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Article published In:
Linguistic Landscape
Vol. 9:4 (2023) ► pp.387–412

Contextual graffiti and collective action frames at the Chilean social outbreak in 2019

ORCID logo | University of Edinburgh

Protest graffiti as visual activism provides a democratic space for demonstrators to articulate their narratives. Nevertheless, the lack of leadership in the Chilean social outburst in 2019 becomes a challenge in outlining its impact. Thus, this article provides an empirical case of political graffiti and explains how graffiti had a constitutive role in the social movement and the immediate country’s political course after that. This paper proposes a transdisciplinary approach by combining the analysis of graffiti as contextual texts (Pennycook, 2007) with ‘collective action frames’ in studying political graffiti collected in a six-kilometre walk in Santiago, Chile. As a result, graffiti frameworks of injustice denounce the state and police violence; frameworks of agency tend to organise protesters’ ideas for change, such as a new constitution and the end of the current pension systems; and a strong sense of feminism conforms part of identity frames.

Keywords: graffiti, collective action frames, transmodality, turbulent linguistic landscapes, Chilean social outbreak
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Literature review
    • 1.2A short history of the social movement in 2019
    • 1.3Positionality as a Chilean researcher
  • 2.Social movement studies into the Linguistic Landscape research
    • 2.1Transmodal graffiti in arenas of conflict
    • 2.2Methodology and outcomes
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1Diagnosing the injustice of the model
    • 3.1Feminism in the movement’s identity
    • 3.3Movement’s agency through a new constitution
    • 3.4Intertextual relationships between CAF components and the new constitution
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 11 April 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.22002.mir
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