Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistic Landscape
Vol. 3:1 (2017) ► pp.78–99

Liminality, heterotopic sites, and the linguistic landscape

The case of Venice

| University of Liverpool

This paper is an investigation into the construction of Venice as a heterotopia – another place – characterised by a liminal linguistic landscape (LL) against a background of mass tourism seen as the enactment of different tourist subjectivities converging onto a peculiarly transnational space. The first part of the study contextualises mass tourism and outlines the concepts of liminality, deterritorialisation and heterotopia. The second part presents and discusses the data, which lay the basis for a linguistic and semiotic reading of Venice’s public space. The conclusion proposes an interpretation of Venice’s LL as a deterritorialised, heterotopic and liminal space, and, importantly, highlights that LL studies have much to contribute to an understanding of late modernity.

Keywords: Venice, heterotopia, liminality, deterritorialisation, tourist, pilgrim
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Contextualising mass tourism: the tourist as a modern pilgrim
  • 3.Heterotopic sites, liminality and deterritorialisation
  • 4.Empirical evidence
    • 4.1Language displays
    • 4.2Beyond language
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 29 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.3.1.04tuf
References
Aramberri, J.
(2010) Modern Mass Tourism. Bingley: Emerald.Google Scholar
Badone, E., & Roseman, S. R.
(Eds.) (2004) Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Basso, K., & Feld, S.
(Eds.) (1996) Senses of Place. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Blackwood, R. J., & Tufi, S.
(2015) The Linguistic Landscape of the Mediterranean. French and Italian Coastal Cities. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baudrillard, J.
(1994) Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Boorstin, D. J.
(1964) The Image: a Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P.
(1986) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chiarini, E., & Mengaldo, P. V.
(1970) Venezia. Enciclopedia Dantesca, retrieved on 29 February 2016, from [URL]
Cohen, E.
(1972) Toward a sociology of international tourism. Social Research, 39(1), 164–189.Google Scholar
(1996) A Phenomenology of Tourist Experience. In Y. Apostolopoulos, S. Leivadi, & A. Yiannakis (Eds.), The Sociology of Tourism: Theoretical and Empirical investigations (pp.90–114). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Coleman, S., & Elsner, J.
(1995) Pilgrimage Past and Present in the World Religions. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Comune di Venezia
(2012) Annuario turismo 2011. Venezia: CPM, retrieved on 22 February 2016, from [URL]
(2016) Retrieved on 14 March 2016, from [URL]
Davis, R. C., & Marvin, G. R.
(2004) Venice, the Tourist Maze : A Cultural Critique of the World’s Most Touristed City. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Debord, G.
(1994) The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
DeLanda, M.
(2006) A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F.
(1988) A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Eade, J., & Sallnow, M. J.
(Eds.) (1991) Contesting the Sacred. The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Eglin, J.
(2001) Venice Transfigured: the Myth of Venice in British Culture, 1660–1797. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
England, K. V. L.
(1994) Getting personal: Reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research. The Professional Geographer, 46(1), 80–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foucault, M.
(1984) Of other spaces: Utopias and heterotopias. [Des Espace Autres, 1967]. Translated by Jay Miskowiec. Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, 51, 46–49.Google Scholar
(2002) The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gadamer, H. G.
(2004) Truth and Method. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Geertz, C.
(1973) The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Hahn, R.
(2008) Tintoretto: The alter ego of Venice. The Yale Review, 96 (1), 81–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Horne, D.
(1984) The Great Museum: The Re-presentation of History. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
James, H.
(1884) Portraits of Places. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company.Google Scholar
Kallen, J. L.
(2010) Changing landscapes: Language, space and policy in the Dublin linguistic landscape. In A. Jaworski & C. Thurlow (Eds.), Semiotic Landscapes. Language, Image, Space (pp. 41–58). London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T.
(2001) Multimodal Discourse: the Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Labov, W.
(1972) Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, H.
(1991) The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lou, J.
(2007) Revitalizing Chinatown into a heterotopias. A geosemiotic analysis of shop signs in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown. Space and Culture 10(2), 170–194. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacCannell, D.
(1973) Staged authenticity: Arrangements of social space in tourist settings. American Journal of Sociology, 79(3), 589–603. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1976) The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Martin, J., & Romano, D.
(Eds.) (2003) Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State 1297–1797. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Merriam, S. B., Johnson-Bailey, J., Lee, M., Kee, Y., Ntseane, Y., & Muhamad, M.
(2001) Power and positionality: Negotiating insider/outsider status within and across cultures. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 20(5), 405–416. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Music in Venice
(2016) Retrieved on 2 March 2016, from [URL].
Obrador, P.
(2012) The place of the family in tourism research: Domesticity and thick sociality by the pool. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(1), 401–420. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, A., & Otsuji, E.
(2015) Making scents of the landscape. Linguistic Landscape, 1(3), 191–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Petrarch, F.
Epistolae Familiares, XXIII, 16, 3, retrieved on 11 January 2016, from. [URL]
Poon, A.
(1993) Tourism, Technology and Competitive Strategies. Wallingford: CAB International.Google Scholar
Porteous, J.
(1990) Landscapes of the Mind: Worlds of Sense and Metaphor. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Provincia di Venezia
(2016) Turismo Venezia. Retrieved on 6 March 2016, from [URL]
Rakić, T., & Chambers, D.
(2012) Rethinking the consumption of places. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(3), 1612–1633. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ritter, A., & Wolny, M.
(2016) The Russian language in the Linguistic Landscape of western European cities between migration and tourism. Examples from Nuremberg (Germany) and Venice (Italy). Paper presented at the 37TH International LAUD Symposium, Landau, 4–6 April 2016.
Rizzo, T.
(2007) I ponti di Venezia. Rome: Newton Compton.Google Scholar
Rose, G.
(1997) Situating knowledges: Positionality, reflexivities and other tactics. Progress in human geography, 21(3), 305–320. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scollon, R., & Wong Scollon, S.
(2003) Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Soja, E. W.
(1996) Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stroud, C., & Mpendukana, S.
(2009) Towards a material ethnography of linguistic landscape: Multilingualism, mobility and space in a South African township. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 131, 363–386. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thurlow, C., & Jaworski, A.
(2010) Silence is golden: The ‘anti-communicational’ linguascaping of super-elite mobility. In A. Jaworski & C. Thurlow (Eds.), Semiotic Landscapes. Language, Image, Space (pp. 187–218). London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, J.
(2013) Globalisation and Culture. Oxford: Wiley.Google Scholar
Tufi, S., & Blackwood, R.
(2010) Trademarks in the linguistic landscape: methodological and theoretical challenges in qualifying brand names in the public space. International Journal of Multilingualism, 7 (3), 197–210.Google Scholar
Turner, L., & Ash, J.
(1975) The ‘Golden Hordes’. International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery. London: Constable.Google Scholar
Turner, L.
(1974) Tourism and the Social Sciences. From Blackpool to Benidorm and Bali. Annals of Tourism Research, 11, 180–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Turner, V., & Turner, E.
(1978) Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. Anthropological perspective. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Urry, J.
(1990) The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Vainikka, V.
(2013) Rethinking mass tourism. Tourist Studies, 13(3), 268–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wee, L.
(2016) Situating affect in linguistic landscape. Linguistic Landscape, 2(2), 105–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zukin, S.
(1992) Landscapes of power. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar