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Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World
Abstract
Discourses in Place is essential reading for anyone with an interest in language and the way we communicate. Written by leaders in the field, this text argues that we can only interpret the meaning of public texts like road signs, notices and brand logos by considering the social and physical world that surrounds them. Drawing on a wide range of real examples, from signs in the Chinese mountains, to urban centres in Austria, Italy, North America and Hong Kong, this textbook equips students with the methodology and models they need to undertake their own research in 'geosemiotics', the key interface between semiotics and the physical world. Discourses in Place is highly illustrated, containing real examples of language in the material world, including a 'how to use this book' section, group and individual activities, and a glossary of key terms. © 2003 Ron Scollon and Suzie Wong Scollon. All rights reserved.
... Visual cues, layout, spatial positioning, and the broader environment all quietly shape how signs are interpreted and how they structure social life. Scollon and Scollon (2003) were among the first to offer a systematic approach to this perspective through what they called geosemiotics. Their work foregrounded the idea that signs are never isolated texts. ...
... Scollon and Scollon showed that signs participate in shaping meaning through their relationship with the built environment and the social practices that surround them. Their work helped shift LL research toward a broader understanding of how language, space, and materiality come together in everyday public life (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). ...
... These everyday details, often easy to miss, spoke volumes about how communities navigate change, negotiate identity, and make space for themselves amid shifting social and economic forces (Huebner, 2006). Scollon and Scollon (2003) took this kind of attention even deeper. They asked researchers not only to notice what was written on signs, but to look at how signs exist within space. ...
Over the past two decades, research on linguistic landscapes (LL) has slowly but steadily expanded, offering new ways of understanding how language, identity, and power take shape in the spaces where daily life unfolds. What began as simple documentation of languages on shop signs, street names, and public notices has since grown into a field that asks deeper questions. Signs are no longer seen as just texts on walls. They have come to be recognized as part of how communities express themselves, negotiate belonging, and work through questions of power, inclusion, and visibility. In a world where movement and multilingualism are part of everyday life, LLs provide a grounded way of noticing how these realities are made visible, sometimes quietly, sometimes quite forcefully, in the streets and spaces people share. This paper revisits some of the key ideas that have shaped this body of work. Through a narrative literature review and thematic analysis, it brings together a range of perspectives and approaches that have been used to make sense of LLs. Nine themes emerged through this process: foundational definitions, language policy and planning, ethnolinguistic vitality, semiotic and multimodal perspectives, political economy and power, globalization and mobility, translanguaging and multilingualism, identity and place-making, and methodological innovation. Each theme shows that public signage is never just practical. It carries traces of social histories, local struggles, shifting identities, and ongoing negotiations over who belongs, who is heard, and how people relate to the places they inhabit. The paper also reflects on how these insights might matter for English language teaching, especially in the Japanese context. It suggests that paying attention to LLs could help learners develop not only greater language awareness but also a more sensitive understanding of cultural diversity and communication in real-world settings.
... With the purpose of filling this gap, this paper adopts a geosemiotics perspective to the study of top-down views produced by drone hobbyists to explore how they diversify current understandings of verticality (Scollon and Scollon 2003). In doing so, it aims to nuance persisting negative associations of the 'view from above' with warfare and surveillance (Kaplan 2018) and foster a broader appreciation of the ways in which drones have created new forms of visualising and embodying our world, acting as intermediaries between humans and nature (Benjamin 2020). ...
... The study adopts a qualitative approach that is informed by the theory of geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon 2003) to explore four key functions of top-down views: (1) as abstract art; (2) as transformations of the mundane (3) as playful mapping; and (4) as dronies. Seen as an extension of Kress and van Leeuwen's (1996) visual social semiotics, geosemiotics is the study of signs as situated in the material world and shaped by social and cultural use (Al Zydjaly 2014). ...
... According to both Scollon and Scollon (2003) and Ledin and Machin (2018), spaces are infused with the dominant discourses in society and these discourses are realised through the materials, colours and textures that are used. However, as the previous examples have shown, the top-down angle of drone visuals has the potential to shake up this regulation of space. ...
... The semiotic analysis of place includes elements such as code orientation, typography, placement, and the discourse of time and space (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). ...
... Code orientation refers to the prioritization of different languages in a multilingual environment (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). The dominant language usually occupies a leading or prominent position. ...
... Placement refers to the physical location of language signs and their relevance to the meaning or function they express, focusing primarily on the relationship between language signs and their surrounding environment, including forms such as contextualization, decontextualization, and transgression (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). The survey sample indicates that language signs in the medical field tend to be contextualized (N=595, 91.7%) (see Fig. 17and 18), mainly because contextualized signs can provide location information in a timely manner. ...
The Healthy China initiative gives priority to the development of people’s health and integrates health into all health. It urgently necessitates the enhancement of language capabilities within the medical domain of the public health service system. The linguistic landscape in the medical field reflects the multifaceted interactions among its participants. This paper, grounded in a framework of place semiotics and supplemented by surveys of both physical and virtual linguistic landscapes of 6 hospitals along with 60 valid questionnaires, examines the current state of the linguistic landscape in Hefei’s medical field and endeavors to define it. This study investigates the evident language usage of hospitals. It shows the role of language in medical contexts and how it reflects public service goals, internationalization, and accessibility issues. This study comes at a time when the focus on health communication is growing and the need for hospital signs to be multilingual is critical. It makes the important contribution of explaining how public policy objectives and patient experiences in healthcare services can be achieved through the management of linguistic landscapes. However, the study identifies several issues, including a lack of language signs targeting specific populations and a low prevalence of language intelligent devices, which provide insights for the scientific, digital, and standardized management of the linguistic landscape in the medical field and if necessary, medical artificial intelligence devices are provided.
... Desde los paisajes lingüísticos y semióticos se ha manifestado recurrentemente (Barni y Bagna, 2009;Bloammert, 2013;Scollon y Scollon, 2003; entre otros) que existe la necesidad de hacer investigación metodológica para abrir las posibilidades del campo. Y es justamente este el objetivo del trabajo que presentamos: elaborar una propuesta metodológica que contribuya a desenmarañar las aparentes "aglomeraciones caóticas y desordenadas" de las que habla Blommaert (2013), respetando su dinamismo y sin caer en su Imagen 2. Manifestación 8M 2020 Barcelona. ...
... Desplazarse con el mensaje inscrito en el cuerpo no es una anécdota banal sino el ejemplo claro de que lo que dicen/gritan/denuncian se expresa como vivencia "encarnada" (embodied). Y como se señala desde la geosemiótica y los paisajes lingüísticos (Scollon y Scollon: 2003; Shohamy y Waksman: 2009), el significado de los Paisajes discursivos en movimiento: análisis de la manifestación feminista del 8 de marzo de 2020 en Barcelona _________________________________________________________________________ mensajes está siempre directa o indirectamente relacionado con el espacio físico que ocupan. Así, en este tipo de formato de mensajes es especialmente relevante el uso que se hace del color como elemento semiótico que desplaza al texto en importancia. ...
