29.688, Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Rojo (2016)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-688. Mon Feb 12 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.688, Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Rojo (2016)

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Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 15:01:58
From: Sibo Chen [siboc at sfu.ca]
Subject: Occupy

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-2411.html

EDITOR: Luisa  Martín Rojo
TITLE: Occupy
SUBTITLE: The spatial dynamics of discourse in global protest movements
SERIES TITLE: Benjamins Current Topics 83
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Sibo Chen, Simon Fraser University

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY
 
Previously published as a special issue of Journal of Language and Politics
(Volume 13, Issue 4), Occupy: The spatial dynamics of discourse in global
protest movements explores the complex interplay between spatial and
communicative practices within recent global social movements. From the Arab
Spring to the Occupy Movement, the unprecedented wave of large-scale protests
has captured public attention across the globe. The growing momentum of these
protests invites us to re-conceptualize democracy and political practices in
contemporary politics. A distinctive feature of these protests is the
occupation of notable public spaces (e.g. Tahrir Square in Cairo and Zuccotti
Park in New York) by protesters, who have transformed these spaces from
centers of the capitalist system into influential counter-spaces.
 
Focusing on how oppositional discourses powerfully reconfigure the political
dynamics of physical spaces, this volume examines communicative practices
(e.g. signs, banners, and placards) within occupied urban spaces. A recurring
theoretical framework throughout the volume is Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) “social
production of space”. Lefebvre considers capitalism as an economic system
constantly demanding the transformation of public spaces into private,
commercial spaces. Yet, spaces are complex social constructions emerging from
social practices. It is possible to transform a capitalist space into a
counter-space by reclaiming its public character. In short, Lefebvre’s
perspective highlights the semiotic dimension of urban spaces and their vital
role in the reproduction of the capitalist system. Following Lefebvre’s
insight, the overarching proposition of the volume is that the production and
circulation of semiotic resources within recent global social movements have
effectively appropriated and transformed urban spaces for radical democratic
practices. These transformed spaces contribute to the formation of protester
identity and community and the direct democratic practices within them sow the
seed of future resistance.
 
The volume consists of seven chapters. Chapter One “Occupy” sets the volume’s
overarching theoretical and methodological frameworks. The chapter argues that
“signage in the square is not only an indicator of larger language ideological
and political processes, but a form of appropriation or reterritorialization
of core spaces in the city in order to reclaim an agora, a meeting point, a
place for discussion and decision-making, for increasing participation and
intervention in the governance of the community” (p. 7). In other words, the
fact that semiotic practices shape and are shaped by urban spaces calls for
the development of a communicative-spatial perspective in discourse research.
Following this theoretical insight, the chapter then reviews traditional and
new research tools for studying communicative-spatial practices, such as
multi-sited ethnography, virtual ethnography, and multimodal analysis. The
chapter proposes that the study of communicative-spatial practices should
involve both physical and virtual dimensions since both online and offline
communications influence the ways we perceive and interact with urban spaces.
 
The rest of the volume elaborates the complex dynamics underlying
communicative-spatial practices through six case studies. Chapter Two “The
Geosemiotics of Tahrir Square” focuses on Tahrir Square, the symbolic heart of
the 2011 Egyptian revolution. By explicating how Tahrir Square was turned into
a site with complex symbolic connotations, the chapter demonstrates its
multifaceted meanings for Egyptian protesters: it functioned as symbolic
space, central space, spiritual space, playful counter-space, “Arab” space,
and global-local space. Protest messages and Tahrir Square were reinforcing
each other’s symbolic power. While the protests, the protesters, and the
protest messages lent new meanings to Tahrir Square, the space’s symbolic
representations in news coverage and social media brought Egyptian people’s
voices and their historical and cultural knowledge to the world.
 
