Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 1307
Part of Session 193: Transcultural networks and neighborhoods (Other abstracts in this session)
Indexing deviance and belonging in Toronto’s multilingual linguistic landscape
Authors: Angermeyer, Philipp Sebastian
Submitted by: Angermeyer, Philipp Sebastian (York University, Canada)
This paper presents an ethnographic and semiotic investigation of indexicality in the linguistic landscape of Parkdale, a polyglot globalized neighborhood (Collins and Slembrouck 2007) in downtown Toronto, Canada. The availability of low-rent apartment housing draws migrants from diverse backgrounds to the neighborhood and these population movements are made visible through a multilayered linguistic landscape that includes languages like Tibetan, Hungarian, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, or Tamil, among others. However, these languages are distributed unevenly in the urban linguistic landscape, in ways that index social boundaries as well as different kinds of belonging to the neighborhood.
The study uses photographs of formal and informal signage in institutional, commercial, and public spaces in the Parkdale neighborhood, in addition to ethnographic field notes and interviews with residents and institutional agents that provide information on local approaches to multilingual space and divergent local readings of the linguistic landscape (Blommaert, Collins & Slembrouck 2005). It follows some recent work on linguistic landscape in distinguishing between top-down and bottom-up “flows” of signs (Shohami et al. 2010, DuPlessis 2010). In particular, it considers the divergent indexicalities of different types of “top-down” signage, such as prohibitory signs, warning signs and informational signs. The study documents the inclusion of certain migrant languages (particularly Hungarian, which is associated with recently arrived Roma refugees) on prohibitory top-down signage that seeks to regulate access to and behavior within institutional spaces (e.g. community centers) as well as commercial spaces. In a dual indexicality similar to that identified by Kulick (2003), prohibitory signs reject deviant behavior but simultaneously affirm its existence. Through the inclusion of migrant languages, prohibitory signs thus carry the presupposition that their content is relevant to monolingual readers of these languages, thereby characterizing them implicitly as people who are likely to require this instruction, i.e., characterizing them as deviant.
Multilingual prohibitory signs can thus index the neighborhood space as inhabited by speakers of these languages, while at the same time constructing their belonging as tenuous and problematic. This contrasts markedly with directional or informational signs that are argued to index a more legitimate and more firmly established presence of speakers of the languages included in them (e.g. Tibetan). Such indexing often goes along with the commodification of a neighborhood (such as in nearby “Little Portugal”), and the study uses interview data and media sources to explore to what extent Parkdale is being identified with or claimed by specific ethnolinguistic groups.
References:
Blommaert J, J. Collins & S. Slembrouck. 2005. Spaces of multilingualism. Language & Communication 25: 197-216.
Collins, J. & S. Slembrouck. 2006. Reading shop windows in globalized neighborhood: multilingual literacy practices and indexicality. Journal of literacy Research 39(3): 335-356.
DuPlessis, T. 2010. Bloemfontein/Mangaung, ‘City on the Move’. Language management and transformation of a non-representative linguistic landscape. In: Shohamy, E., E. Ben-Rafael, & M. Barni(eds.) 2010. Linguistic Landscape in the City. Multilingual Matters, pp. 74-95.
Kulick, D. 2003. No. Language & Communication 23: 139-151.
Shohamy, E., E. Ben-Rafael, & M. Barni(eds.) 2010. Linguistic Landscape in the City. Multilingual Matters.