This article considers a form of marketing strategy among upmarket food and beverage establishments in Hong Kong and Singapore involving the use of Chinese text in their decor. Although the two cities have a majority Chinese population, English is widely considered the language of social mobility and an unmarked language in the discursive construction of eliteness. In asking, “Why Chinese?” we consider how the indexical value of a vernacular language can be rescaled in upmarket commercial spaces for an emergent group of consumers known as “cultural omnivores.” Through the process of indexical selectivity, the invocation of Chinese in these establishments taps into the unique disposition of cultural omnivores by feeding their multilingual desires, and more specifically their desire to consume relatively more or less prestigious languages omnivorously in indexing social distinction. Such alternative readings of the prestige value of the vernacular by a privileged group of consumers point to the ambivalent indexicality of language.
{"title":"The Semiotics of Multilingual Desire in Hong Kong and Singapore’s Elite Foodscape","authors":"Andre Joseph Theng, T. Lee","doi":"10.1086/718861","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718861","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers a form of marketing strategy among upmarket food and beverage establishments in Hong Kong and Singapore involving the use of Chinese text in their decor. Although the two cities have a majority Chinese population, English is widely considered the language of social mobility and an unmarked language in the discursive construction of eliteness. In asking, “Why Chinese?” we consider how the indexical value of a vernacular language can be rescaled in upmarket commercial spaces for an emergent group of consumers known as “cultural omnivores.” Through the process of indexical selectivity, the invocation of Chinese in these establishments taps into the unique disposition of cultural omnivores by feeding their multilingual desires, and more specifically their desire to consume relatively more or less prestigious languages omnivorously in indexing social distinction. Such alternative readings of the prestige value of the vernacular by a privileged group of consumers point to the ambivalent indexicality of language.","PeriodicalId":51908,"journal":{"name":"Signs and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49443933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the role of referential directness and community emblematization in the documentation of Libyan sign processes construed by Italian colonial ethnographers as secretive. I examine the key texts on these practices to show that colonial ethnographers metasemiotically framed the so-called argots of Libya in terms of what was understood to be their occulting function of hiding one’s intentions and their anti-language function of opposing established society. I show that Italian colonial-ethnological preoccupations with clarity and moral unity were articulated against the discursive background of French colonial ethnology of Algeria as well as Italian racist criminology anchored in the metaphor of relative opacity.
{"title":"Secret Language as a “Weapon of Defense”: The Problem of Opacity in Italian Colonial Libya","authors":"Nicco A. La Mattina","doi":"10.1086/718898","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718898","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the role of referential directness and community emblematization in the documentation of Libyan sign processes construed by Italian colonial ethnographers as secretive. I examine the key texts on these practices to show that colonial ethnographers metasemiotically framed the so-called argots of Libya in terms of what was understood to be their occulting function of hiding one’s intentions and their anti-language function of opposing established society. I show that Italian colonial-ethnological preoccupations with clarity and moral unity were articulated against the discursive background of French colonial ethnology of Algeria as well as Italian racist criminology anchored in the metaphor of relative opacity.","PeriodicalId":51908,"journal":{"name":"Signs and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41764445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Capturing the zeitgeist of youthful challenges to the status quo in Ghana, a video of an anonymous young person challenging an older politician with a derisive call of “Tweaa!” went viral in 2014. Reentextualizations of the encounter were soon circulating online in the form of memes, songs, and hashtags and offline in joking exchanges everywhere from vegetable markets to parliament. This article traces the many ironic reembeddings of the tweaa clip across these contexts, as young people used tweaa to subvert and interrogate Ghana’s rigid social hierarchies—ultimately producing an enduring shift in the vocabulary of protest in Ghana. Tweaa, once a casual interjection of disapproval, is now explicitly seen as iconic of the disenfranchised challenging those in power: a verb meaning “to protest inept authority.” This case study of memetic circulation suggests that memes not only discursively produce publics but can effect seismic semiotic shifts in everyday language.
