Article published In:
Linguistic LandscapeVol. 1:1/2 (2015) ► pp.133–151
Skinscapes
The paper argues for extending linguistic landscape studies to also encompass the body as a corporeal landscape, or ‘moving discursive locality’. We articulate this point within a narrative of a developing field of landscape studies that is increasingly attentive to the mobility and materiality of spatialized semiotics as performative, that is, as partially determining of how we come to understand ourselves ‘in place’. Taking Cape Town’s tattooing culture as an illustration, we unpack the idea of ‘the human subject as an entrepreneur of the self, as author of his or her being in the world’ (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012: 23), by using a phenomenological methodology to explore the materiality of the body as a mobile and dynamic space of inscribed spatialized identities and historical power relations. Specifically, we focus on: how tattooed bodies sculpt future selves and imagined spaces, the imprint they leave behind in the lives of five participants in the study and ultimately the creation of bodies that matter in time and place. The paper will conclude with a discussion of what studies of corporeal landscapes may contribute to a broader field of linguistic landscape studies.
Keywords: mobility, phenomenology, semiotics, linguistic landscape, skin, power relations
References
Ahmed, S
(2006) Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
Backhaus, P
(Ed.) (2007) Linguistic landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo (Vol. 1361). Clevedon: Multilingual matters.
Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Hasan Amara, M., & Trumper-Hecht, N
(2006) Linguistic landscape as symbolic construction of the public space: The case of Israel. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 7–30.
Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., & Barni, M
(2010) Linguistic landscape in the city. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Burdick, C
(2012) Mobility and language in place: A linguistic landscape of language commodification. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts.
Butler, J
(1990) Gender trouble. London: Routledge.
Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J.L
(2012) Theory from the South: Or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa. Anthropological Forum, 22(2), 113–131.
Gorter, D., Marten, H.F., & Van Mensel, L
(Eds.) (2012) Minority languages in the linguistic landscape. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hélot, C., Barni, M., Janssens, R., & Bagna, C
(2013) Linguistic landscapes, multilingualism and social change. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Hill, J.H
(2009) The everyday language of white racism. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Hutchinson, D.L
(1999) Ignoring the sexualization of race: Heteronormativity, critical race theory and anti-racist politics. Buffalo Law Review, 47(1), 1–116.
Ibrahim, A
(2014) The rhizome of blackness: A critical ethnography of hip hop culture, language, identity, and the politics of becoming. Bern: Peter Lang.
Jaworski, A., & Thurlow, C
(2012) The (de-) centering spaces of airports: Framing mobility and multilingualism. In S. Pietikäinen & H. Kelly-Holmes (Eds.), Multilingualism and the Periphery. Oxford: OUP.
Johnstone, B
(2004), Place, globalization and linguistic variation. In C. Fought (Ed.), Sociolinguistic variation: Critical reflections (pp. 65–83). Oxford: OUP.
Kress, G
(2002) Aesthetics, ethics, creativity and design. In J. Sefton-Green, P. Thomson, K. Jones, & L. Bresler (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of creative learning, 211. London: Routledge.
Landau, L.B
(2012) Race trouble: Race, identity and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35(4), 789–790.
Leeman, J., & Modan, G
(2009) Commodified language in Chinatown: A contextualized approach to linguistic landscape1. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13(3), 332–362.
Lefebvre, H
(1991) The production of space. Blackwell: Oxford.
Lou, J.J
(2010) Chinatown transformed: Ideology, power, and resources in narrative place-making. Discourse Studies, 12(5), 625–647.
Mac Giolla Chríost, D
(2007) Language and the city. Houndmills: Palgrave: Macmillan.
Malinowski, D
2009 Authorship in the linguistic landscape: A multimodal performative view. In E. Shohamy, & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 107–125). London: Routledge.
Milani, T., & Jonsson, R
(2012) Who’s afraid of Rinkeby Swedish? Stylization, complicity, resistance. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 22(1), 44–63.
