Drive-thru linguistic landscaping: Constructing a linguistically dominant place in a bilingual space

Abstract

Despite the rich societal multilingualism of the United States, the ideological construction of English dominance continues to cast a shadow over other languages. Among the mechanisms that contribute to this state of affairs (e.g. educational policy and conservative language activism), visual language use in public spaces plays a salient role. A growing body of linguistic landscape research highlights the centrality of visual environments in the discursive construction of multilingual settings. Drawing upon nexus analysis together with principles of geosemiotics, the present study explores the discursive processes through which a particular image of San Antonio’s linguistic sense of place, one of English dominance despite its demographic bilingualism, is constructed. Visual data were collected on San Antonio’s highway system, an extensive network that traverses the city and is lined with billboard signs and commercial establishments. Data analysis shows that a confluence of (trans)national, cultural and economic discourses mediates language choices on signs. English is normalized as an unmarked language for all aspects of the linguistic landscape, reproducing national language ideologies about the status of English in the United States. Spanish, in turn, is associated with transnational migration as well as limited community and family domains.

Keywords

Discourse analysis English linguistic landscape Spanish societal bilingualism visual semiotics

Introduction

Despite the rich societal multilingualism of the United States, the ideological construction of English dominance continues to cast a shadow over other languages (González & Melis, 2001; Valdés, 1997; Wiley, 2000). Among the mechanisms that contribute to this state of affairs (e.g. educational policy and conservative language activism), visual language use in public spaces plays a salient role. A growing body of linguistic landscape (LL) research (e.g. Shohamy & Gorter, 2009; Shohamy, Ben-Rafael, & Barni, 2010) highlights the centrality of visual environments in the discursive construction of multilingual settings. The presence or absence of certain languages suggests their relative symbolic values (Shohamy, 2006, p. 110) and contributes to shaping a city’s sense of place (Jaworski & Yeung, 2010, p. 153).

In the present study, I explore the symbolic construction of contemporary San Antonio, an ostensibly bilingual metropolis in South Texas. Specifically, I focus on the LL of San Antonio’s highway system, an extensive network that traverses the city and is lined with billboard signs and commercial establishments. Using nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) together with principles of geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003), I consider the discursive processes operating to shape San Antonio’s English-dominant sense of place amidst its demographic bilingualism. I begin with a brief background of bilingualism in South Texas in order to situate the city in its historical and sociolinguistic context. Next, I turn to a discussion of the theory and method that serves as the foundation for the study. I then present a two-fold analysis of (a) the distribution of languages in the overall LL and (b) a detailed semiotic analysis of individual signs that use Spanish. In the spirit of a nexus analytic approach to investigating LLs (Hult, 2009; Pietikainen, Lane, Salo, & Laihiala-Kankainen, 2011), both dimensions of analysis include attention to discourse cycles that mediate language use on signs.

Bilingualism in South Texas

The space currently known as the State of Texas, particularly its southern region, has a long history of multilingualism as well as shifting ethnolinguistic identification. Originally home to Indigenous communities, the region has been ideologically transformed several times, from Spanish colony to Mexican state and from independent polity to member of the United States. Each of these transformations has left a linguistic trace that continues to reverberate through current linguistic practices.

Since antiquity, the South Texas region has been home to numerous Indigenous communities and their languages. Sociolinguistic circumstances began to change following Spanish colonization of the region during the late-16th century, beginning a period of the gradual erosion of Indigenous languages and cultural practices as the Spanish language and European social structures became increasingly dominant through social, religious and educational initiatives (Menchaca, 1999, pp. 10–11). Still, Spanish and Indigenous languages co-existed in the area, including San Antonio, which was founded in 1731 with the establishment of the presidio, Villa de San Fernando, and the Mission San Antonio de Valero that is now widely known as The Alamo (Garcia, 1996, p. 344). Spanish, however, continued to gain ground. Following a 1793 royal decree, for instance, the Spanish language became the de jure medium of instruction in Texas schools (Menchaca, 1999, p. 12)

