A sociosemiotic interpretation of cultural heritage in UNESCO legal instruments: a corpus-based study

Gwen Bouvier; Zhonghua Wu

doi:10.1515/ijld-2021-2055

Artikel

A sociosemiotic interpretation of cultural heritage in UNESCO legal instruments: a corpus-based study

Gwen Bouvier
Gwen Bouvier is Professor of social media at Zhejiang University. Her main areas of research interest are social media, civic discourse, news representation, and socio-semiotics. Professor Bouvier’s publications have focused on multimodal and critical discourse analysis, social media, fashion as discourse and the visual representation of crises in news. She is Associate Editor for Social Semiotics and Review Editor for the Journal of Multicultural Discourses.
und Zhonghua Wu
Zhonghua Wu is a PhD candidate at the School of International Studies, Zhejiang University. His academic interests include discourse studies, corpus linguistics, legal semiotics, and cultural heritage. His research articles and book reviews can be found extensively in national and international indexed journals. As an editorial board member, he has translated and published a series of books on cultural heritage law.

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Aus der Zeitschrift International Journal of Legal Discourse Band 6 Heft 2

Abstract

The past few decades have seen a plethora of interest in heritage studies in international law, as the legitimization of cultural heritage is a significant aspect of protecting the legacy of humanity’s collective memory, which is fully reflected in a series of international instruments on culture. This paper examines the meaning-making process of UNESCO legal documents on cultural heritage from a sociosemiotic perspective. The data for the corpus-based study were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively by applying the securitization theory to heritage studies. Research findings reveal three significant shifts in cultural heritage, i.e., from property to heritage, from tangible to intangible, and from material-centered to human-centered, which embodies the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature, a philosophical idea embedded in traditional Chinese culture. As noted, terms targeting cultural heritage in UNESCO international instruments are the sign vehicle, generally mediated and shaped by social values, cultural beliefs, and conventional wisdom, etc. as a part of the interpretant, making different categories of heritage meaningful and interpretable. Characterized by temporality and spatiality, cultural heritage is subject to multiple interpretations. The meaning-making of international instruments for consideration is a sociosemiotic operation that can be construed through contextual factors and a process of social negotiation. This paper argues that a sociosemiotic approach to heritage studies is conducive to explicating the construction and deconstruction of heritage as discursive practices while offering some implications for future research.

Keywords: corpus-based approach; cultural heritage; international instruments; meaning-making process; securitization theory; sociosemiotic interpretation; UNESCO

Corresponding author: Zhonghua Wu, School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, E-mail: zhonghuanese@163.com.

About the authors

Gwen Bouvier

Gwen Bouvier is Professor of social media at Zhejiang University. Her main areas of research interest are social media, civic discourse, news representation, and socio-semiotics. Professor Bouvier’s publications have focused on multimodal and critical discourse analysis, social media, fashion as discourse and the visual representation of crises in news. She is Associate Editor for Social Semiotics and Review Editor for the Journal of Multicultural Discourses.

Zhonghua Wu

Zhonghua Wu is a PhD candidate at the School of International Studies, Zhejiang University. His academic interests include discourse studies, corpus linguistics, legal semiotics, and cultural heritage. His research articles and book reviews can be found extensively in national and international indexed journals. As an editorial board member, he has translated and published a series of books on cultural heritage law.

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Received: 2021-01-25

Accepted: 2021-10-30

Published Online: 2021-11-22

Published in Print: 2021-12-20

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Artikel in diesem Heft

https://doi.org/10.1515/ijld-2021-2055

Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel

corpus-based approach; cultural heritage; international instruments; meaning-making process; securitization theory; sociosemiotic interpretation; UNESCO