Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / During apartheid, the infrastructure in South Africa was built by the government and was designed to keep Blacks away from White areas. This infrastructure comprised inter alia the public railway system which was intended to benefit mainly the White minority population, as it momentarily allowed Blacks to provide the cheap labour needed in White areas and businesses. While Whites predominantly resided within the suburbs adjacent to the railways, Blacks were relegated to the outskirts of the cities to areas which became known as townships and homelands. Racial segregation was rigorously enforced and consequently, the signs displayed in trains and on railway infrastructure primarily served to demarcate spaces and places that were designated for use by either Whites or Blacks, respectively. Against this backdrop, the main aim of this research was to present an ethnographic, multisemiotic study of the linguistic landscape (LL) of the public railways in post-apartheid South Africa across space and time. The study focussed on the languages used on signs displayed in the individual research sites. A mixed-methods research design was employed which entailed consideration of both quantitative and qualitative data. Thus, data was collected during ethnographic fieldwork over a six month period and was analysed using a multimodal/multisemiotic approach. The results reveal insights into the social structuring of languages and the mobility of linguistic and semiotic resources across regional and national boundaries in space and time since the end of apartheid.

American Indian graffiti muralism is a terminology that embodies the contemporary public art form of mural production by American Indian artists using public art installations to express ontologies of sovereignty, self-determination, and identity in different public spaces and on different objects. To date, there is no scholarship that has focused solely on American Indian graffiti muralism and ethnic markers within the medium of graffiti muralism. The dissertation, "American Indian Graffiti Muralism: Demystifying the Graffiti Medium and the Visual Harmonics of American Indian Signatures on the Modern Landscape," centers on the functionality of American Indian graffiti murals as markers of sovereignty, self-determination and identity in off-reservation municipal urban settings. Using a mixed methods framework of both qualitative and quantitative analysis this dissertation will provide new scholarship within the field of American Indian/Native American Studies and discourses on Native art and Native public art. Due to the fact that these public artworks contain multiple functions and meanings a mixed methods interdisciplinary analysis using the American Indian theoretical model of Survivance coupled with a social science theory of Geosemiotics, interviews with American Indian graffiti muralists, and quantitative empirical data collected through community-based Q survey creates a multi-narrative on the functionality of American Indian graffiti muralism. The aim of this research is to explore the functionality of different American Indian graffiti mural installations using Gerald Vizenor's Indigenous theory of survivance and the social science theory of geosemiotics. The theory of survivance aids analysis on how American Indian graffiti muralists infuse iconography and visual semiotic elements in their public art installations that (re)claim public spaces and infuse ontologies of sovereignty, self-determination, and identity in cityscapes. This is the first usage of survivance theory with Native public art and provides an ethnically appropriate means to investigate American Indian graffiti muralism. Geosemiotics theory provides analysis on how different American Indian graffiti murals interact with the physical landscape they reside within to create ideals of place and place perceptions in the populace. Geosemiotic analysis of American Indian graffiti murals illuminates how the art adds to a pluralistic public dialectic of place. By creating a dualistic theoretical lens this research addresses the suggestion that new discourses on Native art and Native public art require more analysis involving theoretical models and Indigenous ways of knowing through use of survivance theory, while also showing how a secondary social science theory can bolster a qualitative narrative on the functionality of Native public art. Artistic analysis is inherently subjective and the multi-theoretical application in this dissertation addresses how subjectivity and socio-political elements of American Indian graffiti muralism require a fully rounded framework to explore the function of these installations in our cities. The narratives of American Indian graffiti muralists regarding their mural installations offer intimate knowledge on the function of this art form and in this research provides first-person accounts of how artists approach public art differently than their studio art productions. It was also important to offer the perspectives from the artists themselves to illuminate how this graffiti muralism came to be the chosen form of artistic expression. The conversations with Yatika Fields and Jaque Fragua offer a secondary perspective to those of the researcher and public citizens. To further capture all of the perceptions surrounding American Indian graffiti muralism a public survey using Q methodology was completed to provide a platform for community-based input. Q methodology was used as a means to collect empirical data on the subjective attitudes towards American Indian graffiti murals. The output of Q surveying provided the first empirical data on American Indian graffiti muralism and concluded the multi-narrative of this project in the statements generated and tested by multiple public citizens. Furthermore, this multi-narrative foundation furthers future discourses in American Indian/Native American studies, the social sciences, and Native art historical research by offering elements that each can utilize as points of discussion and dissection.

