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Online Linguistic Landscapes: Discourse, Globalization, and Enregisterment

Chapter · January 2020

DOI: 10.5040/9781350077997.0013

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Following is the manuscript version of the paper published in Malinowski and Tufi (2020)
The published volume contains many interesting papers and is highly recommended!

(2020)
Online linguistic landscapes: discourse, globalization, and enregisterment
Authors: Jeffrey L. Kallen, Esther Ní Dhonnacha, and Karen Wade

Introduction

Linguistic Landscape (LL) research has usually focused on signage in the physical,
terrestrial world. The early study by Rosenbaum et al. (1977) had a strong territorial
orientation, since it focused on a single geographical area (Keren Kayemet street in
Jerusalem) and compared the frequency of the Roman alphabet (taken as a proxy for
English) and Hebrew in signage with the use of English as a spoken language within the
same locale. Spolsky and Cooper (1991) likewise took a strongly geographical approach
to their discussion of the distribution of languages in the signage of Jerusalem, Backhaus
(2007) has developed a quantitative geographical approach to Tokyo signage in which
district-by-district comparisons play a major role, and Barni and Bagna (2010) have
measured the 'visibility and vitality' of Chinese, Romanian, Russian and Ukrainian in
specific districts of Italian cities. The study of linguistic landscapes in relation to
language policy (e.g. Sloboda's 2009 comparison of Belarus, the Czech Republic and
Slovakia) naturally invites a geographical approach, since language policies are framed
within geopolitical boundaries (see also papers by Dunlevy and by Juffermans and
Kudžmaitė, this volume). Studies of globalization and the LL such as Blommaert (2013)
and Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael (2016) focus not on the world as a whole, but on the
visible relationships between globalization and specific areas such as Berlin and
Antwerp, respectively. Though tourism also involves long-distance population
movement, studies in this field (e.g. Bruyèl-Olmedo and Juan-Garau 2015) also take it for
granted that the basic material for LL research consists of signs in specific locations
frequented by tourists. Androutsopoulos (2014: 82) describes LL as a field in which the
'main empirical object is language use on street signs', while Nash (2016: 384) argues
against LL as a separate field of research since 'at ground level, all landscape research
which involves language is arguably linguistic and all linguistic research must somehow
be landscape connected'. This geographic orientation for LL research is not accidental:
accepting Scollon and Scollon's (2003: 164) argument that 'the geosemiotic meaning of
the sign depends on where on the earth it is placed', it becomes clear that signage itself
derives part of its meaning from the circumstances, physicality and reception of its
emplacement.

The LL, however, has not always been seen in purely physical and geographical
terms. Landry and Bourhis (1997: 41) used the term 'linguistic landscape' not only to
describe physical signs, but also to include 'contacts with television programs,
-2-

magazines or journals, movies, radio programs, and newspapers'. Shohamy and

Waksman (2009: 315) bring this broader perspective into the internet era with the view
that

it is essential to draw attention to the sphere of the cyberspace where again

boundaries between 'private' and 'public', 'real' and 'virtual', 'space' and 'place'
lose their original meanings as they converge and overlap. Thus the cyber space
(e.g., YouTube) expands the LL 'geography' to include people who are not
necessarily present physically but nevertheless become active participants in the
LL scenery in virtual ways.
Marten, Van Mensel and Gorter (2012: 4) offer a critique in pointing out that 'the
emphasis in most linguistic landscape work has been on […] static signs', and stating
that new research is needed because 'this focus may seriously limit the variety of signs
that one can encounter in public space'. More recently, Halonen (2015: 128) has argued
in favour of 'perceiving virtual environments as landscape', supporting a view that
'social media applications and the internet should be considered as specific landscapes
where people spend a lot of their spare time', which are 'explored and experienced as
material places just like other types of physical landscapes' (p. 142).
This paper is designed to fit within this broader tradition in LL research, deriving its
impetus from the study of visible language in public places, and developing the notion of
place to include the online world in specific ways. Our approach thus starts with the
notion of landscape as applied to online environments, rather than with a focus on
internet discourse itself. There is a large body of research on various aspects of
discourse in new online media, and space limitations preclude a full review here. Soukup
(2006) and Androutsopoulos (2010a, b), for example, have explored themes in relation
to online environments and physical space. Kutsuno and Yano (2007) and Gottlieb
(2010) consider linguistic creativity in Japanese online writing and discourse; code-
switching and creativity in the development of Persian, Indian and Greek diasporic
communities online have been examined by Androutsopoulos (2007); Li and Juffermans
have considered similar issues for Dutch-Chinese internet discourse, as has McLaughlin
(2014) for Senegalese communities. Deumert (2014) focuses more specifically on the
building of identity using playful discourse in social networking sites. Papers closer to
the subject of this paper include those by Androutsopoulos (2012), which considers the
semiotics of layout and the use of English (in such functions as 'heading', 'bracketing'
and 'naming') in German online communication, and the efforts by Ivkovic and
Lotherington (2009: 17) toward 'conceptualising the virtual linguistic landscape' in
order to, as they say (p. 18), 'map out the possibilities for research, both conceptual and
empirical, of multilingualism in cyberspace within the LL framework'. Though our
-3-

discussion is informed by the insights of these and other studies on the nature of
internet discourse, we want to start by bridging the gap between mainstream LL
research and the specific demands of an online linguistic landscape (OLL) that is made
of digital, rather than terrestrial, images and language displays.
In order to develop this concept of the OLL, we divide our discussion into two parts.
The first part focuses on linguistic landscapes in online environments. Taking the LL as
what Shohamy and Waksman (2009: 314) call 'text presented and displayed in the
public space', we ask how to characterize an OLL in which anything linguistic (or
semiotic) can happen: monolingualism, multilingualism, translanguaging that breaks the
barriers between existing codes, and multimodalism. The second part illustrates our
understanding of the OLL by the close scrutiny of one specific domain of activity: the
construction of Irishness by internet users, based on the demands of community-
building in the online environment and on the affordances of the online environment for
the creation of linguistic landscapes. This approach is designed not only to describe a
specific case, but to facilitate further research in a wide range of circumstances.

