Trajectories of Language: Orders of Indexical Meaning in Washington DC's Chinatown (original) (raw)
Chinatown transformed: Ideology, power, and resources in narrative place-making
Discourse Studies, 2010
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.
2019
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.
Symbols of Gentrification? Narrating Displacement in Los Angeles Chinatown
2020
Los Angeles Chinatown is one of the oldest North American urban Chinatowns and experiencing changes that are redefining the neighborhood. Yet, not all community leaders label these changes as gentrification that directly displaces the community. This article examines how community leaders representing business, residential, and cultural interests engage in the politics of placemaking through their narratives of a new development, Blossom Plaza. Community leaders do not always view gentrification as a primary direct displacement, and instead emphasize how a secondary and symbolic displacement is happening historically, physically, economically, and politically in Chinatown. However, they also vary in whether they see these changes as ultimately reshaping the neighborhood to maintain its unique identity, which is linked to how they envision Chinatown as an ethnic space. The findings highlight the importance of considering symbolic displacement in gentrification studies about historic ethnic enclaves.
In this paper I address a number of recent controversial language-related incidents and ideological statements regarding the use of French in the public sphere by Flemish nationalist aldermen in two Flemish towns. By drawing on interviews with different stakeholders (shopowners, aldermen and passers-by), I address the different perceptions and ideological indexicalities of French shop names and signs in these Flemish contexts. In the data, the indexical field (Eckert 2008) of French in Flanders emerges as both polyvalent and indexically ordered, while the Flemish nationalist interpretations involve rescaled and historically recursive indexical meaning which can only be understood vis-à-vis the historical language ideological debate in Belgium. Language use in the public sphere has thus become a tool to impose monolingual 'doxic logics' in Flanders, in spite of the fact that commercial and private language use is not regulated by language laws in Belgium.
Space and Culture, 2007
With the changing immigrant population and rising real-estate prices in downtown Washington, D.C., the number of Chinese residents and businesses in its Chinatown has declined in recent years. Meanwhile, non-Chinese stores and restaurants have marched into this thriving neighborhood. Foreseeing the threat of Chinatown's disappearance from the urban landscape, leaders of the local Chinese community have devised and administered a mandate for all businesses, Chinese and non-Chinese, in the area to carry Chinese shop signs. To understand how this mandate has reconstructed Chinatown's semiotic landscape, this article employs the theoretical framework of geosemiotics and the (post-)structuralist conception of the sign. Through an analysis of shop signs in their material contexts, it is argued that the local community's preservation effort has inadvertently rendered Chinatown into a heterotopia, where heterogeneous spaces are juxtaposed into one place.
Landscape and Memory: an Archaeology of Boston’s Chinatown
The year was 1870, and Calvin T. Sampson had a problem. His shoe factory in North Adams lay idle, victim of a strike by the shoemaker's union, the Secret Order of Saint Crispin. Desperate to find workers willing to break the strike, he sent a telegram to an employment agency in San Francisco. Contracts were made, payments received, and seventy-five strikebreakers were placed on the next train to the east coast. The workers' arrival sparked a furor among workers all over Massachusetts because Sampson had hired the first Chinese laborers in the history of the Commonwealth. By 1872 the strike at the mill was over, and a few dozen Chinese drifted down to Boston to find work helping to rebuild the city following a devastating fire . This is the beginning of the story of Boston's Chinatown. It is a fascinating story, befitting a fascinating place. In an increasingly gentrified and homogenized urban landscape, it is vibrant and distinctive. Chinese characters shout from building facades and shop windows, the aroma of food permeates the atmosphere, and the sound of people from all over the Asian world speaking in their native tongues fills the ears of passers-by. This distinctiveness has also made generations of residents the victims of suspicion and discrimination, Chinatown's residents who struggled for respect and recognition from Boston's Caucasian majority, a story well documented in the historical record. This record runs the gamut from newspaper headlines warning of the impending "yellow menace" to the minutes of community association meetings trying to devise a strategy to resist encroaching development. The story of Boston's Chinatown and its