Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 20:4 (2021) ► pp.515–538

Protest graffiti, social movements and changing participation frameworks

The case of Macao

| Huaqiao University China
ORCID logo | University of Macau China
As a type of written discourse without guaranteed readership and response, protest graffiti nonetheless projects a participation framework in which protesters address different participants, including not only the government but also other potential ‘participants’ in the social/cultural/political context. This paper studies a dataset of graffiti associated with a protest movement in Macao, China. A survey of the longitudinal data reveals that the contents and visual representation of the graffiti have changed to reflect evolving participation frameworks which are in response to different stages of social movements. While graffiti in earlier stages tends to be more accusatory and anti-governmental, graffiti in later stages shows a shift of protesters’ position more in alignment with patriotism and allegiance to authority. Instead of presenting views competing with mainstream political discourse, our data, with their multimodal resources, draw heavily on Chinese cultural discourses which are supposedly shared among the protesters and addressees in this context.
Keywords: protest graffiti, participation framework, social movement, political discourse, multimodality, Macao
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Research background
    • 1.2Pearl Horizon protest
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Participation framework
    • 2.2Social movements
    • 2.3Protest graffiti as political discourse
  • 3.Methodology and data collection
  • 4.Data analysis
    • 4.1Stage A: Handwritten graffiti
    • 4.2Stage B: Standardized graffiti
    • 4.3Stage C: Picture-dominated graffiti
    • 4.4Stage D: Color-dominated graffiti
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Transformation of graffiti and social movements
    • 5.2Political functions and discursive construction of protest graffiti
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20036.zha
References
Aboelezz, Mariam
2014 “The Geosemiotics of Tahrir Square: A Study of the Relationship between Discourse and Space.” Journal of Language and Politics 13(4): 599–622. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bell, Allan
1984 “Language Style as Audience Design.” Language in Society 13(2): 145–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1990 “Audience and Referee Design in New Zealand Media Language.” In New Zealand Ways of Speaking English, ed. by Allan Bell, and Janet Holmes, 165–194. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters Ltd.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan
2013 Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Toronto: Multilingual matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chang, Hsiao-Chuan
2013 “Housing Affordability in Macao: Evidence and Policy.” China Economic Journal 6(1): 46–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Christiansen, Jonathan
2009 “Four Stages of Social Movements.” Research Starters, 1–7.Google Scholar
Flesher Fominaya, Cristina
2010 “Collective Identity in Social Movements: Central Concepts and Debates.” Sociology Compass 4 (6): 393–404. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Jeff, and James M. Jasper
2015 “Editors’ Introduction”. In The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts, ed. by Jeff Goodwin, and James M. Jasper, 5–8. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Google Scholar
Gross, Daniel, and Timothy Gross
1993 “Tagging: Changing Visual Patterns and the Rhetorical Implications of a New Form of Graffiti.” A Review of General Semantics 50(3): 251–264.Google Scholar
Hanauer, David I.
2004 “Silence, Voice and Erasure: Psychological Embodiment in Graffiti at the Site of Prime Minister Rabin’s Assassination.” The Arts in Psychotherapy 311: 29–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “The Discursive Construction of the Separation Wall at Abu Dis: Graffiti as Political Discourse.” Journal of Language and Politics 10(3): 301–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 “Occupy Baltimore: A Linguistic Landscape Analysis of Participatory Social Contestation in an American City.” In Conflict, Exclusion and Dissent in the Linguistic Landscape, ed. by Rani Rubdy, and Selim Ben Said, 207–222. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugh, Michael
2013 “Im/politeness, Social Practice and the Participation Order.” Journal of Pragmatics 581: 52–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karlander, David
2019 “A Semiotics of Nonexistence? Erasure and Erased Writing under Anti-graffiti Regimes.” Linguistic Landscape 5(2):198–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kasanga, Luanga A.
2014 “The Linguistic Landscape: Mobile Signs, Code Choice, Symbolic Meaning and Territoriality in the Discourse of Protest.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2301: 19–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kim, Sungwoo, and In Chull Jang
2020 “A Trajectory of a Mediational Means in Protest: The Hand Placard in South Korea’s Candlelight Protests.” Social Semiotics. OnlineFirst. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
1988 “Putting Linguistics on a Proper Footing: Explorations in Goffman’s Concepts of Participation.” In Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order, ed. by Paul Drew, and Anthony Wootton, 161–227. Oxford, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Lou, Jackie, and Adam Jaworski
2016 “Itineraries of Protest Signage: Semiotic Landscape and the Mythologizing of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement.” Journal of Language and Politics 15 (5): 612–645. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martín Rojo, Luisa
2014 “Occupy: The Spatial Dynamics of Discourse in Global Protest Movements.” Journal of Language and Politics 13(4): 583–598. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, John D., and Mayer N. Zald
2015 “Social Movement Organizations.” In The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts, ed. by Jeff Goodwin, and James M. Jasper, 159–174. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Google Scholar
Scollon, Ron
2001 Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Scollon, Ron, and Suzie W. Scollon
2004 Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seloni, Lisya, and Yusuf Sarfati
2017 “Linguistic Landscape of Gezi Park Protests in Turkey: A Discourse Analysis of Graffiti.” Journal of Language and Politics 16 (6): 782–808. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shavit, Nimrod, and Benjamin H. Bailey
2015 “Between the Procedural and the Substantial: Democratic Deliberation and the Interaction Order in ‘Occupy Middletown General Assembly’.” Symbolic Interaction 38(1): 103–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sheng, Ni, U-Wa Tang, and Adam Grydehøj
2017 “Urban Morphology and Urban Fragmentation in Macau, China: Island City Development in the Pearl River Delta Megacity Region.” Island Studies Journal 12(2): 199–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steinberg, Rebecca Lila
2014 “The Occupy Assembly: Discursive Experiments in Direct Democracy.” Journal of Language and Politics 13(4): 702–731. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Waldner, Lisa K., and Betty A. Dobratz
2013 “Graffiti as a Form of Contentious Political Participation.” Sociology Compass 7(5): 377–389. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wee, Lionel
2016 “Situating Affect in Linguistic Landscapes.” Linguistic Landscape 2(2): 105–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zaimakis, Yiannis
2015 “Welcome to the Civilization of Fear’: On Political Graffiti Heterotopias in Greece in Times of Crisis.” Visual Communication 14(4): 373–396. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Hong, and Brian Hok-Shing Chan
2017 “The Shaping of a Multilingual Landscape by Shop Names: Tradition versus Modernity.” Language and Intercultural Communication 17(1): 26–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2020 “Differentiating Graffiti in Macao: Activity Types, Multimodality and Institutional Appropriation.” To appear in Visual Communication. DOI logoGoogle Scholar