Part one: defining the OLL

We start with the development of three sets of problems which are fundamental to the
OLL. These problems can be grouped under the following headings:

1. boundaries:
— what is a landscape in the online environment, given the disconnection between
the terrestrial world and the world as it appears online?
—how is the public space of the online environment distinguished from private
space and language use?
— how does the OLL reterritorialize the historical dynamics of the terrestrial LL?

2. spatial fluidity:
— given that online units such as words and images can exist on one computer or
device at a given moment, but may also exist on millions of spatially diffused
devices at the same time, we ask, does the OLL exist in a defined physical space?
— what effects in the OLL arise from the impermanent nature of the online
environment, in which end users can change the environment at will and may also
find it changing involuntarily as a result of their own online histories?

3. expressive fluidity:
-4-

— how does the OLL develop new discourses which involve frequent interchange
between the roles of sign creator and sign recipient as well as translanguaging
which crosses barriers between codes and modalities?

We approach the issue of boundaries by parsing the phrase 'text presented and
displayed in the public space' closely. No LL study can claim to be entirely inclusive of all
text that can be found within a given spatial area. An LL study which uses data from
shops, for example, is likely to focus on signs in shop windows or doors: little attention
will be paid to newspapers, magazines and goods within the shop, and still less to the
language of till receipts, inventories, wiring and plumbing fixtures or other texts that
may be considered incidental, but are nevertheless present. The texts that usually
feature in LL studies are framed in physical ways that make their status as presentations
self-evident. A poster, road sign, billboard, public notice, shop sign or notice in a window
has a discrete physical boundary, a commissioning authority (whether personal or
institutional) and a publicly recognized function: even examples such as graffiti and the
accumulations in what Kallen (2010) terms the 'detritus zone' have physical attributes
of display in the public eye. Thus it has not been difficult for LL studies to select written
texts for analysis, abstracted from (though connected to) a cultural space in which
spoken languages permeate social interaction. We face a potential problem in the online
environment, however, since most material is already textual, and what is not textual
(e.g. images and music) is usually accessed through textual interfaces. If all public text is
potentially part of the LL, then the OLL must include nearly all the content on the
internet, and a concept of the OLL becomes meaningless. The study of the OLL,
therefore, requires a distinction between those components of online linguistic
engagement which are analogous to the everyday language of the terrestrial world, and
those online elements which, like elements in the terrestrial LL, count as 'text presented
and displayed' in public. Our suggestion is that the OLL resides not in the content of
websites, comments, and messages, but in the linguistic features and affordances of
these online spaces that can be harnessed by both users and web developers for the
purpose of language display and enregisterment.

In setting this boundary, we are influenced by notions such as Eastman and Stein's
(1993: 187) definition of language display as 'an attempt to inform others of who one is,
or would like to be in the world'. What sets apart the material of the terrestrial LL is its
focus on ways in which variable linguistic resources such as code-switching, cross-
linguistic borrowing and the ascription of value to particular codes are always at the
ready to allow language users to display who they 'would like to be in the world'. Using a
-5-

theory such as the 'markedness model' of Myers-Scotton (1998), we can suggest

specifically that the creators and administrators of online spaces make marked choices
of linguistic and related visual elements which set out their own identity in particular
ways. In contrast, user identities can be encoded by marked choices such as usernames;
even using a 'default' setting (such as the Twitter egg) represents a display choice.
Because these visually encoded elements are examples of linguistic display, they make
up part of the OLL. Language display in this sense is clearly related to Coupland's (2001)
view of 'stylization' in the use of dialect. For Coupland (2001: 348), this notion 'implies
seeing dialect as PERFORMANCE rather than as BEHAVIOR, and [...] as SOCIAL PRACTICE
rather than as VARIATION' [emphasis in the original]. As we will see below, display and
stylization in the OLL rely heavily on intertextuality, defined by Bauman (2004: 4) as 'the
relational orientation of a text to other texts', based on 'the ways in which each act of
textual production presupposes antecedent texts and anticipates prospective ones'.
Following from these principles, we suggest that from within the potentially limitless
data of online discourse, what counts as OLL must be framed in specific ways so as to be
presented and displayed, rather than simply used as a medium of communication.

To pick an illustrative example, Wikipedia is a highly public, information-centred

web-based resource with versions in a number of languages. It would be redundant to
argue that the English-language version of Wikipedia engages in significant acts of
identity by using English. That is not to say, however, that Wikipedia has no linguistic
landscape. A menu on the left-hand side of the typical page displays a wide range of
languages which can be used for Wikipedia texts: this language choice is an element of
the linguistic landscape, and a screenshot of this section would be more multilingual
than a terrestrial sign is ever likely to be. In the context of the main English text, then,
Magyar (for example) is a linguistically marked choice: it is not simply a link to Magyar
Wikipédia (Hungarian Wikipedia), but tells the reader something about Wikipedia itself.
Yet once the reader has clicked on to Magyar Wikipédia, Hungarian becomes the default
language and there is no added significance in the use of Hungarian: the LL element
fades from language display into the unmarked chatter of information-giving.

