Towards a taxonomy of arguments for and against street renaming

Abstract

In 2016, a special issue of the Linguistic Landscapes: An International Journal explored the nexus between LL and collective memory studies, calling for more research at the interface of these disciplines. Our analysis adds to recent studies by exploring the ways in which commemorative street renaming processes are discursively embedded. We build on research on memorialisation as well as critical toponymy to analyse media discourses that accompany, support or contest commemorative naming practices in the urban streetscape of a large East German city during the last century. Based on this dataset, we develop a typology of arguments against or in favour of street renaming. The longitudinal analysis of discourses in the local press vis-à-vis ongoing resemioticisation reveals a complex relationship between lived political history, freedom of the press, the type of argument and the stances encoded therein.

Commemorative city-texts: Spatio-temporal patterns in street names in Leipzig, East Germany and Poznań, Poland

“…This finding supports Azaryahu (2012:385), who observes that renaming practices legitimizing the hegemonic sociopolitical order are more prevalent at the cusp of a new regime, rather than once the regime is well-established. We hypothesize that the decline in renaming fervour in the later stages of any respective era is due to the onset of inertia (see Buchstaller, Schneider, & Alvanides 2023 for arguments against renaming, which include cost, bureaucratic hassle, etc.). Overall, thus, the timeline of street (re)naming across the past 102 years in both cities illustrates the consecutive ‘wave[s] of renamings that swept’ through time and space in the Eastern European streetscapes (Azaryahu 1986:590).…”