Nayak, A
(2010) Race, affect, and emotion: Young people, racism, and graffiti in the postcolonial English suburbs. Environment and Planning, A 42(10), 2370–2392.
Peck, A
(2012) Reimagining diversity in post-apartheid Observatory, Cape Town: A Discourse Analysis. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of the Western Cape.
Peck, A., & Banda, F
(2013) Observatory’s linguistic landscape: Semiotic appropriation and the reinvention of space. Social Semiotics, 241, 1–22.
Radcliffe, S.A
(1999) Embodying national identities: Mestizo men and white women in Ecuadorian racial‐national imaginaries. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 24(2), 213–225.
Robinson, S
(2015) ‘Now that’s what I’d call morphing’: Building a queer architecture Caroline Bergvall’s Eclat. [URL]
Roth-Gordon, J
(2003) Critical whiteness studies and the antiracist imagination. Postcolonial Studies, 6(3), 399–402.
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S.W
(2003) Discourses in place: Language in the material world. Routledge.
Sheller, M., & Urry, J
(2006) The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning, A38(2), 207–226.
Shohamy, E.G
(2006) Language policy: Hidden agendas and new approaches. Hove: Psychology Press.
Shohamy, E., Ben Rafael, E., & Barni, M
(2010) Linguistic landscape in the city. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Steyn, M., & Foster, D
(2008) Repertoires for talking white: Resistant whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(1), 25–51.
Stroud, C., & Jegels, D
(2014) Semiotic landscapes and mobile narrations of place: Performing the local. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014(228), 179–199.
Stroud, C., & Mpendukana, S
(2010) Multilingual signage: A multimodal approach to discourses of consumption in a South African township. Social Semiotics, 20(5), 467–491.
Szerszynski, B., & Urry, J
(2006) Visuality, mobility and the cosmopolitan: Inhabiting the world from afar. The British Journal of Sociology, 57(1), 113–131.
Urry, J
(2007) Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity.
Cited by
Cited by 60 other publications
Alomoush, Omar I. S.
2021. Is English on mobile linguistic landscape resources no longer viewed as a linguistic threat to Arabic in Jordan?. English Today 37:1 ► pp. 50 ff. 
Aronin, Larissa, Daria Bylieva & Victoria Lobatyuk
2023. Material Culture Inside and Beyond the Multilingual Classroom: Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspectives. In Linguistic Landscapes in Language and Teacher Education [Multilingual Education, 43], ► pp. 259 ff.
Awayed-Bishara, Muzna
2023. Sumud pedagogy as linguistic citizenship: Palestinian youth in Israel against imposed subjectivities. Language in Society ► pp. 1 ff.
Banda, Felix, Shanleigh Dannica Roux & Amiena Peck
2024. Tattoos as multimodal semiotic assemblages. Multimodal Communication 0:0
Borba, Rodrigo & Tommaso M. Milani
2019. Colonial intertexts: Discourses, bodies and stranger fetishism in the Brazilian media. Discourse, Context & Media 30 ► pp. 100290 ff.
Buchstaller, Isabelle & Małgorzata Fabiszak
2021. Editorial: ideology and commemoration in the urban space. Linguistics Vanguard 7:s5
Caldwell, David
2017. Printed t-shirts in the linguistic landscape. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 3:2 ► pp. 122 ff.
Camilleri Grima, Antoinette
2020. What’s in a house name? Student-teachers’ dialogic encounters with multilingual texts in the environment. Language Awareness 29:3-4 ► pp. 199 ff.
Correa, Doris & Elana Shohamy
2018. Commodification of women’s breasts. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 4:3 ► pp. 298 ff.
Dimitris Kitis, E. & Tommaso M. Milani
2015. The performativity of the body. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 1:3 ► pp. 268 ff.
Dresler, Emma
2021. Tattoo as a personalised souvenir: pictorial presentation of tourism experience. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research 26:9 ► pp. 1007 ff.
