Attribute networking: A technique for modeling social perceptions1

An original, network‐based technique is presented for modeling community members’ conceptions of local social space. Social categories derived from the model are used to investigate the social meaning of linguistic variation. The technique is first explained and then demonstrated using linguistic and ethnographic data from Worthington, Ohio, a Columbus suburb. Two linguistic variables are analyzed: (1)/l/ vocalization; and (2) the phonetic realization of the before vowel‐initial words. The results are discussed in the context of Columbus‐area urban sprawl and its perceived threat to Worthington's distinctiveness.     

A semiotic approach to ‘ethnicity’. An example from Taiwanese ‘Chineseness’

For a few decades, socio-cultural as well as linguistic anthropologists have worked hard to construct a reliable semiotic paradigm to study linguistic, cultural and social interactions. These subfields – linguistic, cultural and social – are often analytically tackled asunder, though they are intimately interconnected, intertwined and overlapping. The semiotic theory of culture is not a novel discovery in itself, but it can also be applied to the study of society and ethnicity. Culture, society and ethnicity are systems of communication, that is systems of signs; society is a system of signs whose meaning emerges from social interactions and ethnicity a system of signs whose meaning is strategically imposed by a specific society through a specific culture. Moreover, those three systems of communication, of signs, are interconnected in various ways. This essay will analyze ‘Taiwanese Ethnicity’ in its semiotic dimension, and explore how society, culture and ethnicity interact in constructing an ethnic identification.     

New forms of writing,new visual competencies

This article discusses two crucial issues in the social semiotics of visual communication. The first is the move from accounts of specific semiotic modes towards an integrated multimodal approach to visual communication in which the analysis of images becomes less central than the analysis of semiotic resources such as composition, movement and colour, which are common to a range of semiotic modes including images, graphics, typography, fashion, product design, exhibition design and architecture. The second is a new emphasis on the discourses, practices and technologies that regulate the use of semiotic resources, and on studying the take‐up of semiotic resources by users in relation to these regulatory discourses, practices and technology. Here, the article will discuss a number of semiotic ‘regimes’, including codification, tradition, expertise, best practice or role modelling, and technological control. The article ends with a discussion of the way normative discourses are built into the latest visual communication technologies (e.g. PowerPoint, HTML, Photoshop, Illustrator) and an affirmation of the need for a critical and well‐contextualised semiotics of visual technology.     

Towards a material ethnography of linguistic landscape: Multilingualism,mobility and space in a South African township1

The study of multilingual landscapes promises to introduce a new perspective into theories and policies of multilingualism, and to provide essential data for a politics of language. However, the theorization of space and language underlying the notion of linguistic landscape is not able to capture the manifold complexities of (transnational) multilingual mobility that is characteristic of many late‐modern multilingual societies. Basing our argument on signage data from a contemporary South Africa in a dynamic phase of social transformation, we argue that more refined notions of space coupled to a material ethnography of multilingualism could provide a theoretically more relevant and methodologically refocused notion of (multilingual) linguistic landscape. Specifically, we take an approach to landscapes as semiotic moments in the social circulation of discourses (in multiple languages), and view signs as re‐semiotized, socially invested distributions of multilingual resources, the material, symbolic and interactional artifacts of a sociolinguistics of mobility.     

Towards Critical Intersections of Ageing,Housing and Well-Being

ABSTRACT

Across the life course, far-reaching socio-demographic and health related transformations are influencing the meaning of home in the UK. The collection presented in this Special Issue of Home Futures critically interjects into the ‘where and when’ of dwelling during the process of ageing with key concepts explored within this introductory article. It argues that, change is seen through the disruption of conventional ideas of ageing ‘at home’, traditional understandings of ‘the older person’ and its corollary social imaginaries, alongside the relationship between care practices and homes. Many of these shifts are being addressed through a range of emerging housing (and collaborative) alternatives. The article concludes by considering how discussions in this special issue disclose the home, from a range of social and material angles, as a diverse process and experience of meaning making over time, deeply entangled with health and well-being, disrupting traditional understandings of ‘place making’ in later life.     