Chapter Three “Taking over the Square” analyzes the linguistic practices
during the Spanish Indignados movement. The chapter calls for a serious
academic treatment of the discursive and semiotic strategies employed by
protesters. Strategies such as customization and embodiment of signs,
dialogism, and polyphony were not only expressions of anger and frustration,
they were also communicative practices that “contribute to the
‘de-territorialization’ and ‘re-territorialization’ of urban space” (p. 49).
According to the chapter’s analysis, the production and circulation of
linguistic practices during the Spanish Indignados movement served two
purposes. First, they collectively problematized the established political
norms in Spain. Through occupation, protesters rejected the designed
institutional roles of significant sites and reclaimed them for promoting
people’s democracy. For instance, In Madrid the occupation took place in the
Puerta del Sol, a city symbol embedded with police brutality during the
Francoism era. Second, the occupied squares in turn created new room for
bottom-up political participation and public conversation. At the Puerta del
Sol, a “parallel city hall” emerged from protesters’ democratic discussions. 
 
Chapter Four “Mobilities of a Linguistic Landscape” explores the linguistic
landscape of the 2011 Occupy Movement in Los Angeles. The primary focus here
is the mobility of protest signs during the movement. Through tracking the
physical and virtual displays of two popular signs (“Class Warfare” and
“Monopoly Guy”), the chapter shows how their presence in multiple protests
facilitated democratic contestations. Accordingly, the linguistic landscape
built by the mobilization of such signs turned the LA city square into a
representational space for popular democracy. Both “Class Warfare” and
“Monopoly Guy” were further disseminated through social media, which
strengthened their symbolic power. To this end, the chapter emphasizes the
significance of mobilization in communicative-spatial practices.
 
Chapter Five “Identity as Space” analyzes the discursive and social practices
during the Greek Indignados movement. Echoing the themes discussed in Chapter
Three, this chapter analyzes the co-articulation of political identity and
public space. The occupation of Syntagma Square in front of Greek Parliament
not only connected the Greek protesters with the global wave of resistance,
but also generated a new context in Greek politics by introducing a radical
notion of political participation. A corpus analysis of the General Assembly
proceedings and resolutions further identifies new political genres produced
among Syntagma Square protesters.  
 
Chapter Six “the Occupy Assembly” discusses the mechanism of the General
Assembly during the Occupy movement, an experiment of direct participatory
democracy adopted by protesters for decision-making. Compared with previous
chapters, this chapter emphasizes the innovative nature of embodied semiotic
strategies during general assemblies. Strategies such as hand signals and the
human mic “facilitate a discursive praxis of egalitarianism within the context
of a speech exchange system suited to a large outdoor deliberative body” (p.
127). The bottom-up and autonomous emergence of these strategies presents a
sharp contrast to the traditional political system.
 
Finally, Chapter Seven “Spatial Practices and Narratives” turns to flexible
forms of political mobilization (e.g. flash mobs) and their implication for
the construction of new political spaces. Through studying the “GenkiDama for
education” by Chilean student activists, the chapter vividly demonstrates how
narratives inspired by Japanese manga “Dragon Ball Z” reframed the conflict
between the students and the government in Chile. Through an emotive
discursive polarization, “GenkiDama for education” effectively mobilized a
less politically defined community (manga fans) for political participation.
 
EVALUATION
 
By attending to the less studied spatial dimension of semiotic practices, this
volume presents an impressive attempt to capture the semiotic complexity
underlying recent global protest movements. It also offers many insightful
discussions on the complex interplay between discourse and space. Another
strength of the volume lies in its theoretical integrity: the various aspects
of Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) “social production of space” are well elaborated
throughout the chapters.
 
For readers without sufficient background in political science and critical
theory, some chapters in this book may be difficult to follow. Although to
some extent this issue has been alleviated by the comprehensive overview in
Chapter One, a brief appendix explaining key theories could still be  helpful,
especially for a volume targeting a broad range of readers. Meanwhile, the
volume could also benefit from the addition of a concluding chapter that
synthesizes the different theoretical threads in the case studies. Another
minor issue is the organization of some chapters. Chapter Three and Chapter
Five are thematically connected since both are based on the Indignados
movement across Europe. The same applies to Chapter Four and Chapter Six. It
seems that a reverse of Chapter Three and Four would make the volume’s
argumentative flow more coherent. 
 
Overall, the volume makes a valuable contribution to the field of discourse
analysis and it would undoubtedly serve as an ideal reference and inspiration
for researchers working on related topics.
 
REFERENCES
 
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sibo Chen is a PHD candidate and SSHRC Vanier Scholar in the School of
Communication, Simon Fraser University. His major research interests are
language and communication, critical discourse analysis, and genre theories.





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