The Geosemiotics of a Thai University: The narratives embedded in schoolscapes

Abstract

The present study reports on the geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) of a Thai University. Walking interview tours (Lou, 2017; Stroud & Jegels, 2014a) of Thammasat University's Tha Prachan campus were conducted. These interviews reveal how students narrate and take stances towards the geosemiotic artifacts that are found on their campus. The purpose of the study was twofold: 1) to gain an understanding of how students react to the geosemiotics on campus, and 2) to get a sense of their understanding of Thai history. For the latter the university has been the site of several historical events pertaining to Thailand's spotty relationship with democracy, most notably the Thammasat massacre, and much of this history has been repressed (Huebner, 2017; Winichakul, 2002, 2020). Using the geosemiotic framework to discuss the multimodal make-up of this university's signs and space, I illustrate how the narrations that emerged during walking interviews serve as lenses through which we are offered a glimpse of how students are socialized to think about the material environment of their campus. We can observe how students take different stances to the signs and places of their campus as well as Thailand's history. Such narrations reveal traces of socialization on the one hand and the emergence of an affective regime of reverence on the other (Wee & Goh, 2019). The findings contribute to the growing body of literature on schoolscapes in multilingual educational settings (Gorter, 2018; Gorter & Cenoz, 2015). What emerges from these narrations are traces of a collective historical body regarding Thailand's history and struggles with democracy.