s stadium (Anfield) and the ethos the fans believe it should represent are the focus here. I will first outline the approaches (Section 2) and methods (Section 3) that will be drawn on to show how fans of Liverpool Football Club (LFC) use the semiotic affordances of banners and social media to claim a “Scouse” (working-class, Liverpool) identity (Section 4) to challenge the increasing commercialization of the game. I will draw on tropes commonly associated with the city of Liverpool such as humor, music, left-wing politics, and religion. In Section 5, the chapter will focus on a campaign that took place in 2016 in response to the announcement of increased ticket prices. Fans staged a mass walkout during a home game four days after the announcement of the price rise by the owners, Fenway Sports Group (FSG). By drawing attention to the interrelation between the dynamics of identity formation and assertion and their expression in the LL, I will address a number of themes pertinent to this volume. In particular, how the battle over who “owns” the club—the owners or the fans—reflects those of deterritorialization

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and reterritorialization, as demonstrated by the fans’ interventions in the physical and linguistic space of the football stadium and its environs through displays of banners, chanting and the deliberate emplacement of their bodies, and in cyberspace via social media (Twitter and YouTube). I will also touch on the volume’s theme of “questioning boundaries and opening spaces,” in terms of the fans’ corporeal and linguistic actions. In the conclusion (Section 6) I will draw these strands together and point to some of the theoretical and methodological challenges they pose for the field of LL.

2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS AND LITERATURES To capture the diverse range of offline, online, and corporeal resources the fans and club owners produce and deploy, and which are discussed here (banners, tweets, images, videos, corporate brochures, and official statements), it is necessary to draw on a wide range of methodologies and approaches: LL; critical discourse studies; language as a local practice; multimodality; space; corporeality and mobility; creativity and identity. In drawing on such a wide range, I am acknowledging that just as every LL we encounter is shaped by forces that are always multiple, so too must be the lenses we observe it through if we are to gain as holistic a perspective as possible on it. I also have to acknowledge from the outset my own positionality looking through those lenses and what shapes my vision. I am both a native of Liverpool and a lifelong fan of its football team, and my politics are of the left. I am therefore invested in the research and indeed come to it as a result of what I term my biolography: the merging trajectories (or “rhizomes,” in Deleuzian terms) of my biology (my physical body), biography (my personal history and its connections to others’), and bibliography (my life and work with and through texts). This also accords with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage, “A semiotic system, a regime of signs and content [that] becomes a pragmatic system, actions and passions” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 586). The concept has been recently employed in Pennycook (2017) and Pennycook and Etsuji (2017), and here I am following an operationalization of this term by Livesey (2010: 18) who helpfully defines it as, “complex constellations of objects, bodies, expressions, qualities, and territories that come together for varying periods of time to ideally create new ways of functioning.” The limits of space mean that my exploration is of necessity restricted, indicative rather than exhaustive. Though outlined separately below in order to highlight the particular contribution of each to the topic, they are, of course, interrelated, and the order of presentation is not intended to suggest a hierarchy between them. Let’s begin with the most pertinent approach for this volume, linguistic/semiotic landscapes. Ever since the term “linguistic landscapes” came to prominence through the foundational work of Landry and Bourhis (1997), there has been discussion as to whether the term is too reductive for a field that inevitably deals with more than just language, leading some to prefer the term “semiotic landscapes” (Jaworski and Thurlow 2010). While acknowledging this is true, I will be using the widely adopted acronym LL in this chapter, but not limiting it to language alone, taking as my starting point Jaworski and Thurlow’s description of the field: We are concerned here with the interplay between language, visual discourse, and the spatial practices and dimensions of culture, especially the textual mediation or discursive construction of place and the use of space as a semiotic resource in its own right. . . . We thus take semiotic landscape to mean, in the most general sense, any

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(public) space with visible inscription made through deliberate human intervention and meaning making. (Jaworski and Thurlow 2010: 1–2) The use of parentheses around “public” is, perhaps, reflective of the increase in so-called pseudo-public open spaces in our cities, whereby squares and parks that may appear “public” are actually privately owned with rights of access and regulation of behavior in them determined by the landowners. Equally, LL research has pointed out the ways in which apparently “public” spaces can become commodified through displays of commercial signage that shape our perception of the space and ourselves as compliant consumers rather than autonomous citizens (e.g., studies of Washington’s Chinatown in Leeman and Modan 2009; 2010) and critical discourse studies has also engaged with this phenomenon (Cap 2014). This public/private dichotomy inevitably leads to some of the divisions and tensions between citizens and corporations that are explored in this chapter as fans assert their moral ownership of the club through their intervention in the LL of the Anfield stadium (which can be seen as its physical embodiment) and the owners’ expression of their proprietary rights through public statements, official documents, and control of the physical environment of the stadium. The semiotic “products” of the club, its brochures, advertising hoardings, branded kits, and so on are in contrast to the fans’ far more “local practice” (Pennycook 2010) involving banners, chants, use of social media, and so on, whereby such practices are seen as actions with particular histories taking place within particular spaces: What we do with language in a particular place is a result of our interpretation of that place; and the language practices we engage in reinforce that reading of place. What we do with language within different institutions . . . depends on our reading of these physical, institutional, social and cultural spaces . . . and as we do so, we remake the language, and the space in which this happens. (2010: 2) Pennycook goes on to argue that insofar as globalization leads to homogenization along with “cultural demolition or economic exploitation” then “the local becomes the site of resistance, of tradition, of authenticity, of all that needs to be preserved” (2010: 4). As we will see later, Liverpool fans “read” Anfield, in very particular ways, drawing on the identity of the city and its people and projecting these onto the football club and its supporters. I will show how their use of language and other semiotic resources in defence of this identity constitutes a local practice geared toward resistance of what they regard as a threat to the traditions and authenticity of the club. The chapter also draws on critical discourse studies (CDS) (Machin and Mayr 2012; Wodak and Meyer 2016) and is mindful that this approach is best regarded as a perspective on rather than a method of discourse analysis, using a variety of different methods. Some of these have been mentioned above already, and I will largely follow Wodak and Meyer’s (2016: 74 and ff.) focus on features such as polarization; pronouns; identification; emphasis of positive self-description and negative other-descriptions; activities; norms and values; and interests, as they emerge in the discussion of texts produced by fans and the club owners. Alongside the discussion of discourse features, multimodality is also particularly important in LL research. Jancsary et al. (2016: 185) argue that inequities in power in society are reflected in the modes particular groups can exert more (or less) power over. In Western cultures, where verbal communication is more tightly controlled than visual text or sound, marginalized groups are more able to draw on these latter modes for purposes of resistance and subversion.

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Banners, with their combination of texts and textiles, are a good illustration of the multimodal nature of the LL of Anfield (and the LL more generally). They have served multiple uses throughout history, whether on the battlefield to identify warring factions or as part of public demonstrations to rally participants and broadcast messages that might otherwise go unheard amid the din (Weinbren 2006). Football fans’ banners share this double addressivity in their audience design (Bell 1984) pointing, as they do, both toward the opposition and their fellow supporters. This example gives a flavor of this (Figure 9.1): The “Alex” addressed here is Sir Alex Ferguson, former manager of Manchester United (1986–2013), rivals of LFC, who had said he wanted to “knock Liverpool off their fucking perch.” This banner was produced after LFC’s fifth European Champions Cup victory in 2005, and the five asterisks are not primarily (or at all) there to avoid causing offence, but rather to symbolize the five trophies won (these stars appear on other banners performing the same function). Note also the symbol of the city (the Liverbird) perching on the handle (perch) of the cup. This banner, then, serves as a brusque riposte to the rival manager and as a rallying cry to LFC fans, asserting through the use of the pronoun “our” their collective identity with the team as well as their ownership of the European Cup. (The trophy becomes the permanent property of a team that wins it five times.) The color red reflects the team’s kit but is also associated with leftist politics, something, as we shall see later, the city of Liverpool is also associated with. The owners and managers of football stadiums generally welcome the fans’ banners not least because they help create a vibrant atmosphere that can be marketed to broadcasters and expand the fan base abroad (LFC has over 280 official supporters’ clubs in 90 different countries) (LFC, 2019a). It has been estimated that ca. 100,000 foreign tourists flew to England to watch LFC play at Anfield, spending some £84 million in the city in 2014–15 (VisitBritain 2015). While the club recognizes the value of the banners in adding to the marketable spectacle, site managers exercise control over where and for how long they can be displayed. Generally, they assign a specific section of a stadium, usually behind the goal. At Anfield, this area for Liverpool fans is known as “the Kop,” and this is where the most “hard-core” supporters gather. The group of supporters that

FIGURE 9.1 Banner—“Back on our f****** perch.”

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organize the displays of banners at Anfield is called “Spion Kop 1906” (the date 1906 is a reflection of their concern to assert their own connection to the history and traditions of the club) and this group played a major role in the ticket-price protest, both on the terraces and in social media. Fans use their banners to express not just their support for the club and its players but also their resistance to the increasing marketization of the game (as well as other political and social purposes). The banners operate in physical space in tandem with their online amplification through social media channels, which, as Kress (2010: 21) argues, have led to “a shift from ‘vertical’ to ‘horizontal’ structures of power.” Football clubs, with their vast financial resources, have far more “vertical” power than fans. Increasingly, they are also attempting to encroach on the “horizontal” level by developing their social media presence through “official” club websites (e.g., https://www.liverpoolfc.com/welcome-to-liverpool-fc), Facebook and Twitter accounts (e.g., @LFC), and even their own web-based TV channels (e.g., LFCTV). The ticket-price protest discussed here offers an example of how social fields are dynamic systems, characterized by struggles among the actors within this field over the distribution of resources . . . and—power. Furthermore, the notion of a social field corresponds to a distinct logic of practice, a constellation of rules, beliefs and practices. (Wodak and Meyer 2016: 1) We will see these constellations of texts and space colliding through their different discourses. Social media are also multimodal spaces, and Twitter, with its use of text, hyperlinks, emoji and images, offers an example of how audience design operates online. As Seargeant and Tagg (2014: 180–81) argue, audience design—the semiotic choices that are made when people communicate with others—can play a significant part in the construction and maintenance of communities and networks and helps establish links through “shared cultural and linguistic practices.” This can be seen in this tweet (Figure 9.2):

FIGURE 9.2 Tweet—“Supporters not customers.”

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I will return later to the discussion of the text “supporters not customers”, suffice it to say in the context of multimodality, what is interesting to note here is the placement of the banner above the name of the club’s current sponsor “Standard Chartered,” and its use of black and white, that carries its own meaning of truthfulness. Materiality is also important, with the handmade banner standing in sharp contrast to the commercially produced advertising hoarding. Such acts of emplacement by the fans can be read as acts of reterritorialization not just of the physical space but also of its symbolic meaning. This has significant implications for LL research and how it considers the objects under analysis with regard to their mutability, how they might change or rather be changed by conscious acts of disruption. Spaces need to be seen not as bound but as always emerging, always becoming, deterritorializing, and reterritorializing. This dynamic conceptualization of space owes much to the work of geographers such as Doreen Massey and her seminal work For Space: We recognise space as the product of interrelations; as constituted through interactions, from the immensity of the global to the intimately tiny . . . we recognise space as always under construction. . . . It is never finished; never closed. (2005: 9) There are clear links to Pennycook’s concept of “language as local practice” but this adds a further focus, that of time, inviting us to take not just a close-up look but also a long view. Massey rejects any understanding of space as static but sees it as dynamic and mobile, continuously unfolding through time—and it is this diachronic aspect that offers a valuable, if challenging, additional dimension to LL, which has perhaps tended to have a more synchronic, “snap-shot” focus. Later in the same book Massey argues: Places, rather than being locations of coherence, become the foci of the meeting and the nonmeeting of the previously unrelated and thus integral to the generation of novelty. The spatial, in its role of bringing distinct temporalities into new configurations sets off new social processes . . . and the process of the constitution of identities. (2005: 71) This also connects to Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concepts of de- and reterritorialization, with the fans seeing their “space” and themselves being deterritorialized, both physically and culturally, by the commercial territorialization of the stadium and what it stands for, and the fans making efforts to reterritorialize that space by reasserting their “ownership” of the club and its traditions, its ethos, through the use of their own bodies and signs. We can see evidence of this in the preceding tweet with the dissonant messages of the banner and the hoarding. The fans reject being positioned as customers and “advertise” this by bringing their banner into contact with an actual customer, corporate sponsor Standard Chartered. A football stadium, containing as it does the club’s commercial signage and the fans’ banners, is an excellent space to observe such “new configurations” and the “constitution of identities” and the clash between traditional and neoliberal values. Acts of linguistic creativity such as this—not just in terms of the (inter)text but also its emplacement also constitute acts of identity construction and reflect Carter’s view that identity is “constructed through language in social, cultural and ethnic contexts of interaction. It is dynamic and mobile and emergent.” (Carter 2004: 199). Jaworski and Thurlow (2010: 7) make a similar connection between space and identity through acts of “geographical imagining,” whereby we lay claim to space (or mark our exclusion from them) through our interactions with others.

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FIGURE 9.3 Banners as poetic texts.

Humor can also play an important part in this interaction, and this is reflected in the LFC banners through word play and allusion. Siebetcheu (2016: 118) points out that “banners can be seen as poetic texts” and there is certainly evidence of Jakobson’s poetic function at work in LFC fans’ banners. Take this one, for example, in praise of Xabi Alonso, a popular member of the Liverpool squad from 2004 to 2009 (Figure 9.3): There is a clever pun on the homophones “Basque” (Alonso’s ethnic identity) and the verb “bask,” and a use of lexical parallelism (painter/artist) to equate Picasso with Alonso. This banner also has to be seen in the context of the club at that time having a Spanish manager (Rafael Benitez) and several other Spanish players, so it might also be read as showing an inclusiveness and openness to foreigners that is at odds with a stereotypical view of working-class people (particularly post-Brexit and Trump) as xenophobic. We will, however, see this inclusiveness tested later, when the tension between “local” and “tourist” fans comes to the surface in relation to support for the #walkouton77 protest.

3 METHOD At the heart of this chapter lies an effort to show how this particular LL provides us with further evidence of the fact that “texts as much as spaces are often sites of struggle in that they show traces of differing discourses and ideologies contending and struggling for dominance” (Wodak and Meyer 2016: 12). The chapter draws on a corpus of more than two hundred images of banners I have collected, over several years, initially as a fan myself and then as a researcher. This bank of images is made up largely of photographs taken by fans displaying their own banners and posted on social media sites, for example, this Pinterest collection https://www.pin terest.co.uk/officiallfc/lfc-flags-and-banners/; my own photographs and blog https:// lfc-fan-banners.com/; and examples from a historical collection of banners gathered into book form (McLoughlin 2009). The data also includes a corpus of ca. 1,000 tweets posted between February 1 and February 10, 2016—the day the price rise was announced and four days after the protest took place (February 6, 2016). I have included analyses of a press release from the club and a longer statement from the supporters’ union (SoS) on their website. This variety of text types, producers, and places of publication/

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demonstration illustrates the complexity of what we consider as “a” LL and the different approaches we need to take to come to terms with its complexity and multi-layeredness. It is not possible to make reliable statistical statements based on this inevitably partial and selective dataset, so a qualitative approach has been taken. In doing so, I acknowledge that the arguments presented here must stand on their own merit and that other interpretations are possible. My own position as someone who grew up in Liverpool is a fan of the team and share the core fan values (and politics) that will be discussed further below inevitably means I am not an impartial observer. I do not see this as incompatible with my analysis of the LL under discussion, in fact, I would argue that all choices of sites and approaches are inherently both political and personal, the combination of which is, at least in my case, the motivation to engage with them. In making my own positionality explicit, however, I leave the reader free to pursue their own “lines of flight,” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 56) through the multiplicity of possible readings.

4 BEING LIVERPOOL: FAN IDENTITY IN CONTEXT In this section, I will discuss some of the “rules, beliefs and practices” that constitute the LFC fan identity and how this relates to the identity of the city of Liverpool and its citizens more generally. LFC was founded in 1892, and fortuitously, the owner, John Houlding, adopted the name of the city for the club. In 1894, the team kit was changed to match the city’s colors, red and white (Hansen 2019). These two choices have not been without their symbolic significance: as the history (and public perception) of the city and the football club have become intertwined, the color red, with its associations with left-wing politics, has also been reflected in the city’s politics; an analysis of the difference between votes cast for Labor and the Conservatives in general elections between 1983 and 2015 showed that Liverpool had the highest difference of any city in England (60 percent), and second-highest in the UK, with only Glasgow showing an even greater difference (Ottewell 2016) and the socialist politics promoted by, for example, SoS on the homepage of its website: http://www.spiritofshankly.com/. Trade union membership is also higher on Merseyside than in most other parts of the UK, ranked sixth out of the top twenty regions for trade union membership as a proportion of employees (DBIS 2015). It is therefore no surprise that it is also the modal color of the fans’ banners and features prominently in Anfield’s LL. There have been times when things were as bleak on the streets of Liverpool as they were bright on the football pitch, particularly between the late 1960s and 1990s, a time of major economic decline in the city. Murden (2006: 428) records that some 350 factories in the city closed or relocated between 1966 and 1977 with a loss of 40,000 jobs and employment in the city fell by 33 percent from 1971 to 1985. By 1981, 20 percent of Liverpool’s labor force was unemployed, and by 1985 employment levels had fallen by 33 percent from their position in 1971. It was a period marked by political, industrial, and social unrest. During roughly the same period, however, LFC were League Champions eleven times, won the European Cup five times, and were winners of sixteen other titles during the 1970s and 1980s, establishing them as the most successful club in Britain at that time. Jay McKenna, the chair of Spirit of Shankly (SoS), the Liverpool Supporters Union, which was also closely involved in organizing the #walkouton77 campaign, makes a clear connection between

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the fortunes of the city and those of the club and how they helped forge a specifically Scouse identity: Our fathers and grandfathers . . . grew up in a time where football gave them a sense of purpose, it was difficult times for the city in the 70s and 80s and they had Shankly and he was iconic and he talked a lot about politics and socialism and . . . we were also at a stage when Liverpool were winning trophies week in and week out, seemingly at will, and it gave them an identity that, “I’m a Liverpudlian, that is what I am” and they were quite proud of that. (McKenna 2011) Bill Shankly was a key figure in the club’s history; he was the team’s charismatic manager from 1959 to 1974. It was Shankly who led the team to its early major success and whose personal philosophy about the relationship of the club to the people has proved fundamental to LFC fan identity. This vision is best summed up in his own words, “A manager has got to identify himself with the people [because] football is their whole life” (LFC 2019b), and the closeness of this relationship is captured in this quote from a former teammate and fellow manager, Joe Mercer, describing, “That amazing relationship with the Kop . . . Shankly was their man, their hero, their football god. He belongs to the Kop, he’s one of them” (Shankly.com 2019). Something of this relationship is captured in this banner (Figure 9.4): It shows Shankly in an iconic pose, arms spread out. The four figures below him are other highly successful managers of the club who followed in his wake. The metaphor of the family embedded in it is rich; it conveys the sense of generational continuity and tradition. In terms of the iconography, it is tempting to see this configuration of Shankly positioned above the four other managers as God hovering over the four gospelers and this linking of football and religion is a common trope among LFC banners, bearing slogans such as “Liverpool is our religion, Anfield is our church” and “Liverpool FC—not

FIGURE 9.4 Shankly banner—“Success has many fathers.”

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just a team but a religion.” The idea that football is a religion with its ritualistic services (matches), prayers (chants), hymns (songs praising the team), and icons (banners) is by no means far-fetched (cf. Gardner et al. 1994; Ludwig 2015). One might even see the resistance to corporate greed as akin to Christ driving the money changers from the temple. The sense of being embedded in a specifically local culture (as seen earlier in the quote from Jay McKenna) is reflected in the affirmation of a specifically Scouse identity, even to the rejection of identifying as English Figure 9.5): Again, we see the presence of the Liver Birds, symbols of the city. At the textual level, it is worth noting that the contracted form “we’re” is used in relation to English whereas the full form “we are” is applied to Scouse, adding an emphatic note to the statement. This assertion of Scouse identity has also been claimed by overseas fans Figure 9.6): As this banner illustrates (and there are many similar examples) fandom is now a global phenomenon, with people from all over the world electing affinity to the local fan identity. This is not always welcomed by indigenous fans who see themselves as the guardians of the “authentic” club culture. More commonly, fans’ banners celebrate individual players, especially those who are from Liverpool. One such player is Jamie Carragher, who played for the team from 1996 to 2013, and is perceived as the iconic Scouser—working class and spent his whole professional career at LFC (Figure 9.7). Here we note the use of the pronoun “our,” expressing the community between players and fans; the significance of his working-class roots; and an intertextual reference to the song by Liverpool-born John Lennon, “A Working-Class Hero Is Something to Be.” It might be argued that these personalized banners function as “a portable kit of images that bears witness to connectedness,” as Susan Sontag wrote of family photos (Sontag 1979:8, cited in Rose 2016: 37). Carragher himself appears in the picture, wearing the

FIGURE 9.5 Banner—“We’re not English, we are Scouse.”

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FIGURE 9.6 Banner—“We’re not Bulgarian, we are Scouse.”

FIGURE 9.7 LFC footballer Jamie Carragher—“Our working class hero.”

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red tracksuit top. Apparently, he saw the banner while on his way to Anfield and got off the team coach to meet the fans. In this next example, the fans make a subversive attack on Thomas Cook Sports, the travel firm that holds the franchise to provide package trips to Anfield for out-of-town visitors (Figure 9.8). The banner reproduces the company’s logo adding (in red and emphatic upper case) the word “touts”—the illegal practice of buying and selling of tickets for profit. Positioned above official signage, it also deterritorializes the corporate space and reterritorializes it with the local one—market capital supplanted by fan ethos. A witty display of subversive semiosis to express dissent. The sign also reflects the tension between insiders and outsiders, “true” (local) fans and those who are pejoratively termed “tourists” and dismissed as consumers rather than authentic supporters. This strategy of decontextualization and recontextualization provides an economic way to voice dissent and reflects Jaworski and Thurlow’s observation that identity claims, power relations, and their contestations . . . involve territorial claims . . . and the categorization of social actors into ingroup and outgroup members, into Self and Other. (Jaworski and Thurlow 2010: 8–9)

FIGURE 9.8 Banner—Against “Sport touts.”

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The banner, and others like it, can also be seen—following Lefebvre (1991)—as the fans’ response to those other tensions between Anfield as a “perceived” space (its material reality), a “conceived” space (as represented through advertising), and a “lived” space (experiential, socially produced). Having presented some of the strategies supporters use in their assertion of fan ethos and its opposition to corporate culture, I will now turn to a particular example where these were brought together in a multilayered demonstration of discursive resistance.

5 THE #WALKOUTON77 CAMPAIGN— RETERRITORIALIZING THE STADIUM BY LEAVING IT On February 1, 2016, LFC announced its new ticketing price structure, followed by its publication on the official LFC website (LFC 2016a). This is the opening salvo: Ahead of Anfield’s new Main Stand opening for the start of the 2016-17 season, Liverpool FC have released the pricing and ticket structure, with the club maintaining its focus on bringing more local supporters and young people into the stadium. – 64 per cent of season ticket prices will decrease or freeze. – 45 per cent of matchday tickets will see a price decrease. – Local fans given priority access to over 20,000 tickets across the Premier League season, with prices starting from as little as £9. – Over 20,000 extra tickets allocated across the Premier League season, in a new pricing category, for fans aged between 17 and 21. – Over 1,000 free tickets across the Premier League season to local kids through a new Young Fan Initiative scheme. – 13 months’ consultation with the Ticket Working Group listening to what are priorities for match-going fans. Not surprisingly, this is all presented as good news for the fans: a new stadium; lower prices (including free tickets); the use of “over” to suggest an abundance; a focus on the “young” and “local” fan base; evidence of a “listening” ownership through lengthy consultation with “match-going fans”; the use of “with” suggests a lack of polarization or competing interests; the use of “maintaining” implies a concern for the fans’ interests (rather than FSG’s profits); and the use of personification and metonymy in “LFC” and “the club” also suggests that agency lies with the collective community rather than just the select group who made the actual decisions. Unsurprisingly, not everyone in the fan base saw it that way. In response, SoS also issued a statement on its website on February 2, 2016, that presents things differently. We engaged fully in the last thirteen months to find a solution that benefits all supporters. The club’s proposals do not do that. We did not disclose the prices yesterday as we agreed a Terms of Reference with the club at the beginning and agreed to keep this information confidential. We feel we have always been the ones giving in this process—time, effort, ideas and patience— particularly latterly as we waited many weeks and months for the club to finalise proposals. Whilst we are not happy with the outcome, we would like to place on

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record our thanks to those UK based executives of the club who have engaged with us openly and honestly, listened to us and feedback our concerns as we had no direct engagement with the owners. The final decision on these prices was theirs. They should be the ones made to account for them.1 From a CDS perspective, the most striking difference to the FSG text is the clear polarization between the owners/the club and the supporters on the ticketing group: the word “we” (to describe the supporters’ representatives) appears fourteen times in the opening four paragraphs to distinguish themselves from the “they” of the owners and their representatives. SoS also attributes agency for the actual decision-making to the (absentee) owners (with direct reference to “John Henry,” one of two major shareholders in FSG), who are presented as being absent from the actual negotiations. There is a clear use of positive, at times emotive, self-description: “We engaged fully,” “we did not disclose. . . ,” “we feel we have always been the ones giving in this process,” and so on. The concessionary “thanks to those UK-based executives of the club who have engaged with us openly and honestly” is also double-edged. There is, inevitably, an implied criticism of the US-based owners suggesting, by omission, that they have acted behind the scenes and dishonestly. The campaign moved swiftly, with SoS joining forces with the other major supporter element on the ticket working group, Spion Kop 1906, who organize the displays of banners at matches. On February 3, they began to use the hashtag #supportersnotcustomers, adding a screenshot of a marketing publication by FSG entitled “Transforming Fans into Customers,” thus using the strategy of polarization to position the supporters as upholders of the club’s true values and the owners as interested solely in its marketability. The hashtag and image began to circulate, and FSG hastily reissued the document so that by February 4 the title had changed to “Transforming Consumers into Fans.” A striking illustration of Coulmas’s observation (2009: 14) that “writing embodies the dialectic of power and resistance. A potent tool to secure institutional authority, it can also be turned against the powers that be and challenge authority.” In the interim, SoS and Spion Kop 1906 had agreed to organize a walkout at the next home game, which was to take place just days later, on February 6 and timed to take place on the seventy-seventh minute in reference to the highest ticket price of £77. The hashtag #WalkOutOn77 began to circulate rapidly with some 866 tweets on the first day (February 4) alone, which caused the hashtag to trend in Liverpool, and which were met with responses and retweets from all over the world and in many languages. The vast majority (840) of the tweets posted on February 4 were supportive of the proposed action and drew on similar and familiar tropes about loyalty and solidarity. Only 15 of the 866 tweets directly opposed the action and a further 31 expressed doubts about its likely effectiveness. Some went so far as suggesting that anyone not walking out would be a “scab,” a highly derogatory term for a strike-breaker. Despite widespread support from overseas fans, the tension between insiders and outsiders emerged in tweets that referenced middle-class supporters and non-locals in often disparaging, sometimes jingoistic terms: Football is for proper fans, not #suits & #daytrippers, English fans everywhere, its time to #ReclaimOurStands #20splenty #walkouton77 #lfc Such exclusionary language and sentiments were countered, as here: Need to stop confusing Out of Towners with Day Trippers, loads of OOT’s great lads/ girls. #WalkOutOn77

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Such divisions would suggest that football fans constitute an example of what Blommaert and Varis (2015) term a “light” community: People converge or coagulate around a shared focus—an object, a shared interest, another person, an event . . . triggered by a specific prompt, bound in time and space (even in “virtual” space), and thus not necessarily “eternal” in nature . . . such forms of coagulation should not be seen as creating uniformity or homogeneity: the people thus coagulating around a shared focus remain as diverse as before and after, in the sense that their identities remain as complex and multi-readable as before and after. (pp. 53–54) What emerges from this “coagulation” is that the tweets, embedded images, and hashtags combine to create what Wee (2016) describes as an “affective regime,” a sanctioned attitudinal environment that went alongside the more rational arguments about the economics of ticket-pricing and agitating for the walkout protest. They also illustrate the ability of social media to enable “horizontal power” to spread rapidly and globally, not least through the use of hashtags. Many of the tweets reproduced images of banners and photographs of the walkout. Chun (2014), discussing signs used in the Occupy Los Angeles demonstration of 2011, shows how they spread across the physical space of City Hall Park and into cyberspace, attaining a life beyond the protest itself. He argues that this resemiotization has potential for the mobilization of “global constituencies and for allowing counter-hegemonic discourse to emerge” (p. 670). A similar case can be made for the one here that underpins FSG’s “Transforming fans into customers” mantra. Chun (2014) also reminds us, however, that “these new mobile emplacements . . . may simultaneously . . . actually lessen Occupy’s impact by its very remoteness” (p. 671). LL research needs to be mindful of the role of time, affordances, and access when considering exchanges between online and offline LL. A further significant dimension is the role that the body plays in it. Butler (2011) talks about the “performativity of the body” and a walkout is, of course, a highly evocative performance and one generally associated with workforce strike action—another instance of fans deploying a strategy borrowed from the anti-neoliberal playbook. The significance of a consideration of the body in LL research was highlighted by Peck and Stroud (2015: 148): Corporeal landscapes suggest the dissolution of boundaries between bodies and places, and that one future direction in the study of linguistic landscapes might be . . . , a merging of the concerns of contemporary sociolinguistics with corporeality and mobility with the ambit of linguistic landscape research to research place and inscription. (Peck and Stroud 2015: 148) In organizing a walkout, the fans were (paradoxically) reterritorializing the space by removing themselves from it, showing through their absence the significance of their presence. As one of the most recycled banners stated, “Football without fans is nothing.” As well as tweeting photos and YouTube videos of the emptying stands (The Redmen TV 2016), fans also used their bodies in other ways, as in this image in which a banner repeating the mantra is interpolated alongside LFC’s Chief Executive Officer Ian Ayre seen here looking away from the banner, who was implicated in designing the new ticketing structure (Figure 9.9):

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FIGURE 9.9 Banner—“Football without fans is nothing.”

The fans’ banner acts like a “machine,” which Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 388) describe as “a set of cutting edges that insert themselves into the assemblage undergoing deterritorialisation, and draw variations and mutations of it.” This example illustrates a point made by Kitis and Milani (2015: 272), who, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, argue that the legitimacy of spaces can be contested by such acts of deterritorialization (here through the exposure and effective erasure of one set of meanings) and reterritorialization through replacement with new meanings. Such images are media-friendly and, as in the case above, are taken up by mainstream broadcasters and so disseminated both horizontally and vertically. This distribution ensured that the hashtag #WalkOutOn77 trended in several parts of the world, something that is unlikely to have escaped the notice of the owners. This may account for the fact that only four days after the protest they issued an apologetic statement withdrawing the planned increases in ticket prices and containing the words “message understood” and positioning themselves as custodians of the club: From our first days as owners we have understood that serving as custodians of this incredible institution is a distinct privilege and as such, we have been driven solely by the desire to return LFC to the pinnacle of football. In the world of modern football, growing the club in a sustainable way is essential to realising this objective. (LFC 2017b) This was a remarkable climbdown and their deference to the power of the affective regime constituted by the fans’ walkout is striking. It is interesting from a CDS perspective, to note that the performance of humility “serving as custodians” is nonetheless combined with the language of neoliberal marketing with its references to “growing the club,” “modern football,” and sustainability and objectives. While appearing to accede to the

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fans’ demands, there is an implicit suggestion to use the neoliberal acronym “TINA”— There Is No Alternative.

6 CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have tried to demonstrate that football is a site of interest for LL research, offering as it does, a place where competing “trajectories” (Massey) or “assemblages” (Deleuze and Guattari) meet spatially and textually in both online and offline contexts. The stadium provides a nexus of objects, bodies, texts, practices, and desires that, like Deleuzian rhizomes, have no root or crown, but rather affords a network that passes through the ground along asphalt and digital highways, generating “new affects, new concepts, new bodies, new thoughts” (Colman 2009: 235) as it goes. I have shown how football fans successfully used offline and online resources to challenge the hegemony of the owners in terms of a specific protest but also more generally by pitting their identity, their ethos and traditions against the neoliberal claims of the proprietors, resisting the latter’s deterritorialization of Anfield: the commodification of its physical environment and ethos with advertising hoardings and power to speak as “the club” through official documents, outlining their desire, for example, to turn “supporters into customers.” In so doing, I hope to have shown how LL can provide both a context for and approach to a critique of existing power relations in society. The presence of the fans with their banners, bodies, and voices raised inside the stadium is inherently transitory; they leave and the status quo returns with the ownership intact, but they persist online through social media. This poses challenges and opportunities for LL research in both delineating a particular LL as we need to address the question of where, when, and how we draw the line in defining a particular LL. The concepts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization have proven beneficial in this discussion precisely because they highlight that the LL is always “becoming” and its “is-ness” is inevitably a view from one point along the line of flight. Drawing on multimodal and discourse analysis, I have shown how the fans reterritorialize the club by use of their banners, tweets, and even their bodies, perhaps paradoxically achieving the most significant act of reterritorialization by removing themselves from the stadium through their mass walkout which was then reproduced on social media, YouTube, and public media, ultimately resulting in a climbdown by the club over the ticket-pricing, albeit their “apology” leaves the door open for a return, reminding us that the LL is “never finished, never closed.” By tracking images and texts through social media, taking them beyond the confines of Anfield literally across the globe, I have shown how a local tussle over ticket prices develops into a struggle for the very soul of the club as individuals and groups, like rhizomes, transport, and transform signs and signifiers, so that we recognize that viewed from one angle on the LL there is unanimity, as apparent from the thousands walking out of the stadium together, but from another, there may be dissent, as evident from the admittedly small number of fans opposed to the form the protest took. The LL is always plural and so requires a plurality of approaches, as here, to capture more than a single framing. This combination of multimodality, corporeality, examination of the interrelations of communication and communing in and across physical and cyberspace, the attempt to reflect the synchronic and diachronic dimensions of its unfolding, and the complexities of competing discursive practices, all represent a considerable challenge for LL research

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if it is to capture the complexities of the contemporary world. Football provides us with an open field to pursue that elusive goal.

FURTHER READING Crowley, T. (2012), Scouse: A Social and Cultural History, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Holbrow, M. (2015), Language and Neoliberalism: Language, Society and Political Economy, London: Routledge. Lou, J. J. (2016), The Linguistic Landscape of Chinatown: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Martín Rojo, L., ed. (2016), Occupy: The Spatial Dynamics of Discourse in Global Protest Movement, Luisa Martin Rojo (ed.).Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Millward, P. (2012), “Reclaiming the Kop? Analysing Liverpool Supporters’ 21st Century Mobilizations,” Sociology, 66 (4): 633–48. Monaghan, F. (2017), The Politics of Language and Creativity, London: The Open University. Video Available online at: https://youtu.be/-Krb6MMSiTw

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. “What we do with language in a particular place is a result of our interpretation of that place” (Pennycook, 2010:2). Drawing on ideas and examples presented in this chapter, as well as on your further reading and own exploration of LL, discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with this statement. 2. Gunther Kress has argued that social media channels have led to “a shift from ‘vertical’ to ‘horizontal’ structures of power” (Kress, 2010: 21). Drawing on both the evidence presented in this chapter and your own analysis, what are the implications for research in the field of LL?

PROJECT WORK 1. Show up and tell: Attend and document a protest event in your local area and produce a short film or presentation about it from the LL perspective presented in this chapter. Monaghan (2017) cited in the further readings might give you some ideas. 2. Follow the object: In his article cited in the chapter, Christian Chun draws on Lash and Lury’s method of “following the object” proposed in their book, Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things (2007). Search online for a demonstration or rally about a topic of interest to you. Pick a single image, tweet, or hashtag associated with the demonstration, track it through social media to follow its trajectory. Drawing on ideas in this chapter, write about what you discover as a result, from both a theoretical and a methodological perspective.

NOTE 1. This extract is taken from near the beginning of their response, the full text of which can be found here: http://www.spiritofshankly.com/news/response-to-lfc-ticket-prices.

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REFERENCES Bell, A. (1984), “Language Style as Audience Design,” Language in Society, 13: 145–204. Block, D., J. Gray, and M. Holbrow (2012), Neoliberalism and Applied Linguistics, London: Routledge. Blommaert, J. and P. Varis (2015), Enoughness, Accent and Light Communities: Essays on Contemporary Identities, Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, Paper 139, Tilburg: Tilburg University. Available online https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/upload/5c7b6e63-e661-4147a1e9-ca881ca41664_TPCS_139_Blommaert-Varis.pdf (accessed February 05, 2019). Butler, J. (2011), “Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street,” European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies. Available online: http://eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en (accessed February 05, 2019). Cap, P. (2014), “Expanding CDS Methodology by Cognitive-Pragmatic Tools: Proximization Theory and Public Space Discourses,” in C. Hart and P. Cap (eds.), Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, 189–210, London: Bloomsbury. Carter, R. (2004), Language and Creativity, London: Routledge. Chun, C. W. (2014), “Mobilities of a Linguistic Landscape at Los Angeles City Hall Park,” Journal of Language and Politics, 13 (4): 653–74. Coleman, R. (2009), The Becoming of Bodies: Girls, Images, Experience. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Coulmas, F. (2009), “Linguistic Landscaping and the Seed of the Public Sphere,” in Elana Shohami and Durk Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 13–25. London: Routledge. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1983), Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 1, translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1987), A Thousand Places, translated by Brian Massumi, London: Bloomsbury. Del Percio, A. (2015), “New Speakers on Lost Ground in the Football Stadium,” Applied Linguistics Review, 2015 (2): 261–80. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (2015), Trade Union Membership 2015. https ://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/525938/Trade_Uni on_Membership_2015_-_Statistical_Bulletin.pdf (accessed February 05, 2019). Elliott, R., ed. (2017), The English Premier League: A Socio-Cultural Analysis, London: Routledge. FIFA (2018), “More than half the world watched record-breaking World Cup,” FIFA media release. https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/more-than-half-the-world-watched-recordbreaking-2018-world-cup (accessed February 07, 2019). Gardner, J. et al. (1994), Football as a Religion. Art Works 9 (1994). BBC Open University. Goldblatt, D. (2007), The Ball is Round: A Global History Of Soccer, London: Penguin. Hansen, K. (2019), Play Up Liverpool. https://playupliverpool.com/the-history-of-liverpool-fc (accessed February 05, 2019). Hassan, D. and S. Hamil (2011), Who Owns Football? The Governance and Management of The Club Game Worldwide, London: Routledge. Jancsary, D., M. A. Höllerer, and R. E. Meyer (2016), “Critical Analysis of Visual and Multimodal Texts,” in R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, 3rd edn, 180–204, London: Sage.

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Jaworski, A. and C. Thurlow (2010), “Introducing Social Semiotics,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes, 1–40, London, Bloomsbury. King, A. (1997), “New Directors, Customers and Fans: The Transformation of English Football in the 1990s,” Sociology of Sport Journal, 14 (3): 224–40. Kitis, D. E. and T. Milani (2015), “The Performativity of the Body Turbulent Spaces in Greece,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (3): 268–90. Kress, G. (2010), Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication, London: Routledge. Kytölä, S. (2013), “Multilingual language use and metapragmatic reflexivity in Finnish internet football forums: A study in the sociolinguistics of globalization.” https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/ handle/123456789/41042 (accessed February 05, 2019). Kytölä, S. and E. Westinen (2015), “‘I be da reel gangsta’—A Finnish footballer’s Twitter writing and metapragmatic evaluations of authenticity.” Special issue “Authenticity, Normativity and Social Media” Janus Møller and Sirpa Leppänen, eds., Discourse, Context and Media (accessed January 11, 2018). Landry, R. and R. Y. Bourhis (1997), “Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An Empirical Study,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16: 23–49. Leeman, J. and G. Modan (2009), “Commodified Language in Chinatown: A Contextualized Approach to Linguistic Landscape,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13 (3): 332–62. Leeman, J. and G. Modan (2010), “Selling the City: Language, Ethinicty, and Commodified Space,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 182–98, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Lefebvre, H. (1991), The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell. LFC (2016a), “LFC announces new 16–17 ticket structure.” http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/ announcements/205690-lfc-announces-new-16-17-ticket-structure-9-ticket-and-free-ticketsfor-schools (accessed February 05, 2019). LFC (2016b), “FSG’s message to Liverpool Supporters.” http://www.liverpoolfc.com/new s/announcements/206821-fsg-s-message-to-liverpool-supporters (accessed February 05, 2019). LFC (2019a), https://www.liverpoolfc.com/fans/official-lfc-supporters-clubs (accessed February 05, 2019). LFC (2019b), “Bill Shankly.” http://www.liverpoolfc.com/history/heroes/bill-shankly (accessed February 05, 2019). Livesey, G. (2010), “Assemblage,” in A. Parr (ed.), The Deleuze Dictionary: Revised Edition, 18–19, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Ludwig, F. (2015), “Football, Culture and Religion: Varieties of Interaction,” Studies in World Christianity, 21 (3): 201–22. Machin, D. and Mayr (2012), How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction, London: Sage. Massey, D. (2005), For Space, London: Sage. McKenna, J. (2011), Unpublished interview conducted by Frank Monaghan, November 13, 2011. McLoughlin, C. (2009), Liverpool FC Banners, Liverpool: Trinity Mirror Sport Media. Millward, P. (2011), The Global Football League: Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Millward, P. (2012), “Reclaiming the Kop: Analysing Liverpool Supporters’ Twenty-first Century Mobilizations,” Sociology, 46 (4): 633–48.

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Millward, P. (2017), “A Whole New Ball Game: The English Premier League and Television Broadcast Rights,” in R. Elliott (ed.), The English Premier League: A Socio-Cultural Analysis, 33–48, London: Routledge. Monaghan (2014), “Seeing Red: Social Media and Football Fan Activism,” in P. Seargeant and C. Tagg (eds.), The Language of Social Media: Identity and Community on the Internet, 228–254, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Murden, J. (2006), “‘City of Change and Challenge’: Liverpool since 1945,” in J. Belchem (ed.), Liverpool 88: Culture, Character and History, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Ottewell, D. (2016), “It’s official—Liverpool really is one of the most left-wing cities in Britain.” http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/incoming/its-official-liverpool-really-one-119308 17 (accessed February 05, 2019). Ozanian, M. (2018), “The World’s Most Valuable Soccer Teams 2018,” Forbes SportsMoney. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2018/06/12/the-worlds-most-valuable-soccer-t eams-2018/#25abf7345c87 (accessed February 07, 2019). Peck, A. and C. Stroud (2015), “Skinscapes,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (2): 133–51. Pennycook, A. (2010), Language as a Local Practice, Abingdon: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2017), “Translanguaging and Semiotic Assemblages,” International Journal of Multilingualism, 14 (3): 269–82. Pennycook, A. and E. Otsuji (2017), “Fish, Phone Cards and Semiotic Assemblages in two Bangladeshi Shops in Sydney and Tokyo,” Social Semiotics, 27 (4): 434–50. Rose, G. (2016), Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials, 4th edn, London: Sage. Schiering, R. (2008), “Regional Identity in Schalke Football Chants,” in E. Lavric, P. Gerhard, A. Skinner and W. Stadler (eds.), The Linguistics of Football, 221–32, Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Seargeant, P. and C. Tagg, eds. (2014), The Language of Social Media: Identity and Community on the Internet, London: Palgrave MacMillan. Shankly.com (2019), “The Shankly Effect.” http://www.shankly.com/Article/2536 (accessed February 07, 2019). Siebetcheu, R. (2016), “Semiotic and Linguistic Analysis of Banners in three European Countries’ Football Stadia: Italy, France and England,” in Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscape, 181–94, Rome: Bloomsbury. Sontag, S. (1979), On Photography, Harmondsworth: Penguin. The Redmen TV (2016), Liverpool Fans’ Walkout Protest/#Walkouton77. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=O5s_BXo9u98 (accessed February 05, 2019). VisitBritain (2015), “Football tourism scores for Britain.” https://www.visitbritain.org/sites/ default/files/vb-corporate/Documents-Library/documents/2015-9%20VisitBritain%20Report _Football%20tourism%20scores%20for%20Britain.pdf (accessed February 05, 2019). Wee, L. (2016), “Situating Affect in Linguistic Landscapes,” Linguistic Landscape, 2 (2): 105–26. Weinbren, D. (2006), “Beneath the All-seeing Eye: Fraternal Order and Friendly Societies’ Banners in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Britain,” Cultural and Social History, 3: 167–91. Wodak, R. and M. Meyer (2016), “Critical Discourse Studies: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology,” in R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, 3rd edn, 1–22, London: Sage.

CHAPTER TEN

Exploring the Mediation Styles of LL Sites by Tourist Guides SHOSHI WAKSMAN AND ELANA SHOHAMY

1 INTRODUCTION: MEDIATING TOURIST SPACES The focus of this study is on tour guides as educators who mediate the meanings of spaces and their representations to various audiences (Brin and Noy 2010; Jaworski 2010). The concept of mediation, extensively discussed within the frameworks of education, refers to ways in which stimuli are transformed by intentional agents. In order to enhance mediation, the mediating agent selects, focuses, frames, and organizes the stimuli for the audiences. Further, the mediator has an intention to transcend the immediate needs or concerns of the recipient by going beyond the “here and now” in space and time (Feurstein et al. 2006). Within the framework of LL studies, the issue of mediation has been researched by discussing the interplays among various actors such as passersby, policy-makers, sign designers, and authors (Malinowski 2009; Trumper-Hecht 2010; Garvin 2010; Jaworski and Thurlow 2010). Coulmas (2009) refers to interested agents, within LL scenes, who have specific motivations, agendas, and intentions about the messages they deliver, the languages they choose to use, and the symbolic meanings they assign to spaces—agendas which “must be reckoned with in the analysis” (2009: 23). Leeman and Modan (2010) demonstrated how the municipality of Washington, DC, mediated the tourist space of Chinatown by displaying Chinese orthography to present the area as authentically Chinese, in spite of the fact that Chinese communities no longer reside there. Thus, the framework of mediation is an inherent component, intentionally or not, of a number of LL studies. Tourist sites are linguistic and semiotic arenas in which those interplays are manifested in the form of mediations in way that shape tourists’ perspectives (Thurlow and Jaworski 2010; Urry 1999; Jaworski and Yeung 2010). These mediations are displayed in representations of narratives, ideologies, and identities addressing varied host groups. For example, tourism is a key area through which nations construct their national and collective identities (Urry 1999; Dahles 2002). The tour guide activities include mediations among hosts and guests, tour agencies, and the tourists. Such mediation is claimed by Dahles (2002) as not innocent, as tour guides incorporate political components

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by using tourism strategically. Brin and Noy (2010:19) emphasize that tour guides “act as agents which covertly—under the umbrella of recreational tourist practices—negotiate ideologically charged issues and interpret the scenes and their meanings based on their own identity.” Such type of mediations was observed in our earlier study which examined a new signage system marking attractions for domestic and international tourists in the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (Waksman and Shohamy 2015). The most salient feature of this new system was the detailed display and descriptions of the site in Arabic along with Hebrew and English. This represents a new LL policy given that until recently, visibility of signs in Arabic in tourist areas in the city was represented only marginally (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006). According to interviews with policy-makers, the main reason of displaying Arabic in the new signage was to market the ideology of multiculturalism of world cities. This was evident also while examining the information included on signs based on Jewish narratives only, where while the Arabic language was displayed, the Arab narratives and histories were absent (Waksman and Shohamy 2015). It is often the case that in order to maximize the profits of tourism, agencies choose to market ideologies which are viewed by them as appealing to relevant audiences. Such marketing agencies have perceptions regarding the potential interests, desires, and fantasies of the tourists who visit the sites and design tourist spaces accordingly (Pretes 2003). One wonders then about the role of LL actors as propaganda agents who appropriate histories, power, people, events, and languages, both for materialistic and instrumental goals and/ or for political and ideological benefits.

2 THE PRESENT STUDY This chapter focuses on identifying the methods and strategies employed by a number of tour guides while mediating and interpreting the LL signs during urban excursions in a single area of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. The research design included documentation of oral discourse during the tours; interviews with tour guides regarding their perceptions and practices; and text analysis of tourist guidebooks, brochures, and websites to identify patterns of mediation. A number of LL mediation patterns were identified reflecting mixed and complex agendas. These range from using the LL as supporting and justifying hegemonic messages to utilizing the LL as a visible interface to critique it by pointing to injustice and evils; some take the roles of activists to “repair” the LL by proposing or displaying alternatives. This study therefore proposes to add new actors to the LL spatial scene resulting in broader LL construct. The location. This study is located in Jaffa, which is part of the mixed city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. It is an old city with 5,000 years of history, ample archaeological sites, and major tourist attractions. During the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, it was mainly an Arab cosmopolitan city, prosperous and significant in the Middle East. After the foundation of the state of Israel, in 1950, it was annexed to Tel Aviv and lost its autonomy as a separate city, hence becoming part of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Nowadays, Jaffa is an extremely complex arena of social and political conflicts, and subject to processes of gentrification by Jews and exclusion and marginalization of Arabs (Monterescu and Hazan 2018; Rotbard 2015). Most of the Arabs living in Tel Aviv-Jaffa reside in the Jaffa part, and today they make up 35 percent of Jaffa’s population. At the end of 2012 the population of Jaffa consisted of 46,051 inhabitants, of whom 32,792 were Jewish and 13,259 were Arabs (Goldstein-Havazki 2012). In terms of LL manifestation, it was found

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that in the central streets of Jaffa, 461 of the signs were in Hebrew, 147 in English, and only 83 signs in Arabic (Goldstein-Havazki 2012). The design. The research reported here focuses on tour guides as mediators and interested agents whose roles are to interpret LL in public spaces to different groups of tourists in Jaffa. It included two components: for the first, we documented mediation in action, while the second consisted of elicited reflections by two reputable activists (see below) who employ guiding tours as integral strategies of their activism. Data collection. In the first component we traced two tours in identical areas of Jaffa and documented the discourse of the tour guides and interactions with the audiences. The two tours were selected since they constituted institutional tours on behalf of two opposing organizations representing different perspectives regarding the geopolitical context of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. We followed the tours as members of the group of participants, and while listening to the explanations, we took field notes, photos, and audio recordings of the oral discourse of the interpretation by the tour guides, their interactions with the audiences and other events in the surrounding environment. Each walking tour lasted around three hours. The data collected was used to identify mediation patterns which emerged from the guided tours and to compare the interpretations of the guides in the identical sites. The second component of the research was based on interviews with two professional tour guides who were asked about their ideologies, perceptions, and practices of tour guiding with respect to semiotic and LLs. The rationale for selecting those interviewees was their reputation as activists with political, critical stances, and hence we expected them to provide further evidence of the repertoires of tourist mediation from a grassroots, non-institutionally instigated knowledge. Specifically, we conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews asking them to reflect about their roles and the processes of tour guiding. During the interviews they described their styles of mediation between the space and the audiences while they conduct tourist excursions. Interviewee 1, Sami Abu Shehade, is a historian and Arab resident of Jaffa who supports the rights of the local Arab community and is opposed to the gentrification process taking place in Jaffa. He himself is a popular tour guide in Jaffa with international and local audiences. Interviewee 2, Eitan Bronstein, is an activist who was heading a group named De-Colonizer that battles for the coexistence of Jews and Arabs, especially of Palestinian refugees. In the past he has served as the head of the activist group Zochrot, which often conducted tours which remapped Arab towns and villages, providing their history before the state of Israel was established.

3 ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 3.1 Component 1: Comparing mediations by two tour guides In the first comparative case we compared the discourse of two tour guides as they were mediating the site of the Old Saraya building (Figure 10.1), which used to be part of an Ottoman governmental complex in the nineteenth century. At the time it was purchased by an Arab Greek-Orthodox family that served as go between the Christians and the local Ottoman regime in Jaffa. The family turned the building into a soap factory. In the Israeli Independence War of 1948, the building was abandoned, and it became the property of the Tel Aviv municipality. At the time of the data collection, the building was sealed and a plaque nearby provided some historical facts about its history in Hebrew, English, and

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FIGURE 10.1 Old Saraya Building.

Arabic. This building is a favorite site for many tour guides to visit, so tourists can observe the same location by two different tour guides as they mediated it to their audiences. In the case of tour guide 1 (working on behalf of the municipality), we documented how he mediated the place by providing a number of anecdotes and pieces of personal information as follows: This used to be a soap factory, once the soap was made of what? Can you guess? Actually from olive oil ok? Can you hear the buzz here? Those are fruit bats, everybody that wants to see them can look inside, they are hanging out there, you can see them all over the city during this season and they eat fruit. To manufacture a soap was a very simple process, they took the oil, poured it into big barrels together with the dust of coal, cooked it together. My mother used to bathe me with that kind of soap. The guide of the municipality tour objectified the information and emphasized the procedure of manufacturing soap which does not necessarily relate to the specific story of the place and especially the people involved in its history. He overlooked the specific people and events related to the site and thus avoided any controversial issues. In the case of tour guide 2 (working on behalf of the Zochrot organization), who led a tour in the identical spot, the focus was on the sign nearby and he raised critical questions about its content as follows: They say the house was owned by a Christian family, they do mention its name but they don’t tell what happened to them, where the family lives, who owns this place now, and why they (the Jewish authorities) did not destroy it. I guess there is some controversy, some legal things that are preventing them from destroying it. So I think this is very symbolic to Jaffa as it is trapped in the past. In the view of this tour guide, the sign that represents the site is not transmitting the important and relevant facts and thus he raises a set of questions that need to be posed by the audience. Hence, he is engaged with people connected to the site and diverts the audience’s attention to issues not mentioned on the sign. He also transcends the meaning

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of the building to symbolize the whole story of Jaffa since there are deletions, absences, and contradictory meanings about the current representations of the city. The second comparative case took place in the area entitled Gan Ha-Pisga (in Hebrew, “the Summit Garden”), which is commonly used by tour guides as a spot to gain a panoramic perspective of the area (Figure 10.2). Such panoramic site enabled us to better understand the specific choices each guide made regarding a broad repertoire of the scenery and their significance in the geopolitical context. Tour guide 1 (working on behalf of the municipality) pointed at the scattered spots related to different periods of history with no connection among them as follows: This used to be the bath house of the governor. Next to it, there is the Hamam club; Dan Ben Amoz; we can also see (points at the surrounding) the Neve Tzedek—the first Jewish neighborhood, outside the walls of Jaffa, we can also see Colbo Shalom where the first Hebrew high school was founded. . . . Hilton and Reading power station and we also see the mountains of Judea. In this text the tour guide refers to a mixed list of disconnected sites and people combining history, geography, and events in a nonlinear historical order. He leaps from the Ottoman period directly to Israeli history of the 1950s and 1960s with no explanations and no interpretation of the places mentioned. Further, the tour guide redirects the tourist gaze from Jaffa to Tel Aviv, and overlooking Jaffa, which was the goal of the tour in the first place. Tour guide 2 (working on behalf of Zochrot) mediated the same landscape while holding an old photo of the panoramic place (Figure 10.3) from the past as follows: Right next to us there was a mosque. You don’t see the minaret since it was destroyed right after 1985 . . . those buildings were neglected on purpose and when they are not so nice they say “well this is a dangerous building, we have to destroy it for safety reasons. . . .” There is a bit of truth to it, it is dangerous, but as a child and a grown up you begin to associate mosques and cemeteries as dangerous buildings, you don’t want to go into them.

FIGURE 10.2 Gan Ha-Pisga (in Hebrew meaning “the Summit Garden”).

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FIGURE 10.3 Old photo of the panoramic view represented in Figure 10.2.

While showing the audience the panoramic view, this tour guide uses an old photo of the past, focusing on one detail from Jaffa which is missing in the current landscape (the minaret). He pays no attention to the rest of sites in the surrounding area. For him the disappearance of the minaret is symbolic of a broader phenomenon of marking Arab sites as “dangerous” and as a pretext for their destruction. Thus, this tour guide brings up specific points of reference as metonymy of the situation in general where Arab holy sites are associated with fear and danger.

3.2 Component 2: Tour guides reflecting on tourist mediation The second component of the study, the interviews, included invited reflections about the role and the processes of tour guiding as declared knowledge. We inquired about the styles of mediation between the space and the audience. As mentioned above, we expected the interviewee to provide further evidence of the repertoire of tourist mediation. We learned from the historian Sami Abu Shahada, an Arab resident of Jaffa, that tourist mediation, from his perspective, is intended to make the audiences aware of the conflicting narratives of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa. He commented on the LL and the wider semiotic landscape to propose different points of view and narratives that exist in the space and used them for debating these issues. He expressed his ideas as follows: Most of the tours that exist nowadays, describe only the first Zionists who established the city of Tel Aviv and “liberated” Jaffa . . . after all who is writing the story? The

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narrative of Jaffa as a main city is threatening to Zionism, if Arabs succeeded in the past to run a modern city, all the story about the empty land without people is dismantled and therefore there is no room for the story of Jaffa as a prosperous city in the past and especially during the 19th century. As a guide I would choose a few points of interest that will enable me to compare between the two narratives. To give room to critical examination of both narratives, it is very problematic that each narrative exists separately. Regarding the visibility of Arabic in the LL, he argued: I am not sure whether the tourists even recognize this Arabic orthography. The real hope was that Arabs are not transparent anymore and they are visible in the space, but actually their discourse is completely absent. Therefore Sami Abu Shahada offers to include all those places and points that will enable him to compare between the two narratives and criticize them. He is an interested agent and as such he creates open and free spaces for a variety of interpretations. Coulmas (2009: 14) notes that “writing on open display holds the potential of its acquisition by the uninitiated. It is a genie let out of the bottle. In the long run it cannot be controlled.” The second interviewee, Eitan Bronstein, is an activist for Arab and Jewish coexistence and conducts tours as part of his activism. In the interview he introduced a mediation strategy which he uses in tourist excursions of Arab areas which were erased. His mediation included the construction and displays of an alternative LL. He believes in the power of introducing a new LL as an important step toward reaching a change. The main idea he expressed was to commemorate places that used to exist in the past. Specifically, for him, it meant bringing new signs with historical descriptions, documenting the acts and displaying them on the site as well as on the web, so the presence of the signs continues to exist even though they have been erased (as is usually the case). In Figure 10.4 Eitan Bronstein added a new sign which marks and hence commemorates an Arab village which no longer exists. He asserts the need for more historical layers, especially those related to the Palestinian narrative, and reports these changes to UNESCO in order to reach a deeper awareness of the full history of the place. Thus, by displaying signs in various places, marking Palestinian settlements which no longer exist, Eitan Bronstein is utilizing tours to change the LL by adding not only new stories but also new signs. By doing this he is mediating to his audience that the LL is not necessarily fixed and stable, but rather dynamic and fluid and can be instrumental in preserving layers of history.

4 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This study explores the different roles of interested agents who mediate the LL. While the LL might be perceived as something fixed, the mediation by tourist agents mobilizes and transforms the space to create various directions and interpretations. More specifically, we explored the role of tour guides as major actors in the interpretation of the LL in spatial scenes. In this study we identified various types of mediations. From the comparative analyses of the tours we learned that the two tour guides provided very different types of mediations of the same sites. On the one hand, for the tour guide of the municipality the tour was aimed at mediating the story of the place as historical facts detached from controversy

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FIGURE 10.4 Sign commemorating an Arab village.

and questions of politics, people, and conflicts. Further, he focused on so-called “neutral” facts and avoided mediation of transcendence and meaning. In other words, he does not see the specific story of the site as the tip of an iceberg represented by the whole geopolitical context (Feurstein et al. 2006). On the other hand, the tour guide from Zochrot introduced a critical view of the sites, raising questions about the history of the places and their loaded meanings. As noted above, he focused on people and their histories, and thus transcended the whole story of Jaffa and the general geopolitical contexts. Thus, the comparative findings point to two types of mediation based on their motivations, interests, and intentions regarding the significance of the LL. It is important to note again the fact that each guide represents a different institutional organization. One is associated with the municipality, while the other represents an organization with an agenda to contextualize the site within issues of politics and injustices; the first one constructs a so-to-speak “neutral” narrative, while the second provides a critical and explicit judgment. Nevertheless, both guides, while offering different styles of mediation and narratives, represent agendas of authoritative institutions and they abide by them. By comparison, the two tour guides who were interviewed about their touring strategies offer more bottom-up and innovative approaches of mediation and styles. One is eager to broaden tourists’ perspectives by including diverse viewpoints and variety of narratives that exist in the space and to enable negotiations with the audiences. The other suggested that the sign be rewritten in order to make an alternative narrative visible. From his point of view, the LL visibility and reconstruction of colonized sites are important milestones toward change. One wonders about the roles of the tour guides and their audiences on guided tours, given the above findings. The issue is whether the guides’ purpose is to share historical facts, to raise the moral conscience and awareness of tourists, or to avoid difficult and painful experiences of events that occurred in the public spaces. In terms of the audience,

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is it their role to listen and accept, or does the guide’s reconstruction serve as a trigger for looking for in-depth information about the sites? The act of pointing. One salient observation which we identified during the tours was the use of “pointing” as an act for mediation which is used as a tool for both diverting and directing the perception of the tourist gazes (Figure 10.5). Historically “pointing” has been an act of targeting objects and diverting attention, assigning and transmitting a specific meaning to audiences (Kita 2003). Yet, pointing has another iconic meaning, pointing at the wound—an act of evidence for suffering and being a martyr; a typical example for this is The Altar of Isenheim (Grunwald 1515). It shows the crucifixion of Christ, and the theological significance of the event is stressed by the figure pointing at the wounds of the tortured body. We explored the meaning of pointing during the tours by asking ourselves what the tour guides were doing when they were pointing and telling something. In both tours the tour guides utilized pointing as mediation strategies for directing the attention of the audiences to specific aspects and places and/or removing unwanted aspects of the space. In the case of the old Saraya building, the tour guide from the municipality pointed at the “dry” facts of producing soap and avoided historical and conflictual meanings of the place. On the contrary, the guide from Zochrot pointed at the unanswered questions about the people that used to own the building as described in the nearby sign. Another pointing act related to the panoramic view from Gan Ha-Pisga, where the tour guide of the municipality pointed to scattered spots of the area without any context related to the controversial meanings of the space. The tour guide from Zochrot, on the other hand, pointed at the deleted minaret and even enhanced it with the tool of the old photo which showed the paysage as it used to be in the past. Thus, by pointing, the latter tour guide directed the attention of the audience to the “wound” in the landscape. Yet, the richness and the dynamic nature of surrounding public spaces seem to compete with the boundaries of the pointed space. A case in point is that during the tour (on behalf of the municipality), we encountered a special event that took place on the route of the tour. Several couples of asylum seekers from Eritrea were celebrating their weddings

FIGURE 10.5 The act of pointing.