... Paisajes discursivos en movimiento: análisis de la manifestación feminista del 8 de marzo de 2020 en Barcelona _________________________________________________________________________ espacio público, como los categorizarían Scollon y Scollon (2003), tanto por los mensajes que portan como por su "emplazamiento", no están legitimados y su visibilización es forzosa. Un caso especialmente notorio es el del delantal. ...
El propósito de este trabajo es presentar y explorar la noción de paisajes discursivos en movimiento como una aproximación epistemológica y metodológica a partir del análisis de la manifestación feminista del 8 de marzo de 2020 de Barcelona. Para ello, nos acercamos a la manifestación mediante la exploración de 5 grandes parámetros de análisis: (1) el formato de los mensajes, (2) las temáticas que se abordan, (3) las lenguas en que se transmiten (cuando se hace verbalmente), (4) los elementos semióticos que aparecen en los mensajes, y (5) las características o estrategias discursivas más relevantes. Planteamos este análisis como un primer acercamiento a los paisajes discursivos en movimiento y, más que conclusiones firmes, presentamos su potencial analítico y proponemos algunas invitaciones finales a la reflexión y al debate, así como futuras líneas a desarrollar.
... This study is based on field research conducted in January 2025, the most recent data available, during which the research team spent a week in Hekou Yao Autonomous County and conducted image collection on the visible range of signs (including street signs, door plates, building name plates, shop signs, warning boards, posters, etc.) on both sides of the streets in the sampling area. In this process, according to Backhaus, each signage with a distinct border is regarded as an independent unit of measurement (just as a shop with different sizes and other identical signage counts as one) [4]. Duplicate or defaced signs were deemed invalid signs, and a total of 406 signs were collected, of which 393 were valid. ...
... Multilingual signs are all concentrated in the official signs, with "Chinese-English and Vietnamese" trilingual signs (15.2%) and "Chinese-English and French-Vietnamese" fourlanguage signs (16.8%), reflecting the information function of official signs in external communication and the symbolic function of the government's initiative to integrate with the world; In addition, five cases of official signs of the combination of national common language and minority languages "Chinese + Yao + Yi" were found in the sampling area, which also shows the determination of Hekou County to strive to become a demonstration area of ethnic unity in Yunnan Province. Scollon & Scollon (2003) pointed out that in a specific public place, all official signage will have a uniform design principle. The language landscape engravings in the sample area of Hekou County show the characteristics of single modal language landscape and multi-modal language landscape. ...
... Situated placement is a typical feature of language landscape in Hekou County. Situated placement emphasizes the close integration of signs and physical space, and only when signs are properly placed in a specific environment, their abstract meaning can be transformed into concrete and tangible realistic value (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). In the sampling area, road signs, place signs and other official signs strictly follow the principle of situated placement. ...
With the accelerated advancement of Yunnan Province's construction as a radiation center towards South Asia and Southeast Asia, the language landscape along the China-Vietnam border has presented a rich and diverse characteristic. This study takes 393 signs in the sampling area of Hekou Yao Autonomous County, Yunnan Province as the research object and conducts statistical analysis on the samples using the theory of place semiotics. The research finds that multiple language codes such as Chinese, English, French and Vietnamese exist in the language landscape of the sampling area, with Chinese being the dominant code. The language landscape in the sampling area shows a trend of monotonization in the mode of character engraving and is significantly characterized by scene placement. The language landscape in the commercial area has a "chunk effect", while that in the administrative area highlights authority. Additionally, this study discusses the construction, setting and optimization of the language landscape in border areas from the perspectives of language contact, language attitude and language economics.
... In our study, the participant observations are convenient as the first author has been living in Quanzhou for seven years and the second author is a local resident who was born and grew up in Quanzhou and could observe its SL as an in-group participant. During the fieldwork of 'visual ethnography' (Pink 2008) by walking, observation, taking pictures and shooting videos, the observation contents involve not only the emplacement and code preference in a sign and inscriptions such as size, colour, fonts and materials according to geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon 2003) but also other multisensory resources including the architectural style. The observation results are documented as ethnographic notes, collected pictures and videos. ...
... The association of tradition is emphasised by the material of wood while the trendy English name 'BREEZY TOWN' is the transliteration based on phonetic similarity, rather than translation of its Chinese name. According to the principle of code preference (Scollon and Scollon 2003), SC on the left is the preferred code. '闽南甜汤' (Min'nan sweet soup) in the middle points out the type of commodity, implying that the target customers are Chinese. ...
... While the sign in Figure 1 is made of wood, Figure 2 foregrounds the material of concrete wall. According to inscription (Scollon and Scollon 2003), this material conveys the meaning of permanence, which partly explains why the sign remains after so many years. The shop in Figure 2 specialised in sportswear and related merchandise in the 1950s with relatively large business scale. ...
As the starting point of historical maritime silk road, Quanzhou retains
spaces of the past and embodies modern development in its signage.
This study draws on ‘chronotope’ (Bakhtin 1981), ‘scale’ (Blommaert
2007), and ‘affect’ (Wee 2016) to explore inseparable time-space
relations (i.e. chronotopes) evident in the semiotic landscape of
Zhongshan Road, Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China. The data
consist of photographs, observation notes and formal/informal
interviews from an ethnographic scholarly tradition. The paper analyzes
the multilingual, multicultural and multi-religious representations in the
data and explores the affective effects of the diverse chronotopes, i.e.
chronotopic affect. The semiotic landscape of this road manifests
multiple time-space frames caused by mobile sociolinguistic resources
in the context of globalisation. This mobility leads to the functional shift
of linguistic and other semiotic resources, realised by scale-jumping
processes from local and traditional scales to global and modern scales,
from communication to commodification, from political and historical
to commercial and materialistic scales, from instrumental to cultural
scales, from religious to mundane scales, etc. The accumulated
movements of various scales characterise complex chronotopes
interwoven by history in the same site or even in a single sign, and
create distinct affect such as love and nostalgia.
... As Canagarajah (2023) points out, educational experiences expand beyond the classroom and knowledge concerns, and it is thus important to recognize that geopolitical learning spaces also embody "affective, social, and cultural" concerns. In this sense, it is necessary to pay attention to emotions not only within classroom settings but also within entire university ecosystems, where language in the linguistic landscapes of educational contexts acts as "discourses in place" (Scollon and Scollon 2003) through which one piece of text may be interpreted in different ways and result in a range of emotions from those who inhabit the area. ...
