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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
151

Yanawant: Paiute Places and Landscapes in the Arizona Strip Volume One of the Arizona Strip Landscapes and Place Name Study

Stoffle, Richard W., Van Vlack, Kathleen, Carroll, Alex, Chmara-Huff, Fletcher, Martinez, Aja January 2005 (has links)
This report is the product of a study funded by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) entitled, The Arizona Strip Cultural Landscape and Place Name Study. The study has five main objectives: (1) to provide an overview of American Indian Cultural Landscapes and their relevance for federal agency practices, (2) to describe the ethnographic, historic, and cultural bases for Southern Paiute communities’ access to particular sites within the Arizona Strip, (3) to identify Southern Paiute place names, trails, and stories associated with selected cultural landscape sites within the Arizona Strip, (4) to include descriptions of the cultural significance of natural resources and physical environmental features at selected cultural landscape sites, and (5) to determine the need for future studies based on gaps identified in the historic and ethnographic record. The study is intended to serve as a foundation for identifying and managing Native American resources, cultural sites and cultural landscapes on the Arizona Strip. This report is focused on direct interviews with Southern Paiute people at places in the Arizona Strip. These locations were chosen to represent kinds of places that are culturally significant to Southern Paiute people. These include rock art sites, archaeology sites, springs, rivers, canyons, mountains, lava flows, and areas with special vistas. These places were chosen by representatives of the involved tribes, Arizona Strip BLM staff, and the project director at the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. This is a first study of its kind funded by the Arizona Strip and so a study goal was to see what kinds of contemporary cultural importance would be assigned by Indian people to kinds of places. It was thus impossible to go to all places of cultural significance in the Arizona Strip so the study lays a foundation for more comprehensive studies in the future.
152

The outdoor landscapes of Cornwall's secondary school grounds : the politics of design

Thomson, Sarah Elizabeth January 2013 (has links)
Through collaborative work with Cornwall Council, this AHRC funded project has produced an in-depth study of the design of secondary school outdoor landscapes linking two areas of research – landscape design and cultural geography. It explores the politics underpinning the design, construction, use and function of the outdoor landscapes of secondary schools in Cornwall, focusing on the extent of active participation of children and young people in these processes. Contemporary research has illustrated that outdoor spaces are essential to the development and wellbeing of young people as they are places in which children can play or have fun whilst they experiment with their identity, learn to socialise and participate in informal education. This thesis examines the role children and young people may have had and their potential in helping to formulate the design and implementation of outdoor spaces, alongside planners, garden designers, teachers and other interested parties. There are three linked aims. • Exploration of the politics underpinning the design, redesign, use and function of the outdoor landscapes of secondary schools. Here, “politics” refer to the complex negotiations between people, practicalities (policy priorities, management) and school strategic vision and ethos (including the role of student voice). • Understand more about the local spatialities of childhood of secondary school age children in order to: i) explain the politics of design; and ii) propose a more nuanced approach to understanding the varying needs and expectations of secondary school-age children. By participatory methods, interviews and observations I was able to note the use and functionality of the grounds by and for pupils, teachers and site managers. • Using an understanding of the politics of design in Cornwall’s secondary schools, and with greater awareness of the spatialities of childhood, develop recommendations for evaluation of secondary school outdoor landscapes via a ‘school’s biography’ approach. While policy-facing literature contemplates the educational function of school spaces in the secondary sector, this research broadens the view of children and young people’s relationship with secondary school outdoor spaces, emphasizing the relationality between groups of children, and children and others. This project proposes work which is attentive to how constructions of childhood are achieved in practice, beyond the contingencies of policy making and educational practices. The extent to which school grounds meet pupils’ needs is a reflection of school ethos and the relative status of children and young people in the decision making process.
153

Socioecological transitions trigger fire regime shifts and modulate fire–climate interactions in the Sierra Nevada, USA, 1600–2015 CE