The momentum for Spanish continued after the end of Spanish colonial rule with the establishment of an independent Mexican state in 1821 under the Acta de Independencia del Imperio Mexicano. Spanish gradually emerged as a language of national identity (for a detailed discussion see Heath, 1972). Around this same time, though, a growing number of English speakers began migrating to the San Antonio area. In 1836, Texas seceded from Mexico, ushering in a period of tense relations between English and Spanish speakers (Garcia, 1996, pp. 344–345). The Texas legislature, for example, suspended printing laws for Spanish in 1841; meanwhile three years later approving a charter for a German-medium university¹ (San Miguel, 1999, p. 6). The United States annexed Texas in 1845, and the dominance of English continued to grow. Although there was superficial recognition of the unique position of Mexican Spanish speakers, the mid- to late-19th century was also a period of racialization and subjugation in which Mexicans were positioned as non-white and the Spanish language was highly restricted in schools, economic activities and public affairs (Garcia, 1996, p. 345; Menchaca, 1999, p. 19; San Miguel, 1999, p. 7). Negative attitudes towards Spanish were fostered in an effort to curtail its use, particularly under the guise of US nationalism (Garcia, 1996, p. 345). An 1870 school law, for instance, made English the medium of instruction (San Miguel, 1999, p. 7). Nonetheless, many Texans of Mexican decent resisted by continuing to use Spanish and to practice biculturalism (San Miguel, 1999, p. 7).

Immigration from Mexico to Texas expanded from the turn of the century onward (San Miguel, 1999, p. 17). Indeed, the majority of newcomers to San Antonio during this time came from Mexico, with the city’s ethnic Mexican population increasing from 13,722 in 1900 to 59,970 in 1920 and to 82,373 (35.7% of the city’s population) by 1930, settling largely on the city’s West side² (Garcia, 1996, p. 344). Restrictions and negative attitudes towards the Spanish language also continued, even among Mexicans themselves. An influential organization known as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), with a mission to promote a new Mexican-American middle class, was started in San Antonio in 1929 (Garcia, 1991, pp. 253–254; San Miguel, 1987, p. 68). LULAC privileged English over Spanish, writing in their constitution that the English language is ‘necessary for the enjoyment of our rights and privileges…and we pledge ourselves to learn and speak and teach the same to our children’ (LULAC Constitution, cited in Garcia, 1991, p. 269). Likewise, Catholic schools on San Antonio’s West side were English-medium and encouraged the maintenance of Mexican culture through the English language (Garcia, 1991, p. 161).

Mexican families during the 1930s, which were multigenerational and included older immigrants from Mexico as well as their US-born children, struggled as they sought to maintain their language and culture while also acculturating to the new norms and practices of an Anglo-dominant society that did not fully accept them (Garcia, 1991, p. 51). English gradually came to be associated with Americanization, economic prospects and middle class aspirations, whereas Spanish tended to be associated with the working class, family domains and certain Mexican cultural activities (Garcia, 1991, p. 49, 66, 85, 146). A generally restrictive climate for bilingualism in the United States (Baker & Jones, 1998, p. 546) did not help the status of Spanish in Texas, either. Even as late as the 1960s, the use of Spanish was prohibited in Texas public schools, with some students even being punished physically for using it (Garcia, 1996, p. 345). Spanish is no longer prohibited in Texas schools, which now offer bilingual education.³

Ostensibly, societal bilingualism appears strong in Texas and, in particular, San Antonio. Statewide, as shown in the 2005 American Community Survey, 29% of Texans are Spanish speakers and 66% are English speakers. In San Antonio, according to the 2000 census,⁴ 44% of the population is Spanish speaking, and 53% is English speaking.⁵ Nonetheless, the Anglo legacy that took hold in Texas beginning in the late-19th century continues, bolstered by wider national language ideologies of aspiring monolingualism (e.g. González & Melis, 2001). Accordingly, tensions between English and Spanish remain.

Studying the construction of a linguistically dominant place in a bilingual space

Geographical spaces become places through discursive transformation. As Blommaert remarks, ‘spaces can be filled with all kinds of social, cultural, epistemic, and affective attributes. It then becomes “place,” a particular space on which senses of belonging, property rights and authority can be projected’ (2005, p. 222). Visual language use in public settings is a central mechanism through which spaces are shaped into places, as semiotic resources are deployed iteratively in a visible manner that contributes to constructing particular social realities (Jaworski & Yeung, 2010; Stroud & Mpendukana, 2009). As the brief sociolinguistic history presented in the previous section suggests, San Antonio is a space that has been (re)shaped several times over successive generations, giving rise to different ‘senses of place’ (Jaworski & Yeung, 2010, p. 153). The present study draws upon LL analysis (e.g. Gorter, 2006; Shohamy & Gorter, 2009; Shohamy et al., 2010) in concert with nexus analysis (Hult, 2009; Scollon & Scollon, 2004) in order to examine how a contemporary sense of place is symbolically constructed in one of the most prominent domains in the city—the local highway system.

