Semiotic Landscapes is an exciting addition to the study of linguistic landscapes.
It looks at how landscape generates meaning and combines three major areas of scholarly interest each concerned with central dimensions of contemporary life: language and visual discourse, spatial practices, and also the changes bought about by global capitalism and ever increasing mediatization.
The editors look at: the textual/discursive construction of place; the use of space as a semiotic resource; the extent to which these processes are shaped by wider economic and political re-orderings of post-industrial or advanced capitalism; changing patterns of human mobility and transnational flows of ideas and images.
The collection demonstrates the way written discourse interacts with all other discursive modalities: visual images, nonverbal communication, architecture and the built environment. From the red light districts of Switzerland to the transgressive public art of graffiti, all landscape can be seen to generate meaning. Semiotic Landscapes looks at how and why, and places this meaning generation in an interdisciplinary and thoroughly modern cross-section of global trends.
"Introducing semiotic landscapes Adam Jaworski (Cardiff University, UK) and Crispin Thurlow (University of Washington, USA) \ 1. Changing landscapes: Language, space, and policy in the Dublin linguistic landscape Jeffrey L. Kallen (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland) \ 2. Discourses in transit Mark Sebba (Lancaster University, UK) \ 3. Welsh linguistic landscapes ‘from above' and ‘from below' Nikolas Coupland (Cardiff University, UK) \ 4. Ideological struggles on signage in Jamaica Susan Dray (Lancaster University, UK) \ 5. Sex in the city: On making space and identity in travel spaces Ingrid Piller (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) \ 6. Spatial narrations: Graffscapes and city souls Alastair Pennycook (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia) \ 7. Cyberspace and physical space: Attention structures in Computer Mediated Communication Rodney H. Jones (City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) \ 8. ""A Latino community takes hold"": Reproducing semiotic landscapes in media discourse Thomas D. Mitchell (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) \ 9. Silence is golden: The 'anti-communicational' linguascaping of super-elite mobility Crispin Thurlow (University of Washington, USA) and Adam Jaworski (Cardiff University, UK) \ 10. War monuments and the changing discourses of nation and soldiery, Gill Abousnnouga (University of Glamorgan, UK) and David Machin (University of Leicester, UK) \ 11. Building the nation, writing the past: History and textuality at the Haapala memorial in Tel Aviv-Jaffa Elana Shohamy (Tel Aviv University, Israel) and Shoshi Waksman (Tel Aviv University, Israel) \ 12. Faces of places: Façades as global communication in Post-Eastern Bloc urban renewal Irina Gendelman (University of Washington, USA) and Giorgia Aiello (University of Washington, USA) \ 13. Semiosis takes place or radical uses of quaint theories Ella Chmielewska (University of Edinburgh, Scotland) \ Index"
Adam Jaworski is Professor in Language and Communication at the Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, UK. Crispin Thurlow is Associate Professor of Communication and Adjunct Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
Reviews for Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space
Semiotic landscapes is described on the dust jacket as an ''exciting addition to the study of linguistic landscapes'' and does not fall short of this claim. In a range of different geographic settings, this volume expands the discussion in several refreshing ways, inviting others to respond to the challenges, issues and questions identified in this cutting-edge growth area of sociolinguistics. -- Language Policy This book builds in a nice way on other linguistic landscape studies. The authors do a good job in exploring and expanding the borders of the field. -- Language and Society 41
