N.D. Santsak (2023) Street names as a place and practice of identity performance and collective memory negotiation: A case study of the Linguistic Landscape of Gladstonos Street in Athens
Abstract
Τhis research aims to examine the Linguistic Landscape of Gladstonos Street in Athens, as it is
constructed after the murder of Zak Kostopoulos/ Zackie Oh. In particular, it focuses on street
names as practices of (counter) commemoration and (anti-)control, but also as practices of
identity performance. In order to explore the Linguistic Landscape, the analytical framework
of Geosemiotics has been followed. Both materialities and verbal signs and their
interpretation are examined based on our data, collected from October 2022 to February 2023
through observation of the linguistic landscape, which consists of photographs (a corpus of
330 photographs), field notes and semi-structured interviews with 9 people who study or
work, engage or not in activism, and have socio-spatial experiences from the center of Athens
due to their studies, work, residence or political action. The research has come up with some
conclusions about the importance of materialities in the process of constructing countermemories and performing identities, the role that laws and power play in the construction of
the formal Linguistic Landscape, the verbal choices used in the monuments, as well as the
perfomativity of memory through street names and the role of digitality in shaping and
retaining collective memory processes.
Keywords: Linguistic Landscape, Street names, Identities, Collective Memory, Gladstonos,
Zak
You can read the entire thesis here and/or watch the presentation by Ntefne Dafni Santsak and Roula Kitsiou (University of Thessaly) entitled “Mater/e/alities as discursive elements: A case study of the linguistic landscape of Gladstonos Street in Athens” at the conference DN29 Visiolinguistics: Panoramas of Languaging and Visuality (2023, online).
