Open AccessUrban Surfaces and the Linguistic Landscape: Writing, Power, and Ideology in Dakar's Public Space
Author(s) -
McLaughlin Fiona
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
proceedings of the african futures conference
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2573-508X
DOI - 10.1002/j.2573-508x.2016.tb00040.x
Subject(s) - ideology , linguistic landscape , politics , reading (process) , scripting language , power (physics) , sociology , object (grammar) , public space , space (punctuation) , aesthetics , graffiti , function (biology) , linguistics , media studies , history , visual arts , art , political science , computer science , law , engineering , architectural engineering , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , operating system , evolutionary biology , biology
Cast theoretically within the emerging field of linguistic landscape, which takes as its object of study the written environment (Gorter 2006; Shohamy & Gorter 2009; Shohamy, Ben‐Rafael & Barni 2010; Stroud & Mpendukana 2009; etc.), this paper explores the ways in which Dakar's urban surfaces reflect the city's literacy environment and constitute a reading and writing public. Dakar's surfaces (walls, signs, billboards, etc.) are heteroglossic spaces in which multiple scripts and languages compete for attention, but rather than viewing such diversity as indicative of “a society in transition from oral to literate,” as Calvet (1994:177) has done, I argue that the linguistic plurality of Dakar's written environment reflects an active and useful strategy for participating in public life (Mc Laughlin 2015:238). This paper further explores a distinction made by Stroud & Mpendukana (2009) of “sites of necessity” and “sites of luxury.” In the former, form is subordinated to function, while in the latter, style (form) is privileged. Examples of the former are drawn in this paper from contestatory graffiti, which is primarily political and religious in nature, while examples of the latter come from corporate advertising during the month of Ramadan. But rather than simply focusing on the messages conveyed by these two genres, this paper proposes that the languages and scripts on urban surfaces are associated with a number of ideological stances that are harnessed by Dakar's reading and writing public. Data come from several periods of fieldwork in Dakar within the last five years.