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FIGURE 10.6 Scenes from the Eritrean weddings (I).

FIGURE 10.7 Scenes from the Eritrean weddings (II).

(Figures 10.6 and 10.7). The event raised curiosity on the part of the participants of the tour, and one even referred to it by asking, “Is it a staged scene and part of a movie that is being taken?” The guide responded by saying that it was not a movie but a real wedding, without providing any further explanation about it, and swiftly returned to the historical details of the Saraya building as part of the preplanned tour. In other words, he considered the wedding event as irrelevant and as an intrusion to the tour. This episode raises questions about styles of mediation with regard to the definition of spaces in tours, and about whether they should be considered as fixed spaces where the mediation is preplanned and closed to the reactions of the participants, or as dynamic, fluid, and open to reactions and unexpected happenings. We can see here how tourist

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spaces are often constructed by tour guides as artificial and regimented, and hence create disconnected artificial realities. These questions are extremely relevant to LL studies, which too often create strict and preplanned boundaries around the sites and scenes they research, and hence bias their findings from the start. We ourselves are wondering what the conclusions would be, had we not narrowed down our study to the act of “pointing” as part of the tour guides’ mediation styles. As a result, we propose that this study widens the scope of LL not as a steady and static entity, but rather as a mediated act that invests dynamic and fluid processes that need to be researched further.

FURTHER READING Dahles, H. (2002), “The Politics of Tour Guiding,” Annals of Tourism Research, 29 (3): 783–800. Modlin, E. A., D. H. Alderman, and G. W. Gentry (2011), “Tour Guides as Creators of Empathy: The Role of Affective Inequality in Marginalizing the Enslaved at Plantation House Museums,” Tourist Studies, 11 (1): 3–19. Reisinger, Y. and C. Steiner (2006), “Reconceptualising Interpretation: The Role of Tour Guides in Authentic Tourism,” Current Issues in Tourism, 9 (6): 481–98. Thurlow, C. and A. Jaworski (2014), “‘Two Hundred Ninety-Four’: Remediation and Multimodal Performance in Tourist Placemaking,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18 (4): 459–94.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. Coulmas writes that “linguistic landscape is a cultural scene, formed by interested agents whose motivations and intentions pertaining to information contents, language choice and symbolic significance . . . must be reckoned with in the analysis” (2009: 23). How does this quote apply to the methods and findings of this chapter? Optional: Discuss how Coulmas’s quote applies to studies of the LL with which you are familiar (you may wish to select one or two studies from the online LL bibliography: https:// www.zotero.org/groups/216092/). Are there certain research questions, methodological approaches, or physical sites of research that make Coulmas’s quote more or less applicable? 2. From the vantage points of a tour guide agency and individual tour guides themselves, what are some arguments for and against giving an ideologically “neutral” tour? Is such a tour even possible? What stance would you take as the manager of a tour agency? As an individual tour guide? Why would you make the choices you do? Research and use examples from actual sites you have heard of that have been surrounded by some degree of controversy, either in the past or in the present.

PROJECT WORK 1. Exploring Mediation on Campus—In a group of four, form two pairs who will work separately to lead tours of a place on your school or university campus that is familiar to all of you—the dining hall, a dormitory, the building where your classroom is located, the administrative building, the campus gymnasium, and so on. One person will lead a ten-minute tour, pretending that her/his partner is a prospective student

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who is unfamiliar with the place, and trying to convince the visitor to choose to attend your school. “Visitors” should pay careful attention to the various verbal, visual, and embodied techniques used by their tour guide, documenting with notes and photos or videos, if possible. After the tours, the two pairs should meet, comparing materials and experiences in order to prepare a five-minute presentation to the class on how “mediation” by tour guides works in practice. Based on your collective experience, reflect on any contradictions, problems, or additions you’d like to make to the notion of “mediation” as it’s developed in Waksman and Shohamy’s chapter. 2. Mediating History in Familiar Landscapes—Think of a local heritage site or other location of historical or cultural significance in the region where you live. Study the history of populations of people who have lived in or occupied this place over the decades and centuries. Then, research existing materials from visitors’ bureaus, tourist agencies, property developers, and others who have a vested interest in introducing others to this place and the area nearby. Then, if possible, attend a tour, taking careful note of how various modes and media of communication (narrated text, brochures, signs in the landscape, the physical gestures, expressions, and actions of tour guides, etc.) are used to create certain representations about the place. What stories are told about this place now, and in whose interest? What stories remain silent, or silenced? Design a presentation in which you report your findings.

REFERENCES Ben-Rafael, E., E. Shohamy, M. Hasan Amara, and N. Trumper-Hecht (2006), “Linguistic Landscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public Space: The case of Israel,” International Journal of Multilingualism, 3 (1): 30–7. Brin, E. and C. Noy (2010), “The Said and the Unsaid: Performative Guiding in a Jerusalem Neighbourhood,” Tourist Studies, 10 (1): 19–33. Coulmas, F. (2009), “Linguistic Landscaping and the Seed of Public Sphere,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape Expanding the Scenery, 13–24, New York and London: Routledge. Dahles, H. (2002), “The Politics of Tour Guiding: Image Management in Indonesia,” Annals of Tourism Research, 29 (3): 783–800. Garvin, T. R. (2010), “Responses to the Linguistic Landscape in Memphis, Tennessee: An Urban Space in Transition,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben -Rafael, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 252–74, Bristol, Buffalo, and Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Feurtstein, R., R. S. Feurstein, L. H. Falik, and Y. Rand (2006), Creating and Enhancing Cognitive Modifiability: The Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment Program. ICELP Publications. Jaworski, A. (2010), “Linguistic Landscapes on Postcards: Tourist Mediation and the Sociolinguistic Communities of Contact,” Sociolinguistics Studies, 4 (3): 594–69. Jaworski, A. and S. Yeung (2010), “Life in the Garden of Eden: The Naming and Imagery of Residential Hong Kong,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben –Rafael, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 153–81, Bristol, Buffalo, and Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Goldstein-Havazki, R. (2011), A Travel Diary in Jaffa: Development of Linguistic Landscape Awareness and Attitudes Among Teenagers. Unpublished MA thesis, Tel Aviv University. Kita, S. (2003), “Pointing: A Foundational Building Block of Human Communication,” in S. Kita (ed.), Pointing: Where Language, Culture and Cognition Meet, 1–8, Mahwah, NY: Erlbaum.

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Leeman, J. and G. Modan (2010), “Selling the City: Language, Ethnicity and Commodified Space,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben –Rafael, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 182–98,‫ ‏‬E. Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Malinowski, D. (2009), “Authorship in the Linguistic Landscape: A Multimodal Performative View,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape Expanding the Scenery, 107–25, New York and London: Routledge. Monterescu, D. and H. Hazan (2018), Twilight Nationalism: Politics of Existence at life’s End, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Pretes, M. (2003), “Tourism and Nationalism,” Annals of Tourism Research, 30 (1): 125–42. Rotbard, S. (2015), White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa, Cambridge,MA: The MIT Press. Thurlow, C. and A. Jaworski (2010), “Silence is Golden: The ‘Anti- Communicational’ Linguascaping of Super-Elite Mobility,” in A. A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes, Language, Image, Space, 187–218, New York: Continuum. Trumper-Hecht, N. (2010), “Linguistic Landscape in Mixed Cities in Israel From the Perspective of ‘Walkers’: The Case of Arabic,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben -Rafael, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 235–51, E. Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Urry, J. (1999), “Gazing in History,” in D. Boswell and J. Evans (eds.), Representing the Nation: Histories, Heritage and Museums, 208–32, London, Routledge. Waksman and Shohamy (2015), Introducing a new municipal LL system in tourist areas of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Paper presented at the LL7 Workshop, May 7–9, UC Berkeley, CA.

PART B

Reterritorializing Linguistic Landscapes

SECTION III

Re-Writing, Re-Working, Re-Inventing Place

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Semiotics of Heritage and Regeneration: Post-Apartheid Urban Development in Johannesburg GILLES BARO

1 INTRODUCTION In a 2016 interview at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas, African American soul singer Timmy Thomas, famous for his 1972 international hit song “Why Can’t We Live Together?”, recalls1 his trip to the black township of Soweto, South Africa, in 1974: “I was not the first black person to play in Soweto, I was the first American. ’Cause nobody else would go because of the apartheid, which means division of races, I didn’t know anything about that either. In my history books, they talked about diamonds . . . gold. You know?” The fact that apartheid was omitted from Timmy Thomas’s history book was not an accident. The positive image of South Africa rendered by mentions of diamonds and gold served as a mask for the ideology of apartheid, whereby people were classified and treated unequally based on their race. While apartheid was not exactly popular around the world, due to growing international awareness of South Africa’s racist policies and repression of social movements, the image of a modern, sophisticated, rich, and quasi-European state at the tip of Africa endured. This chapter looks at a site where the foregrounding of South Africa’s gold and diamond mining heritage similarly seems to eclipse its apartheid past, in the context of urban regeneration. A study of what is included, what is excluded, who is represented, and who is erased in the landscape of Marshalltown, located in the inner city of Johannesburg, will show how these historical discursive processes play out in the present. The analysis of Marshalltown is based on a larger ethnographic study of the neighborhood. Because of the focus of this chapter on heritage and regeneration, a small set of signs has been chosen, namely those which index a particular history of the city that have been put on display by private developers. Their aim was to revitalize the neighborhood’s

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past, and as such, they are symptomatic of contemporary urban regeneration trends. The multimodal elements of these signs are analyzed following Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) methodological framework of geosemiotics, which investigates the multiple semiotic systems at play in the emplacement of discourses (Scollon and Scollon 2003). The chapter first gives a historical background on the neighborhood of Marshalltown as well as its current landscape. It then moves on to give an overview of the theoretical framework of heritage and urban development in linguistic and semiotic landscape scholarship in conjunction with a background on the toolkit of geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon 2003), before analyzing the relevant data. It concludes by answering the question of what kind of historicity is backgrounded and foregrounded in the recent regeneration of Marshalltown in a context a reterritorialization and appropriation of the formally public space by the private sector. Considering that urban development in the area is directed by white capital, the chapter links the issue back to the representation found in Timmy Thomas’s history books, whereby the white establishment at the time of apartheid highlighted the country’s mining industry as a way to blur out its racist ideology.

2 JOHANNESBURG, THE GOLD-MINING CITY Marshalltown is located within the administrative limits of the Central Business District (henceforth CBD) of Johannesburg—in the south-west of it to be precise—and if there is one word that encapsulates the history and character of Marshalltown, it is “mining.”2 The first mining camp to be built after the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 was at Ferreirasdorp, an area directly adjacent to Marshalltown. Many fortune seekers flocked to the area. Very soon, an informal camp was no longer enough to sustain the growing population. Marshalltown was the first formally planned residential area; plans were drawn up by Henry Brown Marshall, a Scotsman after whom the area is named (Godfrey, Barnett, and Barnett 1966). Johannesburg, which is also known as eGoli in isiZulu—place of gold—quickly went from being a miner’s camp in the late nineteenth century to being a large metropolis during apartheid thanks to the erection of high-rise buildings and skyscrapers, as the city’s economy dependent on the gold-mining industry in the area kept on growing and luring more and more people looking for money and jobs (Beavon 2004; Garner 2010; Murray 2011; Iqani and Baro 2017). Until 1998, when the South African stock exchange relocated to the new municipality of Sandton in the north following a population and capital flight from the inner city, Marshalltown was the economic center of Johannesburg, hosting the headquarters of the major banks and mining corporations. Unlike the stock exchange, however, those headquarters mainly remain in Marshalltown, which is why the area is still referred as the “banking district” and as the “mining district” because of the many mining and banking headquarters having historically been established there. Their presence has associated Marshalltown with wealth, while the rest of the inner city experienced capital flight, which saw buildings go uncared for by missing owners and banks redlining the areas for fear of not having loans repaid (Baro 2017 2018; Beavon 2010). Private urban development efforts led by Marshalltown’s wealthy corporate and private residents in the 1990s have made the area distinguish itself from the rest of the inner city known for its urban decay and crime statistics. The privatization of some parts of Marshalltown by these developers has allowed them to regulate urban life, indexing a feeling of safety through CCTV cameras and patrolling security guards. Developers

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wanting to revamp Marshalltown managed to gain the private lease to certain streets of the neighborhood from the first democratically elected local government in 1995. The new ANC (African National Congress)-run municipality had inherited a bankrupt city and thus had no choice but to hand over some public spaces to the private sector in order for those to be regenerated and attract urban development back into the inner city. These newly privatized enclaves (Murray 2015) are where the signs of heritage forming the data for this chapter can be found. Those comprise of artifacts from the city’s mining history which are put on display as if Marshalltown was an outdoor museum. Sign boards are also scattered around the area, giving visitors a history of particular buildings and people active in the development of the city. The fact that the privatized landscape of Marshalltown is highly controlled, and any sign not approved by the property owners quickly erased, is what makes the analysis interesting. The semiotic landscape of urban development is constructed with the goal to index safety and cleanliness and to attract people and capital back into the inner city, according to the interviews with developers I conducted for this study, of which one will be mentioned and analyzed. Before delving into the analysis of the signs in Marshalltown, the next section will discuss the methodological approach of the study and will be followed by the presentation of existing scholarship on linguistic and semiotic landscapes of heritage and urban development.

3 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH This chapter draws from a three-year ethnography (Baro 2017) which looked at Marshalltown’s other signs and how they construct a representation of what is meant to look authentic in order to appeal to a middle-to-upper-class consumer market. The project also discussed the language used in media texts and interviews with developers when representing the urban design of the area. For this particular case study, one of the developers from the Johannesburg Land Company is mentioned because of his role in the introduction of heritage in the neighborhood but the semiotic landscape of neighborhood is the work of a few others. The data is analyzed following Scollon and Scollon’s geosemiotic framework. Their work highlights the importance of the material world in the production of discourse. They refer to geosemiotics as “the study of the social meaning of the material placement of signs and discourses and of our actions in the material world” (2003: 2). It gathers insights from multiple fields such as linguistics, cultural geography, sociology, communication studies, and so on, each of which have influenced sociolinguistics individually, but which the Scollons bring together in a coherent analytical framework. Pennycook (2008) suggests that geosemiotics is strongly related to LL research as they both focus on “the spaciality of language” (2008: 304). This is echoed by Huebner (2008) as well as Jaworski and Yeung (2010) who, in the early days of the field, regard it as “stimulus for the study of linguistic/semiotic landscapes” (Jaworski and Yeung 2010: 154). However, despite its earlier mentions, the Scollons’ approach to the signs in place which predates most of LL scholarship has not become a fashionable methodology and its use has remained seldom, with the notable exceptions of Blommaert (2013), Hult (2014), Rubdy (2015), and Lou (2007; 2016), who justifies its use because of its ability to “bring together various strands of research on the three dimensions3 of space and place” (2016: 32). Scollon and Scollon see geosemiotics as a toolkit for understanding the signs of daily life which often go unnoticed. By sign, they mean any material object that indicates or refers to something other than itself (2003: 3). These signs index the world in many ways.

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To give an example from the ethnography that underpins this thesis, my first experience with Marshalltown was walking around after having recently moved to the neighboring Retail District in Johannesburg’s inner city. I noticed that the area of Marshalltown seemed different to the rest of the CBD, and began looking for signs which would make me understand this difference. I often found my answers in apparently mundane “nooks and crannies of daily life” (Besnier 2009: 11), that is, signs that we usually see but do not reflect upon. The goal of these early exploratory walks was also to try to demystify certain areas of the CBD which usually have the reputation of being dangerous, no-go zones. In order to explore this discourse of safety/danger, I started to pay attention to the bodies of security guards, the signs communicating the municipal government’s redevelopment activities, the kind of people walking in the street, as well as their body language (What were they wearing? What were they doing?). Indeed, for Scollon and Scollon (2003), “Our own bodies make and give off much of their meanings because of where they are and what they are doing ‘in place’” (2003: 3). In other words, a geosemiotic approach is interested in everything that is indexable, meaning “a semiotic object in the world to which we can point and about which we can talk” (2003: 11). The banal signs mentioned above rely on systems of meaning that are not immediately apparent, but are no less powerful. Applied to the study of Marshalltown, geosemiotics refers to the study of the discourses produced by the signs of heritage and memory found in the district (discourses of authenticity, urban development, safety, history, tradition, tourism, coolness, etc.) but also which actions are connected to these discourses. In other words, how do people interact with these discourses (Who looks at these signs? What do they see? What do they feel?). For example, someone may feel safe walking in the streets of Marshalltown because the discourse of the signs they see indicates that someone is in charge, security guards are patrolling, the streets are clean, and everything is in order. This information plays a role in the individual’s decision-making process for his or her interaction with the space.

4 HERITAGE AND URBANISM IN LINGUISTIC AND SEMIOTIC LANDSCAPE SCHOLARSHIP Boyer (2006) and Zukin (2009) have argued that, through urban development, cities in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have preserved, renovated, and highlighted historical architecture, narratives, and aesthetics with the aim of returning to the representation of a “traditional” city from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century (Boyer 1996). Many almost erased modernism from their landscapes, partly in order to fit in with global consumer trends that value reliving an “authentic” past (Zukin 2009). Urry (2002) advocated for a shift from the question of whether preserving the past is or is not necessary to questioning “what kind of past we have chosen to preserve” (2002: 99). His sentiment echoes Graham et al.’s (2000) definition of heritage as a concept which implies a particular preservation of the past with a conscious plan to highlight, and thus also background, certain aspects of the past. They argue that heritage is “that part of the past which we select in the present for contemporary purposes, be they economic, cultural, political or social” (2000: 17). Many signs in contemporary cities index the past, be it certain characters, buildings, industries, or aesthetics. These become “signs of heritage” when highlighting a part of a city’s past for particular purposes.

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The field of LLS has tended to focus on language (Landry and Bourhis 1997), and later on its nexus with images (Shohamy and Gorter 2009), on signs in urban areas (with the exception of works such as Du Plessis 2012, Laitinen 2014, and Banda and Jimaima 2015 who looked specifically at rural areas). Specific attention has been paid to multilingualism in the LL of places with increasing multiculturalism due to migration patterns, which, in turn, is reflected in urban social change (Gorter 2006; Backhaus 2007; Helot et al. 2012; Blommaert 2013). However, urbanism and its effects, such as urban development, have received much less attention. As an exception, Papen (2012) examined Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg since Germany’s reunification, and Lou (2016) studied Washington, DC’s Chinatown. Lou analyzed the representation of the district— what makes it Chinese—and how its identity is being produced within the context of urban renewal of a neighborhood previously mostly populated by Chinese migrants. She argues that the district’s shop signs contain similarities and differences depending on whether they are for Chinese or non-Chinese-owned stores. Those shop signs rely on a common language choice, layout, and emplacement indexing a Chinese aesthetic, but they differ in code preference (Scollon and Scollon 2003: 209), content, and color. She argues that non-Chinese corporations—having come into the traditionally ethnic enclave as part of contemporary urban development—use Chinese language on their signs in order to “comply with a mandatory design policy in order to gain entry into a profitable central urban location” (2016: 179). She also insists that urban development has reconfigured the agency of the Chinese community in shaping the district’s LL because of unequal economic and political power, compared to corporations. Thus, multiple times are indexed in the same space—the time when the Chinese community had the resources to design and implement proposals, and the time when this function is taken over by corporations. While Lou looked at urban development lead by corporations aiming to spread their marketing target, Gendelman and Aiello (2010) paid attention to urban renewal due to major sociopolitical change. They focused on the ways in which building façades in the former Eastern European bloc have been reshaped after the collapse of the USSR, and argued that urban change requires new uses for pre-Soviet and Communist-era façades. Here, pre-Soviet façades are highlighted as historic, thus worthy of renovation because of their global, tourist appeal, heightened by the performance of an authentic but staged local identity. Buildings are thus celebrated for their pre-Soviet aesthetic in order to attract global attention and hide their use during the Soviet era. Communist-era façades, on the other hand, are either hidden away through urban decay and lack of care or “refashioned” (2010: 270) through the use of billboards and other types of advertisement for global consumption. Gendelman and Aiello’s (2010) study intersects with the analysis of Marshalltown in this chapter as it deals with urban renewal in the semiotic landscape as well as how signs of heritage—and the particular historicities they index—are used by urban developers for consumption purposes. Even though heritage has been included in the linguistic and semiotic landscape scholarship (Abousnnouga and Machin 2010; Shohamy and Waksman 2010; Abdelhay, Ahmed, and Mohamed 2016), only Aiello (2011) frames it in relation to urban development in the context of the industrial neighborhood of Manifattura delle Arti in Bologna, Italy. She argues that urban renewal has had an effect of exclusion in the neighborhood as development brought new consumerism. She regrets that this renewal is catering for a new, wealthier market and not historically working-class residents. This phenomenon is understood as the result of advanced capitalism. Aiello concludes

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by stating that “in late modern times it is not only media based in representation and communication technology that are mobilized to carry professionally crafted meanings across cultural and national borders” (2011: 360). This study of Marshalltown in Johannesburg looks both at the use of heritage in the semiotic landscape of a place which has recently witnessed radical sociopolitical change with the collapse of the apartheid system and the emergence of “post-racial” democracy, and at how these signs are used in a context of urban development aiming to bring in new consumerism into Johannesburg’s inner city. This chapter is thus in conversation with Gendelman and Aiello (2010) and Aiello (2011), with the aim to bring in new empirical data found in Johannesburg’s inner city, a space thus far underrepresented in linguistic and semiotic landscape scholarship. We will now turn to those signs of heritage in Marshalltown, and analyze what they say—and do not say—about the city’s past.

5 HERITAGE AS DEVELOPMENT IN THE CITY Many signs in Marshalltown indicate that the area is in constant flux because of urban development efforts. This change is exemplified by scaffolding covering buildings being renovated and the fact that new businesses open regularly, filling up previously empty street-level commercial spaces. On Main Street, a building where Standard Bank had its headquarters in the 1970s is under renovation. A fence prevents the public from getting too close to the structure. The bottom floor of the building where the entrance is located is covered by a semitransparent sheet with a photograph of a classroom. The Gauteng4 provincial government logo in the bottom left-hand corner counterbalances the decaying, messy entrance hall. Finally, the top of the banner contains three framed titles in bold typeface stating “Radical Transformation,” “Modernisation,” and “Re-Industrialisation” (Figure 11.1). The first title uses the strong adjective “radical”—referring to an upcoming change that is fundamental, and unlike anything experienced in the present. This sign can be read in relation to the rubbish bins in front of the building, reminders of what must disappear in order for things to change. Stroud and Mpendukana argue that “meaning and languages are represented differently in semiotic artifacts and technologies across spaces” (2009: 365). Here, a language-based sign is read in relation to a material object in the same space, exposing the meaning of transformation from “decay” and “construction,” as iconized (Scollon and Scollon 2003: 26) by the bin, to “modernization.” As opposed to an upgrade or renovation, a transformation means getting rid of something in order to make space for the new. The second linguistic sign (“modernization”) entails a move to the present time, and as such it refers to the adoption of new technologies because of the laptop, digital tablet, and smartboard pictured in the image. Finally, the third sign evokes a reference to the past, as opposed to the previous sign. By saying “re-industrialization,” the sign presupposes that there was industrialization, and then de-industrialization, and that the Gauteng province is now bringing industry back. In the context of urban development, industrialization is part of a discourse of construction, meaning that in order to have urban regeneration or “radical transformation,” various industries will have to be active and relocate their efforts to the developing area. In the context of South Africa, and of Johannesburg particularly where unemployment is rife, reindustrialization presupposes economic expansion and the creation of jobs. This sign of urban development gives hope because it announces a move forward in time for

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FIGURE 11.1 Scaffolding in front of the former Standard Bank headquarters on Main Street.

the inner city after a long period of neglect, and a way to reenergize it while bringing jobs for the people in need. Another sign that makes reference to the discourse of urban regeneration is found on an adjacent street. On the first floor of the newly renovated London House, a large billboard contains the logo of City Property, the city-owned company providing affordable housing in renovated buildings in the inner city. In large bold letters it says “Another Urban Renewal Project.” The middle words—“Urban Renewal”—are in red, while the others are in blue. Scollon and Scollon (2003), taking from Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), explain that within the visual semiotics of a sign, color differentiation is one of the main indicators of modality. The modality here foregrounds urban renewal as something important and deserving attention. This contrast contributes to giving salience to the notion of urban renewal: it is central to the message of the billboard. The adverb “another” is also key here and contributes to discourses of progressive (and promising) changes: the project is one in a series of developments that started in the past, are ongoing today, and will continue into the future. Other buildings have been renovated by City Property, and more are to come. By placing this sign in front of a newly renovated building, City Property is also advertising newly available housing to prospective renters. However, the fact that the sign does not mention housing, but urban renewal in general, suggests that the project

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aims not merely to house people, but to bring a range of changes to the area, catering to the needs of the incoming population. The term “renewal” in this sign also contains a marker of time. It presupposes that there was something before and something different is being created (what the other two signs discussed also pointed to). However, unlike other signs in Marshalltown, none of these signs points specifically to which era is being referred to. Across from the sign analyzed above placed in front of London House stands a recently renovated turret (Figure 11.2). Its façade is so well painted that it looks like the building was built during the twenty-first century. However its architectural style with its pillars and roof tiles index rather an early twentieth-century building, as confirmed by available sources: it was completed in 1906, according to Gerald Garner.5 The turret seems to be missing parts of its edifice on each side, as its roof is abruptly cut off. The remainder of the block it is located on is an open-air parking lot for white-collar workers employed at the bank building across the street. In 2013, the turret was renovated and reused as a base for the newly founded Joburg City Tourism Association, running independently from the municipal government. On closer inspection, the turret is both a sign of heritage in itself and the host of other signs, such as the old street sign for “Marshall Straat” positioned on the lower window. It is interesting to note that the old street sign is in Afrikaans, while the modern street sign a meter away on the sidewalk is in English (“Marshall Street”). This language shift from Afrikaans to English (Dyers 2008) materially represented here is due to the “massive social transformation that democratic South Africa is presently experiencing” (Stroud and Mpendukana 2009: 363). Both signs index the same street, but are different in language, design, and material. One is made out of galvanized iron and thus looks brown with the name in white, whereas the modern one is made out of white plastic, with the name in black. Each sign achieves its indexicality in naming the street by being placed differently in the material world (Scollon and Scollon 2003: 29). The Afrikaans sign does not index that the turret is named “Marshall Straat”; rather, the placement of the sign indexing the street name also iconizes (Scollon and Scollon 2003: 26) a different era, when Afrikaans, rather than English, was the norm on street signs, and when such signs were attached to buildings rather than to poles. The fact that there is already a modern street sign indicating the street name on the corner means that the old Afrikaans sign is there to highlight that the building is a heritage building, preserved in its original state. In the whole of Marshalltown’s LL that was surveyed, this is the only sign in Afrikaans. The linguistic contrast of the sign thus indexes something other than merely “the past” and “heritage,” but a time when Afrikaans was the national language and was required on official signs such as street-name signs. It could be argued that the use of Afrikaans here is chronotopic (Bakhtin 1981; Blommaert 2015), as it reminds viewers of the apartheid era under successive Afrikaner nationalist administrations. It is thus not surprising that other signs from that era are not celebrated as having heritage value: this part of South Africa’s history is very rarely highlighted in the semiotic landscape of heritage in Marshalltown, at least not in a celebratory way. Texts on the storyboards focus on the early days of Johannesburg, before the implementation of apartheid laws. On the Main Street Mall—a privatized section of Main Street in Marshalltown— relics of the mining industry are put on display on the sidewalks along with signboards giving visitors information about their past use in the late nineteenth and early

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FIGURE 11.2 Street sign for “Marshall Street” in front of the turret on the corner with Loveday Street.

twentieth centuries. These signboards are designed following the aesthetic of typical old Johannesburg structure of green tin roof and broekie-lace6 edgings. Examples of those relics include an original headgear installation that stood on top of a mine, two stamp mills used to break down the rocks mechanically in order to extract the gold, and engines used to power the tools handled by the miners underground. In addition, mine vents such as the one in Figure 11.3 were designed to let fresh air into underground shafts to prevent miners from suffocating. These vents are now repurposed as rubbish bins. Those signs of heritage along the Main Street Mall were chosen and displayed by the Johannesburg Land Company, who owns the private lease of the strip. Following an interview with the company’s founder and main developer, I found out that for him, redevelopment entails going back in time to when his family grew up and lived in the inner city. He claims his father was a miner who died of silicosis as a result of breathing dust underground. His family heritage is tied to Marshalltown, and its mining industry. In his youth in the mid-twentieth century, he would explore the inner city on foot, and his various jobs kept him in the vicinity of Marshalltown. After getting involved in finance, he got to know important people in Johannesburg, including the owners of most of the buildings in Marshalltown, which was of great help when he decided to buy many of them in the early 2000s with his redevelopment plan in mind. While his connection to

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FIGURE 11.3 Recycled mine vent, now a rubbish bin on Main Street.

Marshalltown and the mining industry seems very personal, I asked him why he decided to include the heritage of the area in his urban redevelopment plan. He said: We were buying all these buildings and everybody had the perception, like we did, it was dirty, it was dangerous and nobody wanted to come back. So if we wanted to own buildings we had to get people to come back, clean it up, we had to protect it and we had to modernize it. It seems that for him, “modernizing” the area actually meant bringing it back to the way it used to look. By renovating buildings, he meant restoring them to their former glory, even when they would have to stay empty for a few more years. He added that he wanted people to see what buildings once looked like and to understand their architectural style. He also claimed to favor the old buildings because they were very well built, and durable, and that to demolish them to build new ones would have resulted in buildings of inferior quality. His statement was made in relation to many buildings being “knocked down.” When speaking of this, he said: “This is very sad, Johannesburg is disappearing.” This fear and sadness of seeing the Johannesburg he once knew disappearing is what led him to want to preserve what was left, and enhance the feeling of nostalgia by bringing back more artifacts reminiscent of the area’s history. Since he had managed, along with other land owners, to obtain a private lease for a section of Main Street, he was able to decide

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independently which heritage to select to “decorate” the rejuvenated, “modernized” Marshalltown. The narrative above clearly ties the foregrounding of mining heritage with the regeneration of Marshalltown. Thanks to privatization, developers such as the one mentioned above are able to decide what heritage to protect and highlight, and to select artifacts to manipulate for their own personal purposes. As we will see below, signs of mining heritage are also carefully selected in consumer spaces to prompt customers to form a particular impression of the area.

6 THE COMMODIFICATION OF MINING HERITAGE FOR CONSUMPTION: THE GOLD MINE CAF É The Reef Hotel is a four-star hotel in Marshalltown which had a café and restaurant on its ground floor until 2016. The Gold Mine Café, which opened in 2012, caters both to people staying at the hotel, to save them the hassle of having to go outside of the hotel premises, and for customers working in the financial institutions in Marshalltown. One can spot a few residents of the inner city alongside hotel customers on a Saturday morning for coffee or brunch, which is served until 10 a.m. The café is named this way because of the rich mining heritage in the area. The theme of mining is mostly represented in the visual aesthetic of the café-restaurant, with numerous relics put on display, such as signage from an old elevator shaft, tables made with recycled wood from the mines, the miners’ security helmets worn by wait staff, and the café’s menu (Figures 11.4 and 11.5). By being placed on a wall like a painting in a museum, the Code of Shaft Signals sign is included as an authentic artifact, removed from its original place semiotics (Scollon and Scollon 2003) of a mining elevator shaft, and transposed into a themed café (Figure 11.4). In addition to the café’s name, this sign, too, indexes that Johannesburg has had a mining history, while symbolizing old Johannesburg by giving the place a “retro” feel. In order to study what makes artifacts real and authentic, Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) propose the notion of modality. Based on the linguistic concept of modals, modality “refers to the truth value or credibility of (linguistically realized) statements about the world” (1996: 160). They argue than in Western aesthetics, the primary modality is naturalistic representation, meaning that things appear as if they had not been touched or modified. In Marshalltown in general, but specifically in the Gold Mine Café, high modality seems to be associated with the colors of mining, which are gold and yellow because of the extracted minerals, still visible in the form of mine dumps on the outskirts of the inner city, and brown which evokes the color of the earth being drilled in the mines. The wood used for building mine tunnels, as well as the rust appearing on the metal machineries used for extracting gold, deepen the impression of authenticity. In the case of the Code of Shaft Signals sign, rust appears where the paint has been stripped from usage, probably due to the sign being hit by workers’ tools or small rocks and dust. This modality is then replicated in the aesthetic of the typeface used for the café’s menu, as letters also contain marks of wear and tear. This does not index that the menu itself has been heavily used (it is in fact plasticized to protect it from wear), but rather symbolizes the theme of mining and its positioning in the past. The fact that the sign is put on display as opposed to being used in a real mining shaft, and the exploitation of a modality of wear and rust, make the item authentic.

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FIGURE 11.4 Authentic elevator shaft sign on display on the walls of Gold Mine Café.

The Gold Mine Café embraces the heritage of the area, informing its customers of the history, and thereby almost turning them into tourists even though they might only be staying at the hotel on business. They get to leave the hotel or restaurant with the feeling of having seen sites of heritage in Johannesburg or of having been in heritage Johannesburg. Other signs give the café its heritage and mining theme—the light bulbs used for lighting, simply hanging down from the ceiling in a very simple fashion, like they would be inside a mine shaft; the security helmets worn by the waiters, or even the wood used for the tables which is worn on purpose, leaving open the possibility that it might have been used in the mines as well. These signs might denote a mining theme, but their modality connotes authenticity, as they appear to be original and showing signs of wear, or an intention to preserve and display, like in a museum. They are attributes of the space, used to give it the setting of a mine (Machin and Mayr 2012). The nexus of discursive elements which these signs all form is used to change the image of the inner city of Johannesburg and make it more attractive and appealing. However, this nexus does not give visitors the “real” experience of being in a mine. It rather merely symbolizes it, but in a sanitized way: what is erased are the diseases, the pollution, and the noise, which were part of the work in the mines in the early years of Johannesburg (see Malcomess and Kreutzfeldt 2013: 220–21).

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FIGURE 11.5 Menu from the Gold Mine Café.

Finally, these signs are also part of a spectacle to shift the attention away from the associations of crime and danger usually wound up with Johannesburg’s inner city, to the more appealing theme of the city’s gold-mining heritage. But it is a particular kind of heritage that is being celebrated and made appealing—of course consumers do not have to experience being in a mine, breathing dust, and risking their lives, as workers once did and still do today in South African mines. They merely experience a themed environment. The signs used to index the area’s mining history are commodified into symbolic capital for marketing purposes. The Gold Mine Café relies on Marshalltown’s mining heritage to brand itself as a local place. It seems legitimate as a business venture because of the authorized, institutional mining heritage scattered all over the area. Other signs of the past can be found nearby Marshalltown, but either those are not placed and highlighted on purpose or they tell a different kind of story about Johannesburg and its people. Overall, signs of heritage in Marshalltown mainly focus on the mining industry, which was responsible for the establishment and development of the city. Still today, some of the mining corporations are active actors in the regeneration of the area. As we have seen, however, those signs of heritage are part of a selection process which is meant to give the area an attractive feel—like a museum—and index modernization and redevelopment. When looking closely at the semiotic landscape of Marshalltown, other signs of heritage index different historicities of the city.

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7 SEMIOTIC LANDSCAPES OF AMNESIA: THE INVISIBL(IZED) HERITAGE When looking out from the top of most building in Marshalltown, one can spot yellow mountains of gravel and sand on the area’s southern and western side, beyond the delimiting highways. These are “mine dumps” that contain the rocks and dirt excavated from the earth by the mining industry over time. These signs index Johannesburg’s past in a way that is disconnected from urban redevelopment projects, but they are present nonetheless. Another example of intruding, unavoidable signs are old tram railways which have started to protrude from the tarmac over time. These tracks were covered when the trams were retired in the 1960s. The fact that they are not displayed on purpose puts them in a layer of the semiotic landscape which I consider to be “invisible” (Boyer 1996: 467), as it echoes through representation a time and social context not selected to be highlighted by the developers. In June 2015, an Instawalk was organized in Marshalltown. The concept was for amateur photographers to walk together through an area to shoot what makes it interesting, and share the results on the popular social media platform Instagram. Interestingly enough, the walk ended in front of the BHP Billiton Ltd.7 building, with a group photo of all the participants, below the frieze ordered in the 1970s by the apartheid government to celebrate Afrikaner nationalism, and representing a one-sided history of South Africa, including colonization and education of the “natives.” For such a symbol of a very problematic part of history to be included in the background, it is worth noting that the participants of the Instawalk probably had no idea what this sign of the past originally signified. The fact that it stands in the middle of a controlled, regenerated urban environment probably made them feel comfortable enough to pose in front of it collectively. The frieze is a reminder of the colonial processes which saw a white minority control and exploit the land of South Africa at the expense of its indigenous black populations. I believe that the fact that the building’s architecture is being preserved in a context of urban regeneration in a highly controlled urban area invisibilized the frieze’s true significance, while offering these visitors the impression of being in an authentic urban environment with old buildings and where they could walk and embrace the landscape. The colonial past of South Africa also appears at 80 Albert Street, where the former “Pass Building” still stands as a shelter used by homeless people.8 The building was built in 1954 as the head office of the Johannesburg Non-European Affairs Department (JNEAD). This department would control black people’s movements into and out of the inner city for the next three decades, requiring them to gain and produce a pass allowing them to go into the city center, in which they were only allowed to stay for a restricted period.9 Such an oppressive building, for the majority of the historic population of greater Johannesburg and its townships, should surely be of cultural and historical significance. However, except for the introduction of a blue plaque,10 no plans for the refurbishment of the building have emerged. By contrast, a site like Constitutional Hill just north of the inner city has been redeveloped despite its history of being a prison where struggle activists were incarcerated and often tortured. It was developed on the site of the Old Fort prison in Johannesburg after the transition to democracy. It contains a museum and memorial site as well as the new Constitutional Court, completed in 2004. It is a prominent site for post-apartheid heritage, serving both as a reminder of the atrocities committed by the

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apartheid government over the years and as a center for the promotion of human rights and a hub for urban regeneration (King and Flynn 2012). As recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) post-transition, Constitution Hill is part of the symbolic reparations for apartheid. In fact, the site both strengthens human rights and constitutionalism discourse as a founding principle for a democratic South Africa, and corrects the biased heritage politics of apartheid, which were implemented in favor of the white minority. This is why Constitution Hill symbolically represents both the oppressive heritage of prison buildings (such a Robben Island in the Western Cape) and a heritage of human rights values. Finally, I would like to look at one last site of “amnesia” (Boyer 1996: 65) within Marshalltown, namely Gandhi Square. Gandhi Square lies at the eastern edge of Marshalltown and serves as a frontier between bourgeois Marshalltown and the rest of the inner city, which tends to be more working class. Created as a socially inclusive space after the collapse of the apartheid government in the 1990s, and in reaction to increased freedom of movement of nonwhite people in the inner city and other public space in South Africa, Gandhi Square operates as a privately managed public space (Itzkin 2008). In 1999 it became the first major public space to be renamed in Johannesburg, from Van der Bijl to Gandhi Square, after efforts by the directorate Arts, Culture and Heritage at the City of Johannesburg led to its being renamed as Gandhi Square, in celebration of the Indian anti-colonial icon who lived in Johannesburg at the beginning of the twentieth century. Prior to the name change, the redesign of the Square was meant to be done through heritage interventions, with the express goal of addressing a legacy of spatial exclusion through the creation of a socially inclusive social space. The site is, according to Itzkin (2008: 2) “on both a symbolic and functional level, broadly inclusive of diversity in the context of the Johannesburg inner city.” This redevelopment project was to address a history of racial exclusion and oppression, and project democratic values into the city, hence the use of the term “symbolic” by Itzkin. Gandhi Square was both an urban renewal and a heritage project. In addition to a physical makeover of the Square, the site was reimagined along heritage lines, drawing on the story of M. K. Gandhi’s involvement in the area. The cultural transformation and marketing of the site has involved the erection of a Gandhi statue at the Joubert Street entrance to the Square, and a series of interpretive plaques and other heritage material. As Itzkin puts it, “This heritage project was envisioned as promoting the development of more democratic, hospitable and inclusionary public space” (ibid.: 10). Itzkin (2008) also argues through an analysis of symbols, historical representations, and imagery that heritage interventions intersect with processes of urban reconstruction in the post-apartheid inner city. He examines attempts to introduce heritage imagery meant to promote spatial justice and social inclusion in a prominent central city public space, focusing on the renaming and redevelopment of the Square, and how it arose from a merging of urban restructuring and heritage interests. For him, the role of heritage in the redevelopment of Gandhi Square is used to promote cultural diversity, multiculturalism, and interculturalism as seen within a context of the democratization of urban space (ibid.: 11). Itzkin also noticed the lack of tourism as a business activity on the Square as the area developed toward a combination of public transport, and food and beverages services. Taking into account the redevelopment process of the Square as a place of heritage designed to be a more inclusive democratic space in the spirit of the country’s recent transition to democracy, it is then important to mention that the statue of Gandhi was vandalized in 2015. An ANC member threw white paint on top of the statue during a

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protest. Placards that read “Racist Gandhi Must Fall”11 were displayed at the time, in reference to the ongoing battle at the University of Cape Town to remove the statue of Cecil John Rhodes under the protest campaign “#RhodesMustFall” whose effect spread across the country that year, as well as to Gandhi’s own well-documented racism toward black South African people during his stay in the country (Itzkin 2008). Considering the signs making reference to the white colonial history and oppression of native people mentioned earlier in this section, the fact that this particular site was defaced is significant. Indeed, other signs in Marshalltown indexing a white colonial history, such as the frieze mentioned above, did not suffer a similar fate. The fact that the rest of Marshalltown is heavily protected by patrolling private security guards, which is also true about Gandhi Square (although to a lesser extent), might have discouraged the protesters from going there. It could also be argued that the protesters were not aware of the signs of European heritage in Marshalltown, or of the way that they reference colonial history. These signs are so well concealed beneath an urban redevelopment project designed to give visitors a feeling of a world-class authentic experience, that the problematic social context in which the area was built and its colonial history has become part of the city’s amnesia and are thus sidelined in favor of signs that characterize the area (and the city) as a site of modernization and change for the better.

8 CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have presented the heritage of Marshalltown and how it is displayed in the area’s semiotic landscape. I have argued that only a certain layer of history is being highlighted with a particular purpose in mind, making the neighborhood look restored and attractive. At the other end of this development strategy are other layers of Johannesburg’s history which are sidelined, or made invisible. I have also given a critique of the privatization of Marshalltown by mainly white developers, who may then impose their vision of heritage, which is mainly European. This is similar to what Lou (2016) identified in Washington’s Chinatown, where corporations moving into the neighborhood rely on a Chinese aesthetic norm inherited from the migrant population already populating the area but resemiotize it with different codes in order to access the area’s profitable central location. Marshalltown is thus constructed as a site of heritage, but only a certain history of the city is displayed. The direct connection of a private developer like the one mentioned above with the city’s mining history makes the selection of signs of heritage biased toward a particular European pioneer history, erasing the black labor required for the building of Johannesburg and the policing of the black workforce in the city. In other words, Marshalltown, apart from a few counterexamples, portrays the Euro-colonial history of Johannesburg, invisibilizing the social history which shaped the city and its evolution through time. Marshalltown’s post-apartheid semiotic landscape is carefully designed by a majority of white developers who aim to give the area a heritage feel. In so doing they borrow from the mining history of the city and anchor a European-influenced heritage within their own interpretation of what an African city should look like. The heritage feel of Marshalltown is part of a broader plan to reclaim the city, which means changing the image it acquired previously during an era of urban decay as a dangerous no-go area, into an attractive tourism-friendly urban space. Such modifications to the semiotic landscape

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have been obtained and maintained through rife privatization of formerly public spaces. It could be argued that post-apartheid urban development is controlled by white capital in Johannesburg, which, thanks to privatization, is able to maintain and even enhance its influence on what Johannesburg’s inner city should look like, in terms of urban design, heritage politics, and the reshaping of the post-apartheid city. Even though the City of Johannesburg has been able to implement new policies that are moving the city away from apartheid planning, white capital in South Africa has remained so powerful after apartheid that it takes advantage of the lack of public funds for urban development to “take back” control of the city and redevelop it in its own image. It is thus not surprising to see a dominance of white, euro-centric heritage on display in Marshalltown, and the reconstruction of a Western aesthetic catering to middle- to upper-class consumers who are the real target market of the redevelopment project of Marshalltown, as opposed to a democratic space encompassing the needs and representing the majority of the population of the post-apartheid inner city of Johannesburg: working-class black South Africans and pan-African migrants. This argument is reminiscent of the narrative given by Timmy Thomas in the interview I mentioned at the start of the chapter. Indeed, he stated that he did not know about “the apartheid” when flying to South Africa in 1974 because all he learned about the country from his history books was focused on gold and diamond mining. It seems that the representation of Marshalltown has not changed significantly. Someone seeing Marshalltown as an introduction to Johannesburg would never know that black people were restricted from living in the inner city during apartheid, because all the signs of heritage in the area are representative of a white history of mining for gold and diamonds.

FURTHER READING Allen, J. (2006), “Ambient Power: Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz and the Seductive Logic of Public Spaces,” Urban Studies, 43 (2): 441–55. Harrison, R. (2012), Heritage: Critical Approaches, London: Routledge. Hewison, R. (1987), The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline, London: Methuen. Metro-Roland, M. M. (2016), Tourists, Signs and the City: The Semiotics of Culture in an Urban Landscape, London: Routledge. Waterton, E. and S. Watson (2014), The Semiotics of Heritage Tourism (Vol. 35), Channel View Publications.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. How are signs of the past tied to apartheid made almost invisible in the semiotic landscape of Marshalltown? 2. How does the developer mentioned in the chapter manage to have such a material impact on the semiotic landscape of the neighborhood? Which urban phenomenon does he rely on? And what type of urban space is he trying to build?

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PROJECT WORK 1. Go around your university campus and find signs of the past. Document the signs. Analyze what history is being portrayed and for what purpose. Through archival research, find out which other histories are being left out of the semiotic landscape of the campus. 2. Go to a trendy neighborhood nearby. Look for signs indexing the urban lifestyle. How does one know this is a safe place for consumption? What are the signs of urban regeneration? Which social actors are interacting with the place and which ones are being left out?

NOTES 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVGMmEJrUiQ (9:50 in the video). 2. There is no active mining in Marshalltown today. But the mine houses headquarters remain in the neighborhood. 3. The three dimensions are visual semiotics, place semiotics, and the interaction order. 4. Province of South Africa (out of nine) encompassing Johannesburg. 5. http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2013/07/03/Joburgs-turret-tilts-a-new-way 6. Named after the Afrikaans term broekie meaning ladies’ underwear, which had lace-like patterning. 7. Anglo-Australian mining company. 8. http://joburg.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1420&Itemid=210 9. http://theheritageportal.co.za/article-categories/albert-street-pass-office 10. Ceramic or resin circular signs, also named “heritage plaques,” which highlight “special buildings and sites, historic struggles, remarkable personalities, and other pieces of history” (Blue Plaque [booklet]. Directorate Arts, Culture and Heritage, City of Johannesburg, 2013). 11. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32287972

REFERENCES Abdelhay, A., M. Ahmed, and E. Mohamed (2016), “The Semiotic Landscaping of Heritage,” Linguistic Landscape, 2 (1): 52–79. Abousnnouga, G. and D. Machin (2010), “War Monuments and the Changing Discourses of Nation and Soldiery,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, 219–40, London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Aiello, G. (2011), “From Wound to Enclave: The Visual-material Performance of Urban Renewal in Bologna’s Manifattura delle Arti,” Western Journal of Communication, 75 (4): 341–66. Backhaus, P. (2007), Linguistic Landscapes a Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Bakhtin, M. M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Austin: University of Texas Press. Banda, F. and H. Jimaima (2015), “The Semiotic Ecology of Linguistic Landscapes in Rural Zambia,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 19 (5): 643–70. Baro, G. (2017), The Language of Post-Apartheid Urban Development: The Semiotic Landscape of Marshalltown in Johannesburg (PhD thesis). University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Baro, G. (2018), “Chronoscape of Authenticity: Consumption and Aspiration in a Middle-class Market in Johannesburg,” in A. Peck, C. Stroud, and Q. Williams (eds.), Making Sense of People and Place in Linguistic Landscapes, 49–69, Bloomsbury Publishing. Beavon, K. S. O. (2004), Johannesburg: The Making and Shaping of the City, Pretoria: University of South Africa Press. Beavon, K. S. O. (2010), Nearer My Mall to Thee: The Decline of the Johannesburg Central Business District and the Emergence of the Neo-Apartheid City (Working Paper), Retrieved from http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/8421 Besnier, N. (2009), Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Blommaert, J. (2013), Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles Of Complexity, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Blommaert, J. (2015), “Chronotopes, Scales, and Complexity in the Study of Language in Society,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 44: 105–16. Boyer, M. C. (1996), The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. du Plessis, T. (2012), “The Role of Language Policy in Linguistic Landscape Changes in a Rural Area of the Free State Province of South Africa,” Language Matters, 43 (2): 263–82. Dyers C. (2008), “Truncated Multilingualism or Language Shift? An Examination of Language use in Intimate Domains in a New Non-racial Working Class Township in South Africa,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 29 (2), 110–26. Garner, G. (2010), Spaces & places Johannesburg, Craighall Park: Double G. Media. Gelderman, I. and G. Aiello (2010), “Faces of Places: Facades as Global Communication in Post-Eastern Bloc Urban Renewal,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Godfrey, D., D. Barnett, and J. Barnett (1966), The Barnett Collection, Johannesburg: The Star. Gorter, D., ed. (2006), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Graham, B., G. Ashworth, and J. Tunbridge (2000), A Geography of Heritage, London: Arnold. Hélot et al., eds. (2013), Linguistic Landscapes: Multilingualism and Social Change, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Huebner, T. (2008), “A Framework for the Linguistic Analysis of Linguistic Landscapes,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expending the Scenery, 78–95, New York: Routledge. Hult, F. M. (2014), “Drive-thru Linguistic Landscaping: Constructing a Linguistically Dominant Place in a Bilingual Space,” International Journal of Bilingualism, 18 (5): 507–23. Iqani, M. and Baro, G. (2017), “The Branded Skyline? A Socio-semiotic Critique of Johannesburg’s Architectural Adverts,” African Studies, 76 (1): 1–19. Itzkin, E. (2008), The transformation of Gandhi Square: The search for socially inclusive heritage and public space in the Johannesburg city centre (Unpublished master’s thesis), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

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Jaworski, A. and S. Yeung (2010), “Life in the Garden of Eden: The Naming and Imagery of Residential Hong Kong,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 153–81, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. King, T. and M. K. Flynn (2012),” Heritage and the Post-apartheid City: Constitution Hill, Johannesburg,” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 18 (1): 65–82. Kress, G. R. and T. van Leeuwen (1996), Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, London; New York: Routledge. Laitinen, M. (2014), “630 Kilometres by Bicycle: Observations of English in Urban and Rural Finland,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014 (228): 55–77. Landry, R. and R. Y. Bourhis (1997), “Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An Empirical Study,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16 (1): 23–49. Lou, J. J. (2007), “Revitalizing Chinatown into a Heterotopia: A Geosemiotic Analysis of Shop Signs in Washington, Dc's Chinatown,” Space and Culture, 10 (2): 170–94. Lou, J. J. (2016), The Linguistic Landscape of Chinatown: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Machin, D. and A. Mayr (2012), How to do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction, Los Angeles: SAGE. Malcomess, B. and D. Kreutzfeldt (2013), Not No Place: Johannesburg, Fragments of Spaces and Times, Auckland Park: Jacana Media. Murray, M. J. (2011), City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg, Durham: Duke University Press. Murray, M. J. (2015), “Waterfall City (Johannesburg): Privatized Urbanism in Extremis,” Environment and Planning A, 47 (3): 503–20. Papen, U. (2012), “Commercial Discourses, Gentrification and Citizens’ Protest: The Linguistic Landscape of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 16 (1): 56–80. Pennycook, A. (2008), “Linguistic Landscapes and the Transgressive Semiotics of Graffiti,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 342–52, New York: Routledge. Rubdy, R. (2015), “Conflict and Exclusion: The Linguistic Landscape as an Arena of Contestation,” in Rani Rubdy and Selim Ben Said (eds.), Conflict, Exclusion and Dissent in the Linguistic Landscape, 1–24, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon (2003), Discourses in Place, London: Routledge. Shohamy, E. and D. Gorter, eds. (2009), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, New York: Routledge. Stroud, C. and S. Mpendukana (2009), “Towards a Material Ethnography of Linguistic Landscape: Multilingualism, Mobility and Space in a South African Township,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13 (3): 363–38. Urry, J. (2002), The Tourist Gaze, New York: SAGE. Zukin, S. (2009), Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Blurred Lines: The Effect of Regional Borders on the LL in Northern Spain DEIRDRE A. DUNLEVY

1 INTRODUCTION The LL can be an effective means of evaluating the complex relationship between the official language of Spain (Castilian) and the three autochthonous and co-official languages of the historic autonomous communities (Galician, Basque, and Catalan). By exploring the LL of three border towns of the historic autonomous communities in the North of Spain, this study examines how the borders affect the visible language(s) in communities that are on the periphery of two language policies. This study will focus on the analysis of such questions through a mixed methods approach to LL analysis. To further highlight the complexity of these liminal spaces that have thus far been under-theorized from the perspective of LL studies, interviews conducted with members of these communities are considered in order to gauge the attitudes and opinions toward the impact of the LL on the evolving language situations in these border areas. In the historic autonomous communities of Spain, the border areas offer a stark change in language management practices; although the minoritized language may be spoken over the border in the other province, it has no legal support or official status. Thus a frame analysis (following Kallen 2010, Jaworski and Yeung 2010, and Coupland and Garrett 2010, among others) is adopted in order to understand how the official languages of the communities interact in the LL, and how a community on the periphery between two language policies uses the LL to visualize or demonstrate their collective identity within a nation-state. Much research in border studies has been conducted regarding the increasing numbers of state borders, yet little attention has been paid to borders within nation-states. Thus, similar to Blackwood and Tufi (2015: 16), this study aims to explore the “signs which activate meaning and either create or erase borders,” thus contributing to our understanding of how the LL plays an active role in the formation of community and identity in border areas. Borders are generally seen as stark geographic or political boundaries, depicted by strong, solid lines in physical interpretations of space. However, the reality of the border as a place and as a community space demonstrates that, in actuality, physical and political

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borders tend to be more porous. This is particularly salient linguistically, as the need for communication, and the fluid nature of internal borders suggests that what is represented as a stark line on a map in reality is a much more complex linguistic situation that blurs the line between linguistic communities and practices and offers areas of ambiguous language policies. This chapter questions the boundaries of LL research by shifting the theoretical focus to smaller, more rural areas and internal borders within a country. It incorporates ethnographic methodologies so as to further enhance the findings of LL research. By residing for extended periods of time in the communities in question, and conducting interviews with members of the communities, the researcher has endeavored to include the local voice in the research, thus providing evidence-based analysis and local perspectives on these sociolinguistic questions.

2 BACKGROUND The three historical autonomous communities of Spain create a multilingual landscape along the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Spanning the geographical northern coastline there are five autochthonous languages spoken (Castilian, Galician, Asturian, Basque, and Catalan). Although the area covered is relatively small in scale, the linguistic diversity is intense, and so Northern Spain is a stimulating microcosm for multilinguistic research. Mutual intelligibility is not always present between each of these languages, and there is often political tension among, and even within, these autonomous communities, that is spurned by linguistic factors. In their study of Italy, Blackwood and Tufi (2012: 111) note that “in today’s Italy, linguistic fragmentation is a salient characteristic of the country’s cultural heritage.” A similar assertion can be made regarding Spain, as the classification of the autonomous regions was based on fragmentation and a separation of identities, which viewed language as the main, distinguishing factor. This research focuses on the three historic autonomous communities in the North of Spain. They are Galicia to the northwest, The Basque Country, and Catalonia in the northeast. The historic autonomous communities of Spain have in the recent past undergone interesting changes brought on by the sudden shift in official language policy and the political system since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975. Each region was granted the status of historic autonomous community subsequent to the restoration of democracy in 1975 due to the historical claim of autonomy, and having a unique language and culture played a significant role in the claim. This change in policy has been interpreted in varying ways by each of the historic autonomous communities and thus in turn each of the autochthonous languages has undergone a process of revitalization within its community. The constitutional bloc of Spain is the framework of legislation under which the Constitution of Spain is the absolute authority on all state matters. The Statutes of Autonomy of each autonomous community come under the umbrella of the Spanish Constitution. The Constitution states that Castilian is the official language of the state of Spain but that the other languages of Spain, recognized as Basque, Catalan, and Galician, although not explicitly stated as such, are recognized and official within their respective autonomous communities, and are legislated for by their Statutes of Autonomy. Each Statute of Autonomy has interpreted this autonomy of governing to different extents. Therefore, this study examines how this same power has been interpreted by each of the

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historic autonomous communities and how this impacts on, and is impacted by, the LL in these border areas. Each of the Statutes of Autonomy establishes the autochthonous language as the official language of the community, alongside the state official language, Castilian. They advocate for the promotion and revitalization of the autochthonous language in public life and the reintegration, after years of prohibition and stigmatization, of the language into all aspects of society through their language legislation and language policies. Each community’s policies have developed in different ways and the LL indicates the development and revitalization of the minoritized languages vis-à-vis the state language in the public space in their respective autonomous communities.

3 INTRODUCTION TO THE RESEARCH AREAS One small town on the periphery of each of the historic autonomous communities is the focus of analysis. The towns chosen for analysis were Balaguer in Catalonia, O Barco de Valdeorras in Galicia, and Laudio/Llodio in the Basque Country (Figure 12.1). As much as possible, towns with comparable economies were selected. Each of the towns is within 50 kilometers of the border of the historic autonomous community. Towns with a mid-sized population (as categorized by the National Institute of Statistics, INE), that is, over 10,000 but under 50,000 in population, were chosen to be the focus, as this is the average size of community, according to state statistics. It was decided to focus on these towns as it was felt that local LL actors in smaller towns have a more direct control and responsibility for the LL than LL actors in big cities, due to the influential LL

FIGURE 12.1 Map of Spain with the towns of analysis highlighted.

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agency exercised by multinational companies in cities. All three towns have comparable populations with a margin of no more than 5,000. Language usage in each of these towns was also compared in order to ensure comparability across bilingual levels, and all three report usage of both the official state language (Castilian) and the minoritized autonomous community language, according to the census figures at the time (IGE 2013, IdesCAT 2013, EUSTAT 2013). The community uses of the public space are fluid and change throughout the day; thus it was considered important to understand the ways in which the communities use their space, so as to ascertain what discourses would be expected to occur and where. Particular elements of the communities were considered to be important to incorporate in to the data collection so as to make the data collected in each community comparable. Salo (2012) used an ethnographic approach, selecting sites she felt were relevant for the local language economy. Salo’s approach (2012: 248) to the data collection was “rather than trying to record everything in a certain area in each village, we chose to look at language use in sites for different activities.” A similar approach was taken in this study. Sites that are deemed to be central to the day-to-day living and use of the community space were identified, and each identified site was photographed exhaustively. The elements incorporated in each route included the following: ●

Transport hub: train station and/or bus station

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Exit of the city: including the city limit signage

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Tourist information center and tourist attraction

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Administrative buildings of the city: town hall, courthouse

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Main street: center of the region for commerce and everyday business exchanges and shopping

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Financial institutions

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A business marker: a supermarket chain that was present in each of the towns

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Recreational zone: park including playground

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Residential area

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Memorials and statues/plaques

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Public amenities: such as a hospital or health center, library

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Religious: church and cemetery

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Graffiti and transgressive signage

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All street signs

In Catalonia, the town of Balaguer lies in the west of Catalonia, in the province of Lleida, and is a distance of 26 kilometers from the border of the autonomous community with the province of Aragon, with a population of 16,665 according to census figures at the time of data collection. The economy of Balaguer is largely dependent on agriculture, specifically fruit production, and it is also a wine producing region. Catalan is widely spoken in the town. According to the latest statistics available (IdesCat 2013), only 660 people, out of a population of 16,479 (population over the age of two), have no knowledge of Catalan, with all others claiming to at least be proficient in the receptive language skills. In Galicia, the border town of O Barco de Valdeorras, which lies to the east of Galicia and borders Castile and Leon, was elected as the town of focus. O Barco de Valdeorras

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(henceforth referred to as O Barco) lies 15 kilometers from the border of Galicia with Castile and Leon, with a population of 14,010 according to the census data at the time of data collection (IGE 2013). The economy of O Barco is largely dependent on slate mining and wine production. There are high levels of bilingualism in Galician and Castilian. According to the most recent language statistics available at the time of the study, 36.3 percent of the population of O Barco reported that they always use Galician, 47.61 percent reported they sometimes use the language with 16.04 percent reporting to never use it (IGE 2013). Laudio/Llodio is the town of focus in the Basque Country. It lies to the west of the Basque Country, bordering the province of Burgos in Castile and Leon. Laudio/Llodio lies 32 kilometers from the border of the Basque Country with Castile and Leon and has a population of 18,532 according to census data available at the time of the data collection (EUSTAT 2014). The economy is now largely dependent on manufacturing, with a number of glass production and related companies based in the area. It is also a wine producing region, with a number of small vineyards producing txakoli wine, a particular variety of the Basque region. Castilian is the mother tongue of the vast majority of the population (16,114), with 1,001 people reporting Basque to be their mother tongue and 602 reporting it as their language of habitual use, as opposed to 16,603 reporting Castilian (EUSTAT 2013). In Laudio, 876 people report their “mother tongue” to be both Basque and Castilian, and 1,067 report to use both Basque and Castilian habitually. The town is known as Laudio in Basque and Llodio in Castilian. Officially, it is referred to as Laudio/Llodio. Unlike other Basque towns or cities, such as Vitoria-Gasteiz, Laudio/ Llodio did not opt to take a double-barrel official name but instead has two separate, but co-official, names.1 Both names are used officially and by the people living in the area. The majority of those interviewed expressed disapproval of the official name statuses of places such as Vitoria-Gasteiz (as further evidenced in Section 5.3) and claimed such a change to a double-barrel official name would be considered too artificial and therefore would not be embraced or adopted by those living in the area. This focus on border towns tests the hypothesis that the border location affects the LL and explores how a community on the periphery between two language policies uses the LL to visualize and demonstrate their collective identity. As noted by Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes (2013), peripheral sites tend to be ignored in sociolinguistic research, with the focus being more on urban spaces. Although LL studies traditionally center on urban areas, Tufi (2016) advocates for the inclusion of peri-urban settings in LL research, demonstrating how the inclusion of such areas can shed light on the complexity of ethnolinguistic identity construction in contact situations. This study proposes smaller and rural towns and regions can be just as informative as urban studies, as particularly with regard to the LL, the local community tends to have more authority or responsibility for the construction of the visual public space, thus capturing dynamics that are not typical or as salient in large urban areas.

