Citizen Linguistic Landscape, bordering practices, and semiotic ideology in the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This article examines how Linguistic Landscapes in the Covid-19 pandemic construct the borders of place and people. We build on ‘semiotic ideology’ (Keane, 2018) and ‘semiotopology’ (Peck, Stroud & Williams, 2018) to analyze the bordering practices in citizen Linguistic Landscapes during the pandemic in Nepal. Our analysis shows that citizens combine multiple semiotic resources, both linguistic and non-linguistic, to create physical boundaries to restrict the mobility of people during the pandemic. However, the findings show that such practices are ideological; they promote the othering of the tenants, returnees from abroad/outside the valley, and non-locals. We argue that keeping place and people at the centre of analysis provides a critical framework to widen the scope of Linguistic Landscapes as a broad visual and semiotic space that embodies the bordering practices and categorization of people and their impacts on emotions, identities, and sense of belonging.