ABSTRACT

This article describes the changing linguistic landscape on the North Shore of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic. I present an account of the visual representation of change along the area’s parks and trails, which remained open for socially-distanced exercise during the province’s lockdown. Following the principles of visual, walking ethnography, I walked through numerous locations, observing and recording the visual representations of the province’s policies and discourses of lockdown and social distancing. Examples of change were most evident in the rapid addition to social space of top-down signs, characterised mainly by multimodality and monolingualism, strategically placed in ways that encouraged local people to abide by social-distancing. However, through this process of observation and exploration, I noticed grassroots semiotic artefacts such as illustrated stones with images and messages that complemented the official signs of the provincial government. As was the case with the official signs and messages, through a process of discursive convergence, these grassroots artefacts performed a role of conveying messages and discourses of social distancing, public pedagogy, and community care.

摘要

本文描述了在 COVID-19 大流行的前三个月，加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省温哥华北岸不断变化的语言景观。我介绍了该地区公园和步道沿线变化的视觉表现，在该省封锁期间，这些公园和步道仍然开放，可供保持社交距离的锻炼。遵循视觉、行走的民族志原则，我走过了许多地点，观察和记录了该省政策的视觉表现以及封锁和社会疏远的话语。变化的例子最明显的是自上而下的标志迅速增加到社会空间，其主要特点是多模态和单语制，并以鼓励当地人遵守社交距离的方式进行战略性放置。然而，通过这个观察和探索的过程，我注意到草根符号学文物，例如带有图像和信息的插图石头，与省政府的官方标志相辅相成。与官方标志和信息一样，通过话语融合的过程，这些草根文物发挥了传达社会距离、公共教育和社区关怀的信息和话语的作用。