‘Waiting for my red envelope’: discourses of sameness in the linguistic landscape of a marriage equality demonstration in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

At the end of 2016, Taiwan witnessed a string of massive protest demonstrations held by both ends of the ideological debate on marriage equality. These public demonstrations can be seen as linguistic landscapes where the mass employment of signs, banners, flags, and other genres of protest signs discursively construct a highly visible socio-political space for public conversation around marriage equality. This study looks specifically at the protest signs from the 10 December pro-marriage equality demonstration in Taipei and applies critical discourse analysis to examine what identities and ideological positions are represented in the linguistic landscape. I argue that the protest signs construct a linguistic landscape that strongly emphasizes sameness with heterosexuals as a key characteristic of LGBTQ individuals, thereby depicting equality as taking part in the social practices and gender roles of heterosexual relationships and excluding a cross-section of the LGBTQ community who do not support the assimilationist ideology underlying marriage equality.

KEYWORDS:

• Taiwan
• linguistic landscape
• protest
• LGBTQ
• same-sex marriage
• sameness
• critical discourse analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Eric K. Ku is currently a graduate student at National Taiwan Normal University working on his PhD and previously received his M.A. TESOL from San Francisco State University. He is also a lecturer at the University of Taipei. His main research interests are linguistic landscapes, language and identity, and narrative-based research.

ORCID

Eric K. Ku http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7477-0815