Trajectories of Language: Orders of Indexical Meaning in Washington DC's Chinatown (original) (raw)
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Commodified language in Chinatown: A contextualized approach to linguistic landscape
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This article explores the potential of the LL to evaluate ethnically defined spaces. Focusing on the area referred to as ‘Chinatown’ in central Liverpool, it examines the relationships between space, representation, and identity. Interviews with actors and passers-by indicate that the location and definition of Chinatown are interpreted inconsistently. As the article argues, however, the LL contains useful information for locating and qualifying the ethnic space. Scrutinizing both interview data and an empirical corpus of all the texts visible in the space, the article aims to define the borders of Chinatown, and the expression of ethnic identity therein. Whilst testifying to the commodification of aesthetic ideals and symbolic imagery, the LL simultaneously reveals an in-group community representative of authentic Chineseness. Exploring the dynamics of linguistic exclusion and accommodation, the data indicate not only that the identity of Chinatown is multi-layered, but also that its borders are subjective and not definable spatially.
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Combining textual, visual, and ethnographic approaches to discourse, this article examines a variety of resources employed in the narrative construction of Washington, DC's Chinatown in a billboard advertisement that de-ethnicizes the neighborhood. Analysis of the linguistic resources of narrative structure, comparative reference, and lexical cohesion reveals how the gentrification of Chinatown is constructed as a positive transformation driven by a corporation. Further, the visual juxtaposition of text with photos and graphics appropriates the community voice and infuses it with corporate identity. This ideological multimodal construction of the transformation of Chinatown is finally actualized in its durable material form and strategic spatial emplacement. Incorporating ethnographic observation and an interview, this article illustrates how the symbolic power of narrative in place-making is interdependent on the economic power of its producer to propagate ideological discourse in the material world.
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As tourists from China account for a larger and larger share of Nepal’s tourism economy, Jyatha—a small neighborhood in Kathmandu—has absorbed a substantial portion of the Chinese businesses catering to this booming demographic. Its land- scape is heavily populated with Chinese businesses, leading Nepalis (and others) to increasingly refer to the space with the English term “Chinatown.” Drawing on Low’s (2000) and Chuang and Trémon’s (2013) conceptual frameworks of space, this article analyzes three central dimensions to the emergence of a Chinatown in Jyatha. First, it describes the social production of Chinatown space, the physical conversion of the material landscape. Specifically, I analyze the prevalence and prominence of com- mercial signs as a proxy for quantifying the degree of Chinese incursion into Jyatha. Second, the article turns to the social construction of Chinatown space, or the way in which the material space of Jyatha gets encoded with ambivalent meanings. Nepali narrations of the neighborhood highlight local anxieties regarding cultural autonomy and, more acutely, differential economic advantage. Third, the article discusses the social situation of Chinatown space, or the way in which the site of Jyatha gets discur- sively rescaled to address regional and global concerns. Nepalis frequently understand Jyatha to embody broader geopolitical narratives—regarding China’s ascendance on the world stage, and especially as this relates to the Nepal’s regional center of gravity vis-à-vis India. These three aspects—production, construction, and situation—con- verge in Jyatha. Through such practices, Nepalis simultaneously reiterate and contest the emergence of Chinatown. In so doing, they discursively challenge sociopolitical, economic, and spatial inequality at several scales.
We examine shop signs in Brooklyn, New York, as sociolinguistic technologies of place-making that operate through specific language ideologies which represent class struggles for material wealth. We find two salient types of signs which we call Old School Vernacular and Distinction-making signage. The first indexes multiple inclusions in the neighborhood economy before gentrification and thus suggests a capitalism without distinction. These signs also challenge linguistic and literacy prescriptivism. In contrast, Distinction-making signs signal an exclusivity that for some readers also represents exclusion. We discuss how these data can reveal and disguise rent gap opportunities as both old and new signs co-inhabit the same space in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn. Examinamos los letreros de las tiendas de Brooklyn, New York como tecnolog ıas socioling€ u ısticas de place-making (producci on de lugares) que operan a trav es de ideolog ıas espec ıficas del lenguaje, las cuales representan las luchas de clase por el bienestar y la riqueza material. Identificamos dos tipos sobresalientes de letreros a los cuales hemos llamado Old School Vernacular [vern aculo de vieja escuela] y Distinction-making signage [productor de distincci on]. El primero enumera ideas de inclusiones m ultiples en la econom ıa vecinal antes de la gentrificaci on y por lo tanto sugiere un capitalismo sin distinci on. Estos letreros, que tienden a ser evaluados negativamente por algunos pr osperos reci en llegados, tambi en cuestionan las ideas del prescriptivismo ling€ u ıstico y del c odigo letrado. Por el contrario, los letreros – productores de distinci on se~ nalan una exclusividad que, para algunos lectores, tambi en representa exclusi on. Discutimos c omo estos datos pueden revelar y ocultar oportunidades de inversi on, porque ambos letreros, viejos y nuevos, cohabitan en el mismo espacio en una Brooklyn que se gentrifica con rapidez. [Spanish]
Semiotic Landscapes and Discourses of Place within a Portuguese-Speaking Neighborhood
This study examines the semiotic landscapes and the commodification of Ferry Street in Newark, New Jersey, USA. By taking a geosemiotic approach, I study commercial signs as well as symbolic signs, such as flags and cultural paraphernalia, within the Ironbound neighborhood. I also explore the spoken discourse from interviews carried out with Portuguese-speaking residents as well as English-speaking visitors to the area. The analysis focuses on the linguistic constructions and descriptions of place that function to portray the diasporic characteristics of this predominantly Portuguese speaking area. The research reveals that signs and interview talk work in tandem to construct and promote this neighborhood as a multilingual and multiethnic place. Keywords. diasporic community; semiotic landscapes; Portuguese-speaking; marketplace; indexicality; Portuguese in New Jersey
Building upon paradigms of language and languaging practices as local phenomena (Canagarajah, 2013; Pennycook, 2010, Pietikäinen & Kelly-Holmes, 2013), this paper narrates a teacher’s experience in an undergraduate seminar in applied language studies as an exploration in transdisciplinarity-as-localization. Taught by the author in 2012-2013, the seminar was intended as an introduction to the politics of societal multilingualism as visible in the linguistic landscape of public texts. As such, it relied upon its own geographic and institutional locality, as well as the diverse conceptual moorings and methodologies of linguistic landscape research (e.g., Blommaert, 2013; Shohamy & Gorter, 2009; Trumper-Hecht, 2010) in order to lead students in interpreting the significance of East Asian languages in the San Francisco Bay Area. However, as the paper endeavors to show, the course’s own curriculum—and with it, the locus of teacherly authority—was forced to de-localize as the implementation of curricular ideals in practice revealed heterogeneous and expansive orders of meaning.