Hall, Kira, Rodrigo Borba & Mie Hiramoto
2020. Language and Gender. In The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, ► pp. 1 ff.
Huang, Li & James Lambert
2020. Another arrow for the quiver: a new methodology for multilingual researchers. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 41:7 ► pp. 567 ff.
Jaworski, Adam & Jackie Jia Lou
2021. #wordswewear: mobile texts, expressive persons, and conviviality in urban spaces. Social Semiotics 31:1 ► pp. 108 ff.
Järlehed, Johan & Máiréad Moriarty
2018. Culture and class in a glass: Scaling the semiofoodscape. Language & Communication 62 ► pp. 26 ff.
Karlander, David
2018. Backjumps: writing, watching, erasing train graffiti. Social Semiotics 28:1 ► pp. 41 ff.
Kiesling, Scott F.
2018. Masculine stances and the linguistics of affect: on masculine ease. NORMA 13:3-4 ► pp. 191 ff.
Kosatica, Maida
2021. 102: the semiotics of living memorials. Social Semiotics 31:5 ► pp. 738 ff.
Krompák, Edina & Stephan Meyer
2018. Translanguaging and the Negotiation of Meaning. Multilingual Signage in a Swiss Linguistic Landscape. In Translanguaging as Everyday Practice [Multilingual Education, 28], ► pp. 235 ff.
Li, Songqing
2023. Digital remediation and visual manipulation: Blogs as breathing spaces for Chinese tattoo wearers and enthusiasts. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 38:3 ► pp. 1145 ff.
Malinowski, David
2018. Linguistic Landscape. In The Palgrave Handbook of Applied Linguistics Research Methodology, ► pp. 869 ff.
Malinowski, David
Malinowski, David & Sébastien Dubreil
2019. Linguistic Landscape and Language Learning. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ► pp. 1 ff.
Milani, Tommaso M.
2018. Is the Rectum a Gold Mine? Queer Theory, Consumer Masculinities, and Capital Pleasures. In Queering Masculinities in Language and Culture, ► pp. 19 ff.
Milani, Tommaso M.
Milani, Tommaso M. & Erez Levon
2016. Sexing diversity: Linguistic landscapes of homonationalism. Language & Communication 51 ► pp. 69 ff.
Moriarty, Máiréad & Johan Järlehed
2019. Multilingual creativity and play in the semiotic landscape: an introduction. International Journal of Multilingualism 16:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Muth, Sebastian
2018. Linguistic landscaping. In Foreign Language Education in Multilingual Classrooms [Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity, 7], ► pp. 213 ff.
Niehaus, Konstantin
2023. The temporality of commodified landscapes at events & local constructions of identity in Salzburg. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 9:4 ► pp. 357 ff.
Ogiermann, Eva
Ong, Teresa Wai See
2021. Reimaging the Art Scene in George Town, Penang. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ► pp. 1 ff.
Peck, Amiena
2021. Find that thing that weighs more than drugs. Gender and Language 15:4
Pennycook, Alastair
2017. Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages. International Journal of Multilingualism 14:3 ► pp. 269 ff.
Pennycook, Alastair
2019. The landscape returns the gaze. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 5:3 ► pp. 217 ff.
Purschke, Christoph
2017. (T)Apping the linguistic landscape. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 3:3 ► pp. 246 ff.
Purschke, Christoph
2020. Exploring the Linguistic Landscape of Cities Through Crowdsourced Data. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ► pp. 1 ff.
Purschke, Christoph
2020. Exploring the Linguistic Landscape of Cities Through Crowdsourced Data. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ► pp. 1 ff.
Pérez-Arredondo, Carolina & Camila Cárdenas-Neira
2022. ‘The rapist is you’: semiotics and regional recontextualizations of the feminist protest ‘a rapist in your way’ in Latin America. Critical Discourse Studies 19:5 ► pp. 485 ff.