Situation,Structure, and the Context of Meaning*

Two of the approaches at the forefront of contemporary sociological interest in meaning, symbolic interactionism and structuralism, share an interest in the role of signs and symbols in social life, yet take radically different standpoints concerning the nature of signs and the locus of meaning. Symbolic interactionists stress the ongoing process of the “situation” as the determinant of meaning, whereas structuralists claim that meaning must be sought at the deeper level of “system” or “structure” rather than at the surface. By comparing some foundational concepts underlying these traditions, such as the nature of the sign in Peirce and Saussure and Durkheim and Mead, and then exploring recent developments in structuralism and symbolic interactionism, a critical appraisal of their theories of meaning is made in the context of an emerging semiotic sociology.     

The Production of the Female Entrepreneurial Subject: A Space of Exclusion for Women of Color?

SUMMARY

Using critical discourse analysis, this paper examines how the female entrepreneurial subject is constructed/produced within entrepreneurial discourses, how this subject is racialized, gendered and classed, and examines what practices contribute to the shaping of the female entrepreneurial subject. I specifically look at four areas/discourses central to entrepreneurship; that of independence, self-definition/self-monitoring, networking, and women's abilities as businesswomen. I contend that contemporary self-employment discourses mirror those of neo-liberalism/modernization where the notion of the independent liberal subject has the ability to self-determine and self-monitor, which is a sign of autonomy and mastery of the self. I also argue that the space of women's entrepreneurship legitimizes white middle-class women's experiences and excludes women of color from becoming active subjects in entrepreneurial discourses.     

Patterns of linguistic variation among Glaswegian adolescent males1

This article presents the results of an ethnographically informed sociolinguistic investigation of Glaswegian Vernacular and examines the intersection between language and identity using data collected from a group of working‐class adolescent males, over the course of three years, from a high school in the south side of Glasgow, Scotland, called Banister Academy. Through the fine‐grained acoustic analysis of the phonetic variable cat (equivalent to the trap/bath/palm set, Johnston 1997 ), coupled with ethnographic observations, this article shows how patterns of variation are related to Community of Practice membership, how the members of the Communities of Practice in Banister Academy use linguistic and social resources to differentiate themselves from one another, and how certain patterns of variation acquire social meaning within the peer‐group. This article contributes to the under‐researched area of adolescent male language use and offers one of the first ethnographically supported accounts of linguistic variation in Glasgow.     

“You are your only limit”: Appropriations and valorizations of affect in university branding

This article considers the role of affect in university branding in a context of neoliberal higher education, by way of examining the semiotic landscape of the Singapore Management University concourse. Contemporary branding often involves stimulating stakeholder/audience investments of meaning and affect into the brand, thereby appropriating consumers’ affective labour for brand‐building and communications. Adopting a discourse‐analytic approach, I examine how linguistic, visual and spatial modalities are utilized to evoke and semiotize particular affective meanings and orientations in the emplaced discourse within the university's brand space. This discourse, which includes organizational branding discourse as well as more organic student‐generated texts, becomes part of the affective regime, helping to encourage and enjoin what is deemed to be normative affective sensibilities and practices in that context. Consequently, the article also considers the kinds of affective subjectivities that are valorized, and how stakeholder/student‐subjects are interpellated in a context of neoliberal‐oriented higher education.     

A Symbolic Interactionist User's Guide to the Answering Machine: 22 Reflections on Vocal Encounters in an Emerging Social World

This article offers a sociological analysis of a new communication technology—the answering machine. A general semiotic model of “machine talk” is suggested and connected, through the social world perspective, to forms of sociability that involve the fragmentation of time and space. The symbolic meaning given to the answering machine in literature, television, the cinema, and everyday language, as well as its use at home, are examined. Drawing on such disembodied discursive practices as speciality and simulacra, the conclusion provides a Baudrillardian look at “machine talk” as reflecting the postmodern shift from face-to-face interactions to telecommunications.     

