Meat, guns, and God
Expressions of nationalism in rural America
A trend exists in linguistic landscape research to examine urban spaces. Interest in urban spaces is a logical expression of ongoing migratory trends. While such research is helpful in advancing scholarship, there remains a need to examine how rural areas participate in the discursive construction of society. To address the recent urbanization of sociolinguistics, this paper examines how roadside billboards in rural areas of the United States discursively construct homeland messages. Using discourse analysis and drawing from linguistic landscape scholarship, the study explores how billboards draw from banal and sentimental homeland messages to forward a contentious issue, support a political candidate, and imagine a collective American identity. These discourses feed into, and are a part of, a larger network of ideologies that fabricate authentic notions of nationhood. The findings demonstrate that roadside billboards reflect a past time that flattens the cultural diversity of a nation into a static national image.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Ruralscapes of the United States
- 3.The study
- 4.Roadside billboards: Doing being American
- 5.Conclusion
-
References
References (34)
References
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities. New York: Verso.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination (ed. Michael Holquist). Austin: University of Texas Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bhabha, H. (1990). DissemiNation: time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation. In H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and narration (pp. 291–322). New York: Routledge.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bhabha, H. (1996). Culture’s in-between. In S. Hall & P. du Gay (Eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity (pp. 53–60). London: SAGE.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Blommaert, J. (2015). Chronotopic identities. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies, 1701, 1–9.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Carr, E. S., & Lempert, M. (2016). Scale: Discourse and dimensions of social life. Oakland: University of California Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Dillon, M., & Henly, M. (2008). Religion, politics, and the environment in rural America. Carsey Institute Issue Brief 31.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Geertz, C. (1980). Negara: The Theatre state in 19th century Bali. Princeton University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Goffman, E. (1986). Frame Analysis. Boston: Northeastern University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gorter, D. (2013). Linguistic landscapes in a multilingual world. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 331, 190–212. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hachimi, A. (2012). The urban and the urbane: Identities, language ideologies, and Arabic dialects in Morocco. Language in Society, 411, 321–341. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Housing Assistance Council (2012). Race & Ethnicity in Rural America. Washington, DC: HAC.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Jameson, F. (1986). Third-world literature in the era of multinational capitalism. Social Text, 151, 65–88. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Johnson, K. (2006). Demographic trends in rural and small town America. Carsey Institute Reports on Rural America 11.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Keane, W. (2003). Semiotic and the social analysis of material things. Language & Communication, 231, 409–425. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Kress, G. R., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Laitinen, M. (2014). 630 kilometres by bicycle: observations of English in urban and rural Finland. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2281, 55–77.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Llamas, C. (2007). “A place between places”: Language and identities in a border town. Language in Society, 361, 579–604. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Modan, G. G. (2007). Turf wars: Discourse, diversity, and the politics of place. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Muth, S. (2015). Ruralscapes in post‐Soviet Transnistria: Ideology and language use on the fringes of a contested space. In Zabrodskaja, A. & M. Laitinen (Eds.), Dimensions of Linguistic Landscapes in Europe: Materials and methodological solutions (pp. 199–232). Frankfurt am Main: Lang.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mutsaers, P., & Swanenberg, J. (2013). Super-diversity at the margins? Youth language in North Brabant, The Netherlands. Sociolinguistic Studies, 61, 56–89.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Olson, L. R., & Warber, A. L. (2008). Belonging, behaving, and believing: Assessing the role of religion on presidential approval. Political Research Quarterly, 611, 192–204. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Pinder, S. O. (2010). The Politics of Race and Ethnicity in the United States: Americanization, de-Americanization, and racialized ethnic groups. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rampton, B. (2006). Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an urban school. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
RA4C (2017). Reclaiming American for Christ. [URL].
Ratcliffe, M., Burd, C., Holder, K., & Fields, A. (2016). Defining rural at the U.S. Census Bureau. American Community Survey and Geography Brief ACSGEO-1.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W. (2003). Discourses in Place: Language in the material world. New York: Routledge. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
United States Department of Agriculture (2014). Farm demographics: U.S. farmers by gender, age, race, ethnicity, and more. National Agriculture Statistics Service ACH12–3/May 2014.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
United States Department of Agriculture (2016). Rural America at a glance. Economic Information Bulletin 1621.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Elite Discourses and Racism. London: SAGE.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 301, 1024–1054. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Lou, Jackie Jia, David Malinowski & Amiena Peck
Sahranavard, Neda & Jerry Won Lee
2022.
The Persianization of English in multilingual Tehran.
World Englishes 41:2
► pp. 285 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Schluter, Anne Ambler
2020.
The discursive framing of Turkey's pro‐government town square movement.
World Englishes 39:4
► pp. 594 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 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.