Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T19:05:46.718Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - The Linguistic Landscape as Discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2023

Jeffrey L. Kallen
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
Get access

Summary

Contrary to a view of the Linguistic Landscape (LL) as a collection of road and traffic signs, commercial signage, graffiti inscriptions, and other physical objects, this chapter treats the LL as discourse. In this approach, a visible unit of the LL is understood to mediate between a sign instigator and a sign viewer. The sign viewer is often a passing stranger whom the sign instigator will try to engage as an interlocutor. While the sign viewer’s reply is usually not articulated linguistically, it can be understood in light of the viewer’s subsequent behaviour, understanding, affect, or other modes of reply. The LL unit is seen as a performance which displays text in particular ways that are shaped by the pragmatic intentions of the sign instigator, discourse framing, and LL genre. This perspective argues against the restriction of the LL to written units. Urban diversity in the LL is thus understood in terms of a set of separate but interrelated discourses. In addition to examples of conversational maxims and speech acts at work, the chapter examines the overseas Irish pub as a complex LL genre, using data from New York, Chicago, Montreal, Liverpool, and Vienna.

Type
Chapter
Information
Linguistic Landscapes
A Sociolinguistic Approach
, pp. 161 - 217
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×