Linguistic landscaping spaces into places

LL analysis has emerged as a collection of approaches to understanding how the material world is symbolically constructed through visual language use (Ben-Rafael, Shohamy, Amara, & Trumper-Hecht, 2006, p. 8). It is not a unified methodology with an established orthodoxy. LL analysts variously employ quantitative and qualitative techniques and are guided by a broad range of theoretical underpinnings (see Shohamy & Gorter, 2009; Shohamy et al., 2010, for exemplar studies). A common objective, however, is to investigate relationships among different languages in specific spaces, with an emphasis on how the physical manifestation of multilingualism serves to ideologically position different languages as elements of place (e.g. Leeman & Modan, 2009; Stroud & Mpendukana, 2009). For instance, with respect to ‘senses of belonging’ and ‘authority’, echoing Blommaert (2005) above, linguistic dominance can be seen explicitly on LLs. The relative presence or absence indexes ‘symbolic messages about the importance, power, significance, and relevance of certain languages or the irrelevance of others’ (Shohamy, 2006, p. 110; cf. Backhaus, 2007, p. 55; Lanza & Woldemariam, 2009).

LLs do not emerge ex nihilo. They are products of agentive ‘LL-actors who concretely participate in the shaping of LL by ordering from others or building themselves LL elements according to preferential tendencies, deliberate choices or policies’ (Ben-Rafael et al., 2006, p. 27). LLs, then, are the products of social actions which, in turn are mediated by a confluence of discourses that may include historically situated local and national language ideologies, beliefs about the individuals intended to view public signage, and (dominant) expectations about language functions (Hult, 2009, p. 92; Scollon & Scollon, 2004, p. 19–20).

A LL thus symbolically constructed as a place is not merely passive scenery; it projects a set of indexicalities, specific discursive frames of meaning, within which to interpret acts of communication as well as relationships between individuals and the material world (Blommaert, 2005, p. 11; Curtin, 2009; Dong & Blommaert, 2009, p. 4; Jaworski & Yeung, 2010, p. 155). As such, the LL has practical consequences because discourses about languages and their speakers are made concrete and observable. For those who inhabit a particular place, these discourses become an inescapable part of everyday life and, even if only tacitly, shape one’s social and ethnolinguistic identity (Dong & Blommaert, 2009; Silverstein, 2003; Trumper-Hecht, 2010). For LL analysts, in turn, systematic investigation and deconstruction of public language use facilitates an understanding of the discursive nature of place and, in particular, how signage contributes to shaping a particular vision of social reality (Ben-Rafael et al., 2006, p. 8; Curtin, 2009, pp. 223–226; Jaworski & Yeung, 2010, p. 156).

Setting

The City of San Antonio, according to the 2010 census, is home to about 1.3 million people, making it the seventh largest city in the United States. It can be characterized as an ‘automobile culture’. A recent survey ranked San Antonio 40th in walkability among US cities, classifying it as ‘car dependent’ based on factors such as road density, distances between amenities and the length of city blocks (Walk Score, 2011, 2012). The city also has a low population density, with residential and commercial areas spread over 400 square miles, extending well beyond the city centre such that most residents commute to work by car and, to a lesser degree, by bus (Public Financial Management, 2011). The major arteries on which this traffic, commuter or otherwise, travels is a network of highways that frame and bisect the city.

San Antonio proper is framed by the 410 highway loop, while the larger 1604 loop encircles the greater metropolitan area. The downtown district is roughly at the centre of this concentric arrangement, and a series of radial highways, in turn, flow into the city’s quadrants. These are rich semiotic environments that include commercial billboards, official road signs and other unofficial signage. Considering the crucial function that the highways play in the daily traversals of the city by its inhabitants, visual language use here is especially salient to the symbolic construction of place, much like the pedestrian centres that are frequent foci for LL research (e.g. Bogatto & Hélot, 2010; Bruyèl-Olmedo & Juan-Garau, 2009; Huebner, 2006).

Data collection

Urban environments are diverse settings composed of a multiplicity of sub-populations and neighbourhoods representing a diversity of linguistic, social, economic and/or ethnic backgrounds. The scope and scale of metropolitan areas, like San Antonio, make comprehensive coverage difficult, if not impossible, in a single study (Bogatto & Hélot, 2010). LL analysts tend to purposefully select focal geographical areas within a city that provide useful insight into the symbolic construction of place in a particular metropolis (Backhaus, 2007, p. 61; Blackwood, 2011, p. 114–115; Pavlenko, 2009, p. 253).

