Skinscapes

Abstract

The paper argues for extending linguistic landscape studies to also encompass the body as a corporeal landscape, or ‘moving discursive locality’. We articulate this point within a narrative of a developing field of landscape studies that is increasingly attentive to the mobility and materiality of spatialized semiotics as performative, that is, as partially determining of how we come to understand ourselves ‘in place’. Taking Cape Town’s tattooing culture as an illustration, we unpack the idea of ‘the human subject as an entrepreneur of the self, as author of his or her being in the world’ (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012: 23), by using a phenomenological methodology to explore the materiality of the body as a mobile and dynamic space of inscribed spatialized identities and historical power relations. Specifically, we focus on: how tattooed bodies sculpt future selves and imagined spaces, the imprint they leave behind in the lives of five participants in the study and ultimately the creation of bodies thatmatterin time and place. The paper will conclude with a discussion of what studies of corporeal landscapes may contribute to a broader field of linguistic landscape studies.

Affect as narrative action in the Global South

“…Besides the broader research narrative that highlights the significance of these samesex transnational relationships to the spatio-temporal context in which they are initiated and sustained, the analysis draws attention to how narrative research and analysis of small stories may align with approaches from queer linguistics and an ex-centric Southern vantage point (Milani & Lazar, 2017). Moreover, consistent with recent discourse analytic work that has provided understandings of affect as social action, as discussed for example in the context of the research interview (Prior, 2016), in linguistic landscapes of the body (Peck & Stroud, 2015), in acts of citizenship (Milani, 2015), and the interrelations between economies and emotions (Katigbak, 2015), this analysis brings further awareness to the field of narrative inquiry of affect as a powerful interactional narrative resource. Bringing together these perspectives, this paper therefore presents an account of how the performance of these small stories may challenge normative assumptions and find saliency as discursive performances of agentic and transformative action (Lawless, 2001) at this sexualised North/South interstice.…”

From šećerna tabla to čoCROlada

“…In recent years, however, we have witnessed a steady increase of studies focusing specifically on these kinds of texts, as outlined in Section 1 and Section 2 (e.g. Pennycook 2009;Kallen & Ni Dhonnacha 2010;Sebba 2010;Tufi & Blackwood 2010;Blackwood & Tufi 2012;Peck & Stroud 2015;Caldwell 2016Caldwell , 2017. In this paper, we attempted to build on these studies by applying the theoretical paradigm of LL to the study of mobile texts printed on Croatian food labels.…”

“…mobile commercial LL signs, whose characteristics are still somewhat unexplored. Hopefully, in this way we will contribute to the growing body of research on LL, which involve objects in the public space as diverse as bilingual shop fronts (Kallen & Ni Dhonnacha 2010), graffiti (Pennycook 2009), manhole covers (Tufi & Blackwood 2010), alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages (Blackwood, forthcoming), food produce such as milk (Sebba 2010) and honey (Blackwood & Tufi 2012), printed T-shirts (Caldwell 2016(Caldwell , 2017, even human bodies as the media for tattoo artists (Peck & Stroud 2015). One might even propose that -due to their transportability and ubiquity in the global consumerist society -mobile signs, such as food and drink labels, clothing, and tattoos, should be of central interest to the study of LL.…”

The Quality of Quantity

“…The choice of these categories is by no means exhaustive, however these criteria do to varying extents incorporate and build on important LL theoretical developments of the past decade. The categories of Communicative Function and Context Frame reflect the increasing concern with the diverse kinds of meanings and contexts signs may generate for those who view them, for example (Coupland 2012;Kallen 2010;Huebner 2009) and Materiality the interest to consider other mutlimodal semiotics present in the landscape (Peck and Stroud 2015;Banda and Jimaima 2015;Jaworski and Thurlow 2010). In quantitative analyses, however, the desire to preserve the specific and particular must be balanced by pursuit of the generalizable -as such the ideas encapsulated by these examples drawn from qualitative literature are inevitably simplified in the adaptation from description to label.…”