Taylor, Alan H., Trouet, Valerie, Skinner, Carl N., Stephens, Scott 29 November 2016 (has links)
Large wildfires in California cause significant socioecological impacts, and half of the federal funds for fire suppression are spent each year in California. Future fire activity is projected to increase with climate change, but predictions are uncertain because humans can modulate or even override climatic effects on fire activity. Here we test the hypothesis that changes in socioecological systems from the Native American to the current period drove shifts in fire activity and modulated fire-climate relationships in the Sierra Nevada. We developed a 415-y record (1600-2015 CE) of fire activity by merging a treering-based record of Sierra Nevada fire history with a 20th-century record based on annual area burned. Large shifts in the fire record corresponded with socioecological change, and not climate change, and socioecological conditions amplified and buffered fire response to climate. Fire activity was highest and fire-climate relationships were strongest after Native American depopulation-following mission establishment (ca. 1775 CE)-reduced the self-limiting effect of Native American burns on fire spread. With the Gold Rush and EuroAmerican settlement (ca. 1865 CE), fire activity declined, and the strong multidecadal relationship between temperature and fire decayed and then disappeared after implementation of fire suppression (ca. 1904 CE). The amplification and buffering of fire-climate relationships by humans underscores the need for parameterizing thresholds of human-vs. climate-driven fire activity to improve the skill and value of fire-climate models for addressing the increasing fire risk in California.
154

Designing landscapes for grieving children at elementary schools

Thomas, Valerie January 1900 (has links)
Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional Planning / Anne Beamish / Death and loss are natural processes of life, but even so, that does not make them any easier to cope with. For children who may not understand loss, adjusting to life after it can become a nearly impossible feat. Children’s reactions to loss and the grief often include anger, anxiety, confusion, fear, sadness, shock, guilt, and regret (Murthy & Smith, 2005). Nature and art have been used as healing methods in the past, but rarely in schools. Because children spend much of their day at school, outdoor landscapes could be designed to that help alleviate children’s grief and commemorate their memories. This master’s project proposes a set of guidelines and a palette of elements that can be used to create landscapes for grieving in elementary schools. To define these guidelines I combined stages of grieving from two different psychological models with design elements that could help children at each stage of their grief. These guidelines and elements were then tested by applying them at three different elementary schools in Manhattan, Kansas: Marlatt Elementary, Northview Elementary, and Theodore Roosevelt Elementary. The designs at the three elementary schools help illustrate the flexibility of the guidelines and palette of design elements. Not only can the selected elements vary, but the sites can range in size and location. The palette of elements will enable schools to implement landscapes for grieving in a range of places and conditions.
155

Johannesburg climate change observatory: scale of temporality: architecture as a mediator

Thomson, Alexander 30 April 2015 (has links)
The population of the city of Gauteng is expected to double by 2055 (Landau and Gindrey, 2008), which in turn is expected to exacerbate the effects of climate change within the city of Johannesburg. As pressure from the growing population and climate change mounts, existing open space will have to be assessed and its value will determine its function on a natural, social and economic level. This thesis explores the distinct spatial condition of the Johannesburg ridge as a contested landscape of sensitive ecologies and cultures. These remaining fragments of ecological infrastructures within the city can manifest spaces of encounters and introduce a discussion about climate change and the future. This dissertation investigates architecture’s mediating role in the contested landscapes, both physical and psychological. In terms of the physical landscape, any architectural interventions erected on the ridge would need to act as a mediator between the sensitive ridge ecology and the temporality of its diverse multicultural user composition. Design spaces and their proposed uses would need to work towards promoting a successful balance between different modes of knowledge. I propose a research institute located on the Melville Koppies West (MKW) ridge that will provide an interface between science and society that is accessible to the public. For the purpose of this dissertation I will call the research institute the Johannesburg Climate Change Observatory (JCCO). By creating a platform where different constituencies can overlap, new meanings can be negotiated and a cross-pollination of knowledge can thrive. I have studied the contested landscape extensively and have documented my observations through a series of interviews, photographs, mappings, sketches and physical models. The general consensus in the scientific community is that if we do not change the way we think about climate change by the year 2045 we will reach a point of no return for our planet. The JCCO is constructed to be dismantled because of the sensitive nature of the site and as a commentary on the nature of climate change. The intervention then becomes an extension of the site, improving ecological function and extending the existing sacred landscape. This in turn preserves the evolving palimpsest that is the Melville Koppies. As climate change affects communities all over the world the JCCO will become a critical intervention against entrenched practices that are contributing to climate change. It is a building typology that has been constructed through understanding the social dimensions of a physical phenomenon in a particular place, and is one that should be considered everywhere as each intervention of this nature needs to emerge from a similarly meaningful understanding relevant to the dynamics of different sites. The MKW presents a unique opportunity to preserve an ancient ecological landscape, to maintain an active cultural landscape, and at the same time, by respecting both, to create a new space that could give rise to new ideas and paradigms that in turn will lead to the transformative change required to address climate change.
156

