1.2.1 Code Choices: Language Policy

The notion of code choices in the LL refers to the use of linguistic means to express meaning. Other modes which express meaning – from architecture and the use of space to the use of visual images, colour, and layout – are co-present with linguistic codes and are part of LL research, but linguistic codes provide a specific and, as I suggest in Chapter 8, inescapable focus within the LL. From the minimal sense of language as a socially conventional system for relating the intrinsically meaningless elements of sound to meaning, however, there is no expectation that a language will be politically recognised, that it will have a socially agreed writing system (or indeed any writing system at all), or that languages will be ‘pure’ and autonomous from other languages. Even the modality of sound waves in the phonological component of language is not guaranteed, since sign languages have phonological organisation that feeds into morphology and syntax, but does not rely on acoustic sound (see Brentari, Fenlon, and Cormier Reference Brentari, Fenlon and Cormier2018 for a review). The notion of code choices, then, is broad enough to allow for a wide range of codes on display, but retains the idea that linguistic codes are different from other systems within the range of semiosis.

Since one of the original motivations for LL research lies in the field of language planning (see Chapter 2), the illustration of code choices in this chapter starts with Figure 1.3, which displays language policies in action. These signs come from trains that cross internationally recognised political frontiers. Figure 1.3A shows a notice on a train journey which originates in Basle, Switzerland, and terminates in Cologne, Germany. The notice includes safety instructions in the three official languages of Switzerland: German, French, and Italian. Romansch also has official status in the Graubünden canton, but its non-inclusion in this notice underlines the difference between official status at the federal level and regional or local recognition. The bottom line in English raises questions. English does not have status as an official language in Switzerland, and it would be easy to view it here simply as a language of wider communication. Swiss census data cited by Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig (Reference Eberhard, Simons and Fennig2019), however, show 4.8 million people who can speak English, which amounts to slightly more than half the population of the country; of this number, 425,000 people are first-language speakers of English. These figures suggest that globalisation, including the effects of population movement and second language learning, represents a challenge for notions of ‘what language is spoken where’ and how to interpret language display in the LL.

Figure 1.3 Cross-border train notices – Basle–Cologne (2018); New York–Montreal (2017); Dublin–Belfast (2014)

Figure 1.3A also shows the salience of the relative size and position of text across languages. In Figure 1.3A, the main messages contain the same information, and use the same letter shapes and sizes with black print against a white background. The descending order of German, French, and Italian reflects their relative standing in percentages of speakers in Switzerland (Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig Reference Eberhard, Simons and Fennig2019). The word <Automatic!> on the top line, however, is printed in red using a larger type size. It is an English word form, and though it differs from German automatisch, French automatique, and Italian automatica, the shared etymology of these forms (ultimately from Greek αὐτόματος) makes <Automatic!> recognisable across language boundaries.

Language policy is also in play in Figure 1.3D, from the Dublin–Belfast train. As this train crosses the political boundary between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the signage must be understood in relation to language policy in both jurisdictions. The message content is the same across all three languages, though English is given the most prominence, occupying the top position and using upper case letters. The use of English and Irish in public notices conforms to official signage regulations in the Republic of Ireland at the time, though more recent policy gives preference to putting the Irish language text above the English. In Northern Ireland, the default language of public signage is English, although the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 also provides for bilingual Irish/English street name plaques under certain conditions: see Dunlevy (Reference Dunlevy, Blackwood and Dunlevy2021) for a comprehensive review. Since these provisions are based on language use in local communities, facilities such as motorways and public transportation operating across Northern Ireland rarely include Irish. The Irish/English bilingualism in Figure 1.3D thus reflects a policy which is obligatory in the Republic of Ireland but unexpected in public transportation in Northern Ireland. The use of French on the bottom row of text does not follow from legal requirements or population demographics in either jurisdiction. The Dublin–Belfast train, however, was upgraded by a large cross-border train improvement scheme which received significant funding from the European Union at a time when the UK was still part of the EU. Since French is not used in domestic trains anywhere in Ireland, its occurrence in the sign of Figure 1.3D can be interpreted as a recognition of the role of the EU in facilitating cross-border transport and communication within the EU.

