Postcolonial Semiotics

Abstract

This chapter unpacks what a postcolonial semiotics is, then centers on a narrow but key realm within it: elite formations in the postcolony. This focus illuminates how economic interests are advanced through the creation of elite emblems and the ambiguous value that is attached to them. Postcolonial semiotics has its conceptual roots in “colonial linguistics.” Colonial linguistics explores “how representations of linguistic structure and colonial interests shaped and enabled each other”. Now that some key elements of a postcolonial semiotics have been outlined, the chapter considers in more detail a particular realm within it: elite formations. It then provides examples from linguistic anthropological scholarship that illuminate how a postcolonial semiotics produces elites as “fake,” “mix,” and “excess,” that is, as desirable yet disloyal cosmopolitan figures set in contrast to figurations of the immobile, rural, and poor in the postcolony.