4 METHODOLOGY A mixed methods approach was adopted in order to allow for a deeper investigation of the impact of the LL on language practices in the communities in question by way of the triangulation of data. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data was complemented by the inclusion of detailed, semi-structured interviews with the local communities.

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The photographic data of the LL of each town were studied in conjunction with the analysis of thirty interviews that were conducted with members of the community, sign producers, and recipients over extended periods in the towns in 2014 and 2015. By conducting in-depth interviews with members of the communities regarding their attitudes toward the use of languages in the LL in their communities, a further understanding of, in Goffman’s (1974) terms, “what is it that’s going on” in the public space can be reached. The total data collected for analysis in this study consists of 3,820 units. The data analysis was conducted by means of the adaptation of the frameworks established by Kallen (2010), developed on Goffman’s (1974) theory of frames, so as to explore the various dynamics of interaction in the public space by all actors involved (public, authoritative, and marginalized). Kallen developed five frame parameters: The Civic frame, the Marketplace, the Portal, the Wall, and the Detritus zone. The frames of the Civic, Marketplace, and Portal were utilized in the analysis of the data, with the frame of the Wall being further categorized into tourism, religious, community (also referenced by Kallen, but not developed) and Cultural and the transgressive frame and the inclusion of the border frame. This chapter will specifically focus on the civic, transgressive, and border frames, and will also refer briefly to the other frames analyzed. By analyzing the data through frames, the dynamics of social interaction of the official languages (and unofficial languages that are visible) within the LL of each of these communities is explored. Although interviews are not usually involved in the analysis of LL, in recent studies researchers have embraced the beneficial attributes of including such methods.2 Conducting interviews is highly valuable in LL research, as the information gained from an interview contributes to the area by filling in the missing dimensions in LL studies. As Gorter and Cenoz (2008: 9) acknowledge, complementing traditional LL methods with interviews contributes to a “better understanding of the ways in which the linguistic landscape is an important part of the preservation and the continued existence of different languages.” The inclusion of interviews in the analysis introduces the perceptions of people from that community to the analysis, thus balancing the judgment of the researcher and delivering a more integrated and complete analysis as it brings the voice of the local community back into the research. For this project, the researcher spent an extended period of time in each of the towns, in order to gain an ethnographic understanding of the dynamics of the communities. Interviews were conducted with sign creators, sign owners, and sign readers in order to learn more about the intention and interpretation of the LL units in public spaces. Ten interviews were conducted in each of the regions in order to gain a range of opinions and answers regarding the subjects discussed. In order to determine who should be approached to partake in interviews, a purposive sampling approach was taken. It was decided that it was important to have a cross-section of specific representatives of each community as they would be comparable in each of the areas. Therefore, people representing certain pillars of society and that fulfilled specific roles within the communities were approached, as listed below: ●

The local mayor/language policy representative in the local government

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A priest

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A journalist (print or media)

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Someone working within the tourism industry

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A migrant business owner

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Each interview participant was chosen for their role in the community and public life, and the perspective they could bring to the research. The decision to include a migrant was in order to include the perspective of someone from outside, who has come into the community and integrated into the society by establishing a business there. Their view was considered important as they would not have grown up in the community and so could provide a different perspective to those who have lived there all their lives. The remaining five interviews were conducted with shop owners and business owners within the community and were approached for reasons particular to their establishment, such as the use of the autochthonous language, the use of a language other than the two official languages, a combination of both official languages, or interesting use of typography or symbolism, in their signage. Shop owners are both sign producers and sign readers within their community, so they not only directly contribute to the LL but also live within the community and therefore are consumers and readers of the other signs also. Thus, all participants were involved in the production and reception of signs both in their work and in their daily lives. The purposive sampling of participants also correlated with the chosen frames of analysis, so that, in as far as possible, an individual representing each “frame” was interviewed. Interviews were conducted during and after the initial data collection stage. It was also decided to “interact with members of the population in a variety of situations, particularly those in which the relevant matters are likely to be broached” (Briggs, 1986: 96), and so the researcher resided in each community for an extended period and attended local “town hall” meetings about pending local elections, talks organized by the local libraries, vigils, and other community events so as to be involved in the community and to understand issues currently relevant to the community. This ethnographic approach resulted in relationships being established and a level of familiarity and rapport with the community that ensured that the participants felt at ease in the interviews. Interview questions were preprepared but flexible so that there was a level of standardization of survey questions across the interviews, thus making them comparable. Participants were asked prior to the commencement of the interview in which language they would be most comfortable conducting the interview. In most cases, except for the Basque Country, the interviewer was able to accommodate Castilian, Galician, or Catalan to varying degrees. In the case of Basque, participants were informed that should they wish to conduct the interview in Basque arrangements could be made to accommodate this, but there were no instances in which such measures were necessary. At the conclusion of each interview, it was ensured that each participant had the contact details of the researcher should they wish to amend their contribution, or had questions or anything further that they would like to add. In many instances participants made contact in the days after the interview with further thoughts, or examples of material they had spoken about in the interviews (such as mass booklets or festival programs). As the communities in question were small in size and all participants were active members of their community who had a familiarity with the researcher being in the community, interaction continued with the participants for the duration of the researcher’s stay in each town.

5 ANALYSIS 5.1 Quantitative overview Backhaus (2006: 55) considered a unit of analysis to be “any piece of written text within a spatially definable frame” and counted each sign “as one item, irrespective of its size”

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Overview of language distribution in the three towns 900

824

800 Balaguer, Catalonia

Number of units

700

602

O Barco, Galicia

600 500

Laudio/Llodio, The Basque Country

469 414

400 300 200

331

288

150

125

100

12 21

9

34

42

89

87

175 134

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0 Regional Castilian only Language only

Bilingual RL- Bilingual CastCast RL

Ambiguous

Other

Language visibility FIGURE 12.2 Overall language distribution in the three towns.3

(2006: 55). The definition of a unit that will be used in this study develops on Backhaus’s definition, and considers one unit to be one writing act within a spatially definable frame. This further distinction of one writing act is pertinent particularly when considering transgressive acts, where the writing over of, or responding to, a unit is considered a separate writing act to the original unit. It is evident from the overall analysis of the data (Figure 12.2) that it is only in Balaguer, Catalonia, that the autochthonous language dominates the LL more than Castilian. The low visibility of Castilian in Balaguer can be attributed to a number of factors, including the language competences of the community (including the higher ethnolinguistic vitality of Catalan) and the strict top-down language policies regarding language visibility. In O Barco in Galicia, the visibility is quite balanced between the two official languages, but in monolingual form only; the languages are both highly visible in the LL in a diglossic manner. It is only in Laudio/Llodio in the Basque Country that bilingualism in signage has any significant visibility, where it is as visible to a comparable degree as the monolingual signs in both official languages. Bilingual signage in which the minoritized language, Basque, is dominant is most visible. As expected, ambiguity is more of an issue in Galicia, and to a lesser extent in Catalonia, than in the Basque Country, which can be attributed to the linguistic closeness of the languages in question. Other languages, including multilingual signage, do not have a high presence in any of the towns studied. Other languages are least visible in Balaguer, accounting for eighty-nine units. The level of signage categorized as “other” in Laudio/Llodio in the Basque Country is double that found in Balaguer, mainly due to hybrid place-names, as discussed earlier. Overall, the quantitative analysis indicates that the LL in each of these border towns acts quite differently in relation to their two official languages. This suggests that despite each of the local governments actively promoting the autochthonous language in official language policies, the communities interact with their languages in different ways, and it is through a further frame analysis that the dynamics of the discourses in place become apparent.

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5.2 Civic frame The civic frame is the most restricted and controlled frame in the LL of these regions. It is controlled by the governmental authorities (local and state) and thus is most indicative of the language legislation in place. The frame is a one way discourse, allowing for little reciprocity to the message but rather is regulatory in voice. The regulatory and infrastructural nature of the discourse in this frame means that top-down language policies are reflected in the civic frame of each of the towns. Within the civic frame, all signs that were produced and displayed by the authorities (Spanish government or local government) are considered. These include all street-name signs, regulatory signs pertaining to traffic, and directions, signs regulating behavior in the public space (no littering, no dogs), bins, and civic buildings such as administrative buildings. In both Balaguer and Laudio/Llodio the only instances of monolingual Castilian units in this frame occurred in relation to Spanish state authorities, indicating that despite the state authority’s presence in the autonomous community, the state does not enter into discourse in a language other than the state official language. In bilingual signs in the civic frame in Laudio/Llodio (Figure 12.3), Basque is placed in a favored position of dominance (on top, on the left, in bold or capitals) (Scollon and Wong Scollon 2003), giving the language the primary informative function on the signs. It is a conscious decision within the civic frame that in order for the minoritized language to serve a purpose it must come first. The promotion of bilingual signage in official signs was a conscious language management decision by the local government in Laudio/Llodio, as a representative

FIGURE 12.3 Bilingual traffic regulation in Laudio/Llodio.

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in interviews acknowledged that placing Basque in a position of dominance is vital motivation for learners of Basque to make a concerted effort to read and understand it. Although both languages should be treated equally, higher visibility and dominance is necessary for Basque in order to reach a situation of equality. Todos que sabemos euskera, también sabemos castellano. Y si lo lees en castellano, no me lo cuentas otra vez, porque ya me ha enterado.4 (Local government representative, Laudio/Llodio) As official Spanish-language policy allows for diversity, local decisions on language use in signage affect state signage. The street sign is a marker of official language policy which helps to construct identity perception. Street-name signs “have been emblematic of multilingualism in the public space whilst, simultaneously, achieving prominence in the eyes of the wider public” (Blackwood 2015: 42). In Balaguer, there is little evidence of variation from monolingual Catalan units. The strong advocating of Catalan as the first language of the autonomous community is evident in the street-name signs that do not give any recognition to the other official language, Castilian. Only two recorded instances of Castilian street-name signs were noted in a residential area, with newer, monolingual signs in Catalan visible close by for the same street (Figure 12.4).

FIGURE 12.4 Street name sign in Balaguer. Lower sign in Castilian, higher sign in Catalan.

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In the example in Figure 12.4, the newer street name sign in Catalan is answering to the older monolingual Castilian unit that is visible below. Thus, by placing the newer Catalan unit above the older Castilian sign, the Catalan language unit is still demanding priority as it is more salient in view to the passerby. Accordingly, there is no street in Balaguer where a street name sign is not present in Catalan. By contrast, in Galicia, the street-name signs demonstrate diversity in language use. However, this diversity is a juxtaposed monolingualism, in that both languages are visible in the signage of this type, but always in monolingual forms. With regard to street signs, newer signs tend to be in Galician, with evidence of linguistic layering as some older, faded street signs are still present and are in Castilian only. This variety within the official signage is visible even within the signage for the same street, as can be seen in Figures 12.5a and 12.5b. On the opposite end of the street to the sign in figure 12.5a, in this instance the sign is visible in Castilian only. When asked about the language used in street-name signs in the community, many participants were unaware of the variation in language visibility and assumed all signs were in Galician only. The lack of awareness of the language used in

FIGURE 12.5a Street-name sign in O Barco. The street name is visible in Galician only.

FIGURE 12.5b Street-name sign on the same street in O Barco. The street name is visible in Castilian only.

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street-name signs by the general community can be attributed to the over familiarization with the area. One participant explained: El que usa los nombres de las calles aquí es el cartero. Y el cartero de aquí las conoce todas. Aquí nos ubicamos por la calle de las piscinas, o la calle de los colegios, o la plaza del ayuntamiento, o decimos la calle de la Santigoso, de la panadería. Siempre ubicamos por algo que todo el mundo conoce.5 (Shop owner, O Barco) In Laudio/Llodio, there is a high number of bilingual signs, promoting the coexistence of both languages. However, the use of other semiotic tools such as typeface as well as placement order gives the Basque language dominance, thus implying that although the bilingual language policy is adhered to, the importance of supporting and promoting the minoritized language is also recognized. Each town’s street-name signs can largely be seen to be indicative of the language management practices of the local governments. The official policy-driven visibility of minoritized languages in the civic frame was acknowledged by interview participants to be vital for the revitalization of the languages within the communities, as suggested by interview participants: Porque si no, al final solo utilizamos el español. Sí, hay que utilizar también el gallego en este sentido porque si no, si no, acabaría desapareciendo, creo.6 (Shop owner, O Barco) Because of the level of control exercised within the civic frame, it is an important frame to consider in order to understand how official authorities manage languages in bi- or multilingual communities, but also to see how the frame interacts with the other frames of analysis; differences in language visibility between the civic frame and other frames that have more input from the local community can be telling of the language practices and preferences of the community in relation to the official language policies.

5.3 Transgressive expressions of identity The transgressive frame exhibits different discourses to those occurring elsewhere in the LL. Voiced by those without authority, the transgressive frame gives visibility to those who are usually absent from the discourses in other frames (such as the youth). The transgressive units are direct reactions to what is going on in the community and beyond, and therefore are indicative of the overall social and community issues pertaining to that region, often demonstrating acts of social solidarity. The frame includes all elements in the LL that are unauthorized in their placement and are considered to be transgressive. This includes all graffiti and any transgressive acts that have been placed on other units, such as the writing over of, or elimination of elements from, other signs. In each of the towns studied, the transgressive frame diverges from patterns displayed across the other frames in the respective communities. Contrary to findings in other frames, in the transgressive frame Castilian is the salient language in the LL of Balaguer. However, it is in this same frame in O Barco and in Laudio/Llodio that the autochthonous language dominates, due to the association of the language with a particular nationalist ideology, and the political messages that are frequently expressed in transgressive signage. This subversion of the language patterns revealed in other frames can be seen to be a further expression of discontent with current community practices by community

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members who otherwise, outside of the transgressive frame, cannot or do not actively participate in the shaping of the LL. Members of the community are conscious of what language should be represented on the signs around their town. As a result, units within the civic frame are altered, in a dialogue between the top-down authority and the larger community. This demonstrates that the visibility of languages does affect the community; if they were not affected by the language visibility in the public space, there would not be any evidence of contestation or transgressive acts within the civic frame. In each of the communities there are examples of the writing over or erasing of civic frame units in contestation to the language and authority exerted. The visibility of such conflicts and reactions regarding official signage indicates that despite the regulation of this frame, the authoritarian practice does allow for reaction, something which would not have been visible in the LL during the Franco regime (BOE 16 de mayo 1940). It is also indicative of the awareness among the community of the language situation in the officially bilingual area, and the importance attached to the visibility of the autochthonous language, in particular within the LL, for the creation of the local identity. In Figure 12.6 in Balaguer, the transgressive act is rebelling against both the language and the authority that the unit represents. The guardia civil, the national police force, is the symbol of the figure of authority of Spain within the Catalan community in Balaguer. This sign is visible in Castilian only, as would be expected for state authority. (However, Jutjats, the courthouse, is visible above in Catalan only.) Thus this transgressive act of spraying out the Castilian name of the national police and writing over it with fora, “Get out” in Catalan, is indicative of the tensions between the state authority and the regional identity. Not only is the contestation against the police but the juxtapositioning of the two languages is also

FIGURE 12.6 Transgressive act in Catalan in Balaguer.

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indicative of how the autochthonous language is considered to be the appropriate language in which to protest the presence of the state authority in the community. In O Barco de Valdeorras, there are numerous examples of Castilian language signs being altered so that they appear to be Galician. The example below in Figure 12.7 of road traffic signs has been altered through the elimination and addition of letters to adjust the Castilian message to instead reflect the same message but in Galician. The signs read “With the traffic light off or intermittent/Give way.” In the top sign, the first word has been altered to eliminate the final “n,” and a final “u” has been added to the fourth word to alter the sign from Castilian to Galician (con-> co; o-> ou). Similarly, in the bottom sign the definite article in Castilian “el” has been replaced by the definite article in Galician, “o.” This altering of the language in the sign is reflective of the choice preference of language in the LL within the community, which in turn is a manifestation of the community identity which is closely linked to the autochthonous language. In Laudio/Llodio, the importance of the place-name is apparent. In Figure 12.8 the Castilian part of the hybridized name for Vitoria-Gasteiz has been erased, leaving just the Basque name visible. This is indicative of the importance of language use and language visibility in the area and the connection of place-name and language to identity. This is repeated on a number of signs thus revealing the attitude toward the hybrid toponymy introduced in the Basque Country. Such acts of language erasure (Pavlenko 2009) reflect the conflict that exists within a community regarding the display of language in the public space. The erasure of a

FIGURE 12.7 Transgressive act in Galician in O Barco.

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FIGURE 12.8 Language erasure in Laudio/Llodio.

language from signs suggests the importance of the visible display of language(s) in a community as a marker of identity. Through transgressive acts of erasure, the resistance identity (Castells 1997: 66) is asserted through the negation of a language as being visually representative of a community.

5.4 Border markings The border informs all the frames within the LL, creating a sense of identity and community solidarity. Signs from both authorities (the state and the local) existing side by side because of the border location is normal and indicative of the community that is located between two heartlands. The border frame contains multiple discourses occurring in a unique site, where the issue of language choice is heightened in the LL. Official, regulatory discourses interact with tourism, cultural, marketplace, and community discourses where the choice of language marks the border. In each of the towns, the autochthonous language has a marked presence monolingually in the border site. This demonstrates the importance of the visibility of the regional language as a marker of a physical border. The border is a site of exchange and interaction, and the significance of language choice in signage is heightened in such areas, as language is used as a border marker in itself. The border signals a change, regionally and linguistically, resulting in multiple discourses occurring in the same place. In analyzing the border frame, it is obvious that the communities are aware of the border, and of a perceived difference to the rest of the autonomous community, but attribute importance to asserting their own identity because of the increased influence of other communities and of other languages, most notably Castilian. When asked if the geographical location of O Barco (Galicia) affects the language use, and if it gives the choice of language more importance, one participant stated: Eso es evidente. En las zonas fronterizas siempre hay una mezcla muy grande. Es normal.7 (Local government representative, O Barco) Here the participant acknowledges the mixed use of languages in the area. The participant states that, in his opinion, it is “normal” in border areas that there is an increased use of

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language mixing, due to the linguistic influences from both sides of the border. There is higher exposure to Castilian than in the interior of the autonomous community, but there is also an awareness of their autochthonous language and the importance in preserving it as a marker of their identity and their difference to the bordering neighbors. Somos comarcas iguales. Estamos separados administrativamente por una raya, y unos somos gallegos y otros no. Pero digamos que las costumbres, las formas, los usos, son iguales. Incluso la geografía es la misma. Los productos son los mismos. Y por lo tanto la comida es prácticamente igual. Entonces hay una- Digamos que nosotros tenemos más relación personal con el Bierzo que probablemente con el resto de Galicia. Y esto también influye, claro, después en la lengua. Influye en todo. Quizás nos hemos hecho más- en el Bierzo también se habla gallego. En el Bierzo se habla gallego pues es que es normal.8 (Local government representative, O Barco) Here the participant reverses the power and says that “they” speak Galician; it is the minoritized culture and language that influences the “other,” more dominant, Castilian speakers, thus asserting the authority of influence to the minoritized language and culture. In Balaguer, two geographical border points between Catalonia and Aragón were explored. The main highway driving from Aragon toward Balaguer is clearly demarcated as the border is reached, as can be seen in Figure 12.9a. Signage of this type is common when passing through provinces within Spain, not just between autonomous communities. However, in this instance the signage is in Catalan only, and so is indicative of a sociocultural shift that goes beyond the political or geographical lineation, also indexing a linguistic shift as the traveler enters the autonomous community. The second border, which can be reached on foot, had no official signage. A natural border was evident in the landscape following a mountain ridge, but signage was not evident in this part due largely to it being away from main roads. Despite the lack of the

FIGURE 12.9a Province/boundary markers in Catalan in Balaguer.

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FIGURE 12.9b Unofficial sign marking the border in Balaguer.

official signage expected that denotes Catalonia or Aragon, the only indication of a border crossing was in elements of the LL. At the border there is a small power station (Figure 12.9b); the signage on and around the power station was in Castilian only, which was in sharp contrast to any of the signage seen in Balaguer, which tended to be in Catalan only. Exact coordinates indicate that the power station is built just over the official border line in Aragon; thus, the only official language is Castilian. There is no obligation to display Catalan, despite the fact that the nearest inhabited town (Balaguer) is in Catalonia, and that the majority of workers are therefore more likely to be Catalan. In this instance, it is the sudden absence of Catalan and sole presence of Castilian that informs of a change in the linguistic setting of the area. Political and infrastructural developments reinforce boundaries, as is evident here as the infrastructural power station marks the boundary linguistically and politically. Transgressive units can also demonstrate that the border is a dominant issue among the communities. It is apparent that the border location is an important characteristic of the local identity. Each of the communities analyzed displayed evidence of transgressive acts that explicitly referred to the border location. In Galicia, such transgressive acts include statements declaring the neighboring region of Bierzo to be part of Galician territory. In such acts, the Galician language is used to emphasize a shared language and culture among the communities, as Figure 12.10 shows. Interview participants echoed the awareness of the fluidity of the border, such as in the following excerpt: Como estamos limítrofes con Oren- con León, pues el gallego se ve allí pero el castellano predomina bastante porque esta zona [es castellano hablante], ¿no? ¡Y también parte de León lo han puesto ahora en gallego!9 (Priest, O Barco) Here the participant expresses an awareness of the fluidity of language practices among the bordering communities. Although the official language policies of the state draw a

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FIGURE 12.10 A transgressive act in O Barco.

clear line marking the bilingual regions, in practice these speech communities are more diffuse and blur the geographical border lines through interaction and shared language practices. The borders are marked explicitly through official signage and implicitly through unofficial signage and transgressive acts in these towns.

5.5 Cultural commodification The expression of a group identity as manifested in the LL is evident throughout the frames that are engaged with by the community, such as the Marketplace and the Community and Cultural frames. Moriarty (2012: 86) found that her data pointed to the LL as “a space for indexing and performing language ideologies, as a fluid space that is socially constructed and constantly being contested and renegotiated.” This notion of the LL as socially constructed is evident in the towns of research, as elements of the LL are utilized to project the identity of the community. This is visible in instances such as that captured in Figure 12.11 where the Basque word euskal (the adjectival form of Euskara, meaning Basque) has been incorporated into the name for a phone and network provider in the Basque Country. The connecting of a product or service to the local community is seen as positive branding, as increased pride in the local sense of place is evident in each of the local communities. The utilization of a minoritized language in signage offers “an immediate sense of transcendence from the mundane, a token of authenticity in the new surroundings” (Kallen 2009: 271) which can heighten the experience for the visitor, while also serving to connect the local community to the product or service that uses the language. The commodification of the autochthonous languages (Duchȇne and Heller 2012) and the cultures associated with them is expressed in the below interview excerpt, referring to the shop front in Figure 12.11. Here the interview participant explains that it is considered fashionable to make use of, or at least invoke, the autochthonous language in branding so as to create a connection to the immediate community.

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FIGURE 12.11 Shop front in Laudio/Llodio.

Researcher: So, you know the place really well now, when you see a place and the name is just in Castilian, would that give you a different impression to a place that just had the name in Basque, Basque writing and all that? Participant: It probably would have in the past, but not now. Cos now it’s kinda fashionable. Have you seen the phone company, I don’t know if you know the phone company, Euskaltel? Researcher: Oh yeah, the orange one . . . . Participant: Yeah, you put Euskal in front of something and it sells. Maybe I should put Euskal English academy! If I had problems, if I had problems it would bring them in. Seriously, it would, they love it! It’s very, very fashionable.10 (Migrant business owner, Laudio/Llodio) Similarly, in O Barco the Galician language is employed in numerous instances in shops in order to index local products. In their study on Corsica, Blackwood and Tufi (2015: 141) found that Corsican is “in circulation as a commodity, especially within flows of consumption of local produce.” This is also evident in O Barco with regard to the branding of products that are produced locally in the area. In Figure 12.12, there are two units displayed in a shop window. One sign is in Castilian, detailing the price of a sack of potatoes. However, the other sign is visible in Galician stating that there is homemade bread for sale. This blatant commodification of the Galician language and connection of the language to local products only emphasizes the differentiation between Galicia and the rest of Spain; products that are from outside of Galicia are marketed in Castilian, whereas local, artisanal products are displayed in Galician. The notion of authenticity is evident as products are linked to the traditional past and artisanal methods to indicate a high quality product. This intentional connection was recognized by some participants in the interviews, as seen below: Researcher: ¿Por qué pone la gente el gallego y los símbolos gallegos en su rotulación? Participant: Yo creo que es para llamar la atención y para decir . Creo que es una marca identificativa para decir .11 (Shop owner, O Barco) This connection between the language and culture is salient in the cultural frame of the LL. In each community, events indexing cultural activities and events for the local community (cinema days, excursions, local small-scale festivals etc.) are all advertised

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FIGURE 12.12 Two units in the same establishment displaying different language choices.

in the autochthonous language, thus emphasizing the connection between the language and the active community. The emphasis on the autochthonous language illustrates the importance of connecting the language with traditional and cultural events in order to associate them with the local sense of identity for the community. The acknowledgment of the use of the regional language in visual expressions of the traditional culture emphasizes the importance of the regional language as a marker of identity. Many consider themselves more fortunate to live in a border area and to have grown up bilingually. Participants cited benefits to bilingualism, and to growing up in a bi-cultural community. For example, one participant in O Barco explained that Yo creo que tenemos la suerte de estar aquí que más, que igual para Galicia Galicia. Estando en una frontera coges lo bueno de un lado y lo bueno del otro. Y no te cierras a- ni soy gallego cerrado ni soy igual que el típico madrileño y entonces.12 (Shop owner, O Barco) Here the participant explains that the border location forms part of her identity; because of her relationship with both the autonomous community and Spain in general, she benefits from interacting with communities on both sides of the border.

6 DISCUSSION The towns in the study are located in transition zones, where language plays a part politically and socially in the creation of a collective identity of the people there. Thus, language patterns, especially in visual language displays, can give insights into the communities’ language attitudes. People will acknowledge the blurred lines around their linguistic location, but have a different opinion again of their identity markers, with the border location becoming an identity in itself, and the LL contributing to the construction of this border identity.

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The autochthonous language is the preferred vehicle in cultural discourses in each of the historic autonomous communities. It is used to mark the border and to differentiate between the local community and the “other.” Each of the communities values the impact of the visual presence of the autochthonous language in the public space. It enriches the local sense of identity and increases pride in their language, which in turn contributes to the revitalization of the language in the areas. The regional language is commodified in the LL to mark the local and traditional, to build solidarity and to create a sense of community through a shared identity. Such evident support for the promotion of the autochthonous languages was echoed in many of the interviews, such as the two examples below, supporting the hypothesis that the language is an important marker of identity for the communities, and in turn, the visual presence of the languages is a socially driven intentional choice. Si tú pones las características de la tienda, y lo pones en euskera, pues es un pequeño guiño más para que tenga una presencia social, la lengua.13 (Local government representative, Laudio/Llodio) É importante porque non sé si a xente fala máis o menos galego, pero polo menos lee en galego, e entón ten que facer o esforzo de ver escrita ista lingua y de intentar entender a lingua.14 (Journalist, O Barco) Interview participants recognize the importance of the LL in creating the local sense of identity, particularly for a region on the border that is heavily influenced by other factors from both the historic autonomous community and the neighboring monolingual province in Spain. Thus the autochthonous language is given a heightened importance in the construction of a local identity. La lengua de aquí es el catalán. Sí que hemos tenido la influencia del castellano, porque perdimos no sé qué guerra, porque franquismo, porque tal. Pero la lengua es el catalán. Catalán debería ser lo básico. Si quieren castellano, también, pero sólo en castellano es- son libres de hacer o en inglés o tal, pero para estar en Cataluña usar el catalán, es la lengua.15 (Business owner, Balaguer) Participants acknowledge not only the increased influence of Castilian in these areas compared to the rest of the autonomous communities but also the influence the minoritized language has on the neighboring area in the monolingual province. Estamos en la frontera, pero es una frontera política. Porque después de Lérida y después de Alfarràs viene una parte de Aragón que habla catalán. Es la lengua de estas tierras.16 (Local government representative, Balaguer) Thus, it is not solely the majority language and culture that influences the minoritized group, but communities on both sides of the border influence each other reciprocally in the transition zone between these languages and cultures. The signage at the geographical border marks the transition explicitly, where provincial signage is visible in the autochthonous language only, thus indexing the linguistic shift to the commuter. In other instances, the border is implicitly marked, but again it is the linguistic markers that establish the shift. This linguistic shift is acknowledged and distinguished by both the autonomous

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community, who are eager to demonstrate that there is a separate, autochthonous language used in the area, and the state authorities, who, on displaying the official road signage in Castilian only as the traveler exits the autonomous community, emphasize the dominance and authority of the state language in Spain; the autochthonous language has a level of officiality within the autonomous community, but it has no state support outside of these regions, even in the immediate vicinity of the autonomous community. The discourses at these border sites are indicative of the official language policies in action and the relationship between the autonomous authorities and the state, as well as being indicative of the importance attached to the language as a marker of identity.

7 CONCLUSION The framework of the Constitution in Spain results in there being little homogeneity across the historic autonomous communities with regard to the language policies of the autochthonous languages. As each autonomous community is individually responsible for the policing of its regional language, the LL exhibits three different situations which, despite having the same level of autonomy, have each diverged in their own ways. Despite the three communities being officially bilingual, it is only in one community, Laudio/Llodio in the Basque Country, that bilingualism is visible in a significant manner in the LL. Despite this lack of continuity in policies and planning, however, it is clear that the LL has been interpreted and used similarly but in different ways in each autonomous community as a tool of revitalization and in establishing the language as a clear marker of identity. Each community is purposely working on the revitalization of their language using the LL as a tool. The visual presence of the autochthonous language in the public space is embraced by the communities, and a sense of pride in the language was expressed in the interviews, with the autochthonous language emerging as a clear and important marker of identity for the communities. However, the approaches taken toward the use of official languages in the LL are different in each of the communities. In Galicia, both languages have a marked presence, but in monolingual displays. Bilingualism in language display is the channel pursued in the Basque Country as a means of increasing the presence of the Basque language alongside Castilian in the community. In Catalonia, diversity is negligible, and Catalan is prioritized to the degree that Castilian does not appear to have any official status in official signage. While the official language policy is clearly evident in the civic frame in the LLs, it is not always reciprocated in the other frames studied here, which involve the participation and interaction of the general public. The autochthonous languages are commodified particularly regarding cultural activities, and so emphasize the tie between language and culture in the creation of their sense of identity. It was clear that the people interviewed assert the importance of seeing their regional languages on the walls as well as using them in the spoken form. The LL has helped with encouraging use and pride in the language and in bringing it back into the public space as a means of asserting their local identity. In each of these communities, the LL contributes not only to the boundary marking but also to the construction of multilingual spaces of belonging for the communities, as the border itself becomes a marker of identity. Focusing on smaller, more rural communities on the borders of the historic autonomous communities offers an insight into the gradual shift in language that occurs across boundary areas. Such communities display a fluidity of identity and often view

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their peripheral location as a marker of how they use and interact with the LL, and how this peripheral location affects their own language use. With regard to borders, it is not a clear black-and-white line that divides autonomous communities from Spain, but rather there are blurred lines of transition zones in all of them in which language plays a part politically and for the identity of the people there. Although administratively there are clear boundaries marked between regions, sociolinguistically these boundaries are more blurred between speech communities. The border brings an increased awareness and attention to the LL, both explicitly in border markers and implicitly in the other signs. Thus language patterns, especially in visual language display, play a vital role in the construction of a collective identity in these communities.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Jeffrey Kallen for advice and support throughout the development of this research.

FURTHER READING Blackwood, R. and S. Tufi (2012), “Policies vs Non-Policies: Analysing Regional Languages and the National Standard in the Linguistic Landscape of French and Italian Mediterranean Cities,” in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten, and L. Van Mensel (eds.), Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, 109–26, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan. Goffman, E. (1974), Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, Middlesex: Penguin Books. Kallen, J. (2010), “Changing Landscapes: Language, Space and Policy in the Dublin Linguistic Landscape,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, 41–58, London: Continuum. Kallen, J. (2014), “The Political Border and Linguistic Identities in Ireland: What Can the Linguistic Landscape Tell Us?” in D. Watt and C. Llamas (eds.) Language, Borders and Identity, 154–68, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Scollon, R. and S. Wong Scollon (2003), Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World, London: Routledge. Tufi, S. (2016), “Constructing the Self in Contested Spaces: The Case of SlovenianSpeaking Minorities in the Area of Trieste,” in R. Blackwood, E. Lanza, and H. Woldemariam (eds.), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, 101–16, London: Bloomsbury.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. In LL research, methodologies vary depending on the purpose of your study. Identify instances in which the inclusion of interviews would be beneficial and complement the data analysis. Identify the types of study in which interviews may not be necessary/ beneficial. 2. Consider the frame theory established by Goffman and developed for LL by Kallen. How would you incorporate frame theory into a study that you are conducting? Are there other frames that would need to be considered, such as the border frame in this study?

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PROJECT WORK 1. Conduct a number of interviews about the LL in a town or city you are familiar with. Plan the interviews by identifying your method of sampling. (Will you target specific participants, as in purposive sampling, or will a random sample be appropriate?) Consider what is important for you to find out from your participants and plan how you will structure the interviews. 2. Consider a border you are familiar with (it can be between countries, states, or frictionless borders between towns). How are these borders visible? Are there any semiotic factors that make the border explicit or implicit? Conduct a short LL survey of a border area to analyze how the border is marked.

NOTES 1. For further detail regarding the regulation and normalization of place names in the Basque Country see Gorrotxategi 2006. 2. For other LL studies incorporating interviews see Malinowski 2009; Garvin 2010; Bogatto and Hélot 2010; Papen 2012; Vandenbroucke 2015; Manan et al. 2014, among others. 3. The label “Regional Language” (RL) has been used in all figures of the analysis in order to avoid ambiguity that may occur by labeling a bar “autochthonous”/“minoritized” language without clear reference as to the provenance of the language. 4. All of us that know Basque, we know Castilian too. And if you read it in Castilian, there’s no need to tell me the same thing again, because I already know what it’s about. 5. The only one who uses the names of streets here is the postman. And the postman here knows them all. Here we go by the street with the swimming pools, or the street with the schools, or the Town Hall square, or we say the street with Santigoso, the bakery. We always go by something that everyone knows. 6. Because in the end, if there wasn’t (language policies promoting the use of Galician), we would just use Spanish. Yeah, you have to use Galician (in signs) too, because if you don’t, if you don’t it will end up disappearing I think. 7. Obviously. In border areas there is always a very big mix. It’s normal. 8. We are the same region. We are separated administratively by a line, and some of us are Galician and others aren’t. But the customs, the forms, and the uses (of language) are the same. Even the geography is the same. The products are the same. Even the food is practically the same. So there is—we say we have more of a personal connection with Bierzo than probably with the rest of Galicia. And that then influences, of course, the language. It influences everything. Maybe we have become more- in Bierzo they speak Galician too. In Bierzo they speak Galician, and it’s normal. 9. Because we’re bordering with Ouren- with Leon, well you see Galician there but Castilian is more obvious because that zone (is Castilian speaking), you know? And some parts of Leon have them (signs) in Galician now too! 10. Interview conducted in English. 11. Researcher: Why do people use Galician language and symbols associated with Galician in their signs? Participant: I think it is to draw attention to it, to say “we are from here.” I think it is a way of identifying, of saying “well, I’m from here.” 12. I think we are luckier than most, being here, than to be in “Galicia” Galicia. Being on the border you get the good from one side, and the good from the other. You’re not closed off to- I’m not a Galician fanatic, but equally I’m not like your typical Madrid person “All power to Spain,” you know.

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13. If you put the signs and everything in a shop, if you put them in Basque, well, it’s a little extra nod in its favor, so that the language has a social presence. 14. It is important because I don’t know if people speak more or less Galician because of it, but at least they read in Galician, they have to make the effort of seeing and reading the language and trying to understand it. 15. The language here is Catalan. Of course we have been influenced by Castilian because we lost whatever wars, because of the Franco regime, and so on. But the language is Catalan. Catalan should be the basic. If they want to use Castilian, (they can use it) as well, but just in Castilian is- they’re free to use English or whatever, but, when in Catalonia, use Catalan, it’s the language. 16. We’re on the border, but it is a political border. Because after Lerida and passed Alfarràs there is a part of Aragon where they speak Catalan, it’s the language in these parts.

REFERENCES Backhaus, P. (2006), “Multilingualism in Tokyo: A Look into the Linguistic Landscape,” in D. Gorter (ed.), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism, 52–66, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Blackwood, R. (2015), “LL Explorations and Methodological Challenges: Analysing France’s Regional Languages,” Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal, 1 (1/2): 38–53. Blackwood, R. and S. Tufi (2012), “Policies vs Non-Policies: Analysing Regional Languages and the National Standard in the Linguistic Landscape of French and Italian Mediterranean Cities,” in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten, and L. Van Mensel (eds.), Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, 109–26, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan. Blackwood, R. and S. Tufi (2015), The Linguistic Landscape of the Mediterranean: French and Italian coastal cities, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Boletín oficial del Estado (BOE). Orden de 16 de mayo de 1940, por la que se dispone queda prohibido en rótulos, muestras, anuncios etc. el empleo de vocablos genéricos extranjeros (1940). Bogatto, F. and C. Hélot (2010), “Linguistic Landscape and Language Diversity in Strasbourg: The ‘Quartier Gare,’” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 275–91, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Briggs, C. L. (1986), Learning How to Ask: A Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the Role of the Interview in Social Science Research, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Castells, M. (1997), The Power of Identity, Oxford: Blackwell. Coupland, N. and P. Garrett (2010), “Linguistic Landscapes, Discursive Frames and Metacultural Performance: The Case of Welsh Patagonia,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 205: 7–36. Duchêne, A. and M. Heller (2012), Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit, London: Routledge. Euskal Estatistika Erakundea (EUSTAT) (2014), Datos estadísticos: Laudio/Llodio. http://eustat. eu/municipal/datos_estadisticos/laudio_llodio.html:Euskal Estatistika Erakundea. Euskal Estatistika Erakundea (EUSTAT) (2013), Población de la comunidad autónoma de Euskadi por el municipio de residencia, según el sexo y la lengua hablada en casa 2011. Retrieved February 5, 2016 http://eustat.eu/elementos/ele0010600/ti_Poblacion_de_la_CA_ de_Euskadi_por_el_municipio_de_residencia_segun_el_sexo_y_la_lengua_hablada_en_casa/t bl0010651_c.html#axzz4FGCkFYLw Garvin, R. T. (2010), “Responses to the Linguistic Landscape in Memphis, Tennessee: An Urban Space in Transition,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 252–71, Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Goffman, E. (1974), Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, Middlesex: Penguin Books. Gorrotxategi, M. (2006), “Problemas de normativización y normalización de topónimos en áreas romanizadas del occidente de Euskal Herria,” Oihenart, 21: 141–47. Gorter, D. and J. Cenoz (2008), “Knowledge about Language and Linguistic Landscape,” in J. Cenoz and N. H. Hornberger (eds.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2 edn, Vol. 6, 1–13, New York: Springer. Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya (IdesCat) (2013), Población de 2 años y más por conocimiento del catalán 2011. Retrieved February 5, 2016 http://www.idescat.cat/emex/?id=250404 Instituto galego de estatística (IGE) (2013), Poboación en vivendas familiares de 5 ou máis anos segundo o uso do galego 2011. Retrieved February 5, 2016 http://www.ige.eu/igebdt/esqv. jsp?ruta=verTabla.jsp?OP=1&B=1&M=&COD=6856&R=9915[32009]&C=0[all] &F=&S=1:2011&SCF= Jaworski, A. and S. Yeung (2010), “Life in the Garden of Eden: The Naming and Imagery of Residential Hong Kong,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 153–81, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Kallen, J. (2009), “Tourism and Representation in the Irish Linguistic Landscape,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 270–83, London: Routledge. Kallen, J. (2010), “Changing Landscapes: Language, Space and Policy in the Dublin Linguistic Landscape,” in A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, 41–58, London: Continuum. Malinowski, D. (2009), “Authorship in the Linguistic Landscape: A Multimodal-Performative View,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 107–25, London: Routledge. Manan, S. A., D. Maya Khemlani, F. Perlas Dumaning, and K. Naqeebullah (2014), “Politics, Economics and Identity: Mapping the Linguistic Landscape of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,” International Journal of Multilingualism, 12 (1): 31–50. Moriarty, M. (2012), “Language Ideological Debates in the Linguistic Landscape of an Irish Tourist Town,” in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten, and L. Van Mensel (eds.), Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, 74–88, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan. Papen, U. (2012), “Commercial Discourses, Gentrification and Citizens’ Protest: The Linguistic Landscape of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 16 (1): 56–80. Pavlenko, A. (2009), “Language Conflict in Post-Soviet Linguistic Landscapes,” Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 17 (1–2): 247–74. Pietikäinen, S. and H. Kelly-Holmes (2013), “Multilingualism and the Periphery,” in S. Pietikäinen and H. Kelly-Holmes (eds.), Multilingualism and the Periphery, 1–16, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Salo, H. (2012), “Using Linguistic Landscape to Examine the Visibility of Sámi Languages in the North Calotte,” in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten, and L. Van Mensel (eds.), Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, 243–59, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan. Scollon, R. and S. Wong Scollon (2003), Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World, London: Routledge. Tufi, S. (2016), “Constructing the Self in Contested Spaces: The Case of Slovenian-Speaking Minorities in the Area of Trieste,” in R. Blackwoods, E. Lanza and H. Woldemariam (eds.), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, 101–16, London: Bloomsbury. Vandenbroucke, M. (2015), “Language Visibility, Functionality and Meaning Across Various TimeSpace Scales in Brussels’ Multilingual Landscapes,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 36 (2): 163–81.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Politically Open— Sociolinguistically SemiPermeable: A Linguistic Landscape View into the Lithuanian-Polish Borderland GINTAR Ė KUD Ž MAIT Ė AND KASPER JUFFERMANS

1 INTRODUCTION We are driving around in the Polish-Lithuanian borderland and cross the border in both directions. Linguistic signs appear before us, inviting to notice preliminary patterns of the LL. Although both countries have one official state language—Polish in Poland and Lithuanian in Lithuania—and are notoriously “monolingual from above” (cf. Zabrodskaja 2014), the LL on both sides seems to be more complex. Lithuania and Poland have a long history of mutual partnership, and currently are member states of the European Union and the Schengen Area, sharing an inner and open European border. The towns on the Polish side of the borderland host a Lithuanian minority group, while the ethnic composition of Lithuania’s side is more homogeneous. Our research asks how this borderland functions sociolinguistically and what the significance of the border is in shaping the borderland LL. The aim of this comparative LL study is to describe the patterns of signage on the Lithuanian-Polish borderland and to explore to what extent political, ethnic, and linguistic borders overlap. By reaching this aim, we provide a local example of a global question of boundaries, starting with inquiring the geopolitical nation-state bordering of two European states, and ending with investigating the multidimensionality of boundaries. This study first outlines in some detail the historical, political, and sociolinguistic context of the two EU member states and their mutually shared borderland. It then reviews recent work in LLS, borderland studies, and research on LLs and borders with a focus on the Eastern European context. It also comments on theoretical and methodological changes in LL research. After presenting our approach as a triangulation of quantitative

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and multimodal methods, and field observations and conversations, the chapter continues with its main comparative findings from these three angles. Our chapter concludes that the Polish-Lithuanian border is politically open but sociolinguistically only semi-permeable: appearing to be more open in the direction from Lithuania to Poland and more closed when viewing from Poland to Lithuania. By bringing LL and borderland studies together, this research crosses disciplinary boundaries. Not only does it highlight useful concepts in understanding language and ethnicity in the borderland, it also questions different types of borders and suggests that borders are more or less open or closed at different times and in different directions, linguistically and/or geographically. Our case of the Polish-Lithuanian border encourages further LL research on borderland spaces.

2 A STORY OF TWO LANGUAGES AND TWO COUNTRIES Poland and Lithuania are typical European nation-states with a national language homonymous with the state and its people. Lithuanian and Polish belong to separate language branches, Polish being a West Slavic and Lithuanian a Baltic language within the Balto-Slavic language family. Although the languages do not have significant similarities nowadays, shared language use for a period of time in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Kamusella 2013: 817–19) had some impact on both languages. Lithuanian and Polish both use adapted forms of the Latin alphabets with thirty-two letters. Some letters differ in the respective writing systems (e.g., Polish uses ć, ł, ń, ó, ś, w, ź, ż and Lithuanian uses č, ė, į, š, ū, ų, ž) which make the two languages visually easily distinguishable. For more than two centuries the kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were united within a confederation—the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (from 1569 to 1795). In 1795, the Commonwealth was taken apart by the Russian Empire which incorporated most Lithuanian and some Polish lands into its territory, and by the Austrian Empire and Prussia that shared most of the Polish territory (Kamusella 2013). After multiple territorial changes throughout Europe, around and right after the First World War, the Russian Empire was a shared source of political influence on both countries (Laurinavicius 2001). Both nations developed strong feelings toward their national languages and identities: Roman Catholicism and the Polish language in Poland (Komorowska 2014: 21) and the protection of language (e.g., by smuggling Latin-script Lithuanian books) and religion in Lithuania (Petronis 2007: 131–32). Between the two world wars, border demarcations between the two countries repeatedly changed. When both Lithuania and Poland reemerged as sovereign states in 1918, Vilnius region and Suwałki region became areas of especially strong conflicts (Laurinavicius 2001). The Suwałki agreement of 1920 settled the dispute and set the current border. As a result, the Vilnius region is now a territory of Lithuania with the biggest Polish minority, while the Suwałki region in Poland is home to the biggest Lithuanian minority. With the beginning of the Second World War, the two countries were in the controversy between Germany and Russia’s influence. Between the Second World War and the end of the Cold War Lithuania was part of the USSR as a Soviet Socialist Republic (from 1940 to 1990, excluding 1941–44 when the country was occupied by Germany), and Poland

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became a socialist state under the USSR’s influence as a signatory to the Warsaw Pact (from 1955 to 1991). After 1990, Poland and Lithuania reoriented themselves as democratic republics by joining NATO (in 1999 and 2004, respectively), the EU (both in 2004), and the Schengen Area (both in 2007). In 2015 Lithuania joined the Eurozone. With joining international organizations came international agreements and commitments, including attention to minorities, their rights and languages. In their Constitutions, both Lithuania and Poland specify Lithuanian and Polish respectively as the only official language. The 1995 Law on the State Language of the Republic of Lithuania and the 1999 Act on the Polish Language stipulate that official public information has to be posted in official languages, and all governmental and public nongovernmental institutions have to use the official languages for official purposes. Both countries have language regulating bodies reporting to their Parliament. In addition, Lithuania has a Lithuanian Language Inspection responsible for the implementation of the state language law, and separate language councils in the municipalities (cf. Hogan-Brun, Ramonienė and Grumadienė 2005: 350). The Lithuanian language law does not strictly regulate the rules of nonofficial communication within regional communities as long as it does not interfere with the Constitution and the language law. Generally, minorities are granted rights to be provided with all necessary information in all official matters. Freedom of press and information through public media and education in minority languages are ensured as well. Minorities and minority languages in Lithuania are protected by the Constitution and several European and international conventions Lithuania is a signatory to (e.g., the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities). The same rights on using the minority languages are found in Polish laws as well, but with more official resources, which more thoroughly discuss rights of official writing in national minority languages (including Lithuanian). Poland also signed the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages in 2009, which ensures preservation of regional and national minority languages in regions with minorities in Poland. Poland recognizes fifteen regional minority languages and is the only country where Lithuanian is protected as a national minority language. All in all, minority groups and their languages are protected and recognized in both countries. Poland, however, ratified more European treaties on this matter than Lithuania, thus considering minority rights more comprehensively. The foreign language teaching systems are quite alike in Poland and Lithuania. In both countries English, German, and Russian are the most frequently taught foreign languages. At least one foreign language is obligatory at school, and English currently is chosen as the first foreign language by an absolute majority of students in both countries (Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania 2016; Polish EURYDICE Unit 2012). A study of self-reported proficiency in foreign languages (European Commission 2012) suggests that in both countries English and German are spoken well enough to have a conversation by about a third and a sixth of the population respectively, but that Russian is much more widely known in Lithuania than in Poland (see Table 13.1).

3 BORDERLAND LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPES 3.1 Three waves of linguistic landscape studies The first part of our theoretical framework reviews quantitative, multimodal, and ethnographic approaches to LL. Various authors have noted how quickly the field of LLS

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TABLE 13.1 Self-Reported Foreign Language Knowledge in Poland and in Lithuania Language

Poland (%)

Lithuania (%)

English

33

38

Russian

18

80

German

19

14

Source: European Commission, 2012.

has expanded its scenery and matured and diversified its methodological approaches. Milani (2013: 207), for instance, reviewed the dynamics of LLS in terms of three stages of development in LLS with their own “methodological techniques”: from early quantitative approaches that merely count languages on signs, via qualitative and multimodal approaches that focus on “the interaction between the verbal and the visual in public signage” to long-standing ethnographies that explore people’s daily perception of signs. Even though their emergence was (roughly) linear in time, further application and development of these approaches are not linear, and they complement each other within the same studies (Zabrodskaja and Milani 2014: 2). In our study, we understand these theoretical and methodological “waves” of LLS (cf. Blommaert 2016) as reemerging and mixing with each other and not as mutually exclusive approaches. Accepting the reemerging “waves” of LLS is one of the ways to overcome boundaries within the field of LL research. Blommaert (2016), among others, criticized “the first wave” of LLS, which is characterized by quantitative grouping and counting the languages on signs. Alternatively, qualitative analysis supplements mere quantification of data units, looking at the design of presentation of languages, as well as the context of the sign’s placement. Similarly, Reh (2004) proposed a typology to distinguish types of multilingual writing, which aids to envisage the target audience, purposes of specific languages, and communicative, social, and emotional links between the languages, the languages and inhabitants, and among inhabitants who use different languages. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006: 177) analyzed visual items as multimodal texts to be read with scripted text, images, forms, vectors, and colors as constituting elements of its “grammar.” Multimodality means that a multiplicity of modes or semiotic resources is integrated to create a full meaning of the sign. Drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen’s work, Scollon and Scollon (2003: 8–13) introduced the concept of geosemiotics, which is a combination of systems “in which language can be located in the material world,” including not only visual semiotics but also place semiotics (nonlinguistic symbols that represent language), and the interaction order (involving how people act and use their semiotic resources through gestures and speech). Building on this, Blommaert (2013) proposed an ethnographic LL analysis (ELLA) which considers signage as indexing specific social practices in a particular historically configured space (Blommaert 2013: 23–28; Blommaert and Maly 2014: 4). In our approach to the LL of the Polish-Lithuanian border, we borrow some of the above analytical techniques and triangulate them. Triangulation of methods is applied as a way to avoid “hasty conclusions which do not reflect the reality of linguistic situations on the ground” (Ben Said 2011: 65ff), and as a mean to close a gap between methods used in LL research.

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3.2 Borders and borderlands We will now turn to our second theoretical anchoring: border studies. As part of a vast field of research, recent border studies employ interdisciplinary methods, and question ontological, epistemological, and methodological grounds of borders and boundaries (Parker, Vaughan-Williams et al. 2009). Relative to our study are the notions that in many cases borders are being reinforced rather than vanish, that inner European border spaces are not only opening but also closing to some extent (e.g., strengthening borders due to illegal migration), and that border dimensions (political, ethnic, linguistic, cultural) multiply and may not overlap with each other (Newman 2006, 2011; Paasi 2009; Rumford 2006). Initially, borders were created to separate and protect one side of the border from the influence of the other, but with the opening of inner European borders, “trans-boundary regions” were created (Newman 2011: 35ff), and borderlands were connected. Nonetheless, geopolitical borders of nation-states rarely coincide with socioeconomic or ethnolinguistic borders (Newman 2006: 173–78). “Openness” of borders and “free mobility” does not apply to all areas and all categories (Newman 2006: 177). The latter study also highlighted that “reterritorialization”—a shift of borders due to political events (wars, occupations)—moves the border but does not necessarily move the people. These shifts and mismatches make borderlands unique zones of contact. Custred (2011: 265) spoke of “borderland linguistics,” where borderland studies and linguistic studies meet due to their mutual focus on the “contact.” A well-known concept in this regard is the “contact zone,” proposed by Pratt (1991) to refer to the meeting and clashing of different cultures and speech communities in particular spaces and moments. A significant contribution to the study of borderlands in sociolinguistics was made by Omoniyi (2004, 2014). We follow his proposition to distinguish three types of borders. First, “political” borders are borders that separate nation-states and are often articulated in the form of physical obstacles for human and other movement. Second, “emotive” borders are borders that divide ethnic and cultural groups within politically separated nations. These are often not explicitly physically or visually marked. Finally, “conceptual” borders are “mental mappings” without physical indicators, representing discontinuities of norms in order to negotiate individual and social relationships (Omoniyi 2004: 9; 2014: 13). In areas where these borders do not overlap, complex situations for local communities regarding identity work and language choices appear (Omoniyi 2004: 231ff). Drawing on Momoh (1989), Omoniyi (2014) presented borderlands as areas close to the border on both sides, and distinguished three types of borderlands: “zero” borderland or total closure between the two states, “minimal” borderland with partial coexistence without significant ethnic or linguistic continuities, and “maximal” borderland where movement across the border is unrestricted, borderland space continues, and people freely interact on both sides of the border (Momoh 1989; Omoniyi 2004: 18–19; 2014: 12). We are interested in how our chosen borderland is managed ethnolinguistically. The lens through which we attempt to see this is the LL, looking at how different types of borders interact with each other, and what kind of borderland is created during this interaction.

3.3 The Eastern European (borderland) spaces We place our study in the sociolinguistics of Eastern Europe, more specifically the Baltics and Poland, with special attention to borderland spaces. Based on previous studies, we aim at broadening further the scope of LL of these areas, and to compare our findings with the findings of these studies.

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There is a rich body of research on LLS of postcommunist and post-Soviet spaces that has paid attention to the changes after the break-up of the Eastern Bloc since 1989 (e.g., Marten 2010; Muth 2008, 2014a, 2014b; Pavlenko 2008; Zabrodskaja 2014). With independence from the USSR or its influence, complex social and linguistic issues emerged throughout the region due to the multiethnic composition of populations and continued role of Russian as a lingua franca (Pavlenko 2008). In his studies, Muth showed that in some postcommunist areas strong relicts of the former linguistic preferences are still visible in the LL (Muth 2014a,b). Investigating the LL of Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, Muth (2008) reported that the minority languages of Russian and Polish were underrepresented, while English with no significant minority group was presented as a lingua franca in the LL. Marten’s (2010) study of the LL of Rēzekne in Latvia, where language policies are much alike to the ones in Lithuania, found that the strict state language policy was reflected and minority languages were underrepresented in the LL of the city. Similarly, Zabrodskaja (2014) discussed the LL of Tallinn, noticing an ongoing tension between the state language law (Estonian is the official state language) and the actual sociolinguistic environment (a strong minority of Russian speakers). In the context of all three Baltic states, a significant amount of data was collected in a project which took place between 2008 and 2012 in six towns, two in each of the Baltic countries (Lazdiņa, Pošeiko, and Marten 2013). This study reported that the state languages were the most prominent in the LL of each of the countries, followed by English and Russian rather than the neighboring languages. A detailed study covering LLs of territories of both Lithuania and Poland was conducted by Ruzaitė (2017), with a focus on quantitative data of languages other than the state languages on signs collected in two Polish and three Lithuanian holiday resorts. Ruzaitė analyzed how the languages on signs are affected by tourism and the proximity to the border. The results showed bilingual (private) Polish-English signs to be the dominant multilingual signage in Polish resorts, followed by the Polish-German signs. (German visitors represent the biggest group in these cities.) In Lithuanian resorts, English was the most prominent foreign language as well, although signs with three or four languages including Polish, Russian and German were more dominant than bilingual ones. Compared to Muth (2008), Ruzaitė (2017: 213–14) proposes a different view on Russian in Lithuania—this language came as second dominant foreign language after English. Moving to Poland, Herman (2014: 53–57) compared the twin cities Cieszyn/ Těšín on the Polish-Czech border, showing that in Těšín (Czechia), where the Polish minority is relatively significant, Polish signs in theory were promoted by institutions due to minority language policy, but in practice Polish was given a lower position than Czech. In Cieszyn (Poland), Czech signs were significantly absent, pointing to a noncompliance with minority language policy. The LL of another Polish borderland was studied by Gerst and Klessmann (2015), who compared the twin cities of Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany and Słubice in Poland. They concluded that even though promoted on both sides, Polish-German bilingualism is better implemented in the LL of Frankfurt. Nonetheless, they also found an ideologically based asymmetrical dominance of German over Polish. In addition to LLS, important ethnolinguistic notes on the attitudes of Polish and Lithuanian ethnic groups have been published. At various times and places, ethnicity can be “hot” or “cold,” Ehala and Zabrodskaja (2014) suggest. According to their study (Ehala and Zabrodskaja 2014: 84), the Polish and Russian minorities in Lithuania both

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have negative ethnolinguistic vitality indications (i.e., they do not actively promote themselves). Comparable research in Poland by Debicki and Makaro (2014: 55–56) showed a great change from “disliking” (due to past territorial disagreements) to “liking” (due to positive opinions on shared history) Lithuanians in the last twenty-year period. The average attitude of Poles toward Lithuanians and Lithuania, their study found, is “indifference” (2014: 63–64).

4 DEEPER INTO THE LANDSCAPE: FOUR TOWNS AND PLENTY OF ROADS Let us now delve deeper into the landscape and contextualize the Polish-Lithuanian borderland. Present-day Lithuania and Poland share 103.7 kilometers of border, in the southwest of Lithuania and the northeast of Poland. It is the shortest border for both countries with two roadway border crossing points (Kalvarija-Budzisko and LazdijaiOgrodniki as shown in Figure 13.1). After both countries joined the Schengen Area in 2007, these checkpoints formally opened up, allowing free movement between the territories. The Lithuanian-Polish borderland region is approximately 300 kilometers away from the Polish capital and biggest city, Warsaw. On the opposite side, the border is 180 kilometers away from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, and 100 kilometers away from the second biggest and more centrally located city Kaunas. The remoteness of the border from the respective centers of the two countries is geopolitically relevant. Taking the sizes of the two countries into account, distances from the urban centers might suggest different influence levels from the center upon the peripheries. The border crossing point of Kalvarija-Budzisko is situated on the European route E67 that runs from Helsinki to Prague, crossing the three Baltic States and Poland (this segment

FIGURE 13.1 The full circle of the borderland field trip (Kalvarija–Puńsk–Sejny–Lazdijai–Kal varija) with the border crossings.

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TABLE 13.2 Key Demographics of the Lithuanian-Polish Borderland Distance from the border (km)

Inhabitants Town

District

Minority presence

Lithuania Kalvarija

14

4,300

12,000

Insignificant

Lazdijai

10

4,500

22,500

Insignificant

10

4,200 (rural gmina)

20,000

Poland Puńsk Sejny

15

5,500 (urban gmina)

Significant Significant

of the route is also known as Via Baltica). The Via Baltica is an important connector of economic exchange and partnership in the broader Baltic and Eastern European region. With 69,000 inhabitants and 25 kilometers away from the border, the first big Polish city of Suwałki on this route is highly popular with Lithuanians who come for shopping, especially after Lithuania adopted the Euro in 2015, which caused prices to increase. The Lithuanian towns of Kalvarija (county of Marijampolė) and Lazdijai (county of Alytus) are situated on the major roads leading to the border. Kalvarija is the first borderland town located 14 kilometers from the Kalvarija-Budzisko border crossing point, while Lazdijai is within 10 kilometers of Lazdijai-Ogrodniki (Table 13.2). According to the 2011 national census of population and housing (Statistics Lithuania 2013), more than 98 percent of inhabitants in Kalvarija and Lazdijai declared themselves to be of Lithuanian ethnicity while only 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent respectively claimed to be ethnic Poles, and no more than 9.7 percent and 12.9 percent respectively reported to know Polish as a foreign language. On the Polish side of the border, Puńsk and Sejny are located in the same district (powiat) of Sejneński, which has around 20,000 inhabitants. Puńsk is approximately 10 kilometers away from the Kalvarija-Budzisko border crossing point, although different routes to the border can make it as close as 4 kilometers. Slightly bigger, Sejny is 15 kilometers away from the border, and closer to the Lazdijai-Ogrodniki border crossing (Table 13.2). As announced by the Lithuanian Embassy in Poland, the towns of Puńsk and Sejny and their surroundings are home to the national minority of ethnic Lithuanians (composing around 80 percent and 30 percent to 40 percent of the population, respectively).

5 APPROACHING THE BORDERLAND Our data was gathered by the first author during several field trips in the borderland area she has frequently visited since childhood. Photos of signs were collected in the central streets and main squares in the four towns of Puńsk, Sejny, Kalvarija, and Lazdijai, and on roads connecting these towns. We decided to omit official road signs (i.e., indicating town names and distances to particular locations) due to their excessive amount and repetitiveness in both countries. These were strictly monolingual in Lithuania and monolingual or bilingual in Poland, and further corroborate our findings when taken into consideration.

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Our methodology combines three tried techniques. Our quantitative analysis presents a bird’s eye view of signage within the borderland LL. As a second step, our corpus was analyzed by means of qualitative-multimodal analysis. By selecting samples of signs that stand for (or against) general tendencies of quantitative findings, we conducted contextual analysis of signs, their creators, audiences, and their emplacement. Our third step consisted of observations and field conversations in order to see how people interact within the chosen area, and to compare their language use and attitudes with what was found by merely looking at the signs. These field conversations help us close the gap between public texts and their broader social and ideological contexts. During the observation in the ten shops (chosen for their central location and availability), Kudžmaitė examined the interior spaces, and then used some services in each of the shops, engaging the shopkeepers in conversations about language practices. Every time a template question, with little adaptations depending on the place, was posed: “Do you speak Polish?” (in Lithuania) and “Do you speak Lithuanian?” (in Poland). In all cases the question was asked in Lithuanian (the researcher’s first language). We are aware that this potentially biases our research findings somewhat and that a researcher bilingual in both Lithuanian and Polish might have received different responses.