Our approach to the boundary between public and private space in the OLL is also
linked to the question of spatial fluidity, and relies on spatial metaphor. Bittarello
(2009), for example, points out that spatial metaphors such as navigating or surfing the
internet; chatrooms, web-pages and home-pages; and the very nodes and webs that are
basic in thinking about the internet can be shaped to define internet 'spaces' for specific
purposes. Crucially for the OLL, terms such as internet traffic, surfing the internet,
-6-

forums, boards, chatrooms and email each involve notions of space and access. The
continuum of access from traffic (which implies widespread and easy access leading to
large numbers of participants) to email (analogous to postal mail which is usually
addressed to a specific individual and meant to be read privately, even if copies may also
be sent to others) includes a boundary between public and private. At the public end, we
find online resources such as Wikipedia, which aim to cater for as much traffic as they
can support; in general, any internet user can visit the site without cost or entry
barriers, and the way is open for information recipients to become information
contributors. Most forums and blogs, as well as many websites, also operate at a level of
access which encourages public participation. Many newspapers have now breached
traditional boundaries between public and private: whereas the print newspaper
entered the public domain in a way that made readers' comments purely private and
personal (apart from the possibility of publishing a few tightly controlled 'letters to the
editor'), newspapers now often facilitate online public comment. Privately owned social
networking sites such as Facebook use the framework of the public network platform to
provide users with a general landscape in which discourse can take place. Through the
use of different privacy settings (ranging from 'public' to 'secret'), however, it is possible
to create a more private space within the public domain, in which membership and
viewability may be controlled. Online communities created this way may be small, but
they function as a public domain. Building from the existing spatial metaphor that THE
INTERNET IS A HIGHWAY, we argue that search engines (the signposts which guide us
on journeys) are public; website landing pages (the shopfronts which tell us what goes
on inside establishments) are public; members-only forums, private Facebook groups,
privacy-enabled blogs, and paywalled content providers (parts of the business which are
marked off as 'private', 'employees only', or 'restricted') are usually private; and emails
(communications which take place within specifically delimited spaces) are private.

The expressive fluidity of the OLL gives prominence to the interchange of roles
between sign recipients and sign receivers. Most of the terrestrial LL is constructed by
agents with commissioning responsibility and control over the space in which textual
elements are displayed, regardless of whether the agent is a multinational corporation, a
civic authority or a local shopkeeper. Graffiti and detritus represent exceptions, the first
because it often transgresses rules over control of public writing spaces, the second
because it is constructed without wilful design. There are many parts of the online
environment, however, where the public can participate in the construction of a
changing linguistic landscape. As we demonstrate below, however, this fluidity and the
possibility of rapid change does not preclude a demarcated OLL. Rather, what it means is
-7-

that certain specific characteristics of discourse will become integrated into the
language of the OLL.

We proceed here on the basis of core concepts in the use of the term landscape that
transcend the boundary between the terrestrial LL and the OLL. These concepts include
the visual ensemble, in which the whole of the observable landscape in any given space
provides a context for that part of the landscape which contains language presentation
and display; textual stability, according to which visible texts may range from relatively
permanent fixed signs and inscriptions to those with short-term existence or placement,
but are not transient in the manner of spoken, signed, or similarly short-term language
use; and code choices in which linguistic codes (including mixed, inter-language and
indeterminate code choices) are displayed for specific purposes. The construct of the
visual ensemble allows us to include non-linguistic visual and auditory elements in
analysing texts; the adherence to the notion of public display differentiates the OLL from
other types of multilingual behaviour; and the identification of common problems and
behaviours in terrestrial and online linguistic landscapes differentiates linguistic
landscape study from more general landscape research.

Part two: Communities and the OLL – Irish language, interlanguage, and
translanguaging

Using data which come especially from our own participant observation on social media
(Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Ravelry) and commercial websites, we examine here a
set of data which is not designed to be 'representative' in a statistical sense, but is
intended to demonstrate a variety of strategies which are used to negotiate aspects of
Irish identity in the OLL. These include usernames and other identifiers that rely on the
use of the Irish language, Irish-English bilingualism, or features associated with Irish
English; global internet memes and other displays which index language awareness in
the Irish setting; the commodification and enregisterment of Irish and Irish English; and
discourse which relies on Irish-English bilingualism to signal in-group identities. The
development of the OLL by Irish internet users expands Wade's (2013: 56) observation
that 'Irish bloggers make use of cultural texts [...] to perform and shore up their
individual and communal identities' and focuses particularly on elements of the OLL
which connect smaller communities in the global context of the internet. The general
dynamic we describe is not unique to Ireland – Juffermans, Blommaert, Kroon and Li
(2014), for example, have examined community-building and internet discourse in the
Chinese diaspora in the Netherlands, while Nassenstein and Hollington (2016) discuss
-8-

the use of globalized linguistic repertoires and expressions of identity in Ethiopia and
the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other such examples can be found elsewhere –
but each situation has its own distinctive features which require detailed examination in
order to understand these practices as part of the development of linguistic landscapes.