Sight, touch and 'being there': the construction of presence in selected colonial landscape representations

Da Corte, Sindra 02 November 2016 (has links)
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / This study places research detailing the scientific and political underpinnings of the kind of viewing employed in the British landscape painting tradition against its deployment in the British colonies of South Africa and Australia. This research was used to examine how sensing ‘home’ and sensing a ‘different place’ occur. The ‘embedded’ experience of a specific landscape as exemplified by the established artistic traditions of Aboriginal and San cultures is set against the practice of a distanced, externalized viewing developed in relation to optical technologies and the detached vision required of the colonial traveller. This thesis explores three modes of relating to the landscape via representation and their construction of home. It looks in detail at British landscape representation, then at San and Aborigine representations of their experiences of the landscape. I then follow the person of Thomas Baines, an expedition artist, in order to briefly explore the confrontation of the British settler with an unfamiliar, foreign landscape in the colony. Concomitant to this exploration is the consideration of the possible sensual biases at play in the articulation of landscape. The experience of spatiality is predominantly defined in terms of sight. Touch bears on this experience not only in its literalisation in the arts as a response to ‘texture’ or emotive feeling, but it has effects beyond this, or in the depth of this, specifically its involvement in constructions of ‘proximity’. Being cultivated are degrees of sensitivity to what comes to happen in ‘close space’ – where the event occurs, one that is hoped by the settler to be reciprocal, although never fully so, to his perception at that moment. The articulation of sensuality involved in constructing landscape representation traditions offers crucial insights into how present orientations to landscape operate. / MT2016
157

A postcolonial analysis of colonial representations in Triggerfish's animated films Khumba (2013) and Adventures in Zambezia (2012)

Blaeser, Tanya January 2017 (has links)
A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Mater of Arts in Digital Arts: 3D Animation by Coursework and Research Report, 2017 / During the colonial era, stereotypes of Africa were created and normalised in order to gain, maintain and justify colonial power. Europe during the colonial era, defined itself, using binary thinking (stemming from the Enlightenment period), against the "Other". This was used to establish a definition of the savage against which Europe was defined as civilised; Europe, deeming itself rational, used nineteenth-century African ways as an opposition by which the binary of rational against irrational could be expressed (Loomba 45). Colonial depictions of Africa often overlooked complexities and distinctions and represented the continent as a homogenous land and created oversimplified representations of the people and places (Harth 14). From the repeated production of imperial imagery, a regime of representation was created portraying Africa as a primitive wilderness, inferior to Europe, and as a site of colonial adventure. More recently, Triggerfish Animation Studios, based in Cape Town, created the films Adventures in Zambezia (2012) and Khumba (2013). This research argues that both films contain colonial stereotypes that conform to the regime of representation depicting Africa as a homogenous land of animals and landscapes, and repeat the colonial single story of an Edenic Africa. Khumba (2012), although still containing colonial stereotypes, offers a less stereotypical depiction than Adventures in Zambezia (2013). / XL2018
158

Modernidade e assimetrias na paisagem: a fragmentação de ecossistemas naturais e humanos na baía noroeste de Vitória - ES / Modernity and asymmetries on the landascape: the fragmentation of natural and human ecosystems on Vitoria's northwestern bay.

Barbosa, Isabella Batalha Muniz 24 February 2005 (has links)
O espaço moderno produz segundo uma lógica de simultaneidade paisagens contrastantes e com caracteríscas de ocupação distintas. A cidade de Vitória revela uma paisagem de dimensão singular e plural, de natureza fragmentada: a paisagem da região nordeste, correspondente à orla marítima, expressa a riqueza e os signos da cidade global, criando assim, uma condição antagônica à paisagem da região noroeste, cujos ecossistemas naturais e humanos coexistem precariamente. Essas assimetrias espaciais representam um processo dialético de inclusão e exclusão social inerentes à modernidade. A pesquisa teve por objetivo analisar a paisagem da Baía Noroeste no âmbito do município, buscando compreender os processos sociais e espaciais cumulativos que impuseram profundas transformações à sua base natural e sócio-espacial, considerando os seguintes aspectos: os impactos e correspondências que se estabelecem entre as regiões - nordeste e noroeste - a partir da instauração do capital industrial e da solicitação de um espaço compatível com a modernização; a forma como a região da Baía Noroeste se integra à produção e à gestão empresarial do município; os desafios e expectativas que se apresentam para a paisagem e a comunidade da Ilha das Caieiras a partir de sua inserção no Pólo Turístico; e por fim, a discussão da importância da participação da população na preservação do ecossistema manguezal como elemento estruturador da paisagem, da identidade e da cultura urbana capixaba. Desse modo, pretende-se uma nova abordagem sobre a paisagem do lugar, mostrando que a globalização se configura, não pela ausência de referenciais locais, mas por um excesso de representações ideológicas materializadas no cotidiano que redefinem seu conteúdo. E nesse contexto, mostrar que, a articulação do espaço econômico inclui o político, não apenas como externalidade, mas como estruturante na conformação da paisagem. / Modern space simultaneously produces contrasting landscapes with different characteristics in terms of urban ocupation. In this context, the city of Vitória unfolds diversified and fragmentary landscapes of both single and plural dimensions: the coastal northeast area expresses the wealth and signs of the global city as opposed to the northwestern area, whose natural and human ecosystems coexist in a precarious way. Such spatial assimetries represent a dialectical process of social inclusion and exclusion inherent in modern times. The main objective of this research was to analyse the Northwestern Bay landscape within the municipal boundaries. It seeks to understand the social and spatial cumulative processes that deeply altered its natural and social-spatial basis taking into account the following aspects: the impacts and co-relations between the two regions (northeast and northwest) after the industrial establishment which demanded a different urban space compatible with modernization; the ways through which the Northwestern Bay area is integrated with the municipal production and management; the challenges and expectations of the Caieiras Island landscape and community since its insertion in the tourism industry and finally the importance of community participation and empowerment towards the preservation of the mangrove ecosystem as an important landscape structural feature which expresses local capixaba cultural identity. The dissertation offers a new approach to local landscape processes and shows that globalization is expressed not by the lack of local references but by the implementation of an ideological model materialized into ordinary life which ends up reshaping landscape forms. In this context, the research shows that the articulation of economic space includes the political sphere, not merely as an external influence but as a vital infra-structural instance in the configuration of landscape
159

Paisagens invisíveis: os sertões de Ubatuba - SP / Invisible landscapes: backlands of Ubatuba - SP

Vieira, Rosana Silva 12 May 2008 (has links)
A presente pesquisa investiga os processos de produção das paisagens dos sertões litorâneos no município de Ubatuba, extremo norte do litoral paulista, baseada no estudo de dois sertões: Poruba e Sesmaria. Pretende analisar e interpretar essas paisagens, numa abordagem que valoriza a experiência humana, focando na vivência dos lugares, seus diferentes usos, seus olhares e interpretações, seus estigmas e o cotidiano de seus moradores, a fim de compreender os processos sócio-espaciais desses bairros chamados sertões e suas formas de apropriação. / The present research examines productions processes of the coast backlands of Ubatuba, which is a town located at the north end of Sao Paulos coast, based on the study of two backlands: Poruba e Sesmaria. It intends to analyze and to interpret these landscapes, taking an approach that values the human experience, taking focus at the places existence, its different applications, looks and interpretations, its stigmas and the residents quotidian, in order to comprehend the procedures social and of space of these city districts, known as backlands and its ways of appropriation.
160

Social structuring of language and the mobility of semiotic resources across the linguistic landscapes of Zambia: A multimodal analysis