The signs in Figures 1.3B and 1.3C also come from a train line which crosses a political border. In this case, however, different language policies determine different language displays at either end of the Amtrak train journey between New York City and Montreal. Figure 1.3C shows an instruction in New York for passengers headed to Montreal. Although the train is going to a destination where French is the official language, and the passenger population can be expected to include a significant number of French speakers, all information is in English; the spelling <Montreal> reflects English language usage. Figure 1.3B shows the counterpart Canadian signage, addressed to passengers going from Montreal to New York. It uses a similar typeface and the same recognisable Amtrak colour scheme and logo (not shown in the photograph), but gives passenger information with French in top position and English below, in accordance with the law in Quebec. As we will see in Chapter 4, these signs do not exhaust the LL of the New York–Montreal train, but they give an indication of policy decisions at work.

1.2.2 Code Choices: Breaking Language Barriers

Though language policy usually refers to languages which exhibit various degrees of codification and standardisation, code choices in the LL frequently break free from norms of standardisation, mix innovatively between codes, and present texts which cannot readily be assigned to one language or another. Figure 1.4 illustrates this point with a sign from Reagan National Airport (DCA) near Washington, D.C. The large-scale signage overhangs a free-flowing seating area which is designed with short-visit transient customers in mind. Many airports are extraordinary zones in the LL, since they have an intermediate status between public and private space, show essential uniformity around the world, are designed to facilitate movement through the space rather than to provide opportunities for community discourse, and may have only weak ties to local culture, exemplified by the sale of local souvenirs which can actually be made anywhere in the world.

Figure 1.4 Playing with codes

(DCA airport, 2016)

The code choices of the sign at the centre of the unit include an intentional hybrid of English say with French si bon ‘so good’. The resultant text <SAY SI BON!> is roughly homophonous with French c’est si bon ‘it’s so good’. The French meaning generates an advertising name that implies quality, and introduces an element of familiar exoticism for the Anglophone sign viewer, who may also know this phrase from the popular song ‘C’est si bon’, first copyrighted in 1948 and recorded by many artists since then (see Second Hand Songs website for further detail).

The use of a song title in an unrelated shop name introduces the element of intertextuality, which Bauman (Reference Bauman2004: 4) describes as ‘the relational orientation of a text to other texts’. Leeds-Hurwitz (Reference Leeds-Hurwitz1993: 41) observes that intertextuality allows texts to ‘“resonate” with meaning when they refer to previous texts, perhaps because they do not require as much work to decide how to interpret them’. Thus, with regard to Figure 1.4, intertextuality – addressed to a continuous flow of strangers in the unfamiliar and often intimidating atmosphere of an international airport – uses a familiar song text to make the unfamiliar more trustworthy. The linguistic hybridity of the inscription works at one level to attach a name to a place of business and to invite the sign viewer to become a customer, but it does so by engaging in a playful cross-linguistic reference that builds on the sign viewer’s background knowledge to provide the familiar in an unfamiliar environment.

Figure 1.5 shows that cross-linguistic influences in the LL are not limited to lexical-grammatical elements. The photograph in Figure 1.5 shows the signage of one restaurant among many on the same street in Brighton. This one stands out because of the large-scale repetition of the name Bombay, in the form . This name is attached in white letters to the brown walls of the building, and also features in white writing on a red background on signs in several locations visible in the photograph. The colour red has general appeal in street advertising as a means of gaining attention, but it is often used with specific Indian connections.

Figure 1.5 Crossing the boundaries of writing systems

(Brighton, 2016)

The name Bombay is often taken to be an anglicisation of Portuguese Bom Bahia ‘good bay’: Portugal took control of the area in 1534, but it came under British control in 1661. The alternative place name Mumbai reflects the pronunciation in Marathi and other languages – apart from Hindi – of a name derived from the local goddess Mumbadevi + Aai ‘mother’. Neither Hindi nor Marathi is used in the signage. Since Bombay is an anglicisation that has been used since at least the early seventeenth century, the name on display fits easily into the rules for reading English, though the lower case <b> at the start of the name is not normative. In this historical context, the name Bombay is not just an English language place name (or part of the English onomasticon, as I discuss below), but a reference to the city as part of the era of British colonisation. This reference to a familiar past in the English context could enhance a claim to authenticity of a particular kind; it contrasts with Mumbai, which in an English language context references more recent, post-colonial language policy in India.

