DOI: 10.1075/ll.22038.mod ISSN:
Semiotics of a Covid landscape
Gabriella Modan, Susanna Schaller- Linguistics and Language
- Language and Linguistics
Abstract
This paper brings together urban planning and linguistic perspectives to examine the semiotic landscape of a Washington, DC ‘streatery’ in the context of the intersecting public health- and place-based economic crises unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing from
Garay-Huamán and Irazábal-Zurita’s (2021)
work on
neoliberal Social Structures of Accumulation (SSA), we examine how different layers of Adams Morgan’s emergent
Covid landscape are rooted in the dynamics of capitalist accumulation through urban placemaking strategies. We focus on signs put
up by the Business Improvement District (BID) that explain the public health regulations applicable to the area through discourse
that playfully encourages people to social distance and wear masks. These signs utilize three linguistic or semiotic discourses:
hygiene, humor and play, and anti-Trump politics. The signs serve as a bona fide effort to both halt the spread of the coronavirus
and take a political stance. At the same time as the signs promote public health, their commodified aestheticization of hygiene
and politics also serves commercial interests.