Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates practices of urban discursive place-making in selected neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York. I investigate the forms and functions of hitherto neglected multimodal data – semiotic landscapes written on the body, (hidden) Wi-Fi Service Set Identifiers, that is, SSIDs or Wi-Fi names, and #Brooklyn Tweets – and how I have compiled these into a corpus. The corpus currently consists of multivariate data including – among others – ca. 1.3 million words of semi-structured interviews with Brooklynites, ca. 8,000 photographs of the semiotic landscapes in Brooklyn, New York, and ca. 47,000 Wi-Fi SSIDs. The aim of this paper is to show which semiotic forms and constructions of both Wi-Fi SSIDs and #Brooklyn Tweets take on foregrounded practices of so-called discursive urban-place-making and how these interact in the various neighborhoods of Brooklyn and in the virtual spheres related to them. I will show how these practices carry the potential for (re-)indexing specific social values of an urban neighborhood or even the borough itself and how Brooklynites and others comment on the respective neighborhoods. They position themselves in the social, cultural, political, and economic spheres of urbanity. The mixed-methods approach draws on corpus linguistic, sociolinguistic, and stylistic methodology.

Highlights

  • I investigate the forms and functions of hitherto neglected multimodal data – semiotic landscapes written on the body, Wi-Fi Service Set Identifiers, that is, SSIDs or Wi-Fi names, and #Brooklyn Tweets – and how I have compiled these into a corpus

  • The corpus currently consists of multivariate data including – among others – ca. 1.3 million words of semi-structured interviews with Brooklynites, ca. 8,000 photographs of the semiotic landscapes in Brooklyn, New York, and ca. 47,000 Wi-Fi SSIDs

  • The aim of this paper is to show which semiotic forms and constructions of both Wi-Fi SSIDs and #Brooklyn Tweets take on foregrounded practices of socalled discursive urban-place-making and how these interact in the various neighborhoods of Brooklyn and in the virtual spheres related to them

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Part of a 2018-Zun-Lee-exhibition called “Father Figure – Exploring Alternate Notions of Black Fatherhood” at the Bronx Documentary Centre, the 2012-photograph. The value of Brooklyn is created by means of the generic reference to the name Brooklyn (see Busse 2019) and by the re-design of both the bridge on his back – with the famous waterfront view either from or to Manhattan – and the Big Apple symbolizing the city of New York He makes a place with his Brooklyn tattoo on his naked back, which he intends to display on purpose and by walking over the famous bridge. The section will outline the relevant literature, including the theoretical framework of the urbanity model (Busse and Warnke 2015), the process of discursive urban place-making and Leech’s (1969, 2008) concept of foregrounding 2 Literature review: discursive urban placemaking, the urbanity model, and foregrounding

The model of urbanity
Discursive urban place-making and foregrounding
Data and methodology
Categories and functions Wi-Fi SSIDs: first tentative results
Data compilation
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call