Most salient in the graphic presentation of the Bombay name, however, is the use of a horizontal line through the two <b> characters and over the other lower-case letters to yield a visual effect that is (at least for the English-speaking reader) similar to the head line of the Devanagari script used for Marathi, Hindi, and many other languages of India. This use of iconicity creates an inscription which is meant to look ‘Indian’ to the sign viewer, enhancing the power of the signage to claim visual salience and cultural authenticity for the sign instigator. The sign viewer who recognises the resemblance can thus overlook the differences between Devanagari, in which the head line forms a functional part of the individual character, and English in which the horizontal line in the writing has no orthographic function. The modification of English language Roman typefaces in order to evoke features of other writing systems (at least as perceived by the designer and their intended audience) has been expanding since the nineteenth century. Kim and Kim (Reference Kim, Kim and Glauber1993: 32), for example, document a ‘pseudo-Japanese’ font in the US from 1867 and a similar font known as Japanese in England two decades later: see also Sutherland’s (Reference Sutherland2015) discussion of ‘writing system mimicry’, Li and Zhu’s (Reference Li and Hua2019: 151) definition of ‘tranßcripting’ as ‘the linguistic practice of creating a script with elements from different writing systems … or by mixing conventional language scripts with other symbols and signs including emoji’, and related analyses of Greek in online environments by Androutsopoulos (Reference Androutsopoulos2015, Reference Androutsopoulos2020).

1.2.3 Code Choices: Conflict

While the code choices for the preceding signs show no signs of controversy, Figure 1.6 illustrates a conflict over code choices. The signage in Figure 1.6A shows a type which is common in Northern Ireland and can also be found with variations in northern parts of the Republic of Ireland (see Kallen Reference Kallen, Watt and Llamas2014 for discussion). This type is immediately recognisable by its shape, text around the edge of the sign, and central image of a beer mug covered by a conventional red X denoting a prohibition: as I discuss in Kallen (Reference Kallen, Watt and Llamas2014), even the beer mug image is significant, since it was popularised in the 1920s and 1930s and has now come to index not simply drinking alcohol in general, but local traditions of pub life.

Figure 1.6 Public notice, language conflict

(Warrenpoint, 2014; Belfast, 2007)

The linguistic element in the signage of Figure 1.6A is purely in English, using the indirect phrasing that it is an offence to drink alcohol in public places in this area, rather than using a more direct form such as do not drink alcohol here or drinking prohibited. The element I focus on here is the expression of language conflict that arises in Figure 1.6B, where a sticker that reads As Gaeilge Anois! ‘In Irish now!’ is pasted over the central image of the beer glass. The sticker uses text, typography (putting Gaeilge ‘Irish’ in a large distinctive font), and colour (with the preposition as and anois ‘now’ in red), to advance its argument. The linguistic conflict here pits those who support the Irish language, a minority language with limited legal status and recognition in Northern Ireland, against English as the dominant language of the signage. Like other stickers, as discussed further in Chapter 4, this one can be adapted to a range of situations: I have seen it in Belfast on English language parking and security signage as well. As with graffiti more generally, the LL thus becomes a linguistic battleground.