Richardson, Diane F.
2020. Floating Traffic Signs and the Ambiguity of Silence in the Linguistic Landscape. In Language Teaching in the Linguistic Landscape [Educational Linguistics, 49], ► pp. 163 ff.
Roeder, Rebecca & Bryan C. Walden
2016. The changing face of dixie: Spanish in the linguistic landscape of an emergent immigrant community in the New South. Ampersand 3 ► pp. 126 ff.
Roos, Jana & Howard Nicholas
2019. Linguistic Landscapes and Additional Language Development. In The Handbook of Informal Language Learning, ► pp. 243 ff.
Roux, Dominique, Russell Belk, Vicki G Morwitz, Margaret C Campbell & Güliz Ger
2019. The Body as (Another) Place: Producing Embodied Heterotopias Through Tattooing. Journal of Consumer Research 46:3 ► pp. 483 ff.
Roux, Shanleigh, Amiena Peck & Felix Banda
2019. Playful female skinscapes: body narrations of multilingual tattoos. International Journal of Multilingualism 16:1 ► pp. 25 ff.
Rowlett, Benedict J. L.
Savela, Timo
2018. The advantages and disadvantages of quantitative methods in schoolscape research. Linguistics and Education 44 ► pp. 31 ff.
Seals, Corinne A.
2017. Analyzing the linguistic landscape of mass-scale
events. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 3:3 ► pp. 267 ff.
Ssentanda, Medadi & Gibson Ncube
2023. Scripting Identities: Reading Language Dynamics and Ideologies on Shop Signs in Kampala. Language Matters 54:3 ► pp. 60 ff.
Svennevig, Jan
2021. How to do things with signs. The formulation of directives on signs in public spaces. Journal of Pragmatics 175 ► pp. 165 ff.
Szabó, Tamás Péter & Robert A. Troyer
Thurlow, Crispin
2016. Queering critical discourse studies or/and Performing ‘post-class’ ideologies. Critical Discourse Studies 13:5 ► pp. 485 ff.
Tran, Tu, Donna Starks & Howard Nicholas
2020. Discursive constructions of the viewing of a bathroom as a linguistic landscape in a shared home. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 43:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
Troyer, Robert A. & Tamás Péter Szabó
2017. Representation and videography in linguistic landscape studies. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 3:1 ► pp. 56 ff.
Vinagre, Margarita
2022. Engaging with difference: Integrating the linguistic landscape in virtual exchange. System 105 ► pp. 102750 ff.
Vold Lexander, Kristin, Kellie Gonçalves & Haley de Korne
2020. Introduction. Multilingual literacy practices - global perspectives on visuality, materiality, and creativity. International Journal of Multilingualism 17:3 ► pp. 271 ff.
Volvach, Natalia
2023. Manoeuvres of dissent in landscapes of annexation. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 9:2 ► pp. 113 ff.
Vuorsola, Lasse
2020. Minority positioning in physical and online spaces. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 6:3 ► pp. 297 ff.
Wee, Lionel
2016. Situating affect in linguistic landscapes. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 2:2 ► pp. 105 ff.
Yao, Jiazhou, Shuaiying Pan, Xiaohua Zhang & Peng Nie
2022. Linguistic landscape as a way to reflect the tension between mandated language policies and residents’ language preferences: the case of Kashgar in China. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development ► pp. 1 ff.
Álvarez-Mosquera, Pedro & Frieda Coetzee
2018. “It makes it legit”: local semiotic perceptions of the linguistic landscape in a market in Soshanguve, South Africa. Social Semiotics 28:4 ► pp. 494 ff.
Álvarez-Mosquera, Pedro & Frieda Coetzee
2022. “A Name That Recognises You”: Local Analysis of Semiotic Dynamics in Semi-Informal Markets in South Africa. Language Matters 53:3 ► pp. 112 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.