In this vein, the present study examines San Antonio proper, what local residents often refer to as ‘inside the loop’. That is to say, the space that is framed by the 410 loop, which accordingly served as a geographic boundary marker for the present study. This area is composed of neighbourhoods with different ethnolinguistic make ups. Data were collected along the radial highways that pass through these neighbourhoods (i.e. Route 281, Interstate 10, Interstate 37, Interstate 35 and Highway 90) in order to allow for juxtaposition between geolinguisitic demography and visual language use (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Data collection area.

Most LL studies have been conducted on foot while using still photography, paying attention to pedestrian settings such as city centres, train stations, and tourist sites (see Shohamy et al., 2010). The vehicular nature of the highway system in San Antonio foregrounded fast motion through discursive space, necessitating the use of video to capture a comprehensive record of visual language use. From a purely practical standpoint, it was impossible to take accurate still photography while moving through a LL at about 65 mph (approximately 105 kph).⁶ Working with an assistant who operated the motor vehicle, I used a Sony DCR-DVD850 video camera to record all signage⁷ in both directions on the aforementioned highways.

Data analysis

In keeping with common practice in LL analysis (e.g. Backhaus, 2007, p. 61; Ben Rafael et al., 2006, pp. 10–11), data were first analysed quantitatively in order to determine the distribution of different languages on signs. For the present study, the focus is on unofficial signs, which include billboards and building signs, since advertising and commercial signage play central roles in symbolically shaping the scene⁸ of a metropolitan area (Agnihotri & McCormick, 2010, p. 57; Leeman & Modan, 2009, pp. 333–334; Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 187). The numerical distribution of languages alone does not tell the whole story, however (Jaworski & Yeung, 2010; Spolsky, 2009). Accordingly, data were further analysed using nexus analysis (Hult, 2009; Scollon & Scollon, 2004) informed by specific principles of geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003; cf. Agnihotri & McCormick, 2010; Jaworski & Yeung, 2010; Lou, 2010).

As I have argued elsewhere (Hult, 2009), LL analysis is enriched by the tripartite focus of nexus analysis on the interaction order, discourses in place and historical body. These three elements are cycles of discourse that intersect in order to mediate a social action, that is to say a socially situated act such as creating or displaying a sign on a LL (Ben-Rafael et al., 2006, p. 27; Hult, 2009, p. 92; Scollon & Scollon, 2004, pp. 19–20). The interaction order encompasses social norms and expectations about language use in relation to, inter alia, context, the type and nature of signage and intended viewers; discourses in place are the circulating beliefs about languages and their users that shape language choices on signs; and the historical body represents the habituated practices, values and goals of individuals who view or produce signs (Hult, 2009, pp. 92–95; Pietikainen et al., 2011, p. 280–282; Scollon & Scollon, 2004, pp. 12–14).

The hallmark of nexus analysis is attention to multiple scales of social organization and how those scales relate to each other (Scollon & Scollon, 2004, p. 9). With respect to LL analysis, the focus can be on the large scale of a LL as a whole (e.g. what the interaction order of the overall distribution of languages indicates about the discourses in place related to multilingualism) or on the small scale of individual signs and the discourse cycles that mediate semiotic choices on them (Pietikainen et al., 2011, p. 280). Principles of geosemiotics, ‘the study of the social meaning of the material placement of signs in the world’ (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 110), are useful for this latter nexus analysis of individual signs.

Integrating advances in visual semiotics by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) with earlier work by Erving Goffman on the interaction order, Scollon and Scollon (2003) proffer trends in Western contexts for the placement of visual elements (text and images) on signs: given information tends to be oriented towards the left while new information is generally oriented towards the right, and ideal representations usually appear in the upper portion of a sign, whereas real or concrete representations often appear in the lower portion (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 92). Secondly, choices made about the location of different languages suggest discourses in place about them: dominant or preferred languages are often placed in top, left or centre positions, whereas subordinate languages commonly appear towards the bottom, the right or on the margins of a sign (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 120). Thirdly, visual semiotics can provide clues about the historical bodies of sign producers. It is often difficult to obtain data about the beliefs and intentionality of the individuals who created the signs that comprise a particular LL (Hult, 2009, p. 94). Signs, however, are designed in a dialogical manner to project a message that, in turn, is meant to be interpreted by a viewer (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, p. 13). Semiotic analysis of a LL sign, then, provides a window into who sign makers consider their audience to be and what they believe about them. The ‘represented participants’ in the sign itself can be ascertained from the images used and clues about the intended ‘receptive participants’ of the sign can be determined based on vector analysis of the movement or eye gaze depicted, as well as the message content (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, pp. 87–88, pp. 95–96).