Rinkeby Swedish and semilingualism in language ideological debates: A Bourdieuean perspective

The focus of this paper is on the mechanisms whereby liberal and well‐meaning democratic societies propagate a cycle of disposession where immigrants are constructed as least resourced while the powerful retain their power. Specifically discussed is the semiotic management of traditional hierarchies of privilege and access through language ideological discourses pertaining to second language acquisition, multilingualism and heterogeneity. One notion in particular is discussed in this context, namely Rinkeby Swedish , a potential, imagined, pan‐immigrant contact variety of Swedish. The discussion is framed within a primarily Bourdieuean conceptual apparatus using concepts of symbolic market, explaining the role of language boundaries and their institutional policing, and detailing the semiotic processes of iconization whereby immigrants are positioned as outside of a symbolically reconstituted community of 'real' Swedish speakers, in strategic attempts to restrict their access to important linguistic and symbolic resources.     

Privatize your name: Symbolic work in a post-Soviet linguistic market

This paper analyzes the new names given to Russian private businesses that have appeared after the collapse of the Soviet State in 1991. By naming new private ventures their owners members of the new business class attempt to privatize public space not only legally but also symbolically and linguistically. They strive to construct their particular new version of social reality, to represent it as positive and meaningful, and to impose themselves publicly as legitimate authors, owners, and masters of this new reality. This paper proceeds on several distinct levels of analysis. First, it analyzes a number of discourses, representing various subcultures and periods of Soviet and Russian history, from which new business names draw their complex meanings. Second, it considers concrete linguistic and semiotic techniques that are employed by the new names in this process. Third, it examines the cultural and social implications of this process of nomination for post-Soviet developments in the Russian society.     

Conceptualising the vertical landscape: The case of the International Finance Centre in the world's most vertical city

This article introduces the crucial yet much overlooked dimension of verticality to landscape‐related research through a case study of one of the most iconic skyscrapers in Hong Kong, the world's most vertical city. A tripartite analytic model is proposed to examine the dialogical interaction between the discursive and material landscapes in a vertical layout, while at the same time to explore the intricate interrelations among social actors, practices, functions of space, levels of access and forms and functions of semiotic resources, all within one single site of varying levels of verticality. In the process, the study reveals the vertical space as a highly stratified and hierarchical system, and underlines the value of taking a functional approach to verticality in order to deepen our understanding of its indexical social meaning and its role as an active agent both in reflecting and shaping social stratification in today's globalised and consumerist world.     

Texts and Other Symbolic Spaces

This article examines the cultural fabric of national identity in light of recent debates in the human sciences on the nature of texts and "textual realities." In discussing various political and historical examples, it argues that conceiving of national identity as a "textual reality" is to understand it (a) as a symbolic construction, (b) as a process of continuous cultural interpretation and reinterpretation, (c) as semiotic mediation, and (d) as a heterogeneous composition of different, often contradictory, layers of meaning. Although these issues have been discussed in different disciplines and theoretical contexts, they are viewed here as aspects of the same phenomenon, reflecting, each in its way, the conceptual scope of the textual approach. In further developing this argument, the article outlines a concept of text that covers not only linguistic phenomena in the traditional sense but also meaningful structures in a larger, cultural sense: symbolic spaces that embrace several semiotic media. Based on the idea of text as a symbolic space, a concept of national identity is suggested that, although it implies viewing identity as a discursive and narrative construction, is not limited to the mode of linguistic storytelling but also includes narrative media such as architecture, landscape design, cultural traditions such as commemorative rituals, and other symbolic and material practices.     

'Nihonjin no yoo to omoimashita' (I think I'm like a Japanese): Additional Language Learning and the Development of Multiple Selves

This paper addresses the questions of how and what kinds of multiple self-presentations may inhabit the same narrative space. I draw on two types of data, both of which highlight changes that have occurred to individuals who have learned another language. By foregrounding the topical life histories of two Anglo-Celt Australians who have learned Japanese as an additional language after the age of 11 years, it was possible to investigate: (i) the extent to which multiple self-presentations are 'scaffolded' by the ability to make meaning in Japanese as an additional language; and (ii) the process of 'identity slippage' as part of the social semiotic construction of a bilingual self. In this paper, I challenge how 'Asian', and more specifically, 'Japanese' identities have been traditionally described.     