Since 1999, migrants and refugees from across the Middle East and Northeastern Africa have squatted in makeshift camps in and around the strategic port city of Calais, France, hoping for the opportunity to stow away on a ferry or lorry to England. The inhabitants of these camps seek to engage the world in a dialogue, and although they speak a variety of languages, the voices the refugees and migrants in The Jungle of Calais raise through their protest placards and graffiti are more homogeneous. Like in many other protests, the languages of these messages are universal; they are French and English, the languages of their location, their desired destination, and of the world that they hope is watching. The data for this study are from still images freely available through Getty Images Embed Service. Using the techniques of linguistic landscapes, this paper analyzes the linguistic material of The Jungle. Like other recent works on the linguistic landscapes of protest, this analysis challenges the idea that territory is a fixed place or space (Kasanga, 2014), asserting rather that the migrants/refugees are co-creating a collective space that exists more through their raised voices, and less in the physical space they temporarily inhabit.

Magister Artium - MA / This study explores the linguistic landscape of Metrorail in the Western Cape, South Africa. The Western Cape is a diverse, multicultural society with a history of colonialism and imperialism. For this reason, the language/s on signage was explored to reveal differences/similarities between the various groups and cultures within society.This kind of investigation entailed consideration of the signage displayed on trains,stations and other railway infrastructure. Thus, data was collected over a three-month period during 2010 which coincided with the FIFA Soccer World Cup, hosted by South Africa. A combined quantitative and qualitative approach for the analysis of data was supplemented with a multimodal, multi-semiotic approach. In addition, interviews were conducted of a cross-section of commuters as a way to give meaning to the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data. The analysis explored the extent to which multilingualism and multiculturalism are reflected in the linguistic landscape of Metrorail.The focus of the study was on the degree of visibility of the official and non-official languages on signage, as faced by Metrorail commuters. The findings of the study reveal that the interplay between power relations, prestige, symbolic value, identity and vitality in the linguistic landscape of Metrorail results in a somewhat limited display of multilingualism. The findings also reflect the changed language attitudes and perceptions, the maintenance of power relations, the expression of identity, and the desire to be perceived in a certain way, in a broader South African context. Furthermore,the data reveals that the actual linguistic reality does not accurately reflect the aims of the Western Cape language policy in terms of promoting multilingualism. Moreover, it reveals that English is the preferred language of wider communication and it is also the dominant language on the official and non-official signage in the public space. Although the indigenous African languages, along with Afrikaans, are generally neglected in the public space, these languages are widely spoken by Metrorail commuters. The linguistic landscape of Metrorail therefore does not accurately reflect the linguistic reality of the various speech communities in the Western Cape. The linguistic landscape of Metrorail serves to index the broader social developments of the transformed sociolinguistic South African identity.

The thesis concerns the linguistic landscape (LL) of two neighbourhoods, one in Pretoria, South Africa, and the other in Marseille, France. This is a longitudinal study whose data was collected over two years of site visits. LL are explored in terms of both space and place. In terms of place, they are seen to be constitutive of a sense of place, allowing insights into memory, aspiration, and familial and cultural networks. Spatially, they are seen to realise a politics where design and distribution of LL are markers of power and modality. Analysis takes its point of departure in geosemiotics. Artefacts of LL are interpreted as sites of encounter of four cycles of discourse: the interaction order, habitus, semiotics of place and visual semiotics. The focus is on understanding LL artefacts, their production and reception, as a nexus of practice. Methodologically, walking - as a creative practice, and as an actualisation of the place and space of the neighbourhood - is chosen for photographing LL, for observing interactions and for meeting participants to the research. In examining habitus, the discourses, literacy and narratives of the people who live, work and pass through the site are compared. Deep social and economic similarities are noted between the two sites. Exploration of the semiotics of place brings to light regularities in the features of formal and informal LL, the nature of participation with and subversion of these texts, but also disparities among producers and receivers in terms of literacy, access, the socio-cultural and the socio-economic. Visual semiotic analysis continues these findings and it is noted that global and local discourses of identification, aspiration and self-stylisation circulate transversally in the sites. LL are taken to realise a politics of space when multimodal analysis of composition and modality is extended to the streetscape, as LL ensemble. A key facet of the research is the interpretation of informal LL. Their inclusion challenges existing LL methodologies by flagging the necessity to ground quantitative findings ethnographically.

