Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World (review)

Discourses in place is a multidisciplinary monograph, integrating semiotics, communication studies, sociology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural geography. The integrative framework for the analysis of discourses in the material world is provided by the authors’ theory of geosemiotics.

The main concept of this theory is indexicality, which is not confined only to the indexicality in language (cf. for example deictic words), but more broadly is conceived as a property of context-dependent signs. On the one hand, the placement and material appearance of signs affect the interpretive practices of people who read them, and on the other, the emplacement and material appearance of signs partly depend on the character of the place in which they are situated. The book focuses on spatio-temporal situatedness of signs and discourses, their material appearance, and perceptible aspects of their context. Special attention is devoted to signs, inscriptions, and images in public places, and visual aspects of their appearance.

The authors discuss not only situatedness and appearance of signs in the material world, but also, more widely, relations of materialized and situated signs to social actions people perform in their ever-day lives. Geosemiotics is thus defined as ‘the study of social meaning of signs and discourses and of our actions in the material world’ (211). After the introductory chapter on geosemiotics and a chapter devoted to indexicality, the authors add social-interactionist theory to their theoretical framework. Here they particularly draw on the works of Erving Goffman on interaction order and ‘personal front’ and of social psychologist Edward T. Hall.

Interaction order figures as one of the three geosemiotic systems. In situated social actions it meets with ‘visual semiotics’ and ‘place semiotics’. Ch. 4, which deals with the former (meaning-making through the visual organization of signs), has been inspired by the work of Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. The elaboration of ‘place semiotics’, the core of geosemiotics, follows after an interlude chapter on semiotic vs. nonsemiotic spaces. In Chs. 6–8, four aspects of place semiotics are dealt with: code preference (arrangement of languages in bilingual signs), inscription (materiality which constitutes/ bears signs), emplacement (spatial distribution of signs, including aggregation of signs of different discourses in one place and diffusion of signs of the same discourse to different places), and space and time (types of spaces in which signs and discourses occur and change). Ch. 10 briefly discusses the three semiotic principles that operate in the relation between the social actor and signs in a place: indexicality, dialogicality, and selection in social action.

This book is written as a textbook. Each chapter consists of a theoretical and a practical part. The authors have tried to formulate and structure their ideas clearly, and they frequently repeat or paraphrase their main points and illustrate them with photographs of localities in Asia, Europe, and North America. The book also includes a glossary of 144 key terms, which facilitates an understanding of the authors’ newly developed theory of geosemiotics. This book is an innovative and thematically exceptional study.