Usernames and other identifiers

The technology of mass communication carries with it the possibility of personalization
via language display. Kalčik's (1985: 101) early analysis of nicknames (known as
handles) used by CB radio operators pointed out that a handle is 'chosen, or said to be
chosen, because it reflects some part of a person's identity', thereby offering 'the option
of choosing a handle that reflects some desired quality or state and building a fantasy
identity and life around it'. More recently, Bechar-Israeli's (1995) study of chat room
data leads to a conclusion that 'even the most elementary symbolic or intellectual
property–in this case one's nickname–is experienced as an extension of the self', while
Deumert (2014: 25) notes that 'every time we log onto Facebook we experience the
volitional dimension of who we are'. Our Tumblr sample includes (a) Irish-language
usernames based on standard Irish, albeit written in conformity with online
conventions, such as aprilisainmdom.tumblr.com, condensing Irish April is ainm dom 'My
name is April', and An Moncaí Míshuaimhneach 'The uneasy monkey', who describes
himself as Stiofán. Éireannach. Is feirmeoir agus mac léinn na Gaeilge mé 'Stiofán. Irish
person. I am a farmer and a student of Irish'; (b) neologisms, including
easpageag.tumblr.com, which combines easpa 'lack' and geag 'limb' to create 'legless'
(British and Irish English slang meaning 'drunk'), contrasting with standard Irish gan
chos, literally 'without a leg' or éagosach 'legless', neither of which conveys the sense of
'drunk'; and (c) literary references, as with truagh-mo-thuras.tumblr.com. The phrase
truagh mo thuras references two 17th-century poems: the penitential 'Truagh mo thuras
go Loch Dearg' (translated by Ó Tuama and Kinsella 1981: 27 as 'Vain my visit to Loch
Dearg'), and the polemical 'Truagh mo thurus ó mo thir', rendered as 'Sad is my
journeying from my country' by Ua Muirgheasa (1910: 309) and attributed to the
Protestant clergyman Pádraig Ó Duincín (Patrick Dungin). The latter reference further
indexes powerful themes of Irish diaspora identity. These usernames meet the
expectations of language display. They present Irish in a global blog platform dominated
by other languages (especially English); the use of Irish is not driven by the demands of
presenting information through Irish (contrast the Irish-language web content surveyed
by Kelly-Holmes 2006); and they use intertextuality to associate the individual user with
Irish culture in ways that can contain layers of cultural meaning.
-9-

Though the Tumblr usernames contain no special visual elements, the four user
profiles in Figure 1, from Ravelry (a social networking platform based in the United
States and devoted to fibre arts such as knitting and crochet), are more like the
terrestrial LL in combining language display with visual imagery.

Figure 1: Ravelry usernames in Irish.

In the context of a global (English-dominant) internet platform, these profiles display

Irish expressively. Though the Irish does not always correspond to standard
orthography, especially in the lack of accent marks which are integral to modern Irish
spelling but problematic in many online environments, the goal of display is
accomplished: eanair (standard Eanáir) 'January' and cniotaili (cniotálaí) 'knitter' can be
parsed simply. CorcraCroise combines corcra 'purple' and croise 'cross [genitive]'. The
phrase stretches the language, since noun-adjective word order in Irish would require
cros corcra 'purple cross', and 'purple of the cross' is obscure. Obscurities, unexpected
uses of language, wordplay and rule violations are often found in the terrestrial LL (see,
for example, Jørgensen 2008): they should be taken for granted in the OLL. The
identifier roisindubh (Róisín Dubh) is more complex, building on a play between the
literal meaning 'little black rose' (Irish rós 'rose' + diminutive suffix –ín and dubh 'black')
and the visual image of a black rose. Though the name Róisín is common in
contemporary usage (thus 'black-haired Róisín'), the name makes intertextual reference
to a chain of historical associations which includes the 17th-century political poem
'Róisín Dubh'. This poem is based on an older love poem (see Ó Tuama and Kinsella
1981: 308–309), but is now best known for subsequent translations and imagery which
portray Róisín Dubh (sometimes anglicized as 'dark-haired Rosaleen') as the
embodiment of the Irish nation.
-10-

Usernames in the OLL also index Irishness by code-mixing and the use of Irish
English. Figure 2 shows a profile from Twitter with an extended bilingual message,
along with bilingual usernames from Ravelry. The four Ravelry examples follow a
pattern of juxtaposing an Irish word with an English word, allowing for modifications
and polysemy. We parse Bogbean as English bog + Irish bean 'woman' (phonetically
[ban]), yielding 'bog woman' according to English syntax and referencing the topiary
sculpture of a woman which appears to the left of the text; SewBabog as English sew
(also referencing so) + Irish babóg 'doll'; Surfguna as combining English surf (linked to
the seaside photograph to the left) with Irish gúna 'dress'; and CarrigkerryCailin as a
place-based identifier, indexing the Carrigkerry townland in Co. Limerick + Irish cailín
'girl'. The Twitter profile is framed as the discourse of an official organization (Coiste
Focal Nua 'New words committee'), but belongs to an individual user. The notice
regarding 'slang and modern words in Irish' is followed by an Irish version which
closely parallels the English and relies on the neologism phitmhaisithe, offered as an
equivalent to vajazzle, based on Irish pit 'vulva' + maisithe 'decorated'.

Figure 2: Twitter and Ravelry usernames: code-switching.

Variation in Irish English also contains a wide range of linguistic features that can
function as markers of identity. Signmakers in the Irish terrestrial LL sometimes use
local lexicon, morphology or representations of phonology for specific purposes (Kallen
2013: 154, 158, for example, illustrates signage using the lexical items one and one 'fish
and chips' and bazzer 'haircut'), but such usage for fixed signs (as opposed to
commodities such as T-shirts) is relatively rare. Official signage does not assign high
-11-

value to these features, and issues of prestige as well as the over-familiarity of local
dialect or vernacular may discourage their use in commercial signage. In the OLL,
however, local linguistic features can take on added value for the very reason that they
are familiar within the community but may be obscure to, and are often misinterpreted
by, outsiders (cf. the enregisterment of 'Pittsburghese' described by Johnstone, Andrus,
and Danielson 2006). Tumblr usernames in our sample illustrate this principle. The
username janeymac-ie.tumblr.com, for example, trades on knowledge of Janey Mac as a
euphemism for Jesus Christ when used as an exclamation, and on a rhyme well-known in
Irish tradition: Janey Mac/me shirt is black/what'll I do for Sunday?/Go to bed and cover
me head/and not get up till Monday. The username culchiescorner.tumblr.com indexes
culchie, a term used with various connotations to refer to people from rural areas or
areas outside of Dublin (see Dolan 2012 and Kallen 2013: 159–160).
Figure 3 illustrates four further identifiers from Twitter, Tumblr and Ravelry. The
Twitter username for Aidan Lawlor, @aidolawlo, appears to be a simple shortening of
his actual name, but there is more to it than that. The process of name truncation and –o
suffixation is a traditional feature of Dublin English. Perhaps the best-known example is
the historic red-light district known as the Monto (named for Montgomery Street) in
north Dublin; other well-known examples include the Jervo (Jervis Street Hospital) and
personal names such as Anto 'Anthony' and Steeo 'Steven'. The form aido 'Aidan' thus
sends a signal of identity to those who know the vernacular. The graphic from official-
ireland.tumblr.com introduces another element of cultural and linguistic reference. The
profile is satirical, using a profile format that is typical for Tumblr, but does not refer to
the actual blogger. Instead, the picture shows Enda Kenny, the then-Taoiseach (head of
the government): pale and ginger are meant to refer to Kenny's complexion and hair
colour, and the mention of 1916 references the historic Irish uprising against British
authority. The phrase the immersion has particular cultural reference. Immersion
heaters are used to heat water in domestic settings, and while the term is not unique to
Irish English, reference to the culture of having domestic hot water available only when
the immersion has been turned on for specific purposes (a bath or shower, doing
dishes), together with a requirement to turn off the immersion at all other times, has
become a familiar part of Irish culture (though now reducing with the more widespread
availability of central heating): see 'Des Bishop's immersion routine' for an Irish-
American insight. In this example, the immersion refers not simply to an electrical device
but to a household routine that is perceived to be distinctively Irish.
-12-

Figure 3: Irish English references in usernames.

The Ravelry username beanzer is polysemous. The affixation of –er to nouns in Irish
English is highly productive: common forms cited in Kallen (2013: 155–156) include
chipper 'fish and chips shop', Croker 'Croke Park', backer 'back laneway between houses’
and sanger 'sandwich'. The name beanzer can thus be glossed as beans + -er using an
Irish English derivational rule. As we have already seen, though, Irish bean 'woman' is
also a feature of Irish usernames, and we should not be surprised to find it in a largely-
female group such as Ravelry: hence beanzer may also reference Irish bean. No such
ambiguity holds for UnderMeOxter, which references oxter 'armpit', a dialectal word
whose spread includes Ireland, England and Scotland.

Internet memes and displays: Irish and bilingual awareness

Internet memes are readily adaptable across languages, and Irish is no exception. The
displays of Irish on Tumblr in Figure 4, however, are not simply translations; rather,
they index the cultural experiences of Irish-speakers, focusing especially on the position
of Irish as a minority language which nevertheless has high official status and features
prominently in education and government.
-13-

Figure 4: Irish-language internet memes.

Each of the memes in Figure 4 follows an international type; further information is

available from the Know Your Meme website. The four-part '50 Shades' meme follows
the international pattern: in the top left-hand panel, Tá dúile ... ar leith agam can be
translated as 'I have ... unconventional desires', which is followed on the top right by
Taispeáin dom 'show me'. The bottom right panel gives the local cultural reference,
showing a demonstration in support of Irish language rights in which the slogan Cearta
teanga = Cearta daonna 'Language rights = human rights' features prominently. The
'Boromir' meme usually develops from the line One does not simply walk into Mordor,
which quotes the film 'Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring'. The version here
follows a common pattern, with the top line reading Níl sé ró-éasca 'It is not too easy',
followed by Gaeilge Thír Chonaill a thuiscint 'to understand Donegal Irish'. The reference
to Donegal Irish reflects a widespread perception (at least outside of Ulster) that
Donegal Irish is particularly difficult to understand. The 'Success kid' meme has
GaelSpell ar Microsoft Word 'GaelSpell on Microsoft Word' on the top line, followed by níl
líne dearg faoi gach focal 'no red line under every word'. GaelSpell is a commercially
available Irish-language spellcheck for use with Microsoft Word, and the reference to
the red line under each word speaks to the frustration of using Irish when it is not
recognized by Word.
The examples in Figure 5 instantiate global meme formats by using Irish and
referencing non-Irish material. Along with the images in Figure 6, these bilingual
-14-

displays engage in the discourse frame which Coupland (2012: 22) labels 'laconic
metacultural celebration'.

Figure 5: Memes in Irish punning with non-Irish material.

The Mila Kunis and John Travólta memes follow the celebrity 'Name Pun' pattern. In
the former case, the reading of this actor's surname sounds like the Irish word ciúnas
'silence'. Mila ciúnas thus contrasts with the phrase Mila ag caint 'Mila speaking'. The
latter meme plays on the contrast between the Irish word ólta 'drunk' (complete with
vodka bottle in the bottom left of the picture) and English sober. The 'Pun Dog' meme
also follows an international type, in this instance asking Cén sort Gaeilge a labhraitear
ar an nGealach? 'what kind of Irish do they speak on the moon?'. The answer, Gaeilge na
Mumhan! means 'Munster Irish': the humour (reminiscent of the 'culture of "fake"
subtitles' on YouTube described by Androutsopoulos 2010a: 214–216) derives not from
the direct meaning, but from the phonological similarity between English moon and Irish
Mumhan [muːn] 'Munster'. The examples of Figure 5 thus use cross-linguistic references
to index membership in a bilingual community which understands the humour,
displayed on platforms read by outsiders in the global online environment.
The elements of display in Figure 6, both from Tumblr, share a rhetorical stance of
explaining Irish to outsiders. This stance references a common experience for Irish
people who interact with tourists or who live abroad. The promise that the 'cute irish
term of endearment' would endear the speaker to 'any Irish sweetheart' is a joke for
insiders: go ndéana an diabhal dréimire de cnámh do dhroma ag piocadh úll i ngáirdín
Ifreann can be translated as 'may the devil make a ladder of bones from your back and
-15-

pick apples in the garden of Hell'. Likewise, the 'short poem in my native tongue' is a
translation of standard examination regulations ('now read carefully in your
examination paper the instructions and questions which belong to section a'),
referencing the experience of studying Irish in school. Given the discrepancy between
outward presentation and actual meaning, we can say that the Irish is hiding in plain
sight.

Figure 6: Irish hiding in plain sight.

Commodification
The links between linguistic landscapes and commodification have been explored in
various ways. Leeman and Modan's (2009: 353–354) observations of Chinatown in
Washington D.C. show ways in which 'spatial branding [...] has led to the Chinese
language becoming a floating signifier that can be used to signify, or to sell, not just
things Chinese but anything at all', while Jaworski (2015) focuses on the transformation
of items of text into 'language objects' (artworks, sculptures, etc.). Commodification in
the OLL goes beyond what is readily available in terrestrial environments. Not only can
a wide range of language objects be bought and sold on the internet, but the online
displays of language that advertize goods or facilitate access to them become objects of
display in their own right: the publicity itself becomes an object of exchange in a way
which rarely happens in the terrestrial LL.
Figure 7 displays three examples of marketing Irish-language T-shirts. The T-shirt
slogans are in Irish, yet the advertising can be in English and Irish, and references to
Anglophone culture are evident. The slogan An bhfuil tusa ag caint liomsa? translates
'Are you talking to me?' spoken by Robert De Niro in the film Taxi Driver; the graphic
continues this reference. A similar link is made with Tá an geimhreadh ag teacht 'Winter
is coming' (T-léine website). This phrase and the graphics that go with it can only be
fully understood in the context of the television series 'Game of Thrones'. The marketing
-16-

even claims that 'This is the 1st Game of Thrones inspired t-léine as Gaeilge ['T-shirt in
Irish'] anywhere'. The legendary popularity of tea in Ireland is referenced by the Is
maith liom cupán tae 'I like a cup of tea' T-shirt from the now-defunct
freshmilkclothing.com website. Here the marketing translates the slogan into English and
adds 'you can't argue with that. Unless you don't like tea of course, in which case you are
a freak!'. Across these three cases, we see displays of the in-group language, in two cases
making simultaneous reference to global culture and in one case emphasizing local
tradition.

Figure 7: Commodification of Irish in T-shirts.

Commodification also shows identity references which use bilingualism and the
enregisterment of Irish English dialect and vernacular. Figure 8 shows four T-shirts with
mixed code references.
-17-

Figure 8: Irish and English bilingual commodification.

No better buachaill ['boy'], from the Hairy Baby website, uses simple code-switching,
but takes added value from the idiomatic status of phrases of the type 'No better X' in
Irish English. As Hairy Baby explains: 'No Better Man (Boy/Lad/Fella) Usually used to
give respect to someone'. Is maith liom Mayhem 'I like Mayhem' from freshmilk.com
appears to be a case of simple code switching, though we can not rule out the possibility
that there may be another reference involved. The Connemara-based company An
Spailpín Fánach ('The wandering farmhand') has parallel websites in Irish and English,
and offers a meditation on the T-shirt Ach ar dtús fan go dtógfaidh mé #selfie 'But first
wait until I take a #selfie'. Justifying the code-switch to #selfie, they point out that 'there
is an Irish word "Féinphic" [literally 'self-pic'] but we thought the internationally
recognized one was better in this case'. The mixed expression What the fliuch!, using
Irish fliuch 'wet', has become a catchphrase found in various internet contexts. The
phrase simultaneously references the international What the fuck! exclamation, the
outsider's likely misunderstanding of Irish fliuch, and the insider's shared experience of
high amounts of rainfall in Ireland. Marketing from T-leine claims, 'There are many times
in Ireland when this phrase is required. Rain, rain and more rain!'.
Figure 9 shows commodification which displays Irish English and a range of cultural
and linguistic references. The Hairy Baby T-shirt on the left, for example, returns to the
immersion as a point of cultural reference.

Figure 9: Irish English and commodification.

-18-

The use of Feck it and sure it's grand from the GrandGrand website uses two well-
documented phrases with particular Irish associations. Phrases such as feck it and feck
off fulfil a wide range of discourse functions in Irish English and are not simple
euphemisms for their non-Irish equivalents with fuck. Even in the relatively
standardized register of the International Corpus of English for Ireland (ICE-Ireland;
Kirk, Kallen, Lowry, Rooney and Mannion 2011) and Great Britain (ICE-GB 1998), we
can contrast the 8 occurrences of expressions with feck in ICE-Ireland (e.g. And I was in
the mood to buy something so I said feck it) with its complete absence in ICE-GB. Similar
considerations hold for grand, which functions more widely as a mark of approval in
Irish English than elsewhere: see Kallen (2013: 207) for more ICE data and Hickey
(2015: 25–27) for a historical view. The overall layout using the Irish harp (an image
used in a range of official and unofficial contexts) also references the 'Keep calm and
carry on' international meme which uses the British crown. The image from the
Freshmilk website which contains the word bold ('badly behaved' in Irish English),
indexes a ubiquitous marker of this language variety. Irish English usage is generally
taken to represent a loan translation from Irish dána, defined in Irish lexicography as
'bold, brave, intrepid', 'determined, shameless, barefaced', and ' "naughty", as a child'
(see Dineen 1934 and further discussion in Kallen 2013: 148–149). Since the word
occurs so commonly in household contexts, its display here is not simply a dialect
feature, but an aspect of stylization which references the experience of growing up in
Ireland. The catch phrase Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir? (French 'would you like
to sleep with me tonight?') has a mixed history in English. Its earliest textual
documentation appears to be in the novel Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos, where it
exemplifies the fragmentary use of local language by soldiers in an overseas
environment (see Dos Passos 2002: 62); it features more recently in a variety of pop
songs recorded by various artists. The T-shirt on the freshmilk website, however,
substitutes Irish English shift 'kiss' for French coucher. As documented by Share (2008)
and others, Irish English shift can be used as a verb (usually transitive) or as a noun, as
in He's a shift I think (ICE-Ireland).
Finally, we turn to Facebook discourse which exhibits stance-taking with regard to
issues in Irish linguistic culture. The 'Oh my God what a complete Aisling' group on
Facebook focuses on a constructed figure known as Aisling. This name for girls is of
relatively recent currency; it ultimately derives from Irish aisling 'dream, vision', but the
most relevant reference is to aisling poetry and song which developed from the
eighteenth century onwards as an expression of national vision and cultural resurgence.
-19-

In the Facebook context, Aisling represents a stereotypical young woman from rural or
small-town Ireland who lives in Dublin and embraces some aspects of rural tradition as
well as aspects of global modernity: see the OMGWACA Wiki website, and the more
recent work by McLysaght and Breen (2017), for further information. Aisling's equally
fictional boyfriend, 'Generic John', also forms a focus of attention. Contributors to the
anonymized Facebook discourse in Figure 10 use elements of Irish and Irish English to
construct a collaborative view of the stereotypical figure, at the same time engaging in
an extended 'laconic metacultural' discourse.

Figure 10: Metalinguistic display on Facebook.

The initial response to the question of Aisling's ability to speak Irish – cúpla focail 'a
couple of words' –is a set phrase which refers to a low level of Irish usage. It can be used
positively to suggest an effort to employ some knowledge of Irish, but it can be used
disparagingly to suggest a minimal competence underlying any visible efforts to use the
language. The next comment uses the distinctive Irish English terms leaving (short for
leaving certificate, the concluding secondary school qualification in the Republic) and
grinds 'tutorial sessions', before referring to the poem 'Faoiseamh a Gheobhadsa' ('I
would find peace') by Máirtín Ó Díreáin (1984), which frequently features on the Irish-
language secondary school syllabus. The comment which follows indexes the experience
of Irish people who find that even a small amount of Irish serves as a code that cannot be
understood in foreign countries, while Féach, GJ, na broga úafááááásach uirthi 'look,
G[eneric] J[ohn], the aaaaawful shoes on her' captures an Anglophone prosodic pattern
in an Irish-language utterance. Other expressions also pepper the discourse: tír gan
teanga tír gan anam 'a country without a language is a country without a soul' and the
-20-

words geansai 'jumper', plámás 'smooth talk, flattery', citeog 'left-handed person',
amadán 'idiot', bainisteoir 'manager' and srl 'etc.' are all elements that would be well
known from the study of Irish in school and can be inserted into conversation to
demonstrate knowledge of Irish without necessarily reflecting substantial competence.
Arra huist involves two discourse particles in traditional dialect: arrah, long-attested in
Irish English and related to various Irish counterparts (see Kallen 2013: 182 for a
review), and whist 'be quiet', which is related to English dialectal whister and to Irish
fuist. The subsequent discussion also comments on Aisling's attempts to mix with the
Irish club in while in college, despite her shaky knowledge: note the return to the first
comment using the neologistic verb formation cúpla focailing. The suggestion that
Aisling hides her lack of knowledge behind mention of cross-dialectal differences also
indexes common experience for Irish language learners, while the expression Scarleh
Johannson references both an international celebrity and Irish English scarlet
'embarrassed' using a vernacular pronunciation of /t/ with final [h]. In this discourse,
English is the unmarked language which provides a matrix for communication, while
Irish and elements of Irish English index attitudes to language in contemporary society
by their use as language display.

