Globalese: a new visual-linguistic register

Abstract

Several decades of media representation and cultural consumption have led to the creation of a collective geographical imagination of the world as a place. This paper argues that in contemporary semiotic landscapes a new, translingual, middle-brow register, called here globalese, has emerged and that it indexes spaces as “global.” It combines new letterforms, punctuation marks, diacritics, and tittles in ways that create novel, foreignized, visual-linguistic forms increasingly detached from their “original” ethno-national languages.

Keywords:

• semiotic landscapes
• globalization
• punctuation marks
• diacritics
• typography
• orthography

Acknowledgements

A great many colleagues and friends have contributed examples, comments, criticism, and references related to the themes discussed here. In particular, I thank Aaron Anfinson, Kelvin Au, Tom Bartlett, Katherine Chen, Melissa Curtin, Lise Fontaine, Chris Hutton, Michał Kunze, Carmen Lee, Lisa Lim, Luisa Martín Rojo, Barbara Mayor, Melissa Moyer, Gerard O’Grady, Miguel Pérez-Milans, Frances Rock, Philip Seargeant, Jürgen Spitzmüller, Crispin Thurlow, and Theo van Leeuwen. Special thanks to Frederick Blumberg, Melissa Curtin, Johan Järlehed, and Jeff Kallen for reading and commenting on earlier drafts. All caveats apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Adam Jaworski is Professor of Language and Communication at the School of English, University of Hong Kong. He has published widely on such topics as language and globalization, display of languages in space, media discourse, nonverbal communication, and text-based art. His most recent publications include The Discourse Reader, 3rd edition (Routledge, 2014, with Nik Coupland) and a special issue of the Journal of Sociolinguistics on Sociolinguistics and Tourism (2014, with Crispin Thurlow and Monica Heller). With Nik Coupland he edits the Oxford University Press book series, Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics.

Notes

1. The data used in this paper have been gathered over the last decade in the following locations: Aalborg, Amsterdam, Auckland, Barcelona, Bristol, Cardiff, Copenhagen, Dębki, Dresden, Dubai, Gdańsk, Göteborg, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Poznań, Sopot, Stackpole, Stäfa, Taipei, Valencia, Warsaw. All images are mine except: Figure 52. Courtesy of Jürgen Spitzmüller. Figure 53. Courtesy of Aaron Anfinson. Figure 58. Source: https://www.facebook.com/IxizFans/photos/pb.450263781724005.-2207520000.1418969191./450271375056579/?type=1&theater. Figure 69. Courtesy of Melissa Curtin.