... Lefebvre argued that social groups (such as students) actively contribute to producing their own spaces on three levels: perceived space which embodies spatial practices; conceived space which reflects a verbal representation of space; lived space which embodies physical space through nonverbal symbols and signs. In relation to the "spatialization of the LL" (Jaworski and Thurlow 2010), Scollon and Scollon (2003) stress the importance of nexus analysis for LL research whereby not only language on signs is important to analyze but also semiotics and social context, which often reveals underlying language ideologies, linguistic hierarchies, and notions of belonging. Nexus analysis goes beyond linguacentrism or "logocentrism" (Canagarajah and Minakova 2022) by applying a tripartite focus on interaction order, discourses in place, and historical body (Hult 2014;Scollon and Scollon 2004). ...
... For the LL data, nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2003) was used to analyze the corpus of signs and semiotic objects, whereby not only content was explored but rather "interaction order, ...
This paper explores entangled emotions in an Abu Dhabi English‐medium university educationscape in relation to sticky objects and sticky places, which are objects/places saturated in affect through familiarity and repetition. Moving away from a lingua‐centric approach to linguistic landscape research, this ethnographic study explores Emirati students’ emotions not only in relation to language as discourses but also in relation to semiotics, objects, and geopolitical meanings. Students’ interpretations of their semiotic and linguistic landscapes (LL) as “intertextual products” connected to emotions, identities, and levels of belonging were gained via virtual bulletin board posts and essays. Data were analyzed through thematic analysis and nexus analysis. Key findings revealed emotions of belonging in familiar and sentimental cultural and linguistic spaces and around sticky objects, comfort in “hidden places” as an escape from emotions of stress and pressure in the English‐medium instruction university, and the importance of critical awareness in the educationscape. Based on the findings, the article provides practical suggestions for ways to enhance linguistic and cultural belonging in English‐medium educationscapes and recognize emotional entanglements within multilingual university ecosystems.
... The data were obtained through observation and documentation methods involving photography techniques. The data was analyzed using Scollon & Wong Scollon (2003). The result reveals three types of language used; mono/bi/multilingual form in 63 signs around old town Semarang with 15 different languages. ...
... This study comes to fill the gap. Scollon & Wong Scollon (2003) explain public space has three main point; code preference, inscription, and emplacement and it can either indexing community and represents anything about an item or company that has nothing to do with the place where it is located. Jaworski and Thurlow (2010) emphasize the role of symbols and signs in meaning communication and offer light on how language choices affect the semiotics of public spaces by stressing the semiotic character of language landscapes (Guo & Zhao, 2021). ...
... Furthermore, the code preference of a sign includes center-margin, top-bottom, left-right, and earlier-later. The system of inscription would contain everything that manufacturers know about the meanings of making and establishing a typeface for a book or what designers know about applying a certain typeface a scheme of colors for an advertisement, including fonts, material, layering, and state changes (Scollon & Wong Scollon, 2003). Furthermore, by extending the scope of Linguistic landscape research, this work presents an interesting addition to the field. ...
Public sign at old town Semarang represents many variations of language. Besides, the history of old town Semarang offers something fresh perspective on Linguistic landscape due to Dutch colonialism. This study aims to analyze the signs and its relation with geopolitical world by considering government regulation and the purpose of the sign. This study used descriptive qualitative method. The study is phenomenological which is combinatorial, explanatory, and synchronic because the code preference and inscription used in public area (Bungin, 2017). The data were obtained through observation and documentation methods involving photography techniques. The data was analyzed using Scollon & Wong Scollon (2003). The result reveals three types of language used; mono/bi/multilingual form in 63 signs around old town Semarang with 15 different languages. All signs divided into four preferences. Among those signs, geopolitical effect was found through government’s regulation and it is indexing a power to set the public sign. Therefore, other signs were built by the sign maker for a commercial strategy. Despite the fact that the old town has Dutch history, English appeared as the most prominent language in the signs, indicating that language is not always in line with language protection and preservation goals.
... Estas ideas dialogan en nuestro trabajo con el concepto de geosemiótica acuñado por Scollon y Scollon (2003) quienes postulan que los discursos están geolocalizados motivo por el cual debemos pensar en el lenguaje atendiendo al mundo material en donde se expresa. Para el caso, esta observación es de vital importancia en la medida en que la condición de posibilidad del epitafio descansa en el carácter finito de la vida: la muerte es su motivador y disparador y el lugar que funciona como condición para su emergencia es el cementerio: una porción de tierra destinada a los enterramientos que los epitafios señalan. ...
... Los gestos de discriminación lingüística descansan en fundamentos que vienen de fuera de la lengua y que se vinculan con un intento de acentuar las diferencias entre los miembros de la población: aquellos/nosotros, los de fuera/los de dentro, los foráneos/los nativos, los católicos/los no católicos, etc. Desplazamiento social y desplazamiento lingüístico van de la mano también en el dominio de la muerte: las inequidades, los desequilibrios, las distinciones sociales se consolidan geográficamente y de allí lo que dijimos al comienzo del trabajo: las muertes están geolocalizadas (Scollon y Scollon, 2003), no se es igual en vida, no se es igual ante la muerte. Lenguas y espacialidad están imbricadas y la muerte, lejos de ser un principio de homogeneización, es un lugar donde la diferenciación se perpetúa. ...
Death, since time immemorial, has been a socially and psychologically tabooed subject, and the cemetery, as a space dedicated to materializing this taboo, resists the passage of time. The principle of finitude permeates every corridor of the cemetery, amidst tombstones, flowers, and cypresses—the tree whose creeping, semi-porous roots allow the dead to “breathe” and whose cylindrical, elongated shape serves as a bridge to elevate souls to the heavens. Tombstones, in this context, become the focal point of our attention. The objective of this study is to investigate the necrological linguistic landscape of Córdoba (Argentina) through an analysis of selected epitaphs from the San Jerónimo Cemetery in the city. Collecting the words that circulate there and observing how the dead and their mourners engage in dialogue forms the core of our inquiry. We posit that these elements constitute part of the city’s linguistic landscape, carved out as a distinct domain separate from other social spheres. The written word on these epitaphs is conceived as an act of resistance against the material finitude of death: it asserts the right to an existence where language becomes the vehicle of eternity. In this sense, studying the linguistic landscape through the lens of epitaphs entails recognizing a unique form of urban spatial appropriation, where writing indexes presences that no longer belong to the physical world.
