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.
Abousnnouga, G. and Machin, D. (2010). War monuments and the changing discourses of nation and soldiery. In A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (Eds), pp. 219–239.
Ben-Rafael, E. (2016). Introduction. Linguistic Landscape 2 (3). 207–210.
Blomaert, J. (2013). Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscape: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Committee for the Construction of the Thammasat History of Democracy Monument (2000), eds. Six October 1996 Monument. Bangkok: Thammasat University
Ferrara, F. (2015). The Political Development of Modern Thailand. Cambridge University Press.
Garvin, R. T. (2016). Multiple ‘ways of telling’ in the LL: Marking the WWII Japanese American Internment Camp at Rohwer, Arkansas, USA. Paper presented at the Eighth Linguistic Landscape Workshop at Liverpool University, April.
Handley, P. M. (2006). The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Jaworski, A. and Thurlow, C. Eds. (2010). Semiotic Landscape: Language, Image, Space. London and New York: Continuum.
Kongkirati, P. (2012). Thailand: The cultural politics of student resistance. In M. L. Weiss and E. Aspinall (Eds.). pp. 234–241.
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. Second Edition. London: Routledge.
Laothammatat, A. (2000). Building the October Heroes Monument: It’s Historical Importance [in Thai]. In Committee for the Construction of the Thammasat History of Democracy Monument, eds. p. 29.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. English translation by D. Nicholson-Smith. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Lim, E. (n.d.). Pridi Banomyong: father of Thai democracy. [URL], retrieved February 8, 2017.
Lou, J. J. (2016). The Linguistic Landscape of Chinatown: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography. Bristol, Buffalo and Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Malinowski, D. (2015). Opening spaces of learning in the linguistic landscape. Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal 1 (1–2), 93–113.
Noobanjong, K. (2012). The Rajadamnoen Avenue: Contesting urban meanings and political memories. Journal of Architectural / Planning Research and Studies 9 (2), 15–37.
Rojanaphruk, R. (2016, October5). The will to remember: Survivors recount 1976 Thammasat massacre 40 years later. Khao Sod English: An on-line English language news outlet, Retrieved from [URL], February8, 2017:
Satha-Anand, C. (2006). The silence of the bullet monument: Violence and “truth” management, Dunsun-nyor 1948, and Kru-Ze 2004. Critical Asian Studies 38. (1), 11–37.
Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. W. (2004). Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet. New York: Routledge.
Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. W. (2003). Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. London: Routledge.
Shohamy, E., E. Ben-Rafael, & M. Barni (Eds.), 2010). Linguistic Landscape in the City. Bristol: Multingual Matters.
Shohamy, E. and Gorter, D., eds. (2009). Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York and London: Routledge.
Shohamy, E. and Waksman, S. (2009). Linguistic landscape as an ecological arena: Modalities, meanings, negotiations, education. In E. Shohamy and D. Gorter, (Eds.). pp. 313–331.
Tanabe, S. and C. F. Keyes, Eds. (2002). Cultural Crisis and Social Memory: Modern Identity in Thailand and Laos. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Trumper-Hecht, N. (2010). Linguistic landscape in mixed cities in Israel from the perspective of ‘walkers’: The case of Arabic. InE. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael & M. Barni (Eds). pp. 235–251.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2005). Introduction to Social Semiotics. London: Routledge.
Weiss, M. L. and E. Aspinall, Eds. (2012). Student Activism in Asia: Between Protest and Powerlessness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Winichakul, T. (2002). Remembering / silencing the traumatic past: The ambivalent memories of the October 1976 massacre in Bangkok. In S. Tanabe and C. Keyes, Eds., pp. 243–283.
Winichakul, T. (2001). “We Do Not Forget the 6 October” The 1996 Commemoration of the October 1976 Massacre in Bangkok. Paper presented at the workshop on “Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future,” sponsored by the Japan Foundation and the University of the Philippines, Cebu, March 8–10, 15 pages.
Wong saga backfires on regime. (2016, October5). The Bangkok Post, 2016, p. A1.
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.