Introduction: Language aggression in public debates on immigration

In Europe and the US, xenophobic discourses against immigrants have been elaborated by populist movements, with far-reaching effects on election campaigns, on referenda and on the relationship of the public with governing elites, not least through the use of social media. Such discourses have been linked with claims of ‘regained’ national, cultural or ethnic identity and ‘liberation’ on the part of the anti-immigration ‘we-group’ that have fostered demands, and sometimes near-triumphalist assertions of ‘taking’ one’s (own) country ‘back’ from an unspecified alien occupier. The immigrant is thus seen as an aggressor who threatens to take away one’s identity, and in a kind of ‘identification with the aggressor’ by proxy, the projected national Self feels entitled to defend and reconstitute itself through asserting its own supremacy, wholeness and faultlessness. Conversely, it feels entitled to deny such qualities to immigrants (or also to further ‘Others’, such as current or historical ‘enemy’ collectives who are implicated in dealing with migration) and to demonize them

Wilhelm II’s ‘Hun Speech’ and Its Alleged Resemiotization During World War I

Kaiser Wilhelm II’s speech to a German contingent of the Western expedition corps to quell the so-called ‘Boxer Rebellion’ in 1900 and develop the imperialist drive for colonies further, is today remembered chiefly as an example of his penchant for sabre-rattling rhetoric. The Kaiser's appeal to his soldiers to behave towards Chinese like the ‘Huns under Attila’ was, according to some accounts, the source for the stigmatizing label Hun(s) for Germans in British and US war propaganda in WW1 and WW2, which has survived in popular memory to this day. However, there are hardly any reliable data for such a link and evidence of the use of ‘Hun’ as a term of insult in European Orientalist discourse. On this basis, we argue that a ‘model’ function of Wilhelm’s speech for the post-1914 uses highly improbable and that, instead, the Hun-stigma was re-contextualised and re-semiotized in WW1. For the duration of the war it became a multi-modal symbol of allegedly ‘typical’ German war brutality. It was only later, reflective comments on this post-1914 usage that picked up on the apparent link of the anti-German Hun-stigma to Wilhelm’s anti-Chinese Hun speech and gradually became a folk-etymological 'explanation' for the dysphemistic lexeme. The paper thus exposes how the re-semiotized term Hun was retrospectively interpreted in a popular etymological narrative that reflects changing connotations of political semantics

Science notebooks as interactional spaces in amultilingual classroom: Not just ideas on paper

Past studies have explored the role of student science notebooks in supporting students' developing science understandings. Yet scant research has investigated science notebook use with students who are learning science in a language they are working to master. To explore how student science notebook use is co-constructed in interaction among students and teachers, this study examined plurilingual students' interactions with open-ended science notebooks during an inquiry science unit on condensation and evaporation. Grounded in theoretical views of the notebook as a semiotic social space, multimodal interaction analysis facilitated examination of the ways students drew upon the space afforded by the notebook as they constructed explanations of their under-standings. Cross-group comparison of three focal group sled to multiple assertions regarding the use of science notebooks with plurilingual students. First, the notebook supported student-determined paths of resemiotization as students employed multiple communicative resources to express science understandings. Second, notebooks provided spaces for students to draw upon diverse language resources and as a bridge in time across multiple inquiry sessions. Third, representations in notebooks were leveraged by both students and teachers to access and deepen conceptual conversations. Lastly, students' interactions over time revealed multiple epistemological orientations in students' use of the notebook space. These findings point to the benefits of open-ended science notebooks use with plurilingual students, and a consideration of the ways they are used in interaction in science instruction

What Do You Meme? The Sociolinguistic Potential of Internet Memes

Users of the Internet have established a unique form of communication tool commonly used on social media platforms; these are referred to as Internet memes. The term meme, however, was conceived many years before its appropriation into an Internet sphere. Where memes are units of cultural information propagated like a virus from brain to brain, Internet memes are dynamic digital artifacts that can easily be created and quickly distributed to a large social group with the intention of communication. Internet memes are not static; rather their format inspires social interactions that allow them to be modified and reworked with an infinite amount of communicative outcomes. This paper offers an exploration of the different features of Internet memes, which are identified as creational/distributional, social, as well as communicative. When combined, these features in relation to each other constitute a sociolinguistic potential

