AUTHORSHIP IN THE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE: A Multimodal-Performative View

Abstract

This chapter draws on empirical findings to explore the notion of linguistic landscape (LL) authorship as a partial response to a persistent question in the LL literature: namely, what is the symbolic and political significance of a particular linguistic code’s appearance with other codes in bilingual signs? Taking its insights primarily from interviews, participant observation, and joint visual analysis with Korean American business owners in one neighborhood of Oakland, California, the chapter reflects in an immediate sense, the debates about public multilingualism in the USA; despite the rarity of explicitly encoded legal restrictions on the content of business and other signs, there have been attempts to outlaw non-English signage (Andrew 1997). More immediately, the motivation for this chapter was to investigate contradictions that emerged in the debate in 2004 about the purported formation of a “Koreatown” on a street in Oakland. While the media read into the growing presence of individual shop signs containing the Korean script hangul a territorial desire to carve out a separate “ethnic district,” local community organizations and several shop owners themselves expressed reservations about the wisdom of claiming a singular identity for what is in fact an ethnically and linguistically diverse area (e.g., see Tae-su Jeong, “Han-in Sangkweon ‘Dada Ikseon-Gwayu Bulgeup’ Nonjaeng” [Debate over Korean Commercial Power: “The More, The Better” or “Too Much is as Bad as Too Little?]. Korea Times San Francisco Edition, March 23, 2005).

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