Cover not available
Article published In:
Multilingual Landscapes and the Construction of Community
Edited by Leonie Gaiser and Yaron Matras
[Linguistic Landscape 6:2] 2020
► pp. 213–236

Signage as event

Deriving ‘community’ from language practice

| University of Manchester
| University of Manchester

Our aim in this paper is to propose a framework to analyse the relationship between language choice on signs in multilingual environments, place, and notions of ‘community’. We focus on an interpretation of the goals pursued by sign owners, exploring how linguistic (and non-linguistic) resources are mapped onto communicative acts to target addressees and initiate some form of encounter or engagement. We approach signs as complex and multi-layered communicative events that are composed of different illocutionary acts, and take into account the local language ecology and place. We show how signs, as a form of practice, contribute to creating relations between sign owners and addressees, and can thus be constitutive of community.

Keywords: multilingualism, community, signage as event, encounter, engagement, multimodality, Manchester
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research sites and observation methods
  • 3.Spatially convergent events
  • 4.Dispersed events
  • 5.Performing participation
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.19029.mat
References
Amos, H. W.
(2016) Chinatown by numbers. Linguistic Landscape, 2(2), 127–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Benedict
(1983) Imagined communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, England: Verso.Google Scholar
Anderson, Bridget
(2013) Us and them? The dangerous politics of immigration controls. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Austin, John L.
(1962) How To Do Things with Words. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Backhaus, P.
(2009) Linguistic landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Barni, M., & Bagna, C.
(2009) A mapping technique and the linguistic landscape. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 126–140). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Amara, M. H., & 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bessant, K. C.
(2018) The relational fabric of community. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blackwood, R.
(2018) The Linguistic Landscape creating a new sense of community: Guadeloupean Creole, the general strike of 2009. In A. Peck, C. Stroud, & Q. Williams (Eds.), Making sense of people and place in linguistic landscapes (pp 107–122). London, England: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Blokland, T.
(2017) Community as urban practice. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, J.
(2008) Grassroots Literacy: Writing, Identity and Voice in Central Africa. London, England: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013) Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscape: Chronicles of complexity. Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, J., & Backus, A.
(2013) Repertoires revisited: ‘Knowing language’ in superdiversity. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies, 671, 1–26. Retrieved from [URL]
Blommaert, J., & Huang, A.
(2010) Semiotic and spatial scope: Towards a materialist semiotics. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, 621, 1–15. Retrieved from [URL]
Blommaert, J., & Maly, I.
(2014) Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis and social change: A case study. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, 1331, 1–20. Retrieved from [URL]
Brubaker, R.
(2002) Ethnicity without groups. European Journal of Sociology/Archives européennes de sociologie, 43(2), 163–189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) The ‘diaspora’ diaspora. Ethnic and racial studies, 28(1), 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collins, J., & Slembrouck, S.
(2007) Reading shop windows in globalized neighborhoods: Multilingual literacy practices and indexicality. Journal of Literacy Research, 39(3). 335–356. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckert, P.
(2006) Communities of Practice. In Brown, K. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed., pp. 683–685). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gaiser, L.
(2014) Reading the Curry Mile: Language Use in the Linguistic Landscape of Rusholme. Manchester. Multilingual Manchester, The University of Manchester. Retrieved from [URL]
Gaiser, L., & Matras, Y.
(2016) The spatial construction of civic identities: A study of Manchester’s linguistic landscapes. Multilingual Manchester, The University of Manchester. Retrieved from [URL]
Holmes, J., & Meyerhoff, M.
(1999) The Community of Practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in society, 28(2), 173–183. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huebner, T.
(2006) Bangkok’s linguistic landscapes: Environmental print, codemixing and language change. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 30–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hult, F.
(2009) Language ecology and linguistic landscape analysis. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 88–104). London, England: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jaworski, A.
(2015) Welcome: Synthetic personalization and commodification of sociability in the Linguistic Landscape of Global Tourism. In B. Spolsky, I. Inbar-Lourie, & M. Tannenbaum (Eds), Challenges for Language Education & Policy. (pp. 214–231). London, England: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kroon, S., Dong, J., & Blommaert, J.
(2015) Truly moving texts. In M. Prinsloo & C. Stroud (Eds.), Language, Literacy, Diversity: Moving Words (pp. 1–15). London, England: Routledge.Google Scholar
Landry, R., & Bourhis, R.
(1997) Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality. An Empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 16(1), 23–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lanza, E., & Svendsen, B. A.
(2007) Tell me who your friends are and I might be able to tell you what language (s) you speak: Social network analysis, multilingualism, and identity. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(3), 275–300. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matras, Y., & Robertson, A.
(2015) Multilingualism in a post-industrial city: policy and practice in Manchester. Current Issues in Language Planning, 16(3), 296–314. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2017) Urban multilingualism and the civic university: A dynamic, non-linear model of participatory research. Social Inclusion, 5(4), 5–13. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matras, Y., Gaiser, L. & Reershemius, G.
(2018) Multilingual repertoire management and illocutionary functions in Yiddish signage in Manchester. Journal of Pragmatics, 1351(2018), 53–70. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pappenhagen, R., Scarvaglieri, C., & Redder, A.
(2016) Expanding the Linguistic Landscape Scenery? Action Theory and ‘Linguistic Soundscaping’, In R. Blackwood, E. Lanza, & H. Woldemariam (Eds.), Negotiating and contesting identities in linguistic landscapes (pp. 147–162). London, England: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A., & Otsuji, E.
(2015) Metrolingualism: Language in the city. London, England: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosenbaum, Y., Nadel, E., Cooper, R. L., & Fishman, J. A.
(1977) English on Keren Kayemet Street. In J. A. Fishman, R. L. Cooper, & A. W. Conrad (Eds.), The spread of English: The sociology of English as an additional language (pp. 179–196). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Searle, J. R.
(1969) Speech Acts. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spolsky, B., & Cooper, R.
(1991) The languages of Jerusalem. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar