Costas Canakis
University of the Aegean
Stadiou Street bespeaks a story of urban de-gentrification and appropriation by ‘the others’ of Greek society, as suggested by the spray-canned messages on its prized national monuments and up-market shops. The linguistic landscape (LL) has become an arena for the discursive public negotiation of gendered and sexed predicates and meanings, as well as for the discursive production of social categories. It surfaces as a radically globalized ‘canvassing’ arena, which is being transformed through mass media, social media, and contact among local advocacy groups. Therefore, although writing can arguably be considered static, the LL of Stadiou can hardly be conceptualized – let alone studied – as static. To this effect, I approach Stadiou Street ethnographically arguing for the advantages of this approach to the LL as semiotic space.