1.2.4 Place and Code Choices: Names and Naming

Signage that expresses place names shows the intersection between code choice and spatial relations with particular clarity. To name a place is to have power over it, and to choose the code of a place name is to invoke not only linguistic but historical and cultural references. Place name signage can thus become highly contested. Place names, and proper nouns more generally, are a problem for linguistic analysis, since they have many of the same syntactic features as nouns but do not have the same lexical, morphological, and semantic properties: for reviews of philosophical and linguistic arguments, see Ainiala, Saarelma, and Sjöblom (Reference Ainiala, Saarelma and Sjöblom2016: 13–37), Nyström (Reference Nyström and Hough2016), and Van Langendonck and Van de Velde (Reference Van Langendonck, de Velde. and Hough2016). I follow the position advocated by Coates (Reference Coates2006, Reference Coates2009), who argues (Reference Coates2009: 439) that ‘proper names are truly devoid of sense’, but are instead used as ‘a mode of reference’, for ‘the picking out of an individual’. According to Coates (Reference Coates2009: 437), ‘this mode of reference, called onymic reference, is an alternative to what we can call ordinary semantic reference’. By this logic we can best understand the language of proper nouns by distinguishing between the lexicon of a language (which operates as a regular part of the linguistic system, in which words have the full range of rule-governed morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties) and the onomasticon (which stores proper names and generalisations about proper names that arise not by meaning but by experience, telling us, e.g. that English names like Fido and Snoopy usually apply to dogs and not to places or people).

The street name plaques of Figure 1.7 come from different communities in Co. Down, Northern Ireland, and show problems of code choice and onymic reference at work. These sign units share certain features which help to define their genre: see also Chapter 6. They do not simply convey information, but instead have the performative quality of declarations as defined by Searle (Reference Searle1979): they change the world by bestowing a name on whatever part of the street or road they refer to. Each contains an odonym (the name of a street, road, or other thoroughfare), they are all of similar dimension and size, they form a series with other such signs in their respective localities, and they are all placed on walls. They also show contrastive differences. The sign unit in Figure 1.7A is monolingual in English (with a black serif typeface against a white background), the signage in Figure 1.7B puts a name in Irish on the top line with English underneath (using a white sans serif typeface against a blue background), and the sign in Figure 1.7C uses a similar format to Figure 1.7A in the top half, but also uses white lettering against a brown background to present a name that was <formerly> used in Ulster Scots. Only the sign in Figure 1.7B gives the additional trust building information as to the authority responsible for the signage; this information is given in Irish on the left and English on the right.

Figure 1.7 Street name plaques

(Kilkeel, Rostrevor, Grey Abbey, 2014)

Considering a street name plaque as the declaration of an odonym, two names from different languages are equivalent in the sense that they both refer to the same place. As Chapter 6 shows, however, there is no guarantee that the two names will have equivalent etymologies or be composed of semantically equivalent words. In Figure 1.7B, however, the two-name inscriptions are approximate cross-linguistic equivalences, since Irish sráid and droichid correspond lexically to English street and bridge, respectively. These terms are names, not descriptions: we do not know if Bridge Street – Sráid an Droichid leads to a bridge, is itself a bridge, refers to the site of a historic bridge, or is based on other references. The English name carries the additional possibility that Bridge Street could refer to a person with the name Bridge; the grammatical construction of the Irish odonym (with the definite article an and the genitive singular form of the noun droichead) excludes this interpretation.

The bilingual name pairing in Figure 1.7C is of a different type from that of Figure 1.7B. The bottom half of the sign presents an odonym in Ulster Scots, the variety of Scots which was brought to Ulster particularly after the ‘Plantation of Ulster’ in the early seventeenth century: see Smyth, Montgomery, and Robinson (Reference Smyth, Montgomery and Robinson2006) for a linguistic overview. The use of black lettering on a white background with black trim for English and white lettering on a brown background with white trim for Ulster Scots creates a visual complementarity that points to the sign as a single unit. The white lettering on a brown background, however, uses an international colour convention for information of historical or touristic interest. The Ulster Scots odonym is in a smaller italic font that allows the word formerly to introduce the name. Although the signage in Figure 1.7B and Figure 1.7C could be seen as parallel units of bilingual naming, consideration of pragmatic force shows them to be very different. In the Irish/English case, the display of each name carries out the speech act of declaration, but between English and Ulster Scots, only the top part has the force of a declaration. The bottom half is phrased as a mere statement of fact (an assertive in terms of Searle Reference Searle1979) that explicitly negates the implication that the name is applicable today. Place name choices are politically significant, and Ulster Scots has been part of social debate on language rights in Northern Ireland in recent decades: see Stapleton and Wilson (Reference Stapleton and Wilson2004) and Mac Síthigh (Reference Mac Síthigh2018) for reviews, and Dunlevy (Reference Dunlevy, Blackwood and Dunlevy2021: 144–47) for a discussion of the LL. Figure1.7 shows that language displays are not always equivalent: to display a place name as a matter of cultural background is significant, but to bestow the place name in an act of declaration is a matter of different significance. In other words, sign units which may look similar may prove to be quite different when their pragmatic status is taken into account.