{"title":"“Am I Your Coequal?!”: Memes and Changing Meanings in the Digital Subversion of Ghanaian Hierarchies","authors":"R. Flamenbaum","doi":"10.1086/719025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/719025","url":null,"abstract":"Capturing the zeitgeist of youthful challenges to the status quo in Ghana, a video of an anonymous young person challenging an older politician with a derisive call of “Tweaa!” went viral in 2014. Reentextualizations of the encounter were soon circulating online in the form of memes, songs, and hashtags and offline in joking exchanges everywhere from vegetable markets to parliament. This article traces the many ironic reembeddings of the tweaa clip across these contexts, as young people used tweaa to subvert and interrogate Ghana’s rigid social hierarchies—ultimately producing an enduring shift in the vocabulary of protest in Ghana. Tweaa, once a casual interjection of disapproval, is now explicitly seen as iconic of the disenfranchised challenging those in power: a verb meaning “to protest inept authority.” This case study of memetic circulation suggests that memes not only discursively produce publics but can effect seismic semiotic shifts in everyday language.","PeriodicalId":51908,"journal":{"name":"Signs and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42090677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay studies papo reto (straight talk) activist register as an enregistered social formation that indexes practices, relations, and personae belonging in Brazil’s favelas (low-income neighborhoods). Drawing from fieldwork in the Complexo do Alemão favelas in Rio de Janeiro, I discuss three case studies that showcase prototypical pragmatic features of papo reto (suspension of face concerns; directness; and indexically valued tropism). In juxtaposing findings from the sociology of violence in Brazil with my informants’ ethnopragmatics, I conclude that papo reto activist register is a crucial language game for surviving the “crossfire,” that is, the violent dispute between the normative regimes of the state and the “world of crime” in favelas. Further, in its rewording of the “convoluted” language of bureaucracy and other upscale registers to a “direct” and more participatory speech level, papo reto activist register is a fundamental weapon for the political participation of Blacks and other minorities in one of the world’s most unequal countries.
这篇文章研究了直言不讳的活动家登记册,它是一个登记的社会组织,索引了巴西favelas(低收入社区)的实践、关系和人物。根据在巴西里约热内卢的Complexo do alem贫民窟的田野调查,我讨论了三个案例研究,展示了papo reto(暂停面部关注;率直的;指标值向性)。在将巴西暴力社会学的研究结果与我的线人的民族语用学研究结果并列后,我得出结论,在“交火”(即国家规范制度与贫民窟“犯罪世界”之间的暴力争端)中生存下来的关键语言游戏是papo reto活动家登记。此外,在将官僚主义和其他高级登记册的“复杂”语言重新措辞为“直接”和更具参与性的演讲水平时,papo reto活动家登记册是黑人和其他少数民族在世界上最不平等的国家之一参与政治的基本武器。
{"title":"Papo Reto: The Politics of Enregisterment amid the Crossfire in Rio de Janeiro","authors":"Daniel N. Silva","doi":"10.1086/718862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718862","url":null,"abstract":"This essay studies papo reto (straight talk) activist register as an enregistered social formation that indexes practices, relations, and personae belonging in Brazil’s favelas (low-income neighborhoods). Drawing from fieldwork in the Complexo do Alemão favelas in Rio de Janeiro, I discuss three case studies that showcase prototypical pragmatic features of papo reto (suspension of face concerns; directness; and indexically valued tropism). In juxtaposing findings from the sociology of violence in Brazil with my informants’ ethnopragmatics, I conclude that papo reto activist register is a crucial language game for surviving the “crossfire,” that is, the violent dispute between the normative regimes of the state and the “world of crime” in favelas. Further, in its rewording of the “convoluted” language of bureaucracy and other upscale registers to a “direct” and more participatory speech level, papo reto activist register is a fundamental weapon for the political participation of Blacks and other minorities in one of the world’s most unequal countries.","PeriodicalId":51908,"journal":{"name":"Signs and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45106864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article presents a case for approaching works of nineteenth-century realist fiction as proto-ethnographic documents that contain unique evidence for reconstructing extinct discourse practices. We focus on two previously undescribed phenomena: improvised rhyming in sparring dialogue, and the use of ideophones in oral storytelling.
{"title":"Rhymed Talk and Ideophones: Recovering Extinct Discourse Practices from Russian Realist Fiction","authors":"B. Maslov, T. Nikitina","doi":"10.1086/718860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718860","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a case for approaching works of nineteenth-century realist fiction as proto-ethnographic documents that contain unique evidence for reconstructing extinct discourse practices. We focus on two previously undescribed phenomena: improvised rhyming in sparring dialogue, and the use of ideophones in oral storytelling.","PeriodicalId":51908,"journal":{"name":"Signs and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44959157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyzes the significance of the place in Kyiv where the statue of Lenin stood before it was toppled during the Euromaidan protests. Following the monument’s demolition, many works of art have been successively exhibited on this site. Drawing on Bakhtin’s concept of the carnival sense of the world, the article suggests that these sculptures, installations, and performances have demonstrated the permanent carnivalesque potential of the place. Moreover, as different representations of Ukrainian memory and identity, these works of art have created a polyphony of voices about the Ukrainian past, present, and future. The research explains the significance of this phenomenon for the Ukrainian society.
{"title":"Polyphony and the Carnivalesque in Kyiv","authors":"Łukasz Gemziak","doi":"10.1086/718897","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718897","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the significance of the place in Kyiv where the statue of Lenin stood before it was toppled during the Euromaidan protests. Following the monument’s demolition, many works of art have been successively exhibited on this site. Drawing on Bakhtin’s concept of the carnival sense of the world, the article suggests that these sculptures, installations, and performances have demonstrated the permanent carnivalesque potential of the place. Moreover, as different representations of Ukrainian memory and identity, these works of art have created a polyphony of voices about the Ukrainian past, present, and future. The research explains the significance of this phenomenon for the Ukrainian society.","PeriodicalId":51908,"journal":{"name":"Signs and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42950917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Building on the case study of the performative practice of voguing within ballroom culture among LGBTQIA+ communities, the aim of this article is to recognize a facial agency capable of putting into tension three thresholds of meaning: visibility and invisibility; identity and otherness; nature and artifice. On the basis of these tensions, interpretive habits concerning identity are incorporated into the face as a semiotic dispositif that negotiate sociocultural expectations and limitations. These habits, when agentively performed through the face, give shape to a communicative project that manipulates platforms of identity into biopolitical masks. The analysis will also give an account of how “worn” biopolitical masks reproduce and perform a facial monstrum, or warning, and how this specification warns others of the normativity of aesthetic and biopolitical appearance while activating an intentional transformation of identity.
{"title":"Artificial Skin and Biopolitical Masks, or How to Deal with Face-Habits","authors":"Cristina Voto","doi":"10.1086/717563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/717563","url":null,"abstract":"Building on the case study of the performative practice of voguing within ballroom culture among LGBTQIA+ communities, the aim of this article is to recognize a facial agency capable of putting into tension three thresholds of meaning: visibility and invisibility; identity and otherness; nature and artifice. On the basis of these tensions, interpretive habits concerning identity are incorporated into the face as a semiotic dispositif that negotiate sociocultural expectations and limitations. These habits, when agentively performed through the face, give shape to a communicative project that manipulates platforms of identity into biopolitical masks. The analysis will also give an account of how “worn” biopolitical masks reproduce and perform a facial monstrum, or warning, and how this specification warns others of the normativity of aesthetic and biopolitical appearance while activating an intentional transformation of identity.","PeriodicalId":51908,"journal":{"name":"Signs and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47454932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Drawing on the Peircean concepts of qualia and qualisign (Munn 1986; Keane 2003; Chumley and Harkness 2013), I propose that Classic Maya hieroglyphs were associated with two fundamental sensorial experiences, materiality and proximity, which were expressed by coordinating lexical, morphological, syntactic, and pragmatic strategies. I argue that Classic Mayan terminology distributed materiality between three basic qualisigns by privileging tactile and technological experiences of scribal production above interaction with the finished text. Qualia of proximity, in turn, implied differential access to hieroglyphic writing and its recorded knowledge with qualisigns that distinguished producers from patrons or owners. A semiotic approach articulates the material, the corporal, and the social in Classic Maya ontologies of writing and reveals the relational nature of hieroglyphic production and access. It also offers a theoretical consideration of the role of morphology, syntax, and pragmatics in culturally conditioned experiences of qualities and their interpretations.
{"title":"Qualia of Proximity and Materiality in Classic Maya Hieroglyphs","authors":"Mallory E. Matsumoto","doi":"10.1086/717562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/717562","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on the Peircean concepts of qualia and qualisign (Munn 1986; Keane 2003; Chumley and Harkness 2013), I propose that Classic Maya hieroglyphs were associated with two fundamental sensorial experiences, materiality and proximity, which were expressed by coordinating lexical, morphological, syntactic, and pragmatic strategies. I argue that Classic Mayan terminology distributed materiality between three basic qualisigns by privileging tactile and technological experiences of scribal production above interaction with the finished text. Qualia of proximity, in turn, implied differential access to hieroglyphic writing and its recorded knowledge with qualisigns that distinguished producers from patrons or owners. A semiotic approach articulates the material, the corporal, and the social in Classic Maya ontologies of writing and reveals the relational nature of hieroglyphic production and access. It also offers a theoretical consideration of the role of morphology, syntax, and pragmatics in culturally conditioned experiences of qualities and their interpretations.","PeriodicalId":51908,"journal":{"name":"Signs and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48086345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While numerous studies have addressed medieval wounds, few scholars have critically examined the religious role of scars in medieval Europe. This article incorporates theological writings, hagiography (saints’ biographies), chivalric romances, and the visual arts to assess the semiotic significance of medieval scars. This article uses Roland Barthes’s notion of semanticization as an organizing principle. As Barthes has shown, the process of meaning-making is contingent upon its social context. Indeed, semanticization allows the conventionality of signs to operate. This article explores how Western medieval Christianity, with its repository of values and symbolism, enabled scars to function as signs. The religious context undergirding medieval scars allowed them to transcend from traces of accidental bodily markings to portals to rich theological significance.
{"title":"Sacred Skin: The Religious Significance of Medieval Scars","authors":"Kathryn Dickason","doi":"10.1086/717561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/717561","url":null,"abstract":"While numerous studies have addressed medieval wounds, few scholars have critically examined the religious role of scars in medieval Europe. This article incorporates theological writings, hagiography (saints’ biographies), chivalric romances, and the visual arts to assess the semiotic significance of medieval scars. This article uses Roland Barthes’s notion of semanticization as an organizing principle. As Barthes has shown, the process of meaning-making is contingent upon its social context. Indeed, semanticization allows the conventionality of signs to operate. This article explores how Western medieval Christianity, with its repository of values and symbolism, enabled scars to function as signs. The religious context undergirding medieval scars allowed them to transcend from traces of accidental bodily markings to portals to rich theological significance.","PeriodicalId":51908,"journal":{"name":"Signs and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60725020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article engages with the semiotics of “stylized faces” in online communication, focusing on “smileys.” It reconstructs the origins of both emoticons and emojis, outlining how they differ functionally (paralinguistic signs vs. narrative figures) and commenting on their pragmatics, with regard to the issue of literacy as related to generational fruition. A chronology is provided of the first tokens of smileys in written communication, both before and after the Internet. By relying upon the anthropology of the face dating back to prehistory, the issues of iconism and universality are discussed, supporting the view that there is a strong cultural, conventional component in face depiction, varying diachronically (emoticons versus emojis) and diatopically (emoticons versus kaomojis, i.e., Japanese emoticons). Emoticons and emojis are regarded as prominent examples of intermedia, working at the intersection of written word and image. Finally, stylized digital faces are set in the broader framework of Internet memes, thus discussing the dichotomy between structural memes (the focus is on the formula) and iconic memes (the focus is on the image and, thus, the face). Throughout the text, great care is devoted to the philology of sources, some of them being presented in this form for the first time.
这篇文章探讨了在线交流中“程式化面孔”的符号学,重点是“笑脸”。它重构了表情符号和表情符号的起源,概述了它们在功能上的区别(副语言符号与叙事符号),并就与代际成果相关的识字问题评论了它们的语用学。在互联网之前和之后的书面交流中,提供了笑脸符号的第一个符号的年表。通过对史前面孔的人类学研究,本文讨论了象征主义和普遍性问题,支持以下观点:在面部描绘中存在强烈的文化传统成分,这些成分在历时上(emoticon vs emojis)和历时上(emoticon vs kaomojis,即日本的表情符号)存在差异。表情符号和表情符号被认为是中间媒体的突出例子,是文字和图像的交汇点。最后,将程式化的数字面孔置于更广泛的网络模因框架中,从而讨论了结构性模因(关注公式)和标志性模因(关注图像,因此关注面孔)之间的二分法。在整个文本中,非常小心地致力于来源的语言学,其中一些是第一次以这种形式呈现。
{"title":"Colon + Hyphen + Right Paren: At the Origins of Face Semiotics from Smileys to Memes","authors":"Gabriele Marino","doi":"10.1086/717560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/717560","url":null,"abstract":"The article engages with the semiotics of “stylized faces” in online communication, focusing on “smileys.” It reconstructs the origins of both emoticons and emojis, outlining how they differ functionally (paralinguistic signs vs. narrative figures) and commenting on their pragmatics, with regard to the issue of literacy as related to generational fruition. A chronology is provided of the first tokens of smileys in written communication, both before and after the Internet. By relying upon the anthropology of the face dating back to prehistory, the issues of iconism and universality are discussed, supporting the view that there is a strong cultural, conventional component in face depiction, varying diachronically (emoticons versus emojis) and diatopically (emoticons versus kaomojis, i.e., Japanese emoticons). Emoticons and emojis are regarded as prominent examples of intermedia, working at the intersection of written word and image. Finally, stylized digital faces are set in the broader framework of Internet memes, thus discussing the dichotomy between structural memes (the focus is on the formula) and iconic memes (the focus is on the image and, thus, the face). Throughout the text, great care is devoted to the philology of sources, some of them being presented in this form for the first time.","PeriodicalId":51908,"journal":{"name":"Signs and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41771814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}