The linguistic landscape: mobile signs, code choice, symbolic meaning and territoriality in the discourse of protest
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Luanga A. Kasanga
Abstract
In the social and political act of protesting, signs carried by protesters are mediational means to clarify demands and express feelings and, thus, add to physical action such as demonstration, sit-ins, chanting and barricades. Taking as a case in point the “Arab Spring” revolution, triggered by the successful popular uprisings in Tunisia, then Egypt, in early 2011, and, for comparative purposes, a few examples of similar mass protests elsewhere, I show, through a semiotico-textual analysis of these mobile signs, the significance of code choice and the symbolic meaning of these artifacts. Mobile signs are texts resulting from a judicious code choice in relation to multiple target audiences – local, regional and foreign. Code choice is also examined for symbolic meanings which reveal the power of signs to mediate action, their intersection with, their role and their embedding in, the act of protesting. Pregnant with discourse, signs are a powerful tool for giving cultural and political meaning to protest. The inclusion of mobile signs in the study of the linguistic landscape scholarship challenges the notion of territoriality as a fixed place.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Munich/Boston
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- Frontmatter
- Language use patterns and ethnolinguistic vitality of the Shina speaking Gurezi immigrants
- The linguistic landscape: mobile signs, code choice, symbolic meaning and territoriality in the discourse of protest
- Singlish as defined by young educated Chinese Singaporeans
- The influence of social factors on minority language engagement amongst young people: an investigation of Welsh-English bilinguals in North Wales
- Social identities in post-Apartheid intergroup communication patterns: linguistic evidence of an emergent nonwhite pan-ethnicity in Namibia?
- Small languages and small language communities 77
- ÎNÎHIYAWÎTWÂW ‘THEY ARE SPEAKING CREE’: CREE LANGUAGE USE AND ISSUES IN NORTHERN ALBERTA, CANADA
- Small Languages and Small Language Communities
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Language use patterns and ethnolinguistic vitality of the Shina speaking Gurezi immigrants
- The linguistic landscape: mobile signs, code choice, symbolic meaning and territoriality in the discourse of protest
- Singlish as defined by young educated Chinese Singaporeans
- The influence of social factors on minority language engagement amongst young people: an investigation of Welsh-English bilinguals in North Wales
- Social identities in post-Apartheid intergroup communication patterns: linguistic evidence of an emergent nonwhite pan-ethnicity in Namibia?
- Small languages and small language communities 77
- ÎNÎHIYAWÎTWÂW ‘THEY ARE SPEAKING CREE’: CREE LANGUAGE USE AND ISSUES IN NORTHERN ALBERTA, CANADA
- Small Languages and Small Language Communities