1.4.1 Interaction in the LL

Though the approach developed here takes all LL units as acts of discourse, Figures 1.9 and 1.10 illustrate two types of LL unit which highlight discourse in action. One capitalises on the unregulated nature of graffiti, which provides opportunities for continuing discourse between sign instigators as interlocutors. A second illustrates the potential for public protest and debate, where people who instigate the temporary moving signage of protest address an unspecified political audience. Though these illustrations come from different countries, they both pertain to debates over migration in the contemporary world, and may be seen as contributions to a global discourse on migration and human rights.

Figure 1.9 Foreigners graffiti

(Dublin, 2016, 2017)

Figure 1.10 Signs of protest – Cosecha march

(Albany, 2017)

Figure 1.9 comes from a longitudinal study of graffiti on six seafront pedestrian shelters in Dublin, described in Kallen (Reference Kallen2017). These shelters regularly attract graffiti, which is periodically removed by civic authorities. Figure 1.9A is from 2016, and expresses the anti-immigrant sentiment <SWAMPED BY FOREIGNERS!>, followed by a subsequent response <WE SURE ARE>, and a third expression, <W/Goodlucking Wives>. The latter comment adds gender to the sentiment, assuming the problematic foreigners to be men and relegating the foreign wives to a potential value as objects of male desire. (The spelling <Goodlucking> may reflect a potential merger in Irish English between words of the FOOT and STRUT sets as defined by Wells Reference Wells1982; see Harris Reference Harris1996 and Kallen Reference Kallen2013 for detail.)

The messages in Figure 1.9A were painted over by authorities, but by 2017 the same initial slogan had reappeared. Not long afterwards, the word <SWAMPED> had been partly removed by another graffiti artist, and a riposte written adjacent to the remaining phrase, with the resultant message shown in Figure 1.9B, yielding <AREN’T WE LUCKY OUR CITY IS SO ENHANCED BY FOREIGNERS!!>. The reply in Figure 1.9B is specific to its original grounding. It alters the argument of the original inscription, and does so by using the same all capitals style of writing. This similarity of layout thus reinforces the substance of the reply message, which is to assert that foreigners are actually an asset to the city. Though such interchanges are usually fleeting (and this discourse was soon painted over again by city authorities), they constitute a part of the discourse of the LL.

While the discourse on immigration in Figure 1.9 takes place entirely through writing on walls, discourse of a different kind is exemplified by displays of language in social protest and political demonstration. Figure 1.10A gives an overall view of one such protest, on a day of national action, while Figures 1.10B and 1.10C provide details.

Though this demonstration is not fixed in place and is not a permanent structure, it is a display of language in the public space which follows an identifiable generic structure (cf. Hanauer Reference Hanauer, Rubdy and Said2015 and Seals Reference Seals2017). The march progresses from a starting point towards a destination, and the direction of the march defines a lead position which may favour certain banners and signs over others. The march shown in Figure 1.10 was proceeding down State Street, near the New York state capitol building. Large banners at the front bear the name and carry the logo of the organisers, Movimiento Cosecha (from Spanish cosecha ‘harvest’), a nationwide group which describes itself as ‘a nonviolent movement fighting for permanent protection, dignity, and respect for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States’, with a special emphasis on farmworkers (Cosecha website).

