Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T00:01:07.363Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Folk-linguistic landscapes: The visual semiotics of digital enregisterment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2014

Theresa Heyd
Theresa Heyd*
Affiliation:
Albert-Ludwig-Universität Freiburg, English Department, Rempartstr. 15, 79085 Freiburg, Germanytheresa.heyd@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article analyzes folk-linguistic photo blogging as an example of twenty-first-century grassroots prescriptivism. Photo blogs engaged in grassroots prescriptivism usually focus on one specific linguistic phenomenon and collect visual evidence of its usage. Through the overt or covert language policing involved in such displays, folk-linguistic photo blogs contribute to the digital enregisterment of the linguistic practices they focus on as nonstandard or uneducated. This process is closely examined in a case study on emphatic quotation marks, a nonstandard form of punctuation that has been termed ‘greengrocer's quotes’, and its concomitant folk-linguistic photo blog. It is argued here that much of the persuasive power of such blogs can be attributed to their reliance on photographic material depicting signage in public space, and thus on the kind of visual semiotics that also informs many recent approaches in sociolinguistics. The simultaneity of these two phenomena is critically discussed. (Visual semiotics, enregisterment, computer-mediated communication, grassroots prescriptivism, emphatic quotation)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 43 , Issue 5 , November 2014 , pp. 489 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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.)

References

Abbott, Barbara (2003). Some notes on quotation. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 17(1):13–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agha, Asif (2005). Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1):38–59.Google Scholar
Beal, Joan (2008). Three hundred years of prescriptivism (and counting). In van Ostade, Ingrid Tieken-Boon & van der Wurff, William, (eds), Current issues in late modern English, 35–56. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Beal, Joan (2010). The grocer's apostrophe: Popular prescriptivism in the 21st century. English Today 26(2):57–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (2012). Lookalike language. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 33:20–23.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, & Huang, April (2010). Semiotic and spatial scope: Towards a materialist semiotics. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 62:1–15.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan; Kelly-Holmes, Helen; Lane, Pia; Leppänen, Sirpa; Moriarty, Máiréad; Pietikäinen, Sari; & Piirainen-Marsh, Arja (2009). Media, multilingualism and language policing: An introduction. Language Policy 8:203–7.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle (2013). Quotatives: New trends and sociolinguistic implications. Malden, MA: Wiley.Google Scholar
Chandler, Daniel (2007). Semiotics: The basics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas (2007). Style: Language, variation and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dougill, John (2008). Japan and English as an alien language. English Today 24(1):18–22.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope (2012). Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation. Annual Review of Anthropology 41:87–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gorter, Durk (2006). Introduction: The study of the linguistic landscape as a new approach to multilingualism. In Gorter, Durk (ed.), Linguistic landscape: A new approach to multilingualism, 1–6. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Gutzmann, Daniel, & Stei, Erik (2011). How quotation marks what people do with words. Journal of Pragmatics 43(10):2650–63.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica (2012). Legitimate language, legitimate speakers: Who owns Canadian French? Paper presented at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 19, Free University Berlin, 2012.Google Scholar
Herring, Susan; Scheidt, Lois Ann; Wright, Elijah; & Bonus, Sabrina (2005). Weblogs as a bridging genre. Information Technology & People 18(2):147–71.Google Scholar
Hill, Jane (2009). The everyday language of white racism. Malden, MA: Wiley.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra (ed.) (2012). Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jaworski, Adam, & Thurlow, Crispin (2011). Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara (2009). Pittsburghese shirts: Commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect. American Speech 84(2):157–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara, & Baumgardt, Dan (2004). ‘Pittsburghese’ online: Vernacular norming in conversation. American Speech 79(2):115–45.Google Scholar
Keeley, Bethany (2010). The book of “unnecessary” quotation marks. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther, & Leeuwen, Theo van (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Lampert, Martina (2013). Say, be like, quote (unquote), and the air-quotes: Interactive quotatives and their multimodal implications. English Today 29(4):45–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landry, Rodrigue, & Bourhis, Richard (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16(1):23–49.Google Scholar
Lee, Carmen, & Barton, David (2011). Constructing glocal identities through multilingual writing practices on flickr.com®. International Multilingual Research Journal 5(1):39–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lippi-Green, Rosina (2012). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. 2nd Edn.London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pinker, Steven (1994). The language instinct. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Pullum, Geoffrey (2004). Ideology, power, and linguistic theory. Paper presented at the Convention of the Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, 2004. Online: http://people.ucsc.edu/~pullum/MLA2004.pdf.Google Scholar
Ringrose, Jessica (2013). Postfeminist education? Girls and the sexual politics of schooling. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Saka, Paul (1998). Quotation and the use-mention distinction. Mind 107:113–35.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Deborah (2010). Old whine online: Prescriptive grammar blogs on the internet. English Today 26(4):23–28.Google Scholar
Schieffelin, Bambi (1986). Teasing and shaming in Kahili children's interactions. In Schieffelin, Bambi & Ochs, Elinor (eds.), Language socialization across cultures, 165–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scollon, Ron, & Scollon, Suzy Wong (2003). Discourse in place: Language in the material world. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shohamy, Elana Goldberg,; Ben-Rafael;, Eliezer & Barni, Monica (eds.) (2010). Linguistic landscape in the city. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23:193–229.Google Scholar
Spitzmüller, Jürgen (2013). Graphische Variation als soziale Praxis: Eine soziolinguistische Theorie skripturaler ‘Sichtbarkeit’. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Squires, Lauren (2010). Enregistering internet language. Language in Society 39:457–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, & D'Arcy, Alex (2004). He's like, she's like: The quotative system in Canadian youth. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8(4):493–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, & Denis, Derek (2008). Linguistic ruin? LOL! Instant messaging and teen language. American Speech 83(1):3–34.Google Scholar
Thurlow, Crispin (2002). Generation txt? The sociolinguistics of young people's text-messaging. Discourse Analysis Online 1.1. Online: http://extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/articles/v1/n1/a3/thurlow2002003.html.Google Scholar
Truss, Lynne (2003). Eats, shoots & leaves: The zero tolerance guide to punctuation. London: Profile Books.Google Scholar