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The discursive chronotopes of waste: Temporal laminations and linguistic hauntings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2022

Crispin Thurlow Open the ORCID record for Crispin Thurlow [Opens in a new window] ,
Alessandro Pellanda  and
Laura Wohlgemuth
Crispin Thurlow*
Affiliation:
University of Bern, Switzerland
Alessandro Pellanda
Affiliation:
University of Bern, Switzerland
Laura Wohlgemuth
Affiliation:
University of Bern, Switzerland
*
Address for correspondence: Crispin Thurlow, Department of English, University of Bern, Länggassstrasse 49, 3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected]
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Abstract

This article presents two case-study examples of the discursive chronotopes by which domestic waste is organized as a linguistic, spatial, and temporal configuration. Marked by their liminality and temporal laminations, curbside garbage collection and secondhand/thrift shops are major sociomaterial practices in Switzerland. The three discursive chronotopes we address in these contexts are those concerned with regulation, repression, and (re)valuation. By focusing on the temporalities of waste, we complicate how linguistic landscape research typically conceives of, and approaches, both space and language. The language of waste is not always visible or even expressed. Indeed, waste is often deliberately rendered invisible—under the cover of darkness, behind closed doors, sent elsewhere—and thereby functions as an act of discursive suppression. For these reasons, we endorse a hauntological approach to linguistic landscapes. (Waste, linguistic landscape, discursive chronotope, temporal lamination, hauntology)*

Type
Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 51 , Special Issue 5: Semiotic Timescapes , November 2022 , pp. 819 - 837
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

In the first instance, this article arises as part of Thurlow's larger ‘Articulating Privilege’ project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (|CRSK-1_190183). In Autumn 2020, Pellanda and Wohlgemuth took Thurlow's MA seminar on ‘Language and Waste’, which was partly underwritten with funding from the University of Bern's ‘Promoting Sustainable Development in Teaching’ scheme; this is when the three of us first started thinking together through the kinds of issues and ideas at the heart of the current article. We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their encouragement and advice, and the production team at Nova Techset for also helping to bring the paper to life.

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