Observatory's linguistic landscape: semiotic appropriation and the reinvention of space

Using a longitudinal ethnographic study of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Observatory's business corridor of Lower Main Road, the paper explores changes brought about by the influx of immigrant Africans, their artefacts and language practices. The paper uses the changes in the LL over time and the development of an "African Corner" within Lower Main Road, to illustrate the appropriation of space and the unpredictability, which comes along with highly mobile, technological and multicultural citizens. It is argued that changes in the LL are part of the act of claiming and appropriating space wherein space becomes summarily recontexualized and hence reinvented and "owned" by new actors. It is also argued that space ownership can be concealed through what we have called "brand anonymity" strategies in which the identity of the owner is deliberately concealed behind global brands. We conclude that space is pliable and mobile, and that, it is the people within space who carve out new social practices in their appropriated space.IBS

Reimagining Multilingualism From the Heritage Speaker Perspective: A View of Language Brokering Through the Lens of Translanguaging and Resemiotization

This study examines the experiences and ideologies of heritage language speakers in the United States who have shouldered the responsibility of interpreting and translating for their families since childhood. These “language brokers” (Tse, 1995) are often “circumstantial bilinguals” (Valdés & Figueroa, 1994) who have maintained their heritage language out of necessity in order to interpret and translate for their parents. Many of these heritage speakers continue their roles as language brokers as adults (Del Torto, 2008), interpreting and translating for their families in increasingly complex situations as their parents age. However, despite the complexities of these language brokering (LB) interactions and the value that they bring for those involved, there remains a deficit view of heritage speakers, whose heritage language proficiency is often assessed negatively against ideal native speaker standards (cf. Benmamoun, Montrul, & Polinsky, 2013b). Building on recent studies of adult language brokers (e.g. Guan, Nash, & Orellana, 2016; Sherman & Homoláč, 2017), I explore the LB experiences of heritage speakers living in the United States through the frameworks of translanguaging (García, 2009a; García & Li, 2013) and resemiotization (Iedema, 2001, 2003). Using a sequential transformative mixed-methods design (Creswell et al., 2003), I surveyed and interviewed adult heritage speakers across the United States about their LB experiences during childhood and adulthood. I also video recorded authentic LB interactions for linguistic and semiotic analysis using myself as a researcher-participant. Findings indicate that heritage speakers perceived language brokering as a normal part of their lives with functions that go beyond mediating communication. Most participants attributed their heritage language maintenance to their LB experiences, but they also expressed a deficit view of their heritage language proficiency. While almost all participants identified themselves as native English speakers, they felt ambivalent about identifying themselves as native speakers of their heritage language. This ambivalence stems from how heritage speakers compared their heritage language proficiency to their own English proficiency and imagined native speaker standards. Implications from these findings suggest the prevalence of standard language ideology (Lippi-Green, 1994, 2012) among heritage speakers, whose LB experiences simultaneously challenge and perpetuate deficit ideologies of heritage speakers

Resemiotization of eastern adriatic antiquities uses and abuses of the ancient past

The article explores reverberations of meanings attributed to antiquities in Pula/Pola, Zadar/Zara and Split/Spalato through the lens of the strategy of territorialization, i.e. uses and abuses of the ancient monuments in the political context. Through a wide chronological and geographical framework, the text compares and contrasts for the first time instances such as Renaissance reconstructions of the ancient arch in Zadar, citations of the Pula Arch of Sergii in the context of Habsburg and Valois triumphal entries, 18th-19th-century appropriation of the Eastern Adriatic through archeological knowledge as attempted by Cassas and Lavallée and the iconic value of Eastern Adriatic antiquities as a backdrop for public monuments between the late 19th and mid-20th century