6 READING AND LISTENING TO THE BORDERLAND LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE 6.1 Step one: A quantitative comparison The setting of data collection is highly comparable on both sides of the border: 55 kilometers of roads in Lithuania, 57 kilometers in Poland, and two towns on each side. In total 470 signs were collected: 207 in Lithuania and 263 in Poland. Table 13.3 illustrates the varieties of collected signs and languages used on them. In this table, a sign is one data unit. We distinguish between signs with one, two, and three or more languages. In Table 13.4, one data unit is one language on a sign (cf. Cenoz and Gorter 2006: 73). Here not the signs, but all occurrences of different languages are counted. The amount of a particular language is derived from the total sum of all collected signs including that language. This tabulation serves to illustrate how often a language is actually seen in the LL irrespective of its multilingual constellation. Comparing the two sides of the border, we note that first, the vast majority of signs on each side of the borderland includes the majority language (Lithuanian in Lithuania, Polish in Poland), which confirms the findings of the previous studies in this part of Eastern Europe (see Marten 2010; Muth 2008; Ruzaitė 2017). Second, monolingual signs with the neighboring country’s official language (Polish in Lithuania, Lithuanian in Poland) are infrequent in Poland, and were not found at all in Lithuania. Third, English is the only nonofficial language that appeared on monolingual signs on both sides of the border, which again points us back to the previous research in Poland and the Baltics with similar findings (Lazdiņa et al. 2013; Muth 2008; Ruzaitė 2017). Fourth, bilingual signs are significantly more present in Poland than in Lithuania. In detail, bilingual signs including English are quite similar in number on both sides. The main difference between the two sides of the borderland is the different quantities of bilingual Polish-Lithuanian signs (only one sign in Lithuania versus thirty-three in Poland). Fifth, three or more languages generally appear in a small minority of signs in both countries. Since bilingual signs exclusively have only Polish, Lithuanian, and English in different combinations,

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TABLE 13.3 Monolingual and Multilingual Signs in Lithuanian and Polish Border Towns and Roads Compared Lithuania Roads (55 km)

Signs

Poland

Towns (2)

Roads (57 km)

Towns (2)

Monolingual Lithuanian

6 —

Polish English

180

3

12

—

34

150

2

4

3

1

Bilingual Lithuanian-Polish

1

—

7

26

Polish-English

2

—

8

7

Lithuanian-English

6

—

2

4

Trilingual or more Lithuanian-Polish-English

2

—

4

1

Other combinations with Lithuanian, Polish, English, Russian, and German

2

—

1

2

22

185

59

204

Total (n = 470)

TABLE 13.4 Occurrence of Lithuanian, Polish, English, German, and Russian on Lithuanian and Polish Road and Town Signs Compared Lithuania

Poland

Languages

Roads (55 km)

Towns (2)

Roads (57 km)

Towns (2)

Lithuanian

17

184

14

42

Polish

7

—

54

186

English

14

5

15

16

German

1

—

—

2

Russian

1

—

1

1

German and Russian (the two most popular foreign languages in schools after English, as well as the two top languages in self-reported proficiency in foreign languages in both of the countries) in all cases appear only on multilingual signs with three or more languages, and always together with Polish and/or Lithuanian. Finally, Lithuanian roads seem to be more multilingual than Lithuanian towns, while in Poland almost all varieties of signs were encountered both on roads and in towns. Comparing data from roads, there were almost three times more signs collected on Polish than on Lithuanian roads, but half of those signs on Polish roads were monolingual Polish.

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An important observation can be made: the LL of the Polish-Lithuanian borderland is generally more multilingual on the Polish side. However, comparing only roads, quantities of multilingual signs are nearly identical on both sides of the border. So, the main difference between the amounts of bilingual signs is due to a high prevalence of a very specific type of signs: bilingual Polish-Lithuanian signs in Polish towns.

6.2 Step two: Multimodal analysis Quantitative analysis provided us with basic insights on the patterns of multilingualism on the Polish-Lithuanian borderland. Further qualitative analysis will enable us to look more closely into these patterns and propose possible interpretations in context. Figures 13.2a and 13.2b depict a comparison of a Polish and a Lithuanian sign. These signs illustrate how multilingualism is variously managed on the road on different sides of the border. Figure 13.2a is an advertisement of a shopping center Ptak placed on the road between the border and Puńsk. In Reh’s (2004) typology, this sign is an example of “complementary multilingualism,” where different parts of information are given in different languages. Surprisingly, in practice, all information in capital letters on the bottom part of the sign is given in the minority language (Lithuanian) telling about a fashion show (Mados Paroda) and the dates of it (Rugpjūtis is August), with another foreign language (English) occupying the majority of the upper part of the sign (“Fashion City”). The majority language (Polish) serves only the purpose of indicating the name of the shopping center “Bird” (Ptak). This sign is an instance of “minimal bilingualism” (Androutsopoulos 2007), providing very little information in one of the languages, which illustrates how signs quantified as multilingual in reality may have very inadequate information value in one of the two languages (in this case, Polish). Choosing Lithuanian as the most prominent language on the sign might be economically motivated, since this road leads straight to Suwałki, where Lithuanians frequently go shopping. Lithuanian daytrip shoppers are the most natural target audience for signs facing this direction, and this is reflected in the language choice of the Mados Paroda sign in Figure 13.2a.

FIGURE 13.2a Trilingual advertisement sign placed on the road in Poland (Polish, English, Lithuanian). © G. Kudžmaitė.

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FIGURE 13.2b Trilingual sign on the road in Lithuania (Lithuanian, Polish, German). © G. Kudžmaitė.

Figure 13.2b was taken on the Lithuanian road just beside Kalvarija, not far from the main road leading to Poland. It is a stable permanent sign that provides information and contact details on a particular service (overnight accommodation), and is placed in close proximity to the guesthouse. This sign is an example of “duplicating multilingual writing” (Reh 2004), where the meaning of information in all given languages is the same: “place to sleep” in Lithuanian, “accommodation” in Polish, “rooms” in German. The decision to include an icon of a “bed” makes the sign more versatile and accessible to people who can read none of these three languages. The language that is the most prominent— Lithuanian—comes on top of the sign in the biggest font. Polish and German share the same font and the left side of the sign, Polish coming before German. Interestingly, the authors of this lodging sign did not choose the most “popular” foreign languages in the country (English and Russian), which might have been a safer choice. The safe choice, however, might not always be the best choice, since it lacks personalization, and does not always reflect the local market tendencies. Kalvarija is located just beside the important Via Baltica road. This road is highly used by travelers and lorry drivers who transport goods from north to west and vice versa. From the perspective of Lithuania, the first two major countries reached while taking this road toward the southwest are Poland and Germany, and this sign targets the right audiences with an invitation to plan their rest. The LL on Poland’s side of the borderland may be denser, but qualitatively multilingualism on Lithuanian roads is not less developed than on Polish roads. The major differences in question are the signs in Poland that include Lithuanian. Except

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for a few monolingual Lithuanian signs on monuments and bilingual (Polish-Lithuanian) city maps of Sejny and Puńsk, other signs including Lithuanian were private—local businesses’ advertisements, also frequently homemade signs, providing information of local importance. In the examples in Figures 13.3a and 13.3b below, it becomes clear that the national Lithuanian minority plays a crucial role in building the LL of two Polish borderland towns, Sejny and Puńsk. Figures 13.3a and 13.3b illustrate how multilingualism is managed on signs in Polish towns. Figure 13.3a, collected in Puńsk, gives information about classes of the driving school “Jaćwing” in Lithuanian, while Figure 13.3b from Sejny gives the same information in Polish. In both cases, the main corpus of information is equally centered, the telephone numbers and addresses are the same, and designs are alike. In Figure 13.3a, unlike in Figure 13.3b, an additional information field is fully filled with Lithuanian handwriting.

FIGURE 13.3a Poster advertisements of Jaćwing driving school distributed in Puńsk (in Lithuanian). © G. Kudžmaitė.

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FIGURE 13.3b Poster advertisements of Jaćwing driving school distributed in Sejny (in Polish). © G. Kudžmaitė.

Information about a “meeting at the Lyceum of Puńsk” and about further courses is given. Other differences between the posters suggest that Figure 13.3a is newer than Figure 13.3b. More importantly, these two versions with different informative weights were distributed in two different Polish towns. On the one hand, such distribution is a profitable strategy, since Puńsk has a bigger Lithuanian minority than Sejny, and a choice to print two separate versions of the advertisement for Polish and for Lithuanian audiences takes into account the sociolinguistic context of the locations. The Lithuanian-speaking target group seems to be additionally supported with supplementary information. On the other hand, the absence of the same school’s Polish sign in Puńsk and Lithuanian sign in Sejny is noteworthy. While the Lithuanian-speaking target audience is provided with additional information in Figure 13.3a, the illustration in Figure 13.4 of a manicure advertisement in Puńsk (Poland) shows another way of dealing with multilingualism in the area. Two mostly identical flyers were found pinned next to each other, the left one giving information in Lithuanian, the one on the right—in Polish. Reh (2004: 5–7) describes this kind of multilingualism as “covert” or “multiple.” A viewer can choose and read the full message without being disturbed by the other code. This sign, different from Figures 13.3a and 13.3b, seems to recognize the coexistence of both linguistic groups in Polish borderland towns.

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FIGURE 13.4 Manicure sign in Puńsk (Poland). © G.Kudžmaitė.

6.3 Step three: Field conversations Signs are transmitters of meanings implied by their producers and interpreted by their receivers. For us as researchers, the meanings that are embedded in signs are available only indirectly. Casual observations and field conversations with the language agents of the surveyed area allowed us to test some of the interpretations gained through analyzing the signs. With the field conversations we wanted to document if language use patterns on signs in the LL correspond to oral competence and lived local language practices, what those local language practices are, and the reasons for them. We were also interested in the “ethnic temperature” (Ehala and Zabrodskaja 2014) of the bordering communities and these communities’ attitudes toward each other, as well as in the ethnolinguistic vitality (Ehala and Zabrodskaja 2014) of the minorities on each of the borderlands. Field conversations in Puńsk (August 1, 2015, Poland) provided us with three affirmative and two negative answers to the question if the shopkeepers could speak Lithuanian. The field conversations are summarized in Table 13.5. A mixed linguistic environment inside the shops was observed, with Polish dominant and Lithuanian scarcely visible. In Figure 13.5 for instance, a bilingual billboard of the shop’s department of manufactured goods (articuły przemysłowe [Polish], pramoninės prekės [Lithuanian]) is seen. It introduces the goods on the left side (in Polish), welcomes the visitor in two languages (zapraszamy! [Polish], kviečiame! [Lithuanian]), lists the opening hours on the bottom, and shows the way to the department with the icon on the bottom right-hand corner.

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TABLE 13.5 Field Observations and Conversations in Five Shops in Puńsk, Poland: Reactions to the Question, “Do You Speak Lithuanian?” Shop number

Type of shop

Answer

Comment

1

Building materials shop

Negative

Shopkeeper (S): “If you want to speak in Lithuanian, the border is right there.” (in Polish) (pointing).

2

Food and general goods store

Negative

S: “No, I do not speak.” (in Polish).

3

Manufactured goods store

Positive

Shopkeeper greets in Polish, but speaks Lithuanian (her husband is Lithuanian and she visits Lithuania frequently). Greets another customer in Polish, speaks in Polish.

4

Food and general goods store

Positive

The biggest shop with written signs in Polish and scarce Lithuanian. Shopkeepers chat in Lithuanian among themselves and serve a client in Lithuanian. They answer the question in Lithuanian, but serve the next client in Polish. Several Polish-Lithuanian LL signs inside the shop.

5

Food and goods

Positive

Shopkeeper greets in Polish but serves in Lithuanian when asked the template question in Lithuanian. Polish LL signs inside the shop.

FIGURE 13.5. A bilingual billboard in Polish with minimal Lithuanian in shop no. 4 in Puńsk, Poland. © G. Kudžmaitė.

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In one of the shops, during the field conversation in Lithuanian the Polish shopkeeper explained that she had a spouse from Lithuania and had raised children bilingually. In another shop, several shopkeepers were chatting in Lithuanian among themselves (with a noticeable accent suggesting that they belong to the Lithuanian minority in Poland), and there were several Lithuanian newspapers’ titles and Lithuanian-origin food items on display. The third positive answer (to the question “Do you speak Lithuanian?”) was quite unexpected as the shop did not have any Lithuanian-related LL items. These three instances let us witness the relative openness of the ethnolinguistic border on this particular borderland. In two other shops in Puńsk, negative answers were given. However, both of the shopkeepers understood the question in Lithuanian, but answered in Polish. While in one of the shops the answer was presented in a neutral way (“No, I do not”), the other shopkeeper answered more agitatedly: “If you want to speak in Lithuanian, the border is right there!” The speech was accompanied by a gesture—pointing with a finger. The shopkeeper actually pointed north, toward the border and in the direction of Lithuania, thereby drawing a boundary between “there” (Lithuania) and “here” (Poland), separating “them” (Lithuanians, including the researcher) from “us” (Poles). In this particular instance, “political,” “emotive,” “conceptual,” and “linguistic” borders overlap for this shopkeeper, and are all strictly settled at the nation-state border. However, we also take into account the possibility that the answer could have been different if the question was posed in Polish. Due to the aforementioned (linguistic) limitation of this study, we cannot evaluate whether it was the question or the language that evoked the expression of a “hot” ethnicity (Ehala and Zabrodskaja 2014). In Kalvarija (December 23, 2015, Lithuania) (Table 13.6), only one out of five shopkeepers was able to communicate in Polish. Even then, she indicated that the convenience for ordering supplies for her business (flowers) in Poland was the reason for it. Thus, Polish in this shop was spoken not primarily to accommodate potential Polish customers in Lithuania, but rather to accommodate the shopkeeper’s communication with suppliers in Poland. She pointed out that Polish customers do not frequently come to her shop: “It is not profitable for them, it is much more profitable for us.” The same socioeconomic reason was highlighted in other shops, too. Mostly, the assistants looked surprised upon hearing the question. One of them explained that Polish customers sometimes visit the shop, but they are “the ones speaking Lithuanian.” Again, a distinction between “us” and “those other Lithuanians,” from across the border, was emphasized, together with that emphasizing the border. In other shops it was indicated that Russian was the mutual language used in those rare encounters with Polish customers. The field conversations confirmed our hypothesis that in Puńsk some of the locals speak Lithuanian, but Polish-Lithuanian bilingualism in the area cannot be taken for granted. For some, the ethnolinguistic border is more open due to the past reterritorialization of ethnolinguistic groups, while for some it is predominantly closed. In Kalvarija, the majority of shopkeepers did not speak Polish, and for them border dimensions overlapped, setting a clear distinction between the two nations and two languages at the nation-state border, keeping the borderland as a minimal space of contact. Comparing the findings from both sides of the borderland, it seems again that the Lithuanian minority in Puńsk and the absence of any minority in Kalvarija play a crucial role. Shopkeepers spoke Lithuanian in Poland due to the same often repeated arguments of the active Lithuanian minority and visiting customers from Lithuania in Puńsk, and not necessarily because the town is in close proximity of the border. Hiring bilingual shopkeepers in Puńsk is advantageous. Their Lithuanian neighbors, on the other hand, seemed to have fewer reasons and less

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TABLE 13.6 Field Observations and Conversations in Five Shops in Kalvarija, Lithuania: Reactions to the Question, “Do You Speak Polish?” Shop

Type of shop Answer

Comment

#1

Food store

Negative

Shopkeeper (S): “No, I have not encountered Polish speakers here. . . . There were some, but they were speaking in Lithuanian.”

#2

Food store

Negative

S: “If they speak Russian, we can communicate, if not . . . then it is more complicated.” G: “I was wondering, as many people from here go there to shop.” S: “Yes, but there you can speak Lithuanian. . . . Here there are not many of them coming.” G: “What do they mostly buy here?” S: “Mostly drinks, or something local. It is not profitable for them to shop here. But for Lithuanians to go there is very profitable. If you go in a full car and buy a lot, you save a lot.”

#3

Flower shop

Positive

Shopkeeper speaks Polish, learned the language in order to communicate with suppliers when going to Poland to receive products for their shop. Speaking Polish serves for interacting with customers too, although very few of them come here (to Kalvarija). Knowledge of Polish is useful for individual shopping too. G: “Do you frequently go shopping there?” S: “Yes, it is definitely cheaper and profitable to go, as Polish currency dropped recently. But it was always profitable.”

#4

Food store

Negative

S: “We speak in Russian with Polish customers.” G: “Do a lot of them come here?” S: “No, not at all, in comparison to fifteen years ago, for example. Now very few of them come.” G: “What do they buy?” S: “Frequently drinks or local bakery products. But it is not profitable for them, it is much more profitable for us [to go to shop there].”

#5

Pharmacy

Negative

S: “No, I do not speak Polish, but they do not come to shop here. Medicine is cheaper in Poland, why would they come here?”

motivation to learn Polish in the absence of family ties or business relations across the border, despite their similar proximity to it.

7 CONCLUSION Our three-angled comparative study of the Polish-Lithuanian borderland gave us a complex picture of the sociolinguistics of the border. Our conclusions would not

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have been fully reached without triangulating different analytical techniques. We experienced that solely quantitative LL analysis gives an informative picture of the LL of the area, but does not fully uncover the status of languages on signs or the reasons for such multilingual constellations. With our research, we underscore the value of mixing methods of linguistic and multimodal landscape analysis with field observations and conversations. They helped us to contextualize, historicize, and give meaning to—that is, to understand—the LL. Defining the borderland of our study, cross-border roads, which are the connectors piercing the borderland, are generally more varied in their LL than the border towns. On the roads more foreign languages were encountered than in towns, leading us to suggest that borderland location has some impact on the LL of this area, especially from a socioeconomic perspective. English is the most prominent of foreign languages, with German and Russian appearing only on rare occasions, although all three foreign languages have a history of use on both sides of the border. Rethinking the popularity of Lithuanian in Polish towns, the different findings in both towns suggest that the location on the borderland is not a self-evident, although valid, reason. The most important argument for Lithuanian signs and proficiency in Lithuanian in the Polish towns, we suggest, is the Lithuanian minority based in this area. Going further into the sociohistoric background, the fact that the Lithuanian minority ended up in Poland’s territory can be explained by the movements of the border in relatively recent history. It is an example of reterritorialization, as explained by Newman (2006), when the political border was finally settled, and some Lithuanian families found themselves detached from the Lithuanian nation-state on the other side of the border. This brings us back to the border influence on the borderland LL. Generally, as an internal European border, the border is open for sociolinguistic mobility as much as it is for any kind of human movement, and as long as it does not interfere with local laws. Speakers of languages other than Lithuanian in Lithuania and Polish in Poland can find only a very limited number of signs for basic services on the surrounding borderland and are not sufficiently accommodated in any other language. A crucial observation here is that although the border between Poland and Lithuania is politically open in both directions, sociolinguistically it is not equally open. Political borders do not necessarily correspond to conceptual, ethnic, and linguistic borders (cf. Newman 2006, 2011; Omoniyi 2014). As a cultural and linguistic construct, the border is more closed for the neighboring language and community from Poland to Lithuania than in the other direction due to varying socioeconomic, ethnolinguistic, and geopolitical reasons. After the final settlement of the border, some ethnic Lithuanians stayed on the Polish side of the borderland, keeping ethnic, conceptual, and linguistic borders resistant to the political change. The linguistic border in this case is semi-permeable: somewhat open in the direction from Lithuania to Poland, but fairly closed in the direction from Poland to Lithuania. Bilingually speaking, Lithuania keeps its border with Poland more closed than the other way around. A closer look into borderland spaces as we have done here helps to reflect on the concept of borders in general: borders can be present or absent, active or inactive, hot or cold. They can connect or separate, or do both. And most importantly, borders are not naturally given; we build and reinforce them in interaction as part of negotiating identities depending on which side of the border we find ourselves.

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FURTHER READING Ehala, M. and A. Zabrodskaja (2014), “Hot and Cold Ethnicities in the Baltic States,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35 (1): 76–95. Muth, S. (2014), “Linguistic Landscapes on the Other Side of the Border: Signs, Language and the Construction of Cultural Identity in Transnistria,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014 (227): 25–46. Newman, D. (2011), “Contemporary Research Agendas in Border Studies: An Overview,” in D. Wastl-Walter (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies, 33–47, London: Routledge. Omoniyi, T. (2004), The Sociolinguistics of Borderlands: Two Nations, One Community, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Ruzaitė, J. (2017), “The Linguistic Landscape of Tourism: Multilingual Signs in Lithuanian and Polish Resorts,” The Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, 8–1: 197–220.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. Think of different types of borders. Where else do we find borders and boundaries except between countries? Write a short essay about how these different types of borders are marked visually and linguistically. What can be the methods of analysis of such borders? Use visual evidence you can find on the internet. 2. Think of borders that are easier to cross in one direction than in the other. Write an essay about physical and linguistic semi-permeability of borders. How are such borders marked in the (linguistic) landscape? What evidence is there to suggest that a border is semi-permeable? Use visual evidence you can find on the internet.

PROJECT WORK 1. Visit a borderland and collect ten pictures of signs on each side of the border. Compare both sets of pictures. Are there any bilingual signs? Do people speak different languages on either side of the border? Now compare how language is distributed on these signs. Where on each sign do you find the majority/minority or local/foreign language? Third, conduct short conversations with locals on both sides of the border. Begin your conversation by asking if they speak the neighboring language. If you can, ask this question in this “other language.” Compare the responses you get on both sides of the border. Draw a conclusion from your three comparisons: Which side of the border is more open to bi- or multilingualism? 2. Consider the “border” within the city you live in, for instance, between different neighborhoods, of your school’s campus and its surroundings, or between two faculties or departments of your school. Do the same exercise here. You will be surprised how much difference you will find in signage. If there is not much multilingualism in your area, focus on style and variety within language. Do you agree with us that borders can be found everywhere, even at very small-scale levels?

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Muth, S. (2008), “Multiethnic but Multilingual as Well? The Linguistic Landscapes of Vilnius,” in S. Sahel, and R. Vogel (eds.), NLK-Proceedings: 9. Norddeutsches Linguistisches Kolloquium (NLK2008 Bielefeld), 121–46, Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld. Muth, S. (2014a), “Informal Signs as Expressions of Multilingualism in Chisinau: How Individuals Shape the Public Space of a Post-Soviet Capital,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014 (228): 29–53. Muth, S. (2014b), “Linguistic Landscapes on the Other Side of the Border: Signs, Language and the Construction of Cultural Identity in Transnistria,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014 (227): 25–46. Newman, D. (2006), “Borders and Bordering. Towards an Interdisciplinary Dialogue,” European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (2): 171–86. Newman, D. (2011), “Contemporary Research Agendas in Border Studies: An Overview,” in D. Wastl-Walter (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies, 33–47, London: Routledge. Omoniyi, T. (2004), The Sociolinguistics of Borderlands: Two Nations, One Community, Africa World Press. Omoniyi, T. (2014), “A Borderlands’ Perspective of Language and Globalization,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014 (227): 9–23. Paasi, A. (2009), “Bounded Spaces in a ‘Borderless World’: Border Studies, Power and the Anatomy of Territory,” Journal of Power, 2 (2): 213–34. Parker, N., N. Vaughan-Williams, et al. (2009), “Lines in the Sand? Towards an Agenda for Critical Border Studies,” Geopolitics, 14 (3): 582–87. Pavlenko, A. (2008), “Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries: Language Revival, Language Removal, and Sociolinguistic Theory,” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 11 (3–4): 275–314. Petronis, V. (2007), Constructing Lithuania: Ethnic Mapping in Tsarist Russia, ca. 1800–1914, Stockholm: Sweden by Intellecta. Polish EURYDICE Unit (2012), The System of Education in Poland, Warsaw: Foundation for the Development of the Education System. Pratt, M. L. (1991), “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession, 91: 33–40. Reh, M. (2004), “Multilingual Writing: A Reader-Oriented Typology—with Examples from Lira Municipality (Uganda),” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2004 (170): 1–41. Rumford, C. (2006), “Rethinking European Spaces: Territory, Borders, Governance,” Comparative European Politics, 4 (2/3): 127. Ruzaitė, J. (2017), “The Linguistic Landscape of Tourism: Multilingual Signs in Lithuanian and Polish Resorts,” The Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, 8–1: 197–220. Said, S. Ben (2011), “Data Triangulation as a Resource in Multilingual Research: Examples from the Linguistic Landscape,” in Proceedings of the Conference on Doing Research in Applied Linguistics, 62–70, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand. Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon (2003), Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World, London: Routledge. Statistics Lithuania (2013), Results of the 2011 Population and Housing Census of the Republic of Lithuania, Vilnius: Statistics Lithuania. Zabrodskaja, A. (2014), “Tallinn: Monolingual from Above and Multilingual from Below,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 228: 105–30. Zabrodskaja, A. and T. M. Milani (2014), “Signs in Context: Multilingual and Multimodal Texts in Semiotic Space,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 228: 1–6.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Language of Public Mourning—De- and Reterritorialization of Public Spaces as a Reaction to Terrorist Attacks ROLF KAILUWEIT AND ALDINA QUINTANA

1 INTRODUCTION This chapter deals with the re-functionalization of LLs by civil society in response to terrorist attacks that have been striking the Western world since 2001 and the way the authorities react to the appropriation of the public space. In particular, our data were collected following the incidents that occurred in Madrid after the train bombings on March 11, 2004, and the shootings in Paris on January 7 (Charlie Hebdo) and November 13, 2015. In the first part concerned with theoretical and methodological questions, we will discuss the specific relation of the linguistic and semiotic practice of public mourning in its relation to place. We will highlight the struggle for public space as a process of de- and reterritorialization focusing on the formulation of speech, the creation and dissemination of slogans and semiotic practices concerned with the construction of group identities. In the second part, we will deal with the parallels and differences in the reactions of the Spanish and French civil societies and authorities. We will attempt to explain the differences referring to the specific historical settings in which the respective attacks took place.

2 DE- AND RETERRITORIALIZATION AND PUBLIC MOURNING Starting from the appropriation of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) term “(relative) deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” in human geography (Badie 1995), we consider these terms in a more specific spatial way as destabilizing practices affecting the territoriality of the state and its reaction to this practices. Crises is taken as an element of

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deterritorialization such as in Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987: 88) example of Germany’s November 1923 inflation and in response to the inflation, the “semiotic transformation of the reichsmark into the rentenmark, making possible a reterritorialization.”1 We insist with Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 174) that “reterritorialization must not be confused with a return to a primitive or older territoriality,” but incorporates the deterritorialized element into a new, in itself precarious, territoriality. We are aware of the fact that we make a rather down-to-earth usage of a highly complex philosophical concept, but we will show that this is useful for our purposes. Based on the insights of Tomlinson (1999) on the deterritorializing effect of mass media, we will highlight the role of mediatization (Krotz 2007) in the process of de- and reterritorialization. Following Sack (1986: 5), we consider territoriality as “the primary geographical expression of social power.” As Caporaso (2000: 10) pointed out, in the tradition of Westphalian sovereignty, “territoriality links politics as authoritative rule with the geographical reach of this rule.” The national state or federal jurisdictions within a state maintain security and public policy in a given territory and define the prerequisites for an orderly community. These prerequisites range from the respect for the sanctity of human life and the inviolability of private homes to, at a more local level, the functionality of the traffic system and the safety of public spaces and road and rail networks. The persistent threat of terrorist attacks after the 9/11 plane crashes in the United States threw the sovereignty of Western states into crisis, producing a deterritorializing effect. Western authorities do not seem to be able to maintain public policy in their territory when this territory is open to terrorist attacks by networks such as Al-Qaeda, or even state-like organizations such as Daesh. Hence, they take reterritorializing measures trying to fight terrorism by tightening security laws and stepping up police presence in the public space. These measures are not simply an emergency response that could restore public policy as it was before the attacks. As they affect people’s lives for prolonged periods, they also transform the social and moral values of our societies. It must be acknowledged that the deterritorializing strategies of terrorism are not primarily situated at the level of reality. They first and foremost affect the media. Statistically, Western cities are not significantly more insecure because of the terrorist threat. The risk of being a victim of a terrorist attack is far lower than, for example, being killed in a traffic accident (Mueller and Stewart 2011). However, the climate of constant fear created by actual incidences and the enormous, arguably disproportionate media attention (Vasterman et al. 2004) triggers destabilizing public mourning activities and official responses (channeling of mourning streams, musealization, securitization) as a machinery of de- and reterritorialization of the public space. Islamist terrorism not only provokes a reaction of Western national state authorities attacked in their territorial sovereignty but also rouses up the civil societies in the affected states. Immediately after the incidents, people enter the locations where attacks have occurred or come together at the cities’ central places to manifest public mourning and create what has been called “grassroots memorials” (Margry and Sánchez-Carretero 2011). Grassroots memorials are an important part of ritualized practices of public mourning described by Holst-Warhaft (2000) before the age of Islamist attacks. As Sánchez-Carretero (2011b, pp. 244‒45) points out, public mourning is a social experience. The mediatization of traumatic death converts private grief into social grief, creating a public arena for the display of emotions in the form of new rituals. As an appropriation and re-functionalization of the public space, grassroots memorials are a phenomenon that has been observed in the last forty years (Sánchez-Carretero 2011b: 245) and, therefore,

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is not a direct effect of Islamist terrorism. The reasons for public mourning can vary: traffic accidents, plane crashes, shooting rampages, the violent death of celebrities such as John Lennon or Lady Diana and, especially since 9/11, terrorist attacks. Although the reasons behind the forms of public mourning, the number and kind of victims, the perpetrators and responsible persons may vary, the appropriation and re-functionalization of the public space by the civil society is in itself an act of de- and reterritorialization. By creating new forms of mediatized representations in order to express public grief, the mourners (intentionally or not) question the right of state authorities to decide on the design and use of public space. In addition, public mourning disputes the authorities’ power to interpret the incidents and to organize official memorial services. Hence, the processes of de- and reterritorialization triggered by Islamist attacks are highly complex. While terrorist acts challenge the principle of territoriality and therefore deterritorialize the sovereignty of the state authorities, public mourning has deterritorializing effects of its own. It defies the monopoly of the state on shaping public policy and enacts reterritorialization via modalities of appropriation and re-functionalization of public space. In turn, the authorities try to reterritorialize their monopoly not only against the challenge of terrorism but also against the takeover of the public space by civil society. Hence, movements of deterritorialization and processes of reterritorialization are “relative, always connected and caught up in one another” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 10). Mourners deterritorialize a public space, for example, a train station, by hindering the function of public transport and reterritorializing the station as a place of grassroots memorials. State authorities deterritorialize the grassroots memorials reterritorializing them as part of official archiving or remembrance culture through monuments.

3 PUBLIC MOURNING AND LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPES At first glance, public mourning does not seem to be a central topic of research in the field of LL. As far as support materials are concerned, the LL paradigm has focused on signs in the public space. Graffiti has been only marginally taken into account, most likely because, according to Pennycook (2010: 60) it is not “generally aimed at easy public consumption” and therefore unlikely to contribute to wider public debates (Blackwood 2015: 42). Within the LL framework, there has been an intense theoretical discussion on the delimitation, countability, and pertinence of non-fixed, semipermanent items (Cenoz and Gorter 2006; Backhaus 2007). Blackwood (2011: 116) included non-fixed items such as newspapers, price tags, and leaflets. Public mourning in the form of grassroots memorials is a linguistic and semiotic practice that reshapes a public space in a rather temporary way. The construction of the memorials withdraws parts of the public space from its common use. Apart from linguistic and semiotic effects on passersby, memorials are just physically a more or less noticeable obstruction of traffic. Hence, they are generally of temporary character, vanishing after a rather short time. However, the remembrance of their existence, and the slogans and the imagery they have brought up in relation to the incident they refer to, stick with the place they were constructed on and shape the memorialized LL of this place in a permanent way. As a subdiscipline of sociolinguistics, the LL approach has focused on multilingualism, superdiversity, and minority languages (Gorter 2006; Blackwood 2015). The LL of grassroots memorials has been analyzed in Rubdy and Ben Said (2015). Rubdy (2015) has dealt with bilingual discursive texts of the graffiti commemorating the November 26 Mumbai terror attacks combining semiotics and multimodal discourse analysis.

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In our approach to the Madrid 2004 and Paris 2015 data, we will not ignore the role of English as an international language, as well as the role of tourists’ and immigrants’ languages and the languages of national minorities. Our main interest, however, centers on the creation and dissemination of slogans, the semiotic practices concerned with the construction of group identities, and the formulation of speech acts as part of a de- and reterritorializing practice. These speech acts operate with rather small linguistic means and low linguistic effort to produce powerful perlocutionary effects. Fraenkel (2011) highlights that grassroots memorials typically imply the laying down of flowers and the installation of candles and written notes. In addition, we observed a widespread practice of contextualizing messages with photos, emblems, and different kinds of physical objects (T-shirts, soft toys, icons etc.). From a methodological point of view, a LL approach to public mourning may start from the photographic documentation of grassroots memorials and focus on the contextualization of linguistic material. One could ask if a quantitative approach, as it was dominant in LL for a long time (Backhaus 2007; Blackwood 2015), is completely out of the question. If one could document the totality of inscriptions of a given grassroots memorial or at least of a representative part of it, it could be possible to count the presence and instances of slogans, keywords, or even the distribution of different languages. However, grassroots memorials are highly dynamic. Written notes appear and disappear every day, every hour, even every minute. For this reason, the construction of corpora for quantitative analysis seems to be problematic. As far as Madrid 2004 is concerned, we conducted some quantitative analyses of a digital corpus of messages of condolence. In Paris, we documented a paper book of condolence that constitutes a far smaller corpus in comparison to the Madrid data. This only allows for some cautious quantitative considerations since its representative status is questionable. A more adequate method seems to be a geosemiotic approach in line with Scollon and Wong Scollon (2003: 2): a “study of the social meaning of the material placement of signs and discourses and of our actions in the material world.” Scollon and Wong Scollon (2003, pp. 16–7) distinguish three different aspects: interaction order, visual semiotics, and place semiotics. By interaction order they mean the “set of social relationships we take up and try to maintain with the other people who are in our presence,” visual semiotics refers to “how objects are constituted as visual wholes” and place semiotics highlights the fact that signs have different effects on human action depending on the place where they are set up. As detailed in Kailuweit (2019), we will combine their insights on the meshing of interaction order, visual semiotics, and emplacement of discourse with more general considerations in linguistic pragmatics (taking slogans as speech acts) and performance studies (e.g., grassroots memorials as a stage of social interaction). In addition, digital culture becomes more and more important and interacts with the emplacement of grassroots memorials; for example, a photo taken at a grassroots memorial unfolds effects beyond geosemiotic anchoring. The phenomenon of grassroots memorials in general and the Madrid 2004 case in particular has been already studied in history, sociology, and anthropology. The works gathered in the collective volumes of Margry and Sánchez-Carretero (2011) and Sanchéz-Carretero (2011), as well as the article by Ortiz García (2013) are excellent starting points, but their priority is not a focus on linguistic and semiotic aspects. The same holds for the studies of the French sociologist Gêrome Truc on performance who, in a recent book (Truc 2017), related his works on Madrid 2004 (Truc 2006; 2011) to the Paris 2015 attacks.

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4 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: ISLAMIST ATTACKS AT MADRID 2004 AND PARIS 2015 On March 11, 2004, almost simultaneously—between 7:36 a.m. and 7:39 a.m.—ten bombs exploded in four commuter trains on the Alcalá-Madrid line, in the stations Santa Eugenia, El Pozo, and Atocha. The explosions caused the death of 192 people,2 while 1,875 people were injured (Sánchez-Carretero 2006: 335). The Madrid train bombings were the first terrorist attacks on Spain attributed to Jihadi terrorism. The same day of the attack, grassroots memorials emerged in the Alcalá, Santa Eugenia, El Pozo, and Atocha train stations. Between March 11 and June 9, 2004, hundreds of shrines occupied several areas in and out of the stations closest to the places where the train passengers had been struck by the bombs. After three months (on June 9, 2004), the state replaced the grassroots memorials by the Espacio de Palabras (Space of Words), computer terminals set up in the Atocha, El Pozo, and Santa Eugenia train stations which allowed passersby to leave electronic mourning messages. The computer terminals were accessible until March 13, 2007. A few hours after the explosion of the bombs, the conservative government of the Popular Party (PP), headed by José María Aznar, blamed the Basque nationalist and separatist organization ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty) for the attacks3 against evidence that indicated the authorship of Al-Qaeda. The government called for an anti-terrorist demonstration on March 12, in which about twelve million people participated throughout Spain, with two million in Madrid (López García 2009). In line with the official interpretation, many demonstrators still attributed the attacks to ETA. However, more and more people wondered about the perpetrators because of the government’s opaque and biased information policy (Ordaz 2004). Apart from expressing solidarity with the victims and general repulsion against terrorism, groups of demonstrators rebuffed the alleged attribution to ETA and protested against the government and the war in Iraq. The next day, the protest materialized in demonstrations against the government throughout the country. The (dis)information policy of the PP government and its unpopular active support for intervention in Iraq—which the attacks seemed to be a consequence of—were factors that led to the defeat of the PP in the March 14 general election. The victory of the Socialist Party (PSOE) was surprising, due to what the poll ratings said before March 11 (Martín Núñez and Montero Sierra 2005; López García 2009). Immediately after the bombings, a group of researchers of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) started the project Archivo del Duelo (Archive of Mourning), with the main goal of documenting the grassroots memorials at the train stations and of analyzing the mourning practices that took place at those stations in the aftermath of March 11 (Sánchez-Carretero 2011a, b). The collection is accessible for educational and research purposes at the Museo del Ferrocarril (Railway Museum) in Madrid (Sánchez-Carretero 2011a, b; Quintana and Kailuweit 2013). Twice in 2015, Paris became the scene of Islamist attacks. On January 7, two members of an Al-Qaeda branch in Yemen shot twelve people at the Charlie Hebdo’s headquarter (10 rue Nicolas-Appert), among whom were some of the most notable French cartoonists working for the satirical weekly magazine. Twelve people were injured. In related attacks by another gunman, a police officer was shot on January 8, and four people were killed in a Jewish supermarket on January 9. On the same days of the attacks, French armed forces and police killed all three attackers. Grassroots memorials emerged at the sites of crime

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and at Place de la République. On January 10 and 11, the French government organized republican marches to demonstrate against terrorism and in defense of the freedom of press and expression. About two million people, including more than forty world leaders, participated in the march leading from Place de la République along Boulevard Voltaire to Place de la Nation on January 11. The grassroots memorials at Place de la République were dismantled by high-pressure cleaners on April 2, 2015. No official archiving was undertaken. On November 13, 2015, mass shootings at cafés, restaurants, and the music venue Bataclan caused the deaths of 130 people. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks. The French government declared a three-month state of emergency, which involved the banning of public demonstrations. However, at Place de la République and at the sites of crime enormous grassroots memorials emerged. Parts of them were documented by the Archives de Paris.4

5 CORPUS Our data concerning the Madrid 2004 incidents came from the Archivo del Duelo. The archive hosts a multi-format collection including nearly 70,000 documents of the offerings deposited in grassroots memorials of the Alcalá de Henares, Atocha, El Pozo, and Santa Eugenia train stations. In detail, the collection is comprised of 2,532 photographs, as well as 495 objects and 6,436 messages and drawings on paper that were removed from the stations when the computer terminals of the Espacio de Palabras were placed. It includes 58,732 messages sent through the so-called cyber shrines and the website Mascercanos.com, as well as 64 recordings and 13 videos with testimonies on the public mourning.5 Our data regarding the public reaction to the Charlie Hebdo shootings consists of 1,361 photographs and short films taken by Pia Kailuweit on January 11, 2015. The pictures document the republican march and the grassroots memorial at Place de la République and rue Nicolas-Appert. As far as the shootings on November 13 are concerned, Jaqueline Balint took about 1,200 photos of the grassroots memorials at Place de la République and the sites of crime (except at the Stade de France) one week after the incidences. The Archives de Paris documented some of the grassroots memorials starting on November 17. These archives host 7,348 photos online, stemming from the grassroots memorials in front of the Bataclan (5,305 documents) and the bars and restaurants La Belle Équipe (926), Le Carillon (446), La Bonne Bière (262), Le Petit Cambodge (201), Casa Nostra (155), and Comptoir Voltaire (53).

6 DE- AND RETERRITORIALIZATION BY CIVIL SOCIETY 6.1 Emplacement of the grassroots memorials—Marking of the public space The marking of the public space in response to terroristic attacks is an act of selection concerning the public imagery. For example, the 9/11 attacks concerned not only the World Trade Centre in New York but also the Pentagon. In addition, hijackers intentionally crashed an airplane (United Airlines flight 93) near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to avoid that the passengers might regain control of it. However, in the memory of the international public the image of the twin towers as a target of an intentional terrorist plane crash became the central motive (Figure 14.1).6

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FIGURE 14.1 Reference to 9/11 on a wall at Atocha train station on March 25, 2004. Courtesy of Archivo del Duelo, signature FD-0065. Photo: Víctor Fernández.

Due to the temporality of the installations, the relation of grassroots memorials and public space is precarious. In Madrid, grassroots memorials appeared not only at the Atocha train station but also at the train stations of Alcalá, Santa Eugenia, and El Pozo, as well as at central places of Madrid, for example, Plaza del Sol, and in other Spanish cities and villages, on the same day of the attack. The biggest and most representative grassroots memorial was installed at the Atocha railway station, one of the most frequented railway stations of Madrid. However, the particular location of the grassroots memorials and the offerings deposited in the station were fluid. Sánchez-Carretero (2011b, pp. 252‒53) reports that during the three-month period of its installation, the cleaners took care of lighting the candles and rearranging the memorials; they moved them from the train platforms, where they had been for the first few days, to various locations below the dome and in the connecting hall between the metro and the train station, and finally to the intermediate hall. Hence, even within the station there is no particular place that could be delimited as the territory of grassroots memorials. The monument that the train station incorporates today constitutes a separated room dedicated to the victims (Ortiz García 2011). Passersby may visit the place that is a canalized and transformed reminiscence of the grassroots memorials and their messages. We will come back to the function of the monument in Section 6 that deals with the reterritorialization by the authorities. At this point of our argument, it is important to stress that the marking of the Atocha station by the grassroots memorials operates at a symbolic level and transcends physical geosemiotic marking in form of a discourse in space (Scollon and Wong Scollon 2003). The manifold mediatization attaches the grassroots memorials and their slogans to the Atocha station. The mediatization consists of not only disseminating the photos of the memorials but also selecting one of the slogans as a condensation of the response—En ese tren, íbamos todos7 (In that train, we went all)—which by metonymy refers to the railway

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station. The counterfactual statement, the use of the singular instead the plural for “train,”8 and its presentation as the topic makes evident that the slogan is not description, but an act of de- and reterritorialization that symbolically takes possession of the infrastructure of public transport attacked by the terrorists. It implies that people will not abandon public spaces, although they are afraid to move freely when the authorities do not protect them sufficiently. Although today there are no immediate traces left in the station itself, in the imagery of Spaniards and even of a broader international public, the Atocha railway station stands for the particular kind of grassroots memorial to be evoked and referred to. As far as Paris is concerned, Place de la République turned out to be the major geographic reference for grassroots memorials, although on neither January 7 nor November 13 was this central square the scene of an Islamist attack. The square itself is a symbolic place representing the ideals of the French Republic. Since 1880, a larger than life statue of Marianne, personification of the French Republic, perched on a high pedestal, dominates its center. It is near this statue that the biggest grassroots memorials emerged, although smaller shrines existed at the different sites of crime. The reasons for the spontaneous choice that converted Place de la République into the central place of remembrance may lie in the spatial narrowness and dispersion of the sites of crime. Rue Nicola Appert (Charlie Hebdo’s headquarter), the junction of Avenue Pierre Brossolette and Avenue de la Paix in Montrouge, where the police officer was killed, and Porte de Vincennes (the Hypercacher kosher supermarket) are rather narrow and/or peripheral places. While Place de la République functions as a local reference for the grassroots memorial and the demonstrations, it is only metonymically referred to at the symbolic level. One of the main streets starting at the square is Boulevard Voltaire, named after the eighteenth-century French philosopher who personifies the idea of freedom of speech. Using the picture of Voltaire and the request for freedom of speech in the symbolic responses to the attacks reinforces meanings already attached to this part of the city in an act of de- and reterritorialization. As far as the shootings of November 13 are concerned, the scenario seems to be slightly different. Among the dispersed sites of crime—rues Bichat and Alibert (Le Petit Cambodge; Le Carillon), rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi (Café Bonne Bière; La Casa Nostra), rue de Charonne (La Belle Équipe), and Boulevard Voltaire (Comptoir Voltaire)—the grassroots memorial in front of the Bataclan concert hall at Boulevard Voltaire stands out. The Archives de Paris focused the documentation on the Bataclan data. References not only to the Bataclan as a location but particularly to nightlife in general are dominant in the data. No official documentation was undertaken at Place de la République. However, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo identified Place de la République as the center of gathering where the slogans of public response to the November attacks had emerged.9 In conclusion, we consider the Atocha railway station in Madrid and Place de la République in Paris as the central places permanently marked in acts of de- and reterritorializations by the civil society. As we will see below, these places become the focus of reterritorializing strategies of the authorities.

6.2 Strategies of marking—Parallels and differences According to Fraenkel’s (2011) studies of the response to 9/11, grassroots memorials constitute extraordinary writing events. Fraenkel points out that in the ritual of public mourning the process of writing is more important than the remaining written messages. She illustrates this thesis referring to the Baroque motive of vanitas. Shrines of grassroots memorials are very similar to Baroque still lives of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

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in their response to death and decay. Fragile and ephemeral objects, such as candles, flowers, and written notes reflect both the enjoyment and the brevity of life (Figure 14.2). As far as the messages themselves are concerned, Fraenkel (2011) highlights the creation of a monumental subject as a collective rather than individual work. Individual papers are almost invisible. In contrast to boards and banners typical of demonstrations, the notes added to the grassroots memorials used to be written in small letters. Generally, they are of spontaneous style, simple and modest, lacking originality because of a tedious repetition of the same. Our data from Paris confirm these findings (Figure 14.3).10

FIGURE 14.2 “Vanitas” at Place de la République on January 11, 2015. Photo: Pia Kailuweit.

FIGURE 14.3 “I am Charlie,” “I am Charlie, too.” Repetition and dialogue at Place de la République on January 11, 2015. Photo: Pia Kailuweit.

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On the contrary, Sánchez-Carretero (2011b, pp. 247–50) points out that on the walls of Atocha there were discussions in form of dialogical and sometimes even palimpsestic structures (Figure 14.4). She observed that graffiti written on the walls and columns immediately after the attacks were covered with posters and paper notes which themselves turned into billboards for further comments. In line with the geosemiotic approach (Scollon and Wong Scollon 2003) that accounts for the materiality of signs at a meta-semiotic level, Sánchez-Carretero advances the hypotheses that “love is on white paper; hate is on the walls” (Sánchez-Carretero 2011b : 257). However, her documentation of the graffiti when the papers had been removed did only partly confirm this hypothesis. She noticed that insults aimed at politicians are less common on papers than on graffiti. Nonetheless, she documented very few anti-Islam messages independently of the support material. As for the complexity of the political debate at the grassroots memorials, there seems to be a difference between Madrid 2004 and Paris 2015. Apart from the political context, spatial aspects may provide an explanation. The Atocha railway station, as well as the other affected stations in Madrid, offered vertical writing surfaces (walls, columns etc.). An important part of these surfaces was indoor or at least covered by a roof (e.g., on platforms). Contrastively, there were far fewer comparable writing surfaces in Paris. The pedestal of the Marianne statue of Place de la République constitutes such a surface (Figure 14.5), and here we observe the same kind of palimpsestic structures as the one documented at the station of Alcalá de Henares. Note that our data cannot provide evidence that the use of a particular support material favors the production of more emotional or radical messages. The graffiti and the paper notes seem to repeat identical messages. Since the linguistic space for expression and discussion is limited, emblematic strategies come into play. With regard to the vanitas motive mentioned by Fraenkel (2011), emblems are a central artistic device in times of Baroque. Their origins date back to the Renaissance (Harper 1992). Emblems consist of three parts: a title (vocalium signum), an image

FIGURE 14.4 Palimpsest structure of a placard at Alcalá de Henares train station on March 22, 2004. Courtesy of Archivo del Duelo, detail of picture FD-0562. Photo: Cristina Sánchez.

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FIGURE 14.5 Palimpsest at Place de la République on January 11, 2015. Photo: Pia Kailuweit.

FIGURE 14.6 Emblem from 11-M shrines. Courtesy of Archivo del Duelo, signature DP-0561.

(pictura) and, a legend (subscriptio). They operate in a two-part step: visualizing the title as a concept and verbalizing a visual representation by the legend (Warncke 1987). Emblems are surprisingly dominant at grassroots memorials. They condense the speech acts of the collective subject and firmly anchor the experience in people’s memories. In Figures 14.6 and 14.7, we discuss two emblematic representations of the Madrid train bombing and one of the two Parisian incidents, respectively. The emblem shown in Figure 14.6 is painted on paper. It carries the title paz y libertad (peace and liberty). The picture part exhibits a Spanish flag in the background. A white

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FIGURE 14.7 Emblem from 11-M shrines. Courtesy of Archivo del Duelo, signature DP-0058.

hand is presented in the center, a symbol of peace and anti-violence. The hand refers to a gesture consisting in raising open hands forward, with the palms painted white or in wearing white gloves. This gesture was used by students of the Autonomous University of Madrid at the demonstration in response to the murder of Professor Francisco Tomás y Valiente by the armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization ETA in 1996 (Benegas 2004: 342–43; Truc 2011: 225, n. 22). To the right of the hand, the black ribbon was also used in demonstrations responding to murders committed by ETA (Sánchez-Carretero, 2011b: 256‒57). The legend is artistically inserted into the hand. The four words of legend form a cross. In the center, a capital M is situated. Reading from left to right, the M is the first letter of the word Muerte (death). Downwards, we can read the word Masacre (massacre). Upwards, inversely, the M is the first letter of Madrid and, reading from left to right, the M starts the word Marzo (March). While the atrocity of the event is represented by words that could be read in the usual way, the indication of place and time is inverted as the place itself and the normal time sequence is turned upside down. The words Masacre and Madrid seem to form a railway track. Hence, the graphical composition of the legend constitutes another element that visualizes the meaning of the employed terms. The relation of the legend and the graphical and pictorial elements to the title is twofold. On the one hand, peace and liberty is what has been threatened by the attacks, on the other hand, the emblem is a call for restoring peace and liberty and, therefore, indirectly, a call against hatred and revenge. The second example (Figure 14.7) parallels the first one, although it is less sophisticated. The pictorial elements are the flag of Ecuador as a background, two transparent hands on the left and right respectively and a large black ribbon in the center. On the back of the transparent hand on the left, the word paz (“peace”) is written in the largest character size. Hence, it constitutes the title. The legend extends over three columns. Under the title we read in smaller letters Era niña como yo (she was a child as I am), in the second column within the black ribbon Ecuador and on the back of the transparent hand on the right we read No sangre (no blood), and below the hand we can see 11-M (March 11). The first part of the legend refers to an individual, probably to Sanaa Ben Salah Imadaquan, a thirteen-year-old Spanish girl, the only child killed in the attacks apart from Patricia Rzaca, a seven-month-old Polish baby. There were six Ecuadorian victims, but none of them was a child.

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The example taken from Charlie Hebdo grassroots memorials (Figure 14.8) exhibits Liberté (Liberty) as the title, a pencil as a candle constitutes the pictorial element, and the legend consists in the hashtag #JESUISCHARLIE (I am Charlie). It differs in several ways from the emblems analyzed before. First, it is a print, a quite general phenomenon at the grassroots memorials in January 2015. The use of computer devices and digital reproduction has considerably advanced since 2004. The digital revolution changes the strategy of de- and reterritorialization. Joachim Roncin invented the slogan that appears as the legend on Twitter (Roncin 2015). Being a hashtag, the legend refers metonymically not only to an imaginary corpus of experiences to unfold but also to a digital corpus of tweets to read. The title highlights the concept of liberty as the central value to defend. While “peace” dominates over “liberty” in the Madrid data, it is the other way around for the Charlie Hebdo grassroots memorials.11 An explanation may lie in the type of victims symbolized by the pictorial element of the pencil that refers to liberty of expression. However, liberty also plays a fundamental role as a founding category of the French Republic. This aspect becomes more dominant in November, as we will see below. In the November data, we observed a surprising comeback of analogue culture. Although the central slogan12 that appears on the emblem (Figure 14.9) as its title was created as a meme, it is generally painted and not printed on the papers of grassroots memorials. The picture is painted, too, and shows the Eiffel Tower as a peace sign,13 in this version accompanied by colored hearts rising like balloons. The legend Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity) refers to the values of the French Revolution. Notice that the title exhibits an English religious formula, although secularized by its frequent use (Pray for Paris). The use of this formula seems to be a twofold act of de- and reterritorialization. It not only stands for an internationalization of the response but also questions, in particular, the role of the French authorities. As it is well known, laicism and the fight against English in the public space (Blackwood 2008) are central elements of the

FIGURE 14.8 Emblem at the Place de la République on January 11, 2015. Photo: Pia Kailuweit.

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FIGURE 14.9 Emblem placed at Place de la République on November 20, 2015. Photo: Jaqueline Balint.

French public policy. The use of English instead of French in the key slogan is surprising. Although the internationalizing function of English may explain this practice, in France the public use of English is also a challenge to the French official policy. For the dominant discourse in France, English is a minor language in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 104) deterritorializing French as the major language. With respect to the use of different languages in the grassroots memorials, Spanish and French remain the dominant languages in the respective national contexts. However, a central aspect of the grassroots memorials in Madrid 2004 and Paris 2015 is that the very employment of other languages seems to question the linguistic monopoly of the state authorities. Multilingualism appears not only due to the participation of foreign visitors but also as a result of immigrants residing in the areas of Madrid and Paris. More than a quarter of the people killed in the Madrid train bombings were not Spanish citizens. There are only some hints in the literature that point to the whole range of languages used in Madrid’s grassroots memorials. Sánchez-Carretero (2011b: 249) refers to Arabic, Díaz-Mas (2011) to literary contributions in English, as well as in Spain’s regional languages and in various migrant languages. Our own analysis14 of the photos of the Archivo del Duelo reveals that monolingual or bilingual writings in Romanian or Romanian and Spanish, as well as writings in Arabic, almost always accompanied by a translation in Spanish, appeared at the grassroots memorials. We also found writings in Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, Portuguese, and French—mother tongues of some of the victims—as well as in Italian, German, Greek, Chinese, or Japanese. Some of the writings of mourners identifying themselves as coming from Galicia, the Basque Country, or Catalonia appeared in Galician, Basque, and Catalan, respectively. Catalan occurred quite often in monolingual or bilingual texts.

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200 INOCENTES EN MADRID. 10,000 INOCENTES EN IRAQ SEMBRAR MUERTE EN EL ESTRANJERO NO TRAE SEGURIDAD AQUI BASTA DE TERRORISMOS YA CADA VIDA ES UNICA Y VALIOSA.

200 innocent lives in MADRID 10,000 innocent lives in IRAQ SOWING DEATH ABROAD BRING NO SAFETY AT Home END ALL TERRORISM NOW! EVERY HUMAN LIFE IS PRECIOUS!

FIGURE 14.10 Transcription of two placards (Spanish and English) from photo FD-755 of the Archivo de Duelo.

The use of English is sometimes explained by the fact that writers identified themselves as US citizens, but is also due the desire to make the message accessible to an international audience. For example, a political statements against the war of Iraq appeared in two monolingual signs one above the other. The Spanish sign seems to be the source and the English sign the translation (see Figure 14.10). The two placards appear vertically on photo FD-755 of the Archivo de Duelo (Spanish above on the photo, here in the left-hand side table, English below on the photo, here in the right-hand side table). The text criticizes the Iraq policy of the Aznar government. To sum up this section, the speech acts expressing condolence and calling for peace and liberty are directed at three groups of addressees. First of all, at the in-group of the mourners, second at the perpetrators, and last but not least, at the authorities who are held—to different degrees—co-responsible for the escalation of violence. In an act of deand reterritorialization, the constitution of the in-group operates toward a local reference, a symbolic marking of public space that the mourners are not willing to abandon because of the terrorist threat nor to leave it to an official business as usual policy. From the viewpoint of geosemiotics, a community of mourners emerges toward emplaced complex semiotic acts that frequently make use of emblematic strategies. However, mediatization—especially the use of social networks in 2015—anchors emplaced semiotics acts into the digital world. This anchoring is a central factor to produce the de- and reterritorializing effects.

7 RETERRITORIALIZATION BY THE AUTHORITIES Three months after the attacks, the state restored control of the Atocha train station responding to a claim of the workers of the Spanish railroad company (RENFE). In an open letter published in the newspaper of the trade union CGT,15 they expressed that the grassroots memorials hindered their work and acutely affected their personal emotions, constituting a permanent reminder of the traumatic events. They proposed the construction of an official memorial (Truc 2011: 209; Sánchez-Carretero 2011b: 251). After the dismantling and archiving of the grassroots memorials, computer terminals were placed in more discrete points of the Atocha, El Pozo, and Santa Eugenia train stations. On June 9, 2004, the Minister of Public Works Magdalena Álvarez inaugurated the aforementioned Espacio de Palabras (see Section 3): computer terminals where passersby could type a message of condolence and scan their palms to become part of the message that appeared on the screen (Serrano 2004: 12; Sánchez-Carretero 2011b: 259, n. 7). Beside the messages, a five-minute video was projected16 and repeated on a

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loop.17 It consists of a continuum of selected photographs documenting people’s public mourning after the attacks without any comments, but accompanied by Chopin’s Funeral March. Although representing parts of the grassroots memorials and their messages, the video leaves out demonstrations of political discontent directed against the authorities. Therefore, it could be seen as an attempt to influence the attitude and content of the messages the mourners write at the computer terminals of Espacio de Palabras. The terminals were connected with the website www.mascercanos.com (no longer available) that could also be accessed online. As mentioned before (see Section 3), only on March 13, 2007, three years after the bombings, the terminals were removed.18 The computer terminals were part of an official act of reterritorialization, creating a device for a more orderly ritual of mourning and commemoration. They restored the normal appearance and functionality of the stations altered by the grassroots memorials. However, as far as the messages are concerned no direct censorship was exercised. According to Truc (2011, pp. 223–24), the Espacio de Palabras constitutes a heterotopic space of its own that generates a new ritual of mourning by the fact that passersby—normally out of a group—expressed their emotion publicly and with the help of a digital device. The analysis of the corpus of digital messages shows that the use of different languages parallels the multilingualism of the grassroots memorials, although it is limited to messages in Latin letters. The computers did not allow the use of another alphabet. Solidarity with the victims, claims for peace interrupted by the terror attacks and rejection of all types of terrorism are the three main topics around which the messages evolve. However, critical remarks on the official policy were not totally absent (Quintana and Kailuweit 2017). The second step of reterritorialization by the authorities was the creation of an official memorial. On March 11, 2007, the Monumento homenaje a las víctimas del 11-M (“Monument in Homage to the Victims of 11 March”) was unveiled.19 The memorial occupies the center of a roundabout located at the mouth of Alfonso XII Street in front of the Atocha Station, which citizens, with their candles, messages, flowers, and toys, turned into a sanctuary from the same day of the attacks. The memorial consists of a dome in the form of an 11-meter-high cylinder commemorating the date of the massacre. The cylinder opens to the sky of Madrid, to which it seems to be getting closer and closer (Quintana and Kailuweit 2013: 219). The architecture stands for a popular metaphor (Geipel 2007: 10) which became a slogan of the grassroots memorials and demonstrations De Madrid al Cielo (“From Madrid to heaven”). The cylinder is composed of two distinct parts: the monolithic outer skin of glass and the inner membrane where messages of condolence in several languages are engraved, referring to the writings of the grassroots memorials (Ortiz García 2011: 49). The ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) membrane is held by air pressure, generated by some fans,20 which allows the monument to stand without any opaque element that obscures the idea of transparency. This pressurization system makes the atmosphere denser and tighter in its interior.21 The lobby of the station gives access to the basement of the monument housing the Blue Void room—a haven of silence between the rattling of trains. In a cobalt blue wall near the entry, the victims’ names are recorded. Passing the blue room, visitors reach the interior of the cylinder to read the messages engraved in the ETFE membrane.22 The messages reflect the multilingualism of the grassroots memorials. The presence of languages of the European Union, especially Italian, German, French, English, Romanian, and Portuguese is striking, but we also find inscriptions in Arabic, Greek, Basque, Catalan, and Galician (Figure 14.11).23 As far as their content is concerned, the commissioners

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FIGURE 14.11 Messages engraved into the Atocha memorial as they could be captured on July 30, 2014, at 15:13 p.m. Photo: Rolf Kailuweit.

mostly selected messages that do not contain any explicit reference to the perpetrators of the March 11 attacks. The slogan Todos íbamos en ese train (We all went in this train) only appears at a less prominent place in the higher spheres of the cylinder. Messages of political protest were not selected. In Paris, the authorities opted for a radical reterritorialization strategy as far as the Charlie Hebdo grassroots memorials were concerned. On April 2, 2015, the shrines at Place de la République were dismantled and the inscriptions on the statue’s pedestal erased by high-pressure cleaners. No official archiving was undertaken. On the contrary, parts of the papers and objects found at the grassroots memorials after the November shootings were documented at the Archives de Paris. Surprisingly, the grassroots memorials of Place de la République were not included, although Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, as mentioned, highlights the role of Place de la République as the center of the public response on the website of the Archives24 and in a foreword of an official book presenting a selection of the documents (Boulon-Cluzel 2016). The fact that the book takes the title Je suis Paris (I am Paris) and not Pray for Paris combining it with the drawing of the Eiffel Tower as a peace sign constitutes an act of linguistic reterritorialization. The deterritorializing act of conquering the major language (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 104–05) is answered by an act that restores the major language in its homogeneity.

8 CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have shown that an approach informed by Deleuzian geophilosophy transcends not only the traditional dilemma of LL to distinguish between permanent and nonpermanent signs but also the discourses in place anchoring of the Scollon and Wong Scollon’s geosemiotics. The processes of de- and reterritorialization triggered

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by grassroots memorials are highly complex. Public mourning of civil society has deterritorializing effects, defying the monopoly of the state on shaping public policy. Linking emplaced messages and emblems with the digital world, mourners symbolically take possession of public spaces, marking them permanently in the public imagery. The authorities try to reterritorialize their monopoly not only against the challenge of terrorism but also against the takeover by civil society. The de- and reterritorializing of central public spaces via symbolic acts in place and in the digital world constitutes a potentiality for a remembrance culture beyond the realm of the immediately visible. Even if there are no traces left in situ referring to a terroristic attack and the response of the civil society, the symbolic remains of grassroots memorials disseminate in the public imagery in such a way that no official reterritorializing strategy can entirely erase its effects. Although there are significant parallels in the strategies of place marking, public mourning in Madrid 2004 and Paris 2015 also differs in several ways. In both contexts, multilingualism plays a major role. However, challenging the linguistic monopoly of the state by using English in a key slogan seems to be an indirect provocation in the particular context of French linguistic policy. The particular political situation in Spain led to a more explicit critique of the state authorities. After the change of government—a consequence of the attacks—the new rulers aimed for social reconciliation. Hence, the messages of the grassroots memorial were documented and used in an official memorial although their political content was mitigated. In Paris, the social importance of grassroots memorials was only recognized after the November shooting, when they were selectively documented and presented on official websites and in publications. The power to formulate an adequate reaction to Islamist attacks and to mark it in the public space seems to be an even more topical and controversially discussed subject in France than it is in Spain, although the Barcelona attack on August 17, 2017, shows that the public response to Islamist terror remains highly topical Vin Spain as well.