Jimaima, Hambaba January 2016 (has links)
Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The current study framed as Social Structuring of Language and the Mobility of Semiotic Resources across the Linguistic Landscapesof Zambia: A Multimodal Analysis, is situated in Lusaka and Livingstone and their selected surrounding peri-urban and rural spaces (of Kabanana, Bauleni and Chipata; Kafue, Chongwe, Chief Mukuni’s area and stretches between Livingstoneand Zimba and Livingstone and Kazungula). The study aims to explore the linguistic landscapes (LL) of these urban, peri-urban and rural spaces in order to gain insight into the social structuring of language and the mobility of semiotic resources across the LL. This entails an understanding of how languages are distributed and realized across the research sites. In particular, the study aims at understanding how the regionalization of languages is (re-)produced, contested and maintained in (and beyond) the territories for which they are promulgated for use. Thus, the study foregrounds the mobility of the semiotic resources across the LL. In essence, artefactual material, symbols including languages are, in a multimodal fashion, investigated to see their pliability and mobility from context to context. In the light of the mobility of the semiotic resources, the study privileges both translocal and transnational mobility as the force behind the movement and the dispersal of the semiotic material across ethnolinguistic, formal, informal, urban and rural boundaries. This meant understanding the kind of signs in both urban and rural areas and why they are emplaced in the broader context of sign/place-and meaning making. In order to achieve the aim and objectives, the study has been foregrounded in ethnographic research paradigm in which walk, gaze, talk (interview) and photography were of irreplaceable importance. The conflation of walk, gaze (observation), talk and photography in one investigation avails much. Firstly, the walk brought the researcher within the allowable observation range in order to gain an insider impression while, at the same time, maintaining the objectivity required for an unbiased analysis. Participant observation coupled with gaze offered the required positioning for carrying out a multimodal analysis especially in the rural areas which turned out to have the paucity of signage. Thus, by being a participant observer, I keenly observed how sign-and meaning making were accomplished in oral-dominant communities. This meant positioning oneself as a new comer needing direction. It was in such moments when practices of sign-and meaning making were observed and recorded. For example, I would ask: how do I get to the next village/school/headman? The reference to ecological features such as trees, hills and streams extended the taxonomy of signs available for use in rural areas. Interviews with business owners about the emplaced signs brought to the fore the hidden narratives often gushing out from individualized orientation and personal experiences, as well as the shared sociocultural knowledge and histories of both the producer and consumers of the multimodal LL. Photography yielded digital images forming not only the quantitative data but also the qualitative one upon which a multimodal analysis was done. The aim was to capture over 1500 of images which were to be processed by the Software Package of the Social Sciences (SPSS). Over 1500 images were collected but only 1157 were coded based on the languages present, materiality, inscription, and emplacement. The quantitative data arising from this exercise provided insight into the social structuring of language and mobility of the semiotic resources across the urban, peri-urban and rural spaces. These results were later compared with the national census reports. The analysis of images as qualitative data availed much about the multimodal nature of the signage in place. The analysis of the qualitative data was accomplished by multimodality in its evolve form. Kress and Van Leeuwen’s(2006) Grammar of Visual Design, Scollon and Sollon’s (2003) Geosemiotics, and theoretical concepts such as resemiotization, remediation, recontextualization, decontextualization, multivocality and metamorphosis provided a sound theoretical toolkit to analyse the multimodal/multisemiotic signage emplaced across the public spaces of the research sites. As a result of a robust methodology and theoretical base, the study was able to underpin the social structuring of language and the mobility of semiotic resources across the linguistic landscapes in a manner too apparent. First, apart from showing the linguistic heterogeneity of the research sites, the study shows that social structuring of languages being experienced is one that is predicated on predictability, flexibility, flux and indeterminacy. The results showing the social structuring of English, for example, demonstrate the uneven spread of English across the urban, peri-urban and rural spaces. In particular, the results go against the normative expectation that the urbanized centres of Lusaka and Livingstone would have more signs in English. Peri-urban (Kabanana) and rural (Chongwe/Kafue) spaces showed more signs in English. This suggests a disembodiment of language and locality as well as social actors. Moreover, the results showed the co-occupancy of English and local languages in one micro-space/time. This entails the blurring of boundaries between languages of different socio-political statuses. The bilingualsigns on which English and non-regional languages occur demonstrate the persistent percolation of minor languages onto the LL. The presence of regional languages, albeit differentially, in and beyond their regions for which they were promulgated reminds us that there is a counter hegemonic narrative going on in the LL of the research sites –in defiance of regionalization (zoning). Thus, the results show that languages in the research sites do not stay put where they are officially put by legislation. The conflation of multiple semiotic resources has further (re-)produced linguistic coinages resulting in what I refer to as a sociolinguistics of amalgamation predicated on hybridity, fusion and tr ans languaging. This evidence is framed within the trans local and transnational mobility where both the social actors and the semiotic resources are constantly in circulation. The study observes that mobility is not only restricted to local circulation of cultural materialities from urban to rural and rural to urban,but also a more transnational circulation of semiotic resources. For example, the ubiquitous spread of Chinese signage across the urban, peri-urban and rural LL accentuates the permeating effect of translocal and transnational mobility, leading to the de-territorialization of spaces. The study further shows the sociocultural narratives in place-and meaning making. Place and meaning making as an agentive act is premised on shared sociocultural knowledge and histories (Kress 2010), but is further exploited and extended by creatively drawing on individualized orientation, experiences and subjective sensibilities. In this regard, the study agrees with Hult (2009) that in order to glean the subjective narrations and re-imagining of space embedded in the emplaced signs, interviews with the owners of the emplaced signs is in dispensible. Thus, like Blommaert (2012) aptly suggests, spaces are semiotized as themed spaces. The study has shown how spaces are Christianized, moralized, gendered and anonymized, thus, gaining insight into the forces and meanings behind both the emplacement of and emplaced signs. Further, the reading of artefacts in Livingstone Museum shows how the juxtaposition of the material culture of multilingualism and multiculturalism is a semiotic strategy to double-articulate multiple localities simultaneously: local and global; familiar and unfamiliar; modern and tradition. The transaction of multi vocality in a single moment of emplacement and gaze transforms space dramatically and extends the meaning potential of the emplaced signage in micro-space/time. Further, the observable paucity of signs in rural areas forces us to defer to an ecological approach in which oral language mediation, recycling and repurposing of material affordances provide a comprehensive account of the signage and sign-making/consumption in place. form. Kress and Van Leeuwen’s(2006) Grammar of Visual Design, Scollon and Sollon’s (2003) Geosemiotics, and theoretical concepts such as resemiotization, remediation, recontextualization, decontextualization, multivocality and metamorphosis provided a sound theoretical toolkit to analyse the multimodal/multisemiotic signage emplaced across the public spaces of the research sites. As a result of a robust methodology and theoretical base, the study was able to underpin the social structuring of language and the mobility of semiotic resources across the linguistic landscapes in a manner too apparent. First, apart from showing the linguistic heterogeneity of the research sites, the study shows that social structuring of languages being experienced isone that is predicated on unpredictability, flexibility, flux and indeterminacy. The results showing the social structuring of English, for example, demonstrate the uneven spread of English across the urban, peri-urban and rural spaces. In particular, theresults go against the normative expectation that the urbanized centres of Lusaka and Livingstone would have more signs in English. Peri-urban (Kabanana) and rural (Chongwe/Kafue) spaces showed more signs in English. This suggests a disembodiment of language and locality as well as social actors. Moreover, the results showed the co-occupancy of English and local languages in one micro-space/time. This entails the blurring of boundaries between languages of different socio-political statuses. The bilingualsigns on which English and non-regional languages occur demonstrate the persistent percolation of minor languages onto the LL. The presence of regional languages, albeit differentially, in and beyond their regions for which they were promulgated reminds us that there is a counter hegemonic narrative going on in the LL of the research sites –in defiance of regionalization (zoning). Thus, the results show that languages in the research sites do not stay put where they are officially put by legislation. The conflation of multiple semiotic resources has further (re-)produced linguistic coinages resulting in what I refer to as a sociolinguistics of amalgamation predicated on hybridity, fusion and translanguaging. This evidence is framed within the translocal and transnational mobility where both the social actors and the semiotic resources are constantly in circulation. The study observes that mobility is not only restricted to local circulation of cultural materialities from urban to rural and rural to urban,but also a more transnational circulation of semiotic resources. For example, the ubiquitous spread of Chinese signage across the urban, peri-urban and rural LL accentuates the permeating effect of translocal and transnational mobility, leading to the de-territorialization of spaces. The study further shows the sociocultural narratives in place-and meaning making. Place and meaning making as an agentive act is premised on shared sociocultural knowledge and histories (Kress 2010), but is further exploited and extended by creatively drawing on individualized orientation, experiences and subjective sensibilities. In this regard, the study agrees with Hult (2009) that in order to glean the subjective narrations and re-imagining of space embedded in the emplaced signs, interviews with the owners of the emplaced signs is indispensible. Thus, like Blommaert (2012) aptly suggests, spaces are semiotized as themed spaces. The study has shown how spaces are Christianized, moralized, gendered and anonymized, thus, gaining insight into the forces and meanings behind both the emplacement of and emplaced signs. Further, the reading of artefacts in Livingstone Museum shows how the juxtaposition of the material culture of multilingualism and multiculturalism is a semiotic strategy to double-articulate multiple localities simultaneously: local and global; familiar and unfamiliar; modern and tradition. The transaction of multivocality in a single moment of emplacement and gaze transforms space dramatically and extends the meaning potential of the emplaced signage in micro-space/time. Further, the observable paucity of signs in rural areas forces us to defer to an ecological approach in which oral language mediation, recycling and repurposing of material affordances provide a comprehensive account of the signage and sign-making/consumption in place.

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