“When size matters”

Published: 2017-6-29

Journal: Linguistic Landscape. An international journal

Abstract

This paper examines the in-built message modality of Republican Party campaign yard signage in the 2016 U.S. Presidential race, and argues for a ‘reading’ in which known and unknown contender biographical details and idiolectal patterns form a key component in analyses using material ethnography. Examining the grammar of visuality in which typographic choice, toponymic-allusion, punctuational detail, as well as onomastics and embedded speech acts emerge ripe in literal and metaphoric meaning, the paper demonstrates how acts of intertextual chaining of political history and candidate biography re-affirm the need for interpretive frameworks which are dynamic – not static – and which are simultaneously incorporative of exophoric text-context accounts of witnessed signage. The in-built potential of campaign yard signage in triggering contagious and conspicuous acts of affective stance-taking particularly in neighborhoods of geospatial contiguity are examined both for how they fit into LL research, as well as for how they prod further innovation in its interdisciplinary-inspired and evolving frameworks of analysis.

Faculty Members

Anjali Pandey - Salisbury University

Themes

Campaign signage analysis
Emotional responses associated with political signs
Dynamic interpretive frameworks
Political messaging
Intertextuality in political communication
Linguistic landscape research
Impact of visual elements in political contexts

Research Article

“When size matters”

Abstract

Faculty Members

Themes

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