... Specifically, Niedt (2020) examined how a local street in South Philadelphia, USA, seasonally transforms during a festival, whose experience is developed and compared with its former iteration and localized history. Niedt's (2020) use of tempo builds on earlier foundations regarding time in linguistic landscapes (i.e., Scollon & Scollon, 2003) and sits between Pavlenko and Mullen's (2015) diachronic analysis of signage and Niehaus's (2023) temporal analysis of commodified landscapes. ...
... At the same time, our focus on presence as a critical component for the interaction order and geosemiotics contributes to LL research (e.g. Scollon & Scollon, 2003;Feddersen, Liebscher, & Dailey-O'Cain, 2024). We revisited the basic notion of presence by unpacking it further through six categories while considering their relationships and thus ways of manifestations between physical and virtual schoolscapes. ...
Although the term schoolscapes often alludes to physical spaces, contemporary schoolscapes not only exist physically but also virtually, requiring students to navigate through different spatialities and temporalities. In this study, we interviewed six Information and Software Engineering university students to explore how tempo and presence converge with learning experiences within physical and virtual schoolscapes. Using thematic analysis, two themes were identified: I) synchronous learning in designated learning spaces, and II) asynchronous learning in non-designated learning spaces. Presence was the principal concept, which was divided into social presence, co-presence, cognitive presence, emotional presence, teaching presence, and place presence, and captured students’ learning experiences across schoolscapes. Results showed that the tempo of Information and Software Engineering university students’ learning was based on how each category of presence and learning mode (synchronous/asynchronous) related to their learning needs or preferences.
... Once it emerged in February 2022, Ukrainian crisis signage entered the linguistically organized semiotic space of the town and altered its complexity by rearranging the existing system of indexicality and expanding its polycentricity. The signage was deployed mainly in the town's passage spaces and special use spaces (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) and represented its regulatory and infrastructural discourses (ibid.). With a view to answering the above-stated research questions, in the following analysis, the processes of indexicality and types of discourses are addressed, then the semiotic resources used and speech act and identity construction practices are looked at. ...
... Another uniform subgroup of protest signage uses the imperative sentence form to convey a pseudo-directive (PUTINOVI NEVER/ 'do not trust Putin', Fig. 11; FCKPTN, Fig. 15). It should be stated that protest crisis signage (Fig. 19, 11) and some solidarity signage (Fig. 23) is placed in non-semiotic, unapproved spaces (lampposts) and thus represents illegal, transgressive discourse (Scollon and Scollon, 2003). Needless to say, these acts subverting regular semiotic practices come from bottom-up anonymous actors whose identity is meant to remain unrevealed. ...
The outbreak of the military conflict in Ukraine has led to the emergence of a layer of multimodal signage in public spaces as a channel of newly establishing crisis communication in neighbouring states. Using photographic data collected by the authors in the Eastern Slovak town of Prešov, the paper documents, analyses, and discusses this new addition to the local linguistic landscape. Our corpus of signs consists of informational signs, notices, stickers, flags, fliers and graffiti, and documents both “topdown” in nature, i.e. official or semi-official crisis signage emplaced in authorized locations, and “bottom-up”, i.e. unofficial, ad hoc, temporary signage found in unauthorized spaces across the town. Apart from their placement, the two groups of signs differ in their functions, temporariness, materiality, and the ways they use semiotic resources. Overall, the often transient, non-permanent, and fluid nature of the signs mirrors the ever-changing situation in Ukraine. The findings suggest that the signs have three primary functions: expressing solidarity, “on the ground” support/assistance and protest, and back up Shohamy and Gorter’s (2009, p.4) claim that linguistic landscape “contextualizes the public space within issues of […] political and social conflict[s]”. What is more, the use of signs involves users’ categorizations which “fuel the dynamics of power in public space and [they] are core ingredients of social and political conflicts” (Blommaert, 2013, p.48). As the major theoretical-methodological approaches, linguistic landscape studies, sociolinguistics of globalization, migration studies, geosemiotics, and identity construction are used.
... Focus on the built environment, or indeed the materials that shape the landscape, point to a further shift in the study of resources for meaningmaking. Developing out of studies of visible languages (Landry & Bourhis, 1997) and the emplacement of signs within a landscape (Scollon & Wong Scollon, 2003), what Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow term a "semiotic landscape" is "any (public) space with visible inscription made through deliberate human intervention and meaning making" (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010: 2). Signs, markers, removed objects or writing, or any other human-mobilized change in the built or so-called "natural" environment are thus understood as a framework for communication. ...
The word “sustainability” is all around us. In the speeches of politicians and business leaders, in billboard-size fonts and in the fine print on consumer products, in the words of friends and family concerned about climate change, it is a term that permeates contemporary life, even as its meaning has become increasingly difficult to pin down. Nominally, “sustainability” refers to the use of resources in a manner that ensures their replenishment and continued availability for future generations. Yet critics have long noted how even this general meaning of sustainability has been diluted, even describing it as “one of the least meaningful and most overused words in the English language” (Owen, 2011: 246). Indeed the word continues to multiply across all scales of social, political, and economic life, popping up in expected and quite often unexpected places (see Chapter 1). Today, “sustainability” seems to be so deeply ingrained in our everyday communication practices that it is difficult to grasp how “the world once made do without the word” (Caradonna, 2022: 1).
... In several studies, remediation involves 'multimodality and transfers among media' (Irvine 2010:236). Additionally, Prior and Hengst (2010) highlighted that research on remediation has encompassed areas such as mediated discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2003), media intertextualities (Hiramoto and Park 2012), concepts of intertextuality and interdiscursive chains , entextualisation (Briggs & Bauman, 1992;Silverstein & Urban, 1996), resemiotisation (Iedema 2003), and the notions of recontextualisation put forward by Bernstein (2000) and Linell (1998). This concept of remediation ties in with resemiotisation, which is concerned with "how meaning shits from context to context, from practice to practice, or from one stage of a practice to the next" (Iedema, 2003:41). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the crucial role of mass media in disseminating information about potential dangers, often through sensationalised framing. The tremendous additions and growth of communication channels are apparent in our society, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in South Africa. Mass media plays a key role in the dissemination (communication) of potential danger, framing it in a sensationalised way (Joffe, 2003), which has been observed globally during the pandemic. The development and growth of media have brought about many contributions and positivity to society in a multifarious way. The existence of traditional and modern communication media has made it possible to create platforms that produce, disseminate, and circulate information about any pandemic like COVID-19.
A review of media studies literature shows that the media is a platform through which communication messages are created and shared with different audiences. While this literature is applicable, there have been several changes in the media during the national pandemic. With the advent and development of modern communication media, media's role in society has been redefined, reshaped, and reinvigorated due to the multiple capabilities attached to modern media, unlike traditional media. There have been several developments in the media during the pandemic. New media has been immersed in disseminating and circulating pandemic-related information during this period and has significantly influenced societal dynamics. It has influenced the rise of alternative media in which netizens become both producers and consumers.