FURTHER READING Linguistic Landscape (2016), 2(3) – Memory and Memorialization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Margry, P. and C. Sánchez-Carretero, eds. (2011), Grassroots Memorials. The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death, New York: Berghahn. Rubdy, R. and S. Ben Said, eds. (2015), Conflict and Exclusion: The Linguistic Landscape as an Arena of Contestation, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Truc, G. (2017), Shell Shocked: The Social Response to Terrorist Attacks, Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. How is a grassroots memorial different from traditional mourning rituals? 2. What moves people to express their grief and dismay in the form of written messages in the public space?

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PROJECT WORK 1. Select five pictures of the Archives de Paris Corpus (http://archives.paris.fr/f/hommage s/mosaique/?&debut=20), for example, Le Bataclan, 3904W 1(37), and discuss the relation of visual and textual elements. 2. Look for the online editions of three international newspapers from January 12, 2004, and November 14, 2015, and compare the reports on the attacks in Madrid and Paris and the reactions of civil society (grassroots memorials).

NOTES 1. Under “reichsmark” it should be understood the Papiermark—a currency without link to gold—used in the Weimer Republic until November 15, 1923, when the Rentenmark was issued. This was also progressively replaced by the Reichsmark, introduced on August 30, 1924, which marked the return to a gold-backed currency, since the link between currency and gold was abandoned on August 4, 1914 (Widdig 2001: 40, 47–48). 2. After ten years in a coma, the last victim died in 2014. 3. Three hours after the attacks, political leaders close to ETA had already unlinked the Basque organization from the attacks (López García 2009). 4. See Hommages aux victimes des attentats de 2015. http://archives.paris.fr/r/137/homm ages-aux-victimes-des-attentats-de-2015/ (accessed January 20, 2018). A selection of these materials can also be seen in Paris. 13 NOVEMBRE - Les archives des hommages citoyens. https://www.paris.fr/actualites/grandformat/13-novembre (accessed January 20, 2018). 5. Source: Archivo del Duelo, consulted on July 29, 2012. 6. See the following link for a corresponding photo representing the twin towers as pencils. Pia Kailuweit documents a similar drawing at Place de la République on January 11, 2015. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LDl8zS_fa-o/VK56mRDVIUI/AAAAAAAAHiE/k80-b1mRwY4/ s1600/hommage-charlie-hebdo-32.jpg (accessed January 11, 2018). A similar reference to 9/11 appears among the paper no. 3904W 1(144) officially documented at Square du Bataclan, December 10, 2015. http://archives.paris.fr/arkotheque/visionneuse/visionneuse. php?arko=YTo3OntzOjQ6ImRhdGUiO3M6MTA6IjIwMTctMTEtMTgiO3M6MTA6InR5 cGVfZm9uZHMiO3M6MTE6ImFya29fc2VyaWVsIjtzOjQ6InJlZjEiO2k6MTQ7czo0O iJyZWYyIjtpOjczNTc5O3M6MjA6InJlZl9hcmtfZmFjZXR0ZV9jb25mIjtzOjg6ImhvbW1 hZ2VzIjtzOjE2OiJ2aXNpb25uZXVzZV9odG1sIjtiOjE7czoyMToidmlzaW9ubmV1c2Vfa HRtbF9tb2RlIjtzOjQ6InByb2QiO30=#uielem_move=0%2C0&uielem_rotate=F&uiel em_islocked=0&uielem_zoom=65http://archives.paris.fr/f/hommages/mosaique (accessed January 11, 2018). 7. The slogan was dominant at grassroots memorials and manifestations (Sánchez-Carretero 2011b: 247). For example, it was taken up in the form Todos íbamos en ese tren (We all went in that train) in twenty-three short films based on real stories and documentaries of between three and five minutes each, made in 2004 by thirty Spanish directors under the common title Madrid 11-M: Todos íbamos en ese tren. See O. (2005), “El documental ‘Madrid 11-M, todos íbamos en ese tres’ llega a las pantallas,” ABC, January 28. http:// www.abc.es/hemeroteca/historico-28-01-2005/abc/Espectaculos/el-documental-madrid-11 -m-todos-ibamos-en-ese-tren-llega-a-las-pantallas_20242418986.html# (accessed January 20, 2018). The short films, separately, can be seen on YouTube. 8. The singular dominates, although the plural also appears.

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9. See “Anne Hidalgo, maire de Paris.” http://www.paris.fr/actualites/grandformat/13-nove mbre (accessed January 20, 2018). 10. The writings documented by the Archives de Paris are generally of more complexity and elaborated style. However, this might be an effect of selected documentation. 11. Our data confirm this. In the Corpus of Espacio de Palabras, paz (peace) appears in 13,870 occurrences and libertad (liberty) in 1,462 occurrences. It is the other way around in two paper books of condolence (13,669 words) documented by Pia Kailuweit on January 11, 2015, Place de la République: liberté (liberty) 240 occurrences, paix (peace) 57 occurrences. Sánchez-Carretero (2011b: 259) cites the master thesis “‘Todos íbamos en ese tren’: “spontaneous shrines” and the politics of identity in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings of “11-M” of Daniel Clarke (2009), University of Cambridge, proving the dominance of “peace” in the messages on the walls of Atocha. 12. The dominance of the slogan is striking in corpus of the Archives de Paris.http://www.arc hives.paris.fr/r/137/hommages-aux-victimes-des-attentats-de-2015/ (accessed January 20, 2018). 13. The drawing was originally by the Artist Jean Jullien on Twitter. See Gonzalez (2015). 14. In a master thesis directed by Rolf Kailuweit, Anna Lüninghöner transcripted 853 messages contained in photos of the Archivo de Duelo. 6 percent of the transcripted signs are not Spanish monolingual. Twenty messages were bilingual with Spanish and another language. Monolingual massages appeared in the following order: English 13, Arabic 12, Catalan 8, French 5, German 4, Romanian 3, Basque 1, Hebrew 1, Japanese 1, Chinese 1, Galician 1, Polish 1, Greek 1 (Lüninghöner 2019: 121–48). 15. See (2004), “Los trabajadores de RENFE en Atocha piden que se retiren las velas y que se haga un monumento permanente a las víctimas,” and “Carta abierta de los trabajadores y trabajadoras de Madrid Atocha Cercanías,” Rojo i Negro, May 31. http://www.rojoynegr o.info/articulo/sections/los-trabajadores-renfe-atocha-piden-se-retiren-las-velas-se-haga-unmonumento-pe-0 (accessed January 20, 2018). 16. The video “Espacio de Palabras – RENFE” is hosted on the Railway library of Adif, signature VID 379. 17. See Archivo del Duelo, signature FD-2328. Photo: Jorge París: people wait their turn on November 9, 2004, to write a message and scan their hands on the tow cybershrines placed in the lobby of the Atocha Station. 18. In the two computers located in the Atocha Station a total of 41,188 messages were collected: we identified 1,674 in the station of El Pozo, 1911 in Santa Eugenia Station and 3,959 from the webpage mascercanos.com. 19. A two-minute documentary of the Monument in Homage to the Victims of March 11 issued by El Confidencial Digital on March 6, 2014, can be seen in https://www.youtub.e om/watch?v=dCKuAqCFo5U (accessed November 15, 2017). 20. Since its inauguration, the inner membrane has fallen several times, so that the memorial has remained closed. See O. (2015), “El monumento del 11M lleva dos meses languideciendo en Atocha,” La Vanguardia, November 17. http://www.lavanguardia.com/ vida/20151117/30217989321/monumento-11m-fallo-estructura-madrid.html (accessed January 20, 2018). 21. See “Monumento del 11-M” on the webpage of Estudio Fem of which they are part the architects in charge of his construction. https://es.wikiarquitectura.com/edificio/monu mento-del-11-m/ (accessed November 23, 2017). 22. See http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/10/31/madrid/1193841851.html (accessed January 17, 2018).

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23. Spanish remains the most widely used language with 167 messages. However, the share of non-Spanish massages is 41 percent. We find twenty-seven Catalan and twenty-two English messages. Italian is represented by seventeen messages, thirteen messages are in French, twelve in German, and ten in Basque. In Arabic there are seven massages, six in Romanian, two in Portuguese, and one each in Galician and Greek (Lüninghöner 2019: 30). 24. See Hommages aux victimes des attentats de 2015. http://archives.paris.fr/r/137/homm ages-aux-victimes-des-attentats-de-2015/ (accessed January 20, 2018).

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A Swimming Pool, an Abattoir, and a Biscuit Factory: Discursive Presentations of Adaptive Reuse for Museum Spaces in France ROBERT BLACKWOOD

1 INTRODUCTION Adaptive reuse of functionally redundant buildings has, over the course of the second-half of the twentieth century, become an increasingly popular, successful, and creative way of addressing the challenge of a rich architectural patrimony whose original purpose has been rendered obsolete. This is often, but not always, the case for industrial buildings, found in town and city centers, where the edifices which were once factories, power stations, municipal buildings, transport hubs, and the like have ceased to operate as intended, and remained vacant, frequently derelict, and on prime real estate. From the perspective of reterritorialization, the reuse of space—where meaning inscribed in buildings shifts—is an architectural response to deterritorialization, and one where language(s), texts, images, and other resources are activated to change the relation between places and cultural activities. As postindustrial cities grapple with the demands of regeneration, and contend with the difficulties and opportunities associated with gentrification, the potential for sites like these to be adapted into museums and galleries is widely attested. In spectacular style, the Orsay railway station in Paris was repurposed in the 1980s into the Musée d’Orsay. Some twenty-five years later, Tate Modern opened its doors in the site of the former power station at Bankside, on the south bank of the Thames in London. While scholars in architecture have begun the process of examining critically adaptive reuse, the scope remains for sociolinguists, and in particular for LL researchers, to contribute to the ways in which language and other semiotic resources are activated to make meaning in urban regeneration projects.

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This chapter will open with a brief overview of the relevant discussions from the discipline of architecture and, more precisely, museum studies which have informed our approach to these sites, in addition to LL research that engages with museums and memorials. We then present the three examples of adaptive reuse in order to position the exhibition spaces temporally and physically. The sites are then considered from a multimodal perspective, drawing on levels of analysis adapted from Shohamy and Waksman’s 2009 book chapter on the LL as an ecological arena. The data was collected from site visits and includes traditional LL approaches to recording signs, as well as observation of visitors to the three museums. The threads of these findings are then drawn together to offer conclusions on the contribution that the wider semiotic landscapes of repurposed buildings can make to discussions of adaptive reuse.

2 MUSEUM STUDIES AND LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE RESEARCH As Milojković and Nikolić (2012: 70) note, the converting of buildings into museums is not a new phenomenon, and the classic museums of modern times, such as the Vatican Museum, the Louvre, and the Uffizi, “were originally built for different content and service.” Wong (2017: 6) sees the first cave dwellers as adaptive reusers, taking natural phenomena and turning them into dwellings. The fact that, in Europe, the first museums of the modern era were housed in former palaces, and drew on private collections, began the association between grand (even luxurious) buildings and the exhibiting of art, sculpture, and artifacts. However, the traditional view of museums as elite spaces (see Castells 2002: 348–49), which communicated their value to the public by their grandiose architecture and aesthetic, their scale, and even their name, has long been challenged by a counter position which sees the democratization of museums as a force for positive social change (Sandell 1998: 409). At the same time, Sirefman (1999: 297) notes the range of functions that a museum is expected to fulfill: “Cultural repository, dynamic civic space, popular entertainment center, tool for urban revitalization.” Although not the focus of this chapter, the role of museums in regeneration (and subsequent gentrification) processes merits noting. Evans (2005: 968) proposes a typology of the relationships between culture (in the broadest sense) and regeneration. Of these relationships, “cultural regeneration,” namely where “cultural activity is more integrated into an area strategy alongside other activities in the environmental, social and economic sphere,” has been identified by Colomb (2011: 79) as the most pertinent definition to be applied to the case of Roubaix (including its La Piscine museum and gallery, discussed in this chapter). We argue that “cultural regeneration” equally applies to the examples of Toulouse and Nantes, also explored here. Despite notable exceptions, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, “flagship cultural developments” (Grodach 2010) are not necessarily the dominant trend in the creation of new museums. Adaptive reuse has been heralded by changes in economic, social, and urban structures, leading to what Mengüşoğlu and Boyacioğlu (2013: 119) refer to as “the decentralization of production, commerce and people from the core of urban areas.” With explicit reference to France’s industrial patrimony, Weiss (2009: 136) laments the loss of a specific architectural tradition: Although such structures once served as productive instruments in the manufacturing economy of the modern city, the second half of the twentieth century rendered these buildings programmatically and functionally obsolete.

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The response to this marginalization of industrial buildings came in the form of adaptive reuse, described by Choay (2001: 149) as “the most paradoxical, daring, and difficult form of heritage valorization.” As emphasized by Latham (2000: 37), the focus of adaptive reuse builds on the desire to preserve historic buildings as part of wider conservation processes, with the explicit intent of ensuring the future sustainability of these sites through the identification of a new use. At the same time, the balance between the function of the old building and its new use invokes processes familiar to linguistics, semiotics, and semantics. Pendlebury et al (2018: 214) highlight the processes of meaning making along two different axes: In reuse projects, relationships with past use are negotiated partly through the narratives created in marketing material and partly in the detailed material decisions taken over which fabric is kept and which removed and in the aesthetic strategies deployed. In France, Wong (2017: 74) identifies the 1789 Revolution and the following century as the first period of restoration and repair. At the end of the eighteenth century, the creation of a commission to protect monuments was co-opted into the process of nationbuilding, with particular scope to inform new French citizens of their history. The pace for restoration accelerated under the July Monarchy from 1830 with the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc spearheading the renovation of now iconic buildings including the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, Amiens cathedral, the abbey of La Madeleine in Vézelay in Burgundy, and the medieval ramparts of the southern city of Carcassonne. This period of intense activity presaged the European debate on the tension between conservation and restoration. The adaptive reuse of industrial properties was embraced later in France than in the UK, and not before the razing of Les Halles, Paris’ central markets, which is seen by Andrieux (1992: 47–48) as a watershed in sensitivizing sections of French society to the desirability of protecting France’s industrial heritage. With state support—courtesy of the Ministry for Culture—and associations, several industrial sites (ranging from the seventeenth-century forges at Buffon in eastern France, and the Vallois ropeworks in Normandy to the Chiris perfume factory in Grasse) have been preserved rather than destroyed (Belhoste and Smith 1997). In this chapter, we privilege those buildings which have been adapted for an alternative use, rather than merely preserved for their cultural, historical, or economic significance. At the same time, this chapter seeks to bridge the gap between these two lines of enquiry by drawing on work from sociolinguistics, more broadly, and LL, more specifically, with their attention to geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon 2003) and the activation of meanings in relation to emplacement in the (semi) public space. Rather than a critical discourse analysis of the marketing material provided for the three museums in question, we approach the spaces of the exhibition sites as texts, examining the discursive strategies deployed, the semiotic resources drawn upon, and the potential readings of texts (in the widest sense of the term) on the walls of an adapted swimming pool, abattoir, and biscuit factory. In considering the linguistic and semiotic landscapes of these museum spaces, inspiration is taken from Shohamy and Waksman’s (2009: 322–25) examination of the Ha’apala memorial in Tel Aviv, Israel. Here, Shohamy and Waksman explicitly define sites as multimodal, and identify five lines of enquiry by which to analyze what in their case is a monument: geographical location, placement, and design; photographs and their titles; written texts; multilingualism; and visitors to the site. For the purposes of this chapter, some but not all of these categories are privileged: multilingualism is not, for example, a defining characteristic of the exhibition spaces discussed here, or

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particularly pertinent to adaptive reuse in this French context. Shohamy and Waksman stress the importance of positioning what in their case is a memorial in its wider ecology. In particular, they position LLs at the nexus between education, language acquisition, and linguistic activism, which does not meaningfully apply to the adaptive reuse of industrial buildings as museum/gallery spaces. Nevertheless, these sites we explore do, in Shohamy and Waksman’s words, “afford in depth learning about cultural and historical meanings” (2009: 328), but from the perspective of recognition and preservation of industrial heritage. This approach invites a consideration of individuals’ relations between highly localized deterritorialized spaces—venues who initial purposes are deemed redundant— and new iterations of specific places. Equally, given the focus of the chapter and the nature of the sites under discussion, we necessarily adapt these different levels of analysis. At the same time, the approach taken in this chapter has been informed by the method adopted by Jaworski and Thurlow (2013) in their consideration of the airport, who in turn drew on the work of de Botton (2009). I, like them before me, trace how the visitor to each of the three sites approaches the venue, reaches the exhibition space, and enters the museum so as to differentiate between the lines of enquiry above, especially in terms of the written texts encountered by the visitor. In practical terms, therefore, I arrived on foot at each of the galleries, recording signage related to the three museums, before taking in a panoramic view of the exhibition complexes from the outside. Assuming the role of an ordinary visitor, I entered the three sites and followed the signage through the interior space to explore the sites as comprehensively as any other visitor might.

3 THE EXHIBITION SPACES AS CONTEXTS In order to contextualize the discussion, it is helpful to present briefly the three museum spaces under discussion. The museums we examine in this chapter are not on the same scale as the Musée d’Orsay or Tate Modern, but they are all examples of adaptive reuse of sites whose initial purpose came to an end. The three were opened to the public as exhibition spaces in 2000–01 after a period of disuse and then renovation. La Piscine (The Swimming Pool) is officially known as La Piscine – Musée d’art et d’industrie André Diligent de Roubaix (The Swimming Pool – The André Diligent Museum of Art and Industry in Roubaix) and its abbreviated name is a point to which we will return in the analysis below. Diligent was a mayor of the town of Roubaix, in north eastern France, and he also served as a member of the French Parliament, the European Parliament, and the French Senate, elected on a center/center-right Christian democrat platform. The three museums explored in this chapter are relatively small but La Piscine is the largest with 6,000 square meters of exhibition space. As its name suggests, the museum was originally a swimming pool, built in 1932 in art déco style, and some of its original features have been retained. The swimming pool was closed in 1985 and fell into disrepair, at about the same time that the town’s public collection of paintings (dating back to 1924) ceased to be on public display, having been housed in the basement of Roubaix’s town hall. Roubaix is part of the Lille metropolitan area, with a population of 96,000 inhabitants. In the Breton city of Nantes, the former biscuit factory, designed in an art nouveau style, of the LU brand1 is now a cultural center with just under 3,000 square meters of exhibition space, including several large galleries, and a music/theater venue. Known as Le Lieu Unique (The Unique Place), the galleries reuse the LU acronym, which has

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been playfully de-abbreviated, with the initial letters redeployed not to identify explicitly Lefèvre and Utile but instead to initiate a new name for the venue. This name was chosen by the CRDC (le Centre de Recherche pour le Développement Culturel, “the Research Centre into Cultural Development” in Nantes) in order to reflect the breadth of activities that they wished to see taking place there (Le Lieu Unique, no date). Much of the original factory was demolished in the 1970s, with the Ferdinand-Favre building—an annex to the main factory—the only part saved by a preservation order. The site is most noted for its tower (closed at the time of writing for renovation) which has a viewing platform over the center of Nantes, given its location between the main railway station and the Château of the Dukes of Brittany. Nantes is the sixth largest city of France in terms of population, with 290,000 residents. On the left bank of the Garonne river, which passes through Toulouse, France’s fourth largest city (with a population of 460,000 people), is the modern and contemporary art venue Les Abattoirs (The Abattoirs). In three converted slaughter houses, which were operational from 1825 to 1988, are exhibitions spaces covering 3,000 square meters. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the city of Toulouse decided to bring together the municipal abattoirs into one site, and purpose-built these three buildings in a neoclassical style. The design of the complex is traditional for both the time and its usage; as Pendlebury, Wang, and Law (2018: 213) note, abattoirs “were often concealed behind a classical façade, giving dignity to the business of death.” In 1990, the vacant premises were given listed status (i.e., recognized collectively as an important historic monument), and renovation began in 1997. Les Abattoirs houses the region’s contemporary art collection, and the acronym FRAC (Fonds régional d’art contemporain or the “Regional Contemporary Art Collection”) is seen on some signage at the site. Despite the differences between these three exhibition spaces, there are commonalities to which attention should be paid. The three sites are metaphorically peripheral in relation to the city in which they are found; they may be near central landmarks, such as railway stations or town halls, but the districts in which they are located have been, especially over the twentieth century, marginalized. As such, they illustrate the cyclical rhythm of societies where the ties between specific locations and people are weakened and, normally, strengthened when these connections are restructured as part of reterritorialization processes. Les Abattoirs is located in an inner suburb of Toulouse, while Le Lieu Unique is on the edge of the city center of Nantes. La Piscine is relatively central within Roubaix, but the town is considered a satellite of Lille, the tenth largest city of France. Equally, these are not major cultural or artistic institutions which are well known on a global (or even national) scale, with modest collections (or no permanent collection in the case of Le Lieu Unique). From the perspective of this chapter, the other shared attribute of note is their earlier iterations as industrial sites; each of them has been transformed into an exhibition space relatively recently. Where there is distinction is in the fact that La Piscine has always been a public space, designed to admit the public and guide them to its heart—the swimming pool—with a degree of freedom of movement at the same time. The abattoirs and the biscuit factory also inevitably saw the movement of individuals through them, but these were production-oriented sites with a different set of social semiotics, with internal trajectories fundamentally different to those at the swimming pool. We tease out this distinction in the conclusions, but it suffices to note that reterritorialization is an uneven process—or range of processes—that intensifies the bond between people and space to different degrees.

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4 FINDINGS As noted above, we tackle the three museums by adapting the levels of analysis proposed by Shohamy and Waksman (2009). In doing so, there is a sense of progression through the museum spaces, in that we start with the approach to the sites and their physical appearances. We then reorder Shohamy and Waksman’s sequence so as to discuss written texts next; this not only privileges the written word over the visual imagery used but it is logical in that it permits us to follow the passage of a notional visitor through the spaces. Third, we consider photographs and their captions where they relate to the buildings; each of the three venues displays or has displayed photographs as part of exhibitions, and we exclude imagery and art from this discussion since they do not pertain to adaptive reuse.

4.1 Architecture and design In Shohamy and Waksman’s original discussion of the Ha’apala, their first level of analysis is the geographic location, placement, and design of the sculpture. For the purposes of this chapter, where the adaptive reuse of old industrial buildings is our principal concern, we revise this analytic axis to privilege the architecture and design of the exhibition spaces in order to understand better the discursive processes of adaptive reuse. It should be noted at the outset that we are not researchers in architecture, and approach this particular section cautiously, given our unfamiliarity with the critical vocabulary and key concepts from this particular discipline. At the same time, this is a very rich source of data, especially at the site in Roubaix. Of the three exhibition spaces, La Piscine is the gallery where the architecture and structure of the original site is most prominently activated to index the venue’s former incarnation. It is in passing into the main gallery that the structural design of the site is deployed both as a feature and as an instrument of adaptation. The small changing rooms, 2.5 meter high and 1 meter wide, are not only repurposed as tiny galleries, but also the access points from the museum reception to the main gallery. It is possible to reach the main gallery without using the changing rooms, but they are very much a feature of the space, and point in two directions simultaneously: both to the exhibition space of the present and the future and to the swimming pool of the past. The doors have been removed, but their former role as changing rooms is evident, not least because the footbath is retained, with its plughole still in place. Without the doors, though, the visitor can see through the changing room and to the main gallery space, and the pool itself, hence the double indexing performed by what are very small physical spaces. Nowhere at La Piscine are its double lives more apparent than in the principal gallery, which is the site of the main pool, and the gallery emphasizes its history as a public swimming pool in creative ways (Figure 15.1). The main pool has been renovated and its floor raised, while at the same time containing water, with two walkways created along its length. Sculptures stand alongside the pool edge, paintings hang along the walls, and the spectacular 1913 ceramic portico by Alexandre Sandier actuate the dual existence of the space as both a venue for works of art and an old swimming pool. As a constant auditory and visual backdrop to the main gallery, the restored Neptune’s head at the top of the pool continuously spurts water into the main pool. The water in the pool is not static or stagnant, but flowing and rippling. The boundary between La Piscine’s former and current iterations is deliberately blurred both by the playful use of the architecture of the swimming pool and by the sound of water splashing out into the main pool.

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FIGURE 15.1 The main gallery and swimming pool seen through the Alexandre Sandier portico.

Architectural design is not exploited in such an explicit way at Le Lieu Unique or Les Abattoirs. In Nantes, the former industrial nature of the biscuit factory is conveyed in part by the concrete and stone façade, the steel gates (which are closed over the door when the exhibition center is closed), and the exposed infrastructure inside the building. Inside, the heating pipes, the undecorated ceilings, and the steel columns which support the roofs are all visible and unornamented. This industrial aesthetic is widely recognized across industrial and postindustrial cities and towns, and has a certain value as part of gentrification and regeneration. What is lacking at Le Lieu Unique is any distinguishing feature that points to its specific past life as a biscuit factory. The scale of the LU factory is not retained in the way that the architectural texture of the swimming pool is preserved; the production spaces are divided up into smaller venues, including a book shop, a café, a restaurant, a hammam, and the exhibition halls themselves. None of the specific architectural features, including ovens, conveyors, or cutting stations, have been retained; the biscuit factory has disappeared to be repurposed as a series of performance spaces with no architectural echoes visible. Equally, Les Abattoirs preserves none of the architectural designs which date back to its time as a complex of slaughterhouses. The abattoirs were attractively designed with a series of arches repeated inside and along the exterior walls. Under these arches

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FIGURE 15.2 Interior of Les Abattoirs.

passed the rails on which carcasses would hang and be moved mechanically through the slaughterhouses during the butchering process. The rails were removed during the renovations and no other architectural feature which recalls the buildings’ time as a group of abattoirs is visible. As with Le Lieu Unique, the rooms of the old slaughterhouses have been refurbished and restored to a very high specification, to the extent that no aspect of the design of the site suggests the uses to which the exhibitions spaces were put. Unlike Le Lieu Unique the aesthetic of exposed brickwork and steel girders has been eschewed in favor of the careful restoration of graceful arches, modeled on the basilica of St Sernin in the city, and of the pink bricks synonymous with the region (Figure 15.2).

4.2 Photographs and their titles Photographs and captions are powerful resources both in “giving face to themes” (Shohamy and Waksman 2009: 323) and in presenting the viewer or visitor with a preferred reading. In the physical spaces, the visitor encounters photographs of the former iterations of the sites, although the approach to this technique inevitably varies between the sites. There are no photographs on display of the old slaughterhouses at Les Abattoirs, and yet it is not the case that there are no images available for use. Not only does the website of the museum contain images of the site’s former usage but Toulouse’s metropolitan archives

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hold and display online images of the slaughterhouses, including pictures of live cattle being herded into holding pens and butchered carcasses hanging in the meat hanging areas or moving along the rails. Within Le Lieu Unique, no space is accorded to photographic representations of the biscuit factory. As with the internal adaptation of the site (discussed above), visual references to the precise nature of the site are absent. However, outside Le Lieu Unique, at waist-height on the north eastern external wall of the exhibition space is a historical and artistic display 2.5 meter in length which comprises of six panels, and is a mixture of photographs from the site’s time as a factory and contemporary images, including some of the current exhibition spaces and modern art installations (Figure 15.3). Entitled “Du ‘Petit-Beurre’ au Lieu Unique” (From the buttery biscuit to Le Lieu Unique), the short series of images is not chronological, and juxtaposes an image of an audience in one of the venues with a black-and-white photograph of workers on the production line, manufacturing biscuits. The fact that this display is not linear suggests that it is not designed to reflect the development of the site, but rather to highlight the interwoven nature of the exhibition space with the former factory. At the same time, textually, the title of the image, presented in French and running vertically rather than along a more conventional horizontal left-to-right axis, suggests an alternative reading, with a more explicit sense of progression through the use of the prepositions “from” and “to.” The meaning yielded by this image and its title is potentially paradoxical, with the images interweaving the present and the past lives of the site, while the text points to a definitive transformation of the factory. In the entrance hall to La Piscine, the visitor is confronted by a dramatically enlarged old photograph of the pool, where the swimmers—all of whom are men—are represented as life size in their swimming costumes, ready to jump into the pool. At the height of the

FIGURE 15.3 The “Du ‘Petit-Beurre’ au Lieu Unique” montage.

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first floor, a swimmer stands on the diving board, above the other men, while two fully clothed men look on. This image is also one of three used in rotation on the website of La Piscine, in the section devoted to providing information on the history of the swimming pool. The image is not dated or captioned, but the style of swimming costumes, including a one-piece bathing suit worn by one man, suggests the first quarter of the twentieth century. A further image—also used in rotation on the website but not displayed on the site—is more recent and clearly from the second half of the twentieth century. This image shows a boy jumping into a busy pool with men and women already swimming in the water, and a lifeguard holding a wooden reaching pole. Clearly, although only two images, these photographs reinforce visually the former nature of the site, with the enormous life-size black-and-white image in the gallery’s ante-room using unnamed swimmers to make an explicit pictorial connection between the space and its former usage. They are not captioned, thereby leaving the visitor to interpret their significance based on the images, without any preferred reading (Figure 15.4).

4.3 Written texts In examining the discursive presentations of the three sites, it is helpful to break down the discussion using the model adopted by Jaworski and Thurlow (2013) who evaluate the use of linguistic and other semiotic resources in two airports. This can be adapted to organize the way in which written signs are used to discursively adapt and reuse La Piscine, Le Lieu Unique, and Les Abattoirs. These can be summarized as the approach, the entrance, and the gallery spaces.

FIGURE 15.4 The old photograph of the swimming pool in the entrance hall.

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4.3.1 The approach The discursive transformation of spaces is not limited to the sites themselves, and the spatial arrangements of the towns and cities where they are located play a role in reinforcing the adaptation of these buildings. This is most obviously done in the signage that directs the potential visitor to the venues. In the physical process of approaching the sites, it might be expected that the visitor needs to be aware of the repurposing of the original premises. It is implausible to imply that visitors stumble across public signage and decide to visit, for example, Les Abattoirs, only to learn subsequently that these are no longer slaughterhouses. Rather, the point we make here is that the pedestrian, driver, or passenger is presumed to be an insider, aware of the transformation of the venue from the moment that they enter the public space and seek to orient themselves to the cities and their respective museums. Clearly, there is the potential for an individual to be prompted to seek out a specific site on the basis of public signage, but this is, we argue, the minority perspective. In Roubaix, the street directional signs point to LA PISCINE in capital letters, underneath which is the description Musée d’Art et d’Industrie André Diligent, explicitly clarifying the transformation of the swimming pool into a museum. In Toulouse, street directional signs also confirm the nature of destination, specifying “musée des Abattoirs,” whereas the city’s transport network designates a stop near the gallery “Les Abattoirs”; discursively the bus stop falls short of confirming that this is not the site of a former slaughterhouse. A different approach to the emplacement of directions is attested in Nantes, where the only name given in signage is Le Lieu Unique, which includes a bus stop designated as Le Lieu Unique. These prominent and public acts of naming, undertaken by civic authorities, entextualize the adaptive reuse both of the three sites and of the districts within Roubaix, Nantes, and Toulouse where the museums are situated. In Nantes, however, the link between the former biscuit factory and the current exhibition space is not made in public signage around the city. The negotiation between former and current iterations is taken one step further in Nantes, but not in Roubaix or Toulouse. In the redevelopment of this part of Nantes, two new streets were laid, one of which—upon which Le Lieu Unique stands—was named rue de la Biscuiterie (“Biscuit Factory Street”) in 1994, by the city council in recognition of the manufacturing plant that stood there. This is not an echo, therefore, that dates from the cultural center’s first iteration but is instead a contemporary spatial arrangement that draws upon the historical rather than the contemporary form of the site. The interest here lies in the way in which the city council, after the end of working life of the factory to make biscuits, emplaces a discursive reminder of the former iteration of the site. 4.3.2 The entrance As might be expected, there is a similarity in the way in which visitors enter each of the exhibition spaces, with the narrowing of access down to a double door— or a single door for Le Lieu Unique. For reasons of social control—especially at La Piscine and Les Abattoirs, which charge an entrance fee—the entrance space is confined and offers the definitive potential for self-identification on the part of the museums’ managers. As discussed in Blackwood and Tufi (2015: 3) the entrance is the space where, since the fourteenth century in Europe, verbal elements (rather than visual representations) are the norm in order to indicate the purposes and the function of the premises. At La Piscine, the visitor is greeted by the single word Musée, without the article, written in white paint on the brick exterior wall of the museum complex (Figure 15.5). This is striking for several reasons, the first of which is its scale: the letters are each

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FIGURE 15.5 The exterior wall of La Piscine.

10 meters high, and dominate the wall space. Second, it is an unusual example at this site of a name other than La Piscine in use. When the visitor reaches the entrance door to the site, La Piscine reappears, again written in white paint on the brickwork, but this time in lettering no taller than 10 meters high. By comparison, Le Lieu Unique concedes very little, discursively or semiotically, to its former existence as a biscuit factory (Figure 15.6). Visitors approach the main entrance from the street to be confronted by the name of the institution, Le Lieu Unique in a contemporary reworking of neon lighting, with the word Entrée (“Entrance”) below it. Linguistically, very little text—in the traditional understanding of the term—appears in the main spaces. When it does, it uses the branding developed for Le Lieu Unique with no echoes back to the time when the space was a biscuit factory. Textual details are provided for the visiting public, including information on opening times, but it is the logo for Le Lieu Unique—a black square with three regular white vertical bars inside—which draws the eye, and this has no obvious connection with the biscuit factory. Visitors to Les Abattoirs enter the complex through its main gates, where vertical flags (in the distinctive red font adopted for the naming of the exhibition space) refer to Les Abattoirs – FRAC Midi-Pyrénées, again grounding the museum in its location, but this time not the city but the wider region. The only other reference to the slaughterhouses is in the use of the name—this time in the font for the museum but in grey—etched vertically onto the glass of the entrance door. Although there are differences in the ways in which each site arranges entrances, there is a certain similarity in the deployment of linguistic resources. 4.3.3 The gallery spaces Having already discussed the physical arrangement of the exhibition spaces (in Section 4.1), we return to the galleries in the three sites but this time in order to examine the written texts found there.

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FIGURE 15.6 The entrance to Le Lieu Unique.

In La Piscine, written texts which ground the museum in its former iteration abound. Throughout the site, the museum’s logo, which drops the reference to the Musée d’Art et d’Industrie André Diligent, emphasizes the pre-conversion nature of the museum. The logo fixes La Piscine in its topographical place—it includes Roubaix in it—but the elision that sees the museum’s full name disappear anchors the site in pre-transformation purpose. In self-referential texts, such as the sign on one of the walls which recalls the donation to the museum by the textiles merchant Henri Selosse, the museum staff refer to themselves as L’équipe de la Piscine (“The staff of La Piscine”), reinforcing again the notion that the museum is La Piscine, and that the identities are synonymous with one another. As part of reterritorialization processes, this textual layering intensifies the connection between the two iterations of the building. The site’s former purposes are reenacted linguistically throughout the site; the sign pointing up to the first floor display spaces, which overlook the swimming pool, refers to the Galéries du Bassin (“The Pool Galleries”). In the interstices between the main pool and the other former facilities,2 the old signage has been renovated. Therefore, next to the new dining room for the café is a large pair of doors, above which reads the legend Baignoires (“Public Baths”), and also the words Hommes and Dames (“Men” and “Ladies,” respectively). These doors now lead to another exhibition space, and the gender designations no longer apply. There are two processes in play here. First, there has been a deactivation of the meaning, because of the adaptive reuse of the site which challenges the signs’ emplacement (Scollon and Scollon

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2003: 142–44). Second, and in contrast, the retention of Hommes and Dames reactivates the historical memory of the original building and its function. At Les Abattoirs, the name of the museum very rarely reappears in its written form in the galleries, and when it does, it is usually in exhibit labels and posters which refer back to the exhibition space. Beyond the logo on the entrance door, the only other appearances of Les Abattoirs as a form of branding is when information panels alongside exhibition pieces reference the museum. The name of the exhibition space is not a free floating designation; although “abattoirs” as a term translates easily between named languages, the meaning of Les Abattoirs is fixed and designates this specific museum. In other words, the term for abattoirs is not translated into other languages in texts which refer to the exhibition space. For example, the Spanish-language panel (which presented the exhibition on display at the time of the fieldwork) cited “las colecciones de les Abattoirs” rather than referring to the Spanish designation los mataderos. In Nantes, the logo for Le Lieu Unique, which appears on information posters including the opening times and the forthcoming exhibitions, explicitly situates the arts center in Nantes, and highlights its belonging to the Scène nationale, France’s national scheme for public theatres. Given the absence of discursive engagements with the exhibition space’s existence as a biscuit factory, it is unsurprising that there are no textual references inside the galleries. One sign does engage with the architectural history of the venue, but this is the informational sign reminding visitors that the tower, referred to as the tour LU and thereby indexing the biscuit company, is closed. This appearance of LU, in the font used by Le Lieu Unique rather than the biscuit manufacturers, is the only written sign that acknowledges the life of the building before its conversion. It is noteworthy that this sign, although formally produced by Le Lieu Unique on its headed notepaper, is temporary.

4.4 The activation of meaning by people Finally, we adapt Shohamy and Waksman’s fifth level of LL analysis (2009: 324) to consider the ways in which individuals activate meaning and negotiate between the former and current iterations of these three spaces. Activation of meaning is understood here as the ways in which the visitor can trigger alternative or simply new understandings by their engagement with the space under consideration. This process can be kinetic, sensory (such as receptive senses including hearing or seeing), or active engagement (including touch) as part of the recreation of relations between cultures and spaces. This is at its most saturated at La Piscine, where individuals engage with the space as a former swimming pool in ways not replicated at all at Les Abattoirs or Le Lieu Unique. This is in part due to the fact that, at Les Abattoirs and Le Lieu Unique, there is very little with which the visitor can engage. Although there are no signs formally regulating the use of the water in the adapted pool in the main gallery, swimming is not possible, let alone permitted, at La Piscine. The water is not deep enough and the channel not wide enough for any kind of physical activity. On our visits to the site, visitors did not even paddle their feet, and we would expect this not to be allowed, even though there is no signage expressly forbidding it. Visitors do drop down onto the platforms alongside the water in the main pool, but during the periods that the site was observed, no visitor touched the water, either with their hands or by dipping their toes in. This is not to say that the enjoyment of the water

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is completely absent, thanks to the site’s linguistic soundscape (Pappenhagen et al. 2016) which is activated to recall the former life of the building. Every fifteen minutes for thirty seconds, the soundtrack of children playing in a pool is played in the main gallery, evoking the period when the primary function of La Piscine was as a space for swimming. This soundscape occurs against the ongoing audio backdrop of the water flowing from Neptune’s head into main pool, and the repeated recreation of the sound of water and of swimmers enjoying themselves plays an important role in underscoring the former purpose of the building within the current arrangement of the exhibition space. At the same time, and engaging with issues of mobility, bodies, and clothing as part of the LL, the museum protection staff who are stationed across the exhibition spaces wear a uniform provided by and required by the venue management. This uniform is limited to a blue jacket, identifying the protection staff as figures of authority within the museum, and along the right arm sleeve is the two-word legend La Piscine (Figure 15.7). The movement of the protection staff through the gallery and their power as rule enforcers and guardians of both the exhibits and the venue add a further layer of adaptive reuse to this site, with the words La Piscine carried from room to room. Even if largely unremarked by the casual visitor, as part of the wider branding of this space, this detail plays its part in creating and recreating a specific sense of place. Furthermore, the use of this specific uniform can be understood as part of the re-semioticization of the building and the museum protection

FIGURE 15.7 The text on the protection staff ’s uniform.

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FIGURE 15.8 Hélène Angeletti’s fiberglass cow outside Les Abattoirs.

staff are presented to the public as echoes of the life guards who used to be the rule enforcers and guardians of the swimming pool. Given the nature of slaughterhouses, especially in comparison with swimming pools, it would be difficult to imagine ways in which the average visitor could activate meaning through the adaptive reuse of the site via their physical presence. Indeed, Pendelbury et al (2018: 215) refer to the process of adaptive reuse of an abattoir (in Shanghai in their case) as the “aestheticization of the machine for killing” in what they later describe as “strategic forgetting and selective remembrance” (2018: 222). Outside Les Abattoirs on a lawn within the site stands a permanent fiberglass sculpture of a cow, decorated by the artist Hélène Angeletti (Figure 15.8). The cow is owned by the city of Toulouse, and dates from 2012 when the city hosted CowParade, the fundraising and artistic project that began in Zurich in 1998 and has since been taken worldwide. The connection between Angeletti’s cow and the former use of the site in which the statue stands is clear, but visitors’ engagement—based on observation—is limited. Although not expressly forbidden by signage, during the fieldwork for this chapter, visitors did not approach the statue on the lawn, preferring to view it from the nearby path. At Le Lieu Unique, there is no opportunity for visitors to engage with the former biscuit factory; the current iteration is so far removed from its first use that the echoes of biscuit manufacture do not facilitate any kinetic connection between the past and the present.

5 CONCLUSIONS LL research can make a meaningful contribution to the wider discussions over adaptive reuse, as explored in this chapter, as well as to the ongoing engagement with questions of

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reterritorialization. Wong (2017: 174) highlights that “new interventions into the shelltype structure are defined by a minimal interface with the host. Wielding little impact on the existing structures, these architectural actions focus instead on the creation of brand and experience within an impassive host.” Understanding the changing relationship between people (be they residents of Roubaix, Nantes, or Toulouse, or the visitors who pass through these cultural centers) and places which have been deterritorialized is—as highlighted in this chapter—undoubtedly informed by the approaches analyzed here. A critical discourse analysis applied to texts such as promotional material for residential properties in converted buildings provides an important perspective on adaptive reuse. However, the kind of semiotic and LL analysis of adapted buildings— as discussed in this chapter—provides a particularly rich and interesting angle to this question, and complements work undertaken in architecture, heritage studies, and museum scholarship. In Les Abattoirs, Le Lieu Unique, and La Piscine, we see a range of approaches to what Wong (above) refers to as the “host.” Whereas Les Abattoirs and Le Lieu Unique present little evidence of their former purposes as buildings, La Piscine draws particularly heavily on the architectural features of the former swimming pool to activate the new set of meanings as a gallery. The visitor-oriented approach to investigating these sites permits a level beyond the architectural to include a wider range of resources. This starts on a primary level with the act of naming the adapted building. Even when the former function of a building is as unpalatable as the killing and butchering of animals, the naming of a site can connect an earlier iteration of a building with its current use. This naming is reinforced across the towns and cities where the museums are located, with buses stopping at Les Abattoirs, and drivers being directed to La Piscine, even when the buildings no longer serve as a slaughterhouse or a swimming pool. Beyond naming of the site, as significant as this is, written texts, photographs (with or without captions), sounds, and people (in the form of both visitors and exhibition employees) can be activated to make meaning, and importantly make new meanings, in old spaces. The openness of LL research builds on the specific contribution that architectural studies can make by drawing out the discursive links between the past and present purposes. The consistent use of place-branding that explicitly identifies the past life of the building (or the more subtle, playful allusion via the LU acronym) reinforces the bridge between the architectural DNA and the transformation of the sites (if not their exterior shells). This connection is at its most apparent at La Piscine. The bond between the swimming pool and the museum is at its most saturated from a discursive perspective in the branding of the institution, from the identifying information on street directional signs through to the logo and headed notices throughout the site. In the main gallery, which spectacularly and creatively reuses the pool as a feature, the architectural design and the linguistic soundscape are most prominent in invoking simultaneously the former use of the building and its current purpose. LL approaches, with their broad understanding of language to include resources such as architectural features, photographs, and images, and bodies and clothing, can stake a claim to informing discussions of reterritorialization. A range of meanings and possible meanings in buildings adapted for alternative uses can be activated that extend beyond the architectural, and beyond the restoration-conservation continuum, to evoke alternative narratives from sites whose first lives have ended.

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FURTHER READING Pendlebury, John, Y.-W. Wang, and Andrew Law (2018), “Re-using ‘Uncomfortable Heritage’: The Case of the 1933 Building, Shanghai,” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24 (3): 211–29. Shohamy, Elana and S. Waksman (2009), “Linguistic Landscape as an Ecological Arena: Modalities, Meanings, Negotiations, Education,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 313–31, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Tunbridge, J. E. (2007), “The Churchill-Roosevelt Bases of 1940: The Question of Heritage in Their Adaptive Reuse,” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10 (3): 229–51.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. To what extent can we establish a hierarchy of semiotic resources deployed in adaptive reuse? 2. Given that the swimming pool, the abattoir, and the biscuit factory are analyzed from the perspective of the researcher, discuss the potential for exploring adaptive reuse as seen by a visitor or an employee of these sites.

PROJECT WORK 1. Identify a local site whose original purpose has been transformed into something else, and compare and contrast the use of “texts” in their broadest sense within and outside the building. 2. Discuss the online representations of a building which has undergone adaptive reuse. This could involve a study of the semiotic resources used in the building’s webpage, as well as its presence on social media platforms (such as Twitter or Instagram). To what extent do others engage with the building’s former or current purpose?

NOTES 1. The name LU is derived from the surnames of the husband and wife artisan bakers Jean-Romain Lefèvre and Isabelle Utile, whose business Lefèvre-Utile was taken over by their son and named LU in 1882. 2. The complex also included a laundry and a solarium, among other amenities.

REFERENCES Andrieux, J.-Y. (1992), Le Patrimoine Industriel, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Belhoste, J.-F. and P. Smith (1997), Patrimoine Industriel: Cinquante sites en France, Paris: Editions du Patrimoine. Blackwood, R. and S. Tufi (2015), The Linguistic Landscape of the Mediterranean: French and Italian Coastal Cities, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. de Botton, A. (2009), A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, London: Profile Books.

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Castells, M. (2002), “The Space of Flows,” in I. Susser (ed.), The Castells Reader on Cities and Social Theory, 314–66, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Chaoy, F. (2001), The Invention of the Historic Monument, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Colomb, C. (2011), “Culture in the City, Culture for the City? The Political Construction of the Trickle-down in Cultural Regeneration Strategies in Roubaix, France,” The Town Planning Review, 82 (1): 77–98. Evans, G. (2005), “Measure for Measure: Evaluating the Evidence of Culture’s Contribution to Regeneration,” Urban Studies, 42: 959–83. Grodach, C. (2010), “Beyond Bilbao: Rethinking Flagship Cultural Development and Planning in Three California Cities,” Journal of Planning Education and Research, 29 (3): 353–66. Jaworski, A. and C. Thurlow (2013), “The (De-)centring Spaces of Airports: Framing Mobility and Multilingualism,” in S. Pietikäinen and H. Kelly-Holmes (eds.), Multilingualism and the Periphery, 154–98, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latham, Derek (2000) Creative Re-use of Buildings, Volume 1, Shaftesbury: Donhead. Le Lieu Unique (no date), « Le Lieu Unique: une biscuiterie reconvertie. » Available online: http://www.lelieuunique.com/le-lieu-unique (accessed June 27, 2018). Mengüşoğlu, N. and E. Boyacioğlu (2013), “Reuse of Industrial Built Heritage for Residential Purposes in Manchester (1),” METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, 30 (1): 117–38. Milojković, A. and M. Nikolić (2012), “Museum Architecture and Conversion: From Paradigm to Institutionalization of Anti-museum,” Architecture and Civil Engineering, 10 (1): 69–83. Pappenhagen, R., C. Scarvaglieri and A. Redder (2016), “Expanding the Linguistic Landscape Scenery: Action Theory and ‘Linguistic Soundscaping,’” in R. Blackwood, E. Lanza and H. Woldemariam (eds.), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, 147–62, London: Bloomsbury. Pendlebury, J., Y. Wang and A. Law (2018), “Re-using ‘Uncomfortable Heritage’: The Case of the 1933 Building, Shanghai,” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24 (3): 211–29. Sandell, R. (1998), “Museums as Agents of Social Inclusion,” Museum Management and Curatorship, 17 (4): 401–18. Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon (2003), Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Shohamy, E. and S. Waksman (2009), “Linguistic Landscape as an Ecological Arena: Modalities, Meanings, Negotiations, Education,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 313–31, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Sirefman, S. (1999), “Formed and Forming: Contemporary Museum Architecture,” Daedalus, 128 (3): 297–320. Weiss, S. (2009), “Specters of Industry: Adaptive Reuse in Paris as Industrial Patrimony,” Journal of Architectural Education, 63 (1): 136–40. Wong, L. (2017), Adaptive Reuse: Extending the Lives OF Buildings, Basel: Birkhäuser.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A Diachronic Examination and Interpretation of the Street-Signage Transformation in Granada, Spain, during the Transition to Democracy (1975–83) YAEL GUILAT AND ANTONIO B. ESPINOSA-RAM Í REZ

1 INTRODUCTION In November 1975, Spain’s dictatorship, almost four decades old, ended with the death of the dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Ensuing then was “La Transición,” an in-between period of hope and uncertainty about whether Spanish democracy could be restored without bloodshed. The Transition saw a process of re-democratization (Linz 1990: 51–69) that included an attempt to rehabilitate democratic values in public spaces by cautious renaming of streets and places. Two days after Franco’s death, Juan Carlos I was crowned king of Spain, restoring the monarchy after a forty-four-year hiatus. During the initial transition (1975–79), the ex-Francoist UCD (Unión de Centro Democrático) dominated the national political stage. Indeed, the first elections, held in June 1977, awarded the premiership to Adolfo Suarez, a young Falangist from the UCD. The Transition was typified by public consent to the adoption of a policy of amnesia and silence toward the memory of the Civil War and its aftermath. An amnesty for both sides’ political crimes, legislated in 1977 to guarantee a peaceful transition to democracy, “paved the way for the Spanish Parliament to agree to the new constitution in 1978 and turn its back on a period of its history that it was anxious to forget” (Burbidge 2011: 754). The pro-forgetfulness consensus that characterized that time is attributed to the way Spain’s old regime instantly metamorphosed into its new one. At this juncture, the incipient democracy was fragile and supporters of the dictatorship attempted to make a comeback. Thus, an attempted coup d’etat known as 23-F began on February 23, 1981, and ended the next day. Its most visible figure, Antonio Tejero, led the most noteworthy

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event of the failed gambit: a group of 200 armed officers of the Guardia Civil burst into the Spanish Congress of Deputies and held parliament and the cabinet hostage for 18 hours before surrendering the next morning. In 1983, the UCD was voted out as Felipe González’ PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) achieved an electoral victory; it would serve two terms in office. That year marked the end of the Transition. The Movida then ensued—an exalted period in which the spirit of democracy pervaded the public space and changed the way the space was practised. Since Franco’s death, the Spanish public space has been an arena of struggle for democratic remembrance, overtly antagonistic forces and players tussling over clashing beliefs and goals to establish the presence of the historical memory—remembering versus forgetting, reconciliation versus condemnation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, seeking to heal the social fabric versus demanding recognition of the regime’s victims as a condition for such healing. During the Transition, the public space continued to abound with symbolisms that glorified the tyrannical Fascist regime. Street and road names as well as public squares commemorated people and events associated with Franco’s rule. Most municipal mayors and stakeholders remained in their positions, as did police and military officials. The re-democratization of the public space was cautious and slow to be implemented. The case of Granada, capital of Granada Province in the Autonomy of Andalucía, is peculiar because the transitional authorities there in the early 1980s implemented a top-down renaming policy (including design) without major incidents, using old artisanal ceramic plaques (fajalauzas) that focused, at the most, on recovering old and traditional names. It is also remarkable because even today, after four decades and under the Historical Memory Law (HML) that was enacted in 2007, the LL of Spain’s cities and towns continue to reflect the tension between remembering and forgetting, Francoist signs remaining in place. This chapter expands the conceptual and methodological frame of LL studies by combining a diachronic and historical inquiry, oriented in archival research, with the examination, via visual ethnographic and material culture, of the street-signage transformation in Granada during the transition to democracy (1975–83) and its pivotal influence on the city’s subsequent patrimonial image. The renaming of the streets and the act of emplacement of new street signs could be methaphorically considered as a “reterritorialization” of what previously was “deterritorialized” by the Francoist regime. However, this process in Granada seemed to be based on the patrimonial image of the city, an aspect shared by opposing political forces. Since the same patrimonial agency was implemented in a continuum from the former republican administration through to the dictatorial era and democracy, the analysis of the process transcends the simple renaming of streets and shows a complex interaction between “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” of cultural values with respect to the same physical and symbolic territory. As García Canclini (1990) argues, deterritorialization may include reterritorialized manifestations, and the process under local circumstances would articulate “certain relative, partial territorial relocalizations of old and new symbolic productions” (García Canclini 1990: 288). Alongside Pavlenko and Mullen (2015), who considered signs as intertextual objects with historical precedents, and within the so-called material turn in the Humanities (Grassby 2005), we assume that investigations into material culture and the history of the visual mutations of designs and styles of the manufactured signs are intrinsically linked with the diachronic approach to LL, and that they can contribute to the development of multidisciplinary LL research. Following Blommaert (2013), we

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argue that historicity becomes a critical tool for understanding diachronic processes in which the present is invested with meaning through the past. Moving from the synchronic to the historical concept of the space, the street-renaming process can be studied in a wide intertextual context whereby LL analysis will index social, cultural, and political patterns. From this perspective, a multilayered investigation of the historicity, intertextuality, and materiality of street signs in Transition-era Granada will shed light on the discourses, ideologies, practices, and policies that shaped the post-dictatorial public space in Granada.

2 A MULTILAYERED THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Adopting the Foucaultian notion of “regime of memory” (Foucault 1981: 69), we assume that Spain’s post-dictatorial public space reflects a transition not only between political power regimes but also between regimes of memory (Hartog 2015: 101). A regime of memory does more than manage practices of memorialization in a public space (such as renaming streets and redesigning signs); it also regulates the production of society’s discourse about the past—one that shifts between historiography and fiction and includes narratives founded on patterns of memory. Instead of “the rhetoric of ‘total victory’ under Franco’s dictatorship” (Sánchez León 2012: 492–504), the Transition instigated a discourse of “collective and shared guilt” (Sánchez León 2012: 492–504) that threatened to burden the re-democratization of the space. Foucault maintains that history may be read as an intellectual excavation of the radically different discursive formations that govern talk and thought. These discursive formations are metaphorically understood as archaeological layers (Foucault [1971] 1984: 87–90). Foucault’s genealogical history seeks to deconstruct what was previously regarded as unified (i.e., history as a chronological pattern of events emanating from a mystified but all-determining point of departure) while also attempting to identify an underlying continuity that is produced by “discontinuous systematicity” (Foucault [1970] 2004: 58). This concept makes a diachronic investigation of LL more complex and multilayered than a mere synchronized inquiry would be. To further complicate matters, Foucault distinguishes between a “history of the past” and a “history of the present” (Hook 2001: 521–47): “A ‘history of the past’ is strongly anchored in the current socio-political realm [. . .] reproducing as much about the author’s historical and political context as it does about the subject-matter.” Following Foucault, archival inquiry is critical to a so-called history of the present; coinciding with LL methods, it prefers to interrogate the present, to examine its values, discourses, and understandings with recourse to the past as a resource of destabilizing critical knowledge (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982). Complex memorialization, Hartog writes, must take into account “the shifting regimes of historicity” (Hartog in Train 2016: 223) that organize our understanding of “the past” and “the present” (Hartog in Train 2016: 223). Moreover, in contrast to Hegelian philosophies of history, “genealogy” is not a holistic project but a perspectival enterprise. This characteristic links Foucault’s thought to Lefevbre’s conception of space as a trialectical formation consisting of a spatial practice (as the space is perceived in the commonalities and contradictions of everyday life); Representations of Space (discourses about space, discursive regimes of theories, spatial and top-down planning); and Spaces of Representation (discourses of space; “representational space”) (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]: 41–52, 116). Representational space is constructed through media of vernacular historical or invented traditions (Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger 1983) that, of course, are linked to the validity of the different regimes of memory.

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Following Lefebvre’s trialectic, we propose to analyze how the practice of renaming was conducted and accepted/received, how this practice acquired its meaning in the Granada representational (patrimonial) space, and which representations of the space stood behind them. Within the framework of LL studies (Shohamy and Gorter 2009; Jaworski and Thurlow 2010; Shohamy, Ben-Rafael, and Barni 2010), we examine the street-renaming process in Granada’s Transition in reference to the change of regime of power and memory as a set of signifiers, a multimodal text embedded in a public space, “a symbolic system of signifiers with wide-ranging affordances activated by social actors to position themselves and others in that context” (Jaworski and Thurlow 2010: 6). Granada’s LL, we hypothesize, was designed during and after the Transition as a text that mediates meanings for the discourse community, meanings often designed as a hidden curriculum (Machin and Abousnnouga 2014) according to the way different memory regimes interpreted and manipulated the city’s imagery. To be able to capture Granada’s imagery relative to its patrimonial roots as they have been historically constructed since the nineteenth century, we must transcend the empirical present, in which traces of the past remain part of the present LL, by performing a thoroughgoing diachronic analysis (Pavlenko and Mullen 2015). The process of reading “back from signs to practices to people” (Blommaert 2013: 51) will lend meaning to the different strata of the LL and construct the layered discourse of the LL in Granada as fashioned during the Transition. We ask the following: 1. How extensive was the renaming process during the Transition? 2. Who were the agents in the renaming process at that time, and what were their agendas? 3. How did the traditional artisanal design influence both the “reterritoralization” of the old “Granada the Beautiful” imagery and the peaceful re-democratization? 4. How do historical and archival inquiry and diachronic “archaeological” reading help to interpret the renaming discourse within the LL contextual frame?

3 METHODOLOGY For the purposes of this study, we adopted a mixed methodology. First of all a historical methodology was used: archival inquiry (using Granada Archives) by gathering documentation since the first naming policy in the eighteenth century to the Transition period, focusing on the study of the original proceedings of the Granada city council (1978–85); comparative visual analysis of the designs of contemporary and historical signs in situ as well as in museum exhibitions (Casa de los Tiros, Granada Heritage Museum); visual analysis of the design of signs that were renovated/replaced during the Transition, in situ. The visual and material data was processed according to Gillian Rose’s Visual Methodologies (Rose 2012) focusing on three sites: the site of the image, the site of production, and the site of audiencing (Rose 2012: 21). Following Content Analysis (van Leeuwen 2002), the data was coded and categorized. We conducted semistructured, in-depth video interviews with three agents (municipal councillors) who played a significant role in the process, and subsequently analyzed the transcriptions of the interviews according to the Qualitative Narrative approach (Kohler Riessman 2008). We selected both articles from the Transition period and contemporary press articles in order to compare current narratives with the archival records. Finally, Discourse Analysis

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allowed us to trace the structure of the patrimonial discourse in the Transition period in Granada through the diachronic study of the renaming practice.

4 DISCOURSE OF SPACE AND DISCOURSE ABOUT SPACE 4.1 The regionalism’s heritage: A diachronic reading of renaming practices, agents, and agendas 4.1.1 From the Reconquista to the Second Spanish Republic era (1931–36) Adopting a historical archaeological methodology to reconstruct the LL context of the renaming of streets during the Transition, we describe and analyze previous successive changes that left indications and traces of which the present LL is still constituted: from the Reconquista to the liberal era of the nineteenth century, the Regeneration Movement of the early twentieth century, Republican street-renaming, and Franco’s dictatorship and top-down urban policy. Even today, the urban space of Granada reflects the drastic changes that followed the Reconquista, the Christian conquest of the city in 1492. Since then and a fortiori following the religious counterreformation inspired by the spirit of the Council of Trent (1545–63), Granada became a symbol of the Ecclesia Triumphans (triumphant church). The articulation between the physical and the symbolic space remained basically unchanged until the nineteenth century as a “symbolic expression of the privileged linkage of the Catholic faith of the city, definitively exorcised from its Islamic past” (Calatrava & Ruíz Morales 2005: 10.). This urban space was characterized by a profusion of crucifixes, a neighborhood configuration that arrayed erstwhile mosques and synagogues, now converted into churches, around parroquias (parishes), and streets named for parishes or distinguished personalities associated with the new Christian city. The use of plaques to mark space and convert it into spatial text began only in the late eighteenth century. Traces of these practices—the placement of language signs related to the names of parochial districts and blocks—survive as a reminiscent layer of the LL. The crowned pomegranate motif related to the king of Granada, which will become through the years a patrimonial symbol, first appeared in eighteenth-century signs, as exemplified by the tile from the Cuesta de San Gregorio Street (still in situ) (Figure 16.1). Another example is Dalmau’s map from 1796 (included in Figure 16.1)—the blocks were depicted according to the principles of rational cartography as units of the city toponymy differing from the old parochial system.

FIGURE 16.1 Eighteenth-century sign, Block 216, house number 6. Ceramic tile (Photographed by authors in 2016) and Dalmau’s map, 1796 (Archive Municipal of Granada).

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The nineteenth century began with the French invasion of the city and followed with rational urban reforms. At the time, streets were dedicated to politicians, civilian heroes, and ideological values. This practice became an urban mirror of the succession of regimes and the rise and fall of political parties (González Martínez 1987). During the nineteenth century, the bourgeois classes amassed economic and political power and needed new Spaces of Representation that would symbolize their new narrative. The bourgeois urban redesign destroyed much of the medieval city and created a new urban path by, for example, covering the river that meanders through the center of the city. For the first time, the city administration established a consistent style of street signage, the numbering of houses in stone (Figure 16.2) and bylaws relating to the orthography and style of commercial signs and even of tombstones. Marble signs from this era that remain still in situ are sometimes illegible, but even so they serve as an archaeological layer in the ongoing LL as the example from Placeta de Piedra Santa (The Holy Stone Square Figure 16.2). The nineteenth century also witnessed the rehabilitation of the Muslim past under the influence of orientalism. This new reading exhumed the Granada Islamic urban space, and an exotic, harmless, and defeated Muslim heritage can be included and later even rehabilitated on the new Granada imagery. This marked the beginning of a patrimonial local imagery that coincided with incipient tourism attracted by the new narrative and its material vestiges. All these contradictory discourses, including longing for the Kingdom of Granada that had become “just a city” in the new Andalucía of the nineteenth century, converged in the Regeneration (Regeneracionismo) movement of the 1890s. Ángel Ganivet, a diplomat and thinker of that generation, which sought to reinforce Spain’s forgotten Greek-Christian spirit, produced Granada la bella (Granada the Beautiful) (1896), a group of texts that he wrote from his visionary perspective on his birthplace. In this work, Ganivet constructs an imaginary ideal and unreal city of old ideas with new spirit, and perhaps new ideas with old spirit. From the very beginning, however, let it be assumed that my intention is to sing not royal beauties but ideal, imaginary beauties. My Granada is not the one of today, it is the one that could and should be. (Ganivet 1998:33)1 In the 1920s, this popular revival resurfaced under the impetus of a “silver generation of young urbanists, poets, historians, and musicians, some of whom attained international recognition” (Guarnido 1958; Gibson 1998): Federico García Lorca and Manuel de Falla, the philosopher Fernando de los Ríos, and the artists Manuel Ángeles Ortiz and Hermenegildo Lanz. The art historian Antonio Gallego Burín, destined to be a key agent in the dictatorship era, joined the group. Known collectively as “the Rinconcillo” and

FIGURE 16.2 Nineteenth century marble signs that still remain. Example from Placeta de Piedra Santa (the Holy Stone Square). (Photographed by authors in 2016).