Every sign is a nexus point for discourses about multilingualism, and, as a whole, the assemblage of signs forms a ‘semiotic aggregate’ (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 167) that comprises the overall LL (Ben-Rafael et al., 2006, p. 8) and collectively contributes to creating a sense of place. Nexus analysis, thus, facilitates tracing the discursive processes through which spaces are made into places. In the next section, I turn to how this takes shape on the San Antonio highways.

Roadside bilingualism and linguistic dominance

A distinct sense of place emerges on the LL of San Antonio’s highways. Despite its history and current demography, it appears to be a bilingual city with an English-dominant image. A large-scale analysis of the distribution of languages, which I present first, shows the strong presence of English. Spanish is not absent from this public space; however, as the data show, its use tends to be concentrated near specific neighbourhoods. Moreover, closer examination of signage using Spanish, which I present second, brings to light discourses that project limited niches for the language and its users.

Distribution of bilingualism

The relative presence of English with respect to Spanish is striking. As Table 1 shows,⁹ the proportion of monolingual English signs (92.8%) is considerably greater than even the combined proportion of Spanish and English/Spanish bilingual signs (7.2%). As such, it is readily apparent that the LL serves to symbolically construct this bilingual space as an English-dominant place.

Table 1.

Bottom-up signs on San Antonio highways by language.

Location		English	Spanish	English/Spanish
Northeast	281 Northbound	58	2	0
	281 Southbound	61	0	1
Northwest	10 Eastbound	25	1	3
	10 Westbound	65	1	1
South	37 Northbound	25	0	0
	37 Southbound	29	1	1
	35 Northbound	48	4	4
	35 Southbound	49	0	2
East	10 Eastbound	56	5	2
	10 Westbound	122	3	3
West	90 Eastbound	35	5	4
	90 Westbound	45	4	1
Total (N = 666 signs)		618 (92.8%)	26 (3.9%)	22 (3.3%)

Indeed, considering the societal bilingualism of San Antonio, the distribution shown in Table 1 suggests that a discourse in place other than demographically based instrumental communication is intertwined with the interaction order of code choice on signage (cf. Spolsky, 2009, p. 35).

As discussed earlier in the brief sketch of bilingualism in South Texas, a transformation towards the ideological dominance of English took hold in the mid-19th century and gradually increased through the 20th century even while many families and communities maintained Spanish (Menchaca, 1999; San Miguel, 1999). English also came to be locally indexed with Americanization during that time (Garcia, 1991). This, in turn, should be understood in conjunction with the wider circulating discourses of English as the national language of the United States and the concomitant suspicion about other languages, particularly Spanish (e.g. González & Melis, 2001; Valdés, 1997; Wiley, 2000). These nationally circulating discourses have themselves cycled back into local and regional areas, including South Texas (Achugar & Oteíza, 2009). The exceptionally high proportion of English along the San Antonio highways (re)produces the discourse in place about the dominance of English in the United States, resemiotized (Scollon & Scollon, 2004, pp. 101–103) here on a local scale through the normalization of English as the primary language for this urban space.

Juxtaposing the distribution of English, as shown in Table 1, with local demographic information, as shown in Table 2, further illustrates the symbolic function of English in the ideological construction of a linguistic sense of place.

Table 2.

Number of speakers in neighbourhoods by zip code. Source: Census 2000 via MLA Language Map (http://www.mla.org/map_data).

Location	Zip codes	English speakers	Spanish speakers
Northeast	78212	14,365	14,556
	78209	29,482	7428
Northwest	78201	14,356	28,193
	78207	9275	41,937
	78212	14,365	14,556
	78213	20,568	15,014
Southeast	78210	12,044	21,475
	78223	20,491	18,695
	78235	546	108
Southwest	78211	6046	22,057
	78221	12,269	20,946
	78224	3914	8862
	78225	3102	9377
East	78210	12,044	21,475
	78219	8963	3572
	78220	11,918	3279
West	78225	3102	9377
	78226	3290	4878
	78227	22,537	19,650
	78236	900	171
	78237	6040	27,014

Table 2 presents the population of Spanish speakers and English speakers in the specific postal zip codes¹⁰ that the highways traverse in different parts of the city.¹¹ The bolded portions highlight the largest population in each zip code. For the most part, Spanish speakers outnumber English speakers, in some cases considerably so. This stands in sharp contrast to Table 1, which indicates that English is, by far, the dominant language throughout all locations in the LL. While Spanish is a substantial part of the city’s linguistic repertoire, it is English that is projected on the LL as a language for ‘everywhere expressibility’ (Silverstein, 2003, p. 535).