However, there is a literature gap in the fields of language and communication and media on the pandemic-related discourses and their circulation in media and consumption as both parts of COVID-19-related information and pop culture semiotics. This study, therefore, investigates how South African citizens repurposed governmental speeches into pop culture semiotics during the COVID-19 lockdown by analysing selected texts from government officials' discourses; this research uncovers the remediation processes through a unique theoretical framework, Critical Semiotic Remediation Discourse Analysis (CSRDA).
This study employs a qualitative research methodology to collect data from new media platforms using purposeful sampling and document analysis. The study demonstrates how South African pop culture and social media transformed these texts into various social and entertainment genres, highlighting the implications of this interaction in promoting media text production and consumption in a multicultural and diverse society and making a significant contribution to the ongoing study of alternative media.
The findings reveal that traditional media provided a foundation for disseminating official updates, while social media platforms like TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook amplified these narratives by fostering interactivity and creativity. Netizens repurposed government discourses with humour and satire, addressing public health challenges and socio-economic realities while fostering a sense of community. Strategies such as hashtag campaigns and multimedia remixes enabled these semiotics to resonate across diverse audiences, blending global and local influences to create new meanings. These findings contribute to understanding the dynamic interplay between media, culture, and society, showcasing how South African pop culture evolved through the convergence of official narratives using alternative media.
... Bottom-up signs that are not commercial but normative, a descriptor usually reserved for top-down signs, is a class of public signage usually overlooked by studies on the LL. For instance, in Scollon and Scollon's (2003) four types of discourses as used by Moriarty (2014) in his study of the Dingle, Ireland LL, "regulatory and infrastructural" discourses are described as coming from "oficial bodies" (p. 468). ...
Many walls or gates along Metro Manila's streets have signs asking drivers not to block driveways or pedestrians not to loiter. What is interesting is that these signs are often repetitious and are spaced very close to each other. This phenomena, what I call proximal repetition, differs from standard repetition: the regular and rational spacing of signs installed by corporations or local governments. In this paper, I examine instances of proximal repetition in Metro Manila and Coron, Palawan through an analytical framework informed by politeness theory, particularly studies on nagging, and Tim Ingold's writing on practical culture. I conclude that those who use proximal repetition in sign placement have, like naggers, status but weak power. Lastly, I provide arguments for the inclusion of proximal repetition and its counterpart, standard repetition, as salient features of the linguistic landscape, mainly because they allow the ield to consider not just sociolinguistic phenomena but spatial practice as well.
... Por otra parte, ha sido frecuente, en el campo de los estudios del PL, la pregunta por las funciones o las finalidades de los signos expuestos en el PL y de las lenguas que allí se hacen presentes. Algunas taxonomías se relacionan más bien con los tipos de signos o las distintas esferas de la praxis urbana: Scollon y Scollon (2003) diferencian discursos reguladores, infraestructurales, comerciales y transgresivos; por su parte, Fernández Juncal (2019) distingue entre la señalización vial, las marcas toponímicas, la información institucional, los textos publicitarios, los avisos comerciales, los anuncios particulares, los textos nominales, los textos conmemorativos, las pintadas, la información turística y otros textos misceláneos. Otras distinciones, menos taxonómicas, han atendido al rol situado que cumplen las lenguas en los signos de PL determinados. ...
This article analyzes the distribution of different languages in the commercial linguistic landscape (CLL) of the city of Córdoba (Argentina). On the basis of a study of 150 signs photographed at the heart of Güemes district, a bustling tourist and commercial area affected by processes of globalization and gentrification, different languages are identified in the CLL, their uses quantitatively compared and their functions determined. The spaces occupied by such languages are described, and their choices explained in terms of their semiotic links or axiological loads. Likewise, an approach is made towards a comprehension of their distribution within the wider processes of globalization and gentrification. The hypothesis of this work is that Córdoba is a dynamic multilingual space affected by two great forces: a globalizing one, akin to a global integration logic, and a localizing one, which strengthens regional identities in a so-called dialectics of glocalization. In the CLL of Güemes, it is possible to recognize some tensions that disclose the clash between these two tendencies.
... An objective of the present study is to put "human subjectivity at the heart of objectivity" (Borjian, 2017, p. 2) to gain insights into the complex ways in which individual stakeholders engage with language in their lived experience and thus help us to deconstruct how linguistic resources are mobilised in the target context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Regarding the data coding and analysing process, if the photos and screenshots of the LLs showed more than one sign, I highlighted the significant/ representative sign as a precoding step by looking at the subsystems of the code preference, the inscription, the emplacement of the language(s) on the signs, and the interactions between the subsystems that jointly make up semiotic aggregates (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). Over two stages, I conducted a detailed analysis of signage, combining on-site precoding and retrospective coding. ...
What crisis experiences look like remains an underexplored area in the research of linguistic landscapes. The present study intends to investigate how leisurescapes – the venues for leisure for the minority groups of China – were co-constructed by the top-down and bottom-up stakeholders during COVID-19. Drawing from a corpus of 108 photographs, I analysed the signs in three officially authorised leisurescape sites – two provincial-level museums and one library – in a minority group-concentrated region in southern China. Anchored in an ethnographic data-based phenomenological view, I qualitatively analysed how multilingual repertoires were mobilised in the leisurescape, and what subjective affective experiences of the stakeholders were engaged. The study identifies the multiple functions the leisurescape serves, highlighting an imbalance in the presentation of languages, which calls for further considerations about incorporating sociopsychological factors into the creation of signs. The findings reveal a relationship between the top-down sociolinguistic management and bottom-up sociopsychological engagement in fostering an active lifestyle during a crisis and contributes to the field of sociolinguistics by shedding light on the affective dimensions of linguistic landscapes.
... The analytical framework involved a qualitative analysis which was derived from a combination of approaches (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006;Scollon & Scollon, 2003;Shohamy & Gorter, 2009): ...
This chapter analyzes Qatar’s strategic use of English and other non-official languages in public signage and religious messaging during the FIFA World Cup. In 2022, Qatar became the first Arab and Muslim country to host the World Cup, marking a significant milestone for international football. However, undercurrents of Islamophobia shaped much of the discourse in Western media about the event. To counter Islamophobic narratives, Qatar strategically placed public signage that articulated Islamic viewpoints on global issues such as human rights and environmental sustainability, using English to convey these messages. This approach also highlighted universal values, such as peace, kindness, and mercy, which are central to the Islamic faith. This chapter shows how Qatar used the linguistic landscape to present Islam in languages most World Cup attendees understood, positioning itself as a mediator in the global conversation on Islam. By doing so, it challenged stereotypes through education and open dialogue.
... Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics and later expanded by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006). The theory explores how signs and symbols convey meanings within social contexts and emphasizes that different audiences may interpret signs in various ways depending on their cultural and social backgrounds (Scollon & Scollon, 2003;Menezes & Vieira, 2019). ...
This study explores the semantic significance of the tick or check mark (V) symbol in Tanzania, where its use extents to education, business, healthcare, and everyday life. Despite its widespread application, there is limited research on its varied interpretations across different contexts in the world and within Tanzania. Historically, the tick symbol has origins in Roman voting practices, where it represented "veritas" (truth), and its meaning has evolved with changes in writing technology. This study employs a qualitative research approach, utilizing semi-structured interviews with educators, healthcare professionals, and civil servants, alongside document analysis, to investigate the symbol’s semantic meanings. Guided by Semiotic Theory, the research aims to clarify how cultural and contextual factors shape the understanding of the tick symbol, in due course seeking to improve communication practices and enhance comprehension of symbolic meanings in Tanzanian society.
... The priority code, which refers to the language or text given prominence in a multilingual setting, is typically placed above the secondary code in vertical orientations, while in horizontal orientations, it is generally positioned to the left (Scollon and Scollon 2003). In Table 3, English appears as a secondary but significant language within private signs, while being completely absent in official signage. ...
This paper investigates the use of English within the linguistic landscape of Luang Prabang through a combination of photographs and interviews. Specifically, we examine the characteristics of English in the linguistic landscape of Luang Prabang, the roles played by English, and the perceptions of merchants and consumers towards it. The study finds that: first, English is frequently used alongside Lao, particularly in bilingual signs, and it is also used alongside other languages within multilingual sign combinations. English predominantly appears in areas heavily frequented by consumers, where it is utilized for economic benefit. Second, English primarily fulfills the following roles in the linguistic landscape: cultural heritage bearer, tourism information provider, cultural exchange facilitator, economic opportunities creator, educational resource provider, and international image broadcaster. Third, shop owners and consumers generally express satisfaction with the presence of English in Luang Prabang's linguistic landscape, believing that English promotes economic development, cultural exchange, and brand establishment. However, some interviewees also highlight shortcomings, such as concerns over traditional culture and unfriendliness towards non-native English speakers. This study underscores the pivotal role of English in bridging cultural and economic divides in Luang Prabang, offering insights for policymakers on language policy and tourism management.
... First, the learners may have some knowledge of the analog sociocultural resources in the box to the right in Figure 1 -especially if the teacher managed to design for learning in a way that the properties of such resources were recontextualized into the digital pencil context. In such cases, the affordances of digital pencils may point to -or index (Silverstein, 2003;Scollon and Scollon, 2003) -the affordances of analog resources for inscription, from the perspective of the learner. That is, on a generic level, the learner will recognize the pencils as related to analog crayons, pencils, and pens, and connect their use of the digital pencils to uses of their analog counterparts. ...
This research report presents the results from the project Connecting digital and analog literacy: The potential of the digital pencil for text creation in schools (DigiPen). Digital pencils are used for writing, drawing, and pointing on tablet or laptop screens. So far, they have not been used to any larger extent in Swedish schools. Two studies of uses of digital pencils in Swedish compulsory schools are presented. One was carried out in a fourth-grade class and one in an eighth-grade class. The report describes the potentials of digital pencils as tools in schools for writing by hand, drawing, and thinking, as well as for performing tasks other than those that are possible with analog pencils. A number of detailed recommendations are presented, based on the empirical findings of the studies. The recommendations are directed toward teachers, teacher students, school management, and educational policymakers, as well as representatives of the hardware and software industry.
... Managing urban linguistic landscapes is a critical urban governance task that involves planning, managing, and maintaining the linguistic environment in public spaces. However, urban linguistic landscape management faces many challenges during urbanization, such as language differences under diverse cultural backgrounds, the mixing or confusion of linguistic environments, and the diverse needs of public spaces (Scollon and Scollon 2003). In the future, as internationalization increases, the role of translation in multilingual landscapes will become more prominent, becoming an essential component of urban language management and services, helping balance urban development with environmental protection to achieve sustainable urban growth. ...
El objetivo de este volumen es ofrecer reflexiones sobre los numerosos retos y nuevos escenarios (físicos, tecnológicos y también sociales y culturales) que se les presentan a las actividades profesionales, de investigación, mediación intercultural y enseñanza-aprendizaje de la traducción y la interpretación. Las aportaciones se han agrupado en secciones que dan testimonio de áreas diversas, multidisciplinares, relativas tanto a modalidades como a instrumentos y metodologías, aplicaciones, o perspectivas teóricas e investigadoras de gran consistencia científica y calado práctico o conceptual. Así, este volumen pone a disposición de sus lectores una recopilación de trabajos relacionados con la formación, la evolución y la práctica profesional de la traducción y la interpretación en distintos ámbitos y desde diferentes enfoques.
The linguistic landscape reveals the linguistic power and linguistic policy of a particular region. Scholars have conducted extensive research on linguistic landscapes, but the research on linguistic landscapes in minority areas is still relatively lacking. Based on the theory of place semiotics, this paper explores the characteristics and problems of the linguistic landscape in Ningnan County by conducting a field survey. It was found that the linguistic landscape of Ningnan County is characterized by Chinese, Yi language, and English. The bilingual code accounts for a high proportion, with Chinese and Yi bilingualism dominating, Chinese being a strong language in a dominant position. In terms of inscription, the top-down and bottom-up signs are consistent in font usage, traditional and simplified character usage, and sign material, but the bottom-up signs are more diversified in font and character usage and emphasize their individuality. In terms of emplacement, both top-down and bottom-up signs are primarily reasonable and standardized, but there is still room for improvement in bottom-up signs. The linguistic landscape in Ningnan County mainly suffers from improper use of Chinese, damage to some characters, and transgressive semiotics, which requires relevant departments, signage creators, and residents to enhance language awareness and protect the signs. This paper shows the language power and language policy in Ningnan County and provides a basis for the protection and inheritance of Yi language.
In the South-West Indian Ocean, Mauritius and Reunion are part of a group of islands where French-based Creoles are spoken. In spite of their geographical proximity, Mauritian Creole and Reunion Creole are strikingly different in their morphosyntax. The first part of this volume describes some structural properties of their grammars. Both languages also differ in the degree to which they are standardized and used in education and in public spaces. One of the goals of this volume is to examine their social status and their use in writing, especially after the introduction of Mauritian Creole as a subject in schools as one of the ancestral languages. French and Bhojpuri are also part of the multilingual Mauritian context. One chapter in this volume analyses the role of Bhojpuri in the formation of Mauritian Creole, while another studies the pronunciation of Mauritian French.