The time and space of everyday life

This article argues that everyday life is related to all social relations and activities, including both the ‘official’ practices that are codified and normalized and the ‘unofficial’ practices and articulations of experience. Indeed, everyday day life is seen as the single plane of immanence in which these two forms of practice and articulation interrelate and affect one another. The lived experience of everyday life is multidimensional, composed of various social fields of practice that are articulated, codified and normalized to different degrees and in different ways (either officially or unofficially). Moving through these fields in daily life, we are aware of passing through different zones of time and space. There are aspects of everyday relations and practices more open to government, institutionalization, and official codification, while others are more resistant and provide the basis for opposition and social movements. Everyday life is a mixture of diverse and differentially produced and articulated forms, each combining time and space in a unique way. What we refer to as ‘institutions’ associated with the state or the economy are attempts to fix social practice in time and space – to contain it in specific geographical sites and codify it in official discourses. The relations and practices more often associated with everyday life – such as friendship, love, comradeship and relations of communication – are more fluid, open and dispersed across time and space. However, the two should not be uncoupled in social analysis, as they are necessarily interrelated in processes of social and political change. This is especially so in contemporary capitalism or, as Lefebvre called it, the ‘bureaucratic society of controlled consumption’.     

Rhotacization and the ‘Beijing Smooth Operator’: The social meaning of a linguistic variable1

Recent sociolinguistic studies on style have focused much attention on the construction of social meaning in situated discursive practices. Despite a general recognition that the linguistic resources used are often already imbued with social meanings, little research has been done on what these meanings may be. Focusing on rhotacization, a sociolinguistic variable in Beijing Mandarin, this article explores its imbued social meanings and sociocultural associations. I demonstrate that rhotacization takes on semiotic saliency through co‐occurrence with key Beijing cultural terms and frequent use in written representations of authentic Beijing‐ness. Furthermore, this feature is associated with the ‘Beijing Smooth Operator,’ a salient male local character type, and is ideologically construed as reflecting its characterological attributes. The findings of this study shed light on the meaning potential of a linguistic variable, rhotacization in this case, which can enhance understanding of the possibilities and constraints for its use and meaning in new contexts.     

Extending and Broadening Blumer's Conceptualization of Fashion: Adding Notions of Generic Social Process and Semiotic Transformation

Abstract

Herbert Blumer's critics and followers have, for the most part, neglected the significance of his theory of fashion. In this paper I revisit Blumer's thesis on fashion by identifying the fashion process as an instance of the generic social process of semiotic transformation. The concept of semiotic transformation refers to the change in meanings of symbolic objects over time. By identifying six elements of the generic social process of semiotic transformation (systemic permeability, systemic freedom, logonomic fluidity, logonomic openness, indeterminacy, and logonomic hegemony) and by viewing semiotic transformation as a joint act grounded in emergence, I argue that the meaning of change over time is a process structuring both the definition of the situation and symbolic objects. I conclude the paper with a set of reflections on the significance of Blumer's work on fashion for the development of a research agenda of semiotic transformation and for the legacy and reception of Blumerian theory.     

On the nature of isolated and post-isolated dialects: Innovation, variation and differentiation

The investigation of two historically isolated communities in the United States, Smith Island, Maryland, and the Lumbee Native American community in Robeson County, North Carolina, demonstrates that, contrary to assumption, isolated communities may be linguistically innovative and heterogeneous. Explanations are both cognitive and social. Speakers in isolated communities are not subject to the leveling pressure that comes with exposure to heterogeneous usage norms and so are free to retain intra-dialectal variation and carry through internal innovations. In addition, the close-knit networks that characterize isolated communities allow for the transmission of intricate patterns of intra-community variation, while the inward focus of such communities heightens the social semiotic importance of this variation. The present study also shows that as communities emerge from historic isolation, they do not necessarily succumb to leveling pressure. Instead, speakers' desire to retain cultural distinctiveness may enable them to retain and even enhance their linguistic distinctiveness.