Though the demonstration constitutes an ensemble, it is made from individual LL units: some have been professionally printed and others are homemade. Figure 1.10B shows a long rectangular sign reading <SiN MANOS NO HAY OBRA> [‘without hands there is no work’] in black letters followed by the Cosecha logo in blue, then the text <COSECHA> in blue to the left and the wording <TEXT 41411> in red to the right. Figure 1.10C features a pre-printed poster with the Cosecha butterfly logo and the Spanish slogan <¡La lucha obrera no tiene fronteras!> ‘The workers’ struggle has no borders’. Colour adds salience, with black letters used against a white background in the upper half of the poster, and against a red background in the lower half. Behind this poster is one which shows a hand drawn map to represent the world, rimmed by the question <WHERE ARE THE BORDERS> and question marks in each corner of the poster.

This public demonstration is thus not only multimodal – employing spoken and written language, physical and kinesic design, sound and music, and visual imagery – but engages in multiple discourses. The march as a whole shows an overall societal discourse about immigration, but it includes separate discourses about wealth, economic management, justice, religion, and other topics. Linguistic messages are central to the appeal of the demonstration, since the sign viewer would not know what viewpoints are being espoused without them, but multimodality adds to the persuasive power of the ensemble by eliciting and intensifying emotional responses from sign viewers.

1.4.2 Writing and Speech in the LL

The preceding examples rely on written language, but they demonstrate that writing is not all that is on display in the LL: layout, typography, use of colour, physical placement, and visual imagery inevitably come into the LL as well. The discourse dimension of the LL also points towards interactions between spoken language and the landscape, particularly when language is linked to place names, directions, and knowledge about places. Banda and Jimaima (Reference Banda and Jimaima2015), for example, argue that ‘semiotic landscapes in rural-scapes’ are not limited to physically delimited signage using written language, but must also include oral accounts of space and location. Banda and Jimaima’s (Reference Banda and Jimaima2015: 658–59) account of a ‘sign’ in rural Zambia which contains no written language but consists of a concrete slab painted green and ‘supported by two pillars built out of locally built bricks’, shows that it is used ‘as a point of reference to directions given orally’. Such cases motivate Banda and Jimaima (Reference Banda and Jimaima2015: 667) to suggest ‘a somewhat different taxonomy of “signs” for place making compared to urban areas’ which takes account of ‘faded orthographies, names and texts, and removed objects and socio-cultural materialities (e.g. “What used to be a graveyard/Sipalo Butchery”)’. Though Banda and Jimaima’s (Reference Banda and Jimaima2015) argument links spoken discourse and place in non-urban environments, it establishes a much broader principle that also holds in urban areas: that the written LL and its functions coexist with stable elements of discourse that circulate in oral tradition and thus form a complement to the world as mapped out by the written LL.

With this point in mind, Figure 1.11 illustrates an LL place name feature that has no associated signage.

Figure 1.11 The D Walls

(Dublin, 2018)

Figure 1.11 shows a topographic feature known as ‘the D Walls’ in Marino, a Dublin housing estate built in the 1920s. A small grassy area with several trees in the centre of the photograph is contained within a low concrete border. This border shows a straight line on the left, parallel to the footpath. To the right, the border curves around in a shape that, viewed from above, resembles a capital letter <D>. A mirror image <D> area exists on the other side of the street that is visible at the far left of Figure 1.11. There is no signage designating these grassy areas as ‘the D Walls’, and the term has no official status. While the name is based on the shape of the walls, it was not inevitable that the name would be attached to this space: it arises and is maintained by social convention in oral tradition. Such discoursal elements in the LL provide a distinctive tie between language and landscape. To exclude such data from the LL is not just to privilege literacy (which is not equally accessible in all societies), but to overlook the everyday experience of people in societies of all kinds in using spoken language to supplement, comment on, contradict, or in other ways interact with the written LL.

1.5.1 The Past in the Present

A still photograph carries with it an illusion of the LL unit as timeless, freezing the unit as it was at the moment the photograph was taken. A challenge for LL research, however, is to recognise that any given LL unit can only be understood within a flow of continual change. Not only do LL units themselves change (whether by conscious design or by the effects of weathering, daylight, and other physical dynamics), but their relationships to other LL units and to the landscape as a whole are always in flux. Even when the texts of LL units remain relatively stable, their function or affective value may change as they are perceived by new audiences. Various aspects of change and the relation of the LL to history are discussed in Chapter 7; I offer here some examples.

Figure 1.12 shows a remnant of the past LL, repurposed to contemporary meanings. It is an example of ‘the past in the present’, since it is visible in the present-day LL, even though it no longer functions in its original role. The contemporary signage of an ice cream shop appears in Figure 1.12A, with a slogan in blue on a white fascia as well as an iconic image of a drop to indicate fresh cream or melting ice cream. The unified presentation of language, image, layout, and colour continues on the exterior wall and its modern doorway (barely visible in the photograph), and is designed to dominate the entire shopfront.

Figure 1.12 Latin inscription 1615

(Galway, 2019)

Breaking this unity, and revealed by a cut into the modern exterior plaster, is a hexagonal stone with a Latin inscription dated to 1615, shown in Figure 1.12B. The stone was originally a fireplace keystone, which was put into the outer wall at a later date. According to the National Inventory website, the current building incorporates its original seventeenth century fabric, but was built ca. 1820. The top line of the inscription in the stone contains the letters <I H S>, and the <H> is topped with a cross. The abbreviation IHS developed from usage in late Latin as a shortening of Greek ΙΗΣΟΥΣ iēsous ‘Jesus’. Latin Ave Maria ‘Hail Mary’ and gratia ‘grace’ follow, written as <AVE MARİ> and <GRACIA>. The initials <A:F> and <M:F> conclude the inscription, and the stone features a heraldic crest. The right side of the crest resembles the crest of the Ffont family, one of the powerful merchant families in Galway at the time (Hardiman [1820] Reference Hardiman1985: 6), but neither the image on the left side nor the initials have been convincingly identified.

Though much of the intended significance of this remnant has become obscure, and it has been moved from its original emplacement in a domestic setting, the preservation and display of this remnant of the historical LL has relevance for residents and special appeal for tourists. Galway developed from a Gaelic fortified settlement that is first mentioned in historical sources for 1124; an Anglo-Norman borough was established in the thirteenth century, and during the late mediaeval period the city became a major European trading port. The city is now a popular tourist destination, and for the tourist in search of a sense of Galway’s early modern history, the original stone conveys a reality that a modern plaque would lack. Thus, while the stone originally had specific textual and visual references, a new indexicality of the past in a more indefinite sense – illustrating Lowenthal’s (Reference Lowenthal1975: 22) principle that ‘tangibility invests antiquity with powerful affect’ – has been superimposed on the old indexicalities.

1.5.2 Layering of Past and Present

A different historical perspective comes into view when older signage and new signage co-occur within the same broad function. The layering of past and present is a common feature in extensive LL systems such as street name plaques and postal or transportation services, since the complete replacement of older signage with new counterparts may be expensive and labour intensive. The retention of old signage to carry out present-day functions may create problems in times of rapid social change, where there may be strong pressure to develop new signage and replace that of old regimes – see Pavlenko (Reference Pavlenko2009) on post-Soviet LL change, Themistocleous (Reference Themistocleous2019) on shifts in the Cyprus LL, and related data from Eastern Germany in Buchstaller, Alvanides, Griese, and Schneider (Reference Buchstaller, Alvanides, Griese, Schneider, Ziegler and Marten2021) – but in other circumstances the retention of old signage may point to continuity, stability, or historical values. I discuss these and other problems of layering further in Chapter 7.

The layering in Figure 1.13 represents a case in which a newly independent country retains functional elements of the old LL, even though new alternatives are available. The post box in Figure 1.13 was one of many cast iron wall boxes installed in Ireland during the Victorian era; it now contains inscriptions from three historical periods and political regimes. The upper section of the box retains the royal crown and <V R> insignia designating Queen Victoria (Latin Victoria Regina), as well as the English wording <POST OFFICE> from the colonial period. The door of the box, however, has been replaced with a newer emblem, referring to or Saorstát Éireann ‘Irish Free State’, the polity created by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921–1922. The designation includes visual decoration based on traditional Irish motifs and is topped with a harp which is symbolic of Ireland. This presentation was frequently used on post boxes from the establishment of the Irish Free State until 1939 (for details see Ferguson Reference Ferguson2009: 47–50). The Free State constitution was superseded by the Constitution of Ireland in 1937 and the Republic of Ireland Act of 1948, and the Irish postal service was later given a new identity as An Post (Irish, ‘The Post’) in 1984. This identity is expressed in the middle section of the post box. Following current language policy, the detailed information about postal services shown in Figure 1.13B is given bilingually, using Irish in black lettering on the left and English in green lettering on the right.