Flags often intervene in the image space of protests, though the common assumption would be to match the nationality of the flags with their territorial site of protest rather than consider their extraterritorial displacement—how does one go about interpreting seemingly unfamiliar couplings such as the national flags of South Korea, the US, and Israel? This article argues that by taking a transformative approach that ultimately allows national flags to be decoupled from territorial borders, it is possible to extract important insights about how the domestic might interface with the transnational. Specifically, the article isolates the Korean Protestant right and their ideology behind the phenomenon of the triple waving of the South Korea–US–Israeli flags to illustrate how this serves as the focal point for (i) the reinforcement of the transnational far‐right agenda such as anti‐LGBTQI rights, anti‐immigration, and Islamophobia; and (ii) the rearticulation of imperial structures of politics.
This study explores how English teachers in Japan perceive the linguistic landscape (LL) and its role in language learning. Utilizing questionnaires and interviews, it examined their experiences and observations. The findings revealed three key themes. Theme 1: The LL is generally monolingual but reflects other languages, Theme 2: The LL contains linguistic errors, and Theme 3: The LL is pedagogically beneficial. The participants shared insights that raise some meaningful points for both English education and language policy. The study recommends that using real-world language from public spaces in English lessons could make learning more engaging. It also highlights the need for more accurate multilingual signage to improve accessibility and support language education in Japan.
Лингвистический ландшафт Москвы меняется так же быстро, как и сам город. Вместе с уже широко изученными навигационными элементами в городском пространстве все более заметной становится особая группа элементов,
которую ряд исследователей называют символическими ресурсами – такие элементы не имеют своей целью передать какую-либо значимую информацию, а служат символом определенного стиля жизни, иногда несут в себе скрытые значения. В ходе полевой работы автор выявил несколько десятков примеров таких ресурсов в микроландшафтах общественных пространств Москвы и провел их анализ. Сделан вывод о том, что, вопреки стереотипу, доля иностранного языка заметно снижается, а русского – возрастает. Определены функции символических ресурсов в языковом ландшафте Москвы, включая
создание «ложной аутентичности», украшение пространства, а также скрытая маркетинговая функция.
Although it can be argued that the language of the internet is English, the portrayal of other languages in virtual academic settings such as university websites may face constraints related to institutional and monolingual policies. Thus, this research adopts a linguistic landscape perspective to explore the representation of the Spanish language and culture in Australian university websites. In particular, it focuses on how Spanish language/studies programs or courses are portrayed and what meanings are conveyed in the virtual linguistic landscape of four Sydney universities. This paper applies a social-semiotic, multimodal analysis to explore the hierarchical organization of information on universities’ websites and webpages and the meanings conveyed by the designers in relation to the semiotic resources selected to promote Spanish language/studies programs or courses. The study concludes that only two of the studied webpages attempt to portray Spanish language/studies programs or courses fully multimodally, one uses text and video, and the last relies solely on written text to convey meanings. These choices may have ideological implications because these institutions fail in their attempt to represent Spanish as a pluricentric language. Additionally, these programs/courses are disadvantageously positioned in the hierarchical organization of information on the four analyzed websites, which makes it harder for potential students to find relevant content about these programs/courses.
This paper investigates the Linguistic Landscape in the Qinling Mountains, a range which possess significant ecological and economic importance which has led to the formulation of multilevel laws and policies governing them. Within the mountains, LL signs are erected to promulgate and enforce pertinent laws and policies. In this paper, I present five examples of an ethnography of LL in the mountains. The results indicate that human beings and non-human beings co-shape LL signs which exhibit heterogeneity in terms of their style, contents, and history. They index multiple institutions contributing to the ‘polycentricity’ of the LL in terms of their contents and give rise to the formation of ‘municipal regulatory discourse’ specific to the Qinling Mountains. These signs also demarcate the natural environment and assign varying levels of importance to the divided areas, thereby underscoring the legal and economic status of the mountains and facilitating official institutions’ ‘human management’.
This entry provides an overview of Critical Discourse Analysis/Studies within the context of world Englishes research. For the purposes of this overview, Critical Discourse Analysis/Studies can be understood as a methodological approach to discourse, broadly conceived, guided by the express interest in uncovering inequitable power relations, particularly those that have come to be sedimented through various ideological processes. World Englishes is treated as a field of study within applied linguistics and other language‐oriented disciplines concerned with a range of issues related to the global spread of English and usage of Englishes worldwide. Given that the global spread and use of English, both historically and contemporarily, is an inherently power‐laden phenomenon, Critical Discourse Analysis/Studies represents an important framework for world Englishes research. What follows provides an overview of extant descriptions of Critical Discourse Analysis/Studies, explains how questions of criticality are necessary for world Englishes research, and presents examples of how Critical Discourse Analysis/Studies have been deployed within recent world Englishes research.
Our proposal for an academic course concerns geocultural globalization and the associated flows of ideas, meanings, values and semiotic resources, including languages, which are manifested in particular configurations of (peri-)urban linguistic landscapes. Within the course students are engaged in tracing synchronies and diachronies of social processes underlying linguistic landscapes of their own lived environments. As the main theoretical-methodological approaches the course integrates linguistic landscape studies, geosemiotics, sociolinguistics of multilingualism, sociolinguistics of globalization, and English as a lingua franca. The aims of the course are to enable students to understand the semiotic processes within the semioscapes of public spaces with which they interact on a daily basis and, ultimately, to contribute to the development of critically thinking and emancipated students.
El propósito de este capítulo es mostrar la forma en que se manifiesta la religiosidad en una tradición como esta procesión entreverada con lo turístico, pues más allá de concentrarse en el turismo religioso, implica una compleja comprensión del hecho religioso dentro de un producto turístico, como es el caso de Oaxaca. A partir de un análisis cualitativo, primero, basado en una
observación de la procesión del silencio, el viernes 29 de marzo de 2024 y, segundo, un análisis desde la geosemiótica y la recursividad fractal de la imagen y el espacio mismo identificados durante el ejercicio de observación, se muestra una división de lo turístico y lo local, desde su disposición en el espacio público y lo vivencial en el escenario de la procesión. Después de esto, se busca comprender la perspectiva de la devoción, la cultura y la tradición desde ambas aristas (lo local y lo exógeno) con base en los conceptos de autenticidad de Eric Cohen y la tradición inventada de Eric Hobsbawm y Terence Ranger.
La pluralización de las expresiones religiosas es una de las metamorfosis socioculturales más representativas de las últimas ocho décadas en México. A pesar de que la Iglesia católica se mantuvo como la religión hegemónica, la sociedad pluralizó sus creencias y prácticas religiosas. Tal situación fue el resultado de diversos hechos sociohistóricos que surgieron desde la época independentista hasta nuestros días, mismos que son un ingrediente de la transformación que vivimos en el país.