Although Spanish is not widely seen on the LL, its concentration in certain locations is noteworthy. Spanish is more prevalent in those parts of the city historically framed as Latino, particularly the South and West sides (Garcia, 1996, pp. 344–347; Jones, 1983, p. 48). As shown in Table 1, Spanish appears (either monolingually or bilingually) on 12 signs on the South side and 14 signs on the West side.¹² This geographical concentration (re)produces a discourse in place of local territorial bilingualism (Sridhar, 1996, p. 48). English transcends communities as an unmarked language for the city as a whole. Spanish, even though its speakers are found throughout the city as shown in Table 2, is mainly indexed on the LL with a limited set of localities constructed as ethnolinguistic neighbourhoods.

Nonetheless, the presence of Spanish in visual language use contributes to the discursive production of San Antonio as a bilingual city. In the next section, I zoom in to signs that include Spanish in order to explore how they position the language and its speakers with respect to San Antonio’s sense of place.

Functions of Spanish

In all, Spanish appears (monolingually or bilingually) on about seven per cent of signage, totalling 48 signs. An examination of the content of these signs (cf. Leung & Wu, 2012; Sayer, 2009) brings to light what Spanish contributes to the symbolic construction of a sense of place on the LL.

Table 3 provides an overview of the content of signs containing Spanish. The most frequent use of Spanish is proper nouns, often for restaurants. Scollon and Scollon (2003, p. 119) note that the function of a language on a particular sign may be as an index that locates an establishment as part of a particular community or as a symbol of what product or service a business offers. The use of Spanish on a Mexican restaurant, for instance, may suggest a more symbolic than indexical function, whereby Spanish serves to facilitate the commodification of Mexican ethnicity—Spanish as a symbol of purveying Mexican ethnic food—rather than reflecting community-based needs for instrumental communication (cf. Hult, 2009; Leeman & Modan, 2009). Considering the sociohistorical context of San Antonio, though, both symbolic and indexical functions are likely in play.

Table 3.

Sign content.

Content	Spanish signs	Spanish/English bilingual signs
Public safety	4	3
Name (proper noun)	8	10
Telecommunications	3	1
Food	2	1
Alcohol	6	3
Money/Finance	0	2
Auto sales	1	1
Informational	2	1
Total	26	22

Excluding proper nouns (cf. Edelman, 2009), there remain 30 signs that contain Spanish, many of which are advertisement billboards that reflect an indexical function for Spanish. As Agnihotri and McCormick explain:

Although all utterances are shaped, in part, by the speaker’s concept of who the audience is, signage, whether primarily informational or persuasive, inevitably needs to embody explicit or implicit sensitivity not only to the (assumed) linguistic competence of its target viewers, but also to their preferences and to the associations that particular languages or language varieties have among people in the area where the sign is displayed. (2010, p. 78)

A closer look at individual signs through the bifocal lens of nexus analysis and geosemiotics illustrates how Spanish used on signage shapes and is shaped by discourses about San Antonio’s sense of place.

After proper nouns, the next most common sign content using Spanish was alcohol advertisement, generally for beer. Figure 2 shows a billboard advertisement for Tecate beer near downtown San Antonio on I-10.

Figure 2.

Beer advertisement.

In her study of Carlsberg beer marketing in Ireland, Kelly-Holmes (2010) shows that large-scale discourses about the sociopolitics of language reverberate in a seemingly innocuous advertisement. Interpreting Figure 2 in geosemiotic context, similar sociopolitical discourses are apparent in this billboard as well. Leaving aside the proper noun Tecate, Spanish appears in two locations on this sign. Spatially, it seems to occupy positions that reflect being both a preferred and a marginalized code (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 120): on top (preferred) but on the left (marginalized); near the centre (preferred) but on the bottom (marginalized).