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accustomed to meeting at the La Alameda café (González Alcantud 2005), their idea of regeneration had nothing to do with the sentimental, romantic, picturesque, and tragic Andalucía. In the opinion of most of them, the authentic Spanish renaissance should close down the bullfighting (tauromaquia) schools and open schools of public instruction (Soria Olmedo 2007). This intellectual vanguard organized self-commissioned acts in the public space, installing Falajauza-style commemorative plaques, the kind that was typical of Granada Arab ceramics manufacture and that related mainly to the poor classes. The plaques, commemorating people and events within the frame of the new narrative (Escoriaza 2007), were decorated by painters who belonged to their circle and manifested not the revival of old signs but an “invention of tradition” conveyed through memorialization (Blommaert 2013: 120), historicity, language, people, and identity. These practices, used to create a representational space for Granada imagery by mapping the public space with material and symbolic signifiers, were to play a crucial role as a patrimonial stratum in the city’s LL. The Fajalauza tile designed and produced by the Rinconcilist Hermenegildo Lanz dedicated to the romantic poet Théophile Gautier is an example of this practice (Fernández-Almagro 1922). It is remarkable that the pomegranate motif was placed in the center as a patrimonial icon (Figure 16.3). Gavinet’s book, a precursor to the Granada patrimonial discourse of space, was republished many times, including a 1954 edition with a prologue by Gallego Burin. During the Second Spanish Republic era (1931–36), an all-embracing secularization process ensued and acquired visibility through the renaming of streets, squares, and avenues (Viñes Millet 1999). In Granada, however, where no explicit policy relating to the design of signs was promulgated, the renaming reflected the waxing and waning of party political power. The first Republican administration assigned the name of Fernando de los Ríos, an eminent philosopher, pedagogue, and founder of the Institución Libre de

FIGURE 16.3 Fajalauza designed and produced by the Rinconcilist Hermenegildo Lanz. Source of the photo: copy of the original tile, the Andalucian Culture Delegation. Photograted by Antonio García Bascón (García Bascón, 2007).

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Enseñanza, to one of the most important roads, El Paseo de la Bomba, in April 1931. De los Ríos’s name, effaced in 1934, was reinstated in 1936. True to the liberal values that dominated the public sphere, multiple agents were encouraged to participate in constructing LL: several syndicalist associations, the intellectual circles mentioned above, neighborhood organizations, the church, and others (González Martínez 1987). In fact, the toponymy of the city clearly manifested a liberal discourse and the Republican agenda. Instead of the historical royal and Catholic names, a new narrative in municipal nomenclature emerged: Puerta Real (Royal Gate) became Plaza de la Libertad (Freedom Square), Alfonso XIII Avenue (in honor of the king) was transformed into Avenue of the Republic, and so on in the names of Republican thinkers and educators as well as heroes and personages of nineteenth-century liberalism in Spain, Europe, and the Americas. Oppositional voices, given a platform in the newspapers, demanded a moratorium on the “renaming frenzy [. . .] that is wasting municipal resources [. . .] and creating a sense of instability that gives the appearance of being fluid” (El Defensor de Granada, 1931, in González Martínez 1987: 8). In any case, this admixture of liberalism, local culture regeneration, cosmopolitanism, and class solidarity did not last long. 4.1.2 The Dictatorial era (1939–75) After a failed coup d’etat in July 1936 against the established Spanish Republic, Francisco Franco fomented an insurrection against the lawful government—the Alzamiento Nacional. Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, which lasted from 1939 to 1975, began after a gruesome three-year civil war (1936–39) that initially had also been declared a crusade (Reig Tapia 2006). It was just a month after the war began that the coup-affiliated municipal government decided to rename the streets of the city in honor of prominent personalities and events in Spanish Fascism (Figure 16.4; AMG, Bureau of Statistics, File 26, 1936).

FIGURE 16.4 Archival document about renaming of Granada streets at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (August 1936, AMG, Bureau of Statistics, file 26, 1936).

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The authorities’ reasons for this varied. In some cases, it was “because the balillas2 wanted to rip out the plaques violently.” In other instances, the goal was to “remove foreign names” or “interpret the feelings of all those in Granada who gave prestige and renown to our Spain and wished to commemorate their glorious names” (Reig Tapia 2006) The report that advises us on this matter (Archive document AMG, Bureau of Statistics, File 26, 1936) notes the urgent need to replace the names of representative figures of the Republican era with others who were compatible with the Fascist discourse, such as José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falangist Movement, and Jose Calvo Sotelo, a right-wing political figure whose murder helped to precipitate the Civil War. These interventions were proposed at the beginning of the war as a tool of ideological warfare, a way to intimidate and repress the local resistance. The proposal included not only the renaming of streets and places but also the building of a commemorative obelisk and various memorials. By September 1936, eighty-nine streets had been renamed as part of a broader victory narrative, mainly in honor or memory of Fascist heroes and others who were restored to the pre-nineteenth-century liberal and bourgeois discourse. The archive documents reveal that step by step; during the first years of the Civil War, the old king of Granada was reborn through the medium of the symbolic traditional nomenclature. The consolidation of this historicist project culminated in the urban reforms (1939–49) of Gallego Burín, who held municipal and provincial government posts from 1937 to 1951, mostly as the mayor of Granada. Gallego Burín, who had joined the Rinconcillo in the 1920s, promoted a mythical imagery reflecting the idea of a Granada as a space of art. The ideal image of the “promised city” as a Baroque altarpiece “links with past values but [. . .] does not exactly synchronize with Falangist doctrinal horizons” (Juste 1995: 256). This was reflected in the academic and political writings of those associated with the Rinconcillo as well in the group’s urban reforms, including massive renaming of streets and redesigning of signs—a patrimonial approach combining regenerationism and tradition in a contradictory but effective way. Many new names of streets or urbanizations commemorated individuals associated with the regime or significant events that were framed in its discourse. Examples are 18 de Julio Street, marking the date of the insurrection, and Admiral Carrero Blanco Street,3 formerly the traditionally named Camino de la Ronda. Plaques bearing Francoist symbols, such as the yoke and the five arrows (Ortega Oroz 2015), festooned the façades of many new buildings that were put up with support from the National Housing Institute and used for protected housing (Figure 16.5). Francoist iconography covered more and more public space and participated in the semiotic mechanism of meaning construction. The imagery of “Granada la bella” was realized in and through the Fascist dictatorship, meaning that it transcended traditional and memorializing imagery. We find some of the best examples of this imagery not only in the old-new naming of streets but also in the choice of plaques, materials, writing style, and decorative motifs. From 1944 to 1946, Gallego Burín ordered the installation of 900 new street signs, a very large number (AHM Gr, file Fomento 535). The new revised model (in a few specific cases) was placed near stone signs that had been in use since the nineteenth century or the first years of the Civil War (Figure 16.5). The additional different strata participated in configuring Granada’s LL during the dictatorship period. It is difficult to read this landscape diachronically because the synchronic appearance is the product of destroyed layers and not only of covered, semi-covered, or contested ones. This is an example

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FIGURE 16.5 Examples of street signs from the early Franco years, bearing Fascist symbols in situ. Fascist street signs exist side-by-side with signs from the Transition era (Pablo Picasso street sign). (Photographed by authors in 2016).

of what Foucault calls genealogical discontinuity, a fracture in the diachronic array of LL’s layers that produce a complex synchronic view. Thus, a simple description cannot give us conspicuous answers about LL’s configurations in an archaeological sense. We must go beyond the ethnograpic method to the archival and the historical inquiry in order to discover, for example, how some or most of the eighteenth-century stone plates were gradually disappearing as the city was being transformed. According to the archival documentation, the stone old plates of the streets were demolished together with the old buildings. In certain religious or civic institutional buildings, the old plates remained only because the successive reforms did not affect them. The patrimonial value that they acquired in the twentieth century is due to a later, vernacular, localistic awareness, and not due to official protection. Both disappearance and conservation were the product of the city’s development, a bottom-up dynamic. This applies to both the eighteenth-century plates and the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artifacts. According to Lefevbre trialectical theory, Granada’s toponymy produced multilayered Spaces of Representation. Conversely, during the Transition the plates that had names related to the Franco regime were either destroyed or painted over. Both the Francoist period and the Transition period executed a top-down policy, but referring to different ideological representations of the same patrimonial space. Following Gallego Burín’s traditional redemptory vision, the Fajalauza was chosen. The new ceramic signs were produced in an artisanal manner and were associated with the romantic concept of genius loci, symbolizing the revival of the local culture and crafts (Garzón Cardenete 2006). The first revival of the Fajalauza and its passage from the domestic realm (clay pots and utensils) to the public space was promoted, as noted above, by the silver generation of artists and intellectuals.

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Through these mediators, Fajalauza tiles (Figure 16.3), used for memorial, funeral plaques and building nameplates, became signifiers of local identity as well as treasures for tourism and tools for economic development.4 The street signs, commissioned by Gallego Burín from the ceramic artist Ruíz de Luna, invoked two different designs that established a class and ethnic differentiation and effectively determined the city’s sociolinguistic map. One design was placed in the Albaicín neighborhood, the poor quarter with its Muslim roots, the Moorish cradle of the Fajalauza, as a reminder of the eighteenth-century signs with their crowned Granada (Figure 16.6). The style of street-name signs installed in the bourgeois center of the city emphasized the renewal of Granada by sporting the motto “I was born with the crown” (Nací con la corona), referring to the old Kingdom of Granada as it appeared on the shield of Spain (Figure 16.7). The text and the design refer to Granada’s formative role in the development of Spanish national identity, the essential identity of Granada in the view of Gavinet, Burín, and others. The adoption of patrimonial traditionalist imagery by Gallego Burín’s proactive urban administration during the Civil War and the early Francoist period had an enormous influence on what would happen in the Transition (Gallego Burín 1995 [1928]). The dictatorship’s strategy in Granada treated the LL as a complex imposed historicity and memorialization text in two ways. First, it subjected the immediate past and the liberal-parliamentary era of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to collective amnesia through oblivion or silence. Where possible, all physical vestiges of this past were destroyed (as in the removal of names and street signs). Four decades of revision of the diachronic reading caused deep ruptures

FIGURE 16.6 Street sign made by Ruiz de Luna in the 1940s with crowned-pomegranate. (Photographed by authors in 2016).

FIGURE 16.7 The shield of Spain, in the top the crowned emblem of the kingdom; Eighteenthcentury ceramic tile with crowned-pomegranate; Twenty century ceramic tile with crownedpomegranate. (Photographed by authors in 2016).

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among the different LL strata, just as Foucault argued in his archaeological metaphor, therefore bringing on, in his terms, a genealogy discontinuity. Second, the consequent regime of imposed memories led to the “abduction of memory” (Cuesta Bustillo 2002: 20–21) and the revision of memory, establishing continuity between the Spanish imperial past, in a distant although modern era, and the New Spain’s project. Gallego Burín moved on from the representation of space that had been put forward by his generation (and by his murdered colleagues, such as García Lorca) to representational space. For this reason, from an LL perspective, his vision of imagery and his top-down policy would have a crucial influence on the way the renaming of streets in the Transition would be made, realized, and accepted by different actors and social sectors. It was not only a consensual patrimonial discourse into which the leaders of Granada’s Transition were born but also a comforting system of images designed to ease the difficulties of the time.

4.2 “La Transición” in Granada and the renaming process: Extent, agency, and agendas Fascist repression took a grave toll on Granada (city and province) during and after the Civil War (Gibson 1998). The persona of García Lorca, the walls of the cemetery, and the execution venues in the ravine of Viznar were part of a collective memory that long outlived Franco. The years preceding the dictator’s death, followed by those of the Transition, had made visible an opposition that centered on several fronts: organized labor, academia, and the political, religious, and cultural systems (Gómez Abad 2016). The years of the Transition would also see the rise of a threatening and intimidating prevalence of the Far-Right groups in the streets. The first municipal elections in the new era of democracy (April 3, 1979) handed the parties of the Left a landslide victory.5 The new city council held its inaugural session on April 19, 1979, with the Socialist Antonio Camacho taking office as mayor. The first interventions that affected collective memory, reflecting the guiding spirit of the Transition, occurred then and there. The Socialist Juan Tapia dedicated “a memory to those socialists who participated in the last democratic Granada City Hall”6 and the communist Damián Pretel affirmed that “in our opinion, the city council officials have no responsibility for the excesses and arbitrariness that took place in Granada in these past forty years” (AMGR, Leg. 11644). Pretel also proceeded to remove the yoke and arrows from the city council façade. Effacement of symbols of the dictatorship in Granada proceeded gradually in the initial years of democracy (1979–83). On May 15, 1979, the town council ordered the removal of a plaque on the Town Hall façade that referred to the Fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War (AMGR, Leg. 11549). On December 7, 1982, responding to fomenting of tension by anti-Franco groups and the Far Right concerning a plaque bearing the name of Avd. de Jose Antonio (the patriarch of Spanish Fascism) the whole council agreed to censure these acts and affirm “[its] willingness to collaborate with and ensure the agreement of all Spaniards in strong condemnation of all acts that seek to resurrect attitudes of confrontation that our people in greater part reject.” On December 21 of that year, a commission was named to study the renaming of the city streets.7 The University of Granada, fearing vandalism, placed a sculpture in homage to Fernando de los Ríos, a university professor and an outstanding figure in Spanish socialism in the first half of the twentieth century, in the interior of a closed garden.

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At first, the changes also affected main streets in which the names of figures from the dictatorship era were replaced with those who had served theretofore or with new names associated with the previous democratic period. Jesus Quero, a councillor representing the Socialist Party, explained that in his opinion, although the plaques with the Francoist names were installed on the walls, most of the people did not use them or even did not know that that had been the official name. Quero confirmed that most of street names were changed in the first period of transition and emphasized that “there was no controversy because the names of the patanegra Francoists had not been incorporated into the civic language” (Quero 2016). For Quero, the new names were meant to reflect the recovery of Granada’s history: What my generation did should be thought of as a kind of return or, perhaps, the recovery [our emphasis] of the history of Granada, for example, removing the la Cruz de los caidos and naming the place after the Duke de Palatino, who built the railroad to the Sierra Nevada. The crucifix that had symbolized the Fascist fallen soldiers or supports was moved from its original central location to the cemetery. (Quero 2016) Quero conducted the operation furtively, explaining that this was necessary “to avoid confrontations with Fascists and, no less, with local police, almost all of whom were affiliated with ‘the Movement’” (Quero 2016). José Miguel Castillo Higueras, a councillor representing the Communist Party who was central in the new policy of renaming public spaces and developing the new-old memorialistic discourse of the city, concurs. When the first municipal commission on street renaming was elected in late 1982, Castillo Higueras was one of those chosen. He explained the process: One of the most urgent issues was to change street names that were symbolic of Franco’s regime with the intention of recovering [our emphasis] the previous name. Actually, what we wanted was to recover the names as well to avoid friction and to remove all vestiges of the Franco regime as quickly as possible. In that period, 1979–1982, the city including City Hall underwent a renewal: we repaired the original courtyard, its tiled plinth, ladder, trim, and grille, and the staircase including the original pomegranate with the crown, the symbol of the Kingdom of Granada. We felt that our mission consisted of the recovery of Granada’s imagery, the recovery of traditions and their adaptation to the new era of democracy. What was good for the first and second Republic was perfectly good to the third. [. . .] I saw no contradiction with tradition, even with the restoration of the public festival celebration of the Capitulation—the Día de la Toma de Granada—on the anniversary of the city’s Reconquista on January 2. On the contrary: it belongs to history and we must be able to know our own history by walking through the city. The city is an open book. (Castillo Higueras 2016) Evidently, a central question at that time was the image of the city: how Granada would reidentify itself upon the transition to democracy. This patrimonial perspective was confirmed by another Socialist councillor at the time, Antonio M. Claret García, who defined the purpose of the new policy as the recapture of Granada’s own identity. The objective of the city administration (ayuntamiento) was to unify the civic identity with the democratic new identity. Not only did the names change but there was also a significant physical transformation of Granada between 1979 and 1983. The city council strove to be the representative for all citizens and for this reason it was very important that the tradition was raised as a pillar of the new democratic regime.

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Under those conditions, the rupture with the Francoist regime would be [were] more effective and less affective. (Claret y Garcia 2016) Claret García remarks, “It was definitely a rupture with the regime but not with the history of Granada.” According to his testimony, the revision of neighborhood and street names aroused little if any serious interest at the time. It seemed as though anyone who opposed democracy remained silent (Claret y Garcia 2016).

TABLE 16.1 Renewal of Street Names 1982–85 Street Names in Dictatorial Period

The New and “Old Restored” Street Names during the Transition Period

ALCAZAR DE TOLEDO

POETA GRACIÁN

ALFEREZ GALIANO

JUAN RAMÓN JIMENEZ

ALFEREZ PROVISIONAL

RIBERA DEL GENIL

ALTO DE LOS LEONES

EL POLINARIO

BANDERAS DE CASTILLA

MARGARITA XIRGU

BRUNETE

FRAY HERNANDO DE TALAVERA

AVENIDA CALVO SOTELO

AVENIDA DE LA CONSTITUCIÓN

AVENIDA CAPITÁN FERNÁNDEZ

DUQUE SAN PEDRO DE GALATINO

CONQUISTA

TOMAS LUIS DE VICTORIA

AVENIDA 18 DE JULIO

AVENIDA PABLO PICASSO

PLAZA 18 DE JULIO

MIGUEL HERNANDEZ

FIEL INFANTERIA

OSCAR ROMERO

PLAZA GENERAL SANJURJO

PLAZA DEL CAMPILLO

AVENIDA JOSE ANTONIO

ACERA DEL DARRO

LA HAZA

MAESTRO MORENO TORROBA

MATIAS MONTERO

ATAULFO ARGENTA

PEÑON DE LA MATA

SOCRATES

PRIMERO DE ABRIL

LEON FELIPE

RUIZ DE ALDA

ANTONIO MACHADO

SARGENTO PROVISIONAL

PINTOR ZULOAGA

TERCIO DUQUE DE ALBA

DOÑA ROSITA

TERCIO DE LA LEGIÓN

BERNARDA ALBA

CARRERO BLANCO

CAMINO DE RONDA

CALLEJON DE NEVOT

OBISPO HURTADO

PLAZA GENERAL FRANCO

PLAZA NUEVA

Source: González Martínez (1987).

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TABLE 16.2 Thematic Analysis of 2,379 Granada Streets Names 272 720

1053

personalities history geography religious

370

Source: González Martínez (1987).

At that time, the yoke and arrows, the symbols of the Fascist iconography that decorated the façades of many buildings, especially those of the housing-union work project, began to be removed. The attempt being made was to unify the city administration behind the historical symbols, and not simply to replace Fascism with Republicanism— “not to flip the tortilla over.” [. . .] There was a feeling of fear in the air. This is why Fernando de los Ríos was honored by the erection of a small monument in the botanical garden; nobody dared to put it outside in the open public space. (Claret y Garcia 2016) After the street-renaming commission came into being in 1982, old street signs were gradually removed or just renamed with new ones. Sometimes the old and the new street sign placed side by side, mostly with no disturbance of the peace. The twenty-seven street names that had been changed during the lengthy Franco dictatorship were revised again and, in most cases, restored to their previous or traditional names (Table 16.1). In the past 40 years only 47 out of 2,379 streets in Granada (including lanes, passages, roads, alleys, road, squares, avenues, etc.) have been given new names associated with democratic values and local, national, and international struggles.8 True to the patrimonial approach that the Left and the conservative wings shared during the Transition, the municipal authorities encouraged local crafts and new workshops such as Encarnacion and Blas Alguacil to produce street signs in the style of Ruiz de Luna (the main designer in the dictatorship era under Gallego Burin’s local leadership) but to a mass product standard. In many cases, the painting of lime over the wall cannot mask the Francoist names and the symbols that they convey. This substructure of the LL represents the genealogical discontinuity of the history when layers from different historical periods emerged, therefore representing a palimpsestic wall that refused to be covered or buried under the new strata. The final closure of the replacement of the old memorialist discourse with the new one took place on December 6, 1983, with the installation, on one of the main boulevards of the city, of a monument as a tribute to the new democratic constitution of 1979, reenacting a project envisaged in 1832, but never carried out, in homage to the first Spanish democratic constitution of 1812. In this manner, the democratic past combined with the Transition present to affirm the new narrative.

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5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION As the archival documentation demonstrates, the re-signing of street names as an act of rehabilitation of democratic values was gradual—a sensible approach given the atmosphere of intimidation that accompanied the first period of the Transition. The municipality commission on re-signing was established in late 1982, not at the beginning of the Transition, and was composed of members of all parties. Even though the policy was consensual, it was implemented in the intimidating presence of Far-Right groups. The proactive players were the members of the new city council, in which a majority belonged to the political Left with the approval of the UCD, a center-right party that had led the Transition. During these years, the conservative party (the Democratic Coalition, soon to be renamed the Popular Alliance and today the PP—Popular Party) had not attained municipal representation. The yoke and arrows that symbolized the Falange Movement were removed from the city council façade in 1979 by the first elected authorities, after Spain forged its pact of oblivion and amnesty. From a linguistic and semiotic landscape perspective, one may interpret this action as a drastic rupture with the dictatorial regime, an indispensable move to mark the regime as having been left behind. The more gradual renaming of streets, in contrast, related to the sense of recovering traditional imagery as a tool toward a civil and democratic reconciliation based on a common past, even if it was the product of cultural engineering—as the foregoing diachronic analysis has shown it to be. The small number of street names (fewer than thirty) that were changed by the dictatorship and the renaming of nearly all of them in the 1980s may be considered a factor in the peaceful process. At this point, however, the role of the Fajalauza tiles and their patrimonial style should be taken into account at least as much as the adoption of traditional names and the small number of items included. Gallego Burín’s representation of the Granada space, reflected among other things in the revival of the Granada Fajalauza, was carried on by the Transition leaders’ generation. Assuming that this style and design had been officialized by the dictatorship, but not designed by it, we may state that they adopted “discontinuous continuity” along with a patrimonial discourse and a Granada identity of their own. Unlike Gallego Burín, through whom reference was made exclusively to the ancient Kingdom of Granada, the new leaders aspired to recover the liberal tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to incorporate it into the new narrative, as demonstrated through the construction of the Monument to the Constitution—designed in the nineteenth century but built in the 1980s as a symbol of the Transition to the Constitutional Democracy. The recovery of the old craft of the Fajalauza and its adoption for the reshaping of signs has been the hallmark of the toponymy of Granada’s LL ever since the 1980s. The return to and imitation of the old 1940s style, including the symbol of the pomegranate and the crown, may also be interpreted as a symbolic statement in terms of Granada’s own identity apart from the Andalucía narrative, as has been promoted during the democratic era. In their interpretation of the process of renaming streets and reshaping signs from the present (i.e., a Foucaultian present history) by local agents of the Transition, one may acknowledge that this recovery of the city’s “Granada la bella” imagery carries more weight than the demand for the rehabilitation of the regime’s victims or the canonization of the Republican heroes. Following Lefevbre’s trialectical space concept, we can affirm that their spatial practice, while being one that may be called “renaming” or renewing, took place in a continuous representational space and in accordance with a given representation of the space. The diachronic inquiry, using archival sources and tracing physical evidence in the urban space of Granada, allowed us to work from a three-dimensional perspective (space,

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time, and memory) that corresponds to Lefevbre’s trialectic and combines historicity with synchronic examination. Granada’s toponymic discourse from the sixteenth century onward sheds light on important layers of the process of re-memorializing a public space. The practice of renaming during the transition to democracy in Granada, like similar processes elsewhere, was in fact a re-memorialization practice embodied in the Fajalauzas and their iconographic symbolism.

FURTHER READING Blommaert, J. (2017), Engaging Superdiversity: Recombining Spaces, Times and Language Practices, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Guilat, Y. and A. E. Ramirez (2016), “The Historical Memory Law and Its Role in the Redesign of the Semiotic Cityscapes in Spain: The Case Study of Granada,” Linguistic Landscape. An International Journal (LL) 3 (2): 245–74. Preston, P. (1984), The Triumph of Democracy in Spain, London: Methuen.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. How does the chapter conceptualize the relationship between the multilayered strata of LL? 2. The chapter makes use of diverse methods of data collection. What kind of sources were used and what is their contribution to LL, both in methodological and in disciplinary terms?

PROJECT WORK 1. The memory of a city can be interpreted through the study of street toponymy, which can be complemented by an ethnograpic approach. Design an LL study of your city (or neighborhood), using a mixed methodology, and provide supportive arguments for the use of the methods that you combine. 2. The LL is constituted by layers, similarly to an archaeological site. Identify an LL site and reconstruct its diachronic layering. Develop a narrative through an observation of the present signs and of the traces of the past. Justify the methods used in data collection.

NOTES 1. All translations from the original Spanish are the Authors’ own. 2. Balilla was the name adopted by Italian Fascist youth groups. The inclusion of this term in a document from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, before Spain’s own Fascist youth organization was founded, is an indication of the early introduction of terminology influenced by Italian Fascism. 3. Don Luis Carrero Blanco, First Duke of Carrero Blanco and Grandee of Spain (1904–73), was an admiral in the Spanish nationalist navy and a longtime confidant of Franco’s. After Franco’s victory, he became one of the dictator’s closest collaborators as well as chief of naval operations. He was assassinated by members of the ETA group. 4. In Granada, all these elements were integrated at the Museum Casa de los Tiros, an institution dedicated to history and popular culture. In 1929, a regional exhibition of modern art at this museum (Escoriaza 2006; García Bascón 2006) helped Fajalauza to regain its appreciation.

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5. The center-Right Democratic Union (UCD) Party earned eleven mandates; the Partido Socialista Andaluz (PSA) six; the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and the Communist Party (PCE) three; and the Left-oriented Granadina de Trabajadores (CGT) one. The conservative Right either failed to clear the electoral threshold or gave its votes to the UCD. 6. The last democratic mayor before the Civil War, Manuel Fernández Montesinos—a socialist and a relative of Federico García Lorca—was shot in the Granada cemetery in the summer of 1936. 7. AMGR, Libro de actas de la Comisión Permanente, December 1982. The commission was formed by representatives of all political parties that participated in the municipal government. 8. They include Margarita Nelken, Salvador Allende, Alejandro Otero (principal of the University of Granada/UGR), Salvador Vila (an earlier principal of UGR who had been assassinated by the regime), Fernando de los Rios, Pablo Picasso, Federico Lorca, and Margarta Xirgu. (González Martínez 1987).

REFERENCES Bell, P. (2002), “Content Analysis of Visual Images,” in Van leeuwan and carey Jewitt (eds.), The Handbook of Visual Analysis, 15–17, London: Sage. Blommaert, J. (2013), Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity, Bristol, UK; Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters. Burbidge, P. (2011), “Waking the dead of the Spanish Civil War: Judge Baltasar Garzón and the Spanish Law of Historical Memory,” Journal of International Criminal Justice, 9: 753–81. Calatrava, J. and M. Ruíz Morales (2005), Los planos de Granada 1500–1909, Granada: Diputación. Castillo Higueras, J. M. (January 15, 2016). Interview with author. Claret y Garcia, A. M. (January 8, 2016). Interview with author. Cuesta Bustillo, J. (2002), “Tiempo y recuerdo: dimensiones temporales de la memoria política en España (1936–2000),” in C. Navajas Zubeldia (ed.), Actas del III Simposio de Historia Actual 1: 17–52, Logroño, October 26–28. Dreyfus, H. L. and P. Rabinow (1982), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press. Escoriaza, E. (2006), “Arte, industria, tradición y museos,” in E. Escoriaza (ed.), Cerámicas de Manuel Ángeles Ortíz, 35–44, Granada, Museo Casa de los Tiros. Escoriaza, E. (2007), “La generación de plata. Primeros pasos de la vanguardia en Granada,” in La generación de plata, primeros pasos de la vanguardia en Granada, 61–121, Granada: Junta de Andalucía: Caja Granada. Fernández-Almagro, M. Á. (1922), “Un azulejo en honor de Gautier,” El Noticiero Granadino, September 4. Foucault, M. ([1970] 1981), “The Order of Discourse,” in R. Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A PostStructuralist Reader, 48–78, Boston, London, Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1970]1981. Foucault, M. ([1971] 1984), “Nietzsche, genealogy, history,” in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader, 87–90, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gallego Burín, A. (1995 [1928]), El turismo en Granada. Memoria que, sobre la importancia y las necesidades de éste, presenta el subdelegado del Patronato en Andalucía, Ed, Fasc: Junta de Andalucía. Ganivet, Á. (1998), Granada la bella, Granada: Colegio de doctores y licenciados. García Bascón, A. (2006), “Cerámicas de Manuel Ángeles Ortíz,” in E. Escoriaza (ed.), Cerámicas de Manuel Ángeles Ortíz, 11–22, Granada: Museo Casa de los Tiros. García Canclini, N. (1990), Culturas híbridas: estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad, Mexico D.F.: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes/Grijalbo. Garzón Cardenete, J. L. (2006), “Cerámica de Fajalauza,” in E. Escoriaza (ed.), Cerámicas de Manuel Ángeles Ortíz, 23–34, Granada: Museo Casa de los Tiros.

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Gibson, I. (1998), Vida, pasión y muerte de Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), Barcelona: Plaza y Janés. Gómez Abad, F. G. A. (2016), De la rebelión al abrazo: La cultura y la memoria histórica entre 1960 y 1978. Granada: Diputación de Granada. Grassby, R., Spring (2005), “Material Culture and Cultural History,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 35 (4): 591–603. González Alcantud, J. A. (2005), La ciudad Vortice, Lo local, lugar fuerte de la memoria en tiempos de erancia, Barcelona: Anthropos. González Martínez, J. (1987), “El callejero granadino. Algunos aspectos de su nomenclatura,” Gazeta de Antropología, 1987 (5). Retrieved from http://www.ugr.es/~pwlac/G05_07Jose _Gonzalez_Martinez.html Hartog, F. (2015), Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time, New York: Columbia University Press. Hobsbawm, E., and T. Ranger (1983), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hook, D. (2001), “Discourse, Knowledge, Materiality, History: Foucault and Discourse Analysis,” Theory and Psychology, 11 (4), 521–47; also at London: LSE Research Online. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/archive/956, September 2007. Jaworski, A., and C. Thurlow, (2010), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, London: Continuum. Juste, J. (1995), La Granada de Gallego Burín 1938–1951. Reformas urbanas y arquitectura, Granada: Diputación. Kohler Riessman, C. (2008), Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences, Boston: Sage. Lefebvre, H. (1991 [1974]), The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell. Linz, J. (1990), “The Perils of Presidentialism,” Journal of Democracy, 1 (1), 51–69. Machin, D. and G. Abousnnouga (2014), War Monuments and the Changing Discourses of Nation and Soldiery, Oxford, New York, Sidney, New Dehli: Bloomsbury Academic. Mora Guarnido, J. (1958), Federico García Lorca y su mundo, Buenos Aires: Losada. Ortega Oroz, E. (2015), “Entre el yugo y la flecha. Identidad nacional y género en la representación cinematográfica de la Sección Femenina (1937–1945),” PhD. diss, Rovira i Virgili University: Tarragona. Pavlenko, A. and A. Mullen (2015), “Why Diachronicity Matters in the Study of Linguistic Landscapes,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1–2), 114–32. Quero, Jesus (January 8, 2016), Interview with author. Rabinow, P. (1984), The Foucault Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Reig Tapia, A. (2006), La Cruzada de 1936: Mito y memoria, Madrid: Alianza. Rose, G. (2012), Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage Publications. Sánchez León, P. (2012), “Overcoming the Violent Past in Spain,” European Review, 20 (4), 492–504. Shohamy, E. and D. Gorter (2009), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, New York/ London: Routledge. Shohamy, E., E. Ben-Rafael, and M. Barni (2010), Linguistic Landscape in the City, Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Soria Olmedo, A. (2007), “El Rinconcillo (y Federico),” in La generación de plata, primeros pasos de la vanguardia en Granada, 17–35, Granada: Junta de Andalucía: Caja Granada. Train, R. W (2016), “Connecting Visual Presents to Archival Pasts in Multilingual California,” Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal 2: 3 (December 23): 223–46 (24). Viñes Millet, C. (1999), Historia urbana de Granada, Granada: CEMCI.

SECTION IV

Experimenting Space

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A Methodological and Pedagogical Framework for Designing L2 Student-Based Linguistic Landscape Research HIRAM H. MAXIM

1 INTRODUCTION As the field of LL continues to expand, it is not surprising that there is growing interest in the pedagogical possibilities of involving second language (L2) learners in LL research. After all, within L2 studies there has long been an interest in engaging learners with the language as it is used in everyday communication. One could perhaps cite the first examples of this interest as early as the 1950s with the onset of audiolingualism and its attempt, albeit long since debunked, to mimic conversational language use through scripted dialogues and pattern drills. From there the L2 profession in the 1970s experienced the so-called communicative turn and its emphasis on “natural” language use and acquisition, which then evolved into the proficiency movement of the 1980s with its focus on engagement with “authentic” materials found out in the real world beyond the L2 classroom.1 Up until this point in its historical development, the users of the target language who were serving as the de facto models of language use for L2 learners all belonged to the unchallenged monolithic category of “native speakers.” Beginning in the 1990s the shortcomings of this approach were highlighted, perhaps most notably by Cook’s (1992, 1999) notion of the multicompetent L2 user and Kramsch’s (1997) argument for acknowledging the “privileges” of the non-native speaker. Not surprisingly, the viewpoint that fledgling bilinguals were not “deficient” in their L2 use but in fact were privileged in their ability to draw on more than one language system to communicate came at a time in Western history marked by increased migration and language contact as well as contestation throughout the Western world, triggered in large part by the fall of the Iron Curtain. At the same time as these geopolitical developments, there were also technological changes that greatly expanded and facilitated the media with which people were able to interact with each other. In their now groundbreaking

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treatise, a collection of new literacy scholars known as the New London Group (1996) recognized the potential impact of these media-related changes and, in response, argued for the need to develop the citizenry’s “multiple literacies” that would allow for successful participation in society. Moreover, and by all accounts not coincidentally, L2 research experienced a “social turn” characterized by the central belief that language use is inherently social practice (Firth and Wagner 1997). As a result, research into L2 teaching and learning needed to account for the role of the cultural and situational context and its participants in L2 development. For L2 studies, these different yet related developments—the reimagining of non-native status; the increased global migration; the expanding technological opportunities for connecting with others; the social semiotic of language use—encouraged further consideration of ways to help learners interact with the language used by actual speakers in meaningful contexts. For that reason, the public texts of the LL have become attractive (re)sources for L2 learners and practitioners. As Shohamy and Waksman (2009: 328) so effectively described, these texts can be seen as “tips of icebergs” that reveal a “deeper and more complex meaning which are embedded in histories, cultural relations, politics and humanistic inter-relations.” As a result, they have been integrated into the L2 classroom in a number of ways. Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte (2013), in their presentation of a L2 student-based LL project, provide a critical overview of the existing scholarship on using LLS for language learning, highlighting the studies’ contributions and limitations. In chronological order, they cite Cenoz and Gorter’s (2008) work as one of the earliest studies to bring the language learning potential of the LL to the profession’s attention through their description of five possible areas where LLS could benefit language learning: incidental learning; pragmatic competence; multimodal literacy skills; multicompetence; and the symbolic and emotional power of language. However, as Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte (2013) remind the reader, there is no practical, empirical exploration of this language learning potential. They next present Sayer’s (2010) oft-cited study that engages EFL students in Mexico with the use of English in the LL, pointing out the similarities to Cenoz and Gorter (2008) in that there is no “student analysis of linguistic landscapes” (p. 105). Additional works cited include Thornbury’s (2017) blog that encourages L2 learner engagement with the LL and Rowland’s (2012) LL research project with EFL learners in Japan. In responding to both cases, however, Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte (2013: 105) wish for further exemplification and analysis of students’ actual “experiences of doing linguistic landscape research.” To address these shortcomings, Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte (2013) designed a LL research project that aimed to, in addition to having students explore the LL of Seoul, Korea, better understand students’ experience and learning in such a project. Applying narrative analysis to the deliberations and discussions of three undergraduate students during their participation in the research project, the authors were able to document the students’ experience and learning in the project. In particular, the authors noted how “at the most fundamental level this research project led these students to reconsider how they use language and how language is used around them” (Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte 2013: 112). Thus, while not about L2 learning per se, this study as well as the other pedagogically oriented works cited by Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte (2013) highlight the important opportunities but also the remaining potential for L2 teaching and learning in the LL. Specifically, three components of L2 learner-based explorations of the LL remain under-examined and merit further investigation: (1) explicit attention to research methodology; (2) directed engagement with scholarly literature; and (3) systematic

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attention to L2 development. The first item, explicit attention to research methodology, is not a surprise to LL researchers. As a relatively new and burgeoning field, LL has understandably had to spend considerable time and attention on methodological approaches to LL research.2 For instance, as Zabrodskaja and Milani (2014: 2) portray in their pithy review of LL research, the gradual shift from large-scale, quantitative studies to smaller-scale, qualitative approaches that transcend “the purely linguistic element of public texts so as to also grasp their multimodal and multi-semiotic nature” brings with it significant methodological considerations about the objects of study, the forms of analysis, the scope of the project, and the context of language use. In another instance, a review of the programs for recent annual LL workshops (e.g., LL7 in Berkeley, California and LL8 in Liverpool, England) reveals that roughly one-third of all presentations attended to some degree to methodological considerations. With such energy and attention focused on LL methodology, L2 learners engaged in research in the LL also need to be aware of the methodological issues if they are expected to both understand and contribute to the field. Compounding this need is the educational environment for this chapter’s LL project, namely, collegiate L2 education in the United States. Within US higher education, the study of a second language has long held a firm place in the humanities due in large part to the traditional emphasis on literary and cultural study within the discipline. However, within this disciplinary context there has not been much systematic attention directed at socializing learners into the disciplines’ or even humanities-based methodological practices. Consequently, for L2 learners in US higher education engaging in LL research there is the double imperative to attend explicitly to research methodology, brought on by both LL’s evolving methodological practices and the absence of disciplinary methodological clarity in collegiate L2 instruction in the United States. The second under-examined item in pedagogical approaches to L2 learning in the LL, directed engagement with scholarly literature, follows logically from the previous point in that where there is limited attention to research methodology; there would also not necessarily be any significant or systematic study of scholarly literature. While English-speaking L2 learners would not have the difficulty reading the scholarship that the ELL participants in Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte (2013) reported, they would in most cases not have had extensive experience engaging secondary literature in their L2 classes, even if written in English. Therefore, assisting L2 learners in finding, reading, and applying discipline-specific scholarship to their own research remains a significant lacuna within the profession. The third item in need of further investigation, systematic attention to L2 development, is a long-standing issue in L2 studies that, in the American context, can be traced in large part to the well-documented curricular bifurcation in US collegiate L2 education between so-called “language” courses at the lower levels of instruction and so-called “content” courses at the upper levels (see, among others, Byrnes 1998; Kern 2002; Maxim 2009a). Whereas lower-level L2 instruction has traditionally mapped thematic content onto a grammar-based syllabus and thus provided learners with a guided and articulated, albeit Structuralist, approach to language development, upper-level L2 instruction has largely proceeded under the assumption that the organized attention to L2 learning at the lower levels was somehow sufficient and thereby precluded the continuation of any coherent approach to L2 instruction in more advanced classes. Considering the fact that lower-level instruction typically is limited to roughly 200–250 contact hours and during that time L2 learners invariably achieve just intermediate/B1 level of competence, it is indeed

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surprising that there has not been more interest in continuing a systematic approach to L2 instruction into the upper levels. As Maxim (2004) points out, however, there are obstacles in place to prevent such an approach. For starters, there is the traditional personnel configuration within L2 departments in which tenured literary and cultural studies scholars without much pedagogical expertise in L2 language development staff the bulk of upper-level classes. In addition, there has been the general dearth of scholarship on advanced L2 development that would help the field better understand the pedagogical foci needed to facilitate advancedness. Without such expertise, L2 education has remained challenged to establish level-appropriate instructional frameworks for advanced learners (e.g., Byrnes, Maxim, and Norris 2010; Byrnes and Sprang 2004). The LL studies outlined above involving L2 learners highlight this challenge. Whereas Rowland (2013) indicates that LL research can lead to the development of the five areas presented by Cenoz and Gorter (2008), there is no clear picture of the type of pedagogical framework that facilitated the learners’ development. A similar situation is evident in Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte (2013), who claim that learners developed their language abilities and communicative skills without explicating the specific instructional approach for facilitating that development. Looking to address the three aforementioned under-examined focal areas in L2 learner-based LL research, this chapter presents the framework as well as student work of a LL research project conducted by intermediate learners of German as part of their three-week study abroad in Vienna, Austria, in 2015. The chapter will begin by situating the project within the study abroad program. Then, the project itself will be outlined with specific attention on the dialectical process the learners underwent to establish a research methodology for their respective projects and the role of scholarly literature in informing that process. Next, examples from a student’s project will demonstrate the application but also the reconsideration of the methodology in light of the realities of the actual project. A presentation of the genre-based instructional approach used to assist learners in their completion of a report in German about their projects will follow with specific attention to developments in the learners’ L2 meaning-making capacities. Throughout this process students’ work exemplified main themes of the volume by continually questioning the parameters of the project as well as seeking openings and new avenues for addressing their research questions. The chapter will close with suggestions for further work needed to more fully realize the potential of L2 learner-based research in the LL.

2 EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT The LL research project took place in 2015 during the second half of a six-week summer study abroad program in Vienna, Austria, for undergraduate learners of German at Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia, USA). Now in its forty-sixth consecutive year, the program aims to provide participants with an academic immersion experience in the Germanspeaking world. Highlights of the program include three hours of daily instruction, room, and board with a Viennese host family, and an active extracurricular program focused on exploring the city of Vienna and its surroundings. Two levels of instruction are offered each summer, intermediate and advanced, and the program is divided into two halves or courses, each lasting three weeks. The intermediate course is open to students who have completed two semesters of college-level German (roughly 100 contact hours), and the advanced course is one level higher and open to students who have completed four semesters of college-level German (roughly 200 contact hours). Because of the intensive

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nature of the program, each three-week course covers a semester’s worth of material (forty-five contact hours), and participants receive credit for two semesters of German upon successful completion of the program. The second half of the advanced course was entitled “Integration in Austria” and focused on historical and contemporary issues related to immigration in Austria and Vienna. Specifically, the course examined three main topics over the three weeks: (1) an exploration of the history of immigration to Austria and Vienna and its current situation; (2) the specific nature of Jewish immigration, emigration, and exile in Vienna over the past several centuries; and (3) the semiautobiographical portrayal of immigrant life in contemporary Vienna by the Turkish-Austrian author Melih Gördesli. For each topic the five students in the class completed daily reading assignments with accompanying worksheets, a weekly writing assignment, and a weekly formal oral presentation. Most class meetings were held at a classroom space in central Vienna, but twice a week the class would spend at least part of the time in the city exploring sites relevant to the topic at hand. Even though this course took place in the second half of the program and the students had already been in Vienna for three weeks, most of the destinations of the class excursions were new to the students.

3 INTRODUCING LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE INTO THE L2 CLASSROOM In addition to the regular class meetings and assignments, beginning on the third day of the course (i.e., roughly equivalent to the third week of a semester), the instructor began introducing the class to the idea of conducting research in the LL. The class had spent the first two days examining the history of immigration to Austria and Vienna and was now focused on the current status of immigration in Vienna. The instructor started the conversation by asking the class for suggestions on how to study and understand immigration in contemporary Vienna. In response to this initial question about ways to better understand immigration in contemporary Vienna, students were quick to suggest consulting the demographic data that they had just accessed a day or two earlier to learn more about the history of immigration to Austria. Now, however, they were interested in discovering in which districts immigrants currently lived and how the immigrant population was distributed throughout the city.3 Once the class identified several districts with high percentages of immigrants, they were then tasked with devising a plan for studying those districts more closely. Appreciating the database’s initial assistance with their research but now recognizing its limitations, the students in the class did not need long to propose conducting some kind of fieldwork to examine the daily manifestation of immigration in the selected districts. At the same time, they realized the challenges of such work, having never conducted field-based research in their L1 and certainly not in their L2. Although not detectable initially, there was also the potential concern that students would wonder about the relevance of such research for language learning. The instructor thus used this moment of reflection and even consternation in the class to formally introduce the field of LL as an approach for investigating whether and how immigration is reflected within a defined space through public language use. To help exemplify this approach, the instructor took the class out of the classroom and walked with them along a commercial street, asking them to take note of the public texts around them. Not surprisingly, both because they were all native English speakers and because they were in the touristy first

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district of Vienna, the students pointed out right away the prevalence of English in the LL. While this initial step increased their awareness about public language use, it also raised several questions for the group about LL’s relevance and applicability for the course: ●

How does one begin to establish a dataset of public texts?

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Even if a dataset is established, how does one begin to analyze the texts?

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How do these public texts facilitate understanding immigration in Vienna?

With the class just about over for that day, the instructor assigned two additional tasks for homework: (1) take at least one photograph a day of a public text and upload it to a shared folder and (2) read Zabrodskaja and Milani’s (2014) short overview of the field of LL.4 The next day in class the group discussed Zabrodskaja and Milani (2014) and began to assemble issues to consider when designing a LL research project. They were quick to see the benefit of both quantitative and qualitative approaches to LL research although, as they already had noticed the previous day, quantifying public texts can be more challenging than one might expect. They also appreciated Zabrodskaja and Milani’s discussion of the dynamism of the LL now that they had been in Vienna for over three weeks and had observed changes around them in public language use. One student who was interested in graffiti in the city was particularly curious about this aspect of the LL. Other aspects of LL scholarship mentioned by Zabrodskaja and Milani (2014) were less obvious to the learners and required further discussion. To begin with, the idea that the LL could be a place for implementing, contesting, and even resisting language policy was new to the students. It was clear that they had not thought very extensively about the purpose and ideology behind public texts. Moreover, as residents of the United States, where there is no centralized language policy, they arguably had not had to consider a country’s language policy before. Another novel notion was the recommendation that one could move beyond the purely linguistic element of public texts to consider the landscape’s multimodality. Suggesting that sounds, smells, clothing, tattoos, or graffiti all could be considered part of the public landscape proved both intriguing and daunting to the group at first, for they all understood relatively clearly at the outset that LL research invariably involves some kind of data collection, and they quickly jumped to the potentially messy logistics of any data gathering of this nature. A third methodological issue raised by Zabrodskaja and Milani (2014: 2) was the “post-humanist orientation” with its emphasis on “understanding the human-sign interface [. . .], exploring the different and very complex ways in which individuals perceive and engage with public signage in their everyday lives.” Because the students indicated that they did not necessarily think that often about their engagement with public signage, the instructor presented them with a series of questions in German adapted from Malinowski (2015) who drew on Trumper-Hecht’s (2010) application of Lefebvre’s (1991) conceptualization of perceived, conceived, and lived spaces to construct LL-based language activities: ●

● ●

As you move through an area or neighborhood, what evidence in the LL do you notice that indicates socioeconomic, linguistic, or cultural change? What are the boundaries or borders that demarcate these changes? How do you feel as you cross these borders? Do you feel more at home in one area than another? Why?

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As one of their homework assignments for the next day, students were asked to address these questions on their way home that afternoon. Because they all lived in different districts throughout the city, they each had different experiences and some did not necessarily even notice change as they made their way from their neighborhood to the area where class was held. Nevertheless, the effort to question borders, open spaces, and raise awareness of the constructedness of their surroundings had begun. Although not covered explicitly by Zabrodskaja and Milani (2014), one other initial methodological consideration that the instructor introduced was the need to draw from multiple data sources as a way to triangulate one’s sources. The instructor exemplified this approach in their daily discussion of the photographs that each class member had taken the day before. In addition to seeking the students’ input on each photograph, the instructor also looked to open up the spaces being examined by asking what other sources would be helpful to consider in order to come to a better understanding of the sign in question. Again, once prompted, the students were fairly quick to mention other perspectives to consider, that is, shopkeeper, resident, tourist, native Viennese, recent refugee, male, female, young, old. At the same time, they commented on the challenge of accessing these perspectives, particularly in the short time left in the program. In light of these reservations, it was time to start outlining the specifics of the project. The project was presented and framed as a small-scale effort to examine immigration in Vienna through its LL. As a first step, the students were directed to select a location in the city where public texts reveal some manifestation of immigration. Because of the limited amount of time available to conduct the project, they were told to choose a location that was manageable in terms of its size and number of public texts. In the end, all five students chose locations near where they lived and limited their focus to just one commercial street or one public square in their respective neighborhoods. Having selected a specific location, the students were ready to start their investigation. However, rather than following a prescribed set of steps to complete the project, students were encouraged through an iterative process with their classmates and instructor to establish a methodological framework that would allow them to come to some conclusions about their chosen location. In a small way, this approach was an attempt to achieve a more symmetrical relationship between teacher and student and thereby reduce the power differential (Norton 2000). It also resembled approaches followed in studio-based pedagogy (e.g., Kuhn 1998) that seeks to encourage students to think like designers. Specifically, Kuhn (1998) describes several components of the studio method that played a central role in shaping the LL project: (1) project-based work on complex and open-ended problems; (2) rapid iteration of design solutions; (3) frequent formal and informal critique; (4) consideration of heterogeneous issues; and (5) the use of precedent (p. 65). In such an approach, the instructor saw himself as facilitator and guide who needed to create pedagogical space in class each day to help students think through their next steps as part of the process in establishing a tenable research design. Invariably, this involved asking what the most immediate and pressing research issues were that needed to be examined. For this project, the students could see that their first order of business was to study their chosen location to determine the data that they would collect and ultimately analyze. While a key component of this project was to grant students latitude in designing their approach, it was also important for them to see that research design does not happen in a vacuum; rather, it draws on existing work and precedents established in the field. For that reason, coupled with each class discussion of methodology was exposure to relevant scholarship that would help guide their design process. For example, in this first step in

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determining data sources, Barbara Soukup was invited to present on her ELLViA project, an ongoing investigation of the use of English in the LL of Vienna (Soukup 2016). Through this presentation students were able to see, albeit on a much larger scale, the criteria and categories used to build a database of public texts. Specifically, they noted how Soukup used demographic data to select neighborhood districts in the city for investigation that represented the diversity of the city in terms of age, degree of multilingualism, and degree of tourism. Perhaps because of the quantitative focus of Soukup’s study, each student came back with a plan to count, quantify, and categorize signs. In the next iterative stage of the design process, therefore, the students considered whether quantification was sufficient or if they needed to include multiple data sources and triangulation. To that end, they reviewed Zabrodskaja and Milani’s (2014: 2) discussion of the post-humanist orientation to LL work that examines the “human-sign interface,” and they were also assigned Trumper-Hecht (2010) for her discussion of how members of a cultural group construct their subjective representation of space along sociological and relational rather than demographic or geographical lines (p. 248). Following this reading, the class discussion focused on how to access those group representations of space for inclusion in the project and proposed as one solution interviews with host families to gain their perspective on the landscape. With a sense of how to gather data for the project, the next issue to arise was the classification and analysis of the data. To provide some guidance, the instructor assigned on consecutive nights the work by Leeman and Modan (2009), Dagenais et al. (2009), and Pennycook (2009). Although readings in English are not typical for an upper-level language studies course, the absence of LL scholarship in German and the need to expose students to the current scholarly discourse necessitated these assignments. Leeman and Modan’s (2009) investigation of the LL of Chinatown in Washington, DC, offered the students several important guideposts to consider as they shaped their own project. To begin with, the authors’ discussion of the constructedness and commodification of a landscape was a new concept for the students and provided them with useful direction in considering their own locations, particularly in cases where English was present. The students had noted the frequent use of English in the Viennese landscape but were challenged in coming up with an explanation for its prevalence. Leeman and Modan’s (2009: 336) argument that “LL should be understood in terms of the symbolic functions of language that allow people to use language to index identity and present a certain image of self” coupled with their reference to work by Ben-Rafael et al. (2006) and Cenoz and Gorter (2006), who found that English often signified modernity or cosmopolitanism, resonated with the students and allowed them to see for the first time the potential symbolic power of their native language. Another aspect of the article that deepened the students’ methodological thinking was Leeman and Modan’s problematization of traditional categories for classifying signs. In particular, their evidence that highlighted the blurred boundaries between top-down and bottom-up signage as well as their efforts to trace the evolutional function of Chinese signs from purely communicative to largely aesthetic provided students with a more nuanced way to evaluate public texts. One further topic in the article that contributed to the establishment of a methodological framework was the authors’ reminder of the multiple meanings of public texts, which “underscores the limitations of numeric calculations of the ration of signs in one language to those in another, without attention to context or meaning” (Leeman and Modan 2009: 351). Students thus found themselves realizing once again the need to consider different perspectives and question boundaries about their chosen location in order to capture the landscape’s polysemy.

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The following day’s class discussed Dagenais et al. (2009) and their investigation of the presence of multilingualism (or lack thereof) in the LL. Specifically, in their reading the students gleaned four themes that they thought to be directly relevant to their own projects. First, because of their interest in the use of English in the LL, the students found the authors’ suggestion to “critically interrogate folkloristic and romanticized images” (Dagenais et al. 2009: 257) in the landscape as a helpful way to approach the symbolic appropriation of English. Second, the students could see the relevance of the authors’ argument that the LL “highlights relationships of power between dominant and subordinate groups” (Dagenais et al. 2009: 257), particularly as they struggled at times to find evidence of multilingualism within the Viennese LL. Third, while the students were not always finding examples of the languages of immigration populations represented in the LL, they knew from their multi-week residence in the city that the populations were present and thus appreciated the authors’ observation that the most visible public texts do not always “reflect the local language practices” (Dagenais et al. 2009: 257). The challenge then before the students was to expand their understanding of place and look for other semiotic systems that potentially reflected the linguistic vitality and diversity of the neighborhood. The last theme that resonated with the students was the consideration that for those residents surrounded on a daily basis by multilingualism there is the possibility that it is so “commonplace” or “banal” that it does not register with them (Dagenais et al. 2009: 264). Although the students had not yet interviewed their host families about the immediate LL, they realized that they needed to prepare themselves for the possibility that their host families did not critically engage with the public texts in their neighborhood. Originally, Dagenais et al. (2009) was to be the last scholarly article discussed, but because students commented repeatedly on the prevalence of graffiti in the city and one student even expressed interest in analyzing the graffiti along a thoroughfare near his host family, Pennycook’s (2009) analysis of the semiotics of graffiti was assigned to provide the students with a framework for considering less traditional semiotic systems. Having never viewed graffiti from a scholarly perspective, the students appreciated the opportunity to consider this different textual form and were particularly captivated by Pennycook’s reference to Milon’s (2002: 87) characterization of graffiti as “the translation of social unrest” (qtd. in Pennycook 2009: 308). Thus, as transgressive acts of meaning making, graffiti for Pennycook also has an agentive component to it for the graffiti crews who are able to give expression to the challenges they face in society. While they were hard-pressed to identify the social unrest in the graffiti, the students began to see graffiti as a legitimate semiotic system for consideration in their own project. Through this iterative exposure to targeted secondary literature, the students were able to gain a broader and deeper understanding of LL research methodology to support their own small-scale projects. Having already considered points in the city to investigate, the students finalized their respective locations and started work on their projects, each exploring a different angle for how the Viennese LL can serve as a window into the city’s multiculturalism: graffiti in a working-class neighborhood; the use of English in the tourist-heavy central district; the semiotics surrounding Soviet war memorials; the multilingualism on one main thoroughfare in a neighborhood with a large immigrant population; and the comparison of two main thoroughfares in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. To highlight the results of the student work and the degree to which they incorporated methodological approaches from their readings and discussion, the last project will be presented in more detail.

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4 STUDENT APPLICATION OF LL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The project in focus was a comparative study of two commercial thoroughfares in Vienna’s 5th district, Margareten. The student Susan was familiar with this location because she walked this neighborhood on a regular basis on her way from her host family’s apartment to different mass transit stops. However, she had only considered it as a topic for this project once the class started exploring the city’s demographic data and discovered that 44 percent of the district’s residents were foreign born. Although she had noticed evidence of multiculturalism on her walks through the neighborhood, she herself would not have reported such a high percentage. As she tried to come to terms with this difference between her perception and the reality of multiculturalism in the district, Leeman and Modan (2009) as well as Dagenais et al. (2009) helped her see that her perceptions of the neighborhood were shaped very much by her daily encounters with a constructed space. Moreover, the observation by Dagenais et al. (2009) that the LL does not necessarily reflect the languages used in the community impressed upon her the power relations on display in the LL. Now more aware of the complexities of the neighborhood, she was eager to investigate further and got started with a quantitative exploratory study of the languages used in the LL along a two-block commercial stretch of one street that she walked very day, Pilgramgasse. Essentially confirming her initial perception of the neighborhood, she found that over 90 percent of the signs on this street were in German, and the only other languages present were English and Italian. Following studio-based pedagogy, the daily classroom exercise was for each student to report in German their latest findings as well as any concerns or issues they were facing in their project. When Susan reported the heavy preponderance of German, she and the class discussed the situation and proposed two possible explanations: this one street was in fact frequented almost exclusively by German speakers and/or, drawing on Dagenais et al. (2009), other languages are present, just not visible. To test this latter hypothesis, Susan proposed spending that afternoon walking the same street but this time listening for languages spoken. The class discussed different options for capturing the spoken languages, and Susan decided to spend fifteen-minute segments at four different locations: two different bus stops and two different intersections. Important to interject is that the central focus of these class discussions was not to design a flawless approach for capturing the soundscapes but rather to develop the students’ methodological acumen for addressing research questions. Although she followed the approach suggested in class for measuring the spoken languages in the neighborhood, Susan returned the next day to report that during her one hour of listening she heard only German spoken. Frustrated by the apparent monolingualism in a neighborhood that was supposed to be almost half foreign born, Susan and her classmates brainstormed about possible next steps. Although they discussed possible additional data sources to consider for capturing a deeper picture of the Pilgramgasse (e.g., a walking interview with a community member, as suggested by Trumper-Hecht 2010), the students questioned the boundaries of her project and wondered if she should not open up the space of her inquiry by investigating a different street in another part of the district. Susan indicated that she occasionally shopped for groceries on a different street that had more ethnic food stores, Siebenbrunnengasse, and decided it would be worthwhile to start investigating the LL of that street. After

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spending the afternoon studying the visible signs of one two-block segment of the street, Susan reported the next day the following quantitative findings: ● ●

●

only 28 percent of the signs were solely in German; 48 percent of the signs were multilingual with the languages represented including English, Spanish, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, and Croatian; 61 percent of those multilingual signs were in German and a language other than English.

Having discovered on the Siebenbrunnengasse evidence of multiculturalism that seemed to affirm the demographics for the district, Susan began her analysis of these two noticeably different streets by postulating to the class that, although the demographic data indicated close to half of the district was foreign born, the district was divided into neighborhoods that revealed separation rather than integration of foreign-born residents into the German-speaking population. Drawing on some concepts discussed early in the course, Susan even advanced the idea that “parallel societies” (Parallelgesellschaften) were being established within the district. The class appreciated Susan’s initial hypothesis, but they also knew from their daily discussions and readings that each hypothesis needed to be tested further for validation. The class discussed possible approaches, and Susan proposed interviewing her host mother as a longtime resident of the district for her candid views on the two streets. That weekend Susan used a small dinner party organized by her host mother to interview her and the other guests about the district. All four of the guests, including the host mother, were native German speakers from Vienna at or near retirement age who had lived in the district for most of their adult life. When asked about their relationship to the district, they all indicated they could not imagine living anywhere else in Vienna but they also commented how the district had changed in recent years due to gentrification and rising rents. Susan then asked them about their typical routes through the neighborhood, and they all indicated they frequented Pilgramgasse and other streets to the north that led to the city center. When Susan asked them about the Siebenbrunnengasse, they all felt unqualified to say much about it because they rarely, if ever, went there. Although they had very little experience with the street, they found it strange that Susan would be conducting a research project about the street. They indicated that they were aware that the street was frequented by foreign-born residents and pointed to the increase in immigration in the 1990s from the Balkan states as a period when the demographics of the district shifted, but their interaction with the resident immigrant population in the district where they had lived most of their lives was minimal. Using these resident interviews as an additional data source, Susan felt more confident in her initial assessment that parallel societies had taken shape within the 5th district, but she also recognized that her study was just an initial small-scale investigation into a complex and dynamic sociocultural situation. Following the model that she had noticed in the scholarly articles, she thus brainstormed with her classmates about possible next steps for such a project. First, she suggested that the study could extend beyond the commercial sector to include analysis of noncommercial institutions, such as schools and clubs, to ascertain the degree of integration within the district. Second, she acknowledged that additional interviews would thicken the description of the residents’ interaction and movement within the district. Last, she realized that a more representative investigation of the district needed to include more than just segments of two streets.

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Through this iterative process of completing the project, Susan and her classmates were guided in their methodological thinking and development. To begin with, they drew from and ultimately applied arguments and procedures from the secondary literature. To be sure, the students read just a small fraction of the scholarship available and they themselves were not required to find the studies, but they could see concrete applications of the scholarship for their own projects, and they also began to see their work as part of a larger discourse in the field. Second, they began to appreciate the centrality of research question(s) for framing and structuring such projects. Third, they gained experience both in determining the size and scope of a research project and in recognizing its limitations. There is no question that the short duration of the course placed severe restrictions on the types of projects they could conduct, but in having to face constraints and make logistical decisions, the students experienced a fairly standard component of field-based research. They also experienced the importance of questioning the parameters of their project and the need to be open to revisions to their original plan. Fourth, they recognized the importance of seeking multiple data sources in order to cross-check and validate assumptions and findings. Although a brand new concept for them at the outset of the course, triangulation became one of the most cited terms by the end of the three weeks. Fifth, they came to appreciate the importance and power of collaboration in research, particularly when one is delving into new material and conceptual frameworks. The intensive nature of the program meant that students spent a lot of time with each other anyway, and such a close-knit atmosphere lent itself effectively for frequent brainstorming and collaborative feedback sessions. Moreover, because the LL was so new to all of them, they appreciated having each other to share ideas and seek input for their individual projects.