This study aims to provide an epigraphic and contextual analysis of the graffiti on the pier of the acropolis of Monte Sannace. The data, of exceptional significance, are valuable especially considering the extensive research conducted on abecedaria and ancient languages of the Mediterranean. The document includes four abecedaria and other six graffiti which are analyzed in relation to their regional epigraphic landscape and through a comparison coherent with their micro-epigraphic context.
This article introduces the results of Vilnius’s linguistic landscape research. The analysis focuses on which signs make up the linguistic landscape of Vilnius and which languages are used on the signage. The study material consists of 2,442 public and private signs collected from various neighborhoods in Vilnius in 2020, March-October. The research employs quantitative statistical descriptive analysis and qualitative content analysis. The data shows that 76% of all signs include Lithuanian: 49% are monolingual Lithuanian, and 27% are multilingual with Lithuanian. The remaining 24% of signs use other foreign languages. Lithuanian is used in all types of signs, and the only monolingual Lithuanian signs are road signs and street names, apart from decorative plaques with foreign languages on them. Lithuanian is the first language in most multilingual signs, followed by other foreign languages. This language pattern is usually seen on commercial establishments or public institution signage, such as opening hours or services provided. Multilingual signs where Lithuanian is not the first language account for 8.3% of all Vilnius signs analyzed in this study. English-Lithuanian is the most frequent language pattern in these signs. If Lithuanian is not the first language used on a sign, the most common language model is English-Lithuanian, and mostly bilingual English-Lithuanian signs are names of establishments. Research shows that the first foreign language used in a sign does not always play a stronger communicative function, as it may be used because of its symbolic power. The analysis of monolingual signs in foreign languages shows that the most significant proportion of such signs are stickers, shop signs, and graffiti, and the most common languages are English, Russian, Italian, German, French, Latin, and Latin.
Globalization has made English one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. It has become the language code of choice for international communication and plays an important role in various sociolinguistic contexts, such as public or globalized spaces (Pennycook 2010). As a result, English is the most frequently studied object in linguistic landscape studies (Gorter and Cenoz 2023: 252). Examining the use of English in public spaces is relevant because it not only helps to assess the extent to which English is used in various sociolinguistic contexts but also reflects its prestige, power, and socioeconomic values, as well as its relationship with other languages.This paper analyses the functions of the English in the linguistic landscape of Vilnius, exploring how these functions differ depending on the discourse type. An analysis of 861 signs revealed the presence of English in the following discourses: commercial, cultural, street art, infrastructural, public service, tourism, COVID-19, protest, sports, regulatory, political, and health promotion. The findings indicate that English mainly performs an informative function – 63.8% of cases. In certain discourses – public service, COVID-19, and regulatory – English plays an exclusively informative role. Conversely, the symbolic use of English is observed approximately three times less frequently, primarily in the street art and sports discourses, where it accounts for 91.9% and 46.1% of cases, respectively.The study also examines whether the functions of English differ between monolingual and multilingual signs. The analysis shows that the informative function of English is more prominent in multilingual signs, while its symbolic function is more frequent in monolingual signs where English is the sole language. These findings suggest that English occupies a lingua franca role in Vilnius’s linguistic landscape. On the other hand, qualitative analysis shows that English is often influenced by the local Lithuanian language, both in its informative use and when chosen for its prestige, international appeal, or other symbolic powers.
The language items present in the linguistic landscape are deeply embedded in history, often bearing varied time references and indexical loads. This study explores the preserved linguistic landscape of a former concession area in Wuhan, China to elucidate the intricate interplay of multi-layered historical meanings that intersect and converge in the public space. By employing the theoretical constructs of chronotope and polyphony, this study examines how the area is transformed into a liminal space in linguistic and symbolic terms. The findings indicate that the preserved linguistic landscape can be categorised into three types based on time–space configurations: preliminal chronotope, liminal chronotope, and postliminal chronotope, corresponding to signs in original forms, signs refurbished while retaining the original texts, and signs incorporating original texts and new additions. These signs symbolically reference the past, present and future, embodying historical and cultural preservation, reflecting societal and economic development, and enhancing the city’s appeal as a tourist destination. This research contributes to understanding the complex discourses and communicative dynamics within linguistic landscape, offering insights into the interplay between history, culture, and language in public spaces.
Starting with naturally occurring (proto–) pointing gestures of two infants, I examine the role and nature of early gesture in language acquisition and socialization in the Tzotzil-speaking community of Zinacantán, in Chiapas, Mexico. Early "words" are, not surprisingly, only part of the story, since verbalizations are embedded in wider communicative routines that characteristically involve gesture. Although the precursors to gesture have been linked to "practical actions," I argue that considerable conceptual complexity must be involved in emancipating, for example, pointing from grabbing or reaching. I suggest that the developments—both cognitive and sociointeractive— that accompany emerging gesture are consistent with the interactive and conceptual bases for later language development, despite doubts in Western psycholinguistics about both infants' communicative intentions and about the continuity or lack thereof between specifically linguistic and other cognitive attainments. Attention to metalinguistic theorizing in communicative traditions, like that of Zinacantdn, which posit no radical discontinuity between gesture and the rest of language, and which conceive of even small infants as emerging interactive participants, may provide a useful theoretical corrective.
Discourse analysts need to take into consideration the epistemological dimension of agency on the part of both the actor and the analyst. A focus on action makes it essential to be able to characterize how these social actors orient themselves to different futures through their actions. Conversely, if we want to understand social change, we must theorize how social actors orient themselves to the future. As we argue elsewhere (Scollon & Scollon 2000), we need to develop a theory of anticipatory discourse which includes a theory of human agency as part of a theory of human action that can account for disjunctions between its own theory of human agency and the theory or theories of agency held by the social actors under analysis. Apart from the epistemological dimension of knowledge of the future, a theory of human agency needs to address the dimension of the stance toward the efficacy of individual action in relation to the future. This would range on a continuum from what we call agentive to fatalistic. Mediated Discourse Analysis, like other forms of discourse analysis, has tended to focus on analysis of past action in the context of the present. As R. Scollon declares, 'It remains a task of MDA to develop a workable methodology for capturing the richness of anticipatory discourses.
In this paper an effort is made to review the relevance and limitations of a scattering of near-recent work in sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and conversational analysis with respect to a central issue in the sociological study of social interaction: the taken-for-granted and the inferences made therefrom. The hope is that the line between microsociological studies and sociolinguistics can be shown to be arbitrary, requiring those on each side of the division to address the concerns of those on the other side.