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Article published In:
The Political Economy of Linguistic Landscapes
Edited by Johan Järlehed, Tommaso M. Milani and Tove Rosendal
[Linguistic Landscape 9:3] 2023
► pp. 226–246

Semiotics of a Covid landscape

Tactical urbanism in a pandemic

ORCID logo | The Ohio State University
| City College of New York
This paper brings together urban planning and linguistic perspectives to examine the semiotic landscape of a Washington, DC ‘streatery’ in the context of the intersecting public health- and place-based economic crises unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing from Garay-Huamán and Irazábal-Zurita’s (2021) work on neoliberal Social Structures of Accumulation (SSA), we examine how different layers of Adams Morgan’s emergent Covid landscape are rooted in the dynamics of capitalist accumulation through urban placemaking strategies. We focus on signs put up by the Business Improvement District (BID) that explain the public health regulations applicable to the area through discourse that playfully encourages people to social distance and wear masks. These signs utilize three linguistic or semiotic discourses: hygiene, humor and play, and anti-Trump politics. The signs serve as a bona fide effort to both halt the spread of the coronavirus and take a political stance. At the same time as the signs promote public health, their commodified aestheticization of hygiene and politics also serves commercial interests.
Keywords: semiotic landscape, BIDs, commodification of language, gentrification, Covid, negative face, aestheticization, humor, language play, tactical urbanism, Trumpism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.SSAs and the Political Economy of Placemaking
  • 3.The role of language and semiotics in urban planning initiatives
  • 4.Adams Morgan and its Streatery
  • 5.Methods and Data
  • 6.Constructing the Streatery
  • 7.Aesthetic and Public Health Functions of BID signs
    • 7.1Aesthetics of Play and Politics
  • 8.Promoting Public Health Playfully
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.22038.mod
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