5 FOSTERING LL-BASED L2 DEVELOPMENT THROUGH GENRE Having conducted their small-scale studies, the students now had to write a report in German on their project. While the students had been using German exclusively up until now, with the exception of the outside scholarly readings, there had not necessarily been any systematic attention to their language development. At this stage of the project, therefore, attention focused on specific components of advanced written German by following a genre-based approach to L2 writing development. Mirroring the approach that runs throughout the undergraduate German curriculum at Emory University (Maxim et al. 2013), the instructor provided the students with a model of the type of report that the students were asked to produce. In this case, the model text was a scholarly article in German by Cindark and Ziegler (2016) that explored the visibility of multilingualism in the German city of Dortmund. While certainly relevant for their own projects, the article was seen primarily as a resource to be mined for lexicogrammatical and textual features that could be appropriated in their own reports. Adhering to the general principles of genre-based pedagogy (Rothery 1996), the class focused first on the article’s cultural and situational context by identifying the potential users and purpose of the text along with its content focus and tenor (i.e., the relationship between the text’s users). The students were able to indicate relatively quickly that this text was written by scholars for the academic community to present an investigation of a sociolinguistic phenomenon in Dortmund, Germany.

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The next step in this pedagogical procedure was to identify the text’s schematic structure in order to provide the students with an organizational framework for structuring their written report. This task proved relatively straightforward for the students because Cindark and Ziegler (2016) followed a relatively standard outline for social scientific research articles and identified each new section with clearly formulated headers: 1. Introduction 2. Historical and current background of the study site, the industrial Ruhr area of Germany 3. Research design 4. Presentation and discussion of results regarding “visual multilingualism” in Dortmund 5. Conclusion 6. Bibliography The class discussed the relevance of this outline for their own projects and noticed right away how helpful this structure would be in organizing their own presentation. The subsequent step was to move from the textual level down to the sentence level of the text to identify specific linguistic features in the text that were central in helping the authors achieve their communicative purpose. Because of the short duration of the course, the class focused and identified rhetorical features used to articulate just one to two prominent themes or concepts in each section of the article: 1. Introduction a. Description of the field of LL (e.g., “A young, much-discussed international field of research that is labeled ‘linguistic landscapes’ and that examines the visibility, distribution and situation of written language in public, urban spaces,” Cindark and Ziegler 2016: 133)5 2. Historical and current background of the study site, the industrial Ruhr area of Germany a. Temporal markers to lay out the history of a region (e.g., “Since the start of the Industrial Revolution,” “starting in the middle of the 19th century,” “in the period after World War II,” “up until the ban on labor recruitment in 1973,” “the period around 1990,” Cindark and Ziegler 2016: 134–45) b. Lexicogrammar for describing immigration (e.g., “X is one of the most important areas for migration in Germany,” “the continuing industrial growth caused growing demand for laborers,” “the immigrants of Turkish descent represent the largest immigrant group,” “the groups of immigrants reflect a very heterogeneous background,” Cindark and Ziegler 2016: 135–36) 3. Research design a. Presentation of research question (e.g., “To what extent does the visible linguistic diversity correlate with the linguistic-demographic diversity of a specific city district?” Cindark and Ziegler 2016: 133) b. Lexicogrammar, including the passive voice, for describing research procedures (e.g., “Informational, directional, business, and street signs as well

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as transgressive flyers and graffiti were noted,” “to investigate the perspective of the producers of signs,” “three focus groups each with five participants were interviewed about their interests and motivations,” Cindark and Ziegler 2016: 137–38) c. Terms for describing the location under study (e.g., “The district runs along the A40 highway,” “the district north of the A40 is marked by a high concentration of non-German speakers,” “the district under investigation consists of residential, industrial, and commercial areas,” Cindark and Ziegler 2016: 137–38) 4. Presentation and discussion of results regarding “visual multilingualism” in Dortmund a. Lexicogrammar for presenting statistics (e.g., “The most frequently noted discourse types were with 47% the commercial and with 41% the transgressive discourse type,” “the names on signs can be categorized the following way,” “the percentage of the population that is foreign born is 13% in Dortmund and 43% in Neumarkt,” Cindark and Ziegler 2016: 139–40) b. Rhetorical markers for comparing different parts of a district (e.g., “Whereas in Dortmund . . . , in Horde . . . ,” “the data reflects X but not to the extent represented in Y,” Cindark and Ziegler 2016: 140–41) 5. Conclusion a. Rhetorical devices for introducing concluding comments (e.g., “In conclusion,” Cindark and Ziegler 2016: 150) b. Rhetorical devices for addressing limitations of the study (e.g., “To what extent X is an indicator of Y needs to be investigated further,” “a greater range of participants need to be interviewed,” Cindark and Ziegler 2016: 150) Familiar and equipped with this small collection of lexicogrammatical and rhetorical features as well as the overall structure of the model genre, students were now expected to appropriate some of these textual properties into their own reports. To their credit, all five students made a concerted effort to draw on the genre analysis as they drafted their own reports in German. It is beyond the scope of this chapter, but the idea of textual borrowing or appropriation as a learning strategy, while in many ways central to a genre-based pedagogy and certainly a concept that has a long history in the field dating back to Bakhtin’s (1986) work on speech genres, remains questionable to some practitioners (Barks and Watts 2001) and even to students (Maxim 2009b). Therefore, that the students were willing to consider the model text as a resource for their own language production needs to be seen as not necessarily typical or expected behavior by instructed adult L2 learners. However, their willingness to borrow textually is perhaps not as surprising in light of how challenging and time-consuming they described the project on the open-ended course evaluations. Although the evaluations unfortunately did not elicit any more specificity than that, one could speculate that the novelty as well as the difficulty of the project created a need among the students to seek concrete support in completing the assignment.

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Evidence of their textual borrowing revealed itself at the textual and sentential levels. Textually, all five students divided their respective reports into the same six sections as the model text. At the sentence level, Susan’s report helps to exemplify their borrowing practices. In her introduction, for example, she draws on the terminology in Cindark and Ziegler (2016) to describe LL as a “new field of research” (ein neues Forschungsfeld) that examines language use in “public spaces” (öffentliche Räume). She then uses temporal markers to describe the history of immigration in Vienna (e.g., “Since the 16th century” [seit dem 16. Jahrhundert] “after World War II” [nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg]) as well as appropriate lexicogrammar to present statistics (e.g., “The percentage of the population that is foreign born is 44% in the 5th district” [der Ausländeranteil im 5. Bezirk beträgt 44%]). In her description of the research design, she displays good use of the passive voice to describe her procedures (“data was collected” [Daten wurden erhoben], “spoken languages were recorded” [gesprochene Sprachen wurden aufgenommen]), but in her description of the researched area she relies more heavily on her own formulations rather than on the textual model. In her discussion section she effectively uses different comparative discourse markers to relate one street to the other (“whereas . . .” [während . . .], “in comparison with . . .” [im Vergleich zu . . .], “in contrast to . . .” [im Unterschied zu . . .]). Finally, in her conclusion she deviates from the rhetorical style of the textual model to focus almost exclusively on the limitations and next steps of her project. In the end, it is difficult to indicate the degree to which the model text influenced her own writing without further corroboration. For instance, exit interviews with the students were not conducted nor did the course evaluations probe this issue. However, in this early iteration of this pedagogical approach the level of the students’ textual borrowing is arguably secondary to their becoming familiar with the practice of viewing others’ texts as potential resources for their own L2 production. Only by working with these students on subsequent projects that used such a genre-based approach would it be possible to ascertain the degree to which they responded to this practice and saw it as useful scaffolding and guidance for their own L2 development.

6 CONCLUSION By no means a linear process, this iterative effort was an attempt to engage students in the LL, raise awareness about social scientific research methodology, and provide generic and linguistic support for advanced L2 writing development. There remains much more that needs to be examined to understand the students’ reception and implementation of this approach and there are certainly different methodological paradigms and scholarly directions to emphasize in class, but in the end the focus of this approach is very much on guiding L2 learners to understand not just what they say in their second language but also how they say it. To accomplish that goal, the argument of this chapter has been that there needs to be consistent and systematic explicit attention throughout the pedagogical process to the desired methodology while also allowing instructional space for the students to engage each other in methodological discussions. One could easily imagine a more “efficient” approach in which students receive a guidebook with the methodological steps already laid out for them, but the collaborative, iterative approach outlined here sees a real necessity in having students work through the steps themselves with the support of their instructor and classmates. In a way, this apprenticeship into methodological thinking has the potential to provide the basis and guidance for learners’ subsequent L2 encounters either in or out of the classroom.

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FURTHER READING Byrnes, H., H. H. Maxim, and J. M. Norris (2010), “Realizing Advanced L2 Writing Development in Collegiate FL Education: Curricular Design, Pedagogy, and Assessment,” Modern Language Journal, 94 (Monograph). Derewianka, B. (1990), Exploring How Texts Work, Newton, NSW, Australia: Primary English Teaching Association. Malinowski, D., H. H. Maxim, and S. Dubreil, eds. (Forthcoming), Language Teaching in the Linguistic Landscape: Mobilizing Pedagogy in Public Space. Mahboob, A. and N. Knight, eds. (2010), Appliable Linguistics, London: Continuum.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. In light of the possibilities for language learning in the LL, discuss possible approaches for facilitating L2 development in the LL. Which abilities and modalities would be emphasized? Which types of input could be leveraged for language development? How could learners engage the input? 2. This chapter focuses on developing learners’ methodological literacy. Discuss the degree to which the necessary and essential components of social scientific research have been considered and included in this model. Is this approach to raising methodological awareness comprehensive enough for linguistics students? Are there other issues to consider and include in this pedagogical model?

PROJECT WORK 1. As a way to introduce learners to LL field work and to raise their awareness about the subjectivity associated with interpretive work, have all learners walk the same stretch of a particular street and record in writing and photographically their impressions of the street. In the following class session compare and contrast their observations for the purposes of highlighting their different perspectives and demonstrating the challenges of ethnographic field work. 2. Picking up on the idea of triangulation of data sources for LL research, develop a possible research design that incorporates multiple data sources for the purposes of capturing a fuller picture of public language use in particular space.

NOTES 1. For further reading on the history of L2 instruction see Bernhardt (1998); Richards and Rogers (2001). 2. The capitalization of Linguistic Landscape follows the approach suggested by Malinowski (2016: 101) that “Linguistic Landscape” (LL) is used when referring to as an area of study, and “linguistic landscape” when referring to a “geographic/semiotic field of meaning-making activity.” 3. The term “immigrant” is not used in official government data in Austria or Vienna. Depending on the database, residents are instead classified by three, at times overlapping, categories: citizenship, country of origin, or “migration background” (Migrationshintergrund).

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4. There are many excellent articles that provide an overview of the field of LL (e.g., Shohamy and Gorter 2009; Gorter 2013). Zabrodskaja and Milani (2014) were selected for this course because their brief yet effective and up-to-date introduction to the field worked well in this short and intensive course. 5. All translations from the German completed by the author.

REFERENCES Bakhtin, M. M. (1986), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, translated by V. W. McGee, Austin: University of Texas Press. Barks, D. and P. Watts (2001), “Textual Borrowing Strategies for Graduate-Level ESL Writers,” in D. Belcher and A. Hirvela (eds.), Linking Literacies: Perspectives on L2 Reading-Writing Connections, 246–67, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Ben-Rafael, E., E. Shohamy, M. H. Amara, and N. Trumper-Hecht (2006), “Linguistic Landscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public Space: The Case of Israel,” in D. Gorter (ed.), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism, 7–30, Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Bernhardt, E. (1998), “Sociohistorical perspectives on language teaching in the modern United States,” in H. Byrnes (ed.), Learning Foreign and Second Languages. Perspectives in Research and Scholarship, 39–57, New York: MLA. Byrnes, H. (1998), “Constructing Curricula in Collegiate Foreign Language Departments,” in H. Byrnes (ed.), Learning Foreign and Second Languages: Perspectives in Research and Scholarship, 262–95, New York: MLA. Byrnes, H. and K. A. Sprang (2004). “Fostering advanced L2 literacy: A genre-based, cognitive approach,” in H. Byrnes & H. H. Maxim (eds.), Advanced foreign language learning: A challenge to college programs, 47–85, Boston: Heinle. Cenoz, J. and D. Gorter (2006), “Linguistic landscape and minority languages,” in D. Gorter (ed.), Linguistic landscape: A new approach to multilingualism, 67–80, Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, J. and D. Gorter (2008), “The Linguistic Landscape as an Additional Source of Input in Second Language Acquisition,” IRAL: International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 46 (3): 267–87. Chesnut, M., V. Lee, and J. Schulte (2013), “The Language Lessons around Us: Undergraduate English Pedagogy and Linguistic Landscape Research,” English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 12 (2): 102–20. Cindark, I. and E. Ziegler (2016), “Mehrsprachigkeit Im Ruhrgebiet: Zur Sichtbarkeit Sprachlicher Diversität in Dortmund,” in S. Ptashnyk, R. Beckert, P. Wolf-Farré, and M. Wolny (eds.), Gegenwärtige Sprachkontakte Im Kontext Der Migration, 133–56. Schriften Des Europäischen Zentrums Für Sprachwissenschaften, Heidelberg: Winter Verlag. Cook, V. J. (1992), “Evidence for Multicompetence,” Language Learning, 42 (4): 557–91. Cook, V. J. (1999), “Going beyond the Native Speaker in Language Teaching,” TESOL Quarterly, 33: 185–209. Dagenais, D., D. Moore, C. Sabatier, S. Lamarre, and F. Armand (2009), “Linguistic Landscape and Language Awareness,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 253–69, New York: Routledge. Firth, A. and J. Wagner (1997), “On Discourse, Communication, and (Some) Fundamental Concepts in SLA Research,” Modern Language Journal, 81 (3): 285–300.e. Kern, R. (2002). “Reconciling the Language-Literature Split through Literacy.” ADFL Bulletin 33 (3): 20–4.

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Kramsch, C. (1997), “The Privilege of the Nonnative Speaker,” PMLA, 112: 359–69. Kuhn, S. (1998), “The Software Design Studio: An Exploration,” IEEE Software, 15 (2): 65–71. Leeman, J. and G. Modan (2009), “Commodified Language in Chinatown: A Contextualized Approach to Linguistic Landscape,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13 (3): 332–62. Lefebvre, H. (1991), The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell. Malinowski, D. (2016), “Localizing the Transdisciplinary in Practice: A Teaching Account of a Prototype Undergraduate Seminar on Linguistic Landscape,” L2 Journal, 8 (4): 100–17. Malinowski, D. (2015), “Opening Spaces of Learning in the Linguistic Landscape,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1): 95–113. Maxim, H. H. (2009), “An Essay on the Role of Language in Collegiate Foreign Language Programmatic Reform,” Die Unterrichtspraxis, 42 (2): 123–29. Maxim, H. H. (2004), “Expanding Visions for Collegiate Advanced Foreign Language Learning,” in H. Byrnes and H. H. Maxim (eds.), Advanced Foreign Language Learning: A Challenge to College Programs, 180–93. AAUSC Issues in Language Program Direction, Boston: Heinle. Maxim, H. H. (2009), “‘It’s Made to Match’: Linking L2 Reading and Writing through Textual Borrowing,” in C. Brantmeier (ed.), Crossing Languages and Research Methods: Analyses of Adult Foreign Language Reading, 97–122, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Maxim, H. H., P. Höyng, M. Lancaster, C. Schaumann, and M. Aue (2013), “Overcoming curricular bifurcation: A departmental approach to curricular reform,” Die Unterrichtspraxis, 46 (1): 1–26. Milon, A. (2002), “Tags and Murals in France: A City’s Face or a Natural Landscape?” in Blanc Black, A.-P. Durand (ed.), Beur: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the Francophone World, 87–98, Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press. Norton, B. (2000), Identity and Language Learning: Gender, Ethnicity and Education Change, New York: Longman. Pennycook, A. (2009), “Linguistic Landscapes and the Transgressive Semiotics of Graffiti,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 302–12, New York: Routledge. Richards, J. C. and T. S. Rodgers (2001), “Approaches and methods in language teaching,” (2nd ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rothery, J. (1996), “Making Changes: Developing an Educational Linguistics,” in R. Hasan and G. Williams (eds.), Literacy in Society, 86–123, London: Longman. Rowland, L. (2013), “The Pedagogical Benefits of a Linguistic Landscape Project in Japan,” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 16 (4): 494–505. Sayer, P. (2010), “Using the Linguistic Landscape as a Pedagogical Resource,” ELT Journal, 64 (2): 143–54. Shohamy, E. and S. Waksman (2009), “Linguistic Landscape as an Ecological Arena: Modalities, Meanings, Negotiations, Education,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, 313–31, New York: Routledge. The New London Group (1996), “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures,” Harvard Educational Review, 66 (1): 60–92. Thornbury, S. (2017), “L Is for Linguistic Landscape.” An A-Z of ELT (blog), February 5, 2017. https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/l-is-for-linguistic-landscape-2. Trumper-Hecht, N. (2010), “Linguistic Landscape in Mixed Cities in Israel from the Perspective of ‘Walkers’: The Case of Arabic,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 235–51, Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Zabrodskaja, A. and T. M. Milani (2014), “Signs in Context: Multilingual and Multimodal Texts in Semiotic Space,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014 (228): 1–6.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Linguistic Landscape as a Tool for Literacy-Based Language Teaching and Learning: Application for the Foreign Language Classroom OLGA BEVER AND DIANE RICHARDSON

1 INTRODUCTION This study explores the dynamics of the relationship between foreign language (FL) learners, place, and space, and how the local LL stimulates students’ perception of the representation of the German language and culture in the local US Southwest (Tucson, Arizona) and in target language context (Leipzig, Germany). Using a literaciesbased approach, it shows how German-language teaching and learning addresses reterritorialization of place and space by employing LL as a tool and as a medium for stimulating students’ creative and analytical thinking to fulfill their imagined reality. It demonstrates that LL enables the reterritorialization of the concrete place and space of the classroom and the content of the textbook through the reconceptualization of the local and target language contexts, making the target language context imagined yet real. This interplay of the real, imagined, and target language contexts facilitated by instructor-guided activities and mediated by the LL itself and by students’ power of imagination embraces and reshapes students’ perception and associations of the textual elements observed and documented in the local LL with the target language and culture. In an area where the target language, German, is not a dominant language of the local community, this LL project provides FL learners with the opportunity to reshape their way of interpreting and navigating the educational and learning spaces by reinforcing the transformative power of space and power of imagination through unpacking multiple layers of the LL, and imagining, comparing, and contrasting the complexities of the representations of the German-speaking world.

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2 RETERRITORIALIZATION OF PLACE, SPACE, AND LEARNER This chapter draws on a conceptual framework of repositioning place and space (Malinowski 2015, 2016; Trumper-Hecht 2010) through the lens of LL in relation to FL and second language (SL) education. Malinowski (2015) argues that expanding the notion of Lefebvre’s ([1974]1991) conceived, perceived, and lived spaces will benefit language learning activities involving LLs, so that learners “explore, compare, and contrast the distinct representations of language, people and place afforded by these three spaces” (Malinowski 2015: 97). This approach proposes that FL learners explore not just the visible and tangible aspects of the planned and designed (i.e., the conceived) LL, but the audible, smellable, tasteable—anything that is observable or documentable with the senses that one may have (i.e., the perceived), as well as reflect on the emotions, associations, memories that one may have had when documenting those aspects (i.e., the lived). The following discussion suggests an approach that embraces these concepts of space perception, multimodal analysis, and the notion of imagined communities to the FL classroom, and applies them to the four case studies presented here. It raises the point that FL learners in local contexts where the language being learned is not highly salient, can navigate the LL as a critical reflection on the complexities of sociolinguistic and sociocultural factors, and develop and utilize a more complete experience with the multiple dimensions and layers within and beyond those conceived, perceived, and lived spaces. Throughout this study, LL provides multilayered, multilingual, multimodal texts, revealing appearances of German language and culture in shop and restaurant signs, local businesses, and place names. While some linguistic and semiotic properties convey traces of German language and culture, German-ness, and ethno-cultural stereotypes (Piller 2001, 2003), others may provide authentic textual forms associated with the cultural and linguistic properties of the target cultures of German-speaking countries. This study contributes to intercultural education by proposing instructor-initiated pedagogical activities that incorporate LL as a useful tool in the language class and curriculum even in areas where the target language is not very visible, for example, in the context of Tucson, where German rarely appears as a spoken language in the local community, but rather more often as a symbolic representation of a minority language and culture manifested in the local LL. The activities implemented encourage natural curiosity and student observations not just in relation to specific elements embedded in signage but also about the LL as a text that provides a link between the local and target language and culture. By engaging with the LL in the language classroom, the interconnection of the linguistic, symbolic, communicative, and ideological aspects of language learning and teaching is intensified (Bever and Richardson 2015). This instigates designing curricula that involve “integrative approaches” and that incorporate LL as a text, discursive and sociocultural practice, and pedagogical activity (Bever 2012). Bringing LL to the FL classroom unfolds a narrative involving both linguistic and cultural values and functions of the target language and culture, allowing for a dynamic learning environment that involves multimodal analysis and discursive practices. The local LL serves beyond the material and/or visual representation of the target language and culture; LL is the means and vehicle for imagination, embodiment, and associations, crossing the boundary between the local and global, the real and the imaginary world of the German language and cultures.

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3 LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE AND IMAGINED COMMUNITIES The concepts of imagined communities (originally introduced by Anderson [1983] 1991) and power of imagination have been applied to language and literacy teaching and learning, and multilingual and multicultural education as a theoretical approach and a pedagogical tool that stimulate and enrich learners’ engagements with texts and contexts across time and space (Blackledge 2003; Norton 2001, 2010; Kanno and Norton 2003; Pavlenko and Norton 2007; Norton and Toohey 2011). The prior studies suggest that learners’ affiliation with communities that they imagine as critical for language learning and teaching facilitates a link between the local and target language contexts, local and global communities, and expands the learners’ insights and perceptions about the affiliated linguistic and cultural spaces. Imagined communities provide connections to the places and groups of people with whom one desires to affiliate through the power of imagination, and “these imagined communities are no less real than those where learners have daily engagements and might even have stronger effect on their current action” (Norton 2010: 3). Language learners’ connection to the imaginary world spatially and temporally facilitates their “sense of ownership of meaning-making,” inspires the engagements with “the popular cultural text,” and may provide students and teachers with opportunities to work with a “range of texts, including oral, written, drawn, or performed” (Norton 2010: 8–10). This suggests a link between imagined communities and the multimodal and spatial turn in language and literacy studies. This is also in line with more recent scholarship that considers LL as a multilayered and multifaceted phenomenon, and is concerned with the interconnection of text, space, and place, and interplay of multiple modes of representation (Bever 2012, 2015; Blommaert 2010, 2013; Jaworski and Thurlow 2010; Kendrick and Jones 2008; Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001, 2006; Scollon and Scollon 2003; Shohamy and Waksman 2009). The multimodal approach views LLs as texts in a broad semiotic sense, where multimodality constructs, facilitates, and negotiates meaning making in LLs, and enables an interplay of linguistic and semiotic resources, discourses, and ideologies (Bever 2015). Thus, employing diverse multimodal textual materials and LLs in particular for language and literacy learning and teaching provides a broad spectrum of opportunities for learners to affiliate with the imagined communities through constructing and negotiating meanings and discourses across time and space. While language learners (who are also readers and viewers) gain their experiences with LLs, they employ their power of imagination to create an imaginary community and imaginary space of the target language and culture context with its social and cultural dynamics. LL serves as a powerful tool in connecting the learner, the local and the target language contexts through the power of imagination, so that a juxtaposition of the real and the imaginary spaces may provide related and/or contrastive features involving informational and symbolic representations. Learners’ engagement with LLs enhances socially and culturally situated learning, including “creating images of the world and seeing connections through time and space by extrapolating from . . . experiences” (Wenger 1998: 173). By establishing and exploring a relationship between LLs, learners’ experiences with LLs and imagined reality create a powerful pedagogical tool in language and literacy teaching and learning.

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The relationship between LL and imagined communities is a relatively novel concept in LL scholarship. Dagenais et al. (2009) apply a concept of imagined communities to examine linguistic awareness in elementary school children through their engagement with LLs in Montreal and Vancouver, Canada. Using digital photographs, drawings, letters, posters and videos, the researchers designed language awareness activities to document real, and construct imagined neighborhoods and their languages. Their study demonstrates the importance of children’s experiences in both real and imagined spaces for language learning and teaching, and better understanding of their own community. Woldemariam and Lanza (2015) explore the role of LLs in constructing an imaginary homeland in the Ethiopian immigrant community in Washington, DC, while maintaining a link with the real homeland. They argue that “LL is indeed a tool for imagination—a means to connect a diaspora with the homeland, creating links with the past, the present and the future” (Woldemariam and Lanza 2015: 188). To emphasize the presence of the Ethiopian community, the multimodal signs of the businesses, restaurants, and shops of “Little Ethiopia” use Amharic, the homeland language, along with English, and various semiotic devices representing Ethiopian culture. The LL here creates an “imagined Ethiopian space” and allows maintaining the link with the homeland through employing diverse multimodal representations of the Ethiopian culture, including the use of the names of the royal and historical figures and the restaurants and hotel names from “popular spots” in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Both studies (Dagenais et al. 2009; Woldemariam and Lanza 2015) emphasize the significance of the LL as a tool and as a method in constructing imagined spaces, experiencing lived spaces, and exploring perceived spaces where target language and culture can be explored and performed. In both studies, linguistic and semiotic devices in LLs express informative and symbolic values and reveal complexities of the sociocultural contexts. Thus, for the social actors (and language learners in particular), who are far removed from the target contexts and communities, LL stimulates a unique, imagined vision of those cultures and communities. As a supplement to the language and other pedagogical tools, LL activities such as those presented in this study provide language learners with an opportunity to express their insights and their vision of the target communities. Thereby, it is critical to bear in mind that “communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (Anderson [1983]1991: 6). This means that LL activities from the imagined target language context should be included, as what FL learners have cocreated through their power of imagination, under the guidance of the instructor. The discussion provided below on students’ engagement with LL expands the perspective on the relationship between language learning, text, space, and place. It opens up a more complex relation between imagined and lived spaces through the exploration and negotiation of meaning as discursive practice. These multilevel analyses of visual-textual forms and meaning-making involve interaction and negotiation of discourses, textual forms, and human activities (Scollon and Scollon 2003). The discussion illustrates that LL can offer ideological, semiotic, and material spaces for stimulating students’ creative and analytical thinking about public signs to construct their imagined reality. A key point here is that LL stimulates reterritorialization of the concrete place and space of the classroom as the reconceptualization of the local and target language contexts, which in turn also become reterritorialized for the learner, making the target language context imagined yet real.

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4 LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE AS A RESOURCE FOR LITERACY-BASED LANGUAGE EDUCATION As recent LL scholarship shows, linguistic and semiotic landscapes have become a valuable resource for language and literacy development, multimodal and multilingual awareness, and intercultural competence (Bever 2012, 2015; Cenoz and Gorter 2008; Dagenais et al. 2009; Gorter 2015; Malinowski 2009; Shohamy and Gorter 2009). These studies argue that multilingual and multimodal texts in linguistic and semiotic landscapes provide a broad range of learning and teaching opportunities, contribute to the development of linguistic, communicative and symbolic competence, and reveal a complex relationship between the learners, the text, and the social world. They demonstrate that in the contemporary world of globalization, and linguistic and cultural diversities, it is critical to use LL for language, culture, and literacy education. This involves applying creative, analytical, and critical thinking about language use in local and global contexts and raising awareness about a multilingual and multicultural world as an essential component of learning and teaching. Bever (2012), drawing on new literacies, biliteracy, and environmental print studies (Barton and Hamilton 1998; Goodman 1980; Hornberger 1989, 2000; Hull and Schultz 2001), points to the importance of the multimodal textual forms, languages, and print outside of the formal schooling domain, and the resourcefulness of the immediate surrounding contexts for language and literacy education. Learners’ everyday engagements with multimodal and multilingual texts contribute to a better understanding of the “cultural, symbolic, informational and communicative aspects of texts” and strengthen the “connectedness between learner, community and everyday context” (Bever 2012: 336–37). The LL is a rich source of “socially-, historically-, and culturally-situated” texts (Kern 2000: 16) that contribute to cultural and transcultural understanding and the development of multiple literacies. Literacies-based FL education has been influenced by Richard Kern’s (2000: 16–17) seven principles of literacy, which go beyond a focus on isolated communicative skills, grammar, and cultural side notes and involve more critical and reflective awareness and learner engagement. Our pedagogical approach to the LL is informed by this notion of literacy, in order to develop more than linguistic and communicative competence, as well as what has been referred to as “symbolic competence” (Kramsch 2006). That involves encouraging language learners to be engaged in the “symbolic power game of challenging established meanings and redefining the real” (Kramsch 2011: 359). Being able to navigate complexity and ambiguity contributes to symbolic competence, along with “the ability to shape the multilingual game in which one invests [. . .] and to reframe human thought and action” (Kramsch and Whiteside 2008: 667). This means that language learning is about more than appropriate communication skills or even critical reflection; rather, symbolic competence involves learners who engage in, shape, and reshape the complex, multifaceted language use of the multilingual spaces in which they participate—in and out of the classroom. Some LL studies (e.g., Sayer 2010) have investigated the potential for language learning, particularly in the field of English as a Foreign/Second Language (EFL/ESL). Other studies are focused on FLs that are highly salient in urban settings (Abraham 2016; Llopis-Garcia 2016). Similar to the manner in which English has become recognized as a lingua franca the world over, the dominance of the languages in such studies makes their presence in certain LLs comparable to that of a second language. For FL learning contexts where this is not the case and where an immersive, experiential approach to the LL is not possible, Cenoz

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and Gorter (2008) have advocated the careful selection and contextualization of authentic textual representations from the LL. This could be by curriculum developers, instructors, or learners themselves and could include examples collected by study abroad participants and brought back to the home university or school, or those found in virtual LLs (Deumert 2014; Ivković and Lotherington 2009). Those studies show how LL activities can be better integrated into the FL curriculum in order to allow the learners to interact not only with the target language and culture but also with the various other languages used in the LL in their classrooms, daily lives, and virtual realm. The LL provides opportunities to highlight multiple levels of symbolic systems and competence, ranging from incidental language learning (Goodman 1980) and sensitivity to connotations of language (Rowland 2013). In an LL classroom project conducted with EFL learners in Japan, Rowland considers the fact that the list of questions posed to the learners “may have narrowed the students’ perspectives of the LL by focusing them on particular aspects of public signage” (2013:10). In order to avoid restricting learners’ in such a manner, Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte proposed less-structured projects, ones that encourage students to pose their own questions, allowing for “a greater focus on the confusion of students, the meandering paths they attempted to take, and their initial ideas about their own sociolinguistic ecology” (2013:105–06). That was the approach taken to the classroom-based research study presented in this chapter as well. Participants were free to collect examples from all areas of the local LL, including the virtual LL, in order to accommodate for learners who may not have been able to leave campus as well as for those who commuted and spent more time in their nearby towns. A growing number of LL studies from the university level of FL instruction in the United States have discussed study abroad settings as beneficial for students who have the opportunity to participate in such a program (Dubreil 2016; Lee and Choi 2016; Maxim 2016). This was also the case for the study presented in this chapter: study abroad students collected LL images while in Leipzig, Germany. Those LL images were then incorporated into the newly developed curriculum for the fourth semester course at their home institution, in order to expose the participants of the current study to the lived LL of the target language.

5 CASES FROM THE GERMAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE CLASSROOM 5.1 Setting The four case studies presented here were part of a mixed-method, classroom-based research study and curriculum design project for an intermediate German course at a large public university in the US Southwest (Tucson, Arizona). Tucson is a mid-size borderland city in the American Southwest, with a population of about one million people. English and Spanish are dominant languages of the local community, while German is a minority language spoken at home by 0.4 percent of the total Tucson population (Statistical Atlas). Based on the historical patterns of immigration from German-speaking parts of Europe to the US and German-language retention, Gilbert argues that “the future” of German (and French) in the United States “lies almost entirely on their function as foreign languages, not as first or second languages” (1981:271). Today, German is being taught widely as a foreign language throughout the state of Arizona, including Tucson, in the local schools, community colleges, and the universities (American Councils 2017).

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5.2 Course description Data that are discussed in the four case studies here were collected in the spring semester of 2015 in the fourth semester German language and culture course. At the time at that institution, it was the first course in the basic language program that did not use a textbook, starting the transition toward the more text-heavy upper-level courses. The entire curriculum that was implemented that semester was new and developed by the second author, who also instructed one section of the course. The four-credit course met for sixteen weeks, four days per week for fifty minutes per class period. No textbook was used and class was conducted once a week in a computer lab. The newly developed curriculum was divided into three units that focused on the analysis of literary and nonliterary texts, including a variety of multimodal, semiotic, and linguistic landscapes from the German-speaking world as represented in music videos, films about soccer, postcards, and so on. The LL project for the current study was part of the final unit of the course. The focus of the student data discussion is on students’ interactions with, and their reflections on, linguistic and semiotic landscapes for an end-of-semester LL project.

5.3 Participants and data collection The course involved a diverse population of students, from majors and minors to students fulfilling the final semester of their FL requirement. Thirty-two students from two sections of the course consented to participate in the current study. Details about their language learning backgrounds were gained through an at-home, German-language writing assignment in week one of the course. The data collected for this study consist of all classroom artifacts, including written and audio-recorded assignments, student interactions on the online discussion board, and the instructor’s observations. These sources provide insight on how the students conceived, perceived, and reterritorialized the local and target LL. An overview of the main tasks and assessments that served as data sources for this study is in Appendix A. Those tasks and assessments were all completed in German and participant responses were translated by the instructor. The English translations are intended to convey the general sense of the participants’ original German responses and participants were assigned pseudonyms. Data discussion is framed by the notions of conceived, perceived, and lived spaces, and imagined communities, to investigate how language learners exhibit a growing sense of symbolic awareness and competence.

5.4 Pre-unit written reflection Prior to the start of the final unit, students submitted a written reflection that provided baseline information on their initial perception of the presence of German-ness in the Tucson area. The responses showed that without having had their attention explicitly drawn to the LL, most students did not acknowledge the presence or potential of the German-ness to be found there. This speaks to the initial indifference to the LL as discussed by Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte (2013). The twenty-seven responses that were submitted indicate a perceived absence of spoken German and lacking visibility of the language, as well as a preoccupation with linguistic and oral competence. The results of the pre-unit reflections were discussed in class and the LL project was introduced by the instructors, who shared examples of German language and culture from their own small-scale LL scavenger hunt throughout the city and assigned the main task, an online discussion board post.

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5.5 Online discussion board post For the LL project, learners were asked to find examples of the influence of German and the German-speaking world in the LL of their local context. Students were given three weeks to look for examples of anything that they felt was related to German or the German-speaking world, take pictures of it, and post the pictures in a discussion on the course website, with a brief explanation of what the connection to the German-speaking world was and what the picture meant to them personally. The prompt was purposely broad in order to allow a diverse group of learners to respond to the best of their abilities. Thus, student justifications accompanying the fifty-two posted pictures varied from brief concrete descriptions or mention of the location where the examples had been found, to initial affective responses and more extensive interpretation or analyses. The initial posts indicate that simply drawing students’ attention to the presence of German in their everyday surroundings allowed contemplation of various levels of conceived, perceived, and imagined spaces within the LL. These observations were further expanded in subsequent activities and tasks of the LL project.

5.6 Categorization and reflection All of the fifty-two posted pictures associated with German-ness were printed and brought to class for one of the final activities of the semester. In small groups, students sorted these pictures into categories and then, with the entire class, discussed the various categories that each group had identified. The categories determined by the students of section 1 of the course were: restaurants; products (including cars, food/candy, alcohol, hygiene); places/cultural events; names (of companies and on street signs). As written homework for the next day, students reflected on the pictures that they and their classmates had taken: what those representations of “German” might say about the status of German in the Tucson area specifically or the United States in general and to what extent the LL influences people generally as well as individually. Learners also completed a similar categorization activity with fifty-eight images taken by study abroad students of the LL in Leipzig, Germany, during a summer abroad course taught by the second author in summer of 2014. Two of the study abroad students then came into the classes in Tucson to share their experience of Leipzig’s LL and the study abroad experience in general.

5.7 Final unit reflection For the Final Unit Reflection question on LL, students were provided with a German version of the table in Appendix B, which shows the categories identified by the learners in the images of their local LL, as well as in the LL of Leipzig, Germany. Their task was to draw comparisons and reflect on the meaning of the LL in each specific context, and in general. Out of thirty-one responses, some were very brief or concrete descriptions of a certain picture. One participant displayed a unique understanding of the concept of LLs, stating: “I think a ‘linguistic landscape’ is not important, we are humanity, we can speak the language that we would like to speak” (Henri, Sec 2). Although language management and policy had been less of a focus of the unit, Henri grasped the metalinguistic and metasemiotic connections between LL and the enforcement of discriminatory language policies. This is an issue that is relevant for learners in Tucson, where the English-only movement continues to be a topic of discussion. Overall though, the majority of participants showed

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that they were able to use German to reflect on abstract ideas pertaining to LL in their language learning experience. They focused on the benefits of the LL for drawing their attention to sociocultural aspects that may otherwise go unnoticed, emphasizing the potential for critical, sociocultural learning and transcultural connections by simply paying attention to the LL.

6 CASE STUDIES: EXAMPLE PICTURES AND INITIAL POSTS In order to look at the kinds of conceived spaces and places that were perceived, imagined, and reappropriated by the students as they navigated their local LL, we chose to focus on four images that address sociocultural and sociohistorical contexts, cultural heritage, and local market. These pictures illustrate that the German-ness of the particular geographical, symbolic, and social spaces can be related to a certain “exoticization” of linguistic elements, words, or cultural products. The responses of four participants who posted those (or similar) images were tracked for all tasks from throughout the course of the LL project. These particular cases provide insight on what examples learners in a context where the FL is not so well represented in the LL might find, and also demonstrate how different students reacted to the task and the examples encountered.

6.1 Case 1: Himmel Park (Harper) Our first case highlights the process of engagement with LL of a highly motivated and high achieving learner, Harper, who in the pre-unit survey said the following: A big thing is that when you learn German as a second language you’re surrounded by other German speakers. Therefore you could learn conversational German quicker and better than when you learn it as a foreign language. [. . .] I have to say that I think that when you learn German as a foreign and not as a second language that you understand grammar a little better. In this initial reflection, Harper focused on the grammatical and communicative aspects of language learning. Three weeks later, Harper posted and reflected on the online discussion board about two images from the local LL. The examples that Harper chose correspond to the initial focus on more concrete levels of language learning, in particular, vocabulary, which is evident in the accompanying online post: I found 2 examples, but the second one is maybe not so good. My first example is the Himmel Park library. The word Himmel is maybe a family name, but it is also German. In English, Himmel means heaven. My second example is a street that I ride by on my bike every day. “Drachman” is not a German word, but “Drach” is of course German. I think that the name comes from the word “Drache” (dragon). In these examples, Harper acknowledges the presence of German-ness and German heritage in the local LL despite the otherwise seeming lack of the target language there. In the opening line of this response, Harper voices self-doubt and uncertainty about the second example, a street sign. That uncertainty may stem from Harper’s focus on the linguistic aspects of the conceived local LL, such as represented in Figure 18.1.

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FIGURE 18.1 Himmel Park Library Sign.

While Harper chose this sign due to linguistic awareness of the German word Himmel, Harper also acknowledges the fact that it is most likely a family name—demonstrating an awareness of the long-standing influence of German immigration in the United States, without explicitly stating as much. Furthermore, Harper’s reflection incorporates the lived experience of the local LL in regard to the other sign mentioned, which Harper biked by every day. In that case though, Harper did not consider the fact that Drachman could be a family name with German roots. Rather, due to the perceived German sound of the word Drach (similar to the German word for dragon), Harper reappropriated this example into the imagined local German LL. In the final unit reflection, Harper chose not to reflect on either of these pictures, but instead mentioned another street sign, stating: “I think the ‘Linden St’ photo in Tucson is very interesting. Since Linden is a name, it shows that Germans have a lot of influence here in our city.” In addition to a recurring interest in signs with actual German words or names, Harper also expressed an awareness of how concrete place and space can influence what aspects of the LL one even notices, speculating that “when one is in Germany, then one does not notice German products, because they are everywhere. But here they are not everywhere, so they are more noticeable.” These comments were made in regard to the categories of images included in Appendix B—products being one of the largest categories in the local LL. Harper closed the reflection with a discussion of a picture of a Trabant (Trabi), a car from East Germany that was part of a caravan of Trabis driving through the city center of Leipzig, Germany. Harper was puzzled by this display of nostalgia, asking, “Why don’t [Germans] want to forget [East German history]? Wasn’t it a bad time?” Harper could not get an immediate answer or clarification to these questions, but concluded anyways that “questions like this are why it is important for one to pay attention to the linguistic landscape. It shows that what people think is important and initiates intercultural questions.” Harper’s reflections from throughout the semester show that by the end of the study, Harper had come to the realization that the LL is not solely a source of linguistic and grammatical input, but that it broadly addresses and encompasses questions of intercultural

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awareness. Harper is an example of a student who openly discusses the confusion around perceived contradictions associated with the imagined and real communities that have been created through snapshots of various LLs. Questioning the world around us, as Harper did, is evidence of a developing symbolic competence, addressing relationships between the present and the past of the local community, and building the link between the local and target language context.

6.2 Case 2: Wünderbar (Cole) The second case centers on Cole, another student in the German class, who posted Figure 18.2. Cole was a nontraditional student who had been out of high school for thirteen years, working full-time in the manual labor industry. After some time at the local community college, Cole transferred to the university. Cole had always been fascinated with the German language, having taken classes in high school and at the community college. Despite battling extreme fatigue due to the strain of working (more than) full-time and the anxiety of not quite fitting in with younger classmates, Cole was an extremely dedicated learner, who rarely missed a class, and was always well prepared and willing to participate. Cole was a local, had never left the country or even the area for that matter, and similarly to Harper, acknowledged a positive side of the instructed FL learning experience in the pre-unit reflection, writing: If you live in Germany, German is everywhere. It would be easier to learn. As a foreign language there is no exposure. In Germany you have to learn out of necessity. The constant education makes it easier to learn. I go four times a week. That is all that I get. In class I have a teacher. I can ask questions. That is nice. It makes it easier, when you have a problem.

FIGURE 18.2 Wünderbar Ice Cream Bar Sign.

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While Cole appreciated the role of formal education and the instructor’s role in guiding FL learners, Cole also commented on the lack of exposure to the target language. In spite of that perceived lack of German representations in the local LL, Cole found and shared two examples on the online discussion board, including Figure 18.2. As Cole stated, Figure 18.2 is an example of the “exoticization of the Umlaut,” which was accompanied by the following explanation: “This ad is from Luke’s. Wunderbar means wonderful in English. Although there is no Umlaut. The ice cream sandwich is also very good.” Cole alludes to the “exoticization of the Umlaut” when clarifying that there is no Umlaut in the actual German word wunderbar. Cole comes back to this in a later reflection. This reappropriation of the Umlaut into the conceived space of US-American advertising has influenced the imagined notion of German-speaking people and regions not only for Cole but also for many people throughout the United States. Cole’s response also indicates the perceived and lived experience of this LL as pertaining to the memory of the taste of the ice cream sandwich from the advertisement. Cole’s second example posted to the online discussion board was a picture of a German wine bottle in a local grocery store, which was accompanied by a brief explanation about the origins of the wine: “This wine is from Pfalz, Germany. Riesling is a white wine that comes from the Rhine region in Germany.” As these comments reveal, Cole acknowledged the fact that the local German LL extends beyond linguistic representations in public signage to include cultural information and products from the German-speaking world, such as wine—interestingly enough not beer, the alcoholic beverage that is more stereotypically associated with Germany. Cole reflected on the far-reaching impact of such products in the at-home reflection that followed the in-class categorization of the LL pictures, saying: “German has an influence in our city. German is here, when one looks. . . . Sometimes one can turn on to a ‘German’ street or buy a German product. There are also a few German car shops.” This shows a development of symbolic awareness of the concept of LL since the pre-unit reflection, in which Cole had stated that there was no exposure to the target language when learning it as a FL. By this point in the study, Cole had begun reframing ways of thinking about the imagined German community as represented in or related to the local LL. Cole also made the following comment: “But this activity would have been easier in Spanish.” This indicates a broader awareness of the conceived local LL, in which Spanish was much more visible. In the final unit reflection question pertaining to the LL project, Cole wrote a total of eighty-eight words—half the amount that Harper, a linguistically much stronger German user, had written. Cole first reflected on the pictures from the local LL: “I noticed that in America the pictures were more business-related. America is more about money. Many of the pictures were products.” For Cole, the predominance of German products and business-related examples in the local LL were reflective of broader questions of power and representation pertaining to capitalism and consumerism in the United States. Cole then returned to Figure 18.2, stating, “I thought the picture of ‘Wünderbar’ was very interesting. I liked that it had an Umlaut. It made it seem more German.” Here Cole voiced precisely what is meant by the “exoticization” of the Umlaut—through reappropriation thereof, there is a perceived or imagined sense of authenticity given to the word, giving it more legitimacy, at least in Cole’s eyes, as pertaining to the German LL. Cole closed the final reflection with the following remarks: “Linguistic Landscape is everywhere. Our city has a large Mexican landscape, but there is still a German landscape. Culture is a part of life. We must take notice.” These comments show the potential that LL projects in the FL classroom have for drawing attention not only to one specific language in the LL but also

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to other languages as well as broader cultural issues of representation and power. Through analyses of and reflections on the images, Cole acknowledges the commodification, reappropriation, and even exoticization of linguistic elements represented by languages other than English in the United States, and German language in particular. Cole is an example of a learner who recognizes the need for symbolic competence, in the sense of navigating the complexities and multiplicity of the multilingual and multicultural world with the intent of reshaping the way people think about and interact with their surroundings.

6.3 Case 3: Wienerschnitzel (Sloan) This case focuses on an example of the reappropriation or exoticization of a cultural product or concept into or within the imagined German community of the local LL, as portrayed in Figure 18.3. The image included here was taken by the instructor, but a similar one (of lesser quality) was posted to the online discussion board by Sloan, who was a senior fulfilling the final semester of the language requirement for history majors. Sloan had grown up speaking English and Greek, had learned Spanish in high school, but did not like it, and so decided to take German at university instead. While Sloan was a strong German learner and speaker, it was Sloan’s final semester at the university, which may have been the reason for a seeming lack of motivation and desire to participate until the final unit of the course. Despite being a history major, Sloan seemed much more interested in the topics

FIGURE 18.3 Wienerschitzel: A fast food chain serving hot dogs.

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in that unit dealing with contemporary German culture and lifestyle, as the following excerpt from the pre-unit reflection reveals: I am learning German as a FL student. I have learned a little German culture. SL students have a big advantage. They can have the culture and live like a native speaker. . . . The only way for me is to travel. Travel to Germany, Switzerland, Austria and other countries where they speak German and live there. This statement shows that Sloan deemed the cultural aspects of language learning just as, if not more, important as the communicative aspects. While Sloan acknowledged having acquired some knowledge about culture through German classes in the United States, the actual experience of the real (yet imagined) German-speaking world and cultures is considered to be of greater significance. This attention to the cultural aspects of the local LL was also evident in Sloan’s post to the online discussion board, which first described an image of a car: This car, a VW “New Beetle” is the car of my girlfriend. VW has made good cars for Germany and the world. They are a typical German car: clean, practical, and quality-built. This car has many customizations: I painted the rims and the daylights black. For Sloan, good cars belong to the imagined, globalized yet local German LL—which is also very much a lived experience, one that Sloan has in fact physically altered and reshaped through the customizations made to the car. Sloan’s second example, which corresponds to Figure 18.3, is more directly related to the German language, although it is made clear upfront that Sloan believes that it is not a “correct” use of German: Ah, Wienerschnitzel. It is not German, but many Americans think it is correct. First, Wienerschnitzel is two words: Wiener and Schnitzel. It is from Austrian food, Wiener for the city Wien (Vienna) and Schnitzel for the food. I think it is very funny that Wienerschnitzel is thought of as German. The restaurant is a good example of false German in America. Sloan is referencing a fast food chain common in the US Southwest that is known for its hot dogs, despite its misleading name, a compound word that Sloan broke down and analyzed, coming to the conclusion that it is “false German.” This response shows that Sloan not only recognized the word but also was either curious enough to look up the meaning thereof in order to explain it or already had that background knowledge. Either way, Sloan’s analysis was influential for reshaping what several classmates imagined the German language and culture to be, which is reiterated in the last case. Ultimately, what Sloan touched on is precisely that reappropriation of the German language and culture into the US culture as a new, different, not necessarily false, version of the German LL. After the in-class categorization and discussion of the examples of the local German LL, Sloan debated if it was actually helpful for learning the German language: First, I agree with the idea that our city is not good for learning German. But in opposition to this opinion, our city has a lot of “German” to see. Many restaurants, authentic or not, are in our city, many people have German cars and products from many industries that are German. While there is “German” in our city, there is no German community, not like “Little Italy” or “Chinatown” in San Francisco with

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people who speak Italian and Chinese. [. . .] A restaurant name with a little German food is not strong culture. In this statement, Sloan acknowledged that examples of “German” existed in the local LL; however, the use of quotation marks would indicate a doubt of their authenticity or legitimacy. Despite the fact that Sloan and the others in the class had themselves discovered, experienced, and even reshaped the German LL in their city, Sloan dismissed this imagined community and equated German community with a high concentration of German-speaking people in a specified area, similar to neighborhoods like Little Italy or Chinatown. Sloan’s concern with supposedly “correct” representations of German is reiterated in the final unit reflection, for which Sloan wrote a total of 167 words and chose to once again discuss their version of Figure 18.3, saying: My picture of Wienerschnitzel in our town is very funny. It is a good example of appropriated German as advertisement. Wienerschnitzel is from Vienna, Austria, not Germany. The linguistic landscape is important: language is culture and culture without language can mean bad things, maybe Wienerschnitzel. In Sloan’s final statement as a German-language learner at that university, language is equated with culture, which reflects the emphasis Sloan had placed on culture throughout the entire unit. Yet Sloan still struggled with accepting things or circumstances that are not technically “accurate” as part of the “true” language learning experience.

6.4 Case 4: Autohaus (Daryl) The final case is related to Figure 18.4, which was taken by the instructor of the course. Daryl posted two similar images of other auto shops, but the resolution was so poor that this image was included instead. Daryl, an international student whose first language was not English, did not submit the pre-unit reflection, but was otherwise a dedicated

FIGURE 18.4 Stuttgart Autohaus storefront.

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student. During the LL project Daryl was the most active participant on the discussion board, posting three images with explanations as well as responding to two other posts from fellow classmates. Daryl’s own explanation was quite brief though: Two pictures are car-related. They are shops for imported cars (only European, no American or Japanese cars). And the last is a picture of Shumaker St (one thinks of Schuhmacher). When I think Schuhmacher, I think of handmade leather shoes (old times, 15th-18th century). Daryl offered little information or reflection on the auto shops, yet the comments on the street sign are revealing of Daryl’s capacity to imagine a nonexistent Germanspeaking community from the past as part of the local German LL today. After the in-class categorization though, Daryl offered more in-depth thoughts, writing, “There are German influences in our town, many categories, sometimes subtle, sometimes more clear. . . . Learn. If one doesn’t know a word or meaning, they should research and learn.” This reflection shows Daryl’s capacity for developing symbolic competence, calling for the necessity to reshape the manner in which people think and otherwise perhaps passively accept new words without digging deeper to find out more. This may or may not have been influenced by Sloan’s explanation of Figure 18.3, which Daryl wrote about in the final unit reflection, totaling 117 words, and stating: Linguistic Landscape is important because it can change the meaning, i.e., “Schnitzel” in our city is not always like “Schnitzel” in Germany (and then Schnitzel is different in one city than it is in Germany). Each word in a sentence is important, so a word in another country/structure can be more important. This excerpt shows that Daryl has moved beyond basic descriptions similar to that in the original post, and has begun to ponder more abstract ideas related to the LL, including the impact that the LL can have on the meaning of a single word or that a single word can have on the LL. Daryl demonstrates an awareness of the symbolic power of the idea of the “Schnitzel” as well as the ability to imagine a diverse German-influenced community around the world or within the German-speaking world.

7 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS Overall, this classroom-based research study reinforces the pedagogical activities and educational practices involving LL as a text and shows that it can be successfully incorporated into FL curriculum providing a critical link between the learner, the space, and place, as a social, ideological, and discursive practice. The suggested activities and results of the study are encouraging for FL educators in contexts where the target language and culture are not prominent in the LL, or have a largely symbolic meaning. Applying the framework of conceived, perceived, and lived spaces to the discussion of the four case studies presented here demonstrates how through integrating such LL projects in the FL classroom, learners broaden their linguistic, multimodal, and symbolic competence. This encourages literacies-based FL education (Kern 2000) by developing language use through collaboration, problem-solving, interpretation, reflection on conventions and cultural knowledge, and self-reflection. Furthermore, learners demonstrate their awareness of reappropriation and commodification of linguistic and cultural representations from the target language and cultures in their local LL.

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This study was conducted in a city where, as one participant (Sloan) stated, there is “no German community,” that is, no clearly delineated neighborhood with a high concentration of German-language speakers and signage. However, as the discussion of four case studies shows, as well as all of the other forty-eight examples of German/ness in the local LL that were collected by the students, students identified diverse functions and values in linguistic and semiotic elements in LLs. Students addressed the German language and related cultures from multiple perspectives: synchronically and diachronically; as a dominant, minority, and heritage language; and approached it at a local, national, and international level, as a language of the German-speaking world and beyond. Some learners, such as Harper, focused on the benefits of the LL for drawing attention to sociocultural aspects that may otherwise go unnoticed. This emphasizes the potential for critical, sociocultural learning and transcultural connections by simply paying attention to the LL. Other students, such as was the case with Cole, Sloan, and Daryl, reflected more explicitly on the German language: the confusion that can arise when insufficient contextual information is available, and the power that the LL has for influencing not just the understanding of a certain word, but what perspectives and (mis) perceptions may arise about an entire group of people. Ultimately, in a city where the target language is not a dominant language of the local community, the presented LL project provided FL learners with the opportunity to unpack multiple layers of the LL, and reshape their way of interpreting and navigating the educational and learning spaces by imagining, comparing, and contrasting the complexities of the representations of the German-speaking world. This study reveals that a target language community can be created through the collective imagination of the learners across time and space. In contexts where students cannot be immersed in the target language environment, or in a specific neighborhood, studies might benefit from providing more focused questions regarding the various levels of conceived, perceived, and lived spaces within the available LL. At the same time, learners can be asked to voice specifically any difficulties or confusion that they encountered while looking for examples. There is a fine line that must be navigated in order to avoid restricting or narrowing the learners’ perspectives and experience with the LL: educators should also encourage students to “ask their own linguistic landscape questions and pursue them as they see fit” (Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte 2013: 106). For lower-level language courses, much of the discussion surrounding the concept of the LL may not occur in the target language, and even at higher levels it may be beneficial to have discussions and additional readings on the LL in English in order to provide a common base of background knowledge among the participants. Students from both lower- and upper-level language courses can benefit from acknowledging, recognizing, and negotiating linguistic and cultural dimensions of the target language and culture. While the presented study is focused on the university-level German-language classroom, the reflections and suggestions for incorporating LL can be adapted for a target language and culture curriculum on various levels, from beginning to advanced. The literacy-based approach should embrace the overall learners’ experiences inside and outside the school setting as a sociocultural, sociohistorical, and ideological practice, emphasizing the relationship between place, space, and the learner. The elements of LL addressing local and global communities should be analyzed by and discussed with learners in a manner that recognizes and empowers their linguistic and cultural awareness, and raises their linguistic, communicative, and symbolic competence.

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8 APPENDICES APPENDIX A: Overview of LL-Related Tasks/Data Sources Data source

Topic

Number of submissions

1 Pre-Unit Reflection: At-home, German as a Second Written Language (GSL) versus German as a Foreign Language (GFL)

27 individual

2 Online Discussion Board

German in Tucson

52 pictures and accompanying explanations

3 In-Class Categorization and Small Group Analysis

German in Tucson

6 small group

4 At-home, Written Reflection

Status of German in Tucson and General Impact of LL

14 individual

5 Final Unit Reflection, At-home, Written, Online Quiz Tool

Comparison of LL in Leipzig, 31 individual Germany and Tucson

APPENDIX B: Table from Final Unit Reflection German(ness) in the LL of Tucson (Categories Identified by Students)

Leipzig’s Linguistic Landscape (Categories Identified by Students)

1. Restaurants 2. Products – Cars – Food (Candy) – Alcohol – Hygiene 3. Places/Cultural Events/People 4. Names – Companies – Street Signs

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Drinking (and love) Advertisement/Informational Signs Graffiti Food/Drinks Culture (Multicultural-ness & Art) Events Buildings, Art & Memorials

FURTHER READING Bever, O. (2012), “Linguistic Landscapes and Environmental Print as a Resource for Language and Literacy Development in Multilingual Contexts,” in M. Sanz and J. M. Igoa (eds.), Applying Language Science to Language Pedagogy: Contributions of Linguistics and Psycholinguistics to Second Language Teaching, 321–34, Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bever, O. (2015), “Linguistic Landscapes as Multimodal and Multilingual Phenomena,” in M. Laitinen and A. Zabrodskaja (eds.), Dimensions of Sociolinguistic Landscapes in Europe: Materials and Methodological Solutions, 233–62, Sprachkönnen und Sprachbewusstheit in Europa/Language Competence and Language Awareness in Europe, Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang.

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Cenoz, J. and D. Gorter (2008), “The Linguistic Landscape as an Additional Source of Input in Second Language Acquisition,” IRAL, 46: 267–87. Kanno, Y. and B. Norton, eds. (2003), “Imagined Communities and Educational Possibilities,” Journal of Language, Identity and Education (special issue), 2 (4). Malinowski, D. (2015), “Opening Spaces of Learning in the Linguistic Landscape,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1/2): 95–113. Woldemariam, H. and E. Lanza (2015), “Imagined Community: The Linguistic Landscape in a Diaspora,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1/2): 172–90

ESSAY SUGGESTION 1 Locate a language textbook used in language class taught at your institution, or if you are a language teacher, look through a textbook and see what images of the LL you find. Choose one of those images and the corresponding exercises to take notes about the following areas. Use those notes to write a brief essay on the extent to which the textbook LL exercises are conducive to literacies-based language learning and the co-construction of imagined communities. Make suggestions on how to reframe those images and exercises so that are more reflective of those notions. LL Image/ Exercises from Language Textbook Objectives: What do you believe the objective of the textbook exercises related to LL images that you found in the language textbook is? Difficulties: What difficulties do you think language learners and instructors may encounter when using those exercises and images in their classroom? Seven Principles of Literacy (Kern 2000): To what extent does the exercise inspire: interpretation, collaboration, conventions, cultural knowledge, problem solving strategies, reflection and self-reflection, and language use? Imagined Communities: To what extent do the LL images and activities in the language text book encourage learners to cocreate meaning about an imagined community?

ESSAY SUGGESTION 2 Choose one of the images in this chapter or one from the LL of your own everyday surroundings. Use the following questions as a model to structure an essay in which you conduct a multimodal analysis of the image.

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• What do you notice first? • Describe what you see—what shapes, colors, words? • What about size and placement of words, objects, symbols, and so on? • What other details do you see? • What is the atmosphere? How is that created?

Speculate

• What could the elements from the concrete description symbolize or mean? • What do you think was the intent of the text/image? Why?

Reflect

• What personal associations do you have with the image? • What feelings and thoughts does it evoke?

Question

• What do you still wonder about the image . . . who, what, when, where, why, how, and so on?

PROJECT SUGGESTION 1 Take a walk around your neighborhood, your campus, or look to the virtual LL to collect images of a language that you don’t automatically associate with the place you live. While you are taking pictures, make notes about the surroundings. Then categorize the images you took and respond to the following questions. You can do this as a group project, assigning specific neighborhoods, virtual spaces, or places on campus (library, union/cafeteria, classroom building, administrative building, museum, etc.) to each group. Then you can compare and contrast the images found in different spaces.

What categories or themes would you assign to these pictures? What might these categories or themes tell us about the image/status of that lesser represented language in your local context?

PROJECT SUGGESTION 2 Using the images that you collected, create an interactive map of the locations, including detailed information on the meanings of the LL examples found. Use that map to create and lead a guided tour for (potential) learners of that language.

REFERENCES Abraham, L. (2016 April), “Investigating Urban Linguistic Landscapes with Language Learners for Intercultural Learning: Affordances and Challenges,” Paper presented at the Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Orlando, FL.

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American Councils (2017 March), The National K-16 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey Report: A Comprehensive Study of Foreign/World Language Enrollments Across the Formal U.S. Education System, K-16. Available online: www.americancouncils.org/sites/default/files/ FLE-report.pdf (accessed January 26, 2018). Anderson, B. ([1983]1991), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (revised edn), London, England: Verso. Barton, D. and M. Hamilton (1998), Local Literacies, New York, NY: Routledge. Bever, O. (2012), “Linguistic Landscapes and Environmental Print as a Resource for Language and Literacy Development in Multilingual Contexts,” in M. Sanz and J. M. Igoa (eds.), Applying Language Science to Language Pedagogy: Contributions of Linguistics and Psycholinguistics to Second Language Teaching, 321–34, Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bever, O. (2015), “Linguistic Landscapes as Multimodal and Multilingual Phenomena,” in M. Laitinen and A. Zabrodskaja (eds.), Dimensions of Sociolinguistic Landscapes in Europe: Materials and Methodological Solutions, 233–62, Sprachkönnen und Sprachbewusstheit in Europa/Language Competence and Language Awareness in Europe, Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang. Bever, O. and D. Richardson (2015 May), “Defining Linguistic Landscapes as a Tool for Language and Literacy Education,” Paper presented at the International Workshop Linguistic Landscapes 7, University of California at Berkeley, CA. Blackledge, A. (2003), “Imagining a Monocultural Community: Racialization of Cultural Practice in Educational Discourse,” Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 2 (4), 331–47. Blommaert, J. (2010), The Sociolinguistics of Globalization, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. (2013), Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, J. and D. Gorter (2008), “The Linguistic Landscape as an Additional Source of Input in Second Language Acquisition,” IRAL, 46: 267–87. Chesnut, M., V. Lee, and J. Schulte (2013), “The Language Lessons Around Us: Undergraduate English Pedagogy and Linguistic Landscape Research,” English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 12 (2): 102–20. Dagenais, D., D. Moore, C. Sabatier, P. Lamarre, and F. Armand (2009), “Linguistic Landscape and Language Awareness,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscapes: Expanding the Scenery, 253–69, New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Deumert, A. (2014), Sociolinguistics and Mobile Communication, Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press. Dubreil, S. (2016 April), “Unpacking the (Un)Familiar; Experiencing Space: Leveraging Linguistic Landscapes for (Second) Language and Culture Learning,” Paper presented at the conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Orlando, FL. Gilbert, G. (1981), “French and German: A Comparative Study,” in C. A. Ferguson and S. B. Heath (eds.), Language in the USA, 257–72, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodman, Y. (1980), “The Roots of Literacy,” in M. P. Douglass (ed.), Claremont Reading Conference Forty-Fourth Yearbook, 1–32, Claremont, CA: Claremont Reading Conference. Gorter, D. (2015), “Multilingual Interaction and Minority Languages: Proficiency and Language Practices in Education and Society,” Language Teaching, 48 (1): 82–98. Hornberger, N. (1989), Continua of Biliteracy, Review of Educational Research, 59 (3): 271–96.

