Co-Constructing Dissent in the Transient Linguistic Landscape: Multilingual Protest Signs of the Tunisian Revolution

“Hindi Bayani/Not a Hero”: The Linguistic Landscape of Protest in Manila

“…Other scholars (Kasanga, 2014;Rubdy, 2015;Seals, 2011;Shiri, 2015) have pushed the boundary of LL further afield by looking at transient linguistic events-such as the staging of protests, mass demonstrations, and occupy movements-in order to uncover the saliency and visibility of languages that temporarily enjoy public spaces. Made of mostly non-durable materials, protest signs perform linguistic acts such as express anger and dissent, contest narratives, and encourage participation from their immediate and non-immediate audiences.…”

“…Furthermore, the act of displaying languages in public places is a political act (Barni & Bagna, 2016). Seals (2011), Shiri (2015), and Kasanga (2014) articulate the potent use of transient protest signs in achieving concrete and practical political ends. Investigating the factors that led to the ousting of Tunisian president Ben Ali in 2011, Shiri (2015) points to the "subversive, counter-power genre" (p. 255) protest signs that were responsible for the success of the Tunisian demonstrations during the four-week period between 17 December 2010 and 14 January 2011.…”

“…Seals (2011), Shiri (2015), and Kasanga (2014) articulate the potent use of transient protest signs in achieving concrete and practical political ends. Investigating the factors that led to the ousting of Tunisian president Ben Ali in 2011, Shiri (2015) points to the "subversive, counter-power genre" (p. 255) protest signs that were responsible for the success of the Tunisian demonstrations during the four-week period between 17 December 2010 and 14 January 2011. Drawing on all the languages in the protesters' linguistic repertoire, including English, protest signs expressed their opposition to the Tunisian president's repressive administration and mobilized support for the protest march across the region.…”

“…Following previous research in transient LL of protests (Kasanga, 2014;Seals, 2011;Shiri, 2015), the language of protest signs was categorized into types. The languages represented on the protest signs were English, Tagalog, 'Taglish', Ilocano, 'gayspeak', and other symbolic languages, such as Facebook's 'angry' and 'poo' emojis, numbers, and flags.…”

“…This article is situated among linguistic landscape of protest research (Kasanga, 2014;Seals, 2011;Shiri, 2015) where data is composed of mobile posters, placards, banners, and other 'unfixed' signs, including texts on bodies, t-shirts, umbrellas, and rocks. Following Sebba (2010), this article argues that both 'fixed' linguistic landscape and 'mobile' public texts are indices of the linguistic composition of cities, linguistic diversity, and ethnolinguistic vitality (Landry & Bourhis, 1997).…”