Conclusion
Returning to the questions raised in our introduction, our view is that the OLL
constitutes a definable segment of online activity which can be coherently separated
from the totality of online visual discourse. Using the metaphor of the HIGHWAY and the
affordances of the internet, it is possible to define a distinctive landscape of online
public space. As our Irish data show, discourse in this OLL is relatively rich in language
display, and uses linguistic markedness, stylization and intertextuality to heighten the
awareness of display. There are strong links, too, between reterritorialization and
features of OLL discourse such as intertextuality and commodification. As our data
show, events which occur in the offline world – whether the language rights protests in
Figure 4, banal instructions over immersion heaters, or the use of Irish as a spoken
language – can be extracted, expressed in an identifiable form which can be repeated (in
keeping with the Bauman and Briggs 1990: 73 notion of 'entextualization'), and
displayed in the OLL. Commodification crosses and re-crosses boundaries, since, for
example, images of T-shirts in the OLL can lead to the purchase of T-shirts in the
physical world; these T-shirts can be photographed and put online; and a cycle
continues. Similarly, globalization effects in the terrestrial LL have their parallels in the
OLL; though the internet memes we consider in Figures 4 and 5 provide obvious
-21-

examples, much of the display we consider here derives its force from being directed to
local recipients within a global platform.
With regard to spatial and expressive fluidity, our evidence suggests that these are
affordances of the medium rather than barriers to the development of an OLL. As in the
terrestrial LL, some parts of the OLL are relatively stable, while others are much more
variable. Proprietary platforms like Facebook and Tumblr are not entirely public, but
they provide a stable visual format (like a wall in our HIGHWAY metaphor) which
defines an expressive nearly-public domain that, like a legal graffiti wall, allows for
language display. The physical diffusion of imagery across devices provides unique
affordances for the OLL: though the Irish data considered in this paper express a shared
sense of Irishness, and usually originate from Irish internet users, they are on view to
the world at large and may include a geographically dispersed population within the
comunity. Irish signage with a community focus can be found in the terrestrial LL (see
Kallen and Ní Dhonnacha 2010 and Moriarty 2012 for examples), but is heavily
dependent on its physical placement: the reader must be in the right place at the right
time to get the message. Impermanence is a problem for researchers, since there is no
guarantee that data once observed can be retrieved again by another researcher, but not
a problem for the OLL itself.
We have shown here too that the boundaries between sign user and producer in the
OLL change freely in ways that even graffiti and other informal LL inscriptions cannot
match. Shops in the terrestrial world display their identities in the LL, but customers do
not: usernames are a distinctive feature of the OLL. Graffiti can show a cycle of
inscription, response by other graffitists, eradication by civic authorities, and revival,
but the opportunities for participation are limited and the pace of interaction far slower
than the pace of dialogue shown here in Figure 10. In short, we suggest that not all
online discourse counts as linguistic landscape, and that the OLL shows parallels to,
divergences from, and intersections with the terrestrial LL and its wider linguistic culture.
The dynamics of these relationships, in turn, become a subject for research in its own
right.

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-27-

Further reading

Danet, Brenda and Susan C. Herring (eds). (2007), The Multilingual Internet: Language,
Culture, and Communication Online, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra and Tereza Spilioti (eds). (2016), The Routledge Handbook
of Language and Digital Communication, Abingdon: Routledge.
Seargeant, Philip and Caroline Tagg (eds). (2014), The Language of Social Media: Identity
and Community on the Internet, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan
Thurlow, Crispin and Kristine Mroczek (eds). (2011), Digital Discourse: Language in the
New Media, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Essay questions

1. Given the importance of boundaries in online spaces, and the sometimes ambiguous
ways in which public and private spaces are delineated online, what are some of the
ethical concerns that may arise when conducting online linguistic landscape studies?
How can we best reconcile these concerns with the requirements of research?

2. Look back through your own social media posts, usernames, blog posts, forum
histories, etc. Do you use language display (which may include bilingualism, code-
mixing, translanguaging, dialect play, etc.)? What purposes does this display serve in
your posts, and how conscious were you of these purposes when you posted? How
does your use of language display vary over time and/or across different online
spaces?

Project work

1. Analyse the online linguistic landscape as it pertains to either a cultural or linguistic

group, or to a specific online community such as a Facebook group, a subreddit, or an
Instagram community. What languages, dialects, and other semiotic references are
used in marked ways? How do members use language and semiotic display to express
and develop their individual and group identities? Use examples.

2. Landry and Bourhis (1997) saw the linguistic landscape as including ‘contacts with
television programs, magazines or journals, movies, radio programs, and newspapers’,
but these areas have received much less attention in LL studies compared to street
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signs, shopfronts, graffiti, etc. Choose one of these less-studied landscape areas, or
name another area which you think has been overlooked in linguistic landscape
research. Outline the important features and parameters of your chosen area: what
discourse is public, what is private, and what is in between? Then, conduct a case study
of language use in that area. What forms of language display can you find? What
cultural features are indexed? What social structures are subverted or shored up? How
do individuals and groups construct their identities within the landscape?

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