This study analyses the different social variables that conditioned the naming of schools during the colonial period in Zimbabwe (1890-1979). The study collects and analyses the names given to schools in Salisbury (including Chitungwiza), Umtali and Fort Victoria the colonial period in Zimbabwe. The study adopts Geosemiotics, a theory propounded by Scollon and Scollon (2003), together with insights from Semantics, Semiotics and Pragmatics in the analysis of school names. Critical Discourse Analysis is used a method of data analysis. One of the main findings of the study is that place names are discourses of power which are used to express and legitimise power because they are part of the symbolic emblems of power. It was possible to ‘read’ the politics during the colonial period in Zimbabwe through the place names used in the colonial society. Both Europeans and Africans made conscious efforts to imbue public places with meanings. Overally, people who have access to power have ultimate control over place naming in any society. In this case, they manipulate place naming system in order to inscribe their own meanings and versions of history in the toponomastic landscape. The second finding is that place names are critical place-making devices that can be used to create imagined boundaries between people living in the same environment. Place names are useful discourses that index sameness and differences of people in a nation-state. Place names exist in interaction and kinship with other discourses in making places and imposing an identity on the landscape. Semiotics, Semantics and Pragmatics are instrumental in the appreciation of the meaning conveyed by school names. This study makes an important contribution to onomastic research in the sense that its findings can be generalised to other place naming categories during the colonial period in Zimbabwe. This study provides background information on how place naming was done during thecolonial period in Zimbabwe. This makes it significant because it provides insights on place naming in other states that went through the colonial experience, in Africa or elsewhere in the world. / African Languages

This study analyses the different social variables that conditioned the naming of schools during the colonial period in Zimbabwe (1890-1979). The study collects and analyses the names given to schools in Salisbury (including Chitungwiza), Umtali and Fort Victoria the colonial period in Zimbabwe. The study adopts Geosemiotics, a theory propounded by Scollon and Scollon (2003), together with insights from Semantics, Semiotics and Pragmatics in the analysis of school names. Critical Discourse Analysis is used a method of data analysis. One of the main findings of the study is that place names are discourses of power which are used to express and legitimise power because they are part of the symbolic emblems of power. It was possible to ‘read’ the politics during the colonial period in Zimbabwe through the place names used in the colonial society. Both Europeans and Africans made conscious efforts to imbue public places with meanings. Overally, people who have access to power have ultimate control over place naming in any society. In this case, they manipulate place naming system in order to inscribe their own meanings and versions of history in the toponomastic landscape. The second finding is that place names are critical place-making devices that can be used to create imagined boundaries between people living in the same environment. Place names are useful discourses that index sameness and differences of people in a nation-state. Place names exist in interaction and kinship with other discourses in making places and imposing an identity on the landscape. Semiotics, Semantics and Pragmatics are instrumental in the appreciation of the meaning conveyed by school names. This study makes an important contribution to onomastic research in the sense that its findings can be generalised to other place naming categories during the colonial period in Zimbabwe. This study provides background information on how place naming was done during thecolonial period in Zimbabwe. This makes it significant because it provides insights on place naming in other states that went through the colonial experience, in Africa or elsewhere in the world. / African Languages / D. Lit. et Phil. (African Languages)

Práce se věnuje managementu bilingvismu v situaci jazykového posunu, tj. tomu, jak se jednotlivci a organizace chovají vůči dvojjazyčnosti, jak s ní zacházejí, a to v situaci, kdy společnost přechází od užívání jednoho jazyka k jazyku jinému. Práce se konkrétně zaměřuje na vybrané, dosud méně zkoumané aspekty současné jazykové situace v Bělorusku. Analyzované aspekty zahrnují: 1) geosémiotiku a management jazykového posunu na nápisech ve veřejném prostoru, 2) management jazykových problémů se zaměřením na školství a 3) snahy o obrácený jazykový posun k běloruštině. Pozornost se přitom věnuje korespondencím mezi jazykovým managementem občanů a státních nebo jiných veřejných organizací. Cílem práce je přispět jak k lepšímu poznání jazykové situace v Bělorusku, tak k rozpracování některých sociolingvistických konceptů, jako je zejména jazykový posun a jazykový problém. Práce aplikuje teorii jazykového managementu jako obecný model jazykového posunu a jako instrument k diagnostikaci jazykových problémů. Při aplikaci teorie v uvedených kontextech se ukázalo jako užitečné rozšířit ji o koncept diskurzu a kolektivního jednání, které pomůžou konceptualizovat propojení mezi jednoduchým a organizovaným jazykovým managementem, respektive mezi mikrosociální a makrosociální rovinou. Klíčová slova bilingvismus,...