Information about Tecate’s marketing strategy offers a glimpse into the historical body discourses of those who developed this sign. The con carácter tagline is part of a campaign that was designed to index this imported beer with Mexico in order to appeal to recent immigrants in the United States (Wentz, 2009). As such, Spanish is the preferred code of Tecate beer (viz. its branding team). This is apparent visually through the salient placement of the tagline superimposed on the case of beer. The word ‘carácter’, in a clear intertextual reference to the tagline, appears again in the copy text through intra-sentential code-switching (Poplack, 1980). Echoing the English-dominant interaction order for signage shown in Table 1, English is the matrix language (Myers-Scotton, 1993) of this utterance. The Spanish preposition ‘con’ from the tagline is replaced by the English ‘with’, even though retaining it would not violate the code-switching equivalence constraint.

On this billboard, then, we begin to see some reflections of how Spanish and its users relate to San Antonio’s sense of place as constructed on the LL. It is a place for recent Mexican immigrants, Tecate’s target demographic. It is also a place for the symbolic marginalization of Spanish where, harkening back to a discourse in place that became prevalent in the 1930s (Garcia, 1991), Mexican culture can be experienced in English (cf. Pennycook, 2007, p. 112).

The billboard shown in Figure 3 projects onto the LL additional dimensions of San Antonio’s Spanish-speaking sense of place. In contrast to Figure 2, this sign from the South side is Spanish-dominant.

Figure 3.

Transnational finance.

Reading the sign dialogically (Agnihotri & McCormick, 2010), a particular receptive participant (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 95) can be inferred. The message, ‘Send money to Mexico quickly. Up to $1000 for $9.99’, positioned in the upper left quadrant, targets a viewer whose code preference is Spanish and whose ideal is to transfer funds to Mexico (cf. Scollon & Scollon, 2003, pp. 92, 120). The represented participants are a Latino woman and child whose eye gaze vector relates them to the receptive participant (cf. Scollon & Scollon, 2003, pp. 86–87). The close image cropping showing only their heads and faces, moreover, positions them at an intimate social distance (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, p. 125). English appears on the sign only as proper nouns in the logos for the services through which the ideal is realized. The call to action directed at the receptive participant is presented in Spanish (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, p. 123).

This advertisement represents on the LL a community population that is translocal, situated in the city but with economic and familial ties elsewhere (Blommaert, 2010, p. 9). It contributes to constructing San Antonio as a place for Spanish-dominant or -monolingual transnationals who are there to work and send money home to their families. In this way, the sign also (re)produces the historically situated discourse in place of Spanish as associated with the working class (Garcia, 1991).

Figure 4 presents yet another dimension of Spanish and its users. Like Figure 3, it is also Spanish-dominant, although the receptive participant is different. This sign from the West side, which might be characterized as semi-official since it was produced by the Texas Department of Transportation, is part of a ‘transmedia’ campaign (Lemke, 2009, p. 292) communicating information across modalities ‘to help Texas families learn to secure their children in the appropriate child safety seat’ (TxDOT, 2011, para. 4). The represented participant here is a child whose eye gaze vector relates her to a receptive participant who is looking backwards in a rearview mirror while driving. The child looks directly at sign viewers, inviting them to position themselves in an imaginary relationship as caregiver (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, pp. 117–118).

Figure 4.

Safety.

Tracing the campaign online¹³ reveals that the billboard pictured in Figure 4 is a Spanish translation of an English sign, which reads ‘Buckle’ em up. Buckle’ em up right. (3 out of 4 children aren’t)’. The choice to translate an originally English sign into Spanish provides insight into the historical body discourses of the producers. It suggests their belief that receptive participants on the West side would include adults in ‘Texas families’ who are either Spanish-dominant or -monolingual and, as such, are reached most effectively through Spanish. Indeed, although not clearly visible on the image provided here, even the TxDOT campaign logo and slogan used in the centre-left position to invoke state authority (Scollon, 2008, pp. 4–5) has been translated into Spanish: Salve una Vida DEPARTAMENTO DE TRANSPORTES DE TEXAS.¹⁴ English is marginalized, appearing only in the lower-right position to offer the URL for the campaign website.

The content of the sign, child safety and, by extension, caregiver responsibility, anchors it firmly in the family domain. Its location on the West side coupled with the use of Spanish for instrumental communication, in turn, targets a Spanish-speaking audience thereby indexing the local Latino community, contributing to a sense of place where Spanish speakers are local and have family ties to San Antonio. Thus, it (re)produces the historically situated discourse in place that aligns Spanish with family and community domains (Garcia, 1991).