Figure 1.13 Updating the Victorian postbox

(Galway, 2019)

Layering in this example also includes the overlay of colour. As Ferguson (Reference Ferguson2009: 42–3) documents, one of the first acts of the Free State was to paint post boxes in ‘emerald green instead of P. O. red’. This change obscures the earlier layer, but allows for the creation of new indexicality: during the 2016 commemorations of the 1916 Rising in Ireland, certain letter boxes were temporarily painted red as they were in 1916, in order to heighten awareness of this historical event (see McGrath Reference McGrath2016).

1.5.3 Remembering the Past

Overt acts of remembrance are also part of the LL, and to illustrate this point I turn to one of the most complex commemoration activities in the contemporary European LL: the Stolpersteine (‘stumbling stones’) project initiated in the 1990s by the artist Gunter Demning. A Stolperstein is a simple brass plaque which, as the Stolpersteine website puts it, commemorates individual ‘victims of National Socialism’ in Germany. Stolpersteine are usually inset into the pavement in front of the last place where the person who is being remembered lived by choice. As Demning explains it on the website, ‘The Stolpersteine in front of the buildings bring back to memory the people who once lived here. Each “stone” begins with HERE LIVED… One “stone”. One name. One person’. Stolpersteine have already been discussed in LL research: see Krzyżanowska (Reference Krzyżanowska2016) and Hanauer (Reference Hanauer, Seymour and Camino2017), and further commentary by Hernàndez-Grande (Reference Hernàndez-Grande2020) on Catalan Stolpersteine and an accompanying audio guide. To illustrate these features of the LL (which, according to the Stolperstein website, now include nearly 70,000 Stolpersteine in nearly 2,000 places), Figure 1.14 shows two Stolpersteine from Michelstadt and one from Strasbourg. Details of the individuals named in the Michelstadt Stolpersteine are given by Haag (Reference Haag2013) and for the Strasbourg Stolperstein by the AFMD website.

Figure 1.14 Stolpersteine

(Michelstadt, 2018; Strasbourg, 2019)

The Stolpersteine project is indexical at many levels. The uniformity of the memorial plaque is an intentional device by which each Stolperstein references all the others: they become part of a series, and in that sense form one act of commemoration which extends to thousands of places and individuals. Uniformity of the individual message can be seen in the materials used (the brass plaque which is one face of a cube 96 mm x 96 mm in height and width, set to a depth of 100 mm), the letter shapes and layout, and the essential elements of the message. The German and French examples in Figure 1.14 show the same format, beginning with Hier wohnte or Ici habitait ‘here lived’, followed by the individual’s name, their year of birth (here German Jahrgang, abbreviated <JG.> or French né(e) ‘born’), and a short reference to elements of the individual’s fate, such as German deportiert ‘deported’ and ermordet ‘murdered’ or French assassiné(e). The uniformity of form across all Stolpersteine is contrasted with the individuality of content: each Stolperstein refers to one individual, and by its emplacement indexes both person and place.

Language is a significant feature of the Stolpersteine project. The policy that ‘inscriptions are in the language of the country in which they are being placed’ (Steps [2018]: 6) allows for a diversity of languages across the series as a whole. It does not appear, however, to cater for non-state languages such as Yiddish which may have been the mother tongue of individuals, nor afford any place to Hebrew. The inscriptions in Figure 1.14 thus illustrate a complex interaction in which language is put in place to create a site of memory that can be read locally, but which refers to people and events on a far wider scale. The nature of the project draws attention to three other questions for the LL: (1) the use of language that is addressed to viewers of sites of historical memory; (2) the use of language to give voice to those who are commemorated in such sites; and (3) the question of how – and if – languages themselves become the subject of historical memory.