Orienting to theoretical descriptions of ‘affective-discursive practices’ (Wetherell, 2012) and linguistic/semiotic landscapes as ‘affective regimes’ (Wee, 2016), this paper accounts for (some of) the complex ways in which the experience of pandemic and lockdown was articulated and felt across the landscape of Melbourne. I employ a novel combination of autoethnographic and citizen sociolinguistic approaches as self-reflexive research techniques. Working more-or-less chronologically, from the lowest ebbs to feelings of (relative) joy, importantly, this paper does not focus solely on negative articulations such as sadness or anxiety. Rather, it examines the affective resonance of expressions of love, kindness, and resilience in the landscape, and these affects’ intersection with chronotopes during and since isolation; from being locked down, to keeping spirits up, from top-down to bottom-up. This paper concludes with an orientation to hope: to Melburnians’ rejoicing in what they’ve achieved, and the belief that there can be an end to crisis.
In this paper, I examine LGBTQ tourism discourse about Cape Town, South Africa, which is often declared the 'gay capital of Africa'. The paper considers the implications of such claims and how, in the specific case of Cape Town, apparently playful rhetorics obscure deep-seated inequalities under the guise of visibility, equality and globality. Using a multimodal critical discourse analysis informed by queer theory, my paper examines the recurrent linguistic and visual production of these rhetorics in a range of LGBTQ tourism marketing materials, before focusing on the website of one key agent: Out2Africa. Ultimately, I demonstrate how, contrary to the superficially progressive and cosmopolitan discourses of LGBTQ tourism, equality is increasingly represented in consumer media as an individual attainment typified by privileged mobility rather than any true social condition. Under the sway of neoliberal capitalism, mobility is a commodity, identity, and metonym for pride, and equality becomes a slogan.
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