Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space

321 Pages·2011·9.049 MB·

by  Adam Jaworski, Crispin Thurlow

Semiotic Landscapes
Advances in Sociolinguistics
Series Editors: Professor Sally Johnson, University of Leeds
Dr Tommaso M. Milani, University of the Witwatersrand
Since the emergence of sociolinguistics as a new fi eld 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
infl uence of theories drawn from outside of sociolinguistics itself. Thus rather than
see language as a mere refl ection of society, recent work has been increasingly
inspired by ideas drawn from social, cultural, and political theory that have
emphasized 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 fi eld of sociolinguistics and the blurring of the boundaries
between sociolinguistics and other domains of study concerned with the role of
language in society.
Discourses of Endangerment: Ideology and Interest in the Defence of Languages
Edited by Alexandre Duchêne and Monica Heller
Globalization of Language and Culture in Asia
Edited by Viniti Vaish
Linguistic Minorities and Modernity, 2nd Edition: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography
Monica Heller
Language, Culture and Identity: An Ethnolinguistic Perspective
Philip Riley
Language Ideologies and Media Discourse: Texts, Practices, Politics
Edited by Sally Johnson and Tommaso M. Milani
Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies
Edited by Sally Johnson and Astrid Ensslin
Language and Power: An Introduction to Institutional Discourse
Andrea Mayr
Language Testing, Migration and Citizenship
Edited by Guus Extra, Massimiliano Spotti and Piet Van Avermaet
Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective
Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese
The Languages of Global Hip Hop
Edited by Marina Terkourafi
The Language of Newspapers: Socio-Historical Perspectives
Martin Conboy
The Languages of Urban Africa
Edited by Fiona Mc Laughlin
Semiotic Landscapes
Language, Image, Space
Edited by
Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Adam Jaworski, Crispin Thurlow and contributors 2010
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.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-8470-6182-9 (Hardback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Contributors ix
Introducing Semiotic Landscapes 1
Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow
1. C hanging Landscapes: Language, Space and Policy in the
Dublin Linguistic Landscape 41
Jeffrey L. Kallen
2. Discourses in Transit 59
Mark Sebba
3. Welsh Linguistic Landscapes ‘From Above’ and ‘From Below’ 77
Nikolas Coupland
4. Ideological Struggles on Signage in Jamaica 102
Susan Dray
5. Sex in the City: On Making Space and Identity in Travel Spaces 123
Ingrid Piller
6. Spatial Narrations: Graffscapes and City Souls 137
Alastair Pennycook
7. Cyberspace and Physical Space: Attention Structures in Computer
Mediated Communication 151
Rodney H. Jones
8. ‘A Latino Community Takes Hold’: Reproducing Semiotic
Landscapes in Media Discourse 168
Thomas D. Mitchell
9. Silence is Golden: The ‘Anti-communicational’ Linguascaping of
Super-elite Mobility 187
Crispin Thurlow and Adam Jaworski
10 War Monuments and the Changing Discourses of
Nation and Soldiery 219
Gill Abousnnouga and David Machin
vi Contents
11 Building the Nation, Writing the Past: History and Textuality
at the Ha’apala Memorial in Tel Aviv-Jaffa 241
Elana Shohamy and Shoshi Waksman
12 Faces of Places: Façades as Global Communication in
Post-Eastern Bloc Urban Renewal 256
Irina Gendelman and Giorgia Aiello
13 Semiosis Takes Place or Radical Uses of Quaint Theories 274
Ella Chmielewska
Index 292
Acknowledgements
This book, like any other academic enterprise of this sort, is a result of many
collaborations, and we are grateful to all who have provided us with input and
inspiration. Most of all, we thank the chapter authors for sharing their work
with us and for their patience. We also thank the editor of this book series, Sally
Johnson, for her initial support for the project, and all at Continuum, especially
Gurdeep Mattu and Colleen Coalter, for adding the book to their list and for
their help at every stage.
At the University of Washington end of things, special thanks are due to
Crispin’s colleagues – and especially Jerry Baldasty – in the Department of
Communication for their fi nancial support towards two indispensible visits to the
Helen R. Whiteley Center, a wonderful writing retreat on San Juan Island in the
Puget Sound. We are incredibly grateful to Kathy Cowell and her colleagues at
the Whiteley Center for their generous, friendly assistance. Thanks also to Chris
Harihar, Crispin’s research assistant, for his help with the preparation of our
manuscript for publication.
Adam has enjoyed and benefi ted from numerous conversations about ‘lan-
guage in place’ with Nik Coupland, Chris Hutton, Kasper Juffermans, Gerlinde
Mautner, Aneta Pavlenko, Frances Rock and Simone Yeung, as well as the par-
ticipants at the Linguistic Landscape Workshops in Tel Aviv (January, 2008) and
Siena (January, 2009) organized by Elana Shohamy, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Shoshi
Waksman, Nira Trumper-Hecht and Efrat Marco (Tel Aviv), and Monica Barni
and Carla Bagna (Siena). Adam is also grateful to all colleagues at the Depart-
ment of English, University of Hong Kong, where some of the initial work on
the book was carried out between January–March 2007, and to all colleagues at
the Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, for
continuously providing the stimulating research environment.
As always, we are most indebted and grateful to our families for supporting us
in our academic endeavours, tolerating extravagant working hours, long
absences, taking endless photos of seemingly bizarre objects, and claiming to
still like us as much as before we started work on this book (and the other two!).
For Adam, this is Ania and Maja. For Crispin, this is Jürg, Joe and Jay.
At the planning stages, we were extremely privileged when Ron Scollon and
Suzie Wong Scollon agreed to write an Epilogue for the book. Just as we were
viii Acknowledgements
ready to send them the manuscript, however, we heard from Ron about his
illness and, understandably, about their inability to write the epilogue. A little
later, we were saddened to hear about Ron’s passing away. Of course, this was
far more than a blow to our modest project. Ron’s work, largely in collaboration
with Suzie, not only permeates all the pages of this book but also the fi elds of
sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, social semiotics and visual communication
more broadly. We are reminded of one of many inspiring pieces by Ron, the
paper titled ‘The machine stops: Silence in the metaphor of malfunction’ pub-
lished in the collection Perspectives on Silence, edited by Deborah Tannen and
Muriel Saville-Troike (Ablex, 1995). Ron has fallen silent, but the machine of
his work has not stopped, and will continue to hum away, informing and infl u-
encing generations of researchers to come.
List of Contributors
Gill Abousnnouga, University of Glamorgan, Wales
Giorgia Aiello, University of Leeds, England
Ella Chmielewska, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Nikolas Coupland, Cardiff University, Wales
Susan Dray, Lancaster University, England
Irina Gendelman, Saint Martin’s University, Olympia, USA
Adam Jaworski, Cardiff University, Wales
Rodney H. Jones, City University of Hong Kong, China
Jeffrey L. Kallen, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
David Machin, Cardiff University, Wales
Thomas D. Mitchell, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Ingrid Piller, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Mark Sebba, Lancaster University, England
Elana Shohamy, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Crispin Thurlow, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
Shoshi Waksman, Levinsky College of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel