Introduction

From the moment an individual steps out into the city streets and onto public transport or other city domains s/he enters into an unspoken dialogue which is going on between the city and its citizens through a variety of communication channels, both textual and visual, each of which relies on its own hybrid discourse. Audio, visual and textual modalities combine to project an image which the city (through its authorities) intends to translate to its inhabitants. What does the city have to say to its residents? Why? How? What can they see and hear? What do they understand and what instructions and ideas are expected to follow? The principles and ultimate goals of all the messages basically coincide, as they are all meant to resonate with the social background and operating political and social practices, and to translate administrative power. Sometimes the city is sending a clear, straightforward message, sometimes an unobtrusive, subtle and silent one, with a hidden agenda to foster values and beliefs, knowledge and power. Despite the city’s discourse being omnipresent in the life of its public, “place-name research has carved out such a marginal existence within the discipline of geography and is commonly conceived of as ‘the old and largely discredited field of toponymy’” (Goodchild 2004, 712). Moreover, some genres have been escaping researchers, especially those which combine different codes, and it’s only recently that they have got into their research focus. Smallformat texts such as commemorative plaques, or other multimodal ones that combine audio, visual and verbal codes, are now getting more and more attention, however. The authors here refer to these texts as multimodal, a term emphasizing the focus on perception channels, rather than using the term multicode(d), which does, in turn, focus on the coding systems (visual, textual, auditory); nor do they use the term hybrid, which suggests that the text is in some respect not homogeneous—without specifying in which particular respect. Modality implies the speaker/recipient’s being an active participant in the state of affairs, which better reflects the communication specifics the parties are involved in. Originally research into the city’s information landscape focused on the accumulation of data, proceeding further to etymological and derivational data analysis (cf. the review in Rose-Redwood, Alderman, and Azaryahu 2010); but then the end of the 20th century saw a “critical turn” to a discursive approach to the analysis, toward hybrid forms within a multidisciplinary approach. This turn entailed new methodologies and new principles that focus on semiotics, hybrid codes, cultural arenas and the discourse of power on behalf of the authorities.