Prohibition Signage in Public Places: On the Functional Organization of Different Media, Communication Forms, and Text Types

An Interactive Webgraphic by Christine Domke (Chemnitz)

Abstract

In media linguistics a lot of research has been done on mass media and in this regard increasingly on multimodality, new communication forms and media convergence. The paper’s aim is to transfer these more recent insights from the digital or rather online discourse to the
texts being heard, seen or even touched at everyday places (like railway stations and market places) and to analyze their “place bound” mediality. Thereby it is to be discussed both what kind of media (e.g. analog or digital, permanent or temporary) one is to perceive while
visiting a place or buying something and what kind of relation is to be found between media like screens or posters, established communication forms like notices or announcements and text types like instruction- and prohibition-signs. With regard to prohibitions in public places the relation between media differentiation and text type will be elaborated as well as the crucial question about the text’s semiotic structure, the different kinds of perception (visual,
auditiv, tactile) and the places used for their material “locatedness”. The article therefore argues for a broader discussion of mediality and multimodality in media linguistics with reference to
the concept of “mediatization” as a basic feature of very different discourses of everyday life.

The Contribution

Excerpt (Running Text)

The Author

Christine Domke is a research assistant at Chemnitz U of Technology.  She holds a PhD in linguistics from Bielefeld University and finished her habilitation on public communication in cities, railway stations and airports at Chemnitz University of Technology in 2012. Her research interests include pragmatics, media linguistics, meso-communication, spoken language and organizational communication.