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Article published In:
Linguistic Landscape
Vol. 3:2 (2017) ► pp.101–121

Monument as semiotic landscape

The contested historiography of a national tragedy

| San José State University
| Chulalongkorn University | Thammasat University

As semiotic spaces, monuments convey messages through multiple information design modes, including language, materiality and emplacement. As research on semiotic landscape has pointed out (e.g., Shohamy and Waksman 2009, Abousnnouga and Machin 2010, Train 2016), these messages are often contested in nature and convey competing discourses inherent in the spaces they occupy. This paper explores those competing discourses manifested in a monument dedicated to the 1976 student protest and violent suppression of it by the Thai military and right-wing paramilitary groups. Working within a production of space framework (Lefebvre 1991) and drawing on insights from the grammar of visual design (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) and nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2004), the paper attempts to show how these contested discourses are reflected in the monument’s historiography as conceived, in its physical appearance and emplacement, and as it is experienced today. The analysis is based on photographic data of the monument and its immediate physical context, published accounts of the events of October 6, and interviews with survivors, commemoration planners, and the monument’s designer.

Keywords: monuments, multimodality, contested discourses, historiography, student protest, massacre, Thammasat University, Thailand, October 6
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Monuments and the semiotics of space
  • 4.Conceived space – monument as tale of multiple narratives
    • 4.1Perceived space – monument as physical object
  • 5.Lived space as contested histories / narratives / social memories
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.3.2.01hue
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