Noticing houses: An analysis of the vernacular landscape of south Marrickville and Tempe, Sydney, Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Residential suburbs are not deserts of signage. Alongside the signs imposed by local governments to aid citizens navigate their neighborhoods, there are signs assigned by property owners. These include house numbers and names as well as various forms of semiotic control. Often multi-modal in format, they are designed to deter strangers from violating properties, depositing unwanted advertising and so on. Yet much of this signage in the residential parts of suburbia has escaped scholarly examination. This paper, which employs a geosemiotic approach to analyze the linguistic landscape of south Marrickville and Tempe, redresses this oversight. It explores both the linguistic landscape’s content and its material expression. While much of its constituent signage “gate keeps” traffic and pedestrians, some blandish same with radical politics, front of house as it were. Of particular interest are the environs of the local railway station, which for a time were a magnet for an insurrectionist geosemiotic.