Discussion and conclusion

As heterogeneous spaces, cities are confluences of national, cultural and economic discourses (Jaworski & Yeung, 2010, p. 156). LLs are mosaics of these discourses, in their entirety suggesting symbolic cohesion yet in part revealing multiple discursive trajectories. By examining the LL of the San Antonio highways as a whole (the overall distribution of language on signage) as well as in part (the geosemiotics of individual signs), this study brings to light how some of the discourse cycles operate in the construction of the city’s sense of place.

As the overall distribution of signage shows (Table 1), an interaction order (Hult, 2009, pp. 93–94; Scollon & Scollon, 2004, pp. 13–14) that favours the use of English is present and (re)produced on the LL. Considering the city’s sizable population of both English and Spanish speakers as well as its historical and present transnational connections to Mexico, one might have expected to see greater Spanish language prevalence. Interpreted against the backdrop of discourses in place (Hult, 2009, pp. 93–94; Scollon & Scollon, 2004, p. 14) about the role of English in the United States, the LL can be seen as a site that reinforces English-dominant language ideologies by fostering a visual sense of place that is predominantly English-speaking albeit with a Spanish ‘flavour’. The sharp contrast between the marginal presence of Spanish with the large population of Spanish users shown in census data (Table 2) is a good reminder that LLs are ultimately about the symbolic construction of place and far from an accurate representation of a community’s actual linguistic repertoire (Ben-Rafael et al., 2006, pp. 9–10; Shohamy, 2006, p. 110).

Zooming in to consider individual signs provides further depth into how Spanish, when it is used, contributes to San Antonio’s sense of place as projected on the LL. Like the heterogeneity of the cities in which they are situated, LLs themselves reflect a diversity of perspectives (Ben-Rafael et al., 2006, p. 8). The focal signs examined here (Figures 2 –4) show the semiotic nuances of Spanish. We see an idealized projection of San Antonio’s diverse Spanish users as part of the city’s sense of place: English-dominant individuals who identify with Mexican(-American) culture, Spanish-dominant transnationals and Spanish-dominant local community members. The discourses mediating the focal signs, moreover, circulate iteratively on other signs that employ Spanish (Table 3). The tension between joint symbolic/indexical (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 119) functions of Spanish are reflected on other signs for Mexican ethnic foods. Transnationalism reverberates on billboards for money/finance as well as telecommunications, and the translocal (Blommaert, 2010, p. 9) mobility of Spanish speakers is further suggested on informational signs, which often read se habla español on buildings that house hotels, churches, medical practices and law offices.

Analysis limited to the overall distribution of languages would have revealed only a general sense of the symbolic dominance of English and the comparative marginalization of Spanish. Using nexus analysis to follow discourse cycles from the LL as a whole to its constituent parts brings to light the fractal recursivity (Hult, 2010, p. 15; Irvine & Gal, 2000, p. 38; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008, pp. 122–123) of discourses. For example, large-scale (i.e. national) discourses about English-dominant language ideologies permeate the overall LL, and these same discourses cycle through individual signs (e.g. Figure 2). We can also visualize contemporary iterations of historically situated discourses about the relationship between Mexican(-American) culture and the English language or Spanish and social class (e.g. Figures 2 and 3) as well as the alignment of Spanish with local communities and families (e.g. Figure 4).

In all, the present study offers a multi-layered analysis (Blommaert, 2007; Hult, 2009, 2010) of the LL of San Antonio’s highways. Nexus analysis coupled with distributional LL analysis and geosemiotics facilitates an examination of the discursive processes through which a sense of place is created. The highway system, while especially salient because of its vital function and integration throughout the city, is not the only setting of symbolic significance. It would be useful to compare the findings of this study with future research about public language use in other key locations. The geographical concentration of Spanish found here would suggest the benefit of further investigation into the LLs of specific San Antonio neighbourhoods to consider how localized senses of place are situated with respect to the city as a whole. Notably absent from the highway LL are languages other than Spanish and English. With speakers of at least 28 other languages having been recorded in census data, there would also be value in an exploratory study of where these languages might appear and how these other language communities are (or are not) visually situated as part of the city’s sense of place. Considering its rich history and contemporary diversity, there is much still to explore about the societal multilingualism of San Antonio.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Shannon Sauro for her assistance and careful driving during data collection.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biography

Francis M. Hult is an associate professor at the Lund University Centre for Languages and Literature. His recent books include the Handbook of Educational Linguistics (with Bernard Spolsky, 2008, Wiley-Blackwell), Directions and Prospects for Educational Linguistics (2010, Springer), and Educational Linguistics in Practice (with Kendall A. King, 2011, Multilingual Matters).

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