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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1134

Part of Session 132: Re-writing and Engaging with Urban Spaces via Linguistic Landscape (Other abstracts in this session)

Balancing authenticity and anonymity. The use of typography in Basque and Galician linguistic landscaping and nation-building.

Authors: Järlehed, Johan
Submitted by: Järlehed, Johan (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)

This paper examines the relationship between the processes of nation-building and linguistic landscaping in urban space in Galicia and the Basque Country, focusing on the use of fonts – an often anonymous but efficient resource for social meaning-making and identity formation (Kallen & Ní Dhonnacha, Kamusella, Kress).

In both regions specific letter-forms have been cultivated for centuries in cemetery stones and rural house fronts. At the beginning of the 20th century they were appropriated by early nationalists and promoted as “authentic” expressions of “their” cultures. During the transition to democracy in the 1970’s and 1980’s these rustic letter-forms were copied and transformed into widely used fonts in both commercial signage and political pamphlets circulating in the Basque linguistic landscape (LL), while the so called “Galician” fonts were hardly seen in the Galician LL. However, since the turn of the millennium the use of the latter has increased, and in both cases one can witness an ongoing stylization of the “national” typefaces - particularly obvious in the branding of cities and public institutions.

Through this stylization process the Galician and Basque communities face the same problem of balancing authenticity and anonymity (cf. Woolard). Whereas the traditional letter-forms index rural life, genuineness and folklore –central but increasingly contested values in both Basque and Galician nationalism-, as a result of the often implied decontextualization and deterritorialization the stylized fonts risk not being perceived as authentic enough or not even as “Basque” or “Galician” at all.

In order to understand the social and ideological conditioning of this act of balance, I argue that we need to pay special attention to local political institutionalization and so called linguistic normalization, on the one hand, and global processes of privatization, commodification (Harvey) and semiotisation (Lash & Urry) or urban space, on the other.

For my argument I draw on an analysis of three types of LL-items: i) the signs and menus of “regional” and “traditional” restaurants; ii) local commercial signage; and iii) the logos, brands and corporate identity displays of cities and public institutions.

In sum, the paper presents a qualitative and comparative approach to LL analyzing the transformations of the form and meaning of a specific LL-feature, i.e. fonts, in different textual genres and social settings in two cases of nation-building in urban space.

References:

Harvey 2001. “The Art of Rent: Globalization and the Commodification of Culture”, pp. 394-411 in Spaces of Capital: Toward a Critical Geography.
Kallen & Ní Dhonnacha 2010. “Language and Inter-language in Urban Irish and Japanese Linguistic Landscapes”, pp. 3-18 in Ben-Rafael Linguistic Landscape in the City.
Kamusella 2001. "Language as an instrument of nationalism in Central Europe", Nations and Nationalism 7 (2), 235-251.
Kress 2010. Multimodality. A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication.
Lash & Urry 1994. Economies of Signs and Space.
Woolard 2008. “Language and Identity Choice in Catalonia: The Interplay of Contrasting Ideologies of Linguistic Authority.” In: Süselbeck Lengua, nación e identidad. La regulación del plurilingüismo en Espana y América Latina.