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    The ordinary semiotic landscape of an unordinary place: spatiotemporal disjunctures in Incheon’s Chinatown

    Lee, J.W. and Lou, Jackie Jia (2019) The ordinary semiotic landscape of an unordinary place: spatiotemporal disjunctures in Incheon’s Chinatown. International Journal of Multilingualism 16 (2), pp. 187-203. ISSN 1479-0718.

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    Abstract

    This article examines the semiotic landscape of the Chinatown in Incheon, South Korea. Using the geosemiotic framework as a heuristic guide, we analyze how the spectacle of Chinatown is constituted through spatial, linguistic, semiotic, and material resources, and find that the unordinariness of the place is contingent on and emerges through its juxtaposition with ordinary space, practice, and language use. We suggest this apparent paradox can be understood through the process of scaling, during which signs and practices that might have been considered quotidian become monumentalised and ritualised when they are transported across timescales and spatial scales. Incheon’s Chinatown then affords an opportunity to understand the semiotic and material production of ‘unordinariness’ through ‘ordinariness’. These collective spatiotemporal disjunctures or juxtapositions reveal unexpected but nonetheless crucial intersections among language, semiotics, and nationness.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis, available online at the link above.
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Translinguistics, geosemiotics, space, Chinatown, Korea
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Jackie Lou
    Date Deposited: 12 Mar 2019 10:48
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:46
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/26594

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