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Hornberger, N. (2000), “Multilingual Literacies, Literacy Practices and the Continua of Biliteracy,” in M. Martin-Jones and K. Jones (eds.), Multilingual Literacies, 353–68, Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins North America. Hull, G. and K. Schultz (2001), “Literacy and Learning Out of School: A Review of Theory and Research,” Review of Educational Research, 71 (4): 575–611. Ivković, D. and H. Lotherington (2009), “Multilingualism in Cyberspace: Conceptualizing the Virtual Linguistic Landscape,” International Journal of Multilingualism, 6 (1): 17–36. Jaworski, A. and C. Thurlow (2010), Semiotic Landscape: Language, Image, Space, London and New York: Continuum. Kanno, Y. and B. Norton, eds. (2003), Imagined Communities and Educational Possibilities, Journal of Language, Identity and Education (special issue), 2 (4). Kendrick, M. and S. Jones (2008), “Girls’ Visual Representations of Literacy in a Rural Ugandan Community,” Canadian Journal of Education, 31 (3): 372–404. Kern, R. (2000), Literacy and Language Teaching, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Kramsch, C. (2006), “From Communicative Competence to Symbolic Competence, Perspectives,” The Modern Language Journal, 90 (ii): 249–52. Kramsch, C. (2011), “The Symbolic Dimensions of the Intercultural,” Language Teaching, 44 (3): 354–67. Kramsch, C. and A. Whiteside (2008), “Language Ecology in Multilingual Settings: Towards a Theory of Symbolic Competence,” Applied Linguistics, 29 (4): 645–71. Kress, G. and T. Van Leeuwen (2001), Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication, London, England: Hodder Arnold. Kress, G. and T. Van Leeuwen (2006), Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, 2nd edn, London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Lee, H. and B. Choi (2016, April), A Geolocative Linguistic Landscape Project in Korean Language Education. Paper presented at the conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Orlando, FL. Lefebvre, H. ([1974]1991), The Production of Space, trans. D. Nicholson-Smith, Oxford, England: Blackwell. Llopis-Garcia, R. (2016 April), Twitter and the City: Cultural Analysis and the Linguistic Landscape of ÑYC, Paper presented at the Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Orlando, FL. Malinowski, D. (2009), “Authorship in the Linguistic Landscape: A Multimodal-Performative View,” in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscapes: Expanding the Scenery, 107–25, New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Malinowski, D. (2015), “Opening Spaces of Learning in the Linguistic Landscape,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1/2): 95–113. Malinowski, D. (2016 April), Translate the City: A Pedagogical Intervention into the Representational Logic of the Linguistic Landscape Image. Paper presented at the Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Orlando, FL. Maxim, H. H. (2016 April), Using the Linguistic Landscape to Foster Methodological Awareness and Language Development in the L2 Classroom. Paper presented at the Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Orlando, FL. Norton, B. (2001), “Non-Participation, Imagined Communities, and the Language Classroom,” in M. Breen (ed.), Learner Contributions to Language Learning: New Directions in Research, 159–71, London: Pearson Education Limited. Norton, B. (2010), “Identity, Literacy, and English-language Teaching,” TESL Canada Journal, 28 (1): 1–13.

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Norton, B. and Toohey, K. (2011), “State-of-the-Art Article: Identity, Language Learning and Social Change,” Language Teaching, 44 (4): 412–46, Cambridge Journals: Cambridge University Press, Available online: http://journals. cambridge.org. Pavlenko, A. and B. Norton (2007), “Imagined Communities, Identity, and English Language Teaching,” in J. Cummins and C. Davison (eds.), International Handbook of English Language Teaching, 669–80, New York: Springer. Piller, I. (2001), “Identity Construction in Multilingual Advertising,” Language in Society, 30: 153–86. Piller, I. (2003), “Advertising as a Site of Language Contact,” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 23: 170–83. Rowland, L. (2013), “The Pedagogical Benefits of a Linguistic Landscape Project in Japan,” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 16 (4): 494–505. Sayer, P. (2010), “Using the Linguistic Landscape as a Pedagogical Resource,” ELT Journal, 64 (2): 143–54. Scollon, R. and S. Scollon (2003), Discourses in Place: Languages in the Material World, London, England: Routledge. Shohamy, E. and D. Gorter, eds. (2009), Linguistic Landscapes: Expanding the Scenery, New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Statistical Atlas. Available online: https://statisticalatlas.com/state/Arizona/Languages (accessed January 23, 2018). Trumper-Hecht, N. (2010), “Linguistic Landscape in Mixed Cities in Israel from the Perspective of ‘Walkers’: The Case of Arabic,” in E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael and M. Barni (eds.), Linguistic Landscape in the City, 235–51, Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters. Woldemariam H. and E. Lanza (2015), “Imagined Community: The Linguistic Landscape in a Diaspora,” Linguistic Landscape, 1 (1/2): 172–90 Wenger, E. (1998), Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Parents Interpreting Their Children’s Schoolscapes: Building an Insider’s Perspective TAM Á S P É TER SZAB Ó AND ROBERT A. TROYER

1 INTRODUCTION School premises have been recognized as custom-designed built environments that enhance specific activities and interactional practices in educational contexts. In her study of educational anthropology, Brown was the first to propose the term “schoolscape” to cover “the physical and social setting in which teaching and learning take place” (Brown 2005: 79). Combining material and social aspects of education, Brown has pointed to the role schoolscapes play in socializing children to various ways of visual, or more broadly speaking, object-mediated institutional communication. The investigation of schoolscapes in turn leads to a better understanding of pedagogical practices that reflect and construct language ideologies (Brown 2012) as well as pedagogical principles and values (cf. Johnson 1980). Utilizing Brown’s (2005, 2012) definitions, we argue for a non-logocentric approach to schoolscapes and use the term in reference to “the visual and spatial organization of educational spaces, with special emphasis on inscriptions, images and the arrangement of the furniture” (Szabó 2015: 24). This approach necessitates that we question an emphasis on the “linguistic” in LLS; making the object of study “the language on signs” creates a boundary that separates words from their context and ignores the complex processes of emplacement (Scollon and Scollon 2003). Currently schoolscape research represents a rapidly growing field, covering diverse geographical, technological, and interactional contexts (for comprehensive reviews, see Laihonen and Szabó 2018; Gorter 2018). Schoolscape studies are tightly linked to qualitative and ethnographic LLS (e.g., Lou 2016; Peck and Stroud 2015; Waksman and Shohamy 2016) that argue that spaces as social constructs are sites of object-mediated negotiations of cultural practices and ideologies that explain, evaluate, or challenge certain institutional routines, traditions, and processes (cf. Potter and Edwards 2003). Emphasizing such connections, schoolscape studies enhance intervention projects

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that can be carried out with school communities to further develop their pedagogical strategies through a more conscious negotiation of spatial practices. Such cooperation is much needed because, as previous studies (e.g., Szabó 2015) have shown, although school communities develop sets of practices for creating and adapting spaces to their purposes, they seldom engage in explicit conversations about or systematic consideration of the physical environments they inhabit. People encounter a complexity of landscapes in which they navigate and carry out action (Clark 2010). Homes, streets, administrative offices, and spaces for commercial, educational, and recreational activities are perhaps the most relevant in one’s life. Walking, commuting, and interacting, people establish connections between such heterogeneous sites as they enforce and challenge interactional practices and construct and transform spaces (cf. de Certeau 1984). From this perspective, school premises are special since they can be defined as semipublic spaces (Gorter 2013). That is, schools are open to large groups of people, but entry to the premises and access to resources are regulated. In this regard, schoolscape studies reflect another theme of this collection: opening spaces. Access to semipublic places entails a much closer connection between researchers’ places of study and the people who imbue these spaces with socio-semiotic meaning. Local community members (i.e., students, teachers, parents, administrative staff, etc.) play a crucial role in creating, interpreting, and adjusting schoolscapes, but at the same time schools as institutions operate in line with local, national, and global standards of education. To get a better understanding of the transitory character of schoolscapes as private-yet-public spaces, we focus on parents’ experiences within the premises of their children’s schools. Parents belong to school communities through their children and through cooperation with teachers and school administration, but typically they do not spend a lot of time on premises during teaching time. Although they receive information from various sources (e.g., from their children’s or the teachers’ reports) about school life, they typically have only a mediated experience regarding classroom practices. However, we argue, parents are important schoolscape agents especially through the evaluations and expectations that they articulate to teachers and administrators. Our materials come from the lead author’s project that focused on the somewhat discontinuous transition from authoritative pedagogies to egalitarian practices in Hungarian schools. Since Hungarian schools compete for student admissions to secure their funding (either from public or private sources), the school management often designs or controls the schoolscape in ways to meet parents’ expectations. Previous studies (e.g., Szabó 2015; Laihonen and Szabó 2017) have analyzed how teachers articulated their presumptions about parents’ expectations. In this chapter, in turn, we analyze how parents themselves present, interpret, and transform the schoolscape in the frame of a fieldwork activity that affords interaction with objects, a researcher, and some of the school community members. Although we use visual data in our analysis, our main goal is to analyze schoolscape-related interaction, and more specifically, interpretative conversations about schoolscapes that index identity (the roles that parents construct in interaction) and agency, which is related to the power status of these roles. These goals also question the boundary that limits LLS to documenting and interpreting the static environment and/or attitudes toward it. With these goals in mind, we apply an applied Conversation Analytical approach (e.g., Antaki 2011) to

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detect practices of membership categorization and status management. Specifically we address the following questions: 1. How do parents when discussing the schoolscape construct their identity and negotiate the agency of their roles? 2. What educational expectations, traditions, and ideologies do parents convey when talking about the schoolscape? Thus, we investigate how the participants made connections between the school environment as a socially constructed space and their own roles and impact in the community which uses and shapes such a space. By emphasizing movement through and commenting upon the LL of the schools, this chapter foregrounds the dynamic nature of these semiotic spaces. Educational institutions are physical places, but as environments that mediate and facilitate human interaction on multiple scales, their significant import rests in how they are interpreted by their inhabitants. As Jaworski and Thurlow (2010: 6) state in summarizing contemporary scholarship on spatialization, “Space is not only physically but also socially constructed, which necessarily shifts absolutist notions of space towards more communicative or discursive conceptualizations.” One way to question the boundaries of LLS is to challenge a logocentric phenomenological ontology by collecting data that is concomitant with the social construction of space and that privileges the perspectives of actors and agents rather than observation and documentation. Thus, in this chapter we demonstrate that the lived environment can be studied as a living landscape that exists when people, language, and place interact. To understand a schoolscape at this level, this chapter presents an ethnographic methodology and detailed analysis of visual data and verbal interaction between the local agents, the researcher, and the schoolscape. Before our analyses, we provide a review of agency and identity studies and describe the data generation methods and the corpus.

2 AGENCY AND IDENTITY IN SCHOOLSCAPERELATED DISCOURSES In her review, Ahearn (2001) defined agency as “the socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (112). To refer to power relations, she adopted Karp’s distinction between actors and agents, the former meaning people with rule-governed behavior, and the latter referring to people who are “engaged in the exercise of power in the sense of the ability to bring about effects and to (re)constitute the world” (Ahearn 2001: 112; cf. Karp 1986). Subsequent studies have gone beyond such a dualism, and built on interaction analysis that emphasizes the relational, emergent, and context-dependent nature of agency. For example, Hunter and Cooke (2007: 72) stated that “being able to act implies the ability to act differently and we take agency to be the ability to act with initiative and effect in a socially constructed world.” For Hunter and Cooke, differing from pre-set agendas (“to act differently”) is a sign of increasing autonomy that is crucial to promoting learner agency. To enhance the analysis of agency as a relational concept, Ruohotie-Lyhty and Moate (2015) have proposed the terms “reactive” and “proactive agency.” “Reactive agency” refers to responses to the (perceived) agency of those who seem to be influential, that is, who can (or seem to be able to) control circumstances directly or indirectly.

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Ruohotie-Lyhty and Moate (2015) provide “meeting expectations of others, retiring and expecting others to deliver” (p. 54) as examples of this type of agency. On the contrary, “proactive agency” “suggests a knowing and active individual, whose activity is oriented towards one’s own goals instead of being driven from the outside” (p. 55). Corresponding actions in Ruohotie-Lyhty and Moate’s corpus were “delivering, connecting, finding own goals, entering a new space and taking a stance” (p. 55). We find these two terms useful since human interaction with schoolscapes is also built on both reactivity and proactivity. People routinely interpret schoolscapes as agentive in at least two ways. (1) Signs and spatial relations among artifacts are the results of previous human actions and thus people react to other people’s previous actions (cf. Coupland 2012; Stroud and Jegels 2014); and (2) signs and spatial relations influence and somewhat restrict the action potential of people in the schoolscape, as the following examples explain. Figures 19.1, 19.2 are

FIGURE 19.1 Video capture of the panopticon classroom.

FIGURE 19.2 Video capture of the classroom rearranged for group work.

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visually modified (anonymized) captures from a video recorded lesson observation from the lead author’s Hungarian corpus. At the beginning of the observed lesson (Figure 19.1), the setting can be described as a “panopticon classroom”—employing the term coined by the eighteenth-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham to describe institutions, especially prisons, in which many individuals can be observed from one vantage point. Foucault (1979) argued that such spatial arrangements exist to enforce disciplinary power structures, and Scollon and Scollon (2004) apply the term to classrooms in which the teacher controls the interaction order by selecting and deselecting speakers, evaluating and repairing their performance as well as supervising all students in the room. At some point, the teacher instructed the students to move the furniture and form work stations for small groups of three to four persons. After this transformation (Figure 19.2), students were expected to interact only within their peer group, and the teacher supervised only one group at a time by walking from work station to work station. Close to the end of the class, the teacher initiated the transformation of the classroom back to the panopticon setting (cf. Figure 19.1). By rearranging the furniture, the teacher communicated a change in the presumptions on the interaction order. However, such presumptions were challenged during the observed lessons since there were students who talked to each other during the teacher’s speech in the panopticon setting, and others who did not contribute to group discussions in the group work setting. This paragraph is an academic account of an observed event, referring to preexisting results and the researcher’s own (fieldwork) experiences. As will be shown in the data that follows, through images and texts, an interpretive account can be constructed to analyze processes of sense- and placemaking. An individual’s agency is closely related to their identity; as Titman (1994) has noted, competence and control of the physical world is an important aspect of self-identity. As shown in our data and discussion sections, the parent participants constructed their situational identities in several ways that demonstrated competence in relation to the schoolscape. In this chapter we seek to emphasize connections between our analysis of discursively co-constructed agency and recent LL scholarship that highlights the role of identity. In doing so our point of departure is the volume edited by Blackwood, Lanza, and Woldemariam (2016) which was thematically organized according to aspects of identity addressed by the contributors. Having pointed readers to the extensive coverage of and resources for language, the LL, and identity in the aforementioned volume, here we will merely highlight a few key considerations. In contrast to approaches to identity that posit an internalized, static construct, we follow current conceptions that view identity as performed and dynamic (Bucholtz and Hall 2004, 2005; Benwell and Stokoe 2006), and closely linked to dimensions of power (Pavlenko and Blackledge 2004). In this chapter’s discussion section, we will rely on the framework presented by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) that consists of the following five principles: identity (1) is emergent; (2) includes macro, local, and temporary categories; (3) requires several indexical processes; (4) relies on complementary relations that individuals align with, and (5) is constantly shifting. Examples of these principles which were present in the data from this schoolscape study are presented in the discussion section. By emphasizing the agency and identity of inhabitants of the LL, this chapter addresses the crucial role that these constructs play in formulations of semiotic spaces. In the remaining parts of the chapter, we focus on how parents create their accounts with the use of various semiotic resources (i.e., referring to visuals, reconstructing discourses, building arguments, etc.). Further, we show how interaction with other persons influences parents’ verbal accounts.

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3 DATA AND METHOD To study different organizational cultures and pedagogical practices as situated in the LL of educational institutions, the lead author visited four schools in Hungary. To secure confidentiality, we mention the schools and the participants by pseudonyms. Two staterun schools (River School: grades 1–8, students aged 6–15, and Garden School: grades 9–13, students aged 15–19), a church-run school for students from families experiencing economic challenges (Forest School, grades 1–13), and a private foundation-run school (Hill School, grades 1–13) participated in the study. Four one-week visits took place in spring 2015. Following the principles of inclusive research (e.g., Nind 2014; Szabó and Troyer 2017), the fieldwork activities were carefully negotiated with the school administration that then recruited the research participants on a voluntary basis. The dataset includes video recorded classroom observations, sedentary and walking interviews as well as field notes. In this chapter we focus on walking interview data. Walking interviews were conducted with the tourist guide technique (henceforth TGT; Szabó and Troyer 2017), a walking-based method that enhances interaction with the material environment and stresses the role of research participants in the exploration, interpretation, and transformation of LLs. At the beginning of the tour, the researcher asks the research participant to guide her/him through the school premises, commenting on the design of the foyers, classrooms, and other community spaces, in relation to daily activities that take place there. The research participant introduces the schoolscape, holding the voice recorder which implicates that she/he is in control of the verbal interaction, and the researcher is equipped with a photo and/or a video camera like a tourist familiarizing herself/ himself with a new environment. The setting defines research participants as the experts of the given school community, and it encourages them to initiate actions, open new topics in conversation and decide on the route (for a detailed analysis, see Szabó and Troyer 2017). However, as our examples will show, the guide negotiates the implementation of the tour with the researcher and potentially with other persons as well. Mobile interaction in the LL creates a frame in which talk on the material environment emerges easily. As Garvin (2010: 255) has observed, “The LL in the current study functioned as both text and tool in that it embodied the phenomenon under investigation as well as stimulated and focused the interviews that were constructed onsite during the ‘walking tours.’” The generated data includes videos, photographs, verbal interaction, and written text. In 2015, a robust corpus was created from work in the four participating schools. The lead author participated in 25 tours that resulted in nearly 1,600 photographs, 16.25 hours of audio, 1.25 hours of video, and a detailed, 262-page field journal. In this chapter we use the sub-corpus of parent-led tours which consists of 5 tours, 240 photographs, nearly 4 hours of audio recording, more than half an hour video recording and field notes. All tours were voice recorded and photographed, and one tour was video recorded by a voluntary assistant. To maintain confidentiality, we apply a special effect on images that feature individuals. We need to note that only mothers volunteered to participate in the study, and that two of the tours we analyze here were a combination of parent- and student-led tours. Since the parents routinely arrived in the afternoon to the school, their children were in the afternoon club and they preferred to be with their mothers. It was a non-planned, natural development. In the Forest School tour, the children seldom contributed to the conversation verbally, but they helped their mothers with practical tasks. In the River School tour, the guide’s daughter contributed many details about school life and acted

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as a co-leader of the tour as in the following excerpt (Dóra: mother, Lilla: her daughter, Tamás: researcher; “eighth Bee” is the identifier of an eighth grade class): (1) 1 Dóra: 2 Lilla: 3 D: 4 Tamás:

erre van még terem? are there more rooms this way? igen, a nyolcadik bé yes, eighth Bee ja! ( - - ) de szépek ezek a rajzok is, hihetetlen yep ( - - ) oh how nice these drawings are, unbelievable! ühm uh huh

Dóra’s conversations with her daughter are examples of intergenerational dialogue. The student led her mother to rooms her mother was not familiar with, and the mother shared her own school life memories as a former student of River School. Further, it happened several times during the tours that other people joined the conversation for a while, for example, students or teachers who walked in the corridor or were already in the classroom to be explored. This characteristic of the tours means that although only one participant was asked to lead the tours, it happened quite easily that eventually seven people contributed to the conversation (e.g., in Forest School: the researcher, the mother with her three children, a teacher in the school yard, and a teacher in a classroom). As mentioned in Section 1, we apply a Conversational Analytic approach to the data to analyze interactional practices in co-constructing agency and identity in various schoolscape settings. The examples will show that through referring to and transforming the schoolscape, participants exercised their agency to construct and deconstruct various traditional agendas and ideologies about school interaction. We apply Jefferson’s (2004) notation in the transcripts (summarized in Appendix 1).

4 ANALYSIS 4.1 Classrooms for learning Our first example comes from River School where Dóra, a mother of two and a former student of River School, guided the tour. Dóra arrives, and we spend the first minutes in the main lobby with her talking about the history of the school and its achievements that have recently enjoyed media coverage. At some point Dóra asks the researcher (Tamás) for ideas about the continuation of the tour (“Miről beszéljünk még?” “What else should we talk about?”). Tamás suggests going to classrooms; that is, the route is negotiated verbally. Arriving to the classroom, Dóra talks about the evolution of technology in relation to the interactive whiteboard which, as she notes, is even bigger than the blackboard. Then she points to the coat of arms of Hungary and the text of the Hungarian anthem on display, commenting on their importance in patriotic education (cf. Szabó 2015). After a long pause, she initiates a turn and continues the evaluation of the schoolscape. Figure 19.3 shows the setting she is talking about in excerpt (2a). There are history, chemistry, biology, and grammar posters on the wall, as well as the administrative map of Hungary and a portrait series of canonic nineteenth- to twentieth-century literary authors.

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FIGURE 19.3 Photograph of posters representing a variety of academic subjects.

(2a) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Dóra:

meg ezt is jó dolognak tartom egyébként, hogy ö (.) és and actually I find it a very good thing that er (.) and ez a mi időnkben, még amikor én ide jártam iskolába, in our times, when I came here to school, akkor is ugyanígy volt, hogy hogy ö nem egy nem egy then it was also like the same that that not one not one séma, hanem minden ö témakörből scheme, but all er subjects Tamás: ühm uh huh D: ö (.) vannak fölrakva olyan alapdolgok, amiket szerintem er (.) basic things are put on there that I think tudni kell egy gyereknek, tehát aki a child should know, so one who T: [ühm ] uh huh D: [álta]lános iskolát végzett, és most tényleg n- nemcsak finished elementary school, and now really n- not only a történelem meg nemcsak a nemcsak a History and not only not only the (.4) nemzeti identitástudat, hanem ige[nis] national identity, but indeed, T: [ühm] uh huh

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D:

15 16

T:

17

D:

18 19 20

T:

21

D:

22 23 24

395

a földrajz, a nyelvtan, tehát ezek mind olyan Geography, Grammar, so these are all so alapdolgok, amiket basic things that ühm uh huh azt szokták mondani, hogy az ismétlés a tudás édesanyja, they say that repetition is the mother of knowledge, és ha csak unatkozik és bámészkodik, akkor is legalább and if s/he’s just bored and stares, then still at least ilyeneket, (.) jó dol- jó dolgokat láthat, tehát olyat, amit like this, (.) s/he can see good things like this, so things ühm uh huh amit neki meg kell tanulni meg amit tudniuk kell that s/he needs to learn and they need to know. (1.1) úgyhogy én úgy gondolom, és és minden osztályterem so I think, and and all classrooms are ilyen egyébként. like this, actually.

Though her earlier technology-related comments about the interactive boards are not included in the excerpt, they concerned displaying content on the wall. As this example demonstrates, we argue that Dóra’s account interprets the classroom as a historically situated learning space that is mediated by technology and visual displays. The historical line becomes multifaceted as she contextualizes it with her own life narrative (“in our times”; line 2) then refers to history as a school subject and as a formative factor of national identity (lines 10–12). Following from her comments about technology, she emphasizes the continuity of hanging posters as learning aids (“it was . . . the same”; line 3) and the practice of distinguishing between separate school subjects (“all subjects”; line 4). That is, she interprets the classroom walls as surfaces with potentially useful visual-textual information for learning. She makes connections between the curriculum and the content displayed on the wall, arguing that they remind students of those manifest “basic things” that “a child should know” (lines 6–7). Dóra’s references to the physical space and its relationship to curriculum function as indexes to her educational ideologies. We find that here she defines knowledge transmission and identity building as the basic tasks of a school, so her argument is in line with the findings of Johnson’s (1980: 187) school ethnography that concluded that “classroom material culture functionally reinforces the integration [. . .] of heterogeneous local communities into national networks of society and culture.” The extract suggests that it is exactly the fulfillment of this task that Dóra expects from the school. Emphasizing that classrooms are for learning, Dóra presupposes that students repeatedly read the content of the posters and it facilitates learning and meeting school requirements (lines 17–21). She evaluates hanging posters positively (“I find it a very good thing”; line 1),

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claiming that this practice is typical in this school (“all classrooms are like this”; lines 23–24). Later (not included in the excerpt) Dóra talks about a regulative poster that described group work, defining and describing roles within a group. Dóra then asked Tamás to take a picture on the poster, explicitly highlighting the poster and its role in the organization of classroom interaction. She sees the function of such a poster as similar to the ones mentioned above in which content learning is disseminated through the process of repetitive reading: (2b) 1

D:

2

T:

3

D:

így rögzül bennük, hogy it’s like getting fixed in them ühm uh huh milyen (.) csoportmunkás foglalkozásnál mi a feladatuk. what (.) what their role is in group work activities.

In summary, we claim that in excerpts (2a–b) Dóra reinforced the continuity of educational traditions in the schoolscape. Further, she referred to expectations that students should meet, so she emphasized their reactive agency in the learning process. To do this she primarily used verbal tools, especially self-initiated monologue, while the researcher repeatedly uttered uh huh which we identify as a continuer encouraging the other interactant to carry on (e.g., Schegloff 2000: 5). These interactions demonstrate the facilitative role that researchers play in identity creation as the interviewees are afforded agentive roles in their exploration of a schoolscape or other semiotic landscape.

4.2 The order of a “proper” classroom The next tour we analyze here was led by Réka, a mother of three students from Forest School. When she arrives, she immediately leads Tamás, the researcher, to the classroom of her elder daughter, a second grader. Réka prefers to start with a seated interview during which she presents her family situation and her strong commitment toward the school. Soon after beginning her son (Gábor) and her younger daughter enter the room so sometimes Réka also involves them in the conversation, asking them questions. Réka does not speak directly about the classroom in the first thirty-five minutes, and she is about to leave the room but Tamás proposes an alternative agenda including photography and talking about the schoolscape: (3) 1

Réka:

hát akkor Tamás, átvezetnélek a hatodik osztályba, well, then, Tamás, I’d lead you to the sixth class

2

Tamás: jó okay

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R:

oda jár a

397

( - - )

there goes my ( - - ) 4

T:

hát csinálnék egy néhány fényképet howell I’d take a couple of photos thazért erről a teremről

5

rather about this classroom 6

R:

jó okay

7

T:

hogyha már ilyen sok időt töltenek ott. és if they spend so much time here. and

8

(.6)

9

hogy mit ö milyen benyomásaid vannak erről a teremről, that what er what impressions you have about this room, hogy milyen, hogy tetszik,

10

what is it like, how do you like it, [mit gondolsz róla?

11

]

what do you think about it? 12

R:

[nekem nagyon.

] kis otthonos.

very much. it’s cozy. 13

T:

aha. ah hah.

14

R:

elfogadnám. betennék ide magamnak egy s áI’d accept it, I’d bring here to me a begy kis ágyat, egy egyszemélyes ágyat,

15

a small bed, a single bed, 16

T:

((chuckles))

17

R:

s én bizony ellennék itt. and I’d say I’d stay here.

18

T:

ühm, ühm. uh huh, uh huh.

19

R:

nagyon jó. it’s very good.

20

T:

igen. yes.

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R:

ez a legjobb terem. it’s the best room.

22

T:

((chuckles))

23

R:

hát nem is a tied, fiam, tiszta kosz a termetek. well certainly not yours, my son, your room’s so dirty.

24

Gábor: ez is ez a mi- mi ide jártunk. this is also o- we came here as well.

Tamás’s request, his negotiation with Réka, and the questions in lines 4–11 direct the attention to the physical environment and launch the walking tour phase of this combined encounter. Réka starts to answer the questions in overlap with the end of Tamás’s utterance (line 11–12), so the beginning of her turn (“very much”) answers the question in line 11 (“How do you like it?”). Réka later elaborates on her positive evaluation in different ways. First she calls the classroom “cozy” (line 12). A general observation of the whole corpus of parent-led tours shows that all five mothers involved in the study often evaluated the school premises from the point of view of their children’s physical and emotional comfort. Among others, a mother from River School emphasized the friendly colors of the curtain; a mother from Hill School mentioned that the tea equipment in the classroom creates an impression of being at home; and finally, the well-functioning heating system was highlighted in Garden School. All these examples and several others show that the mothers often compared the school to their home or an idealized image of a home, thus connecting different types of spaces or “landscapes of being” (Clark 2010: 6). By contrast, the majority of teachers and students rather highlighted the viewpoints of working efficiency (e.g., ergonomic chairs; Hill School) or networking in the institution (e.g., finding friends easily in the lobby; Garden School), thus focusing on the schoolscape itself, not in relation to other kinds of social spaces. In this regard, Réka’s mention of “coziness” fits the line of mother-led tours. However, as we see in extract (3), Réka develops this motif further, claiming that the classroom is so good that she would even transform it to a private accommodation (lines 14–17). She builds a fictitious narrative about a potential rearrangement in which she is the protagonist (“I’d accept it, I’d bring here . . .”; line 14). Later she makes similar comments in another classroom as well where she points to spots along which walls would be erected to separate the classroom into two rooms with different functions. In summary, Réka takes the opportunity to construct her proactive agency through her narration of imagined actions. Further, she positions herself as an expert on the whole school, claiming that the classroom they are in is “the best” (line 21). Such a claim suggests that she is familiar with all the classrooms and thus she can evaluate them along a scale. At the same time, by calling this classroom the best, she constructs a contrast with another classroom, that of her sixth grader son Gábor (line 23). Since she already announced that the next stop of the tour would be the room of the sixth graders (line 1), we evaluate this contrast as a tool in structuring the tour verbally and anticipating evaluations emerging from co-exploration. To understand her son’s reaction (line 24) better, we note that in the original Hungarian Réka uses singular case (“tied” Hung. “SG.2 yours”; line 23) first and

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then plural case (“termetek” Hung. “PL.2 your classroom”; line 23) when referring to the ownership of the sixth graders’ classroom. Doing so, her utterance might be interpreted in a way that her son and his class as the owner of the classroom are responsible for its bad condition (“so dirty”; line 23). In line 24, Gábor refuses this ownership categorization by claiming that the current classroom also belongs to his class, at least on a historical scale. He launches a turn with ez is a miénk (“this is ours”) but drops “ours” (mi- “o-”) and with self-initiated self-repair he says that previously this was the room of his class. That is, the ownership of Gábor and his class is becoming distributed as Gábor creates ownership and belonging to the “cozy” classroom as well. When arriving to Gábor’s current classroom, Réka continues to contrast that room to the previous one, claiming her dislike several times. After some minutes of criticizing the condition of the classroom, she again organizes the tour with verbal tools, anticipating that the next classroom she has in her agenda is almost as good as the previously visited one. Since Réka articulates her concerns with the current classroom so often, Tamás asks her to present an alternative classroom setting. (4a) 1 2 3 4 5 6

Tamás: és mondjuk mit változtatnál rajta? and let’s say, what would you change on it? Réka: én változtatni? me changing? (.6) hát például az, hogy ne ennyi, well, for example that not that many, ne össze-vissza legyenek a padok. the desks shouldn’t be so messily. T: aha. ah hah.

Tamás’s question (“What would you change on it?”; line 1) invites an account on an imagined transformation (e.g., the verb is in conditional tense). Réka echoes the question (“Me changing?”; line 2) which might be interpreted as a preparation for the extension of her role as a transformative (proactive) agent in the schoolscape. This time she does not talk about the classroom in relation to private accommodation, but follows another line concerning the organization of work. First she describes her preferences verbally (lines 4–5), criticizing the current “messy” arrangement. Later she negotiates it with Tamás (not in the extract) that one major problem is that a student’s desk is too close to the teacher’s, and it is not in line with some principles she does not explicate (“nem illő” “it’s not proper”; not in the extract). Tamás again invites her to articulate an alternative arrangement (“és hogyan rendeznéd a padokat?” “and how would you arrange the desks?”; not in the extract), and at this point Réka goes beyond verbal evaluations and fictitious narratives, and turns into physical action: pulls and pushes desks and chairs. She also instructs her children to assist her and they work on the rearrangement for several minutes. When Réka pulls back a desk which is directly next to the teacher’s desk, she comments on the result of her own action as follows:

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(4b) 1

R:

2 3

T:

4

R:

((moving a student’s desk)) és akkor and then a tanári asztaltól ezt el. get away with this from the teacher’s table. aha, aha. ah hah, ah hah. mert a gyereknek így kell lenni. cause the child should be like this.

We argue that by stressing “the child should be like this” (line 4), Réka concludes her view about a normative order of the classroom she prefers. Later Réka adds that according to her, a classroom “would be normal like this” (Hung. “normális szerintem így lenne”; not in the extract). Figures 19.4–19.6 show some stages of the episode: the initial condition of the classroom (Figure 19.4); Réka and her children moving desks and chairs (Figure 19.5); and finally, the rows of desks and the increased space between the teacher’s and the student’s desk that Réka found appropriate (Figure 19.6). Considering the emergence of interaction during the walk (cf. Szabó and Troyer 2017), we emphasize that the transcript of the audio material and the inclusion of still photographs give only fragmented pieces of information about the co-exploration of the classroom. On the verbal level, evaluations are often implicit since co-conducted action provided a context in which lengthy elaboration or precise identification of objects were not considered necessary (e.g., “get away with this”; line 2 in excerpt 4b). We argue that the final result Réka preferred (Figure 19.6) is close to what we described above as the panopticon setting (Figure 19.1). That is, Réka reconstructed an environment in which the teacher controls interaction and supervises the tasks of all the students. Although the initial arrangement (Figure 19.4) was also close to the panopticon setting,

FIGURE 19.4 Photograph of the classroom as the teacher had left it.

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FIGURE 19.5 Photograph of the mother and children rearranging the furniture.

FIGURE 19.6 Photograph of the classroom arranged to the mother’s preferences.

Réka increased the visual impression of “order” by forming regular rows of desks. Further, Réka’s emphasis on the distance between the student’s and the teacher’s desks is in parallel with Scollon and Scollon’s (2004: 40) claim that teachers in panopticon settings often occupy as much as one-third of the classroom space in front, and the distance between them and the students contributes to their primary ownership of the space. We find that through a series of verbal and physical transformations of the schoolscape, Réka has strengthened her proactive agency and constructed an expert role. As our next excerpt shows, later Réka’s expert role gets somewhat challenged by a teacher.

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Leaving the sixth graders’ classroom, we traverse the school yard to approach a building that houses the last classroom of the tour. It is the time of the afternoon club so we find there the class and their teacher (Ida) upon arrival. Kata, mentioned in the excerpt, is Réka’s younger daughter. The excerpt begins at the point when Réka narrates the tour-so-far to Ida. (5) 1

Réka:

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13

14 15

16 R: 17 18 Tamás: 19 R:

úgyhogy megmutattam a hatodik osztályt is, elrendeztem so I showed the sixth class, I arranged a hatodik osztályt, hogy hogyan képzeltem el, mert the sixth class that how I imagined it, cause zsúfolva van ott a pad, the desks are crowded, (1.2) igaz? right? (.8) és (.) nem az a nem is nem is azzal van baj, and (.) it’s not the it’s not it’s not the problem that hogy zsúfolt, hanem viszont azzal, hogy szanaszét. it’s crowded but it’s that it’s messy. (1.2) és nem úgy, mint ahogy itt. and not like, not like here. (.9) ebbe az osztályba is meg mint a in this class and like in the class of Katáékéba is a padok nincsenek a tanári asztalnál, Kata’s as well, the desks are not at the teacher’s table, (.7) ott a hatba úgy volt, úgy húztam el. there in the sixth that was like that, I pulled them back. ((lines omitted)) ez a praktika, this practice, (.6) igen? yes? hogy (.) itt a második eltérő osztályban that (.) here in the second alternative class

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20 T: 21 R: 22 23 T: 24 25 26 R: 27 28 T: 29 R: 30 Ida: 31

32 33 R: 34 T: 35 I: 36 R: 37 I: 38 R: 39 I: 40 R: 41 I:

403

aha ah hah ahova az én lányom jár, itt is, ugyanúgy, mint a hatba, where my daughter goes, here, too, just like in the sixth, a tanári asztalnál nincs a pad. there’s no desk at the teacher’s table. aha ah hah (1.1) igen, tehát van egy ilyen yes, so there’s one like itt is a tanár (.) szereti a diákokat, de viszont here, too, the teacher (.) loves the students but meg- megtartsa azt a távolságot, hogy igenis ke- keeps the distance that indeed ühm uh huh hogy így lesz a padotok that your desk will be like this hát a távolság azért van, hogy ugye itt vannak a well the distance is there because, so here’s the személyes cuccok, hogy ne nyúljanak hozzá, tudják. personal stuff, so that they don’t touch it, so they know. de én a gyerekek között ülök but I sit among the children de azt mond- énbut I sa- I[aha aha aha ] ah hah ah hah ah hah [ahányszor jössz, ] látod, hogy nem itt whenever you come, you see that not here, [én é] I uígy tanítok,= I don’t teach like this, =igen, ] yes így nem lehet tanítani that’s not possible to teach so mindig [ott vagy] you’re always there [hanem ] köztük] vagyok, but I’m among them,

404

42 R: 43 I: 44 45 46 R: 47 48 Gábor: 49 R: 50 T:

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igen, meg itt [hátra is] yes, and here at the back as well [ez azért], hogy ami nekem itt van, so it’s cause that what I have here, hogy tudják, hogy ez nem nekik, mert so they know that it’s not for them, cause [(azért kell, hogy ezt megtanulják)] it’s needed that they learn it [de a hatodikba Idike ] úgy volt, hogy a pad but in the sixth, Idike, it was so that the desk teljesen itt a tanári asztalnál. was completely here at the teacher’s table. nekem is [úgy van.] it’s like that for me, too [ami ] nem szép. which is not nice aha, aha ah hah, ah hah

We interpret Réka’s narrative (lines 1–8) as a summary of her principles and her claim for an expert position vis-à-vis the teacher. She emphasizes her own proactive agency in presenting and transforming the schoolscape (e.g., “I showed,” “I arranged,” “I pulled them back”; lines 1–2, 15), she evaluates and compares settings (e.g., “not like here”; line 10), and identifies problems (e.g., “it’s messy”; line 8). As a summary, she presents her view that the big physical distance between teachers and students is not in conflict with a loving atmosphere (lines 26–29). Réka also voices a teacher in an imagined dialogue to support her argument (“indeed . . . your desk will be like this”; lines 27, 29; “your desk . . .” is uttered as if the teacher would talk to the students). According to Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998: 226), such active voicing “can be used in a number of ways to warrant the factual status of claims and undermine the possibility of skeptical responses” (p. 226). That is, Réka takes teacher authority and strengthens her argument by voicing the teacher who is present in the classroom. At this point Ida challenges Réka and articulates her own view on the classroom arrangement, presenting that the distance creates a private zone rather than an authority position for the teacher (lines 30–33, 43–45). Ida narrates that she always sits among the students so it is rather the distance of personal objects than the distance of persons that is created by the arrangement of the furniture. Further, Ida argues that it is not possible to teach when sitting at the teacher’s desk (line 39), and invites Réka to recall her previous experiences to prove that Ida routinely doesn’t sit at her desk (e.g., “Whenever you come . . .”; lines 35–42). Although Réka, partly in overlapping speech, accepts the validity of the situation as presented by Ida (lines 36–42), she maintains her criticism of the physical closeness of student and teacher desks, and concludes it in an evaluative statement (“not nice”; lines 46–49). We interpret this last evaluation as an attempt to restore Réka’s authority in the evaluation of schoolscape settings.

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5 DISCUSSION In the examples above, we analyzed how parents co-constructed ideologies about normativity in schoolscape design with regard to interaction order. These examples also display how the research setting provided an opportunity for the participants to describe and demonstrate their alternative or contesting perspectives on the schoolscape. Our data showed that parents constructed their situational identity via showing competence in relation to the schoolscape. In one case we found that a parent exercised control over the schoolscape and transformed the classroom setting. As briefly outlined in Section 2, Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) framework for identity analysis consists of five principles, all of which can be seen at work in the examples above. First, identity is an “emergent product rather than the preexisting source of linguistic and other semiotic practices” (Bucholtz and Hall 2005: 588). Our detailed analysis of researcher-participant interaction and the methodological perspective afforded by TGT demonstrate how situationally created identity influences an informant’s interaction with and evaluations of the schoolscape. For example, in excerpt (4a), Tamás’s question, “What would you change on it?” (line 1), was the impetus for Réka’s subsequent comments and rearranging of the classroom. Second, identities include “(a) macro-level demographic categories; (b) local, ethnographically specific cultural positions; and (c) temporary and internationally specific stances and participant roles” (Bucholtz and Hall 2005: 592). Dóra’s and Réka’s positions as mothers, their culturally influenced educational ideologies, and their performative roles as tour guides are all relevant to their movement through and commentary about their children’s schools. Bucholtz and Hall outline several indexical processes that are at work as a third element of identity construction. For example, Dóra’s references to history index the social function of schools as they enculturate students into a national identity, and her comment regarding the classroom displays that students can observe daily (“repetition is the mother of knowledge”; line 17 in excerpt 2a) presupposes a knowledge-transfer model of education. Likewise, Réka’s actions and evaluations index an authoritarian teacher-student relationship, but one in which “the teacher loves the students but / kekeeps the distance” (lines 26–27 in excerpt 5). The fourth principle of Bucholtz and Hall, that of the complementary relations or dualities that individuals align themselves with, for example, similarity/difference, is exemplified by Dóra’s observation that “in our times, when I came here to school, / then it was also like the same” (lines 2–3 in excerpt 2a). This evocation of the similar curricular structure that she experienced solidifies her identification with both the school’s history and the setting of her children’s education. The final principle that Bucholtz and Hall discuss emphasizes that identity is “constantly shifting both as interaction unfolds and across discourse contexts” (2005: 606). This is evident in the evolution of Réka’s role from guide to classroom authority as she arranges the room to parent as the teacher, Ida, assumes more control over the discourse. For scholars who seek to apply ethnographic methods to understand the dynamic interaction of people and space, considerations of agency and identity are a crucial lens. Likewise, distinguishing between reactive and proactive agency has helped us to understand the complexities of established and emerging schoolscape practices and their significance to institutional semiotics. While agency and identity are our focal concepts in this chapter, we need to note that in our study of Hungarian schoolscapes, the investigation of agency-in-interaction has helped us understand other aspects of educational practices as well. For example,

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teachers’ talk highlighted the role signs play in agency negotiations of classroom norms with regard to somewhat challenging interactional practices (e.g., disciplinary vs. youth language [Szabó 2015]; British English vs. American and outer circle Englishes [Szabó 2016, 2018]; compartmentalized languages vs. hybrid solutions [Szabó 2016]; etc.). With reference to research methodology, we discussed participants’ agency in embodiment, more specifically, in negotiating the trajectory of walking tours as well as manipulating objects and shaping discussion (Szabó and Troyer 2017).

6 SUGGESTED APPLICATIONS Recent educational development projects (e.g., Kury et al. 2014; Mikkonen et al. 2015) and our results presented in this chapter indicate that conversations with school community members provide relevant insights into the co-construction of institutional agency and identities and, further, foster cooperation among school community members with different organizational statuses. We argue that adapting researchbased methods such as TGT to educational development purposes helps school community members to explicate and discuss their practices in and interpretations of the schoolscape with regard to their special interests. Further, such encounters give space for peer and intergenerational learning situations. Students guiding their peers, their teachers or their parents, and all possible combinations of taking roles and linking people with different organizational statuses enhance dialogue about the actual and the potential use of various school spaces, and can also be used for detecting problematic issues or challenges that should be addressed. During the tours, school community members can also recall their personal stories that link them to the premises, potentially including references to previous school premises that have been meaningful to them (e.g., their previous school, or the school’s previous building when appropriate), or establishing links between schoolscapes and other private or public spaces they encounter (perhaps similarly to Réka’s account on the parallels between a home and the school). Currently the lead author contributes to an organizational development project for students and teachers of so-called colocated schools in Finland. In colocated schools, administratively independent schools with different languages of instruction (i.e., Finnish and Swedish) share premises, and the increased use of both languages changes previous language practices. This situation can be considered an opportunity for renewing educational practices, or a threat to established traditions, depending on school community members’ language ideologies that can be studied through walking through the premises and talking about changes in the schoolscape (e.g., Szabó et al. 2018). Recently, students of colocated schools have recorded joint walking tours, that is, students from both institutions are present, and they interpret the schoolscape together, merging or challenging competing institutional and personal perspectives. Their recordings are then used in popularized videos to present the phenomenon of colocated schools (e.g., From and Szabó 2017). Likewise, the second author is working with a local school district to examine the presence (and absence) of a minority language (the home language of about a quarter of the district’s students) in the district’s schoolscapes. The interaction between the researcher, teachers, and administrators has led to increased awareness of the symbolic importance of language choice and the potential for initiatives that increase visibility of the minority language.

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Beyond walking tours, participants can also prepare visual-textual diaries in connection with the school premises, organizing the content around various topics relevant to them, for example, colors, materials, sounds, smells, action potentials (what, where, when, with whom and how to do in the school building), and so on. Walking, talking, thinking, documenting, and planning together, school community members can set agendas for further development, and can redefine their roles in the community. For example, when preparing the abovementioned videos on colocated schools, school community members have emphasized that plans of implementation of any task in the project need to come from the school itself, so they should not be imposed on them by external agents. That is, they have stressed their aspiration toward constructing proactive agency in terms of interaction and potential intervention in their schoolscape. LL research that engages closely with the inhabitants and stakeholders of a place not only changes the kind of data that is collected, the methods of analysis, and theoretical orientation but, moreover, engenders transformative processes by raising awareness and providing local agency. These are the results of opening new spaces for research; to gain entry to semipublic environments, researchers must step out from behind the lens of the camera and make responsible social commitments to their participants. These interactions, in turn, lead us to question the boundaries entailed by the research methods of much previous research, and in adopting new perspectives, to understand a schoolscape not only as object but also as the experience of linguistic landscaping.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Szabó’s research was supported by the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland (For acknowledgements within this chapter; including only his acknowledgements in Prelims would be off-balance and, likely, the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland will need to see this acknowledgement within the text of the actual chapter).

APPENDIX 1 Transcript Conventions Used in this Chapter (based on Jefferson 2004) [

the point of overlap onset

]

the point at which two overlapping utterances end

=

no break between the two lines

(.)

a brief interval (shorter than 0.2 seconds)

(1.2)

elapsed time by tenth of seconds

:

prolongation of the immediately prior sound

-

cutoff

word

stress via pitch and/or amplitude

(( ))

transcriber’s description

(– –)

the transcriber could not get what was said

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FURTHER READING 1. Gorter, D. (in press). This chapter gives a comprehensive overview of LL–oriented research on educational spaces and their interpretations by school communities. It devotes special attention to contributions published in the Special Issue for Linguistics and Education “Studying the Visual and Material Dimensions of Education and Learning” (ed. by P. Laihonen and T. P. Szabó) which covers a great variety of geographical contexts, theoretical approaches, and methodologies applied. 2. Troyer, R. A. and T. P. Szabó (2017) and Szabó, T. P. and R. A. Troyer (2017). The first of these two articles discusses a theory of visual representation then draws on recent work in the related fields of anthropology and cultural geography to introduce videographic documentation and analysis of the LL. It provides a framework for videographic methodologies and an example of nonparticipatory video documentation. The second article provides a detailed analysis of walkingbased methodologies in ethnographic and LL research which provide insight into the organization of interaction between researchers and research participants. It also elaborates on the tourist guide technique method that we used in this study. 3. Kraftl, P. (2015). This monograph of comparative education develops a cultural geography–based framework for the study of educational spaces. It operates with notions such as connection versus disconnection, mess versus order, movement and embodiment as well as “good life.” Insights from this book complement LLS, and are thought-provoking for LL researchers, especially because they discuss central phenomena of LL research from the viewpoint of another academic tradition, that is, cultural geography. 4. For readers interested in language and identity, there is a wealth of literature. Good chapter-length starting points are Bucholtz and Hall (2004), Pavlenko and Blackledge (2004), and Schecter (2015). Longer treatments of the connection between language, culture, discourse, and identity include Benwell and Stokoe (2006), Joseph (2004), and Coupland (2007). For specific application of identity theories to studies of the LL, the volume edited by Blackwood, Lanza, and Woldemariam (2016) contains an overview and many detailed discussions from a variety of approaches.

ESSAY QUESTIONS 1. What makes an ideal physical learning space to you? Describe what you consider ideal for your studies and illustrate it with a photo you took, an image you downloaded from the internet, a drawing, or any other visual material. After writing your description, self-reflectively analyze what personal expectations and presuppositions you found in your text and visuals. Finally add if you got new insights or questions that influence your further studies in the topic. 2. Consider the educational ideologies implied by Dóra (transcript 2a) in reference to classroom signage and Réka’s opinions about classroom arrangement (transcript 5) relative to the comments of the teacher (Ida). Based on your experience, describe additional kinds of materials that are often posted in and around K-12 classrooms, and explain the educational beliefs that these imply. Discuss how these elements of the schoolscape may be interpreted differently by students, teachers, parents, and school administrators.

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PROJECT WORK 1. Explore the difference between a researcher’s etic (outsider) perspective and the emic (insider) perspective of an inhabitant of an LL. First, choose a local LL research site that you are unfamiliar with. Make a preliminary exploration on foot and audio record or write notes focusing on the salient features of the LL followed by a more detailed journal entry immediately afterward. If this is part of a larger project, you should return to gather an extensive photographic and/or video record for documentation. Next recruit a volunteer who is very familiar with the research site to be your “tour guide.” Briefly explain to them the idea of LL research then ask them to give you a walking tour which you video tape while trying as little as possible to direct their attention. Analyze the recording to find similarities and differences between what was salient to you as an outsider and what was important to your participant. 2. Applying tourist guide technique described in this chapter and in Szabó and Troyer (2017; see under Further Reading), co-explore a school building with a group of people which is as diverse as possible. For example, you can ask pupils, teachers, parents, education administration staff, janitors, security guards, firefighters, and others to guide you and share their specific interpretation of the space with you. Record the walking tours by taking photos, video recording, voice recording, and so on. To get more focused, you can choose a wing or a classroom for scrutiny. After the walking tours, analyze comparatively the material you generated with a special regard to the different viewpoints your guides represented and reconstructed vis-à-vis their role in the design, use, maintenance, and so on of the schoolscape. Pay particular attention to how participants’ involvement with the schoolscape changes depending on their role.

REFERENCES Ahearn, L. M. (2001), “Language and agency,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 30: 109–37. Antaki, Ch., ed. (2011), Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Benwell, B. and E. Stokoe (2006), Discourse and Identity, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Blackwood, R. J., E. Lanza, and H. Woldemariam, eds. (2016), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, London: Bloomsbury. Brown, K. D. (2005), “Estonian Schoolscapes and the Marginalization of Regional Identity in Education,” European Education, 37 (3): 78–89. Brown, K. D. (2012), “The Linguistic Landscape of Educational Spaces: Language Revitalization and Schools in Southeastern Estonia,” in D. Gorter, H. F. Marten, and L. V. Mensel (eds.), Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, 281–98, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bucholz, M. and K. Hall (2004), “Language and Identity,” in A. Durante (ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, 369–94, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Bucholtz, M. and K. Hall (2005), “Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach,” Discourse Studies, 7 (4/5): 585–614. Certeau, M. de (1984), The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press. Clark, A. (2010), Transforming Children’s Places, London: Routledge.

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INDEX

#WalkOutOn7 184, 185, 190–3 11 March 299 adaptive reuse (in architecture) 306–9, 311, 318, 320–22 Add Oil Machine 146 agency 4, 5, 8, 26, 58, 190, 191, 220, 238, 326, 336–9, 388, 389–91, 393, 396, 398, 401, 404–7 Anfield 7, 177–98 apartheid 7, 117–36 architectural design 141, 169, 223, 225, 229, 298, 306–7, 311–13, 321–2 assemblage 4–5, 9, 179 Austria 57, 69, 71, 349–50, 36, 377–8 Bakhtin, Mikhail 2, 141, 156, 223, 359 Banksy 125, 166 banners 16, 47, 48, 124, 125, 143, 144, 149, 177–98 The Basque Country 25, 237–8, 240, 242–3, 249, 253, 257, 259, 297 Bataclan 289–91, 302 Berkeley 1, 31, 58, 348 Bill 101 16, 23–4 bodies. See embodiment borderland 3, 8, 261–3, 265–71, 272–5, 277, 278–9, 369 Boston 166–8 Canada 7, 17, 21, 25, 367 Catalonia 25, 237–9, 243, 251–2, 257, 260, 297 Charlie Hebdo 284, 288–9, 291, 296, 300 Chinatown 2, 32, 82, 107, 141, 199, 220, 231, 353, 377, 378 civic frame 66, 79–80, 241, 244, 247–8, 257 civil society 8, 156, 284, 286, 289, 291, 301, 302 class (socio-economic) 62, 118, 178, 184, 187, 188, 191, 218, 220, 230, 232, 330, 332, 335

cognitive linguistics 20 commodification 2, 7, 90, 101, 107–9, 111, 141, 194, 226, 253–4, 353, 376, 379 conservation (of buildings and sites) 164, 308, 322, 334 corporeality 165, 179, 192. See also embodiment cultural awareness 380 cultural regeneration 307 Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix 4–5, 7–9, 118–19, 138, 141, 152, 156, 163–4, 177, 179, 183, 185, 193–4, 284–6, 297, 300 deterritorialization 5–9, 118, 128, 130–1, 134, 138, 140–1, 163–4, 177–8, 193–4, 284–6, 307, 327 ELLViA 62, 71, 353 embodiment 4, 7, 58, 118, 124, 131, 137, 139, 142, 155, 179, 183, 192–4, 219, 320, 322, 365, 406 enregisterment 96, 99, 101, 104, 108 eye-tracking 6, 16, 19–21, 24–7 First Wave [of LL studies] 56–7, 59, 265 Florence 161, 169–73 Foucault, Michel 138–48, 150, 152–3, 155, 327, 334, 335, 340, 391 frame analysis 79–80, 236, 243 France 297, 301, 307–11, 320 French 7, 8, 16–27, 35, 65, 71, 78, 110, 284, 287–9, 291, 296–7, 299, 301, 303–4, 309–10, 315, 331, 369 Galicia 237–40, 243, 246, 250–2, 254–5, 257, 259, 297 Garner, Eric 147 generalized additive model 34, 36, 42 generalized linear model 36 genre-based pedagogy 357, 359 gentrification 39–41, 46–7, 50, 164, 200–1, 307–8, 313, 356

414

geosemiotics 217–19, 265, 298, 300, 309. See also Scollon, Ron; Suzie Wong Scollon German 8, 39, 61, 68, 72, 97, 264–5, 267, 271, 273, 280, 297, 299, 303, 304, 349–51, 353, 355–7, 359, 362, 364–5, 369–81 globalization 96, 111, 178, 180, 368 graffiti 7, 41, 62, 63, 65, 98, 100, 112, 125, 131, 161, 162–4, 169–74, 238, 246, 285, 292, 351, 354, 359 sgraffio 169–73 grassroots memorial 285–302 Halliday, Michael 128, 162, 174 heritage 2, 79, 210, 216–21, 223–33, 237, 309–10, 323, 329, 330, 331, 372, 380 heritage language 17, 380 Heterotopia 137–45, 147–8, 150, 153–6 Hong Kong 6, 7, 137–40, 142–55 ideology 127, 140, 200, 216, 217, 247, 351 imagined communities 365–7, 370 immigration 39, 59, 350, 352, 354, 356, 358, 360, 369, 373 inferential statistics 31, 34, 35, 38, 51, 52 interaction order 233, 265, 287, 391, 405 interdisciplinary methods 266 interested agents 199, 201, 205, 209 interlanguage 101 internet discourse 97, 101 Irish English 101–5, 108–11 Irish language 7, 101–2, 105–7, 111 Israel/Palestine 117–19, 121–2, 124–7, 131, 134 Italy 7, 141, 161, 164, 167, 169–74, 220, 236. See also Little Italy Jaffa 7, 200–6 Johannesburg 216–18, 221, 223–33 Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen 118, 121, 162, 173–4, 222, 226, 264 Labov, William 59–60 Landry, Rodrigue and Bourhis, Richard Y. 8, 16, 25, 57, 59, 61, 77–8, 80, 97, 113, 160, 179, 220 language display 97, 99, 101–2, 111–12, 113 language policy 2, 4, 7, 16, 18, 24, 25, 27, 96, 237, 241, 245, 247, 257, 267, 351,

INDEX

Lefebvre, Henri 141, 190, 328 Leipzig 364, 369, 371–3 Lennon Wall 146 linguistic soundscape. See soundscapes literacies-based 8, 364, 368, 379, 385 literacy 347, 366–9, 380 Lithuania/Lithuanian 8, 261–82 Little Italy 377, 378 Liverpool 1, 2, 7, 32, 57, 58, 71, 178–81, 184–7, 190–1, 348 Liverpool Football Club 178 LL7 1, 348 LL8 1, 348 logistic regression 34–8, 40, 42, 47, 52 Massey, Doreen 183, 194 material ethnography 147 materiality 33, 41, 63, 64, 70, 138, 139, 142, 155, 183, 327 mediation 81, 179, 195, 199–210 memes 101, 105, 106, 111 memorialization 137, 331, 335, 337, 339, 341 memorials 63, 229, 238, 284–93, 295–300, 307, 308, 309, 327, 333, 335, 354 mining industry 217, 223–5, 228–9 mixed methods 70, 217, 236, 240 Montreal 7, 16–19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 367 multilingualism 57, 58, 71, 147, 154, 155, 220, 245, 272–5, 281, 286, 297, 299, 301, 309, 353–4, 357–9 multimodal 6, 119, 139, 142, 155, 181, 182, 194, 217, 263, 264, 265, 270, 272, 280, 286, 308, 309, 329, 347, 348, 365, 366, 367, 368, 370, 379, 385 Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis 118, 119 multimodality 138, 179, 180, 183, 194, 265, 351, 366 multiple literacies 347, 368 museums 1–2, 88, 148, 164, 166–7, 218, 226–9, 287, 307–9, 311, 313, 316–22 naming practices 8, 177, 223, 230, 316, 317, 322, 325, 326–41 normativity 405 noticing 16, 19, 25, 26, 27 OLL 96–103, 107, 111–13 Online Linguistic Landscapes 96, 97 paper cities 137–40, 142, 149, 151, 153–5 Paradox of the (dis)empowered citizen 139

INDEX

Peirce, Charles Sanders 89, 160 photographs 313–15 pointing (the act of) 207, 209 Poland 262–73, 275–80 post-apartheid 7, 122, 130, 216, 229–32 Principle of Accountability 60–2 protest 2, 6, 7, 117, 119, 125, 133, 134, 137–40, 142, 145, 147, 150, 152, 155, 156, 182, 184, 192, 193, 194, 195 psycholinguistic research 20 public mourning 284–7, 289, 291, 299, 301 quantitative analysis 33, 34, 43, 57, 243, 270, 272, 287 approaches 7, 31, 265 methods 31, 32, Quebec 16, 17, 19, 23, 77 race 39, 48, 118, 119, 217 regeneration 1, 2, 7, 161, 169, 216, 217, 221, 222, 226, 228–30, 233, 307–8, 313 Movement 330–4 renaming. See naming practices restoration (of buildings and sites) 308, 313 reterritorialization 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 111, 121, 122, 124, 125, 130, 131, 134, 138–42, 152, 154, 163–4, 166, 169, 171, 173, 177, 179, 183, 193–4, 217, 266, 278, 280, 284–6, 289–91, 296, 298–300, 307, 311, 319, 323, 327, 364–5, 367 revitalization 1, 2, 8, 161, 164, 237, 238, 247, 256–7, 308 rhizome 5, 179, 194 Rome 161, 164, 167, 169 Roubaix 307, 309, 310, 311, 316–18, 321 schoolscape 387–93, 396, 398–9, 401, 404–9 Scollon, Ron and Scollon, Suzie Wong 6, 17, 33, 58, 69, 96, 217–23, 226, 244, 265, 287, 290, 293, 300, 309, 319, 366–7, 387, 391, 401 semi-permeable 262–3, 280–1 sgraffio. See graffiti Shankly 185–6 situated objectivity 82

415

smooth space 5, 118 social media 87, 97, 101, 113, 125, 177–80, 182, 184, 192, 194–5, 229, 324 social space 77, 79–83, 85, 90, 91, 230, 372, 398 soundscapes 58, 319–20, 322, 355 South Africa 6, 7, 117–36, 216–34 Spain 7, 38, 140, 235–7, 247, 250, 253–7, 287, 300, 325–7, 330–6, 340 spatial metaphor 100 Spirit of Shankly (SoS) 185, 190–1 Spolsky, Bernard 3, 8, 31, 59, 96, 160 street art 7, 125, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165–9 striated space 8, 118 study abroad 8, 349, 369, 371 Survey Area 32, 61, 62 symbolic competence 368, 374, 376, 379–80 Tel Aviv-Jaffa 200–1 territorialization 118, 125–6, 131, 134, 163, 183 terrorist attacks 8, 121, 284–6, 288 text size 24 Tiananmen Square Massacre 149 tour guides 7, 199–207, 209–10, 405 tourism 59, 96, 199–200, 219, 230, 241, 250, 267, 331, 336, 353 transgression 4, 78, 89, 161–3 transgressive frame 241, 247–8 Tucson 8, 364, 365, 369–71, 373, 381 turbulence 5, 7, 117–19, 122, 125, 131, 133, 134 Umbrella Man 143, 149, 156 Umbrella Movement 7, 137, 139, 140, 142–55, 157 unit of analysis 4, 33, 60, 62, 78–9, 90, 242 unit of observation 4 urban development 216–21, 232 VaLLS 56–7, 59, 61–2, 64, 69–72 Variationist Linguistic Landscape Study 56–7, 59 Vienna 8, 57, 60, 61, 349–53, 355–6, 360, 377, 378 viewing pattern 7, 19, 21, 26 walking interview 355, 392