Navigating COVID-19 linguistic landscapes in Vancouver's North Shore: official signs, grassroots literacy artefacts, monolingualism, and discursive convergence
International Journal of Multilingualism
; 20(2):189-213, 2023.
Article
in English
| ProQuest Central | ID: covidwho-2324758
ABSTRACT
This article describes the changing linguistic landscape on the North Shore of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic. I present an account of the visual representation of change along the area's parks and trails, which remained open for socially-distanced exercise during the province's lockdown. Following the principles of visual, walking ethnography, I walked through numerous locations, observing and recording the visual representations of the province's policies and discourses of lockdown and social distancing. Examples of change were most evident in the rapid addition to social space of top-down signs, characterised mainly by multimodality and monolingualism, strategically placed in ways that encouraged local people to abide by social-distancing. However, through this process of observation and exploration, I noticed grassroots semiotic artefacts such as illustrated stones with images and messages that complemented the official signs of the provincial government. As was the case with the official signs and messages, through a process of discursive convergence, these grassroots artefacts performed a role of conveying messages and discourses of social distancing, public pedagogy, and community care.
Linguistics; Linguistic landscape; COVID-19 pandemic; multimodality; visual ethnography; walking ethnography; Ethnography; Artifacts; Social distancing; Grass roots movement; Monolingualism; Literacy; Discourses; Walking; COVID-19; Public officials; Convergence; Social space; Sociolinguistics; Semiotics; Teaching; Community health care; Pandemics; Landscape; Visual representation; Coronaviruses
Full text:
Available
Collection:
Databases of international organizations
Database:
ProQuest Central
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Qualitative research
Language:
English
Journal:
International Journal of Multilingualism
Year:
2023
Document Type:
Article
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